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NUCLEAR
U.S. Will Give Cold Fusion Second Look, After 15 Years
Nuclear Dump Workers Exposed to Vapors
3 Nuclear Workers Hospitalized After Odor
Uranium mine in Australian national park is closed
US experts to analyse uranium seized by DR Congo authorities
Illegal Uranium Mining in Congo, UN Wants Answers
SILENT GENOCIDE
Support people, not just troops
India tests short-range surface-to-air missile
India Tests Short - Range Trishul Missile
UN inspectors to head to Iran in crucial nuclear visit
Japan advised to pre-empt North Korean missile attack
Japanese Agency Says Japan Should Be Equipped
North Korea approves budget with chunk set aside for defense
N. Korean Leader, Chinese Aide Discuss Arms
N.Korea Wants to Continue Nuclear Talks - China FM
Arms-Control Group Says U.S. Inflated Libya's Nuclear Bid
Key U.S. missile defense component delayed
New Russian nuclear reactor a danger to 4.5 mln people: ecologists
Russia to become testing ground for world plutonium industry
Russia warns NATO with nuclear option
Russia May Revise Military, Nuclear Doctrines
US not to reduce nuclear arsenal to Moscow Treaty levels
U.S. Urges Curb on Arms Traffic
Law of the Sea Treaty Battle Surfaces in the Senate
Ukrainian nukes go AWOL
UN Considers Measure Banning Arms to Terrorists
NRC: Nuclear Waste Casks Not Vulnerable
3 Nuclear Workers Hospitalized After Odor
NRC: Nuclear Waste Casks Not Vulnerable
Bush's Funny War
Condeleezza Rice disputes comment by vice president
Richard Clarke, Folk Hero
Truth as a Weapon
Just wondering
MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
MILITARY
U.S. to Send Nearly 2,000 Marines to Afghanistan
Parties Withdraw From Ivory Coast Gov't
Japanese PM re-ignites debate over nations armed forces
Eurofighter Seen Overtaking US Fighter Makers In Revenues
EADS opens Russian unit
Pentagon Faults Supervision Of Contracts
Plan to Use Ohio Plant for Military Blimp
Haitian Cabinet Weighs Disarming Rebels
U.S. Overseer Cites Gains in Iraq
U.S. Calls for Sunni and Kurdish Rights After Turnover
Israel wrong on Iraq weapons
U.N. Rights Panel Condemns Israel's Killing of Hamas Leader
NATO to welcome ex-Soviets in landmark expansion
NATO warplanes to patrol Baltics from March 29
Macedonia, Albania, Croatia Knock on NATO Doors
Indonesian Militants 'Keep Regenerating'
Likely al - Qaida Tape Seeks Pakistan Coup
Tape Said to Be of Qaeda No 2 Urges Pakistan Coup
Russian defence ministry to launch "patriotic channel"
Report: Israel Wrong on Iraq Weapons
U.S. Vetoes U.N. Council's Yassin Measure
U.N. Draft Resolution Would Require States Deny Terrorists
Report details low US Army morale, suicide in Iraq
Unfit soldiers shipped to Iraq, military admits
U.S. May Halve Forces in Germany
DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts
Dutch Court Puts Former Congo Officer on Trial in Torture Case
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ex-Aide Recounts Terror Warnings
Ex-Bush Aide Says Threat of Qaeda Was Not Priority
Colombia drops plans to spray drug crops in parks
9-11 Was Not an Attack, It Was Murder
Homeland Security Wants Better Integration
Domestic Security Gets a Mixed Appraisal
Missed Chances in a Long Hunt for bin Laden
OTHER
OPEC Takes Back Seat as Oil Prices Run Wild
15 Years Later, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Lingers
Bulgarian GMO Protesters: Third World War Comes in Your Plate
Human Genome Sciences Faces Shift in Leadership and Focus
Birth Weights Up After EPA Pesticide Ban, Study Finds
Medicare Official Cites Cost Warning
Medicare Official Testifies on Cost Figures
ACTIVISTS
Say NO to the U.S. Bomb Factory
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S. Will Give Cold Fusion Second Look, After 15 Years
March 25, 2004
By KENNETH CHANG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/science/25FUSI.html
Cold fusion, briefly hailed as the silver-bullet solution to the world's energy problems and since discarded to the same bin of quackery as paranormal phenomena and perpetual motion machines, will soon get a new hearing from Washington.
Despite being pushed to the fringes of physics, cold fusion has continued to be worked on by a small group of scientists, and they say their figures unambiguously verify the original report, that energy can be generated simply by running an electrical current through a jar of water.
Last fall, cold fusion scientists asked the Energy Department to take a second look at the process, and last week, the department agreed.
No public announcement was made. A British magazine, New Scientist, first reported the news this week, and Dr. James F. Decker, deputy director of the science office in the Energy Department, confirmed it in an e-mail interview.
"It was my personal judgment that their request for a review was reasonable," Dr. Decker said.
For advocates of cold fusion, the new review brings them to the cusp of vindication after years of dismissive ridicule.
"I am absolutely delighted that the D.O.E. is finally going to do the right thing," Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy magazine, said. "There can be no other conclusion than a major new window has opened on physics."
The research is too preliminary to determine whether cold fusion, even if real, will live up to its initial billing as a cheap, bountiful source of energy, said Dr. Peter Hagelstein, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been working on a theory to explain how the process works. Experiments have generated small amounts of energy, from a fraction of a watt to a few watts.
Still, Dr. Hagelstein added, "I definitely think it has potential for commercial energy production."
Dr. Decker said the scientists, not yet chosen, would probably spend a few days listening to presentations and then offer their thoughts individually. The review panel will not conduct experiments, he said.
"What's on the table is a fairly straightforward question, is there science here or not?" Dr. Hagelstein said. "Most fundamental to this is to get the taint associated with the field hopefully removed."
Fusion, the process that powers the Sun, combines hydrogen atoms, releasing energy as a byproduct. In March 1989, Drs. B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, two chemists at the University of Utah, said they had generated fusion in a tabletop experiment using a jar of heavy water, where the water molecules contain a heavier version of hydrogen, deuterium, and two palladium electrodes. A current running through the electrodes pulled deuterium atoms into the electrodes, which somehow generated heat, the scientists said. Dr. Fleischmann speculated that the heat was coming from fusion of the deuterium atoms.
Other scientists trying to reproduce the seemingly simple experiment found the effects fickle and inconsistent. Because cold fusion, if real, cannot be explained by current theories, the inconsistent results convinced most scientists that it had not occurred. The signs of extra heat, critics said, were experimental mistakes or generated by the current or, perhaps, chemical reactions in the water, but not fusion.
Critics also pointed out that to produce the amount of heat reported, conventional fusion reactions would throw out lethal amounts of radiation, and they argued that the continued health of Drs. Pons and Fleischmann, as well as other experimenters, was proof that no fusion occurred.
Some cold fusion scientists now say they can produce as much as two to three times more energy than in the electric current. The results are also more reproducible, they say. They add that they have definitely seen fusion byproducts, particularly helium in quantities proportional to the heat generated.
After a conference in August, Dr. Hagelstein wrote to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, asking for a meeting. Dr. Hagelstein; Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.; and Dr. David J. Nagel of George Washington University met Dr. Decker on Nov. 6.
"They presented some data and asked for a review of the scientific research that has been conducted," Dr. Decker said. "The scientists who came to see me are from excellent scientific institutions and have excellent credentials."
Scientists working on conventional fusion said cold fusion research had fallen off their radar screens.
"I'm surprised," Dr. Stewart C. Prager, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, said. "I thought most of the cold fusion effort had phased out. I'm just not aware of any physics results that motivated this."
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear Dump Workers Exposed to Vapors
Thursday March 25, 2004
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3900180,00.html
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Six workers at a research site that once made plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal sought medical attention last week after being exposed to chemical vapors wafting from underground tanks of radioactive waste, a watchdog group said Wednesday.
Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation were exposed in three separate incidents on March 16 and 17 while cleaning up tanks containing waste left over from years of nuclear weapons production, according to the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, based in Seattle.
A U.S. Energy Department official confirmed the six were evaluated and later returned to work.
Tom Carpenter, director of the accountability project's nuclear oversight campaign, criticized Hanford officials for not equipping the workers with respirators.
``Not only are the vapors toxic and perhaps lethal, the workers have inadequate protection,'' Carpenter said. ``Hanford put these workers in harm's way - it borders on criminal negligence.''
The exposures were reported to company managers in a daily meeting and later to employees in a memo.
Rob Barr, director of environmental safety and quality for the U.S. Energy Department's Office of River Protection, called the exposures a ``learning experience'' for Colorado-based contractor CH2M Hill, hired to handle tank-waste cleanup at the facility in south-central Washington.
A company vice president said the contractor shares concerns about vapors but insisted scientific evidence showed no threat to workers. ``All the technical information I have says we are not endangering anyone,'' said Susan Eberlein, CH2M Hill's vice president of environmental safety, health and quality.
More than 800 workers at Hanford's sprawling ``tank farm'' are cleaning up 177 underground tanks holding about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste. Some of the tanks date back to World War II and could contain as many as 1,200 different chemicals.
Contractors have identified the contents of some tanks by sampling, but critics contend no one knows exactly what is in them or what vapors they might give off. Some of the tanks have leaked into ground water.
The exposures come as Hanford officials face state and federal investigations into allegations they have ignored safety concerns to speed cleanup at the facility, considered the most heavily contaminated nuclear research site in the nation.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
----
3 Nuclear Workers Hospitalized After Odor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 25, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Workers.html
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Three workers at the Hanford nuclear site were taken to a hospital Thursday after noticing a mysterious ``sweet smell'' near underground tanks holding radioactive waste.
The three initially declined medical evaluation, but co-workers called 911 when one of them developed a nosebleed, according to Erik Olds, spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of River Protection.
The worker with the nosebleed was taken by ambulance to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland. The other two also were being evaluated at the hospital, Olds said. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The workers are monitors for radioactivity or chemical vapors during the cleanup of the vast site that once made plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Several investigations are under way to determine if Hanford workers are being exposed to toxic vapors from 177 underground tanks, which hold about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste from weapons production.
Last week, six workers sought medical attention after being exposed to tank vapors. They later returned to work.
The Energy Department and the contractor handling tank waste cleanup have said the vapors are not dangerous.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile site in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
----
Uranium mine in Australian national park is closed after uranium is detected in water supply
Thursday, March 25, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-25/s_22171.asp
DARWIN, Australia - A uranium mine in the middle of a pristine heritage-listed national park in northern Australia was temporarily shut down Wednesday after tests revealed increased levels of uranium in its water supply, the mine's operator announced.
ERA closed the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park after the higher-than-usual levels were found late Tuesday in water used by mine staff for drinking and showering.
In a statement the company said, "Staff coming off the night shift noticed poor water quality while showering, and the water was tested and found to contain elevated levels of uranium and higher acidity."
ERA did not say what the uranium levels were but said, "A preliminary assessment shows no need for concern for the small number of staff involved, although the company will continue to monitor the health issue carefully."
ERA said it closed the mine and sent about 170 nonessential staff home as a precaution and shut down the drinking and washing water system. The mine would likely remain closed until Friday morning, said the company, which is investigating the problem.
Aboriginal owners of the mine site said they were concerned by the incident in the midst of the park, which gained fame as a backdrop for parts of Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee movie.
"The contamination is of great concern because of its possible implications for human health," the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation said in a statement. "While at present it appears that there is minimal radiological risk to workers, the question of chemical toxicity is of concern."
Kakadu is a vast expanse of wetlands and sandstone outcrops about 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the northern port of Darwin that is home to wildlife including crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and birds. It is recognized as a World Heritage site for environmental and cultural reasons.
-------- africa
US experts to analyse uranium seized by DR Congo authorities
KINSHASA (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325155425.kgsvgjm6.html
Experts from the United States will on Friday visit a Nuclear Research Centre (CREN) where several dozen samples of enriched uranium are stocked in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Scientific Research Minister Gerard Kamanda said.
The lead and stainless steel alloy casings holding the samples all appear to come from the United States, Kamanda told AFP on Thursday. The uranium stored at the CREN has been seized over the course of four years, he said.
Earlier this week, a DRC atomic energy specialist said that a blend of enriched uranium 235 and 238 was detected in two seized samples. These materials could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb", he said, but not an atomic one.
The shell casings will not be opened at once, Kamanda said Thursday. The first step will be to decipher the writing on them.
The DRC's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) representative, Fortunat Lumu, had said Tuesday, two US experts were in Kinshasa and "will at the end of the week or the beginning of next week" open two casings.
In all, security forces have seized about 50 such casings, weighing between 50 kilos (110 pounds) and 100 kilos. Similar finds have been made in neighbouring Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda, Kamanda said.
The research minister said the most likely explanation for the discovery of the various casings was that "a network of swindlers" was out to make money from selling them.
Some of the samples could merely be "waste", he added.
Dirty bombs are made by mixing radioactive material with conventional bombs and are capable of irradiating a vast area for several decades, Lumu told AFP.
Last month, two Zambians were arrested in possession of weapons-grade uranium at a public function where President Levy Mwanawasa was expected to be guest of honour.
The president failed to show up. The two were charged last week with "possession of dangerous substances," but on Monday the charge was changed to one of espionage.
Weapons-grade uranium has also been seized recently in Uganda and Tanzania.
And in November last year, a member of the DRC opposition told France's Progres de Lyon newspaper that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network had bought a case of enriched uranium from a DRC opposition figure, who had sold it to finance a coup.
Casings of enriched uranium exchange hands for around 400,000 dollars in DRC's smaller, western neighbour the Republic of Congo, Lumu said.
--------
Illegal Uranium Mining in Congo, UN Wants Answers
March 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-congo-democratic-uranium.html
SHINKOLOBWE, Congo (Reuters) - A mine in Congo that provided uranium for the first atomic bombs is being illegally quarried and the potentially dangerous raw material exported without control, industry experts say.
That rang alarm bells with the United Nations Thursday and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had asked the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for more information.
``If there is the possibility that large quantities of uranium are being mined and exported, it is disturbing,'' said a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
``The DRC has an additional protocol with the IAEA which puts it under an obligation to report its uranium mining activities as well as its exports of uranium,'' Melissa Fleming added.
Thousands of self-employed miners are pounding away at rocks and descending into makeshift shafts at Shinkolobwe, one of mineral-rich Congo's largest and oldest mines in the southeastern province of Katanga.
``Our union manages several thousand miners at Shinkolobwe. Our role is to manage the future training of these miners for whatever they end up doing,'' said Jean Marie Mujinga, site head at Shinkolobwe for the Union for Artisanal Miners in Katanga.
Mujinga said there were around 6,000 miners at the site.
Discovered in the early 1900s and developed by Congo's then colonial master Belgium, Shinkolobwe provided the uranium for the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of the World War II.
Its principal mineshaft was filled with concrete and its uranium concentrator abandoned after the war by the Belgians, under pressure from the U.S. government to remove a potential security threat once Congo gained independence in 1960.
REFINED AND ENRICHED
The miners are digging up cobalt and copper compounds, in high demand on the world market, but the amalgamates contain significant traces of uranium, which can be processed into nuclear material in the hands of expert scientists.
``They are inadvertently exporting raw uranium, which could find its way into the hands of countries that are capable of using it,'' said John Skinner, General Manager of Swanepoel Enterprises, a South African farming and contract mining company that has been based in nearby Likasi since the 1930s.
Demand for cobalt -- used in paints, batteries and newer generations of mobile phones -- continues to suck compounds containing uranium out of Shinkolobwe. But scientists say that the threat of it ending up in a nuclear bomb is minimal.
Only uranium which has been through several stages of refining and enrichment is usable in the core of an atomic bomb, and experts say obtaining highly-enriched uranium is the biggest obstacle to developing nuclear weapons.
``The uranium from Shinkolobwe is mostly uranium-238, and therefore not immediately fissionable,'' says Professor Fortunat Lumu, Atomic Energy General Officer at Congo's Ministry of Scientific Research in the capital Kinshasa.
``It could only be dangerous in the hands of those countries that have, or are trying to develop, expensive nuclear reactors and laser technologies that can process uranium-238 into highly radioactive materials,'' he said.
Shinkolobwe was once prospected by North Korea, which sent a team of engineers to the site in 1999, only to be thrown out after Washington put pressure on Congo's government.
Nowadays, local residents say, it is Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and South Korean smelter operators who are buying up the amalgamate compounds for smelting in Likasi -- an industrial town not far from Shinkolobwe -- or for direct export.
-------- depleted uranium
SILENT GENOCIDE
By Robert C. Koehler
Tribune Media Services
3/25/04
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824
"After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death."
This will not be easy to read, especially if you've projected evil out of your own heart, into some cave in Afghanistan or a spider hole in Iraq, and reduced the age-old question it inspires to this one: How can we bomb it off the face of the earth?
Before the damage we inflict grows greater, before history's judgment gets worse, before we contaminate the whole world - even before we vote in the next election - we must stop what we're doing. We must stop now.
It's time to listen for a moment not to defense analysts, briefing officers, pols or pundits, but to people like Jooma Khan, a grandfather who lives in a village in Laghman Province, in northeastern Afghanistan, who is quoted above. Surely he deserves 30 seconds of our undivided attention.
"When I saw my deformed grandson," he told an interviewer in March of 2003, "I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good. (This is) different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape."
We're waging war-plus in Afghanistan and Iraq - in effect, nuclear war, with our widespread use of depleted-uranium-tipped shells and missiles. This is no secret. DU, with its extraordinary penetrating power and explode-on-impact capability, helps assure our military dominance everywhere we go. But people like Jooma Khan and his grandson reap its toxic legacy. So, of course, do our own troops.
Kahn's words are only a sliver of the damning testimony contained in the documents of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan, a Japanese citizens' initiative that recently concluded its two-year inquiry into the first phase of the Bush administration's war on terror. But they say everything that we cannot hear.
If we (ITALICS) could (END ITALICS) hear Jooma Khan, and others who are sounding the alarm about DU, such as former Livermore Labs geologist Leuren Moret, who testified at the tribunal, there would not be mere thousands of people in the streets of American cities demanding that we stop the war, but hundreds of thousands, or millions - the sort of numbers that turn out in other parts of the world.
The use of DU weaponry is not the extent of our criminal irresponsibility in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the tribunal's guilty verdict against George Bush on charges of war crimes, but it's the most chilling. (You can check out the full report at, among other places, www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm)
As Moret testified, depleted uranium turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes; individual particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria. And, "It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment."
And DU dust is everywhere. A minimum of 500 or 600 tons now litter Afghanistan, and several times that amount are spread across Iraq. In terms of global atmospheric pollution, we've already released the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs, Moret said.
The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse. DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe or touch it; the substance also alters one's genetic code.
Thus, birth defects are way up in Afghanistan since the invasion: children "born with no eyes, no limbs, tumors protruding from their mouths . deformed genitalia," according to the tribunal report. This ghastly toll on the unborn - on the future - has led investigators to coin the term "silent genocide" to describe the effects of this horrific weapon.
The Pentagon's response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.
But blame is beside the point. Surely even those who still await "conclusive proof" that DU is the cause, or a factor, in the mystery illnesses and birth defects emanating from the war zones, can see the logic in halting its use now.
Global terrorism? Listen to Jooma Khan. Then look in the mirror.
(Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com.)
----
Support people, not just troops
Backing must not preclude sympathy for murdered innocents
An interpretive dancer performs at Wenceslas Square before a march protesting the U.S.-led war in Iraq. About 300 people participated March 20.
By Vincent Farnsworth
(March 25, 2004)
Prague Post
http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/0325/opin3.php
Slogans are simplistic by nature, such as the "No War for Oil" chant in the protest march to the U.S. Embassy in Prague March 20. The same goes for the pro-war slogan "Support Our Troops." Even living here in Prague, I knew the phrase had reappeared on countless car bumpers in the United States when the invasion of Iraq began a year ago, just as I remember the phrase ringing out during the first Persian Gulf war when I lived in California in the early '90s.
The expression "Support Our Troops" means that even if you oppose a war, you are supposed to shut up about it once the attack begins. In theory, this is to avoid placing a further burden on the average G.I. Joe or Jane sent out to kill and possibly die for (take your pick) an imminent threat, the war on terrorism, a supposed liberation or a profitable war machine.
There are parts of this ruse that I might buy. Most soldiers are young and can hardly be blamed for finding themselves in the middle of a war. Many of them signed up facing the choice between lousier work and joining the military. Some joined to afford college, as did Jessica Lynch, only to find herself maimed in battle and then used for Pentagon propaganda. Some find a military career attractive because it offers the benefits, such as subsidized housing and health care, of a semisocialist organization.
U.S. soldiers in this case are basically victims of a system that offers poor choices. In most developed countries, higher education is affordable and state-supported, as was true in the United States until a couple of decades ago. Also, having grown up in a military family, I know the basic protections we receive that a nonmilitary family doesn't, such as reduced prices at military supermarkets and state-sponsored health care. Again, public health care is something most enlightened First World countries provide across the board, and they don't necessarily demand military service in exchange.
So you have to give a break to, and maybe "support," these economic conscripts. Your average American soldier in Iraq is like the one who, when captured and interrogated on Iraqi TV during the height of the war, pathetically said, "I just followed orders. ... I don't want to kill anybody. ... [Iraqis] don't bother me, I don't bother them." Any reasonable person could empathize with a fellow citizen stuck in such a position.
But the lie behind SOT involves its intent to cow pubic debate and to distract from how the sloganeers themselves harm troops. For example, the U.S. military uses weapons that produce lethal toxins without regard to their effect on U.S. soldiers (not to mention civilian populations). Flagrant examples of this come from Dr. Doug Rokke, who was in charge of toxic cleanup operations in the first Persian Gulf war and had to deal with U.S. depleted-uranium missiles and other chemical and biological weapons. Within 72 hours his team began getting ill, and since then many have died. It makes you think that the 100,000-plus veterans with mysterious illnesses after their time in the Gulf and in Kosovo are not all suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, as the U.S. government likes to pretend. Rokke, a gung-ho army major turned peace activist, knows that those mouthing SOT in fact don't care about the troops' health and well-being one bit.
Notice how it is often "chicken hawks" -- exuberant war boosters who themselves avoided military service -- who push the SOT idea. And Colin Powell, among the few leaders in the current U.S. administration with an actual military record, brings up another nefarious side. Assigned to investigate atrocities by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, Powell reported only "isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians ... this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the division," despite later revelations of the massacres of entire villages. Likewise, to blindly "support troops" today is to give sanction to the mass murder of civilians, whether due to psychopathic episodes, everyday sadism or just standard operating procedure.
News of such U.S. atrocities in Iraq has come out in scattered reports. U.S. Marine Sergeant Eric Schrumpf revealed that his training in civilian casualties taught that killing a large number of innocents all at once looked bad but that killing them a few at a time was OK. About the civilian woman he had just murdered because she stood too close to his target, he said, "I'm sorry, but the chick got in the way."
Turning to the psychopathic tendencies within the war, we have Corporal Ryan Dupre blurting to a reporter, "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."
I don't know whether Corporal Dupre was allowed to "get his hands on" and kill the first Iraqi he could find or whether he was yanked from combat for airing an inconvenient truth and sent into treatment (a form of support he desperately needs). Or maybe he was just allowed to simmer into yet another maniac on the American landscape. Sergeant Schrumpf, on the other hand, needs only the "support" of a war-crimes tribunal, along with all those responsible up the chain of command who trained him to murder civilians.
SOT involves a "my-side-versus-your-side" premise while creating a mental shortcut around actually thinking about it. Are we supposed to support any U.S. soldier on "our" side more than every single Iraqi? Troops on each side of this conflict might have had more in common with each other than with the oil-company family oligarchies ruling each country. The Bush clan and the U.S. government in fact "supported" the Saddam Hussein family through years of CIA sponsorship and military sales much more than they support U.S. troops exposed to deadly environments and trained to murder. Are we supposed to support any Sergeant Schrumpf more than however many "chicks" he murdered? Should we support "our" troops over their civilians?
Personally, I support those with whom I feel kinship. I feel none at all with the chicken hawks in government running this aggression and none with troops like Schrumpf. I do not support them. I feel sorry for but little kinship with soldiers who find themselves in a bad position and just shoot wherever they are told, as the captured soldier said. I support them as much as I sympathize with them. But I feel more sympathy for the civilians murdered by U.S. weapons, for the children sliced to pieces by cluster bombs, for the women blown apart by bunker busters -- and for their survivors.
The protest march in Prague reminded us whom to support in these artificially created conflicts, no matter where they, or we, live. Support the individual luckless soldiers, the Iraqi civilians and all the victims of this aggression and occupation.
But none of us should offer a blanket "support" that equals favoring the death of innocents in an illegal act of international aggression, that means shoving unknowing soldiers and hapless civilians into slow death by exposure to radioactive weapons, or that means having to silence our voices about a unilateral slaughter loosed by a government run amok.
The writer is a founding member of the Prague branch of American Voices Abroad.
-------- india / pakistan
India tests short-range surface-to-air missile
BHUBANESWAR, India (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325111427.qytk49nj.html
India conducted Thursday a successful test of a short-range surface-to-air missile that can target aircraft and counter sea-skimming missiles, a defence official said.
The missile named Trishul (Trident) was fired from a mobile launcher at about 2:52 pm (0922 GMT) at a test range in Chandipur, 200 kilometresmiles) from Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern coastal state of Orissa, the official said.
Trishul, one of five developed by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation since 1983, is powered by solid fuel and can deliver a 15-kilogram (33-pound) warhead up to nine kilometres (five miles) away.
The missile is being developed for the army, navy and air force.
It has already been tested about a dozen times.
--------
India Tests Short - Range Trishul Missile
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Missile-Test.html
NEW DELHI (AP) -- India tested its most sophisticated short-range missile Thursday, the Defense Ministry said.
Pakistan was unlikely to have any reaction to the launch, since it says it does not comment on tests of such short-range missiles.
The solid fuel-propelled Trishul missile, which has a range of six miles, was fired from India's main testing center in Chandipur-on-Sea in the eastern state of Orissa, Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti told The Associated Press.
``Trishul'' means trident, the weapon favored by Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
The missile, developed by the government's Defense Research and Development Organization, is capable of targeting aircraft and sea-skimming missiles, and can carry a warhead of up to 33 pounds.
India routinely test-fires missiles it is developing for military use at the site 750 miles southeast of New Delhi.
When it tests larger missiles, it gives advance notice to Pakistan, its neighbor and nuclear rival with which it has fought three wars. Pakistan does likewise.
When a Trishul was tested in December, Pakistan said it would not comment on tests of such short-range missiles by India.
India's missile arsenal includes the short-range ballistic missile Prithvi, the medium-range Agni and Akash missiles, the anti-tank Nag missile and the supersonic Brahmos missile.
Last week, India tested a new, extended-range version of its nuclear-capable Prithvi missile that could easily reach Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
-------- iran
UN inspectors to head to Iran in crucial nuclear visit
VIENNA (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325122744.fuahhg5i.html
UN inspectors leave for Iran Saturday for a crucial mission in the International Atomic Energy Agency's drive to answer US charges that the Islamic republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Iran had tried to put off the mission earlier this month after the IAEA condemned it for continuing to hide sensitive nuclear activities.
But Tehran yielded and allowed the visit, delayed by two weeks, after an international outcry against Iran for failing to cooperate with the atomic agency.
The inspectors will be "leaving on Saturday for Iran for an inspection mission to the Natanz and Isfahan facilities," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
The Natanz uranium enrichment plant is one of two sites where IAEA inspectors have discovered traces of highly enriched uranium, a substance which can be used both in civilian reactors to generate electricity and also as the raw material for a nuclear bomb.
Isfahan is a nuclear technology center, with a uranium conversion facility where the IAEA has safeguards.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said this inspection visit was "routine, nothing spectacular."
He said the IAEA would not be verifying on this trip Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment.
Iran promised in February to halt not just enriching uranium but all related activities, such as building centrifuges, in a move IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said was crucial to Iran's building confidence in its full cooperation.
The diplomat said another inspection team slated to go into Iran in perhaps two weeks would be looking more aggressively for new findings.
The diplomat said the IAEA was still operating under two different agreements, one for safeguard inspections under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the other under an additional protocol to the NPT which allows for snap, short-notice inspections which Iranian authorities are obliged to accept.
The IAEA has since February 2003 been verifying whether Iran's nuclear programme is peaceful, or devoted to secretly developing atomic weapons, as the United States claims.
The European Union called on Iran Monday to come completely clean on its nuclear programme.
The EU, which favours "constructive engagement" with Iran, has been more cautious in its appraisal of Tehran's nuclear drive.
ElBaradei had said in Washington March 17 that he still could not rule out finding that Iran has been hiding a nuclear weapons program.
He told a US congressional subcommittee that Iran was developing a nuclear fuel cycle as it has been under international sanctions against its nuclear program.
"Have they taken the step from that into weaponisation? We have not seen that but I am not yet excluding that possibility," ElBaradei told the subcommittee on Middle East and Central Asian affairs.
"The jury is still out," on whether Iran possesses such a program, he said.
He said the IAEA's discovery in January of designs for sophisticated P2 centrifuges in Iran for making highly enriched uranium was "a setback, a great setback" since Iran claimed in October it had fully disclosed its nuclear activities.
This led to the tough resolution against Iran at an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna last week for hiding sensitive nuclear activities.
-------- japan
Japan advised to pre-empt North Korean missile attack
TOKYO (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325130920.o6dbl07m.html
Japan should consider developing the capability to launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korean bases in case of missile attacks, an official Japanese think-tank said in an annual report.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the Japanese islands in 1998 and relations between the two countries have remained testy.
"It would be useful to be prepared to carry out a campaign for intercepting the missile in flight and use force against the missile base, in a simultaneous and parallel action, when the opposite side sets out to launch a missile attack on Japan," the National Institute for Defense Studies said.
The report, scheduled to be published on Friday, said it would be important to have extensive discussion at "political level" on the "significance and limit" of such striking power.
The think-tank, affiliated to the Defense Agency, briefed foreign media on Thursday on the report, entitled "East Asian Strategy Review."
Japan's Defence Agency director Shigeru Ishiba has said in parliament last year that, if North Korea were about to launch a missile at Japan, it would not be unconstitutional to make a preventive attack on the launch site.
Ishiba has said such pre-emptive strike abilities have been entrusted so far to the US forces under a security pact.
Japan's post-war constitution bans the use of force in settling international disputes and its military, called the Self-Defense Forces, has been limited to a purely defensive chore.
Japan has been conducting joint research with the US on developing a sophisticated missile defence system since 1999, a year after North Korea's firing of the missile over Japan and into the Pacific.
The report said that North Korea is deploying "175-200" Rodong missiles with a range of about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) at present and seen capable of "striking almost all parts of Japanese territory."
"Japan has become more vulnerable as it is subject to a situation in which Tokyo, like Seoul, can be taken hostage by North Korea in military terms, as a result of the deployment of the Rodong missiles and due to the lack of preparations on the part of both Japan and the United States to counter the move with effective means," the report said.
----
Japanese Agency Says Japan Should Be Equipped With Preemptive Strike Ability
MARCH 25, 2004
by Won-Jae Park (parkwj@donga.com)
The Dong-A Ilbo
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2004032613598
The Japanese Defense Research Center has asserted that Japan should be equipped with the ability to start an assault in order to prepare for missile launches from North Korea.
In a report titled "2004 East Asia Military Strategies" issued by the research center on March 24, it said that "North Korea will get ready to manufacture more than two uranium enriched nuclear bombs next year," suggesting the logic of a preemptive strike.
This is the first time a Japanese governmental agency has dealt with the subject of a preemptive strike, officially. As this assertion is directly opposite to the principle of the Japanese constitution, which was designed in accordance with the self-defense rule, heated conflict is being expected.
Stating that North Korea is developing not only a plutonium nuclear weapon but also enriched uranium nuclear bombs, this report anticipates that "around 2005, [North Korea's] facility for manufacturing uranium nuclear bombs will be put into operation."
In addition, the report deals with China, Russia, and North Korea as the countries that could launch a ballistic missile assault on Japan, asserting that raised precaution towards these countries is necessary.
As for China, the report assessed that "it is equipped with fifty DF21 ballistic missiles, which can cover 1,800 kilometers, and the portable ballistic missile, DF31, which can reach 8,000 kilometers distance at maximum range, and that will be deployed by the end of this year."
In addition, the report points out that North Korea is one of the Japan's intimidators because it is equipped with 175 to 200 ballistic missiles including the Rodong, which can cover 1,300 kilometers together with not only nuclear warheads but also chemical ones.
"Without any other means to wipe out these intimidations if the enemy starts assaulting, we should be equipped with devices to get rid of these intimidations such as missile posts in enemy territory," stated this report, focusing on the importance of re-armament for the sake of preemptive strike ability.
The Liberal Democratic Party, the leading party of Japanese cabinet, has also consented to the necessity of the ability to attack posts in enemy countries if in necessity, reported Tokyo Shimbun on March 25.
-------- korea
North Korea approves budget with chunk set aside for defense
SEOUL (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325134643.aqcu1w85.html
North Korea's parliament Thursday approved a state budget for the coming year with nearly 16 percent of the funds set aside for strengthening its defense capabilities, state media said.
The Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) convened with cabinet officials, including Finance Minister Mun Il-Bong, reporting last year's budget spending and this year's plan, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Moon said he "earmarked 15.5 percent of this year's state budgetary expenditure for ... increasing the independence of the defence industry, stepping up modernization and informationalization and thus consolidating the country's defences as firm as an iron wall."
He gave no budget figures, saying only that revenue and expenditures this year were expected to increase 5.7 and 8.6 percent respectively, according to
North Korea has been locked in a standoff with the United States and its allies over the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons ambitions.
The SPA, North Korea's highest decision-making organization, has never failed to endorse the policies of the government and the ruling communist party, both led by leader Kim Jong-Il.
Kim himself was reelected to a five-year-term by the SPA last year.
--------
N. Korean Leader, Chinese Aide Discuss Arms
Associated Press
Thursday, March 25, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22223-2004Mar24.html
SEOUL, March 24 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il hosted a rare meeting Wednesday with China's foreign minister to discuss the region's nuclear dispute. Beijing described the visit as a "very important contact."
Li Zhaoxing, who arrived Tuesday in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, became the first foreign minister from China to visit the North in five years. The visit is seen as bolstering the push for a third round of six-nation talks on the status of North Korea's nuclear programs, although efforts to organize working-level groups for those talks remain unclear.
As the North Korean government's last major ally, China has taken on the role of host and coordinator of the meetings.
The Chinese diplomat and North Korean officials were expected to discuss a date for the crucial working group meetings, which will seek to nail down details before the next full round of talks, sometime before July, according to South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon. The United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan have agreed to convene a third round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program. A second round ended in Beijing last month without much progress. In the meantime, participants are trying to form working groups. The South Korean government has accused the North of dragging its feet.
In Hong Kong, a North Korea expert said Pyongyang might skip the next round of nuclear talks because of the uncertainty caused by November's presidential election in the United States.
"What are they going to do there? Now, is anybody going to strike a deal?" asked Charles L. Pritchard, a former U.S. State Department official. He was part of an unofficial delegation of Americans who toured North Korea's nuclear facility at Yongbyon in January as a way of providing confirmation that it has reprocessed spent fuel rods into plutonium.
It is unlikely that President Bush will offer a deal before the election, while his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, likely would start a direct dialogue with Pyongyang if he wins, Pritchard said.
In Pyongyang, Li's delegation met Kim Jong Il and North Korean dignitaries in a "warm atmosphere," according to North Korea's official KCNA news agency.
Li presented greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao, KCNA reported. Before Li departed for Pyongyang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kong Quan described the trip as a "very important contact between our two sides."
Earlier in Seoul, Ban, South Korea's foreign minister, said North Korea likely would attend the next six-nation nuclear talks despite its recent rhetoric over U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the impeachment of South Korea's president.
A recent rupture in relations has fanned concern that the Communist North might use the joint war games or South's leadership upheaval as grounds for postponing nuclear negotiations.
The U.S. military describes the annual U.S.-South Korean war games, which began earlier this week, as defensive. But North Korea routinely criticizes them as preparation for an invasion.
Ban is scheduled to meet Li in Beijing next week.
The U.S. government insists that the North dismantle its nuclear weapons programs completely and verifiably. North Korea says it will only do so if the United States provides economic aid and security guarantees.
North Korea threatened Friday to boost its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," blaming the United States for the lack of progress in nuclear talks.
--------
N.Korea Wants to Continue Nuclear Talks - China FM
March 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-korea-north.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea has a positive attitude to resolving the crisis over its nuclear ambitions and is willing to continue six-party talks, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Thursday on his return from Pyongyang.
``My impression is that the North Korean side holds a positive attitude,'' Li told reporters, adding that his trip had been ``very smooth, very enjoyable, very successful.''
``The Chinese side and the North Korean side both expressed our willingness to continue pushing the process of the six-party talks and resolve the nuclear problem through dialogue,'' Li said.
Li's visit, the first to North Korea by a Chinese foreign minister in five years, was being closely watched in the hope that China could persuade North Korea to remain engaged in six-party negotiations aimed at dismantling its nuclear weapons.
The crisis erupted in late 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted to a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons.
The six countries involved in talks -- China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, and the United States -- agreed in February this year to meet for a third round of negotiations before the end of June and for working group discussions before then to begin resolving details of how to dismantle the nuclear programs.
North Korea put off two sets of working-level talks with South Korea this month, citing uncertainties caused by the impeachment of its president, Roh Moo-hyun, and the South's annual joint military drills with the United States.
Many analysts do not expect progress toward resolving the nuclear impasse before the U.S. election in November, saying North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has little incentive to deal with a president whose days in office may be numbered.
Li said he had passed on a message to Kim from Chinese President Hu Jintao during their one-and-a-half-hour talk on Wednesday. He did not elaborate. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said earlier that Beijing and Pyongyang had reached ``extensive consensus'' on an array of issues, including political and economic ties and the nagging nuclear crisis.
Ning Fukui, China's special ambassador for nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula, said North Korea hoped working groups could be established and could discuss and resolve some specific problems. He did not elaborate.
China would continue to keep in touch with North Korea and the other parties on the issue of working groups, Ning said.
-------- libya
Arms-Control Group Says U.S. Inflated Libya's Nuclear Bid
March 25, 2004
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25NUKE.html
Rekindling debate on how close Libya actually came to acquiring a nuclear bomb, a private arms-control group says the Bush administration overstated the number of devices the country had for making uranium fuel.
The group, the Institute for Science and International Security, based in Washington, said yesterday that the administration had given an inaccurate briefing to reporters last week at the Energy Department's nuclear weapons lab in Oak Ridge, Tenn. At that briefing, officials displayed a dozen uranium centrifuges from what they said was a cache of about 4,000 that Libya had obtained before agreeing in December to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
The institute, which has done extensive research on uranium centrifuges, said its own inquiries, including interviews with federal and overseas experts, found that Libya had obtained 4,000 casings for centrifuges, but that few if any had the finely tooled rotors that are the machine's heart.
A spokeswoman for the Energy Department replied that Libya had the parts and raw material for making the centrifuges, if not thousands of working machines. "Libya had a nuclear weapons program - that's not in dispute," said the spokeswoman, Jeanne Lopatto. As for the 4,000 centrifuges, she said, the Libyans "either had the parts in hand, or the ability to make them."
She added that Libya had many tons of a special high-strength steel "which would make a lot of rotors."
Centrifuges are complex devices and their rotors are hard to make. They must spin so fast that a wobble can throw them out of alignment and destroy the machine. Without working rotors, said David Albright, the institute's president, Libya would have been "several years from being able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb."
"The administration has distorted what was found in Libya, with the implication that it was very close to having a nuclear weapon," he said.
After Libya publicly renounced its weapons program, the Bush administration and Britain tended to portray the project as large and aggressive, while the International Atomic Energy Agency said Libya was several years away from producing a nuclear weapon.
In a report last month, the agency said Libya had obtained two advanced centrifuges of the type known as P-2, for Pakistan-2, had ordered 5,000 more and "had received a considerable number of parts, mainly casings." It added that shipments for the advanced machines contained "no additional rotors."
At the briefing in Oak Ridge on March 15, White House and Energy Department officials showed a dozen casings for centrifuges, flanked by guards armed with assault rifles. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave the main briefing, and a White House official spoke of the 4,000 centrifuges. Many television and newspaper reports, including one in The New York Times, quoted the administration as saying Libya had surrendered 4,000 centrifuges.
Corey Hinderstein, a researcher for the security institute, investigated that claim and learned from an Oak Ridge employee involved in the briefing that the 4,000 figure referred to casings, according to a memorandum she wrote to Mr. Albright, the group's president.
Mr. Albright said the administration had papered over a huge gap between centrifuge theory and practice. "It would take the Libyans a long time to learn how to make the sophisticated components," he said. "They might have failed because some of them are extremely difficult to make. The bottom line is that what they had was a far cry from a large number of working machines."
Blair and Qaddafi to Meet in Tripoli
LISBON, March 24 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair will help usher Libya back into the international mainstream Thursday when he meets with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on the outskirts of Tripoli. British officials called the visit a reward for the Libyan leader's decision to give up banned weapons programs and pay compensation for the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The prime ministers of Italy and Spain have met Colonel Qaddafi in recent months and on Tuesday Assistant Secretary of State William Burns delivered a message from President Bush hailing Libya's "excellent progress" in eliminating illicit weapons. Libya said in December it would abandon efforts to acquire nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
A senior British government official said British business would gain from closer ties with oil-rich Libya.
-------- missile defense
Key U.S. missile defense component delayed
03.25.04,
By Jim Wolf
(Reuters)
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/03/25/rtr1312743.html
WASHINGTON, March 25 - A key part of a planned U.S. missile defense shield will cost more and take longer to field than currently scheduled, the Pentagon's top space planner told Congress on Thursday.
The Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)-High system, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. Corp. "is in a fluid situation right now," said Air Force Under Secretary Peter Teets, the Defense Department's executive agent for space.
The Bush administration and the Pentagon already are under fire from critics for seeking $10.2 billion in fiscal 2005 to deploy a missile defense before making sure it would work.
The SBIRS High system is meant to detect enemy missile attacks and collect a range of technical intelligence. It involves a network of four satellites in geosynchronous orbit and two in highly elliptical orbit.
It was not immediately clear what effect a slip in the launch timetable would have on President Bush's plan to start fielding a layered missile defense by the end of this year. The initial goal is to defend against any incoming warheads from North Korea. A Missile Defense Agency spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.
SBIRS High has been beset by cost overruns and schedule slips for years. Before being restructured two years ago, it "could be considered a case study for how not to execute a space program," a Pentagon panel that included Teets reported last May.
An electromagnetic interference problem that has dogged the project would be resolved by the end of July, 18 months later than had been projected, Teets told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee.
He said he could not yet give a launch date for the first of the system's four satellites bound for geosynchronous orbit, though he said there was no technical problem with the satellites.
"I can tell you that I anticipate having another cost problem on the SBIRS High program," as well as schedule problems, he said.
Lockheed is working with the government to "replan" the project, "which will impact ... cost and schedule," said Lori Reichert, a spokeswoman for the company's Space Systems unit in Sunnyvale, California.
Despite the new delay, SBIRS High's technical performance is expected to remain unchanged, she said. A high-level Pentagon review panel would weigh Air Force recommendations on how to reshape the program at a scheduled April 20 meeting, Reichert added. An Air Force spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Under the restructured program, the launch of the first geosynchronous satellites was delayed from 2004 to 2006.
Design flaws, including the electromagnetic interference problem, had dogged the two satellites bound for highly elliptical orbit, or HEO.
"The fact is that we focused so much attention on the HEO birds that we have fallen behind in the development of the first GEO satellite," Teets said.
-------- russia
New Russian nuclear reactor a danger to 4.5 mln people: ecologists
MOSCOW (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325132657.udetw3pf.html
Russian ecologists on Thursday denounced the construction of a new nuclear reactor in the Urals region of Sverdlovsk as a danger to the surrounding region's 4.5 million inhabitants.
"The construction of the fourth reactor of the Beloyarsk power plant could provoke radioactive leaks of plutonium which could affect 4.5 million people," the Ecodefense green lobbying group said in a statement.
Russia is currently looking for foreign capital to finance the construction of the fast neutron reactor, which is due to be opened at the end of 2009.
Sources in Rosenergoatom, the state-run body that is responsible for nuclear facilities in Russia, said Wednesday that China and Japan and possibly the United States were ready to participate in the 1.2-billion-dollar project.
Ecodefense denied assertions by Rosenergoatom that the Beloyarsk nuclear power station had an exemplary safety record, saying that there had been 27 leaks -- including radioactive -- and 14 fires over the past 24 years.
In September 2000, the station's automatic shutdown system did not function because of a short circuit. "The reactor would have exploded if the staff had not shut it down manually," the organisation said, citing the local Federal Security Service (FSB, ex-KGB).
----
Russia to become testing ground for world plutonium industry
Pravda
2004-03-25
http://newsfromrussia.com/main/2004/03/25/53004.html
Russia is set to become a testing ground for the world plutonium industry, according to the environmental group Ecodefense. As reported by a Rosbalt correspondent, the group's head, Vladimir Sliviak, said that at one of Russia's most dangerous atomic energy stations, Beloyarsk, in the Sverdlovsk region, construction has resumed of a fourth fast neutron reactor. The reactor will be at a minimum 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than former Russian reactors, which is why the Russian constructors are seeking foreign investors for the project.
According to representatives of the concern Rosenergatom, Japan and China are prepared to participate in the project, and discussions with them are ongoing. The cost of the new reactor will total nearly USD 1.3 billion, and its estimated completion is 2009-2010.
The group Ecodefense feels that as a result Russia will be transformed into a testing ground for untried technologies not yet ready for commercial exploitation. 'Experiments by the atomic energy industry with plutonium at the Beloyarsk atomic energy station can only lead to fresh nuclear accidents and plutonium contamination on Russian territory. In the Sverdlovsk region alone, nearly 4.5 million could be affected by an accident at the plant, not to mention other regions in Russia,' said Sliviak.
In 1995, Japan suspended its own program for the development of fast neutron reactors following a major accident at the Mondzo reactor. The leader in atomic energy development, France, completely froze development of fast reactors at the end of the 1990s because of its unprofitability and proneness to accidents. China does not as yet have any fast reactors, and is eager to learn from the Russian experience.
----
Russia warns NATO with nuclear option
MOSCOW (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325131714.ze0u31xv.html
Russia's defense minister Thursday repeated his earlier warning to NATO that he may order a build-up of the country's nuclear defenses should the US-led alliance continue to expand and take an unfriendly view of Moscow.
Sergei Ivanov said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was following an aggressive strategy and treating Russia as a threat rather than a partner.
"If NATO continues to keep to its offensive military doctrine, then Russia's military planning and the principles of Russia's military procurement -- including in the nuclear sphere -- will be adequately reevaluated," the Interfax new agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
"Russia is carefully observing the process of NATO's transformation," said Ivanov, who is seen as one of President Vladimir Putin's closest political allies in government.
He said that that some new NATO members both "directly and indirectly" display anti-Russian policies.
Russia and NATO have recently come to blows over the alliance's plans to station warplanes in the three Baltic states and former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
All are due to formally join NATO on April 2. Russia had spent years futilely trying to avert the expansion up to its borders and is growing increasingly concerned that the warplanes stationed in the Baltics will spy on its defenses.
Ivanov's comments Thursday are almost exactly the same that he made on October 2 in remarks that startled Western nations.
Russia and the United States signed a nuclear disarmament treaty in May 2002 aimed at slashing the size of the two country's "operationally deployed" arsenals by two-thirds over 10 years -- a deal aimed at sealing a new friendship between the two Cold War era foes.
But a senior US administration official said in Washington this week that the United States may use a loophole in the treaty to keep an unlimited number of warheads in storage.
And Ivanov has made repeated comments in recent months suggesting that Russia could be ready to reevaluate its own stance on that deal.
"Should NATO remain a military alliance with its current offensive military strategy, this will prompt a fundamental reassessment of Russia's military planning and arms procurement," said an internal document released by Russia's defense ministry in October.
Ivanov also reaffirmed his vow from that day that Russia reserved the right to preemptive strikes against other nations if it felt its security was under threat.
"We cannot absolutely rule out the use of preemptive force, if this serves either Russia's interests or is required by its obligations to allies."
--------
Russia May Revise Military, Nuclear Doctrines In Response To NATO Expansion
Interfax (Russia)
March 25, 2004
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=9683208
MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) - Russia will revise its defense policy, including with its nuclear forces, if NATO continues its current offensive military doctrine, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an article published in the Russia v Globalnoi Politike (Russia in Global Politics) magazine.
"Russia is closely following the process of NATO's transformation and expects NATO member nations to withdraw, from military planning and political declarations, both direct and indirect anti-Russian statements," he says.
The downgrading of the role played by the United Nations and its Security Council may result in the emergence of military- political threats to Russia's interests, he says.
"This downgrading and use of force in line with decisions made by specific countries is a very dangerous trend that may create serious threats to Russia's political and military- political interests," he says.
Russia wants military force in resolving international issues to be reduced to a minimum, Ivanov says.
"However, the trends in international developments force the Russian military and political leadership to amend its view on the role to be played by its military policy and military tools," he says.
"Today's military threats call for Russia's Armed Forces to carry out various tasks in various parts of the world. Russia's interests and commitments to its allies may call for preventive use of force," Ivanov says.
Russia is worried by the possibility of reducing the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which could force the country to revise its military unit command system and the principles governing the use of armed forces, he says.
""The possibility of turning nuclear weapons back into a real military tool should not be ruled out. This trend is very dangerous in that it undermines global and regional stability. Even a minor reduction in the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons would require Russia to revise its armed units command system and the principles governing the combat use of its units," Ivanov says.
-------- treaties
US not to reduce nuclear arsenal to Moscow Treaty levels
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325055626.630l5owq.html
The United States will not cut its nuclear arsenal to levels designated by an arms accord it concluded two years ago with Russia because it must hedge against an uncertain future, a top administration official announced.
The Moscow Treaty signed with great fanfare by Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia in May 2002 calls on both sides to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012.
But it refers to "operationally deployed" weapons, essentially offering both governments a loophole that allows them to move an unlimited number of warheads into storage and keep them indefinitely under lock and key.
While US officials have often praised this option, Wednesday's remarks by Undersecretary of Energy Linton Brooks before the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces represented the first official indication the Bush administration had actually decided to exercise it.
"The 2012 nuclear stockpile will be substantially reduced from current levels," Brooks told lawmakers. "But reductions will not lower the stockpile to 1,700-2,200 total warheads."
He said the retained warheads will be needed for routine maintenance of the arsenal, for meeting "commitments to allies," and to address threats that may arise in the future.
"In particular, sufficient warheads will be retained to augment the operationally deployed force in the event that world events require a more robust deterrent posture," Brooks argued.
The current US nuclear arsenal is estimated by experts to contain between 6,500 and 7,000 weapons.
The announcement came as the administration is pushing for a dramatic expansion of its study program focusing on so-called bunker-busting nuclear bombs that would enhance the military's ability to destroy underground command and control centers and hidden arms depots believed to exist in countries like North Korea and Iran.
Under the project, scientists are looking into whether they will be able to convert, for these purposes, two existing warheads - the B61 and the B83, officials said.
The B61 is a tactical thermonuclear gravity bomb that can be delivered by strategic as well as tactical aircraft -- from B-52 and B-2 bombers to F-16 fighter jets, experts said.
The B83 is designed for precision delivery from very low altitudes, most likely by B-2 stealth bombers.
The main task facing the scientists is finding how to harden the bombs' shells so they can survive penetration through layers of rock, steel and concrete before detonating, according to the experts.
Last year, Congress allocated 7.5 million dollars for the project. This year, the administration is seeking to boost these appropriations to 27.6 million.
"There is a clear military utility to such a weapon, which is why the Defense Department asked for it to be studied," Brooks said.
He disclosed that the Energy Department was discussing with the Air Force the effectiveness of using nuclear weapons to destroy stocks of chemical and biological weapons, but acknowledged that "no decision to study this area has yet been reached."
Experts believe an atomic blast could have the advantage of instantly incinerating chemical and biological agents, an effect that is unlikely to be achieved with conventional bombing.
The administration is also requesting 336.5 million dollars for restoring US capability to manufacture so-called plutonium pits that form the core of nuclear weapons -- an increase of 13 percent over the current year.
Although no new weapons production is currently planned, Brooks said it was important to maintain a manufacturing and scientific base for such projects.
"Our goal is to be able to design, develop, and begin production of a new warhead within three-four years of a decision to enter engineering development," he said.
----
U.S. Urges Curb on Arms Traffic
U.N. Is Given Draft Resolution to Ban Transfers to Terrorists
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22260-2004Mar24.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 24 -- The Bush administration presented the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday with a draft resolution that would outlaw the transfer of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to terrorists and mercenary organizations.
The move comes nearly six months after President Bush appealed to the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a resolution that would "criminalize the proliferation of weapons." It follows an agreement on the text this week by the representatives of the world's five original nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- which possess veto power in the council.
The five-page resolution would require the United Nations' 191 members to "adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws" to prevent "any non-state actor" from being able to "manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery." It is to be adopted under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, a provision that permits the council to use sanctions or military force to compel states to abide by its demands.
The draft was agreed upon after the United States accepted a demand from China to drop a provision authorizing the interdiction of vessels suspected of transporting weapons of mass destruction, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's nonproliferation strategy. But China's ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, said Tuesday that "this interdiction [provision] has been kicked out" of the resolution.
U.S. officials defended the concession, saying that an existing program, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), provides sufficient legal authority to board ships suspected of transporting such weapons. But only 14 countries have agreed to participate in the PSI.
John R. Bolton, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an interview that a provision in the resolution calling on states to "take cooperative action to prevent illicit trafficking" would cover the interdiction of ships believed to be hauling banned weapons. He said Wang acknowledged this in private by arguing that the word " 'interdict' is redundant."
John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the focus of the resolution "is how to prevent weapons of mass destruction and materials that can be used to make them from falling into the hands of non-state actors." Negroponte noted that the resolution was written to "fill gaps" in a web of treaties and agreements that govern the spread of weapons between states.
In a Sept. 23 address to the General Assembly, Bush urged the council to pass tougher laws, impose stricter export controls and increase scrutiny of existing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. In a Feb. 11 address at the National Defense University, Bush followed up on the theme, pledging to help governments "enforce the new laws that will help us deal with proliferation."
U.S. officials said the resolution's chief aim is to target international terrorists, but the resolution would also require states, including alleged proliferators such as Pakistan, Iran and North Korea, to adopt new laws or regulations to enforce the ban on the transfer of prohibited weapons. The council's 10 non-permanent members will begin discussing the draft Thursday. Nine votes are required for passage by the 15-member Security Council.
Some envoys have complained that they have been excluded from the negotiations by the council's five permanent members, and that the proposed resolution would perpetuate a long-standing monopoly on nuclear weapons by those five nations. Under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, only the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China may possess nuclear weapons.
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Law of the Sea Treaty Battle Surfaces in the Senate
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
March 24, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-24-02.asp
President George W. Bush and his administration are in support of Senate ratification for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a top State Department official told a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.
John Turner, assistant secretary of state for oceans policy, reaffirmed the administration's support for the treaty in testimony Tuesday before the Senate Environment Committee.
Senator James Inhofe, Republican chairman of the Senate Environment Committee and a critic of the treaty, cited published newspaper accounts reporting that the Bush administration was retreating from its effort to win Senate endorsement for the treaty under pressure from conservatives who believe it gives the United Nations too much power.
Turner rebutted those reports. "I wouldn't be here testifying before you if there was any retreat or change of position of the administration," Turner said. He expressed the "full support" of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and key national security agencies, he said.
The 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention became legally binding in 1994 after it was ratified by 60 countries. Now ratified by 143 countries, the treaty has been called by the former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Watkins, "the foundation of public order of the oceans."
It sets forth standards for navigating the oceans by commercial and military vessels, fishing on the open seas, mining the sea bed, laying communications cable, and protecting the marine environment.
The Convention gives direct support to the global moratorium on commercial whaling, it supports the creation of sanctuaries and other conservation measures, and requires Parties to cooperate not only with respect to large whales, but with respect to all cetaceans.
President Bill Clinton sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, but it stalled on opposition from Senator Jesse Helms, then the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
In February, the Foreign Relations Committee, now chaired by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, unanimously approved the treaty after listening to testimony from dozens of witnesses during two hearings in October 2003.
"Our hearings revealed broad support for U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention. They also revealed the need for U.S. accession to be completed swiftly," Lugar wrote in the March 8, 2004 issue of "Navy Times."
In its report, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed its belief that the Convention "advances important U.S. interests" in a number of areas.
"It advances U.S. national security interests by preserving the rights of navigation and overflight across the world's oceans, on which our military relies to protect U.S. interests around the world, and it enhances the protection of these rights by providing binding mechanisms to enforce them."
"It advances U.S. economic interests by enshrining the right of the United States to explore and exploit the vast natural resources of the oceans out to 200 miles from our coastline, and of our continental shelf beyond 200 miles, and by protecting freedom of navigation on the oceans over which more than 28 percent of all U.S. exports and 48 percent of all U.S. imports are transported."
"It advances U.S. interests in the protection of the environment by creating obligations binding on all States to protect and preserve the marine environment from pollution from a variety of sources, and by establishing a framework for further international action to combat pollution."
"Becoming party to the Convention also advances the ability of the United States to play a leadership role in global oceans issues, including by allowing the United States to participate fully in institutions created by the Convention such as the International Seabed Authority, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea," the Lugar committee report states.
The current urgency over U.S. ratification arises because the treaty is open for amendment for the first time later this year. Turner reminded the Senate Environment Committee that the treaty will be open to amendments, whether the United States participates or not. "It seems to me the United States ought to join now," Turner said.
He said he found it "unbelievable" that the United States might not be participating as Russia and other countries start staking out mining claims on the continental shelves.
At the most recent annual meeting of Parties to the treaty in June 2003, Russia was the first country to submit the delineation of its continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical miles that is agreed under the treaty to be the limit of any country's sphere of governance.
Governments are lining up for sea bed mining permits beyond their 200 mile limits, a process controlled under the treaty by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica.
In the 2002 to 2003 time period, the ISA considered the first set of annual reports by seven registered pioneer investors, as well as proposals for regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic sulphides and cobalt rich ferromanganese crusts.
The Bush administration does not want the United States to be left behind in the rush to mine the seabed.
Turner told the Senate Environment Committee that the United States would not need to change any environmental laws or enforcement practices as a result of ratification.
Also, U.S. ratification would promote the Bush administration initiative against weapons proliferation by promoting cooperation with other countries under a common legal framework for boarding and intercepting vessels, Turner said.
Critics of the treaty fear that the material wealth of the seas would be shared among nations under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
Frank Gaffney (left) with Senator James Inhofe at a press conference of Americans for Missile Defense, July 31 2001. (Photo credit unknown) Conservative columnist Frank Gaffney, an official in the Reagan administration who is founding president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, writes in the "National Review" of February 26, 2004, "U.S. adherence to this treaty would entail history's biggest and most unwarranted voluntary transfer of wealth and surrender of sovereignty."
But Senator Lugar says that the "basic tenets of the treaty" have been U.S. policy since first enunciated by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. "Over the next dozen years the U.S. won in negotiations on the questionable aspects of the treaty, and signed on in 1994," Lugar says, but if the United States is not party to the Convention when amendments are considered, "U.S. ability to protect Convention rights that we fought hard to achieve will be significantly diminished."
A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the presumptive Democratic candidate for President in November, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry says "as a longtime supporter of this treaty" he is in favor of ratification.
Kerry as the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard, warned that provisions of the treaty must not limit the United States' ability to pass laws in its own interests. "Congress must also be assured that we will have the flexibility to enact protections here at home in the absence of international action, or that are more stringent than those that can be agreed upon internationally," he said in a statement published with the committee's report.
On security issues, Kerry said, the treaty "strikes a careful balance between the rights of free passage and the ability of coastal states to protect their borders." He said the United States must ensure that ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention "will not interfere with our ability to protect our ocean borders from terrorist threats."
If a ratification resolution passes the Senate Environment Committee, the Law of the Sea Convention goes to the full Senate where approval of a treaty requires a two-thirds vote in favor. The House of Representatives does not vote because it has no constitutional authority over treaties.
The 14th Meeting of States Parties to the Law of the Sea Convention is scheduled from June 14 to 18, in New York.
The Law of the Sea Convention and related agreements are online at: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm
The Lugar Foreign Relations Committee report with history from the U.S. point of view is online at: http://lugar.senate.gov/sfrc/seareport.pdf
-------- ukraine
Ukrainian nukes go AWOL
By Lester Haines,
UK Register
25/03/2004
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/36544.html
Hundreds of missiles have gone AWOL from the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, defence minister Yevhen Marchuk has admitted.
The missiles - which were supposed to have been decommissioned following Ukraine's independence in 1991 - are apparently unaccounted for, due to "accounting problems".
Marchuk said: "We are currently looking for several hundred missiles. They were decommissioned, but we can't find them. Each of the missiles contained gold, silver, platinum. But where are the results of their recycling?"
Where indeed?
The BBC report into the matter studiously avoids using the word "nuclear" in relation to "missile", although it seems pretty certain that these are ICBMs we're talking about here.
Ukraine maintains that it no longer has any nuclear weapons on its soil. A recent statement to Pravda insists "in order to meet the requirements of a bilateral agreement with Russia dating from April 1992, whereby Ukraine had to transfer its nuclear weapons to Russia for destruction, all Ukraine's strategical nuclear weapons were removed to the Russian Federation by June 1996. Therefore Ukraine met all the obligations on nuclear weapons which it had inherited from the Soviet Union on time."
Which is all well and good, except this particular disclaimer came in response to a charge that "in 1998 Ukrainian scientists sold al-Qaeda representatives a compact supply of nuclear weapons, which could have been fitted into a small suitcase".
Furthermore, a former Soviet intelligence officer was recently caught trying to smuggle a 400g of uranium from Ukraine into Hungary. When detained in his minibus, the man claimed he had been paid to transport the material, which was "for use by a dentist".
So, while Hungarian dentists look for a new source of fuel for their independent nuclear deterrent, Mr Marchuk has the unenviable task of trying to work out how hundreds of missiles disappeared off the face of the planet. "Unfortunately, strange things happen," he notes.
Given that the former Soviet nuclear arsenal consists of an estimated 7-800 tons of weapons-grade uranium, 150-200 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and around 16,000 stored nuclear weapons, the world can happily live without further strangeness of this kind.
-------- u.n.
UN Considers Measure Banning Arms to Terrorists
March 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-un-terrorists.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and Britain asked the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution that would ban the transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and others acting without state authority.
The complicated five-page draft, under discussion among the major council powers over the last four months, would compel nations to adopt and enforce laws prohibiting a ``non-state actor'' from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
It was introduced by the United States on Wednesday and co-sponsored by Britain after being promoted by President Bush in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September. France, Russia and China support the draft.
The measure would require all 191 U.N. members to ``adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws'' to prevent ``any non-state actor'' from being able to ``manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery.''
``What we have to do is stop the ultimate nightmare -- of bringing together weapons of mass destruction and the terrorists,'' said Britain's U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry.
The document invokes Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, a provision that makes the resolution mandatory. Chapter 7 allows sanctions and military force but in this case neither applies.
It calls on governments to penalize those helping terrorists obtain weapons, but does not provide any sanctions if the states do not comply. Instead U.S. officials said they relied mainly on ``name and shame'' pressures on errant nations.
China insisted the original draft drop a provision on the interdiction of suspected shipments of unconventional weapons. But U.S. officials said that an existing Proliferation Security Initiative, which so far involves 15 countries, provides legal power to board ships.
John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for non-proliferation, pointed to a provision in the resolution calling on nations to take ``cooperative action'' to prevent the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction in accordance with domestic and international law.
``We are making a political statement and confirming what we already have regarding international and national authority,'' Bolton told Reuters by telephone from Washington.
He said China's U.N. ambassador Wang Guangya, agreed with his interpretation.
John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the focus of the resolution was how to ``fill gaps.''
No date was set for a vote. But Algeria's U.N. ambassador, Abdallah Baali, said council nations wanted all 191 U.N. member states to be briefed on the measure. As a result, adoption of the resolution ``will take longer.''
The new draft defines a ``non-state actor'' as an individual or entity not acting under the lawful authority of any state in conducting the banned activities.
Under that definition, a target would be A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and is now under house arrest.
Pakistan, a council member, said it had to seek instructions first, diplomats reported.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
NRC: Nuclear Waste Casks Not Vulnerable
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press
Thu, Mar. 25, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/8276362.htm
WASHINGTON - The containers for carrying radioactive waste to the planned Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada would survive a Sept. 11 style airliner attack, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday.
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz told a House subcommittee that officials concluded that after running classified tests. The potential danger of transporting nuclear waste across the nation's roads and railways has been a key argument made by opponents of the Yucca Mountain project.
"Our present findings are that a transportation cask that's been certified by the NRC ... would actually resist the impact of a large aircraft without releasing radioactivity to the public," Diaz said, responding to a question from subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.
"We have even carried them beyond the aircraft crashes, and we feel confident that the present design of this cask is quite resistant to terrorist attack and will provide substantial protection to the American public," he said.
Diaz also said the casks would survive being stuck inside a burning train trapped in a tunnel - as happened in a Baltimore rail tunnel in 2001 - without a significant release of radioactivity.
The director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Office, Bob Loux, questioned Diaz's assertions in an interview later.
"If the public can't have an opportunity to see casks being tested in all of these testing areas and possibly even tested to destruction so they know where the thresholds are, it doesn't seem to me that any of these tests really improve public confidence," he said.
The Yucca Mountain dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel now held at commercial power plants in 31 states and government waste from its nuclear weapons program. The Department of Energy wants to open the dump in 2010 and intends to submit a license application to the NRC next December.
Nevada is challenging the project in federal court.
-------- washington
3 Nuclear Workers Hospitalized After Odor
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Workers.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- The contractor hired to clean up underground tanks holding radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site halted routine work Thursday after three workers were taken to medical centers following a possible vapor exposure.
Colorado-based CH2M Hill said only essential workers would be allowed into the so-called tank farms -- and then only with respiratory protection.
``We are evaluating the situation and will determine the appropriate precautions moving forward,'' the company said in a statement.
The three workers were released without restrictions following medical exams, the company said.
The three were working near a pit earlier Thursday when they noticed an odor, described as a ``sweet smell,'' according to Erik Olds, spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of River Protection.
They initially declined medical evaluation, but co-workers called 911 when one of them developed a nosebleed, Olds said.
The three workers had been assigned to monitor for radioactivity or chemical vapors during cleanup of the vast site that once made plutonium for nuclear weapons. Several investigations are under way to determine if Hanford workers are being exposed to toxic vapors from the 177 underground tanks, which hold about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste.
Last week, six workers sought medical attention after being exposed to tank vapors in three separate incidents. They later returned to work.
The Energy Department and CH2M Hill have previously said the vapors are not a danger to workers.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile site in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret World War II-era Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.
Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
-------- us nuc waste
NRC: Nuclear Waste Casks Not Vulnerable
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The containers for carrying radioactive waste to the planned Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada would survive a Sept. 11 style airliner attack, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday.
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz told a House subcommittee that officials concluded that after running classified tests. The potential danger of transporting nuclear waste across the nation's roads and railways has been a key argument made by opponents of the Yucca Mountain project.
``Our present findings are that a transportation cask that's been certified by the NRC ... would actually resist the impact of a large aircraft without releasing radioactivity to the public,'' Diaz said, responding to a question from subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.
``We have even carried them beyond the aircraft crashes, and we feel confident that the present design of this cask is quite resistant to terrorist attack and will provide substantial protection to the American public,'' he said.
Diaz also said the casks would survive being stuck inside a burning train trapped in a tunnel -- as happened in a Baltimore rail tunnel in 2001 -- without a significant release of radioactivity.
The director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Office, Bob Loux, questioned Diaz's assertions in an interview later.
``If the public can't have an opportunity to see casks being tested in all of these testing areas and possibly even tested to destruction so they know where the thresholds are, it doesn't seem to me that any of these tests really improve public confidence,'' he said.
The Yucca Mountain dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel now held at commercial power plants in 31 states and government waste from its nuclear weapons program. The Department of Energy wants to open the dump in 2010 and intends to submit a license application to the NRC next December.
Nevada is challenging the project in federal court.
-------- us politics
Bush's Funny War
Charles Cutter
March 25, 2004
http://www.cuttersway.com/body_home.html http://www.cuttersway.com/
On Wednesday night, from the comfort and safety of a black tie affair in Washington, a smiling George W. Bush entertained his audience with a scripted joke about the war in Iraq. Within hours of this levity, two more U.S. soldiers died fighting in Mr. Bush's funny war.
Mr. Bush was performing at the 60th annual dinner for the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association. During the presentation of a slide show-featuring photos of Bush and his people, with Mr. Bush providing the humorous captions-a picture was shown of the president looking under furniture, searching in vain for some misplaced item. He then provided the side-splitting caption: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
"Those weapons" represent Mr. Bush's casus belli for the invasion of Iraq-the heart of his rationale for a military action that has claimed, as of this writing, the lives of 589 American soldiers. And, of course, "those weapons" didn't exist. "We were all wrong," said David Kay, Mr. Bush's hand-picked weapons inspector.
"All wrong." The imminent-threat-that-wasn't. The facts that were fantasy. But in the world of George W. Bush, it's good for a laugh. Unfortunately, it was not such a lighthearted day for our troops in Iraq. In Taji, on Wednesday, one U.S. soldier was killed in combat, and another wounded. Shortly after midnight (Washington time), another was killed by a roadside bomb; two others were also wounded.
In Woody Allen's movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, a character explains a key aspect of humor: "Comedy is tragedy plus time...The night Lincoln was shot, you couldn't joke about it, you just couldn't do it...but now time has gone by, and it's fair game." Mr. Bush would certainly disagree; to him, tragedy is always fair game for comedy, and the distancing factor of time doesn't play a role. Recall, for instance, that as governor of Texas he mocked a death row inmate pleading for her life.
And this is not the first time Mr. Bush has sought laughter with jokes about the war. Last month, for instance, he yukked it up at a campaign fundraiser, where his jokes were aimed at those who disagreed with his actions in Iraq. Wednesday's event was no doubt intended as self-deprecating, to show he's just a regular guy and can laugh at himself. It worked; a headline on CNN's web site read, "Bush pokes fun at self over missing WMD."
But, on analysis, there's nothing self-deprecating about this attempt at humor. It's a smug and arrogant joke, and is based on the fact that Mr. Bush has not been held accountable for his deception-nor for the destruction that followed. It's also a brutally insensitive joke for the families and friends of those who died in the impossible effort to pry "those weapons" from the hands of Saddam Hussein.
It is inconceivable that Mr. Bush would appear at an event and crack jokes about September 11th, but it's hard to attribute that to any special sensitivity on his part. No, he's basing his reelection hopes on a somber and fearful nation remembering those terrorist attacks. In fact, during Wednesday night's slide show, he took on a solemn tone at the end as he invoked 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. But "those weapons" in Iraq-those non-existent weapons that supposedly forced America into war-are fair game for humor, despite the fact that they also led to numerous American deaths (not to mention the killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians).
Keep in mind, these are not off-the-cuff remarks; Mr. Bush is working from a prepared text. This administration is no doubt hoping that, by turning the missing WMD into a punch line, they can defuse the impact of the issue. It appears as if this gamble from Bush's handlers has paid off-the audience ate it up. So what if Bush lied about his pretext for war? Let bygones be bygones. We're not laughing at him, we're laughing with him.
On January 10, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson delivered his State of the Union address. Like Mr. Bush, he was in the midst of an ill-advised, undeclared war. And, while this was not a war of his making, he certainly expanded the American involvement in it. Those who remember this speech recall the face of a tortured man, anguished over his commitment to a war that was dividing a nation, eroding his presidency, and costing thousands of lives. He defended the war effort, defended his actions; but his assessment of that war was blunt, harsh, and honest: "I wish I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony. For the end is not yet."
President Johnson saw nothing humorous in the Vietnamese war-the conflict that George W. Bush managed to creatively avoid. Perhaps if Mr. Bush had indeed tasted combat in that distant war, he would not now be offering gung-ho "bring it on" bluster and tasteless one-liners.
Or, perhaps he would not have come home at all. To illustrate that risk: As this column closes, there is a report that another U.S. soldier has been killed near Fallujah.
----
Condeleezza Rice disputes comment by vice president
New York Times
Mar. 25, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0325rice-loop.html
WASHINGTON - It is a strange occurrence in Washington when members of the well-ordered Bush White House publicly disagree with each other, but it happened on Wednesday.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, took exception to Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Richard A. Clarke, the administration's former counterterrorism chief, was "out of the loop."
On the contrary, Rice said, Clarke was very much involved in the administration's fight against terrorism.
"I would not use the word 'out of the loop,' " Rice told reporters in response to a question about whether she considered it a problem that the administration's counterterrorism chief was not deeply involved "in a lot of what was going on," as Cheney said on Monday in an interview on Rush Limbaugh's radio program.
----
Richard Clarke, Folk Hero
By Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
March 25, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18232
John F. Lehman, the former secretary of the Navy, probably wishes he hadn't asked Richard Clarke about Iraq on Wednesday. By doing so, he helped Clarke emerge as a new folk hero. Lehman also increased the chances that historians will view Clarke's devastating critique of Bush's terrorism and Iraq agenda as the beginning of the end of the Bush administration.
The forum for all this was Richard Clarke's testimony in front of the bipartisan commission investigating terrorism and September 11. Clarke, of course, is the giant-killer and tell-all author whose recent release, Against All Enemies, blew the roof off of President Bush's claim to be a war president.
Until Lehman's question, Clarke hadn't mentioned Iraq, though he'd quietly and effectively ripped President Bush to shreds for his failure to take terrorism seriously. "The Bush administration considered terrorism an important issue but not an urgent issue," said Clarke. "George Tenet [the CIA director] and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency. I don't think it was ever treated that way."
So Lehman, acting like a hatchet man for the White House, which has launched an all-out assault on Clarke, took him on - but on Iraq. In all your 15 hours of classified testimony to the commission before today, he asked, why didn't you say that you felt the president was so wrong about Iraq and the link to terrorism? Clarke was ready. "No one asked me what I thought about the president's invasion of Iraq," said Clarke, matter-of-factly. "By invading Iraq, the president has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Lehman, a right-wing Republican who worked for President Reagan, called Clarke an "active partisan trying to shove out a book," adding, "You've got a real credibility problem." If so, it wasn't evident to the audience, which included many friends and relatives of 9/11 victims, and which repeatedly erupted into spontaneous applause in Clarke's support.
Uncharacteristically quiet and soft-spoken, speaking in measured tones, the normally brusque Clarke issued a startling apology to those friends and relatives at the start of his testimony: "Your government failed you, and I failed you," Clarke said, "We tried hard, but that doesn't matter. We failed you."
Joining in the effort to discredit Clarke was Fox News. In a fair and balanced below-the-belt strike, Fox released the transcript of a 2002 background briefing Clarke gave to reporters about the war on terrorism. In that presentation, delivered at President Bush's request, Clarke notably didn't attack Bush. For some reason, that deference puzzled Republican members of the commission - including Lehman, Fred Fielding and former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson - who asked why Clarke didn't criticize the Bush administration in that briefing.
Asked by Fielding whether he lied during the briefing, Clarke seemed bemused. "I tried," he said, "to highlight the positive and downplay the negative." Asked whether that undermined his integrity, Clarke said: "I don't think of it as a question of integrity. I think it's a question of politics." As the spokesman for the White House, he said, he represented the administration's point of view, and ably so - without lying.
Commissioner Robert Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska, blasted Fox News for releasing the background transcript, noting that background briefings are supposed to remain confidential.
In terms of revelations, the most interesting part of Clarke's testimony concerned the early history of Al Qaeda. The organization itself, Clarke said, probably was formed as far back as 1988, but the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government didn't even know it existed until 1995. Perhaps two years earlier, in 1993, the U.S. intelligence community began to suspect that Al Qaeda had been established. But, said Clarke, intelligence was poor. "There was no such capability, even to know that Al Qaeda existed," he said.
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is currently working on a book about America's policy toward political Islam over the past 30 years.
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Truth as a Weapon
March 25, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/opinion/25DOWD.html?hp
As the White House was sliming Richard Clarke, the 9/11 families were stroking him.
Several relatives of victims surrounded the ex-counterterrorism chief after his testimony yesterday and reached out to pat him. After being condescended to, stonewalled, led on and put off by the White House, they were glad to hear somebody say: "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you."
"Mr. Clarke is the first person who has apologized to the families and held himself accountable," said the lovely Kristen Breitweiser of New Jersey, whose husband died in the south tower. "I am enormously grateful for that." She and other widows left the hearing room to protest Condoleezza Rice's lame no-show.
If only Sandy Berger had told the incoming Bush officials that Al Qaeda was no big deal, they might have gotten alarmed about it. They were determined to disdain all things Clinton, including what they considered his overemphasis on terrorism.
Dick Cheney, Rummy et al. were on amber alert, "preserved in amber," as Mr. Clarke put it, obsessing on old G.O.P. issues that had been hot when they were last in power, like a menacing Saddam and a Star Wars missile shield to protect America from the awesome might of the Evil Empire.
Terrorism wasn't really their cup of tea anyhow.
As Mr. Clarke writes, the ascension of Al Qaeda and the devolution of Iraq were topics that called for nuance: "Bush and his inner circle had no real interest in complicated analyses; on the issues that they cared about, they already knew the answers, it was received wisdom."
The Bush crew was thinking big, and Osama seemed puny to them.
Donald Rumsfeld told the 9/11 panel that there had been no point retaliating for the Cole bombing in October 2000, "four months after the fact," because that might have sent a signal of weakness.
So it was too late to whack Osama four months later, but not too late to re-whack Saddam 12 years later?
As he admitted to the commission on Tuesday, the defense secretary didn't like the idea of going after Osama in Afghanistan because "it didn't have a lot of targets." You just ended up bombing rocks instead of palaces. "Afghanistan was something like 8,000 miles from the United States. . . . You can pound the rubble in an Al Qaeda training camp 15 times and not do much damage; they can put tents right back up."
So, not showy and not convenient? Crummy excuses, Rummy.
Paul Wolfowitz was completely uninterested in Al Qaeda unless he could use it as a rationale to invade Iraq as part of his grandiose dream to remake the Middle East in his image. (And John Ashcroft was just too busy covering up immodest statues and trying to cut counterterrorism funds.)
In the Clarke book, Mr. Wolfowitz fidgets as Mr. Clarke urges that armed Predators target Osama at a meeting in April 2001. "Well," Wolfie whines, "I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden."
Besides confirming what we already knew - that national security in this White House has been as ideologically driven as the domestic agenda - the Clarke book and the commission hearings are most chilling in describing how clueless the agencies charged with sorting through clues were under Clinton and Bush.
Reprising the scene in the White House on 9/11, Mr. Clarke says Dale Watson, the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism chief, called him. "We got the passenger manifests from the airlines," Mr. Watson said. "We recognize some names, Dick. They're Al Qaeda."
Mr. Clarke recalled: "I was stunned, not that the attack was Al Qaeda but that there were Al Qaeda operatives on board aircraft using names that F.B.I. knew were Al Qaeda." Mr. Watson told Mr. Clarke that "C.I.A. forgot to tell us about them."
Mr. Clarke's argument that the Bush team's misguided adventurism in Iraq has actually spawned more terrorism and diverted resources has panicked the Bushies, who are running as heroic terror warriors.
It's always gross to see a White House stoop to smearing the character of someone seen as a threat. It was sickening when the Clinton White House smeared Monica Lewinsky, and it's sickening now.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
--------
Just wondering
This week's testimony before the commission investigating 9/11, and all the questions that remain
Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com
03.25.04
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16656
Okay, so, like, here's the deal. I've spent the last two days watching and listening to the testimony before the independent commission investigating 9/11. And I've appreciated the directness with which panel members have grilled current and former high-ranking officials of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.
But there's been an awful lot of questions that have continued to go unasked. Some of them are obvious enough that virtually anybody watching would be asking them, too. So, with the risk of being the village heretic, let me ask a few of them.
1) Let's start with the most obvious. Why are we having these hearings now, and not two years ago? Why has it taken so long to investigate 9-11, when the Bush Administration was willing to turn decades of American foreign policy and generations of international law on their heads seemingly within days? We could invade Afghanistan, we could pass PATRIOT and a rash of executive orders undermining basic constitutional rights, we could create a massive new federal "homeland security" bureaucracy, we could spend a year trying to goad the world into helping us unjustly attack Iraq, and when that failed, we could go ahead and invade, loot, and pillage it anyway. We could do all that -- and in the process run up a debt our great-grandchildren will pay -- but we couldn't, before now, even make the time to investigate the incident supposedly so pivotal and earth-shaking that it justified all of the above. Why? And why, even now, is the White House so hostile to the notion?
2) After the supposed cataclysm that was 9/11, Why did no heads roll? Why -- if not for any other reason than for symbolic purposes, to demonstrate that performance and results have consequences - weren't the heads of the CIA, FBI, and National Security Advisor Condi fired on September 12? I don't subscribe to the notion that the Bushies knew, or should have known, that 9/11 was coming; Washington is awash in reports and chin-stroking papers that never get read, let alone acted upon. And conspiracy theories are overpriced at a dime a dozen. Bureaucracies have cracks large enough to drive a truck -- or commercial airplane -- through. But once 9/11 happened, why was the immediate response not only to not hold anyone accountable, but to vastly expand the powers and budgets of the very agencies that had just failed so spectacularly?
3) Speaking of driving airplanes -- how on earth, two full hours after four separate airplanes had been hijacked, could one of them cruise into Washington, D.C. airspace and plow right into the Pentagon? That's an extremely high-value military target. Didn't they have, like, any kind of defense for that? Missiles, or interceptor jets, or anything? If it didn't work, why not?
4) What has the Bush Administration's obsession with Iraq cost us in the War on Terror? I'm not just talking about Richard Clarke's testimony -- which reiterates what Paul O'Neill and others had already told us -- that both Cabinet officials like Rumsfeld, as well as Bush and Cheney themselves, were obsessed with Iraq, before and after 9/11. I mean what did the invasion of Iraq do to strengthen Al-Qaeda and kindred groups -- as a recruiting tool, as a motivator, and as the transformation of Iraq itself into a handy new terror target and training ground? How has the bogged-down war in Afghanistan against a now-resurgent Taliban suffered due to diversion of far greater resources to the war in Iraq? Has that diverted attention allowed bin Laden or other fundamentalists to reorganize and reassert themselves in ways that would not have been possible if Dubya had stayed on point?
This last question becomes particularly critical this past week, as Afghanistan's election is postponed -- a complete lack of safety in most of the country outside Kabul caused the U.N. to back down with only 10 percent of the country registered to vote -- and in the context of the elections in Spain. As I wrote last week, the Spanish electorate threw out on its ear a government that lied to it, intentionally and systematically, about who was responsible for the Madrid terror bombings and why. Clarke, O'Neill, and others have essentially testified that Bush did the same thing, only for over two years, on far grander a scale, and with much graver consequences for the future security of our country.
Maybe that's why they didn't want this investigation.
----
MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
03/25/2004
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1336
Only in Washington.
Last night I was at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. It's a formal-and-fun affair where thousands of media folks assemble at the Hilton for a fancy dinner and fab pre- and post-parties. I'm not going to denigrate such soirees. I enjoy them. While bookers and producers jiggled and jostled on the dance floor and media and political celebs dissected the news du jour (this time it was Richard Clarke's dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission), I was able to chat with former weapons hunter David Kay and learn about some troubling developments in the intelligence community (more on that down the road). And there was free sushi.
But an awful you're-all-alone moment came during George W. Bush's comments that followed the sit-down dinner. The current president is often the honored guest at this annual affair, and the audience toasts him in what is supposed to be a sign of communal and nonpartisan spirit. And the tradition is that the president has to be funny; he has to provide us with an amusing speech that pokes fun at himself and his political foes. After all, political journalists love to see politicians engage in self-deprecating humor. Bill Clinton was quite good at these performances. Bush seems to enjoy them less. Rather than do straight standup, he sometimes relies on a humorous slide show, and that was how he chose to entertain the media throng this time.
It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.
Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it. Instead, I took a long drink of the lovely white wine that had come with our dinner. It's not as if I was in the middle of a talk-show debate and had to respond. This was certainly one of those occasions in which you either get it or don't. And I wasn't getting it. Or maybe my neighbor wasn't.
At the end of the slide show, Bush displayed two pictures of himself with troops and noted these were his favorites. The final photograph was a shot of special forces soldiers--with their faces blurred to protect their identities--who were posing in Afghanistan where they had buried a piece of 9/11 debris in a spot that had once been an al Qaeda camp. Bush spoke about the prayer the commander had said during the burial ceremony and noted he had this photograph hanging in his private study.
So what's wrong with this picture? Bush was somber about the sacrifice being made by U.S. troops overseas. But he obviously considered it fine to make fun of the reason he cited for sending Americans to war and to death. What an act of audacious spin. One poll recently showed that most Americans believe he either lied about Iraq's WMDs or deliberately exaggerated the case to justify the war. And it is undeniable that in seeking public support for the war he made many false assertions that went beyond quoting intelligence that turned out to be wrong. (I've written about this in many other places. If you still don't believe Bush mugged the truth, check out this short guide.) As the crowd was digesting the delicious surf-and-turf meal, Bush was transforming serious scandal into rim-shot comedy.
Few seemed to mind. His WMD gags did not prompt a how-can-you silence from the gathering. At the after-parties, I heard no complaints. Was I being too sensitive? I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that claimed their loved ones. Bush told the nation that lives had to be sacrificed because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used (by terrorists) against the United States. That was not true. (And as Kay pointed out, the evidence so far shows these weapons were not there in the first place, not that they were hidden, destroyed or spirited away.) But rather than acknowledge he misinformed the public, Bush jokes about the absence of such weapons.
Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands? Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light." Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia--during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The problem is, those embassies--they all look alike."
Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation--he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's capital.
DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: www.bushlies.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. to Send Nearly 2,000 Marines to Afghanistan
March 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-afghan-usa-marines.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will add nearly 2,000 Marines with special operations training to the 11,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to boost security and intensify the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives, defense officials said on Thursday.
The officials told Reuters that most of a major unit of up to 2,200 Marines stationed on warships in the Gulf would be moved to Afghanistan. The Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, are on a seven-ship naval Expeditionary Strike Group, led by the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp.
``With the weather warming up, it is an opportunity to add forces and press the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban,'' said one military official. U.S. forces in Afghanistan have stepped up operations in the remote, mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of Operation Mountain Storm.
American-led forces are seeking al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and other key fugitives.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday that in addition to the hunt for guerrillas, the United States wanted to beef up security ahead of elections scheduled for summer in Afghanistan.
``A couple of events (are) happening in Afghanistan that we want to ensure there's appropriate security for,'' Myers said.
SECURITY FOR AFGHAN ELECTIONS
``As you know, they're going to be elections some time this summer, perhaps late summer ... And we want to make sure that event goes well,'' he told reporters.
``There are still pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda that need to be dealt with,'' Myers added.
The Wasp strike group, carrying 2,000 to 2,200 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, left North Carolina on Feb. 19 for a scheduled six-month deployment in the Gulf region and arrived in recent days, officials said.
``Some of the those Marines will participate in and support operations in Afghanistan,'' said another defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The United States, beefing up its forces in the region, already has 2,000 other Marines inside Afghanistan as part of the 11,000-strong U.S. military contingent there.
Officials provided no timetable for the new deployment and said the exact number from the Wasp group who will be sent into Afghanistan depended on the circumstances on the ground and requirements identified by commanders.
Marine Corps officials said the troops were trained for special operations missions, and that the Wasp, resembling a small aircraft carrier, carried attack helicopters and Harrier fighter jets. Officials gave no further details about the Marines' possible missions.
Under an initiative begun by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Marines are being trained to join Army Special Forces soldiers in operations in what U.S. officials call the global war on terrorism.
A Navy official said four of the seven ships in the group are positioned in the Gulf: the Wasp, the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown, the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island, and the amphibious transport ship USS Shreveport.
The official said two others are in the north Arabian Sea: the guided missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and the guided missile destroyer USS McFaul. The official declined to identify the location of the final vessel in the group, the attack submarine USS Connecticut.
-------- africa
Parties Withdraw From Ivory Coast Gov't
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ivory-Coast.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Rebels and the main opposition party withdrew from Ivory Coast's power-sharing government Thursday after security forces fired on protesters demanding implementation of a peace deal, officials said.
The news came after a day of violence in which the opposition said about a dozen people were killed during a massive protest march. The death toll could not be independently confirmed and casualty figures varied widely.
Rebels control the northern half of this West African country, once noted for its stability and prosperity as the world's largest cocoa producer.
``We have suspended our participation in the government to protest against today's killings,'' rebel spokesman Alain Lobognon said.
A spokesman for the main opposition Rally of the Republicans party, Bictogo Adama, said his group also would pull out of the power-sharing government set up after last year's French-brokered peace agreement.
Air France suspended flights to Ivory Coast, and the French Foreign Ministry called on all parties to show restraint.
``It's deplorable. The Ivorian army must stop shooting at the population,'' rebel chief Cherif Ousmane said earlier in the day from his stronghold in the northern town of Bouake. ``If they don't stop, we're going to suspend all negotiations at every level.''
For decades, Ivory Coast was seen as a haven in a region wracked by coup d'etats and civil wars. That reputation was shattered with a 1999 coup that paved the way for a failed September 2002 coup attempt that saw rebels seize the north.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Aka N'goran said five people were killed Thursday, including two policemen, two ``criminals'' and one man shot by an unknown assailant. French army spokesman Lt. Col. Bruno Misset confirmed 12 dead.
Djedje Mady, a spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, put the death toll at 16, saying ``very many people were wounded by bullets.'' His counterpart from the Rally of the Republicans party, Bacongo Cisse, put the death toll as high as 31.
Despite the violence and a government ban on public demonstrations, opposition leaders vowed to press on to reach their destination -- the downtown business district, known as Plateau, that is home to the presidential palace and key ministries.
``The demonstration will continue. We will do everything to arrive in Plateau,'' Cisse said.
Democratic Party official Ouassanan Kone added, ``I have asked people not to give up and not to allow themselves to be walked over.''
The bloodied corpse of one policeman lay in a courtyard in the northern suburb of Abobo, where security forces were trying to break up gathering crowds.
The policeman was among a group of officers who first fired at stone-hurling demonstrators but retreated as protesters chased him, said Mady Traore, a resident of the area.
``We followed him and he entered a courtyard. We broke down the door and came up behind him, and knocked him down with a brick,'' Traore said. ``When he fell down, one of our friends shot him.''
Nearby, other witnesses said demonstrators burned tires in the road and threw rocks at security forces. Paramilitary police ``shot in into the crowd. I saw two people fall,'' one man said on condition of anonymity.
Jeannot Koudou, an adviser to the security minister, said ``security forces intervened to maintain order,'' firing tear gas and injuring several people. Asked whether any had fired into crowds, he said: ``It's false. It's not true.''
Integration Minister Mel Theodore blamed the opposition for the violence.
``In insisting on their wish to demonstrate, they are trying to create troubles for the government, which is at the stage where it wants reconciliation,'' he said.
The march was called to press President Laurent Gbagbo to implement fully the peace deal to end a nine-month civil war.
Gbagbo's government, which has banned all demonstrations, accuses rebels of plotting a coup d'etat together with opposition parties -- charges that both groups deny.
Ivory Coast has been divided between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south since the 2002 civil war. A French-brokered peace agreement in January 2003 brought an end to fighting, and the war was officially declared over in July.
With tensions still high, the United Nations is preparing to deploy 6,240 U.N. peacekeepers next month to back around 4,000 French and 1,400 West African troops already in the country.
Authorities stepped up security in Abidjan ahead of the march, deploying armored cars around the presidential palace and helicopter gunships above. Military vehicles brimming with soldiers and police patrolled the streets.
The downtown business district has been declared off-limits by presidential guards, who warned they would defend the area at all costs. It was empty and quiet Thursday.
Radio France International and British Broadcasting Corp. transmissions were yanked off local airwaves without explanation.
In a bid to keep residents home, the government declared Thursday a public holiday and closed all schools. The U.S. Embassy warned of violence, and advised Americans to stay home.
-------- asia
Japanese PM re-ignites debate over nations armed forces
25/03/2004
ABC Radio Australia News
http://www.goasiapacific.com/news/GoAsiaPacificBNA_1073559.htm
The Japanese Prime Minister has used an interview with a British newspaper to return to the controversial issue of calling the nation's Self-Defence Force (SDF) an army.
Speaking to the UK's "Times" newspaper, Junichiro Koizumi says that to the rest of the world, the SDF is considered to be an army while, constitutionally, it cannot be referred to in that way within Japan.
He says that "several points in the constitution are not logical in the light of commonsense."
Mr Koizumi says that when the question arises of amending the country's consitution in the future, the issue of re-naming the SDF will be "part of the debate."
What's In A Name?
The exact nature of the SDF has long been a contentious issue throughout the Asia-Pacific region but has become one within Japan itself since the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq.
It is the first time since the Second World War that Japanese forces have served in a country where armed conflict is continuing.
Tokyo has stressed the humanitarian nature of the SDF's role in southern Iraq but the move has caused widespread public disquiet domestically.
Article Nine of the Japanese constitution states that the "people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."
It goes on to say that in order to achieve that, " land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."
-------- business
Eurofighter Seen Overtaking US Fighter Makers In Revenues
Mar 25, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/industry-04i.html
Newtown CT - Over the next 10 years the Eurofighter team is expected to surpass U.S. firms in sales of fighter/attack/jet trainer aircraft. This projection is one of the major findings of a recently released market analysis by Forecast International.
Overall, the analysis reports that deliveries of fighter aircraft can be expected to accelerate during the 2004-2013 timeframe. FI is projecting worldwide deliveries of 4,300 new aircraft worth $161 billion, with shipments and revenues both rising from late-decade onward.
The so-called legacy fighters - the F-15, F-16, and Mirage 2000 - continue to generate "last call" orders, but interest in these types will fade in favor of next-generation models such as the F/A-22, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Dassault Rafale, and the Eurofighter Typhoon by the end of the 10-year period under review.
Virtually all the new models are having difficult if not painful gestation periods as their development costs continue to spiral upward.
In the U.S. the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 has had its inventory objective scaled down to 276 aircraft as cost overruns and technical problems dog its progress, while the planned U.S. Navy/USMC buy of the same manufacturer's F-35 has also been cut significantly amid criticism of its "aggressive" development timetable and a weight problem.
Europe's Typhoon program may be further delayed as the consortium member nations renegotiate work shares and seek to cut costs. The program's credibility is not helped by rumors that the U.K. may reduce or stretch out its Tranche 2 order, although that country's Ministry of Defence (MoD) claims it has no plans to cut its 232-unit Typhoon requirement.
Meanwhile, France's defense minister has called for an audit of Dassault's Rafale program to resolve a dispute between the government and the manufacturer over who should bear the burden of unforeseen program costs.
The Saab/BAE Systems team will lease 14 Gripens to Hungary and another 14 to the Czech Republic, and has sold 28 aircraft outright to South Africa. The Anglo-Swedish Gripen International company will continue to promote the single-engine all-weather fighter to other sales prospects while Saab works on its Swedish Air Force order backlog.
Forecast International aviation analyst Bill Dane notes that a number of overseas governments have signed aboard the F-35 development program and adds that "should this multirole type emerge at the end of this decade as a cost-effective design living up to its performance and cost goals, it could become an everyman's fighter which could well emulate or even surpass the success Lockheed Martin has enjoyed with its long-running F-16 family."
At the end of 2003, with a first flight still more than two years in the future, the manufacturer already held commitments from the U.S. and U.K. services for nearly 2,600 F-35s.
Both Dassault and the Eurofighter group are battling Boeing for a 20-unit fighter order from Singapore. The U.S. manufacturer proposed a variant of its two-seat F-15E, and some analysts see this contest as the last chance for the Typhoon or Rafale to score on the export market before the advent of the F-35.
The Singapore deal may have a domino effect as in the not-too-distant future the island nation will also need to replace about 36 Northrop F-5s. In the interests of commonality and type standardization, the winner in the current competition may move to the head of the line. Meanwhile, Singapore is keeping its options open, having joined the development phase of the F-35.
In terms of unit production, Lockheed Martin will lead the field but, its current problems notwithstanding, the Eurofighter team is expected to overtake the U.S. company in value of production before the end of the forecast period. This projection assumes the multinational Typhoon requirement is not cut back. The Europeans will be closely trailed by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the Lockheed/Boeing F/A-22 team.
----
EADS opens Russian unit
MOSCOW (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325115447.9kq90uei.html
The European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Company (EADS) said here Thursday it aimed to beef up its presence in Russia with a Russian-registered unit.
"We plan to build up our presence significantly in all sectors in Russia including by taking stakes in Russian companies," EADS co-chairman Rainer Hertrich told a press conference here.
The operation means more subcontracting in Russia of parts for Airbus, in which EADS has an 80-percent stake.
EADS, which until now only had an office in Russia, will now be represented in the country by EADS Russia headed by Vadim Vlasov, a Russian aeronautics specialist.
"This will provide greater visibility in the Russian aerospace community and also a better legal position to act as a partner with public and private Russian firms," Vlasov said.
To that end, the company will have a supervisory board including politicians and Russian aeronautic and defence specialists "with the responsibility to provide informed opinions about what directions to take," Vlasov said.
--------
Pentagon Faults Supervision Of Contracts
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22522-2004Mar24.html
The Pentagon's inspector general has criticized the management of some contracts awarded by the Defense Department immediately following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.
In a report dated last Thursday, the inspector general found that procurement officers "circumvented procedures" by not following established federal guidelines and did not provide proper oversight once the contracts were awarded.
The report found that one contractor -- San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which has offices in McLean -- chartered a cargo jet to fly an H2 Hummer and a Ford C350 pickup truck to Iraq after its plan was turned down by a contracting officer. SAIC, which was under contract to provide media support to the Pentagon's reconstruction office, "went around the authority of this acquisition specialist to a different office . . . to gain approval and succeeded," according to the report, which recommended that the company repay the government $634,834 for unsubstantiated costs.
Ronald M. Zollars, a spokesman for SAIC, said the company had not seen the report.
"SAIC has worked very diligently to ensure that we are performing to the customer's satisfaction," he said. "When unanticipated events occur, we immediately respond to address and resolve any issues."
The inspector general reviewed 24 contracts valued at $122.5 million awarded by the Defense Department on behalf of the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq.
"DOD cannot be assured that it was either provided the best contracting solution or paid fair and reasonable prices for the goods and services purchased" for 22 of the 24 contracts, the report said.
Thirteen of the 24 contracts were not competitively awarded, according to the report, including eight to SAIC valued at up to $108.2 million.
--------
Plan to Use Ohio Plant for Military Blimp
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Military-Blimp.html
AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- Government officials and Lockheed Martin Corp. announced a $24 million plan Thursday to update an old blimp factory for construction of a high-flying, remote-controlled blimp prototype to monitor U.S. borders and scan the horizon for enemy missiles.
Lockheed Martin in September received a contract worth about $40 million from the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency to design and build the unmanned, helium-filled airship that would patrol at 65,000 feet and be able to lift about 4,000 pounds.
The company's Airdock plant in this northeast Ohio city once was the site of mass production of Navy airships during World War II, and before that, much bigger hydrogen-filled airships.
On Thursday, the state, city and Summit County Port Authority announced an array of grants, loans and tax incentives to prepare the Airdock, which will be owned by the Port Authority and leased to the company.
The prototype is expected to be complete by summer 2006.
``For Akron, it's a very emotional thing,'' Mayor Don Plusquellic said. ``People here can remember seeing blimps that were built here always flying overhead.''
On the Net:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com
-------- haiti
Haitian Cabinet Weighs Disarming Rebels
By Stevenson Jacobs
Associated Press
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22222-2004Mar24.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 24 -- Haiti's interim cabinet, meeting for the first time Wednesday, discussed the urgent need to disarm gunmen in a nation terrorized by rebels, street gangs and escaped convicts despite thousands of U.S.-led peacekeepers.
Haitian police are among those accused of fueling the turmoil, and a report Wednesday said that five officers have been detained on suspicion of killing five supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party.
The National Coalition for Haitian Rights said that according to relatives of the victims, the officers rounded up and killed the men, ages 17 to 24, over the weekend. The officers were detained without charges on Monday, but no charges had been filed.
Miguel August, a top aide to the acting prime minister, Gerard Latortue, said a top government priority is to work with American and French troops to disarm militants.
Auguste said officials were considering new training and education programs to help integrate impoverished militants into society. A rebel uprising helped push Aristide from power Feb. 29.
Rebels, for their part, are pressing the interim government to reinstate the army.
Residents in northern Haiti, meanwhile, are relying on an alliance of rebels, police and foreign peacekeepers to maintain a shaky truce. Guerrillas outnumber and outgun police in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city.
About 3,300 troops from the United States, France, Chile and Canada are in Haiti as peacekeepers.
-------- iraq
U.S. Overseer Cites Gains in Iraq
Lauding Economic, Political Steps, Bremer Largely Avoids Topic of Violence
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22236-2004Mar24?language=printer
BAGHDAD, March 24 -- L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. official who oversees Iraq, marked the 100-day countdown to the formal end of the U.S.-led occupation with a speech Wednesday that lauded the country's economic growth and the signing of its interim constitution.
In a 35-minute speech to an audience of 90 carefully selected Iraqi dignitaries, Bremer wove words of encouragement into a celebration of democratic government. "Iraq is now on the path to a full democracy, in a united state at peace with its neighbors," he said.
But Bremer's upbeat remarks largely avoided the two most vexing problems facing the U.S.-led occupation authority as it prepares to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis: the persistent violence against Iraqi security forces and civilian targets, and the lack of consensus on the makeup of the interim government, which is supposed to take over from Bremer on June 30 and arrange elections by January.
Bremer, who has been in charge here since May, repeated the U.S. promise to maintain troops in Iraq and acknowledged that "Iraq's security is the first concern of Iraqi citizens -- we hear it every day." But he did not mention the car bombs, mortar and rocket attacks and gunfire that are daily occurrences in Iraq.
Nor did Bremer address the possibility that the constitution signed March 8 could be altered even before he leaves in June. Several members of the Shiite Muslim majority on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council contend that the document dilutes their electoral strength by ceding too much power to the minority Sunni Muslims and Kurds.
Increasingly, political attention is turning away from Bremer and toward the United Nations. On Wednesday, the Security Council issued a statement of support for Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan to send electoral and political teams to guide Iraq's transition to self-rule.
The impact of Bremer's speech was primarily psychological, said Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite member of the Governing Council who sat in the front row.
"The train has started now," Rubaie said. "We're counting down to the 30th of June. This is going to be a historic moment in Iraq. There is a lot of work that needs to be done from now until then. . . . We're doing this at a rocket speed."
Bremer, who officially works for the Pentagon but reports directly to the White House, announced several initiatives for the remaining 100 days of his tenure, including anti-corruption efforts and public ownership of Iraq's airwaves.
This week, Bremer said, he will create a cabinet-level Defense Ministry to replace the one he dissolved last year. The ministry will oversee the Iraqi army that has been reconstituted and trained under Bremer's direction.
To demonstrate Iraq's revival in the year since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the government of President Saddam Hussein, Bremer recited a list of statistics: 2,500 schools refurbished, 3 million children vaccinated, 18,000 reconstruction projects begun and a 30-fold increase in health care spending. Unemployment is down, he said, and the value of new Iraqi dinar has risen 29 percent since January.
Bremer praised the signing of the interim constitution as "perhaps the greatest achievement" of the new Iraq, citing its bill of rights and creation of a federal form of government. The constitution provides for a directly elected government by December 2005.
Bremer also complimented the Governing Council, whose members from different religious and ethnic groups were appointed by the United States, for compromising on key aspects of the constitution. "For Iraq to regain its prosperity and strength it must remain united, and that unity requires that the interests of all Iraqis be accommodated," he said. "In a country as broad and diverse as Iraq, it is not possible for every interest to have everything it wants."
But if the thrust of Bremer's speech was optimistic, the security precautions attending it and incidents elsewhere in the country on Wednesday were reminders of the continuing violence in Iraq.
Two Marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were wounded around 1:30 a.m. by a roadside bomb and gunfire near Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of resistance to the occupation. The Associated Press reported that three civilians were killed.
Around 4:30 a.m., a rocket damaged the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel, where many contractors and journalists live. Another rocket a short time later wounded a contract employee inside the Green Zone, the tightly guarded compound that houses the occupation authority. The military was unable to provide any information about the incident, said a spokeswoman, Air Force Lt. Serena K. Wallace.
Also on Wednesday, a local police chief was shot dead on his way to work in the southern province of Babil and an Iraqi translator working for Time magazine was in critical condition after being shot in Baghdad.
In addition, the Los Angeles Times and the Reuters news agency reported that a mortar shell that landed inside the Green Zone last Thursday killed an Iraqi working as a subcontractor for Bechtel Corp. The military has not noted the death.
Bremer spoke outdoors, near the city's convention center inside the Green Zone. The event was closed to the public. Guests arrived more than two hours in advance to be screened by security guards. Before and during the afternoon speech, black military helicopters circled above.
To address corruption, Bremer said, he would create a commission to enforce public integrity laws. The panel would work alongside a board of auditors and inspectors general in each of Iraq's 25 ministries.
Bremer also said he would appoint an independent communications commission to regulate Iraq's radio and television airwaves and oversee a new public broadcasting service.
After the speech, Iraqi officials said they appreciated Bremer's optimism but noted serious concerns ahead.
"The Iraqi people are very angry about the terrorist acts that are taking their lives and interfering with the reconstruction," said Nasreen Mustafa Sadiq Barwari, a Kurd who serves as Iraq's public works minister.
A Shiite member of the Governing Council, Rajaa Habib Khuzai, said she appreciated Bremer's remarks "to show that we are progressing," but she left no doubt that her focus was on the intense politics that will shape Iraq's future after Bremer leaves. What she has in mind, Khuzai said, is fixing the constitution: "Every fault can be corrected -- in the very near future."
--------
U.S. Calls for Sunni and Kurdish Rights After Turnover
March 25, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/international/middleeast/25IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 24 - Faced with a top Shiite cleric's demands for majority rule that would dilute Sunni and Kurdish rights in an independent Iraq, the head of the American occupation, L. Paul Bremer III, delivered a strong argument on Wednesday for the American insistence on a democratic system that protects minority rights.
"Democracy entails not just majority rule, but protection of minority rights," Mr. Bremer said at an outdoor ceremony to mark the 100-day countdown to the dissolution of the occupation authority and the return of sovereignty to Iraq. Attending were Iraqi leaders who have worked closely with the Americans since a United States-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's government nearly a year ago.
"For Iraq to regain its prosperity and strength it must remain united," he said. "And that unity requires that the interests of all Iraqis be accommodated. In a country as broad and diverse as Iraq it is not possible for every interest to have all it wants."
The United States has held firm to the June 30 handover date, even as attacks on Iraqis working with Westerners have increased. On Wednesday, an Iraqi translator working for Time magazine was shot and wounded in his car on his way to work in the Baghdad suburb of Mansour. A gunman who drew alongside fired a volley of bullets, striking him four times, American officials said. He was listed in critical condition at an American hospital. The attack was the latest in a series of attacks on Iraqis working for Western news organizations.
In other attacks confirmed by the American command on Wednesday, three Iraqi civilians were killed and two American soldiers were wounded when a military convoy was ambushed with roadside bombs and small-arms fire shortly after midnight Wednesday near the restive town of Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad. The incident followed a night of violence in the area that began with a drive-by shooting at dusk on Tuesday in which a man described by the command as a foreign security guard and a child were killed.
Troubled infrastructure also bedevils the country. In Fao, in southern Iraq, a major oil pipeline ruptured, spilling oil that caught fire and sent out vast plumes of dark smoke. The rupture was caused by poor maintenance, according to the occupation authority, the Bloomberg news agency reported.
On the political front, Mr. Bremer has worked through months of shadow-boxing with Shiite clerics who command the allegiance of millions of Iraqis, always avoiding direct confrontation, addressing the clerics only with careful deference.
In Wednesday's speech, he made no mention of the cleric he was indirectly addressing, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has emerged as Iraq's decisive power broker. From his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf, where he has refused to meet with Mr. Bremer or any American emissary, Ayatollah Sistani has issued a volley of political demands on behalf of the country's Shiite majority. The demands come in contrast to his espousal of a "quietist" school of religious thought opposed to direct clerical intervention in politics.
On Monday, Mr. Sistani's aides released a letter to the United Nations in which he spoke of "dangerous consequences" if United Nations mediators endorsed the American-sponsored interim constitution that will operate when sovereignty is transferred.
The cleric warned that the interim constitution approved by the Governing Council two weeks ago "enjoys no support among the Iraqi people." and said that it set the stage for ethnic and sectarian strife with its elaborate guarantees for the Sunni and Kurdish minorities. Shiites account for about 60 per cent of Iraq's 25 million people.
Mr. Bremer used the Wednesday ceremony for the 100-day countdown as a morale-boosting exercise, ticking off a checklist of the occupation's accomplishments.
Iraq has more electrical power, he said, a new currency that has gained nearly 30 per cent in value, a vast increase in health spending, and the prospect of nearly $19 billion in reconstruction funds voted by the United States Congress last year.
"At liberation, this great country had been reduced to a shell, not by war, not by invasion, but by almost four decades of relentless greed and cruelty by its leaders," he said. "Instead of investing in Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam's regime squandered and stole the nation's wealth.
"Instead of serving his citizens, Saddam deprived them of access to essential services. When liberation came, water, electricity, sewage, schools and much more were a shambles. When liberation came, not a single policeman was on duty in Iraq, and the army had disappeared.
"What a difference a year can make in the life of the Iraqi people."
But in large part, Mr. Bremer's speech focused on rebuffing the Shiite political demands.
Calling on Iraqis to salute the Governing Council members - Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen and Assyrians - who hammered out the interim constitution - under American supervision - Mr. Bremer said they represented "many different traditions and communities," with "distinct desires and expectations."
"Of course, all those expectations did not match up perfectly," he said. "The great work of the Governing Council" he said, was realizing that "they could be made to fit together in a harmonious whole if they were adjusted."
"This," he said, "is the true essence of democracy."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel wrong on Iraq weapons
By Peter Enav,
Associated Press Writer,
3/25/2004
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/03/25/report_israel_wrong_on_iraq_weapons/
JERUSALEM -- Parliamentary investigators have determined that Israel's intelligence services delivered an erroneous assessment of pre-war Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.
Prior to the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Israeli services reported Iraq had large amounts of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents.
Since ousting Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition's technical experts have failed to find any such weapons.
An investigative subcommittee was formed eight months ago to consider if Israeli intelligence agencies provided an accurate picture of Iraqi unconventional weapons capabilities on the eve of the Iraq war.
The Haaretz daily said the 80-page report -- set to be released next week -- had criticized all Israeli intelligence branches for providing erroneous assessments of Iraq's non-conventional weapons.
It said the report recommended that Israeli intelligence services re-examine their techniques and the way responsibility is divided among them.
A spokesman for legislator Yuval Steinitz, who chaired the parliamentary committee, would not comment on the Haaretz report.
The Israeli military and various intelligence agencies also declined to comment.
Based on intelligence warnings that a U.S.-led invasion could trigger an Iraqi missile attack on Israel, the Israeli military ordered citizens to update their gas mask kits in the run-up to the Iraq war. The step cost the country millions of dollars. No missiles were fired on Israel during the war.
In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's forces fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. All had conventional warheads, causing considerable damage but few casualties.
The parliamentary report was based on the closed-door testimony of some 70 witnesses, including the prime minister, defense minister, military chief of staff, and the heads of the Mossad foreign intelligence service, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, and the military intelligence service. After the report's release, some sections will remain classified.
Last December, a former Israeli intelligence officer charged that Israel produced a flawed picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities and substantially contributed to mistakes made in U.S. and British prewar assessments on Iraq.
The comments of reserve Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom represented an unusual criticism of the Israeli intelligence community, long regarded as one of the world's best. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Brom served in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years, and acted as the deputy chief of planning for the Israeli army.
Brom said he was directing his remarks at Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Mossad intelligence agency.
----
U.N. Rights Panel Condemns Israel's Killing of Hamas Leader
March 25, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/international/europe/25GENE.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 24 - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights voted on Wednesday to condemn Israel's killing of the Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, but a similar resolution failed to move forward in the Security Council because of objections by the United States.
The 53-member rights commission, holding its annual session in Geneva, passed by a 31-to-2 vote a resolution submitted by Pakistan that scored Israel for "targeted assassinations, liquidation and murder of political leadership." Only the United States and Australia voted against it, and 18 countries, including the European Union states, abstained.
The United States said the resolution, which is nonbinding, lacked balance because it made no mention of Palestinian terror attacks. Yaakov Levy, the Israeli envoy, dismissed it as "Israel bashing."
At the United Nations headquarters in New York, Algeria, the Arab nation currently on the Security Council, submitted a redrafted resolution on Wednesday evening after an earlier attempt to obtain a statement against Israel from the 15-member Council failed to win support. The United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, said the United States had opposed it because it made no mention of "terrorism conducted by Hamas."
The new draft, which condemns "the most recent extrajudicial execution committed by Israel," adds a paragraph condemning "also all terrorist attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction." The document will probably be discussed in the Council on Thursday, but Mr. Negroponte indicated that the American objection to not singling out Hamas would continue.
"If the Security Council is going to pronounce itself on this question," he said, "it must recognize the reality that Hamas has been responsible for numerous, extensive and very recent terrorist activities."
Earlier Wednesday, Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, met with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who on Tuesday had condemned the killing of Sheik Yassin. Mr. Shalom said he explained Israel's reasons for taking its action and appealed to the United Nations to "push all the moderates in our region to abandon those extremists and don't give them an umbrella to move forward with violence against innocent Israelis."
On Tuesday, 41 countries and regional groups debated in the Security Council what the panel's response ought to be to Sheik Yassin's killing.
Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the United Nations, said that Sheik Yassin was a revered spiritual leader and that his murder was a "mad and brutal assassination" for which Israel was legally and politically responsible.
Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador, responded that "to characterize him as a spiritual leader is to attempt to characterize Osama bin Laden as a Mother Teresa." He said it would be the "ultimate hypocrisy" if the Council were seen to be defending "the godfather of terrorism."
Fiona Fleck contributed reporting from Geneva for this article.
-------- nato
NATO to welcome ex-Soviets in landmark expansion
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325030044.ovbnw71j.html
NATO will next week enact its biggest-ever expansion, welcoming seven ex-Soviet bloc countries into the fold of the "transatlantic family" in the teeth of undisguised Russian irritation.
US President George W. Bush will host a ceremony on Monday with the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania to seal their entry into the currently 19-member US-dominated alliance.
The White House event, when the newcomers will deposit their accession documents to NATO's founding Washington Treaty and so become members, will be followed by a formal flag-raising ceremony at the alliance's Brussels headquarters April 2.
"This will be a huge step towards a long-standing objective of the alliance: a Europe without dividing lines. A Europe not only free of war, but also free from fear," said NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who will attend the event in Washington.
National celebrations are also planned in the new member states for the expansion, which comes less than two years after their formal invitation to join at a November 2002 NATO summit in Prague.
Three other ex-communist countries -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- joined the West's former Cold War military bloc in 1999.
The United States has done little to disguise its satisfaction that the new NATO members were staunch supporters of its actions after the September 2001 attacks in the United States, notably in last year's Iraq war.
The seven "have already acted as allies through their strong solidarity and actions in the war on terrorism, and in helping to strengthen peace and democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq," a White House spokesman said Tuesday.
The Brussels ceremony will be attended by the newcomers' foreign ministers, who will then join an informal meeting with their counterparts from the newly-expanded 26-member organization.
The process of ratifying the newcomers' accession - which involves an amendment of the 1949 treaty which launched NATO after World War II -- has proceeded remarkably quickly, diplomats say.
Five of the seven new NATO states are also gearing up to join the European Union on May 1, finally cementing their re-integration into the transatlantic community after the end of the Cold War a decade and a half ago.
But amid the celebrations at least one cloud remains: Russia's continuing resistance. Moscow long opposed expansion, but was persuaded reluctantly to accept it two years ago, a process eased by geopolitical shifts following the September 11 attacks.
Specifically, Russia is opposing NATO plans to station warplanes and air defences in the ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, plus Slovenia, which have no such defences of their own.
"It is clear that such plans directly threaten Russia's security," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said recently, warning that Moscow could take "corresponding measures" if necessary.
From a military standpoint, the seven newcomers' contributions will be relatively modest. They will be pressed to work hard to bring themselves up to NATO standards to ensure inter-operability in the expanded alliance.
But the enlargement will radically reshape Europe's security map: apart from neutral countries like Ireland and Austria, the only states outside NATO will be the ex-Yugoslav states, plus countries like Albania and Ukraine.
NATO officials stress that this will change, in time. Pressure is growing for a summit in Istanbul in June to extend invitations to Macedonia, Croatia and Albania to join, perhaps in 2006.
Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia-Montenegro are currently pushing to join NATO's Partnership for Peace program of enhanced cooperation, but it remains unclear when decisions on these cases could be taken.
----
NATO warplanes to patrol Baltics from March 29
RIGA (AFP)
Mar 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040325172624.tcq7b44i.html
NATO warplanes will start to patrol Baltic airspace on March 29, Latvian Defence Minister Atis Slakteris said on Thursday, confirming plans by the alliance that have edged up tensions with neighbouring Russia.
Slakteris said the patrols would be carried out by Belgian Air Force planes. Denmark had originally been expected to provide the planes.
"It is symbolic indeed that Latvias airspace will be patrolled by Belgian airplanes, because Belgium is a small NATO country likewise Latvia," Slakteris said.
The Belgian defence ministry in Brussels would not confirm the report.
Slakteris said the Belgian air force planes would be stationed at Siauliai, in the north of neighbouring Lithuania, and that Norwegian personnel, who would be serving the Belgian aircraft, would arrive at the base on March 26.
Four NATO airplanes would patrol Latvian airspace daily, Slakteris said.
Russia is deeply unhappy about NATO's move to station warplaces in its the three former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which are set to join NATO on April 2.
After spending years fruitlessly trying to block the expansion of the military alliance up to its borders, Russia has come out on the offensive, with Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov saying Thursday he may order a nuclear build-up in response to NATO's Baltic operations.
Moscow fears that flights over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would enable the alliance to spy on its defences.
--------
Macedonia, Albania, Croatia Knock on NATO Doors
Politics: 25 March 2004, Thursday,
Novinite.com (Bulgaria)
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=32615
Macedonia, Albania and Croatia will probably become NATO members in 2007.
According to an analysis by the Slovenian news agency STA, the three western Balkan countries will be included in the next wave of Alliance expansion, projected for 2007.
The analysis points out that Croatia is even more optimistic hoping to be accessed this year.
To confirm its statements, the STA reminds NATO's policy of "open doors". The decision for the first wave of expansion was made in Madrid in 1997.
Five years later seven other Eastern European and Baltic countries were invited to join the Alliance. Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be officially welcomed to NATO on April 2.
The STA cites the US Senate resolution, adopted earlier this month, recommending that Macedonia, Albania and Croatia be invited to join the Alliance. The three NATO-aspiring countries have sent their missions to Afghanistan; Albania and Macedonia had their troops in the Iraqi war.
-------- pacific
Indonesian Militants 'Keep Regenerating'
Jemaah Islamiah Defies International Efforts to Quash It
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22182-2004Mar24?language=printer
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The sun was bright, the sky a flawless blue -- a perfect day for a graduation. In a mountain clearing in the southern Philippines four years ago, 17 young Indonesians snapped to attention in their camouflage fatigues, two instructors recalled. They marched in formation. They assembled a low-explosive bomb and detonated it. They crawled on the ground with AK-47s.
"Allahu Akbar!" the audience cheered: "God is greatest."
The men were the first graduates of the military academy established by Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian militant network allied with al Qaeda. That day in April 2000, as described by two men who were there, was a high point in the life of the organization.
During the next two years, hard-liners in Jemaah Islamiah gained influence. The group's biggest attacks were the October 2002 bombings of two Bali nightclubs and the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which together killed 214 people. At least one of the 17 graduates was arrested last year for hiding a Bali bomber, said Muhaimin, 42, one of the instructors in the Philippines and now an imam at a Jakarta mosque. Like many Indonesians, he uses only one name.
The death toll from the March 11 bombings in Madrid is listed at 190, slightly less than Bali, and a group saying it represents al Qaeda has asserted responsibility. A similar claim was made after the Bali bombings.
Although al Qaeda provided financing for the Bali attacks, Jemaah Islamiah operates largely independently, analysts and police say. Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean members, who met and were molded in Islamic boarding schools and training camps in Afghanistan and the Philippines, share al Qaeda's ideology but do not need an order from Osama bin Laden to act, according to police and former members such as Muhaimin.
More than 240 of Jemaah Islamiah's members have been arrested since the Bali and Jakarta attacks, including many of its leaders. But interviews with captured members, former members and relatives portray a network that continues to defy police efforts to quash it, exploiting school, family and religious connections to stay alive.
"At the same time that the police arrest them, they always find someone to replace them," Mohammad Nasir bin Abbas, 34, a former instructor at the camp, said in an interview. "Even if the entire Jemaah Islamiah membership is wiped out, other groups will arise and do the same thing."
Jemaah Islamiah plans to close its training camp in the Philippines, according to Indonesian police, as its main ally there, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, conducts peace talks with the Philippine government. But the network is reportedly seeking to relocate the camp in Indonesia, a handful of leaders are still at large, and analysts and police warn of the possibility of another attack.
Six Indonesian terrorism suspects were recently arrested trying to enter Malaysia from the Philippines. Meanwhile, Abubakar Baasyir, 65, a cleric considered the network's leader, could be released from prison as early as next month. Baasyir was arrested and jailed in October 2002 on charges of immigration offenses and forgery, but not for involvement in the Bali bombings. The Indonesian Supreme Court recently reduced his sentence. The instructors recalled him watching proudly at the Jemaah Islamiah graduation ceremony in 2000.
"This organization is still dangerous as hell," said an Indonesian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They keep regenerating. They can change the name of the group. They can use new faces. They change strategy."
Until his arrest last December, Muhammad Saifudin, an Indonesian, was being groomed as part of Jemaah Islamiah's next generation of leaders. In an interview in his jail cell in Jakarta in the presence of his attorney, Saifudin said he was recruited as a religious teacher, or ulema, for the terrorist network by the principal of a conservative Islamic boarding school in Solo, in central Java.
As Saifudin explained it, Jemaah Islamiah needed not only fighters, but teachers who could furnish a religious justification for the jihad, or holy war. But even teachers needed hands-on experience, he said. So he was sent to the Philippines to learn to fight.
"I wanted to contribute something to this Islamic movement," Saifudin said. "Besides, I was the best student in my class, and my teacher saw this potential."
In 1999 after he graduated from the Islamic boarding school, he took one of Jemaah Islamiah's short courses at its camp in the Philippines. In four months, he said, he learned everything from mapmaking to bomb assembly.
In 2001, he trained in Afghanistan, at Camp al Farouq in Kandahar, which housed 300 fighters from Saudi Arabia, he said.
Also at the camp was Hambali, whose real name is Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin and who was Jemaah Islamiah's most important strategist until his capture last August. In October 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks, Saifudin said, he shouldered a Stinger missile and tried to shoot down U.S. jets, but the planes flew too high and the Stingers were outdated.
Saifudin, who said he met bin Laden four times at the camp, said the al Qaeda leader showed the recruits videos of Palestinian civilians dying after being attacked by Israelis. "Osama was crying and said, 'These people are my brothers in Islam. They ask for my help and your help,' " he recalled.
In late 2001, Saifudin went to Karachi, a city in southern Pakistan. There he joined a group called al Ghuraba, Arabic for "the foreigners." The group was formed on Hambali's orders, Singaporean authorities said. Many of its members were sons or brothers of Jemaah Islamiah militants. The group itself was set up by Abdul Rahim, Baasyir's son. Hambali's brother handled the finances, Abdul Rahim said in an interview at his father's home in Solo.
Abdul Rahim, who lives freely in Solo where his father co-founded an Islamic boarding school, said al Ghuraba was formed purely for religious study and discussion. Saifudin said senior Jemaah Islamiah members "saw the urgency of regeneration in the movement" and sent their sons and their students to Pakistan to study to become ulemas.
But Singapore, which has arrested two of the group's members, has characterized it as a cell designed to groom future leaders. And a senior Indonesian security official said the students served as liaisons between Hambali and al Qaeda, in some cases transferring money. An Indonesian police official said they helped Hambali in terrorist activities, which he did not specify.
Eleven young al Ghuraba members are now in jail in three countries. Their backgrounds reflect the movement's family ties: The two members arrested in Singapore are the sons of members of Jemaah Islamiah and Moro, respectively. In Malaysia, five students have been detained, three of whose fathers are with Jemaah Islamiah. In Indonesia, Saifudin and Hambali's brother are among four members arrested.
With the 11 arrests, al Ghuraba has been effectively dismantled, authorities say.
But police and analysts such as Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group's Indonesia program, point to the emergence of other groups as evidence that the militant movement will be difficult to break up.
A group called Mujaheddin Kompak formed in 1999 in response to what it saw as the slower, more bureaucratic Jemaah Islamiah, from which it drew some of its leaders, Jones wrote in a new ICG report.
Jemaah Islamiah, meanwhile, continues to draw strength from family ties, with women playing a largely unseen role.
In a modest cinderblock house in East Java, Faridah binti Abbas, sister of Mohammad Nasir bin Abbas, the former camp instructor, is raising six young children alone. The youngest, Usama, was born after her husband, Ali Ghufron, also known as Mukhlas, Jemaah Islamiah's alleged operations chief, was sent to prison for helping plot the Bali bombings. There, Mukhlas has told police he was gratified that Bali "claimed many lives from American allies, including Australians" and has written by hand manuscripts with titles such as "How to Educate Your Wife" and "The Bali Bomb Jihad."
Yet Faridah, whose marriage was arranged by her father, shows no sign of weariness or fear that his death sentence could leave her a widow. She wears a black chador, the traditional garment that covers all but the eyes and is worn when a woman is outside the house.
She became passionate when asked about jihad and the targeting of civilians. "Bali killed only 200 people," she said. "How about those killed in Kashmir? In Iraq? In Palestine? In Chechnya? In Afghanistan?" Why don't we call those who attacked them terrorists? she asked.
These days, Mohammad Nasir bin Abbas is torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he still reveres the organization's founder, Abdullah Sungkar -- the "old man," he calls him -- who died in late 1999 of a heart attack. On the other, he is disgusted, he says, by the group's shift since 2000 toward civilian violence. He said a majority of the group disagrees with that tactic, an assertion backed by Saifudin.
Nasir said he believes that the use of arms is justified only against another army or militia in defense of Muslims under attack.
Persuading his fellow militants to end their targeting of civilians is difficult, he said. "It's about ideology," he said. "They believe what they're doing is true. That it comes from God."
Special correspondents Noor Huda Ismail and Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report.
-------- pakistan / india
Likely al - Qaida Tape Seeks Pakistan Coup
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Egypt-Al-Qaida-Tape.html
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A tape purportedly recorded by Ayman al-Zawahri, the No. 2 figure in the al-Qaida terror group, called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf a ``traitor'' Thursday and urged people to overthrow his government.
The pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a seven-minute excerpt from a tape it received Thursday. Its authenticity could not immediately be verified, but the speaker sounded like al-Zawahri and made references to the Islamic holy book, the Quran, which is known to be al-Zawahri's style.
The speaker also called for a military uprising in Pakistan.
``Musharraf seeks to stab the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan in the back,'' the speaker said.
``Every Muslim in Pakistan should work hard to get rid of this client government, which will continue to submit to America until it destroys Pakistan.''
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the government has no immediate comment on the purported al-Zawahri tape. When an al-Zawahri tape released in September called for Musharraf's overthrow, the government said it would not be deterred in its pursuit of terrorists.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he heard news reports about the tape and said if it was authentic, the speaker ``is clearly an individual who is very high-ranking and is capable of, and has in the past killed innocent men, women and children. And so one has to recognize that.''
The tape comes as Pakistani troops are in the second week of a campaign along the Afghan border in South Waziristan, a longtime hiding place and stronghold of Islamic militants from al-Qaida, Afghanistan's Taliban and their Pakistani supporters.
It was not known when the tape was made, but the speaker appeared to be referring to the conflict in South Waziristan when he said, ``I call on the Pakistani army: you, poor army, what a miserable state Musharraf has put you in ... Musharraf ruins your natural fences -- those tribes on the border -- by engaging you in a fight with them. Then he removes your nuclear weapons.
``Will you stay silent until Pakistan is divided again?''
The speaker repeatedly named the Pashtun and Baluch border tribes and urged them to close ranks with the Taliban against the Pakistani army.
``Taliban and their supporters are your brothers,'' the speaker said, ``so how can you allow the agents of crusaders and Jews to hurt them?''
He used the word ``crusaders'' for Americans as Islamic militants often do.
The speaker said such military operations on the borders violated Islamic law by pitting Muslims against each other at America's bidding.
``Every soldier who finds this act to be legitimate is an infidel, according to Islamic law,'' the speaker said.
After Musharraf spoke hopefully of capturing a ``high-value target,'' there was speculation that al-Zawahri might be in the rugged border area where local tribes have more power than the Pakistani federal government.
Pakistan Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said Thursday that more than 50 terrorists have been killed in the operation. More than 150 suspects have been captured, said Brig. Mahmood Shah, chief of security in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The speaker did not mention Israel's Monday morning assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, which suggests the tape was recorded before then.
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said the Qatar-based channel received the tape Thursday, but he declined to reveal how. The tape is 17 minutes long.
``Indications are that it is authentic,'' Ballout said, ``the voice, the nuances.''
In the United States, an intelligence official said the CIA was reviewing the tape to determine whether it was authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said the rapid response of the tape suggests that Al-Zawahri was nowhere near the Pakistani fight zone. He said the message was essentially a call to kill Mussharref.
A Cairo expert on Islamic militants, Dia'a Rashwan of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the tape indicated al-Zawahri was close to the action in South Waziristan.
``This is a counterattack. It reflects how he can feel the tremendous security effort exerted at the borders,'' Rashwan said.
In urging the tribes to rally to his side, al-Zawahri seems to realize that the Pakistanis are much more dangerous for him than the Americans, Rashwan said.
The speaker also urged Islamic clerics to tell the Pakistani people ``the truth about Musharraf, the traitor and killer of Muslims.''
``They should incite the nation to expel the crusaders from Pakistan,'' the speaker said.
``The crusade in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine is targeting Pakistan primarily, because America does not want Pakistan to be a special power in the center of Asia.''
Al-Zawahri is believed to have provided much of the ideology driving al-Qaida since his Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with Osama bin Laden's network in 1998, experts say. The United States has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
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Tape Said to Be of Qaeda No 2 Urges Pakistan Coup
March 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-qaeda-tape-zawahri.html
DUBAI (Reuters) - A defiant message apparently from Osama bin Laden's right-hand man called on Pakistanis on Thursday to overthrow their pro-American president -- just days after Pakistan hinted its forces had the fugitive trapped.
In a new tape aired on Arabic Al Jazeera television and attributed to Ayman al-Zawahri, the al Qaeda number two -- believed hiding on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border -- called President Pervez Musharraf ``the traitor.''
``I call on Muslims in Pakistan to get rid of their government which is working for Americans,'' said the voice on the audio-only tape, which sounded like Zawahri.
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the ``war on terror,'' has been waging a bloody campaign over the last fortnight to root out al Qaeda fighters in tandem with a U.S. sweep on the other side of the Afghan frontier.
Pakistani officials said last week the fierce defense the militants were putting up suggested they were protecting a ``high-value target,'' perhaps Zawahri, who Washington believes played a key role in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The military later rowed back, saying this was unfounded ``guesswork'' and the target might be a Chechen or Uzbek warlord.
Musharraf, who has to balance pressure from Washington with anti-U.S. sentiment at home, narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in December blamed on Muslim militants.
The CIA, which said two similar messages last month were probably from Zawahri, was checking the tape's authenticity.
``Musharraf wants to stab the Muslim Jihaduprising in Afghanistan in the back,'' the voice said.
``The Pakistani people had offered a helping hand to their brothers in Afghanistan, that's why Americans delegated Musharraf to take revenge on the tribes along the border, especially the Pashtun.''
Al Jazeera, which often receives tapes purportedly from bin Laden and Zawahri, said it got the new message after Pakistan began its frontier military campaign but gave no more details. No specific events to help date the tape were mentioned on it.
Islamabad has faced strong opposition demands to stop the offensive in the lawless South Waziristan tribal region by some 5,000 troops, but says it will go on until all militants are eliminated. Scores of people have been killed.
``Pakistan is targeted mainly because Americans don't want it to be a nuclear power in Asia because it is Muslim,'' the tape's speaker said.
He said Musharraf wanted to ``strangle the Jihad in Kashmir'' -- the majority Muslim state disputed between India and Pakistan -- by gradually abandoning the right of Kashmiri independence.
He called on Pashtun tribes to protect the Taliban, Afghanistan's Islamist rulers toppled in 2001, and al Qaeda fighters from U.S. and Pakistani forces hunting them.
``Oh, you proud, strong tribes, your brothers of the Taliban and their allies are guests in your homes, so how can you allow the (Pakistani) agent of the crusaders and Jews to harm them?'' he said.
The tape also tried to incite the Pakistani army against Musharraf, saying he planned to rid them of nuclear arms and leave them prey to Indian enemies on the border.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian defence ministry to launch "patriotic channel"
MOSCOW (AFP)
Mar 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040326100708.9zlujt0j.html
The Russian defence ministry plans to launch a "military-patriotic" nationwide television channel called Zevzda, or Star, in a bid to boost the armed forces' profile in Russia, it said Friday.
"The ministry is working on a project to launch a military-patriotic channel called Zvezda (star)," ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko told
The TV network could be put on air on February 23 next year, Russia's army day, he said.
The Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily reported that the military has only allocated 80,000 dollars of funding for the channel, which would require 100 million dollars in order to be broadcast throughout the world's largest country.
The defence ministry has held discussions with gas monopoly Gazprom and oil majors LUKoil and Rosneft on financing, but without great success. It hopes the state-run arms export body Rosoboronexport will provide the necessary funds, the daily said.
According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Zvezda would represent the views not only of the military but of the secret services and law and order agencies.
The number and influence in the government of men from the military and security structures, known as the "siloviki", has increased greatly since President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, came to power at the end of
The army already has a daily newspaper called "Krasnaya Zvezda", Red Star.
-------- spies
Report: Israel Wrong on Iraq Weapons
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Iraq.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Parliamentary investigators have determined that Israel's intelligence services delivered an erroneous assessment of pre-war Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.
Prior to the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Israeli services reported Iraq had large amounts of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents.
Since ousting Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition's technical experts have failed to find any such weapons.
An investigative subcommittee was formed eight months ago to consider if Israeli intelligence agencies provided an accurate picture of Iraqi unconventional weapons capabilities on the eve of the Iraq war.
The Haaretz daily said the 80-page report -- set to be released next week -- had criticized all Israeli intelligence branches for providing erroneous assessments of Iraq's non-conventional weapons.
It said the report recommended that Israeli intelligence services re-examine their techniques and the way responsibility is divided among them.
A spokesman for legislator Yuval Steinitz, who chaired the parliamentary committee, would not comment on the Haaretz report.
The Israeli military and various intelligence agencies also declined to comment.
Based on intelligence warnings that a U.S.-led invasion could trigger an Iraqi missile attack on Israel, the Israeli military ordered citizens to update their gas mask kits in the run-up to the Iraq war. The step cost the country millions of dollars. No missiles were fired on Israel during the war.
In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's forces fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. All had conventional warheads, causing considerable damage but few casualties.
The parliamentary report was based on the closed-door testimony of some 70 witnesses, including the prime minister, defense minister, military chief of staff, and the heads of the Mossad foreign intelligence service, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, and the military intelligence service. After the report's release, some sections will remain classified.
Last December, a former Israeli intelligence officer charged that Israel produced a flawed picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities and substantially contributed to mistakes made in U.S. and British prewar assessments on Iraq.
The comments of reserve Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom represented an unusual criticism of the Israeli intelligence community, long regarded as one of the world's best. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Brom served in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years, and acted as the deputy chief of planning for the Israeli army.
Brom said he was directing his remarks at Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Mossad intelligence agency.
-------- un
U.S. Vetoes U.N. Council's Yassin Measure
March 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Yassin.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday condemning Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader, calling the measure ``one-sided'' and saying it ignored the group's bloody record of terrorism.
The United States had demanded that the resolution on the death of Ahmed Yassin include a mention of attacks by Hamas and other militant groups. Algeria, the resolution's sponsor, had resisted identifying the groups by name or citing specific attacks.
``This Security Council does nothing to contribute to a peaceful settlement when it condemns one party's actions and turns a blind eye to everything else occurring in the region,'' U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said before the vote that came after days of bitter debate.
The vote was 11 countries in favor, three countries abstaining, and one country against -- the United States.
Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed in a missile strike Monday morning in the Gaza Strip. He is the highest-ranking militant to die in a series of Israeli assassinations.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for dozens of bombings and shootings of Israelis during 3 1/2 years of violence. Israel says it is weakening Hamas by targeting its leaders, but critics say killing suspects without arresting or trying them violates international law and breeds resentment among Palestinians.
``Israeli policies are not part of the battle against international terrorism; it's part of the problem of creating terrorism,'' said Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative.
Negroponte said the United States, too, was ``deeply troubled'' by the killing of Yassin.
``Israel's action has escalated tensions in Gaza and the region, and could set back our effort to resume progress towards peace,'' he said.
He said the United States could not support the resolution because it failed to mention recent attacks by Hamas, including a suicide bombing in Ashdod that killed 10 Israelis last week. The document also limited its condemnation to violence in the Palestinian territories, omitting attacks in Israel.
``The council should be focused on ways to advance the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security,'' Negroponte said. ``The one-sided resolution before the Council does not advance that goal.''
Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman accused the Palestinian Authority of siding with Yassin.
``The Security Council ... would have committed an unforgivable act of hypocrisy had it come to the defense of a man whose life's work was the eradication of peace, a man who was nothing less than a mass murderer,'' Gillerman said.
On Wednesday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva voted 31-2 to condemn Israel for Yassin's death, but the body has no power to punish countries. A resolution by the Security Council would have carried more international weight.
The 11 Security Council members who voted for the measure on Thursday were: China, Russia, France, The Philippines, Angola, Chile, Pakistan, Spain, Algeria, Benin and Brazil.
Britain, Germany and Romania abstained from the vote.
The Algerian delegation said it might take the resolution to the full, 191-nation U.N. General Assembly. That body overwhelmingly sides with the Palestinians in such issues, but lacks the prestige of the Security Council.
Gillerman criticized ``those council members who were recently victims of horrendous terror'' for casting votes in favor of the measure. It was an apparent reference to Spain, where bombings in Madrid killed 190 people on March 11; and Russia, where a Moscow subway attack killed 41 on Feb. 6.
``If you knew before the bloody massacre of your citizens took place who was going to carry that horrendous act out, would you have sat still and let it happen?'' Gillerman asked.
The vetoed resolution condemned Yassin's death and called for a ``complete cessation of extrajudicial executions.''
It also condemned ``all terrorist attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction.''
However, it did not mention any militant groups by name -- a traditional U.S. demand.
A U.S. draft proposal would have deleted all condemnation of ``extrajudicial executions.'' That issue is a touchy one for the Americans, because the United States has marked suspected terrorists for death in the past.
In perhaps the most dramatic U.S. assassination, a missile fired by a CIA-operated Predator drone killed al-Qaida commander Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen in November 2002.
Only five members of the Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- can veto the body's resolutions. Thursday's veto is the United States' 79th and the latest in a long string of vetoes regarding Israel.
The Soviet Union and Russia have cast the most Security Council vetoes over the years, 121. Britain has cast 32, France 18 and China, 5.
--------
U.N. Draft Resolution Would Require States Deny Terrorists WMDs
Thursday, March 25, 2004
By Jim Wurst
U.N. Wire
http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20040325/449_22189.asp
UNITED NATIONS - The United States and United Kingdom yesterday presented to the other Security Council members a draft resolution that would require all countries to deny "non-state actors" - which could include terrorists - access to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
The draft, if approved, would require states to "adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws" to deny nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, their components and "means of delivery" - such as missiles and drones - to any "non-state actors."
Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of the United Kingdom said the draft "fills a gap in the nonproliferation regimes" because governments are subject to international controls, but "what there aren't are obligations targeted at the terrorists." He added, "What we have to do is stop the ultimate nightmare: the bringing together of weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist."
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said, "We believe that we must act now to set a higher standard to prevent these weapons, key elements used to create them and designs used to make them from falling into the hands of non-state actors, including terrorists, who seek to do us harm."
The draft, which has been circulating in various forms since December, originated in U.S. President George W. Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September 2003. The United States and United Kingdom had been discussing the text with the other permanent members of the council - China, France and Russia - and the current draft is the result of their negotiations. The 10 elected members of the council received it yesterday.
One of the contentious points during the negotiations among the five was the indirect references to the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a U.S.-led project in which countries cooperate in interdicting ships on the high seas suspected of carrying WMDs or missiles. China in particular objected to any suggestion that the council would endorse ad hoc "frameworks" such as PSI.
Those references have been deleted, but Negroponte said, "There's nothing in this resolution that precludes the continuation of the Proliferation Security Initiative ... which is being conducted under existing international law."
Ambassador Abdullah Baali of Algeria, one of the 10 elected members of the council who received the draft yesterday, said his government would "definitely" support the draft, but with reservations. "We understand there is a loophole in the international instruments regarding the issue of WMDs and non-state actors" since existing treaties only deal with governments, he told U.N. Wire. "It's important that the Security Council address the issue and take measures to prevent these non-state actors from acquiring these weapons."
However, Baali added, this resolution should be "exceptional" to address an immediate danger. Nonproliferation is better dealt with through treaty negotiations, not council mandates, said Baali, who was president of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference in 2000. "It would be a mistake to do it through the Security Council," he said. "Let's make sure that it's exceptional and that the whole membership is on board and try in parallel to engage in negotiating an international agreement that would deal with that phenomenon."
The co-sponsors said they were addressing this concern. Jones Parry said the draft "does not represent the Security Council trying to impose its will to replace the role of properly negotiated multilateral regimes, it is a responsible reaction by the Security Council to a real threat."
Negroponte said, "There is explicit language in the draft making clear that this resolution is not meant to supercede, undercut or undermine existing disarmament and nonproliferation regimes."
A complaint about the draft from arms control experts has been that the text never refers to disarmament, only nonproliferation. "We are very much aware of that," said Baali. "It's obvious there are a lot of things we have to look at in detail and we have to make sure certain guarantees are there, including nuclear disarmament."
Jones Parry said the council might be able to vote on the draft by the end of March, but Baali thought that was too soon. Pointing out that it took the permanent five members months to work out this draft, he said, "For the time being we are studying the draft. We'll have suggestions and amendments to make in due time."
-------- us
Report details low US Army morale, suicide in Iraq
By Will Dunham
25 Mar 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25580239.htm
WASHINGTON, March 25 - U.S. soldiers in Iraq were plagued by low morale, experienced spikes in suicides last July and November and lacked access to some medications sought by military mental-health specialists to treat emotional problems, Army experts reported on Thursday.
A 12-person Army Mental Health Advisory Team issued a 38-page report on issues faced by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, including suicide, combat stress and the availability of help from the Army. The team traveled to Iraq from August to October 2003 and interviewed almost 760 soldiers.
The report found a "significant proportion" of soldiers "experienced and reported behavioral health concerns, and that there was an unmet need for behavioral services."
Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. James Peake noted that the report focused on a period when U.S. soldiers faced a mounting insurgency and questions over the length of their deployment.
During a Pentagon briefing, team members gave fresh details on Army suicides, saying that since last April, 22 male soldiers and two female soldiers had taken their own lives in Iraq and Kuwait. All but one were by gunshot, with the lone exception being an overdose of headache medication.
Three other Army deaths -- two last year and one this year -- are under investigation as possible suicides, officials said. In addition, seven soldiers have committed suicide after returning from Iraq, officials said.
Col. Bruce Crow, a clinical psychologist who served on the team, said suicides peaked with five in July and four in November but averaged about two per month for most of 2003. U.S. troops faced heightened attacks during those two months. He said the only suicide by an Army soldier in Iraq this year occurred this month.
Army officials disclosed some of the suicide findings on Wednesday, including a suicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers among soldiers in Iraq, much higher than the overall Army rate.
Crow said this compared to a rate of 15.6 per 100,000 during the Vietnam War and 3.6 during the 1991 Gulf War.
The report also detailed low morale among Army soldiers, with 72 percent of those questioned characterizing morale as either low or very low in their unit and 52 percent saying their personal morale was either low or very low.
Combat stress was caused by seeing dead bodies, personally coming under attack or knowing someone who was killed or seriously wounded, the report said. Other factors included soldiers' uncertainty over when they would go home.
The report found that soldiers who showed signs of depression, anxiety or traumatic stress were more likely to say it was too difficult to get help from the Army.
About 57 percent of personnel in combat stress-control units and 67 percent in mental health offices attached to Army divisions in Iraq cited insufficient supplies of key medications, including antidepressants and sleep medications.
Psychiatrists in the field said the Army made it "unnecessarily complicated" to fill prescriptions, the report said. Half of these psychiatrists also reported being unhappy with the range of antidepressant medications available for them to provide soldiers.
The Army plans to send another evaluation team to Iraq this spring.
----
Unfit soldiers shipped to Iraq, military admits
By David Goldstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thursday, March 25, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001887438_unfit25.html
WASHINGTON - To meet the demand for troops in Iraq, the military has been deploying some National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers who aren't fit for combat.
More than a dozen members of the Guard and reserves said they were shipped off to battle with little attention paid to their medical histories.
Those histories included ailments such as asthma, diabetes, recent surgery and hearing loss. Once in Iraq, the soldiers faced severe conditions that aggravated their medical problems, and the medical care available to them was limited.
David Lloyd, 44, a mechanic with the Tennessee National Guard, died of a heart attack in Iraq last August. His wife, Pamela Lloyd, said her husband didn't know he had a problem, but his autopsy showed three blockages in his coronary arteries.
"He should have never been deployed," she said. "He was supposed to have been given a thorough physical. He had none. The only thing he had was the shots."
Michael Scott, an Iowa National Guardsman who had a herniated disk, said: "They funneled us through the medical part: boom, boom, boom. They let it be known they weren't real interested in hearing about stuff. 'No, you're fine right now.' "
A memo from the European Regional Medical Command in Germany, where many injured soldiers were sent, criticized the pre-deployment medical screening and said soldiers who were unfit for Iraq were being sent home. Deploying them was a risk to their health and an added cost for the military, it said.
The memo contained the concerns of Col. Holly Doyne, a physician based there at the time. Doyne has been deployed to Kuwait and couldn't be reached for this article. Another Army medical officer, who didn't want his name used, confirmed Doyne's memo was distributed to various stateside medical officials and commanders.
Michael Kilpatrick, a top Pentagon health official, acknowledged some medically unqualified troops have been sent to Iraq but said "the percentages are extremely small." He said the Pentagon was taking steps to improve medical screening.
How many soldiers are unfit is unclear. Each soldier interviewed said he or she knew of others who - like themselves - were sent to Iraq despite health problems ranging from allergies requiring refrigerated medications to heart disease.
Several also said many soldiers weren't given physicals but were asked a few cursory questions about their health by the medical screeners.
All the soldiers interviewed said their units and the medical officers who screened them, either after they were activated or at their mobilization sites, were aware of their medical conditions.
The problem was worrisome enough to trigger concerns last April at the European Regional Medical Command.
Doyne's memo said pre-deployment screening was "clearing individuals for movement to the combat zone without knowledge of the medical system limitation in the combat theater. ... OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is NOT peacekeeping. It is combat. The medical support is austere."
It said the problem was a "KEY medical issue" and went on to say, "Frankly, we are burning out a lot of time and effort on shipping back folks who never should have come in the first place. Also runs a high risk of damaging folks."
The memo added: "Current practice of taking the theory of 'if they are on duty they are OK' is not working. Nor is the assumption that if they have been found fit for duty by a medical board in the past they are fit."
Kilpatrick, the Defense Department's deputy director of deployment health support, said the Pentagon was requiring more scrutiny of a soldier's medical background before he or she is shipped overseas.
"We just need to do a better job educating our medical providers - the people doing the pre-deployment screening - of the importance of making this on an individual basis," he said. Of the 120,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq, about 40 percent, or nearly 50,000, are National Guard and reserves. Kilpatrick said that if even 1 percent were medically unfit, that was 500 soldiers who were likely to become patients at military hospitals.
Nearly every soldier interviewed for this article had to be medically evacuated out of Iraq because battlefield conditions exacerbated health problems.
"That's a tremendous medical logistical burden," Kilpatrick said.
Knight Ridder reported last March that the military wasn't medically screening troops before and after deployments, as required by law. Those screenings were supposed to include pre- and post-deployment blood tests.
Congress mandated the tests in 1997 to prevent a recurrence of Gulf War Syndrome, the mysterious malady that has affected some soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf War.
In addition, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has found the military lax in keeping up with medical reporting. Guard and reserve troops are required to undergo medical examinations every five years, every two years for those older than 40. The GAO also is looking into the problem of National Guard and reserve troops being kept for long periods in "medical holds" while their conditions are evaluated.
----
U.S. May Halve Forces in Germany
Shift in Europe, Asia Is Aimed at Faster Deployment
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22217-2004Mar24.html
The Pentagon has drafted plans to withdraw as many as half of the 71,000 troops based in Germany as part of an extensive realignment of American military forces that moves away from large concentrations in Europe and Asia, according to U.S. officials.
Under the plan, which is nearing approval, smaller, relatively spartan bases would be established in Romania and possibly Bulgaria, and designed for the rapid projection of U.S. military power against terrorists, hostile states and other potential adversaries.
Farther east, in Central Asia, bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that were established in 2001 to support the war in Afghanistan would be preserved as training sites and as staging areas that U.S. forces could use in emergencies.
In Asia, about 15,000 troops out of a total presence of about 100,000 would be withdrawn, mostly by streamlining administrative staffs of the U.S. military commands in South Korea and Japan, the officials said. But much of that reduction could be offset by a buildup of personnel and aircraft in Guam and the possible stationing of another aircraft carrier battle group in either Guam or Hawaii, the officials said. The Pentagon plan also calls for new training and staging areas in Australia and expansion of military ties with Singapore and Thailand.
U.S. officials have said before that they intended to eliminate a number of large, full-service Cold War bases abroad and construct a network of more skeletal outposts closer to potential trouble spots in the Middle East and along the Pacific Rim. But neither the proposed size of the reductions in Europe and Asia nor details about locations of the new sites were previously disclosed.
The realignment would amount to a dramatic change in how U.S. forces are positioned around the globe. Some of the troops now overseas would be brought home, while vital equipment would be dispersed more widely to enable more nimble dispatch of forces. Another major objective, officials added, is to deepen military ties and joint training with a greater number of allies in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Several senior administration officials involved in the planning said in interviews that President Bush and his national security advisers are still a month or two away from approving the changes. Some key details have yet to be resolved, officials said, and more consultations with allies will be held.
But many aspects of the initiative have been well defined by Pentagon authorities. Defense officials, some of whom spoke on the condition that they not be named, agreed to discuss the plan after The Washington Post learned some details.
The planning reflects a recognition that potential threats have changed since the Cold War ended, said Douglas J. Feith, Pentagon undersecretary for policy and an architect of the global realignment plan.
"One of the main arguments for forward deployment in the old days was, you had a sense that you knew where you were going to fight and so you positioned your forces where you thought you were going to fight," Feith said. "Our view now is you have to move to the fight."
The administration still intends to retain a ring of permanent military hubs in closely allied countries, including Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan. But many other bases that the United States has relied on would be supplanted by a number of spare "forward operating sites" such as those planned for Eastern Europe. They would be maintained by small support staffs.
Other countries would be designated as "cooperative security locations," providing staging areas that U.S. forces could occupy quickly in a conflict. These locations would have no permanent U.S. military presence but could be used periodically for training exercises.
In Western Europe, which hosts about 102,000 U.S. military service personnel, most of the expected reduction would come in Army forces in Germany.
The Army would withdraw more than 60 percent of its 56,000 troops in Germany, home to the 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions, officials said, and several overlapping high-level commands would be consolidated.
U.S. May Halve Forces in Germany
The nature of the remaining force would change as well. Armored units there now would leave and be replaced in part by lighter, easier-to-deploy forces, possibly including a brigade of Stryker infantry combat vehicles -- lightly armored wheeled vehicles central to the Army's shift toward more agile, mobile units. Additionally, some troops sent to Europe would go for short rotations without families, instead of more traditional three-year tours with families.
Some substantial U.S. military operations would remain in Germany, including Ramstein Air Base, which defense officials view as a critical hub facility for supporting deployments to more distant places. But some U.S. fighter aircraft may be shifted to the Middle East.
Officials said the specific level of personnel reductions in Germany will depend on decisions involving relocation of the aircraft and stationing of a Stryker brigade in Germany, among other factors.
"The one thing I would strongly refute, because it comes up all the time, is the notion that we're withdrawing forces to punish the Germans somehow" for their lack of support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Feith said. "What we're doing is not at all tied to current events. We're looking at this in terms of changes that will last decades."
Feith said German authorities had been kept informed of U.S. plans. But the German military attaché here, Col. Carsten Jacobson, expressed surprise when told the force reduction could end up in the range of 50 percent. "It's definitely higher than what we've heard so far," he said, adding that his understanding was the proposed cuts were in the range of 20 to 30 percent.
Officials stressed that the entire realignment plan has many parts, involving not just the repositioning of U.S. forces but also a greater reliance on pre-positioning of combat equipment at staging areas in strategic locations and aboard ships.
Some defense specialists have questioned whether the administration may be planning too much retrenchment, upsetting relations with old allies and giving up valuable real estate in Germany and elsewhere to bring troops home where they would be farther from potential war zones.
"This set of proposals doesn't seem to be thought out very carefully," said Ashton Carter, who was an assistant secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton and is now co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at Harvard University. "Neither the strategic rationale nor the cost to the taxpayer nor the impact on our allies seems to have been thought through."
But Feith said that plans are being closely coordinated with affected countries, and that it was outdated to think large numbers of forward-based forces would save deployment time. "In fact, some forward deployments will cost you time, because you have to get permission or you have to work things out" with host governments, he said.
-------- propaganda wars
DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts
by Tom Flocco
Thursday, 25 March 2004
www.UnansweredQuestions.org
http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=50
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0403/S00280.htm
Washington, DC -- FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.
Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six months-- commencing in December, 2001.
In a 50 reporter scrum in front of some 12 news cameras, Edmonds said "Attorney General John Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilage and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts".
"I appeared once on CBS 60 Minutes but I have been silenced by Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI follows me, and I was threatened with jail in 2002 if I went public." Edmonds told tomflocco.com.
When we asked her if it was really true that she had been bribed by the FBI and DOJ, Edmonds said "You can interpret it as that."
This writer personally asked Edmonds where the term "State Secret Privilage" was derived. "The term came from an October 18, 2002 DOJ memo to me from DOJ spokesman Barbara Comstock," said Edmonds.
Edmonds said "My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which I won't go into right now."
Incredibly, Edmonds said "The senate Judiciary Committee, and the 911 Commission have heard me testify for lengthy periods of time time (3 hours) about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weopons, and specific idividuals and activities."
This explosive information has been kept under wraps by the White House, CIA, FBI, and DOJ since Edmond's 60 Minutes interview segment.
The former FBI translator told tomflocco.com that "translators before me had ongoing personal relationships with the subjects or targets of the FBI and DOJ pre 9-11 investigations linked to intercepts and other intelligence in June - July - August, just prior to the attacks."
"I also became aware of a [terrorist] ciminal investigation going on since 1998," said Edmonds.
Patty Casazza, one of the 9-11 "Jersey Girls," said "Sibel Edmonds told me that color coding terrorist threat alerts for the American people is reflective of the intercept translations received." Casazza and Edmonds gave no indication as to whether FBI translators had doctored or adjusted Homeland Security terrorist threat alerts for political reasons.
"This whole situation is outrageous and I am going public," said Edmonds, adding "I am currently being advised by counsel. Thank you."
9-11 family member, Jersey Girl, Kristen Breitweiser, arranged to have Ms. Edmonds address the gathered media right after the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified.
-------- war crimes
Dutch Court Puts Former Congo Officer on Trial in Torture Case
March 25, 2004
By MARLISE SIMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/international/europe/25TRIB.html
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands, March 24 - For almost four years, Sebastien Nzapali, a former military officer from Congo, was hoping for political asylum in the Netherlands.
But Mr. Nzapali, who asserted that he had been persecuted, appeared in a Dutch court on Wednesday to answer charges that he himself was a persecutor. He is charged with torture and rape committed in 1996 during the rule of former President Mobuto Sese Seko in the country then known as Zaire.
As he faced Mr. Nzapali, a slightly built man, the prosecutor cited a long list of abuses and said, "Many people knew him by his notorious nickname as `The King of the Beasts.' "
The prosecution said Mr. Nzapali earned that name because he treated people like animals, abused his authority, locked up people at will and brutalized and raped prisoners.
In the unusual trial that opened Wednesday, Mr. Nzapali, 51, is being prosecuted in a Dutch court for violating the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture. His trial is considered an important test case for the Netherlands and other countries that are parties to the convention but have rarely or never applied the laws flowing from it. Lawyers said the case against Mr. Nzapali was an example of the gradual widening of international laws that allow courts in one country to judge human rights crimes committed in another regardless of the person's nationality.
Until now, human rights trials in European national courts have been prosecuted as war crimes or genocide cases, but the torture convention is not known to have been used in a conviction, lawyers said. In 1998, Britain arrested Chile's former president, Augusto Pinochet, at the request of Spain, because both countries were parties to the torture convention, but he was later released because of ill health. Other countries, including France and Switzerland, have arrested foreigners on charges of committing torture elsewhere, but the accused were either released or they fled.
Court officials said that Mr. Nzapali, who arrived in the Netherlands in 1998 and requested political asylum, was denounced to the police by fellow countrymen who said they recognized him. Dutch investigators traveled to Congo to look into the charges, and last September Dutch police arrested him. Since then, court officials have also visited Congo to take sworn statements from witnesses and supposed victims.
Mr. Nzapali's case is being heard by a panel of three judges, but no jury. The president judge quoted at length from the testimony on Wednesday. One woman testified that she had been kept locked up by Mr. Nzapali for two weeks. Another witness said he had been stripped and beaten three times a day on orders of Mr. Nzapali. The prosecution said that as a colonel in the civil guard and commander in charge of the province of Matadi, the defendant acted with impunity.
Mr. Nzapali denied all the charges. "All this information is completely wrong," he told the judges on Wednesday. "I am not an animal."
After the hearing, which lasted one day, court officials said they expected a verdict in two weeks.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ex-Aide Recounts Terror Warnings
Clarke Says Bush Didn't Consider Al Qaeda Threat a Priority Before 9/11
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22231-2004Mar24.html
President Bush's top counterterrorism adviser warned seven days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks that hundreds of people could die in a strike by the al Qaeda network and that the administration was not doing enough to combat the threat, the commission investigating the attacks disclosed yesterday.
Richard A. Clarke, who served as a senior White House counterterrorism official under three successive presidents, wrote to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 4, 2001, urging "policymakers to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of Americans dead at home and abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done earlier," according to a summary of the letter included in a commission staff report. Clarke also cites the same plea in his new book.
Clarke told the commission in testimony yesterday afternoon that whereas the Clinton administration treated terrorism as its highest priority, the Bush administration did not consider it to be an urgent issue before the attacks.
"I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue but not an urgent issue," Clarke told the 10-member panel. ". . . There was a process underway to address al Qaeda. But although I continued to say it was an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way."
Clarke's appearance before the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, climaxed days of furor over claims in his book that the Bush administration did not do enough to pursue al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001, and has neglected the war on terrorism since then because of an obsession with waging war on Iraq.
The second day of this week's commission hearings also produced new revelations about events before the attacks, including a denial of the White House's long-standing claim that Bush requested a briefing on the domestic threat posed by al Qaeda in August 2001.
But perhaps the day's most dramatic moment came at the start of Clarke's testimony, when he issued an apology that prompted sobs and cheers from the front rows of the packed hearing room, which were filled with relatives of victims of the terrorist attacks.
"To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you," he said. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."
Administration officials inside and outside the commission's meeting room continued to wage fierce attacks yesterday on Clarke's motives and credibility. The White House authorized identifying Clarke as the official who anonymously gave a background briefing for reporters in 2002 that included positive comments about Bush's anti-terrorism strategies.
Rice, who has refused to testify publicly before the commission, met with reporters late yesterday and said that Clarke has sharply changed his view of the administration's war on terrorism. "This story has so many twists and turns now that I think he needs to get this story straight," Rice said.
She said he never raised concerns with her about the impact of the invasion of Iraq on counterterrorism efforts. Rice also characterized Clarke's Sept. 4 letter predicting deaths from a terrorist strike as a policy document that contained no specific warnings.
The White House released an e-mail from Clarke to Rice sent four days after the attacks that said the White House had warned law enforcement agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration that top counterterrorism officials feared a major al Qaeda attack "was coming and it could be in the US . . . and did ask that special measures be taken."
At the hearings, top officials of the Clinton and Bush administrations also resumed sparring over details of their counterterrorism policies and defending their respective efforts to guard against attacks.
The charged political climate enveloped the commission as well. Key Democrats and Republicans on the panel dropped the neutral posture they had shown in previous hearings and were openly partisan in questioning Clarke and other witnesses. Three GOP members of the group, for example, grilled Clarke on his motivations, suggesting that he had been contradictory in his statements and dishonest in the past about his misgivings about counterterrorism policies.
The drama of Clarke's appearance nearly overshadowed a series of notable disclosures at yesterday's hearing. Among them:
• The CIA now says that a controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks on the United States by al Qaeda was not requested by President Bush, as Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that Osama bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al Qaeda supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here.
After the highly classified document's existence was first revealed in news reports in May 2002 , Rice held a news conference in which she suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer. But Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commission member, disclosed at the hearing yesterday that the CIA informed the panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.
But a White House official who demanded anonymity replied: "We did request such a document. It's not out of the question that the CIA and others had the same idea."
• Commission investigators disclosed that during the Clinton administration, the president and other White House officials signed a series of secret orders for covert action that, according to the top Clinton aides, authorized the killing of bin Laden by CIA proxies.
But CIA Director George J. Tenet and other agency employees, including those in the field, told commission investigators that they interpreted the orders as requiring them to attempt a "credible capture" of bin Laden and to kill him only if it was necessary as a part of that attempt. When the leader of the Northern Alliance was briefed on the perceived restrictions, he laughed and, according to the staff report, said: "You Americans are crazy. You guys never change." The report also found that Tenet and others at the CIA never told anyone in the Clinton White House that they felt constrained. Tenet testified yesterday that he would have done so if he had thought it was necessary.
• In the summer of 2001, veteran counterterrorism officers privy to reports on al Qaeda threats "were so worried about an impending disaster that one of them told us that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns," according to one of two staff reports issued by the commission yesterday. Senior CIA officials were also frustrated by some Bush appointees who were not familiar with surges in terrorist threat information and questioned their veracity, the report said.
Tenet said that the death of bin Laden, even in the summer of 2001, probably would not have stopped the attacks on New York and the Pentagon because the plot was already "up and running."
The two staff reports issued yesterday appeared to confirm many of Clarke's key allegations and criticisms, including his assertion that the Bush administration halted use of Predator surveillance drones over Afghanistan to conduct tests on arming the aircraft.
In his testimony, Clarke described the Sept. 4, 2001, National Security Presidential Directive, a strategy for addressing al Qaeda that administration officials have characterized as a bold departure from the Clinton years. But Clarke said the three-stage plan differed little from strategies already in place under Clinton that included first warning the Taliban government in Afghanistan, then pressuring it to turn over bin Laden and finally ousting it through third parties.
It was only after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the introduction of U.S. forces was added, although contingency plans by both the CIA and the Pentagon existed, Clarke said.
Clarke said that he had wanted the directive to say "that our goal should be to eliminate al Qaeda," but that Bush officials called that "overly ambitious." It was reworded to say the goal was to "significantly erode" bin Laden's network. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the word "eliminate" was added back into the directive, he said.
Former deputy attorney general Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic commission member, asked Clarke whether Rice's recent statement that the Bush plan "called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets, taking the fight to the enemy where he lived" was accurate.
Clarke responded, "No, it's not."
Staff writer Mike Allen and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
--------
Ex-Bush Aide Says Threat of Qaeda Was Not Priority
March 25, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25PANE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 24 - President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, Richard A. Clarke, testified on Wednesday to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration had largely ignored the threat from Al Qaeda prior to the attacks. That prompted members of the commission to divide along sharply partisan lines as they questioned Mr. Clarke.
As Republican members openly questioned Mr. Clarke's truthfulness and Democrats defended an official who helped direct the nation's counterterrorism strategy for nearly a decade, Mr. Clarke testified that the Bush administration had not treated counterterrorism as an "urgent issue" before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Clarke used a different tone in starting his testimony in a hushed Senate hearing room, saying he wanted to apologize to the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the scores of victims' relatives in the audience.
"Your government failed you," he said. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."
Mr. Clarke's appearance before the commission, which is in the final weeks of an investigation of intelligence and law-enforcement failures before the 9/11 attacks, overshadowed the drama of testimony earlier in the day from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Samuel R. Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser. Mr. Tenet and Mr. Berger were sharply questioned about why two administrations in a row have been unable to stop Al Qaeda and kill or capture its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Tenet's testimony was generally supportive of the Bush administration. He said the Bush White House was "working hard before Sept. 11 to devise a comprehensive framework to deal with Al Qaeda," and he discussed how Mr. Bush insisted on having Mr. Tenet brief him personally each morning on threats to the United States.
Mr. Tenet said thousands of people spent years trying to combat the evolving threat from Islamic radicals, but he acknowledged that the intelligence agencies "did not penetrate the plot that led to the murder of 3,000 men and women on that Tuesday morning."
He described a government that throughout the years before the attacks "raced from threat to threat to threat" without addressing systemic problems in intelligence gathering, law enforcement and domestic security.
"It's not criticizing anybody," he said. "But the moral of the story is, if you take in those measures systemically over the course of time and closed seams, you might have had a better chance of succeeding stopping, deterring or disrupting."
Mr. Clarke's testimony drew another furious round of denunciations from the White House, which has questioned Mr. Clarke's accounts as an effort to sell his newly published memoirs. Administration officials have accused him of motivations beyond greed, suggesting that he also wanted to help the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry, by undermining efforts of Mr. Bush's re-election campaign to promote his record in combatting terrorism. At a briefing with reporters called specifically to answer Mr. Clarke's testimony, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, cited past statements in which Mr. Clarke had defended the administration's counterterrorism policies. Mr. Clarke was offering "two very different pictures here, and the fact of the matter is, these stories can't be reconciled," Ms. Rice said.
Republican members of the 10-member panel joined in the fray, with three pounding Mr. Clarke about what they said were discrepancies between what he had written in his book and was now saying about Mr. Bush and what he has said in the past, including what he said in classified interviews with the commission.
"You have a real credibility problem, and because of my genuine real long-term admiration for you, I hope you'll resolve that credibility problem," said John F. Lehman, a Republican member of the panel.
Without detailing the classified testimony, Mr. Lehman said that there was "real inconsistency between what your promoters are putting out and what you yourself said" to the panel.
"I'd hate to see you shoved aside during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book," he said.
Mr. Clarke insisted that he was telling the truth in his book and that he had told the truth to the commission. But he said that in 15 hours of private testimony to the panel, he was not asked about the American invasion of Iraq, an issue that he said framed his harsh criticism of the Bush administration.
"No one asked me what I thought about the president's invasion of Iraq," he said. "The reason that I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is that by invading Iraq - something I was not asked by the commission - but by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
At several points, Mr. Clarke parried questions about whether he had deliberately offered two versions of events by sketching out what he said were the realities of life in official Washington. He had opted, he said, "to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did. And I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration."
He insisted again that Mr. Bush and his senior aides, notably Ms. Rice, had rebuffed his efforts throughout 2001 to step up efforts against Al Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan, even as intelligence agencies warned repeatedly that the terrorists appeared to be on the verge of a large, possibly catastrophic, attack on the United States.
"My view is that this administration, while listening to me, either didn't believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there was an urgent problem," Mr. Clarke said.
An interim report released on Wednesday by the staff of the independent commission said that on Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks, Mr. Clarke wrote a letter to Ms. Rice summarizing his frustrations and asking her to ask policymakers "to imagine a day after a terrorist attack, with hundreds of Americans dead at home or abroad, and ask themselves what they could have done."
James R. Thompson, a commissioner who is a former Republican governor of Illinois, brandished a copy of Mr. Clarke's book, with its harsh criticism of Mr. Bush, and a transcript of a press briefing by Mr. Clarke in 2002 in which he generally supported the steps by the administration and said Mr. Bush had not inherited a plan from Mr. Clinton to deal with Al Qaeda.
"Which is true?" Mr. Thompson asked.
For every attack on Mr. Clarke from a Republican, there was praise from one of the five Democrats, who said Mr. Clarke's decades of government work showed that he had been trusted by presidents from both parties and that his allegations needed to be taken seriously.
"Everything you've said today and done has not damaged my view of your integrity," former Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat, said to Mr. Clarke. "It's very much intact."
Another Democrat, Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said he had not found "any areas of contradiction" in Mr. Clarke's testimony and his account in the book.
The hearing before the panel, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, produced other new information about counterterrorism efforts. Witnesses were intensely questioned on the comprehensive strategy that the Bush administration says it was preparing throughout 2001 for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Although the strategy paper is classified, Ms. Rice, the security adviser, cited it on Sunday in defending the administration's efforts in an opinion article in The Washington Post in anticipation of the release of Mr. Clarke's book. She said the document was prepared before the Sept. 11 attacks and outlined a tough new policy in controlling and eradicating Al Qaeda, including "military options to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets - taking the fight to the enemy where he lived."
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting for this article.
-------- drug war
Colombia drops plans to spray drug crops in parks
Thursday, March 25, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-25/s_22160.asp
BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia said Wednesday it had dropped plans to spray cocaine crops in the country's national parks, a proposal that drew criticism from environmental groups.
"There won't be any spraying in the parks until other alternatives are examined, such as manual eradication," said Environment Minister Sandra Suarez.
Colombia's national parks, which cover 25 million acres of jungle and mountainside, were originally excluded from the country's U.S.-funded Plan Colombia spraying campaign. But the government authorized spraying in the parks last year, prompting an outcry from environmentalists and critical commentary in Colombian media.
Colombia's spectacular national parks harbor some of the most diverse populations of plant, bird, and animal species in the world. But the presence of guerrillas, who kidnap hundreds of people a year for ransom, often makes them dangerous to visit.
The government thinks about 11,000 acres of the country's approximately 275,000 acres of coca leaf - the raw material of cocaine - are hidden in national parks. It has promised to eradicate the drug crops.
Cocaine helps fund far-right paramilitary gangs and Marxist rebels fighting a four-decade-old war.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has stepped up crop spraying and increased defense spending to crack down on guerrillas.
"The government can't send the wrong message, that it will permit armed groups to continue moving into these areas to plant crops and process drugs, because the parks can't become sanctuaries beyond the law," Suarez said.
Environmentalists criticized Plan Colombia from the start, saying its herbicides damage the environment and harm peasants.
The government has dismissed those claims and said drug producers destroy jungle to plant coca and poison water with chemicals used to refine cocaine.
-------- homeland security
9-11 Was Not an Attack, It Was Murder
by Jim Kirwan
March 26, 2004
http://www.americaheldhostile.com/ed032604-2.shtml
Rumsfeld in trying to explain his actions on 911 to PBS on: 3/5/04 said:
"The Department of Defense, of course, is oriented to external threats. This was a domestic airplane that was operated by people who were in the United States, against a US target, which makes it historically a law enforcement issue. The Department of Defense deals with external threats coming into the United States-and that's what the department is organized, trained and equipped to do."
Donald Rumsfeld is wrong - in this case dead wrong. This view is what cost thousands more American their lives on 911, than what would have happened, if the White House had not failed to do its job in preventing everything after the first plane hit!
There is something called NORAD, The North American Defense Command, which came into being somewhere back near the 1950's. Its headquarters today is located beneath a mountain in Colorado. Since its creation the United States has spent untold trillions of taxpayer dollars just to prevent something like 911 from ever happening here.
Everything that flies in or over this country is tracked by both civilian (FAA) radar, and military (NORAD) radar. This system is vast and intricate and while it is not foolproof, it is sufficient to defang what took place on September 11th.
The procedure works like this. Every aircraft files a flight plan, prior to takeoff, and has to check in with Air Traffic Control upon leaving the ground. During the flight the aircraft is tracked from takeoff to landing by elements of the FAA, but it is never out of range or vision of military radar.
During the cold war the NORAD system was used to defend the nation's airspace as certainly and as swiftly as any traffic-cop would, when using a speed trap on a highway. Everything that flew had to be identified and cleared to continue throughout its flight by the military. If the course or the intent of the aircraft was in doubt the US Air Force sent up fighters to investigate. The time lag for identification to be made was 3 minutes. That was over the United States, on US flights being made here, by anyone who happened to be piloting the aircraft - so long as that aircraft appeared on radar.
NORAD is under the direction of the Department of the Air Force, which is still under the direction of the Department of Defense-who is directly responsible to the President of the United States. The President is ultimately responsible for the air defense of the continental United States and Alaska and Hawaii - in peace or war.
It should be noted that after the 1st attack upon the WTC, when the towers survived, there was from that day until 911, intensified air patrols that monitored the airspace surrounding the World Trade Center. For some reason those aircraft were not present on that September morning.
On that morning, after air traffic control knew that the aircraft had been hijacked, and especially after the first plane hit the towers - US Air Force fighter aircraft should have immediately been scrambled (sent to intercept the remaining hijacked planes). What was taking place had to have appeared on dozens of radarscopes in both the New York and Washington areas. Once the planes had been identified as the planes that had been taken over by unknown hijackers, the chain of command would have automatically been engaged with requests for decisions as to how to respond. Simultaneously, messages should have come from NORAD headquarters to the White House, or Air Force One - wherever the president was at the time - requesting orders for what the fighters should do regarding the potentially hostile aircraft. Yet instead of plopping his ass in front of a video monitor for a teleconference with his air defense chiefs, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (which would have been done under any hostile attack situation) - Bush kept reading to a bunch of second-graders In Florida for an additional twenty minutes, after the first plane hit.
On 911, no fighters appeared in the skies over New York or Washington. The White House said there were none available - the reality was much different. There were at least a hundred interceptors available, but none took off, until after the attacks were completed. In the 1950's the only way that could have happened was if the President of the United States had order the US Air Force to "stand-down." And to this day neither the White House, nor the Secretary of Defense has ever offered an explanation of why this happened as it did.
When Bush finally did re-board Air Force One, he basically ran to Omaha to hide in the fortified bunkers that used to belong to Strategic Air Command. This president needs to explain his actions to the entire nation - because it appears that he is guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy. If Bush is innocent of such an action then why has he yet to tell the people about his actions on that day: especially given the number of people that died while his administration fiddled around in completely inept confusion?
Those Air Force Generals in charge of Operations on that day need to be subpoenaed to testify before Congress in open session, to explain why all the rest of those in the second tower and the Pentagon, as well as those on the Pennsylvania flight had to die as well as those who were in the first tower.
Rumsfeld wants to claim that the whole affair was a matter for the civilian authorities, as if a civil crime was in progress, and so 911 was not within his jurisdiction, the DOD being the US military, was not to interfere. That - is a flat out LIE!
Moreover, if this was a civilian matter, then why did the United States retaliate with the US military for a civilian crime? Also where did our dictator get off making this a global problem, after having cast himself in the role of the leader of a Crusade to exterminate the evil infidels that had militarily attacked the USA? Let's not forget Guantanimo, and all those people who are charged as being enemy combatants. If this was a civil crime and not a military operation, then how could we have taken military prisoners and held them for years without charges?
The Cabal can't have it both ways. If this was an attack upon this nation, an act of war that required the United States to invade another country: then where was the military here at home? Where was our military that we have spent trillions on when they were needed? Or if 911 was a civil crime, as Donald Rumsfeld says: "a law enforcement issue," then how can Bush defend what we did by way of retaliation?
This nation needs to stop the bullshit and get to the heart of this matter! The Department of Defense is responsible for the air space over the continental United States, and that's a fact. Failure to interrupt the attacks of 911 in the hour and forty-seven minutes that they waited for the attacks to come to an end - amounts to the murder of thousands of additional American civilians.
Maybe the first attack might not have been preventable, but everything after that first plane hit should not have happened in the way that it did. The people responsible for this crime against the people of this nation need to be held accountable, and that would be the President of the United States, who was reading a book to second graders, the Vice-President who from his secure location, supposedly intervened to stop the interceptors from flying, and Donald Rumsfeld for trying to cover it all up.
This action could begin to bring closure to these events-and the time to do this is now!
----
Homeland Security Wants Better Integration
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22488-2004Mar24.html
For the Department of Homeland Security to fight terrorism as effectively as possible, its divisions -- and their disparate information technology systems -- are going to have to start operating cohesively.
That was the message Steven I. Cooper, chief information officer at the department, gave yesterday at FOSE, a government information technology trade show, to an audience of about 100 technology executives interested in selling their wares and services to the agency. While there's been much speculation on the agency's need for advanced technologies to track and disrupt terrorists, Cooper said many of Homeland Security's technology priorities are of the significantly less flashy variety.
"If we can't send classified e-mails from one undersecretary to another undersecretary, or undersecretary to [the department] secretary, I'd argue we've got a bit of a problem," Cooper said.
Apart from internal e-mail systems, Cooper said, the department will focus on integrating the data and processes of first responders such as firefighters and police officials so that information can be shared across organizations. The agency is also trying to set up a common network infrastructure so all of its employees can work from a common computer desktop and collaborate more easily on projects.
Cooper said the agency's other goals for the coming year include reorganizing its financial processes, training and developing its technology staff, and bolstering its Internet security, which got an "F" in a report card issued by a congressional subcommittee in December.
The Department of Homeland Security also wants to make it easier to receive and filter information on potential threats from sources including state and local agencies and individual citizens. One possibility being considered, Cooper said, is using public libraries to reach out to people who don't have the Internet.
--------
Domestic Security Gets a Mixed Appraisal
March 25, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25HOME.html
WASHINGTON, March 24 - One year after a vast reorganization of domestic security, the government has made important strides in defending the nation against another terrorist attack but still faces critical gaps that could take years to close, according to an internal review released on Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security, which in March 2003 brought together 22 agencies and some 180,000 employees in one of the largest government reorganizations in history, "has made significant progress in addressing all of its management challenges," said the report, by the department's inspector general.
Even so, some needed improvements in border protection, technology upgrades, training, staffing and management "will take years to develop and implement, and much remains to be done."
The report is likely to fuel further debate over whether the country has done enough to safeguard its borders after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Even as the Sept. 11 commission wound up two days of widely publicized public hearings, the inspector general's assessment reinforced a perception among some critics that the country remained vulnerable to another major strike.
"This administration is not doing all it can to keep America as safe as it needs to be," said Representative Jim Turner of Texas, a Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, who maintains that President Bush has not directed enough money to domestic defense in his 2005 budget proposal.
"I agree with the department's independent inspector that much has been done to make this country safer, but this is not good enough," Mr. Turner said. "We are not as safe as we need to be, and now is not the time to lose our resolve."
Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said: "We certainly understood that integrating 22 separate departments and agencies would be a monumental task. However, we feel we've made significant progress addressing these challenges in our first year and at the same time redefining many traditional government management approaches," an effort that includes creating "one-stop shopping" for domestic security grants to state and local governments.
The report from the inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, relied both on previous investigations and on Mr. Ervin's own assessments.
It found that in several crucial areas, among them carrying out aviation and maritime security overhauls mandated by Congress, "our nation's defense against international terrorism has never been stronger." But even amid such progress, it said, the department faces continuing challenges because of financing problems, shortages of trained and qualified personnel, and technological setbacks.
Law enforcement officials have been working to integrate fingerprint databases, for instance, in order to speed the identification of illegal residents with criminal records and terrorist ties. But financing for that effort has been stalled because of concerns about the quality of the fingerprint imaging, the report said, and domestic security officials are now experimenting with new technology to try to solve the problem.
The report also pointed to "significant problems" in identifying, locating and removing foreigners who have overstayed their visas or are otherwise in violation of immigration law. It said noncompliance or fraud in the processing of student visas "could lead to breaches of national security."
Another area of particular concern involved the hiring of more than 50,000 security screeners at some 400 airports around the country. The report said poor management at the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the hiring, and poor oversight of contractors had allowed thousands of screeners to be hired without completion of background checks on them. These included 85 convicted felons, who were later fired.
But in the course of addressing that problem, the report said, officials also erroneously fired 169 screeners who had clean records.
-------- terrorism
Missed Chances in a Long Hunt for bin Laden
March 25, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON and TODD S. PURDUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25HUNT.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 24 - In 1996, the C.I.A. secretly created a special operational unit devoted to tracking a single man, a Saudi-born exile named Osama bin Laden, then living in Sudan and considered a major terrorist financier. By early 1997, the office, known as the bin Laden station, had concluded that he was also a terrorist organizer, based in Afghanistan, with a military committee planning operations against American interests worldwide.
"Although this information was disseminated in many reports, the unit's sense of alarm about bin Laden was not widely shared or understood within the intelligence and policy communities," the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reported on Wednesday. "Employees in the unit told us they felt their zeal attracted ridicule from their peers."
What happened over the nearly five years from that moment until the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is the story of bureaucratic miscommunication, diplomatic dead ends, military hesitation, intelligence failures, political rivalries and policy miscalculations at the highest levels of two presidential administrations - a trail of fumbles presented in sweeping new detail in two days of commission hearings and four staff reports made public this week.
The commission's work provides the government's first comprehensive account of how the Clinton and Bush administrations assessed and responded to the growing threat presented by the bin Laden network before Sept. 11. Previous government accounts, and testimony by national security officials, focused more narrowly on specific failings of intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.
In the last years of Bill Clinton's administration, the commission's findings show, there were deep misunderstandings between White House officials, who believed the president had clearly authorized actions that would kill Mr. bin Laden, and C.I.A. officers who thought that they were only permitted to kill him in a capture attempt. There were a half-dozen frustrating efforts to use Afghan proxies to attack Mr. bin Laden, and a series of successively more ambitious plans for military strikes that proved unworkable, diplomatic pressure that failed and bitter disputes about how best to use unmanned Predator drone aircraft to gather intelligence.
In the first months of the Bush administration, the commission found, there was sharp skepticism about the Clinton approach - a conviction that it had "run out of gas," as Stephen Hadley, the Bush deputy national security adviser, put it.
There was also hesitation about how and whether to retaliate for the October 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole, more debate among the White House, Pentagon and C.I.A. over arming the Predators with missiles, and repeated delays that kept a new policy for expanded action against Al Qaeda from being approved until Sept. 4, 2001 - just a week before the attacks.
As intercepts of reported threats against unspecified targets jumped alarmingly in June and July, 2001, the deputy director of central intelligence, John McLaughlin, told the commission he "felt a great tension" between "the new administration's need to understand these issues and his sense that this was a matter of great urgency."
He also reported frustration that some policy makers in the new administration "who had not lived through such threat surges before, questioned the validity of the intelligence or wondered if it was disinformation, though they were persuaded when they probed it."
In all the pages of commission reports, and in all the hours of testimony, one haunting reality becomes clear: Whatever the missteps of the government in the months and years before the attacks, there was always a lonely chorus of experts, mostly at lower levels of the intelligence community, warning that the worst could really happen, even if they did not know how, where or when.
As early as mid-1997, the commission found, one C.I.A. officer recognized that the intelligence community alone could not solve the problem of Mr. bin Laden. "All we're doing is holding the ring until the cavalry gets here," he warned his supervisor in a memorandum.
There were some successes: Foiled plots, economic sanctions and a freeze on the Taliban's assets. But through both administrations, and despite internal pressure from critics scattered around the bureaucracy, the efforts against Al Qaeda were more notable for their limits than for their reach.
"If officers at all levels questioned the effectiveness of the most active strategy the policy makers were employing to defeat the terrorist enemy," the commission's staff concluded, "the commission needs to ask why that strategy remained largely unchanged throughout the period leading up to 9/11."
What follows is an examination of how this happened, based on the commission's staff reports and testimony from current and former officials.
Early Clinton Efforts
In June 1995, President Clinton signed a new policy redefining terrorism "as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act," and committing the United States to "apply all appropriate means to combat it."
But despite an escalating pattern of threats and attacks, the Clinton administration remained constrained by a parallel series of interlocking diplomatic and military considerations from dealing as aggressively as it might have liked with Al Qaeda, according to the commission reports
At first, the C.I.A. regarded Mr. bin Laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 as a break. The agency had long experience dealing with tribal leaders since its officers ran an arms pipeline that supplied millions of dollars in arms used successfully against the Soviet invaders who in 1989 were pushed out of Afghanistan in a humiliating defeat.
By 1998, the C.I.A.'s special bin Laden unit had a plan: The agency suggested using Afghan tribal fighters to assault a terror compound where Mr. bin Laden was believed to be living with the assent of the Taliban government. He would be captured and transported to the United States. But like so many of its covert action plans, the bin Laden unit's proposal collapsed after months of discussion. The risk of failure was deemed to be too high and C.I.A. officials doubted the ability of their proxy forces.
The capture plan was just one of about a half dozen instances before the Sept. 11 attacks when the C.I.A.'s informants in Afghanistan provided enough information to consider attacking Mr. bin Laden. But each time, the operation was aborted. If intelligence was limited, so was diplomacy. In 1998, Mr. bin Laden issued a public call for any Muslim to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world. In April of that year Bill Richardson, then Mr. Clinton's representative to the United Nations, became the highest-ranking American to visit Afghanistan in decades and asked the Taliban government to surrender Mr. bin Laden to the United States.
In May, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia agreed to make a secret effort to persuade the Taliban to expel Mr. bin Laden to the United States or another country. But these efforts ultimately came to naught, as did diplomatic pressure on two successive governments in neighboring Pakistan, including a one-day visit by Mr. Clinton in 2000. "The Pakistani position was that it had to support the Taliban, and that the only way forward was to engage them and try to moderate their behavior," the commission staff found.
On Aug. 7, 1998, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked, and intelligence quickly pinned the blame on Mr. bin Laden. On Aug. 20, days after Mr. Clinton acknowledged lying about his affair with an intern, the president ordered cruise missile strikes, code-named Operation Infinite Reach, against a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in the Sudan. The missiles hit their intended targets, but neither Mr. bin Laden nor any other terrorist leaders were killed.
Still, the administration considered follow-up strikes, and its counterterrorism coordinator, Richard A. Clarke, drafted a paper for a political-military plan he called "Delenda," from the Latin "to destroy," envisioning a continuing campaign of regular, small strikes, whenever targets could be found. No senior officials agreed with him. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen argued that the terrorist camps were crude, and that further efforts to hit them without killing Mr. bin Laden would only make Washington look weak.
But there were other advocates of more aggressive action. Counterterrorism officials in the Defense Department, unaware of Mr. Clarke's plan, warned that while the terrorist threat had grown, "we have not fundamentally altered our philosophy or our approach" and that in the event of new horrific attacks, "we will have no choice, nor, unfortunately, will we have a plan." The paper wound up in office of an under secretary of defense, where no action was taken.
So cruise missile strikes became the "default option," the commission found, and were considered on at least four occasions - in December 1998 and February and May 1999. But they were always ruled out, apparently because of uneasiness about the accuracy of the intelligence, including concerns in one case that a strike might inadvertently kill members of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates at an Afghan hunting camp. After July 1999, there was no occasion when cruise missiles were readied for a possible strike.
Debates on a New Approach
By the late 1990's, morale in the bin Laden unit sagged, the commission reported. In June 1999, Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, said that covert efforts against Mr. bin Laden had failed.
In response, the C.I.A. installed new leaders at the agency's counterterrorism center and at the bin Laden unit. They proposed shifting away from a reliance on Afghan tribal leaders to creating the C.I.A.'s own sources. Another proposal, initially resisted by some senior officials, involved using unmanned Predator aircraft to fly over Afghanistan relaying video footage back to the agency.
The flights eventually began, and twice, the Predator's cameras recorded what appeared to be a security detail clustered around a tall man in a white robe who some analysts concluded was Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Clinton's national security advisers told the commission that Mr. Clinton wanted Mr. bin Laden dead and legal advisers said that under the law, the killing of someone who posed an imminent threat to the country was an act of self-defense, not assassination.
But the commission reported that every C.I.A. official interviewed on the subject, including George J. Tenet, the director, said that they believed Mr. bin Laden could only be lawfully killed in one circumstance: if he died in an operation intended to capture him.
"Working-level C.I.A. officers said they were frustrated by what they saw as the policy constraints of having to instruct their assets to mount a capture operation," one commission report said, referring at one point to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance opposition in Afghanistan who was assassinated just days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"When Northern Alliance leader Massoud was briefed on the carefully worded instructions for him, the briefer recalls that Massoud laughed and said: "You Americans are crazy. You guys never change."
On Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombers in an explosive-filled skiff bombed the destroyer Cole at anchor in Yemen, and while evidence emerged that individuals linked to Al Qaeda had been responsible, clear evidence linking the attack to Mr. bin Laden himself was not forthcoming.
No decision on a possible retaliation had been reached by the time the Clinton administration left office. Mr. Berger told his successor, Condoleezza Rice, that "she would be spending more time on terrorism and Al Qaeda than any other issue."
The Bush Administration Mr. Berger was far from alone. In one previously undisclosed intelligence briefing after the election but before Mr. Bush took office, James L. Pavitt, a senior C.I.A. official, warned the new administration that Al Qaeda was "one of the gravest threats to the country."
For his part, Mr. Clarke, who was kept on as White House counterterrorism adviser, briefed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others, warning that Al Qaeda had sleeper cells in many countries, including the United States.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the commission that he was consumed by other military matters and "did not recall any particular terrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11 other than the development of the Predator unmanned aircraft system for possible use against bin Laden."
Although the Bush team took office only three months after the terrorist attack on the Cole, Mr. Bush's aides showed no more interest than their predecessors in the Clinton administration in launching a reprisal strike against Al Qaeda. Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, said that by the time the Bush administration was in place, the Cole attack had grown "stale," according to the commission.
Instead of action and new initiatives, the Bush administration engaged in a lengthy policy debate. Mr. Bush's aides rejected most of the Clinton administration's ideas and plans as ineffectual or too narrow.
But evidence compiled by the commission suggests that before Sept. 11, the Bush team failed to put into place a comprehensive game plan of its own against the bin Laden network.
In March 2001, one commission report made public on Wednesday disclosed, Ms. Rice asked Mr. Tenet to prepare a new set of legal authorities that would expand the agency's powers to carry out covert actions in Afghanistan. Mr. Tenet complied, but told Mr. Hadley, Ms. Rice's deputy, that changes in authority usually emerged from a policy review.
In May, Ms. Rice recalled that Mr. Bush expressed frustration as Mr. Tenet repeatedly warned of terror threats in his daily briefings. At one point, the President expressed impatience with "swatting flies," and urged his advisers to greater efforts against Al Qaeda.
But Mr. Bush's aides were engaged in a lengthy examination of the government's approach toward Al Qaeda and Afghanistan - a review that went on unresolved through the spring and summer of 2001. By June, a draft of a presidential directive authorizing an ambitious covert action plan was circulating through the upper echelons of the administration - with no decision.
Some intelligence officials expressed frustration over what they viewed as the Bush administration's slow pace and its apparent unwillingness to grasp what they viewed as the extreme gravity of the threat. Two C.I.A. counterterrorism officers, who were not identified, told the commission that they were "so worried about an impending disaster" that they considered resigning in protest, a report said.
By midsummer 2001, the danger signs were growing. A commission report said that by late July, intelligence agencies were deluged with the "greatest volume" of reports hinting that "multiple, possibly catastrophic, terrorist attacks were being planned against American interests." They seemed to point to attacks outside the United States.
The C.I.A's counterterrorism center identified 30 possible attack sites abroad and began efforts to disrupt possible attacks - even as Mohamed Atta and the last of the Sept. 11 hijackers had safely arrived in the United States, all of them carrying visas issued by the State Department.
By August, the spike in threat reporting had subsided. Mr. Tenet said that the C.I.A. had concluded that whatever terrorist activity had been planned had been delayed. At the same time, a commission report said, a cabinet-level national security committee on Sept. 4 reached agreement on a new policy toward Afghanistan.
On Sept. 10, Mr. Tenet was formally advised to prepare a fresh set of authorizations to put into effect the new covert action plan that included operations to disrupt Mr. bin Laden's control of Al Qaeda - a plan that was expected to take at least three years.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
OPEC Takes Back Seat as Oil Prices Run Wild
Story by Andrew Mitchell
REUTERS UK:
March 25, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24437/story.htm
LONDON - OPEC oil producers appear to have lost control of a surge in prices that ministers say is being driven by forces out of the cartel's hands.
Ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meet next week in a bid to stem an upward price spiral when most were bracing for a seasonal slump on world crude markets.
OPEC has long publicly fretted that a drop in global fuel demand after the northern hemisphere winter and a recovery in Iraq to pre-war crude export volumes would bring oil's five-year price bonanza to a screeching halt.
Instead U.S. crude last week hit a 13-year closing high on the New York Mercantile Exchange of over $38 a barrel, raising the alarm on energy costs for importing nations.
OPEC's mid-February decision to slice production quotas by four percent from April 1, a second surprise cut in six months, now looks one step too far in the group's campaign of supply restrictions that officially is designed to keep prices in a $22-$28 range.
Ministers must decide at their March 31 meeting in Vienna whether to defer or cancel the April cut, and risk a big fall in prices, or go ahead with it and upset consuming nations worried about the economic impact of energy inflation.
"By not cutting, it runs the risk that prices fall precipitously if stocks continue to build and gasoline is unsupportive," said William Buchanan of Standard Bank in London.
"Cutting as planned could encourage more funds to push prices even higher, incurring the wrath of the United States and jeopardizing demand."
EXTERNAL FORCES
OPEC ministers blame external forces, rather than any shortage of its crude, for lifting benchmark U.S. crude futures to an average of more than $35 a barrel so far this year, well above 2003's $31 average, itself the highest in two decades.
China's rampant fuel demand growth, geopolitical security fears and low U.S. gasoline stocks of a new green fuel have turned oil futures into a buying magnet for big-money fund managers. The speculative buying has fueled OPEC's nagging fear that a sudden exodus by those funds could send prices into free fall. A recent survey of analysts estimated speculators have injected a premium of about $8 into U.S. crude prices.
"I am convinced there are two reasons for such a high price - the reduced quantity of petrol in America and speculators who are convinced there is going to be a lack of crude," Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said this week. The big question now is whether OPEC, and Saudi Arabia in particular, think prices are too high for the group's own good.
The Bush administration is showing growing unease about the political fallout of high prices at the pump in an election year. But the post-9/11 chill in relations between Washington and Saudi suggest Riyadh is no longer in the business of reining in OPEC's price hawks.
Self-interest indicates OPEC best avoid allowing high prices choking off fuel demand but so far the pace of U.S. and Chinese demand growth suggests consumers are getting used to more expensive fuel. U.S. Federal Reserve official Michael Moskow said this week he had yet to see evidence that rising energy costs were hurting the American economy.
FEARS RUN DEEP
OPEC's five-year market management success, following the price slump of late 1998, has been founded on keeping U.S. inventories lean. Despite price strength the fear of excess supplies building in the second quarter still runs deep among many cartel ministers.
OPEC economists, meeting this week to prepare a report for ministers, will not have missed the fact that U.S. crude stocks have shown a steady rise from 28-year lows struck two months ago.
The OPEC secretariat's latest oil market report estimated that demand for its oil during the second quarter will be 3.4 million barrels per day less than current production. That would mean more than double the 1.5 million bpd inventory build OPEC considers normal for the period.
"If the cartel continued to produce at that level, it would create a veritable flood of 'homeless cargoes' equating to about 60 million barrels per month. Such an overhang would do far more than cause the expected 'correction' in price," said Mike Rothman of Merrill Lynch in a research report.
Many in the oil market expect OPEC to make no change to quotas and continue to manage prices by leaking supply at will over official limits.
But given Saudi Oil Minister Naimi's taste for springing a surprise on speculators, OPEC could take the opportunity to narrow a big gap between formal quotas and actual production, which may soon become damaging for cartel credibility.
The 10 OPEC members with quotas, excluding Iraq, have been producing around 1.7 million bpd above their current ceiling - and 2.7 million bpd above the 23.5 million bpd limit due to take effect from April.
-------- environment
15 Years Later, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Lingers
By J.R. Pegg
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
March 25, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-25-11.asp
In the immediate wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, company representatives made a promise to the communities of Prince William Sound.
"If you can show that you have a loss as a result of this spill, we will compensate it," the company's top official in Alaska told residents from the fishing community of Cordova. "We will consider whatever it takes to make you whole. Put it on paper and bring it to the table."
Fifteen years later, the town is still waiting.
"Exxon has not fulfilled its promise," Riki Ott of the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility told reporters Wednesday.
Ott led a delegation of Cordovans - including scientists, commercial fishermen, high school students, Alaska Natives, oil industry experts and injured cleanup workers - to the nation's capital this week to share their stories about the lingering devastation of the oil spill.
On March 24, 1989, a drunken captain ran the massive Valdez oil tanker into a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling millions of gallons of oil.
"That day the ocean died," said Dune Lankard, founder of the Eyak Preservation Council. "It was a living nightmare."
The oil spill fouled 1,500 miles of Alaskan shoreline and killed more wildlife than any prior environmental disaster.
It killed more than 250,000 sea birds, 3,000 otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 whales.
The region's commercial and recreational fishing industries were destroyed - and have not fully recovered.
The average value of Cordova commercial fisheries landings is some 60 percent that of pre-spill averages - much of this is attributable to the collapse of the $16 million herring fishery.
ExxonMobil says the environment in the Sound is now "healthy, robust and thriving." But that statement rings false for local residents of the Sound, who say the oil giant and world's most profitable company has continually underestimated the ecological, financial, social and cultural devastation of the nation's worst oil spill.
The Alaskans say the federal government and the state of Alaska should reopen their civil suit against Exxon in order to release $100 million in additional restoration fees. The terms of the $900 million settlement included $100 million in additional restoration fees - dubbed the "reopener."
The parties have until 2006 to call for Exxon to turn over these funds, which the company agreed to turn over if Prince William Sound had not completely recovered from the oil spill.
The Cordova delegation says the money should be used to fund educational efforts about the long-term impacts of oil spills and to help provide some relief to local fishing families.
But there seems little chance the state or the federal government will move to assert the $100 million reopener claim. Alaska state officials say the evidence needed is still lacking and the Bush administration has shown little interest in pursuing the matter.
Yet there is growing evidence that the Valdez spill - and oil spills in general - have longer and more harmful impacts on coastal marine ecosystems than previous assumptions.
A peer reviewed study published last December in the journal "Science" found that large quantities of oil remain in the ecosystem and predicted that oiled mussel beds and other tidal shoreline habitats will take an estimated 30 years to recover.
The study determined that "unexpected persistence of toxic subsurface oil and chronic exposures, even at sublethal levels, have continued to affect wildlife."
Ott says the debate over Exxon's responsibility has largely rested on inaccurate assumptions about oil toxicity and a flawed estimate of the oil spill's size, widely reported as 11 million gallons.
Exxon publicized that figure within the first 36 hours, Ott said, but it was the low end of an estimate with a high of some 35 million gallons.
"That is a low estimate that was never independently verified," Ott said. "The spill was actually 30 million to 35 million gallons."
There is also growing evidence that cleanup workers hired by Exxon and its primary contractor VECO are suffering from debilitating illnesses as a result of exposure to the oil and solvent mixtures used to clean the oiled beaches, rocks and waters.
Exxon's cleanup was "an occupational health disaster," Ott said.
More than 11,000 workers helped clean up the Valdez oil - a new survey finds one-third of workers were experiencing health problems consistent with high exposure to oil, solvents and other chemicals present during the cleanup.
Exxon's records - now sealed by a court case - show 6,722 clean up workers filed claims for respiratory problems. The company or its contractor recorded these claims as "colds or flu" and did not report a single case to federal occupational health safety officials.
"Workers were sent out to clean oil without proper training or protective equipment," said Pamela Miller, executive director of the Alaska Community Action on Toxics. "While media and public attention focused on the thousands of oiled and dead seabirds, otters, and other wildlife, little attention was given to the harm done to the cleanup workers."
No federal or state agency has done a comprehensive investigation of long-term health effects to the cleanup workers, said Miller, who urged Congress to investigate the health of the Exxon Valdez oil spill workers.
Sociologist Steve Picou told reporters how economic uncertainty from the spill and prolonged litigation have fueled emotional trauma for many Sound residents.
Picou has completed numerous studies on the economic and social welfare of Cordova's commercial fishers - on average each lost some $55,000 to $60,000 a year from 1990 to 1995.
Some 50 percent suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorders during that time, Picou said, and many continue to suffer today.
Kory Blake, a third generation Cordova commercial fisherman, said the emotional effects of the spill "wreaked havoc on Prince William Sound families."
Blake was forced to sell his home to make boat payments and move his family from Cordova. For the past 11 years he has had to leave his family for five months of the year to take seasonal work.
"We want to find some closure from this disaster," said Blake.
Much of the long term trauma for Sound residents comes from Exxon's use of "adversarial litigation," Picou told reporters.
In 1994 a jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages to 32,000 plaintiffs affected by the spill.
Exxon, which became ExxonMobil in 1999, has battled the award and successfully tied it up in court. The award remains embroiled in the appeals process.
ExxonMobil argues that it has paid some $2.2 billion in clean up and compensation and has fulfilled its responsibility to the Sound residents.
Company statements contend the punitive damage award "is not, in any way, an issue of compensation to the plaintiffs."
The company, which earned some $21.5 billion in 2003, has argued for a punitive award of $25 million - a figure Lankard says is outrageous.
"The $4.5 billion - that number should go up not down," said Lankard, who called on others to use the lessons of the Valdez to help shift the nation away from oil dependence.
"Future generations will inherit our bad decisions," he said. "We must get off our addiction to oil."
-------- genetics
Bulgarian GMO Protesters: Third World War Comes in Your Plate
SOFIA, Bulgaria, (ENS)
March 25, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-25-01.asp
Bulgarians worried about the environmental and public health impacts of genetically modified crops and foods brought their concerns to the front door of the National Parliament in Sofia today, while inside legislators were hearing the second reading of the Draft Law on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
"The Third World War comes in your plate," they argue, fearful that the liberalization of GMOs will have adverse consequences for "the agriculture, environment, health and social and economic life in the country."
On February 12, the draft law passed first reading. The legislation sets up a commission to regulate the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment of Bulgaria, and permits genetically engineered foods on the market using European Union standards. Both the environment and agriculture ministries would have some oversight of genetically modified crops.
No vote was taken on the legislation today.
Organizers of the demonstration, the Bulgaria Free of Genetically Modified Organisms Coalition, are demanding a moratorium on any decisions about introducing genetically modified crops and foods into the country at least until Bulgaria joins the European Union.
Bulgaria will not be one of the 10 countries that will join the European Union on May 1, but Bulgaria is on track to become an EU member in the near future.
The European Union last year adopted new laws in preparation for the introduction of genetically engineered crops and foods. Two new EU laws will come into force on April 18. One of them will lift the moratorium and the other will introduce strict rules on the tracing and the labeling of genetically modified components in foods.
Before Bulgaria can become an EU member, the candidate country must bring its own laws into harmony with existing EU law.
The most recent EU assessment of Bulgarian progress towards accession comes in a report by the European Commission to the Council of Ministers in November 2003.
The Commission says that in the field of foodstuffs Bulgaria has adopted all EU laws up to the year 2000 and now needs to adopt EU laws passed from 2001 onwards, improve its training programs, to implement hazard analysis and control, and to upgrade its laboratories. "More efforts are needed to ensure appropriate control of genetically modified and novel food," the Commission wrote.
The demonstrators say that the draft law being considered by Parliament is imperfect and that "its many gaps could lead to risks and dangers for the people and environment."
Scientists, Green Party politicians, and representatives of environmental organizations, united under the coalition slogan of "Bulgaria - GMO Free Zone," say the draft law was developed under the influence of multinational corporations.
They say that if the law is passed Bulgaria would be used as a testing place for genetically modified organisms and a "Trojan horse" for the supply of genetically modified foods and crops in Europe.
The demonstrators are insisting that the law must protect Bulgarian citizens and nature, rather than multinational business interests. Their concerns parallel those of citizens across the European Union who have continued to resist transgenic foods despite government reassurances.
Under the Bulgarian draft law, licenses to work with GMOs will be issued after risk assessment under EU standards, Professor Atanas Atanasov from the Agrarian Biological Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture told the Bulgarian News Network on March 7.
Atanasov said the assessment would make sure that GMO creation, testing and commercialization would not endanger human health and the environment.
Last September Atanasov told a meeting of EU and Eastern European scientists that the first Bulgarian genetically modified crops will be ready by 2007. Most probably they will be tomatoes, alfalfa, barley, and tobacco, modified to make them more resilient to diseases, pests and pollution, he explained.
Laboratory tests were nearing completion, he said then, and the modified varieties must still be field tested.
----
Human Genome Sciences Faces Shift in Leadership and Focus
March 25, 2004
New York Times
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/business/25genome.html
William A. Haseltine, the bold-talking chairman and chief executive of Human Genome Sciences, will be leaving the company as it struggles to realize his grand vision of parlaying genetic information into a cornucopia of new drugs.
Dr. Haseltine said yesterday that he would retire later this year, probably in the fall, after a successor is found and he turns 60. He said that the move was voluntary and that as the company shifted from gene research to drug development it needed an experienced pharmaceutical executive at the top rather than a scientist like himself.
Still, the company is under pressure because its two leading drugs have failed in clinical trials. The stock, which closed yesterday at $11.39, has fallen far from the heights of $241 it attained four years ago when it seemed to epitomize the promise of genomics.
Indeed, the company, based in Rockville, Md., plans to announce today that it is dropping development of about half the drugs in its pipeline to focus on five of the most promising ones. It said it was also cutting about 200 jobs, or about 20 percent of its work force.
Dr. Haseltine, who will also give up his board seat, denied that he was pushed out. "It was really the other way around," he said. "I've been pressuring the board."
Max Link, the lead independent director of the board, agreed.
"The stock price did not play any role," said Dr. Link, who is the former chief executive of Sandoz, now part of Novartis. "We were looking at the fundamentals and felt the time had come now to sharpen our focus. There are very few founders who have the grace to catch the right moment for them to leave."
Still, it did not seem obvious that such changes were needed now.
With about $1.3 billion in cash, Human Genome Sciences is not in imminent danger of running out of money. And with its most advanced drug in midstage clinical trials, it is no further advanced in drug development than it was before its first two drugs failed.
Dr. Haseltine's departure in some ways echoes that of J. Craig Venter, who left the top spot at Celera Genomics two years ago as that company turned to drug development and away from genomics. Dr. Venter, however, was clearly pushed out.
The two men, once business partners, have since become unfriendly rivals. Both are widely described as brilliant and driven, with big egos and a penchant for the grand statement.
Dr. Haseltine, for his part, is also known as a Renaissance man and jet- setter. He lives in both New York and Washington, decorates the company's office with prints of famous artwork, and is married to Gale Hayman, who was the co-founder of the Giorgio boutique in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Human Genome Sciences was founded in 1992 as the for-profit partner of a nonprofit institute set up by Dr. Venter to find genes.
Dr. Haseltine apparently thought that this would be a shortcut to discovering drugs. His idea seemed vindicated when, in 1993, SmithKline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline, paid $125 million for access to Human Genome's genetic database.
But genomics has not accelerated drug development. While drug companies have been inundated with genes, they must still figure out what the genes do and still must develop chemicals to influence the effects of those genes.
GlaxoSmithKline so far has put only two drugs discovered using the database into clinical trials. Human Genome Sciences has put in several, more than any other genomics company. But its first two drugs did not work as expected.
The company's most advanced drug now is LymphoStat-B for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, which is in the second of three phases of clinical trials.
The company said it would now focus on that drug, as well as on two drugs for cancer and a long-acting alpha interferon for hepatitis C, all of them in early-stage trials. It also plans to start trials this year of an AIDS drug intended to block the way the virus enters the cells it infects.
Dr. Haseltine, who was a professor at Harvard before founding Human Genome, said he would probably work now on applying science to improve health care in the developing world. He said he would also remain active in Washington policy affairs. He is on the board of trustees of the Brookings Institution and involved with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and other organizations.
"I've sort of lived my life in 10-year chunks - 10 years on cancer, 10 years on AIDS, now it's been 12 years at this company," he said. "I think I have one or two more chunks left."
According to the most recent proxy, he owns six million shares of Human Genome, worth about $70 million. His stake was once worth more than half a billion dollars.
Dr. Haseltine said he was proud of what his company and the field of genomics had accomplished.
"I would argue that a lot of people have given genomics a false rap," he said, adding that the techniques have provided targets for drugs. "Where the system is broken is later on, it's moving the drugs through the pipeline."
Kenneth C. Carter, a former Human Genome executive who now runs Avalon Pharmaceuticals, a younger company, said Dr. Haseltine's legacy was secure, despite the setbacks in bringing drugs to market.
"They created a quantum leap in biomedical science," Dr. Carter said. "I think when history looks back they won't judge H.G.S. by whether they had one or three Phase 2 clinical trials in March of 2004."
-------- health
Birth Weights Up After EPA Pesticide Ban, Study Finds
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22416-2004Mar24.html
A federal ban on two popular household insecticides has significantly reduced the number of underweight babies born in neighborhoods where the chemicals had been widely used, a study has found.
Researchers at Columbia University found that infant birth weights and birth lengths in upper Manhattan improved immediately after the pesticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon, used in a number of household products, were banned for indoor use by the Environmental Protection Agency beginning in 2000.
"We were surprised to see such a significant association between exposure to the pesticides and birth weight," said principal author Robin M. Whyatt of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. "There is no question that this is an instance where regulation worked -- that the EPA imposed a ban and there was immediate benefit from it."
The research tested levels of the pesticides in the blood of pregnant women and their infants before and after the ban. The results showed that the infants exposed to the highest amounts of the chemicals in the womb were most likely to have low birth weights, which generally predicts a higher rate of health and developmental problems.
Whyatt said the babies of pregnant women exposed to the greatest amount of the banned insecticides were on average 6.6 ounces lighter than those of women with lower exposures. She said the difference in birth weight was highly significant, comparable to the gap between pregnant women who smoke and those who do not.
The two pesticides were found in many products to control cockroaches and other insects. They were banned after the EPA found that typical concentrations in homes were above the allowable levels set by the agency. Based on animal studies, the agency had concluded that the pesticides, from the family of chemicals known as organophosphates, could cause low birth weight in infants and developmental problems for children.
The makers of the products -- Syngenta Crop Protection for diazinon and Dow AgroSciences for chlorpyrifos -- at first opposed the ban but later voluntarily consented to stop selling them for use in households and by exterminators.
The ban did not affect the use of the pesticides for crop protection. According to Agriculture Department statistics, diazinon residues are most commonly found on mushrooms and chlorpyrifos on peaches.
Whyatt said her study did not look at the effects of trace amounts of the pesticides on food, but she did have concerns about exposing migrant workers to the chemicals.
The new study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, followed the birth of 314 babies. It is part of a broader, multi-year research project begun in 1998 that examines the health of pregnant women exposed to air pollutants, tobacco smoking and allergens, as well as pesticides. The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the EPA.
Whyatt said researchers found that pregnant women used insect-control products in equal amounts before and after the ban, but the new products did not contain chlorpyrifos or diazinon.
The study focused on women in Harlem and Washington Heights, areas with many poor and minority families. The researchers will continue to follow the children tested at birth to see how exposure to the pesticides affects their development.
----
Medicare Official Cites Cost Warning
White House Given Data, He Says
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22178-2004Mar24.html
The Medicare program's chief actuary told lawmakers yesterday he gave analyses last June to the White House and the president's budget office -- which were not shared with Congress -- predicting that prescription drug benefits being drafted on Capitol Hill would cost about $150 billion more than President Bush said he wanted to spend.
Richard S. Foster made the disclosure during his first appearance on Capitol Hill since he confirmed two weeks ago that administration officials threatened to fire him if he directly provided lawmakers with his cost estimates on the changes to Medicare, which were among Bush's top domestic priorities.
Foster's acknowledgement of those threats touched off a partisan furor. It was on full display as he testified for three hours before the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the main authors of the Medicare bill that narrowly passed Congress in November. Democrats accused the administration of a coverup; Republicans said the actuary followed the law by deferring to his boss to decide how much internal administration information about the legislation Congress deserved.
Foster, an obscure civil servant who has been a federal actuary for 31 years, sat quietly as he recounted his unsuccessful efforts to persuade the Medicare administrator at the time, Thomas A. Scully, to give Congress more of Foster's predictions about the impact of various provisions of the legislation.
Foster said he was so frustrated information was being suppressed that, at one point last June, he consulted a lawyer in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that runs the program.
"I ended up convinced the administrator had the legal right" to withhold cost estimates from Congress, Foster said. "However, I was not happy about that." He decided to resign in protest, until his staff persuaded him to stay to fight to preserve his office's independence.
He said his estimates of the House and Senate bills consistently showed they would cost $500 billion to $600 billion in the next decade, close to the $534 billion price tag he set in late December. His figures are substantially higher than the $395 billion predicted by the Congressional Budget Office. Bush said throughout last year that he was willing to spend $400 billion.
Democrats leapt on Foster's account, which was similar to what he has said in recent interviews. "I think, in a few words, there was a coverup of basic information," said Rep. Sander M. Levin (Mich.).
The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (N.Y.), chided his GOP colleagues. "We know you would not have had the votes to pass this bill if the true cost of the bill was known," Rangel said, adding he was astonished "how far the majority party was willing to go to keep the Congress in the dark."
Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) sought to shift the controversy away from the Bush administration. He recalled a conversation he had with Foster in 1997, when the actuary had a disagreement with a Clinton administration official over how much information to give Congress -- a conversation Thomas said was similar to one he had with Foster last summer.
"I supported you then. I support you now," Thomas said.
Still, several Republicans took a jab at the actuary for his work on a new government forecast that says Medicare's financial condition has worsened precipitously in the past year, partly because of the new Medicare law. They said he should have given the law credit for adding preventive care and efforts to better manage patients' chronic illnesses.
"I'm just astounded you could cost out every dollar we spend but could not cost in anything we saved," said Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.).
--------
Medicare Official Testifies on Cost Figures
March 25, 2004
By ROBERT PEAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25MEDI.html
WASHINGTON, March 24 - The chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, told Congress on Wednesday that last June he provided the White House with data indicating that prescription drug legislation would cost 25 percent to 50 percent more than the Bush administration's public estimates. That information did not make its way to Congress for six more months.
Mr. Foster said he had shared his cost estimates with Doug Badger, the president's special assistant for health policy, and with James C. Capretta, associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. But he said that Thomas A. Scully, who was then administrator of the Medicare program, directed him to withhold the information from Congress, citing orders from the White House in one instance.
In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Foster said he had struggled to preserve the independence and integrity of his office. It was his first public appearance since a furor erupted over his assertions that Mr. Scully threatened to fire him if he disclosed his cost estimates to Congress during debate on the Medicare bill. The law, signed by President Bush in December, adds drug benefits to Medicare and significantly increases federal payments to private health insurers.
Mr. Foster said he had been told to withhold information from lawmakers of both parties. Moreover, he said, Mr. Scully stated that he was "acting under direct White House orders" in telling the actuary not to respond to a request from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California. Mr. Thomas was a principal architect of the Medicare bill.
An aide to Mr. Scully sent an e-mail message to Mr. Foster on June 20 saying that the actuary would suffer "extremely severe" consequences if he provided Congress with information requested by Mr. Thomas and other lawmakers.
Mr. Thomas disclosed on Wednesday that he called Mr. Foster in June to say that the actuary should not worry about such threats.
"I supported you then," Mr. Thomas told Mr. Foster at the hearing. "I support you now."
Mr. Foster said he had evidence that Mr. Scully was indeed acting under instructions from the White House and from Mr. Badger, in particular.
"There's evidence regarding Mr. Scully's comments about acting on direct White House orders," Mr. Foster said. He refused to give details, but said he would provide them to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, who is conducting an independent investigation.
Trent D. Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Badger did not remember telling anyone to withhold information from Congress.
Federal law says the chief actuary shall follow "professional standards of actuarial independence" and can be removed from his job "only for cause." But Mr. Foster testified that a lawyer at the department had told him that Mr. Scully had the legal right to prohibit the actuary from sharing information with Congress.
Mr. Foster identified the lawyer as Leslie V. Norwalk, acting deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She is leading the administration's effort to carry out the new Medicare law.
William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the department, confirmed Mr. Foster's account of the conversation. "Leslie provided legal advice to Rick Foster, and we agree with her analysis," Mr. Pierce said.
Mr. Foster was calm and even-tempered in his testimony. "I did not especially want to be fired, but I was not afraid of it," he said. Last summer, he said, "I ultimately decided to resign in protest." But he added, "the staff talked me out of that."
Mr. Scully denies threatening Mr. Foster, but confirms having told him to withhold certain information from Congress.
President Bush was urging Congress to create a drug benefit under Medicare, but said the legislation could not cost more than $400 billion over 10 years, and Congress accepted that ceiling.
The shape of the legislation was continually changing, but Mr. Foster said, "The range of our estimates was $500 billion to $600 billion all the way through the process," from June to November.
In their public statements, administration officials cited lower figures. "We are spending $400 billion," Mr. Scully said in a letter to The New York Times published on Nov. 20.
In a report accompanying a 1997 law, Congress said it was imperative for the actuary to provide Congress with impartial cost estimates for legislative proposals. But Mr. Foster said Mr. Scully told him that directive "meant nothing" because it was not in the statute.
At the hearing, Democrats complained that they had been misled. Representative John Tanner, Democrat of Tennessee, said, "Every Republican and Democrat on this committee ought to be outraged at the willful, deliberate, sinister withholding" of information.
Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, told Mr. Foster, "I wish your information had been made public at the time." But Mr. Brady said the $400 billion figure was an honest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Foster's testimony emphasized the huge fiscal implications of the new Medicare law. The drug benefit "is expected to increase total Medicare costs by nearly one-fourth in 2006," Mr. Foster said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Say NO to the U.S. Bomb Factory
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Dear Friends: <http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/images/helen.gif>
I am writing to you about the new United States nuclear bomb factory, and to ask you to sign a pledge
The U.S. still has more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in storage, 3,000 in submarines patrolling the world's oceans and 2,500 on hair trigger alert that can be launched within three minutes by the President. U.S. policymakers are funding increased spending levels for new weapons research -- more than during the height of the Cold War.
The U.S. has enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on earth many times over. What possible rationale do we have to build more?
These policymakers represent you. During an election year, we should be telling our representatives that new nuclear weapons make us all more vulnerable -- not more safe to nuclear accidents or terrorist attacks.
The Nuclear Policy Research Institute is working with a broad coalition of people to stop this nuclear bomb factory in its tracks. But we must act quickly.
What You Can Do Today.
Sign on to the Pledge http://en.groundspring.org/en/go?j=1208892&u=3410
Opposing the New Nuclear Arms Race, and ask your family and friends to sign too. Your message will be delivered to the White House. During the next few months, we will e-mail you periodically with updates about how you can take action to prevent the development and use of nuclear weapons. Together, we can build consensus and visibility for a nuclear-free future.
Visit our website to learn more about how to fight the U.S. bomb factory and stop the new nuclear arms race.
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