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NUCLEAR
THIS NUCLEAR AGE
Dirty bomb dust proves deadly
Plutonium Files
Beijing's peacemaking travails
The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry:
ITALY & URANIUM: OPPOSITION DEMANDS A DEBATE SOON
Government above the law?
The Only Thing Depleting is Human Life
US Group Urges Europe to Tighten Efforts
Pakistan tightens controls on nuclear proliferation
Pakistan, China sign deal on nuclear power plant
Evidence of Iran Nuclear Plans Found
Iran says will keep its side of nuclear agreement
Source: Some in U.S. Think Syria Has Atomic Centrifuges
Developing missile defense
Nuclear Terror Scenario Exposes Vulnerable World
INEEL: tanks clean-up advancing
Damaged Davis-Besse Reactor Could Have Lasted 13 Months
Reducing K Basins' risk
Panel Weighs Nuclear Cleanup Law Changes
"Public Information Circular for Shipments of Irradiated Reactor Fuel"
MILITARY
British Troops Face Allegations of Abuse
British Official Vows a Thorough Inquiry
Boeing Buys Ads to Defend Proposed Tanker Deal
Boeing Acquires UAV Developer Frontier Systems Inc.
An Al Qaeda 'Chemist' and the Quest for Ricin
Shiite Leaders Urge Cleric to Abandon Cities
U.S. Begins First Major Assault on Iraqi Militia Led by Cleric
Report: Ministry Funded Illegal Outposts
U.S. Retreats From Bush Remarks on Sharon Plan
Japanese officials seek to amend constitution
Pakistan Protests U.S. Troop Border Violation
Jailed Iraqis hidden from Red Cross, says US army
Military lawyers attack Guantánamo tribunals
Probes of Detainee Deaths Reported
Army Discloses Criminal Inquiry on Prison Abuse
U.S. to Cut Iraq Prison Population
UN nuclear watchdog fights heavy water, sustains fresh water
138,000 Troops to Stay in Iraq Through 2005
U.S. Commander to Keep 135,000 Troops in Iraq Through 2005
Prison Scandal Indicates Gap in U.S. Chain of Command
Private Guards' Status Outlined by Pentagon
U.S. addresses control of security companies
Interrogators pressured to make inmates talk
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Marijuana Abuse Is Up Among U.S. Adults
Explosives Detector Tested at Md. Station
Some Flights Get Extra Security
No Plan to Hurt 9/11 Detainees, Ex-Jailer Says
Report Warns of Infiltration by Al Qaeda in U.S. Prisons
U.S. Resident Claims Torture by Troops
POLITICS
9/11 Panel Members Giving to Campaigns
Vietnam veterans call Kerry unfit
Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush
Staffers Quit at U.S.-Backed Paper
'Godzilla': Rerelease restores anti-nuclear message for classic
Bush to denounce abuse on Arab TV
Rape Rooms: A Chronology
Bush Tells Arab World That Prisoner Abuse Was 'Abhorrent'
House Panel Urges Defeat of Attack Bill
ENERGY
Farmers, Ranchers Can Apply for Renewable Energy Grants
OTHER
Reaching for Control of Carcinogenic Chemicals
Fires Erupt in Southern Calif.
Lab Created 5 Babies for Stem Cells
Rise in Blood Pressure Among Children Cited
U.N.: World Must Brace for Diseases
ACTIVISTS
G - 8 Protesters Accuse Police of Spying
60 Ex-Diplomats Protest Bush's Alignment with Sharon
-------- NUCLEAR
THIS NUCLEAR AGE
Part 1: US neo-cons and war
By Ritt Goldstein,
May 5, 2004
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE06Aa01.html
Part 2: Preemption and an arms race with itself http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE05Aa01.html
Part 3: Iran, North Korea and proliferation http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE07Ak05.html
Present United States nuclear policy appears on the verge of undoing decades of nuclear weapons taboos. But for some in the administration, that's good news, and indications exist that it was the concepts embodied in a conservative think-tank report which helped frame the parameters of this transition.
Dr Keith Payne was the Bush administration's deputy assistant secretary of defense for forces and policy until June 2003. That means that he was the Pentagon's key civilian figure involved in how the US views the retention, development and use of nuclear weapons. He is also someone who believes in the efficacy of nuclear weapons and warfare. And a major push to create new nuclear weapons and substantively expand America's nuclear weapons complex is presently ongoing.
Highlighting a perspective long held by the nuclear hawks was an article Payne co-authored during the summer of 1980 preceding Ronald Reagan's election, "Victory is Possible". It stated that America "should not launch a nuclear strike if expected US casualties are likely to involve 100 million or more American citizens", with the implication being that anything under that number was somehow "acceptable". But it was concurrently noted that a good offensive plan, "wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce US casualties to approximately 20 million", and the US abrogated the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty to build just such defenses.
Notably, in his article Payne condemned the US defense community for regarding "strategic nuclear war not as war but as a holocaust". And his ideas appear to have gained a resonance within the Bush White House.
While a US nuclear weapons debate is ongoing, and there is Congressional, bi-partisan opposition to a number of administration proposals, Payne is perceived by many to have effectively shaped a US movement towards the development and use of the nuclear option. A January 2001 report he directed while president of the conservative National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), "Rationale and Requirements for US Nuclear Forces and Arms Control", was heavily reflected in the administration's subsequent December 31, 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a document laying out America's official nuclear weapons policy.
US nuclear weapons and policy expert Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, drew parallels for Asia Times Online between the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) foreign-policy blueprint, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", and the NIPP's nuclear weapons plan. Both were drafted by groups heavily comprised of those who are presently within the Bush administration, both were key documents in influencing official US policy.
Cirincione described the present US nuclear push as "an ideological issue that has become a key part of the agenda for leading administration officials". And the nuclear issue appears to devastatingly parallel prior policy undertaking by America's neo-conservative community.
In a description of the process through which the administration came to embrace the philosophy provided by PNAC, one often heard descriptions of small groups of ideologues, "like minded individuals", often from the conservative think-tanks, placed strategically within various offices of the federal bureaucracy. An article this journalist wrote last October for the Sydney Morning Herald, "Cheney's hawks hijacking policy", reported on the phenomena, and the revelations a former senior-level Pentagon staffer provided in blowing the whistle on the political network, and the way these political appointees precipitated Iraq's invasion.
"How do these crazy ideas get brought into the administration and adopted so quickly - they worked it out beforehand," said Cirincione, with his remarks not aimed at the Iraq invasion but America's nuclear posture. He added that it wasn't a conspiracy, but rather groups of committed ideologues who, "when they came in, it [a US nuclear posture plan] was all ready to go."
Numerous media reports on the origins of the Iraq invasion have similarly detailed allegations of a limited group of ideologues who had a pre-existing plan that they had pushed. Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, was particularly cited for his involvement via the now discredited Office of Special Plans, which was under his authority. Feith has also been particularly active on the administration's nuclear questions, with his appointment to the government's Nuclear Weapons Council formally urged this February.
Highlighting an alternative perspective within US nuclear circles, Cirincione pointedly noted: "There are dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons scientists who think it's crazy that we need new weapons or new more usable nuclear weapons ... there's a small handful of people behind this."
Reflecting what Cirincione called the small but "quite well placed", US nuclear constituency, the NPR stated: "Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope and purpose will complement other military capabilities." With this, the nuclear option is being effectively integrated into the range of available military responses, a triumph for those hawks who have long viewed such weapons as only a particular military tool.
In keeping with such a philosophy, a new generation of nuclear weaponry is being sought, particularly specialized-use weapons and so-called "mini-nukes", weapons with a power of less than 5 kilotons of TNT. In early August 2003, a one-day conference on such nuclear weaponry was held at US Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Congressional Research Service notes that Admiral James Ellis, commander, US Strategic Command, wrote that Strategic Command had an interest in "examining the merits of precision, increased penetration and reduced yields for our nuclear weapons". But as to the actual demand for such weaponry, the National Nuclear Security Administration's (the agency which oversees nuclear weapons production) director had acknowledged that there was "no requirement to actually develop any new [nuclear] weapons at this time".
While similar nuclear force concepts to those being proposed had been rejected during the height of the Cold War, and eschewed by America's last three presidents, this administration appears to be making them policy. Beyond this, the Bush administration will spend over 50 percent more on nuclear weapons this year, and for the next five years, than was the yearly average during the Cold War (in 2004 dollar terms).
While President George W Bush has stated that he will cut the number of nuclear warheads the US deploys from 6,000 to somewhere between 1,700 and 2,200, critics charge this has served to obscure the reality of the substantive weapons programs, and their cost. It's also charged that the cuts have helped conceal the attempt to eliminate institutional and psychological barriers between nuclear and conventional weaponry.
In a May 13, 2003 report, the BBC noted that Pentagon officials had sought such nuclear-friendly changes since the Summer of 2002, when they began "to develop plans to reshape the US nuclear arsenal to take account of the new doctrine of pre-emption". Reflecting on the pursuit of these weapons programs, former US vice president Al Gore has been quoted describing the administration's weapons initiative as "true madness".
In the NIPP report, one example of the potential application of nuclear weapons was their use against mobile missile launchers, such as those the Iraqis used in the first Gulf War of 1991. The report suggested that if the locations of launchers couldn't be pinpointed for a conventional strike, "suspected deployment areas might be subjected to multiple nuclear strikes".
Issues of civilian casualties, radioactive fallout, long-term environmental contamination, and the very illegitimacy of a nuclear weapon's use, all appear to have been discounted from the military equation.
US security and defense expert John Pike of Global Security told Asia Times Online that the American military would not seek to employ such "nuclear strikes", and the ongoing nuclear initiative does not appear militarily driven.
Pike elaborated on the ideologues' current drive for increasing US nuclear forces, saying: "It's been part of their doctrinal creed for so long that it's reflexive on their part ... it's their religion." More ominously, Pike noted that Payne "has always understood that a splendid first-strike capability, a splendid damage denial posture, which was what they wanted during the Cold War ... that missile defense has always been the key to that. And now they're working on it."
In a July 15, 2001 article in the Observer of Britain, "Dr Strangelove rides again", broad concerns presented by the evolving US nuclear posture were reported. "The real issue, experts insist, is not whether an anti-missile system is feasible or desirable, but what kind of military and diplomatic policies a US ... would enact under a protective umbrella able to neutralize the threat of a nuclear strike on the US mainland.
In this context, it is important to note that the evolution of the administration's nuclear posture preceded September 11.
Pike knows Payne dating from the early 1980s, when the two regularly debated the Reagan administration's Star Wars program in the areas around Washington DC's Beltway. With a note of frustration apparent in his voice, Pike said that "the thing that's so idiotic about this stuff, the targets that they would be attacking over there [places such as Iraq and Afghanistan] are not targets that you would attack with nuclear weapons."
Providing another dimension to nuclear usage, and emphasized in both Payne's work and the NPR, was the use of nuclear weapons to achieve "political objectives". As noted by Payne as early as his 1980 article: "Such a function requires American strategic forces that would enable a president to initiate strategic nuclear use for coercive, though politically defensive, purposes ... strategic targeting must have a unity of political purpose from the first to the last strikes."
As regards an aspect of this recalling Israel's 1981 leveling of Iraq's Osirak reactor, as early as 2002, speculation existed that the Bush nuclear policy indicates that the actual prevention of proliferation may well be an American attack, conventional or otherwise.
Nuclear policy expert Christopher Paine, senior analyst in the Natural Resource Defense Council's nuclear program and author of the recent report "Weaponeers of Waste", told Asia Times Online: "The ideal world for the Bush administration is one in which US conventional forces can work their will without fear of being deterred by Weapons of Mass Destruction." Paine also observed that the administration's current nuclear efforts "represent a violation of article 6 of the Non-proliferation Treaty [NPT]".
Separately, Cirincione had said: "Most of the officials in the current administration see the treaties as something to be tolerated, not necessarily something to be honored." Notably, at the time of the NPR's release, then US assistant defense secretary J D Crouch spoke of achieving a reduction in overall nuclear warheads "without having to wait for Cold War arms-control treaties", reflecting the administration's desire to avoid such commitments. Further, and reflecting US moves towards a possible resumption of US nuclear testing, the Bush administration has voiced reservations about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with administration officials specifically noting that the US is now opposed to it.
Paradoxically, in Bush's 2004 State of the Union address, he outlined that America is "demanding that Iran meet its commitments", and not pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of the NPT. Reflecting present concerns, as early as 2000, former US president Jimmy Carter had warned that the world was indeed facing a "nuclear crisis", adding that "US policy has had a good deal to do with creating it".
Tomorrow, Part 2: US and preemptive nuclear weapons http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE06Aa01.html
Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
-------- accidents and safety
Dirty bomb dust proves deadly
Mortality estimates have ignored results of inhaling fallout
5 May 2004
Nature
By GEOFF BRUMFIEL
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040503/040503-3.html
A bomb spiked with radioactive material could be more lethal than previously thought, according to physicists who have analysed the consequences of a 1987 accident in Goiâna, Brazil.
Estimates made by government officials and scientists could be off by an order of magnitude, Peter Zimmerman of King's College London told attendees of the American Physical Society's annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, on 3 May.
Some officials and nuclear experts say that although radiation from a dirty bomb could cause vast psychological and economic damage, it would result in few, if any, deaths. They argue that the radioactive material contained in the bomb would be too diluted after the blast to expose any one person to a deadly dose.
But Zimmerman says that while those previous estimates consider the effects of exposure to the expected levels of radiation at a blast site, they have failed to take fully into account the possibility that victims might breathe in or ingest radioactive dust.
Zimmerman and a colleague, Cheryl Loeb at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, conducted a new analysis of an incident in Goiâna, Brazil, where scrap-metal merchants took a canister containing 1,400 curies of radioactive caesium-137 from an abandoned cancer clinic. Not knowing what the glowing dust was, they dispersed about a tenth of it at a party, during which over 150 people inhaled or swallowed the material.
Six people in the area died as a result of the incident, says Zimmerman, three of whom were not at the party and had had no direct contact with the material.
Using those numbers, Zimmerman estimates that if a bomb dispersed a similar amount of material over a wider area, as many as 150 people could die and 1400 could become ill.
That estimate "seems reasonable", says Benn Tannenbaum, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, an arms control group in Washington, DC. Tannenbaum says that the Goiâna incident is particularly disturbing because it is unclear how some of the victims became contaminated, which suggests that even indirect contact with the material was enough to kill them.
However Michael Levi, who is a physicist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank, points out that the Goiâna victims did not receive treatment until several days after their exposure. He hopes that the death toll from a dirty bomb might be lowered considerably if victims who ingested or inhaled material were treated immediately following the blast.
----
Plutonium Files:
How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans
Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/1357230
Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the country's great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who had plutonium injected directly into their bloodstream. [includes rush transcript] In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three disabled children were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes.
In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old woman believing she was being treated for a pituitary disorder, was injected with plutonium.
At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served "vitamin cocktails" containing radioactive iron, as part of their regular treatment.
No these are not acts of terrorism by common criminals.
These are just some of the secret human radiation experiments that the U.S. government conducted on unsuspecting Americans for decades as part of its atom bomb program.
In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and scientists working with the US atomic weapons program, exposed thousands of unwilling and unknowing Americans to radiation poisoning to study its effects.
For years, the experiments by the U.S. government and the identities of their human guinea pigs were covered up.
Then after a six-year investigation, investigative reporter Eileen Welsome uncovered the names of 18 people who were injected with plutonium in the 1940s without their knowledge by federal government scientists. In 1993, she published her finding in The Albuquerque Tribune and later received the Pulitzer Prize for her work.
Another six years later, Welsome published "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War." The book gives a detailed account of the unspeakable scientific trials conducted by the U.S. government that reduced thousands of American men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.
- Eileen Welsome, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and author of "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War."
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: After a six-year investigation, reporter Eileen Welsome uncovered the identities of eighteen people injected with plutonium in the 1940's without their knowledge by federal government scientists. Eileen Welsome published her findings in a series in the "Albuquerque Tribune" and received the Pulitzer Prize for her work. It took another six years for her to complete her book called "The Plutonium Files, America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War." She joins us now in Boulder, Colorado. Eileen Welsome, thanks for joining us.
EILEEN WELSOME: Happy to be here. Thank you for having me. AMY GOODMAN: Over the years we have spoken with you, but now that we're on this tour and you live in Denver, this is a rare opportunity to sit down and go through this story. First, how did you even get a clue that this was going on?
EILEEN WELSOME: Amy, it started, as you mentioned earlier, I was a reporter at the "Albuquerque Tribune" and I was doing some research on an air force base there, and they were doing some cleanup work. I noticed that in the document there were several radioactive animal dumps on this air force base. So I was curious about what kind of animals were in the dump and why were they radioactive? So I went over to the air force base, Kirkland Air Force Base, to what was then called the Air Force Special Weapons Laboratory. And they got out a big stack of these dusty reports for me to read on these animal studies. And so as I was thumbing through these reports, and it was horrible because they were incubating beagles and watching them develop cancers and how long they lived and charting the radiation sickness. But as a reporter, there wasn't a story there for me. These were old experiments and as gruesome as they were, it wasn't something that a daily newspaper would be interested in. So it was about 5:00 on Friday, I was eager to go home, but I felt like I had gone to this trouble to get these documents and I had to make my time look good. So I kept flipping through the reports. And my eye fell on a footnote and the footnote mentioned something about 18 humans who had been injected with plutonium. So I kind of reared back in my seat. I was just shocked. Shocked to think that our government had injected 18 people with plutonium. So I jotted down what I could from the citation and the next day, which was a Saturday, I went to the university library there and started hunting up reports about these scientists. So that was the beginning of it and the reason I looked at the footnote, I need to say this, is I had done a lot of financial reporting prior to that time and I know that whenever a company wants to put in the bad news, it's always in a footnote. So that taught me to look at footnotes.
AMY GOODMAN: And so how did you begin to unravel this story?
EILEEN WELSOME: Well, here was my problem: I learned there were some scientific reports in the literature, so I got those reports. I started to cull everything I could. And I learned that there were 18 people that had been injected with plutonium, but they were known by code numbers only. So the problem for me became how to find 18 Americans that had been injected with plutonium 30 or 40 years ago in a country of millions. So I thought that -- I mean, it was an impossible task, and so I started very crudely. I put these 18 code numbers on yellow sheets of paper and then as I gathered documents, I would write down what I knew about each of these 18 people. So I eventually learned their ages, the date they were injected, what kind of disease they had, if there was an autopsy or a biopsy conducted, and when they died. And then it was just a matter of continuing to do that and pick up clues.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about one of the 18 people.
EILEEN WELSOME: Well, I had gone off on a journalism fellowship and I had been filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the federal government. So I had a tiny folder on this experiment and when I came back and looked -- I pulled out my folder and I had fresh eyes. And I looked at this document again and these documents were redacted. In other words, the names of the patients were whited out and so were the names of the doctors. And my eye fell on this line, which said Doctor so and so contacted the physician of Cal-3 in Italy, Texas. And what leapt out at me were the words, Italy, Texas. By then, I knew a lot about Cal-3. I knew he was an African American man who would have been 80 years old, who would have been -- who had his left leg amputated three days after he was injected with plutonium. So given those few clues and that this person might have lived in Italy, Texas, I was determined to go there and knock on every door until I found this man.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Eileen Welsome. So tell us about your discovery, how you made contact.
EILEEN WELSOME: So I got out a map. I looked up Italy, Texas. It was south of Dallas, about 60 miles. I called directory assistance, got the number of Italy's City Hall, called them up, introduced myself, described the person I was looking for and they said, "You're looking for Elmer Allen, but he died a year ago. Would you like his wife's number?" So I said, "Of course." And I wrote the number down and within minutes I was talking to Mrs. Allen.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you say?
EILEEN WELSOME: I was very circumspect because I didn't want to frighten her and I didn't want to seem like a kook and I didn't want to put words in her mouth. I wanted to know what she remembered. So I simply said, you know, I had some documents that suggested that her husband may have been involved in a government-funded study and I would like to talk with her about it. And she asked me to talk to her daughter, Elmerine Allen Whitfield. And I called her and she was very quiet on the phone. As I reeled out my story, she said, "Ok, you can come on." And so I flew to Italy, Texas, and we sat down at her kitchen table and by the end of the interview, I knew and they knew that I had found the first of these 18 people.
AMY GOODMAN: Elmer's story?
EILEEN WELSOME: Elmer's story.
AMY GOODMAN: What was Elmer's story, how did he end up in a hospital being injected with plutonium?
EILEEN WELSOME: Elmer was a railroad porter. He and his wife were living in the Bay Area in the mid 1940's. They had left Texas and gone out there to start a better life. They had two young babies. Elmer fell from the train in Chicago and damaged his leg, and that sort of put him into the medical system. That was the beginning of his participation in this experiment. And his leg did not heal and he kept going back to the doctor. Somehow he found himself in this clinic at U.C. San Francisco University of California Hospital in San Francisco, and they selected him for this radiation experiment.
AMY GOODMAN: But he didn't know that?
EILEEN WELSOME: Oh, no, no, he absolutely did not know. He was told that he had an osteosargenic sarcoma in his knee and they would have to amputate in order to save him. There's some question about whether he did or didn't have that cancer and I do not know the answer to that. But three days before they amputated that leg, they injected him in the calf, intramuscularly, with plutonium.
AMY GOODMAN: Didn't they -- he describe to his wife how they put a target on his leg and they injected it in that?
EILEEN WELSOME: They eventually, with the consent of Mrs. Allen, I was able to get Elmer's medical records from U.C. San Francisco and in those medical records, the doctors talked about putting that target on his calf prior to the injection.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, he never knew he was a subject in a U.S. government experiment, but he suspected something, is that right?
EILEEN WELSOME: Yes. He told a good friend of his in Italy, Texas, that the doctors kept flying in and out of his room practicing to be doctors. And he told his friend, "They guinea-pigged me."
AMY GOODMAN: We interviewed Elmerine Allen a number of times and she talked about how growing up her father would say that, and then when she left for college, he said, watch out, "Don't let the U.S. government guinea-pig you." And they always thought that Elmer had some kind of, well, Elmer was kind of quirky, and he had this delusion that the government experimented on him.
EILEEN WELSOME: The sad part about Elmer's story is that nobody believed him. He went to his doctor and told him, "I think I've been injected with something." His doctor diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic at the same time that he was conversing with the atomic energy scientists in Argon National Lab to provide them with tissue samples.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, his doctor said he was a paranoid schizophrenic at the same time his doctor was providing his tissues to the government scientists doing the experiment?
EILEEN WELSOME: That's correct. That's what the medical records show. So Elmer was not only used in 1947 when he was injected with this radioactive isotope, but he was continued to be used as a guinea pig for the rest of his life.
AMY GOODMAN: Being sent for example to where, Rochester, New York?
EILEEN WELSOME: In the -- the experiment had two parts. In the 1970's, the -- in the 1970's, a second generation of atomic scientists rediscovered this experiment. So they wanted to dig up all the people who were dead, who had been injected with plutonium, and they also wanted to bring whoever survived them back into the lab for further studies. And Elmer was one of those people.
AMY GOODMAN: Under what pretext since he didn't know, supposedly, that he was a U.S. government guinea pig?
EILEEN WELSOME: They told Elmer, and this is all documented in the medical records, that they knew he had a very serious cancer and they wanted to know where he had lived so long.
AMY GOODMAN: Eileen Welsome is our guest. Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, unearthed the names of 18 people injected with plutonium by the U.S. government. When we come back, we're going to talk about who these scientists were. We'll hear more of the stories. And then also the group studies, the studies of hundreds of people who were given -- well, a couple dozen disabled children in Massachusetts fed radioactive isotopes in their oatmeal, hundreds of pregnant women, also, served so-called vitamin cocktails containing radioactive iron -- how this all happened without anyone knowing about it until recently. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman. As we continue looking at "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War." We're broadcasting from Boulder, Colorado and our guest is Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Eileen Welsome now lives in Denver. The lessons -- let the lessons of history remind us that the best safeguard for the future is an informed and active citizenry. Let's continue on this journey of the people who were injected, and the people who injected them. This certainly sounds a little like the Tuskegee experiments, but tell us, who ran this program?
EILEEN WELSOME: The program sounded in the Manhattan Project, the project to build the atomic bomb in the early 1940's. Side by side with the physicists worked a group of doctors who were interested in finding out how to protect their own workers in the Weapons Complex. And also trying to figure out what these new radio isotopes did in the human body. So basically, the beginning was the fathers of the bomb project, the medical doctors and scientists that were the tier below the Nobel Laureates, below the Oppenheimers and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they know this was happening?
EILEEN WELSOME: Certainly the records indicate that Oppenheimer approved the injections of these patients with Plutonium, because Los Alamos was fighting a severe contamination problem and the scientists working in those laboratories were concerned about their own health.
AMY GOODMAN: Didn't Oppenheimer come from Berkeley, and you had Elmer who was injected in California?
EILEEN WELSOME: That's correct. There was a large component of the atomic bomb project in the Bay area.
AMY GOODMAN: Conducted where?
EILEEN WELSOME: At the University of California at Berkeley and also at the university of California San Francisco.
AMY GOODMAN: So we're talking about a nexus of university, military, working together?
EILEEN WELSOME: That's exactly right. During the Manhattan Project, it was a very strange hybrid animal where you had people that were in the military working for the military, and you had people that were getting paid by universities.
AMY GOODMAN: The robbing of graves?
EILEEN WELSOME: That occurred -- well, I don't know if I would quite put it so strongly as that, but they did exhume bodies.
AMY GOODMAN: With the family's consent?
EILEEN WELSOME: They sought the consent of the families, but they did not tell the families the true purpose for the exhumations.
AMY GOODMAN: What did they tell them?
EILEEN WELSOME: That they had been given some radio isotope or some chemical and wanted to see what it had done in the bodies of their loved ones.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, that's true, isn't it?
EILEEN WELSOME: Yes, but they didn't use the word Plutonium.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you name a scientist and can you tell us what the response has been?
EILEEN WELSOME: When I did my research, most of the scientists, with the exception of Himer Fridel, who was the assistant medical director of the Manhattan Project, were dead.
AMY GOODMAN: The Manhattan Project being --
EILEEN WELSOME: The atomic bomb program. But the scientist who had conducted the more recent studies defended them. That they were important to protecting the workers in the nuclear weapons complex or that they were harmless.
AMY GOODMAN: So let's go through the experiments. The 18 people injected with Plutonium, none of them knew that that had happened to them. But moving on, in a Massachusetts school, 73 disabled children spoon fed oatmeal that had radio isotopes in them, radioactive isotopes. What happened?
EILEEN WELSOME: In that case, this was a nutrition study and they were given radioactive calcium and other radio isotopes.
AMY GOODMAN: Every morning?
EILEEN WELSOME: In their oatmeal, it was either mixed into the oatmeal or in the milk. And these boys did not know what was being given to them, nor did their parents. And in fact, they were told that this was really something nutritious and good for them. They were asked to give blood samples, urine samples, feces samples.
AMY GOODMAN: How long did this go on for?
EILEEN WELSOME: It went on for a number of years. And these boys grew into men and did not find out what had been done to them until the 1990's.
AMY GOODMAN: Upstate New York hospital, 18-year-old girl thinks she's being treated for a pituitary disorder and gets injected with Plutonium?
EILEEN WELSOME: This was a young woman who like Elmer Allen wound up in a hospital at the wrong place and was injected.
AMY GOODMAN: Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women served radioactive iron as part of their regular treatment. What did they think they were getting?
EILEEN WELSOME: This was a study done immediately after World War II and these young women came to the clinic thinking that they were getting vitamins to drink, that this would help their babies. And in fact, what was being studied was how fast the radio iodine crossed into the placenta.
AMY GOODMAN: Where was this?
EILEEN WELSOME: At Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to these women?
EILEEN WELSOME: They had all kinds of ailments, skin diseases, cancer, blood disorders, some of their offspring, their children that they were carrying at the time of this experiment died of cancer. And very strange cancers at young ages.
AMY GOODMAN: Were there any whistle blowers among the doctors and nurses?
EILEEN WELSOME: There was none whatsoever. The doctors closed ranks and considered this worthwhile science, and something they were doing to protect the country.
AMY GOODMAN: What about patients brought into the basement of the hospital and experimented on in the middle of the night, where was this?
EILEEN WELSOME: This was an experiment that was done in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was another one of these hybrid experiments that was half medical, half military. And in many cases, that's the problem with hybrid experiments. Often times, what's medically good for the patient is not militarily the best experiment. So these studies were done with cancer patients. They were told it would help their cancer. What the doctors were looking at was trying to figure out in the event of an atomic bomb detonation, how long could soldiers fight?
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Eileen Welsome. Her series came out in the Albuquerque Tribune and she turned it into a book, the Plutonium Files. Your expose came out under the Clinton years. President Clinton set up an advisory committee on human radiation experiments, which did its own digging into radiation programs. Remarkably enough, the report, the final report, came out on October 3, 1995, the same day as the verdict in the O.J. Simpson case. I don't remember seeing the results being reported.
EILEEN WELSOME: It was really unfortunate, because everybody in the country was focused on O.J. Simpson and --
AMY GOODMAN: Or was it timed right? Because let's remember every day people were waiting to the Simpson verdict, so it clearly was not beyond the government commission to understand the attention of the nation was focused elsewhere.
EILEEN WELSOME: I hadn't thought about that, Amy. It's simply a possibility.
AMY GOODMAN: So the results came out anyway?
EILEEN WELSOME: The results came out anyway, and nobody paid attention to it.
AMY GOODMAN: And what were the results?
EILEEN WELSOME: Basically, they confirmed that thousands and thousands of experiments had been done on U.S. Citizens. That the victims were the most vulnerable people in our society: the young, the disenfranchised, the poor, people of color, people who did not know enough to ask questions. In other words, the subjects were not doctor's children or friends of their doctors; they were people who were vulnerable.
AMY GOODMAN: And how many places did this happen in the United States? The school in Massachusetts, the Cincinnati test, Elmer Allen was at the University of California Berkeley, how many sites were these government scientists working in?
EILEEN WELSOME: There were hundreds of sites. There were private hospitals, public hospitals, military installations, orphanages. About any place that doctor was working where they might be able to get a grant.
AMY GOODMAN: Prison?
EILEEN WELSOME: Yes, that was a really, really ugly experiment. A group of prisoners had their testicles eradiated.
AMY GOODMAN: Where?
EILEEN WELSOME: In Oregon mostly. And the purpose was for NASA. They were interested in knowing the effects of space radiation on astronauts.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to these prisoners?
EILEEN WELSOME: Many of them that I interviewed were still in prison. They had all kinds of medical problems and cancers and health issues.
AMY GOODMAN: Lawsuits?
EILEEN WELSOME: Many, many lawsuits filed. Some of the families were compensated. The Plutonium patients got an average per family of $400,000. I think that was the largest. And patients at other sites around the country got lesser amounts.
AMY GOODMAN: What about today? Do you think which have learned anything? And as people listen to this, I'm sure there are many who will start to wonder.
EILEEN WELSOME: I think that the way to safeguard yourself, you as a patient or your loved ones as patients, is by asking questions. And the other way to safeguard -- the other way to prevent these things from happening again is to make sure that what we do is open an available to the public. Because openness is a disinfectant and it keeps these kinds of malignant, unethical experiments from happening.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet we have entered an age of perhaps greater secrecy than ever before.
EILEEN WELSOME: That's correct. In fact, I realized as I was doing my book, my intuition told me this was a small window that was closing and I don't think that today I could get some of the documents that I was able to get for this book.
AMY GOODMAN: Soldiers?
EILEEN WELSOME: Thousands of soldiers were used in bomb tests in Nevada.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
EILEEN WELSOME: Well, they were ordered into the blast area within minutes after a detonation. They flew in - Air Force pilots flew into radioactive clouds. They detonated atomic bombs in the Pacific. The soldiers and sailors were then ordered in to retrieve various instruments that were contaminated.
AMY GOODMAN: And then there were not the people who were personally fed the radio isotopes, the kids at the school or the women who were given these vitamin cocktails that were radioactive. But there was the disbursing of radio activity in the air over cities, at schools?
EILEEN WELSOME: That's correct. One of the most famous is the Green Run at the Hanford Reservation.
AMY GOODMAN: In Washington state?
EILEEN WELSOME: In Washington State in which they released radio iodine and the prairie was very hot, but that was one of the controversial findings in this committee report. They did not say or recommend that the government be forbidden from doing this. They basically said you need to have a committee and at some point the documents should be made public. I thought that was one of the worst recommendations that they came out with.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. What was the biggest revelation for you in this research and looking at the Plutonium Files?
EILEEN WELSOME: The biggest revelation for me was to see how cruel and inhuman these very educated doctors were toward their patients.
AMY GOODMAN: And not telling them?
EILEEN WELSOME: And not telling them.
AMY GOODMAN: And the medical establishment today, is it backing them up?
EILEEN WELSOME: They were when I was doing my research on this book. They still defended these experiments as being important.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Eileen Welsome, thank you for being with us. The book is called "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War." Tomorrow on Democracy Now!, we'll be joined by Joyce Mescus, the owner of The Tattered Cover, an independent bookstore in Denver who has been talked about by many booksellers as the one who took on the US Government when police came in to get records of someone who had bought a book in her store. She spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting this case. We're going to talk about what this means this day and age. We're also going to speak with a doctor who has treated soldiers coming back from Iraq.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-------- asia
Beijing's peacemaking travails
By FRANK CHING
May 5, 2004
Business Times (Asia)
http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/story/0,4567,115750,00.html
THE agreement to hold a working group meeting of the six-power talks on May 12 is one of the few tangible signs of movement in China's year-long effort to help resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The announcement came shortly after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il visited China and received promises of increased economic aid. However, two plenary sessions at ministerial level have failed to yield much progress and it is highly unlikely that the working group meeting this month or the ministerial meeting in June will see a breakthrough.
The perception, even among American analysts, is that the Bush administration so far has not attempted to seriously engage the North Koreans. The Bush administration is under a false sense of security, said Charles Pritchard, the State Department's former special envoy for North Korea, at a conference on the Korean Peninsula sponsored by the Brookings Institution in Washington.
He said: 'Bush needs to describe the end game in a very detailed way to North Korea. You can't require them to sign up to a complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of their nuclear programme without explaining what it means.'
According to Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at Brookings, the working group meeting would present a chance for the US to explain what CVID means - in particular, verification - so people can discuss what the US has in mind. So far, however, the working group meeting does not even have an agenda or agreed terms of reference.
The hope is that lower-level officials, without the glare of the international media, may be able to explore specific issues, such as the details of a security guarantee and what would be involved in a verification regime. Before such issues are ironed out, it is unlikely that there will be an agreement.
However, at the ministerial meetings held in Beijing in August and February, the US delegate, James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, had little leeway to depart from his talking points. It is not known how much negotiating authority a lower-level official will have.
It has been a frustrating process for the Chinese, caught between the Americans and the North Koreans. An incident last year illustrates the lengths to which Chinese diplomats have to go to keep the talks alive. According to Mr Pritchard, during the April 2003 three-power talks - the precursor to the six-party talks - the North Koreans told their Chinese hosts after the first day that they were returning to Pyongyang. Beijing ostensibly accepted this but convinced the North Korean delegation to make a farewell call on the Chinese foreign minister before departing.
Then Beijing asked the American delegation to meet with the foreign minister at the conclusion of the North Korean meeting. When the American delegation was waiting outside the room where the North Koreans were meeting with the foreign minister, Chinese diplomats suddenly threw open the doors, creating an unscheduled encounter between the North Korean and American delegations. The Chinese foreign minister then declared a formal trilateral meeting in session.
With the participants now having technically met on day one and day three, the Chinese were able to announce that the talks had ended with the participants having met over a three-day period. The Chinese may well have to resort to stratagems like that again.
The US has insisted that there shall be no reward for bad behaviour by North Korea, saying that Pyongyang must first dismantle both its plutonium and uranium nuclear programmes before any discussion of economic aid. However, the official North Korean press agency, in announcing the working group meeting, pointedly declared that Pyongyang's delegation will attend to discuss the proposed reward for a freeze. If the freezing of the nuclear programmes is an interim measure leading to eventual dismantlement, that might be acceptable. But there is no chance that the US will be willing to reward North Korea simply for stopping doing what - in Washington's view - it should never have done in the first place.
The Chinese are desperate to keep the talks going. If they break down, then Washington will resort to other measures. China, which wants to ensure the survival of North Korea, will be opposed to any use of force by the US. In fact, given the television images of Chinese leaders hugging Mr Kim, there is little likelihood that Beijing will even endorse economic sanctions by the United Nations.
Given the absence of any palatable alternatives, all signs are that Chinese officials will have to continue their hectic efforts to keep the talks alive, even if little progress is actually made.
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
-------- depleted uranium
The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry:
The Only Thing Depleting is Human Life
By Vincent L. Guarisco
May 5, 2004,
Axis of Logic
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_7217.shtml
''The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.''
~~Michael Parenti, political scientist and author
Ever notice how crafty the inventors of modern weaponry working for the Pentagon are -- giving their weapons misleading names that deliberately give the opposite impression of the actual intended use? None is more Orwellian, nor more ghoulish, than "Depleted Uranium," or its even less intrusive acronym -- "DU."
Since the early 80's, the all-too-aware world has sounded the alarm about depleted uranium, from a full-blown international outcry to United Nations warnings transmitted through blood-stained pages of the Geneva and Nuremberg conventions to the echos of wooden mallets feverishly slamming down in the world court at the Hague.
The message is very clear - the radiation level in depleted uranium is NOT depleted, in fact, it won't be depleted to any safe degree for about two billion years. In retrospect, that's a long time to beg for forgiveness, not only for what we have done, but for what we continue to do on multiple battlefields.
Fact - only approximately 14 percent of Americans at best understand the full matrix surrounding depleted uranium.
Listen up - depleted uranium is a deadly weapon of mass destruction that has been banned by virtually every nation on the planet. Its illegal use by the United States breaks all existing international treaties, conventions, protocols, and articles of war. It was first introduced into our arsenal around 1983 under the leadership directives of then President George H. W. Bush, and used in the first Gulf War in Iraq to the tune of 350 tons of exploded poison.
The main difference between father Bush and his son is that junior unleashed his radioactive arsenal mainly in Iraqi urban centers and civilian neighborhoods, rather than in desert battlefields. Untold thousands of Iraqi people, U.S. soldiers, and coalition troops will pay the price for generations in chronic illness, widespread cancers, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects.
Last year, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters into Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. In his May 15, 2003 report, (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html) staff writer Scott Peterson tells of seeing children playing on top of a damaged tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad -- a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, Peterson pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation.
The families who survived the tragic decade of sanctions, and the recent shock-and-awe bombing campaign of Baghdad may not survive the radiated aftermath of this continued military sacrilege. The highly toxic "Highway of Death" in 1991 after Desert Storm was only a warm-up session compared to what is happening in Iraq during Enduring Freedom under George W. Bush.
DU was introduced into our arsenal under the pretension that by incorporating this radioactive concoction into our munitions, it somehow makes them more armor piercing. Even if this is true, what they (the marketing department) forget to mention is that DU is perhaps the most lethal time-released agent ever to be unleashed on mankind except for maybe one exception -- its kin -- the Atom Bomb.
Its poisonous effectiveness continues to take life long after the tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, Bradley vehicles, unmanned drones and troops have long gone, put simply, DU is a prolonged latent kiss of death that genetically keeps on embracing for generations to come.
It's a fact that other nations will forever hold us responsible for what our government has done in our name, they fully understand that we are willing participants who supply the needed funds that build these weapons; ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for war crimes committed against humanity! This will not soon be forgotten or forgiven.
Because I'm the offspring of an Atomic Veteran, and have witnessed what can happen to loved ones exposed to radiation, I hereby claim my right to rename DU --"Death Unlimited." May this horrible name always serve as a subliminal reminder whenever you hear others fraudulently attempting to reference it otherwise.
The documented track record associated with DU is a hideous reality, a carcinogenic killer causing birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities, etc.
When DU munitions explode, it becomes an atomized dust devil that fills the air with a blanket of radioactive poison, which travels in the wind and is easily inhaled and ingested. Then it enters the soil polluting ground water and infecting the food chain. Eventually, the uranium extends past its immediate epicenter impacting the surrounding environment. This stuff is nothing to play with.
What is most astonishing is that most Americans have never even heard of DU, and few (14%) fully understand what it is, where its being used, and who is being targeted by its usage. DU is one of the Pentagon's best-kept secrets, its most widely-used genocidal weapon for wiping out entire populations quietly and covertly.
Sara Flanders, co-director of the International Action Center and coordinator of the DU Education Project, writes ( http://www.coastalpost.com/03/09/11.htm ) that the Pentagon "continues to assert that there are no 'known' health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection."
Although the Bush Pentagon denies publicly that DU weapons can cause sickness, it's own internal reports warn that the radiation and heavy metal of DU weapons could cause kidney, lung and liver damage and increased rates of cancer. Flanders says the Pentagon continues to deny health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection.
Who comes up with this crazy stuff? Was DU conceived somewhere deep some murky hushed corridor of the Project for a New American century (PNAC)? Or perhaps it came from some other think tank that funded a secret scientific lab deep in the belly of the Atomic energy weapons program?
What was the dialogue? Did they say---gee, let's invent a quiet nuclear weapon that can surreptitiously be deployed inside conventional weaponry to progressively eliminate our enemies (and their families) long after we are gone to help reduce future risks of blowback, retribution and revenge?
They had to entertain the idea that every plan has a degree of downside -- surely they knew that by using these weapons in battle our own troops would be exposed too, in fact, even more so because they store, transport, handle and load these DU munitions into the very guns that fire them.
So why do they continue with this knowing full well the danger to our own troops? Do they purposely shorten the lifespan of our soldiers to shave several costly years off healthcare and pension plans? What are we to think about all this? Are they premeditated murderers?
According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, "Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." (Listen to Rokke's interview on the subject at http://traprockpeace.org/RokkePressConf23July03.html )
Rokke's own crew -- 100 employees -- was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy," Rokke said. However, after performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 staff members died, and most others -- including Rokke himself --developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems.
"We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension," Rokke said.
Unbelievable? Think again. Or better yet---ask the more than 150,000 Gulf War Vets who have filed claims after previously serving in Iraq's toxic wastelands during the first Gulf War. After doing so, they were shamelessly denied their benefits by the risk management boys who said that Gulf War Syndrome was a figment of their imagination. Heck, the masters treat their dogs better then them!
Is it any wonder that Uncle Sam took away their M-16's before they returned home? With arms in hand, I would love to know which way those same gun barrels would point after receiving such crap in the VA after serving so valiantly. Conspiracy theory?
Everyone can't be wrong, so answer me this---why in Sam-Hell does the Pentagon continue to use these weapons even though there is an overwhelming abundance of scientific data from around the globe to back these claims?
George W. Bush justifies his continued carnage with a convenient "Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator who gassed his own people and threatened his neighbors..."
But Admiral Gene LaRocque, who fought the Cold War as a commander of a nuclear-armed carrier task force in Europe and served as a war planner in the Pentagon, says war has become a "spectator sport" for most Americans. LaRocque said:
"I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners, and patriotic sayings...
"We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts.... You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate it unchanged to the situation today...
"I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them."
Are George Bush and his Pentagon guilty of war crimes against the people of Iraq? By unleashing this most deadly of weapons of mass destruction, are they demonstrating reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops?
You be the judge.
----
ITALY & URANIUM: OPPOSITION DEMANDS A DEBATE SOON
(AGI),
May 5, 2004
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200405052013-1276-RT1-CRO-0-NF82&page=0&id=agionline-eng.italyonline
Rome, Italy - Following the positive meeting today held in Palazzo Chigi between Cogemil (Parents of Fallen Soldiers in Times of Peace Committee) and General Tricarico representing the Prime Minister's office, opposition groups have asked for the quick approval of the Ramponi-Ruzzante bill of "Norms in favour of conscription soldiers, volunteers and professionals injured or fallen in the course of duty".
"It has been nearly two years" said Piero Ruzzante (DS), "since the defence commission unanimously approved the Ramponi-Ruzzante bill rendering justice to soldiers fallen during service. It can also deal with the issue of deaths linked to depleted uranium. Minister Tremonti has blocked it for long enough. We have asked for the bill to be discussed next week by the defence commission to verify immediately the new availability of Palazzo Chigi. Parents and associations (Cogemil, Anavafaf, Osservatorio) are now awaiting facts".
The meeting with Cogemil was also attended by MPs Pisa (DS), Deiana (RC), Pinotti (DS) and Maurandi (DS). "We will ask the Defence Commission president Ramponi to quickly start formal hearings on the problem of depleted uranium" Pisa and Deiana recalled, "because we believe that Parliament should tackle the issue of the too many suspicious deaths and because relatives demand a response from institutions".
----
Government above the law?
Military Seeks Environmental, Health Exemptions
Wednesday 05 May
by Joel Creswell,
Pulse of the Twin Cities (Minnesota)
http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1066
Photo: View of the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant Superfund site [left] in Fridley.
http://www.pulsetc.com/image/2004/0505/Pix-of-NIROP.jpg
The Defense Department wants to shirk laws governing air pollution, toxic waste and Superfund cleanups at thousands of military ranges across the country, but opponents warn that the proposals before Congress threaten the health of neighbors in Minnesota and across the country. Congress will likely vote on the Bush administration's proposal for exemptions in May.
Minnesota has two Department of Defense toxic Superfund sites that need to be cleaned up: the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant in Fridley, and the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) in Arden Hills. But the 126 military operational ranges in Minnesota could also be exempted from environmental laws.
"Bottom line, these exemptions would mean that toxic waste in Minnesota will not get cleaned up," said Katherine Blauvelt, Minnesota Representative for the National Environmental Trust. "Innocent men, women and children may be exposed to toxic contamination, and meanwhile communities are left with the cost of cleanup," she stated.
This year, the Bush Administration's Defense Department is asking for exemptions to the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Superfund. The proposed health and environmental exemptions would affect over 8,000 operational ranges across the country, covering more than 24 million acres of land. Many of these ranges are contaminated or have toxic hazards.
DoD asked for similar exemptions last year, but Congress turned them down. Congress did grant the Defense Department exemptions from the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Contamination Knows no Boundaries
Groundwater and drinking water contamination is the chief concern for residents of Fridley, due to the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant Superfund site, located in Anoka County just 700 feet from the Mississippi River, where the U.S. Navy and its contractors have produced advanced weapons systems since 1940.
The Environmental Protection Agency placed this site on the Superfund Cleanup National Priority List after regulators found the toxic chemical trichloroethylene (TCE), which causes nervous system and liver and kidney damage, in local groundwater wells and in the city of Minneapolis drinking water treatment plant intake, which is located approximately 1,500 feet downstream from the site in the Mississippi River. The EPA later learned that groundwater contaminated primarily with TCE was flowing into the Mississippi River at 37 parts per million -- more than seven times the levels set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. More than 200,000 people live within three miles of the site, and an estimated 29,000 people obtain drinking water from public wells within three miles of the site.
John Haukass, Public Works Administrator for the city of Fridley, says cleanup operations at NIROP are well underway. "They [DoD] have to get it to a point where it is considered cleaned up," stated Mr. Haukass. "They are pumping groundwater, pulling some of the trichloroethylene back up. There is no set date to stop pumping. They need to keep going until it is done," he stated. But the proposed exemptions may open the door to the military backtracking on its commitment to clean up contamination. The exemptions may mean that contamination like the TCE found in the Mississippi River could not be cleaned up at its source - the Naval base. In act, all military munitions - including chemical and depleted uranium weapons - and the contamination they cause would be exempted from regulation under the law that governs how disposal is handled. Polluting munitions would be allowed to lie on or in the ground where they can leak into the environment and possibly endanger an installation's residents and the surrounding community.
Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch recently joined 38 other State Attorney Generals in opposition to the exemptions, stating in a letter to the Armed Services Committees, "As chief enforcers of our respective environmental laws, we think that these amendments would significantly impair our ability to protect the health of our citizens and their environment." The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the National Audubon Society and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials are a few of the groups on record opposing the exemptions.
The number of communities that could be affected is staggering. According to the Military Toxics Project, nationwide, 25 million acres of land on closed, transferred and transferring ranges are contaminated with unexploded ordnance, chemical munitions, toxic explosive compounds, toxic propellants and heavy metals like lead.
A Solution In Search of A Problem?
In a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, Raymond DuBois, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, said, "[The exemptions] remain essential to military readiness and range sustainment and are as important this year as they were last year -- maybe more so."
But in a December 2003 meeting with officials from several western states, Department of Defense officials acknowledged that there has never been an instance in which any of these laws have impacted military readiness and that preempting state authority was "not a matter of readiness, but of control."
"Our military has served us well without being exempt from health or environmental laws," said Katherine Blauvelt, from the National Environmental Trust. "If it's not affecting training or readiness, why shouldn't they have to clean up their toxic messes like everyone else?" she stated.
The General Accounting Office said in a 2002 report that it found little evidence to support the Bush administration's claims that environmental laws hamper military training. And last year Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said she couldn't recall any training missions scrapped or delayed due to environmental regulations. Current law already allows case-by-case exemptions and permits the President to waive environmental rules in specific situations when national security is at stake.
It is now up to Congress to decide whether to accept or reject the proposed blanket exemptions.
Lois Rem, City Councilwoman from Arden Hills, says that "the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, a Superfund site in Ramsey County, is being cleaned up to protect the water supply and the communities nearby."
"If the government discontinues cleanup funding now, we will lose not only the promised completed cleanup, but we may lose progress already made as contamination is left to sit or to spread. The Army and its contractors locally are making good progress to finish TCAAP cleanup. We can't let Washington put a stop to it now."
--------
The Only Thing Depleting is Human Life
By Vincent L. Guarisco
May 5, 2004,
Axis of Logic
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_7217.shtml
''The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.''
~~Michael Parenti, political scientist and author
Ever notice how crafty the inventors of modern weaponry working for the Pentagon are -- giving their weapons misleading names that deliberately give the opposite impression of the actual intended use? None is more Orwellian, nor more ghoulish, than "Depleted Uranium," or its even less intrusive acronym -- "DU."
Since the early 80's, the all-too-aware world has sounded the alarm about depleted uranium, from a full-blown international outcry to United Nations warnings transmitted through blood-stained pages of the Geneva and Nuremberg conventions to the echos of wooden mallets feverishly slamming down in the world court at the Hague.
The message is very clear - the radiation level in depleted uranium is NOT depleted, in fact, it won't be depleted to any safe degree for about two billion years. In retrospect, that's a long time to beg for forgiveness, not only for what we have done, but for what we continue to do on multiple battlefields.
Fact - only approximately 14 percent of Americans at best understand the full matrix surrounding depleted uranium.
Listen up - depleted uranium is a deadly weapon of mass destruction that has been banned by virtually every nation on the planet. Its illegal use by the United States breaks all existing international treaties, conventions, protocols, and articles of war. It was first introduced into our arsenal around 1983 under the leadership directives of then President George H. W. Bush, and used in the first Gulf War in Iraq to the tune of 350 tons of exploded poison.
The main difference between father Bush and his son is that junior unleashed his radioactive arsenal mainly in Iraqi urban centers and civilian neighborhoods, rather than in desert battlefields. Untold thousands of Iraqi people, U.S. soldiers, and coalition troops will pay the price for generations in chronic illness, widespread cancers, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects.
Last year, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters into Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. In his May 15, 2003 report, (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html) staff writer Scott Peterson tells of seeing children playing on top of a damaged tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad -- a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, Peterson pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation.
The families who survived the tragic decade of sanctions, and the recent shock-and-awe bombing campaign of Baghdad may not survive the radiated aftermath of this continued military sacrilege. The highly toxic "Highway of Death" in 1991 after Desert Storm was only a warm-up session compared to what is happening in Iraq during Enduring Freedom under George W. Bush.
DU was introduced into our arsenal under the pretension that by incorporating this radioactive concoction into our munitions, it somehow makes them more armor piercing. Even if this is true, what they (the marketing department) forget to mention is that DU is perhaps the most lethal time-released agent ever to be unleashed on mankind except for maybe one exception -- its kin -- the Atom Bomb.
Its poisonous effectiveness continues to take life long after the tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, Bradley vehicles, unmanned drones and troops have long gone, put simply, DU is a prolonged latent kiss of death that genetically keeps on embracing for generations to come.
It's a fact that other nations will forever hold us responsible for what our government has done in our name, they fully understand that we are willing participants who supply the needed funds that build these weapons; ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for war crimes committed against humanity! This will not soon be forgotten or forgiven.
Because I'm the offspring of an Atomic Veteran, and have witnessed what can happen to loved ones exposed to radiation, I hereby claim my right to rename DU --"Death Unlimited." May this horrible name always serve as a subliminal reminder whenever you hear others fraudulently attempting to reference it otherwise.
The documented track record associated with DU is a hideous reality, a carcinogenic killer causing birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities, etc.
When DU munitions explode, it becomes an atomized dust devil that fills the air with a blanket of radioactive poison, which travels in the wind and is easily inhaled and ingested. Then it enters the soil polluting ground water and infecting the food chain. Eventually, the uranium extends past its immediate epicenter impacting the surrounding environment. This stuff is nothing to play with.
What is most astonishing is that most Americans have never even heard of DU, and few (14%) fully understand what it is, where its being used, and who is being targeted by its usage. DU is one of the Pentagon's best-kept secrets, its most widely-used genocidal weapon for wiping out entire populations quietly and covertly.
Sara Flanders, co-director of the International Action Center and coordinator of the DU Education Project, writes ( http://www.coastalpost.com/03/09/11.htm ) that the Pentagon "continues to assert that there are no 'known' health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection."
Although the Bush Pentagon denies publicly that DU weapons can cause sickness, it's own internal reports warn that the radiation and heavy metal of DU weapons could cause kidney, lung and liver damage and increased rates of cancer. Flanders says the Pentagon continues to deny health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection.
Who comes up with this crazy stuff? Was DU conceived somewhere deep some murky hushed corridor of the Project for a New American century (PNAC)? Or perhaps it came from some other think tank that funded a secret scientific lab deep in the belly of the Atomic energy weapons program?
What was the dialogue? Did they say---gee, let's invent a quiet nuclear weapon that can surreptitiously be deployed inside conventional weaponry to progressively eliminate our enemies (and their families) long after we are gone to help reduce future risks of blowback, retribution and revenge?
They had to entertain the idea that every plan has a degree of downside -- surely they knew that by using these weapons in battle our own troops would be exposed too, in fact, even more so because they store, transport, handle and load these DU munitions into the very guns that fire them.
So why do they continue with this knowing full well the danger to our own troops? Do they purposely shorten the lifespan of our soldiers to shave several costly years off healthcare and pension plans? What are we to think about all this? Are they premeditated murderers?
According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, "Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." (Listen to Rokke's interview on the subject at http://traprockpeace.org/RokkePressConf23July03.html )
Rokke's own crew -- 100 employees -- was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy," Rokke said. However, after performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 staff members died, and most others -- including Rokke himself --developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems.
"We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension," Rokke said.
Unbelievable? Think again. Or better yet---ask the more than 150,000 Gulf War Vets who have filed claims after previously serving in Iraq's toxic wastelands during the first Gulf War. After doing so, they were shamelessly denied their benefits by the risk management boys who said that Gulf War Syndrome was a figment of their imagination. Heck, the masters treat their dogs better then them!
Is it any wonder that Uncle Sam took away their M-16's before they returned home? With arms in hand, I would love to know which way those same gun barrels would point after receiving such crap in the VA after serving so valiantly. Conspiracy theory?
Everyone can't be wrong, so answer me this---why in Sam-Hell does the Pentagon continue to use these weapons even though there is an overwhelming abundance of scientific data from around the globe to back these claims?
George W. Bush justifies his continued carnage with a convenient "Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator who gassed his own people and threatened his neighbors..."
But Admiral Gene LaRocque, who fought the Cold War as a commander of a nuclear-armed carrier task force in Europe and served as a war planner in the Pentagon, says war has become a "spectator sport" for most Americans. LaRocque said:
"I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners, and patriotic sayings...
"We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts.... You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate it unchanged to the situation today...
"I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them."
Are George Bush and his Pentagon guilty of war crimes against the people of Iraq? By unleashing this most deadly of weapons of mass destruction, are they demonstrating reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops?
You be the judge.
Vincent L Guarisco is a freelance writer from Bullhead City AZ., a contributing writer for many web sites, and a lifetime member of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. Reprint permission is given as long as article content is not altered or changed and credit is given to the author. Replies welcomed at: vincespainting1@hotmail.com
-------- europe
US Group Urges Europe to Tighten Efforts to Secure Nuclear Facilities in Former Soviet Union
By Roger Wilkison
VOA News
May 05, 2004
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-5-5/21277.html
BRUSSELS - A leading U.S. research institute and a former U.S. senator have used a computer exercise to try to convince European officials that Europe could be threatened by a terrorist attack with nuclear weapons, if western countries do not tighten efforts to secure nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy research organization, and former Senator Sam Nunn, showed during a brainstorming session with top European Union and NATO officials what could happen, if the al-Qaida terrorist group were able to acquire highly enriched uranium from civilian research reactors in the former Soviet Union.
How about an attack with a crude nuclear bomb at NATO headquarters in Brussels, which would immediately kill 40,000 people, overwhelm hospitals with hundreds-of-thousands of injured, spread panic throughout Europe and plunge the world economy into turmoil?
The scenario is fictitious, but is based on documented evidence of al-Qaida efforts to get its hands on highly enriched uranium, and of contacts between the organization's operatives and Pakistani weapons scientists.
Mr. Nunn said preventing al-Qaida from obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material is the best way to stop the group from building such a bomb. "It is well within al-Qaida's operational capabilities to recruit the technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear device. The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it hard enough," he said.
Mr. Nunn, who sponsored a $10 billon program in the U.S. Senate to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet republics in 1991, says at least 60 percent of those facilities still need to be adequately secured.
He wants the Group of Eight rich countries to fulfill pledges they made two years ago to commit a further $20 billion to that program over 10 years. And, he said, European leaders should push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin into taking action to protect sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are stored. "The key here, the priority, is securing the material where it is. That takes cooperation. It takes focus. It takes leadership. It takes President Bush and President Putin not simply having a summit conference, but declaring when they leave it that they're going to cut through every bureaucratic obstacle to get this job done. Unless those two leaders cut through their bureaucracies, then it's not going to get done," he said.
Rolf Ekeus, a former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, says the 50 or so officials who attended the session found that Europe is now as much of a target as the United States for terrorists armed with unconventional weapons. That, he said, is partly due to the fact that terrorists can move easily across European borders, and have set up cells in nearly every European country. "It is clear that Europe has become the breeding ground, the base and the place where planning for terrorist actions is taking place," he said.
Mr. Nunn, Mr. Ekeus and other organizers of the exercise admit that taking measures now to prevent weapons-grade nuclear material from falling into the hands of terrorists would be costly. But they stress that coping with the consequences of an attack like the one in their simulation would be, as one put it, phenomenally expensive.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan tightens controls on nuclear proliferation
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
May 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040505151040.rws55ng5.html
Pakistan Wednesday moved to tighten controls on the export of nuclear weapons technology following a UN resolution calling on members to prevent weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists, officials said.
The cabinet approved a draft bill for export controls on material, equipment and technologies related to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems, an official statement said.
The bill, which now goes to parliament, provides imprisonment of up to 14 years, a maximum fine of five million rupees (285,000 dollars) or both for offenders.
"The draft bill manifests Pakistan's strong commitment to the prevention of proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons and missiles capable of delivering such weapons," the statement said.
The move followed a UN Security Council resolution last week aimed at keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists and black market traders.
It also calls on all UN members to adopt laws to prevent sensitive materials and technology from getting into the hands of non-state actors.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan was hit by an arms proliferation scandal recently when the architect of its atomic weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, publicly confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Khan was given a conditional pardon by President Pervez Musharraf but he remains under virtual house arrest in the capital Islamabad.
The government has said a probe into the leaks has not been completed.
----
Pakistan, China sign deal on nuclear power plant
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-05/s_23469.asp
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan and China signed a deal on Tuesday to build a new nuclear power plant, underlining economic cooperation between the longtime allies a day after a car bomb killed three Chinese technicians in southern Pakistan.
Officials from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and the China National Nuclear Corporation participated in the signing ceremony, witnessed by Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in an agreement experts valued at around $600 million.
"With the signing of the C-2 (Chashma-2) project, PAEC has achieved yet another landmark and this project will be an important milestone in historical relations between Pakistan and China," said a statement distributed at the ceremony.
Pakistan will be keen to underline close ties with China following the attack at Gawadar port, which Islamabad saw as a strike at the heart of investor confidence and its broader economic interests.
A car bomb was triggered by remote control as a minivan carrying 12 Chinese and two Pakistanis passed by. Besides the three dead, nine Chinese and two Pakistanis were wounded.
More than 300 Chinese nationals are working to turn Gawadar into a deep sea port and major trading hub, and China is providing $198 million of the $248 million project costs.
The statement said the second nuclear plant to be built by China at Chashma was for peaceful use only, after a nuclear proliferation scandal involving a top Pakistani scientist set alarm bells ringing over the safety of the country's atomic program.
"It is worth mentioning that Pakistan's nuclear power plants are under the safeguards of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), which is the international agency responsible for monitoring and safeguarding of nuclear power plants," it said.
The new power plant will be built at Chashma, on the banks of the Indus river, 280 km (170 miles) south of Islamabad and beside the first plant China helped to build. It will have a capacity of 300 megawatts and take more than six years to complete.
The first Chashma nuclear installation was built in 1999 and connected to the national power grid early in 2000.
Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 in the port city of Karachi with Canadian help. The Karachi plant has a capacity of 137 megawatts.
Western countries, under pressure from the United States, later halted nuclear cooperation with Pakistan amid suspicions Islamabad was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan vowed to go nuclear after rival India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974. Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests weeks after India carried out its own tests in May 1998.
-------- iran
Evidence of Iran Nuclear Plans Found
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
May 5, 2004,
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-us-iran-nuclear,0,2682892.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence has determined Iran plans to continue to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle despite pressures from the Bush administration, an American official said Wednesday.
The program involves processing and enriching uranium in what Iran contends is an effort to generate electricity.
Administration officials are concerned that the move is linked to an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Last week, diplomats from the European Union, France, Sweden and Japan agreed at a meeting with administration officials in New York that they are concerned, too, the official said. But he said they could not agree on how to deal with the problem.
U.S. officials said last week that Iran may be running a covert military nuclear program parallel to the peaceful one it has opened to international inspection.
In Berlin on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Iran would fulfill the promises it made about its nuclear program.
Working together, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the Britain persuaded Iran last October to suspend uranium enrichment and give inspectors unrestricted access to its nuclear facilities. But recently, concerns have emerged that Iran may be backtracking.
"We will fulfill our obligations as far as our nuclear program is concerned," Kharrazi said after talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. "This is not an Iranian project, but a joint project by Iran, the European countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency. A success in this project will be a success for everyone."
----
Iran says will keep its side of nuclear agreement
BERLIN (AFP)
May 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040505145403.v229trtg.html
Iran reiterated Wednesday that it would stick to its commitments to cooperate with the UN's atomic energy watchdog over its nuclear programme, and urged EU countries to follow suit.
With International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors due to report on Iran's activities by the end of May, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said that "we will fulfil our commitments on the nuclear programme."
Speaking in Berlin after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his ministerial counterpart Joschka Fischer, Kharazi added that "we hope that the European side will also be punctual in sticking to its commitments so this dossier can be closed for good."
He said success would be success for all "and a defeat would mean a defeat for all."
Fischer was one of a trio of EU foreign ministers who last year negotiated an agreement with Tehran under which Iran would allow a tougher IAEA probe to ensure it was clean of a covert nuclear programme.
In return, they dangled a carrot of peaceful nuclear assistance.
No details were made public at the time, but Iran continually refers to the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) whereby signatories commit themselves to exchange peaceful nuclear techology.
Iran, however, has yet to be given the all-clear by the IAEA, and has been chastised for failing to disclose key elements of its programme.
Fischer said it was "crucially important" that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was able to present a "positive" report, based on the inspectors' findings, to the body's board of governors next month.
"If we really want to make progress, then we really must have the complete implementation of the agreement, that is the most important point," he told a joint press conference with Kharazi.
Fischer insisted the EU was keeping to its side of the bargain, notably by not dragging the nuclear issue before the UN Security Council.
"We stand by the agreement but it must be precisely and fully implemented," he warned.
Tehran vigorously denies US and Israeli charges that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and is pressing for its dossier to be taken off the top of the IAEA's agenda during the June meeting -- something that most diplomats say is highly unlikely.
-------- mideast
Source: Some in U.S. Think Syria Has Atomic Centrifuges
May 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-syria.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Some members of the Bush administration believe Syria has centrifuges that can purify uranium for use in bombs, though the intelligence community is divided on the issue, diplomats and experts told Reuters.
Last week, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, had ``several other'' customers who may want the bomb. Western diplomats in Vienna said Bolton was clearly referring to Syria.
One atomic energy expert, who follows nuclear intelligence closely, said Bolton leads a faction in President Bush's administration that believes they have strong evidence Syria is operating uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
But a U.S. official, who asked not to be named, warned the intelligence on Syria had not dispelled all doubts.
``Those who are pushing the idea that Syria has centrifuges have been held back by other members of the inter-agency community who question the veracity of the claim,'' he said.
Several Western diplomats who follow the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have been saying for months that Syria was a customer of Khan's.
``Syria certainly had contact with Khan,'' said a non-U.S. Western diplomat, adding that suspicions of Syrian research in atomic weapons have existed for decades.
Since Washington began its post-September 11 policy of aggressively pursuing countries it believed had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States and its allies, it has repeatedly issued warnings about Syria.
In the Central Intelligence Agency's most recently published report on Syria from June 2003, the CIA said: ``We are looking at Syrian nuclear intentions with growing concern.''
But several sources said not everyone in the U.S. intelligence community and government is certain Syria has operating centrifuges. Likewise, one of the sources said not even Syria's arch-foe Israel is convinced.
``There is disagreement within the intelligence community about whether Syria has operating centrifuges...in the U.S. and with the Middle East,'' the atomic energy expert said.
SYRIA DISMISSES CONCERNS
Syria, which has publicly called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, dismissed the allegations.
``This can only be part of a campaign of absolutely baseless accusations against Syria,'' a Syrian official told Reuters in Damascus. ``Syria has no program to acquire...nuclear weapons.''
The U.S. official said some feared pressuring Syria now may undermine relations with Damascus when it is starting to cooperate on sealing its border to militants crossing into Iraq.
Centrifuges can be used to purify uranium for use as nuclear fuel or in weapons. Experts say getting weapons-grade material is the biggest hurdle for any country that desires the bomb.
But diplomats and arms experts said revelations about Khan's nuclear black market showed a means existed for Syria to get hold of equipment it needed to enrich uranium without decades of research that would have been needed to develop it on its own.
On the other hand, one arms expert said even with enrichment devices Syria could not be close to having a nuclear weapon.
``Could Syria have centrifuges? Sure. Is it possible that they could be close to getting a nuclear weapon? No way,'' Joseph Cirincione, director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters.
Everyone interviewed for this story said Bolton, who made strong assertions about Iraq's nuclear plans before the war in Iraq, would have trouble convincing people outside the United States that Syria was a threat.
The U.S. military has never found any evidence to support claims that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear weapons program.
``Given what was revealed about the quality of intelligence in Iraq, people have become very wary of U.S. intelligence about other countries,'' said a Western diplomat close to the IAEA.
Bolton has crusaded against many states suspected by the Bush administration of seeking WMD. He has attacked Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and now Syria.
Pakistan could hold the key to resolving the debate about any Syrian nuclear capabilities.
Khan, the man credited with building up Pakistan's successful nuclear weapons program, has been cooperating with Pakistani authorities after admitting that he leaked nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Diplomats and non-proliferation experts agreed that if Syria does in fact have centrifuges, they had to come from Khan and the Pakistani authorities would be able to resolve the issue. But Islamabad may refuse to cooperate, as in the case of Iran.
-------- missile defense
Developing missile defense
May 05, 2004
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040504-091111-5868r.htm
As Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Kinetic Energy Interceptors program manager, I was surprised by James Hackett's column Thursday ("Missile defense going astray?" Commentary). For the record, KEI is one element of a global missile-defense system designed to protect our country and allies from enemy missile threats, which is a point Mr. Hackett missed. Simply put, if we're serious about adding capability to the initial ballistic-missile-defense system that will be deployed later this year, we need KEI.
For missile defense to be effective, it must be a robust, layered system offering multiple opportunities to destroy multiple warheads at multiple points in their trajectories. From both strategic and budget standpoints, KEI is complementary to, not competitive with, other systems. Delaying investments in systems that can intercept incoming missiles in the boost phase is the far more risky approach given the nature of the threats we face. KEI will destroy hostile missiles at their most vulnerable stage - the boost/ascent phase, before decoys or countermeasures can be deployed. It is the simplest, not the most difficult, way to accomplish missile defense. KEI captures and integrates 20 years of tested work, reusing proven technologies and hardware.
Contrary to Mr. Hackett's assertion, the interceptor will fit on the back deck of the Navy's Aegis destroyer. It's also C-17-transportable for quick and easy deployment anywhere around the world. This maximizes - not limits - our ability to deny opponents launch areas. KEI is not a new concept but a critical piece of the nation's overall layered system. In no way is the program a reallocation from or a drain on another program. To suggest anything different is wrong.
DAN MONTGOMERY
Vice president and general manager, KEI Northrop Grumman Corp. Reston
-------- terrorism
Nuclear Terror Scenario Exposes Vulnerable World
Story by John Chalmers
REUTERS BELGIUM:
May 5, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25002/newsDate/5-May-2004/story.htm
BRUSSELS - Here's the scenario: the al Qaeda network gets hold of highly enriched uranium from civilian research reactors in the former Soviet Union and explodes a crude nuclear bomb at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.
Forty thousand people are killed immediately, 300,000 are injured and the number of casualties marches higher as a radiation cloud spreads into the Netherlands and Germany.
That was the terrifying backdrop to "Black Dawn," a nuclear terrorism exercise for European decision-makers conducted behind closed doors on Monday.
The central question of the brainstorming session led by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was: "The day after a nuclear attack...what would we wish we had done and why aren't we doing it now?"
Michele Flournoy, a senior adviser at the CSIS and former Pentagon official, said the participants concluded that once terrorists have obtained deadly ingredients to build weapons of mass destruction there is little hope of tracking them down.
"Once the cat is out of the bag, there aren't many good options," she told Reuters. "The exercise tended to underscore the overall message that prevention is the only option...we need to keep such material out of the hands of terrorists."
Graham Allison, an assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration, told NATO officials last year that a group like the al Qaeda Islamic militant network had the motive and opportunity to launch a "nuclear 9/11." The best defense was to control weapons and fissile material at source, he said.
That message was echoed at the "Black Dawn" exercise attended by mostly senior European Union and NATO officials.
The United States has spent billions of dollars since the end of the Cold War to help Russia secure ex-Soviet nuclear facilities, and employ or retrain atomic scientists to avoid them selling their skills to proliferators.
Flournoy said the exercise organizers chose a scenario involving highly enriched uranium because al Qaeda has made repeated attempts to acquire it.
"They've met with Pakistani weapon scientists to discover how to use it. There are lots of indicators they are working on this," she said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- idaho
INEEL: tanks clean-up advancing
Energy Department project remains controversial
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
By GREG MOORE
Idaho Mountain Express Staff Writer
http://www.mtexpress.com/2004/04-05-05/04-05-05ineel.htm
The U.S. Department of Energy has made considerable progress cleaning tanks that contain high-level radioactive wastes located above the Snake River Aquifer, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory's new manager said last week.
However, a potential funding freeze next year could stall the cleanup--a move that Wood River Valley activists say amounts to extortion by the DOE to get its way on the controversial project.
During the past six months, INEEL Manager Elizabeth Sellers has been meeting with community leaders throughout southern Idaho to apprise them of cleanup progress and of the DOE's future projects at the site. No Wood River Valley government officials attended Seller's talk at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum on Thursday, but a dozen local citizens did.
Sellers reported accelerated progress on cleaning both the site's 10 high-level liquid waste tanks and on a demonstration cleanup project at the notorious Pit 9, which contains solid radioactive wastes contained in drums buried underground.
The liquid-waste tanks store solvents used to clean equipment used in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from Navy submarines and aircraft carriers. They contain both radioactive material and hazardous chemicals.
Some of the pipes connecting the tanks have leaked in the past, allowing some of the liquid to contaminate the soil. However, INEEL spokesman Brad Bugger said the leaks have been repaired. The tanks lie about 500 feet above the aquifer.
Sellers said workers have cleaned five of the tanks and started on a sixth two weeks ago.
"We're cleaning these things up as clean as you can possibly get them," she said.
The liquids are to be consolidated into three tanks pending a decision on what to do with them next.
The project has been controversial since it began about two years ago. The DOE would like to characterize the material removed as "mixed transuranic waste," which would allow it to be disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico rather than at the proposed, but not yet opened, high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The Yucca Mountain repository is designed to contain penetrating radioactive materials that need to be shielded and handled remotely, and that give off heat. WIPP, a series of caverns dug out of a large salt deposit, is designed to contain drums of transuranic waste, which contain plutonium and americium. Those materials are radioactive, but are hazardous only through ingestion, and the drums containing them can be handled directly.
Even if it receives the necessary approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Yucca Mountain is not expected to be open to receive waste shipments until 2010. Bugger said the department believes the wastes can be removed from INEEL sooner if they can be sent to WIPP.
The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires radioactive material "resulting from" the processing of nuclear fuel to be characterized as high-level waste, and sent to Yucca Mountain. But the DOE contends that the liquids stored at INEEL were used only indirectly in reprocessing as cleaning solvents, and therefore should not come under the act's definition. Bugger acknowledged that like high-level radioactive waste, the liquids contain penetrating, heat-giving radioactive materials, but said those are in small enough quantities that the wastes could be safely handled at WIPP.
However, environmentalists objected to the DOE's position and brought suit in federal court. Last July, District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill agreed with the plaintiffs, and ordered the DOE to proceed on a course toward sending the wastes to Yucca Mountain. The DOE has appealed.
The department's fiscal 2005 budget states that if the case is not decided by next year, it will withhold $97 million allocated for the liquid-waste cleanup at INEEL, as well as money for similar cleanup efforts at Hanford, Wash., and Savannah River, S.C.
"That is a real strong-arm tactic," contended Hailey resident David Kipping, chair of INEEL's Citizens Advisory Board, in an interview. "They're saying, 'Unless we get our way, we're not going to give you the money to clean up anything.'"
Bugger said the DOE simply doesn't want to ask Congress for money that it won't be able to spend. He said the cleanup will not be able to proceed until the department knows how it will have to solidify and package the wastes-and it won't know that until it knows where it will be sending them.
An additional wrinkle is that even if the DOE succeeds in reclassifying the wastes, they may not be accepted at WIPP. The state of New Mexico is in the process of modifying the DOE's hazardous waste permit to prohibit reclassifying high-level waste. A hearing on the question is scheduled for June.
"The fact of the matter is that the DOE has always handled it as high-level waste," said Jon Goldstein, communications director for the New Mexico Environment Department, "They've playing with words."
The outcome of the court case will also determine how the DOE deals with the contaminated soil below the tanks. Bugger said the department is just in the "investigative stage" on that issue, but hopes to have the contaminated area either capped or cleaned out by 2006.
Kipping contended that the longer the DOE continues its court fight, the more threat the wastes pose to the environment.
"The longer it sits there and the more it rains, the greater the chance that it will get into the aquifer," he said.
He called the situation "a great big mess."
-------- ohio
Damaged Davis-Besse Reactor Could Have Lasted 13 Months
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
May 5, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-05-091.asp
The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio that was closed in February 2002 when a hole was found in a reactor head could have operated safely for an additional two to 13 months, the latest analysis and testing conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has found. The plant is now open again and generating power.
The NRC's findings are summarized in a memo from Ashok Thadani, executive director for operations in the agency's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research to the Executive Director for Operations William Travers. The memo was made public Tuesday due to "the level of interest," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
Laboratory tests on materials similar to the Davis-Besse reactor vessel were used to verify an analytical method which was then applied to the degraded condition found at the Davis-Besse plant, Thadani wrote.
"The results show that the reactor would have likely continued to operate safely for several months, at least until the end of its originally planned operating cycle, if the plant had not shut down for inspections in February 2002," he wrote.
Damage to the Davis-Besse reactor head (Photo courtesy NRC) On February 16, 2002, the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, began a refueling outage that included inspecting the head of the reactor pressure vessel, the container that houses the reactor core and the control rods that regulate the power output of the reactor.
In conducting its inspections, personnel employed by the licensee FirstEnergy found that three nozzles entering the head had indications of axial cracking, which had resulted in leakage of the reactor's pressure boundary. In addition inspectors found a hole in the head that may have been formed by boric acid.
The cavity did not penetrate the head, but only 3/8 of an inch of steel cladding was left intact. The steel cladding covering the head was found to contain a complex network of stress corrosion cracks having a total extent on the surface of two inches.
"The results also show the reactor vessel's stainless steel cladding would have likely withstood pressures at least 125 percent of what is encountered in normal operation," Thadani wrote.
To provide an independent perspective on the extensive experimental and analytical work that Thadani details in his memo, an external review panel was formed. It includes:
- Dr. William Shack of Argonne National Laboratory and the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, who has expertise in materials analysis and corrosion.
- Dr. Gery Wilkowski of the Engineering Mechanics Corporation of Columbus, who has expertise in fracture testing of both laboratory test specimens and large structural components and in fracture analysis of structural components. - Professor James Joyce of the United States Naval Academy, who has expertise in fracture analysis and testing.
The review panel met with the staff and the Oak Ridge National Lab in early December 2003 and had several discussions with the NRC staff since then. Each reviewer submitted an independent letter to the staff, but all reviewers raised the same issues about tests of the cladding.
While the clad disk tests provide useful information on the failure characteristics of the steel cladding of the reactor head, they should not be taken to represent the conditions that existed at Davis-Besse, the panel said.
Estimates of the Davis-Besse structural integrity should be based on a finite element analysis that represents much more closely the geometric conditions that existed at Davis-Besse on February 16, 2002, combined with laboratory data on the strength, toughness, and failure characteristics of the stainless steel cladding.
A better characterization of the crack network that existed in the Davis-Besse cladding is needed to support a realistic assessment of the as-found condition. Evidence does not suggest that failure was imminent on February 16, 2002, the panel concluded.
The plant is currently operating in Mode 1 at 100 percent reactor power. The plant achieved full power on April 4, 2004. The Davis-Besse Oversight Panel will continue to monitor plant activities utilizing enhanced inspection oversight coverage.
The Davis-Besse Oversight Panel will conduct a public meeting with the plant operator FirstEnergy scheduled at 3:00 pm on May 13 at the Ottawa County Courthouse, Lower Level 315, Madison Street, Port Clinton, Ohio. The meeting is to discuss plant performance and the NRC's activities related to the process at Davis-Besse.
A final engineering and analysis report will be issued when the NRC report on the preliminary results and findings of the Accident Sequence Precursor analyses in early summer.
-------- washington
Reducing K Basins' risk
Tri-City Herald
Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opinions/story/5039112p-4967494c.html
A plan to proceed with cleanup of Hanford's K Basins is welcome news, especially given the alternatives.
Most importantly, the proposal promises to reduce the risk posed by the indoor pools near the Columbia River, one of which has been known to leak.
But also significant is that the cleanup proposal changes the tone of the K Basins discussion.
The Environmental Protection Agency had threatened a $500,000 fine if the Department of Energy didn't get on with work that was supposed to begin nearly a year and half ago.
Fines are an important tool for ensuring the federal government lives up to its promises on Hanford cleanup, but they don't buy actual cleanup. This community sees more progress when the people who understand cleanup devise a workable plan to get the job done.
The basins hold spent nuclear fuel that has formed a sludge containing uranium and plutonium. The contractor in charge, Fluor Hanford, is close to removing the most corroded fuel, but work to get rid of the sludge has yet to begin.
Under the proposed resolution, work on putting the sludge in the leaking basin into stainless steel containers would start this fall and be completed by next spring. That would help clear the way to get the basin removed in 2007.
As with all Hanford cleanup, it can happen none too soon. Getting a plan in place that the Energy Department is confident it can perform and that EPA is convinced is sound gives this community something to expect and demand.
-------- us nuc waste
Panel Weighs Nuclear Cleanup Law Changes
H. JOSEF HEBERT
Wed, May. 05, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/8597949.htm
WASHINGTON - A Senate committee is considering a measure that could allow the government to avoid removing hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly radioactive sludge from sites in three states.
The Energy Department has been stymied in an attempt to reclassify some of the 90 million gallons of radioactive waste kept in tanks in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina so it would not have to ship it to a special high-level waste repository.
The department claims the residual sludge, the byproduct of Cold War bomb-making, is too expensive to extract. Instead, the government says, it can be diluted by covering it with grout so it can be left in place as less radioactive "low level" waste.
Last year, though, a federal judge in Idaho said the Energy Department plan violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which stipulates that any waste from the production of plutonium must be treated as high-level waste and be put in a deep geological vault. The government is planning to build such a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
In an attempt to get around the court ruling, the Energy Department has been lobbying Congress to change the law.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered a proposal Wednesday as part of a defense authorization bill that would change the law as it pertains to 34 million gallons of waste in tanks at the department's Savannah River facility in South Carolina.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, meeting behind closed doors, was expected to act on the measure Thursday.
The provision, Graham said, "allows South Carolina and DOE to define high level waste in a very reasonable manner. ... There's nothing going to be left behind ... that will not be secured through environmental remediating to protect South Carolina."
The change will save $16 billion in cleanup costs at the Savannah River site alone and shorten the cleanup time by 23 years, while assuring South Carolina has a say on how the waste is disposed of, said Graham.
Still, state officials in Idaho and Washington oppose any changes in the law unless they are assured the states will have a final say in how the waste will be handled.
The proposed changes circulated by Graham "would minimize the role of (state) regulators in overseeing decisions regarding this waste's disposal" and allow the Energy Department "to define what constitutes cleanup," Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington wrote Wednesday to the chairman of the Armed Services panel, opposing any changes in the nuclear waste law.
Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said, "We wouldn't make a decision without involving the states." He said talks were continuing with Washington and Idaho officials to try to reach an agreement similar to that reached with South Carolina.
There are 34 million gallons of waste in underground tanks at the Savannah River site near Aikin, S.C.; 53 million gallons in tanks at the Hanford site near Richland, Wash.; and 900,000 gallons in tanks at the INEEL facility in Idaho. The waste has been described as a "witches brew of radioactivity" left over from years of reprocessing to make plutonium from the nation's nuclear arsenal.
Geoffrey Fettus, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the cleanup changes sought by the Energy Department and pushed by Graham "would create nuclear waste cesspools" and a "legacy of radioactive pollution" at the defense sites.
----
"Public Information Circular for Shipments of Irradiated Reactor Fuel"
May 5, 2004
Memory Hole
http://www.thememoryhole.org/nrc/irradiated_fuel_shipments.htm
http://www.thememoryhole.org/nrc/nureg0725_rev13.pdf
Published in Oct 1998, this is the thirteenth (and most recent) version of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's NUREG-0725, "Public Information Circular for Shipments of Irradiated Reactor Fuel." The NRC has more of its publications online than most agencies but, interestingly, this document isn't among them. To my knowledge, it's never been posted online until now.
From the report's abstract:
This circular has been prepared to provide information on the shipment of irradiated reactor fuel (spent fuel) subject to regulation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It provides a brief description of spent fuel shipment safety and safeguards requirements of general interest, a summary of data for 1979-1997 highway and railway shipments, and a listing, by State, of recent highway and railway shipment routes.
-------- MILITARY
-------- britain
British Troops Face Allegations of Abuse
Photos of Iraqi Prisoner Are Disputed
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1966-2004May4.html
LONDON, May 4 -- Britain is facing allegations that its soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners in a scandal that echoes similar charges in the United States but with a distinctly British tabloid twist: claims that the incriminating photos are fakes.
A British defense minister told the House of Commons on Tuesday that the government would "leave no stone unturned" in investigating the allegations, which were first published in the Daily Mirror newspaper on Saturday.
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, said "any decent thinking person" would be disturbed by the photos, which purportedly show anonymous soldiers abusing a hooded and bound Iraqi prisoner by striking him with a rifle butt, kicking him and urinating on him.
The man, thought to be about 20 years old, was picked up as a suspected thief last September, beaten for eight hours and then thrown from a moving vehicle, according to the Mirror report. It said its information came from two unnamed members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, a unit with a long and colorful history.
"From the outset, we have taken the allegations seriously and taken the photos at face value and will continue to do so unless there is evidence to the contrary," Ingram said. The Mirror had handed over 20 photos of alleged abuse to military investigators, he added.
While the government has not sought publicly to discredit the photos, defenders of the regiment have done so vociferously. Col. David Black, a former commander of the regiment, is one of several people who have alleged that the black-and-white photos were doctored. They have contended that the uniforms and weapons depicted were not those of the regiment, and that the lack of blood, sweat, dirt or injuries on the body of the alleged victim suggested that the scenes had been faked.
Ingram expressed concern that "when the press do make these charges they walk away, and they can lay waste to people's reputation." He added: "These allegations have been aired right across the Arab world and also into Iraq; there is always a question of life being put at risk because of what may prove to be unfounded allegations, so it is on the conscience of those who have run it in this way."
But the Mirror, an early and vehement opponent of the Iraq war, has insisted the story is true and has quoted its two anonymous sources as saying the photos represented only a tiny portion of the abuse that occurred. "Maybe the officers don't know what is going on -- but everybody else does," the Mirror quoted one of the sources as saying. "I have seen literally hundreds of pictures. The Army knows a lot more has happened."
"Although we appreciate the Queen's Lancashire Regiment has concerns, as they put it, about the Daily Mirror, we also have very serious concerns about the behavior of some of their troops in Iraq," the newspaper said in a statement.
In the tabloid world, those who get beat on an exclusive story often follow up by trashing the scoop, and the Daily Express led its front page Tuesday with the huge headline "LIARS." Piers Morgan, the Mirror's combative editor, told the Guardian newspaper: "Being called a liar by that lot is like being called a halfwit by the village idiot."
Still, even Morgan's friends said he had risked his career by publishing a story that could threaten British lives in Iraq. "Piers has had a lot of success and he's had a lot of major disasters as well, but I think this one would be one too many," said Max Clifford, a publicist who has worked closely with Morgan. "I can't imagine that Piers would press a button unless he was totally convinced" the photos were genuine.
There are about 8,000 British troops in southern Iraq, and officials here contend their forces have maintained better relations with the Iraqi population than their American counterparts. The Defense Ministry has reported that 33 allegations of civilian deaths, injuries or ill-treatment caused by British forces are under investigation.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the allegations of abuse, if proved true, would be "completely and totally unacceptable." But Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, a political party that has opposed the war, told the BBC that, "Whether true or false, there is no doubt whatsoever they are going to have a massive impact in terms of domestic opinion within Iraq and again across the Muslim world and the Arab world as a whole."
--------
British Official Vows a Thorough Inquiry
May 5, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/05BRIT.html
LONDON, May 4 - The government said Tuesday that it had accepted "at face value" as possible evidence of a crime photographs that seem to show British soldiers beating and humiliating a hooded Iraqi prisoner, "unless there is evidence to the contrary."
In a somber statement to the House of Commons, the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, said that despite suspicions that the photographs, which were published over the weekend in The Daily Mirror, had been faked, the Royal Military Police would conduct a thorough investigation.
"I can assure the House that if British soldiers are found to have acted unlawfully," Mr. Ingram said, "then appropriate action will be taken. But our immediate priority is to establish the truth as quickly as possible and we are determined to leave no stone unturned."
While doubts about the authenticity of the British photographs persist inside the government, Donald Anderson, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Parliament, said extensive damage had already been done and would take an extensive effort to repair.
Mr. Ingram disclosed that since the outset of hostilities in Iraq, 33 cases of civilian deaths, injuries or ill treatment had been investigated by the British military. He said 12 cases were still under investigation. Of the 21 inquiries that have been completed, 15 were closed without charges and 6 were referred for possible prosecution. He gave no further details.
-------- business
Boeing Buys Ads to Defend Proposed Tanker Deal
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2078-2004May4.html
Boeing Co. bought full-page newspaper advertisements yesterday to defend its proposed $23.5 billion tanker deal with the Air Force as the Pentagon neared release of a key report that could help determine the fate of the controversial program.
The company also moved to repair its reputation with the Pentagon by announcing yesterday that it had recently hired an internal watchdog. The Pentagon last year suspended Boeing from bidding on space contracts because the company had obtained proprietary Lockheed Martin Corp. documents during a rocket launch competition.
Boeing and the Air Force are negotiating terms for lifting the suspension, and an ethics watchdog is sure to be one of the requirements, said Dan Beck, a Boeing spokesman. "We wanted to get this special compliance officer on board so they could get up to speed on the complexity of this company," Beck said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also has postponed a decision on the tanker deal pending several probes into Boeing's conduct during the program's negotiations. Darleen Druyun, an Air Force procurement official, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in April after she accepted a job at Boeing while still negotiating the tanker deal for the Pentagon.
In the newspaper ads titled "The Boeing 767 Tanker: Let's Get the Facts Straight," president and chief executive Harry C. Stonecipher disputed allegations that improper acquisition policies were used in negotiating the tanker deal. He said that the proposed contract secures a good price for the Pentagon and limits Boeing's profit margin. "Recent news reports -- based on draft reports, out-of-context e-mails and misleading allegations -- have misrepresented important issues," the ad said.
Rumsfeld received a briefing Monday on a report by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory group, assessing the necessity of replacing the fleet of tankers. The secretary did not make a decision on the fate of the tanker plan but "appropriate officials are now evaluating the way forward," said Larry DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman.
The report is expected to conclude that the tanker fleet needs to be modernized and that it would be too expensive to simply put new engines in the 40-year-old airframes, according to sources familiar with the report. But it also says that the Pentagon does not need to decide how to pursue that modernization immediately, the sources said.
The Pentagon could consider several options, including performing an analysis of alternatives, buying used planes from airlines and turning them into tankers or using a private leasing service to augment the current capacity, according to the sources familiar with the report.
The Defense Science Board report is considered a critical predictor of the future of the program.
Critics of the deal called Boeing's advertisement misleading, noting that several government agencies, including the Pentagon Inspector General, have been critical of the deal. "There can be no doubt that the current multibillion-dollar proposal to acquire 100 Boeing 767 tankers is fundamentally flawed," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement. "The truth is that the deeper one looks into the proposal, which remains the subject of criminal and congressional investigative inquiry, the worse it looks."
Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, said the assertions in the advertisement "are either misleading, untrue, or both."
----
Boeing Acquires UAV Developer Frontier Systems Inc.
Chicago (SPX)
May 05, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-04x.html
Boeing said Tuesday that it has acquired Frontier Systems Inc., developer of the A-160 Hummingbird and Maverick unmanned aerial vehicles. Frontier's platforms and technologies add to Boeing's portfolio and capabilities in unmanned systems that include the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System X-45, ScanEagle and other concepts under development. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
"Frontier Systems is well known in the UAV field for its innovative systems and technologies," said Mike Heinz, vice president and general manager of Boeing Phantom Works Integrated Defense Advanced Systems.
"By enhancing our ability to meet the diverse UAV needs of our customers, this acquisition strengthens our position as a key player in the unmanned systems market."
The privately held Frontier Systems has about 70 employees and was formed in 1991. Frontier is based in Irvine, Calif., and also has operations in Victorville, Calif., for flight-test operations.
"For years we've been looking for the right company to take Frontier's programs into production," said Gale Kerem, Frontier Systems executive vice president and chief financial officer.
"Boeing provides the perfect complement of people and technology for further developing and producing the Hummingbird and making it even more versatile and effective for a wide variety of domestic and international markets."
The A-160 Hummingbird, a vertical take-off-and-landing UAV, has been designed to fly up to 2,500 plus nautical miles with 30 to 40 hour endurance. Its modular payload design can carry up to 1,000 pounds.
The A-160 offers range and endurance unprecedented in the history of helicopter UAV design. It will provide reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, communication relay, precision re-supply, sensor delivery and eventually precision attack capabilities.
The A-160's unique characteristics address current and emerging requirements of the U.S. armed forces, Department of Homeland Security, and international military and security organizations.
Frontier also sells the Maverick UAV, a retrofitted commercially available helicopter, to the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Maverick UAV has also been used as a test bed for A-160 technologies.
Boeing Phantom Works will complete development of the Hummingbird and then transfer the program to Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (IDS). Phantom Works recently transferred the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System X-45 program to IDS.
-------- chemical weapons
An Al Qaeda 'Chemist' and the Quest for Ricin
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2159-2004May4?language=printer
LYON, France -- Menad Benchellali, thin and bearded, was known among his Arab friends as "the chemist" because of the special skills he learned at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. When he returned to his native France in 2001, according to investigators, he set up a laboratory in his parents' spare bedroom and began to manufacture ricin, one of the deadliest known substances.
Working at night with windows open to dissipate fumes from the process, he blended ingredients in a coffee decanter and spooned the doughy mixture onto newspapers to dry. The final product was a white power that Benchellali stored in small glass flasks and old jars of Nivea skin cream -- to be used, as he later told police, "in the event I became involved in the jihad."
Today, exactly how many jars of ricin the 29-year-old Benchellali may have produced -- and their whereabouts -- is an urgent question for European governments facing a wave of terrorist attacks and threats. Last year, investigators say, similar containers turned up in Britain, in the possession of North Africans who were allegedly planning an attack. At least one other jar is known to be missing, and French investigators suspect that still others exist.
The story of Benchellali's laboratory offers a glimpse into a secret world of suspected terrorists and their quest for biological and chemical weapons. According to European investigators, a string of incidents in recent months points to a particular interest in ricin, the highly lethal toxin that comes from castor beans. Other powerful poisons that also are relatively easy to obtain and use -- botulinum toxin and industrial chemicals such as potassium cyanide and osmium tetroxide -- have also been sought by suspected terrorists. In April, police in Jordan foiled what government officials said was a plot to use chemical bombs and poison gas in a series of attacks on embassies and government buildings in Amman, the capital.
So far, no poison attacks by al Qaeda-related groups have been carried out, and many experts say they believe that terrorist groups still haven't mastered the skills needed to make an effective weapon. But they clearly are trying. Lacking facilities for making advanced chemical or biological arms, investigators say these groups are seeking toxins that can be easily bought, stolen or manufactured in an ordinary kitchen using common ingredients.
Al Qaeda's interest in biological and chemical arms is well documented, although the group's ability to produce such weapons is believed to have been crippled by the loss of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. Invading U.S. forces in 2001 discovered and destroyed two production centers that were preparing to manufacture cyanide and the botulinum and salmonella toxins, and possibly anthrax.
Since then, investigators believe al Qaeda has become more diffuse, transforming itself into a loose-knit collection of underground cells. They say that Benchellali, who has been in prison in France since December 2002, may be one of hundreds of specially trained graduates of al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan who have shared their skills with a new generation of recruits.
"Biological and chemical weapons are more important than ever to al Qaeda, but the new emphasis is on the simple and the practical," said Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert and author of a forthcoming book, "The Third Generation of al Qaeda," which describes the evolution in tactics. "This is the kind of terrorism that interested Benchellali's group. If they had been allowed to continue, they probably would have succeeded."
In the past 21/2 years, ricin-making equipment or traces of the toxin have been discovered during police raids on al Qaeda-affiliated cells in Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Georgia and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. In each case, police also found manuals or papers containing detailed instructions for making and using ricin.
CIA Director George J. Tenet, in testimony in March before the U.S. commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, cited the manuals in warning of a "heightened risk of poison attacks" in the near future. "Extremists have widely disseminated instructions for a chemical weapon using common materials that could cause large numbers of casualties in a crowded, enclosed area," Tenet said.
Lethal in Tiny Doses
Deadlier by far than cobra venom, a speck of pure ricin the size of a pinhead will kill an adult if injected into the bloodstream. A slightly larger dose -- roughly a pinch -- is fatal if swallowed or inhaled. Ricin is water-soluble and virtually odorless, so it can be used to contaminate water or food supplies on a small scale. Victims may be unaware of their exposure until hours afterward, when the toxin begins to attack living cells and disrupts their ability to make essential proteins. The result is respiratory distress, internal bleeding and organ failure. Death can occur in as little as 36 hours, and there is no antidote or cure.
Ricin is not well suited for a weapon of mass destruction. At least a half-dozen countries, including the United States and Iraq, have sought to weaponize ricin and failed. The toxin's jumbo-sized molecules are heavy and tend to clump together, and bioweapons scientists found they needed tons of ricin to deliver lethal doses to a battlefield.
However, the toxin has been used for assassinations and small-scale attacks. In one of the most famous assassinations of the Cold War, Bulgarian secret police in 1978 used a tiny pellet of ricin, fired from a specially designed umbrella, to kill dissident Georgi Markov on a street in London.
Ricin's lethality has drawn interest from all manner of killers, plotters and extremists. While regarded as a biological weapon -- ricin is essentially a plant protein -- it is not a living organism and its effects are not contagious. Unlike the chemical nerve agent VX, it cannot be absorbed through the skin. And, although several recipes for ricin are available on the Internet, most would not yield a product of sufficient purity to cause mass casualties, bioweapons experts said.
For would-be terrorists, however, ricin is appealing for a single reason: accessibility.
"The technology for making it is low enough that literally any crank working in his basement can create a ricin preparation of some sort," said Jonathan Tucker, a biological weapons expert with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "You can't do that as easily with anthrax."
The raw materials for ricin are cheap. The toxin naturally exists in castor beans, which grow wild in many parts of the world, including the United States, where the plants are prized by gardeners and landscapers as an ornamental shrub. Brazil, China and India grow industrial quantities of the colorful, plump beans to make castor oil, which is used in products ranging from laxatives and shampoos to lubricating oils. A single castor bean, if chewed, contains enough ricin to kill a child. Al Qaeda's interest in ricin dates to at least the late 1990s. Two terrorism manuals seized from al Qaeda operatives in several locations contain detailed instructions on making and using the toxin. One was found by British journalists in November 2001 at a deserted al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Another was titled, "The Encyclopedia of Jihad," and commends ricin as one of the "poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health."
Training From Al Qaeda
Many of the details of Benchellali's ricin experiments -- including how much he made and how he intended to use it -- remain unknown. But after a year-long probe, French investigators have pieced together a chronology of his activities. This account is based on interviews with investigators, a family member, neighbors and French journalists, and the transcripts of police interrogations of Benchellali.
The son of an Algerian-born Muslim cleric, Benchellali grew up in a gritty Lyon suburb, Les Minguettes, notable for its thickets of towering public housing complexes and 30-percent unemployment rate. As a boy, he witnessed his father's confrontations with the French government over laws banning Islamic head coverings for school girls. Although he developed a fondness for nice cars and clothes, he saw few opportunities for obtaining them, or for gaining full acceptance as a Muslim and Arab in France, according to family acquaintances.
"As an Arab living here, the only area of society where you are truly accepted is religion," said Mustapha Kessous, a Lyon journalist and radio talk-show host who has written extensively about the Benchellali family and Lyon's immigrant community. "To anyone meeting you on the street, you are a Muslim and an Arab first, not a Frenchman."
Police are uncertain how Benchellali first connected with al Qaeda. In the late 1990s, according to U.S. and French intelligence officials, he traveled to Afghanistan to train in one of several camps that the group established for foreign recruits. On one of his later trips he was accompanied by his younger brother Mourad, who eventually was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and is now being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. officials believe Menad Benchellali may have received advanced training at al Qaeda's Derunta camp, near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. The camp housed one of al Qaeda's labs and a school for a select group of recruits who studied the use of toxic chemicals and biological toxins, including ricin, U.S. intelligence sources say.
The instructors included at least two scientists: Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained biochemist who is now in custody in Malaysia, and a Pakistani microbiologist who U.S. officials have declined to name. At Derunta, U.S. forces discovered castor oil and equipment for making ricin. "There is a lot of evidence of crude attempts to produce ricin," at Derunta, said a U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition he not be identified by name.
After al Qaeda lost Afghan camps to invading U.S. forces in late 2001, Benchellali's chemical training shifted to the Pankisi Gorge, a lawless area in Georgia that borders Chechnya, the separatist republic in southern Russia, French authorities say. The existence of makeshift laboratories and training camps in the mountainous region has been documented by the Georgian government, which moved to close the camps early last year. Benchellali told police he had planned to join the Chechen rebels but was thwarted in his attempts to cross into Russia. He decided instead to return to France, taking with him new skills and a network of contacts spanning most of Western Europe.
Lab in a Spare Room
The apartment in suburban Lyon to which Benchellali returned two years ago is small but tidy, its thin green carpet and modest furnishings showing meticulous care. The dominant feature is a wall-length bookshelf filled with handsome brown leather volumes with titles in gold Arabic script. A young girl who answered the door recently explained that the dwelling had been nearly empty for weeks: Since early January, three members of the family -- both parents and a brother -- have been jailed pending trial on charges they aided Menad Benchellali's attempts to make ricin.
The lab was located in a spare bedroom that doubled by day as a sewing room. French police say Benchellali, fresh from training camp in the Pankisi Gorge, would lock himself in the room and work through the night on his mysterious projects, the nature of which he kept to himself. In fact, French police say, he was experimenting with a variation of one of the recipes he learned abroad: a ricin concoction laced with the toxin that causes botulism. While extremely toxic, ricin can be extracted using rudimentary kitchen equipment and can be handled without danger if a person takes basic precautions.
Family members acknowledged to police that they sometimes ran errands for Benchellali, picking up lab equipment and bottles of acetone from a local market. Acetone is used in the processing of the castor beans. "Menad would tell me what he needed, and I would make a list," one of his sisters told police, according to a transcript of her interrogation, which was relayed by a French investigator.
Benchellali's mother, Hafsa, told police she became concerned after finding strange potions and liquids scattered around her sewing room following one of her son's all-night sessions. But when she confronted her son, he warned her to stay away. "He said it was dangerous," the woman said, according to the transcript, "and it was better if I didn't know what he was doing."
The experiments ended abruptly in December 2002 when Benchellali was arrested along with three others in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the Russian Embassy in Paris with conventional explosives. Months passed before terrorism investigators became fully aware of the ricin experiments and the extent of Benchellali's possible ties with al Qaeda's biological and chemical programs abroad. On Jan. 10, 2004, police raided the family's apartment in a search for weapons and equipment, but by then any traces of ricin that might have existed had vanished, French officials said.
Relatives and neighbors contend that the government's claims about Benchellali are wildly exaggerated. Jacques Debray, a lawyer representing the Benchellali family, said he believed that France's arrest of the parents was partly a pressure tactic to extract confessions -- including possible new leads to assist the U.S. government in its prosecution of Mourad Benchellali, the son held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. "Such information could clearly improve relations with the United States," Debray said.
French terrorism officials, however, are convinced that the arrests halted a terrorist attack and likely saved lives -- and not just in France. But the details of such plans for an attack are not known.
"Members of this group had training in chemical and biological weapons," said a senior French terrorism investigator who spoke on the condition he not be identified by name. "We know they wanted to develop poisons and use them to create panic. It was to be one tool among many."
Plots Across Europe
Menad Benchellali's arrest gave police a breakthrough that led to the unmasking of other plots and terror cells in Europe.
In January 2003, prompted by French discoveries in the Benchellali case, British police raided apartments in London, Bournemouth and Manchester and apprehended 13 North African men suspected of ties to al Qaeda and an affiliated terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam. In one of the London apartments authorities found castor beans, traces of ricin and equipment for making the toxin. Later that month, Spanish police arrested 16 North Africans and seized additional equipment, chemicals and false passports.
French officials believe the Spanish, British and French cells were communicating with one another and coordinating their activities, especially those related to obtaining toxins and poisons. Members of all three groups had spent time at the same Pankisi Gorge camp. Yet, more than a year after Benchellali's arrest, European and U.S. counterterrorism officials are not convinced that all members of the network have been identified.
The Bush administration has said it believes more than 100 militants were part of the same cluster of terrorist cells that allegedly included Benchellali. It also contends that members of the network took orders from Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian terrorist believed to have organized recent suicide bombings in Iraq. While other governments are less certain about the command structure, there is wide agreement among counterterrorism officials that additional sleeper cells continue to operate in Europe, Asia and possibly North America.
"They are honing their skills and awaiting instructions," said Jacquard, the French terrorism expert. "They make what they want and they raise their own money. Some may not be sophisticated. But they communicate with more professional and trained individuals who are operating under the last orders they received from leaders of al Qaeda."
Terrorism experts say an attack with ricin probably would not cause massive casualties, though it could kill or sicken dozens or even hundreds under the right conditions. Even a small-scale attack could cause panic and disrupt commerce and government services, as was illustrated two months ago when the discovery of ricin traces on a mail-sorting machine shut down Senate office buildings for several days.
"These are toxins that, if released in a enclosed space, could cause extreme harm," said Jeffrey M. Bale, an expert on chemical and biological terrorism at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There's no doubt that the groups we're seeing today could carry out such an attack. What surprises me is that that they haven't already done so."
-------- iraq
Shiite Leaders Urge Cleric to Abandon Cities
Committee Seeks to Prevent U.S. Attack On Sadr's Forces in Najaf and Karbala
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1965-2004May4?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 4 -- Some of Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim leaders, seeking to avoid a potentially devastating U.S. attack on two holy cities, called Tuesday for cleric Moqtada Sadr and his armed followers to abandon their strongholds in Najaf and Karbala.
The plea, which included a call for U.S. troops to remain outside the cities, represents the most public attempt to date by Iraq's mainstream Shiite leadership to resolve a five-week-old standoff between Sadr and occupation officials. It comes as U.S. officials are counting increasingly on Iraqis to assume responsibility for the country's security before sovereignty is handed to them at the end of next month.
A 21-member committee of Shiite tribal, religious and political leaders hopes to broker a deal that would allow Sadr, who is wanted by U.S. authorities on murder charges, to leave the city of Najaf, where he has hunkered down for several weeks. Najaf is home to the shrine of Ali, Iraq's holiest Shiite site, and recent fighting around the city between Sadr's militia and U.S. forces has placed it in jeopardy.
An adviser to Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, said Sistani had not been invited to send a representative to the committee, which comprises senior officials from each of the most influential Shiite political parties and many of Iraq's southern tribes. The widely revered Sistani and the young firebrand Sadr do not have good relations, though both have demanded that the United States move more quickly to return sovereignty to Iraqis.
Members of the committee, whose composition was announced Tuesday, said any arrangement would likely require U.S. officials to cancel the arrest warrant against Sadr and allow him to be taken into protective custody by a group of respected Shiite clerics in Najaf or to leave the country. Others suggested that Sadr be given a place in the interim government that assumes sovereignty on June 30.
But committee participants, including some Shiite members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, said U.S. officials had not approved any agreement, although one has been drawn up.
Sadr's aides quickly dismissed the committee's proposal as a plan influenced by an illegitimate occupation, a denunciation he has used repeatedly to whip up support among Iraqis frustrated by the continued presence of U.S. troops.
"Moqtada Sadr and his followers do not occupy the holy shrines in the holy cities," said Qais Hazaali, Sadr's spokesman in Najaf. "Any calls issued by the Governing Council, or any members of the Governing Council, do not represent Iraqis. They represent the occupation forces."
Sadr's defiance has helped generate antipathy toward the occupation across parts of Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, a region that once supported the U.S. invasion after decades of suffering under deposed president Saddam Hussein's government, which was dominated by Sunni Muslims. The standoff in Najaf and the broader Shiite unrest are at the forefront of security concerns that occupation officials are eager to resolve before the planned transfer of power.
Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, attacked a U.S. Army checkpoint Tuesday afternoon with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds, witnesses said. Army helicopters and a tank returned fire, and witnesses said at least four attackers and one Iraqi policeman were killed.
U.S. military officials have been reluctant to enter Najaf or Karbala, another holy city that has been the scene of fighting between U.S. troops and the Mahdi Army, for fear of damaging the shrines and creating a backlash across the Middle East.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Tuesday, one U.S. soldier was killed and 10 were wounded in an ambush near the northern city of Kirkuk. Four other U.S. soldiers were killed in a traffic accident in the town of Khalis, north of Baghdad.
The rise in violence over the past five weeks has severely complicated U.S. reconstruction and political efforts and prompted U.S. officials to turn to unlikely allies for help, alienating some old ones in the process.
Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician and Governing Council member who was once the Pentagon's choice to lead post-Hussein Iraq, said Tuesday at the news conference announcing the committee that "sovereignty is not to be given, it is to be seized."
Referring to members of the Mahdi Army, Chalabi said: "Most of them have parents in the mass graves, and they became fed up with the current situation, which the occupiers have ignored. But it is time to reject every military invasion and nonmilitary invasion of the two holy cities."
The siege of Fallujah, where Sunni insurgents have also been battling U.S. forces for five weeks, eased in recent days after U.S. military officials allowed former senior officers in Hussein's army to establish a brigade of local troops to control the city, located west of Baghdad. On Tuesday, however, a senior Pentagon policymaker described the recent handling of Iraqi generals in Fallujah as a "mistake."
U.S. military officials initially had said a former Iraqi Republican Guard general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, would take command of the new Iraqi force. But after new information emerged about Saleh's background, they said another former general, Mohammed Latif, would take over.
"One of the biggest challenges in a situation like Iraq today is vetting people," Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a speech Tuesday. "One of the checks on the vetting process is, after you're finished vetting people and you go public with somebody, if you've made a mistake, you hear about it, and that allows you to take corrective action. And that's what was done in that case. And it was a mistake."
Feith gave an upbeat assessment of the situation in Iraq in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington research organization. While conceding that "we're in a difficult period now," Feith said Iraq had been "transformed" over the last year by the elimination of Hussein's government, political progress and improved distribution of electricity and some other services.
Addressing the continuing argument over the Bush administration's reasons for going to war, Feith argued that because the threat presented by Hussein's previous weapons capabilities and his history of aggression were well known, the rationale for going to war was not undercut by the fact that no chemical or biological weapons have been found.
"I think no one can properly assert that the failure so far to find Iraqi WMD stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war," he said, using the initials for weapons of mass destruction.
The Fallujah agreement, reached without consulting the Governing Council, has drawn criticism from many Iraqi political leaders for allowing Hussein loyalists to regain a measure of power at the point of a gun. The Shiite leaders warned Tuesday that the reversal might complicate their efforts to resolve the Najaf crisis. The committee plans to visit Sadr within a week.
"What happened in Fallujah may encourage Sadr negatively, showing him that negating and refusing will get you something, as elements of the old regime have now shown," said Adil Abdul Mahdi, the second-ranking member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite political party.
Abdul Karim Mohammedawi, a tribal leader on the Governing Council and the committee, said: "We need to find a solution to get Moqtada Sadr outside these cities. If the Americans will be reasonable, there will be a solution. But if not, it will be very difficult."
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Begins First Major Assault on Iraqi Militia Led by Cleric
May 5, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/middleeast/05CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
KARBALA, Iraq, May 5 - The American military launched its first major assault against insurgents led by Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, striking early this morning at militia enclaves in this holy Shiite city and in another city in southern Iraq in an effort to retake control of those areas.
About 450 soldiers in dozens of armored vehicles, including M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, rumbled beneath a full moon through a neighborhood here controlled by armed supporters of Mr. Sadr.
The firepower on display was extraordinary. Polish and Bulgarian soldiers, Special Forces snipers, an Apache attack helicopter and an AC-130 Spectre gunship backed up the main strike force.
The operation, called Iron Saber, began at 11 p.m. on Tuesday (3 p.m. Tuesday Eastern time) and ran until dawn today. A similar battle took place at the same time in the city of Diwaniya, 60 miles southeast of here.
Soldiers in Karbala killed at least 10 Iraqi fighters and captured 20 people, Lt. Col. Gary Bishop of the First Armored Division said. An American soldier in a Humvee was killed when two insurgents driving a dump truck ran a checkpoint and rammed into the Humvee. A spokesman for Mr. Sadr said nine militiamen had been killed in the clashes in Diwaniya.
Members of Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, set off roadside bombs and fired rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles at the American convoy as it inched its way down a half-mile stretch of road through the heart of the neighborhood. Red tracer rounds arced through the sky, and the Americans returned fire down narrow alleyways and raided buildings. Explosions echoed across the city. At one point, an Iraqi man crawled out of a bunker waving a white flag of surrender, followed by several of his compatriots.
An Apache helicopter then launched 30-millimeter rounds at the building, and an Abrams tank incinerated it with a shot from its main cannon.
"Hopefully we can put enough pressure on them to break their will to stay in Karbala," said Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, who flew down from Baghdad in a Black Hawk to watch the battle.
The coordinated attacks here and in Diwaniya began hours after powerful Shiite politicians and religious leaders met in Baghdad to urge Mr. Sadr to withdraw his militia from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Now that the occupation forces have restored a veneer of calm to the volatile city of Falluja, they are upping the military and political pressure on the 31-year-old cleric. In early April, Mr. Sadr ignited a Shiite uprising throughout central and southern Iraq as marines were invading Falluja to root out a mostly Sunni Muslim insurgency there.
The two-front war has been the worst crisis for the Bush administration since the toppling of Saddam Hussein last April and has raised serious doubts about the White House's ability to create a stable, democratic government in Iraq.
More than 2,500 American soldiers have surrounded the holy city of Najaf, just 40 miles south of here, where Mr. Sadr lives. But the soldiers have not invaded the city center for fear of inflaming Shiites around the world and alienating the senior clerics of Najaf, whom American officials are hoping will oust the much-reviled Mr. Sadr.
The military did not hold back, though, from launching attacks today in Karbala, also one of the most revered cities among Shiite Muslims. Many Shiites make pilgrimages to the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein and Shrine of Abbas in the crowded downtown area. The city was founded on the site where Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and 72 of his followers were slain in battle by Sunni Muslim warriors in the eighth century, sealing the rift between the Sunni and Shiite sects.
In early March, suicide bombers blew themselves up around the Shiite shrines here and in Baghdad during the festival of Ashura, killing nearly 200 people.
The American assault today took place in a neighborhood southwest of the holy shrines. Town leaders did not raise a furor, and dozens of families stood outside their homes watching the convoy as it rolled toward the battle site. American commanders said they were trying to make precise attacks so as not to incur the wrath of the Shiites, who make up at least 60 percent of the population of Iraq.
Col. Peter Mansoor of the First Armored Division, which moved into this region from Baghdad after having its yearlong tour extended, said city leaders of Karbala met with American officers on Sunday and "made it very clear they don't want this to look like Falluja when this is all over."
Though popular support for Mr. Sadr appears to be waning, members of his militia continue to stage deadly attacks on occupation forces. Fighters in Karbala killed a Bulgarian soldier in late April after a convoy got lost near the shrines. Last Saturday, in the town of Amara, insurgents ambushed an American convoy, killing two soldiers. Militiamen lob mortars into an American base on the outskirts of Najaf every night, and as many as 20 Iraqis were killed in fierce fighting at the base on Monday.
Before today's operation began, American commanders estimated there were 200 to 500 members of Mr. Sadr's militia in Karbala and 300 to 400 in Diwaniya. There were 1,000 to 2,000 Mahdi fighters in Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa, though it is unclear how many of those are devoted warriors, General Hertling said.
Mr. Sadr's followers are generally impoverished young men who form something more akin to an inner-city street gang than a disciplined army. Many hail from the sprawling slum called Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad and are newcomers to the holy cities they have invaded.
American commanders said the strikes in Karbala and Diwaniya were intended to drive the Mahdi Army from cities near Najaf and tighten the noose on Mr. Sadr. Occupation forces had not made any serious incursions into hostile areas of Karbala since the Mahdi Army invaded a month ago, General Hertling said.
The unit leading today's assault, the First Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the First Armored Division, arrived last Saturday in Camp Lima, about five miles east of the city center. The camp has been housing Polish, Bulgarian and Thai soldiers responsible for security in the area. The American soldiers are officially acting under the command of a Polish general.
Camp Lima was one of three bases in Karbala housing occupation soldiers, who were attacked in January by insurgents using coordinated suicide car bombs. On Tuesday afternoon, commanders briefed their soldiers on the battle ahead, running through various scenarios using markers on the ground beneath makeshift white tents, and indicating the placements of roads and buildings.
They decided to first attack a neighborhood southwest of the two holy shrines that was abandoned by Iraqi security forces when the Mahdi Army arrived last month. They said three buildings - a hotel, a former headquarters of the Baath Party and the old governorate building - were believed to be strongholds for the insurgency.
The first tanks rolled out of Camp Lima at 11 p.m. on Tuesday and began drawing fire from the Mahdi Army after reaching the neighborhood at midnight. A roadside bomb and a rocket-propelled grenade exploded at the front of the second armored vehicle. Soldiers fired back down an alleyway with tracer rounds from M-16's and powerful 25-millimeter rounds from a Bradley fighting vehicle.
When soldiers raided the former Baath Party headquarters and old governorate offices, they discovered the buildings were wired to explode. An Abrams tank fired at the governorate building. That set off a spectacular inferno, leading officers to say the place was probably an ammunition dump.
"They think if they keep shooting at us, we'll leave," said Lt. Josey Sandoval, 24, the gunner in an M-113 armored personnel carrier. "They should know it's just the opposite. If they stop shooting, then we'll leave."
-------- israel / palestine
Report: Ministry Funded Illegal Outposts
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's Housing Ministry has spent millions of dollars on unauthorized construction in the West Bank, a government report said Wednesday, leading the attorney general to impose a new way of monitoring settlement spending.
Also Wednesday, the Palestinian legislature fired a high-ranking official it accused of corruption. It was the first time lawmakers dismissed a senior official for corruption.
In Gaza, two Palestinians were killed and 16 -- including a news photographer -- were wounded in Israeli-Palestinian violence. In the West Bank, an armed Hamas fugitive was shot dead by troops.
Also, Israel released a co-founder of Hamas, Mohammed Taha, after holding him for 14 months without charges. Taha, accused by the army of leading Hamas' military wing, was arrested in a raid on the Boureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
The report, issued by the watchdog state comptroller, detailed how the Housing Ministry funneled about $6.5 million for illegal construction, more than half of it to unauthorized outposts.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz ordered an unprecedented freeze on funding for settlement construction, charging that settlements were diverting state funds to the outposts.
The Justice Ministry announced Wednesday that Mazuz had lifted last month's ordered freeze after approving a monitoring system to ensure government money is not used for illegal projects.
From January 2000 to June 2003, the Housing Ministry approved 77 contracts for construction projects in 33 West Bank areas, 18 of them unauthorized outposts, the report said. Of the $6.5 million given to illegal West Bank construction, about $4 million went to the outposts, the comptroller's report said.
Housing Minister Effie Eitam, leader of the pro-settler National Religious Party, pledged to respect the law.
``I promise that every shekel (dollar) that comes from the government will be transferred to legal activities,'' Eitam told Israel's Army Radio after the report was released.
Israel is obligated under the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan to dismantle dozens of unauthorized West Bank outposts, many of them no more than a trailer on a barren hilltop.
Palestinians view the outposts as further encroachment on land they want for a state. Although Israel has removed a handful of the outposts, most were rebuilt within days.
A U.S. official declined to respond to the findings in the report but said the American position on illegal outposts is well known.
``Consistent with the road map, settlement activity is to be frozen, and certainly illegal outposts even more so,'' the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
On Sunday, members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party voted against his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and small parts of the West Bank. In consultations Tuesday in New York, the ``Quartet'' of Mideast mediators -- the United States, European Union, Russia and United Nations -- endorsed Sharon's plan.
In a Wednesday letter to Quartet members, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said the defeat of Sharon's plan was an opportunity to return to negotiations ``and the end to Israeli occupation of all Palestinian territory.''
In another development, the Palestinian legislature Wednesday fired the head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority after a parliamentary probe concluded he was involved in corruption and mismanagement.
Amin Haddad was the first high-ranking Palestinian official to be fired by the parliament for corruption. The monetary authority monitors the flow of money in the Bank of Palestine. The Palestinian administration assumed control over the private bank three years ago, but losses have tripled during that time to $34 million.
``This is part of the parliament's war against corruption in the Palestinian Authority,'' said Hassan Khreishe, the Palestinian deputy parliament speaker.
Haddad could not be reached for comment.
In the West Bank village of Talouza, troops shot dead an armed Hamas fugitive, the army said. Villagers said the dead man, Einad Janajra, was the target of an Israeli raid last month but escaped, and an innocent bystander was shot dead instead.
The army later apologized for killing the bystander, a university lecturer.
In Gaza, two Palestinians were killed in fighting with the Israeli army.
Palestinian officials said one person was killed after entering an unauthorized area near the border with Israel. Originally the Palestinians said two were killed, but only one body was found. The military said soldiers opened fire on two men, hitting one.
In the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, a Palestinian security guard was killed by Israeli gunfire after dozens of youths began throwing stones at troops. One of the wounded, Mahmoud Hams, is a news photographer working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency.
The army said soldiers fired at gunmen. The military demolished 10 buildings, uprooted dozens of olive trees and damaged infrastructure in the area, witnesses said.
The army has stepped up activity in southern Gaza since Palestinian gunmen killed a pregnant Jewish settler and her four young daughters in an ambush there Sunday
--------
U.S. Retreats From Bush Remarks on Sharon Plan
Effort Is Intended To Placate Arabs
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1475-2004May4.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 4 -- The Bush administration on Tuesday joined in a high-level diplomatic statement that stressed that the key issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians must be negotiated by both sides, just weeks after President Bush pronounced that Israel could keep some West Bank settlements and Palestinian refugees should not resettle in Israel.
U.S. officials and foreign diplomats described the statement as an effort by the Bush administration to repair the international damage from the president's remarks last month, which had drawn sharp criticism in the Arab world and from European allies.
Bush's comments, made with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his side, had alarmed diplomats overseas because some perceived that the United States and Israel had cut their own deal on Sharon's plan to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians. U.S. officials now appear eager to erase that perception, both in private negotiating sessions and in public statements afterward.
The Tuesday statement should be "some assurance to the Arab world, and to the whole world, that we are committed to the basis upon which the peace process rests -- that's the appropriate U.N. resolutions," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said. "And we are in conversation with our other Arab friends to see what assurances and comments they may need from us to make sure that they know that the president has not abandoned them."
The statement, issued by a Middle East coordinating group known as the Quartet, represented an effort by the international community to reinsert itself into the peace process, including laying the groundwork for financial assistance to the Palestinian areas to be vacated by Israel. It appeared to put the Quartet -- made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and United States -- at the center of future Middle East peacemaking, even though the group had been largely marginalized in the past by the administration as a sort of a debating society.
In the statement, issued after a two-hour meeting by senior officials and several days of negotiations by lower-level aides, the Quartet said Sharon's plan "must bring about a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end of occupation in Gaza." Diplomats said they wanted to give the idea of a withdrawal a qualified endorsement and to stress that anything less than a complete abandonment of settlements in Gaza would be unacceptable, especially in light of the rejection of the plan Sunday by Sharon's Likud Party.
"We took positive note of Prime Minister Sharon's announced intention to withdraw from all Gaza settlements and parts of the West Bank," said the statement, which U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan read at a news conference. "This should provide a rare moment of opportunity in the search for peace in the Middle East."
Since Bush's meeting with Sharon -- which included an exchange of letters between the two men -- U.S. officials have emphasized that the president was not trying to preempt negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians on a final peace deal. But the backlash in Arab and European countries was intense. Many felt that Bush had given away two of the Palestinians' best bargaining chips, making it more difficult for them to gain new territory or monetary compensation in exchange for letting Israel keep some settlements and giving up the right to return to homes lost in Israel's war of independence.
In the letter to Sharon, Bush said Israel "must have secure and recognized borders," and "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect . . . a full and complete return" to pre-1967 borders. Bush added: "It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."
On Palestinian refugees, Bush wrote: "It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue [would require] the settling of Palestinian refugees [in a Palestinian state], rather than in Israel."
But the lengthy Quartet statement said that "any final settlement on issues such as borders and refugees must be mutually agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians" based on a long list of U.N. resolutions and other diplomatic initiatives, including a Saudi proposal that would have Israel give up all the occupied territories. The Quartet also stressed at several points that Israel must freeze settlement growth, that it "must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967," and that "no party should take unilateral actions that seek to predetermine issues that can only be resolved through negotiation and agreement between the two parties."
It is unclear if the Quartet statement will mollify the administration's Arab critics. Bush will meet with Jordan's King Abdullah at the White House on Thursday. While the White House earlier this week rejected the king's request for a letter that would suggest compensation for any Palestinian loss of homes or land in a final peace deal, officials said on Tuesday that they were holding intensive discussions with the Jordanians on a possible statement that would be responsive to Jordanian concerns.
Bush's perceived tilt to Israel also came under fire from a group of more than 50 retired U.S. diplomats, including ambassadors, many with experience in the Middle East. The diplomats, following a similar complaint to British Prime Minister Tony Blair by more than 50 former British envoys, released a letter to Bush that said they were "deeply concerned" by Bush's embrace of Sharon, which they said defied U.N. resolutions on the matter.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage dismissed the complaint. "I don't think it's particularly significant, one way or the other," he said. "It's a demonstration of democracy at work."
-------- japan
Japanese officials seek to amend constitution
May 05, 2004
By Lucille Craft
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040504-100437-2096r.htm
TOKYO - Spurred by threats at home and abroad, Japan's ruling party has embarked on the most audacious effort ever to recast the country's constitution, which renounces the right to wage war and to maintain a standing army.
If the governing Liberal Democratic Party is successful, it will mark the first time that the nearly 60-year-old document has been altered.
"In the past, debates have been about whether we should even touch the constitution at all," said Kazuo Aichi, a retired legislator and leading proponent of constitutional reform. "Should we revise it, or protect it? Now we're beyond that."
Cobbled together in days by a group of idealistic Americans after World War II, the constitution has become a source of national identity for many Japanese, who have shied from a leading role in global affairs and surrendered responsibility for defense to the United States.
But with an increasingly menacing government in North Korea and an increasingly assertive China on its doorstep - not to mention terrorism and turmoil further afield - the consensus that Japan's destiny was to write checks while other countries wrestled with international crises finally has cracked.
Once the exclusive province of ultranationalists, deep-seated taboos such as amending the peace constitution are getting a serious hearing even among foes of the ruling party. One of the last holdouts, left-wing leader Takako Doi, announced in late April that she now favors constitutional revision.
Matake Kamiya, a professor of international relations at Japan's National Defense Academy, hails the birth of "active pacifism" in his country.
"Japanese have to understand that military power has two different aspects. It can be used as a tool to destroy peace, but it is [also] indispensable to create peace."
The no-war constitution "is a dead letter," said Andrew Horvat, who leads the Japan office of the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization.
"What was good during the Cold War - 'we are a defeated country, we suffered two atomic attacks, we are not participating in overseas military adventures' - this isn't working, and the average Japanese knows that."
That realization began to set in in 1991, when Kuwait publicly thanked the nearly 30 members of the U.S.-led coalition that drove Iraqi forces from its territory but pointedly failed to mention Japan - which had contributed $13 billion to defending Kuwait but not a single soldier.
Hit by the snub, Japan went on to join peacekeeping missions in Cambodia, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq while limiting troops to purely humanitarian relief efforts.
North Korea's firing of a Taepo-Dong ballistic missile over Japan in 1998 convinced many Japanese that the policy of simply "praying for peace," as political scientist Kiichi Fujiwara puts it, was dangerously idealistic.
The missile dropped into the sea, but the damage to Japan's sense of security was irreparable.
"For the first time, the Japanese realized they had external enemies," Mr. Kamiya said. This spring, Japan Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba informed parliament that Japan would be "helpless" if North Korea attacked.
Today, even those reluctant to send Japanese troops into combat think that the constitution should be amended to specifically permit the sort of deployments now under way in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Let's call a spade a spade," Mr. Aichi said. "It's desirable to have a constitution with room for interpretation, but we've gone way beyond that point. It's time for a change."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan Protests U.S. Troop Border Violation
May 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-usa-protest.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has protested to the United States against an incursion by U.S. troops into Pakistani territory to hunt suspected al Qaeda or Taliban militants, a Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.
The incident, which took place May 2, came a day after the top U.S. commander in neighboring Afghanistan said foreign fighters, including from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, were still launching attacks from Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt.
``We have protested to the U.S. authorities, both through the diplomatic and military channels,'' Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a news conference.
``The U.S. version is that this was a misunderstanding and that the incursion was inadvertent, and once they realized that they were on the Pakistani side of Pakistan-Afghan border they withdrew immediately,'' he added.
Pakistan requested the U.S. authorities conduct an inquiry and share the results with Islamabad, he said.
The U.S. troops searched shops and a gas station in the village of Alwara Mandi in North Waziristan, one of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions, during a night operation, said Pakistani Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
Some 60 U.S. troops drove into Alwara Mandi, which lies a few hundred yards from the frontier with Afghanistan and has a Pakistani forces picket close by, villagers told Reuters.
The U.S. troops were in Alwara Mandi for no longer than 25 minutes, Sultan said. Residents said they stayed longer.
Some 120 people were killed, including dozens of soldiers, in a battle between Pakistani forces and suspected al Qaeda fighters and their local allies in neighboring South Waziristan in March.
-------- prisoners of war
Jailed Iraqis hidden from Red Cross, says US army
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday May 5, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1209681,00.html
US military policemen moved unregistered Iraqi prisoners, known as "ghost detainees", around an army-run jail at Abu Ghraib, in order to hide them from the Red Cross, according to a confidential military report.
The report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison - a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian - described the practice of hiding prisoners as "deceptive, contrary to army doctrine, and in violation of international law".
The revelations surfaced at a time when the prison abuse scandal threatened to engulf the Pentagon and the military occupation of Iraq.
The US army yesterday admitted to the Senate there was evidence of widespread abuse of prisoners in military-run jails in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been a total of 25 recorded deaths in US military custody in both countries.
The army also said yesterday that one soldier had been court-martialed for using excessive force in shooting to death an Iraqi prisoner last September. The soldier was reduced in rank and dismissed from the army.
It disclosed, too, that it had referred to the Justice Department a homicide case involving a CIA contract interrogator alleged to be responsible for the death of an Iraqi pris oner last November. That death was at Abu Ghraib prison.
"I think the important point that I took from this hearing is that this does not appear to be an isolated incident and that there are additional reports in Iraq, and also Afghanistan," Senator Edward Kennedy said after an army briefing of the armed services committee. "And I think we also have to find out [about] the conduct of personnel down in Guantanamo as well."
The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that multiple investigations were under way into prison conditions and interrogation techniques, including at Guantanamo Bay and a naval detention centre at Charleston, South Carolina.
But he denied the scandal represented a breakdown in control. "The system works," he insisted. However, Mr Rumsfeld was denounced in the Senate for failing to tell Congress about the Abu Ghraib scandal until the news broke in the press last week.
The army report on Abu Ghraib, written by Major General Antonio Taguba, is a bluntly-worded indictment of the military detention system, with harsh words for the military policemen who physically and sexually abused prisoners, their superior officers, and the private contractors who carried out interrogations and gave some of the orders.
The Taguba report described how "ghost detainees" were brought to the military police (MP) unit running several jails in Iraq by OGAs (military jargon for other government agencies, often a reference to the CIA).
"The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by OGAs without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention," the report stated.
"The joint interrogation and debriefing centre (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees 'ghost detainees'. On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of 'ghost detainees' for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team."
Amanda Williamson, an ICRC spokeswoman, said its prison inspectors were not aware that prisoners had been hidden from them.
· The US plans to keep more than 130,000 troops in Iraq until the end of next year, Pentagon officials said yesterday. The decision marks a drastic departure from earlier plans to reduce troop levels sharply in the run-up to the US elections in November.
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Military lawyers attack Guantánamo tribunals
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Neil A. Lewis
NYT
http://www.iht.com/articles/518386.html
WASHINGTON The Bush administration's plan to use military tribunals to try some of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which has faced considerable skepticism, has been receiving some of its sharpest attacks from the military defense lawyers who are participating in the process.
Senior government planners once expected that the first of the prisoners to go before a tribunal would plead guilty as part of an agreement to reduce their jail time. But the military lawyers assigned to defend the first group of prisoners have radically altered that hope, officials acknowledge.
The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the military tribunal system as inherently unfair.
The Pentagon wants the military commissions, the first for the United States since the end of World War II, to be seen as fair domestically and internationally.
But the military lawyers are playing a kind of attack-the-system role, and in the process have been quoted around the world and acclaimed by some as heroes after appearances in London and Australia in which they have denounced the tribunals.
Nonetheless, senior military officials said that while they disagreed with the view that the tribunal system is unfair, they had no problem with the defense lawyers' making harshly critical comments.
Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift of the U.S. Navy and Major Mark Bridges of the U.S. Army, said that the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result.
The several hundred people who had gathered for a talk about the Guantánamo facility did not expect to hear the U.S. officers' objections.
Murray Wesson, a Rhodes Scholar from South Africa who attended, wrote on his Web log: "What I was unprepared for, given that these were, after all, military lawyers, was how critical of the process they were. Indeed, they went so far as to describe the tribunals as 'fundamentally flawed' and insinuated that they would not amount to fair trials."
The day before the Oxford event, Major Michael Mori of the Marines, another defense lawyer, said at a London news conference, "The system is not set up to provide even the appearance of a fair trial."
Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who was at the event in Oxford, said he had been greatly surprised by the approach of the military lawyers in public forums.
"These folks have been amazing. It's just something I never expected," said Ratner, whose New York-based group is challenging the Guantánamo detentions in federal court. "I always assumed that the prisoners would get an adequate defense, but they're denouncing the entire system with public press conferences."
Mori, who represents an Australian detainee, has become a minor celebrity in Australia, where he has visited and where his interviews with Australian reporters based in the United States appear regularly.
One such reporter, Karl Stefanovic of Channel Nine, a major national network, said news accounts had compared Mori to Tom Cruise, who played a valiant military defense lawyer at Guantánamo in the film "A Few Good Men."
"When people hear him talk for the first time, they are quite surprised at the way he openly attacks the system," Stefanovic said of Mori.
Lieutenant Colonel Sharon Shaffer, who was a judge in the U.S. Air Force until being assigned to defend a Sudanese detainee who is one of the first two to have been charged with a crime, said she had told audiences of her "great concerns about whether he can receive a fair trial with rules that are written that are twisted against the defense."
"My client just wants to have the opportunity to have a just and fair trial," Shaffer said. "How can I tell him that this system will accomplish that?"
Like the other defense lawyers, she was critical of rules requiring that motions do not go to the panel of judges "but to the same officer who approved the charges in the first place."
Lieutenant Commander Philip Sundel of the navy, one of the lawyers, has complained that the tribunal process lacks the needed checks and balances to be fair.
That person, Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway of the air force, said in an interview that he believed the rules were fair, but added: "I don't object to defense counsel challenging the system. Their job is to zealously defend their client."
Shaffer, like her colleagues, said that she did not worry that her comments could harm her career. "It doesn't trouble me in the least," she said. "I'm just being a staunch supporter of the Constitution and its notions of fairness."
The lawyers have been to Guantánamo Bay to visit their clients, who are kept separately from the other 610 prisoners there in a facility called Camp Echo. The six detainees who have been designated as eligible to face a tribunal each have an air-conditioned cell, 10 feet by 10 feet, or 3 meters by 3 meters, that is divided into living quarters with a bed and small toilet and a section for a small table where the lawyer and client may confer.
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Probes of Detainee Deaths Reported
Bush to Appear On Arab TV; Rice Apologizes
By Bradley Graham and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2179-2004May4?language=printer
Two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. soldiers last year, and 20 other detainee deaths and assaults remain under criminal investigation in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of a total of 35 cases probed since December 2002 for possible misconduct by U.S. troops in those two countries, Army officials reported yesterday.
The tally emerged on a day U.S. military officials, struggling to contain growing outrage over the handling of detainees, insisted they had been quick to respond to allegations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. But Gen. George Casey, the Army's vice chief of staff, acknowledged that the actions there of military guards and interrogators had amounted to "a complete breakdown in discipline."
Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, publicly apologized to the Arab world for the mistreatment, and White House officials said President Bush would appear on Arab television in an effort to counter the damage.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered public assurances that those responsible for the misconduct would be held accountable and announced a further widening of Pentagon investigations into the military's treatment of detainees. He said he had ordered the Navy to look into operations at two prisons outside Iraq and Afghanistan holding terrorist suspects -- the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the naval brig at Charleston, S.C.
At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld appeared on the defensive as he was peppered with questions about why he and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had taken days to read an internal Army investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib prison. Pentagon leaders also faced a sharp rebuke from Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress, who accused them of not having been forthcoming earlier about the problems at the prison.
"We need to know why we weren't told what went on," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after a closed-door briefing by Army officials to the Armed Services Committee.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) complained that when Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials came to Capitol Hill last week -- hours before CBS's "60 Minutes II" first aired photographs of Iraqi prisoners being physically abused and sexually humiliated -- they neglected to mention the coming disclosure.
"Why were we not told in a classified briefing why this happened, and that it happened at all?" he asked. "That is inexcusable; it's an outrage."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) agreed when asked whether he also was concerned that the administration had not alerted Congress before the CBS program. "If we're going to be part and a partner in this war on terror, then we ought to be completely briefed, not just briefed on things they want us to hear," he said.
But while condemnation of the reported abuses came from both sides of the political aisle, members split along party lines over the question of whether Congress should conduct special hearings into the allegations. Several Democrats urged such a move, but Republicans DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee opposed the idea, saying regular congressional committees could provide sufficient oversight.
"I'm sure that our committees are going to be asking the right questions," DeLay said. "But a full-fledged congressional investigation -- that's like saying we need an investigation every time there's police brutality on the street."
Human Rights Watch, a leading human rights organization, called yesterday for a broad public investigation of all detention centers around the world run by the U.S. military and CIA. The CIA operates an unknown number of small prisons for suspected terrorists overseas.
"The brazenness with which the U.S. soldiers involved conducted themselves suggests they thought they had nothing to hide from their superiors," they wrote in a letter to Rice. A probe of conditions at Abu Ghraib prison "does not nearly go far enough to reverse the extraordinary harm these abuses have caused."
Of the 35 criminal investigations into specific cases of possible mistreatment of detainees begun by the Army in the past year-and-a-half, 25 have involved deaths and 10 resulted from allegations of assault, said Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army's provost marshal and head of the service's Criminal Investigation Division. The large majority of the cases occurred in Iraq.
Twelve of the deaths were attributed either to a natural cause, such as a heart attack or illness, or to undetermined factors because the bodies had been buried quickly by relatives. Investigations into 10 other deaths and into the 10 assault cases remain unresolved.
The death of an Iraqi detainee who was shot last year trying to escape from the Abu Ghraib prison was declared a justifiable homicide. In the death of another detainee at another Iraqi prison, who was shot while assaulting a U.S. soldier with rocks, the soldier was found guilty of using excessive force. He was demoted to the rank of private and discharged from the Army in place of a court-martial, an Army spokesman said.
The CIA inspector general is investigating three deaths of detainees involving CIA interrogators. One took place at Abu Ghraib last November, and a second at another detention facility in Iraq, a CIA spokesman said yesterday. The third death, which an Army investigation refers to as a homicide, involves a CIA contract interrogator in Afghanistan.
Questions about just how seriously top Pentagon officials had initially taken the allegations about conditions at Abu Ghraib were fanned by Myers's admission Sunday that he had not yet read the highly critical report on the prison completed in March by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. Rumsfeld's spokesman reported Monday that Rumsfeld had not yet read it, either.
Rumsfeld said yesterday that he had since reviewed an executive summary of Taguba's report and denied any foot-dragging by the Defense Department. Providing a chronology of Pentagon actions, he said an investigation into abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility was announced Jan. 16, three days after military authorities had received a tip about misconduct there.
In February, he noted, the Army directed its inspector general to review the doctrine and training associated with detention operations throughout the U.S. Central Command area. And in March, the head of the Army Reserves ordered an assessment of the training given to military police and intelligence personnel on handling prisoners. Two weeks ago, commanders in Baghdad began an investigation into military intelligence practices in Iraq.
"These things are complicated; they take some time," Rumsfeld said of the investigations.
The explanation of why it had taken so long for Taguba's report to reach top Pentagon officials was left to Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined Rumsfeld at the news conference. Pace said that to ensure rights are protected and avoid command influence, investigations must proceed "in a very systematic way" up the chain of command, with officers at each level taking time to read all documents, receive legal advice and make decisions.
Nonetheless, he said, senior Pentagon officials had been aware of the charges filed against the guards at Abu Ghraib. "There has been no attempt to hide this," he said.
Taguba's investigation portrayed an extremely sloppily run unit of military police that lacked in the most basic discipline, leadership or operating procedures. The report noted that no one seemed to have had a clear idea of how many escapes had occurred from the facility, in part because of shoddy record-keeping.
The investigation found that Army military police soldiers at the prison sometimes took photographs of naked female detainees. Also, among what Taguba said were "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses," a male guard was reported to have had sex with a female detainee, and male detainees were threatened with rape or sodomized with a chemical light or broomstick. Also, guard dogs with their muzzles removed were used to threaten detainees.
Transgressions were pervasive and intentional, Taguba's report said. In an incident it described as a violation of international law, detainees were moved around the prison to hide them from a visiting survey team from the International Red Cross.
A number of lawmakers lamented yesterday the damage to U.S. efforts in Iraq and the U.S. image abroad resulting from the disclosure of the abuses. Rumsfeld, asked about the impact on U.S. standing in the world, called the revelations "unhelpful in a fundamental way." He condemned the alleged abuses as "totally unacceptable and un-American" and said he had been "stunned" by the evidence.
At a later news conference, Casey, the Army's vice chief of staff, recounted measures taken in recent weeks to avoid a recurrence. The military police and intelligence units at Abu Ghraib have been replaced, and a single two-star general has been put in charge of detainee operations in Iraq, he said.
All U.S. military guards and interrogators in Iraq have received additional instruction in international rules governing treatment of detainees, Casey added. And a team of 24 specialists in prison operations has been sent to Iraq to bolster training. Longer term, the Army is forming several new units with specialized training in prison management, Casey said.
Staff writers Helen Dewar, Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
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Army Discloses Criminal Inquiry on Prison Abuse
May 5, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/middleeast/05ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 4 - In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's vice chief of staff said Tuesday.
To date, the most severe penalties in any of the cases were less-than-honorable discharges for five Army soldiers, military officials said. No one has been sentenced to prison, they said.
The disclosure of the investigations, by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's second-highest ranking general, was the strongest indication to date of a wider pattern of abuse at American prisons beyond the horrific descriptions and photographs that have emerged recently of acts of humiliation, sexual and otherwise, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in November.
At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld condemned the abuses at Abu Ghraib as "totally unacceptable and un-American," but sought to minimize the significance of incidents elsewhere and insisted that the military had acted swiftly in cases in which misconduct was alleged. "The system works," he said.
But on Capitol Hill, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed anger after a briefing in which they were told of the details and potential scope of the misconduct for the first time.
The Senate Intelligence Committee said it would hold a closed session on Wednesday to determine whether American intelligence officers from the military or other agencies were involved.
The Bush administration dispatched top officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to contain the fallout over the widening story of abuse at the prisons, which Mr. Powell said had "stunned every American." Administration officials have acknowledged that the episode had caused enormous damage to the American image around the world.
To date, only Army military police officers assigned to Abu Ghraib prison have been disciplined in abuses committed in November in a secure cellblock. But a March 9 report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said two military intelligence officers and two private contractors who oversaw interrogations may have been "either directly or indirectly responsible."
It was not until April 24 that the Army began to investigate possible involvement by military intelligence units and contractors working with them in Iraq in any abuse, including the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade; employees of CACI, a private contractor; and the Iraqi Survey Group, a unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to Defense Department officials.
The worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place in November, after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then in charge of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, recommended changes in procedures intended "to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," according to General Taguba's report.
In Iraq on Tuesday, General Miller said he had recommended that military police be given a more active role in gathering intelligence, but said the abuses had not been the result.
In providing a detailed accounting of other Army investigations into accusations of abuse, General Casey said the military had conducted a total of 25 criminal investigations into deaths and 10 into allegations of misconduct involving detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the cases involving death, the cause in 12 was natural or undetermined.
Of the 13 other deaths, one - a prisoner killed while trying to escape - was ruled a justifiable homicide, General Casey said.
Of the two cases determined to have been criminal homicides, defense officials said, one was in Iraq, and has resulted in a dishonorable discharge but not the jailing of the American soldier responsible, whose actions were judged to have been provoked by rock-throwing Iraqi prisoners.
The other case was in Afghanistan and involved a person working with the Central Intelligence Agency who has not yet been charged with a crime, the military officials said. A C.I.A. official disputed the idea that any determination had been made in that case about possible agency involvement. "The investigation is still under way," the official said.
The other 10 deaths are still under investigation.
The accounting by Army officials of the deaths of Iraqi prisoners apparently did not include a case in which two marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif., are set to stand trial this summer on charges of abuse involving an Iraqi prisoner who died in their custody in June 2003.
It was not clear whether the cases listed by the military as being under investigation included the deaths of two prisoners in Iraq that C.I.A. officials have said are being reviewed because of the possible involvement of agency personnel.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a telephone interview that the impact of the abuse cases in the Middle East would extend "beyond what we can imagine today on our troops and our nation's security. It will just fuel the anger and ill-feeling in the region."
Senator John McCain of Arizona, a top Republican on the panel, called for a public hearing "as soon as possible" in which the committee would ask Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials to explain "how this whole situation evolved, what action is being taken, and what further actions needs to be taken to prevent a recurrence of this terrible situation."
Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing at a midafternoon news conference, identified six separate broad reviews that he said had started since January, when the first reports of the abuse at Abu Ghraib reached Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq.
"We're taking and will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to hold accountable those that may have violated the code of military conduct and betrayed the trust placed in them by the American people," he said.
Among Americans conducting interrogations in Iraqi prisons, members of the Iraq Survey Group, under the command of Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had primary responsibility for the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners designated as "high-value targets," according to senior intelligence officials.
But a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency said the agency had "not heard of any allegations involving our people."
C.I.A. officials also took part in some interrogations involving high-value targets, including as many as two dozen prisoners in Abu Ghraib, an agency official said.
But intelligence officials said the primary role in interrogating Iraqi prisoners appeared to have been played by Army intelligence units, under the overall command until recently of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which answered to Col. Thomas Pappas, who was among those singled out for particular criticism in the report by General Taguba.
Ralph Williams, a spokesman for the Titan Corporation in San Diego, said Tuesday that John Israel, one of the contract employees implicated in the prison abuse scandal, worked for a Titan subcontractor that he would not name.
The Army's classified report on the abuse at Abu Ghraib identifies Mr. Israel as a translator who was, with others, "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses" at the prison and recommended "immediate disciplinary action."
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U.S. to Cut Iraq Prison Population
General Vows to Ease Overcrowding, Bans Use of Hoods
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A707-2004May4?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 4 -- The U.S. general overseeing Army-run prisons in Iraq said Tuesday that the population of overcrowded Abu Ghraib prison would be cut by more than half and that he has ordered military intelligence operatives to stop placing hoods over detainees' heads as an interrogation tactic.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, 54, who previously commanded the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was unapologetic about the use of tough tactics designed to draw out information from detainees, but said that he had directed interrogation supervisors to strictly follow Army rules detailing what techniques can be used.
"We're here to enable the armed forces to win this fight that's ongoing," Miller said he told his subordinates. "At the end of the day you'd better make sure that what we've done will make America proud."
Miller disclosed the policy changes during an interview with a small group of reporters here. He was made deputy commander for detainee operations in Iraq last month, weeks before images of detainees being physically and sexually abused at Abu Ghraib in November and December were broadcast around the world.
Last spring the military took over Abu Ghraib, which had been President Saddam Hussein's most notorious prison. Since then it has held as many as 7,000 prisoners, prompting complaints from human rights advocates and criticism from Army investigators.
Miller said he would reduce Abu Ghraib's population to a maximum of 1,500 or 2,000 but did not explain when or how the reduction would be achieved. The Army has accelerated the release of prisoners in recent months and has transferred a small number for criminal prosecution in Iraqi courts.
The U.S. military runs two other large prisons, in the southern port city of Umm Qasr and at Baghdad International Airport, where those referred to as "high-value" detainees are held. It also runs 11 smaller detention facilities, where prisoners can be held for up to 14 days before a decision is made to release them or transfer them to one of the three main facilities.
The U.S. military has begun five separate investigations since January into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, located in a western suburb of Baghdad. A criminal investigation has resulted in charges being filed against six soldiers. An administrative review resulted in notices of reprimand filed this week against six officers and non-commissioned officers and a lesser penalty for another.
One of the probes, into interrogation practices, could lead to additional criminal and administrative actions, military officials have said. The Army inspector general and the commander of the Army Reserve are conducting their own inquiries as well.
In the interview, Miller offered details of the procedures used to rattle, persuade or intimidate detainees into divulging information about their methods and organizations.
Each interrogation at Abu Ghraib is conducted by a group called a "tiger team," comprising one or two interrogators, a translator and a linguist, Miller said. An analyst, typically an older or more experienced interrogator, observes the questioning from a separate viewing room.
"Every interrogation must have an interrogation plan that lays out the techniques that will be used to be able to garner the information that is laid out in that interrogation plan," Miller said. "The interrogation team submits this up to their interrogation supervisor, who lays that out. That's one of the safeguards and checks that we use to ensure that our interrogation teams are following our guidance."
Miller said the use of physical contact and threats against detainees is prohibited. Last week, he said, he banned the use of hoods to cover the heads of detainees during transport. Instead, military officers have been directed to use "pressure bandages" or goggles to cover the eyes of detainees when transporting them.
The use of hoods within the prisons was halted more than a month ago, Miller said. Several of the photographs depicting abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees, taken in November and broadcast last week on CBS's "60 Minutes II," showed some prisoners wearing dark-colored cloth hoods.
"We just made the decision we did not want to use that technique," Miller said. "I believe it sends a message we do not want to send to the civilian population."
Miller said interrogators generally cannot deprive prisoners of sleep or force them to sit or stand in uncomfortable positions, but he did not say there was an outright ban on those techniques. "We do not use stress positions, we do not use sleep deprivation, unless that is approved at the general-officer level," he said. "We follow the tenets of the Geneva Convention, and so the basics of the Geneva Convention -- shelter, medical care, food -- are never used as a manipulation tool."
Former military guards at Abu Ghraib said it was common to limit prisoners' sleep to four hours a day.
Miller also addressed his role in helping to shape policies at Abu Ghraib. In August and September, while he was the commander at Guantanamo Bay, Miller and about 30 aides paid a two-week visit to Iraq to offer suggestions on how to make interrogations more efficient and effective.
A major outcome of that visit was a recommendation to consolidate military intelligence operatives, who supervise interrogations, and military police, who oversee detainees. In November, a military intelligence brigade was put in overall control of Abu Ghraib, while a separate military police brigade continued to run detention operations.
In March, an investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, concluded that the decision led to a lack of communication and fragmentation of authority and created conditions for the abuses to occur.
On Tuesday, Miller defended the command structure he championed. He said his recommendations were only partially implemented. He did not dispute Taguba's findings directly, but said that effective leadership could solve the problem. "Since I am the overall authority, I am the integrator," he said.
He added: "I am absolutely confident that every recommendation was not only appropriate but did [make] and would have made this operation more effective and more efficient."
Miller, a 32-year Army veteran and former paratrooper from Menard, Tex., said the abuses did not reflect the conduct of the majority of soldiers working for military intelligence and police.
"I'm pretty proud of these people," he said. "They're out working at great risk, with enormous pride. They're all a little bit embarrassed because some people who came before them didn't follow the standards. These are great Americans who are out doing the business of this nation."
Iraq's former human rights minister, Abdul Basit Turki, told the Azzaman newspaper on Monday that U.S. soldiers responsible for the crimes should be prosecuted as war criminals before an international tribunal. He also called for turning over the detention facilities to Iraqi authorities.
Turki also predicted that the abuses would harden anti-American sentiment. "Such practices, which contradict human rights principles and are humiliating in Arab culture, will lead the suspects to nurture negative reactions and will translate into resistance to the occupation."
Turki said he had submitted his resignation as rights minister on April 8 but was asked by his employees and Iraqi political leaders to remain. News services reported Tuesday that U.S. authorities had accepted his resignation.
In the dusty parking lot outside Abu Ghraib, dozens of families gather each day to schedule visits with detained relatives, which often get canceled.
Yassin Abdul Rahman, 31, a taxi driver, said Tuesday that he was trying to see his brother, Fakher Abdul Rahman, who had been behind bars since they both were arrested in December near the northern city of Mosul on suspicion of being members of a militant group.
"Last week we heard that Fakher was wounded in a mortar attack on Abu Ghraib," said his brother, who was released after two weeks. "So we came to see him, but they wouldn't let us. This is the third time that I've come, but it's no use."
Special correspondent Khalid Saffar in Abu Ghraib contributed to this report.
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UN nuclear watchdog fights heavy water, sustains fresh water
Helping countries to tap & manage water supplies
5 May 2004
UN News Centre
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10627&Cr=Fresh&Cr1=Water
The United Nations nuclear watchdog may well sniff out plutonium-producing heavy water in its war against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but in a less heralded programme it is also working to sustain dwindling freshwater supplies for the world's thirsty masses.
Such activities by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlight how nuclear science and technology can help boost incomes and support broader-based efforts for meeting basic human needs, especially in the world's poorer countries, according to the agency's latest Staff Report.
IAEA cited its use of isotopic tools to encourage sustainable water management in South America, China, Namibia, Indonesia, El Salvador and many other countries across the globe.
The Guarani Aquifer System, for example, shared by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and considered one of the most important fresh groundwater reservoirs, is just one of 73 IAEA projects looking at how dwindling freshwater supplies can be sustained.
In an international effort, the IAEA is focussing on finding ways for all four countries to share the aquifer in a way that will not cause it to run dry in the future. A nuclear tool, called isotope hydrology, is used to give scientists indispensable information on how much water is available, its quality, how quickly it is replenished and where it flows from. Piecing that information together reveals how the precious resource can best be managed.
The report noted Secretary General Kofi Annan's speech to the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in New York last week outlining just how vital water management is. "Tensions over water could even generate conflict, within and across borders, although water also offers great opportunities for cooperation," Mr. Annan said then. "So the stakes are high. Without an integrated approach, we could face a tangle of problems. But with one, we could generate a cascade of progress."
Land degradation is also firmly on the IAEA's agenda. For example, since 1997 it has supported six countries - Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria and Tunisia - in the fight to turn arid wasteland into economically productive fields. Efforts have paid off with salt-tolerant plants now growing in the wastelands, providing sources of food or income for farmers.
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138,000 Troops to Stay in Iraq Through 2005
U.S. Forces Fighting Insurgency,
Providing Security Will Be Far Greater Than First Expected
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2064-2004May4.html
Military officials plan to keep as many as 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq through the end of next year, maintaining a higher-than-expected level of forces there to quell the insurgency and provide security to the country long after it is slated to become a sovereign nation. Officials also plan to send more heavy equipment, such as tanks and armored vehicles, into Iraq to help secure U.S. forces against attack.
The Defense Department announced yesterday that officials plan to deploy 10,000 soldiers and Marines this summer to replace troops in the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Light Cavalry Regiment who have had their stays in Iraq extended, and officials plan to identify 10,000 more troops soon to complete the replacement. About 6,000 National Guard and Reserve troops -- from more than a dozen states -- whose stays were extended also will be spelled in the next deployment.
An additional 37,000 combat support troops -- including about 16,000 reserves -- have been notified that they will rotate into Iraq this fall or early next year for possible 12-month deployments. The support units will provide services such as transportation, military police, logistics, maintenance and intelligence.
The deployments, at the request of combat commander Gen. John Abizaid, indicate that military officials believe they will need a far greater presence in Iraq than anticipated as recently as a month ago, to respond to the lingering insurgency and a growing number of U.S. casualties. Defense officials had expected to reduce the level of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 115,000 this year and about half that by the summer of 2005. Now, they are preparing to maintain a force of 138,000 for at least the next 18 months as they have seen violence rise over the past few weeks.
Maintaining the unexpectedly high troop levels in Iraq represents a major change in the military force structure, straining the U.S. military's worldwide resources and incurring billions of dollars in additional costs. While top military officials have acknowledged the change will be expensive, they say they still do not know whether they will have to ask Congress for more money in coming months. Keeping more than 100,000 troops in Iraq also worries the top brass because it makes it more difficult for U.S. forces to respond to crises in hot spots such as the Korean peninsula.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he expects the heightened violence in Iraq to continue well past June 30, when coalition forces are to hand limited sovereignty to a transitional Iraqi government. With ongoing offensive situations in such cities as Fallujah and Najaf -- and at least 126 troops killed in action in April, more than during major combat operations to take Baghdad last year -- military officials believe the United States needs to maintain a significant presence for the foreseeable future.
"You're going to have a period of uncertainty from now, and you're also going to have a period of increased attacks," Rumsfeld said, telling reporters that terrorist attacks could be expected in Iraq and around the world. "So this is going to be a difficult period. But our forces are there. They're going to stay there."
Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that the mission in Iraq remains essentially the same: to ensure security and stability. He said the level of troops will be based on the perceived requirements.
"If there is a change in the security situation, we will change accordingly," Schwartz said, adding that officials are notifying troops about their deployments as early as possible. "If more are needed, we will make adjustments."
Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, said the new units heading to Iraq will include a "heavier" mix of equipment, with more Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles that provide additional protection for troops. Instead of a balance that includes about one-third heavy equipment and two-thirds lighter, and more mobile vehicles such as Humvees, Abizaid has requested that some units arrive with close to a 50-50 mix.
Defense officials said the move to heavier equipment is largely because of the changing tactics of the enemy. Insurgents have targeted U.S. military weaknesses, such as convoys of thin-skinned Humvees, and have used roadside bombs to kill troops riding in lightly armored vehicles. The change sacrifices a bit of mobility to add security.
The first major units to be deployed will be the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, based in Fort Drum, N.Y., and two Marine Expeditionary Units, the 11th, based in Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the 24th, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
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THE MILITARY
U.S. Commander to Keep 135,000 Troops in Iraq Through 2005
May 5, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/middleeast/05TROO.html
WASHINGTON, May 4 - The commander of American forces in the Middle East, putting on hold the goal of reducing troops in Iraq, plans to keep at least 135,000 soldiers there through 2005, Pentagon and military officials said Tuesday.
In addition, the commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, has asked that fresh Army and Marine forces rotating into Iraq arrive with a larger percentage of tanks and armored fighting vehicles than had been planned, an acknowledgment of the violent prowess of the insurgency.
In the official rotation plan announced last year, troop levels were to have fallen to about 115,000 by the end of this month.
The immediate effect of the change is that 10,000 soldiers and marines will be sent to Iraq this summer in the first installment to replace 20,000 members of the First Armored Division and Second Light Cavalry Regiment, whose one-year tours were extended by 90 days after guerrilla violence erupted last month in and around Falluja and Najaf.
The new order - and the costs of keeping extra soldiers in Iraq - presents a political challenge to the Bush administration this election year as public concern over the war effort mounts, along with casualties.
The Pentagon now plans to shift money in its budget to pay for the unanticipated expenses.
Further complicating planning for Iraq were announcements by several allies that they were pulling out troops and the absence of promises from other nations to join the mission or increase their commitments.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he received a request from General Abizaid to retain the current level of American forces in Iraq, which fluctuates between 135,000 and 138,000. "Recently I approved deployment of approximately 10,000 replacement personnel," he said during a Pentagon news conference. "Other units are now being identified and will be approved in the coming days."
The forces ordered to Iraq include the 10th Mountain Division's Second Brigade, based at Fort Drum, N.Y.; the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.; and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The 10th Mountain Division's brigade has been home only nine months since its last deployment.
A Pentagon statement said various Army National Guard and Reserve units would be deployed with those forces. In a separate order, another 37,000 troops for combat support and combat service support duties, already notified to prepare for service in Iraq, have now been approved by Mr. Rumsfeld for deployment, the statement said. Of that 37,000, about 16,000 are reservists.
Pentagon and military officials said if Iraq calmed, General Abizaid could reduce the forces over coming months - but that the Defense Department also would be prepared to add even more troops if needed.
The Marine units in the new order are quick-deploying combat forces, designed to sweep into hot spots around the world, and their accelerated departure for Iraq carries a risk should hostilities erupt, for example, in the Korean peninsula, Africa or Latin America.
But Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, said Tuesday that a highly mobile "division ready brigade" from the 82nd Airborne, a veteran unit, would be certified ready by Friday for deployment in a crisis.
Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Staff, said Tuesday that troop levels committed to Iraq were of great concern to military planners, but that the stress on the force was manageable.
"I think we can handle the tempo," he said. "It is demanding. There is no question about it."
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Prison Scandal Indicates Gap in U.S. Chain of Command
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2044-2004May4.html
Questions about the role of civilian interrogators in the abuse of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison have put the spotlight on the accountability of tens of thousands of contractors in Iraq and on whether the administrative setup at the prison gave contractors too much freedom from and too much power over military units.
"As we begin to dig below the surface, we're seeing the larger involvement of contractors in this war and within the prison itself," said Justin Hamilton, legislative director for Rep. Chris Bell (D-Tex.). Bell wants Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to begin a military inspector-general investigation of abuses at the prison.
Private contractors, Hamilton said, "at this point don't seem to be in the chain of command. They don't answer to the military chain of command."
Another member of Congress, Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), in a letter to President Bush, proposed suspending all contracts with civilian firms for "security, supervision and interrogation of prisoners."
"The sadistic abuses of Iraqis at a U.S. military prison raise serious questions about the accountability of U.S.-hired private military contractors who are involved in illegal activity," said Schakowsky, a longtime critic of the growing prominence of civilian contractors.
CACI International Inc. and Titan Corp., employees of which were named in the inquiry, said Tuesday that they still had not received notice from the Pentagon about any charges against their employees and that they therefore had not taken disciplinary action.
The use of contractors has increased significantly since Sept. 11, 2001, and the line between the military and defense contractors has blurred further. No longer are civilians providing only support services such as cooking or driving trucks. They are responsible for some of the military's most sensitive tasks. They are building giant databases of credit cards and travel information for patterns that might indicate terrorist attacks. They are training international police forces. They provide security for U.S. officials such as L. Paul Bremer, the occupation government's top administrator in Iraq.
U.S. soldiers operating in war zones are subject to a strict code of conduct. It's less clear what legal framework the tens of thousands of contractors supporting U.S. troops and working on reconstruction in Iraq must adhere to. Under an order issued last summer by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, contractors are not subject to Iraqi law. If they are suspected of a crime, the military can send them to their home countries to face charges.
Marc E. Garlasco, a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, said: "If there are three people from three different countries and they commit the same crime, they will face three different judicial systems and three different sanctions. There is certainly potential for abuse of this system."
A law passed in 2000, after DynCorp employees in Bosnia accused of trafficking in prostitutes were not prosecuted, theoretically could be used to charge private contractors. But the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which authorizes the Justice Department to investigate military contractors, is untested, said Deborah D. Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of a book on the privatization of security.
The prisoner-abuse report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba that has caused an international furor names two civilian contractors who he said should be reprimanded for their role in the abuses. Steven Stephanowicz, described as an interrogator working for CACI, made a false statement regarding "the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations and his knowledge of abuses." Another contractor, interpreter John Israel, "denied ever having seen interrogation processes in violation . . . which is contrary to several witness statements." It is not clear from Taguba's report what company employs Israel.
Taguba wrote that he believes two military officials and Stephanowicz and Israel were either "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."
Stephanowicz "allowed and/or instructed" military police to assist in interrogations by "setting conditions." "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba wrote.
Another contractor, Adel L. Nakhla, whom the report said was a Titan employee, was identified as a "suspect."
Nakhla said he observed: "They made them do strange exercises by sliding on their stomach, jump up and down, throw water on them and made them some wet, called them all kinds of names such as 'gays' do like they like to make love to gays, then they handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other."
The Taguba report raises the question of who was in charge at Abu Ghraib. Some of the soldiers who were disciplined blamed not their military supervisors but a military intelligence unit staffed in part by private contractors.
Some analysts say the use of civilians as interrogators raises questions regarding oversight and training of contractors.
"If they are working sources, how are they working sources? What are their rules of engagement? I don't think they exist," said Paul C. Forage, a military analyst at Florida Atlantic University.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks showed an intelligence gap, the Defense Department rushed to hire private contractors. "[I]n our rush to meet the requirements, the mere numerical requirements, I think folks were brought on based on those initial checks and then the more detailed checks followed as time permitted," Charles S. Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense, said in testimony to the Senate in October. "We have found a couple who were not as trustworthy as we had hoped initially."
Staff writer Renae Merle and researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
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Private Guards' Status Outlined by Pentagon
Number in Iraq Expected to Grow
By Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2444-2004May4.html
At least 60 private security companies, employing 20,000 workers, operate in Iraq, and even more will arrive as reconstruction work picks up, the Pentagon said yesterday in response to a congressional inquiry.
Most of the security teams work directly for contractors. The contractors, not the occupying Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), are responsible for disciplining those employees, the Pentagon wrote in a letter to Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.).
Skelton, the ranking minority member of the House Armed Services Committee, had sought detailed information about private security operations in Iraq in the aftermath of the March killings of four Americans security workers in Fallujah.
The 20,000 workers include Americans, Iraqis and third-country nationals, according to the Pentagon letter, which did not break down the number further or say how many security workers are armed.
The CPA has eight direct private security contracts worth about $147 million to provide personal security details and guard non-military sites and convoys, the CPA said in information attached to a letter signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Details about the security work done on behalf of contractors is "proprietary" and "may have privacy implications," the CPA wrote in explaining why the firms generally do not share prices of their contracts, salaries or numbers of employees. However, about 50 companies take part in a CPA working group and exchange some information, the letter said.
A draft regulation that CPA said it hopes to complete this month would vet and register private security companies and require them to file many of those details with the Iraqi Ministries of Interior and Trade. The Iraq agency is scheduled to take on oversight after June 30, the letter said, and "be largely responsible for the administration" of that regulation and "any revisions" promulgated by the Iraqi interim government.
Normally, the Pentagon said, contractors remove any employee from Iraq who requires discipline. If an employee is a foreigner and accused of a crime that occurred while performing official duties under contract to the CPA or coalition forces, he is subject to the laws of his parent country and immune from Iraqi legal processes, according to an existing CPA order, the response said. If the alleged crime occurred outside the private security company worker's official employment, the worker would face Iraqi law, but only if the CPA administrator agrees to allow the legal action to go forward, it added.
Skelton said the response "covers the top of the waves, but didn't go into the details I'd hoped." Skelton and Rep. Victor F. Snyder (D-Ark.) have also asked the General Accounting Office to report on the use of private security firms in Iraq.
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U.S. addresses control of security companies
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Sharon Behn
May 05, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040505-122432-9701r.htm
Pentagon officials are moving to tighten control over security contractors whose intelligence-gathering activities in Iraq are largely outside the control of U.S., military, international or Iraqi law.
Worried about the lack of oversight of the companies, and the nebulous relationship between them and the military, the Pentagon said it was moving to bring them into line.
"It's clear that it warrants review, and we are looking at it," Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, said yesterday after a talk at the American Enterprise Institute.
Several security firms have been used by the military and the CIA to help hunt down suspects and aid in their interrogation, former intelligence officers and lawyers have said, circumventing the normal military or civilian chain of command.
"We are trying to tighten the rules by which these people operate," Peter W. Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.
It was important to make the companies "accountable to military people so they are properly carrying out the roles they are there for," he said, just days before a scandal regarding the treatment of Iraqi prisoners broke in the media.
Citing an army official, Reuters news agency reported that a prisoner was killed at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad in November 2003 by a private contractor working as an interrogator for the CIA.
Pentagon, Centcom and Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF-7) officials in Baghdad said they were not able to comment on the report.
Employees of security firm CACI International - an Arlington company that advertises its intelligence gathering and analytical services - are suspected of being involved in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Pentagon officials are looking into the terms of CACI's contract and have said action will be taken if something went wrong.
A lawyer close to the abuse case said the contract was likely a "black world" operation that fell under the purview of the CIA. The lawyer said the military was working on a secret report that deals in part with the role of private security contractors and other members of the intelligence community in prisons in Iraq.
"These are people that the military has hired to assist in investigations," said one former senior intelligence officer involved in Iraq. He said that some of those employed are retired CIA operatives who have been brought back, usually because of their language abilities.
"I can see them being used in roles of interpreter, but anything beyond that is shocking. I think it's disgraceful. If you can't do it yourself, you shouldn't be contracting it out," he said.
The ex-intelligence officer said he doubted the military was hiring these contractors to escape accountability so much as to abbreviate the "tortuous tunnels of lawyers and decision makers all the way up the chain."
"If you have a private firm doing this, aiding in intelligence gathering, you skip all that. Once you sign a contract, you're done," he said, adding that the Abu Ghraib incident was not likely to be an isolated case.
"If I had to guess, I would say it's happened more than just the times we've seen now - this is just the most egregious."
Spc. Daemon Lowell, 22, an interrogator for the 1st Armored Division Artillery Combat Team, insisted that detainees' human rights are respected - no matter his or her station in life. The tone of the interrogation depends on the detainee's attitude, he said in a military press release issued in March.
"If they are cooperative and don't give me a hard time, I am a very friendly person," he said. "If they decide that they want to play games, well, we play games too."
A defense official in Washington said the Pentagon was "very concerned about contractors and their performance on the battlefield," but added that "the majority of our contractors on the battlefield are performing a great service for both the military forces and the Iraqi people."
The official said he was "unaware of the specific contract" under which private contractors participated in interrogations at Abu Ghraib. "I'm aware of what is reported, but I do not have the details of [this] specific instance."
But the official insisted that all contractors, including security firms, had to operate under U.S., Iraqi or international law. He did not say who would enforce those laws.
Amnesty International has been warning of human rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at the hands or instruction of the U.S. military for months.
"We raised the question back in May about ill-treatment concerns, and gave the report to the [Coalition Provisional Authority] at the time," said Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett.
"With regard to the lack of clarity of how private groups are being held accountable - providing security, guarding facilities or the extent to which they are employed by the U.S. or its agencies - it's time for people to step forward to say who is watching over the nonmilitary individuals operating in Iraq," Mr. Hodgett said.
"There needs to be an answer from those who are hiring them and placing them inside these facilities," he said.
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Interrogators pressured to make inmates talk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
May 05, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040505-122431-5035r.htm
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller arrived in Baghdad in September with one urgent mission: Improve the intelligence gathered from Iraqi detainees in 16 Army-run prisons, including Saddam Hussein's favorite, Abu Ghraib.
Saddam was still on the run, and commanders desperately needed information on him and on a growing insurgency that was killing American troops daily. The recommendation was to "Gitmo-ize" interrogations, or bring them more in line with practices at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Gen. Miller, who ran the Guantanamo Bay compound for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, advocated centralizing military intelligence interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Cellblocks 1A and 1B, which served as the prison's maximum-security wing, became home to a relatively modest number of insurgents thought to hold a wealth of facts on the enemy.
"He wanted all the interrogation teams in one location," said Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve military police officer (MP) who served as warden for all 16 prisons as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. "They were putting a lot of pressure on the interrogation teams to get more information.
"The problem was he had 800 MPs to guard 600 prisoners [in Guantanamo]. We had 130 MPs for about 8,000 detainees," Gen. Karpinski told The Washington Times yesterday.
Gen. Miller now runs the Army's Iraq prison system.
What followed in those two cell blocks was three months of abusing prisoners by MP guards and interrogation teams.
Whether the abuse produced the coveted intelligence information is not clear. But publicized graphic photographs of Iraqis forced to form naked pyramids or simulate sex acts has enraged the Arab world and President Bush and have sparked at least six formal investigations.
Army officials say at this point, the abuse seems to have been limited to those two cellblocks that held captured Iraqi insurgents and to incidents at another camp.
Six MPs face criminal charges. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who heads Combined Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) in Baghdad and is up for a fourth star, has reprimanded six officers at the prison and admonished a seventh.
Gen. Karpinski thinks the scandal is rooted in the pressure that Gen. Sanchez's command exerted on the interrogation teams after he accepted Gen. Miller's recommendation.
"The combat divisions were being more vigorous going out on raids," she said. "They wanted to get actionable intelligence."
To Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who completed an investigative report in March, the scandal can be traced, in part, to training and resources.
"I find that the 800th MP Brigade was not adequately trained for a mission that included operating a prison or penal institution at Abu Ghraib prison complex," he said in a secret report obtained yesterday by The Washington Times. "I also find ... that the 800th MP Brigade as a whole was understrength for the mission for which it was tasked."
Gen. Karpinski said she would have stopped the abuse had she known about it. For what the Army considers command failures, she has received a written admonishment. She said she remains in command of the 800th MP Brigade, which demobilized as scheduled with members returning to their hometowns.
"She has not been suspended, reprimanded or relieved of her command," said Neal A. Puckett, her civilian attorney and a former Marine Corps judge advocate.
The one-star general ran a two-tiered prisoner system. The Army housed criminals and some insurgents in 15 detention centers around the California-size country. Gen. Karpinski said the system holds few, if any, classic prisoners of war - that is, Iraqi soldiers captured during the war to topple Saddam. Virtually all of those individuals have been released.
The system also does not house the infamous 55-member "deck of cards" - the most senior Ba'athists, including Saddam. The coalition detains those prisoners in undisclosed lockups.
Abu Ghraib became the hub for what are called "security detainees" - those involved in attacking coalition forces. The 7,000 to 8,000 population is a mix of Ba'ath Party loyalists, former intelligence security officers and criminals who joined an anticoalition cell.
Some are accused of killing American troops.
Of that population, those thought to hold special information on Saddam loyalists and their whereabouts were moved to cellblocks 1A and 1B.
"They wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff," said Gen. Karpinski, who saw CJTF-7 switch control of Abu Ghraib on Nov. 19 from her MPs to a military intelligence commander.
CJTF-7's push for "actionable intelligence" meant units such as the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit and the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad were pushing their mobile-intelligence units to vacuum up more Iraqis and bring them to Abu Ghraib. From October to December, the time span when the abuse occurred, the two cellbocks held nearly 200 prisoners.
Interrogations occurred each day. Detainees were questioned by three-member interrogation teams made up of an Army 205th Military Intelligence Brigade officer, a civilian linguist on contract and another agency representative normally from either the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency or the Army criminal investigative command.
The interrogators have been given some leeway to pressure prisoners, such as depriving them of sleep and light.
But the abuse depicted in the photos violates Army regulations, the rules of engagement for Iraq and the Geneva Conventions.
In general, the conventions state that prisoners of war must be treated humanely and not subjected to torture or scientific experiments. They cannot be threatened if they do not talk and cannot be put on public display.
Gen. Karpinski said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) frequently visited Abu Ghraib, including the high-value men in cellblocks 1A and 1B. She said she was aware of only one complaint: a Red Cross team found an Iraqi naked in an isolation cell. He told them that he had refused to talk and that the staff made him wear women's underwear.
Gen. Karpinski said when the complaint was reported to a senior Army military intelligence commander, he commented, "We have to stop allowing them to order from the Victoria's Secret catalog."
Amanda Williamson, the ICRC spokeswoman in Washington, said the group visits Abu Ghraib every five or six weeks.
Mrs. Williamson said it is ICRC policy not to comment on its observations to the press.
She also said, "There are apparently a number of different categories of people detained in Iraq. Some are POWs, and there are some detained in other categories. Nonetheless, the Geneva Conventions clearly prohibit mistreatment."
Army investigators now have scores of investigations under way. Gen. Taguba's report highlights a pattern of abuse and some shocking statements from Army noncommissioned officers, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Times.
•"[Spc.] Sabrina D. Harman, 372nd MP Company, stated in her sworn statement regarding the incident where a detainee was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis, that her job was to keep detainees awake."
•Another MP, Sgt. Javal Davis, said military intelligence officers told him, "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment." After some detainees began talking, an officer told him, "Good job. They're breaking down real fast. They answered every question."
•"The Iraqi guards at Abu Ghraib demonstrated questionable work ethics and loyalties and are a potentially dangerous contingent within the [prison]. These guards have furnished the Iraqi criminal inmates with contraband, weapons, and information. Additionally, they have facilitated the escape of a least one detainee."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
Marijuana Abuse Is Up Among U.S. Adults
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Marijuana-Adults.html
CHICAGO (AP) -- Habitual marijuana use increased among U.S. adults over the past decade, particularly among young minorities and baby boomers, government figures show.
The prevalence of marijuana abuse or dependence climbed from 1.2 percent of adults in 1991-92 to 1.5 percent in 2001-02, or an estimated 3 million adults 18 and over.
That represents an increase of 800,000 people, according to data from two nationally representative surveys that each queried more than 40,000 adults.
Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the rate or abuse or dependence remained stable among whites but surged by about 220 percent among black men and women, to 4.5 percent of that population, and by almost 150 percent among Hispanic men, to 4.7 percent.
Among all adults ages 45 to 64, the rate increased by 355 percent, to about 0.4 percent of that population.
The report, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, was led by Dr. Wilson Compton of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who said the rise in dependence was probably due at least partly to increases in the potency of pot over the past decade.
Also, the figures may indicate that baby boomers ``bring their bad habits with them into old age,'' he said.
The researchers said adults were considered marijuana abusers if repeated use of the drug hurt their ability to function at work, in school or in social situations, or created drug-related legal problems.
Drug users were considered dependent if they experienced increased tolerance of marijuana, used it compulsively and continued using it despite drug-related physical or psychological problems.
Overall use of the drug -- that is, casual use and habitual use -- remained stable at around 4 percent of adults.
``This study suggests that we need to develop ways to monitor the continued rise in marijuana abuse and dependence and strengthen existing prevention and intervention efforts,'' said Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director. Programs that target young black and Hispanic adults are particularly needed, she said.
Increases in dependence among young minorities may reflect their growing assimilation into sectors of white society where marijuana use is more accepted, Compton said.
Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism contributed to the report.
On the Net:
JAMA http://jama.ama-assn.org
NIDA: http://www.drugabuse.gov
NIAAA: http://www.niaaa.nih.gov
-------- homeland security
Explosives Detector Tested at Md. Station
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A682-2004May4.html
The federal government began screening rail passengers for explosives yesterday at a Maryland train station, the first time train riders have been made to walk through a high-tech "sniffer" that checks them for bomb residue.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said they are conducting a 30-day $1 million experiment at the New Carrollton Amtrak/MARC station to learn whether it is feasible to screen rail passengers.
Work began on the project last year, and it gathered speed after the March 11 terrorist bombings of commuter trains in Madrid that killed nearly 200 people and prompted worldwide concern about rail security.
Experts have long contended that the nature of rail transportation -- hundreds or thousands of passengers boarding many stations along a railroad on tight schedules -- makes it difficult to scrutinize riders.
"We don't want to shut it down, we want to keep the system moving," Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security, said moments before he walked through the screening machine at New Carrollton.
About 1,000 passengers pass through the station each day, making it a manageable place for the test, Hutchinson said. Riders will be screened from 5 to 10 a.m. and from 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays and from 3 to 6 p.m. Sundays.
Hutchinson said the government has no plans to deploy the machines widely across the country or use them in subways, where the high volume of riders and trains spaced just minutes apart would make screenings too difficult.
Instead, he said, federal officials are hoping to use the technology in a focused way. "If we have this capability and we get a specific threat, we could use this at a targeted station," he said. "It is important that we develop technologies that work in that environment."
As Hutchinson and other officials showed off the new equipment, the transit industry continued to push for more federal funds for rail and bus security. Public transit systems want $6 billion in new federal aid to make ferries, buses, subways, commuter railroads and light rail systems more secure. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has been cool to that request.
The machinery at New Carrollton, developed by GE Infrastructure Security, stands about eight feet tall and three feet wide and looks like a metal detector on steroids.
A passenger must pause in the portal for 12 seconds while a sensor in its ceiling "sniffs" for trace particles of explosives. Eight puffs of air aimed at the passenger's upper thighs shoot out from vents in the equipment to help free any particles that may be clinging to clothes. It has a side effect of blowing men's ties and suit coats and rippling women's blouses.
This is the first time this technology has been used in a rail station, Jim Bergen of GE Infrastructure said.
As part of the New Carrollton experiment, bags are placed on a conveyor belt and run through an X-ray machine. Passengers are not asked to take off their shoes or remove metal objects from their pockets.
Travelers who were screened yesterday at Gate A seemed resigned. "We have to get used to this, just like we got used to the airport," said Anthony Chaffier, 48, a MARC rider who waited patiently in a slow-moving line that fed into the screening equipment. "It's a lot better than being on a train that's at risk."
The limits of the system were apparent in the first hours yesterday. Several times, officials let dozens of passengers bypass the screening because the line had grown too long and their train was arriving.
On the platform, Amtrak rider Frank Cermak wondered about whether the new equipment makes train travel safer.
"Look at all this," Cermak said, gesturing to Amtrak's unprotected track bed, which stretched for miles without any fences or barriers. "It's wide open. If someone wanted to do something. . . . At the end of the day, [the screening equipment] is a good thing. Is it foolproof? No."
--------
Some Flights Get Extra Security
TSA Increases Effort Based on Destination, Other Criteria
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2042-2004May4.html
The Department of Homeland Security has begun designating certain commercial airline flights for additional security based on destination, fuel load and previous attempts by terrorists to target certain airports.
Bush administration officials yesterday acknowledged that United Airlines Flight 200, a nonstop from Los Angeles to Dulles, was among several "flights of interest" that warranted extra scrutiny but that the additional security was not prompted by a specific threat or new intelligence. Officials said the agency began targeting certain flights on a variety of airlines and routes earlier this year as part of a new layer of security based on improved processing of risk-assessment information.
"We do maintain an ongoing list of 'flights of interest' -- both foreign and domestic flights and carriers," said Transportation Security Administration spokesman Mark Hatfield. "It's probably one of the less-observable dimensions of TSA. This one hasn't had a whole lot of attention."
Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the agency was not considering canceling any flights and that it did not plan to raise the nation's threat alert level.
The TSA flags the flights based on factors such as whether a flight operates between certain cities that have been targets in the past by terrorists, such as Los Angeles, Washington and New York. It also targets certain flights involving larger aircraft, such as coast-to-coast departures, that have been known to be more attractive to terrorists because they carry more fuel. Other targeted flights might be headed to cities where a high-profile event is taking place, such as a Super Bowl.
Some airline pilots say they would like to know more about the threat reporting behind the security designation. The pilots say they are entitled to know all information about a flight that has been flagged for extra scrutiny and they resent being singled out for additional security checks in front of passengers.
"As the captain, I'm responsible for everything that goes on," said a United captain who flew one of the Los Angeles-Washington flights with stepped-up security. "I have to be informed of all available information in order to make a decision whether these flights are safe to make."
The captain, who asked that his identity not be revealed because he feared repercussions from government officials, said he and his flight crew and passengers received additional scrutiny at the gate before boarding the plane in Los Angeles. All luggage and catering supplies were screened with explosive-detecting machines, and bomb-sniffing dogs combed the plane before anyone was allowed on board. The pilot said he was followed by security personnel as he performed a routine walk-around check of the aircraft and prepared for the flight in the cockpit.
United Airlines recently distributed an e-mail to the company's pilots alerting them to expect extra security on certain flights.
"We have been advised by the TSA that it will periodically designate certain 'flights of interest,' " said the e-mail, written by the carrier's manager of line operations, Mark Sebby. "On these trips, you can expect additional screening of the aircraft, crew members, [passengers] and hand luggage, including crew possessions. The TSA has not given us a reason for this designation. However, we have been informed that other airlines have flights that are subject to the same unilateral security measures."
The United e-mail tells pilots that it will alert them if they are scheduled on a flight with the additional security procedures.
"This is not the first time this has happened in the airline industry -- it has happened with a number of other airlines," said spokesman Jeff Green.
-------- prisons / prisoners
No Plan to Hurt 9/11 Detainees, Ex-Jailer Says
May 5, 2004
By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/nyregion/05warden.html
The former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where the Justice Department and a new lawsuit say Muslim detainees were physically abused after Sept. 11, 2001, said yesterday that there had been no organized effort to mistreat the detainees or to "soften up" those being questioned by federal investigators.
But the former warden, Dennis W. Hasty, said he had recognized the potential for abuse in the charged atmosphere after the World Trade Center attack and took action to try to prevent it. After one detainee complained of mistreatment, the warden began requiring the use of hand-held cameras to videotape all so-called 9/11 detainees whenever they were moved outside their cells.
Some of those videotapes are now being used by the inspector general of the Justice Department as prime evidence of the abuse that took place there. Only a handful of frames from hundreds of tapes have been made public, and none comes close to the shocking images of Iraqi prisoners abused at the hands of American soldiers. But the videotapes captured numerous examples of excessive force being used in Brooklyn, including ramming unresisting detainees into walls, twisting their manacled arms and hands, and mocking them during unnecessary strip searches, the Justice Department said in a report issued in December.
Mr. Hasty, 54, a 30-year veteran of the federal prison system who retired as head of the Metropolitan Detention Center in April 2002, said he would not comment on specific allegations because of pending litigation. He is one of several defendants named in a federal lawsuit that was filed Monday by lawyers for Ehab Elmaghraby and Javaid Iqbal, two Muslim men who say they were physically abused while detained for more than seven months in the center's maximum-security unit before being cleared by the F.B.I. of any terrorist links.
The lawsuit charges that the men were repeatedly slammed into walls and dragged across the floor while shackled and manacled, kicked and punched until they bled, cursed as "terrorists'' and "Muslim bastards,'' and subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one during which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby's rectum, making him bleed.
In a phone interview from his home in Springfield, Mo. - his first since the Justice Department issued a critical report about post-9/11 detentions in June - Mr. Hasty stressed that any mistreatment that occurred did so despite his best efforts. "There was no game plan, such as we're hearing about now in Iraq, to break their will," he said, referring to the unfolding scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. "There was no collusion." He added, "I did not subscribe to doing anything but handling detainees in a restrained, professional manner."
At the same time, he said, his officers were not immune to the emotions that ran high after Sept. 11. Recalling that he counted 27 flags on display near one Brooklyn service station as he filled his tank with gas, he said: "People were feeling very patriotic. The city and the country felt victimized and felt threatened by what had happened. Of course many people, my staff included, had neighbors and friends who were killed in the attack."
He described the change that swept the detention center as 84 detainees designated "of high interest" by the F.B.I. were brought in after the terrorist attacks.
"We didn't know how many, if any, were going to be implicated in the conspiracy to attack our country," he said. But he added that he cautioned his staff that some of the detainees brought to the Brooklyn center would be found to have had no involvement at all in 9/11. "We were to house them in constitutional conditions, avoiding anything that would have a hint of cruel or unusual punishment."
But a different picture emerged from the inspector general's two reports. In one case cited in the December report, a lieutenant who denied that any mistreatment had occurred was caught on tape discussing abuse with other officers. According to that report, the lieutenant, apparently not realizing that the audiotape was still running, "suggested how the officers could break some detainees' hunger strikes," saying: " 'Let's get a team. Let's go with a tube. The first guy that gets that tube shoved down his throat, they'll be cured!' He then stated, 'We're going hard,' to which another officer responded, 'Outstanding!' The lieutenant repeated his statement, 'We're going hard.' " Among the hundreds of video and audiotapes belatedly recovered after they had been ordered destroyed by a prison official were some that showed that many of the federal officers, including at least one senior management official, had lied to investigators in denying knowledge of abuse, the December report concluded. It recommended disciplinary action against at least 10 employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
No one has yet been disciplined, federal prison officials said, because such administrative action would have interfered with possible prosecutions, which the Justice Department recently decided not to pursue.
"We consider this a very serious matter," Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said yesterday. "Our review will be done as quickly as possible, while assuring it is done in as thorough a manner as possible."
A broader lawsuit filed in 2002 by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the constitutionality of the detentions also includes allegations of abuse. It has been stalled in Federal District Court in Brooklyn pending a judge's ruling on the government's motion to dismiss the case. So far, lawyers for the plaintiffs have not been allowed to view the videotapes themselves, they said.
Mr. Hasty, who had previously been the warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were held, said he ran his detention centers by the book. "We were constantly reminding the staff that it was just essential that they exercise restraint, that they not allow emotions to override their professional training,'' he said.
He added that he warned the staff that Al Qaeda had instructed its members to allege mistreatment, so the behavior of officers toward detainees was bound to come under scrutiny. "We told them," he said, to "make sure that we're squeaky-clean, that we're complying with every jot and tittle of agency policy."
--------
Report Warns of Infiltration by Al Qaeda in U.S. Prisons
May 5, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/national/05CHAP.html
WASHINGTON, May 4 - Groups promoting extremist brands of Islam have gained a foothold in American prisons, and counterterrorism officials believe Al Qaeda are likely to try to use the prisons "to radicalize and recruit inmates," according to a Justice Department investigation.
In a report from the Justice Department inspector general's office, investigators said safeguards were so loose in the 105 federal prisons that inmate chapels "remain vulnerable to infiltration by religious extremists." A copy of the report, to be released on Wednesday, was obtained by The New York Times.
The investigation grew out of concerns among members of Congress that groups training Muslim chaplains had terrorist ties and were breeding extremism. But the investigation found that the problem of "radicalized" prayer sessions was less a reflection of the chaplains than of unsupervised inmates who were allowed to lead their own worship meetings.
"Too many opportunities for abuse of this practice exist," the report found.
The inspector general's report, the first detailed look into how the federal prisons have dealt with extremist beliefs since the Sept. 11 attacks, will likely prove controversial among Muslim leaders, who say they have been subjected to unfair scrutiny and criticism because of their religious beliefs. Several groups that have trained Muslim chaplains have vigorously denied charges of terrorist links, and Muslim leaders point out that charges linking a military chaplain at Guantánamo Bay to possible terrorism largely collapsed.
The inspector general concluded that while the problem of terrorist recruitment in the federal prisons was not necessarily widespread, officials needed a number of systemwide improvements to ensure tighter control. Prison officials said Tuesday that they had already moved to fix some problems identified in the report by demanding more information about outside groups that train chaplains and by improving communications with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The report found that prison officials received sparse information from the F.B.I. about inmates or chaplains who may have terrorist connections.
"We understand the seriousness and the risks inherent with extremist chaplains, contractors or volunteers," said Dan Dunne, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman. "And we've made significant changes since the review was initiated to better screen religious service providers."
A classified addendum to the report details cases in which counterterrorism officials assert that people leading prison prayer sessions - including authorized chaplains, volunteers and inmates - may have ties to terrorist groups.
In a briefing Tuesday for Congressional officials, the inspector general's office said it found evidence that volunteers leading prayer services had been linked to people who showed up on terrorist watch lists, and that people associated with Al Qaeda had already managed to recruit support within the federal prisons, said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
Federal prison officials "were putting out the welcome mat to any group that wanted to infiltrate the prisons," Mr. Schumer said. "There was virtually no vetting of who would become a chaplain or a volunteer, and there was virtually no supervision. It was an invitation to danger."
Senators Schumer and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, requested the investigation and held a hearing last year after concerns focused on the case of a Muslim chaplain, Warith Deen Umar, who had run New York State's Islamic prison program and was a consultant in the federal prisons. Mr. Umar was banned from the state prison program after he reportedly expressed admiration for the Sept. 11 hijackers and espoused a radical brand of Islam, but he maintained he was misquoted.
Senator Kyl said the inspector general's findings confirmed his concerns about the spread of extremist messages in the prison system, where Muslims represent an estimated 9,000 of the 150,000 inmates.
"There's a concern that groups may already be radicalizing people in prison," he said. "Some of the findings are troubling, and clearly there is work to be done."
The report found that chapels are among the few areas in federal prisons where large numbers of inmates can meet and talk, and it noted that several high-profile terrorist suspects had been drawn to Islam while in prison. Chaplains sometimes supervise the prayer sessions with no guards present, and some prayer sessions are conducted partly in Arabic, the report said.
Although some chapel services are videotaped, prison officials admitted that they might not be in a position to detect radical religious messages. "Not a whole lot of folks are in tune with that stuff," said an associate warden quoted in the report.
-------- torture
U.S. Resident Claims Torture by Troops
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2214-2004May4.html
TORONTO, May 4 -- A U.S. resident has alleged in a legal claim that he was tortured by U.S. troops in Iraq in April 2003 while held as a prisoner at Camp Bucca, a U.S. detention center in Umm Qasr.
Hossam Shaltout, 57, charged in the complaint that he was arrested that April outside the Sheraton hotel in Baghdad. He was then handcuffed, and soldiers beat him with their open hands, fists and shoes, according to the pleading, filed with the U.S. Army Claims Office on April 30. The word Canadian was written in black marker on his white shirt, the claim says. Shaltout is described in the filing as an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen with U.S. permanent resident status.
"Apparently being a Canadian did not mean favorable treatment, for Mr. Shaltout was then interrogated and tortured on a daily basis," says the pleading. "For example, he was required to wait under the fierce southern Iraqi sun for his turn at being interrogated, and when the interrogation began, he was falsely accused of having Iraqi documents in his possession, all with a view toward extracting a confession."
Attempts to reach a U.S. Army spokesman in Baghdad Tuesday night regarding the claim were unsuccessful. The Army is pursuing various investigations of alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq.
Shaltout arrived in Canada in 1971 and moved to the United States four years later, according to his pleading. Shaltout says in the claim that he went to Iraq in January 2003, about three months before the U.S.-led invasion, "to convince the leaders of Iraq that they should step down in order to avoid war with the United States."
He said was working for a private organization, Rights and Freedom International, when he was arrested on April 9, 2003, the day that Baghdad fell. The Marines refused to allow him to return to his hotel room, where he said he had hidden more than $100,000 in cash, according to the complaint, which seeks at least $350,000 in compensation. Instead, he was taken in an armored personnel carrier to the Bucca facility.
The complaint says the money now is missing along with his laptop computer, his Canadian passport, Egyptian passport, U.S. Social Security card, Florida driver's license and U.S. green card.
He said his captors accused him of having been a "right-hand man" and speechwriter for Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi president, which he said he denied.
Shaltout said he was released from U.S. custody on May 15, 2003, and deported to Egypt.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
9/11 Panel Members Giving to Campaigns
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/politics/05PANE.html
WASHINGTON, May 4 - At least 6 of the 10 members of the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have made campaign donations since joining the panel, campaign finance reports show.
One member, Jamie S. Gorelick, has given roughly $14,000 to Democratic causes and candidates.
Ms. Gorelick said the commission decided early that members should not physically participate in partisan activities, but that they could donate to campaigns.
The panel has five Democrats and five Republicans.
"If I stopped for the period of my service, it doesn't give a more honest representation of who I am - I am a Democrat," said Ms. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.
Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator, has donated at least $25,000 to Democratic candidates and party committees since being named to the panel in December 2003.
The commission chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, has donated at least $4,000 to Republicans since joining the panel in December 2002.
Former Senator Slade Gorton of Washington gave $2,700 to Republicans.
Mr. Kerrey, Mr. Kean and Mr. Gorton did not respond to messages left at their offices.
Former Gov. James R. Thompson of Illinois, named to the commission in December 2002, donated $2,000 to President Bush's re-election campaign in September.
John F. Lehman has given at least $6,000 to Republican candidates and causes since joining the commission and said the 9/11 investigation had nothing to do with the elections.
"This is not a political issue, even though the media tries to play it into a partisan issue," Mr. Lehman said.
-------- propaganda wars
Vietnam veterans call Kerry unfit
May 05, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040504-110913-2157r.htm
Two dozen veterans who served the same swift boat duty in the Navy as John Kerry in Vietnam, including some who served with or commanded him, said yesterday the Democratic presidential candidate is not fit to be commander in chief.
They are part of a group of 200 swift boat veterans who signed a letter saying Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, betrayed them in 1971 and to this day by saying he witnessed atrocities and war crimes during his time in combat.
"We don't understand why three months, 35 years ago, would even be significant, but if in fact it is, if he hasn't moved on like all the rest of us, including people who were badly wounded there, that's his life, then we're absolutely devoted to making sure the American people know the truth about that three months," said John E. O'Neill, who commanded one of the same boats as Mr. Kerry several months later and who debated Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1971.
Mr. O'Neill said so far only 19 swift boat sailors have declined to sign the letter, compared with the 200 who did sign as of last Thursday - including all of the men who were his commanding officers for any substantial period of time. He also pointed to a picture of Mr. Kerry with 18 other swift boat officers who served with him in Vietnam at the time, and said 12 of them have signed the letter, which they first circulated April 27.
Still, of the men who served under Mr. Kerry's command, only one has signed the letter, and most are supporting Mr. Kerry's campaign and traveling the country to campaign with him.
"We know he was a great leader. His decisions saved lives," said Del Sandusky, one of Mr. Kerry's crewmen.
Mr. Kerry is running advertisements touting his service in Vietnam, and has said in interviews that it was a critically formative period in his life. But it has turned out to be a mixed blessing politically.
While the circumstances surrounding his three Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star medals were an issue for some of the veterans yesterday, their bigger issue was his protest of the war when he returned to the United States and his continuing charges of atrocities, including those he made in a recent biography, "Tour of Duty," written about him by historian Douglas Brinkley.
"What torqued everybody is when he got back and started saying things about what happened in Vietnam that didn't happen - not in my part of Vietnam," said William Shumadine, who like Mr. Kerry was a lieutenant junior grade and skippered swift boats alongside him.
The veterans said Mr. Kerry tried to head off the letter.
Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, who as commander of the Navy Coastal Surveillance Force lead the swift boats and who was the driving force behind the letter, said that after it began circulating last week Mr. Kerry called him to try to talk him out of going forward with the project. Adm. Hoffman said Mr. Kerry said he felt Mr. Brinkley's book had maligned the admiral's service, and that Mr. Kerry asked if they could correct any of the errors in the book.
Kerry campaign senior adviser Michael Meehan said yesterday he was surprised that some of the same men had supported Mr. Kerry in his 1996 Senate race, coming to defend him in the days before that election.
"That was then; it's politics now," he said. "That's OK. They're entitled to have their political views, but let's be clear - over the first 25 years afterwards, they came to defend Kerry and his service at the height of a political campaign."
"If they want to have a political choice now, if they want to be for a guy that went to the Guard, that skipped active duty, that's their choice. They can vote however they want," he said. "But we're not going to stand for people who have signed written reports about Kerry and then misrepresent them 35 years later."
But the swift boat veterans said it's not about parties. Mr. O'Neill said he paid for the press conference room yesterday at the National Press Club himself, and said he didn't know of anyone in the group who had contact with the Bush administration or re-election campaign.
He said the only unifying factor within the group was trying to stop Mr. Kerry from becoming commander in chief: "If Kerry drops out and allows the American people a real choice, a fit choice, to be president, we all go home."
----
Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush
By JIM RUTENBERG
May 5, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/national/05DISN.html?hp
WASHINGTON, May 4 - The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.
The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis - including the family of Osama bin Laden - and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Disney, which bought Miramax more than a decade ago, has a contractual agreement with the Miramax principals, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, allowing it to prevent the company from distributing films under certain circumstances, like an excessive budget or an NC-17 rating.
Executives at Miramax, who became principal investors in Mr. Moore's project last spring, do not believe that this is one of those cases, people involved in the production of the film said. If a compromise is not reached, these people said, the matter could go to mediation, though neither side is said to want to travel that route.
In a statement, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Miramax, said: "We're discussing the issue with Disney. We're looking at all of our options and look forward to resolving this amicably."
But Disney executives indicated that they would not budge from their position forbidding Miramax to be the distributor of the film in North America. Overseas rights have been sold to a number of companies, executives said.
"We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax," said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore's agent. "That decision stands."
Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, backed out.
Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.
"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."
Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.
A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore's film is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.
"It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," this executive said.
Miramax is free to seek another distributor in North America, but such a deal would force it to share profits and be a blow to Harvey Weinstein, a big donor to Democrats.
Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' "
Mr. Moore's films, like "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," are often a political lightning rod, as Mr. Moore sets out to skewer what he says are the misguided priorities of conservatives and big business. They have also often performed well at the box office. His most recent movie, "Bowling for Columbine," took in about $22 million in North America for United Artists. His books, like "Stupid White Men," a jeremiad against the Bush administration that has sold more than a million copies, have also been lucrative.
Mr. Moore does not disagree that "Fahrenheit 911" is highly charged, but he took issue with the description of it as partisan. "If this is partisan in any way it is partisan on the side of the poor and working people in this country who provide fodder for this war machine," he said.
Mr. Moore said the film describes financial connections between the Bush family and its associates and prominent Saudi Arabian families that go back three decades. He said it closely explores the government's role in the evacuation of relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States immediately after the 2001 attacks. The film includes comments from American soldiers on the ground in Iraq expressing disillusionment with the war, he said.
Mr. Moore once planned to produce the film with Mr. Gibson's company, but "the project wasn't right for Icon," said Alan Nierob, an Icon spokesman, adding that the decision had nothing to do with politics.
Miramax stepped in immediately. The company had produced "The Big One," another Moore film, in 1997. In return for providing most of the new film's $6 million budget, Miramax was positioned to distribute the film.
While Disney's objections were made clear early on, one executive said the Miramax leadership hoped it would be able to prevail upon Disney to sign off on distribution, which would ideally happen this summer, before the election and when political interest is high.
----
Staffers Quit at U.S.-Backed Paper
'Suffocated' Baghdad Journalists Prepare to Start Their Own Publication
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2152-2004May4.html
BAGHDAD, May 4 -- Many of the editors and reporters at al-Sabah newspaper, a U.S.-funded publication that occupation officials have called a model for journalism in the Middle East, walked out this week and said Tuesday that they would launch their own paper. American overseers had threatened their future editorial independence, they alleged.
"We thought that the Americans were here to create a free media," Ismael Zayer, who had been editor-in-chief, said in an interview. "Instead, we were being suffocated."
Zayer said he could not accept the plan by the American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, to keep the Arabic-language paper within the Iraqi Media Network, a body that occupation officials created to develop a public broadcasting service. Zayer contended that the newspaper would be subject to interference by a future Iraqi government.
David Sedgley, program director for the Iraqi Media Network, dismissed Zayer's opinions as the "complaints of a disgruntled employee." He said the future network board of governors would provide only a guiding hand to the newspaper, television and radio operations.
The Coalition Provisional Authority that has ruled Iraq for the past year says the media network is being modeled on the British Broadcasting Corp. Simon Haselock, head of media development and regulation for the authority, said in an interview Tuesday that he had designed a corporate structure for the organization at the authority's behest.
The exodus from al-Sabah is the latest setback in U.S. efforts to shepherd Iraq into a new media era. The undertaking has faced allegations of wasted funding and uninspired programming. Many Iraqis view the media outlets created by the program as mouthpieces of the occupation, not independent voices.
The resignations come as many Iraqis want to break free of U.S. control in advance of the scheduled June 30 transfer of sovereignty to a new government. Iraqi political and religious leaders have chafed at U.S. plans to select an interim government to lead the country to elections. The proposals are being reworked by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
The journalists said Tuesday that leaving a publication controlled by the occupation authority would enhance their credibility. "We want our sovereignty now," said Shaker Anbari, the former culture section editor.
The planned new newspaper is to begin publication later this week under the name al-Sabah Jdeed. Sabah means morning and jdeed means new.
Staff members said they were putting up initial funds themselves and would seek to keep it going with commercial revenue and possibly contributions.
The publication they left is one of the largest-circulation dailies among the scores of papers that have opened in Iraq since the fall of former president Saddam Hussein a year ago.
Zayer was one of several exiled journalists hired to run the publication. He fled Iraq in 1980 for Germany after repeated jailings for opposition political activities and worked for many years as a correspondent for the London-based al-Hayat newspaper.
He said censorship at al-Sabah was rare, although U.S. overseers recently tried to block publication of an advertisement from a new political group that complained of the "grief of occupation."
Zayer and other former staff members said that working for a newspaper under U.S. control had become a dangerous occupation. In March, three employees of the newspaper died in an ambush in northern Iraq; Zayer himself has been the target of two assassination attempts, including an attack on his offices with rocket-propelled grenade and rifle fire.
Al-Sabah Jdeed is operating from a house once used as a distribution office by al-Sabah. On Tuesday morning, a few dozen staffers crowded into the building to set up offices, plug in computers and prepare for this week's inaugural edition.
Development of the Iraqi Media Network is being overseen by the Florida-based Harris Corp., which last January won a $96 million contract to carry out the job. Sedgley is an executive at Harris.
The telecommunications equipment maker subcontracted the task of training and overseeing al-Sabah to a Kuwaiti publisher.
For the moment, a former Zayer deputy, Maher Faisal, is in charge of putting out the original al-Sabah. It was not clear how many of the original staff had fled. Faisal said that he and "five or six hard workers" put out Tuesday's edition and that he was working to recruit replacement staff. Faisal once worked for al-Jumhuriya, one of Hussein's official newspapers.
"We don't need the independence Zayer talks about," he said. "We only have to publish credible information. These exiles have nothing to teach Iraqis. We can work without them."
----
'Godzilla': Rerelease restores anti-nuclear message for classic
By Tony Hicks
Wed, May. 05, 2004
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/entertainment/movies/8595375.htm?1c
Only minutes into the big lizard's first rampage in the newly rereleased version of the original 1954 Japanese classic film "Godzilla," things seem amiss:
• That monster stomping all over Tokyo doesn't have a visible zipper running down his back.
• He's not battling a fanged turtle pumped-up on plutonium steroids, nor is he after the aliens with the funny little sunglasses.
• He certainly doesn't have a cute, tubby little piece of reptilian offspring that talks.
• He's not going WWE Smackdown with a moth, a flying three-headed beast, King Kong or a smog monster.
• Where are those tiny, shrill-singing girls dressed like they're greeting passengers off the plane in Hawaii?
• Nobody is speaking English while his mouth moves all funny.
What in the world of Creature Features is going on here? This isn't a Godzilla movie.
For one thing, it has a point. It almost has a plot.
And thank goodness, it doesn't have an edited-in Raymond Burr, whose presence in the U.S. version only obscured the point and intent of the original.
Opening Friday at San Francisco's Castro Theatre, the original Godzilla bears little resemblance to the subsequently dubbed and dumbed-down movies I came to love in "Godzilla vs. the Thing (aka Mothra)," "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster," and the beautiful final destruction of a flower-munching menace called Bambi in "Bambi Meets Godzilla."
The best week of my life may have occurred in 1975, when Channel 7's afternoon movie devoted an entire week to the big boy. Lots of Hot Wheels and action figures suffered horribly during those commercials.
For those of us believing we saw the original -- titled in America "Godzilla: King of All Monsters" -- its 50th anniversary rerelease is a surprising glimpse at post-World War II Japan. It's a real film that includes a strong anti-nuclear subplot that was probably a bit deep for boys craving destruction.
Yeah, the big guy still pulls down power lines, eats whole trains and melts tanks like campfire marshmallows. And that part is still pretty cool.
But the simplistic stigma that later became a money-making machine of cult movies, cheap toys and cartoons didn't start that way. America's doctored version, released here in 1956 -- two years after the original was shown in Japan -- omitted 40 minutes of the original, including references to the atomic bombs that laid waste to Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier.
America turned the plot inside out, replacing footage deemed controversial by inserting Raymond Burr as American journalist Steve Martin in Tokyo on a social call. Revealing the destruction (and blowing a hole in the movie), Burr acted as narrator of what essentially became a big surreal flashback.
What was missing was the Japanese perspective; the real reason there ever was a Godzilla. Supposedly a prehistoric ocean dweller rustled awake by H-bomb testing, Godzilla emerges to flattened an island village and, later, Tokyo. It's not that hard to grasp -- big bomb wakes giant beast, who orders major metropolis for breakfast.
The real moral dilemma in "Godzilla" comes from the mysterious Dr. Serizawa, developer of a secret weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer that will kill the monster -- and a lot of other things. Despite being the creator, as a Japanese scientist in the 1950s, he understands the ramifications of creating a weapon humans could use on each other. Even if he destroys his notes, as long as governments know the secret resides in his brain, they could unleash untold horrors on each other.
Now, when one watches the plot build, including a previously cut scene of two evacuees pondering surviving Nagasaki only to perish from Godzilla, one understands the real texture of horror when screaming people run from Godzilla, who is a metaphor for the A Bomb.
Once one gets past the simple special effects, the shadowy black-and-white film and the spare music powerfully accentuate fires ravaging the horizon -- mostly because of the knowledge that these people aren't strangers to destruction. They become sympathetic. The new version gives us the previously unseen gut-wrenching dialogue between a woman and her child, huddling in the shadow of a crumbling building as the monster approaches, saying that it will soon be over and they can join Daddy.
In light of the nuclear context, it's much easier to sympathize with victims as real people, rather than background extras to Burr's protagonist irritatingly "reporting" from a window while the beast destroys the city. His "the world can wake up and live again" speech at the end of the American version becomes shamefully silly compared to the original ending, featuring Japanese scientist Kyohei Yamane (played by Takashi Shimura) wistfully pointing out: "If we continue to test H bombs, another Godzilla will one day appear again somewhere in the world." In other words, "Stop developing nukes because having your city destroyed by an atom bomb is really lame."
Perspective is what the American-censored movie lacked, yet perspective is absolutely required to enjoy "Godzilla" in the 21st century. Yes, those are very visible wires attached to the model planes "attacking" (and badly missing) the unstoppable Godzilla. No, it's not exactly method acting up there -- though the cast was made up of respected Japanese actors, including Shimura, who appeared in Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai." "Godzilla" was directed by Kurosawa associate Ishiro Honda, who went on to become known as a master of Japanese sci-fi.
The grim nuclear shadow is exactly what the film needed, yet was exactly what the American distributor removed. Only two years removed from the American occupation, Japan censored its mediator from discussing the war or the atom bomb strikes. Though Godzilla was one of the first allowable anti-nuclear statements, America wasn't ready to face the ugliness of 1945 disguised as a monster metaphor. Keeping that in mind as backdrop, the movie makes much more sense -- even in the overly dramatic cinematic approach of the 1950s.
Ultimately, though, it's still a Godzilla movie. It's not the funniest, most action-packed or easiest to watch. But it's easily the most important.
Tony Hicks is the Times pop music critic. Reach him at 925-952-2678 or thicks@cctimes.com.
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Bush to denounce abuse on Arab TV
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By James G. Lakely
May 05, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040505-122416-2049r.htm
President Bush will give interviews to two Arab TV networks today to denounce the abuse of Iraqi detainees, a furor that worsened yesterday as the Pentagon revealed it was investigating the deaths of 25 prisoners in U.S. custody, including two slain by Americans.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last night on Air Force One that Mr. Bush will conduct 10-minute interviews, one with the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra television and the other with the network Al Arabiya.
"This is an opportunity for the president to speak directly to the people in Arab nations and let them know that the images that we all have seen are shameless and unacceptable," Mr. McClellan said.
Meanwhile yesterday, an Army official told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that a soldier had been court-martialed for using excessive force in the fatal shooting of an Iraqi prisoner in September. The soldier was demoted to private and dismissed from the Army but served no jail time, the official said.
The Army also disclosed that it had referred to the Justice Department a homicide case involving a CIA contract interrogator accused in the death of an Iraqi prisoner in November.
In addition to those two cases, 23 other deaths are under investigation or have been investigated by the U.S. military.
Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, told reporters there were 10 investigations under way of prisoner deaths - mostly in Iraq - and 10 pending cases involving possible assault of prisoners, including one sexual assault. Also, one prisoner's death was ruled to have been a justified homicide.
Investigations into 12 other detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2002 had concluded that the causes were natural or undetermined, Gen. Ryder said.
The investigations and the release of pictures of U.S. soldiers humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners yesterday spurred bipartisan calls for open congressional hearings on the incidents.
Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday that he will hold a closed hearing today about the abuse of prisoners.
"There have been a number of allegations that intelligence personnel instructed or encouraged the activities that have come to light over the last few days. The committee will question the witnesses to determine whether intelligence professionals had anything to do with what I think everyone believes is absolutely unacceptable conduct by Americans," Mr. Roberts said.
John Ullyot, spokesman for Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, said his boss has invited Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to testify publicly before the Senate Armed Services Committee "as soon as possible."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said that "it's too early for me to be calling for open hearings," but that "I think within a couple of days we'll be able to have an answer to that."
Emerging yesterday from a closed-door hearing of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Warner said he had learned in the meeting that similar sexual humiliation and abuses, though "small in number," also have occurred in Afghanistan.
"This is as serious a problem of breakdown in discipline as I've ever observed," he said.
Meanwhile yesterday, several Bush administration figures moved to stem the damage to the U.S. image around the world, especially in the Middle East.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on Al Arabiya television to condemn the abuse and say that "we are deeply sorry for what has happened to these people."
"I want to assure the people in the Arab world, Iraq, around the world, and the American people that the president is determined to get to the bottom of it, to know who is responsible and to make sure that whoever is responsible is punished for it and held accountable," Miss Rice said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the abuse - which ranged from forcing Iraqi prisoners to strip naked and form a human pyramid to phony threats of electrocution - is "totally unacceptable and un-American."
The Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to hold accountable those who may have violated the code of military conduct and betrayed the trust placed in them by the American people."
"The images that we've seen that include U.S. forces are deeply disturbing, both because of the fundamental unacceptability of what they depicted and because the actions by U.S. military personnel in those photos do not in any way represent the values of our country or the armed forces," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that it was a "small number of troops who acted in an illegal, improper manner."
"Compare that to the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have served in Iraq and who served around the world, and not just in this current period but in the past," Mr. Powell said. "These wonderful young men and women are distressed that some of their fellow soldiers acted in this manner."
In campaign swings through Ohio yesterday, Mr. Bush did not mention the Iraqi prisoners, but made clear that he believes he deserves a second term because of his record as commander in chief.
"We're liberators," Mr. Bush said in Dayton. "We care deeply about human freedom and the human condition. ... When America speaks, it's got to mean what it says. Everybody is watching us."
On Capitol Hill yesterday, senators emerged from a closed-door meeting of the Armed Services Committee stunned by the abuse of the prisoners.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said that despite protestations from the Bush administration, "this does not appear to be an isolated incident."
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War, said he is "extremely hopeful" that what happened is not indicative of "a widespread pattern of abuse and that the conduct of the overwhelming majority of Americans is honorable and decent."
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, was irked that Congress only learned of the incidents through the press.
"Not only did we not know about it, what is very, very troubling to me is that we met with Secretary Rumsfeld and all of the key Pentagon leadership on the very day this broke last week," Mr. Daschle said. "They had an opportunity, in over an hour's time, to tell us, to come clean. I think that is inexcusable, it's an outrage, it's wrong, and some sort of explanation is warranted."
Miss Rice expressed confidence that the abuse won't result in long-term damage to the reputation of the United States in the Arab world.
"We believe that when people hear our story, that they will understand, at least then, for themselves," she told Al Arabiya.
While telling reporters of the Bush interviews last night, Mr. McClellan declined to say whether the United States would accept an international investigation into the abuses, saying the Pentagon already is studying the matter.
Charles Black, a Republican political consultant and unofficial adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, said the fallout from these abuses might ultimately inflict political damage.
"It's bad news, there's no doubt about that," he said. "The main concern I've heard people talk about is that it's just a terrible thing about the way we'll be viewed in that part of the world when we're trying to do the right things."
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Rape Rooms: A Chronology
What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded
By William Saletan
Wednesday, May 5, 2004,
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100014/
Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.
"The Iraqi people are now free. And they do not have to worry about the secret police coming after them in the middle of the night, and they don't have to worry about their husbands and brothers being taken off and shot, or their wives being taken to rape rooms. Those days are over."-Paul Bremer, Administrator, [Iraq] Coalition Provisional Authority, Sept. 2, 2003
"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."-President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003
"There was an announcement by the Iraqi Governing Council earlier this week about the tribunal that they have set up to hold accountable members of the former regime who were responsible for three decades of brutality and atrocities. ... We know about the mass graves and the rape rooms and the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein's regime. ... We welcome their decision to move forward on a tribunal to hold people accountable for those atrocities."-Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan, White House press briefing, Dec. 10, 2003
"One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms."-Bush, press availability in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 12, 2004
"On 19 January 2004, Lieutenant General (LTG) Ricardo S. Sanchez, Commander, Combined Joint Task Force Seven (CJTF-7) requested that the Commander, US Central Command, appoint an Investigating Officer (IO) in the grade of Major General (MG) or above to investigate the conduct of operations within the 800th Military Police (MP) Brigade. LTG Sanchez requested an investigation of detention and internment operations by the Brigade from 1 November 2003 to present. LTG Sanchez cited recent reports of detainee abuse."-Report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, senior U.S. military official in Iraq, describing a formal inquiry launched on Jan. 19, 2004
"Sources have revealed new details from the Army's criminal investigation into reports of abuse of Iraqi detainees, including the location of the suspected crimes and evidence that is being sought. U.S. soldiers reportedly posed for photographs with partially unclothed Iraqi prisoners, a Pentagon official told CNN on Tuesday."-Barbara Starr, CNN, Jan. 21, 2004
"Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell, and Iraqi men and women are no longer carried to torture chambers and rape rooms ..."-Bush, remarks on "Winston Churchill and the War on Terror," Feb. 4, 2004
"Seventeen U.S. soldiers have been suspended of duties pending the outcome of the investigation into alleged allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, a U.S. officer said Monday."-Associated Press, Feb. 23, 2004
"[B]etween October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force. ... The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements (ANNEX 26) and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence. ... I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:
a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; ...
j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture;
k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee ...
These findings are amply supported by written confessions provided by several of the suspects, written statements provided by detainees, and witness statements. ...
In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):
a. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
b. Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
c. Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
d. Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
e. Threatening male detainees with rape; ...
g. Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick."
-Executive summary of Taguba report, finalized Feb. 29, 2004, briefed to superiors on March 3, 2004, and submitted in final form on March 9, 2004
"Every woman in Iraq is better off because the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein are forever closed."-Bush, remarks on "Efforts to Globally Promote Women's Human Rights," March 12, 2004
"There's still remnants of that regime that would like to take it back. ... They could torture people and have rape rooms, and the world would turn their head from that and let it happen. But they can't do that anymore."-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, BBC interview, March 16, 2004
"There are no more rape rooms and torture chambers in Iraq."-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CBS Early Show, March 19, 2004
"As you know, on 14 January 2004, a criminal investigation was initiated to examine allegations of detainee abuse at the Baghdad confinement facility at Abu Ghraib. Shortly thereafter, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force Seven requested a separate administrative investigation into systemic issues such as command policies and internal procedures related to detention operations. That administrative investigation is complete; however, the findings and recommendations have not been approved. As a result of the criminal investigation, six military personnel have been charged with criminal offenses to include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts with another."--Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations, Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing, March 20, 2004
"Correspondent Brooke Hart: But in a 53-page secret report, Army Major General Antonio Taguba says an investigation found a disturbing pattern of sadistic, blatant, wanton criminal abuses. The report was completed in February, but the Pentagon said Defense Secretary Rumsfeld hadn't read it. Democratic lawmakers are frustrated. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.: This is an unacceptable response. That's not the level of concern the American people would expect of their military commanders for this type of conduct."-"Pentagon officials to answer tough questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding Iraqi prisoner abuse," CNBC, April 4, 2004
"SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. .... I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. ... I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open."-Testimony of Military Police Specialist Matthew Wisdom, hearing on charges of prisoner abuse, April 9, 2004; according to The New Yorker, "After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial."
"The investigation started after SPC Darby ... got a CD from CPL Graner. ... He came across pictures of naked detainees."-Testimony of Special Agent Scott Bobeck, Army Criminal Investigation Division, same hearing, April 9, 2004
"Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes II received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast-given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq."-CBS News statement on its broadcast of photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse, April 29, 2004, referring to a DOD appeal received on or near April 15, 2004
"Our military is ... performing brilliantly. See, the transition from torture chambers and rape rooms and mass graves and fear of authority is a tough transition. And they're doing the good work of keeping this country stabilized as a political process unfolds."-Bush, remarks on "Tax Relief and the Economy," Iowa, April 15, 2004
"We're facing supporters of the outlaw cleric, remnants of Saddam's regime that are still bitter that they don't have the position to run the torture chambers and rape rooms. ... They will fail because they do not speak for the vast majority of Iraqis who do not want to replace one tyrant with another. They will fail because the will of our coalition is strong. They will fail because America leads a coalition full of the finest military men and women in the world."-Bush, remarks on the USA Patriot Act, Pennsylvania, April 19, 2004
"We acted, and there are no longer mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms in Iraq."-Bush, remarks at Victory 2004 Reception, Florida, April 23, 2004
"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners. There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up."-Dan Rather, 60 Minutes II, April 28, 2004
"A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq."-Bush, remarks in the Rose Garden, April 30, 2004
"There are those who seek to derail the transition to democracy because they want to return to the days of mass graves and torture chambers and rape rooms. But that's not going to happen."-McClellan, White House press briefing, April 30, 2004
"A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba ... listed some of the wrongdoing: 'Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.' "-Seymour M. Hersh, "Torture at Abu Ghraib," The New Yorker, posted April 30, 2004
"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq."-Bush, remarks at "Ask President Bush" event, Michigan, May 3, 2004
"I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. ... I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."-Rumsfeld, Defense Department Operational Update Briefing, May 4, 2004
"It's very important for people, your listeners, to understand in our country that when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act-and we act in a way where leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. And we act in a way where, you know, our Congress asks pointed questions to the leadership. ... Iraq was a unique situation because Saddam Hussein had constantly defied the world and had threatened his neighbors, had used weapons of mass destruction, had terrorist ties, had torture chambers ..."-Bush, interview with Al Arabiya Television, May 5, 2004
-------- us politics
Bush Tells Arab World That Prisoner Abuse Was 'Abhorrent'
May 5, 2004
By DAVID STOUT and TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/middleeast/05CND-ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 5 -- A somber President Bush made a personal appeal to the Arab world today, expressing his deep sorrow over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in American custody, vowing that those guilty would be punished and declaring that their actions did not represent "the America that I know."
"The actions of these few people do not reflect the hearts of the American people," Mr. Bush said in an interview Al Hurra, an Arabic-language satellite television channel financed by the American government. "The American people are just as appalled at what they have seen on TV as Iraqi citizens have. The Iraqi citizens must understand that."
Mr. Bush's interview represented an abrupt turnaround for the White House, which on Tuesday expressed its regrets through Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and other surrogates. In his campaign swing through Ohio on Tuesday, the president did not mention the abuse of prisoners at all, although he did say again that the Middle East and the world were better off without Saddam Hussein.
But today, while not actually uttering an apology, Mr. Bush expressed his own personal regrets, and he said he knew he was speaking for millions of Americans, including the great majority of the military.
"First, the people in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent," Mr. Bush said in the Hurra interview, one of two in which he appealed to the Arab peoples, who have expressed outrage over the incidents in the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
"They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent America that I know," the president went on. "The America I know is a compassionate country that believes in freedom. The America I know cares about every individual. The America I know has sent troops into Iraq to promote freedom -- good, honorable citizens that are helping the Iraqis every day."
Mr. Bush said he hoped the people of Iraq would know "that in a democracy, everything is not perfect; that mistakes are made." But in contrast to the dark era of the Hussein regime, Mr. Bush said, the recent abuses will be brought to light and the guilty brought to justice.
Anger over the abuse and humiliation of prisoners -- and the complaints of some leading lawmakers that they were kept in the dark about it for too long -- continued to foment on Capitol Hill, where the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding a closed hearing on the episode today.
In response to a question from an interviewer, Mr. Bush said he stood behind Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- "Oh, of course I've got confidence in the secretary of defense" -- but Mr. Rumsfeld's fate remained a matter of discussion.
Senator John S. McCain, an Arizona Republican and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, did not rule out the possibility that Mr. Rumsfeld might have to go.
"I don't think you could reach that conclusion yet," Mr. McCain said on the ABC "Good Morning America" program. But "clearly there has to be a full, complete, independent investigation."
Mr. McCain, who was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for more than five years, has expressed anger not only over the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners but at what he says was the administration's slow response in informing Congress.
Mr. Rumsfeld himself, in an interview on the same ABC program, replied somewhat indirectly when he was asked whether he was, in effect, apologizing for the abuses.
"Oh, my goodness," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Anyone, any American who sees the photographs that we have seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused, and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American."
Asked whether he could envision circumstances under which he would feel compelled to step aside, he again replied indirectly. "Well, it seems to me that the chain of command is the chain of command," he said, alluding to the several investigations now under way.
Mr. Bush's personal appearances are part of an administration effort to stem the tide of Arab anger at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and they apparently reflected a sharpening consensus among his top political advisers that he had to take a more visible role in denouncing the abuses and promising justice.
Mr. Bush's remarks came a day after the United States military disclosed that the Army had conducted 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and 2 deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides.
"There will be investigations, people will be brought to justice," Mr. Bush said of the humiliation and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a notorious site that was used for torture and killings under Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Bush said that the American inquiry would look into whether such instances of abuse also took place in other prisons. "We want to know the truth," Mr. Bush said.
Photographs on television showing prisoners at Abu Ghraib being subjected to acts of humiliation, sexual and otherwise, have been broadcast worldwide, particularly enraging Arab audiences in the Middle East.
Mr. Bush's statement was part of two 10-minute interviews he gave this morning, one to Al Hurra, which broadcasts from Springfield, Va., and the other to Al Arabiya, an Arab-owned network based in Dubai.
Al Arabiya was barred from reporting in Iraq by the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council last November after it broadcast an audiotape of comments purportedly made by Mr. Hussein.
It has an estimated 20 million viewers in the Middle East, compared with 25 million for the leading Arab satellite station, Al Jazeera. A random telephone survey to determine Al Hurra's viewership figures was conducted over two weeks in early April in major Middle East cities. The survey, of households with telephones and satellite dishes, found that the station was watched in the previous week by an average of 29 percent of adults, the station reported.
David Stout reported from Washington and Terence Neilan contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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House Panel Urges Defeat of Attack Bill
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Continuity.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A proposed constitutional amendment on replacing lawmakers killed or incapacitated in a terrorist attack was sent to the House by a committee that urged its defeat.
With the chairman and his Republican colleagues united in opposition, the House Judiciary Committee on a 17-12 partyline vote Wednesday reported the proposal ``adversely'' to the full House. It would amend the Constitution to allow for temporary appointment of House lawmakers if a majority of the 435-member body are killed or incapacitated by an act of terror or other disaster.
A vote on the House floor was expected by the end of the month.
Vacated Senate seats already can be filled by appointment until special elections are held, but the Constitution requires that members of the House of Representatives be elected.
Two weeks ago the House passed a bill, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., that would require affected states to hold special elections within 45 days when 100 or more members die in an attack.
But some lawmakers said that legislation could leave the country dangerously vulnerable, because Congress might not be able to function for 45 days after a catastrophic attack. Several constitutional amendments were proposed permitting appointments on grounds that was the only way to ensure near-seamless survival of the legislative branch.
The Judiciary Committee on Wednesday considered an amendment by Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., a leading voice on the continuity of Congress issue. It would require lawmakers to submit a list of possible replacements to the governor of their states, and for the governor to choose from that list when a majority of the membership is unable to carry out duties because of death or incapacitation.
States would later hold special elections to fill vacant seats.
Sensenbrenner had promised, when his 45-day special election bill was considered, that his committee would also take up and send to the House floor a constitutional amendment proposal. But he and other GOP leaders strongly rejected the amendment path, saying the tradition of having all House members elected should be strictly defended.
A constitutional amendment, he said, ``would accomplish what no terrorist could, namely striking a fatal blow to what has otherwise always been 'the People's House.'''
But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who has introduced her own constitutional amendment, said the insistence on elections could undermine the constitutional authority of the House if a disaster left the House powerless for an extended period. ``The executive would have to assume the powers of a dictator,'' she said.
Baird said it was a ``sham'' that his proposal was being pushed forward to near-certain defeat without proper hearings on his and other amendment proposals. He also criticized the ``holier than thou attitude'' of opponents who were ``creating precisely that scenario where an unelected person will rule'' if Congress is unable to function.
Constitutional amendments must be approved by a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate and be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures. With Sensenbrenner and other GOP leaders opposed to the Baird proposal, it has little chance of winning House approval.
The threat of nuclear attack during the Cold War aroused discussion of Congressional continuity during the 1950s. That debate has become more pressing since Sept. 11, 2001, because of the widespread belief that United Flight 93 was headed for the U.S. Capitol until it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
The Baird constitutional amendment is H.J. Res. 83.
On the Net:
House Judiciary Committee: http://www.house.gov/judiciary/
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Farmers, Ranchers Can Apply for Renewable Energy Grants
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
May 5, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-05-093.asp
For the second year, the Bush administration is giving millions to agricultural producers or rural small businesses to develop renewable energy systems and make energy efficiency improvements to their operations.
On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced the availability of $22.8 million in grants under the Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvements program. This compares with $ 21.7 million offered last year to assist 114 applicants from 24 states develop or improve wind power, anaerobic digester, solar, ethanol and other bioenergy related systems or energy efficiency improvements.
"President [George W.] Bush wants to bring greater energy independence to our country through expanded use of renewable energy," said Veneman. These grants will help America's farmers, ranchers and rural businesses meet this need."
Applicants for the program must be agricultural producers or rural small businesses, U.S. citizens or legal residents, and have demonstrated financial need. Rural Development grant funds may be used to pay up to 25 percent of the eligible project costs.
Eligible projects include those that derive energy from a wind, solar, biomass, or geothermal source, or hydrogen derived from biomass or water using wind, solar, or geothermal energy sources.
Applications must be completed and submitted with a postmark no later than 75 days from today's publication of the offering in the Federal Register. Detailed information about program requirements and information on how and where to apply is included in the funding notice.
Awards will be made on a competitive basis for the purchase of renewable energy systems and to make energy improvements. Find out more at: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Reaching for Control of Carcinogenic Chemicals
PARIS, France, (ENS)
May 5, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-05-02.asp
At UNESCO Headquarters on Friday, The French Association for Research on Treatments Against Cancer is convening a trans-Atlantic group of leading cancer specialists to present scientific evidence on the role of environmental pollutants as major causes of cancer and other diseases.
Foremost on the agenda is the proposed new chemicals policy for the European Union, known as REACH - Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals - an unprecedented complex of regulations for industrial chemicals.
First outlined by the European Commission in 2001, REACH was opposed by the European and U.S. chemical industries, and also by the Bush Administration. A weaker version was offered in 2003, but in view of the drastic rise in deaths from avoidable causes of cancer such as industrial chemicals, the distinguished scientists at this Colloquium will present evidence to show that REACH needs to be strengthened, not weakened.
BP Chemicals' acetyls complex at Saltend Works, Hull, England. (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy FreeFoto) As the world's largest chemical market, Europe has the ability to act as a catalyst for reform of global legislative policies on the regulation of industrial chemicals. The U.S. government and chemicals industry is closely watching the progress of REACH on its path through the European legislative process. At this critical moment, the experts meeting at UNESCO are engaged in a life and death struggle with cancer and the chemicals that cause this constellation of diseases.
The Colloquium opens with an address by distinguished French oncologist Lucien Israel, MD, who has spent nearly 60 years in the cancer field. He will share the podium with renowned French virologist Dr. Luc Montagnier, best known for his 1983 discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which has been identified as the cause of AIDS.
From the American side of the Atlantic comes Samuel Epstein, M.D., professor emeritus of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, and a winner of the Right Livelihood Award who chairs the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Dr. Epstein will give the introductory morning talk on cancer prevention, which will emphasize the escalating incidence of non-smoking related cancers, such as testicular, brain and childhood cancers.
Boston University Professor of Environmental Health Dr. Richard Clapp will offer his perspective on the epidemiological approach to the links between cancer and the environment. Founder of the Massachusetts Cancer Registry, he now sits on the Governing Council of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.
The Colloquium, organized by Dr. Dominique Belpomme of Pesticides Action Network Europe, will hear from representatives of American, Belgian, British, French, and Spanish scientific and citizens' groups such as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Greenpeace Europe, the WWF, and the European Environmental Bureau, which represents 143 member organizations in 31 countries.
Paul Lannoye of Belgium, a Member of European Parliament representing the Green Group, will address the issues of a Europe facing environmental pollution, and lawyer Corinne LePage of France will advance the idea that polluting is a crime against humanity.
Cancers resulting from occupational exposure, cancer and foods, chemicals in consumer products - a full spectrum of chemical causes of cancer will be considered with the precautionary principle as well as the principle of prevention in mind.
"We have developed a very high dependence on chemicals," European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom told the Second US-EU Chemicals Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia on April 26. "Yet this is not matched by sufficient knowledge about their potential risks and long-term effects, for which we are paying a high price."
"This is not just an issue for European countries," she said. "Chemical safety is a global concern. Countries all over the world are paying a high price for failures to address chemical safety."
European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom (Photo courtesy European Commission) Wallstrom has been the point person for the REACH program, which she said is designed to provide the information and safety Europe needs but in a way that is integrated with international efforts. "To facilitate transfer of information, we will be implementing the Globally Harmonised System, which is the UN system for classification and labeling of dangerous substances," she said.
But experts at the Colloquium strongly believe that the current version of REACH is too weak to be effective, and that it has been deliberately weakened at the behest of the chemicals industry on both sides of the Atlantic.
In a detailed 40 page report, "REACH: An Unprecedented European Initiative for Regulating Industrial Chemicals," Dr. Epstein writes, "In striking contrast to EU governments, which have maintained neutral positions, the Bush Administration has encouraged industry to take aggressive opposition to REACH."
Citing articles in the "New York Times," "Environmental Health Perspectives," and other respected publications, Dr. Epstein presents evidence that the Bush Administration is doing its best to undermine the precautionary principle on which REACH is founded, a principle accepted by the European Commission as a "full fledged and general principle of international law."
"Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a March 2002 U.S. "Nonpaper on EU Chemical Policy," warned that the Precautionary Principle would result in "politically motivated bans" of U.S. chemical products, which account for over 20 percent of all U.S. exports.
Dr. John Graham, administrator of the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and former director of the industry-funded Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis, in a May 18, 2003 speech to EU regulators, stated that the Administration considers the Precautionary Principle "to be a mythical concept, perhaps like a unicorn."
Confidential documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, have revealed that the U.S. State and Commerce Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, have formed an alliance with Dow Chemical to fight REACH, as reported in the "Wall Street Journal" on September 9, 2003.
"These tactics, however, may backfire," Dr. Epstein writes. "Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), with other influential Congressional Democrats, is drafting a proposal to overhaul U.S. regulations to resemble the EU's proposed reforms."
The mainstream industry opposition has been mobilized by the American Chemistry Council and the European Chemical Industry Council, each accounting for approximately 30 percent of the world's chemical production. The Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue has been established to coordinate industry opposition to REACH, Dr. Epstein notes.
A leaked American Chemistry Council memo made public by the Washington, DC based Environmental Working Group in November 2003 revealed aggressive and well-funded plans to fight laws and regulations based on the precautionary principle, observes Dr. Epstein.
The Council's public relations campaign is being handled by the firm of Nichols-Dezenhall, which, Dr. Epstein writes, "has hired former FBI and CIA agents to create phony front groups, and spy on environmental activists, including digging through their trash in efforts to smear them."
The industry is fighting against regulation of highly toxic industrial chemicals that REACH would impose.
Under REACH, certain classes of industrial chemicals are regarded as of Very High Concern. They are:
- carcinogens, mutagens, and reprotoxins which are either known or very likely to be toxic to humans
- chemicals that can become widely disseminated in the environment, and which are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic, particularly persistent organic pollutants
- chemicals that are very persistent and very bioaccumulative in humans and wildlife for which toxicity data are still unavailable
Many of these chemicals are ingredients or contaminants in pesticides, and in consumer products, including food, cosmetics and household products.
Under REACH, when a company intends to produce or import new and existing chemicals it would be required to prepare a Chemical Safety Report to notify the European Chemicals Bureau, a new body which would be responsible for the classification and labeling of dangerous substances.
The report would include - data on the identity of each chemical; toxicological, and ecotoxicological properties of intended uses; estimated human and environmental exposures; production quantity; proposed classification and labeling; safety data sheet; preliminary risk assessment; and proposed risk management.
This information would be entered into a publicly available database to be managed by the European Chemicals Bureau.
The chemicals notified would be evaluated by testing, and authorization will be granted for a limited number of chemicals of very high concern.
Chemical companies would be required to pay fees for each submission. Overall costs are estimated at: registration: €300 million; testing of 30,000 high production volume chemicals: €2.1B for a total of: €2.4 billion. Administrative costs of approximately €0.4 billion would be recovered on a fee based system.
The first formalized critique of REACH was detailed by the American Chemistry Council in July 10, 2003. "REACH is impractical and too costly," the Council said, and should be replaced by a "risk-based approach." The high costs of REACH would impose a negative impact on innovation and competitiveness of EU industry, the Council warned.
Dr. Samuel Epstein chairs the Cancer Prevention Coalition. (Photo courtesy foxBGHsuit.com) Dr. Epstein says the chemical industry is making exaggerated claims about the costs of REACH, which he says are only 0.05 percent of the chemical industry's €417 billion turnover in 2000. He maintains that these costs are "likely to be dwarfed by costs of poorly recognized public health and environmental impacts to which REACH makes the briefest reference. "
The latest REACH proposal "fails to recognize the much higher public health and environmental costs of its drastically weakened regulations," Dr. Epstein warns. He points to "significantly increased ... incidence of testicular cancer in young men, and allergies over the last decades, for which the underlying reasons have not yet been identified."
The American Chemistry Council objects that REACH is trade restrictive and incompatible with World Trade Organization objectives and international chemical regulations. The Council and its European counterpart say the EU should rely on existing registration and risk management, rather than on REACH.
The opposition to REACH by European and U.S. industry was so strong that the EU was forced to make substantial concessions, which were formalized in its October 2003 legislative proposals. These were jointly developed by Wallstrom and EU Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen.
Key among these concessions was the reduction of the number of high production volume chemicals for which comprehensive safety testing would be required from 30,000 to 10,000, in spite of what Dr. Epstein calls "minimal available test data on most of them."
Chemicals produced in smaller amounts, from one to 10 metric tons, were exempted from the requirements to produce data on reproductive toxicity and environmental persistence.
But people are getting sick and dying in increasing numbers from exposure to the very chemicals REACH is designed to regulate, chemicals that they are exposed to not just one at a time, but in combination.
This is one of the most serious weaknesses of the latest REACH proposal writes Dr. Epstein. "REACH focuses on the carcinogenic and other toxic effects of individual chemicals," particularly chemicals classified as of Very High Concern, "to the exclusion of well-documented evidence on additive and unpredictable synergistic interactions between individual carcinogens."
Formaldehyde, styrene, and atrazine each is toxic alone, for instance, but when a person is exposed to them at once, their combined toxicity is even greater.
REACH should be strengthened by emphasis that the right-to-know "is an inalienable democratic principle, with the exception of sensitive national security concerns," writes Dr. Epstein. "This right clearly extends to information on avoidable risks of disease and death, and environmental contamination, due to industry practices."
"These rights override claims of trade secrecy and confidentiality," he writes. "It should, however, be recognized that the right-to-know in the EU, besides other nations, is more honored in the breach than the observance. REACH should explicitly acknowledge this right, and detail the mechanism for its widest implementation."
Workers are at greatest risk of high level exposure to industrial chemicals of Very High Concern, and Dr. Epstein is calling on industry to recognize workers' right-to-know information on all such life threatening dangers. Workers must have specific information on the chemical and common name of each carcinogen, and carcinogenic process, he says, and specific information on precautions that can be taken to avoid inhalation and skin exposures.
Among many other recommendations for strengthening the REACH legislation, Dr. Epstein is calling for "independent audits of industry chemical safety dossiers prior to registration under REACH, and independent auditing of industry claims for waiving authorization of chemicals classed as of Very High Concern, based on no "right to concern," or that risks can be "adequately controlled."
"All advisory committees should include representatives of independent expert stakeholders, and meetings should be open to the public," he advises, and "all committee members should fully disclose their conflicts of interest."
He challenges the existing estimated health benefits, of €50 billion over 30 years, saying they do not reflect the escalating incidence of cancer, nor early life exposures due to industrial chemicals.
The environmental benefits should be estimated and recognized, and industry benefits from technological innovation stimulated by REACH also should be estimated and recognized, Dr. Epstein says.
The very existence of the REACH proposal has emphasized the inadequacies of the 1976 U.S. Toxic Substances Act, Dr. Epstein will tell the Colloquium. These U.S. regulations still require testing of only about five percent of chemicals in commerce. "Reflecting such concerns, exacerbated by the deregulation policies of the Bush Administration, progressive Congressional Democrats are now drafting a proposal to overhaul U.S. regulations to conform with those of REACH," he says. These initiatives may extend to state level, and the city of San Francisco is already moving in this direction.
Considering the wide range of exposure of the public to high production volume chemicals, Dr. Epstein is not surprised that many have been identified, particularly in the United States as body burden contaminants in fat and blood of the general population.
These chemicals are in the fat and blood of Europeans too, and European Environment Commissioner Wallstrom is no exception. The results of her personal blood test are now public knowledge and she shared them with participants in the Second US-EU Chemicals Conference.
"Among all the talk of costs, trade barriers, bureaucracy," she said, "the results of the test underline the urgency of cleaning out the chemicals stable."
"A couple of years ago, a British doctor told me that each of us have roughly 300-400 synthetic substances in our bodies, and that these were not present in our grandparents' generation. This got me curious," Wallstrom said.
"Last summer I participated in a limited screening involving three groups of man-made substances brominated flame retardants, PCBs and organo chlorine pesticides," she said. "Of the 77 looked for in this screening, I had 28 in my body, including PCB and DDT, which have been banned in Europe for several decades."
"I was told that my result was below the average of the group tested," Wallstrom said. "The result certainly made me concerned, particularly since I also was told that some of the chemical burden in my body was transferred to my children when I was breast feeding them. And, synthetic chemicals are certainly not something that I want to leave as a legacy with them!"
Dr. Epstein puts it even more strongly. "Reckless industry practices are violations of human rights, and white collar crime," he says, and under REACH authorization of chemicals of Very High Concern should be denied if safe alternatives are available.
If public support for REACH is forthcoming when it is introduced to the new European Parliament of 25 member states after the May elections, it will be none too soon for the scientists and nongovernmental organizations at the Paris Colloquium. Cancer is now a leading cause of disease and death in France and the United States, striking nearly one in two men and more than one in three women in their lifetimes.
Dr. Epstein's full report on REACH is available on the Cancer Prevention Coalition site: http://www.preventcancer.com.
--------
Fires Erupt in Southern Calif.
Blazes, Earlier Than Usual, Are Fueled by Drought and Record Heat
By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1874-2004May4.html
LOS ANGELES, May 4 -- A rash of wildfires spread across the bone-dry backcountry of Southern California on Tuesday, forcing thousands of residents to flee their homes and signaling the start of what will likely be another long, dangerous summer of blazes.
Authorities said the wildfire season is beginning a few weeks earlier than usual in the region, which is in a severe drought and is still recovering from a massive firestorm last fall that killed 20 people and destroyed more than 2,700 homes.
Seven wildfires erupted Monday in four Southern California counties that were baking in record heat. In some areas, temperatures topped 100 degrees. Firefighters gained the upper hand on several of the fires early Tuesday, but two blazes in Riverside County, southeast of Los Angeles, exploded in size overnight and were threatening homes and major power transmission lines.
About 4,000 people in Riverside County were ordered to leave their residences, or voluntarily left in haste after midnight as one of the wildfires suddenly grew threefold. The two most serious fires, which are barely contained, are now burning across nearly 15,000 acres and have destroyed 14 structures, including a few homes. Eight injuries have been reported, none serious. More than 1,500 firefighters are on the front lines of the blazes.
Wildfires flourish in windy, hot and dry weather -- and the West is bracing for months of it. Most western states are reeling from years of drought. Reservoirs are low, and the melting mountain snowfall in much of the region is meager. Authorities say the climate could create an intense wildfire season this summer.
"We've experienced some real warm weather real early," said Rich Green, an assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "Things are really drying out quickly. There's going to be plenty of dead fuel in forests available to burn real soon."
For months, firefighters and foresters across the West have been pleading with residents living on the edge of wilderness to clear dry brush from their land. In Southern California, officials also are rushing to remove thousands of trees in the San Bernardino Mountains that are dead or dying from a beetle infestation -- and that would be ideal kindling for a wildfire. San Diego County is scrambling to resolve the communications breakdowns and equipment shortages that prompted widespread public criticism of its response to last fall's fires.
"We're taking as many precautions as we can," Green said. "The incidents from last year's fires are still very fresh in people's minds. Now is the time to take action."
The catastrophic fires that engulfed Southern California last fall were the most destructive in the state's history. They scorched 700,000 acres and displaced 50,000 residents from their homes for more than a week.
The latest fires pose nothing close to that threat yet. And firefighters are getting some help from the weather. Temperatures around the region Tuesday were 10 degrees cooler than they were on Monday. It is still hot and windy, and no rain is on the way, but cooler ocean air is moving onshore and could create the kind of humid, foggy conditions that slow wildfires. Forecasters also say they do not expect another bout of record heat this week.
Authorities are still investigating the cause of some of the wildfires. But police arrested a Riverside County man Monday night and said that he apparently had caused one of the largest blazes by negligently handling some kind of equipment.
One fire, burning near the town of Temecula, has destroyed an artists retreat and forced the evacuation of an elementary school. Some residents whose homes could be in the fire's path have fled to two newly opened evacuation centers.
Another fire that erupted on the dry brush land of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in San Diego County is nearly contained. It had spread across nearly 2,000 acres.
Forestry officials said that if the weather cooperates, they might be able to save all the homes now threatened and douse all the wildfires by the end of the week.
-------- genetics
Lab Created 5 Babies for Stem Cells
Associated Press
Wednesday, May 5, 2004;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2200-2004May4.html
CHICAGO, May 4 -- In a practice that troubles some ethicists, a Chicago laboratory helped create five healthy babies to be stem-cell donors for siblings ill with leukemia or a rare anemia.
The cases, reported in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, involved nine couples who submitted embryos that underwent tissue-typing tests in 2002 and 2003. Five had infants considered suitable donors.
Stem cells from the umbilical cord blood of one infant have been donated to an ailing sibling, said Avner Kuliev, of the Reproductive Genetics Institute.
Valparaiso University professor Gilbert Meilaender, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, called the practice "morally troubling."
Much of the public, however, appears to be comfortable with using the genetic tests to help ailing siblings, according to a new survey by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
The survey, conducted for the center with funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, asked 4,005 Americans: "In general, would you approve or disapprove of using [technology] to make sure a baby will be a good match to donate his or her blood or tissue to a brother or sister who is sick and needs a transplant?" Sixty-one percent approved; 33 percent disapproved.
Washington Post staff writer Rick Weiss contributed to this report.
-------- health
Rise in Blood Pressure Among Children Cited
Study Ties Increase to Obesity Epidemic
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2142-2004May4?language=printer
The increase in the number of American children who have become overweight or obese in the past decade has been accompanied by a disturbing rise in their blood pressure levels, researchers reported yesterday.
An analysis of data from nationally representative surveys of more than 5,000 children found for the first time that average pediatric blood pressure rates nationwide have begun to inch up.
The increases may seem small -- 1.4 points in the top systolic reading and 3.3 in the bottom diastolic reading. But they are enough to sharply boost a child's risk of developing high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and strokes -- the nation's leading killers, experts said.
With an adult form of diabetes already being diagnosed in more and more children, the new finding is another indication that the nation's obesity epidemic may be predisposing a generation to diseases that in the past primarily afflicted older adults, experts said.
"What we're doing is shifting this burden of disease to a younger age," said Barbara Alving, acting director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "We see this new data as a wake-up call. It's time to pay attention to this."
Federal officials have begun revising the guidelines doctors use to diagnose and treat high blood pressure in children and adolescents to spur parents and physicians to screen children more aggressively and begin treating signs of trouble early.
"The obesity-related rise in blood pressure among American children is a serious health issue," Alving said. "We need to take steps to reverse this trend."
The new guidelines, which will be released this summer, will for the first time create a category of "prehypertension" for children. The document will advise that children with prehypertension be put on a diet-and-exercise regimen to lower their blood pressure.
If that fails, drugs should be prescribed. The exact blood pressure levels that classify a child as having prehypertension or hypertension vary by age, height and sex.
"We want to give our children the best possible start in life," Alving said. "That means ensuring they have a healthy blood pressure and weight. We need to teach them to be physically active and to follow a heart-healthy eating plan. Otherwise, we may be giving them an early start on heart disease."
In the new study, researchers examined data collected from 5,582 children and adolescents between the ages of 8 and 17 during the government's ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1988 and 2000.
Over that time period, the average systolic blood pressure increased from 104.6 to 106 and the average diastolic pressure rose from 58.4 to 61.7, the researchers reported in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"What we're seeing is a shift in the whole blood pressure distribution in children," said Paul Muntner of Tulane University, who led the study. "We may be seeing an epidemic of hypertension in the future as these children become adults."
Studies have shown that just a one- or two-point increase in blood pressure translates into a 10 percent increased risk of developing hypertension as a young adult.
"There's a lot of evidence that high blood pressure begins in childhood, and it's generally agreed that the strongest determinant of developing high blood pressure in adulthood is high blood pressure in childhood," Muntner said.
Unlike with adults, there is not a single reading that constitutes the threshold for high blood pressure for all children. Instead, normal blood pressure varies depending on age, sex and height. For example, a 12-year-old girl who is 4-feet-11 would be considered to have high blood pressure with systolic reading of 123 or greater or a diastolic reading of 80 or greater.
The researchers did not analyze the data to determine whether more children met the definition for high blood pressure at the end of the study period, but Muntner said that was probably the case.
"Based on this data, the number of children with high blood pressure probably has increased," Muntner said.
While increasing weight undoubtedly is contributing to the rise, other factors probably play a role as well, including a lack of physical activity and possibly greater salt consumption from eating fast food and prepared foods, experts said.
"One can be pretty sure that with the increasing role that fast food and convenience foods play in the diet that kids are being exposed to more salt," said Jeffrey Cutler of the NHLBI, who helped conduct the study.
The findings should not necessarily alarm individual parents about their children, but are cause for concern for the population overall, said Rae-Ellen Kavey, chief of cardiology at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
"On a national level, it is worrisome because the blood pressure of our children is gradually trending up over time, just as the weight of our children is gradually trending up over time," said Kavey, speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association.
Melinda S. Sothern, who treats overweight and obese children at Louisiana State University's Health Sciences Center in Baton Rouge, said she is already seeing children suffering severe health problems because of their weight.
"I think that we're going to have a generation of children who are not children. They're basically, because of the physiological and metabolic sickness associated with carrying all that excess weight around, prevented them from participating in childlike activities," Sothern said. "They are going to be very much physically and emotionally handicapped, and we're going to have to pay for it as a nation."
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U.N.: World Must Brace for Diseases
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Animal-Diseases.html
GENEVA (AP) -- The world must brace for future outbreaks of diseases like bird flu that leap the species barrier from animals to humans, the United Nations health agency said Wednesday.
Lessons learned from SARS, mad cow disease and other illnesses have taught experts to be on the lookout for such outbreaks, but predicting the next epidemic will still be tough, said Dr. Francois Meslin, World Health Organization coordinator for control of ``zoonoses'' -- diseases that can cross species.
``Emerging zoonotic diseases are a global and regional issue of increasing importance and the current upward trend is likely to continue,'' Meslin told reporters following a three-day meeting at WHO headquarters. ``But continual changes in risk factors lead to unpredictability and we are not able to tell where the next zoonosis will pop up.''
The meeting was held jointly with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health and included international experts in public health, veterinary science, microbiology, conservation biology, disease modeling and forecasting.
Meslin said scientists need to think beyond traditional disease research and consider the possible role played by climate change, air travel, and the growth of cities in developing countries -- where large numbers of people live close to markets were animals are slaughtered or sold live.
Scientists suspect that SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed at least 774 people in 2002-2003, was passed to humans from civet cats and other mongoose-like animals that are sold in live food markets in southern China.
The transmission of disease from animals to people depends on many factors, including the interactions between animals and humans, the microbial agent involved and the environment.
Bird flu originated in chickens, and there is scientific evidence that consuming meat from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, can lead to a fatal brain disease in humans.
The scientists urged governments to boost cooperation in zoonosis research and monitoring. ``A coordinated international response is essential across all sectors,'' Meslin said.
He said that in particular, doctors and veterinarians must work together to predict new threats and tackle disease outbreaks as they emerge.
Meslin said the meeting also looked at other diseases which are currently ``not on the radar.''
They included Ebola, one of the world's deadliest virus, which causes rapid death through massive blood loss in up to 90 percent of those infected. WHO says more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since it was first identified in 1976 in Africa.
Some experts believe the disease may enter the human population from the ingestion of infected ``bush meat'' -- chimps, gorillas and other animals sometimes included in the diet of central African people.
Ebola spreads through bodily fluids, generally kills rapidly and has so far afflicted remote regions of Africa, meaning the disease has burned out before spreading great distances. But most zoonotic diseases have the potential to spread beyond their region of origin, Meslin said.
Scientists also say the AIDS epidemic that emerged in the 1980s was the result of cross-species transmissions of another monkey virus -- the simian immunodeficiency viruses, or SIV -- to people several decades earlier. They based their theory on genetic analyses of the AIDS virus and similar viruses found in chimps.
-------- ACTIVISTS
G - 8 Protesters Accuse Police of Spying
May 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Summit-Surveillance.html
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- With President Bush and other leaders of the world's economic superpowers coming to secluded Sea Island, 80 miles south of Savannah, for the Group of 8 summit June 9-10, sweeping security preparations are under way -- including the gathering of intelligence on dissent groups that are planning workshops, protests or other gatherings.
Some activists have accused the police of spying and employing McCarthy-era intimidation tactics against groups that are no threat to them. But police say that given the violent demonstrations that upset the 1999 World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, they cannot afford to overlook any G-8 protest groups, no matter how peaceful they appear.
``This is the largest event that's ever going to come to this city in my lifetime, and we can't stand by and assume an event is going to be a nonevent,'' said Capt. Gerry Long, who is in charge of G-8 planning for Savannah police.
New Jersey professor Trent Schroyer's activist group prefers round-table discussions to street protests. But when the group rented a conference hall for use during next month's G-8 summit of world leaders, the police took notice.
Savannah detectives visited the real estate office that rented out the hall to look at the group's contract. They also made calls inquiring about the hall's owners and the Georgia professor who signed the rental agreement.
``We have never had this degree of surveillance,'' said Schroyer, president of TOES, or The Other Economic Summit, and a professor of sociology and philosophy at Ramapo College in Mahwah, N.J. ``I have no affiliation with any groups dangerous to the country in any way -- unless rational discourse is a real threat.''
Marching through public parks in riot gear, police have drilled in anticipation of thousands of protesters in Savannah, the host city for 5,000 international delegates and journalists during the summit. More protesters are expected in Brunswick, the nearest mainland city to Sea Island.
The Secret Service will be in charge of security during the summit. Gov. Sonny Perdue has said that the president and his guests will be protected by a force of 20,000 federal, state and local law officers.
Federal agents on the lookout for terrorists will conduct sweeps of vehicles crossing the four-mile causeway to St. Simons Island, which links Sea Island to the mainland. Waterways will be off limits to private boats and the airspace will be restricted over Georgia's 100-mile coastline and into South Carolina and northern Florida.
As federal and state authorities start to get into place, local police have been investigating tips about plans for possible protests.
Savannah detectives visited Oglethorpe Speedway Park, a race track in nearby Pooler, after hearing that a local protest organizer wanted to rent the venue for a benefit concert during the summit. Speedway general manager Ted Austad said he told the detectives he was leaning against the concert. A few days later, he said, Pooler Police Chief Clarence E. Chan also called.
``He just said he had concerns about that event and we might want to take a closer look before leasing it out to that person,'' said Austad, who backed out of holding the concert.
Kellie Gasink, head of the Chatham County Green Party, accused police of scuttling her concert plans. The local police chief acknowledged discussing the concert with Austad but denied saying anything to dissuade him.
Washington attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice, accused police of using scare tactics that make protesters fear for their jobs and property owners afraid to rent to activists.
``You have law enforcement conducting domestic spying operations, targeting individuals and groups purely based on those persons' political views,'' said Verheyden-Hilliard, who has sued on behalf of protesters in New York, Philadelphia and Miami. ``It's a McCarthy-era tactic.''
Last month, the Progressive Recreation Center, a hall owned by black employees of International Paper, learned that police had questioned the company about the hall after the TOES professors group had rented it.
``Why are the Savannah police allowed to do that?'' said Charles Nelson, manager of the hall, which is separate from International Paper. ``What are they reacting to? We're not doing anything illegal.''
Both International Paper and the Savannah College of Art and Design said they got calls from the police. Professor Margy Betz, who signed the rental agreement for the conference, said she is not sure why police called her college -- its name does not appear on the contract.
TOES contends the G-8 is a case of wealthy nations dictating economic policy to the rest of the world. It says it wants political leaders to consider other viewpoints.
In nearby Garden City, where the professors' group plans to meet, Police Chief David Lyons checked into the TOES conference weeks after Savannah police began investigating. He concluded it is ``a fairly peaceful organization.''
``Nobody said, `Hey, these are violent, flame-throwing Nazis coming to town,''' Lyons said.
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60 Ex-Diplomats Protest Bush's Alignment with Sharon
by Jim Lobe,
May 5, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/
Some 60 former U.S. diplomats and other government officials who served overseas have signed a letter to President George W Bush protesting his support for the Israeli government's position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The letter was inspired by a similar protest signed by 52 former British ambassadors and senior government officials and sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. That letter warned that Blair's strong support for Bush's policies in both Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were "doomed to failure."
The US diplomats' letter, which applauded their British colleagues' initiative, is focused far more on the Israel-Palestinian issue, noting in particular Bush's Apr. 14 endorsement of Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli settlers from the Gaza strip while consolidating five large settlement blocs on the West Bank.
Bush's endorsement, which also rejected the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes on Israeli territory, "reverses longstanding American policy in the Middle East," the former diplomats wrote.
"Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends," the letter said. "Nor is this endorsement even in the best interests of the State of Israel."
The letter, which is still being circulated for endorsements, will be sent May 28, according to the organizers, who said they had received an "amazing" response from former colleagues who wanted to sign it.
To date it has been signed by at least 16 former ambassadors, most of whom, like Edward Peck, James Akins, Talcott Seelye and Chas Freeman, Jr., represented Washington in Arab capitals, as well as several dozen former deputy chiefs of mission, consul generals and chiefs and deputy chiefs of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stations, including Ray Close, a well-known CIA officer who served part of his career in Jeddah.
Former US Information Agency (USIA) officers and US Agency for International Development (USAID) employees were also well represented among the signers, who were organized by former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, and a former USIA chief inspector, Richard Curtiss.
But despite the prominence of some of the signers, the letter's impact may be somewhat muted, particularly compared to the controversy provoked by the letter to Blair.
While Blair's Middle East policies have come under strong attack both within his Labour Party and by the two major opposition parties, Bush's alignment with Sharon has not provoked much criticism from other major political figures, including his Democratic challenger in the upcoming November elections, Senator John Kerry.
Shortly after Bush's Apr. 14 embrace of the Sharon plan, Kerry declared not only that he supports it as well, but that he also backed Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, an action that provoked widespread outrage by US allies in Europe and the Arab world - the same countries that Kerry says the Bush administration has ignored to its detriment.
Kerry's declarations have been interpreted as an attempt to keep US Jews, who have historically voted overwhelmingly Democratic, from deserting the party, in what most analysts believe will be an extremely close presidential race.
Thus, Kerry has backed away from his earlier proposal to appoint former President Jimmy Carter or former Secretary of State James Baker to oversee renewed peace negotiations, because of "the Jewish community's perception that they are overly sympathetic to Arab positions," as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently put it.
The Bush campaign for the November vote is making a major bid for Jewish support, based almost exclusively on his strong backing for Sharon, despite the fact that most US Jews do not favor the positions of the Israeli leader's Likud Party against substantial territorial compromise with the Palestinians.
Despite Kerry's unwillingness to take on Bush's unprecedented support for Sharon, however, public concern over Washington's general position in the Middle East appears to be on the rise, particularly concerning the recent setbacks in Iraq and the growing sense that US actions, most recently the abuse and humiliation by US troops of Iraqi prisoners, is intensifying anti-U.S. hatred and anger in the region.
The former diplomats and other regional specialists say the Bush administration does not appear to appreciate how the US occupation in Iraq and its support for Israel's actions in the occupied territories are seen increasingly in both Europe and the Arab world as part of the same picture, and that, by tying Washington to Sharon, Bush is making it far more difficult to gain or keep much-needed allies in its "war on terrorism" and in Iraq.
That Likud members rejected Sharon's withdrawal proposal despite Bush's support further undercuts US credibility, according to Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution here who has long warned that US support for Israel is the main "prism" through which Arabs gauge US intentions.
"Now, if it looks like this Gaza withdrawal isn't going to take place," he told the Los Angeles Times, "it will be very difficult for the administration to deal with (moderate Arab governments). The immediate issue for the administration is what do they do next week, when the King of Jordan (who canceled a previous visit to protest Bush's endorsement of the Sharon plan) comes to town"?
The diplomats made a similar point in their letter, which urged Bush to return Washington to the position of a "truly honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians. "A return to the time-honored American tradition of fairness will reverse the present tide of ill will in Europe and the Middle East - even in Iraq," they wrote, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "at the core of the problems in the Middle East."
The letter echoed the views of US allies, as well as of the Palestinians themselves, by noting that Bush's backing for the Sharon plan, in addition to reversing longstanding US policy, also flouts a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions dating back to 1948, and undermines the Road Map for peace drawn up by the so-called "Quartet" - the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia. Quartet representatives met Tuesday at the United Nations.
Moreover, the administration acted after a series of negotiating sessions between Israeli and US diplomats, said the letter, "but which left out Palestinians," adding, "In fact, you and Prime Minister Sharon consistently have excluded Palestinians from peace negotiations." In so doing, it said, "you have placed US diplomats, civilians and military doing their jobs overseas in an untenable and even dangerous position."
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