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NUCLEAR
Elite Guard to Cover U.S. Nuclear Sites
Top Officials Hold Fake Degrees
The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry:
Talks on North Korean Nuclear Program to Resume in Beijing
Battlefield space: out of the silo
U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposal Project Languishing
Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan Approved by Senate Panel
MILITARY
Aid workers feel fatal chill of new Cold War
Powerful Afghan Governor Slams Disarmament Plan
Sudanese Fighters Raid Chad Village
Blair Pressed to Answer Red Cross Report
Iraq News Unnerves Tech Firms
Computer Systems Spur Growth for Contractors
Contracts Awarded
Federal Contracts Realistic Battles Without the Bullets
Europe's Chief on Terrorism to Reassure U.S. on Efforts
Two out of five Lithuanians want to keep troops in Iraq
Bremer knew, minister claims
Celebrations break out in Fallujah
Iraq Cleric to Widen War
Shiite Cleric's Militia Seizes Control of Baghdad Slum
Analysts Say Iraqi Agencies Unlikely to Follow U.S. Rules
U.S. Destroys Cleric's Baghdad Office
Sharon Tells Cabinet He Will Present New Withdrawal Plan
Prison Abuse: An MI Officer Sounds Off
Red Cross Report Describes Abuse in Iraq
Contractor: Army Happy With Interrogators
Military contractors -- Above the law?
Army to boost prison guard force amid abuse scandal in Iraq
Top brass 'picked man who ordered torture'
Most Iraqi detainees 'arrested by mistake'
Red Cross: Iraq Abuse Widespread, Routine
Soldier: Foul photos of inmates were prized
THE ROAD TO ABU GHRAIB : Gathering Intelligence in a War Zone
Inmates Scuttle Efforts to Repair Iraq Prison Image
Kremlin-backed president slain in bombing
Chechen President Killed in Bomb Blast
Chechnya Bomb Kills President, a Blow to Putin
Doctrine to restructure counterspy agencies
President backs probe of U.N. scandal
Navy launches vast maritime security plan
MP to Be First Tried for Abuses
Iraq prison abuse stains entire brigade
CACI Defends Screening of Interrogators
First Trial Set to Begin May 19 in Abuse in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Terrorists court converts
The Israeli Torture Template
POLITICS
Senators Set Hearings on Iraq Prisoner Abuse
Senators Fault Pentagon as New Photos Emerge
Rumsfeld Criticized by Influential Military Paper
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
U.S. Must Find a Way to Move Past Images of Prison Abuse
From Texas to Abu Ghraib
Few friends rush to aid Rumsfeld
Conservatives Restive About Bush Policies
Bush Issues Strong Endorsement of Rumsfeld in Visit to Pentagon
ENERGY
World's hydrogen fuel stations up by 33 pct to 87
Excited Nanocrystals Yield More Solar Power
OTHER
Nancy Reagan Calls For Stem Cell Research
World Bank Panel Details Problems at Yacyretá Dam
ACTIVISTS
Iraqi activists push for better treatment of prisoners
2,000 march against guns
Conductor Protests At Israeli Ceremony
Mother's Day Rally for Assault Weapons Ban
The art of war
Honduras protests threaten mining investment
Cold Turkey
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Elite Guard to Cover U.S. Nuclear Sites
May 10, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-10-01.asp
The federal government plans to upgrade security across the Energy Department's network of laboratories and defense facilities, particularly those that contain weapons grade nuclear material. A new specialized security force will be put in place to guard the facilities that would have capabilities similar to the military's elite Delta Force or Navy SEAL units, said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
Abraham made the new initiative public Friday in a speech to top department security officers gathered at the Savannah River Nuclear weapons site, on the Georgia-South Carolina border.
The Energy Department, which develops and maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, is responsible for protecting these materials. Abraham stressed that the fissile materials, which could be used to make a nuclear weapon, "must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands."
"Since the stakes are so high," Abraham said, "everything is on the table," including "a special elite federal force" to protect the most sensitive installations and the "federalizing" of some security units currently managed by contractors.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Photo courtesy Congressman Zach Wamp) To reduce the number of nuclear facilities that need such high level protection, Abraham is moving to consolidate special nuclear material - plutonium and highly enriched uranium used for weapons.
The consolidation effort would remove the most sensitive nuclear material from Los Alamos National Laboratory's Technical Area 18 and the Sandia Pulse Reactor facility in New Mexico, and consolidate material stored at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The new security measures are being established in response to repeated warnings from the intelligence community of terrorists' interest in acquiring U.S. nuclear materials. CIA Director George Tenet warned of al-Qaida's interest in getting these materials as early as 1998, he told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on March 24.
"Al-Qaida's interest in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons is strong," Tenet told the Commission. "Acquiring these is a religious obligation in [Osama] bin Ladin's eyes. Al-Qaida and more than two dozen other terrorist groups are pursuing these materials," he said.
Compounding these threats, Abraham acknowledged recent reports of security lapses, such as lost keys, at some Department of Energy (DOE) sites, but he called the incidents "rare."
"But frankly, rare or not, they are unacceptable, and the failure of any and all levels of management to address instances such as these will not be tolerated," Abraham said.
To improve the protection of sensitive information in case of an attack in cyberspace, Abraham announced a Cyber Security Enhancement Initiative to help "protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all our information systems to assure that we can continue to perform our missions even while under cyber attack."
The initiative, to be implemented within the next year, would deploy intrusion-detection systems to guard against potential cyber attacks, improve procedures to guard against internet threats and enhance the security of online information.
Citing past problems with computer disks and hard drives containing classified information, Abraham proposed "an initiative to move to diskless workstations for classified computing" to allow sensitive functions such as weapons design to be performed in a more secure diskless environment.
To eliminate issues of lost keys and key cards, Abraham said he intends to "do away with the use of mechanical keys as an important part of our protection system" and replace them with sophisticated new technologies that will allow "a keyless security environment, where access is not afforded by any physical item or object that can be lost or stolen."
Abraham also called for regular reviews of DOE security standards and procedures to ensure "a modern efficient, effective guard force able to meet 21st century threats" and for new programs to train security officers and test their readiness to respond to attacks or attempts to infiltrate facilities.
The Administration Building, TA-3, Building SM-43 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (Photo courtesy LANL) He also discussed initiatives to recruit and train the best possible candidates for DOE security jobs and to increase employee retention rates. The initiatives include faster background checks for employee security clearances and an intern program to help recruit "highly qualified technical personnel in the areas of cyber security, nuclear material control and physical security."
Abraham called for "a change in our management culture" to improve the way the department accepts, analyzes and responds to criticisms and concerns from outside the department as well as from employees, who Abraham said should be confident about raising questions or concerns without fear of retribution.
"If we are able to implement a system - a culture - where people can legitimately air concerns, then everyone will benefit. Our workforce will be more effective, the public's confidence in this department will improve, and America's security will be greatly enhanced," he said.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, expressed support for the new security measures, but also concern for the large expenditures that will be necessary to implement them. Domenici is also chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee that funds DOE and the national laboratories.
Calling security of nuclear material "a top priority," Domenici said he looks forward to working with the department "to implement the Secretary's plan to deploy improved cyber security and other state-of-the-art technology to protect our sensitive material."
"But I continue to have concerns that security costs are outpacing any growth in the DOE budget," the senator said. "I will work with Secretary Abraham to consolidate special nuclear material where it makes financial sense and will not undermine the program."
The reforms Abraham announced follow recommendations the nongovernmental organization Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has been urging since its 2001 report "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security at Risk," the Washington, DC based group said Friday.
Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO, lauded Abraham's announcement saying, "Today Secretary Abraham has articulated the most important priorities for addressing homeland security vulnerabilities posed by the nation's nuclear weapons complex. The agency and its contractors, however, have a long history of stonewalling security reforms. We look forward to ensuring the department implements Abraham's initiatives."
POGO has urged consolidation of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Pulse Reactor Facility in New Mexico, and the Y-12 site. In addition, the group has called for an improved definition of the threats facing nuclear facilities, improved training for guards, and a move to an information environment that is not dependent on media such as CDs that can be stolen.
Work is already underway on some of the measures Secretary Abraham announced on Friday.
Planning for nuclear shipments from Technical Area 18 at Los Alamos to the Nevada Test site, which is considered less vulnerable to terrorist attack, is well advanced. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Linton Brooks said in April that the shipments will start in September and are expected to take about 18 months.
NNSA and the U.S. Department of Energy decided in December 2002 to move the materials after an analysis of the technical site's old facilities and the high cost of security. The transfer was put on hold in the summer of 2003 after cost estimates tripled from the original estimate of $100 million.
Brooks says spending on security is top priority for his administration and for the energy secretary as well. Testifying April 27 before the Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, Brooks said Secretary Abraham "has directed spending on security take priority over other program spending until we can guarantee that security."
Security guard at a Department of Energy site (Photo courtesy DOE Office of Security) The Bush administration's nuclear security budget request for Fiscal Year 2005, submitted to Congress last week, is for over $707 million - a 75 percent increase since 2002, said Brooks.
About half of this funding is spent on the protective forces that provide front-line security at NNSA facilities, said Brooks. The number of guards has increased from 2,100 to over 2,400 since 2001, and their capabilities to defend have been upgraded.
"Security positions are being hardened against blast and heavy weapons. To deny an adversary cover, lighting has been improved and fields of fire cleared around perimeters and critical facilities. Protective forces are being equipped with thermal imaging and night vision devices to further enhance their ability to detect and engage any adversary," Brooks said. "And, when and if they must engage, protective forces will be using upgraded weapons and munitions with increased range, accuracy, and lethality.
Overall security performance "as measured by independent reviews" is improving, Brooks told the subcommittee. "In the past year, no force-on-force performance testing by the Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance has found security forces unable to protect the assigned assets on their site."
Brooks said many security upgrades are already in place. "Critical material has been consolidated and the frequency of patrols around retained materials and critical facilities has been increased," he said.
"Vehicle parking and movement has been controlled to increase the standoff distances around facilities for protection from vehicle bombs. Vehicle searches, including canine searches for bomb detection, have been stepped up. Temporary vehicle barrier systems have been put in place and construction of permanent barrier systems has begun."
"While I am pleased with the progress we have made, our long term security must be based on more than guns, gates, and guards," Brooks said. "In the 21st century, America's technological prowess can provide invisible gates, omniscient over-watch, and lethal, accurate response capable of deterring or defeating any adversary."
The next generation of security applications will be based on a DOE study of needs and technologies available today to meet those needs that Brooks said should be completed in time to affect the Fiscal Year 2007 budget submission. In addition, a renewed research and development program to accelerate new security technologies is in the works.
In May 2003, the administration revised the definition of what is technically known as the Design Basis Threat - a profile of the type, composition, and capabilities of an adversary - to take into account the increased risk of terrorism.
Brooks told the subcommittee that "all NNSA sites have completed, and I have approved, plans to meet the Design Basis Threat by the end of Fiscal Year 2006."
Brooks said his administration is working closely with the rest of the DOE to meet that deadline and particularly with the Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance on vulnerability analyses to validate planned security upgrades and detailed schedules for achieving implementation milestones.
More funding will be required to meet the new Design Basis Threat, said Brooks, because requirements to meet it were not fully evaluated before the FY 2004 budget request was made. He said $55.4 million will be squeezed out of the 2004 budget by "reprogramming" and another $89.9 million was added in the FY 2005 budget request.
The Nuclear Safeguards and Security Programs office is leading a team of security and budget specialists to each site to make sure their budgets cover all security requirements and ensure headquarters and sites are in agreement on priorities, Brooks said. A second team of experts has just completed visits to every site to review locks and keys procedures, collect best practices, and make recommendations for improvement.
Brooks said he wants to provide a "keyless" security environment within the next five to 10 years.
Meanwhile, Brooks acknowledged that one of the most challenging sites to protect is the 811 acre Y-12 facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. "These facilities do represent some of the most difficult security problems we face in some parts of the complex - aging, outdated facilities built in the early days of the Cold War, or earlier, when no threat of the current nature was envisioned."
The DOE explains that programs at Y-12 include manufacturing and reworking nuclear weapon components, dismantling nuclear weapon components returned from the national arsenal, serving as the nation's storehouse of special nuclear materials, and providing the U.S. Navy with nuclear propulsion systems.
In addition to the nuclear weapons work taking place at Y-12, the site stores 55,000 pounds of uranium hexafluoride, centrifuge equipment, and other materials removed from Libya in January.
Still, Brooks said he is "convinced" Y-12 will meet the deadline for implementation. Of the $89.9 million for Design Basis Threat requirements asked in the FY 2005 budget, about $25 million of that is earmarked for Y-12 in addition to nearly half the $55.4 million in the reprogramming request for a total of nealy $50 million.
Secretary Abraham is committed to a complete review of the entire weapons complex, Brooks said, including the suitability of Y-12 to continue as a federal nuclear site. But even before the review is complete, Brooks made his own conclusions clear.
"Moving Y-12 would be a lengthy, expensive endeavor that would impact the mission for at least a decade and would costs billions of dollars," he told the subcommittee. "During that time period, security at Y-12 would have to meet the same standard we are striving to achieve by the end of Fiscal Year 2006. For this reason, I do not believe moving Y-12 is a solution to our near term problems."
In June, Brooks will hold the first ever NNSA Safeguards and Security Summit, a gathering for top managers of federal nuclear sites, national laboratories, and nuclear power plants together with their senior security staffs.
"We are committed to making bold changes where necessary," Abraham said Friday, adding that the new security initiatives "are designed to build and support the most robust and motivated protective force in the world."
----
Top Officials Hold Fake Degrees
May 10, 2004
LOS ANGELES, (CBS)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/eveningnews/main616664.shtml
They are safety engineers at nuclear power plants and biological weapons experts. They work at NATO headquarters, at the Pentagon and at nearly every other federal agency. And, as CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, they're employees with degrees from phony schools.
"These degrees aren't worth the paper that they're printed on," says one insider, who asked CBS News to protect his identity.
The man worked at a so-called diploma mill where students pay a lot of money to get a degree online or through the mail for little or no work.
He says he's not surprised to know that there are people working at almost every level of government who have degrees from these types of operations.
Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Abell has a master's from Columbus University, a diploma mill Louisiana shut down. Deputy Assistant Secretary Patricia Walker lists among her degrees, a bachelor's from Pacific Western, a diploma mill banned in Oregon and under investigation in Hawaii.
CBS News requested interviews with both officials. The Pentagon turned us down, saying, "We don't consider it an issue."
But using such a degree is a crime in some states. Alan Contreras cracks down on diploma mills for Oregon, a state that's taken the lead on this issue.
"You don't want somebody with a fake degree working in Homeland Security," says Contreras. "You don't want somebody with a fake degree teaching your children or designing your bridges."
But we found employees with diploma mill degrees at the new Transportation Security Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Departments of Treasury and Education, where Rene Drouin sits on an advisory committee. He has degrees from two diploma mills including Kensington University.
Kensington was forced out of business by officials in California and Hawaii. Another Kensington alum, Florida State Rep. Jennifer Carroll, just stepped down from the National Commission on Presidential Scholars.
Both Carroll and Drouin say they worked hard and thought their degrees were legitimate.
"The students are being sold a bill of goods that really don't help them at all," the insider says. "There are slick people out there, and it's happening every day, every minute probably somewhere in America."
And taxpayers have paid for bogus degrees some workers used for hiring, promotions and raises.
-------- depleted uranium
The Truth About Depleted Uranium Weaponry:
The Only Thing Depleting is Human Life
by Vincent L. Guarisco (Monday 10 May 2004) Media Monitors Network
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/6650/
"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.
-------- korea
Talks on North Korean Nuclear Program to Resume in Beijing
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12866-2004May9.html
After a helpful push from China -- which last month promised to double food assistance to North Korea -- mid-level officials from the Pyongyang government will sit down Wednesday in Beijing with their counterparts from the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
The topic concerns ending North Korea's nuclear programs, though the North Koreans and Americans have not quite agreed on the precise agenda.
The talks, which the Chinese say will last at least five days, are designed to clear the diplomatic underbrush for more senior-level talks next month by the six nations on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Few hold out hope that there will be any breakthroughs at the talks, but U.S. officials involved in the planning say the very fact of talking is productive.
"We would start a process with dialogue," one administration official said. "This gives us an opportunity to go into many issues."
Others within the Bush administration were more skeptical, portraying the sessions as diplomatic showboating designed to give the illusion of progress. "We're trying to keep the seats warm for the Kerry administration," quipped one administration official.
None of the officials interviewed would agree to be quoted by name or even organization, given the sensitivity of the dispute over North Korean policy within the administration. The U.S. delegation will be headed by Joseph R. DeTrani, a State Department official who holds the title of special envoy to North Korea.
Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard, who had held DeTrani's job before he quit last summer because he felt the administration was not serious about resolving the impasse, said he could not completely rule out some progress because the talks come so quickly after a state visit to China by North Korean leader Kim Jung Il.
"I would not put it past them [the North Koreans] to snub the Chinese" by refusing to give any ground, Pritchard said, but Kim Jung Il's visit "is a factor I can't disregard wholly."
Regional concern over North Korea's programs has risen in recent weeks after it was disclosed that U.S. intelligence has broadly concluded that North Korea has enough plutonium for at least eight nuclear weapons, an increase from an estimate of two before the crisis erupted in October 2002. At the time, the United States accused North Korea of having a clandestine uranium enrichment program, which led to North Korea's kicking out international inspectors and reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
Two previous sets of negotiations in Beijing by the six nations, in August and February, did not yield much progress, in part because the sessions were limited and there was little opportunity for extended give-and-take. The Bush administration has insisted Pyongyang agree first to a "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement," and North Korea has refused without a better understanding of the rewards for doing so.
At the talks in February, U.S. negotiators described three "coordinated steps" that the United States was prepared to take if the North Koreans agreed to the U.S. demands.
In the first stage, the United States was ready to discuss multilateral security assurances if North Korea made such a commitment. In the second stage, as verifiable benchmarks were achieved, the United States was prepared to offer technical and financial assistance to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programs and discuss ways that the country's energy needs could be met. In the final stage, once the program was nearly dismantled, the United States was prepared to enter into comprehensive negotiations leading to diplomatic relations and a permanent mechanism to replace the armistice ending the Korean War.
But North Korean officials have complained to Asian counterparts that the United States has not provided definitions about such terms as "verifiable" and "irreversible" and thus they have difficulty understanding what the United States really wants.
Much of the success of these talks may depend on whether the two sides can even agree on what they are talking about.
One administration official said the parties have not quite agreed on what they will discuss. "It's not really an agreement; it's close to an understanding," he said, before providing an explanation that hinted at the diplomatic complexities.
The Americans, he said, want to talk about the dismantling of the programs. "We're prepared to talk about the first step, which is a halt of the program, a freezing of the program, and what the [South] Koreans and the North Koreans call 'compensation' for that and which we call 'corresponding measures,' " he said.
The United States has defined "corresponding measures" as a multilateral security guarantee, but no aid. But others at the table -- China, South Korea and Russia -- have offered shipments of heavy fuel oil if North Korea halted its programs and began to dismantle them.
The official said the freeze would need a time limit of six to 18 months for North Korea to begin dismantling its programs. But North Korea denies it even has a uranium program, though the Bush administration insists that North Korean officials privately admitted having such a program in 2002.
The Bush administration has refused to hold direct talks with the North Koreans, except brief sessions during the six-nation negotiations. But the official said there would be "tremendous opportunities" for bilateral discussions during this week's meetings.
-------- missile defense
Battlefield space: out of the silo
May 10, 2004
New York Times /Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/09/1084041272768.html
It's not Star Wars, but a new anti-missile system has raised as bitter a debate, writes James Glanz.
Over the next few months rockets hidden in Alaskan silos will give America its first operating defence against intercontinental ballistic missiles since the 1970s. Although the system is not a secret, it has been revived with so little fanfare that few Americans realise it exists.
Among warfare experts, it has revived the bitter debate that began in the Cold War, culminating in an anti-ballistic missile treaty. It is inspiring the sort of passion that arose during the national fixation with President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars effort.
Unlike Star Wars, which faded into the realm of misbegotten high-tech dreams, the new system relies on agile but fairly ordinary rockets, rather than nuclear-powered lasers in space, to smash incoming warheads.
In the new debate, Pentagon planners see the system as a bulwark against the ultimate calamity, a nuclear attack - while sceptics ridicule it as a defence that will not work, against a threat that does not exist.
The decades have not washed away the political dimension of a missile defence, either. Deploying the system will fulfil a campaign pledge by President George Bush, as well as a more specific directive, issued in December 2002, that the nation have a functioning missile defence system by this year.
Critics of the system, which will cost $US10 billion ($13.8 billion) a year for the next five years, say it is being rushed before being fully tested. The critics call it a flawed defence against the ICBMs of yesteryear, not the suicide bombers and hijacked planes of the post-September 11 world.
Nevertheless, the system is taking on hard reality in the remote Alaskan town of Delta Junction. Outside the town, six white domes rise like igloos within a double-perimeter fence topped by security cameras.
The little domes are clamshell-shape doors that sit above silos dug 23 metres into the frozen earth. If one of the clamshells ever opens to release a missile, it will in all likelihood mean the nation's leadership believes the United States has become a nuclear target.
The silos are empty, but two huge cranes nearby should soon be outfitting some of the silos with three-stage interceptors. Once those interceptors, each topped with a bunch of thrusters and optical sensors called a kill vehicle, are hooked into a global network of radars, satellites, computers and command centres, one of Reagan's biggest dreams will be reality.
Critics of the shield find little hearing at the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency, headed by Lieutenant-General Ronald Kadish, an air force pilot with long experience in developing military hardware like fighter jets.
"We should not choose to be vulnerable," Kadish says. "We have proven that from a technological standpoint and a practical standpoint we can intercept ballistic warheads in flight. And to say that we can technologically defend ourselves and then choose not to is, in my view, a recipe for failure."
The first system will rely on interceptors in a handful of silos at the army base of Fort Greeley at Delta Junction, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. In an attack, boosters would release the kill vehicle more than 150 kilometres above Earth. With a heat-sensitive telescope, the vehicle would search the chill of space for the warhead, then manoeuvre with its thrusters and try to pulverise the weapon by ramming it at 30,000kmh.
Even that description does little justice to the complexity of the system, which spans nine time zones and uses 21,000 kilometres of fibre optics to link sites as varied as a radar installation in the Aleutian Islands and in a command centre in Colorado. If it works as planned, the system may take the title of the biggest machine built from America's electrical grid.
Officials at the Missile Defence Agency have said the system was developed to stop what they characterise as unsophisticated threats from budding nuclear powers such as North Korea, not the highly developed arsenals of Russia or China. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said November's presidential election, not any imminent threat, was behind the decision to deploy the system before full tests.
"It's a date which obviously was set politically so they could say before the election that they've deployed a system," Levin says.
The White House has repeatedly said the deployment timetable is based just on the system's technical readiness. The system has also found significant international support.
Australia will buy air warfare destroyers with the latest Aegis class radar systems and SM3 ballistic missiles that will give them a missile defence capability. The destroyers, which will come into service in 2014, will cruise Australia's northern waters and can be deployed near combat zone to provide an umbrella of protection for troops.
More immediately and directly related to the defence shield protecting the US mainland, the Pine Gap satellite relay station will play a role in giving early warning to any incoming long-range missiles. The Jindalee over-the-horizon radar has the capacity to sense missiles aimed at Australia, bouncing radar off the ionosphere - 1000 kilometres above the Earth's surface - to get far-reaching coverage.
England and Greenland are dedicating some radar sites to the program's early warning system. The Japanese parliament recently put $US1 billion toward a missile shield that would involve American-made radars and interceptors aboard its Aegis cruisers.
The Bush Administration is spending $US700 million this year and has requested more than $US1 billion for next year to develop the sea-based interceptor system, which would be developed on American cruisers.
The system has not entirely abandoned its claims to grandiosity. Next year, the Pentagon expects to begin testing an advanced radar built on a heroic scale atop a floating oil platform so that it can rove about the world to provide high-resolution images of mock warheads and decoys in tests. At a cost of $US1 billion, the radar will tower nearly 100 metres above the water and include a deck almost the size of two football fields. After being assembled on the Texas Gulf coast, the radar will be too big to pass through the Panama Canal and will be forced to motor around the tip of South America to its main base in the Aleutians.
Another futuristic component, an immensely powerful laser mounted in the nose of a Boeing 747 that would fly near hostile countries and try to destroy missiles shortly after launching, has been repeatedly delayed by technical problems. Despite the setbacks, Kadish said the laser "represents such a revolutionary capability that we are going to stick to it".
Even if all elements of the giant program work just as in the computer simulations, some experts do not see the point. The Cold War geopolitical landscape in which the system was conceived has shifted out from under it, says Dean Wilkening, the director of the science program at the Stanford Centre for International Security and Co-operation. "I don't understand the rush to deploy by 2004," Wilkening says. "I simply don't see the threat."
But with so much of the elaborate system in place and more on the way, defence specialist Steven Hildreth says questions like that may no longer matter. "I've sort of seen it as a juggernaut," he says. "It's on a collision course with destiny, if you will."
That destiny starts in the Alaskan countryside where a carved wood sign welcomes visitors to Delta Junction, "America's Friendly Frontier", population 980. Why Alaska? "Because it sits at the top of the world," Kadish said, where the trajectories of virtually all ICBMs attacking the US would pass. "We can do the job better there, cheaper, in the long run, and be effective whether the warheads are coming from the east or the west."
Building silos and the electronics and communications systems to operate them in this part of the world comes with other challenges. The ground is loose and shifting, the construction season is short, and winter temperatures can reach -15C; so cold that tyres on stationary vehicles can freeze overnight into irregular shapes and refuse to become round again.
After the first shovel of soil was turned for the silos two years ago, the schedule left no time for error.
A curious-looking yellow building with a white dome, for communicating with the interceptor, was built partly inside an immense cocoon to protect workers from the elements. Hundreds of workers also built a large command centre jammed with electronics next to the missile field, and four kilometres of climate-controlled underground tunnels for pipes and utilities.
"We are shooting to be on alert by September 30 in response to the President's requirement to be on alert by the end of the year," says Colonel Kevin Norgaard, the director of the site activation command. "We are where we need to be today, to be there."
In contrast to the controversy the missile defence system elicits in some regions, it is popular in Delta Junction, where the short-term closing of Fort Greeley struck a grave blow to the economy. As the base reopens, city manager Pete Hallgren says: "The economic impact in our area is massive." In a town where the normal yearly operating budget runs to $US250,000, the Defence Department has earmarked $US25 million to help ease the impact on local services. The money will buy a new elementary school, a library, a landfill and a fire station, as well as partly finance a recreation centre.
"I'm one of those true believers, who always thought we needed one," Hallgren says of a national missile defence.
-------- treaties
U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposal Project Languishing
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12895-2004May9?language=printer
With much fanfare, the world's two nuclear superpowers announced in 1998 that they would destroy 68 tons of plutonium stripped from bombs and warheads. The cost, counted in billions, would be borne largely by the United States and European governments intent on removing dangerous fissile material from circulation.
Six years later, the project sits stalled. The plutonium remains intact, and no construction has begun on either of the planned processing factories. In frustration, some U.S. analysts and politicians are doubting the Bush administration's commitment.
This has happened because the United States and Russia have been unable to agree on who would pay if an accident -- or sabotage -- occurred in Russia. The Bush administration wants Russia to take full responsibility, and the Russians are balking.
The stalemate comes when the fear of nuclear terrorism is growing and President Bush is pledging aggressive action. Nuclear specialists and some members of Congress say the case highlights a failure by the White House to back up its nonproliferation ambitions with action.
"How a little issue of indemnification can hold this up is beyond me," Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) told top Energy Department officials at a recent hearing. "This is a way to get rid of a huge chunk of nuclear-grade plutonium."
The project was blocked by "trivial negotiating issues," Domenici said. He added that he told the White House "that maybe they ought to put some bigger people in the position of negotiating." Plutonium is not easily obtained, but Russia is considered to be the site of the largest and most vulnerable stockpiles.
"It's a very messy, messy situation," said Kenneth Luongo, executive director of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. The project, he said, has been "in the works for a decade, and we haven't moved beyond the talking phase."
Agreements to build parallel plants in Siberia and South Carolina expired last year. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in March that the administration hoped to resolve the issue by this spring and asserted that it "is being worked at high levels."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are among those who have raised the issue with their Russian counterparts. Despite intensive discussions within the administration in recent weeks, a White House official conceded that the issue is "one of those things that have been on the one-yard line a long time." Abraham reported in his annual budget request that construction was officially 10 months behind schedule but should begin by May 2005 if an agreement can be reached. He said money will be needed to start building the plants that convert plutonium into mixed oxide fuel for nuclear reactors.
"We are confident that we can work it out. We are not that far apart, believe it or not," said Paul M. Longsworth, deputy Energy Department administrator, who acknowledged that the positions remain "pretty firm right now."
"Plutonium disposition is a 20-year program that is going to eliminate enough plutonium to make far more than 10,000 nuclear weapons," Longsworth said. "You've got to start it right."
On Feb. 11, in a speech intended to amplify his record on nonproliferation and inspire other countries to do more, the president declared that governments around the world "must do all we can to secure and eliminate nuclear and chemical and biological and radiological materials."
A particular worry is that terrorist organizations or rogue states will buy or steal a nuclear weapon or the fissile material that powers an atomic blast. Many scientists and public policy experts believe that an organized group or government that acquires fissile material would have little trouble assembling a crude weapon.
To build an atomic bomb from 50-year-old technology would require about 13 pounds of plutonium, said Thomas Cochran, director of nuclear projects at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Libya, which recently abandoned its fledgling secret nuclear program, acquired a bomb design of that vintage from the illicit supply network run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
U.S. government facilities are also vulnerable, the General Accounting Office said in a report released late last month. The Energy Department's responses to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were "not sufficient" to ensure that all of its sites are prepared "to defend themselves against the higher terrorist threat present in a post-Sept. 11 . . . world," the GAO said.
In Russia, basic security improvements have not been made at dozens of military installations where more than 60 percent of the country's plutonium and weapons-grade uranium is kept, the GAO warned last year.
GAO auditors blamed Russia for failing to allow U.S. officials to visit key sites but also said Congress and the Bush administration exacerbated the delays by denying critical funds or refusing to grant contract waivers. When the report came out, the United States had spent $6 billion since 1992 to help Russia destroy or safeguard nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
"The big problem is there's a leadership gap. These are not big obstacles. They can be handled by leaders who are determined and can be focused," said former U.S. senator Sam Nunn, who with Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) backed the vast counterproliferation program that bears their names.
The project to destroy 68 tons of plutonium -- half in Russia and half in the United States -- was designed as part of the cooperative project to reduce the risk of fissile material falling into the wrong hands. Announced during the Clinton administration, the program was formally launched during a presidential summit in Moscow in 1998.
Domenici, who helped direct $200 million to the project in its first year, attended the summit as President Bill Clinton's guest. He has been among the sharpest critics of the Bush administration's inability to keep the program on track.
The sticking point is the issue of liability for potentially catastrophic problems. In threat-reduction agreements signed in the mid-1990s, Russia agreed to take responsibility in return for help from foreign governments in disarming former Soviet nuclear weapons and improving security.
"If something blew, Russia would pay. No ifs, ands or buts," said Leonard S. Spector, director of the Washington office for the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. But on the plutonium program and a project known as the Nuclear Cities Initiative, the Russians insisted that if U.S. contractors were to blame, they or the federal government should be liable for damages and possible prosecution.
Sabotage is a particular worry, the Russians told U.S. negotiators, who have been led by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton.
"They kept saying, 'Hey, you can hire Chechen rebels under contract and they could blow up our facilities, and we would be powerless to prosecute,' " said an administration official closely involved in the issues, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "We said that's ridiculous. We don't hire people who will conduct sabotage."
The Bush administration is adamant that U.S. companies and officials are engaged in a goodwill effort and should not be held liable for unintended problems. The liability negotiations commanded attention at the 2002 summit of the world's most industrialized countries, which pledged $20 billion for 10 years of nonproliferation programs in Russia.
There is a disagreement within the administration, where sources said the Defense and State departments have demanded the more stringent liability provision, while the Energy Department believed that a somewhat less rigorous formula was sufficient.
"What you would have thought was an incidental legal issue looms so large," said Spector, who suggested sharing the burden, a structure established in the civilian nuclear power sector. "Everybody is frustrated that an additional hurdle is being presented that has to be overcome."
As the negotiations continue, the potential dangers remain, critics believe.
"The implications are that you're going to have 68 additional tons of weapons-grade plutonium lying around the United States and Russia," said Luongo, the nuclear security specialist. "And Russia, in particular, is where security is not up to global standards."
------- us nuc waste
Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan Approved by Senate Panel
May 10, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-10-10.asp
The Senate Armed Services committee has added a rider to the $422 billion fiscal year 2005 Department of Defense authorization bill that will allow the U.S. Energy Department to reclassify millions of gallons of high level nuclear waste at South Carolina's Savannah River site as less hazardous.
The language would give the department the authority to leave the waste on-site, a move opposed by environmentalists as irresponsible and unsafe. The bill passed out of committee Thursday and is expected to hit the Senate floor next week.
The rider centers on high-level radioactive waste stored in 51 massive underground tanks at the Savannah River site, which contains more than half the radioactivity in the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
The federal government has kept this waste on-site with the aim of retrieving it and moving it elsewhere for safe storage. The Savannah River is a site burdened with the radioactive legacy of the Cold War. (Photo courtesy Energy Department ) Federal law currently requires the government to bury the waste deep underground.
The repository chosen for disposal of this waste, which under law must be encapsulated in glass for burial, is the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Although the liquid wastes can be drawn out and removed, the Energy Department's method for removing the most radioactive sludge out of the tanks has proven unsafe.
The department is exploring alternatives, but the Bush administration favors diluting the waste with grout and leaving it on-site permanently.
Savannah River has already diluted two tanks despite evidence that the residual radioactivity had concentrations far above the maximum limits allowed by federal regulations for shallow land disposal of waste.
"This is making a residual waste problem that could be remedied in the long term - with development of technology - into one that will be extremely difficult or impossible to remediate," says Arjun Makhijanim, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
Makhijanim authored a 77 page report released in March that detailed major flaws in the federal government's management of wastes at the Savannah River site.
The report found the Energy Department does not have a reliable inventory of how much waste and contamination is at the site and its long term plan to safeguard the waste is flawed.
More than a third of U.S. weapons plutonium and almost all of its tritium was produced at the Savannah River site.
For the Energy Department to leave the grouted tanks on site, the waste would have to be reclassified as less hazardous - last year a federal court in Idaho rejected the agency's attempt do this through a federal rulemaking process.
The court agreed with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which argued that the Energy Department's decision to reclassify high level nuclear waste in storage tanks as "incidental waste," violated federal law and would allow the agency to use a substantially less protective standard of cleanup the waste.
The judge wrote that the Energy Department "does not have discretion to dispose of defense [high-level waste] somewhere other than a repository established under [the Nuclear Waste Policy Act]."
The administration has appealed that ruling but has pressed Congress to provide it with a legislative remedy - the language in this rider accomplishes the goal. The Savannah plant has tanks similar to these at a federal facility in Hanford, Washington - at least 70 of the Hanford tanks have leaked some one million gallons of waste into the soil. (Photo courtesy Energy Department ) A similar move by the administration to convince Congress to reclassify the waste failed last year.
Deputy Secretary of Energy Kyle McSlarrow said the administration is "very pleased with the action take by Senate Armed Services Committee to clarify the Secretary's authority to proceed with accelerated cleanup of the tank farms at the Savannah River Site."
McSlarrow says the NRDC lawsuit and subsequent ruling are inhibiting efforts to dilute and secure the waste.
The rider does not, however, give the department authority to reclassify similar wastes at facilities in Washington and Idaho.
"We have several important issues to resolve and we look forward to continuing our discussions so that we can devise a solution that will work for these other states as well," McSlarrow said.
Critics say the administration is trying to shortchange the department's clean up responsibilities and to bully states into accepting the policy.
They note the administration has also asked Congress to allow the Energy Department to withhold some $350 million in cleanup funds from the sites in South Carolina, Washington and Idaho until the reclassification issue is resolved.
Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell has vowed to battle the amendment and the funding issue on the Senate floor.
-------- MILITARY
Aid workers feel fatal chill of new Cold War
Humanitarian relief for the Third World is being jeopardised by changes to US and British foreign policy.
Kim Sengupta reports from Kabul
10 May 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=519719
The bodies were found yesterday in Bagh Chilsthan, a garden of withered roses and weeds not far from the centre of Kabul. They were of two Western men, one of them Swiss, who had been stoned and stabbed to death.
The remains, dressed in shalwar kameez which were now their blood-stained, dust-covered shrouds, were the latest grim examples of how the war on terror by the United States and Britain has cast a murderous shadow over international relief efforts.
The victims have not been identified. Aid workers are seen by many Afghans as the enemy. About 20, Afghans and foreigners, have been killed.
Three years after Tony Blair's pledge to the Afghan people after the war of "this time we will not walk away from you", in effect, that is what the US and Britain have done. Funds for redevelopment have dried up, security has unravelled, and the Taliban is resurgent again. And US troops are using aid as a bargaining chip to extract intelligence, putting workers for international agencies into the target area.
The former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who will launch a study calledAid in the new Cold War today, said: "The murder of aid workers in Afghanistan dramatically highlights the tragic consequences when the provision of humanitarian aid gets confused with the security operation.
"I find it particularly depressing that any of our aid effort should be diverted to fund the occupation of Iraq. Regardless of what any of us may think about the invasion of Iraq, we surely all agree that the poor around the world should not pay for the consequences."
In the height of the Cold War, the US secretary of state John Foster Dulles responded to the founding of the Non-Aligned movement by saying: "If you are not with us, then you are against us." Forty-six years later, after 11 September, President George Bush declared: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
After the Second World War, the US made no secret that the world's wealthiest nation would use aid as part of its armoury in the struggle against the Soviet Union. In Latin America, the military regimes of Pinochet in Chile, Galtieri in Argentina, Stroessner in Paraguay and Castillo Armas in Guatemala all had American aid. At the same time, "unpalatable" leaders such as Allende in Chile and Castillo Armas's reforming predecessor, Jacobo Arbenz, were removed through CIA-organised coups.
The US provided aid and also persuaded the International Monetary Fund to provide huge loans to Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Suharto in Indonesia and Marcos in the Philippines, three of the biggest personal looters of development money. In South Korea, facing the Communist north, Western aid financed 68 per cent of all imports, and 60 per cent of its investment.
There was also a steady flow of arms to friendly regimes in the poorest regions. The World Policy Institute in New York points out that in Africa alone, through the Cold War, the US delivered more than $1.5bn-worth of weaponry. It said that many of the top US arms clients - Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan and the Congo - "have become the top basket cases of the 1990s".
The Soviet Union, too, used aid to spread its sphere of influence, mainly through Comecon, to client states in the Warsaw Pact, South-east Asia and Africa countries such as Angola, Mozambique. Ethiopia and Tanzania.
In 1978, Judith Hart, Britain's minister for overseas development, said: "There are two basic ways in which the aid programme helps British industry. By helping foster income creation, it increases the overseas market for British goods. In the process it also provides opportunities for aid-financed exports."
But after the end of the Cold War there was a deliberate move by the West to disengage from strategic politics. During an African trip, President Bill Clinton declared: "The Cold War is gone. Colonialism is gone. My dream is that we might do the things that your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of a new African renaissance." This was backed by the passing of the 1998 US Code of Conduct bill imposing restrictions on US weapons sales to regimes accused of human rights abuse.
In 2001, the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) changed its guidelines on aid, untying recipient countries of aid from having to buy goods and services from donor countries. In Britain, the Labour government passed the International Development Act in 2002, which specified that Britain can offer development assistance only when "the provision of the assistance is likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty". Aid tied to buying only from Britain was discontinued by statute.
All this changed after the 11 September attacks. The DAC published a paper which showed it was prepared to support the use of aid to fight terrorism. In March, European Union foreign ministers in Brussels signed a raft of anti-terrorist measures including a clause tying aid to non-EU countries to co-operation on security. Countries banned from US military assistance because of their human rights record became eligible, including Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Pakistan.
The Philippines has been allocated $92m to fight the Abu Sayyaf group in Mindanao. Indonesia's ineligibility for military training after East Timor has been reversed under a counter-terrorism programme.
At the same time, to protect its citizens fighting the war on terror from possible prosecution in front of the International Criminal Court, the Bush administration has signed bilateral immunity agreements with 82 countries. Those who have refused to sign have been punished by having their aid cut, a total of $90m this year.
Britain has pledged £544m to Iraqi reconstruction. A leaked Department for International Development document said: "The burden of financing Iraq will mean ... that a number of current programmes in middle-income countries will close." This includes swaths of Latin America, north Africa, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.
In Afghanistan, the US has spent $40bn on military operations, and international aid totals $4.5bn. Out of the latter, much of the $2.2bn earmarked for this year has been diverted to military projects and emergency relief.
Teena Roberts, the head of the Christian Aid mission in Afghanistan, said: "What is very worrying is that aid is being used to get information. I have also heard an American member of a provincial reconstruction team, whose job is humanitarian work, saying it was her job to be the eyes and ears of the US government. The effect is obvious. Aid workers become targets."
The UN, aid agencies, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent said: "Many states involved in Afghanistan no longer draw a distinction between military and humanitarian activities ... they have to be kept separate."
The US forces have made little effort to hide what they are doing. Delivering blankets and food to refugees at Dwamanda in the Pashtun south, Lieutenant Reid Finn said: "It's simple. The more they help us find the bad guys, the more good stuff they get."
The price is paid by others. At just before seven on an evening in February, eight workers from the National Solidarity Programme, a relief agency, stopped on the road to Sarobi, east of Kabul, to repair a punctured tyre. Two young men with Kalashnikov assault rifles, their faces covered with keffiyahs, appeared. When told they were aid workers, the gunmen accused them of spying for the Americans. They opened fire, killing five. The other three jumped into a ditch and escaped.
The five victims, Najibullah, Abdulraif, Mohammed Nadi, Sher Mohammed and Zalmai, were between 32 and 56. They were Tajiks and Pashtuns, and had worked in the area before without problems.
Last month, two workers for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance relief agency and a soldier were killed after gunmen burst into a guesthouse near Kandahar.
SDF has now pulled out of 72 areas. The programme co-ordinator, Ihsanullah Dileri, said: "This is a terrible situation. We had $60,000 to spend on each of these 72 areas. The programme will suffer terrible harm. But there is nothing we can do; it is too dangerous."
Wahid Waqfi, a CHA director, added: "We were neighbours of the Taliban government in Kandahar before 2001. They didn't attack us then. Why now? We know the answer."
UGANDA
The boys lie on the floor of the Kitgum Government Hospital in northern Uganda, huddled together in a corner for safety. They are "night commuters", among the thousands who trek across the bush into towns to escape the rebel Lords Resistance Army, which raids villages, abducting children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves. In the relative safety of the day, they will return to their homes.
Most of the children walk alone, some carrying infant brothers and sisters, others bedmats on their heads.
The LRA raises the tempo of forced recruitment to replenish the ranks after each military clash with government forces.
Uganda is the third largest recipient of aid from Britain - £55m in 2002-03. The war against the LRA is estimated to cost the country £56m in lost production capacity.
Three months after the 11 September attacks, at the request of President Yoweri Museveni, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, declared the LRA a terrorist organisation. In March 2002, the Ugandan government launched Operation Iron Fist against the rebels, diverting 23 per cent of its social services budget, much of it from international aid, to the military campaign. Some of the money was earmarked for anti-HIV campaigning.
PAKISTAN
In 1988, after Pakistan tested a nuclear device, and in 1999 when a coup brought General Pervez Musharraf to power, the US and Britain blocked millions of dollars in aid. Both countries expressed concern about human rights abuse and the presence of nuclear weapons in an unstable country run by a military regime which buttressed the Taliban in Afghanistan, and sanctions were imposed.
Eleven days after the terror attacks President George Bush lifted the sanctions. A spokesman said: "We intend to support those who support us."
In 2000, US aid to Pakistan was $88.5m. After the start of the war on terror, it jumped tenfold to $775m a year. British aid went up to $70m. Pakistan also benefited in other ways. President Musharraf's 2002 elections led to widespread accusations of fraud, but not from the US and Britain.
There was also little criticism from either of the aid donors when a Pakistani scientist with high government links was exposed for supplying nuclear technology to countries defined as "rogue states" by the Bush administration.
THAILAND
Thailand made the latest bloody entry into the war on terror with security forces killing about 112 Muslims in the south of the country. Thirty of the deaths came when soldiers stormed a mosque using machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades after a three-hour siege.
At first, the authorities claimed that those killed were Islamist fighters. But later the Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinwarta, said they were members of local youth gangs, not connected to terrorism. The Thai government does not admit to a "shoot-to-kill" policy, but it is noted for its severe police tactics. About 2,500 people were shot dead last year in an anti-drugs drive.
The Government has also refused to acknowledge that it has a problem of Islamic fundamentalism within its borders, despite simmering violence in the Muslim southern provinces. Critics argue that the unrest has been sustained by the Government's treatment of southerners as second-class citizens.
Thailand is an important US ally in South-east Asia, and has sent a contingent of 447 troops to Iraq. The country is a significant recipient of US civil and military aid.
-------- afghanistan
Powerful Afghan Governor Slams Disarmament Plan
Mon May 10, 2004
By Mike Collett-White
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=GEBXW021XBBCWCRBAE0CFEY?type=topNews&storyID=5084645
HERAT, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's most powerful regional strongman warned on Sunday that plans to disarm tens of thousands of factional fighters over the coming months could hurt national stability, not enhance it.
On the eve of a visit to his province by President Hamid Karzai, who has made rapid disarmament a central policy, Ismail Khan said in a rare interview that the fledgling Afghan army was too weak to fill the power vacuum that would be created.
Khan, the self-styled "emir of Herat," rules the strategic western province as a personal fiefdom, and, his critics say, trades freedom of expression and women's rights for the kind of stability most Afghan provinces could only dream of.
"The disarming of the mujahideen (holy warriors), who are helping to secure Afghanistan, will bring instability," the silver-bearded 65-year-old told Reuters at an official residence overlooking the ancient city of Herat, near the Iranian border.
Khan is revered as a leading warrior in the "jihad," or holy war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and associates himself closely with "mujahideen" fighters who still hold sway in some regions outside Kabul.
"And yet they are disarming the mujahideen. The mujahideen is not bringing insecurity. There is not an alternative army yet to replace them," Khan said.
His comments underline differences between Karzai, who wants to consolidate the center's grip over provinces, and powerful regional commanders, often referred to as warlords, who pay scant regard to Kabul's directives.
Khan has clashed with Kabul in the past, both for being slow to hand over millions of dollars in customs revenue from goods entering from Iran and his apparent reluctance to disarm local forces who swear loyalty to him.
Estimates vary but experts put the number of soldiers closely affiliated to Khan at 5,000 to 10,000. Together with a large revenue base, that makes him the most powerful governor in the country.
The government wants to disarm 40,000 of an estimated 100,000 militiamen by the end of June before landmark elections in September intended to cement political stability after the U.S.-led war in 2001 that toppled the Taliban.
Recent violence in Herat and in the northern province of Faryab has raised new fears that regional power brokers threaten stability as do Islamic militants in the south and east.
KARZAI VISIT
Karzai's visit on Monday comes just over a month after a clash in Herat in which Khan's eldest son was killed by a local military commander known for his sympathies to Karzai.
Khan blamed General Zahir Nayebzada for the March 21 death of Mirwais Sadiq, who was civil aviation minister, and said the commander had been called to Kabul where he should be punished.
"I don't want to judge a criminal before he is handed punishment," he said of Nayebzada. "If I see that he is not punished, then I will make a judgment."
The gunbattle was another setback in attempts to bring Khan into the Kabul fold, and the government sent 1,500 soldiers from the Afghan National Army to Herat to impose order.
Khan is clearly angered at the deployment, which he says is unnecessary and a ploy by his rivals in the cabinet.
He did not identify individuals, but analysts and diplomats in Kabul believe relations with Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali are especially sour.
"Because of the security here, we have no need for them (Afghan troops). This is a political issue," Khan said.
Surrounded by murals portraying battle scenes from the anti-Soviet campaign, and sitting beneath a portrait of Karzai, Khan said he had declined several offers by Kabul to join the cabinet, and would remain in Herat for the foreseeable future.
He said the mujahideen faction called Jamiat-e-Islami, to which he belongs, was still considering whether to unite behind a single candidate to run against Karzai in elections in September. "It is too early to decide whether there will be a strong alternative or not," he said. "There is plenty of time; politics change very quickly. We are still in discussions."
-------- africa
Sudanese Fighters Raid Chad Village
Associated Press
Monday, May 10, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13445-2004May10.html
NDJAMENA, Chad, May 9 -- Hundreds of Arab militiamen from Sudan raided a village inside neighboring Chad, setting off gun battles with the Chadian army that killed 60 fighters, a Chadian soldier and six civilians, Chad's defense minister, Emmanuel Nadingar, said Sunday.
The Sudanese militia has been accused of carrying out atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region. The fighting in Darfur pits Sudan's Arab-dominated government and a militia made up of Arab nomads against black African residents, some of whom have taken up arms to demand more autonomy for Darfur, a western region on the border with Chad.
The acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, last week blamed the militias for a "scorched-earth policy" and spoke of "repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity."
-------- britain
Blair Pressed to Answer Red Cross Report
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12424-2004May9.html
LONDON, May 9 -- Opposition politicians and antiwar critics demanded Sunday that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government respond to a confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross that raised concerns about British treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war.
Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon was due to appear before the House of Commons on Monday to respond to allegations of abuse by British soldiers that are similar to those involving American troops, but less severe.
Blair's office has refused to release the Red Cross report, which it received in February. A government spokesman said the organization's concerns had been addressed and specific actions taken. The Red Cross said its report had focused primarily on abuses by U.S. troops that were "tantamount to torture" but had also raised questions about British actions .
Robin Cook, Blair's foreign secretary who resigned from the cabinet last year to protest the war, added his voice to those demanding that officials disclose the contents of the report. "Until they do, really we cannot see what independent people are saying about the problem and how severe it is," Cook told the BBC.
Spokesmen for the opposition Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats have also demanded an explanation. "The most important thing here, right now, is that the government should publish whatever evidence it may have been given by the Red Cross," said Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. "People have a right to know."
The government has been under attack over the prisoner issue since the Daily Mirror published photographs a week ago that purportedly depicted soldiers mistreating an Iraqi prisoner. While experts have raised doubts about the authenticity of the pictures, which the tabloid said it had obtained from two unidentified soldiers, the Mirror and other newspapers have followed up with a series of first-person accounts of abuses provided by other soldiers and by former prisoners. And the human rights group Amnesty International has also said it provided evidence to the government last year that Iraqis in British custody had been tortured and killed.
Over the weekend, the Mirror and other newspapers published fresh accounts of alleged abuses. The Sunday Times reported that soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers were under investigation for alleged sexual assault and prisoner abuse.
The Independent on Sunday cited what it said were eight new cases in which soldiers allegedly shot dead Iraqi civilians in cold blood. The Defense Ministry has confirmed that military police have completed several investigations into alleged abuse and forwarded its recommendations to prosecutors.
Britain has 7,500 troops in southern Iraq and is considering sending at least 1,000 more to fill the gap caused by the withdrawal of Spanish forces after the election of an anti-war government in Spain.
-------- business
Iraq News Unnerves Tech Firms
MONDAY MORNING
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page E02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13232-2004May9.html
When Paul M. Cofoni, president of the Computer Science Corp. division that does business with the federal government, heard the allegations that interrogators on contract to the U.S. Army were linked to the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, he immediately checked to see if his company had any interrogators.
"I double-checked to make sure, and none of our personnel are engaged on those contracts," he said. The company's business doesn't include interrogations.
Cofoni's inquiry was understandable. CSC, based in El Segundo, Calif., but with a big presence in the Washington area, bought Reston-based defense contractor DynCorp last year, and many of DynCorp's employees are in the Middle East providing security, managing the movement of supplies and repairing aircraft for the military.
"I thought I would have heard of it, but we do so many different things in so many different places," said Cofoni, who oversees a $5.4 billion business.
The allegations of abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison put the local technology community on edge last week. An Army report alleged that employees of Arlington defense contractor CACI International Inc. and San Diego's Titan Corp. were involved. Both companies said the government had yet to contact them and as far as they know their employees did nothing wrong.
The biggest local government contractors have thousands of outstanding contracts at any given time and some executives seemed concerned they may have overlooked even one job that could drag them into a public relations nightmare.
Executives at Anteon International Corp., a Fairfax contractor with employees in Iraq, also reviewed their company's work in "hot spots."
"We do have over 4,000 active task orders," said Dennis Kelly, senior vice president of corporate communications. "There's always a chance that we would be in an area that isn't a normal business area.
"So we did a double- and triple-check just to ensure that we didn't have anybody operating in one of these roles that have been discussed," he said. "We were quite sure that we did not. We just wanted to make sure that one didn't slip through the cracks."
Others said they were never worried. "We don't have anybody over there that would have that type of direct contact with Iraqi people," said George Farrar, a spokesman for Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc., a private consulting firm based in McLean.
Farrar said a "very small number" of the firm's consultants are in Iraq, but wouldn't be specific.
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Computer Systems Spur Growth for Contractors
List of Top Firms Is Rearranged By Acquisitions
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13055-2004May9?language=printer
Companies that sell complex computer systems to the military and national security agencies dominate the race for government technology contracts, a trend confirmed by this year's ranking of the top prime contractors by Washington Technology magazine.
The list is produced annually by the magazine, which is published by a unit of The Washington Post Co. This year's compilation ranks companies by the value of federal technology contracts they won in 2003. The contract values do not include subcontracts, work on government projects for another contractor.
Acquisitions account for most of the changes on this year's list as companies of all sizes continue to buy competitors to get business with the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department.
"It is still a very solid market," said Ray Bjorklund, who analyzes technology contractors for Federal Sources Inc., a consulting firm in McLean. But "a lot of companies have grown more from acquisitions than from actual growth in the business," he said.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda and Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles finished first and second for the fourth year in a row. Once traditional defense contractors, those companies now depend on computer networks as well as jets and tanks.
Computer Sciences Corp., a technology outsourcing and consulting company based in El Segundo, Calif., moved into the No. 3 spot as its business supporting operations in Iraq boomed. The value of its prime contracts exploded to $4.1 billion, from $1.9 billion in 2002, almost entirely because of its March 2003 acquisition of DynCorp, a Reston-based contractor.
"The areas that we're experiencing the greatest growth are all largely related to activities in the Middle East," said Paul M. Cofoni, president of CSC's federal business.
Demand is growing for services related to logistics, security, and intelligence technology, all areas of DynCorp expertise. In the case of logistics work, CSC employees not only build and monitor computer systems that track and analyze the movement of military supplies into Iraq, they also are stationed with military officials in the Middle East to distribute provisions.
CSC recently won a contract to design and produce identification badges containing biometric data and a system to scan the badges for the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The project is an example of the contracts that CSC can now pursue by combining the resources of a major technology services company with DynCorp's history of supporting the U.S. military in "hot spots" around the world, Cofoni said.
"A lot of our business is this nice confluence of our information technology and our international presence," Cofoni said.
DynCorp gave CSC the muscle to push Science Applications International Corp. down to No. 5 on the Washington Technology list. But unlike CSC, whose federal business grew only slightly after excluding DynCorp, SAIC grew rapidly without a sizable acquisition. The value of SAIC's prime contracts rose to $2.8 billion, from $2 billion a year ago.
SAIC is based in San Diego but has a huge campus in McLean, where 14,000 people work. The company does more than 80 percent of its business with the federal government and its revenue from regulated clients, mostly government agencies, jumped 24 percent in the year ended Jan. 31.
SAIC's roots in technical research and its long relationship with U.S. intelligence and research agencies have given the company an edge when competing for security-related contracts. Its scientists work on experimental national security projects, including ways to identify people from a distance based on their heartbeats or facial features. Other consultants are helping the government anticipate terrorist threats to critical parts of the public infrastructure, such as the Hoover Dam.
International Business Machines Corp. climbed to No. 11 from No. 18 as the value of its contracts soared to $910 million, from $394 million in 2002. IBM, the world's largest computer company, became the largest technology consulting company as well when it bought PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2002.
IBM's business with the federal government increased 36 percent last year, but PWC only contributed a fifth of that growth, said Anne K. Altman, who oversees the federal division. The division's biggest source of growth is upgrading computer systems and advising agencies on how to change the way they operate to take advantage of new technology, Altman said.
For example, IBM is working with the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to shift its focus from customs enforcement to border security. Such projects allow IBM to combine its longtime expertise in hardware and software with its new strength in management consulting.
Altman said it has not always been easy competing for federal technology projects in a market dominated by the traditional defense contractors. Even now, Lockheed Martin beat Northrop Grumman, its nearest competitor for the most contracts, by more than $500 million. But IBM's rise represents the emergence of pure technology companies in the market, she said.
"If I told somebody I ran IBM Federal five years ago," Altman said, "they would have said, 'Oh, my condolences, Anne.' "
--------
Contracts Awarded
States News Service
Washington Post
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13056-2004May9?language=printer
Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions of Gaithersburg won a $236.6 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency for the development, integration and installation of the command, control, battle management and communications capability for the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
AT&T's Government Solutions Division of Vienna won a contract valued at up to $134 million from the Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation to develop live battlefield training systems.
Computer Sciences Corp. of Arlington won a contract valued at up to $24.66 million from the Missile Defense Agency for scientific engineering and technical assistance to the Ballistic Missile Defense System Program director and the deputy for system integration and engineering.
BAE Systems Technologies Inc. of Rockville won a $22.32 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command's Aircraft Division for engineering and technical support services.
R.S. Information Systems of McLean won a $22 million contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Cyber and Information Security for senior-level system engineering.
ICF Consulting of Fairfax won a contract valued at up to $18 million from the General Services Administration to support the new federal government eTravel Initiative.
Radian Inc. of Alexandria won a $10.57 million contract from the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command for crew protection kits for the Medium Tactical Vehicle.
Alliant TechSystems Inc. of Radford , Va., won an $8.18 million contract from the Air Force for bulk explosives.
MCI Inc. of Vienna won a $7.88 million contract from the Army for a modern, digital cellular, command and control system to link together the various new sites of the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team.
Darlington Inc. of Arlington won a $7.08 million contract from the Marine Corps Systems Command for joint enhanced core communication systems.
Total Resource Management of Alexandria won a $6.7 million contract from the Navy to engineer an enterprise asset management system that supports four naval bases in the Northwest.
Dynamix Corp. of Landover won a contract valued at up to $6 million from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for environmental services.
Professional Software Engineering Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $5.24 million contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for engineering services to support information systems and network technology programs.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $3.44 million contract from the Army's Communications-Electronics Command for communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.
Computational Physics Inc. of Springfield won a $2.85 million contract from the Navy's Office of Naval Research for engineering and analytical support for remote sensing.
FDGM Inc. of Chesapeake, Va., won a $1.49 million contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for diesel cylinder heads.
Atlantic Coast Technologies Inc. of Silver Spring won a $1.43 million contract from the Rome Air Force Research Laboratory for research and development of target recognition using continuous acoustic signals.
Alutiiq Security & Technology LLC of Chesapeake, Va., won contract valued at up to $500,000 from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for law enforcement, security, marine craft, fire and rescue and special purpose clothing.
Integrated Systems Analysts of Arlington won a $289,804 contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center for watertight door kits.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $110,700 contract from the Army's Communications-Electronics Command for communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.
Steiner B. Moore Corp. of Chesapeake, Va., won an $83,716 contract from the Special Operations Command's Naval Special Warfare Group to buy and install mezzanine and diamond mesh cages.
GTSI Corp. of Chantilly won an $83,438 contract from the Department of the Treasury for portable scanners.
Epsilon Systems Solutions Inc. of Portsmouth, Va., won a $71,623 contract from the Homeland Security Department's Coast Guard for dockside repairs to the USCGC Bear.
Intrinsic Semiconductor Corp. of Sterling won a $69,960 contract from the Air Force for research and development services.
Paragon Systems LLC of Herndon won a $68,131 contract from the U.S. Air Force for Hanscom servers.
Dela Technology Corp. of Rockville won a $58,070 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for voltage regulators.
Nurad Technologies Inc. of Baltimore won a $51,576 contract from the Defense Supply Center for antennas.
These contracts were awarded by the federal government to companies in Maryland, Virginia and the District. For more information, call States News Service at 202-628-3100, ext. 266.
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Federal Contracts Realistic Battles Without the Bullets
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13223-2004May9.html
AT&T Corp.'s federal division won its first two contracts to build "live" training systems for the U.S. Army that let soldiers skirmish on open-air ranges, driving real tanks and firing real guns but shooting radio signals instead of bullets.
One contract, from the Army, is worth $74 million. The other is a subcontract from Lockheed Martin Corp. worth $60 million. AT&T won over Science Applications International Corp. in a final round of competition after three other bidders were eliminated.
Soldiers conduct elaborate training exercises that are sophisticated versions of laser tag. All the guns, tanks and shells are real, but they are not loaded with ammunition. The path of lasers beamed from the weapons tell soldiers and commanders which shots hit their targets.
The laser system was cutting-edge 20 years ago, but decades of innovation have made new equipment better able to model combat scenarios. Lasers, for example, can mimic only "line-of-sight" weapons, such as automatic rifles, that fire in a straight line; they can't emulate the arc of an artillery shell.
AT&T Government Solutions of Vienna plans to eliminate that disadvantage and others by using a system that relies on global positional satellite devices, sensors, and radios embedded in guns, vehicles and soldiers' uniforms.
Processors built into tanks, for example, will calculate the speed and trajectory of mock weapons and their targets. Then a device in the firing tank could send a radio signal to the "hit" tank, setting off a pyrotechnic device and causing smoke to rise from the tank. Or if a mock weapon would have wounded a soldier, a radio signal could set off a vibrating sensor in a soldiers' uniform to indicate an injury.
The prototype for the new system is scheduled to be demonstrated in September 2007, said Edward Babiuch, the contract's program manager at AT&T.
The location of the test has not been determined yet. One possibility is the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin in southeastern California. There, in the Mojave Desert on a range the size of Rhode Island, as many as 5,000 soldiers can conduct war games using "real tanks in real dirt," Babiuch said.
The contract from Lockheed Martin is to update the communications systems at the National Training Center, including the data networks that transmit information from the training range to commanders monitoring the games. Eventually, Babiuch said, wireless radio towers on the training range will collect information about the location of every soldier, vehicle, tank and bullet and sent it to the commanders building through underground fiber-optic cable.
-------- europe
Europe's Chief on Terrorism to Reassure U.S. on Efforts
May 10, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/europe/10EURO.html
PARIS, May 9 - Europe's new counterterrorism coordinator, Gijs de Vries, is scheduled to meet with Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, in Washington on Monday to assure the United States that Europe is toughening its counterterrorism practices and to ask for closer cooperation between the United States and the European Union in combating terrorists.
Mr. de Vries's job was created by European Union leaders in the wake of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and signaled that Europe was a target for the kind of large attacks that have hit countries from the United States to Indonesia. His job is to accelerate a range of European Union-level counterterrorism initiatives meant to consolidate intelligence and integrate responses to threats to the union's 25 members.
"Europe is united and committed in this fight," Mr. de Vries, 48, said Friday in an interview.
For years, the union has been criticized by the United States and other countries for a lack of coordination among members' police and judicial systems. The lack of continuity has let terrorism suspects move freely from country to country and find sanctuaries in Europe even though they are known to associate with violent groups. Several people believed responsible for the Madrid bombings were well known to security services elsewhere in Europe. Islamic militants in Europe also planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
European countries already have varying degrees of bilateral cooperation on counterterrorism, but the union has made only piecemeal efforts to address terrorist threats multilaterally. After the Madrid bombings, leaders of member countries listed such flagging initiatives and appointed Mr. de Vries to see that they were swiftly carried out and to propose additional measures.
Among the initiatives he is pushing member states to adopt is a European arrest warrant that would obligate all European Union members to exercise a warrant issued by any one member. Other initiatives include rules that allow national police forces to operate in neighboring countries and for groups of countries to form investigative teams to pursue terrorists.
Mr. de Vries, who has represented the Netherlands in the European Parliament and served four years as his country's deputy interior minister, will also propose initiatives when European leaders meet again in June, including a plan to pool intelligence from the members' domestic security services for analysis in Brussels, where the union has its headquarters.
"The security services of the 25 member states of the new union have agreed to step up their cooperation and to work together as 25," Mr. de Vries said.
Europe has intensified its focus as activity by Islamic militants here has increased, spreading anxiety that another major attack on a European Union member is in the works. On Sunday, the Italian antiterrorist police arrested five men suspected of membership in a militant Islamic group on suspicion of recruiting suicide bombers to attack in Iraq.
Italian officials told Italy's Ansa news agency that the men, an Algerian cleric and four Tunisians, were detained in a yearlong investigation into what they suspect are terrorist cells in Genoa, Italy. Italian officials said 71 people were arrested last year on suspicion of having links to international terrorist groups.
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Two out of five Lithuanians want to keep troops in Iraq: poll
VILNIUS (AFP)
May 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040510180124.bqsfy1nh.html
Fewer than half of Lithuanians support the deployment of their troops in the US-led coalition force in Iraq, according to a poll released on Monday.
Forty-one percent of respondents backed the presence of the Lithuanian force in Iraq, while fully 33 percent said they opposed it and 26 percent described themselves as undecided.
The survey was conducted by Spinter Tyrimai polling company April 27-30 among 1,005 people aged 18-75.
It also showed that 79 percent of Lithuanians support the idea that only volunteers should be sent on military missions and should have the right to return home whenever they wish.
Some 120 Lithuanian soldiers, conscripts who volunteered to go to Iraq, currently serve there under Danish and Polish command.
This is the first survey of the public's view on Lithuanian participation in the US-led coalition since the beginning of the Iraq conflict.
-------- iraq
Bremer knew, minister claims
Luke Harding in Baghdad
Monday May 10, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1213186,00.html
Iraq's first human rights minister launched a blistering attack yesterday on America's chief administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, saying that he had warned him repeatedly last year that US soldiers were abusing Iraqi detainees.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Abdel Bassat Turki, who resigned a month ago, said he informed Mr Bremer last November and again in December of the rampant abuse in US military prisons. "He listened very well. But that was all he did," he added.
Dr Turki also claimed that he had received "information" of abuses committed against prisoners "just this week", but refused to give details.
Following allegations of abuse, he said, he had asked for permission to visit Abu Ghraib prison last November - the month the photos were taken of US guards abusing naked Iraqi inmates. But Mr Bremer refused his request.
In December, a month before the US military set up its own secret inquiry into Abu Ghraib, he telephoned Mr Bremer to complain about the treatment of female detainees.
"They had been denied medical treatment. They had no proper toilet. They had only been given one blanket, even though it was winter," he said.
Dr Turki's claims heap embarrassment on the US-led coalition and the Pentagon, and suggest both had been aware of the widespread abuse much earlier than previously admitted. Dan Senor, Paul Bremer's spokesman, told the Guardian that Mr Bremer only found out about the "humiliation" of prisoners in January.
Yesterday Dr Turki said that in March he and other US-appointed ministers had demanded an investigation after a US soldier raped a woman prisoner, documented by Major General Antonio Taguba in his report on Abu Ghraib.
"We were told this matter would be dealt with in secret, and with only Americans attending," he said.
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Celebrations break out in Fallujah as US marines enter rebel Iraqi city
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP)
May 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040510155135.r4uvwekd.html
Celebratory gunfire ripped the Sunni Muslim bastion of Fallujah on Monday as US marines in a dozen armoured vehicles entered the war-battered city on a symbolic tour and met with local leaders.
Iraqi police and masked insurgents shot off rounds and people flooded the streets, waving Iraqi national flags and honking their car horns in jubilation over what they mistakenly believed was a deal between the marines and the city's leaders to scale back the US presence in Fallujah.
Locals said they believed if the city was quiet during the convoy tour marines would leave Fallujah for good.
But the marines immediately crushed the notion and said they would keep their positions around the edges of the city, rocked by the worst fighting in Iraq since the US invasion last spring.
Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, led the 20-vehicle convoy of marines, police and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) into the heart of the city, with ICDC members waving the old Iraqi flag.
The marines headed into meetings with the city's mayor and within an hour Iraqis erupted in joyous celebration as people tumbled into their cars and started their own impromptu victory parades.
Marine spokesman Major T.V. Johnson said Mattis reviewed plans with Fallujah's mayor and tribal sheikhs for establishing "conditions so we can get in there and start spending money on the city on various projects."
But Johnson expressed befuddlement about the swirling rumours among Fallujans that the marines were on the verge of a further withdrawal.
"Eventually we want to recede to the horizon ... but just because we have one meeting in town it doesn't mean we're leaving Fallujah."
But Johnson's word would have fallen on deaf ears in the city awash in a carnival-like atmosphere.
A caravan of some 20 vehicles including trucks full of young men waving AK-47 assault rifles toured around the centre of the city, blaring their horns as people gathered on the street to greet them.
"Saddam, your name shocks America," shouted a group of 10 men being driven in the bucket of a digger in the middle of the convoy. One of the flags on a van proclaimed: "Hail the heroes".
The sound of gunfire crackled in the area as the convoy passed by burnt-out cars, damaged homes and mosques, with rubble strewn around a minaret, in a reminder of April's fighting.
Bilal Mohammed, 23, was standing on the front seat of a BMW car with his head outside the sun roof, holding an AK-47.
"I feel like every Muslim Arab is feeling today, that we have a victory that God himself gave us -- a victory over the unbeliever Americans. This is the end now, and it will be much better than before."
Along the road, Yussef Mosaif, who draped himself in the traditional red, green, black and white Iraqi flag, said: "America is the enemy of the Fallujah people and will be till the end of our lives."
On the city's main street, police Sergeant Yassin Hamed said: "This is a victory for the people of Fallujah and for all the Iraqi people over the Americans."
Since the marines struck a deal with former Iraqi generals at the end of April, Fallujah has been patroled by Iraqi police and the newly-formed Fallujah Brigade, an ad-hoc force of army veterans, many of them with links to Saddam Hussein's old Baath party.
Until now, marines have manned joint checkpoints with Iraqi security teams on the city's periphery, but Monday's convoy stood as an effective test of the calm ruling Fallujah since the police, ICDC and Fallujah Brigade took over responsibility here last week.
Last month's fighting, prompted by the March 31 murder and mutilation of four US security contractors on the city's main street, left hundreds of Iraqis and scores of marines dead.
The convoy could herald a greater pullback of marines from the edge of the city and accelerate the process of restoring normality and pumping 77 million dollars of reconstruction funds into Fallujah.
Fallujah's northwestern neighborhood of Jolan remains a haven of insurgents and marines are deployed, alongside ICDC, outside the district.
The coalition wants the Fallujah Brigade and police to round up the insurgents' heavy weapons and start taking steps to find the culprits behind the March 31 murders, as well as a February 14 attack on Iraqi police and ICDC that killed more than 20 Iraqi officers.
----
Iraq Cleric to Widen War After U.S. Bombs Baghdad HQ
Mon May 10, 2004
(Reuters)
By Suleiman al-Khalidi
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5091197
NAJAF, Iraq - Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr Monday ordered his Mehdi Army to launch a broad new offensive against U.S.-led occupying forces following a U.S. crackdown on his strongholds in Baghdad and across the south.
U.S. bombs flattened his office in the capital overnight.
"We have now entered a second phase of resistance," said Sadr's chief aide at his main base in the holy city of Najaf.
U.S. commanders, helped by rival Shi'ite leaders, sound increasingly confident of containing Sadr's month-old uprising.
But efforts to foster a pro-American spirit in Iraq ahead of next month's handover of sovereignty to an interim government ran into more trouble with new revelations from the International Committee of the Red Cross about U.S. failures to prevent its soldiers abusing Iraqis.
Photographic revelations that soldiers sent to "liberate" them from Saddam Hussein have abused prisoners are undermining efforts to win over Iraqis, despite efforts by President Bush to assure them that a case heading for court martial next week is an isolated incident swiftly dealt with.
A report, published in the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the ICRC, said Red Cross officials complained in October -- two months before the pictures in the court martial case were taken -- about prisoners being held naked in total darkness in Saddam's Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
A U.S. military intelligence officer defended the treatment at the time as standard practice, said the ICRC, which also disclosed that its president went to Washington in January to alert Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in person to the agency's concerns.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who faces calls to resign, said he learned of problems with prisons in Iraq only in January. Bush, fighting for re-election, has stood by him.
His main U.S. ally in Iraq was also under fire to confront allegations that British soldiers also abused prisoners. Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized but faced further questioning.
VIOLENCE
The killings of a South African and a New Zealand engineer in a drive-by shooting in the northern oilfields and a bomb that slowed up oil exports from the south also struck at U.S. efforts to stabilize the country ahead of the June 30 handover.
U.S. Marines made an effort to show they have restored peace to the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja by driving an armored convoy into the center for the first time since a bloody siege last month. But scenes of armed guerrillas cheering the convoy's departure, suggested that peace remains rather fragile.
Responding to what appears to be the main military threat at present, U.S. aircraft bombed Sadr's offices in the restive Baghdad slum of Sadr City overnight, witnesses said.
At least one bomb fell on the single-storey building around 2 a.m. (2200 GMT Sunday) and virtually destroyed it. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, which reported 19 members of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia were killed in a series of clashes in the impoverished Shi'ite neighborhood Sunday.
The raid was part of a stepped up military campaign against an uprising launched by the Shi'ite cleric against U.S.-led forces a month ago. Sadr has taken refuge in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, south of the capital, with thousands of men.
U.S. forces, spurred on by mounting irritation with Sadr among Shi'ite elders, have squeezed the outskirts of Najaf. With British forces around Basra, they have been taking back key positions like police stations in a string of towns across Shi'ite southern Iraq. An armored U.S. column rolled again into the center of the holy city of Kerbala Monday.
NEW OFFENSIVE
Sadr's chief aide in Najaf told Reuters he was hitting back.
"Our policy now is to extend the state of resistance and to move it to all of Iraq because of the occupiers' military escalation and crossing of all red lines in the holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf," Qais al-Khazali said.
Sadr has threatened to launch suicide bombers should U.S. troops intrude on sacred ground. There have also been signs that militants from the Shi'ite south might join forces with minority Sunni guerrillas to the north and west, despite a history of strife that saw Sunnis oppress Shi'ites under Saddam Hussein.
In Kirkuk, main city of the northern oilfields, gunmen killed a South African and a New Zealand engineer and an Iraqi in a drive-by shooting, police said.
In the southern oilfields, also crucial to putting Iraq back on its feet, exports were reduced sharply after saboteurs blew up a pipeline Saturday, the U.S. Army said. It was still ablaze at the southern tip of the Faw Peninsula, near Basra.
Arab television Al Jazeera aired a video tape it said was from an unknown Iraqi group that vowed to kidnap and kill Arab and foreign workers -- especially Kuwaitis -- in Basra.
--------
Shiite Cleric's Militia Seizes Control of Baghdad Slum
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13066-2004May9.html
BAGHDAD, May 9 -- Gunmen and commanders loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr took over the giant Sadr City slum in Baghdad on Sunday, seizing control of police forces, municipal administration and schools and blocking freedom of movement in an area just five miles east of U.S. administration headquarters.
Teenagers wielding rocket-propelled grenade launchers commanded entrances to the slum, home to about a third of Baghdad's 5 million residents. The youths waved commands to visitors with one hand and slung rifles around with the other.
With the quick takeover, which was completed at dawn, Sadr City joined two southern towns, Najaf and Kufa, now under the control of Sadr's militia.
The immediate trigger for the uprising in Sadr City was a U.S. raid Saturday night on a former office of Sadr's organization and the detention of two of Sadr's lieutenants, Amr Husseini and Amjad Saedi. U.S. officials said the men were responsible for Sadr's finances and operations in eastern Baghdad.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the decision to raid the building was "based on intelligence suggesting that a large group of armed Moqtada militia were attempting to reestablish operations and reoccupy the building."
"After the arrests and following the call of the leader . . . we decided to rise up with him and stop the Americans from coming into Sadr City again," said Sheikh Latif Moqtadai, commander of a small militia unit. His group manned an intersection on Orfali Street on the western edge of Sadr City, which was named for Sadr's father, Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, a revered grand ayatollah who was assassinated in 1999.
A cluster of young men surrounding Moqtadai nodded. The men, with scarves wrapped around their heads and wearing sandals, brandished AK-47 rifles, while others in the area carried rocket-propelled grenade launchers, their pointed projectiles locked in place.
Sadr, 30, has defied a U.S. arrest warrant for involvement in the murder of a Shiite cleric, Abdel-Majid Khoei, who was killed last year. Sadr has taken refuge around Najaf, home to the shrine of Ali, a cousin of the prophet Muhammad and the first Shiite imam, a development that has complicated the U.S. drive against him because commanders say they want to avoid storming the holy city.
The commanders say they are chipping away at Sadr's forces by hitting them in several other southern cities, including Diwaniyah, Karbala, Kut and Kufa, just east of Najaf. U.S. tanks roared deep into Kufa for the first time Sunday.
In less than eight weeks, the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority is supposed to transfer at least nominal authority to a new Iraqi government. Sadr's rebellion against the American-led occupation, which started more than a month ago, has dimmed prospects for a smooth transfer.
A rebellion also continues in central Iraq, spearheaded by Sunni Muslims. Shiite religious and political factions have grown nervous about a U.S. decision to reach out to members of Hussein's former army and Baath Party to pacify the Sunni revolt in the western city of Fallujah. Hundreds of opponents of the Baathist revival demonstrated peacefully Sunday in downtown Baghdad.
Sadr's Shiite rivals also fear they might have to deal with the radical cleric and risk intra-Shiite fighting. Sadr has rejected proposed political transition plans, which so far have excluded him.
"This problem cannot be left to hang there unsolved," said Sabeeh Jasim, a former political prisoner who runs a relief charity in Baghdad. "The turmoil can only grow."
Sadr City's warren of alleys had already proved to be volatile territory. The slum erupted in violence on April 4, a few days after the chief U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, closed Sadr's newspaper, al-Hawza, and a day after the arrest of one of Sadr's chief aides. But the violence had subsided after a U.S. counterattack, and until Sunday, Mahdi Army forces had withdrawn from the streets.
Members of the Mahdi Army, which numbers in the thousands, blocked streets with all manner of debris: fruit crates, stones, cinder block, automobile bumpers and iron grating. They set tires aflame and also burned the abundant street-side trash in the neighborhood. Heavy cranes and bulldozers were placed on main thoroughfares, available to block any American approach.
Owners of the few open businesses and shops kept assault rifles by their counters. Posters of Sadr, an index finger jutting at an angle, covered walls around one-story houses, shops and mosques.
Around midday, masked men shot rocket-propelled grenades at the Karameh police station, which was guarded by a pair of tan Bradley Fighting Vehicles and a lone police guard. The Bradleys rattled side streets with heavy fire and 10 others soon rumbled into Sadr City to escort them out. U.S. military officials said the Americans killed 18 insurgents at Karameh and at another police station. U.S. officials also said they had secured the sites, but the Karameh station stood abandoned. Other municipal buildings were vacant as well.
Clutches of young men formed an inner cordon of checkpoints deep in Sadr City near Sadr's abandoned main offices. They ushered autos onto side streets, where suspicious eyes gazed into the passing vehicles, particularly four-wheel-drive vehicles, which many Iraqis view as the cars of foreigners. Checkpoints popped up where none had existed. New flocks of youths, some armed, diverted traffic onto narrow streets to face lines of cars herded there from the opposite direction.
On Orfali Street, Moqtadai tried to reorganize the watch. "You will not be able to shoot from here," he told his underlings. "The civilian cars are in the way. Let's move from here."
A youth in a black scarf arrived and asked about a jeep that, he said, had been circling nearby. A visitor assured him it was only his awaiting transportation. "We have to be sure," he said. "We're afraid of spies who will tell the Americans where we are gathering."
----
Analysts Say Iraqi Agencies Unlikely to Follow U.S. Rules
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12896-2004May9.html
With less than two months before the Coalition Provisional Authority is to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi government, CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer III has been establishing rules for key agencies in the fields of intelligence, defense and the law that analysts say may not survive long because they reflect American rather than Middle Eastern values.
The new Iraqi intelligence service, which the CPA has created to replace Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat, will not collect intelligence that helps or harms any "legal" political party or Iraqi government official, under an order Bremer signed April 1. Nor will the agency carry out covert activities against "any Iraqi citizen or group based on race, religion, sect, gender, language, origin or tribal affiliation," the order said.
In some cases, Bremer's orders go beyond U.S. government practices. For example, after the U.S.-led coalition transfers limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government June 30, officers in the new Iraqi armed forces will have to wait 18 months after resigning or retiring before they are permitted to hold any political office, under Bremer's order establishing the new Ministry of Defense.
"There is no chance at all that a follow-on government [in Baghdad] will observe these orders," said Patrick Lang, a retired colonel and former head of the Middle East division of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "They need to walk away from us."
"No one has any illusion that it all is going to last," said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a specialist in the Middle East. He said Iraqis will reshape all the orders and ideas that Bremer's group is promulgating, no matter what is put down on paper.
"It makes perfect sense as attempts to lead into the future," Cordesman said, "but Americans need to understand we are just creating a climate for Iraqis . . . and it will be modified by them."
Lang agreed with Cordesman that the Iraqis will "adapt their government to their own traditions and culture."
"We can write all those things into law and it won't do any good," Lang said. "Saddam had a constitution with some of those same words, but none of it worked because they ignored it. That's their culture."
A poll of Iraqis taken in February found that only 42 percent of those surveyed understood that a transitional constitution had been approved, and that only half of that number understood that a constitution is "a nation's fundamental law," according to a recent Defense Department report.
Some of Bremer's orders are designed to keep military and intelligence officers out of the Iraqi political system to avoid having a new dictator emerge, as Hussein did 35 years ago. According to a Baghdad newspaper report, the newly named defense minister, Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, and the director of the intelligence service, Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Shehwani, have already moved into political activities, working behind the scenes to reach an understanding with Moqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric leading an anti-coalition insurgency.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who specializes in Middle Eastern affairs, noted earlier this week that Allawi "clearly wants to build a future political career by bringing order to the country."
The Mukhabarat was a sort of hybrid of the FBI and CIA, and regularly surveilled, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and even killed both citizens and foreigners.
The new Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) "shall have no power to arrest or detain persons" under its charter, which supplemented Bremer's order. Instead, it will provide intelligence "to Iraqi law enforcement authorities not precluded by other law."
Under Bremer's order, the INIS will be headed by a director general named by the future prime minister and confirmed by the body vested with national legislative authority. The director general will serve for five years and "ensure that no information is obtained by the INIS except so far as necessary for the proper discharge of its responsibilities."
In conducting searches or wiretaps, INIS employees will "minimize the unintentional acquisition, retention and dissemination of information about citizens of Iraq that is not of value in its work on national security," its charter says. Warrants from a judge will be obtained in advance and will be operable for only 90 days, after which a renewal will be required.
Bremer's order setting up the new defense ministry includes a set of "principles" to be followed in its operation, including one that calls for the ministry to "play its full part in reinforcing national unity" and not be "used to foster or institutionalize disunity."
Another principle is that the armed forces act to gain the confidence of the Iraqi people by "acting in the country's interest" and "abiding by laws and telling the truth."
The new defense minister "shall exercise administrative control" over the Iraqi armed forces, but operational control will remain with the "command of coalition forces," under another order Bremer signed March 21.
Another order Bremer recently signed in effect gave legal protection, after the transfer of sovereignty, to U.S. and other coalition military forces. It said the Central Criminal Court authorities "shall not compel" foreign military forces to appear if they are in Iraq "in support of operations sanctioned by a U.N. Security Council resolution."
Normally such protection is included in a status-of-forces agreement signed between governments.
--------
U.S. Destroys Cleric's Baghdad Office
May 10, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/middleeast/10CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 10 - American forces said today that they had killed some three dozen militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric during two days of fighting that included the destruction of the cleric's Baghdad headquarters in the Sadr City slum district here.
American armored vehicles bombarded the walls of the compound, which contains the offices of the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, and a small mosque, witnesses said. The building had been evacuated and there were no casualties, witnesses said.
But later, the United States military said 18 of Mr. Sadr's followers had been killed during heavy nighttime fighting that echoed around the capital. Those deaths came on top of at least 18 militiamen reported killed in fighting on Sunday.
The director of a hospital in Sadr City, the poor Shiite neighborhood here where Mr. Sadr draws most of his support, said that it had received nine bodies since Sunday, including that of a woman.
In addition to the 18 militiamen reported killed in Baghdad each of the last two days, Mr. Sadr's forces lost 41 dead in a battle against American forces in Najaf last week, the military said.
While American troops have battled regularly with Mr. Sadr's supporters since he led an uprising against the American occupation last month, clashes are now erupting daily in the southern cities of Najaf, Kufa, Karbala and Basra amid heightened threats to kill and kidnap foreigners in Iraq. An aide to Mr. Sadr said today that the cleric had ordered his militia to widen its battle against occupation troops across Iraq.
"We have now entered a second phase of resistance and our patience is over with the occupation forces," said Qais al-Khazali, Mr. Sadr's chief lieutenant, according to Reuters. "Our policy now is to extend the state of resistance and to move it to all of Iraq because of the occupiers' military escalation and crossing of all red lines in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf."
Separately, United States officials said that the unidentified body of what appeared to be a Westerner had been found near a bridge in western Baghdad. A military official said the body was not that of a soldier and was not believed to be one of the three surviving Italian hostages captured last month, one of whom was executed by militants who had demanded Italy withdraw its troops from Iraq.
The American military command also announced that a soldier from One Task Force Olympia had died from small-arms fire during a patrol in western Mosul.
There were new signs of growing impatience with Mr. Sadr among more moderate Shiites - and the possibility of clashes among Shiites themselves.
This evening in Najaf, the most holy city in Shiite Islam, leaflets were distributed with photographs showing corpses and armed men.
The leaflets carried this warning: "To al-Sadr followers: If you continue fighting you will be killed in the end. You must be killed. It is your choice." The leaflets' reverse side showed worshipers and people eating in a restaurant. "There is a chance for Iraqi people to live in peace," the reverse side read. "Just put your weapons aside and be happy with what your country has given to you."
The leaflet was not signed, but in the last few weeks a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army has reportedly killed at least seven of Mr. Sadrs' militiamen in Najaf.
The fliers were distributed a day after Sadr Edin Qubanchi, a top cleric in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a mainstream Islamic political party and a rival to Mr. Sadr's more militant group, called for the people of Najaf to take power back from Mr. Sadr, who has taken over important Shiite shrines there.
With almost daily clashes and a ring of some 2,500 American troops in and around Najaf, the city's lucrative business as a destination for Shiite pilgrims has all but dried up. And many more moderate Shiite leaders see Mr. Sadr - who appeals largely to young and jobless Shiites - as a dangerous threat to an orderly political transition. Shiites represent some 60 percent of the population and so stand to gain the most power in any future democratic government.
The council is calling for a huge demonstration, which its leaders hope will reach 250,000 people, to demand that Mr. Sadr leave the city, and there are fears that the demonstration could lead to violence.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt of the Army, the chief military spokesman for the occupation, responded to a question at a news conference here by saying that the "first response" would be to rely on the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
However, he added: "If they were to call on the coalition for assistance, we'd evaluate that, given the conditions of what's happening on the ground. But that would be appropriately an Iraqi-led operation, so that they could show the proper cultural sensitivity to that particular engagement."
In other fighting today, gunmen fired on a vehicle in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing two construction workers, from South Africa and New Zealand, as well as their Iraqi driver, said the city's police chief, Torhan Abdel Rahman Yusuf, according to The Associated Press.
In Karbala, occupation troops and Mahdi Army fighters loyal to Mr. Sadr clashed in two areas of the city today, The Associated Press reported. The roof of a bank was damaged and the windows shattered after coalition troops fired on rebel snipers there, residents told the A.P.
In Falluja, an American Marine convoy, accompanied by Iraqi security forces, entered the city for the first time in more than a month, witnesses told Reuters. The convoy traveled to the mayor's office in the town center and encountered no resistance.
But a top Iraqi police official there, Capt. Hammed Alayash, said he would prefer if the Americans left the policing to the Iraqis.
"We are glad you are here with us and that you liberated Iraq," Captain Alayash told Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the First Marine Division, Reuters reported. "But we would like the Americans to stay out and let us deal with the security." He added, "I think it would be safer if we are not seen with foreign forces."
When the convoy withdrew, hundreds of Falluja residents spilled out into the streets and claimed victory in the recent fighting.
In Sadr City, the walls of Mr. Sadr's headquarters were pocked with big holes, and shrapnel from a missile lay among the rubble.
"At 2:00 a.m., tanks and armored vehicles entered out street," said a tribal leader, Sheikh Fakher al-Azawi, who was helping to clean up the small mosque. "Our youth responded to that force. People were hiding in their houses. It was a street battle."
"I think the Mahdi Army attacks will continue until the complete withdrawal from our land," he added. "We are all Mahdi Army."
After a tense day on Sunday, security checkpoints in the neighborhood were being guarded again, and businesses were open, residents said.
But residents still did not feel safe. A man who gave his name as Abu Ali, 50, said that the civilians in Sadr City were caught in the middle of the fighting.
"We are stuck in the middle between the Mahdi Army and the coalition forces," he said.
He gestured to some of the residents. "Look at those poor people," he said. "The Mahdi Army was hiding behind the buildings shooting at the Americans. The Americans in return bombed the whole street. It is really chaotic. All we can do is to watch, nothing more."
The American military said that all of the 18 fighters it killed on Sunday had been carrying rocket-propelled grenades. No American casualties were reported. A Sadr City hospital official, Abdul-Jabbar Soulagh, said that at least 9 had been killed and 32 wounded in the battle.
The militia fighters took to the streets of the neighborhood after Americans detained several people, including Mr. Sadr's lieutenant and a man accused of being his financier, at Mr. Sadr's office on Saturday.
The militia was reported to have taken over some municipal buildings in Sadr City, in northeastern Baghdad, and to have blocked off roads in parts of the district. Many shops were closed there on Sunday.
"There are still some inside that district that are of the belief that Moktada's militia can operate freely," General Kimmitt said in a news conference on Sunday. He said the militia fighters believe "that somehow, Moktada has some sort of legitimate control over that district," adding, "They'll find out they're wrong."
Sadr City has been a stronghold of support for Mr. Sadr. When an uprising broke out early last month, Mr. Sadr's militia tried to seize control of police stations there, and local hospitals reported dozens of people killed in the heavy fighting that ensued. On Sunday morning, Iraqi police stations jointly guarded by American forces came under fire, the military said. It said the troops returned fire and secured the area.
The military statement said a grenade hit a Bradley Fighting Vehicle while on patrol, and that militia fighters also tried to fire rocket propelled grenades at soldiers, who returned fire, killing two of the insurgents. It said 15 fighters had been killed in airstrikes by close air support craft.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, the American-led occupation authority handed over control of Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources to its Iraqi minister. The authority has relinquished control of seven Iraqi government ministries as part of the American plan to hand over power to a sovereign Iraqi government on June 30.
"Today we pass another milestone on the path to full Iraqi sovereignty," L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, said in an outdoor ceremony in Baghdad's American-controlled green zone, The A.P. reported.
Iraq's Water Ministry will continue its clearing of irrigation canals and reflooding of the vast marshlands in southern Iraq that were drained by the government of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bremer said, according to The A.P.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Tells Cabinet He Will Present New Withdrawal Plan
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12812-2004May9.html
JERUSALEM, May 9 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told cabinet ministers Sunday that he was devising a new plan to withdraw Israeli troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and expected to present it to the government in about three weeks, the officials and their aides said. Sharon's announcement reportedly set off fireworks in the weekly cabinet session between ministers who threatened to leave the government if the Gaza settlements were not evacuated and those who have vowed to quit if they are. Either scenario could lead to the collapse of Sharon's four-party coalition government or force him to dramatically revamp it.
The meeting came a week after members of Sharon's Likud Party voted the plan down by about 20 percentage points in a nonbinding referendum. The vote was a stunning rebuke to Sharon, who had made the plan the cornerstone of his administration.
The proposal to remove 7,500 Jewish settlers and the soldiers who protect them from 21 settlements in Gaza was warmly embraced by President Bush during a meeting with Sharon at the White House last month. In exchange for Israel's pullback from Gaza, Bush said that he favored allowing Israel to keep some settlements in the West Bank and opposed allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.
Sharon did not detail how he would change the Gaza withdrawal plan. But the prime minister's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said: "The key is building more of a consensus within the government without unraveling the plan and the understanding achieved with the U.S. The first priority is to try to achieve the broadest possible consensus within the government, without breaking up the coalition."
Two cabinet ministers, Avigdor Lieberman and Benny Elon, both of the National Union party, walked out of the cabinet meeting when Justice Minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid insisted on discussing the plan and reportedly threatened to pull his party out of the coalition if it was not advanced.
Lapid leads the secular Shinui Party, the second-largest member of the coalition, with five seats in the 23-member cabinet; Likud has 14 seats. National Union and the National Religious Party, both of which have threatened to leave the government if settlements are evacuated, each have two seats.
Aides to Lieberman and Elon accused Lapid of grandstanding. "Mr. Lapid was the problem," said Shaike Rosenfeld, an adviser to Lieberman. "If Mr. Sharon wants to bring his plan before the cabinet, he should have done it two or three months ago, not now after the defeat in the Likud Party."
Lapid said in an interview on Israel Radio, "We can't now say, 'That's it, they rejected the disengagement plan, we're done, everything is as it was, in opposition to the American position, in opposition to the European position, in opposition to the Arab world, in opposition to most of the Israeli public.' "
Natan Sharansky, a minister without portfolio and a Likud member who opposes Sharon's plan, said the main problem was that it would have unilaterally evacuated the settlements without making the issue part of a larger peace process with the Palestinians.
"There must be a partner with whom we are agreeing on something -- the vote was about this," Sharansky said about the referendum.
Sharon also told his cabinet that he had canceled a trip to the United States next week in which he was scheduled to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on May 17 in Washington. Sharon had been expected to meet again with Bush during the visit. An aide said that instead, the prime minister "will be conducting consultations in Israel regarding the disengagement plan."
-------- prisoners of war
Prison Abuse: An MI Officer Sounds Off
05-10-2004
Hack,
The abuse and humiliation actually took place at 3 prisons in the Baghdad area. This was not done by accident, it was a planned, systematic way to break down the prisoners will to resist any interrogation, degrade them and then blackmail them into working for US Intelligence.
The pictures were taken as a way to intimidate the prisoner and then keep them working as low level collectors (if they did not the pictures would have been released to their family and tribes) Videos were also made as a way to record the "success" to be used as a teaching tool at Fort Huachuca (to train future interrogators). The MPs and Interrogators were told the Geneva Convention did not apply to Iraq Soldiers and Civilian Detainees. The methods the MPs used were actually taught to the MPs by military intelligence professionals and civilian contractors. This was a sanctioned operation and the methods were known to be used by Generals in the chain of command. Women MPs were sought out to further humiliate the Iraqi prisoners. The female MPs who accepted the jobs, conducted degrading acts upon the Iraq men, because such acts by women on men in the Arab culture are so humiliating, it was thought that the men would then talk just to stop the abuse by the female MPs. This abuse was done in stages and the less cooperative Iraqis were given the more degrading abuse to condition them to interrogation. The Major General (Barbara Fast) in charge of the MI personnel in Baghdad sanctioned this treatment.
Hack, if they are going to hang privates and NCOs for meting out this abuse, they better go after the Generals and Colonels who sanctioned and approved these methods be use. This is a not an isolated cace of abuse my a few soldiers, this was a planned campaign well know by the entire chain of command. There is also evidence that people in the Pentagon also knew and approved of these methods many months prior to the pictures being relased and only told the President when the pictures were published.
The DOD is now trying to pin the blame on anything else, other than the Generals amd Colonels who sanctioned this treatment.
MI Senior NCO
----
Red Cross Report Describes Abuse in Iraq
By Alexander G. Higgins
The Associated Press
Monday 10 May 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/051104B.shtml
To view the Entire Red Cross Report: http://www.truthout.org/mm_01/4.rcr.iraq.pdf - PDF reader required
A Red Cross report disclosed Monday said coalition intelligence officers estimated that 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake and said Red Cross observers witnessed U.S. officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells.
The report by the International Committee of the Red Cross supports its allegations that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was broad and "not individual acts" - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."
"ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators," according to the confidential report.
The delegates saw in October how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.
"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities," the report said. "The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.'"
This apparently meant that detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.
It said it found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation.
Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.
The 24-page document, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic after it was published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, said the abuses were primarily during the interrogation stage by military intelligence.
Once the detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it said.
The report cites abuses - some "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."
"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"
The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.
"Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said.
"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."
It said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units."
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, ICRC director of operations, said Friday the report had been given to U.S. officials in February, but it only summarized what the agency had been telling U.S. officials in detail between March and November 2003 "either in direct face-to-face conversations or in written interventions."
Kraehenbuehl said the abuse of prisoners represented more than isolated acts, and that the problems were not limited to Abu Ghraib.
"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he said, declining to give further details.
The report described how male prisoners were forced to parade around in women's underwear.
It said that information obtained "suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by" coalition forces.
Kraehenbuehl said the ICRC regretted the publication and said it would have preferred sticking to its policy of confidential discussions with coalition authorities because the United States had been making progress toward meeting its demands.
ICRC chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari declined to discuss the full report.
----
Contractor: Army Happy With Interrogators
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
May 10. 2004
http://www.houmatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040510/API/405100965
ARLINGTON, Va. - The chief executive of a defense contractor that provides civilian interrogators to the scandal-ridden Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said the Army is pleased with its work and that its employees fully understand they are under military authority.
"It's been reported to us that we're doing a fine job. That's from our customer (the Army), and those are the people who count," J.P. "Jack" London said Monday in a telephone interview.
One of CACI International Inc.'s interrogators was criticized in an internal Army report for helping to facilitate the physical and sexual abuse documented against detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.
London said last week's congressional hearings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others bolster the company's contention that its employees operate under close supervision and direct control of military personnel.
"Our workers have no supervisory authority," London said. "We are not in the chain of command. We never have been in the chain of command. We don't want to be in the chain of command."
He also said the company is continuing its own investigation, and cooperating with military investigators, but that CACI still has received no formal notice from the Pentagon about any improper conduct.
Some critics of the government's increased reliance on contractors say the practice leads to a lack of accountability and oversight.
But CACI, in a press release Sunday, said its contract with the Army carefully details the qualifications and duties of the interrogators. The company also said that it received nearly 1,600 applications for an interrogation job, but approved less than 3 percent of those applications, which were then sent to the Pentagon for review as well.
London has declined to specifically discuss the status of the interrogator named in the Army's report, but said in a conference call with investment analysts last week that all CACI employees in Iraq remain on the job.
Central Command spokeswoman Col. Jill Morgenthaler said Monday in an e-mailed response to a question that she has "no opinion" on whether the interrogator in question should still be working.
Seven enlisted soldiers are facing courts-martial for their alleged roles in the prisoner abuse scandal, and reprimands have been issued to six officers and noncommissioned officers.
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Military contractors -- Above the law?
P.W. Singer
Monday, May 10, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/10/EDGGG5VKTU1.DTL
The reports of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners during interrogations are both horrifying and depressing. Fortunately, there is a clear and proper legal response. Those accused will be court-martialed and, if found guilty, they will be punished.
But the story, sadly, does not end there. It now appears that this deeply disturbing episode -- in which Iraqi prisoners were beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, among other things -- may have involved not only soldiers but also private contractors hired as interrogators.
That private contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged criminal behavior.
Most people by now know that in an attempt to fill the gap between the demand for professional forces and the limited number deployed by the Pentagon, an array of traditional military and intelligence roles have been outsourced in Iraq, all without public discussion or debate. There are 15,000 to 20,000 private military contractors operating in Iraq, outsourcing critical military roles from logistics and local Army training to guarding installations and convoys. This outsourcing of critical roles to private companies represents a sea change in the way we fight a war.
However, until the last few days, not many Americans were aware that private firms were also providing interrogators and translators in the prisons. According to recent reports, the Army's investigation of the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in November and December named CACI International Inc. in Virginia and Titan Corp. of San Diego. Titan, however, denies having contracts that involve working with prisoners.
The Army investigation discovered such depraved behavior as making prisoners perform simulated sex acts and form naked human pyramids and putting "glow sticks" in bodily orifices. The perpetrators even took more than 60 photographs, including one showing an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands and genitals. He was told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. One civilian contractor was even accused of raping a male juvenile prisoner.
The Army has responded swiftly and correctly, at least with regard to its soldiers. Seventeen soldiers were relieved of duty and six face court-martial. As Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit said: "We're appalled ... they wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down. ... These acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals, but, by God, it doesn't reflect my Army."
But although the military has established structures to investigate, prosecute and punish soldiers who commit crimes, the legal status of contractors in war zones is murky. Soldiers are accountable to the military code of justice wherever they are, but contractors are civilians -- not formally part of the military and not part of the chain of command. They cannot be court-martialed.
Normally, an individual's crimes would then fall under the local nation's laws. But, of course, there are few established Iraqi legal institutions -- that is why we are running prisons in Iraq in the first place -- and, besides, coalition regulations explicitly state that contractors don't fall under their scope.
In turn, because the acts were committed abroad, and also reportedly involve some contractors who are not U.S. citizens, the application of U.S. domestic law in an extraterritorial setting is unclear and has never been tested. This appears to leave an incredible vacuum. Indeed, as Phillip Carter, a former Army officer now at UCLA Law School, says, "Legally speaking, [military contractors in Iraq] actually fall into the same gray area as the unlawful combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay."
So far, none of the contractors involved has been criminally prosecuted. As for the contractor accused of raping a prisoner in his mid-teens, Central Command spokesperson Col. Jill Morgenthaler told the British newspaper the Guardian: "We had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him." It is clear that our policies on military contractors must be updated.
If found to be involved by investigators, the contractors should not escape prosecution. Yet that's exactly what happened in the Balkans when several DynCorp employees, working as military contractors, were implicated in the trafficking of women and other sex crimes. Felony crimes merit harsher punishment than simply the end of a good paycheck.
This may require breaking new legal ground, such as testing the extraterritorial standards for civilian prosecution, requiring detention of the suspects until the Iraqi legal system gathers strength or even transferring jurisdiction to the international court.
To not only pay contractors more than our soldiers but also give them a legal free pass is unconscionable.
More broadly, the United States must re-examine which military and intelligence roles are appropriate for outsourcing and which are not. For the roles that we do choose to outsource, we must close the gaps in the law. The overwhelming number of contractors are probably just as sickened and embarrassed by this behavior as the American military and the public.
That is why we have laws in the first place: to govern for the worst of human behavior, not hope for the best. The private military field should be no different.
P.W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "Corporate Warriors: Rise of the Privatized Military Industry" (Cornell University Press, 2004). This commentary originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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Army to boost prison guard force amid abuse scandal in Iraq
Monday May 10, 2004
By DAVID DISHNEAU
Associated Press Writer
http://cbsnewyork.com/national/PrisonerAbuse-Trainin-aa/resources_news_html
CRESAPTOWN, Md. (AP) The Army is boosting the number of military police trained as prison guards amid complaints that MPs charged in the Iraq abuse scandal were not schooled for such duty, officials said.
The Army will create a new company of about 150 prison guards, plus a 50-person command structure, by Sept. 30, according to officials of the Army Military Police Corps at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., who spoke late last week on condition of anonymity.
An additional 300 soldiers now guarding U.S. military prisoners at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., will be made available for duty in the Middle East, the officials said.
Also, two more companies of about 150 soldiers each will be added in fiscal year 2006, the Army officials said.
With thousands of U.S.-held prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is running out of MPs trained as prison guards, said Jack Gordon, spokesman for the Army Reserve's 99th Regional Readiness Command, which oversees the unit at the center of the abuse scandal, the 372nd Military Police Company.
Currently, about 2 percent of the 5,000 solders trained as MPs each year receive detailed instruction in handling prisoners of war, civilian internees and other detainees, according to the Army. During 17 weeks of training, they get 115 academic hours devoted to the subject, compared with 31 hours for other MPs, Army officials said.
Some of those charged in the scandal, as well as their families, have cited a lack of training in their defense. They say the soldiers, some trained as clerks or mechanics, were overwhelmed by the job of guarding as many as 250 prisoners each with little guidance except to ``loosen up'' some prisoners for interrogation.
Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, dismissed the claims of inadequate training when he visited the 372nd's headquarters near Cumberland on May 1.
``I believe that members of this unit had the requisite training to ensure that they were aware of and competent in the task needed to secure enemy prisoners of war, and to ensure that they were aware of the requirement for humane treatment of prisoners,'' Helmly told reporters.
The Army has also said that all soldiers, regardless of their job assignment, learn about the Geneva Conventions prohibiting mistreatment of prisoners of war and others.
Staff Sgt. Ivan L. ``Chip'' Frederick, the top enlisted man among the soldiers guarding the prison, and another of the soldiers charged, Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., had worked for years as state prison guards.
On the Net:
U.S. Army Military Police Corps: http://www.wood.army.mil/usamps
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Top brass 'picked man who ordered torture'
By William Lowther in London
May 10, 2004
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9519057%5E401,00.html
THE torture tactics used to "soften up" Iraqi detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail began under orders from the highest level of the US defence administration, it was claimed yesterday.
The creation of torture units was the consequence of orders by the Defence Department - headed by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - to prise information out of prisoners.
Last August, the Department ordered General Geoffrey Miller - then in charge at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay - to go to Iraq to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence from detainees, an investigation by Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper has found.
The general recommended creating a single central interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib. It was in this unit where the degradation of Iraqi prisoners - now graphically exposed by more than 1000 photographs - took place.
Unit members, acting to the orders of Military Intelligence officers, carried out the sexual sadism and other abuses which have shamed the US - and there is still worse to come.
Unreleased images from Baghdad are reported to show:
AMERICAN soldiers beating an Iraqi to a bloody pulp.
A MALE US soldier having sex with a female Iraqi inmate. SOLDIERS acting inappropriately with a dead body.
A VIDEO allegedly showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.
Mr Rumsfeld has apologised for the abuses at Abu Ghraib "on my watch" but has taken no responsibility for having started the process.
The decision to use General Miller came after he reported on Camp X-Ray, saying three quarters of the 600 Taliban and Al-Qaida suspects held there were becoming compliant and offering intelligence tips.
The Washington Post reported that the Defence Department approved interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay which included forcing inmates to strip naked and subjecting them to loud music, bright lights and sleep deprivation.
The techniques, approved in April 2003, required approval from senior Pentagon officials and in some cases Mr Rumsfeld, the paper reported.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the report but US Southern Command spokesman Colonel David McWilliams confirmed a sliding scale of techniques was approved. He denied this included stripping detainees. "We do not do it," he said.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, sent General Miller from Cuba to Baghdad in August last year to suggest changes to prisoner interrogations.
General Miller recommended that detention operations must act as an "enabler" for interrogation.
One of the soldiers in the jail photos and now facing charges, Spc Sabrina Harman, 26, of the 372nd Military Police Company, said she was told to break down the prisoners.
"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," she said. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."
General Miller, who had returned to Camp X-Ray, was last week put in control of running Abu Ghraib.
He said he would halt or restrict some interrogation methods, especially eight to 10 "very aggressive techniques" including using hoods on prisoners, putting them in stressful positions and depriving them of sleep.
Those methods were now banned without specific approval, he said.
Democrat Congressman Jim McDermott, said he was convinced abuse had been sanctioned from the top. "It wasn't just six soldiers who did it. It goes all the way to the top - to the Presidency," he said.
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Most Iraqi detainees 'arrested by mistake'
By Frances Williams in Geneva
May 10 2004
Financial Time
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180400050&p=1012571727172
Coalition military intelligence officers believed 70-90 per cent of Iraqi detainees were "arrested by mistake", according to a leaked Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, further details of which were disclosed on Monday.
The confidential report, given to the US and British governments in February but covering events in March to November last year, describes a pattern of indiscriminate arrests involving destruction of property and brutal behaviour towards suspects and their families.
Ill-treatment during capture was frequent and "appeared to go beyond the reasonable, legitimate and proportional use of force", the report said. Such behaviour "seemed to reflect a usual modus operandi by certain CF [coalition forces] battle groups".
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday it had repeatedly, throughout last year, drawn these and other violations of international humanitarian law to the attention of the coalition forces and the prison authorities in Iraq.
In February, a consolidated report summarising the ICRC's interventions was sent to the US and UK governments. A month earlier, Jakob Kellenberger, ICRC president, had raised the issue of prisoner abuse in Iraq when he saw Colin Powell, US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, US national security adviser, and Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy defence secretary, on a visit to Washington.
The report, published in full on Monday by the Wall Street Journal, said arrests tended to follow a pattern. "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property.
"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."
The report said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated that "between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake".
Pierre Krähenbühl, ICRC's operations director, said on Friday that he was "disturbed" to see the report made public, noting that confidentiality was a vital element of the ICRC's work that enabled it to gain access to hundreds of thousands of detainees around the world. Last year ICRC representatives visited more than 460,000 detainees in nearly 80 countries, including 13,000 in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal stated on Friday that the leak did not come from the ICRC.
Mr Krähenbühl said the ICRC faced a "terrible dilemma" in Iraq and elsewhere over its consistent policy not to talk about what it sees in its visits to the prisons.
However, the agency had decided not to speak out unless it was clear that its recommendations were having no effect.
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Red Cross: Iraq Abuse Widespread, Routine
May 10, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Red-Cross-Prisoner-Abuse.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GENEVA (AP) -- Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday. It also said U.S. officers mistreated inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison by keeping them naked in totally dark, empty cells.
While many detainees were quickly released or no longer mistreated after interrogation, high-ranking officials in Saddam Hussein's government -- including those listed on the U.S. military's deck of cards -- were held for months in solitary confinement, The Associated Press has learned.
The 24-page report by the International Committee of the Red Cross says abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was broad and ``not individual acts,'' contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ``was the wrongdoing of a few.''
The report, confirmed by the Red Cross as authentic after it was published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, says a military intelligence officer told the agency that abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces in Iraq is generally ``part of the process.''
Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, including the military intelligence section at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport and the Tikrit holding area, according to the report.
The report, given to coalition forces in February, cites abuses -- some ``tantamount to torture'' -- including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of ``imminent execution.''
``These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'''
High-ranking officials were singled out for special treatment.
``Since June 2003 over a hundred 'high value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight,'' said the report. ``Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions.''
It did not say who the detainees were, but an official who discussed the report with the Red Cross told AP they include some of the 55 top officials in Saddam's regime named in the deck of cards given to troops.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said detainees being held at Baghdad International Airport include many of the 44 ``deck of cards'' suspects already captured. It was not clear if Saddam was at the airport, but the Red Cross has said it visited him in coalition detention somewhere in Iraq last month.
The high-value detainees were deprived of any contact with other inmates, ``guards, family members (except through Red Cross messages) and the rest of the outside world,'' the report said.
Those whose investigations were near an end were said to be allowed to exercise together outside the cells for 20 minutes twice a day. The report said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated ``between 70 percent and 90 percent'' of the detainees in Iraq ``had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units.''
The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.
``Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,'' the report said.
``Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people,'' it said. ``Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles.''
In coalition prisons, ``ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation'' of the inmates ``with their interrogators.''
The Red Cross delegates saw how detainees were kept ``completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness,'' the report said.
``Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities,'' the report said. ``The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.'''
This apparently meant that detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.
The report said the Red Cross found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation -- including burns, bruises and other injuries.
Once detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it said.
The report also cites widespread abuse of power and ill-treatment by Iraqi law enforcement officers under the coalition, including extorting money from people in their custody by threatening to hand them over to coalition authorities. Under the Geneva Conventions, the coalition is responsible for the Iraqi officers' behavior, the report said.
The Red Cross has emphasized that the report was only a summary of its repeated attempts in person and in writing from March to November 2003 to get U.S. officials to stop abuses. Those earlier interventions by the Red Cross far preceded the Pentagon's decision to investigate after a low-ranking U.S. soldier stepped forward in January.
The prisoner abuse erupted into an international scandal in recent days after the publication of disturbing photographs from Abu Ghraib.
The Red Cross said it wanted to keep the report confidential because it saw U.S. officials making progress in responding to their complaints. Still, the American reaction was far slower than that of British officials, according to the report.
It says the Red Cross informed the commander of British forces in April 2003 of ``ill-treatment'' by military intelligence personnel in interrogating Iraqis at Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. ``This intervention had the immediate effect to stop the systematic use of hoods and flexi-cuffs in the interrogation section of Umm Qasr,'' the report said.
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Soldier: Foul photos of inmates were prized
By John Simerman
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Mon, May. 10, 2004
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/nation/8629607.htm
ANTIOCH, Calif. - Long before the world saw shocking photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees, Sgt. Michael Sindar and other military police serving at the Abu Ghraib prison saw all they wanted of them.
Pictures of abuse and humiliation of Iraqis, taken with digital cameras, were burned onto CDs that circulated widely among prison personnel, said Sindar, 25. Peeks could be had in the chow hall.
"It was like a commodity," Sindar explained. "Whatever pictures you had, whoever had the most foul picture out there, everyone wanted to see what it was."
Brutality was also in the air. Sindar recalled a 14-year-old Iraqi with a broken arm being hurled to the ground and then mocked by U.S. soldiers as the boy wept and wet himself in the prison intake center.
He saw soldiers and officers boozing in violation of military rules, Sindar said, and watched the commander of his unit, the 870th Military Police Company, based in Pittsburg, Calif., quietly leave, accused of taking nude photos of female soldiers taking showers.
Sindar and other MPs who served at Abu Ghraib now blame weak senior officers for failing to restrain American bullies there, let alone set clear standards for treating Iraqi detainees. From the MPs' accounts, it's clear that problems at Abu Ghraib extended beyond just a few bad apples to a leadership system that failed to temper the outbursts of poorly trained and war-wearied soldiers.
"The thing with the soldiers there, they think because we're Americans, you can do whatever you want," said Spc. Ramon Leal, 25, of San Jose, Calif.
The officers "didn't have the nerve to discipline soldiers," Leal continued, "so the bad soldiers had no reason not to" misbehave.
Nothing the 870th soldiers did came close to the sordid behavior of the 320th Military Police Battalion, now at the center of the volcanic inmate-abuse scandal. The lone mention of the 870th in the Army's report on detainee abuses describes accusations against Capt. Leo Merck for the shower-photo incident.
But some among the 124 soldiers in the 870th, which included six women, lashed out at the inmates or at the crowds of visitors who gathered at the gates and refused to obey orders.
"There was a time I went to my superiors and said people are forgetting they're American soldiers," said Sgt. Joe Martin, a police sergeant in private life. "I saw people losing their temper quicker than was appropriate."
Martin said his superiors did nothing about it.
The 870th manned the entry checkpoints, perimeter towers, and towers overseeing prisoners in one of eight tent cities surrounded by razor wire. The 870th also worked the inmate-processing center, where tempers often flared.
Prisoners were often unruly, the MPs said in a series of interviews, and the guards sometimes rough. That reflected, at least in part, the stress of the work. Shifts were 12 hours long. Almost-daily mortar attacks rained down on the huge 280-acre prison, its tent compounds framed in razor wire. There was fear and frustration on both sides.
The most common mistreatment was what one officer called "stupid" verbal abuse by soldiers trying to barrel through an impenetrable language barrier. Or making inmates squat repeatedly and hold their arms up for long periods of time.
Occasionally, as with the 14-year-old boy, it turned physical, soldiers said.
"I didn't understand why we had to be so rude with these prisoners and beat the crap out of these guys," Sindar said.
Many of the detainees were angry, and some would spit at soldiers or rush them.
In one incident last year, prisoners started throwing large rocks up at the tower. One 870th soldier fired down, and a small riot led to the deaths of four inmates, said Sgt. Kelly Strong of Antioch, a company medic.
One young female soldier with the 870th was taken off a prison tower above one of the tent cities after she was caught firing a slingshot.
Strong, who treated both soldiers and Iraqi inmates for injuries, said he would watch soldiers for violent tendencies or signs of combat stress.
"You can see these guys messed up ... running up and down the halls naked, or when they're not eating, losing weight," Strong said. "There were probably 30 people that went on medication while they were over there - Prozac, Zoloft, those kind of drugs."
Alcohol was widely available: cans of vodka or bottles sent from home. Soldiers would pay translators to buy beer or whiskey. Soldiers who complained said their gripes were dismissed.
One 870th soldier started Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside Abu Ghraib.
"A.A. meetings in the prison," mused Master Sgt. Greg Rayburn, a medic. "Obviously there was a need for it."
Strong, 50, said he found himself hitting Iraqi prisoners and recognized in himself how anger could turn into brutality.
"You get a burning in your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead running through your veins, and you get a sense of power," Strong said. "Imagine wearing point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all the power in the world, and the authority of God. That power is very addictive.
"That's what happened (in the scandal). They lost their sense of compassion, their sense that all these guys are not bad. Then they started degrading human beings."
Several soldiers said they got little guidance in handling prisoners and had to figure out for themselves which inmates were hard cases and which were petty criminals.
"It was, figure it out as you go," said Spc. Jose Victor Leiva of Bay Point, Calif. "The leadership were more worried about our dress code, as opposed to the situation at Abu Ghraib, being mortared every night, having security issues. There was nothing set in place."
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THE ROAD TO ABU GHRAIB : Gathering Intelligence in a War Zone
As Insurgency Grew, So Did Prison Abuse
Needing Intelligence, U.S. Pressed Detainees
By Scott Wilson and Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13065-2004May9.html
Second of three articles
BAGHDAD, May 9 -- In the fall of 2003, U.S. officials watched anxiously as a potent guerrilla resistance rose across broad swaths of northern and central Iraq. Insurgents assassinated diplomats, detonated car bombs and mounted daily hit-and-run strikes on U.S. soldiers. Fearful of reprisals, Iraqis shrank from collaborating with an occupation authority that appeared powerless to reverse the tide of violence and lawlessness. Less than two weeks after 1,000 pounds of explosives demolished U.N. headquarters here on Aug. 19, driving the organization from Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived in Baghdad from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was warden of the U.S. detention facility for suspected terrorists. Miller's mission in Iraq signaled new zeal to organize an intelligence network that could hit back at the insurgents, but through unorthodox means.
"He came up there and told me he was going to 'Gitmoize' the detention operation," turning it into a hub of interrogation, said Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, then commander of the military prison system in Iraq. "But the difference is, in Guantanamo Bay there isn't a war going on outside the wall."
The worsening war outside the walls of the U.S. prison system in Iraq had a direct bearing on the abuses that occurred inside the facilities, according to Iraqi and American sources. Through the summer and fall of 2003, when detainees at Abu Ghraib prison suffered mistreatment now notorious throughout the world, the security situation in Iraq and the treatment of Iraqi prisoners ran parallel courses, both downward.
U.S. officials were under mounting pressure to collect wartime intelligence but were hobbled by a shortage of troops, the failure to build an effective informant network and a surprisingly skilled insurgency. In response, they turned to the prison system. Today, as outrage spreads over images of abused prisoners, the practices inside the prisons have the potential of strengthening the insurgency that they were designed to defeat.
Interviews with U.S. officials, former prisoners and Iraqis who have supported the occupation, along with findings outlined in the Army's internal investigation of prison abuses, make clear that there was a connection between changes in conditions inside the prisons and the struggle to control an increasingly hostile country.
Last fall, U.S. military leaders cast about for ways to generate more information on the insurgency after focusing their early intelligence efforts on the hunt for Saddam Hussein, his top lieutenants and the weapons of mass destruction that were the Bush administration's rationale for going to war.
The urgency of the problem prompted U.S. officials to accept a new intelligence service they once opposed because of its similarity to Hussein's. It also led to more widespread detentions of Iraqis. The strategy was reflected in the rising number of Iraqis arrested for questioning across the country in the late fall. At Abu Ghraib alone, the number of prisoners rose from 5,800 in September to 8,000 five months later, when Karpinski received an official admonishment.
The harsh treatment of prisoners was seen by some of the perpetrators as consistent with Miller's recommendation for "setting conditions" for interrogations by military intelligence officers. Although abuses of prisoners have been denounced as aberrations, former detainees describe humiliation, pain and discomfort as commonplace.
The treatment could also be traced to other outside pressures on the American jailers. Pre-interrogation punishment at Abu Ghraib was dispensed by reservists embittered by their prolonged stay in Iraq and plagued by frequent attacks from outside the prison walls, according to the Army investigation conducted by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
"Psychological factors, such as the difference in culture, the soldiers' quality of life, the real presence of mortal danger over an extended time period, and the failure of commanders to recognize these pressures contributed to the perversive atmosphere that existed at Abu Ghraib," Taguba wrote.
Purge Damages Occupation
Some American and Iraqi commentators attribute the growth of the insurgency to the decision in May of last year by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, to dissolve the Iraqi military.
The decision was another step in the dismantling of Hussein's government, once dominated by members of the Baath Party. But it had a practical effect of leaving an estimated 400,000 men with military training without jobs. U.S. commanders worried about the consequences, which Iraqis sympathetic to the U.S. project now say have turned out worse than any of the Americans expected.
Many former Baathist officials fled Iraq for their safety, according to former military officers, taking with them their intelligence training and unrivaled knowledge of Iraq's pre-war political landscape. Many who stayed were too angry or too frightened to help the Americans, these officers said.
One result, the former officers said, was that violence against U.S. troops began to increase almost at once. Twice as many U.S. troops were killed in hostilities in June than in May, when President Bush had declared an end to major combat operations.
"The way to get information was very easy for the Americans, if they had chosen," said Abdul Jalil Mohsen Muhie, a retired Iraqi brigadier general with the Iraqi National Accord, a party that opposed Hussein from exile and has a long-standing relationship with the CIA. "The intelligence and security services were intact, they were experienced and would have been highly useful after purged of pro-Saddam elements."
The continuing strife had an impact on troops deployed in Iraq and looking forward to a prompt return home. In early June, the 800th Military Police Brigade, which would play a central role in the future U.S. intelligence strategy, received disheartening news. Instead of returning to the United States, the soldiers would be staying on in Iraq.
Their job would now be to administer the new prison system and supervise several specific detention centers, including Camp Bucca, Abu Ghraib and the special ward for "high-value detainees" at Camp Cropper on the grounds of Baghdad International Airport. The brigade had been in charge of the Army's Camp Bucca, a prison in the southern city of Umm Qasr that in the war's aftermath held 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners.
The 320th MP Battalion was assigned to Abu Ghraib, a prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad synonymous with Hussein's oppression. The unit was severely understaffed, with 450 soldiers responsible for as many as 7,000 prisoners at a time, according to the Taguba report. The jail was built to hold 4,800 prisoners.
"Morale suffered," Taguba wrote, "and over the next few months there did not appear to be any attempt to mitigate this morale problem."
Karpinski, a business consultant from South Carolina who was a member of the reserves, took command of the brigade at the end of June. Although she had participated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and later helped oversee a women's military training program in the United Arab Emirates, she had no experience running a large prison.
As Karpinski took charge, American troops were in the midst of Operation Sidewinder, the largest offensive since the invasion. The air and ground assault swept through the heart of the resistance in the crescent of Sunni territory north of Baghdad. There and in the capital, U.S. forces seized hundreds of suspected insurgents.
Amnesty International, the London-based human-rights organization, criticized the U.S. military for subjecting Iraqi prisoners to "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" conditions in a July 1 report. At the time, a U.S. official said, "We are more than complying with our obligations under the Geneva Convention."
Then, on July 3, more than 50 militants ambushed an Army patrol near the town of Balad. Another attack rained mortars on a base, wounding 17 soldiers.. Suddenly, the insurgency seemed capable of taking the initiative.
"At first, there wasn't so much fear and there was a little cooperation" by Iraqis with the Americans, said Saher Dabbagh, a former Iraqi lieutenant colonel who has worked with U.S. officials here and supports the occupation. "But the curve declined very quickly after that."
The Balad attack surprised U.S. military commanders for what it revealed of the size and skill of the insurgency, several said at the time. On the next day, an audiotape believed to be from Hussein was broadcast on Arab television. In his first public comments since the fall of Baghdad, he called on Iraqis to resist the occupation and claimed that guerrilla cells were being formed to do so.
In the following days, U.S. military officials began to worry publicly whether the 150,000 U.S. troops then in Iraq were sufficient to maintain order. U.S. officials reached out to Iraqi political allies for help, turning to the Iraqi National Accord among others for advice on how to build an Iraqi intelligence service and for assistance looking for two soldiers who were missing following the attack in Balad. The two soldiers were later found dead.
"We told them you cannot play the role of the intelligence and security forces in Iraq because you are not Iraqis," Dabbagh said. "They were trying to find Iraqis, but they were going about it the wrong way. None of the ones they found were professionals, and all of the information they received was false."
Escalation Spurs Change
After receiving reports that large military operations in the north had angered the local population, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, decided in early August to use more small-unit raids that rely for success on precise intelligence.
But the next weeks were among the most damaging to the U.S. occupation to date. A car bomb exploded Aug. 7 in front of the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 people in the first appearance of such tactics. Twelve days later, another car bomb detonated at the U.N. offices, killing more than 20 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. envoy to Iraq.
Within days, U.S. officials disclosed that they were recruiting a new domestic intelligence service from former agents of Hussein's intelligence organization, the Mukhabarat, despite deep misgivings from some of the 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
"The only way you are going to combat terrorism is through intelligence," a senior U.S. official here said at the time. "Without Iraqi input, that's not going to work."
Miller, a former paratrooper with a mild Texas drawl, arrived in Baghdad from Cuba on Aug. 31 at the head of a team "experienced in strategic interrogation," according to the Taguba report. Their aim was "to review current Iraqi theater ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," Taguba wrote.
"We're enormously proud of what we have done at Guantanamo to be able to set that kind of environment where we were focused on getting the maximum amount of intelligence," Miller said last week in Baghdad, after he returned to Iraq having been named to supervise the country's military prison system. "We were bringing expertise into the theater. We made a number of recommendations, the vast majority of which were implemented following the visit."
The Taguba report cites one of those recommendations as saying that the detention centers had to act as "an enabler for interrogation." Miller recommended giving military intelligence officers a greater role in how prisoners were detained, not only how they were questioned. He also recommended training a guard force that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation on internees/detainees."
These new procedures came into force as increasing numbers of Iraqis were being detained and interrogated. According to interviews with former prisoners, many arrests were made in predawn raids on houses. Others were swept up if weapons -- even licensed ones -- or suspicious items were found during roadside vehicle searches.
Ahmad Naje Dulaimi, a waiter at a restaurant in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, was arrested in the middle of the night of July 18. He had once worked for the Iraqi Olympic Committee, which was run by Hussein's son, Uday, and used as a cover for political persecution.
Dulaima was a long-distance freestyle swimmer on the Iraqi national team. A neighbor had informed U.S. soldiers of his affiliation, he said, and suggested to U.S. troops that he was a member of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.
"I had an Olympic Committee card in my wallet, but I told them I was a swimmer," said Dulaimi, a lanky 23-year old with floppy hair and acne. "I guess the Americans believed their spy."
Within days, the informant, a well-known religious figure in the neighborhood, was killed for working with U.S. troops, Dulaimi said.
Dualimi's 11-month imprisonment began in the interrogation rooms of the Adhamiya Palace, a former Hussein villa now being used by U.S. troops. He spent the first night in the T-shirt and shorts he was sleeping in at the time of his arrest, but he was also hooded, with his hands and feet bound by plastic cuffs.
For two days, he consumed only a cracker and several sips of water, he said. On the third night, he was interrogated by two U.S. soldiers, a man and a woman, who were assisted by a Kuwaiti interpreter. The male soldier strode into the interrogation room, Dulaimi said, and immediately urinated on his head.
"They asked me about Baathists in the neighborhood, if there were officers, who sold weapons, and who were Fedayeen. I told them I knew nothing," said Dulaimi, who also spent time in Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib before he was freed on Thursday, according to his release papers and prison identification bracelet. "They said, 'We know you are innocent, but we want information from you. You know these people.' "
As the prisons filled up and the frequency of rioting and escapes increased, U.S. troops turned to force to keep order, particularly at Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper. Sanchez, the commanding general, dispatched Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder to study the situation.
In a Nov. 5 report, Ryder recommended that military police and military intelligence should operate independently, as Army regulations require. He also said "security detainees," the term for those alleged to pose a threat to U.S. forces, should be put under the watch of one brigade.
But two weeks later, Abu Ghraib's military police units were placed under the military intelligence command. Taguba suggested in the report that Miller favored the move by recommending that "the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the detainees." In a news conference here Saturday, Miller said, "There was no recommendation ever by this team -- the team that I had here in August and September -- that recommended that the MPs become actively involved in interrogation, in the interrogation booth." The prison system's new "Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy," issued Oct. 12, came in the wake of Miller's recommendations. According to the Taguba report, the "numerous photos and videos portraying detainee abuse by Military Police personnel" were dated soon after the policy was adopted, sometime between October and December.
As the new policies took hold, the Abu Ghraib compound was suffering the effects of the war outside its walls.
"We were being fired on at Abu Ghraib every single night, with mortars, RPGs and small-arms fire," Karpinski said. "
U.S. military commanders changed tactics again in an attempt to corral the widening insurgency. In late November, U.S. forces began using 2,000-pound bombs and precision-guided missiles for the first time since the war ended.
U.S. officers described the effort as an attempt to intimidate the guerrillas, and it marked a shift back to large-scale tactics Sanchez had suspended two months earlier. U.S. generals said the large strikes were made possible by a major improvement in their ability to wage war: better intelligence.
Since then, uprisings in the Shiite south and the area north and west of Baghdad known as the Sunni Triangle have inflamed much of the country. The evidence of abuse inside Abu Ghraib has shaken public opinion in Iraq to the point where it may be more difficult than ever to secure cooperation against the insurgency. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, acknowledged last week that winning over Iraqis before the planned handover of some sovereign powers next month had been made considerably harder by the photos.
Last week, denunciations and threats rang out from mosques across Iraq during Friday prayers. Powerful clerics ridiculed the U.S. occupation authority's central justification for the war -- that it would bring justice to a country suffering under dictatorship -- and warned or reprisals if those who carried out the torture were not tried by an independent court.
"Saddam didn't claim that he was for freedom and equality," Moqtada Sadr, the rebellious Shiite cleric now commanding a thousands-strong anti-U.S. militia, told hundreds of worshippers in the southern city of Kufa. "I call for humanitarian organizations to change this prison into a humanitarian establishment, and to try the criminals in honest courts as soon as possible. Otherwise, we'll do the necessary actions in ways that you don't expect."
----
Inmates Scuttle Efforts to Repair Iraq Prison Image
Mon May 10, 2004
By Tom Perry
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5094286
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq - Inmates at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad staged an angry demonstration against their detention Monday, disrupting a U.S. public relations exercise to repair damage done by a prisoner abuse scandal.
Col. David Quantock, commander of the 16th Military Police Brigade, struggled to keep the attention of reporters on a guided tour of the jail as more than 100 prisoners challenged his assertion that ties with U.S. prison guards were good.
"We have a very good relationship with our detainees, we work that very hard," Quantock told reporters on a bus, as one of many dishevelled inmates behind a tall razor wire fence revealed a T-shirt reading: "Prisoners cannot talk freely."
"What are you going to do about this scandal?" read a banner unfurled by other detainees, standing at the edge of one of the prison's open-air pens where up to 500 prisoners sleep in dirty khaki-colored tents on the floor.
"They are given blankets for warmth," Quantock said. They also have concrete bunkers where they can seek shelter when guerrillas attack the jail. Two mortar attacks on the jail killed nearly 30 inmates in April.
It was the second media tour of the jail in less than a week and part of U.S. efforts to repair damage done by the release of photographs showing U.S. soldiers posing alongside hooded and naked Iraqi detainees in humiliating positions.
Prisoners, nearly all of whom are held without charge, took the opportunity to vent anger at their detention. "Why am I here?" read a sign held aloft by one detainee. "Our families are waiting for us," was painted across another prisoner's T-shirt.
Prison officials showed off a new visitor center, which they said would allow each inmate to receive two visits per month, as opposed to one every six months.
"WITHIN THE LIMITS"
Iraq's U.S.-led authorities say they are accelerating the release of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, notorious for its torture chambers under ousted president Saddam Hussein -- and now notorious again as the U.S. abuse scandal spreads.
Major General Geoffrey Miller, put in charge of overseeing Abu Ghraib in the wake of the scandal, said he would halve the number of detainees at the prison from 3,800 within the next month and a half.
Some would be moved to different prisons and others would be released through an accelerated release program, he said. Three hundred were released this week and another 400 would be let go in the next few days, he said.
Miller was brought in after the departure of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the prison when the abuses are alleged to have taken place in October and November.
Miller, who previously ran the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, has imposed strict controls on interrogation methods and banned the once common practice of hooding prisoners.
Colonel Foster Payne, director of interrogation at the jail, who took up his position in February, said interrogators did not need to use rough techniques to extract information.
"You can achieve the aim of the interrogation by staying within the limits," he said. "You don't have to maim, you don't have to brutalize, you don't have to humiliate anybody. That's not what it's about," Payne said.
Seven U.S. soldiers face criminal charges in connection with the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and another seven have been reprimanded. Soldiers charged over the abuse have said they acted on the orders of intelligence specialists at the jail.
A U.S. army report into the case also concluded that two men identified as employees of Virginia-based CACI International Inc were among those who were either directly or indirectly responsible for abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Payne said three CACI interrogators were still conducting interrogations at the prison and another six CACI employees were conducting initial questioning of detainees. "They report to me," he said, offering no further details.
-------- russia / chechnya
Kremlin-backed president slain in bombing
May 10, 2004
By Musa Sadulayev
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040509-111743-3885r.htm
GROZNY, Russia - A bomb exploded at a stadium in the Chechen capital during a Victory Day ceremony yesterday, killing provincial President Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin's point man in its efforts to control separatist violence in the war-wracked region.
No group took responsibility for the explosion, which killed as many as 24 people, but suspicion inevitably fell on separatist rebels, who had tried to assassinate Mr. Kadyrov several times.
Police and soldiers began an extensive search after the blast and detained at least five persons, news reports said.
The attack harshly underlined the difficulties that Russia faces in restoring order in the southern region despite a massive troop presence. It was expected to set off a new round of killing between Mr. Kadyrov's camp and his enemies.
The stadium's VIP section collapsed in the explosion, leaving a jagged hole and sending up a plume of smoke. Panicked people, including many elderly dressed in their Sunday best, clambered over the bleachers as gunshots split the air.
Footage on Russia's NTV television showed men in uniform dragging away the body of a blood-covered man resembling Mr. Kadyrov.
The explosive device was thought to have been a land mine, said Sergei Kozhemyaka, a spokesman for the southern Russian branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry. NTV television quoted an investigator as saying that the bomb was made from a 152 mm artillery shell and was detonated with a wire or timer.
The bomb was planted under the concrete floor of the VIP podium where Mr. Kadyrov and other dignitaries were watching ceremonies marking the 59th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II.
Another land mine was found nearby.
Investigators were trying to identify people who worked on a three-month renovation of the stadium, which was completed just recently, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.
Official estimates of the death toll varied.
The Grozny emergency medical center said 24 persons were killed and 46 were wounded. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin's representative in the southern Russian district, Vladimir Yakovlev, said six persons died and 53 were wounded, the Interfax news agency reported.
The differing estimates could not be explained.
Russian authorities have blamed Chechen rebels for many attacks since 2002, including a Feb. 6 suicide bombing on a Moscow subway that killed more than 40 people and wounded dozens.
Previous major attacks in Chechnya have been followed by massive operations to find the perpetrators, with troops and security forces sealing off whole neighborhoods and towns, conducting house-to-house searches and detaining scores of people.
--------
Chechen President Killed in Bomb Blast
Kremlin's Plans for Peace Tested in Volatile Region
By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11794-2004May9.html
MOSCOW, May 9 -- Chechnya's pro-Russian leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed Sunday by a powerful explosion that ripped through a stadium in the capital of the rebellious republic in one of the boldest recent attacks in a secessionist war that persists despite Kremlin claims that it is largely over.
The blast also seriously injured Col. Gen. Valery Baranov, the top field commander of Russian forces who are attempting to pacify the separatist region. At least seven people died and about 50 were wounded in the blast, Russian officials said.
President Vladimir Putin, who had handpicked Kadyrov to run the republic and had again proclaimed his Chechen pacification policy a success as recently as his inauguration on Friday to a second term, announced Kadyrov's death in televised remarks Sunday. Putin called him a "truly heroic person" who had been "confidently leading his republic to a peaceful life."
Putin, who has characterized the Chechen conflict as an extension of the international struggle against terrorism, told a crowd of World War II veterans in Red Square minutes after the attack that "retribution" against terrorists would be "inevitable." But it was unclear whether he knew about the explosion at the time or was speaking generally. There was no immediate sign the Russian government would retaliate.
Kadyrov's death is one of the most serious challenges yet to Putin as he seeks to end the grinding conflict in Chechnya, rebuild the shattered region and halt a wave of terrorist attacks by suicide bombers that have claimed hundreds of lives in Moscow and southern Russia in the past 18 months.
Putin's plans for peace relied largely on Kadyrov as the Kremlin increasingly shifted responsibility to the Chechen president to establish control in the region. Analysts said there were no obvious successors, creating a potentially dangerous power vacuum at a time when rival clans are feuding for power, separatist guerrillas remain active and Chechen civilians are increasingly disgruntled with Moscow's failure to deliver on reconstruction promises.
"We are on the eve of a civil war in Chechnya, and Putin has to do his best to prevent it," said Alexei Malashenko, a specialist on Chechnya at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research organization. Putin, he said, can either introduce direct presidential rule by putting a general in charge of the republic or continue his "Chechenization policy" by finding another pro-Kremlin Chechen to take Kadyrov's place.
Kadyrov, 52, the former chief Muslim religious leader in Chechnya, fought alongside the rebels against Russian forces in the mid-1990s but changed sides when the latest conflict there began in 1999. He was elected Chechen president last October with more than 80 percent of the vote in balloting that international observers and human rights groups said was a farce.
The White House condemned the killing Sunday. "No national, ethnic, religious or other cause can ever justify the use of terrorism," said Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary.
Appearing at Putin's side at the Kremlin on Sunday was Kadyrov's son Ramzan, who was wearing a blue sweat suit and was visibly shaken. He said his father had made a "conscious choice" to take on a dangerous task. Ramzan Kadyrov runs a private militia that human rights groups have accused of being responsible for the disappearance of civilians and political opponents of his father.
Putin announced that Sergei Abramov, the Chechen prime minister, would step in as acting president. But Abramov, a Kadyrov loyalist who is not an ethnic Chechen, is likely to be only a transitional figure and was so upset as he spoke on television that he appeared to be unable to catch his breath.
The bomb that killed Kadyrov detonated at 10:35 a.m. local time, minutes after he made a speech during anniversary celebrations of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Television cameras recorded scenes of pandemonium as the explosion wiped out a section of the white bleachers in Grozny's Dynamo Stadium.
Tatyana Lokshina, executive director of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which monitors human rights in Chechnya, was in Grozny and described what she said she was told by a witness at the stadium. After the explosion, "there was a shout: 'Everyone down on the ground!' They all fell to the ground, face down, naturally. Then armed people started shooting, in no particular direction, and running around over the bodies. There was terrible confusion."
Television showed Kadyrov's guards bundling him into a black Mercedes-Benz SUV.
By late afternoon, Russian officials announced they had detained five people in Grozny in connection with the blast. The officials said the explosion had likely been the result of a bomb fashioned from an artillery shell and placed directly under the reviewing stand where Kadyrov and others had gathered for the ceremony.
Vladimir Yakovlev, presidential representative for southern Russia, arrived in Grozny to take charge. Baranov, the general wounded in the blast, had one of his legs amputated, Yakovlev said, and was listed in serious condition. Earlier reports from local officials had put the death toll much higher, at two dozen or more.
Among the confirmed dead were Khusein Isayev, chairman of the Chechen legislature, and Adlan Khasanov, 33, a journalist for the Reuters news agency who had worked as a photographer and television cameraman since the late 1990s, the agency said. "People wanted to believe that things were coming to normalcy," said Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group. "People were tired of the war. They were snatching at the tiny shreds of hope. I guess that hope is gone."
Pro-Moscow Chechen officials quickly blamed rebel leaders for the attack. Russian politicians here suggested Kadyrov could have been betrayed by someone in his inner circle, given the heavy security surrounding Sunday's event.
No one immediately asserted responsibility for the killing, but Akhmad Zakayev, a rebel envoy to Europe, suggested it was the work of people who had been tortured by men loyal to Kadyrov or his son.
"Any Chechen who went through all of Kadyrov's repressions could have been behind this," Zakayev said by telephone from London, where he has been granted political asylum. "There may be quite a few people in Chechnya who would be willing to take credit for this."
He added that Kadyrov's death would not change the equation in Chechnya, saying the Kremlin makes the decisions and "Chechens have no other way out but to continue the resistance." Zakayev renewed a longstanding offer to negotiate, something Putin has consistently rejected.
--------
Chechnya Bomb Kills President, a Blow to Putin
May 10, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/europe/10CHEC.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW, May 9 - A bomb exploded in a stadium in Chechnya's capital on Sunday, killing the republic's president and delivering a severe blow to President Vladimir V. Putin's efforts to end the long, deadly conflict in the region.
As many as 13 others were killed, two officials there said, while more than 50 were reported wounded, including the Russian military commander for the region. There was no immediate claim of responsiblity.
Akhmad Kadyrov, a former rebel leader who was elected the republic's president last fall in a vote widely considered fraudulent, was the political figure Mr. Putin entrusted to wind down nearly a decade of war in Chechnya. His death now plunges the Kremlin's strategy into ominous uncertainty.
The explosion, reportedly caused by a bomb planted inside a concrete pillar, occurred at 10:35 a.m. as Mr. Kadyrov and other Russian and Chechen leaders attended a parade and concert in Grozny commemorating the 59th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
The NTV network, having sent a crew to film what was expected to be a celebratory event, broadcast jarring images of the explosion and its panicked aftermath. As smoke billowed over the stadium's grandstand, dazed and bloodied spectators, including children and elderly veterans wearing their war medals, stumbled over metal bleachers to escape.
The blast tore a gaping hole in the stadium's central section for dignitaries. Soldiers and police officers lifted Mr. Kadyrov from the wreckage, his body slumped, his face battered and bloodied. He was 52.
In televised remarks confirming his death, a shaken Mr. Putin called him "a truly heroic man" who personified the difference between "bandits, terrorists and the whole people" - a distinction Mr. Putin strives to make between those who still struggle for Chechnya's independence and those who accept that Chechnya is a part of Russia.
Mr. Putin announced that Sergei B. Abramov, the Kremlin-appointed prime minister of Chechnya, would take over as acting president, as stipulated in the republic's new constitution, until elections are held sometime before September.
Given the placement of the bomb, the attack was clearly meant to assassinate Mr. Kadyrov and other Russian and Chechen leaders. Khussein Isayev, the chairman of the republic's state council under Mr. Kadyrov, was also killed, as was a journalist for Reuters, Adlan Khasanov, the news agency reported.
Col. Gen. Valery P. Baranov, the commander of the Russian military in the northern Caucasus since late 2002, was gravely wounded, according to official accounts. He underwent surgery at the main Russian military base outside Grozny and was reported to have lost a leg.
There were conflicting reports about the exact toll, reflecting confusion and, perhaps, efforts to play down the severity of the attack. Official Russian news agencies reported that only six had died, although two officials reached by telephone in Grozny put the toll at 14. Other reports cited as many as 24 or 32 dead.
An aide in Mr. Kadyrov's office said the stadium in Grozny had undergone a three-month renovation that had been completed just days before Sunday's ceremonies. Investigators, he said, suspect that someone embedded the bomb into concrete directly beneath the V.I.P. section and detonated it apparently by timer or remote control. The aide said security officers had carefully swept the area beforehand and had found nothing.
After the blast, gunfire erupted in and around the stadium, apparently in panic since there were no reports that security forces had clashed with anyone. A spokesman for Chechnya's Interior Ministry announced Sunday evening that five people had been detained and were being questioned as suspects in the bombing.
The bombing was the worst attack in Russia since Feb. 6, when a suicide bomber killed 41 people on a Moscow subway train. A previously unknown Chechen group later claimed responsibility for that bombing.
The attack on Sunday underscored the simmering violence in Chechnya and the precarious state of the Kremlin's efforts to portray the second Chechen war, which began in 1999, as all but over.
Those efforts included a referendum on a new constitution in March 2003, followed by the presidential election in October, which Mr. Kadyrov won after the Kremlin orchestrated the removal of his most prominent challengers.
Mr. Kadyrov has so dominated politics and power in Chechnya that it is unclear who else in the republic could garner enough support from both Russians and Chechens to replace him.
A bearded and stocky man who carefully balanced his allegiance to Moscow with Chechen nationalism, he once served as the republic's chief mufti, or Islamic religious leader. In the first Chechen war, from 1994 to 1996, he commanded a rebel force fighting for independence against Russian forces.
But in the years after the Russians withdrew and Chechnya gained autonomy, though not outright independence, he broke with Aslan Maskhadov, who was the elected president of the republic until Russian troops invaded again in 1999 and ousted him.
When war erupted anew, Mr. Kadyrov sided with the Russians, and Mr. Putin appointed him the administrative head of the pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, a position he held until he was elected president in October.
While suspicion for the bombing fell on Chechen separatists who still clash with Russian forces almost daily, Mr. Kadyrov earned the enmity of others who bristled under his strong-handed rule over the republic's security and battered economy.
In Moscow on Sunday, Mr. Putin appeared inside the Kremlin with Ramzan Kadyrov, the president's son and head of Chechen security forces. The younger Mr. Kadyrov, whose forces have been accused of abuses against civilians, appeared dressed in a sweat suit, apparently having rushed to the Kremlin. It was not clear if he was in Grozny or in Moscow at the time of the attack.
The aide in the elder Mr. Kadyrov's office, speaking in a telephone interview, said the Chechen leader had distrusted many of the former rebels he had persuaded to surrender and join his forces.
The attack came despite stepped-up security across Russia as celebrations approached for what is known here as Victory Day.
Attacks attributed to Chechen extremists have occurred before on holidays. On Victory Day in 2002, a bomb stuffed with nails and bolts killed 43 people, including 12 children, during a military parade in Dagestan, the republic that borders Chechnya to the east.
Victory Day is one of Russia's most important holidays, though one that resonates differently in Chechnya, given the fact that Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of Chechens during World War II.
"May 9 marks the peak of our glory," Mr. Putin said in remarks on Red Square during the traditional Victory Day parade, which was under way even as the explosion in Chechnya struck. "People do not forget such sacred dates."
Mr. Kadyrov was a target for assassination before. In December 2002, two car bombs destroyed his headquarters in Grozny, killing 72 people; he was not there at the time. In May 2003, a suicide bomber narrowly missed him in an attack at a religious festival in the village of Iliskhan-Yurt that killed 17.
Speaking in Moscow before the extent of the carnage was clear, Mr. Putin vowed that Russia would retaliate for any terrorism, though he did not directly address the attack in Grozny. Meeting with World War II veterans, he said, "There can be no doubt that retribution will be inevitable for those against whom we are waging the struggle today."
-------- spies
Doctrine to restructure counterspy agencies
May 10, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040510-122705-5788r.htm
The Bush administration is preparing to restructure counterspy agencies to focus more on offensive operations and better interagency communication, a senior intelligence official says. Michelle Van Cleave, the national counterintelligence executive, said in a speech that U.S. intelligence agencies are working on a new counterintelligence (CI) doctrine "for attacking foreign intelligence services systematically via strategic CI operations, including strategic CI annexes to support war plans."
-------- un
President backs probe of U.N. scandal
May 10, 2004
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040510-122650-7025r.htm
President Bush wants investigators to get to the bottom of the oil-for-food scandal at the United Nations, which National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says may have originated in a "corrupt underworld."
"We need to have that investigated until we fully understand the depth of that," Mr. Bush said in a previously unreported interview with The Washington Times.
In his first on-the-record comments about the burgeoning scandal, the president brought up the subject of a document, disclosed by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, that indicates Saddam Hussein awarded oil "vouchers" to 270 friendly governments, groups and individuals around the world.
The biggest beneficiary of these multimillion-dollar contracts - awarded under the aegis of the United Nations' oil-for-food program - was the Russian government, followed by a financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac.
Mr. Bush expressed caution about the veracity of the document and stopped short of linking oil-for-food revenue from Saddam's Iraq with opposition to the war by France, Russia and other countries. Still, the president had his suspicions.
"That would give you an indication of how the decision-making might have been made," Mr. Bush said in the Feb. 5 interview. "I don't know. I would never ascribe those motives to - 'those motives' being people willing to kind of turn a blind eye to the security of the United States because of commercial interests. That's a pretty heavy charge."
Mr. Bush's call for a probe in the interview came more than six weeks before U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed an investigation. Mr. Annan, whose son is among the U.N. officials implicated, had expressed reservations about toppling Saddam.
The oil-for-food program was part of a regimen of sanctions designed to punish the Iraqi dictator by forcing him to devote all oil revenues to the purchase of food and medicine for his impoverished people.
"Sanctions are an important tool," Miss Rice said in a separate interview. "They do have a tendency to grow an underworld and a corrupt underworld. We need to understand it better."
Miss Rice also called for an investigation weeks before Mr. Annan did.
"There will have to be a thorough look at how oil-for-food was running and what was happening," she said. "I've heard, we all have, from Iraqi ministers that they're uncovering a lot of contracts - that were not fulfilled, but the money was paid - a lot of contracts ... where bogus equipment was sent."
-------- us
Navy launches vast maritime security plan
May 10, 2004
By Richard Halloran
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040509-111754-9040r.htm
HONOLULU - Pacific Command has undertaken one of the most ambitious and complicated ventures in the war on terrorism as it seeks to prevent seaborne terrorist and criminal assaults on nations bordering the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Called the Regional Maritime Security Initiative, it is intended to prevent terrorists from seizing a vessel loaded with liquid natural gas from slamming into a pier and exploding in Singapore, from scuttling a tanker in the Straits of Malacca to close a vital waterway, or from exploding containers full of chemical fertilizer in busy ports such as Pusan, South Korea; Yokohama, Japan; Oakland, Calif.; or Los Angeles.
The command hopes to prevent terrorists from joining criminals to smuggle illicit drugs, arms and humans who are sold into prostitution or brought illegally into North America. It seeks to crack down on piracy in the South China Sea. The initiative is especially aimed at terrorists plotting an attack with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction.
Adm. Thomas Fargo, who leads the Pacific Command from its headquarters in Hawaii, told a military audience on May 3 in Victoria, British Columbia, that the goal is to forge a partnership of nations willing to identify and intercept "transnational maritime threats under existing international and domestic laws."
The first hurdle is the immensity of the task. The oceans between the west coast of the United States and the east coast of Africa occupy 20 times the surface area of the United States.
Lloyd's, the London insurance firm, estimates there are 89,000 ships in the world ranging from 100-ton coastal freighters to the 565,000-ton oil tanker Jahre Viking.
Presumably, more than half of those ships ply these waters, but no one seems to know for sure. Determining where those ships are, where they are headed and what they carry is a primary task.
Adm. Fargo told Congress in March that "we need to gain an awareness of the maritime domain to match the picture we have of our international airspace."
An airplane takes off or lands somewhere in the world every few seconds, says the International Civil Aviation Organization, which adds: "Every one of these flights is handled in the same uniform manner, whether by air traffic control, airport authorities, or pilots at the controls of their aircraft."
The technology exists to do the same with ships, including the Global Positioning System, radar, radio communications and transponders emitting signals to a disclose location. The task is to pull that information together swiftly so that law-enforcement agencies, coast guards and navies can intercept any suspicious vessels.
The amount of cargo transported in containers known as TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) is stunning. Shanghai, reflecting China's ballooning economy, handles 10 million TEUs a year and Hong Kong another 5.3 million. Los Angeles moves 6.6 million containers, and Oakland transfers 2 million.
Law-enforcement officers say that before the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, only 2 percent or 3 percent of TEUs were inspected for illegal or dangerous cargo.
That has changed under a customs law scheduled to go into effect July 1 that requires nations shipping to the United States to install counterterror measures including X-rays, surveillance cameras and patrolling guards. A ship that fails to comply might be barred from an American port.
Adm. Fargo has several cautions about the maritime security initiative: It does not envision a new alliance or a new naval force patrolling the Pacific. The intent, he said, is to "empower each nation to take the action it deems necessary to protect itself in its own waters, thereby enhancing our collective security."
The admiral emphasized that the security initiative would not interfere with national sovereignty but would rely on existing laws and forces. That was intended to alleviate fears among Asians who have cast off Western colonialism since the end of World War II and resent anything that appears to revive Western domination.
----
MP to Be First Tried for Abuses
Proceeding in Iraq to Be Open to Public
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12298-2004May9.html
BAGHDAD, May 9 -- A 24-year-old military policeman will be the first U.S. soldier to face a court-martial in connection with the torture of detainees at the Army-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, military officials announced Sunday.
The trial of Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., will begin May 19 and will be open to the public, the officials said. The Army announced that it planned to hold the court-martial at the Baghdad Convention Center rather than at a military base to give reporters access to the proceedings.
Sivits and five other soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md., were charged in March with the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of about 20 detainees at Abu Ghraib late last year. A seventh soldier from the unit was charged Friday.
Sivits is charged with the maltreatment of detainees; conspiracy to maltreat subordinates, specifically detainees; and dereliction of duty for negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse, cruelty and maltreatment.
Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, who is the commander of the Army's III Corps and oversees day-to-day military operations in the country, referred the charges against Sivits to a special court-martial on Wednesday.
Under the special court-martial, Sivits faces a maximum penalty of one year in confinement, reduction to the grade of a private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay and allowances for 12 months and a fine, in addition to discharge from the Army for bad conduct, according to an Army lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity
A general court-martial has no upper limit on penalties. If Sivits had faced a general court-martial, he could have received a dishonorable discharge, a more severe punishment than a bad-conduct discharge.
A general court-martial also would have taken longer because a preliminary hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing, must be held before the case can be tried. Under a special court-martial, no such hearing is necessary.
Eugene R. Fidell, who practices military law in Washington and is not involved in the case, said the decision to refer the charges to a special-court martial rather than to a general court-martial suggests that "the command has decided he isn't going to get more than a year. . . . Some slack is being cut here."
Telephone calls placed Sunday to Sivits's family were blocked by a screening system. His father said in a telephone interview last week that his son took many of the photographs showing scenes of abuse but was only following orders. "He was asked to take pictures, and he did what he was told," Daniel Sivits said.
Military officials said that conducting the court-martial in the convention center, a cavernous three-story building where U.S. officials hold regular news conferences, would allow Iraqi journalists to observe the trial.
"There was discussion about the best and most proximate location that met both the requirements of justice as well as the fact that if we say they are open, they truly must be open and accessible," the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said of the proceedings. "It is not our intention to hide anything."
Kimmitt emphasized that the soldiers were "innocent until proven guilty," but he also repeated the apologies for the abuse that have become an almost daily ritual for U.S. officials in Iraq.
"There are 135,000 other soldiers out there that are doing the right thing every day," Kimmitt said. "And even though every one of those 135,000 condemn the actions you saw in those photos, they still want you to understand that they're out there doing a good job, trying to do the right thing and trying to accomplish the mission."
In a related development, a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, acknowledged that Bremer had received reports last year from humanitarian groups about poor conditions at the detention centers but did not learn about the severity of the cases until Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, announced an investigation in January.
"The abuse that we were made aware of in January was in a league of its own," said Daniel Senor, the spokesman. "Any reports we received were nothing even remotely comparable in magnitude to the kind of abuse Ambassador Bremer was made aware of in January."
Senor said Bremer had worked on detention issues over several months and had urged the Defense and State departments to accelerate both the release of prisoners not deemed to be dangerous and the transfer of detainees for prosecution in Iraqi courts.
Meanwhile, the Marines said that a convoy carrying detainees slated for release was hit by a roadside bomb Saturday afternoon in western Iraq near the town of Habbaniya, wounding seven detainees. Return fire killed one insurgent. Another insurgent was detained.
----
Iraq prison abuse stains entire brigade
May 10, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040510-122707-7878r.htm
BAGHDAD - The prisoner-abuse scandal has so tarnished the Army's 800th Military Police Brigade that soldiers slated to receive a Bronze Star medal have been dropped from the list, the brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, said yesterday.
"The vast majority of fine, outstanding soldiers in the brigade are paying dearly," Gen. Karpinski told the Associated Press in an e-mail.
After the Army started its investigation into abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison, "many, many" of the soldiers' recommendations for the Army medal were downgraded, Gen. Karpinski said. Her 2,800-member brigade operated 12 U.S. prisons and detention camps across Iraq, including the sprawling Abu Ghraib facility west of the capital, Baghdad.
The Bronze Star denotes heroism, outstanding achievement or meritorious service.
An Army report on the abuses at the prison faulted Gen. Karpinski and other commanders in the brigade and its subordinate battalions, saying leaders paid too little attention to the prison's day-to-day operations.
Previous abuses of prisoners or lapses at the prison went unpunished or unheeded, said the report, written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
Gen. Karpinski's subordinates at Abu Ghraib at times disregarded her commands and didn't enforce codes on wearing uniforms and saluting superiors, which added to the lax standards that prevailed at the prison, said one member of the brigade.
The soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said that commanders in the field routinely ignored Gen. Karpinski's orders, saying they didn't have to listen to her because she was a woman.
Now, that soldier said, his own Bronze Star commendation was quashed after the investigation started.
"I was supposed to get one and so were others. [The recommendations] were downgraded and subsequently kicked out," he said. "There's a stigma of belonging to the 800th. You don't deserve any medals. Everybody thinks it's the 800th that's guilty of these crimes, when it's a subordinate unit."
Some of those turned down for the medals won't get even the simple Army Commendation Medal, the soldier said.
The seven soldiers facing criminal charges in the abuse case, including those posing with naked prisoners, are members of the Army's 372nd Military Police Company, based near Cumberland, Md.
The 372nd is one of more than a dozen companies within the 800th MP Brigade. All are Army reservists, most of whom returned to civilian life in January in the United States.
The vast majority of the soldiers in the brigade and its subordinate units served without incident in Iraq.
Gen. Taguba's report reserves special commendations for two battalions within the 800th that operated well, "with little or no guidance from the 800th MP Brigade": the 744th MP Battalion and the 530th MP Battalion
Gen. Karpinski said the decision to cancel Bronze Star awards was another blow to a demoralized brigade, which was stretched thin across Iraq while handling some of the Army's toughest tasks.
"This will contribute in a large way to the morale of the soldiers who placed their lives on the line every day and survived, despite often seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges," she said.
The general, who works as a business consultant in civilian life, said low morale inside the brigade and at Abu Ghraib was no secret. Soldiers "spoke openly about their concerns" to visiting members of Congress and other high-level visitors.
A personal Web site created by a member of the brigade, Sgt. 1st Class Bill Sutherland, mentions the abuse and calls the 800th a "dysfunctional" unit.
"I'm ashamed that I was with them," he says on his site (http://sgtbilly.smugmug.com). "But I will agree with one thing: the unit was very dysfunctional. From the HHC, to S2, S3 and S4 shops," referring to the brigade's headquarters command, intelligence, operations and supply sections, respectively.
----
CACI Defends Screening of Interrogators
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13013-2004May9.html
CACI International Inc. said yesterday that its interrogators were carefully screened and worked under the supervision of the U.S. military in Iraqi detention centers.
The Arlington government contractor, whose employee Steven Stefanowicz is implicated in an Army report on prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, said in a statement released yesterday that it reviewed 1,600 applications for interrogator positions and sent less than 3 percent on to the military for final approval.
The company also said all of its interrogators had secret clearances that required background investigations and the workers were briefed on military rules of engagement.The statement did not define the rules.
The military dictated "how CACI must operate in Iraq and included the required qualifications for interrogators and other allied specialties. The company has followed these instructions," the statement said.
Stefanowicz is cited in the report as one of four men who were either "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses at the prison near Baghdad.
The company has hired a law firm to conduct its own investigation of the allegations. It reiterated yesterday that none of its employees have been formally charged with wrongdoing and that the company was cooperating with the military's investigation of the abuses.
CACI's statement also supported Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's testimony before Congress last week that civilian contractors are "responsible to military intelligence who hire them, and have the responsibility for supervising them."
The firm again said it would take "appropriate action" against any employee found to have acted illegally. It also said its employees continue to perform a number of duties in Iraq, including interrogation services.
In an interview last night, CACI chief executive J.P. London said the company's contract with the military defined the terms of its service, including length of engagement and pricing. "It's pretty straight forward," he said. "We will provide services to the U.S. military. We don't provide supervisory services over anybody else. That's very clear."
--------
PROSECUTION
First Trial Set to Begin May 19 in Abuse in Iraq
May 10, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/middleeast/10ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 9 - A 24-year-old military policeman from Pennsylvania will be court-martialed here on May 19, the first American soldier to face trial in the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, military officials said Sunday. In an extraordinary gesture to address outrage over the abuse scandal, the military is permitting broad public access to the trial and will invite the Arab news media.
The policeman, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who American officials contend took some of the photographs of Iraqi prisoners that captured the abuse as it unfolded, is one of seven American soldiers to face criminal charges and the first to receive a trial date. There were indications that Specialist Sivits had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing.
The decision to allow a wide level of public access to Specialist Sivits's court-martial appears to reflect a conclusion by American commanders that the abuse and the photographs have severely damaged the credibility of the United States enterprise in Iraq and the country's reputation in the Middle East. While American courts-martial are not usually conducted in secret, it is unusual for the military justice authorities to make them easily accessible to the public.
"It is our endeavor and it is our desire to make the upcoming courts-martial as available as possible," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy chief of operations, said at a briefing here. "We try to make these types of proceedings as transparent as possible. It is not our intention to hide anything."
Six of the seven American soldiers facing trial are believed to still be in Iraq, and General Kimmitt said they would probably be tried here. Any sentences meted out would probably be served in the United States, he said.
In anticipation of intense interest from around the world, General Kimmitt said military officials might hold the trial in Baghdad's convention center, a spacious building with several auditoriums, in the heavily fortified area known as the Green Zone.
Military officials declined to comment in detail about the case, but the speed with which Specialist Sivits's trial was announced, and the type of proceedings he faced, suggested that he had reached a deal with prosecutors that could include testifying against his comrades.
Specialist Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company from Maryland, is charged with maltreatment of detainees, conspiracy to maltreat and dereliction of duty.
Under a proceeding known as a special court-martial, the maximum penalties he could receive would be one year of confinement, a reduction in grade, a forfeiture of pay for 12 months and a fine. He could also be discharged from the Army for bad conduct.
But military law experts said prosecutors could have tried Specialist Sivits in a general court-martial, where he could have faced stiffer penalties. In a general court-martial, Specialist Sivits could have faced a slightly longer term of confinement and a dishonorable discharge, a more severe form of expulsion than that for bad conduct.
"This soldier is not being exposed to the full punishment," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington and an authority on military law. "It may be that they are going to use him as a witness and use him to hammer other people."
Mr. Fidell said it was possible that Specialist Sivits had reached an agreement on a plea and on his sentence. In military courts, sentences are typically decided in a separate hearing, after guilt or innocence is determined or a plea is offered.
Under military rules, Specialist Sivits will be allowed to choose between a trial by one judge or a panel containing a minimum of three soldiers of superior rank. If Specialist Sivits opts for such a panel, he may request that at least one-third of the panel members are, like him, enlisted soldiers. The panel members would decide the punishment.
Besides Specialist Sivits, from Hyndman, Pa., and the six soldiers who also face criminal charges in the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners confined to Abu Ghraib, seven soldiers who held supervisory roles have received letters of reprimand.
Photographs of the abuse, which have been shown around the world and have created a crisis for the Bush administration, show American soldiers standing over Iraqi inmates, some of them naked and in sexually provocative positions. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has taken responsibility for the abuse scandal but resisted pressure from antiwar critics to resign, has said many more shocking photographs and videos of the abuse exist.
Specialist Sivits's role in the scandal is not clear. His unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, provided the guards for the prison. But Specialist Sivits has not appeared in any photos made public. Some military officials say they believe that Specialist Sivits took some of the photos.
In an internal military report on the abuse, Specialist Sivits's name appears on a list of 13 witnesses and suspects. He is designated as one of three suspects.
In a telephone interview on Sunday evening, Specialist Sivits's mother, Sissy Sivits, said the family had little information about his status. "You guys know more than we know," Ms. Sivits said from her home in Hyndman, a small town in southwest Pennsylvania. "How we found out about the court-martial date is on the news. He's not allowed to tell us anything."
"We were told to keep our mouths shut," she said. "I'm not hurting my son any more than he's already hurt."
Ms. Sivits said her son had been trained as a mechanic, not a prison guard, and that it was her understanding he had been ordered to take the photos. She said she did not know who gave the order. She said a military lawyer, Stanley L. Martin, had been appointed to represent her son.
Specialist Sivits's friends and neighbors said in interviews in Hyndman that they were shocked that he was being accused of anything improper. They described him as well liked around town and said that he had excelled at baseball on his high school team in Hyndman, where they said he had graduated in 1998.
Several said he was committed to his military career, and had served in Bosnia before Iraq. They said he fairly recently married a woman who works in health care. One neighbor, Peggy Shroyer, said Specialist Sivits had talked about someday doing the same sort of work as his wife. Ms. Shroyer's husband, Harry Shroyer, said that as a youth Specialist Sivits would help anyone who needed it.
Knowing that Specialist Sivits was a trained mechanic, Ms. Shroyer said, people in Hyndman have been trying to figure out how he wound up in the prison. "We're all asking the same question: Why would they put a guy in the motor pool in a place like that?" Ms. Shroyer said.
Specialist Sivits spent part of his youth riding four-wheelers at the home of Fred Hendrickson, the grandfather of a childhood friend. Mr. Hendrickson said he had officiated at Specialist Sivits's wedding.
"In my opinion, whatever he did, he did under orders," said Mr. Hendrickson, who described Specialist Sivits as well mannered and honest. "I don't think he volunteered to run the camera."
In his remarks, General Kimmitt said the military was particularly mindful of the need to have the Arab news media see American justice being carried out.
"That is one of the reasons why we are considering holding those trials here in the convention center," the general said.
There appeared to be some dismay among Iraqi reporters about the nature of the court-martial, historically a tool for American commanders to enforce order and discipline in their ranks.
At a briefing with an American military lawyer, an Iraqi reporter demanded to know why Mr. Sivits was not being turned over to an Iraqi court.
"It will be a trial with a United States judge," the American lawyer said.
The Iraqi reporter asked, "No Iraqi participation?"
"No," the American official answered. "This is a United States military courts-martial." It seemed likely that Specialist Sivits' trial, and that of the other American soldiers facing charges in the case, would generate strong emotions in Iraq and around the Arab world. General Kimmitt alluded to that when he said that although the trial would be "open and transparent," the defendants would be presumed innocent.
It seemed likely, too, that the case would generate strong emotions among American troops here in Iraq as well. On Sunday, General Kimmitt spoke of the feelings of American troops in Iraq for the abuse carried out by their comrades at Abu Ghraib.
"There are 135,000 other soldiers out there that are doing the right thing every day," General Kimmitt said. "And even though every one of those 135,000 condemn the actions you saw in those photos, they still want you to understand that they're out there doing a good job, trying to do the right thing and trying to accomplish the mission."
Watching General Kimmitt make that statement on television, Mr. Fidell, the military law expert, said lawyers for the soldiers charged in the case might use the general's remarks as evidence to support the contention that the defendants would not be able to receive a fair trial in Iraq.
"His comments are likely to generate some effort to change the venue," Mr. Fidell said.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Hyndman, Pa.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- terrorism
Terrorists court converts
May 10, 2004
By Teresa Cerojano
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040509-111748-3185r.htm
MANILA - Al Qaeda-linked terrorists are recruiting Muslim converts in the Philippines through a network of charities, including one founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, according to security officials and an intelligence report obtained by the Associated Press.
Converts to Islam in this predominantly Roman Catholic country are valuable because they know the lay of the land and can tap into local information and have contacts and access, the authorities said.
"When they use converts, it means they are using people who are familiar with Manila, with Cebu, with the Christian-dominated centers," National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales warned at a recent forum.
Muslim converts landed in the spotlight when at least seven were arrested in March in and around Manila with caches of explosives. Police said one, Redendo Cain Dellosa, confessed that he planted a bomb on a ferry that caught fire two months ago, killing more than 100 people. Dellosa's attorney called it a false confession, extracted under torture.
Government officials estimate the Philippines has about 200,000 Muslim converts, many who worked as migrant laborers in the Middle East before returning to join the nation's 8 million-strong Islamic community.
Philippine Muslims are dwarfed by the sheer number of Christians in this nation of 84 million, but convert groups get by on funds from Arab benefactors and tithing from Muslims in the Middle East.
The government intelligence report identified the Fi Sabilillah Da'wah and Media Foundation as the main local advocate of a radical Muslim convert movement in Christian-dominated Manila and Luzon island.
The group has been headed since 1998 by a man authorities suspect is a terrorist, Ahmad Santos, who now is in hiding. Police and soldiers recently raided the foundation's mosque and office in suburban Quezon City, seizing firearms, explosives and videotapes of jihad activities.
Police arrested Mr. Santos' two wives, but they were released on bail.
The March report links Fi Sabilillah officers to bin Laden's al Qaeda. Fi Sabilillah also has been tied to the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, other fundamentalist groups and a network of foundations set up by bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammad Jamal Khalifa.
A Fi Sabilillah officer, Yusuf Ledesma, denied charges of terrorism and said the Muslim group is being unfairly targeted by a government attempt to whip up anti-Islam hysteria.
"They really have no proof that Fi Sabilillah has ever been involved in any terrorist act," Mr. Ledesma said. "They seem to be using us as props in a propaganda war."
Mr. Ledesma accused police of planting guns and explosives in the Fi Sabilillah office and torturing converts into admitting terror activities.
The intelligence report claims that two Islamic schools, or madrassas, in the northern provinces of Pangasinan and Tarlac were run by Mr. Santos and provided paramilitary training for Muslim converts.
Eight converts - including the accused ferry bomber, Dellosa - were arrested in a 2002 raid on the madrassa in Pangasinan, but were released.
Dellosa was among six suspected terrorist-cell members from the brutal Abu Sayyaf group arrested last month when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said officials had foiled major terror attacks in Manila.
-------- torture
The Israeli Torture Template
Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks
By WAYNE MADSEN
May 10, 2004
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html
With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."
According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.
Clues about worse photos and videos of abuse may be found in Israeli files about similar abuse of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners. In March 2000, a lawyer for a Lebanese prisoner kidnapped in 1994 by the Israelis in Lebanon claimed that his client had been subjected to torture, including rape. The type of compensation offered by Rumsfeld in his testimony has its roots in cases of Israeli torture of Arabs. In the case of the Lebanese man, said to have been raped by his Israeli captors, his lawyer demanded compensation of $1.47 million. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel documented the types of torture meted out on Arab prisoners. Many of the tactics coincide with those contained in the Taguba report: beatings and prolonged periods handcuffed to furniture. In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on "administrative detention." The prisoner was "cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence." If additional photos and videos document such practices, the Bush administration and the American people have, indeed, "seen nothing yet."
Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an interrogator for CACI. According to CACI's web site, "a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and US citizenship" are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its interrogators "have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques."
Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.
In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."
The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon's angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.
The leak of the Taguba report was so radioactive, Daniel R. Dunn, the Information Assurance Officer for Douglas Feith's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy (Policy Automation Services Security Team), sent a May 6, 2004, For Official Use Only Urgent E-mail to Pentagon staffers stating, "THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY." Considering Feith's close ties to the Israelis, such a reaction by his top computer security officer, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), is understandable, although considering the fact that CISSPs are to act on behalf of the public good, it is also regrettable..
The reference to "third country nationals" in a report that restricts its dissemination to U.S. coalition partners (Great Britain, Poland, Italy, etc.) is another indication of the possible involvement of Israelis in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Knowledge that the U.S. may have been using Israeli interrogators could have severely fractured the Bush administration's tenuous "coalition of the willing' in Iraq. General Taguba's findings were transmitted to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on March 9, 2004, just six days before the Spanish general election, one that the opposition anti-Iraq war Socialists won. The Spanish ultimately withdrew their forces from Iraq.
During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?"
When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain's question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI's President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah's Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.
Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America's Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld's neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.
Another person considered by Pentagon insiders to have been knowledgeable about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners is U.S. Army Col. Steven Bucci, a Green Beret and Rumsfeld's military assistant and chief traffic cop for the information flow to the Defense Secretary. According to Pentagon insiders, Bucci was involved in the direction of a special covert operations unit composed of former U.S. special operations personnel who answered to the Pentagon rather than the CIA's Special Activities Division, the agency's own paramilitary group. The Pentagon group included Arabic linguists and former members of the Green Berets and Delta Force who operated covertly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Titan also uses linguists trained in the languages (Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, and Tajik) of those same countries. It is not known if a link exists between Rumsfeld's covert operations unit and Titan's covert operations linguists.
Another Titan employee named in the Taguba report is Adel L. Nakhla. Nakhla is a name common among Egypt's Coptic Christian community, however, it is not known if Adel Nakhla is either an Egyptian-American or a national of Egypt. A CACI employee identified in the report, Steven Stephanowicz, is referred to as "Stefanowicz" in a number of articles on the prison abuse. Stefanowicz is the spelling used by Joe Ryan, another CACI employee assigned with Stefanowicz to Abu Ghraib. Ryan is a radio personality on KSTP, a conservative radio station in Minneapolis, who maintained a daily log of his activities in Iraq on the radio's web site before it was taken down. Ryan indicated that Stefanowicz (or Stephanowicz) continued to hold his interrogation job in Iraq even though General Taguba recommended he lose his security clearance and be terminated for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
In an even more bizarre twist, the Philadelphia Daily News identified a former expatriate public relations specialist for the government of South Australia in Adelaide named Steve Stefanowicz as possibly being the same person identified in the Taguba report. In 2000, Stefanowicz, who grew up in the Philadelphia and Allentown areas, left for Australia. On September 16, 2001, he was quoted by the Sunday Mail of Adelaide on the 911 attacks. He said of the attacks, "It was one of the most incredible and most devastating things I have ever seen. I have been in constant contact with my family and friends in the US and the mood was very solemn and quiet. But this is progressing into anger." Stefanowicz returned to the United States and volunteered for the Navy in a reserve status. His mother told the Allentown Morning Call in April 2002 that Stefanowicz was stationed somewhere in the Middle East but did not know where because of what Stefanowicz said was "security concerns." His mother told the Philadelphia Daily News that her son was in Iraq but she knew nothing about his current status.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Senators Set Hearings on Iraq Prisoner Abuse
May 10, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-abuse-hearings.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Following up on Friday's grilling of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday will question the Army general who wrote a report outlining the abuses.
Senators in the morning will question Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who described egregious mistreatment of Iraqi inmates at a U.S.-run prison near Baghdad, a committee spokesman said on Monday.
In the afternoon, the committee will question Under Secretary of Defense Steven Cambone, who is in charge of intelligence, and other Pentagon officials about the scandal that has sparked international outrage.
In his report completed in March, Taguba cited the ``systematic and illegal abuses of detainees,'' and said between October and December 2003, ``numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.''
With many Democrats calling for Rumsfeld's resignation in the wake of the disclosures, the embattled defense secretary also is scheduled to be back on Capitol Hill this week to talk about the Pentagon's budget at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.
--------
Senators Fault Pentagon as New Photos Emerge
Lawmakers Split on Rumsfeld Resignation
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13028-2004May9?language=printer
Republican and Democratic senators criticized the Pentagon yesterday for what one Republican termed a "systemic failure" in overseeing the detention of prisoners in Iraq but expressed divided opinions on whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should resign in the wake of the scandal over the humiliation of Iraqis and other prison abuses.
As they spoke, a series of new photographs came to light of U.S. military personnel using German shepherd guard dogs to threaten and apparently attack a naked Iraqi prisoner last December at Abu Ghraib prison, where other publicized cases of abuse were photographed and videotaped.
The New Yorker magazine said the photos had been held by a member of the 320th Military Police Brigade, the same unit implicated in other abuses at the prison, west of Baghdad. One photo, which the magazine published, showed the prisoner cowering while the dogs barked; others in the series, which were described, showed a soldier pinning the same man on the ground while displaying a bleeding wound to his leg.
If the sequence was accurately described, it would be the first to surface from the prison that displays an act of deliberate wounding, stretching beyond the humiliation and acts of physical abuse of naked Iraqi prisoners depicted in photos already published.
Although no pictures depicting murder have become public, military investigators are looking into at least two apparent slayings by prison guards since December 2002 and 10 more Iraqi deaths, as well as 10 assaults, at detention facilities under the control of Central Command.
The Pentagon and coalition forces in Iraq had no immediate comment on the authenticity of the photos. But spokesmen reaffirmed to reporters yesterday that the guards were obliged to follow international conventions and Army regulations that require prisoners be protected against bodily injury. The spokesmen said the codes bar the use of torture, as well as prohibit taking photos of individual detainees for anything other than intelligence or counterintelligence.
Particularly tough criticism of the Pentagon's actions came from two Republicans on the armed services and intelligence committees, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.). Although U.S. officials said last week that the problems were aberrations, Graham, a former chief prosecutor for the Air Force, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "it's clear to me that we had systemic failure" within the military and that "we just don't want a bunch of privates and sergeants to be the scapegoats here."
Hagel, a former Army sergeant and Purple Heart recipient in Vietnam, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that "it's still in question whether . . . Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, [Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman] General [Richard B.] Myers can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military," because of the continuing prison abuse revelations.
The Pentagon announced yesterday that the first court-martial for a soldier implicated in the scandal is to be held May 19 in Baghdad's convention center. It will be open to the public. Army Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits stands accused, along with five others from the prison guard force, with cruelty and physical abuse of detainees.
No Pentagon or administration officials appeared on television talk shows yesterday, after a week in which officials were subjected to stiff questioning and lectures from members of the armed services and intelligence committees. The sessions provided the first information Congress has received on the abuse accusations, which surfaced within the Army and were described to Myers and Rumsfeld in January.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) made clear that officials face additional grilling. He plans to chair a hearing tomorrow at which the Pentagon's top intelligence official, Stephen A. Cambone, and Central Command officers who oversee the conflict in Iraq are to testify. An Army report on the abuses said the guards were pressured into harming the Iraqis by military intelligence officers.
Warner also said he expects the Pentagon to surrender today or tomorrow a full copy of the military's scathing internal report, based on an inquiry conducted by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The report, completed in February, was classified "Secret/No Foreign Dissemination" and approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, on May 1; that was a few days before its contents became public.
Annexes to the report, which contain testimony about the abuses and documentary evidence, have remained classified and inaccessible to anyone outside the military. Warner said he was "not able to answer" questions about when the data will be made public.
A request on Saturday evening by Vice President Cheney's office that Rumsfeld's critics should "get off his case" -- according to a statement given to Reuters -- clearly rankled several of the senators who spoke yesterday and who had earlier criticized the Pentagon for tardiness in disclosing the allegations.
Graham said the remark "really bothers me. He [Cheney] says get off his back. Senator Warner's hearing is not 'being on Secretary Rumsfeld's back.' The hearing we're going to have on Tuesday is not 'being on Secretary Rumsfeld's back.' The Congress has an independent duty to find out what happened. It affects us all. . . . We're just doing our jobs."
Kevin Kellems, Cheney's spokesman, would not elaborate on the statement beyond saying: "It was a straightforward, supportive description of Secretary Rumsfeld's exceptional record of service."
Neither Graham nor any other Republican lawmaker called yesterday for Rumsfeld to resign, but their statements of support were guarded. Warner said: "I want to support our president. The president says he's going to stay." Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that he thinks "it would be terribly premature to call for his resignation at this time."
At the same time, McCain castigated those who wrongly, in his view, blurred the distinction between terrorists and detained Iraqis. "I think there was some blurring there that may have accounted" for the abusive actions by U.S. military personnel against Iraqis, he said.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) expressed unalloyed support for Rumsfeld, saying on CNN's "Late Edition" that "you can't give a person who is managing a 2.5 million-member armed forces across the world the responsibility for what happens at 2:30 in the morning in a remote prison in Iraq."
Many Democrats, including Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have said Rumsfeld should go. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the intelligence panel, said on CNN that Rumsfeld, "for the good of this nation, needs to step forward and say, 'As an important act to show we are changing courses . . . I am stepping down.' That would be an act of patriotism."
A similar statement was made by retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a former Democratic presidential aspirant who also said the Iraqi people are likely -- due to these abuses and other problems -- to force a "catastrophic early end to this mission." But two other Democrats who have criticized the administration's handling of the conflict -- Sens. Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.) -- said they worried that Rumsfeld's resignation, by itself, would make little difference because, they believe, the administration's policies are so flawed.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Rumsfeld Criticized by Influential Military Paper
Mon May 10, 2004
By Charles Aldinger
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5092647
WASHINGTON - The independent Army Times newspaper, read widely in the U.S. military, on Monday suggested Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilian and military leaders should be removed over the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal.
"This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war," the private weekly newspaper said in an editorial.
Army Times is one of four such publications owned by the Gannett Co., and has a circulation of about 250,000. The same editorial was carried in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps Times newspapers.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, already facing demands from some Democrats and major newspapers that he quit over his handling of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, said on Friday he would not step down "simply because people try to make a political issue out of it."
President Bush has expressed support for Rumsfeld and said he would remain part of the Cabinet.
Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, have conceded they were too slow to inform Bush of the abuse -- which has stirred major criticism in Washington, Iraq and the Arab world -- but argue the military is investigating the matter and prosecuting those responsible.
"Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have, not only in the United States but around the world," the Army Times said.
"He (Bush) was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his military leaders."
The editorial noted that Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the Army Military Police brigade that ran the Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad, faces possible military action and that seven soldiers have been charged in the matter.
"That's good, but not good enough," the newspaper said.
"The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes."
In congressional testimony on Friday, Rumsfeld took full responsibility for the abuse.
Many U.S. newspapers have demanded Rumsfeld's resignation, including The New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York Newsday, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Detroit Free Press. The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and New York Daily News published editorials supporting him.
----
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
By Kurt Nimmo
May 10, 2004
Press Action
http://www.pressaction.com/2004/002198.html
It's the second week of May and we're closing in on the elections.
If more sadistic reports of prisoner abuse emerge - like the most recent photos showing big guard dogs biting a hapless Iraqi detainee - or something worse, Bush is more or less doomed come November.
How to fix the damage?
Dust off that old CIA song and dance show, al-Qaeda!
"Experts say it is only a matter of time before al-Qaeda or a related Islamicterrorist organization detonates a 'dirty bomb' in America or Europe," reports United Press International. "Prime targets could include this summer's Olympic Games in Athens or the NATO summit in June in Istanbul, which President Bush is scheduled to attend. Last week, Turkey announced the arrest of several alleged members of a cell with links to Al-Qaeda who, investigators say, planned a bombing during the summit."
How in the heck did these flat-footed investigators discover this nefarious al-Qaeda plot to bomb the NATO summit, possibly with a dirty nuke?
Islamic websites!
"Experts ... find that comments on Islamic websites justifying the use of nuclear weapons against the United States is on the increase."
Oh, that cinches it for me!
Never mind that on the internet anybody can claim to be al-Qaeda or Elvis or Santa Claus in a screamin' green jumpsuit.
I wonder if these terr'ists have IP addresses. Or maybe they post from internet cafes in the deepest darkest recesses of Afghanistan. It seems these "experts" spend too much time surfing the net when they should be slogging around in the back woods of the Pakistani frontier looking for honest to Allah terr'ists - say for instance Osama or Omar - in the flesh. But no. It's easier (and safer) to sit in an air-conditioned office and write up useless reports about how evil and demented terr'ists are going to take us out.
Just to make sure we're sufficiently frightened and sincerely appreciate the seriousness of the situation, the Bush Ministry of Disinformation, Fox News division, reports that "Ukrainian security forces seized nearly 375 pounds of a radioactive material seen as a likely ingredient for a 'dirty bomb,' authorities said."
"Dirty bombs use conventional explosives mixed with radioactive material to disperse radiation over a wide area," explains the Nature News Service. "They are a crude way for terrorists to use radioactive materials. The materials do not need to be of the quality required for nuclear weapons: radioactive materials used for industrial or medical applications, which are easier to obtain, would create panic and disruption and a significant radiological health risk."
Sort of like all that depleted uranium in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Serbia.
I bet the Iraqis would be more worried about "panic and disruption" from DU if they were not so desperately trying to nail down a bit for normalcy - to say nothing of electricity and clean water.
It's obvious we're entering that funny season when bombastic neoliberal bags of fetid hot air get on the idiot tube and try to get you to vote for them. It's going to be a real challenge this year telling the difference between Tweedle Dumb (Bush) and Tweedle Dee (Kerry).
It seems Tweedle Dee has a leg up on Tweedle Dumb thanks to all those S/M digital photos floating around.
Of course, Tweedle Dee would be in the same pickle as Tweedle Dumb if he were in the White House. No doubt he'd rattle off a speech about how he intimately understands the horrors of war and such due largely to his stint as a war criminal in Vietnam. Besides, it's obvious Kerry gives a better speech than Bush. It was a tossup for Dubya - stick it out at Yale and actually learn something or go out drinking with his frat buddies.
Bush sorely needs a dirty bomb attack.
If it happens in America he can declare martial law or simply cancel the election. Remember, Bush said there's nothing wrong with a dictatorship so long as he's the dictator. I think it's the most serious thing he ever said.
"In recent weeks FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have all warned that they expect Al Qaeda to try to time a strike inside the United States with the upcoming presidential election," notes the Boston Globe. "Since the March bombings in Madrid, speculation about the impact of an attack on the outcome of the November election has become something of a whispered brain-teaser in Washington."
Brain-teaser?
It's just like the folks in Washington to make everything look like rocket science. I guess they consider it job security and a good reason to up their salaries during midnight sessions.
Tommy Franks spelled it all out for us last December in Cigar Aficionado magazine. Franks said that "the worst thing that could happen" is if the terr'ists get their sweaty paws on and then manage to use "a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties." In Tommy's scenario "the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."
Experiment?
Is that how Jefferson and Madison viewed the Constitution? Hey, it's just an experiment - if it crashes and burns, oh well ... we can go back to being ruled under a monarchy. Or a military dictatorship.
I can distinctly envision Tweedle Bush salivating at the prospect.
But terr'ists would not necessarily have to light off a dirty nuke in Cleveland or Kalamazoo. Just about anywhere in the "Western world" would do, as Franks tells it.
"It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important," warned the Tom Meister.
Last time a retired general warned us about tricky business it was Ike. He told us to watch out for the military-industrial complex. Seems to me the military-industrial complex - under the aegis of guys like Dick Cheney and the neocons - pretty much did what old Ike told us they'd do.
So, let's take stock.
It's May. The Democratic National Convention kicks off in late July and the Republican National Convention runs from August 30 until September 2. I don't know why these guys don't simply hold one convention and save you and me a whole lot of money. After all, there's not a lick of difference between them.
Anyway, there's plenty of time for the terr'ists to get their act together. It shouldn't be too much of a problem since they received all that expensive and fancy training courtesy of the CIA back in the day when they were fighting against the Evil Empire for Reagan and William Casey and Ziggy Brzezinski.
Maybe they're smuggling that Ukrainian radioactive nastiness in under the wire as I write this. Maybe inside one of those unsupervised carrier containers we were repeatedly warned about after 9/11.
Or maybe they won't bother with America and will blow it off in Athens or Istanbul or London or Paris - though probably not France because, as any neocon will tell you, those pantywaist Frogs are in cahoots with the terr'ists. It wouldn't be a good idea for people to get the idea the French are with us in this interminable war on terr'ism. We didn't change "french fries" into "freedom fries" in the Senate cafeteria for nothing.
I don't know though. This whole dirty bomb business is crazy. Is there a reason al-Qaeda would blow off a dirty nuke and thus bring the wrath of Oceania down hard on Eastasia and Osama Goldstein?
Maybe those Islamic terr'ists have a death wish. It figures since the lot of them are suicide bombers. Or is it homicide bombers as Fox calls them?
Maybe they want Junior to invade Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and any other lousy country on Ariel's dartboard. It must be their irrational and savage nature - and because they're jealous of our way of life and such. Or so Tweedle Bush keeps telling us during his meandering press conferences.
But think about it. Cui bono? Exactly who'd benefit from a dirty bomb attack on the Good and the Righteous?
Not the Arabs.
Bush would and so would the neocons and Israel and Halliburton and Bechtel and all the neoliberal carpetbaggers itching to get a piece of Iraq and Iran and Syria and of course - the prize! - Saudi Arabia with its gazillion barrels of black gold so yearned for by the SUV masses.
It'd be worth suffering a little radiation - especially if the radioactive clouds wafted over Istanbul and not Wall Street.
Four more years - or maybe four more decades.
Now that would give the neocons and their Likudnik bosses enough time to "reshape" the Arab Middle East. But don't take my word for it - go ask Charles Krauthammer or Richard Perle or that wild and crazy total war guy, Michael Ledeen.
It's downright scary when Robert Mueller, Tom Ridge, Condi Rice, and a whole lot of "experts" start yammering about sideshow Osama doing a dirty bomb number on that most sacred of events - well, at least for Demopublicans - the hallowed United States presidential election.
Shhh. Do you hear that?
It's Tommy Jefferson rolling over in his grave.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.
----
U.S. Must Find a Way to Move Past Images of Prison Abuse
May 10, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10ASSE.html
WASHINGTON, May 9 - When President Bush travels to the Pentagon on Monday morning for a classified briefing on the Iraq war, the subtext of the conversation will have little to do with the commanders' latest assessments of whether insurgents can be routed from Falluja and Najaf.
Instead, some of Mr. Bush's senior aides conceded in conversations over the weekend, the far larger question hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly become a secondary problem.
Even some of the most vociferous enthusiasts of Mr. Bush's plan to make Iraq the cornerstone of a freer, more democratic Middle East are now conceding privately that their early optimism has been shattered.
Just weeks ago, some of these same officials expressed cautious confidence that once the insurgents were captured or killed, the occupation authority would somehow stumble through the next seven weeks, cobbling together a transitional Iraqi government and making the transfer of sovereignty the crowning symbol of how America liberated a nation from tyranny. But now, they say, the main issue is regaining American political legitimacy as the power behind that transition.
With Arab television stations broadcasting images of the abused prisoners and only snippets of Mr. Bush's vow to punish those responsible, some of Mr. Bush's aides say they fear many ordinary Iraqis can no longer take the risk of backing any plan that carries the American imprimatur.
Worse, aides fear the images are becoming recruiting posters for the insurgents. It is a problem, one senior aide said over the weekend, "that you simply can't solve with the First Armored Division."
Another senior official, insisting on anonymity, put the ugly turn in the American occupation more starkly. "If in the coming months Iraq looks relatively stable and on some path to democracy, this whole issue of abuse will be a tragic problem that was addressed and solved," he said.
But, he continued, "If the wheels come off in the next few months, then it will be an example of how our discipline broke down, and it will be regarded as a signpost on the road" to far worse troubles.
The question facing Mr. Bush, aides say, is a narrow one. Should he order the release of the remaining photographs and videos - even if they contain graphic images, as rumored, of assaults or rapes?
No matter how Mr. Bush handles the question of the graphic evidence, the bigger issue for the war, and for his re-election campaign, is whether he can undo the damage that the revelations have done to his broader political goals for Iraq.
It will be months, maybe years, before anyone will know for certain whether the image of a hooded Iraqi prisoner connected to electrical wires that was splashed across the world's magazine covers last week will become the symbolic image of the American occupation - the way the photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running from an American attack helped turn opinion against American action in Southeast Asia.
But clearly, the prisoner abuse issue is affecting how Mr. Bush talks about the liberation of Iraq. He still tells audiences, as he did in Pittsburgh last month and Cincinnati last week, that "because of our actions, because of the actions by our coalition, Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are closed." But he no longer dwells on such comparisons, perhaps mindful that Mr. Rumsfeld found himself last week rejecting any comparisons between the prisoner abuses and the systemic use of torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons under Mr. Hussein's rule.
In fact, the American abuses appear more a product of poor training, a breakdown of command authority and astoundingly bad judgment than any premeditated plan.
One of Mr. Rumsfeld's most skilled bureaucratic opponents inside the administration, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, drove the point home on CNN last week when he said, "For many of our European friends, what they saw on those horrible pictures is tantamount to torture, and there are very strong views about that." He added, "In the Arab world, there is general dismay and disgust, but in some places we were not real popular to start with."
If Mr. Bush has a strategy for undoing that damage beyond the television appearances he made on two Arab networks last week, White House officials freely admit they cannot describe it.
"I'm not sure such a strategy is possible," one senior official said late last week. "The facts are simply not with us."
-------- us politics
From Texas to Abu Ghraib: The Bush Legacy of Prisoner Abuse
May 10, 2004,
by Heather Wokusch
http://www.heatherwokusch.com/
While administration officials express shock and outrage over allegations of the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners by US forces, a deeper look into Bush's stateside prison-system record shows disturbing similarities.
Despite Taguba's report detailing US "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqi detainees, the President declared, "We acted, and there are no longer mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms in Iraq."
In George Bush's America, denial about inmate mistreatment runs similarly rampant. As Texas governor, Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"
Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared by only Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.
Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."
In September 1996, for example, a videotaped raid on inmates at a county jail in Texas showed guards using stun guns and an attack dog on prisoners, who were later dragged face-down back to their cells.
Funding of mental health programs during Bush's reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row. A prisoner named Emile Duhamel, for example, with severe psychological disabilities and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed "natural causes" but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush's governorship is unclear.
As president, Bush presides over a prison population topping 2 million people, giving America the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. When considering that the US has three times more prisoners per capita than Iran and seven times more than Germany, the nation looks more like a Gulag than the Land of the Free.
Abu Ghraib has left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, but it's worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture, especially a proposal to establish voluntary inspections of prisons and detention centers in signatory countries, such as the United States.
It's not difficult to see why: if even a fraction of Bush's devastating legacy with Texan prisoners has been transferred to the US prison system as a whole, then the scandal over Abu Ghraib will seem like child's play.
The White House also wants to stifle investigation into the roughly 760 aliens (mainly Muslim men) the US government rounded up post-911, ostensibly for immigration violations. Amnesty International reports 911 detainees have suffered "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some corrections officers" and a denial of "basic human rights."
Then of course, there's Guantanamo, where the US is holding hundreds of detainees in top secrecy and without access to courts, legal counsel or family visits. Add to that the roughly 1000 civilians the US imprisons in Afghanistan, the 10,000 civilians thought to be detained in Iraq and who knows how many others across the globe, and it looks as if incarceration is the nation's best export.
But blame can't stop with Bush. A recent CNN poll asking "Is torture ever justified during interrogation?" yielded 47% of respondents answering in the affirmative, which explains why there hasn't been much stateside outrage over prisoner neglect in the past. It's that Faustian with-us-or-against-us mentality rearing its ugly head once again, promising safety but tempting us to dehumanize others and lose our souls in the process.
----
Few friends rush to aid Rumsfeld
May 10, 2004
BY ROBERT NOVAK,
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak10.html
Amid the political firestorm after the Army confirmed maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners, Donald Rumsfeld was provided no cover. It was not surprising that partisan Democrats went for the secretary of defense's throat. The shocker was how few friends of the Bush administration jumped to his aid. There were reasons that transcended the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.
While the White House officially vowed Rumsfeld's retention, there was no reinforcement in his natural political constituency. Last week, I talked to Republican members of Congress, GOP fund-raisers and contributors, defense consultants and even one senior official of a coalition partner. The clear consensus was that Rumsfeld had to go. ''There must be a neck cut,'' said the foreign official, ''and there is only one neck of choice.''
Rumsfeld is paying the price for the way he has run the Department of Defense for more than three years, but the price is also being paid by George W. Bush. From the first months of the Bush administration, I have heard complaints by old military hands that the new secretary's arrogance and insularity were creating a dysfunctional Pentagon. That climate not only limits the government's ability to deal with the prisoner scandal but also may have been its cause.
Rumsfeld is a man of extraordinary talents. When I first covered him almost 40 years ago, he was a House member from Chicago's North Shore whose future seemed limitless. But he alienated the party's Old Guard leadership, the reason he left Congress in 1969 to head the Nixon administration's poverty program.
The Rumsfeld style was apparent when he was still in his 30s and President Richard Nixon named him ambassador to NATO. On his first day in Brussels, Belgium, he publicly humiliated a young briefing officer with a barrage of questions he was not prepared to answer. It was a management technique that he perfected in high federal office and as a successful corporate CEO.
In 2001, a few months after Rumsfeld was brought back for a second hitch at the Pentagon, an old friend of his gave me a disturbing report. A former senior government official who was now a defense industry consultant, he told me Rumsfeld was a disaster waiting to happen. Rumsfeld, insulated by his inner circle, was at war against the uniformed military, the civilian bureaucracy, and both houses of Congress.
This same former official last week told me the Iraqi prisoners fiasco was the inevitable outgrowth of Rumsfeld's management style. ''If it had not happened with this,'' he told me, ''there would have been a different disaster.''
The ''kill the messenger'' syndrome, other Pentagon sources say, clogs up avenues of information.
To well-informed outsiders, Rumsfeld's fate seems assured. Stratfor, the private intelligence service, reported last week: ''The amazing thing is not that the White House is preparing Rumsfeld for hanging but that it has taken so long.'' The report added that Rumsfeld ''consistently managed to get the strategic and organizational questions wrong.''
That harsh view is widely shared inside the Pentagon.
The problem for Bush is that sacking his war minister in time of war is not the same as dismissing a feckless secretary of the treasury. As Rumsfeld's aides circled the wagons last week, his supporters accurately conveyed the adverse fallout with this argument.
The Democrats demanding Rumsfeld's scalp are really aiming at Bush. Rumsfeld's scalp would signify that the war in Iraq is a failure and, by extension, so is Bush. When Rep. Charles Rangel is ahead of the Democratic lynch mob in calling for Rumsfeld's impeachment if necessary, he is pursuing his relentless opposition to U.S. foreign policy.
The solution to Bush's dilemma was hinted at when he promised Rumsfeld would ''stay in my Cabinet.'' That triggered speculation: Would Rumsfeld switch jobs with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice? Would he replace the beleaguered George Tenet at the CIA? Whatever the solution, it was hard to find anyone outside Don Rumsfeld's E-ring at the Pentagon who felt he should remain there.
----
Conservatives Restive About Bush Policies
Fresh Initiatives Sought On Iraq, Domestic Issues
By Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13027-2004May9?language=printer
After three years of sweeping actions in both foreign and domestic affairs, the Bush administration is facing complaints from the conservative intelligentsia that it has lost its ability to produce fresh policies.
The centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy -- the effort to transform Iraq into a peaceful democracy -- has been undermined by a deadly insurrection and broadcast photos of brutality by U.S. prison guards. On the domestic side, conservatives and former administration officials say the White House policy apparatus is moribund, with policies driven by political expediency or ideological pressure rather than by facts and expertise.
Conservatives have become unusually restive. Last Tuesday, columnist George F. Will sharply criticized the administration's Iraq policy, writing: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts." Two days earlier, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now."
The complaints about Bush's Iraq policy are relatively new, but they are in some ways similar to long-standing criticism about Bush's domestic policies. In a book released earlier this year, former Bush Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill described Bush as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people" and said policymakers put politics before sound policy judgments.
Echoing a criticism leveled by former Bush aide John J. DiIulio Jr., who famously described "Mayberry Machiavellis" running the White House, O'Neill said "the biggest difference" between his time in government in the 1970s and in the Bush administration "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl [Rove], Dick [Cheney], [Bush communications strategist] Karen [Hughes] and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics."
Michael Franc, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, said the criticism by O'Neill, Will and Kagan has a common thread: a concern that the administration is "using an old playbook" and not coming up with bold enough ideas, whether the subject is entitlement reform or pacifying Iraq. Conservative intellectuals "are saying, 'Don't do things half way,' " he said.
"It's the exhaustion of power," said a veteran of conservative think tanks who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Ideology has confronted reality, and ideology has bent. On the domestic side, it has bent in terms of the expansion of the government embodied in the Medicare prescription-drug law. On the foreign policy side, it has bent because of what has transpired in the last few weeks in Fallujah."
A Bush spokesman quarreled with that notion, saying there has been no let-up in Bush's policymaking. "We are marching ahead," said the spokesman, Trent Duffy, pointing to Bush's plans for community-college-based job training, space exploration and modernizing health records. "He's continuing to push the policies that have made the country better and stronger."
Part of the current perception of policy fatigue in the White House is a reflection of the political calendar: With a presidential election approaching, there is little possibility that the closely split Congress will enact serious legislation this year regardless of what the White House proposes. "It's a combination of how very challenging it is to move anything in the Senate these days, and it is an election year," said one former Bush aide, who like some of the conservatives interviewed for this article declined to be identified to avoid offending the White House.
But conservative policy experts and a number of former Bush administration officials say there are more systemic reasons for the policy sclerosis. For three years, the president pushed policies conceived during his 2000 campaign for the White House, but with most of those ideas either enacted or stalled, policymaking has run out of steam, they said.
Bush has also discouraged the sort of free-wheeling policy debates that characterized previous administrations, and he relies on a top-down management style that has little use for "wonks" in the federal bureaucracy. At the same time, many of the top domestic policy experts in the Bush White House have moved on to other jobs; in many cases they have been replaced by subordinates with much less experience in governing.
Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, said policy ideas typically bubble up from experts deep inside federal agencies, who put together working groups, draft white papers, sell their wares in the marketplace of ideas and hope White House officials act on their suggestions. In this case, ideas are hatched in the White House, for political or ideological reasons, then are thrust on the bureaucracy, "not for analysis, but for sale," Bartlett said.
The result is a White House that has become unimaginative with domestic policy and, in foreign policy, has struggled to develop new policies to adapt to changing circumstances in Iraq, according to several conservatives.
"In Iraq, you don't see the thinking, 'Things have not happened as we had planned. What do we do now?' " said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, who last week organized a Cato forum entitled "The Triumph of the Hacks?"
Richard W. Rahn, a prominent Republican economist, excoriated the administration's telecommunications, antitrust and international economic policies in a Washington Times column April 30 along similar lines. "From the beginning of the Bush administration, sympathetic, experienced economists have warned its officials about the need to avoid some obvious mistakes," he wrote. "Unfortunately, these warnings have gone unheeded."
In an interview, Rahn said he has grown concerned over what he sees as "a lack of vision and policy consistency" in the Bush administration. "I mean, we knew where [President Ronald] Reagan was heading; at times there were deviations from the path, but we knew what it was all about," he said. In contrast, he said, now "there doesn't seem to be a clear policy vision."
Some attribute the policy lethargy to personnel changes, particularly on the domestic side. For example, three veterans of previous White Houses with lengthy experience in Washington have left their policymaking roles; their successors, though capable, have significantly less policymaking experience.
Joshua B. Bolten, the deputy chief of staff for policy, has been replaced by Harriet Miers, a Texas lawyer and former chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Jay Lefkowitz, director of the Domestic Policy Council, has been replaced by Kristen Silverberg, who was a young aide to Bolten. And Lawrence B. Lindsey was replaced as top economic adviser by investment banker Stephen Friedman.
Likewise, John Bridgeland, a former director of the Domestic Policy Council, was replaced as director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps initiative by Desiree Sayle, the former director of correspondence in the White House. And public-policy professor DiIulio was replaced as chief of Bush's "faith-based" initiative by Jim Towey, who had ties to the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Leading experts in welfare and health policy have left the White House and been replaced by less experienced hands.
"It would be fair to say the policy shop is less policy-oriented in its apparatus and more administratively managed," said a Republican with close ties to the White House.
In interviews, former officials of the current and three previous administrations described Bush's domestic policy team as unusually green -- particularly compared with Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove. At the Cato forum last week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum said Rove is "the top hack and the top wonk" in the White House.
"I don't think he should be the most important wonk in the White House," said Bruce Reed, former domestic policy chief to Bill Clinton and author of an article about how policy "wonks" had been bested by political "hacks" in the current White House. "Every White House takes on the enthusiasms and the interests of the president, and most of the time this president seems to take more joy in the politics than in the policy."
Defenders of the Bush policymaking apparatus agree that the volume of policymaking has diminished significantly from 2001 and 2002, when the White House was fighting for passage of policies developed during the presidential campaign, such as tax cuts and education accountability. But they say the cause is outside the administration.
Frum said much of the policy energy has been channeled into fighting terrorism at home and abroad because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "On the most critical issue of our time, they have been bold, creative, and in some cases, they have shocked the intelligentsia with their assertiveness," he said.
Whatever the cause, conservatives say the remedy to policy malaise won't come until the election. Conservative strategist Jeffrey Bell said the big items on the policy agenda -- such as an overhaul of Social Security -- are necessarily on hold as Bush fights for reelection. "He's having to defend the forward motion he's already had," Bell said. "Reagan in '84 was the same way. People who thought Reagan's creative period was going to end after '83 were wrong. I think Bush will be the same way."
--------
Bush Issues Strong Endorsement of Rumsfeld in Visit to Pentagon
May 10, 2004
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/middleeast/10CND-BUSH.html?hp
President Bush vigorously reiterated his support for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today while promising a "full accounting" of the abuses of prison detainees by American personnel in Iraq.
"You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror," Mr. Bush said after meeting at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld, who stood by his side during the president's remarks. "You're doing a superb job. You are a strong secretary of defense and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude."
The president also said several investigations led by senior military officers were under way to determine responsibility in the prison abuse case, and he said an "orderly and transparent" investigative and judicial process would assure "a full accounting for the cruel and disgraceful abuse of detainees."
"One basic difference between democracies and dictatorships is that free countries confront such abuses openly and directly," he said.
Mr. Bush's statements, bundled with a generally positive assessment of American progress in Iraq, seemed intended to dispel speculation about whether he would compel Mr. Rumsfeld to resign, as well as to restore confidence at home and abroad in the administration's handling of the scandal and to lift morale among the troops in Iraq.
In the face of almost daily attacks on American forces in Iraq, Mr. Bush said, "We're on the offensive against the killers and terrorists in that country, and we will stay on the offensive."
He said the United States military was maintaining pressure "on Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters and other militants" in Falluja, and that in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, an illegal militia was being dismantled. At the same time, the president added, "We're helping to build Iraqi forces that can take responsibility for security."
The president's meeting with Mr. Rumsfeld was scheduled before the scandal erupted late last month, but it acquired new significance in recent days.
Mr. Bush asserted last week that he wanted Mr. Rumsfeld to remain in his cabinet, but revelations in the widening investigation have been accompanied by calls from some top lawmakers and editorial pages that Mr. Rumsfeld consider resigning as part of an effort to salvage American credibility in Iraq and the Arab world at large.
Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, said today that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign but that the administration's task was much greater than deciding whether the secretary should stay or go.
"This is so much bigger than Secretary Rumsfeld," Mr. Biden said today on the CBS "Early Show" program. "There seems to be more concern about political damage control than international damage control. I want to see the president do some swift and positive action here." He added, "I want to see him demonstrate to the world we understand the gravity of this."
Mr. Biden said the fate of Mr. Rumsfeld mattered little. "I don't care if he goes and stands on his head in the corner," he said. "It's less important what happens to him than that we demonstrate to the world that we understand the gravity of this and move on."
While most Republicans appeared to be standing with the defense secretary, concern about the effects of the scandal on the American agenda in Iraq crossed party lines.
Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said on "The Early Show" today that the scandal "will cut directly to the core of our effectiveness" in ensuring a transition of power in Iraq to a sovereign government, scheduled for June 30. "The purpose of America, our motivations, cannot be questioned," he said.
Though Senator Hagel did not call for the removal of Mr. Rumsfeld, who apologized for the prisoner abuse at hearings on both sides of Capitol HIll on Friday, the senator did say that the abuse of prisoners "is an awesome issue that we need to deal with publicly and quickly and move on," adding, "We have a large, large agenda of great international challenges out there that only America can lead with."
The Bush administration is bracing for the expected release of more gruesome photos and inflammatory details of the prisoner abuse.
The New Yorker magazine published a photograph this weekend showing American guards holding large dogs flanking a naked and cringing Iraqi prisoner.
Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has said that the Pentagon will soon give Congress new abuse photos, which legislators will be allowed to view in private.
At least seven people have been criminally charged and six military personnel have been reprimanded in connection with the scandal. As many as 30 investigations are now under way, Senator Hagel said.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
World's hydrogen fuel stations up by 33 pct to 87
REUTERS UK:
May 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25044/newsDate/10-May-2004/story.htm
LONDON - Hydrogen fuelling stations for fuel cell vehicles increased by a third in the past year to a total of 87 worldwide, according to a survey by industry website Fuel Cell Today.
"Probably the most ambitious efforts in creating an infrastructure are currently taking place in California, said the report's author Stefan Geiger. "Many government bodies and organisations have increased their work on hydrogen infrastructure issues and started deploying vehicles for tests."
California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger aims to make the U.S. state the leader in introducing hydrogen-powered cars by building 200 fuel stations this decade. U.S. President George W. Bush has also sought a 43 percent increase in federal spending to develop fuel cells cars and service stations, which cost around $500,000.
But it will be still be a long time before the average motorist fills up their tank with hydrogen instead of gasoline. The costs of manufacturing fuel cell engines as well as storing and distributing the hydrogen are still major hurdles, the report said.
Fuel cells make electricity from hydrogen, producing little or no emissions of greenhouse gases and so are touted as an environmentally friendly power source for the 21st century. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are blamed for contributing to global warming.
The European Union is trying to cut carbon dioxide emissions as part of its commitments to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol, and has introduced DaimlerChrysler fuel cell buses in 10 cities, but its funding still lags well behind the United States and Japan.
Vehicle manufacturers are waiting for a widespread hydrogen network, though energy majors such as Shell (RD.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) and BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) need fuel buyers to justify building that network.
"There is a precedent - 60 to 70 years ago governments across the world spent huge amounts of money on creating national highways and petrol infrastructure," the report said.
The survey found more industrial gas suppliers and equipment manufacturers are now working on cheaper small-scale refuelling facilities, capable of supplying enough hydrogen for just a couple of vehicles per day.
----
Excited Nanocrystals Yield More Solar Power
May 10, 2004
LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-10-097.asp
University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated a process that could lead to a new generation of solar cells producing up to 35 percent more electrical output than current solar cells. Today the most efficient solar cells known convert sunlight to electricity at 32 percent efficiency.
In a paper published April 30 in the journal "Physical Review Letters," scientists Richard Schaller and Victor Klimov describe their observations of high efficiency carrier multiplication in nanoparticles of less than 10 nanometers in diameter made from lead and selenium (PbSe nanocrystals). A nanometer equals one billionth of a meter.
Schaller and Klimov showed how semiconductor nanocrystals respond to photons by producing multiple electrons. This increase in the number of electrons being produced can lead to a greater electrical current output from solar cells.
Exposed to light at the green-blue end of the spectrum, the nanocrystals reacted to absorbing solar photons by producing twice the electrons of conventional bulk semiconductors through a process known as carrier multiplication, the scientists found.
The basic operation of solar cells has remained unchanged over the past 40 years. The absorption of a photon by the solar cell material generates a single exciton - a bound state of a negatively charged electron and a positively charged hole - which undergoes charge separation and produces electrical current.
Traditionally, the single photon produces only one exciton. The rest of the photon's energy is lost as heat. Over the decades, scientists have proposed various methods for improving the efficiency of solar panels, including a method called carrier multiplication.
Carrier multiplication was discovered in the 1950s, but has always been considered an inefficient method for solar energy conversion since it produced, at best, an increase in solar energy conversion efficiency of less than one percent.
But now the Los Alamos scientists have demonstrated that the use of nanoscale semiconductor particles can improve the efficiency of carrier multiplication through an enhancement of the effect called impact ionization.
Impact ionization is a process where an exciton, created in a semiconductor by absorbing a photon, transfers the excess energy that would normally have been lost as heat to another electron. The result of this energy transfer process is that two excitons are formed for one absorbed photon.
Schaller and Klimov have not yet built a working PbSe nanocrystal solar cell, but they are the first to demonstrate the ability to use impact ionization to generate more excitons and a greater electrical current in the solar cell configuration.
Schaller and Klimov are researchers in the Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy group of the Laboratory's Chemistry Division. For more information on their work, go to: http://quantumdot.lanl.gov/online.
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
Nancy Reagan Calls For Stem Cell Research
Former First Lady Makes Plea in Speech
From News Services
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12862-2004May9.html
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Former first lady Nancy Reagan endorsed stem cell research Saturday night and made an impassioned call for taking the controversial procedure out of the political arena, saying it could help cure illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease, which afflicts her husband.
Such research is generally opposed by political conservatives and many antiabortion groups because it involves the destruction of days-old human embryos. President Bush signed an executive order in 2001 limiting research to existing embryonic stem cell lines.
But Reagan and others believe the use of stem cells taken from embryos could lead to cures for such illnesses as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, which afflicts Reagan's husband, former president Ronald Reagan.
"Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him," she said at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation dinner. "Because of this, I'm determined to do whatever I can to save other families from this pain. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this."
Nancy Reagan became one of the first conservative public figures to support human embryo research when she first spoke in favor of it more than three years ago.
Letters from former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton supporting her efforts on embryonic stem cell research were read to the dinner by actors Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Absent was any comment from the Bush administration, which has placed severe restrictions on stem cell research because it can involve using cells from human embryos.
Organizers of the event, which was expected to raise $2 million, said it was the first time that Reagan had made a public speech on the issue although her views have long been known.
She added after accepting the group's caregiver award: "Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. . . . We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more."
Actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease and is a supporter of stem cell research, said Reagan was taking the issue out of politics.
"For someone like Mrs. Reagan to step outside of political or ideological groupings and just speak to what she believes . . . can help people is tremendously valuable," he said.
A growing number of state and private efforts designed to skirt federal restrictions are underway, most notably in California, where a measure is expected to qualify for the November ballot. The measure would provide the state's scientists and biotechnology industry with $3 billion in stem cell research funds. The California measure is being led and supported by wealthy celebrities.
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
World Bank Panel Details Problems at Yacyretá Dam
May 10, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-10-03.asp
The World Bank funded Yacyretá Hydroelectric dam on the Paraguay-Argentina border has harmed the lives and environment of about 4,000 families, a nongovernmental organization representing them has complained to the Bank. In response, the Bank asked an independent Inspection Panel to review the project. On Thursday, the panel reported that the families have legitimate grievances.
The group, the Federación de Afectados por Yacyretá de Itapúa y Misiones (FEDAYIM), claimed the Bank violated its own policies and procedures in relation to the design and implementation of the Yacyretá project, which received World Bank loans totaling $878 million between 1979 and 2002.
The World Bank Board of Executive Directors Thursday discussed the panel's findings, and also management's official response to the review.
The Yacyretá Hydroelectric dam controls the Parana River on the Paraguay-Argentina border. (Photo courtesy Entidad Binacional Yacyretá) Edith Brown Weiss, who chairs the Inspection Panel, said that the "Yacyretá investigation has been the most complex ever undertaken by the panel."
Brown Weiss told the Board that the Bank complied with its policies and procedures in some areas of concern, but not in many others.
On the major environmental issues raised in the FEDAYIM request, the panel found that the Yacyretá reservoir did not cause flooding of urban creeks, contaminate the Parana River, or spread diseases.
But the panel did agree with FEDAYIM that the dam was at times being operated at a higher level than provided for in the project's legal agreements.
While the panel found that the biophysical impacts from the major dam and reservoir were being managed competently, the panel stated that a number of important environmental problems remain at the resettlement sites.
There was inadequate evaluation of the environmental impacts of roads, water, sewerage and drainage facilities at the resettlement sites, the panel found.
On social issues, the panel said that the Bank fell short on implementing its policy on the resettlement of families and businesses affected by the Yacyretá project. The project will require the relocation of infrastructure and resettlement of a total of about 33,000 people on both banks of the river.
The panel determined that a number of people were omitted from a 1990 census used to establish compensation and resettlement benefits.
Alternative resettlement sites were not considered; there was no transparent and independent procedure for hearing grievances, and the impacts of resettlement sites on adjacent areas were not fully assessed, the panel determined.
The report highlighted a need for improved project supervision, better census and survey data, wider public disclosure of information, and more effective consultations with affected groups.
Power lines leading from the Yacyreta dam (Photo courtesy Entidad Binacional Yacyretá) Bank management noted that some of the project's problems stemmed from a series of extended economic and political crises in Argentina and Paraguay, and "resulting delays and uncertainties that have significantly increased the cost of the project."
Currently, a lack of funds is preventing the project operator, Entidad Binacional Yacyretá (EBY), from completing the project and realizing the full generating capacity of the dam.
"The inspection panel's review strengthens the case of the Paraguayan and Argentinean citizens' groups who oppose filling the Yacyretá reservoir," said Glenn Switkes, Latin America program director of California based International Rivers Network.
"The Inspection Panel also confirmed that the reservoir has been routinely operating at one meter above its 'official' level, adversely affecting still unresettled riverbank communities, and possibly generating additional energy than officially accounted for," Switkes said.
"We are extremely grateful for the work of the Inspection Panel, and the positive relationship we have enjoyed during this process," said David de Ferranti, World Bank vice president for Latin American and the Caribbean. "Its findings are constructive, and we believe the Action Plan we have put together responds to the issues raised in the panel's report."
The action plan proposed by the World Bank management has three themes:
- Support of EBY's social communication program aimed at clarifying what compensation schemes are available to affected communities, reducing uncertainty of those awaiting resettlement, and providing a forum for people to get information and express opinions.
- Assist in development of a dispute resolution mechanism that would provide a suitable means of addressing concerns, without undermining the appropriate role of the judiciary as the last resort for dispute settlement.
- An improved supervision and monitoring framework that would include twice-yearly Bank supervision missions to Yacyretá, expanded documentation of subjects raised by affected communities, suitable budget capacity for high levels of supervision, and the addition of a civil society specialist and an urban planner to the project team.
The Bank's Executive Directors approved the management action plan, and welcomed management's decision to provide them with a progress report that will detail what further measures will be taken to address problems identified by the panel. The Inspection Panel will review management's action plan and implementation measures for the Board.
This report, which will be provided within 90 days, will include progress made in the implementation of the Bank's action plan and additional measures identified, including social and economic impacts of the project and measures taken with respect to the 2,416 families already relocated and the 6,000 families waiting to be relocated in Paraguay.
Progress on implementing grievance procedures for affected people will be covered as well as decisions taken with regard to the water level in the reservoir and its potential impacts.
The report will also address what the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is doing with respect to Yacyretá, and how the IDB and the World Bank have been collaborating on issues identified during the inspection.
But this approach does not go far enough to address the underlying problem of corruption, government and nongovernmental sources say.
The persistent allegations of massive corruption at the $11 billion project are now under investigation by official commissions in both Paraguay and Argentina.
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Photo courtesy OFfice of the Senator) The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, is including Yacyretá in an investigation of corruption in World Bank funded projects. The first public hearing is due to open on May 13.
The Bank welcomed the committee's review, and Bank officials said they will cooperate with Senate officials.
In a letter to World Bank President James Wolfensohn date April 20, Senator Lugar noted Yacyretá's $8 billion cost overrun and asked if the World Bank has "considered ordering an internationally accepted financial audit of the Yacyretá Dam project."
"Perhaps the crucial issue involving Yacyretá - its sordid history of corruption - was dodged by the Inspection Panel," says Switkes.
"It difficult to imagine that the World Bank did not know that billions of dollars was being siphoned off from the project, when they had to approve all contracts with consultants and construction companies. An independent investigation of the role of international banks and corporations in the financial aspects of the project is urgently needed."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Iraqi activists push for better treatment of prisoners
In Baghdad Sunday, former prisoners and human rights activists in Iraq spoke out against abuse by coalition troops
By Annia Ciezadlo
The Christian Science Monitor
May 10, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0510/p07s01-woiq.html
BAGHDAD - For months, Iraqi human rights groups say they tried vainly to alert the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the abuse of detainees by coalition troops at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers across Iraq.
But now, in the wake of devastating photos of abuse that have shocked the Arab world, Iraqi human rights activists have the spotlight. And they're using the international attention to push for fundamental changes in the way the US-led occupation deals with thousands of prisoners.
"All of the things that have come to light now were well known to the CPA and all the humanitarian organizations that came to Iraq, but they didn't do anything about it until the pictures came out," says Muhammad Adham al-Hamad, the head of the Iraqi Prisoners and Captives Union, an association of human rights workers. "We informed the CPA about this, we informed all the humanitarian organizations, but they didn't do anything about it until they saw the pictures."
For human rights activists like Mr. Hamad - the majority of whom work for shoestring organizations - this is one of those "I told you so" moments. Sunday, Iraqi activists sponsored a press conference in Baghdad to allow former prisoners to come forward and tell of abuse they say has long been ignored.
Relatives also came forward, though human rights workers emphasized that they will be wary of those who try to exploit the situation.
"For a long time, we have been trying to have our voice reach those responsible for the inhumane conditions that most detainees in Iraqi prisons are experiencing," says Bassem al-Rubaie, director of the Council of Legal Defense Care, a group of Iraqi lawyers that has been campaigning for prisoner rights for the past year.
"There are those who did not believe what we were telling them, there are those who did not care, and so our voice was lost," says Mr. Rubaie. "And then the terrible conditions appeared before the entire world, and there was condemnation from all over the world, including the occupation forces."
In recent days, US-led occupation authorities have been battling charges that they ignored early warnings of the abuse of prisoners. Dan Senor, the spokesman for US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer, said on Friday that Mr. Bremer was "made aware of the charges relating to the humiliation" in early January, when military officials began an investigation into complaints by a US soldier about humiliations of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a notorious Saddam-era prison now being used by coalition authorities.
But that same day, officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross contradicted Mr. Senor's statement, saying they alerted occupation authorities of abuses "on several occasions, orally and in writing, throughout 2003."
At a press conference in Geneva, Red Cross operations director Pierre Kraehenbuehl stated that while occupation authorities did respond to some allegations of abuse, the treatment of prisoners remained "unacceptable."
The Red Cross, which is charged with monitoring violations of the Geneva Conventions on human rights, does not make such allegations public for fear of being barred from prisons. Instead, it gathers testimony from prisoners and reports directly to the governments involved.
But Mr. Kraehenbuehl did confirm that a summary of a report in the Wall Street Journal was genuine. Published on Friday, the report described the beatings and killings of Iraqis by coalition prison guards, as well as the shooting of unarmed prisoners by guards firing from towers inside the prison. It also described US guards forcing Iraqi prisoners to parade in front of each other wearing women's underwear.
Kraehenbuehl stated that he did not think the abuse was confined to Abu Ghraib. "What we have described amounts to a pattern and a broad system," he said.
In Baghdad, similar pleas for attention went unheard. For months, the Baghdad-based Human Rights Organization asked to meet with US officials and discuss the abuse of detainees, they say. It wasn't until last month, says Adel al-Allami, that US officials agreed to talk to the group.
Now human rights groups like Mr. Allami's are trying to get reforms in place before international interest wanes.
Rubaie's group has issued a list of demands to occupation authorities, including giving all prisoners access to both lawyers and information about their cases, as well as the right to file complaints about their treatment in jail.
The human rights group says minors should be separated from the general population. They also have demanded that no prisoner be held indefinitely unless charged with a crime, and that the Iraqi justice ministry oversee the prison system.
Other demands include keeping accurate records of all prisoners and guaranteeing sanitary conditions throughout the entire facility.
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2,000 march against guns
May 10, 2004
By S.A. Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040509-113713-5352r.htm
About 2,000 people celebrated Mother's Day yesterday by attending a Million Mom March rally at the Capitol to demonstrate support for extending the nation's ban on assault weapons.
The crowd gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol for speeches by figures such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who called for intervention by President Bush to continue the federal ban on military-style weapons, such as AK-47s.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who entered politics after her husband was killed in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting by Colin Ferguson, urged the crowd to pressure their congressmen to extend the gun ban.
"Let's make this land safe for our police officers, our children, our moms and dads," Mrs. McCarthy said. "Let's go out, and get them."
The prohibition of the sale and manufacture of assault weapons is set to expire in September. Mr. Bush has said that he would sign into law an extension of the ban, but the Republican-controlled Congress has signaled a willingness to let the ban expire.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, said Congress was wasting time on trivial matters such as changing the names of post offices, while the assault-weapon ban languishes. He told the crowd that they have the power to prod Congress to action.
"They need to be more afraid of the moms going to the ballot booth than they need to be afraid of the [National Rifle Association]," Mr. Van Hollen said.
He also called for expanding the ban to cover more rifles, such as the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle used in 2002 Washington-area sniper attacks that left 10 persons dead.
"In Iraq, we are fighting to get AK-47s off the streets," Mr. Van Hollen said. "What about the terror right here on our streets at home?"
After the rally, the demonstrators - many wore pink and white Million Mom March T-shirts and some held photographs of children killed by gun violence or hoisted placards emblazoned with slogans such as "Halt the Assault" and "Assault Weapons are WMD," or weapons of mass destruction - marched down Constitution Avenue to the Washington Monument.
The event served as a kickoff for the Million Mom March organization's national campaign to extend the gun ban. The group's 26-foot pink recreational vehicle embarked from the rally to similar demonstrations planned for the next four months in cities nationwide, including Richmond; Raleigh, N.C.; St. Louis and Denver.
Donna Dees-Thomases, founder of Million Mom March, which first drew national attention to its anti-gun violence cause with a march in Washington on Mother's Day 2000, said the group aims to enlist five dedicated activists in each congressional district to lobby for the assault-weapons ban.
By targeting congressional districts, she said, the group could preserve the gun ban with fewer than 2,000 workers - a fraction of the Million Mom March's ranks.
"We have more people than the NRA," Mrs. Dees-Thomases said. "The majority of legitimate gun owners agree that we don't need AK-47s and Uzis on our streets."
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Conductor Protests At Israeli Ceremony
Associated Press
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13400-2004May10.html
JERUSALEM, May 9 -- Controversial conductor Daniel Barenboim angered Israeli officials Sunday when he criticized the country's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as he accepted a prestigious Israeli award.
In his acceptance speech for the Wolf Prize at Israel's parliament, Barenboim said Israel's policy toward the Palestinians contradicted the humanist values on which the state was founded in 1948.
"Can a situation of occupation and control of another people be reconciled with [Israel's] declaration of independence?" he said.
Barenboim, who was born in Argentina and raised in Israel, is music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and general music director of the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra.
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Mother's Day Rally for Assault Weapons Ban
May 10, 2004
New York Times
By GLEN JUSTICE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/national/10MOMS.html
WASHINGTON, May 9 - Carrying homemade signs and photographs of loved ones killed by gunfire, gun control advocates used a Mother's Day rally on Sunday to begin a campaign to lobby for renewal of a ban on assault weapons.
The rally, the Million Mom March, attracted about 2,500 people, its organizers said. It focused on supporting legislation to renew the 1994 ban on semiautomatic assault rifles, which is to expire in September.
The legislation is unlikely to move forward in the Republican-controlled Congress, and gun control advocates hope to make it an election year issue. They plan to travel to swing states and elsewhere to lobby, hold rallies and try to enlist local elected officials and police chiefs in calling attention to the bill, which focuses on guns like the AK-47, Uzi, Tec-9 and Street Sweeper.
"I think we've got a real chance to change the politics on this," said Michael D. Barnes, a former Maryland representative who is now president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "We know we are in for a real struggle, but it's winnable."
The battle pits the Brady Campaign, which has merged with the Million Mom March, against the National Rifle Association.
"I don't see the stomach for it on Capitol Hill," said Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.'s executive vice president, in an interview on Sunday.
House legislative leaders said last year that there would be no effort to renew the ban. Though senators supported it this year, tacking it onto another gun bill, that legislation was ultimately voted down.
By traveling to political battleground states, gun control advocates hope not only to sway Congress, but also to pressure President Bush into working to get the bill passed.
"He got the Congress to declare war in Iraq," said Donna Dees-Thomases, the founder of the Million Mom March. "He can get us to stop declaring war on ourselves."
Mr. Bush has supported the ban on assault weapons and has said he will sign the extension if it reaches his desk. His opponent, Senator John Kerry, has also backed it.
But advocates on both sides of the issue, and some lawmakers, say Congress will never act on the bill unless the president requests it.
"You can't just say you will sign a bill," said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York. "If he has the political will, it will be done."
A White House spokesman, Brian Besanceney, said he did not have a list of the president's meetings with legislators on the weapons ban, but, he said, "The president's position on this issue remains unchanged."
Mr. LaPierre called the Federal Assault Weapons Act "a needless law that hasn't accomplished anything" and said the N.R.A. would lobby against it.
Gun rights supporters also held a rally on Sunday a few blocks away from the White House. Organized by Second Amendment Sisters, a group of women who support gun rights, the rally drew several hundred.
"Self-defense is a basic human right, and a firearm is the most effective means of self-defense," said Maria Heil, the group's spokeswoman.
Like Mr. LaPierre, Ms. Heil said she did not believe Congress would act on the bill extending the ban. She said the rally was timed to coincide with the Million Mom March because "we can't let them go unanswered." Gun-related killings have declined in the last decade. The latest statistics available show there were 10,808 in 2002, according to the Department of Justice. That is down from a high of 17,048 in 1993, the year before the assault weapons ban was passed.
But killings, especially those involving children, still capture attention. In Washington last week, Chelsea Cromartie, 8, died while playing in a relative's living room when a stray bullet struck her in the head.
The story dominated local news, and the child's death was invoked at Sunday's gun control rally, which was held on the lawn in front of the Capitol.
"In the name of Chelsea, we stand strong and tall," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in Congress. "The N.R.A. has met its nemesis."
The rally offered a preview of some of the appeals that advocates will take nationwide.
A massive quilt was on display, with each square containing the story of somebody marching. Many were written by marchers with a loved one killed by gunfire. Politicians, religious officials and families of those killed all spoke.
"These are not guns for the marksman," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "These are guns for those who spray and kill en masse."
Byrl Phillips-Taylor of Virginia, holding a picture of her 17-year-old son, who she said was killed with an assault rifle in 1989, said she would lobby tirelessly for the bill, as she did in the early 1990's.
"He was with me in the halls of Congress before, and he'll be with me again," she said in an interview. "That way they have to look at him."
Ms. Dees-Thomases, who helped organize the first Million Mom March in Washington in 2000, which drew hundreds of thousands, said it was those efforts that mattered.
"This was about coming here and looking at the Capitol, then going home and calling your congressman," she said.
Courtney C. Radsch and Brian Wingfield contributed reporting for this article.
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The art of war
A Cal Poly exhibit is raising controversy, but student curators and artists say that's just part of the educational process
Patrick S. Pemberton
Mon, May. 10, 2004
The San Luis Obispo Tribune
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/living/8632835.htm
At the opening for Sabiha Basrai's exhibit, "Art for the Peace Movement," friends wrote glowing comments in a gallery guest book. But after a photo in the Mustang Daily, the Cal Poly campus newspaper, featured one of the exhibit's pieces - depicting a burned U.S. flag - critical letters to the editor followed.
Despite negative reactions, Basrai said, the exhibit caused students to think about something other than homework or weekend plans.
"That's really important to me," said the Cal Poly art and design senior, whose exhibit included statistics on casualties in the Iraq war. "I don't think that's something the average student at Cal Poly thinks about."
At a fairly conservative campus like Cal Poly, curator Natalie Mathews said, the exhibit stirred emotions. But it also prompted students to view the show.
"It's interesting to see people come look at art and have a reaction to art," said the sophomore.
The University Union Gallery, located on the second floor of the student union, solely features art created by Cal Poly students.
For the students who display there - and they don't have to be in the art program - the gallery represents a busy venue.
"This is the first opportunity for me to display my work outside of class," said Rachelle Kam, a senior whose tarot card art exhibit is set to open tomorrow.
While students can also display art at the University Art Gallery across campus, that gallery also includes exhibits from professors and other professionals. And, unlike the University Art Gallery, the curator of the UU Gallery is always a student, who is responsible for everything from artist recruitment and display to promotion and event planning.
They also have to take the heat for controversial shows.
"Cal Poly's philosophy is to learn by doing," said Amie Hammond, program coordinator for Associated Students, Inc., the student body organization that oversees the gallery. "And we try to put that to use."
The curator of the gallery, a paid position, is chosen by a committee consisting of the outgoing curator, an ASI staff member and a human resources administrator.
"We don't expect someone to come in completely prepared to run a gallery," Hammond said. So the committee normally looks for someone with an art background with potential for growth.
Mathews had no curating experience before she took the job in September. But now she has seven shows under her belt - something she can put on her resume. For each show, she seeks the artist or artists to display, works on press releases and fliers to promote the show and sets up the opening night - which might include food, a band or dancers.
The current exhibit features watercolors of Iraqi children who have developed leukemia from depleted uranium weapons. It also features a pencil drawing of President Bush sitting atop a pile of human skulls, photos of antiwar protesters and a poster of a burned flag.
Basrai, a student activist, said she has wanted to express her feeling about the war through her art.
"It's a combination of me trying to educate people and me trying to share how strongly I feel about this," she said.
Even though Mathews has only curated seven shows, Basrai's wasn't the first to stir up controversy. A previous show, depicting several spiritual paintings created by a Christian student, raised questions from some who thought it violated a separation of church and state.
Other shows have featured photos of well-known music acts and a show that focused on the human body, which raised awareness about eating disorders.
Now Mathews and Kam are preparing for the next opening. Just recently, they created an advertisement, along with press releases. A tarot card reader is scheduled to appear.
For Kam, the gallery offers a glimpse of what it's like to show work off campus.
"Even if I get a handful of people, that will be great."
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Honduras protests threaten mining investment
Story by Gustavo Palencia
REUTERS HONDURAS:
May 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25045/newsDate/10-May-2004/story.htm
TEGUCIGALPA - Protests at Honduran mining sites are threatening to scare away international investment in the nation's rich gold, silver, zinc and lead deposits, industry and government officials say.
Environmentalists and civil groups are in constant protest over Honduran mining activities, which consist mostly of open pit excavations run by four main outfits, three of them subsidiaries of Canadian companies and one that is Honduran.
"If we cannot put a stop to these anti-development groups and mining and exploration companies continue to be attacked, then they will simply leave and no new companies will come in to take their place", Enrique Rodriguez, the president of the Honduras National Association of Mining and Metals, told Reuters in an interview this week.
The pressure already looks poised to unseat the Canadian company Maverick, which pressure groups say has an exploration permit that infringes on a nature reserve.
Honduran President Ricardo Maduro, under growing pressure from ecologists, citizen groups and even the influential Catholic Church to put an end to mining activities, said on April 15 he would revoke Maverick's permit by August.
Maverick's legal representatives in Honduras refused to comment.
"There are other countries that are giving miners a better reception and despite having the (mineral) resources we have, we are letting investments get away," said Rodriguez.
In 2003, Honduras exported 975,000 ounces of gold, 840,000 ounces of silver, 80 million pounds of zinc and 13 million tonnes of lead, the government mining fund DEFOMIN said.
The value of Honduran mineral exports more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2003, to $89 million from $22 million.
Protesters say their fight is to save the environment from the scars open pit mines inflict on the tropical landscape.
"We will continue to oppose mining in Honduras, especially of the open pit variety because of the destruction to forests and the environment and the threat of contamination," said Juan Almendarez, of the Madre Tierra environmental organization.
Miners who claim protests are blown out of proportion say they fix whatever damages they cause by planting trees over lands they have cleared.
"This atmosphere of protests in the country is being fanned by minorities," said Juan Castro of DEFOMIN. "We have a legal and competitive environment that will surely attract the mining investment we hope for."
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Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut
May 10, 2004
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey/
Image: http://www.inthesetimes.com/images/28/14/monkey.jpg
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America's becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who've said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:
Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?
How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. ...
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does "A.D." signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.
Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?
No problem. That's entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.
Mel Gibson's next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, "History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."
The same can be said about this morning's edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
So there's another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.
Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls' basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:
I often think it's comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It's practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren't one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.
If some of you still haven't decided, I'll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you're for the poor, you're a liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative.
What could be simpler?
My government's got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
We're spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call "Native Americans."
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.
So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven't noticed, they've already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you'll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I've been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn't seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I'll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver's license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't like TV news, is it?
Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
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