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NUCLEAR
Strange bedfellows
America quietly sacks its prize witness against Saddam
Poll Finds Support For Arms Control
NEW MEXICO: NUCLEAR WASTE CENTER REMAINS OPEN
DOE watches demolition
Bush calls for Patriot Act renewal
Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11
Powell Said to Have Warned Bush Before the War, a New Book Says
White House Won't Criticize Assassination
MILITARY
In Afghanistan, U.S. Envoy Sits in Seat of Power
UK Condemns Killing of Rantissi as Unlawful
A no-haggle deal
Missing G.I. Seen on Tape Provided by Iraqi Captors
Iraq Leaders With Fewer U.S. Ties Emerge
Israel bans Palestinians aged over 35 from leaving Gaza
Israel Would Keep Its Access Under Gaza Evacuation Plan
Hamas Leader Killed in Israeli Strike
Copter Attack Kills Rantisi and Two Others in Gaza
Militant Calls for Seizure of Israeli Soldiers
Prominent Israeli Assassinations, Attempts
Indonesians Name Cleric As Terrorist Suspect
Captured U.S. Soldier Is Shown On Arab TV
New Crew Is Heading To Space Station
CIA tracked bin Laden from 1995
Bush, Blair Support U.N. On Iraq Plan
Politicians React to Plan From the U.N. for Iraqi Rule
Volcker to Head U.N. Iraq Probe
Some Dare Call It Treason: Wake Up America!
Rove Regrets Using Banner On Carrier
DNC's Ad Mocks Bush Over News Conference
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Supreme Court Terrorism Glance
High Court to Hear First Terrorism Cases
Bush Urges Renewal of Patriot Act
Bush: Renew Patriot Act or Else
9/11 Panel Calls Policies on Immigration Ineffective
9/11 Panel Points to Missed Chances
OTHER
Trout-Protection Data Questioned Costs but No Benefits Published
ACTIVISTS
Anger at restrictions on Vanunu
Former PM held in Nepal pro-democracy protest
Anti-War Protest at Downing Street
Kucinich, in Oregon, urges Patriot Act repeal
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
Strange bedfellows
April 17, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38076
The neo-crazies want to invade Iran and the loony-lefties want universal nuke disarmament. So, strange as it seems, they have each charged that if the Iranians are "allowed" to begin full-scale operation of their uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz or their nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, Iran will soon be producing "fissile" material with which to make nukes and/or to give to terrorists.
Now, Natanz and Bushehr will be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards agreements. Furthermore, Iran will have signed an Additional Protocol, which gives the IAEA the right to inspect any facility in Iran, not just Natanz and Bushehr.
So, by making these charges, the neo-crazies and loony-lefties are essentially attempting to discredit the IAEA nuke proliferation prevention regime.
Consider Natanz, first.
The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima was a "uranium-fission" nuke.
But not all uranium is "fissile." In fact, only about 0.3 percent of the atoms in natural uranium are fissile. Since all uranium atoms have the same chemical properties, the very rare fissile isotopes - U-235 - can't be chemically separated from the non-fissile isotopes.
Bushehr will "burn" uranium fuel that is "enriched" to about 3 percent U-235 by almost literally throwing out many of the heavier U-238 atoms.
"Weapons-grade" uranium is at least 90 percent U-235. So many U-238 atoms have to be thrown out from a ton of natural uranium that only a few pounds of weapons-grade uranium remain.
Nevertheless, the loony-lefties charge the Iranians can modify Natanz to produce just pounds of output, rather than tons, and the stupid on-site IAEA inspectors will never notice, nor be competent enough to perform a simple test to determine isotopic composition of the output.
To their credit, the neo-crazies now realize the IAEA inspectors are neither stupid nor incompetent.
They want an excuse to invade Iran. But they learned a lesson when they invaded Iraq, citing an urgent need to destroy the nukes and nuke programs the IAEA insisted weren't there. As the whole world now knows, the IAEA was right. They weren't there. Now, the IAEA similarly says that Iran has no nukes or nuke programs to destroy.
So, the neo-crazies say, "Maybe not now, but as soon as the Natanz facility is up and running, the Iranians will abrogate their Safeguards agreement, throw the IAEA inspectors out and begin producing weapons-grade uranium by the ton. We must never allow Natanz to begin operating."
And maybe Natanz won't begin operating, now that the Pakistani connection has been revealed.
But how about Bushehr?
Well, the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki was a "plutonium-fission" nuke.
As uranium fuel is "burned" in the Bushehr nuclear reactor, a small amount of plutonium will be "bred." Initially, the Pu-239 isotope, which is "fissile," will be produced. But, as more fuel is burned, more and more non-fissile plutonium isotopes will be produced - some of them highly radioactive.
All plutonium atoms have the same chemical properties. Therefore, when the "spent fuel" is chemically "reprocessed," the plutonium can be separated out. But "weapons-grade" plutonium must be about 90 percent U-239. So there is a definite limit to the length of time - about a year - the fuel can be allowed to remain in the operating reactor if weapons-grade plutonium is to be produced.
But the IAEA will see to it that the Russian-supplied fuel will remain - on average - in the safeguarded Bushehr reactor for more than four years. Hence, the plutonium recovered from Bushehr fuel will belong to Russia, will not be "weapons-grade," and will be highly radioactive.
The loony-lefties say that a terrorist wouldn't care if the nuke he made from stolen reactor-grade plutonium was essentially a fizzle. It would still terrorize.
Of course, the loony-lefties make similar charges about any and all nuclear power plants, wherever sited.
However, the neo-crazies don't make similar charges about other nuclear power plants. They just want an excuse to invade Iran and an un-safeguarded Iranian reactor would do just fine.
So, the neo-crazies say, "Maybe Iran doesn't have nukes or a nuke program, now, but shortly before Bushehr has operated a year, Iran will abrogate its Safeguards agreement, throw out the IAEA and proceed to separate out enough "weapons-grade" plutonium from the Bushehr fuel to make a few nukes.
"We must never allow Bushehr to begin operating."
Will the neo-crazies prevail, or the IAEA? Well, the Russians and the European Union made a deal with the Iranians; sign and adhere to the IAEA Additional Protocol and we'll see to it that Bushehr is just the beginning.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- iraq / inspections
America quietly sacks its prize witness against Saddam
By Patrick Cockburn
17 April 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=512242
Once he was a prize witness before congressional committees, arguing that the US must invade Iraq immediately because Saddam Hussein possessed a fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Given a top job in Baghdad after the war, he has now been quietly sacked by the US authorities.
Khidir Hamza was the dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist who played an important role persuading Americans to go to war in Iraq. His credentials appeared impeccable because he claimed to have headed Saddam's nuclear programme before defecting in 1994.
After the war, Dr Hamza was rewarded, to the distress of many Iraqi scientists, with a well-paid job as the senior advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, he had partial control of Iraq's nuclear and military industries.
It was not a successful appointment, according to sources within the ministry. Dr Hamza seldom turned up for work. He obstructed others from doing their jobs. On 4 March, his contract was not renewed by the CPA. It is now trying to evict him from his house in the heavily guarded "Green Zone" where the CPA has its headquarters. He could not be contacted by The Independent but is believed to have taken up a job with a US company.
Dr Hamza's fall from grace with the US administration is in sharp contrast with the seriousness with which it took his views on WMD before the war. Speaking excellent English, he was also regularly interviewed by US television and quoted by the press.
There were always doubts that Dr Hamza had been as central as he claimed to Saddam's programme to develop a nuclear bomb. Dr Hussain Shahristani, an Iraqi nuclear scientist, tortured and imprisoned under Saddam for refusing to help build a nuclear device, said: "Hamza really was only a minor figure in our nuclear programme and always exaggerated his own importance when he got to the US."
Dr Hamza's own account of his career was that, after being educated in the US, he had been working at Florida State University in 1969 when he was approached by an Iraqi agent. He was told that unless he returned to Iraq his family would be in danger. He came back and was compelled to work for 20 years for Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission on developing an atomic bomb. Deeply opposed to the project, he defected to the US embassy in Hungary in 1994 and swiftly became a persuasive expert witness, testifying as an Iraqi insider on how Saddam was developing a terrifying arsenal. In the lead-up to the war he proclaimed: "Saddam has a whole range of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical."
It was as if Dr Hamza had studied the agenda of the hawks in the US, who wanted to invade Iraq, and was willing to supply evidence supporting their arguments. Several other Iraqi defectors during the 1990s also produced information which they said proved Saddam was secretly producing WMD, but Dr Hamza was the most convincing because he was able to clothe his evidence in appropriate scientific jargon. He wrote a book, Saddam's Bomb Maker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda.
One employer in the US decided that his account of his past simply did not stand up to examination but the US government stuck by him and made him a consultant to the US Department of Energy. Dr Hamza also hinted that Saddam had secret links to al-Qa'ida and might give them anthrax.
Back in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Dr Hamza's position as a senior advisor was very influential. The US-appointed advisors share control over ministries with Iraqi ministers. The ministry was, among other things, in charge of monitoring and securing the remains of Iraq's nuclear industry.
Dr Hamza's life in Baghdad was not entirely happy. At first he lived outside the Green Zone with his family until a remotely detonated bomb exploded near his car on the morning of Christmas Eve, buckling the doors and blowing out the windows.
He and his son were in the car at the time but were not injured. Dr Hamza asked for and was given a house in the Green Zone. It is this which the CPA is now trying to recover.
Of the Iraqi defectors after the Gulf War in 1991 who built a career in the US by providing evidence that Saddam Hussein was covertly building up an arsenal of WMD, Dr Hamza was the most successful. Once the war was over and no WMD had been found, he was something of an embarrassment, all the more so since he could not do his job.
-------- treaties
Poll Finds Support For Arms Control
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18928-2004Apr16.html
Americans continue to fear weapons of mass destruction and believe the Bush administration should work more closely with U.S. allies to stop their spread, according to a nationwide opinion poll released this week in Washington.
International cooperation and arms-control agreements are likely to be more effective than U.S. military threats against countries that try to develop nuclear weapons, respondents said.
"They really understand how hard it is to address proliferation. The United States by itself, even with all its military power, can't target the problem. You have to have cooperation between states," said Steven Kull of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.
The results came in a poll that touched on a panoply of unconventional weapons. Conducted in March, it followed by one month a call by President Bush for measures to curb development of nuclear weapons and halt the illicit global trade in nuclear materials.
Although the White House called for more stringent international efforts, including tougher inspections and a global interdiction program, the Bush administration has made high-profile departures from treaties -- and from peaceful solutions, most notably in Iraq.
When asked about Pakistan, where weapons scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan recently admitted peddling nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, 73 percent of respondents said the most important lesson is that the United States should give international agencies "more power to conduct intrusive inspections."
Reflecting worries about atomic dangers, 86 percent of respondents to the poll -- conducted by PIPA/Knowledge Networks -- said the United States should work with other nuclear powers toward eliminating nuclear weapons. A similar percentage said the administration should join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed but not ratified.
A majority questioned the effectiveness of a test ban, given that crude nuclear weapons can be built without testing. Yet only 18 percent supported the idea of periodic explosions to make certain U.S. weapons work.
Seventy-seven percent countered that the United States has other testing methods "and, anyway, the U.S. has so many nuclear weapons, America's enemies have to assume that an overwhelming number will work."
As the Bush administration studies low-yield nuclear weapons for potential use against underground targets, such as terrorist caves, two-thirds said production of such weapons would set a bad example.
A treaty banning all weapons in space was considered a good idea by 74 percent of respondents, and only 21 percent favored building a missile defense system right away. Sixty-eight percent said more research should be done first.
The Bush administration has said it is committed to deploying an antimissile system.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
NEW MEXICO: NUCLEAR WASTE CENTER REMAINS OPEN
National Briefing: Southwest
April 17, 2004
Steve Barnes (NYT)
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/national/17BRFS1.html
Gov. Bill Richardson said a storage center for nuclear waste would continue to operate despite a warning on Thursday by his environment secretary, Ron Curry, that the state might close it. Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, said the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad would accept shipments of military-related radioactive materials pending the resolution of a dispute with the federal Energy Department, which seeks to store higher-level atomic waste in the underground repository. The department is appealing a federal judge's ban on radioactive sludge at the site.
-------- washington
DOE watches demolition
Saturday, April 17th, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4975525p-4903573c.html
When Hanford workers got ready to tear down the plutonium-contaminated 233-S laboratory, one of their first steps was to give the interior a fresh coat of paint.
It was part of a new demolition method that officials at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and other Department of Energy nuclear sites are watching closely as they search for better cleanup methods.
Instead of scrubbing as much radioactive contamination as possible from the laboratory before demolition began, workers glued it in place. The goal was to haul away huge pieces of the building for disposal with the contamination intact.
"We had a lot of pessimists who thought we would have to stop work as soon as we started," said Jeff Riddelle, deputy project manager for contractor Fluor Hanford.
But the new method appears to be a success, reducing risk to workers and the environment.
On Friday, little remained of the four-story laboratory except a few multiton blocks of reinforced concrete on the first floor.
The project is the first "open-air" demolition of a highly contaminated building in a DOE complex and the first demolition of a Hanford plutonium processing facility.
Earlier this year, Fluor finished stabilizing and packaging 20 tons of material containing plutonium left over from Hanford's days of producing plutonium for the nation's weapons program.
Now it has turned its Plutonium Finishing Plant workers to the task of deactivating and demolishing laboratories and buildings used to produce plutonium.
In 1956, the solution backed up through a defective valve. Two employees were seriously contaminated and contamination spread out the dampers and doors of the building across 200 square feet of ground.
In 1963, a fire spread through four floors of the building and scattered an estimated 2 to 6.6 pounds of plutonium dust and residue in the building. Officials never determined whether some new processing equipment caused the fire or malfunctioned because of the fire.
When workers got ready to dismantle the building last year, "it was horribly contaminated," Riddelle said.
Plans developed in the mid-1990s called for the building to be cleaned of radiation using liquid solutions. That would have left Hanford with yet more contaminated waste to dispose of -- the used liquid -- and caused some radiation to be airborne during the cleaning.
Instead, DOE agreed to try open-air demolition.
"We chose the approach because it minimized the time to do the job," said Tony Umek, a Fluor project director. That meant less time workers would be exposed to radiological and industrial hazards.
Workers used two ways to fix contamination in place before demolition started. A latex-based paint was applied with an airless sprayer, said Tom Orgill, manager for the demolition project. Some equipment was left in the building and also had its radioactive contamination glued in place.
A soil-cement was used to cover rubble, debris and contaminated soil around the lab.
"It binds dust to anything," Orgill said.
Trucks rolled in on a huge yellow carpet of plastic, used to keep their wheels free of any contamination on the ground near the building.
The least contaminated parts of the laboratory building, such as offices, were demolished with a huge, clawlike shear that chewed through the cement. It worked in a cloud of mist created by a Fog Cannon to make sure any radioactive dust stirred up fell to the ground.
As work progressed to the more heavily contaminated plutonium processing area, workers switched to carefully sawing the remainder of the building into 39 chunks of reinforced concrete as heavy as eight tons each.
As much as possible, the work was hands-off. On Friday, workers in double suits of protective gear, face masks and respirators stood back and watched a rotary saw grind through 12-inch concrete walls.
Once a block was sawed off, a crane lifted it away. The cut edges, which hadn't been coated with protective paint, were wrapped in clingy, clear plastic wrap. Then the piece was bundled in black plastic and packed into a steel container to be trucked to a permanent waste dump for radioactively contaminated rubble in the center of Hanford.
Most of the waste will be buried at Hanford, but some of the more highly contaminated pieces from the site are expected to be sent to an underground waste repository near Carlsbad, N.M.
In the 4,000 times that workers have entered the site since work began in late October, no skin contamination has been recorded, Riddelle said.
Extensive air sampling has shown no migration of dust off the work site, said Nick Ceto, Hanford project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the lead regulator on the project.
The work is about 90 percent complete and Fluor expects to wrap it up in May. One uncertainty is the weather. Work is stopped anytime the wind blows at least 12 mph because of the risk of spreading dust with radioactive contamination.
The next step will be putting down concrete as a cap over the dirt. It will keep water from driving contamination deeper into the soil.
With hundreds of other contaminated buildings waiting to be torn down at Hanford, open-air demolition likely will be used again after EPA, DOE and Fluor analyze the safety and success of the project. The Rocky Flats, Colo., nuclear site, which is much closer to populated areas, is particularly interested in evaluating how the new method worked.
-------- us politics
Bush calls for Patriot Act renewal
April 17, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040416-105357-5101r.htm
WASHINGTON, April 16 -- President George W. Bush said Saturday Congress must heed a lesson of September 2001 and renew provisions of the Patriot Act to thwart new terrorism.
Bush said passage of the law following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington helped eliminate barriers to information sharing between domestic policing and intelligence agencies, and contributed to the disruption of terror cells in at least six American cities.
"To abandon the Patriot Act would deprive law enforcement and intelligence officers of needed tools in the war on terror, and demonstrate willful blindness to a continuing threat," he said in his weekly radio address.
Added Bush; "Because we passed the Patriot Act, FBI agents can better conduct electronic surveillance and wiretaps on suspected terrorists. And they now can apply other essential tools -- many of which have long been used to investigate white-collar criminals and drug traffickers -- to stop terrorist attacks on our homeland."
More than a dozen provisions of the Patriot Act will expire at the end of next year. Critics believe the act is a threat to civil liberties and want some provisions eliminated.
--------
Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11
Book Says President Called Secrecy Vital
By William Hamilton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17347-2004Apr16?language=printer
Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.
The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, according to "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, fueled in part by the CIA's conclusion that Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war and CIA Director George J. Tenet's assurance to the president that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In 3 1/2 hours of interviews with Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, Bush said that the secret planning was necessary to avoid "enormous international angst and domestic speculation" and that "war is my absolute last option."
Adding to the momentum, Woodward writes, was the pressure from advocates of war inside the administration. Vice President Cheney, whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force," led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force.
By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq, according to the book. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 19 here (March 20 in Iraq) because Blair asked him to seek a second resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.
Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.
Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there "you're going to be owning this place." Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called "the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq: "You break it, you own it," according to Woodward.
But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to make the U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February 2003, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin at a White House meeting on Dec. 21, 2002.
McLaughlin's version used communications intercepts, satellite photos, diagrams and other intelligence. "Nice try," Bush said when the CIA official was finished, according to the book. "I don't think this quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."
He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss, and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD, and this is the best we've got?"
"It's a slam-dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you?"
"Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," Tenet repeated.
Tenet later told associates he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward. After the CIA director made a rare public speech in February defending the CIA's handling of intelligence about Iraq, Bush called him to say he had done "a great job."
In his previous book, "Bush at War," Woodward described the administration's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: its decision to attack the Taliban government in Afghanistan and its increasing focus on Iraq. His new book is a narrative history of how Bush and his administration launched the war on Iraq. It is based on interviews with more than 75 people, including Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
On Nov. 21, 2001, 72 days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush directed Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq. "Let's get started on this," Bush recalled saying. "And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to." He also asked: Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?
Bush received his first detailed briefing on Iraq war plans five weeks later, on Dec. 28, when Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, visited Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex. Bush told reporters afterward that they had discussed Afghanistan.
While it has been previously reported that Bush directed the Pentagon to begin considering options for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's order to Rumsfeld began an intensive process in which Franks worked in secret with a small staff, talked almost daily with the defense secretary and met about once a month with Bush.
This week, the president acknowledged that the violent uprising against U.S. troops in Iraq has resulted in "a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people." But he insisted that his course of action in Iraq has been the correct one in language that echoed what he told Woodward more than four months ago.
In two interviews with Woodward in December, Bush minimized the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction, expressed no doubts about his decision to invade Iraq, and enunciated an activist role for the United States based on it being "the beacon for freedom in the world."
"I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."
The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq, and the powerful role his religious beliefs played throughout that time.
"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."
The president told Woodward: "I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right. I was going to act. And if it could cost the presidency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so."
Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
The president told Woodward he was cooperating on his book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told. He said it would be a blueprint of historical significance that "will enable other leaders, if they feel like they have to go to war, to spare innocent citizens and their lives."
"But the news of this, in my judgment," Bush added, "the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions. To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned."
Bush's critics have questioned whether he and his administration were focused on Iraq rather than terrorism when they took office early in 2001 and even after the Sept. 11 attacks. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill and former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke have made that charge in recently published memoirs.
According to "Plan of Attack," it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William S. Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." Bush specifically assigned Cheney to focus as vice president on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons.
Early discussions among the administration's national security "principals" -- Cheney, Powell, Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- and their deputies focused on how to weaken Hussein diplomatically. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz proposed sending in the military to seize Iraq's southern oil fields and establish the area as a foothold from which opposition groups could overthrow Hussein.
Powell dismissed the plan as "lunacy," according to Woodward, and told Bush what he thought. "You don't have to be bullied into this," Powell said.
Bush told Woodward he never saw a formal plan for a quick strike. "The idea may have floated around as an interesting nugget to chew on," he said.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., according to Woodward, compared Bush to a circus rider with one foot on a "diplomacy" steed and the other on a "war" steed, both heading toward the same destination: regime change in Iraq. When it was clear that diplomacy would not get him to his goal, Card said, Bush let go of that horse and rode the one called war.
But as the planning proceeded, the administration began taking steps that Woodward describes as helping to make war inevitable. On Feb. 16, 2002, Bush signed an intelligence finding that directed the CIA to help the military overthrow Hussein and conduct operations within Iraq. At the time, according to "Plan of Attack," the CIA had only four informants in Iraq and told Bush that it would be impossible to overthrow Hussein through a coup.
In July, a CIA team entered northern Iraq and began to lay the groundwork for covert action, eventually recruiting an extensive network of 87 Iraqi informants code-named ROCKSTARS who gave the U.S. detailed information on Iraqi forces, including a CD-ROM containing the personnel files of the Iraq Special Security Organization (SSO).
Woodward writes that the CIA essentially became an advocate for war first by asserting that covert action would be ineffective, and later by saying that its new network of spies would be endangered if the United States did not attack Iraq. Another factor in the gathering momentum were the forces the military began shifting to Kuwait, the pre-positioning that was a key component of Franks's planning.
In the summer of 2002, Bush approved $700 million worth of "preparatory tasks" in the Persian Gulf region such as upgrading airfields, bases, fuel pipelines and munitions storage depots to accommodate a massive U.S. troop deployment. The Bush administration funded the projects from a supplemental appropriations bill for the war in Afghanistan and old appropriations, keeping Congress unaware of the reprogramming of money and the eventual cost.
During that summer, Powell and Cheney engaged in some of their sharpest debates. Powell argued that the United States should take its case to the United Nations, which Cheney said was a waste of time. Woodward had described some of that conflict in "Bush at War."
Among Powell's allies was Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father, who wrote an op-ed piece against the war for the Wall Street Journal. After it was published in August 2002, Powell thanked Scowcroft for giving him "some running room." But Rice called Scowcroft to tell her former boss that it looked as if he was speaking for Bush's father and that the article was a slap at the incumbent president.
Despite Powell's admonitions to the president, "Plan of Attack" suggests it was Blair who may have played a more critical role in persuading Bush to seek a resolution from the United Nations. At a meeting with the president at Camp David in early September, Blair backed Bush on Iraq but said he needed to show he had tried U.N. diplomacy. Bush agreed, and later referred to the Camp David session with Blair as "the cojones meeting," using a colloquial Spanish term for courage.
After the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the resumption of weapons inspections in Iraq, Bush became increasingly impatient with their effectiveness and the role of chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. Shortly after New Year's 2003, he told Rice at his Texas ranch: "We're not winning. Time is not on our side here. Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war."
Bush said much the same thing to White House political adviser Karl Rove, who had gone to Crawford to brief him on plans for his reelection campaign. In the next 10 days, Bush also made his decision known to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, who helped arrange Saudi cooperation with the U.S. military, feared Saudi interests would be damaged if Bush did not follow through on attacking Hussein, and became another advocate for war.
According to "Plan of Attack," Bush asked Rice and his longtime communications adviser, Karen Hughes, whether he should attack Iraq, but he did not specifically ask Powell or Rumsfeld. "I could tell what they thought," the president said. "I didn't need to ask their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear."
Rumsfeld, whom Woodward interviewed for three hours, is portrayed in the book as a "defense technocrat" intimately involved with details of the war planning but not focused on the need to attack Iraq in the same way that Cheney and some of Rumsfeld's subordinates such as Wolfowitz and Feith were.
Bush told Powell of his decision in a brief meeting in the White House. Evidently concerned about Powell's reaction, he said, "Are you with me on this? I think I have to do this. I want you with me."
"I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President."
Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq.
"You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to," Bush said.
Describing what the 41st president said to him about Iraq, the 43rd president told Woodward:
"It was less 'Here's how you have to take care of the guy [Hussein]' and more 'I've been through what you've been through and I know what's happening and therefore I love you' would be a more accurate way to describe it."
---------
Powell Said to Have Warned Bush Before the War, a New Book Says
April 17, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/middleeast/17BOOK.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 16 - Two months before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned President Bush about the potential negative consequences of a war, citing what Mr. Powell privately called the "you break it, you own it" rule of military action, according to a new book.
"You're sure?" Mr. Powell is quoted as asking Mr. Bush in the Oval Office on Jan. 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. "You understand the consequences," he is said to have stated in a half-question. "You know you're going to be owning this place?"
The book, "Plan of Attack," by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, reconstructs that and other private conversations between senior Bush administration officials during the 16-month period of planning and preparation that ended with the attack on Iraq last March.
It has been well known that Mr. Powell was the most skeptical among Mr. Bush's senior advisers about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But the new details described in the book, at a time when the American occupation has met with new perils, add considerably to a portrait of a secretary of state who expressed private reservations about the administration's policy but never issued a public protest about the administration's course.
"Force should always be a last resort; I have preached this for most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat; but it must be a resort," Mr. Powell told the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 14, 2003. "We cannot allow this process to be endlessly strung out, as Iraq is trying to do now."
Mr. Powell is described as having clashed in particular with Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Mr. Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" advocating the war who was preoccupied with reports of links between Saddam Hussein and the Qaeda terrorist network. Mr. Powell regarded Mr. Cheney's intense focus on Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda as a "fever," the book says, and he believed that the vice president misread and exaggerated intelligence about the Iraq threat and supposed terrorist ties.
Mr. Woodward's account quickly provoked speculation in Washington that Mr. Powell might have cooperated with Mr. Woodward as the book was being prepared in an effort to distance himself from the Iraq war.
A spokesman for Mr. Powell said Friday night that he could not determine whether the secretary had spoken with Mr. Woodward.
Mr. Powell has made no secret in the past that he has helped Mr. Woodward with other books. Only Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are identified by the author as having given on-the-record interviews for the book. But conversations between Mr. Powell and Mr. Bush are quoted verbatim in the book, and in the account of the January 2003 conversation, Mr. Bush is identified only as a corroborating source.
Richard A. Boucher, Mr. Powell's spokesman, declined to comment on the book, saying he had not read it and adding: `We won't do book reviews. I promise." Asked if it were true that Mr. Powell and Mr. Cheney were barely on speaking terms, Mr. Boucher said, "I think that's not true."
An official in Mr. Cheney's office said Friday that the vice president and his spokesman were flying back to the United States from a weeklong trip to Asia and would not be available for comment on Friday evening.
The 443-page book, published by Simon & Schuster and to be available in bookstores next week, provides the most detailed account to date of debate and tension within the administration before the war, but it does not add any broad new story lines. The Associated Press published an account of the book's contents on Friday morning; The New York Times also obtained a copy.
In a note to readers, Mr. Woodward writes that he based the book on information "from more than 75 key people directly involved in the events," a model he has used in other books. Following that model, the book does not include footnotes or otherwise identify the source of specific information. When he attributed thoughts, judgments or feelings to participants, Mr. Woodward writes, he obtained them from the person, a colleague with firsthand knowledge, or the written record.
In Mr. Woodward's account of the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell in January 2003, the president is described as having simply informed the secretary of state of his decision to go to war in Iraq, as part of a 12-minute meeting in which Mr. Bush made a conscious decision not to ask Mr. Powell for advice.
But, according to the book, Mr. Bush did ask Mr. Powell "Are you with me on this?" and told him, "I want you with me." Mr. Powell is quoted as having replied: "I'll do the best I can. Yes sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President."
The book discloses that Mr. Bush privately asked Mr. Rumsfeld in November 2001, just 72 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, to direct his commanders to begin planning for a possible war against Iraq. But it says that Mr. Bush did not make his final decision to start the war until January 2003. (In a televised news conference on March 6, Mr. Bush said, "I've not made up our mind about military action.")
Asked about the account on Friday at a joint appearance with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Mr. Bush said it was difficult for him to recall specific dates that far back. But he called attention to a meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, on Sept. 15, 2001, the Saturday after the attacks.
"I sat down with my national security team to discuss the response, and the subject of Iraq came up," Mr. Bush told reporters. "And I said as plainly as I possibly could: `We'll focus on Afghanistan. That's where we'll focus."'
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, confirmed on Friday that Mr. Bush had raised the issue of Iraq with Mr. Rumsfeld in November 2001, at a time when American forces were still heavily engaged in the war in Afghanistan. But Mr. McClellan sought to minimize the significance of those discussions, saying that "there is a difference between planning and making a decision."
The exact timing of Mr. Bush's request to Mr. Rumsfeld to begin war planning had not been publicly known, and it had not been known that, as the book reports, Mr. Bush kept that request secret from other top advisers, including Mr. Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
But the general time line for war planning that is presented in the book is broadly consistent with other recent accounts, including public statements by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the retired commander of the Iraq war. It generally upholds the insistence by Mr. Bush and his top advisers that they did not begin their war planning for Iraq until well after the Sept. 11 attacks, even if their attention was fixed on Iraq from early in the administration, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has written in a recent book.
In an interview with Mr. Woodward in December 2003, Mr. Bush said he had kept the early war-planning directive secret because if news of it had leaked out, it would have caused "enormous international angst and domestic speculation," the book says.
The book also provides new details about the hurriedly arranged airstrike on March 19, 2003, in which the White House jump-started the war with a bomb and missile strike on the Dora Farms compound near Baghdad in a failed attempt to kill Mr. Hussein.
The air raid, advocated by Mr. Tenet, had initially been opposed by General Franks, the book says, but was approved by President Bush and Vice President Cheney after they asked other advisers to leave the Oval Office.
The strike was launched, the book says, on the basis of first-hand reports from Iraqi sources at Dora Farms enlisted by a network of 87 Iraqi spies, designated with the code name DB/ROCKSTARS, who had been recruited by a C.I.A. team that had infiltrated northern Iraq in the months before the war.
In calls by satellite phone to the C.I.A. team, the Iraqi sources reported that Mr. Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were at the compound, and that Mr. Hussein himself would return there. After the strike, the book says, one Iraqi source reported Mr. Hussein's body had been removed from the wreckage, prompting Mr. Tenet to celebrate what he thought had been a success.
Even now, it is still not clear whether Mr. Hussein was at the site at all, though a C.I.A. official said on Friday that the agency maintained that Mr. Hussein was "probably" there and survived the American raid. Mr. Woodward's book reports that the Iraqi security guard who was the main source of the intelligence was killed in the American attack, but a C.I.A. official said that the Iraqi agents recruited by the agency had proved "extraordinarily productive."
Over a period that began in early 2002, Mr. Powell is depicted as having cautioned Mr. Bush and other advisers repeatedly about the potential drawbacks of military action in Iraq. The "you break it, you own it" principle he cited in delivering those warnings was privately known to Mr. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, as "the Pottery Barn rule," the book says.
"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Mr. Powell is said to have told Mr. Bush in the summer of 2002. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all."
Conservatives have long accused Mr. Powell of pursuing his own agenda, and of being more interested in depicting himself as right on the issues than as loyal to his president.
Among the previously unknown episodes presented in the book was a White House meeting in December 2002 in which Mr. Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, met with Mr. Bush and his top advisers for what was intended as a dress rehearsal for a public presentation of the administration's claim that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.
Mr. Bush was not impressed by the presentation, the book reports, and urged that it be refined to make a stronger case to "Joe Public." He is said to have turned to Mr. Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having W.M.D. and this is the best we've got?"
In response, Mr. Tenet is described in the book as having twice assured Mr. Bush that the intelligence information supporting the American claims meant that the case was a "slam dunk." A C.I.A. official said that Mr. Tenet was reflecting an assessment spelled out in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that declared unambiguously that Iraq possessed both chemical and biological weapons.
---------
White House Won't Criticize Assassination
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Mideast.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House declined to criticize Israel's missile strike assassination of a top Hamas leader Saturday, saying instead that Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks and urging Palestinians to use restraint in responding.
Fearing retaliatory attacks from Palestinians that would escalate already high Mideast tensions, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in the wake of the killing of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Hamas leader in Gaza, that ``the United States is gravely concerned for regional peace and stability.
``The United States strongly urges Israel to consider carefully the consequences of its actions,'' he said. ``And we again urge all parties to exercise maximum restraint at this time.''
Rantisi was killed as he rode in his car in attack that also killed two of his bodyguards. A senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had no advance notice of the attack. Israeli sources, likewise, said the strike was not coordinated with Washington.
The Bush administration response was similar to that nearly a month ago, when Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
It was a sharp contrast to reaction from elsewhere. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned Israel's policy of targeted killings as ``unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive'' and a spokesman for the Arab League called the assassination ``a criminal act.''
McClellan on Saturday emphasized that the United States considers Hamas a terrorist organization, citing a suicide attack earlier Saturday that killed an Israeli border policeman and for which Hamas claimed responsibility. Israeli officials said there was no connection between the bombing and the killing of Rantisi.
``As we have repeatedly made clear, Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks,'' McClellan said.
Israel has threatened to kill the entire Hamas leadership ahead of a proposed unilateral withdrawal of its settlements in the Gaza Strip. Rantisi, a hard-liner who has pushed for accelerating attacks on Israel, had replaced Yassin as the new leader of Hamas.
Just Friday, Bush had called on the Palestinian people to do their part to take advantage of the planned withdrawal by installing ``leadership that is committed to peace and hope.'' The Bush administration refuses to deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But earlier in the week, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his side at the White House, Bush also endorsed the part of the Israeli leader's withdrawal plan that envisions keeping many Jewish settlements on the West Bank and refusing Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel.
That position, which represents a fundamental shift in longtime American policy, has outraged Palestinians.
As after Yassin's killing, Rantisi's assassination touched off a wave of Palestinian protests, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia accused the United States of encouraging Israel's actions.
In urging restraint, the White House referred to Sharon's plan as offering hope for ``a new opportunity for progress toward peace.''
``All parties should focus on the positive, concrete steps needed now to make the Gaza withdrawal successful,'' McClellan said.
Bush also met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last week, on Monday at his Texas ranch, and is scheduled to see Jordan's King Abdullah at the White House next week.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
In Afghanistan, U.S. Envoy Sits in Seat of Power
April 17, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ABUL, Afghanistan - "So what are we doing today?" Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, asked the United States ambassador, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, as they sat in Mr. Karzai's office.
Mr. Khalilzad patiently explained that they would attend a ceremony to kick off the "greening" of Kabul - the planting and seeding of 850,000 trees - in honor of the Afghan New Year.
Mr. Karzai said he would speak off-the-cuff. Mr. Khalilzad, sounding more mentor than diplomat, approved: "It's good you don't have a text," he told Mr. Karzai. "You tend to do better."
The genial Mr. Karzai may be Afghanistan's president, but the affable, ambitious Mr. Khalilzad often seems more like its chief executive. With his command of both details and American largesse, the Afghan-born envoy has created an alternate seat of power since his arrival on Thanksgiving.
As he shuttles between the American Embassy and the presidential palace, where Americans guard Mr. Karzai, one place seems an extension of the other.
Working closely with the Karzai government and the American military, Mr. Khalilzad ponders whether to push for the removal of uncooperative governors, where roads should be built to undercut insurgency, and how to ensure that the elements friendly to America gain ascendancy in a democratic Afghanistan. His overarching goal is to accelerate the country's rebuilding and securing, preferably on a timetable attuned to the American political cycle.
As a State Department and Pentagon official and at the Rand Corporation, he advocated pre-emptive action against so-called rogue states like Iraq. Now he is formulating - on the ground, and on the fly - that doctrine's previously neglected bookend: how to fill the void those governments leave behind. And as the United States struggles to get it right, policy makers in Washington are closely watching Mr. Khalilzad, an academic and policy planner.
"In many ways we're experimenting," Mr. Khalilzad admitted.
Until it regains sovereignty this summer, Iraq has an almost wholly American administration. Mr. Khalilzad must work with a government with its own head of state that somewhat unsteadily unifies disparate political and military factions.
Where L. Paul Bremer III has an occupation authority staffed by hundreds of Americans, Mr. Khalilzad is working with only a handful of advisers, one-tenth the number of American troops in Iraq, and this year, about one-tenth the financing.
The question is how much Mr. Khalilzad can do with so much less.
Provincial Reconstruction Teams of fewer than 100 soldiers are being deployed to provide a security presence and support reconstruction. Mr. Khalilzad has brought in a coterie of senior advisers, including a former "change agent" for companies like American Airlines, to provide ideas and jump-start the private sector.
"This all has to work," said the acting Army secretary, Les Brownlee, during a meeting with Mr. Khalilzad. "If it doesn't, we're never going to get out of here."
Mr. Khalilzad has less outright power than Mr. Bremer, but possibly as much influence. That is partly because America's 15,500 troops - up from 11,000 a few months ago - and $4.2 billion in spending since 2001 loom so large in Afghanistan, among the world's poorest, most fragile countries.
It is also because he has the ear of Mr. Karzai, whom he often sees two or three times a day, the ambassador's distinct laugh echoing from the president's inner sanctum. The two have known each other for 20 years, since Mr. Khalilzad became involved with supporting the anti-Soviet mujahedeen. Then an official in the Reagan administration, he helped funnel support and Stinger missiles to Islamic fundamentalists, some of whom, like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, later became America's fiercest opponents.
Mr. Hekmatyar "is your old friend," a former Hekmatyar commander named Sabawun, who now is advising Mr. Karzai, told Mr. Khalilzad during a brief palace encounter. Old friends become enemies, they agreed, and left it at that.
Mr. Khalilzad himself knows how compasses change. In the mid-1990's, he briefly defended the Taliban while working as a consultant for Unocal, the oil company that was then trying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. He later became one of the Taliban's fiercest critics.
Born in Mazar-i-Sharif 53 years ago, Mr. Khalilzad, Pashtun by ethnicity, speaks Dari and Pashto. He understands and remains comfortable with the intrigues and intimacies, the informality, the talk and the tribal ties that are so much of political business here.
"You are working for two countries, the United States and Afghanistan," one tribal leader from Helmand Province told him.
More seasoned Afghan officials say they are clear that Zal, as Mr. Khalilzad is known, answers to the Bush administration. It dispatched him here to ensure that Afghanistan has visible progress and a successful election in advance of the American one, and to judge whether a greater infusion of money and attention now can reduce the bill to American taxpayers later.
His plan is to speed the building of the army and police, and to develop the private sector largely by luring expatriates back to invest. He has used his influence to help secure land for projects like a new Hyatt hotel for Kabul, and is pushing the development of an international school and top-tier hospital to serve returning elites, although critics note that many Afghans lack the most basic health care and education.
He preaches a narrative of American self-sufficiency, exhorting Afghans to do more for themselves and depend less on foreign donors and their government.
"Tell the story of America, especially its early days," he encouraged Americans gathered at a town hall meeting in the capital of the country that was once his.
Mr. Khalilzad celebrated the Afghan New Year in March with 12 hours of meetings. The first was with bearded, turbaned tribal leaders from Helmand Province, whom he met at the presidential palace, a location that signaled their prestige, and his access.
His goal was to secure better cooperation with coalition forces, while acting as a buffer against resentment of those forces. Helmand was a strong support base for the Taliban, and the American military has been unhappy with the attitude of its governor, Sher Muhammad Akhundzada.
"We are curious why so far the governor has no committee or no contact with American troops," the ambassador told the leaders, and asked what would happen if the governor were moved from the province. He jokingly warned them against playing "tribal games" with him, alerting them he knew they come from the governor's tribe.
The tribal leaders stoutly defended the governor, and in turn complained about the conduct of coalition troops and their Afghan allies. The way house searches are being conducted "will compel people to revolt," one elder warned.
Mr. Khalilzad later said that he worried that American military tactics could drive Afghans toward the Taliban, but he replied that the governor should create understanding between the tribes and the troops. "I think he will stay in the province as long as these problems are solved," Mr. Khalilzad said, putting diplomatic finesse on what amounted to an ultimatum.
He pointedly reminded the leaders that he is a Muslim. Together, they prayed for the success of Afghanistan.
The trees were planted. He and Mr. Karzai then met with United Nations officials about elections, a process that Mr. Khalilzad is ferociously prodding. He is frustrated with the United Nations, which so far has registered 1.5 million out of an estimated 10 million potential voters for elections that have been pushed back to September from June. He said of United Nations operatives, "Frankly they have been relatively slow," a criticism the United Nations disputes.
Under his auspices, the United States is allocating $60 million over two years to speed police training, with the goal of having 20,000 officers to secure elections by the end of June. The training effort has been German-led, but here, as elsewhere, the impatient Mr. Khalilzad is tempering multilateralism with a more active American role.
Mr. Khalilzad is also trying to shore up support for Mr. Karzai's government by providing visible signs of reconstruction, an effort that could provoke resentment from other factions as the elections approach. Recent weeks have brought choreographed announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the next few months - more than has been done in the last two years. Critics say such haste, along with the government's lack of money and trained personnel, risks littering Afghanistan with unstaffed buildings.
But Mr. Khalilzad is pressing ahead. At an afternoon briefing, he showed Mr. Karzai where the schools would be built. "I have already discussed with a couple of provinces to trade two or three elementary schools for a larger high school," Mr. Khalilzad said, not bothering to hide his ability to barter with American money.
The United States has hired a Washington-based communications company, the Rendon Group, to bolster Mr. Karzai's communications office. And in a brief huddle at the palace, Mr. Khalilzad and the head of intelligence, Amrullah Saleh, discussed how the Afghan people regarded the government - and, as Mr. Khalilzad put it, "things we could do to help the standing of the government without working through the government."
He has also pushed hard to accelerate the disarmament of the country's militias, which many see as the essential condition for minimally free and fair voting. He has shepherded a new plan that would demobilize 40 percent of Afghan militias - the same forces that arose to fight the Soviets, then lived on to fight the Taliban and one another.
Radical in its ambition, the plan would amount to sending home as many as 35,000 soldiers in the next three months, though less than 6,000 have been demobilized since the United Nations started the process in October.
Mr. Khalilzad has been personally negotiating with the defense minister, Muhammad Qasim Fahim, over how best to do it. The United States allied with Mr. Fahim, then the Northern Alliance commander, after Sept. 11, but even today American officials remain uncertain whose side he is on.
"I'm still shadow-boxing with Minister Fahim," Mr. Khalilzad said at one point.
In a meeting at the embassy, Mr. Khalilzad asked Mr. Brownlee, the acting Army secretary, his impression of Mr. Fahim.
"Tough guy," Mr. Brownlee said. "I have no idea the extent to which he can be trusted."
"I think that's still the question," said David Sedney, the deputy chief of mission.
"He always says the right thing - or at least recently," Mr. Khalilzad said, explaining that Mr. Fahim wanted to be Mr. Karzai's vice presidential candidate.
Mr. Khalilzad wants to speed the training of the Afghan National Army, which after some $500 million in American investment has fewer than 8,000 soldiers. In the evening, he led a meeting on the subject with military planners. They discussed how big an army the country needed, the likely threats Afghanistan would face, the money Washington might provide in coming years.
"What models are we talking about for a future relationship with Afghanistan?" Mr. Khalilzad asked. "This has to be linked to that."
The discussion turned to how long to embed American trainers with Afghan battalions. The question arose: Were the military men considering how long it would take to create an ethnically harmonious army, or just what it takes to learn specific military skills? The latter, the military men said.
Such tensions - between military and civilian perspectives, short and long-term interests - perpetually bedevil this enterprise. Mr. Khalilzad, for example, worries that the Americans are cultivating dependence by coming 10,000 miles to build concrete schools for Afghans who once built stunning palaces and mosques. But he concedes that he is pushing the school-building, because the Americans and Mr. Karzai need the good will now.
Mr. Khalilzad has changed his view that the Afghans, having resisted the British and Soviets so fiercely, would permit only a light foreign footprint. Now he believes that they crave foreign help - but that he must carefully calibrate how heavy a footprint they will stand.
If the United States maintains enough aid, he said, Afghanistan can be a close friend, an Islamic democracy, a more prosperous place. "This experiment we were forced into getting involved in can be a success," he said. "It requires sustaining the course." He knows better than most how hard that is for a superpower perpetually distracted by new crises. In the early 1990's, Mr. Khalilzad was part of a Bush administration that looked away as Afghanistan devoured itself in a civil war. Today he tells Afghans that the American abandonment was a mistake, and vows that this time will be different.
-------- britain
UK Condemns Killing of Rantissi as Unlawful
April 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-rantissi-britain.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain condemned Saturday Israel's killing of top Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi as illegal and counter-productive.
``The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called 'targeted assassinations' of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counter-productive,'' Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement.
An Israeli helicopter missile strike killed Rantissi in Gaza City earlier Saturday.
Israel hailed its killing of what it called a ``mastermind of terrorism,'' but Hamas issued an immediate vow of revenge.
-------- business
A no-haggle deal
A St. Petersburg Times Editorial
April 17, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/17/Opinion/A_no_haggle_deal.shtml
The controversial Boeing tanker-aircraft deal smells worse by the day. A report last month by the Pentagon's inspector general found that the Air Force massaged the plane's specifications to steer the contract to Boeing. Last week the inspector general said the deal should not go forward unless the Air Force makes key changes to the contract. Now court records show the Air Force official who played a lead role in the deal before going to work for Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy.
To now, the debate over the tankers has focused on price, but these developments raise broader questions about the tanker's military worth. Initially, the Air Force wanted to lease, not buy, the planes. But after critics in Congress objected to the cost, the service agreed to buy 80 tankers and lease another 20. Pentagon and congressional investigators are examining the $23.5-billion deal, particularly the role Darleen Druyun played during the time she worked on the deal for the Air Force before leaving for Boeing. According to the Associated Press, Druyun intends to plead guilty this month to conspiracy.
Documents and interviews already show that the Air Force and Boeing acted more like partners throughout the negotiations that led to the multibillion-dollar aircraft deal. Both sides shared strategy and communications while selling the lease-deal on Capitol Hill. Boeing was told of Air Force discussions, was made aware of the government's bargaining position and collaborated with the Air Force on getting Congress to approve the contract.
That Druyun later got a job with Boeing is not the only suspicious part of this corrupted "negotiating" process. The inspector general found that the Air Force failed to ensure that the price was fair and that it disregarded a host of auditing and procurement practices. The deal "places the department at a high risk for paying excessive prices and profits," the Pentagon auditors found.
Investigators need to explore not only whether the contract was steered to Boeing but whether the need for and capabilities of the aircraft were oversold to give the company business. Investigators are reportedly examining whether at least one Air Force official used a briefing to mislead officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Auditors have also questioned whether the tankers would meet Air Force performance requirements. The government should suspend the contract until these serious questions are resolved. [Last modified April 17, 2004, 01:50:35]
-------- iraq
Missing G.I. Seen on Tape Provided by Iraqi Captors
April 17, 2004
By IAN FISHER and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/middleeast/17IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 16 - An American soldier who has been missing for a week since his fuel convoy was attacked west of Baghdad was seen on a videotape on Friday being held captive by six armed and masked men. The family of the soldier, Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, confirmed his identity.
A voice speaking in Arabic on the tape, first shown on the Arab news network Al Jazeera, said Private Maupin was being held to trade for Iraqi prisoners of the Americans.
Private Maupin, who identified himself on the tape, was dressed in fatigues and a floppy desert hat and shown looking down, chewing on his lip nervously. The Pentagon said he was one of two soldiers missing after an attack on April 9. Seven civilian contractors are also missing from that attack.
"I came to Iraq to liberate it," Private Maupin said, according to an Arabic translation broadcast by Al Jazeera, in a soft and uncertain voice. "But I didn't want to come here because I wanted to be with my son." He said he was married and had a 10-month-old son.
The tape was released on a complex day in the struggle to end two serious standoffs between Iraqi insurgents and the United States military, as a rebel Shiite Muslim cleric again defied a crucial American demand and as American officials said their patience with Sunni Muslim insurgents was running out.
In Washington, President Bush met with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, and both asserted that they would stand firm in their commitment to pursue their goals in Iraq, despite the difficulties of recent weeks. Mr. Blair said there would be a stepped-up effort for recruiting and training Iraqi police and security forces, and a crucial role for the United Nations as well.
Over the last two weeks, Iraqi insurgents have abducted some 40 foreigners - about half of whom have been released unharmed, including at least four on Friday. The abductions are part of a new strategy that has raised the dangers here and caused further divisions between the United States and its allies over Iraq.
On Friday, a group of 118 workers from Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were evacuated from Iraq.
With some 2,500 troops surrounding the cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad, the Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, appeared for the first time in public in two weeks. He preached a fiery sermon at a mosque in Kufa, the center of his strength, in which he refused to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, as American officials have repeatedly demanded.
"That will not happen," said Mr. Sadr, who led a broad uprising against the American occupation here. "I have founded this army with the cooperation of the Iraqi people."
Mr. Sadr had hinted in recent days that he could agree to some face-saving compromise to avoid a deadly showdown with American soldiers who have surrounded the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. Also on Friday, Shiite militia members ambushed an American convoy near Kufa. There was no immediate word on any casualties.
In the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, American officials issued a clear warning on Friday that they would not allow the violence there to continue and that time was running out for peace talks.
The warning was sounded at a news conference just before American officials met with tribal elders from Falluja to discuss alternatives short of a military takeover of the city, a hotbed of resistance.
"I must be candid, and say time is limited," said Richard Jones, the deputy administrator for the occupation authority in Iraq. "We cannot just sit here and allow the situation to continue the way it is. There are literally tens of thousands of innocent people who are bottled up in that city, and we don't want them to continue to be held hostage by these terrorist and militant groups."
Mr. Jones then stepped inside a heavily guarded building on a United States Marine base to negotiate with the Falluja delegates, who were so concerned about reprisals for talking to the Americans that they did not want their identities revealed or their pictures taken.
After the meeting, Hashem al-Hassani, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party and one of the intermediaries between American officials and Falluja representatives, said the Falluja contingent had agreed to put more pressure on insurgents to stop attacking American forces and to lay down their heavy weapons.
"Fallujans want to return to peace and normal life," Dr. Hassani said. "They are willing to take steps in that direction."
Even with the standoffs in Najaf and Falluja unresolved and still potentially volatile, there has been no sign in recent days of the violence that raged though cities west and south of the capital this month. But the new problem of kidnapping - a tactic that American officials seem to have no real tools to combat - loomed as a personal and emotional embodiment of the risks in Iraq.
In the Jazeera video, the gunman standing closest to Private Maupin held his finger on the trigger of his automatic rifle. No mention was made of the other missing American soldier, Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C.
The other documented hostages have been civilians. On Wednesday, Iraqi insurgents killed one of four Italian security guards - and filmed the killing on video - who had been traveling with another American supply convoy. They threatened to kill the others unless Italy withdrew its troops from Iraq.
On the tape shown by Al Jazeera on Friday, the captors did not threaten to kill their prisoner and said they were treating him well. Private Maupin did not appear to be injured.
Also on Friday, a Danish businessman was reported missing north of Baghdad, and American officials said a Jordanian businessman had been captured recently in Basra.
At the same time, three Czech journalists - Michal Kubal and Petr Klima from Czech Television and Vit Pohanka from Czech Radio - were freed, five days after their taxi was hijacked by armed men near Falluja. Also, a Syrian-born Canadian aid worker, Fadi Ihsan Fadel, was taken to Mr. Sadr's office in Najaf and freed Friday. There was no word about a second man, Nabil George Razuq, captured with Mr. Fadel.
"They accused me of being a Jew," Mr. Fadel told Reuters after his release. "I was detained for eight days in a room with other hostages. They spoke Arabic and they looked like Iraqis but they were also detainees. We were not allowed to talk to each other."
There were also reports that a Chinese citizen was released Friday after two days of captivity. On Thursday, three Japanese hostages were released.
Although Mr. Sadr's oratory in his sermon was otherwise defiant, he did appeal on Friday for the release of all hostages from countries uninvolved with the occupation of Iraq. American officials say they believe the hostages have been taken as a deliberate way to sow discord between the United States and its allies.
Mr. Sadr seemed to show some confidence that United States forces would not leave their positions and actually enter Najaf itself, one of the two holiest cities for Shiite Muslims. To deliver the sermon, he traveled some three miles from his headquarters there to the mosque in Kufa.
The question of American troops' entering Najaf is an extraordinarily sensitive one to Shiites, and on Friday, a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected Shiite cleric in Iraq, called Najaf a "red line" that American troops should not cross.
In fact, even as American officials indicated they might resume offensive operations in Falluja, they were far more cautious regarding Najaf, for fear that it could spur even Shiites who do not support Mr. Sadr to back his opposition to Americans.
Maj. Gen. John Sattler, the director of operations for the United States Central Command, in Doha, Qatar, said there were no immediate plans to move into Najaf, adding that Mr. Sadr "continues to marginalize himself" among most Shiites.
"We know where he is," General Sattler said. "But right now, we're letting him continue to marginalize himself, and we're not focusing any combat power or combat operations into An Najaf. But we do have forces present to make sure that we keep the situation stable."
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit, the chief spokesman for the American military command, said that while hostilities around most of Iraq had quieted, attacks remained a problem along the main supply routes out of Baghdad: the main highway leading west toward Jordan where Private Maupin's convoy was hit, and one of two highways south to American military resupply areas in Kuwait.
In recent days, military officials in Washington have worried that the attacks may disrupt the supply lines for soldiers here, and the military has stepped up operations and patrols along those routes. General Kimmit said the real danger was less to the military - which it said could find other ways of supplying itself - than to ordinary Iraqis.
"You can imagine if this is sustained for a long period of time, the effect that will happen on the open market," he told reporters here. "Fewer supplies are going to be able to get to people in Baghdad and the surrounding region. Prices will probably go up. The reconstruction projects, which are so critical to the onward development in this country, will be slowed down because contractors will be intimidated to come in."
Ian Fisher reported from Baghdad for this article, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Falluja.
--------
Iraq Leaders With Fewer U.S. Ties Emerge
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Winners-and-Losers.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A new batch of Iraqi leaders has sprung up in the latest spasm of violence in Iraq -- people with grassroots support but few or no ties to the U.S.-led occupation.
The new players include an association of Sunni clerics, ``the Prince of the Marshes'' from southern Iraq and an outspoken Shiite woman dentist.
The rise of these new figures is largely at the expense of politicians with links to the U.S.-led occupation. Their arrival comes as Iraqi leaders are wrangling over who will make up a government due to take power from U.S. administrators on June 30.
On that day, the U.S.-appointed Governing Council -- a 25-member body that has served as Iraq's interim government since July but failed to win the trust of many Iraqis -- will likely be dissolved.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who was asked to come up with a plan for Iraq's transition, has proposed the council be replaced by a caretaker government of ``men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence.''
Brahimi did not say who he had in mind.
But many Iraqis are starting to see those qualifications in the new rising stars: the Islamic Clerics Committee -- a Sunni group -- and Shiite Governing Council members Abdul-Karim al-Mohammedawi and Salama al-Khufaji.
Vehemently anti-occupation, the Sunni committee was formed a year ago but had been sidelined by the newly powerful Shiite clergy. For months the committee has struggled to give a voice to Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, demoralized by its loss of its position of power under Saddam.
The current crisis has boosted the committee's fortunes and influence.
The Sunni clerics have used their leverage to win the release of some 20 foreign hostages snatched in a wave of abductions that accompanied this month's violence.
Images of the smiling clerics embracing freed hostages have been beamed daily by Arab satellite TV stations widely seen in Iraq, and the releases have won thanks from foreign embassies.
The committee says it has no contacts with the abductors, arguing that its ``patriotic'' anti-occupation stance persuades kidnappers to heed their appeal for the release of captives not directly involved in military operations.
At the same time, the clerics' group has become the hero of residents of Fallujah. It has organized aid convoys into the city, and its main mosque in Baghdad is a refuge for residents fleeing the city.
The committee has been sharply critical of the Marine siege of Fallujah and the reportedly high death toll among civilians there.
``In the course of a year, we took Iraq by storm and won the trust of everyone,'' spokesman Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi said in an interview. ``The Americans have sidelined us because we don't accept that their presence here is legitimate. This stance gave us leverage in the street because people began to sense that we speak what is on their minds.''
Iraqis dubbed Al-Mohammedawi the ``Prince of the Marshes'' for leading a resistance movement against Saddam in the southern march region of Iraq for 17 years. He was imprisoned for six years under Saddam's regime.
Al-Mohammedawi, 45, bearded and often wearing a traditional Arab robe, has suspended his membership in the Governing Council this month to protest U.S. policies in Iraq. He also has played a key role in efforts to mediate an end to the standoff between U.S. forces and al-Sadr, whose militia has clashed with U.S. and other coalition forces this month.
His Hezbollah -- unrelated to the guerrilla group of the same name in Lebanon -- was founded in 1994 and cooperated with U.S. and British troops in the closing stages of the invasion of Iraq last year.
But his frustration with U.S. policies appears to be pushing him away from the U.S.-led coalition.
``I will not go back to the council until we enter a constructive discussion about Iraq ... to achieve what the Iraqi people really want and to stop the bleeding in all Iraq,'' al-Mohammedawi said. ``I call on everybody to use the voice of wisdom and avoid violence.''
Al-Khufaji, a Shiite professor of dentistry at Baghdad University, is another rising star on the Iraqi political scene. She joined the Governing Council in December, replacing another Shiite woman who was assassinated three months earlier.
Her conservative dress -- a black chador that covers her entire body except for the face -- makes her an exception among professional women in Iraq, most of whom wear headscarves or no traditional Islamic covering at all.
She said in an interview that she objected to military solutions to the standoff with al-Sadr or the fighting in Fallujah.
``Muqtada al-Sadr has a large following and many supporters on the streets,'' she said. ``The Americans' insistence on his arrest came as a surprise to many Iraqis since they are not used to seeing this happening to icons of their society.''
An investigative judge has issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr in connection with charges of theft and the murder last year of a rival cleric in the holy city of Najaf.
``These two have taken positions that set them apart from the rest of the council members,'' Amer al-Husseini, one of al-Sadr's chief representatives in Baghdad, said of al-Mohammedawi and al-Khufaji.
Words like these are high praise since they come from a senior official in a movement that has branded Governing Council members traitors and rejected their decisions as illegal.
``Salama al-Khufaji's shoe is of more value than the entire council,'' another al-Sadr aide, Nasser al-Saadi, told a 20,000-strong congregation on April 9.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel bans Palestinians aged over 35 from leaving Gaza
2004-04-17
(Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-04/17/content_1424642.htm
GAZA, April 16 -- The Israeli security forces decided on Friday to prevent Palestinians aged 16-35 from leaving the Gaza Strip for abroad.
A Palestinian public security spokesman said that the Israeli decision to prevent the Palestinians from traveling abroad "would harden the daily life of the residents and would affect students who study abroad."
Israel has been imposing a strict closure on the Gaza Strip and prevents Palestinians from leaving the densely populated Gaza Stripfor Israel or the West Bank.
The Palestinians aged between 16 and 35, who represent about 80 percent of the overpopulated Gaza Strip community, would be also prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip through the Rafah terminal, the only exit on the borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which is controlled by Israel.
--------
Israel Would Keep Its Access Under Gaza Evacuation Plan
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18625-2004Apr16.html
JERUSALEM, April 16 -- The proposed Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlements and soldiers from the Gaza Strip would allow the military to continue to enter Gaza and permit Israel to maintain control over its airspace, seaports and border crossings, according to the first official text of the plan made public late Thursday.
All 7,500 Jewish settlers and the Israeli troops that protect them would be evacuated by the end of 2005, according to the document, which stated, "Israel will aspire to leave standing the real estate assets" as well as "the water, electricity and sewage infrastructure" in the 21 communities to be abandoned.
The general outline of the unilateral disengagement plan proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been known for several months, but details of Israel's continued controls over Gaza and other details remained a closely guarded secret as Israeli and U.S. officials negotiated what commitments the United States was willing to make. After meeting with Sharon at the White House on Wednesday, President Bush strongly endorsed the plan and agreed to several major U.S. policy shifts on borders, refugees and settlements, making the U.S. positions more favorable to Israel.
Palestinian officials, already dismayed by Bush's endorsement, said the text exposed new flaws in the disengagement proposal.
"This is changing Gaza into a big prison," said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian's chief negotiator with the Israelis. He said that with Bush's endorsement of the plan, "We've been set back at least 50 years."
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, dismissed the Palestinian complaints and said, "We're giving them something on a platter and they're just coming up with excuses as to why they don't want to conduct the necessary steps against terrorist activity."
After the Gaza withdrawal, Israel would continue to control all access into and out of the small coastal strip, effectively keeping its 1.2 million Palestinian inhabitants inside a heavily guarded enclosure that is about twice the size of Washington, according to Sharon's plan. Most residents of Gaza have not been permitted to leave for years, even for medical, family or other emergencies.
"Israel will supervise and guard the external envelope on land," the document said, "will maintain exclusive control in the air space of Gaza, and will continue to conduct military activities in the sea space of the Gaza Strip."
"Israel reserves for itself the basic right of self-defense," the plan stated, "including taking preventative steps as well as responding by using force against threats that will emerge from the Gaza Strip."
The document proposes that Jewish settlements and their infrastructure be turned over to "an international body" modeled after the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, a group of 17 nations, international organizations and donor groups that oversees financial donations to the Palestinian Authority.
The plan says that the oversight group should "appraise the value of all the assets" Israel leaves behind, adding that Israel "reserves the right" to be reimbursed.
A key component of the agreement between the United States and Israel that has not been publicized is how much money -- if any -- the United States would provide to aid in the relocation of the Gaza settlers. The cost, including the potential construction of entire new towns and agricultural areas, is expected to be in the billions of dollars. An Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Israel expects the United States to finance a large portion of the relocation, but said the amount is not being publicized because of sensitivities over budget issues in the United States.
When Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, the military destroyed all houses and infrastructure for settlements inhabited by several thousand Jewish settlers. Sharon was defense minister during the operation.
--------
Hamas Leader Killed in Israeli Strike
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Gaza-Explosion.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- An Israeli missile strike killed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi on Saturday in a strike on his car, hospital officials said. Rantisi's son Mohammed and a bodyguard also were killed in the attack, the officials said.
The militant Hamas leader was one of Israel's top targets after it had assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in an airstrike last month.
Rantisi's car was hit with missiles Saturday evening on the road outside his home, leaving only the burned, destroyed vehicle.
Rantisi was taken to the hospital in critical condition, his body pocked with bloody wounds, and rushed into emergency surgery, but he died five minutes after arriving at the hospital.
--------
Copter Attack Kills Rantisi and Two Others in Gaza
April 17, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/middleeast/17WIRE-HAMAS.html
JERUSALEM, April 17 - An Israeli helicopter strike on Saturday night killed the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, hospital officials in Gaza City said. Dr. Rantisi assumed the post just last month after a similar attack killed the group's founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
The Israeli attack on Dr. Rantisi's car, which was traveling on a main street in Gaza City, came less than five hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up, killing one Israeli security worker and wounding three others in an industrial park near the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the Israeli military said.
After several weeks of relative calm, Saturday's violence unleashed fresh tensions. A large crowd of angry Palestinians swiftly gathered outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where Dr. Rantisi died of his wounds, and began chanting his name and calling for attacks against Israel. Two other people in Dr. Rantisi's car were killed, one of them a bodyguard.
``All of us will be martyrs,'' Ismail Haniya, another Hamas leader in Gaza, said at the hospital. ``This is our fate as Hamas and the Palestinian people. This will not end our willingness to continue with the resistance.''
Dr. Rantisi, who was in his mid-50's, did not have the stature of Sheik Yassin. But Dr. Rantisi was the most prominent Hamas spokesman in recent years, known for frequent interviews in which he invariably called for more attacks against Israel.
Israeli security forces have been on high alert since the killing of Sheik Yassin on March 22, also in a helicopter missile strike in Gaza City. The Israelis said they had foiled several attempted bombings in recent weeks.
But on Saturday afternoon, a Palestinian attacker detonated his bomb in a special industrial zone where several thousand Palestinians work in factories, most of them owned by Israelis. The factories are on the northern edge of Gaza, near the Erez crossing point, an area that has been the scene of several Palestinian attacks in recent months.
The bomber was inside the industrial park and exploded his bomb next to Israeli security force members as he was leaving the area around 4 p.m., when many workers head home. Four members of the security forces were wounded, one of them a border policeman who later died of his wounds, the Israeli military said.
Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed joint responsibility for the attack and identified the bomber as Fadi al-Amoudi, 22.
In killing Sheik Yassin last month, Israel stressed that it would continue to attack leaders of groups involved in violence despite widespread international criticism. Even the United States, Israel's closest ally, has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the practice.
After Sheik Yassin was killed, the United States at first avoided direct criticism of Israel, but some hours later, after criticism erupted throughout the Arab world and the European Union and Britain, the White House issued a statement saying that it was ``deeply troubled by this morning's events in Gaza.''
Israel wounded Dr. Rantisi last June in a missile strike, the first in a series of attack on leaders of Hamas, which has carried out about half of the more than 100 suicide bombings in the past three and a half years of Mideast fighting.
The most recent Palestinian suicide attack was on March 14, when two Palestinians from Gaza slipped out of the territory, apparently inside a truck trailer, and detonated their bombs after the truck reached Ashdod, a port in southern Israel. The blasts killed 10 Israelis. Eight days later, the Israelis killed Sheik Yassin.
In another development Saturday, thousands of Palestinians took part in rallies in several cities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to demand the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Abdullah Shami, leader of the Islamic Jihad faction in Gaza, told demonstrators that the Palestinians should kidnap Israeli soldiers and use them as bargaining chips to win the freedom of Palestinian detainees.
``This tactic will be used by all the Palestinian factions,'' Mr. Shami said.
Israel has imprisoned more than 5,000 Palestinians suspected of involvement in the violence, according to various monitoring groups. Israel's security forces continue to carry out almost daily arrest sweeps in the West Bank.
--------
Militant Calls for Seizure of Israeli Soldiers
April 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-palestinians.html
GAZA (Reuters) - A top Islamic militant called for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers to trade them for Palestinian prisoners, as thousands rallied across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday to demand freedom for loved ones behind bars.
The protests, part of an annual event for an estimated 6,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, were fueled by anger over President Bush's backing for an Israeli plan to retain parts of the occupied West Bank after a Gaza pullout.
Some 10,000 Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza City to mark the annual day of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners. They marched with banners behind a mock jail surrounded by barbed-wire mounted on a truck, while thousands attended protests staged throughout the West Bank.
``No peace without the release of all the prisoners,'' read a huge banner displayed in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. In Hebron, militants called for more attacks on Israelis.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath urged Israel to agree to a ``total'' release of prisoners. Such a step would be essential to renewing peace efforts, he told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
In the Gaza Strip, Abdullah al-Shami, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group called for kidnapping Israeli soldiers as a tactic to ensure the release of prisoners.
``The policy of kidnapping Zionist soldiers should be adopted,'' said Shami, whose group had carried out numerous suicide bombings against Israelis. He said militants ``are working on this.''
Israel in January freed hundreds of Palestinians among some 400 prisoners released under a deal with the Lebanese Hizbollah group in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers.
Hours before Saturday's protests, Islamic Jihad militants issued a statement that one of its members had been killed in a ``holy war'' action near the West Bank city of Nablus.
Israel army radio said the blast in Askar refugee camp on Friday night occurred while the Palestinian who was killed was preparing a bomb.
--------
Prominent Israeli Assassinations, Attempts
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Targeted-Killings-Glance.html
Israel has killed more than 150 militants in targeted raids since fighting broke out in September 2000, according to Palestinian medical officials, though that total includes militants killed resisting arrest. Israel also has had a long history of assassinating those it considered to be terrorists before then.
Here are some of the most prominent strikes:
--April 17, 2004: Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, was killed by an Israeli missile strike on his car in Gaza. Rantisi's son and a bodyguard were also killed.
--March 22, 2004: Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, was killed by an Israeli missile in Gaza.
--March 3, 2004: Three Hamas militants were killed in a missile attack on their car south west of Gaza City.
--Feb. 28, 2004: Three Islamic Jihad militants were killed in an Israeli missile attack in the Gaza Strip.
--Feb. 7, 2004: Two Palestinians were killed in a missile strike against an Islamic Jihad target in the Gaza Strip, including a 12-year-old boy.
--Dec. 25, 2003: Five Palestinians were killed in a Gaza rocket attack aimed at top Islamic Jihad leader Mekled Hamied. Hameid, two other Jihad militants and two bystanders were killed.
--Oct. 20, 2003: Fourteen Palestinians were killed in Israeli missile strike in Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza, according to Palestinian count. The number of militants killed remains under dispute. Palestinians said two of the dead belonged to armed groups; Israeli military put the figure higher.
--Sept. 1, 2003: One Hamas member was killed by missile strike, one bystander died later of injuries. At least 25 others were wounded.
--Aug. 30, 2003: Two Palestinians, both members of Hamas, were killed by Israeli strike. Two bystanders were injured.
--Aug. 28, 2003: One Hamas activist was killed by missile strike in southern Gaza. Three others were injured.
--Aug. 26, 2003: Two Palestinian bystanders were killed in helicopter strike in Gaza City. Another bystander died the following week.
--Aug. 24, 2003: Four Palestinians, all Hamas activists, were killed in helicopter strike in Gaza City. More than a dozen bystanders were injured.
--Aug. 21, 2003: Three Hamas members, including prominent leader Ismail Abu Shanab and two bodyguards, were killed by helicopter missile strike. One bystander was killed, at least 15 others wounded.
--June 2003: Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi was wounded in Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
--March 2003: Ibrahim Makadmeh, senior Hamas strategist, was killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
--September 2002: Hamas commander Mohammed Deif was wounded in Israeli airstrike.
--July 2002: Hamas commander Salah Shehadeh was killed with 14 others when Israeli plane drops one-ton bomb on his Gaza house.
--January 2002: Raed Karmi, leader of Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank, was killed in Israeli attack.
--September 1997: Two Israeli Mossad agents were arrested in Jordan after botched effort to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.
--January 1996: Hamas master bombmaker Yehiyeh Ayyash was killed in explosion of booby-trapped cell phone in Gaza. Israel was assumed responsible.
--October 1995: Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shakaki was killed by gunmen in Malta. Israel was assumed to be responsible but does not comment officially.
--February 1992: Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sheik Abbas Musawi was killed in southern Lebanon in Israeli helicopter strike.
--April 1988: Israeli agents assassinated Khalid al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Yasser Arafat's deputy in the PLO and commander of operations in West Bank.
--January 1979: Israeli agents killed Ali Hassan Salameh in bomb explosion in Beirut. Salameh planned the 1972 attack in Munich that killed 11 members of Israeli Olympic team.
--February 1973: Israeli commandos enter Beirut by sea and kill three senior PLO leaders. One of the commandos was Ehud Barak, later Israel's prime minister.
-------- pacific
Indonesians Name Cleric As Terrorist Suspect
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Alan Sipress
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19038-2004Apr16.html
JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 16 -- Indonesian officials named radical cleric Abubakar Baasyir as a terrorism suspect Friday, raising the possibility they may keep him in prison after his current sentence on immigration charges ends in two weeks.
U.S. and other foreign officials criticized Indonesia after the country's Supreme Court reduced Baasyir's prison sentence last month, despite allegations by investigators that he heads the Jemaah Islamiah militant network, which has been linked to al Qaeda.
Indonesian police did not detail new evidence against Baasyir when they reopened their probe. But in recent months, investigators have been questioning suspected militants in Indonesia and neighboring countries about Baasyir's possible connection to the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali and the bombing of the JW Marriott in Jakarta last August that killed 12.
-------- prisoners of war
Captured U.S. Soldier Is Shown On Arab TV
U.S. Joins Fallujah Talks, Rebuffs Iran in Najaf
By Sewell Chan and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18125-2004Apr16?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 17 -- A grainy video broadcast on Arab television Friday night showed a U.S. soldier under the control of six masked insurgents, providing a dramatic glimpse into a wave of kidnappings that have targeted soldiers, contractors and foreign civilians in Iraq over the past two weeks.
In the embattled western city of Fallujah, U.S. officials held their first direct talks with local leaders aimed at ending a siege by the Marines that began April 5. But negotiations on a continuing standoff with fighters in Najaf, the other front of the two-pronged insurgency, showed no signs of progress.
U.S. officials said they had rebuffed an effort by Iranian diplomats to mediate between the military and a radical cleric, Moqtada Sadr. An aide to Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, warned U.S. troops not to enter the sacred city of Najaf, where Sadr is based.
The video, broadcast by the al-Jazeera satellite television network, showed a soldier squatting on the ground, surrounded by six masked men, several of them brandishing assault rifles. The soldier, wearing a military-issue noncombat uniform with the rank insignia of a private first class, appeared unharmed and gave his name as Keith Matthew Maupin.
Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, is one of two soldiers who have been unaccounted for since April 9, when insurgents ambushed an Army fuel-truck convoy with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades near Abu Ghraib, an impoverished western suburb of Baghdad.
In Washington, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said the military was trying to confirm that the man on the tape was Maupin. Maupin and the other missing soldier are assigned to the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, based at Bartonville, Ill.
There was a candlelight vigil Thursday night at Glen Este High School in Cincinnati, where Maupin was a student. Maupin "was a great kid, and he comes from a great family," said the principal, Dennis Ashworth. "All of us here -- the staff, the students -- are extremely concerned about his well-being."
Marjorie Stultz, a friend of the family, said Maupin's mother was "pretty shook up."
"We're all rallying around her," said Stultz, whose grandson just returned from Iraq.
The U.S.-led occupation authority said this week that it knew of 40 hostages from 12 countries, but officials have refused to update the figures. Only one hostage -- an Italian private security guard -- has been confirmed killed.
The abductions continued Friday. Two businessmen, from Denmark and the United Arab Emirates, were the latest to be reported kidnapped, while three Czech journalists, a Syrian Canadian aid worker and a Chinese laborer -- all of them captured this month -- were released.
On Saturday, the U.S. military closed sections of two major north-south highways that run from Baghdad, in a sign of the increased danger of kidnappings and bombings on roadways. "Civilians that attempt to drive on these roads may be considered anti-coalition forces and risk being subject to attack," a military statement said.
In Kufa, a town adjacent to Najaf, witnesses reported on Friday hearing loud explosions near the Euphrates River. Witnesses and a hospital official reported that five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in crossfire during clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents on the town's outer edge.
One soldier was wounded in a car-bomb attack Thursday while he was on patrol in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, where 47 insurgents were killed last week in one of the bloodiest battles of the insurgency. A patrol was attacked by a roadside bomb in the southern town of Amarah Thursday night, but no casualties were reported.
In Fallujah, where the Marines suspended an offensive on April 9, U.S. officials joined talks between city leaders and Iraqi government representatives for the first time. The U.S. negotiators were Richard H. Jones, the ambassador to Kuwait, and Marine Maj. Gen. Joseph Weber, the chief of staff of the joint military command in Iraq. Iraqi members of the delegation asked not to be identified because of possible threats to their safety.
The American representatives said they had agreed to immediately reposition U.S. troops inside the city to enable ambulances and cars to reach the central hospital in Fallujah, while Iraqi officials at the talks said the city leaders agreed to work with Iraqi police to collect heavy weapons in the city and halt insurgent attacks. The talks were to resume Saturday.
Mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. troops, and retaliatory airstrikes by U.S. military planes, have continued despite the cease-fire, which formally began April 10.
But no one representing the Iraqi fighters was present at the talks, and it was not clear whether the 11 civic and tribal leaders who attended had any influence over, or even contact with, the well-organized guerrillas, who have fiercely resisted efforts by about 3,500 Marines to gain control of the city. The military estimates the number of armed insurgents in Fallujah at 1,000 to 2,000.
"We need to build bridges of trust between the people of Fallujah and the coalition, so we can address better their common foe," said Jones, who is on leave from his post in Kuwait to supervise political operations for the occupation authority.
Jones said the most encouraging aspect of the talks was that "the people are willing to reject the criminal and terrorist elements that are causing problems." He said the Fallujah delegation included local officials, tribal sheiks and ordinary citizens.
Hachem Hassani, an Iraqi politician who represented the Iraqi Governing Council at the talks Friday, said he was optimistic because most people in Fallujah were "tired of what is going on in the city" and agreed that "bad elements need to be controlled."
Hassani acknowledged that he and the local leaders had not met with the fighters but said there was communication with them. "We need a real cease-fire, not shooting at the coalition, and we need to gather the heavy weapons as soon as possible," he said.
Jones said U.S. officials expected Iraqi authorities to investigate and try those responsible for several crimes in the city, including the murder and public mutilation of four American security guards on March 31. But he did not repeat U.S. demands, reportedly made in talks last week, that the insurgents turn over the killers.
The U.S. military operation to rid Fallujah of violent criminals and insurgents has provoked widespread Iraqi criticism and led to some of the most intense battles since coalition forces seized Baghdad one year ago.
Before the Fallujah delegation arrived at the Marine base Friday, Jones expressed some impatience and skepticism. He said that by essentially coming to Fallujah, U.S. officials hoped to "accelerate and intensify" the negotiations, but that it was "not an open-ended process."
Jones added: "We will continue to work with them and give them time, but time is limited. We can't sit here and allow the situation to continue the way it is."
More than 70,000 civilians have fled Fallujah at U.S. urging in the past week, but many others are believed to be hiding in their homes in large areas under insurgent control, with virtually no access to food or medicine. A dusk-to-dawn curfew is in place.
A spokesman for L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, warned in Baghdad that talks could not continue indefinitely.
"Our Marines have been on the receiving end of shots and violence over the past week while we are pursuing this political track," said the spokesman, Daniel Senor. "And all this while the enemy seems to be strengthening their defensive positions."
There was alternating optimism and combative rhetoric on Friday between U.S. authorities and Sadr, whose virulent preachings have launched the broadest challenge yet to the occupation.
"I am ready to meet martyrdom for the sake of Iraq," Sadr told worshipers in Kufa, where two weeks earlier he had preached a fiery sermon that inspired a wave of anti-American resistance by members of the Mahdi Army, his black-clad militia group. He wore a white funeral shawl, an indication that he was prepared to die.
Sadr and his aides denied that he had agreed to disband the militia, saying it was part of a popular movement and not a centrally run organization. "I assure you that this army was not founded by me, but by the Iraqi people," he said.
In Baghdad, U.S. officials acknowledged for the first time the efforts by an Iranian delegation to mediate a peace in Najaf. Hossein Sadeghi, a diplomat from the Foreign Ministry of predominantly Shiite Iran, is leading the delegation.
According to U.S. officials, the Iranians approached the Americans, using British officials in Iraq as intermediaries. Ronald E. Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, met with the delegation this week.
U.S. officials took pains to distance themselves from the Iranians on Friday. Senor, the spokesman for Bremer, insisted that Sadr was not even the direct subject of the meeting.
"The purpose of the meeting was not to address the Sadr situation and we believe -- it is our position -- that there is no role for the Iranians to play the middleman here in discussions between us and Sadr," he said.
In an interview, Hazm Aaraji, a top Sadr deputy in Baghdad, disputed the American version of events. He said that U.S. officials approached Iran through Swiss intermediaries to help broker a peace in Najaf.
"They asked the Iranians to solve the problem, because the Americans are in trouble, but now they say Iran volunteered to interfere," Aaraji said. Neither side provided evidence to confirm its account.
Shiite clerics used their Friday sermons to warn U.S. forces against storming Najaf, which is surrounded by 2,500 U.S. soldiers from three Army divisions.
"We say to the Americans: Do not storm Najaf, or your blood shall flow like a river," said Sheik Nasser Saadi at the Hikma Mosque in Sadr City, a teeming Baghdad slum where dozens have died in violent clashes this month. "This is a warning. Do not mess with us, because you haven't seen anything yet."
At the Kadhim Shrine in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya, Sheik Raed Saadi Kadhimi said that Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq have started to join together in opposing the occupation. "I call on the Iraqi people to unite to get victory and to liberate your country," he said.
A Sadr associate in Basra, Iraq's largest city, wore a funeral shawl and carried an assault rifle as he urged worshipers to gather weapons and stockpile gasoline and supplies in preparation to defend Sadr. "I will be the first martyr," said the cleric, Abdel-Sitar Bahadli.
Constable reported from Fallujah. Staff writer Robert E. Pierre in Chicago, staff writer Thomas E. Ricks, special correspondents Khalid Saffar and Bassam Sebti in Baghdad and special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Emad Zainel in Basra contributed to this report.
-------- space
New Crew Is Heading To Space Station
6-Month Stint Will Include Repairs
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18767-2004Apr16.html
A fresh crew is heading for the international space station this weekend for a six-month stint that will include science and spacewalks but will also demand close attention to an array of potentially serious maintenance problems that have arisen in the aftermath of last year's shuttle disaster.
Unlike the last crew exchange, however, when two mid-level NASA officials refused temporarily to certify the safety of the mission, planners have given this weekend's Expedition 9 -- the ninth crew to staff the station -- a clean bill of health. Lingering defects ranging from an iffy oxygen supply to jury-rigged exercise equipment and a temperamental gyroscope continue to raise concerns, but NASA officials said they have been analyzed and deemed manageable.
"The best you can do is train for every one of these contingencies," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said last week during a visit to The Washington Post. "But you're going to have equipment challenges, and there's no way to call Pep Boys or Wal-Mart. You've got to have the capacity to do this onboard."
O'Keefe also denied reports of disputes between NASA and Russian space officials over priorities for shipping vital equipment on the Russian Soyuz and Progress cargo spacecraft, which have assumed the burden of servicing the station since the U.S. space shuttles were grounded after last year's Columbia tragedy. The Russians "have responded like partners," he said. "It has been extremely successful."
Still, NASA's William Gerstenmaier, manager of the space station program, showed little enthusiasm for a recent Russian proposal to extend space station missions from six months to a year. Acknowledging in a recent briefing that the proposal would give the cash-strapped Russians "an opportunity to sell more seats" on Soyuz, he added, "We'll probably never know what the real motivation is."
Expedition 9 is scheduled for launch at 11:19 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Russian Air Force Col. Gennady Padalka, 45, a veteran of long-duration spaceflight aboard the Mir space station, will command the mission. U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Edward "Mike" Fincke, 37, a spaceflight rookie, will serve as flight engineer and science officer. Docking is scheduled for 1 a.m. April 21.
Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, 45, another first-timer, will accompany Padalka and Fincke and conduct experiments aboard the space station for 10 days. He will return to Earth April 30, with the departing crew: American commander Michael Foale and Russian flight engineer Alexander Kaleri.
In a mission expected to last about six months, Padalka and Fincke will perform experiments in disciplines ranging from human physiology to materials science, physics and chemistry. They will also conduct extensive observations of Earth's geography, geology and environment.
In addition, mission controllers have planned two spacewalks, scheduled for July 22 and Aug. 25, focused primarily on preparing the station for the arrival next year of a new European cargo vessel.
Both astronauts will participate in the walks, with no one inside the station, an undertaking viewed by NASA with some misgivings when the current crew did it in February. That spacewalk ended prematurely when a cooling hose kinked inside Kaleri's spacesuit, but Gerstenmaier said the new crew will sew in special straps to keep hoses from meandering.
Internal NASA documents obtained by The Post described the hose defect along with a number of other concerns. Gerstenmaier addressed several of these, saying a leaky lab window poses little danger and a mysterious rattling noise may have come from a fan in the Russian sleeping quarters.
Other problems were not so easily dismissed and concerned important pieces of equipment that in many cases cannot be easily replaced because of the limited cargo capacity of Russia's Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
A chief concern was an oxygen-producing Elektron unit, whose erratic performance early this year several times forced Foale and Kaleri to rely on auxiliary oxygen. Should the auxiliary oxygen be depleted, the space station would have to be abandoned.
Gerstenmaier said the Elektron had been repaired and added that the crew will bring two pumps to help repair another failed unit. He acknowledged, however, that "the Elektron we have installed is effectively our last spare."
The NASA documents assessed this risk as "medium" but noted that "if the last Elektron liquid unit fails, there is adequate time to prepare [the space station] for a de-manning configuration."
Gerstenmaier said the need for spare tanks of oxygen may interfere with NASA's hopes to send upgraded exercise equipment aboard one of the two unmanned Progress flights scheduled for launch during Expedition 9. The equipment is vital for astronauts to curb bone loss and maintain muscle tone in a weightless environment.
If the space shuttle were flying, planners would simply have sent up a 60-pound replacement component for a balky treadmill, Gerstenmaier said. The shuttles can carry several times as much cargo as the Russian spacecraft.
Instead, he said, NASA bought a bearing puller at an auto parts store and spent three months teaching Foale and Kaleri how to use it to repair the gyroscope: "We're not 100 percent sure this is going to last as a fix," he said. "But so far, it's working great."
There is, however, no obvious solution for the erratic operation of "control moment gyroscope 3," one of four large gyroscopes that maintain the station's attitude in space. One of the four has already failed, and at least two are needed to hold the station in position. Should another fail, astronauts would use fuel thrusters as backup.
O'Keefe said NASA had been planning to send a new gyro up before Columbia crashed, but the spare "is just too big" for the Russian cargo flights. Still, he added, like the station's other festering problems, the gyro "is not something that they sit back and say 'goodness gracious, we think this is right on the edge of failure.' They're saying, 'I got lots of default options, and I can work my way through.' "
-------- spies
CIA tracked bin Laden from 1995
April 17, 2004
By John Solomon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Six years before the September 11 attacks, the CIA warned in a classified report that Islamist extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, according to intelligence officials.
Though hauntingly prescient, the CIA's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate did not name Osama bin Laden as a terrorist threat.
But within months, the intelligence agency developed enough concern about the wealthy, Saudi-born militant to create a specific unit to track him and his followers, the officials told the Associated Press.
In 1997, theCIAupdated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil, the officials said, divulging new details about the CIA's 1990s response to the terrorist threat.
The officials took the rare step Thursday of disclosing information in the closely held National Intelligence Estimates and other secret briefings to counter criticisms in a staff report released this week by the independent commission examining pre-September 11 intelligence failures.
That commission report accused the CIA of failing to recognize al Qaeda as a formal terrorist organization until 1999. It characterized the agency as regarding bin Laden mostly as a financier instead of a charismatic leader of the terrorist movement.
But one senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the 1997 National Intelligence Estimate "identified bin Laden and his followers and threats they were making and said it might portend attacks inside the United States."
The National Intelligence Estimate is distributed to the president and senior intelligence officials in the executive branch and the Congress.
Philip Zelikow, executive director of the September 11 commission, confirmed the 1997 warning about bin Laden, but said it was only two sentences long and lacked any strategic analysis on how to address the threat. "We were well aware of the information and the staff stands by exactly what it says" in its report, he said.
The intelligence official also said that while the 1995 intelligence assessment did not mention bin Laden or al Qaeda by name, it clearly warned that Islamist terrorists were intent on striking specific targets inside the United States like those hit on September 11, 2001.
The report specifically warned that civil aviation, Washington landmarks such as the White House and Capitol and buildings on Wall Street in New York City were at the greatest risk of a domestic terror attack by Muslim extremists, the official said.
Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin testified Wednesday that by early 1996 his agency had developed enough concern about bin Laden to create a special unit to focus on him.
"We were very focused on this issue," Mr. McLaughlin told the commission.
The commission's report did credit the CIA after 1997 with collecting vast amounts of intelligence on bin Laden and al Qaeda, which resulted in thousands of individual reports circulated at the highest levels of government.
Despite this intelligence, "there was no comprehensive estimate of the enemy," the commission report said.
-------- un
Bush, Blair Support U.N. On Iraq Plan
But British Leader Dissents On Sharon's Mideast Proposal
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18865-2004Apr16.html
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an enthusiastic welcome yesterday to a proposal to create a U.N.-appointed caretaker government that would assume power in Iraq on June 30.
The two leaders, embattled by recent uprisings in Iraq that have undermined the occupation of the country, said they were of one mind on their Iraq policy as they embraced the broad outline of a U.N. solution that the Bush administration had sought.
But Bush and Blair presented different views about a new Middle East initiative by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that was endorsed Wednesday by Bush. Blair said he welcomed Sharon's move to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, but the Briton did not endorse two promises by Bush that have infuriated Arab leaders: that Israel, as part of any peace settlement, will not have to accept the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel and will not have to abandon all settlements in the occupied territories.
According to British accounts, Blair had unsuccessfully pleaded with Bush not to embrace the Sharon plan, and Bush's endorsement of it is being portrayed as a major setback for Blair.
Bush, in a question-and-answer session with the prime minister, dismissed a warning from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Bush's action would provoke more violence. "I think this is a fantastic opportunity," Bush said. "The fact that Ariel Sharon said we're going to withdraw from territory is an historic moment."
The president said "we're not going to prejudge the final-status discussions," although Arab leaders said his vow to Sharon -- that under any peace agreement Israel need not accept refugees or return to its pre-1967 borders -- does precisely that.
Mubarak, who had a warm meeting with Bush at the president's Texas ranch on Monday, said he was "shocked" by Bush's action and, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle published Friday, said Bush's move was politically motivated by the presidential election and predicted "much more violence" as a result of it.
Bush and Blair also welcomed a U.N. proposal, announced this week, for a transfer of sovereignty in Iraq to a caretaker government on June 30. Echoing earlier statements by Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Bush hailed the plan without committing to any particulars.
"This week we've seen the outlines of a new Iraqi government that will take the keys of sovereignty," Bush said in a prepared statement. "We welcome the proposals presented by the U.N. Special Envoy Brahimi. He's identified a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people."
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage departed yesterday for Iraq, where he will help to negotiate the transition. The U.N. plan, done at the Bush administration's urging, calls for dissolving the U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council and replacing it with a U.N.-appointed government until elections can be held.
Bush yesterday said the composition of the interim government "is going to be decided by Mr. Brahimi." And Blair, who has long pushed Bush to seek more active cooperation with the United Nations than the president has desired, vowed that "the U.N. will have a central role, as now, in developing the program and machinery for political transition to full Iraqi democracy."
At a news briefing after the two leaders spoke, White House press secretary Scott McClellan declined to describe the United Nations' role as "central," saying the U.N. role is "vital" but "the Iraqi people will have the central role going forward" after June 30.
Though the two leaders were in accord on how to proceed with Iraq, there was evidence of some disagreement over Bush's embrace of the Sharon plan for the Middle East. According to British press accounts, Blair pleaded with Bush to take a more "evenhanded" approach on the issue but was spurned by Bush.
Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned to protest the Iraq war, wrote in a front-page commentary in the Independent newspaper that Bush "could not have delivered a worse snub to Tony Blair on the eve of their meeting." Cook charged that Bush had killed the "road map" to Middle East peace that both countries have sponsored.
Blair said yesterday that "we welcome the Israeli proposal to disengage from the Gaza and parts of the West Bank." He did not mention Bush's statements about territory and refugees, however. "I see this not in any shape or form as pushing the road map to the side; on the contrary, I see it as a way back into the road map," Blair said.
Bush, who has vowed that he still supports the road map, said that despite Sharon's plan, "all final-status issues must still be negotiated between the parties."
State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher acknowledged yesterday that with Wednesday's declaration the United States has taken positions on some issues "that we had not taken as the U.S. government before, although the ideas had been out there in the previous negotiations." He added: "Obviously, that has an influence on the future of negotiations. But it doesn't determine the outcome. The outcome is determined by the parties."
A senior administration official, briefing reporters after the Bush-Sharon news conference on Wednesday, asserted that U.S. policy on the settlements has not changed. Bush, he said, simply acknowledged the reality that Israel would not be expected to completely vacate the West Bank, where more than 200,000 settlers have taken up residence since the 1967 war. "There's nothing in this paper, in what the president said or his letter, that changes our policy on settlements," the official said.
Staff writers Peter Slevin and Robin Wright contributed to this report.
--------
GOVERNING COUNCIL
Politicians React to Plan From the U.N. for Iraqi Rule
April 17, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/middleeast/17REAX.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 16 - Members of Iraq's Governing Council were restrained Friday in their reactions to a United Nations plan for transferring sovereignty to a new caretaker government, but they strongly condemned a related proposal to allow Baath Party members back into the government.
Even as the June 30 date for the transfer approaches, politics has taken a back seat for council members, who said they were preoccupied with the fighting in Falluja and the standoff with an anti-American cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, in Najaf.
The United Nations plan was put forth by Secretary General Kofi Annan's envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. When asked for comment, a senior aide to Adnan Pachachi, one of the council's most prominent members, said Mr. Pachachi was taken up with security issues.
The aide said that although Mr. Pachachi saw some merit to Mr. Brahimi's ideas, "the people who really care about Iraq right now are focused on what really matters, which is helping to avert this crisis."
Mr. Brahimi presented his ideas at a news conference on Wednesday, saying the proposals were preliminary and based on only 10 days of consultations. He called for a caretaker government with a prime minister, president and two vice presidents that would hold sway until elections next January.
He said the council would cease to exist on June 30 and a national conference should be convened to elect a consultative assembly to serve until January.
One council member, Mahmoud Othman, an independent, said the selection of the caretaker government would work if "they can choose people who have the trust of the Iraqi people."
"If they can choose the right people it might succeed," he said. "It depends on how much authority they will have also. It is not just about who, it is also a question of how much authority, how much sovereignty."
Council members said Mr. Brahimi's recommendations generally reflected those set out in a new "transitional administrative law" and agreed with his emphasis on free and fair elections as "the most important milestone."
But they parted ways with Mr. Brahimi on the contentious issue of bringing back members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, who have been barred from government posts.
To Mr. Brahimi, that ban, often referred to as de-Baathification, is a self-defeating policy. "It is difficult to understand," he said, "that thousands upon thousands of professionals who are sorely needed have been dismissed within the de-Baathification process."
Entifadh Qanbar, the spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, a political party that began as an anti-Hussein exile group, said Mr. Brahimi was intruding on Iraq's internal affairs. "I think this is a very unacceptable comment," Mr. Qanbar said. "The de-Baathification is going in accordance with laws. It is a very serious issue for a majority of the Iraqi people."
Hamid al-Kifaey, a spokesman for the Governing Council, said, "The G.C. believes de-Baathification is a council policy and it is going to continue to be." Many Iraqis say it is important that decisions about their future government are not dictated to them by other countries or by the United Nations. Mr. Kifaey said that Iraqis wanted help and support from the United Nations in the transitional period but that "the political process in Iraq must be led by Iraqis."
John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Volcker to Head U.N. Iraq Probe
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18828-2004Apr16.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 16 -- Facing mounting criticism of the United Nations' management of an oil-for-food humanitarian program in prewar Iraq, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday appointed former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to head a panel to probe allegations of corruption at the U.N. agency.
The move is part of a broader effort by U.N. officials to contain the political crisis, and to demonstrate that some blame rests with nations on the U.N. Security Council that failed to close loopholes allowing Saddam Hussein's government and scores of foreign companies to exploit the system. Volcker's appointment comes less than a week before the first of two hearings in the U.S. House into allegations that Iraq was able to illegally siphon billions of dollars from the U.N. program when it was supposed to exchange oil only for civilian goods.
U.S. lawmakers have warned that a credible investigation into corruption in the program is essential to restoring the United Nations' reputation at a time when it is being called upon to help Iraq through its political transition this year and elections early next year.
"Assuming there is wrongdoing found by some U.N. officials, it is important to have an independent and credible investigation into these allegations to put to rest any lingering concerns," said Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. representative of political affairs to the United Nations. "I think Secretary General Annan has made it clear he will do what it takes."
The U.N. came under scrutiny after the head of its oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan of Cyprus, was included on a list of those who allegedly received vouchers to purchase or trade large quantities of Iraqi crude at a discount rate. Sevan has denied the allegations. Annan, asked if he has confidence in Sevan, said, "We are going to investigate these allegations very seriously and with a very thorough independent investigation."
Volcker's panel will probe those charges as well as broader allegations that Hussein skimmed billions of dollars from the 1996 oil-for-food program, which permitted Iraq to sell oil and use that money only for purchases of food, medicine and other civilian goods.
Hussein's government, however, was able to pocket $4.4 billion in cash under the program, in part by secretly demanding extra payments from companies that wanted to purchase Iraqi oil, and by charging illicit commissions to businesses that were sending the permitted humanitarian goods to Iraq, according to the General Accounting Office. It also generated another $5.1 billion in illegal earnings from smuggled oil outside the U.N. program, according to the GAO.
The Bush administration has defended Annan, charging that Russia, France, China and other commercial partners of the former Iraqi government bore greater responsibility for misconduct by routinely frustrating efforts to rein in abuses in the program. "We have had resistance" from those countries "with respect to correcting improprieties and inadequacies" in the program, John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.
The United States says it supports an appeal by Annan and Volcker for passage of a legally binding Security Council resolution that would "compel member states and entities to comply with the secretary general's intention to thoroughly investigate the charges," according to Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
But Russia opposes the adoption of such a resolution. A senior Russian diplomat suggested that the oil-for-food "scandal" is an invention of conservative activists in the United States who also promoted the theory that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "Are they doing these hearings alongside with the WMD inquiries?" Russia's acting U.N. ambassador, Gennady Gatilov, said in an interview. "I personally have very big doubts about any possible corruption on the part of the United Nations."
U.S. and U.N. officials say they have been aware of abuses in the program since late 2000. But they said they could find little hard proof until the collapse of the government. That's when Iraqi civil servants told U.S. officials the regime charged a commission of at least 10 percent on every contract since 2001. "It was the ministry officials themselves who came to us and said, 'Here's what's been going on. Here is the system; here are the percentages,' " Robin L. Raphael, the State Department's Iraq reconstruction coordinator, told the Senate.
U.N. officials have also provided closed-door briefings to U.S. auditors, and House and Senate staffers, in their effort to demonstrate that key council members including Russia, France and China routinely stalled efforts to address abuses in the program.
They have also charged that the United States showed little interest. The United States challenged that assertion, but Negroponte acknowledged that corruption was never a main focus of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, which devoted most of its energy to preventing Iraqi importation of banned weapons.
-------- propaganda wars
Some Dare Call It Treason: Wake Up America!
by Dr. Robert Bowman, USAF Ret.
April 17, 2004
Baltimore Chronicle Commentary
We [who protest the Iraq war] are upholding the spirit of the American Revolution. We are preserving the freedoms that the troops in the desert have a right to come back to.
I am a member of Veterans For Peace, an organization of thousands of combat veterans. All of us have put our life on the line for this country. Most of us opposed the recent invasion of Iraq. We also opposed the first Gulf War, and the sanctions that followed. We opposed the slaughter of fleeing Iraqis on the Road to Basra. We opposed the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. And we opposed the lies upon which the first Gulf War was based. But there was one good thing about that first Gulf War. It ended. And without a wholesale invasion of Iraq. Why?
Here's what the first President Bush wrote about that in his memoirs:
"Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.
My brothers and sisters, it is just too darn bad his son can't read!
I've been severely criticized for speaking out in opposition to this war. So have you, probably. We're told that we're aiding and abetting the enemy. We're told that we should support the president no matter what. We're told that patriotism demands that we support the war. They say that we're abusing the freedoms that our troops are in the Middle East defending. They say we should be ashamed to be protesting while the troops are in the desert protecting our right to do so.
Well I say, Hogwash!
I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon.
I feel an affinity for the troops over there in Iraq. They are my comrades in arms. I admire their sense of honor and sacrifice. I understand why some of them believe they should be there. They have neither the experience nor the wisdom to see past the lies they have been told. The truth is, they are not over there protecting our freedoms. Our freedoms are not under attack from Saddam Hussein or the remnants of his Baathist party. Our freedoms are under attack by John Ashcroft. They are threatened by John Poindexter. They are trampled by Donald Rumsfeld. They are disdained by Dick Cheney. And they are not even understood by George W. Bush. The battle to preserve our freedoms is not taking place in Baghdad and Tikrit. It is taking place in Central Park in New York City, in Lafayette Park in Washington DC, in Ghirardelli Park in San Francisco, and in River Front Park in Melbourne, Florida. The front lines go right down US 1 and up New Haven Avenue.
It is we, here at home, who are the foot soldiers battling to preserve our cherished freedoms by exercising them, in spite of opposition and ridicule. It is we who protect our civil rights through speaking out. We are the Minutemen sounding the alarm against tyranny. We are upholding the spirit of the American Revolution. We are preserving the freedoms that the troops in the desert have a right to come back to. The troops getting shot at in Iraq are not protecting us. We are protecting them, and their honor and their freedoms. We have just completed a forced march through hostile territory to defend their freedoms and ours, and the ideals America was founded on. We are protecting this nation by speaking truth to power. Let us do it loudly and fearlessly and courageously and joyfully, for we are the true patriots!
As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I can tell you that the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON.
Here is the truth that we proclaim. This war has nothing to do with national security or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq. It has to do with money. It has to do with oil. And it has to do with raw imperial power. It is based on a pack of lies. And it is wrong. Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of flagrantly violating the US Constitution, the UN Charter, and international law. What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and TREASON.
It's been said that somewhere in Texas there is a village looking for their idiot. Now that may be funny, but it misses the point. George W. Bush is not an imbecile. He is a TRAITOR.
Before this war started, we knew it would fracture NATO, split the United Nations, separate us from our allies, and destroy the great nation we inherited from our fathers who died in World War II. And it has. We knew it would make our beloved country feared and hated, an outcast from the world community, a pariah among the peoples, and the number one rogue nation on earth. And it has. It has done so based on a pack of lies. My sisters and brothers, that is not stupidity. That is TREASON.
We knew this sadistic corporate war would incense the Arab world, provide thousands of new Osama bin Ladens, and enormously increase the terrorist threat. And it has. We knew it would further endanger the American people and destroy our national security. And it has. That is not stupidity, it is TREASON.
The cabal of neoconservatives at PNAC who planned this war (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Perle, Jeb Bush) even before W became president, knew the American people would not stand for it unless there was a new Pearl Harbor. 9/11 supplied that. Our government was warned. They were warned by the Clinton Administration. They were warned by 11 other countries. And they were specifically warned by an FBI agent that one of them was planning on flying a hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center.
They not only ignored the warnings, they made sure no fighter jets were scrambled to stop it. If they had just done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to be followed, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. This is not stupidity, it is TREASON.
As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than fight in Vietnam. Honor requires that I call this by its right name. It is TREASON.
As one who has devoted his life to the security of this country, I will not stand by and watch an appointed president send our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs for the oil companies without calling it by its right name. It is TREASON.
I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon. We've had enough corporate wars. No more Iraqs. No more El Salvadors. No more Kosovos. No more Colombias. These are not isolated incidents of stupidity. They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial benefit of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism. It violates our Constitution. It endangers our people. And it is TREASON.
As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I can tell you that the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That includes a renegade president. Wake up, America! It is time for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the whole oil mafia to be removed from office and indicted for TREASON. We are the people. We are sovereign. We are the patriots. The whole world is with us. Never allow anyone to intimidate you into silence. Wake up, America! It's time to speak truth to power. God bless America, and God save us from the traitors in our government.
Dr. Robert Bowman was a Col. in the USAF and was Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under President Jimmy Carter. He is Presiding Archbishop, United Catholic Church. He has been president of the Institute for Space and Security Studies since 1982. Before that he was vice-president of Space Communications Company; manager, Advanced Space Programs for General Dynamics; and director, Advanced Space Programs Development for the Department of Defense, directing the "Star Wars" programs. He is also a progressive populist candidate for President of the United States. He may be reached via email at: isss@rmbowman.com, See also his web site: http://www.rmbowman.com.
--------
Rove Regrets Using Banner On Carrier
Associated Press
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18755-2004Apr16.html
President Bush's top political adviser said this week that he regrets the use of a "Mission Accomplished" banner as a backdrop for the president's landing on an aircraft carrier in May to mark the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
"I wish the banner was not up there," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols."
At a meeting with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch newspaper on Thursday, Rove echoed Bush's contention that the phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing their 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq.
The banner has been a source of controversy for the Bush administration and has been mocked many times over the failed search for weapons of mass destruction and the continuing violence in Iraq.
In October, Bush said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later clarified that the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor. It was not clear who paid for the sign.
Rove also predicted that "we're going to win Ohio comfortably" in the race against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Kerry spokeswoman Kathy Roeder said it was "stunning" that Rove feels so confident that he can win a state where millions lack health insurance.
--------
DNC's Ad Mocks Bush Over News Conference
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18769-2004Apr16.html
The Democratic National Committee is trying to hang President Bush with his own words -- and pauses.
A mocking ad posted on the party's Web site yesterday uses footage of Bush struggling at Tuesday's news conference to answer a question from Time magazine's John Dickerson on what has been his biggest mistake in office.
"Hmm. I wish you had given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it," the president is shown saying, slowly. "You know I just, uh, I'm sure something will pop into my head here, in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet. . . . You just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be on coming up with one."
Some suggested mistakes fill the screen: "Mission accomplished." "We found the weapons of mass destruction." "Bring 'em on." The tag line: "Credibility is on the ballot this November."
Terry Holt, Bush's campaign spokesman, said: "The biggest mistake in this election so far is that Kerry's had no serious policy for winning the war on terror. . . . The Democrats simply don't understand the threat we face." Asked about Bush's hesitation at the news conference, Holt said the president had offered "thoughtful responses to questions."
But DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera said the ad captures "a pivotal moment in Bush's presidency."
"We intend to remind voters that Bush has a credibility problem on a host of issues," he said.
The footage would seem to provide irresistible ammunition for a television ad, but a party official who insisted he could not be named if discussing strategy said that would not happen for two reasons. The committee could run into copyright problems by airing CNN footage of the news conference, and Kerry's presidential campaign has signaled that it wants the party to hold off on advertising for now.
Although the DNC has set aside several million dollars for ads, this official said, the Kerry camp believes it would be a waste to start spending now while the president is on the defensive over Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, commission hearings.
Internet ads, which cost little to produce, have become a way for both sides to draw free media coverage without, for example, the $50 million cost of the Bush campaign's television spots so far. The Republican National Committee did an Austin Powers-style spoof of Kerry as an "International Man of Mystery," while Kerry's Web site this week posted a cartoon illustrating the "misery index" under the Bush administration.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Supreme Court Terrorism Glance
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Terrorism-Glance.html
The Supreme Court on Tuesday hears two consolidated appeals from current and former prisoners at the military's detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoners want access to federal courts so they can press their claim that they are being held illegally.
The Supreme Court will consider only the jurisdictional question of whether the men's cases belong in American courts, but the answer will have great significance for future appeals and as a bellwether of the court's views on presidential power in the war on terror.
The Bush administration won its argument in lower courts that the prisoners are foreigners held on foreign soil who cannot use American courts to try to win their freedom. The government calls the more than 600 prisoners ``enemy combatants,'' and says some are terrorists.
The status of the Guantanamo camp will be a main issue for the high court. The land belongs to Cuba, but the base has been leased to the United States for about a century.
The cases are Rasul v. Bush, 03-334 and al-Odah v. United States, 03-343.
On April 28, the court hears two separate cases involving U.S. citizens the government has labeled enemy combatants.
The government maintains that, like the Guantanamo prisoners, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla may be held and interrogated without charges or trial until hostilities are over. Lawyers for the men, and their supporters, claim the detentions are unconstitutional.
Hamdi was captured during the war with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. He was sent to Guantanamo, but later transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina when U.S. authorities verified that he was been born in Louisiana and was thus a U.S. citizen. He was raised in Saudi Arabia.
Padilla is a convert to Islam who was arrested in Chicago two years ago on suspicion that he was part of a plot to detonate a radioactive bomb. Initially under the control of the regular, civilian court system, Padilla later was transferred to military custody and placed in the same brig with Hamdi.
The administration lost its argument in a lower court, which ordered Padilla be released or his case returned to the civilian courts. That ruling is on hold.
Neither has been charged with a crime, and until recently they were not allowed to meet with a lawyer.
Together the cases allow the high court to consider whether the war on terror allows this kind of indefinite detention of Americans, whether captured overseas or at home.
The cases are Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 03-6696 and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 03-1027.
-------
High Court to Hear First Terrorism Cases
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Terrorism.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A few days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia crowded into a chapel in Rome for a Mass honoring the dead. The next week, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wept as she stood at the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers.
The personal consequences of the attacks and their aftermath were swift. But it has taken until now for the justices to fully reckon with the legal ramifications. The court is poised to hear the first major cases to arise from the Bush administration's fight against terrorism.
``They become the most important cases because they are the first cases,'' said Steven Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``The first cases always go a long way toward establishing the rules.''
On Tuesday, the court hears from lawyers representing some of the more than 600 foreigners held captive and essentially incommunicado at a U.S. military prison camp in Cuba. The justices must decide whether the prisoners may challenge their detention and treatment in U.S. courts.
On April 28, the justices hear two cases testing the president's power to label American citizens ``enemy combatants'' and hold them in open-ended military custody, without charges or trial.
Rulings in all three cases are expected by June. They will mark the high court's most significant statements in decades on the balance of security and liberty in wartime.
Historians have noted that the courts tend to give the president and other leaders greater leeway in times of war and give greater weight to civil liberties in peacetime.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a history buff, has written that ``judges, like other citizens, do not wish to hinder a nation's `war effort.'''
What Rehnquist and the court he leads say now will depend in large part on whether a majority of justices equates a war on terrorism with a traditional war that has a clearly defined end.
If so, the court could agree that fighting terrorism requires a reconsideration of government power and of the breadth of protection offered by the Constitution and the courts.
It has been more than a generation since the high court dealt with major wartime cases. The most relevant cases date to World War II, even to the Civil War.
``The question is whether they will essentially declare the Constitution silent when it comes to the war against terror,'' said University of Pennsylvania constitutional law professor Nathaniel Persily.
He predicts the court will chart a middle course -- perhaps ruling against the administration in the case of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but siding with the White House in one or more of the cases involving U.S. citizens.
Many of the Guantanamo captives are suspected Taliban or al-Qaida foot soldiers captured in or near Afghanistan; some may be victims of circumstance. Most have been held for two years or longer and interrogated frequently. The administration has let some of the captives go and has begun the process of convening military tribunals to try others.
The administration deliberately housed the detainees beyond U.S. shores. The government maintains the men have no right to use American courts. The detentions allow interrogations that can prevent future attacks and prevent captured enemies from rejoining the fight, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer argued in a court filing.
The cases of Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla hit closer to home for Americans. Both are U.S. citizens, although Hamdi was raised in Saudi Arabia. Both are in a Navy brig in South Carolina and until recently neither had seen his lawyer nor known that his case was before the Supreme Court.
Hamdi was captured overseas. He was at Guantanamo until authorities verified he had been born in Louisiana. Padilla was arrested in Chicago, where he grew up, on suspicion of a plot to detonate a radioactive bomb.
The question for the high court is not whether Hamdi and Padilla are guilty, but whether the fight against terrorism allows the government to declare the pair ineligible for the usual constitutional protections afforded traditional defendants.
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov
-------- homeland security
Bush Urges Renewal of Patriot Act
April 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Terrorism.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Declaring the Patriot Act a vital tool in the war on terror, President Bush says Congress would place the nation at greater risk of attack if it fails to renew the law's wide-ranging law enforcement powers.
Key elements of the post-Sept. 11 law are set to expire next year and ``some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule,'' Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
``To abandon the Patriot Act would deprive law enforcement and intelligence officers of needed tools in the war on terror, and demonstrate willful blindness to a continuing threat.''
Several conservative Republicans have joined liberal Democrats in saying that portions of the law are too intrusive on Americans' lives. They are threatening to allow the provisions to die at the end of next year.
Some want to impose more judicial oversight of how police and prosecutors conduct investigations.
``Our government's first duty is to protect the American people'' and the Patriot Act ``fulfills that duty in a way that is fully consistent with constitutional protections,'' Bush said.
Asked Friday whether Bush was making a campaign issue of the Patriot Act, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president is ``going to continue to talk about it'' and there are ``some clear choices on this issue ... in this election.''
Bush's remarks strike a theme that he will return to next week, beginning Monday in Pennsylvania, a state that is key to his re-election hopes.
There, he and law-enforcement officers will stress the Patriot Act's importance. On Tuesday, the president will speak about the Patriot Act again with law-enforcement officers in Buffalo, N.Y., the site of recent criminal cases against the Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni-Americans convicted of supporting terrorism by briefly attending al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
``Since I signed the Patriot Act into law, federal investigators have disrupted terror cells in at least six American cities,'' said Bush. He said that since Sept. 11, the Justice Department has charged over 300 people in terrorism-related investigations, more than half of whom have been convicted or pleaded guilty.
A recent study concluded that while the Justice Department has sharply increased prosecution of terrorism-related cases since the Sept. 11 attacks, many fizzled and few produced significant prison time.
Bush says the Patriot Act must not be weakened.
The law ``tore down the artificial wall between the FBI and CIA, and enhanced their ability to share the information needed to hunt terrorists,'' said the president.
He said the Patriot Act also marked a major shift in law enforcement priorities in which ``we are no longer emphasizing only the investigation of past crimes, but also the prevention of future attacks.''
Because of the law, FBI agents can better conduct electronic surveillance and wiretaps on suspected terrorists, he said.
--------
Bush: Renew Patriot Act or Else
Associated Press
Apr. 17, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63109,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_8.com
WASHINGTON -- Declaring the Patriot Act a vital tool in the war on terror, President Bush says Congress would place the nation at greater risk of attack if it fails to renew the law's wide-ranging law enforcement powers.
Key elements of the post-Sept. 11 law are set to expire next year and "some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
"To abandon the Patriot Act would deprive law enforcement and intelligence officers of needed tools in the war on terror, and demonstrate willful blindness to a continuing threat."
Several conservative Republicans have joined liberal Democrats in saying that portions of the law are too intrusive on Americans' lives. They are threatening to allow the provisions to die at the end of next year. Some want to impose more judicial oversight of how police and prosecutors conduct investigations.
"Our government's first duty is to protect the American people" and the Patriot Act "fulfills that duty in a way that is fully consistent with constitutional protections," Bush said.
Asked Friday whether Bush was making a campaign issue of the Patriot Act, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president is "going to continue to talk about it" and there are "some clear choices on this issue ... in this election."
Bush's remarks strike a theme that he will return to next week, beginning Monday in Pennsylvania, a state that is key to his re-election hopes.
There, he and law-enforcement officers will stress the Patriot Act's importance. On Tuesday, the president will speak about the Patriot Act again with law-enforcement officers in Buffalo, N.Y., the site of recent criminal cases against the Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni-Americans convicted of supporting terrorism by briefly attending al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
"Since I signed the Patriot Act into law, federal investigators have disrupted terror cells in at least six American cities," said Bush. He said that since Sept. 11, the Justice Department has charged over 300 people in terrorism-related investigations, more than half of whom have been convicted or pleaded guilty.
A recent study concluded that while the Justice Department has sharply increased prosecution of terrorism-related cases since the Sept. 11 attacks, many fizzled and few produced significant prison time.
Bush says the Patriot Act must not be weakened. The law "tore down the artificial wall between the FBI and CIA, and enhanced their ability to share the information needed to hunt terrorists," said the president.
He said the Patriot Act also marked a major shift in law enforcement priorities in which "we are no longer emphasizing only the investigation of past crimes, but also the prevention of future attacks."
Because of the law, FBI agents can better conduct electronic surveillance and wiretaps on suspected terrorists, he said.
-------- immigration / refugees
9/11 Panel Calls Policies on Immigration Ineffective
April 17, 2004
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/national/17IMMI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 16 - The commission investigating the 9/11 attacks has concluded that immigration policies promoted as essential to keeping the country safe from future attacks have been largely ineffective, producing little, if any, information leading to the identification or apprehension of terrorists.
The commission said one program had proved so fruitless that it was discontinued after less than a year.
The critical assessment was released this week as part of a preliminary finding to a final report due in July. It returned a spotlight to programs that have been controversial from the start, aimed mostly at people, like the 9/11 hijackers, from Muslim or Arab countries. Critics have said the government engaged in a wholesale roundup of these people, kept them in jail for months, in some cases without access to lawyers, and conducted closed-door legal hearings on their status.
Many of the libertarian and pro-immigration groups that have criticized the Bush administration for what they deem the unfair and unnecessary focus on these groups hailed the findings. They said that as the first independent assessment of government actions after 9/11, it affirmed their misgivings.
"Clearly, the government was overreaching," said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, about the immigration programs. "We raised concerns from the beginning that they not only interfere with time-honored civil liberties, but they were likely to prove to be ineffective."
But a former Justice Department official involved in the development of the programs defended them as critical to counterterrorism efforts.
Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate for Congress in Kansas who served as counsel to Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2001 to 2003, said the programs had yielded great benefits by leading to the identification and deportation of hundreds of people with criminal backgrounds or indirect ties to terrorism.
Mr. Kobach said the commission viewed the impact of the programs too narrowly, drawing conclusions based solely on the application of antiterrorism laws, rather than others, like immigration law. "The commission is looking for a terrorism label affixed to an individual," Mr. Kobach said in an interview. "But it's failing to realize that just because the F.B.I. hasn't gotten to the point of applying the terrorism label, it doesn't mean the individual is not a terrorist."
Perhaps the most controversial of the programs was one that sought to identify "special interest" immigrants, which resulted in the arrests of more than 700 people, most from Middle Eastern countries, who were charged with violating immigration laws and held for months, in many cases, until federal agents cleared them of any involvement in terror-related activities.
The commission report echoed concerns raised when these programs were initiated. The concerns led to an investigation by the inspector general at the Justice Department that found that officials "made little attempt to distinguish" between immigrants who had ties to terrorism and those who did not.
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil libertarian organization, called the detention program misguided, saying: "Hundreds of people's rights were violated, and, very importantly, the United States is now seen around the world as a country where Arabs and Muslims can be arrested in secret and held without charges. That's a very dangerous development in terms of a country promoting democracy and human rights as an antidote to terrorism."
But Mr. Kobach said the detention program had proved more valuable than the commission knew, leading to the deportation of at least three men with "strong, substantial connections to terrorism," including a roommate of one of the 9/11 hijackers, an immigrant who confessed to attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and another who was found with 75 pictures of the World Trade Center.
In response to the inspector general's report, the Department of Homeland Security issued new guidelines last month to streamline the process for handling cases involving immigrants held in connection with national security concerns.
The commission report also disparaged a program that requires additional screening for visa applications from 26 predominantly Muslim countries. It charged that investigators had not been processing them in a timely fashion and that "no terrorists have been uncovered" by the effort. The report also cited a program, begun in November 2001, that delayed visa applications from the same countries and a few others. The commission concluded that the program, which was shut down 11 months later, "yielded no useful antiterrorist information and led to no visa denials."
Other critics said the two programs had discouraged students, artists, entrepreneurs and other travelers from visiting the United States and alienated a community "that was as shocked as anyone by the 9/11 attacks," in the words of Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group.
But Mr. Kobach defended both efforts, saying that the first was necessary for the security of the country and that the second was a temporary and necessary action while efforts were under way to make sure federal investigators could scrutinize the names of visa applicants.
The commission criticized a fourth program, the Absconder Apprehension Initiative. Its intent was to round up 5,000 immigrants from countries with a Qaeda presence who were facing deportation and to expedite their expulsion. The commission found that by early 2003, 1,139 had been apprehended, a group that included 803 who had been deported, 224 who were awaiting deportation and 45 who were being prosecuted on other criminal charges.
But so far, the commission report said, "we have not learned that any of the absconders were deported under a terrorism statute, prosecuted for terrorist-related crimes or linked in any way to terrorism."
Mr. Kobach asserted that the so-called absconders were already in violation of immigration laws and some were wanted for other criminal violations, including more than 100 who were found to be sex offenders.
"In many cases," he said, "we have kicked terrorists out of the country over garden-variety immigration laws."
-------- investigations
9/11 Panel Points to Missed Chances
Publicizing Threat Might Have Halted 'Jumpy' Hijackers
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18864-2004Apr16?language=printer
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has concluded that the hijackers would probably have postponed their strike if the U.S. government had announced the arrest of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 or had publicized fears that he intended to hijack jetliners.
A report on the case released this week noted that "publicity about the threat" posed by Moussaoui "might have disrupted the plot." Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean (R) said the conclusion is based in part on extensive psychological profiles of the Sept. 11 hijackers, who were "very careful and very jumpy."
"Everything had to go right for them," Kean said. "Had they felt that one of them had been discovered, there is evidence it would have been delayed."
Such a delay could have given the FBI, the CIA, and British and French intelligence services more time to discover Moussaoui's ties to al Qaeda and the terrorist cell in Germany that planned the attack. The FBI also might have had more time to track down two hijackers who had entered the country but were not located before the attacks.
These and other findings disclosed by the commission this week make it clear that the scope of missed opportunities in the Moussaoui case was broader than previously believed. A wide array of U.S. counterterrorism officials and foreign intelligence services -- including the director of the CIA -- knew about Moussaoui's arrest but repeatedly missed the clues he offered to the catastrophe that was about to unfold, the reports and testimony show.
The findings have led some commission members and investigators to believe that it is plausible, perhaps even likely, that the terrorists' plan could have been detected if Moussaoui's case had been pursued more vigorously.
"A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui could conceivably have unearthed his connections to the Hamburg cell, though this might have required an extensive effort, with help from foreign governments," investigators wrote in a staff report released this week. "The publicity about the threat also might have disrupted the plot. But this would have been a race against time."
Timothy J. Roemer, a commission member and former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said the Moussaoui case "is really a plausible way to deflect parts of 9/11, as plausible as they come."
According to staff reports and testimony this week, CIA Director George J. Tenet and his senior deputies were briefed on the case within days of Moussaoui's arrest, but never told the president, the White House counterterrorism group or even the acting director of the FBI, who learned about the case on the day of the attacks. The CIA brief given to Tenet was titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."
There were numerous other mistakes, according to the commission and previous accounts. The FBI and immigration agents who arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota as he sought flight training feared he wanted to hijack an airplane, but they were blocked by FBI lawyers from searching his belongings. The FAA was warned Sept. 4 about Moussaoui's clumsy attempts to learn to fly jetliners, but it never warned the airlines or the public. British and French intelligence services were queried, but the British in particular were slow to help.
Moussaoui was ultimately charged as a conspirator after the attacks and is jailed in Alexandria awaiting federal trial. He has publicly declared his allegiance to al Qaeda but denied he was part of the plan to strike New York and Washington.
Moussaoui was first detained on immigration charges in Eagan, Minn., on Aug. 17, 2001, by FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service agents. A flight school in which Moussaoui had enrolled reported that he was hostile and suspicious, and that he wanted to learn to fly a Boeing 747 despite minimal skills or experience.
The staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the panel is formally known, recounted familiar parts of this tale in reports released this week. The FBI agent notified headquarters but was rebuffed in attempts to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and other belongings because of legal squabbling over the need for better evidence tying Moussaoui to terrorists, which FBI officials believed was necessary to secure a warrant.
The agent notified the FBI's legal attaches in London and Paris to try to gain more information about Moussaoui, a French citizen and former London resident. And because the Minneapolis FBI office and its lawyer, whistle-blower Colleen Rowley, were frustrated by what they perceived as a lack of interest from headquarters, the agent also contacted "an FBI detailee and a CIA analyst" at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, according to commission staff and previous accounts.
But what had not been clear before this week was how high, and how quickly, details of the case went from there. Tenet testified Wednesday that he was briefed on the case on Aug. "23rd or 24th." Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin and director of operations James L. Pavitt had learned about it at least a couple days earlier.
Despite the apparent urgency with which the arrest was treated and warnings that summer of an impending terrorist attack, Tenet acknowledged that he and his aides did not notify the White House or counterterrorism officials. In part, CIA officials say, this was a matter of protocol: The original information from the Minneapolis FBI agent was passed along outside usual channels.
"We immediately tried to undertake a way to figure out how to help the FBI get data and deal with this particular problem," Tenet testified.
Tenet also maintained that there was no reason, based on the evidence available at the time, to alert President Bush or to share information about Moussaoui during a Sept. 4, 2001, Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism. "All I can tell you is, it wasn't the appropriate place," Tenet said. "I just can't take you any farther than that."
Tenet had told commission investigators that "no connection to al Qaeda was apparent to him" before the attacks.
Roemer said he found it "shocking" that Tenet and his deputies did not share the Moussaoui information more widely, especially in light of the Aug. 6 briefing document that Bush had received about the domestic terror threat titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US."
"This moved its way up the chain at the CIA very quickly," Roemer said. "Why doesn't it continue to circulate? . . . I would think 'Extremist Learns to Fly' would be treated at least as a discussion item, if not a Molotov cocktail."
Daniel Benjamin, a national security official in the Clinton administration, said, "There is such a rich history of jihadists learning to fly, it is really surprising that more was not made of this."
Two other shortcomings were cited as particularly important by investigators. First, the panel noted, the Moussaoui case "was not handled by the British as a priority." Two days after the attacks, the British discovered information that placed Moussaoui in an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan -- which would have provided the FBI the evidence necessary to search his belongings. The panel concluded that if the British had treated the case more urgently, they could have learned about Moussaoui's ties to the camp before the attacks.
Second, the commission staff said, U.S. officials failed to check with terrorist operatives in custody, including convicted millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam. After the attacks, Ressam picked Moussaoui out of a group of photos and said he remembered him from the Afghanistan training camp. "Either the British information or the Ressam identification would have broken the logjam," the commission wrote.
One subject of the panel's inquiry not discussed during this week's testimony was a fledgling deportation plan that called for taking Moussaoui on a government jet to Paris, where he would have been turned over to the French intelligence service, which has more leeway to conduct searches. Moussaoui's computer included, among other things, telephone numbers linked to Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the key organizers of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.
But that plan may not have mattered in the end: Moussaoui would have arrived in Paris on Sept. 17.
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Trout-Protection Data Questioned Costs but No Benefits Published
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18768-2004Apr16.html
SEATTLE, April 16 -- In a report analyzing the economics of protecting a threatened fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Bush administration this month deleted all references to possible monetary benefits.
Instead, in releasing the report on bull trout and their vast habitat in four states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made public only those parts of an analysis that detailed the costs of saving the fish.
They were put at $230 million to $300 million over 10 years, adversely affecting hydropower, logging and highway construction.
Gone from the published analysis, which was written for the Fish and Wildlife Service by a Missoula, Mont., consulting firm called Bioeconomics Inc., were 55 pages that detailed the benefits of protecting bull trout.
Estimated at $215 million over 20 to 30 years, they include revenue from sport fishing, reduced drinking water costs and increased water for irrigation farmers, especially late in the summer when streams run low.
An official for the Fish and Wildlife Service said the benefits analysis was cut because of its methodology. It was released by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan, two Montana-based environmental groups whose lawsuits have forced the federal government to list the bull trout as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The deletion was first reported in the Missoulian, a Montana daily.
On Friday, a number of environmental groups accused the Bush administration of publicizing facts that support its political objectives while ignoring facts that do not.
"The Bush administration will go to any lengths to do what its corporate sponsors want it to do," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
In Washington, officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service strongly objected to this characterization of their economic analysis.
"It is not politics," said Chris Nolin, chief of the division of conservation and classification at the Fish and Wildlife Service.
She said the chapter on the economic benefits of protecting habitat for bull trout had to be deleted from the published report because it did not conform to analytical standards prescribed by the Office of Management and Budget.
"OMB uses very strict methodology" when it comes to calculating the benefits of environmental action, Nolin said, adding that the agency has "told us repeatedly in the past to remove this kind of analysis" from public reports.
The federal government, however, often publicizes analyses of the benefits of Bush administration proposals for environmental cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, found $113 billion in benefits over 10 years from provisions of the administration's 2003 Clear Skies Act.
Under a court order, the Fish and Wildlife Service must decide by Sept. 21 how much of a proposed 18,000 miles of streams and 532,000 acres of lakes should be protected habitat for bull trout in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
"It is not a cost-benefit analysis. It is a policy decision," Nolin said.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service may exclude some habitat from protection if there are sufficient economic benefits. It cannot, however, make exclusions that would result in the extinction of a protected species.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Anger at restrictions on Vanunu
Duncan Campbell
Saturday April 17, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1193735,00.html
Protests were lodged yesterday against the restrictions that are to be imposed on the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who is due to be released from prison next week.
Vanunu, who will have served 18 years for revealing details of Israel's nuclear arsenal, is to be forbidden to have contact with foreigners either in person or by correspondence. He will not be allowed to leave Israel or move from his home town without reporting to police.
"This is ludicrous and in breach of international law," said the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who is to travel to Israel next week as one of around 90 supporters who plan to welcome Vanunu on his release from Shekma prison in Ashkelon.
Mr Corbyn said at a press conference in London that one of the reasons for going to Israel was to demonstrate the international concern about Vanunu. Around 40 British supporters, 30 Americans and others from Japan, Poland, Italy and elsewhere in Europe are due to be outside the prison for his release on Wednesday.
The restrictions put on Vanunu are based on clauses 108 and 109 of the state of emergency statute passed by the British mandate in 1945. Vanunu will be allowed to choose where he lives, but will not be able to leave that town or city without police permission. He will not be allowed to go near foreign embassies, borders, ports or airports.
He will also be barred from talking about his work as a technician at the Dimona nuclear plant, or the circumstances in which he was kidnapped by the Israeli security services in Italy in 1986.
The restrictions are due to last for six months, after which they can be renewed. If he is found to be in breach of the restrictions, he could face another trial.
David Polden, of the Campaign to Free Vanunu, said that it was unclear whether Vanunu would be able to talk to his adoptive parents, the American peace campaigners Nick and Mary Eoloff. It was also unclear whether he would be able to answer journalists' questions, even if they are directed to him via a third party.
Susannah York, the actor, who has corresponded with Vanunu, said that he was anxious for a non-confrontational exit from prison.
"I want to look forward, not back," he had written to her in a letter 10 days ago.
[More Vanunu stories above under "--- israel"]
----
Former PM held in Nepal pro-democracy protest
FOREIGN STAFF,
Sat 17 Apr 2004
Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=431932004
NEPALESE police made more than 1,000 arrests - including that of a former prime minister - yesterday as pro-democracy demonstrators shouted slogans against the king and marched through the capital, Katmandu.
At least a dozen protesters suffered mild injuries when police used batons to disperse them. The former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was among those arrested in Ratna Park, where demonstrators from five political parties had been gathering for several days.
Police said they were detained for flouting a ban on protests. Thirty-one journalists who had gone to cover the rally were also arrested, though it was not clear why.
The demonstrators, holding banners and red flags of the Nepali Congress (Democratic) Party, called for King Gyanendra to leave the Himalayan kingdom or reinstate its democratic government.
Several protests have been held since the king dissolved parliament and dismissed Mr Deuba as prime minister in October 2002, accusing him of incompetence and failure to control a Maoist insurgency. Gyanendra then assumed executive powers.
On Thursday, police detained more than 2,000 protesters. Most were released the same night, but police said 22 remained in custody yesterday for questioning.
----
Anti-War Protest at Downing Street
By Alan Jones, Industrial Correspondent,
Scotsman
Sat 17 Apr 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2792046
Anti-war campaigners were taking their protest to the front door of the Prime Minister today with a demonstration outside Downing Street.
The Stop The War Coalition, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain said they wanted to highlight the continued "slaughter" of people in Iraq.
"The illegal war against Iraq and continued occupation is leading to increased death and an escalation of violence," said CND chairwoman Kate Hudson.
"This will not end until there is an immediate cessation of hostilities."
Andrew Murray, chairman of the STWC, said the anti-war groups had no intention of remaining silent.
"The people of Iraq are demanding that the occupation of their country cease. We support their right to determine their own future, free from foreign interference."
-------
Kucinich, in Oregon, urges Patriot Act repeal
Comes to Central Oregon on Monday
From Bend.com news sources
Saturday, April 17, 2004 http://www.bend.com/news/ar_view%5E3Far_id%5E3D14932.htm
April 17 - PORTLAND - As President Bush on Saturday called upon Congress to renew the controversial Patriot Act, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said, "It's time for the Democratic Party to take a strong stand and call for the repeal of the Patriot Act."
Kucinich, campaigning in Oregon in advance of that state's May 18 primary election (including a Central Oregon swing on Monday), said that he is making the repeal of the Patriot Act one of the principal issues he intends to press with the leadership of the Democratic Party for inclusion in the party's platform.
"It's time for our party to show some backbone. It's time to stand for the repeal of the Patriot Act. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I spoke against it, I voted against it, and I introduced legislation for its repeal," said the Ohio congressman. "In campaigning across America, it's unmistakably clear that there is an almost universal rejection of the Patriot Act."
"Democrats can strengthen the Party's commitment to basic civil liberties by standing for the repeal of the Patriot Act and by blocking the government's attempt to continue pursuing a policy of unreasonable search and seizure, of snooping into the private lives of our citizens, and of violating our Constitutional rights and freedoms."
Kucinich concluded: "The Patriot Act was passed in a climate of fear. Fear and democracy are inconsistent. It is wrong for the United States government to ask us our citizens to defend our country and then to ignore and violate the very rights we are called upon to defend."
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