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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Power 'Can't Stop Climate Change'
Government cites LANL after plutonium inhalation
Los Alamos workers inhaled plutonium
China, N Korea hold emergency meeting after nuclear test threat
Court awards compensation to widow of Italian soldier in DU-related case
New Accord a Modest Step to Ease Nuke Danger
Iran Rebuked Amid Nuclear Fears
Talks on North Korea Nuclear Program End
N. Korea Says It Can 'Show Flexibility'
US, N.Korea Emerge from Talks Poles Apart
Nuclear weapon, not a dirty bomb
Los Alamos Workers Inhaled Plutonium
Ohio Threatens Lawsuit to Stop Nuke Waste
Above-Ground Uranium Storage Planned in Tennessee, Despite Concerns
Entergy: promise to pay doesn't kick in until uprate
Bill Omits Funds for Nuclear Waste Storage
MILITARY
2 U.S. Marines Killed in Afghan Attack
U.N. Chief to Join Powell in Sudan to Try to Halt Massacres
Briton Condemns Proposed U.S. Trials
The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction
China's military threat
Foes of U.S. in Iraq Criticize Insurgents
U.S. Forces, Iraqi Police Take Action After Attacks
Iraqi Insurgents Are Surprisingly Cohesive, Armitage Says
Army Used Speed and Might, Plus Cash, Against Shiite Rebel
U.S. Attacks Falluja as Iraqis Renew Hint of Martial Law
Israel Troops Kill 7 Palestinians in Raid
U.S. and European Union Pledge NATO Aid for Iraq
Faulty Air Switch In Astronaut Suit Ended Spacewalk For American
CIA Analyst Assails War on Terrorism
Axis of Deceit
Kofi Annan requests the Ukraine to protect the UN personnel in Iraq.
U.N. Hopes U.S. Won't Pull Peace Forces
More GIs At Prison May Face Charges
Over 60 Days, Troops Suppressed an Uprising
Former CIA Contractor to Be Jailed Until Trial in Afghan Prisoner Assault
C.I.A. Contractor to Be Held Till Trial
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ashcroft's Gulag
Security for GOP Convention Detailed
U.N. Investigators Appeal to U.S.
F.B.I. Sees Delay in New Network to Oversee Cases
UK police help anti-torture move
POLITICS
9/11 Panel Links Al Qaeda, Iran
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
An Outsider Tries to Shake the 'Spoiler'
Cheney Owns Up to Profanity Incident and Says He 'Felt Better Afterwards'
OTHER
White House Tries to Rein In Scientists
ACTIVISTS
Ireland Welcomes Bush With Protests
Turkish Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters
War Protesters Gather in Boston and Conn.
Library group to poll on Patriot Act usage
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Power 'Can't Stop Climate Change'
Saturday, June 26, 2004
by the lndependent/UK
by Geoffrey Lean
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0626-05.htm
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=535576&host=3&dir=507
Nuclear power cannot solve global warming, the international body set up to promote atomic energy admits today.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which exists to spread the peaceful use of the atom, reveals in a new report that it could not grow fast enough over the next decades to slow climate change - even under the most favorable circumstances.
The report - published to celebrate yesterday's 50th anniversary of nuclear power - contradicts a recent surge of support for the atom as the answer to global warming.
That surge was provoked by an article in The Independent last month by Professor James Lovelock - the creator of the Gaia theory - who said that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source could prevent climate change overwhelming the globe.
Professor Lovelock, a long-time nuclear supporter, wrote: "Civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."
His comments were backed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's former PR chief, and other commentators, but have now been rebutted by the most authoritative organization on the matter.
Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change. However, it has long been in decline in the face of rising public opposition and increasing reluctance of governments and utilities to finance its enormous construction costs.
No new atomic power station has been ordered in the US for a quarter of a century, and only one is being built in Western Europe - in Finland. Meanwhile, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden have all pledged to phase out existing plants.
The IAEA report considers two scenarios. In the first, nuclear energy continues to decline, with no new stations built beyond those already planned. Its share of world electricity - and thus its relative contribution to fighting global warming - drops from its current 16 per cent to 12 per cent by 2030.
Surprisingly, it made an even smaller relative contribution to combating climate change under the IAEA's most favorable scenario, seeing nuclear power grow by 70 per cent over the next 25 years. This is because the world would have to be so prosperous to afford the expansions that traditional ways of generating electricity from fossil fuels would have grown even faster. Climate change would doom the planet before nuclear power could save it.
Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear energy analyst, told The Independent on Sunday last night: "Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top." But he added that closing existing nuclear power stations would make tackling climate change harder.
-------- accidents and safety
Government cites LANL after plutonium inhalation
06/26/2004
Associated Press
http://kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=11921&cat=4HEALTH
(Los Alamos-AP) -- Los Alamos National Laboratory says it's been cited for an incident last summer in which two workers inhaled plutonium.
The U.S. Department of Energy issued the violation under the Price-Anderson Act, which is the law governing worker and public-safety issues at nuclear facilities.
The incident occurred August 5, 2003, when two workers were doing an inventory of cans of plutonium residues stored at Technical Area 55. That's the lab's main plutonium processing facility.
The workers evacuated the room after an alarm sounded. Physical exams indicated both had inhaled plutonium.
The lab shut down some plutonium-processing operations for eight months following the incident and has implemented a new safety and security process.
Lab officials say the workers have returned to work.
----
Los Alamos workers inhaled plutonium
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, June 26, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=BRF%20Plutonium%20Inhalation
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- The U.S. Department of Energy has cited Los Alamos National Laboratory for a safety violation because two workers inhaled plutonium.
The accident happened last summer at the main plutonium processing facility, the lab reported Friday.
The workers were conducting an inventory when an alarm sounded, the lab said. The workers evacuated the room but medical exams showed skin contamination with the radioactive metal and evidence that both had inhaled plutonium.
They have returned to work, according to the lab.
Los Alamos officials said they shut down the facility for eight months and have since implemented a new safety and security process.
The violation would normally carry a fine of $770,000, but the University of California, which manages the lab for the DOE, is exempt as a nonprofit institution.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there is little health risk from external exposure to plutonium, but inside the body it can damage the kidneys and its radiation can create a risk of cancer.
On the Net:
Los Alamos: http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/
-------- asia
China, N Korea hold emergency meeting after nuclear test threat
6/26/2004
(AFP)
http://www.financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=6/26/2004§ion_id=2&newsid=14017&spcl=no
BEIJING, June 25: North Korea and its closest ally China held an emergency meeting here Friday after the Stalinist state threatened to test a nuclear device, as South Korea moved to limit the damage.
US, Japanese and South Korean delegates to six-nation talks under way here on North Korea's nuclear drive agreed not to let Pyongyang's rhetoric derail the quest to find a solution to the standoff, a South Korea official said.
"The United States and other delegates think it is neither appropriate nor helpful to continue a debate over this matter," said a South Korean delegate.
"They think it more important to handle this in a cool-headed manner and to help talks proceed well."
The unexpected meeting between the two communist countries delayed Friday's start of the six-nations talks that also include Russia. The meeting finally got under way more than two hours late at 0343 GMT, Japanese officials said.
North Korea renewed its threat to conduct a nuclear weapons test in one-on- one talks Thursday between US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean head negotiator Kim Kye Gwan.
The Stalinist regime said the test could be conducted if the United States did not accept the North's proposal that it would freeze its nuclear programmes in exchange for compensation, US officials said.
An official in Washington stressed that the threat made was not new and he believed Pyongyang would continue to give "careful and serious" consideration to the latest US plan to end the nuclear crisis.
"The discussion was not confrontational, threatening or brinksman-like but a long exchange of views and no one left the room in a huff," he said.
"It did not come across as an attempt to scuttle the talks." He also said the United States would also look carefully into the North Korean proposal.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher meanwhile told reporters that nine parties had agreed to provide energy aid to North Korea if it dismantled its nuclear weapons network under the fresh, more flexible US plan tabled here.
"We know that nine US parties, some of our friends and allies in the talks, are prepared to provide energy assistance to North Korea, non-nuclear energy assistance, once the programme is stopped and we're starting to move down the road," Boucher said.
The US plan calls for a step-by-step dismantling of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programmes in return for aid and security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation.
-------- depleted uranium
Court awards compensation to widow of Italian soldier in DU-related case
26 June 2004
by ICBUW, BanDepletedUranium.org
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=130
A court in Rome has ruled that the Italian Ministry of Defense must award Euro 500,000 in compensation to the widow of Stefano Melone, a soldier who had served in the Balkans.
During one of his missions in Kosovo, Mr Melone had come into contact with remnants of war contaminated with depleted uranium. In 2001, at the age of 40, he died from a rare form of cancer, which doctors had attributed to radiation exposure.
Since then, his widow Paola Melone has sought to hold the Italian government accountable for the death of her husband along with 26 other veterans who have been exposed to depleted uranium and died from rare diseases.
-------- india / pakistan
New Accord a Modest Step to Ease Nuke Danger
by Praful Bidwai,
June 26, 2004
Antiwar.com editorial
http://www.antiwar.com/bidwai/?articleid=2854
NEW DELHI - Six years after they blasted their way into the world's nuclear club, India and Pakistan have taken some welcome, if tentative, steps in recent days toward nuclear-risk reduction and confidence-building, which they say would "promote a stable environment of peace and security."
But the steps are small and may prove inadequate in reducing the nuclear danger in tension-ridden South Asia.
The agreement signed on Sunday revisits and repeats some crucial formulations of the Lahore summit of 1999 on substantive issues.
But they include two significant new measures. One of them is to establish a "dedicated and secure" hotline between India and Pakistan's foreign secretaries or chiefs of diplomatic service, and to upgrade the existing hotline between their directors-general of military operations, which is supposed to be activated once every week.
This measure is meant to prevent misunderstandings and "reduce risks relevant to nuclear issues." The second new step is to "work towards concluding an agreement with technical parameters on pre-notification of flight testing of missiles." Under this, the Indian and Pakistani governments will furnish each other more details on the timing of future missile test flights and their flight paths.
An eventual agreement on this will mark a minor improvement on the practice that India and Pakistan have followed for more than a decade, that is, even before their 1998 tests, to warn each other of impending flight tests.
These measures are welcome because they promote transparency and at least put the issue of nuclear-risk reduction on the negotiating table as part of the ongoing India-Pakistan dialogue process.
But they do by no means end, or even temporarily freeze, the Pakistan-India nuclear and missile races. They also do not address the gravest danger that South Asia faces - the actual use of nuclear weapons, whether by intent or accident.
The only reliable way of reducing this danger would have been to agree not to deploy nuclear weapons and to separate nuclear warheads from their delivery systems (missiles, aircraft, ships, etc.). Once nuclear weapons are deployed in the field, there is a definite risk that they might be used - unauthorizedly, unintentionally, or by design.
But New Delhi and Islamabad did not agree to non-deployment - even for a limited period such as one or three years.
Equally necessary for security in South Asia is a bilateral agreement to freeze missile development and put a moratorium on test-flights. But New Delhi and Islamabad fought shy of this. They only agreed to notify each other about missile test-flights.
This means their missile development will continue unabated. This will bring the deployment of nuclear weapons closer.
The specific danger of missile development in South Asia is India and Pakistan's physical proximity and the extremely short missile flight-time - three to eight minutes - in which it is near impossible to defuse a crisis.
Even more glaring is the hesitation by both countries in declaring an unequivocal and categorical moratorium on nuclear explosive tests through a bilateral pact.
Instead, each side only "reaffirmed its unilateral moratorium on conducting further nuclear test explosions."
But they added a fatal condition in the very same sentence - "unless, in exercise of national sovereignty, [either state] decides that extraordinary events have jeopardized its supreme interests." This significantly devalues the value of a mutually agreed test ban.
A hotline between their chief diplomats is welcome and will facilitate communication and clearing of misunderstandings, especially in crisis situations. But these officers are not the key decision-makers in respect of nuclear military matters.
A hotline at a far higher, political, level would have been more relevant, similar to what existed between the U.S. president and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1980s. Functionally, such a communication link can better promote confidence-building and constructive engagement.
In South Asia, all recent positive steps toward a dialogue for peace and reconciliation have come from top political or even military leaders, not from establishment diplomats or bureaucrats, including foreign secretaries.
Nevertheless, the agreed steps could promote a modest degree of friendly confidence-building.
As Pakistani official Masood Khan put it: "There is progress. There has been a thaw. There has been an understanding and movement towards dialogue and confidence-building and constructive and consistent engagement. ... The spirit right now in the nuclear realm is to transcend bizarre rhetoric and do something substantive and concrete. That is the intent of the delegations that met here."
This must be balanced against the risk that India and Pakistan might be taking by aiming their nuclear confidence-building too low. That is exactly what they did at Lahore-1999, their first attempt at confidence-building and risk-reduction after the nuclear tests.
Despite an agreement there to promote security, and attempts to appear to be "responsible" nuclear states, India and Pakistan within a few months fought a bitter mid-sized conventional conflict at Kargil in Kashmir.
During that war, and again in 2002, they repeatedly exchanged nuclear threats. This exposed the inadequacy of the Lahore agreements on nuclear and missile confidence-building. Two other points in the latest India-Pakistan agreement are noteworthy for their negative implications.
First, the two say their nuclear capabilities are based on their "national security imperatives" and "constitute a factor for stability."
It is extremely doubtful if genuine security considerations or actual threat perceptions led them to cross the nuclear threshold in 1998. And it is plain that nuclear weapons have not promoted stability. Rather, they have been an immensely destabilizing factor in the security environment. Their possession has encouraged nuclear saber-rattling and adventurism.
Second, India and Pakistan have called for "regular working-level meetings to be held among all nuclear powers to discuss issues of common concern," and agreed to "bilateral consultations on security and non-proliferation issues within the context of negotiations of these issues in multilateral fora."
This means they demand some form of recognition of their nuclear status from the five original nuclear weapons states accepted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
There is not a single word about nuclear disarmament in the India-Pakistan agreement, not even as a long-term goal, however distant.
This spells the danger of complacency and inaction in the face of South Asia's extraordinarily high potential for a nuclear conflagration - the highest such risk anywhere in the world.
-------- iran
Iran Rebuked Amid Nuclear Fears
June 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-eu-usa-iran.html
SHANNON, Ireland/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States, the European Union and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog condemned Iran on Saturday for deciding to resume a production process that could make purified uranium for an atomic bomb.
They urged Iran, which says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, to rethink its decision to produce parts again for centrifuges that can purify uranium. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, said he hoped the move was temporary.
But a joint U.S.-EU statement, issued after talks between President Bush and European leaders in Ireland, stopped short of threatening new action to punish Iran for breaking a deal it struck with Britain, France and Germany.
``The United States and the European Union expressed united determination to see the proliferation implications of Iran's nuclear program resolved,'' the statement said.
``In this connection, the U.S. and EU were disturbed by Iran's recent announcement of its intention to resume manufacturing and assembly of centrifuges and called on Iran to rethink its decision,'' it added.
Echoing EU and U.S. concerns, ElBaradei said: ``I hope Iran will go back to the full suspension they have committed themselves to.''
In the first Iranian reaction to the EU-U.S. statement, a newspaper editor appointed directly by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hinted that the country might now consider pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
``The (EU-U.S.) statement shows Iran is reaching its last option in having access to peaceful atomic energy, that is pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,'' said Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hardline Kayhan daily. A letter from Iran to the IAEA, seen by Reuters, told the agency that Tehran ``intends to resume, under IAEA supervision, manufacturing of centrifuge components and the assembly and testing of centrifuges as of 29 June.''
IRANIAN RETALIATION
Iran's decision was a retaliation against an IAEA resolution last week that ``deplored'' Iran's failure to cooperate fully with IAEA inspectors.
But Iran also pledged in the letter to continue to allow IAEA inspectors access to nuclear sites for short-notice, intrusive inspections under the IAEA's so-called Additional Protocol, which Tehran signed last year but has yet to ratify.
Asked when the IAEA would be inspecting a site in Tehran called Lavizan, where all the buildings have been razed and the topsoil removed, ElBaradei said ``soon.'' However, there was no evidence that Iran was hiding anything there, he added.
Washington says Iran razed the site in an attempt to cover up signs of activities related to what it says is Tehran's secret atom bomb program.
Tehran denies wanting nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear program is aimed solely at generating electricity.
Iran promised France, Germany and Britain in October it would suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons, in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology.
Centrifuges are machines that purify uranium gas by spinning at supersonic speeds.
Germany, Britain and France have adopted a strategy of engagement with Iran that contrasts sharply with the U.S. policy of isolating Iran and threatening it with U.N. Security Council sanctions for violating its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
-------- korea
Talks on North Korea Nuclear Program End
Saturday June 26, 2004
By SOO-JEONG LEE
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4248511,00.html
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BEIJING (AP) - Envoys ended six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program Saturday with a promise to discuss steps toward dismantling it and to meet again by September, but they cautioned that the U.S. and North Korean positions remained far apart.
The four-day talks produced no breakthroughs, but diplomats said they agreed to discuss how to define the North's initial moves toward disarmament, how they would be monitored and what kind of aid the impoverished nation could expect in return.
``The problems start from here,'' said Japan's chief delegate, Mitoji Yabunaka. ``This is the first step, at the entrance. From now starts the work on concrete measures.''
A key issue appeared to be how far North Korea had to go to qualify for energy aid and other benefits offered by Washington, which is demanding that the North dismantle the program completely.
Other participants were China, Russia and South Korea.
``It's difficult to say this round of talks was a big success, but there was a progress somewhat with the United States showing a forthcoming attitude,'' said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.
``The talks won't end with one or two more meetings,'' said Koh. ``But I think there will be progress little by little in the future because they were able to make general outlines.''
Two previous rounds of six-nation talks, held at a walled government guesthouse in Beijing, produced no major progress on the stated goal of North Korea's negotiating partners: a nuclear weapon-free Korean Peninsula.
North Korea offered this week to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for energy, the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions and removal from Washington's list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
The North said the freeze would be a step toward eventual dismantling.
The U.S. proposal requires the North to go further, disclosing all its nuclear activities, helping to dismantle facilities and allowing outside monitoring. That plan would withhold some benefits for later to ensure the North cooperates.
A statement Saturday by China, the meeting's chairman, said the parties ``agreed in principle to hold the fourth round of the six-party talks in Beijing by the end of September 2004.''
Lower-level discussions will be held ``at the earliest possible date to define the scope, duration and verification ... for first steps for denuclearization,'' as well as compensation for the North, the statement said.
China canceled a closing ceremony scheduled for Saturday and titled the final declaration a ``chairman's statement,'' rather than a joint statement - signaling how far apart the negotiators were.
Despite their differences, the South Korean envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, was optimistic, saying the talks involved ``substantial discussions'' of the competing U.S. and North Korean proposals.
But China's envoy said there were ``a number of differences and even opposing ideas'' between Washington and Pyongyang, which have no official relations.
``There is still a serious lack of mutual trust,'' Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
North Korea and the United States have been at odds for years over the North's nuclear weapons program.
The latest dispute flared in October 2002, when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said North Korean officials told him it had a secret program in violation of a 1994 agreement.
The North then expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted an idle nuclear reactor. Washington and its allies retaliated by cutting off aid that had been supplying the energy-starved North with 500,000 tons of free oil per year and stopped work on two promised nuclear power plants.
North Korea said its freeze offer this week covered all nuclear weapons programs and included a pledge not to make, transfer or test nuclear weapons.
But it said Washington had to take part in providing energy aid - a step that isn't included in the U.S. proposal.
``If the United States gives up its hostile policy toward us ... we are prepared to give up in a transparent way all plans related to nuclear weapons,'' a North Korean official said on Friday.
--------
N. Korea Says It Can 'Show Flexibility'
Possible Dismantling of Nuclear Arms Programs Tied to Broader Aid Package
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6596-2004Jun25.html
BEIJING, June 25 -- The North Korean government on Friday expressed willingness to compromise with the United States about ending its nuclear weapons programs, saying it would "show flexibility" if U.S. officials improved their offer of energy aid from South Korea and agreed to provide some assistance itself.
In an unusually mild statement read by a North Korean official as six-nation talks in Beijing neared a close, North Korea emphasized it might be willing not only to freeze "all facilities related to nuclear weapons" but also to dismantle them. The North Korean government also refrained from publicly berating the United States as it had during the past two rounds of the talks.
But U.S. officials here said North Korean negotiators continued to deny the existence of a secret uranium enrichment program that the Bush administration and its allies insist must be disclosed and dismantled as part of any deal. One senior U.S. official described the two sides as "far from agreement."
"There's some good, some bad, some a little ugly, but not as much as has been the case in the past. The results would have to be described as mixed so far," said the U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. "There are no breakthroughs." During the talks, the Bush administration presented a more specific proposal for resolving the 21-month standoff, offering North Korea the possibility of energy aid from South Korea, security assurances and other benefits during a three-month test period if it promised to disclose and end its nuclear weapons programs.
North Korean delegates on Friday described the proposal as "constructive," the same language they used the day before, and told the U.S. negotiating team that the proposal "was being very carefully studied in Pyongyang," the U.S. official said. Officials expect the talks to end Saturday with a plan to continue discussions at a working-group level.
In exchange for a freeze of its nuclear programs, North Korea wants the United States to remove it from a list of terrorist nations and lift economic sanctions, the North Korean statement said. The North Korean government also asked in the statement that the United States "participate in providing" it with a 2000-megawatt energy capability, about the same amount that would have been generated by two light-water reactors the United States and its allies had promised to build for the Pyongyang government in a deal that fell apart in 2002.
"Compensation is a necessary element of creating trust," the North's statement said, adding that its freeze would begin once the compensation was delivered. But the statement also said that if the United States agreed to take part in providing energy aid, North Korea was "willing to show flexibility" about its demands on the sanctions and the terrorism list. The U.S. proposal envisions South Korea and perhaps other countries providing the North with heavy fuel oil at the start of its freeze, but the United States would not provide energy aid until after North Korea began dismantling its nuclear programs.
The North also said in the statement that its freeze would cover "all facilities related to nuclear weapons," including nuclear materials that have already been reprocessed, and that it would pledge not to build, test or transfer nuclear weapons. "What we are saying is that we will not only freeze these facilities, but if the conditions are met, we'll dismantle these facilities," it said.
North Korean negotiators made a similar declaration during the talks, and they specified that the offer included a key facility in Yongbyon that the North has said produces plutonium for use in bombs, according to the U.S. officials.
The U.S. officials described the statements as helpful, but said that North Korea was still not clear in describing what other facilities, programs and materials are covered by its proposal and that it has not provided many details about how it would dismantle its programs as opposed to simply freezing them.
A major problem, they said, is that the North continues to deny operating a secret uranium enrichment program. The current crisis began in October 2002 after the U.S. government confronted North Korea with evidence of the program, which violated a 1994 agreement to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for oil and other aid. At the time, the Bush administration says, North Korea admitted it had a uranium program.
In its statement, North Korea appeared to suggest that its government had had difficulty reaching a consensus to offer a freeze, saying it "required a large political commitment."
On Thursday, North Korea's chief envoy said in a private session with U.S. negotiators that some people in his country want to test a nuclear weapon and might do so, apparently referring to military hard-liners, U.S. officials said. "It was not phrased as a threat," said the senior U.S. official, but "we made clear that we would certainly not welcome any such thing and that any such thing would be a very unwise choice."
--------
US, N.Korea Emerge from Talks Poles Apart
June 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-talks.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and North Korea were as far apart as ever on Saturday after nuclear crisis talks, with Washington insisting Pyongyang disclose its uranium enrichment program.
The communist North denies such a program, the issue that triggered a crisis 20 months ago and led to three rounds of inconclusive six-nation talks in Beijing.
The third round closed with agreement to meet again before the end of September and a pledge to take the first steps to resolve the crisis ``as soon as possible.'' Working-level talks would be held in late July, Russia's envoy to the talks said.
China's chief negotiator, Wang Yi, said the main gap was between the United States and North Korea.
``There are serious differences between the two sides over the uranium enrichment program,'' Wang told a news conference.
The parties had agreed that a freeze of the North's nuclear activities should be a first step, he said.
North Korea stressed its readiness to freeze plutonium-based nuclear facilities but refused to accept the U.S. demand that it admit to having a uranium enrichment program, which can be used for making bombs, a diplomatic source in Beijing said.
North Korea also rejected proposals by the United States and Japan to allow International Atomic Energy Agencyexperts to inspect its nuclear facilities for verification. The source said Pyongyang had demanded a ``different form of inspection.''
U.S. OVERTURE
North Korea pulled out of international agreements on non-proliferation and threw out IAEA inspectors just weeks after the crisis erupted in October 2002, when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted to a clandestine nuclear program.
It also reactivated its mothballed atomic plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
The discussions in Beijing were buoyed at the outset by the first detailed U.S. proposal. It offered Pyongyang security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for North Korea agreeing to fully dismantle its nuclear programs.
The U.S. overture was its first detailed proposal since President Bush took office and labeled the reclusive North part of an ``axis of evil'' alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he hoped North Korea would respond positively to the offer.
``I have always been saying you need to offer North Korea security guarantees and you have to offer economic assistance.
``But North Korea also has to understand that they need to make a firm commitment to completely abandoning any weapons program and accepting full verification,'' he added.
At a European Union-U.S. summit in Ireland, President Bush and European leaders called for the ``complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement'' of Pyongyang's nuclear program, including uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.
In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said North Korea's proposal to freeze its plutonium-based nuclear facilities ``could be a first practical step toward a settlement.''
``The main thing is to keep the negotiating process going in order to find a compromise,'' he told Itar-Tass news agency.
Analysts described the talks as having made modest progress, mainly because the United States appeared more flexible.
``That both the United States and North Korea are calling the proposals 'constructive' is something,'' said Noriyuki Suzuki, chief analyst at Radiopress News Agency in Tokyo.
``But North Korea mainly wants to resolve things that can be seen with the eyes, like the Yongbyon plant, while the United States is more interested in things such as the North's uranium program. So there's still a gap,'' Suzuki said.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear weapon, not a dirty bomb
June 26, 2004
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040625-080827-7909r.htm
In an otherwise excellent call for action to stop nuclear proliferation, The Washington Times mistakenly reports that a NATO "dirty bomb" simulation last month projected 40,000 deaths and 300,000 injuries, ("A warning about WMD," Editorial, Friday). That NATO simulation was of a full-scale nuclear weapon, not a dirty bomb. Last fall, NATO did simulate detonating a dirty bomb. The result: 20 deaths, though a lot of fear and panic.
MICHAEL LEVI Science and Technology Fellow Foreign Policy Studies Brookings Institution Washington
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Workers Inhaled Plutonium
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Plutonium-Inhalation.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has cited Los Alamos National Laboratory for a safety violation because two workers inhaled plutonium.
The accident happened last summer at the main plutonium processing facility, the lab reported Friday.
The workers were conducting an inventory when an alarm sounded, the lab said. The workers evacuated the room but medical exams showed skin contamination with the radioactive metal and evidence that both had inhaled plutonium.
They have returned to work, according to the lab.
Los Alamos officials said they shut down the facility for eight months and have since implemented a new safety and security process.
The violation would normally carry a fine of $770,000, but the University of California, which manages the lab for the DOE, is exempt as a nonprofit institution.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there is little health risk from external exposure to plutonium, but inside the body it can damage the kidneys and its radiation can create a risk of cancer.
On the Net:
Los Alamos: http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/
-------- ohio
Ohio Threatens Lawsuit to Stop Nuke Waste
Saturday June 26, 2004
By JOHN NOLAN
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4246965,00.html
CINCINNATI (AP) - Ohio's attor'ney general said Friday he will sue the U.S. Energy Department if it attempts to remove radioactive waste from a former uranium processing plant without a drawing up a plan to store the waste permanently.
The state of Nevada has threatened to sue the Energy Department to block its plan to ship the silo waste by truck from this year through 2006 to the department's Nevada desert site. With that plan in limbo, Ohio officials fear the waste will be removed from the silos only to be temporarily stored elsewhere at the Fernald site, which for almost 40 years processed uranium for the production of nuclear weapons.
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro said his state would object to temporary storage of the waste at Fernald, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, because it could create environmental and health risks.
Under a cleanup plan that environmental regulators reached with the Energy Department years ago, the waste now stored in three concrete silos would be removed for permanent disposal elsewhere, Petro noted in a letter sent Friday to the Energy Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Petro sent his letter to comply with a provision of federal environmental law requiring notice of intent to sue, said his spokeswoman, Michelle Gatchell.
The Energy Department has not said it plans to move the waste to another location at Fernald, but department spokesman Joe Davis said officials are trying to stay on schedule, which calls for removal of the waste to begin this month.
The Energy Department has promised to give Nevada 45 days notice before shipments begin. That notice hasn't been given yet, Energy Department officials said Friday.
Cleanup of the Fernald site is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006.
-------- tennessee
Above-Ground Uranium Storage Planned in Tennessee, Despite Concerns
Associated Press
Jun 27, 2004
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBWFO8YZVD.html
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - Construction of an above-ground storage complex for bomb-grade uranium will begin in August despite auditors' concerns about the design, federal officials said.
An earlier proposal had called for partially burying the Y-12 National Security Complex, but U.S. Department of Energy spokesman Steven Wyatt said building the $250 million facility above ground will be "more flexible and cost-effective."
That decision comes despite a March DOE inspector general's report that questioned whether such a design would provide enhanced security. It also said the structure, which is expected to be completed in 2007, would cost more than a below-ground facility to build and operate.
Uranium stocks from around the Y-12 plant are to be consolidated in the new facility under heightened security,
The approved design was recommended by BWXT, which replaced Lockheed Martin as Y-12's contractor in late 2000. Lockheed Martin had proposed partially burying the uranium vaults at the weapons plant.
Critics say an above-ground facility could harm security efforts.
"Instead of guarding one side of the building, you have to guard five," Peter Stockton, a security analyst with the nonprofit watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, said of the design earlier this year.
Dennis Ruddy, president of BWXT and the plant's general manager, disagrees, saying that burying the vaults wouldn't automatically enhance security.
"Then you've got to have sensors in the building that would tell you if somebody is burrowing in under the ground," Ruddy said. "If the facility is sitting out there and you've got a guard tower on every corner, you just have to look out the window to see if anybody's monkeying around."
In a May policy speech, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the Y-12 uranium facility would be a model for "applying security oriented construction techniques and technology to the problem of securing materials."
-------- vermont
Entergy: promise to pay doesn't kick in until uprate
By David Gram,
Associated Press
June 26, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2004/06/26/entergy_promise_to_pay_doesnt_kick_in_until_uprate/
MONTPELIER, Vt. -- A spokesman for Entergy Nuclear said Saturday the company does not believe it will need to pay Vermont utilities money due to an outage at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
The comment from Entergy's Robert Williams came two days after a nuclear watchdog group asked regulators to investigate whether two June 18 fires at the Vernon plant were tied to modifications made as Vermont Yankee pursues a plan to boost its power output by 20 percent.
Entergy made a deal with the state Department of Public Service last November under which it agreed to pay the retail utilities including Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and Green Mountain Power Corp. if the power increase caused outages that forced the utilities to buy more expensive power elsewhere.
The Public Service Board conditionally approved the planned power boost in March, incorporating the November agreement into its conditions. Entergy's request is still pending before the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
During an outage in April, Entergy made an estimated $60 million worth of modifications at Vermont Yankee, betting that the NRC, which has never rejected a request by a nuclear plant to increase power, would grant this one.
Two fires on June 18 -- a major one around the plant's transformer and a smaller one in the turbine building -- caused an automatic shutdown of the 32-year-old reactor. It has remained idled since, forcing the retail utilities to buy more expensive power from other sources.
Williams said on June 18 that the transformer was replaced two years ago and that the new one was larger -- to accommodate the higher power levels expected after the plant got permission to boost its output.
But on Saturday he said the company is not conceding that the fire was related to modifications made for the power increase -- or "uprate," as such an increase is known in the nuclear industry.
"We haven't ascertained whether this (the fires) was related to equipment that was upgraded," Williams said Saturday.
He also said that Entergy believes that its promise to pay the utilities if an uprate-related outage forced them to buy more expensive replacement power is not effective, because the plant hasn't yet increased its power output.
"It's our view that the agreement becomes effective when we produce uprated power," Williams said.
In its March 15 order, the board said the agreement applies "for three years following uprate."
But it also said that, under certain circumstances, Entergy would pay the utilities for lost power if there were a reduction in output due to plant modifications before power output increased.
The anti-nuclear New England Coalition petitioned the board on Thursday to investigate the fires and determine whether they should result in payments to the utilities for being forced to buy more expensive power.
That group's Raymond Shadis said the language in the agreement between Entergy and the Department of Public Service was unclear.
"It's what happens when you have a hastily, poorly drafted agreement," he said. "There's room for disagreement. Our reading of it is that the uprate began when the board gave permission to make those modifications. The issue isn't whether they can crank out extra power."
Shadis argued that common sense would indicate that if the fires are attributed to changes made as part of the planned power boost, the November agreement should apply.
"If a mechanic does repairs on your car and the repairs are guaranteed, but the repairs result in a fire before you get your car out of the shop, are they going to say the guarantee only applies if you were driving down the highway?"
-------- us nuc waste
Bill Omits Funds for Nuclear Waste Storage
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6535-2004Jun25.html
A long-standing federal plan to permanently store waste from the nation's commercial nuclear reactors under a Nevada mountain was thrown into question yesterday when the House passed a key spending bill containing no funds for that purpose in 2005.
The White House and congressional supporters of the proposed waste repository beneath Yucca Mountain launched a hectic last-minute effort to add money for the project. But the attempt failed after Nevada legislators and fiscal conservatives expressed strong opposition.
Funding for the huge project, which could eventually cost as much as $60 billion, may yet be salvaged. The Senate has not taken up its version of the legislation, and ways could be found to solve the problem when House and Senate negotiators reconcile their bills later this year.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) has a plan to impose a one-time surcharge on electricity users to raise an additional $440 million to continue development of the site next year.
"Yucca Mountain is a national priority," said Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee panel that approves the Energy Department's annual budget. "This needs to be resolved at some point. We've spent too much money already on it."
Hobson's state is home to several major nuclear utilities that are running short of secure storage space for spent fuel rods and other radioactive materials from their operations. Creation of a single repository away from urban areas is a top priority of numerous power companies that are major contributors to Republicans.
But supporters acknowledged yesterday that they face serious problems after the House, 370 to 16, approved a $28 billion energy and public works bill that includes funds for Yucca Mountain. The measure allocates $131 million to continue designing facilities at Yucca Mountain for Defense Department nuclear waste, but nothing for further work on permanent storage of materials from 72 commercial reactor sites in 33 states.
Hobson and other supporters of Yucca Mountain blamed the White House budget office for "miscalculations" that led to the situation.
The Energy Department requested $749 million for non-defense nuclear waste disposal in 2005, a substantial increase that it figured would put the Nevada project on firm long-term financial footing.
But the White House budget office assumed that Congress would make the sharply increased resources available from fees that the nuclear utilities pay annually into a Nuclear Waste Fund, set up in 1982 to deal with the problem.
That legislation, however, has not been forthcoming, and a report prepared under Hobson's supervision declared that "at best, the Office of Management and Budget made an unwise budget calculation; at worst, it took a foolish political gamble" by assuming Congress would enact the needed legislation this year.
In an eleventh-hour attempt to help on Thursday, the House energy committee rushed through a bill making available $576 million to Yucca Mountain from the utility fees. But a GOP plan to offer it as an amendment to the Energy appropriations bill was abandoned after opposition from Nevada lawmakers and GOP fiscal conservatives.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
2 U.S. Marines Killed in Afghan Attack
June 26, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/asia/26KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 25 - Two United States marines were killed and one was wounded in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday evening when they were ambushed during an operation near the border with Pakistan, the American military in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said in a statement on Friday.
The attack occurred northeast of Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province, where the United States military maintains a base.
Militants loyal to the Taliban and the renegade mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have been active in the region for months, infiltrating from across the border to fire rockets or attack patrols.
Twelve American soldiers have been killed this year in combat, ambushes and land-mine explosions around southern and eastern Afghanistan.
United States forces have been increased to about 20,000 - including 2,000 marines - to improve security around the country before national elections in September. The militants' main targets have been Afghan government officials and aid workers.
In a separate incident, the governor of Kunar, Fazel Akbar, said an American artillery round fired from a military base at Nangalam, in northwestern Kunar, hit a house on Thursday night, killing a woman and her son and injuring her husband.
Mr. Akbar, who was in Kabul, said he learned of the attack on Friday.
-------- africa
U.N. Chief to Join Powell in Sudan to Try to Halt Massacres
June 26, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/africa/26NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 25 - Secretary General Kofi Annan said Friday that he would meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Sudan next week in an effort to compel the Sudanese government to end the "catastrophe" facing its people.
"The people of Darfur are suffering a catastrophe - terrible crimes have been committed against them," Mr. Annan said, referring to the area of the country where pro-government Arab militias have been evicting and killing black Muslims in a campaign that he said "is bordering on ethnic cleansing."
He said that he and Mr. Powell would be "collectively putting pressure" on Sudan to ease restrictions and halt attacks on aid workers trying to get to tens of thousands of people needing food and water, and to disband the so-called Janjaweed militias, which are financed and equipped by the government.
In announcing Mr. Powell's plans to go to Darfur, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said Thursday that the United States had not seen any evidence that the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, was following up his pledge earlier this week to disarm the militias.
International pressure on the Sudanese government to halt the killings and cease blocking assistance has taken on particular urgency because of the imminent onset of the rainy season, which makes much of the Darfur region difficult for aid missions to reach.
Foreign ministry officials from France, Italy and Switzerland, as well as United Nations officials, have been in Khartoum, the capital, expressing their concern to the government, leading Mr. Bashir to complain that foreigners were exploiting the plight of the people of Darfur to intervene in Sudanese affairs.
He has denied aid organizations' repeated reports that their workers are being intimidated and impeded from reaching Darfur.
The violence in Darfur goes back to February 2003, when black African rebel groups rose up against the government, charging that their region was being neglected and their people left unprotected.
The government's response was to give license to the militiamen to retaliate, and United Nations relief workers have reported seeing rampaging militia members burning down homes and killing villagers while government police officers and soldiers stood by without intervening.
The Bush administration says hundreds of villages have been bombed from the air in attacks that in addition to killing residents have destroyed crops and irrigation systems.
A United Nations human rights report last month accused the Sudanese government of committing widespread rights violations in Darfur, where more than 10,000 people have been killed, another one million displaced and more than 120,000 forced into refugee camps in neighboring Chad.
Leaders of human rights organizations have warned that unless the world reacts now, the ethnic killings in Darfur may become a massacre on the scale of the one in 1994 in Rwanda and which the United Nations and the international community failed to stop.
Mr. Annan has taken institutional and personal blame for that catastrophe, which occurred while he was the head of the United Nations peacekeeping office.
He said failure by Sudan to respond now should cause the Security Council to take up the case and consider measures like sanctions or military intervention. "If the Sudanese government doesn't have the capacity to protect its population," he said, "the international community must be prepared to assist."
He acknowledged that the Council was not prepared to step in yet. "I don't think we are ready to send in the cavalry," he said. "I'm not sure I have that many countries willing to go. The Council will have to think about what to do if it becomes necessary to take concrete action. Someone suggested sanctions, but there are all sorts of actions the Council can take."
Mr. Annan made his remarks at a news conference at United Nations headquarters in New York before leaving this weekend on his three-week trip, which will take him to Asia and Europe as well as Africa. He and Mr. Powell will meet in Darfur on Wednesday.
Mr. Annan said that donor nations had come up with only $60 million of a promised $200 million to assist in Darfur and that the money was desperately needed for basic matters like health, water and sanitation. According to the United Nations, the lead donor has been the United States, followed by the European Union, Britain, Canada, Australia and Germany.
Asked if he would hold the government in Khartoum responsible for directing the militias, Mr. Annan said: "The perpetrators ought to be put on notice that they will be held accountable, whoever they are. It is not just the field commanders, but also some of the leaders who are giving the orders who may also be held accountable."
-------- britain
Briton Condemns Proposed U.S. Trials
June 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/worldspecial2/26BRIT.html
LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) - Britain's top legal officer on Friday condemned as "unacceptable" military tribunals proposed by the United States for Guantánamo Bay prisoners.
The comments by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, represented one of the bluntest statements yet of London's disquiet over America's handling of terrorism suspects at the American base in Cuba.
"While we must be flexible and be prepared to countenance some limitation of fundamental rights if properly justified and proportionate, there are certain principles on which there can be no compromise,"the prepared text of Lord Goldsmith's speech said. "Fair trial is one of those."
Britain has long said it believes the tribunals are unfair, but Lord Goldsmith's remarks, hours before a visit to Europe by President Bush and days before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the matter, drew fresh attention to the dispute.
Lord Goldsmith is the head of a British team negotiating the fate of four Britons among some 600 people held without charge at the camp, suspected of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan or supporting Al Qaeda.
Five Britons were released from Guantánamo in March, and several alleged mistreatment by interrogators.
The Pentagon has yet to hold any trials under the proposed rules.
-------- business
The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction
The shameless corporate feeding frenzy in Iraq is fuelling the resistance
Naomi Klein
Saturday June 26, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1247867,00.html
Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.
In the run-up to the June 30 underhand (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it a "handover"), US occupation powers have been unabashed in their efforts to steal money that is supposed to aid a war-ravaged people. The state department has taken $184m earmarked for drinking water projects and moved it to the budget for the lavish new US embassy in Saddam Hussein's former palace. Short of $1bn for the embassy, Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said he might have to "rob from Peter in my fiefdom to pay Paul". In fact, he is robbing Iraq's people, who, according to a recent study by the consumer group Public Citizen, are facing "massive outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea, nausea and kidney stones" from drinking contaminated water.
If the occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, they might be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn Congress allotted - the reason the reconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq was sovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte can use it as leverage. With $15bn outstanding, how likely are Iraq's politicians to refuse US demands for military bases and economic "reforms"?
Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5bn of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by American tax dollars.
But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatisation. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the US, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency.
Iraqis saw something else: desperately needed jobs going to Americans, Europeans and south Asians; roads crowded with trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreign plants, while Iraqi factories were not even supplied with emergency generators. As a result, the reconstruction was seen not as a recovery from war but as an extension of the occupation, a foreign invasion of a different sort. And so, as the resistance grew, the reconstruction itself became a prime target.
The contractors have responded by behaving even more like an invading army, building elaborate fortresses in the green zone - the walled-in city within a city that houses the occupation authority in Baghdad - and surrounding themselves with mercenaries. And being hated is expensive. According to the latest estimates, security costs are eating up 25% of reconstruction contracts - money not being spent on hospitals, water-treatment plants or telephone exchanges.
Meanwhile, insurance brokers selling sudden-death policies to contractors in Iraq have doubled their premiums, with insurance costs reaching 30% of payroll. That means many companies are spending half their budgets arming and insuring themselves against the people they are supposedly in Iraq to help. And, according to Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on US National Public Radio's Marketplace programme, "at least 20% of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption". How much is actually left over for reconstruction? Don't do the maths.
Rather than models of speed and efficiency, the contractors look more like overcharging, underperforming, lumbering beasts, barely able to move for fear of the hatred they have helped generate. The problem goes well beyond the latest reports of Halliburton drivers abandoning $85,000 trucks on the road because they don't carry spare tyres. Private contractors are also accused of playing leadership roles in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A landmark class-action lawsuit filed by the Centre for Constitutional Rights alleges that Titan Corporation and CACI International conspired to "humiliate, torture and abuse persons" in order to increase demand for their "interrogation services".
And then there's Aegis, the company being paid $293m to save the PMO from embarrassment. It turns out that Aegis's CEO, Tim Spicer, has a bit of an embarrassing past himself. In the 90s, he helped to put down rebels and stage a military coup in Papua New Guinea, as well as hatching a plan to break an arms embargo in Sierra Leone.
If Iraq's occupiers were capable of feeling shame, they might have responded by imposing tough new regulations. Instead, Senate Republicans have just defeated an attempt to bar private contractors from interrogating prisoners and also voted down a proposal to impose stiffer penalties on contractors who overcharge. Meanwhile, the White House is also trying to get immunity from prosecution for US contractors in Iraq and has requested the exemption from the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi.
It seems likely that Allawi will agree, since he is, after all, a kind of US contractor himself. A former CIA spy, he is already threatening to declare martial law, while his defence minister says of resistance fighters: "We will cut off their hands, and we will behead them." In a final feat of outsourcing, Iraqi governance has been subcontracted to even more brutal surrogates. Is this embarrassing, after an invasion to overthrow a dictatorship? Not at all; this is what the occupiers call "sovereignty". The Aegis guys can relax - embarrassment is not going to be an issue.
· A version of this article first appeared in the Nation
-------- china
China's military threat
June 26, 2004
Washington Times Editorial
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040625-080827-9107r.htm
The Pentagon's "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China" is a troubling document for a variety of reasons. Not the least of these is that the report makes clear that China, despite attempting a more tempered approach in recent years, is still committed to Communist ideology as it relates to foreign policy. Released in May, the report outlines how China's military buildup is in direct connection to its regional ambitions, which include challenging U.S. dominance in the Pacific. China's goal of regional hegemony is still many years off, though approaching at a pace that demands immediate attention.
China reasons correctly that it must upgrade its military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), to U.S. armed forces standards through a prolonged concentration on increasing investment and procurement of high-tech, "network-centric" systems. As the report notes, "China's military modernization is oriented on developing the capabilities to fight and win 'local wars under high-tech conditions.' Based largely on observations of U.S. and allied operations since Operation Desert Storm [in 1991], PLA modernization envisions seeking precision-strike munitions, modern command and control systems, and state-of-the-art [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)] platforms. Beijing sees its potential future adversaries, particularly the U.S. Armed Forces, acquiring these advanced systems, and this is the driver in PLA defensive and offensive force modernization." According to the report, China's military spending will increase 11.6 percent to $25 billion this year. The amount in real terms is actually higher, the report cautions, when research and foreign purchases are added, which would bring it between $50 billion to $70 billion. Such spending makes China the third-largest defense spender after the United States and Russia. China's military imports also rose 7 percent from last year, 90 percent of which come from Russia alone.
With its ISR advancements, the PLA expects to "provide a regional, and potentially hemispheric, continuous surveillance capability," according to the report. This would include land, air, sea and space systems comparable to U.S. systems. Also included in the PLA's modernization program are space-based systems with military and intelligence potential, antisatellite systems capable of disabling enemy satellites and electronic warfare systems capable of concealing PLA movement and operations, weakening enemy air-defense early-warning systems and disrupting integrated air-defense systems. In short, these are not only the high-tech systems that the U.S. military has employed with such deadly efficiency upon lesser enemies, but they are the sort that a military would need to defeat the United States.
The balance of power in Eastern Asia is quickly shifting in China's favor, especially in regards to Taiwan. Even if high-tech nations restrict arms trade with China, it is committing more resources toward modernizing its military than any other nation in the region. It is only a matter of time. As such, it is clear that the Bush administration's security strategy of ensuring U.S. military preeminence in the world applies to both fighting terror as well as guaranteeing peace.
-------- iraq
Foes of U.S. in Iraq Criticize Insurgents
Clerics and Militiamen Decry Violence
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5662-2004Jun25?language=printer
BAGHDAD, June 25 -- Key Iraqi opponents of the U.S. occupation expressed unease Friday over the wave of insurgent attacks that killed more than 100 Iraqis a day earlier, and rejected efforts by foreign guerrillas to take the lead in the insurgency and mate it with the international jihad advocated by Osama bin Laden.
The objections -- from anti-U.S. Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders, including rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr, and even from militia fighters in the embattled city of Fallujah -- arose in part from revulsion at the fact that victims of the car bombings and guerrilla assaults in six cities and towns Thursday were overwhelmingly Iraqis. But they also betrayed Iraqi nationalist concerns that the fight against U.S. occupation forces risked being hijacked by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom U.S. officials describe as a paladin in bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
"We do not need anyone from outside the borders to stand with us and spill the blood of our sons in Iraq," Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarrae, a Sunni cleric with a wide following, declared in his Friday sermon at Umm al Qurra mosque in Baghdad. Since they were appointed three weeks ago, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and members of his U.S.-sponsored interim government have railed against the car bombings and other attacks. But Friday's show of disgust -- expressed in mosques and, in Sadr's case, with fliers calling for cooperation with Iraqi police -- marked the first time anti-occupation clerics and fighters sided against violence associated with the insurgency, for which Zarqawi has increasingly asserted responsibility.
In that light, it could be an important moment in the U.S. struggle to win acceptance for the military occupation and for the interim government scheduled to acquire limited authority next Wednesday. While far from embracing the U.S. occupation or the new government, the anti-occupation leaders seemed to disavow the bloodiest edge of the violence and Zarqawi's attempt to make it part of al Qaeda's vision of international jihad.
"Which religion allows anyone to kill more than 100 Iraqis, destroy 100 families and destroy 100 houses?" raged Samarrae in his sermon. "Who says so? Who are those people who do this? Where did they come from? . . . It is a conspiracy to defame the reputation of the Iraqi resistance by wearing its dress and using its name falsely. These people hurt the Iraqis and Iraq, giving the occupier an excuse to stay longer."
Samarrae said he had learned that some Iraqi insurgent leaders have begun to clash with Zarqawi loyalists, insisting the jihadists do not represent the "right and true resistance." He warned against those who he said want to tear the country apart in the name of Islam and suggested they were foreigners who should not be part of Iraq's conflict.
In a similar vein, a group of masked fighters in Fallujah stood before Reuters television cameras and read a statement insisting that the city's violent struggle against surrounding U.S. Marines is being carried out by Fallujans, not Zarqawi or other foreign fighters.
"The American invader forces claim that Zarqawi, and with him a group of Arab fighters, are in our city," said one of the heavily armed men, reading from a paper. "We know that this talk about Zarqawi and the fighters is a game that the American invader forces are playing to strike Islam and Muslims in the city of mosques, steadfast Fallujah."
Shortly after their declaration, the U.S. military launched precision weapons against what it called a Zarqawi safe house, the third such strike in less than a week.
In Baqubah, where scores of fighters proclaiming allegiance to Zarqawi attacked police stations and government buildings in Thursday's offensive, clerics called on the faithful not to support such attacks. The attackers, they said in their Friday sermons, were foreigners attacking Iraqis.
"This is the first time we have heard the minaret broadcast support for the Iraqi government," said Edward Peter Messmer, the occupation authority's coordinator for the Baqubah region, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. "And it couldn't come at a better time."
Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has fought U.S. troops in the Sadr City slum in eastern Baghdad and in Najaf, 90 miles to the south, ordered his followers to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi police in Sadr City to "deprive the terrorists and saboteurs of the chance to incite chaos and extreme lawlessness."
"We know the Mahdi Army is ready to cooperate actively and positively with honest elements from among the Iraqi police and other patriotic forces, to partake in safeguarding government buildings and facilities, such as hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil refineries, and any other site that might be a target for terrorist attacks," said an order from the Mahdi Army distributed in Sadr City.
Interior Minister Falah Naqib said Sadr's militiamen were welcome to join the police or army as individuals, but not to patrol alongside regular police units.
Abdul Hadi Darraji, a Sadr spokesman in Sadr City, said Sadr's order was issued in part to see whether U.S. occupation authorities were serious about transferring power to Allawi's government. If they were, he suggested, Sadr's movement could continue cooperating with Iraqi authorities in combating terrorists who, he said, come from outside the country.
"This gesture is designed to distinguish between honorable, legal resistance against the occupation and the dishonorable resistance, which does not target the occupation, but targets the Iraqi people," he said.
Aws Khafaji, a cleric in Sadr's militantly political stream of Shiite Islam, disowned Thursday's violence even more clearly in a sermon at the Hikma mosque in Sadr City.
"We condemn and denounce yesterday's bombings and attacks on police centers and innocent Iraqis, which claimed about 100 lives," he said. "These are attacks launched by suspects and lunatics who are bent on destabilizing the country and ruining the peace so that the Iraqi people will remain in need of American protection."
Sadr's militia, as far as is known, has not been involved in the car bombings and assaults against Iraqi police and government officials across the country in recent weeks. His fighters concentrated their battle against U.S. troops in Sadr City and the Najaf area, although they also fought with Iraqi police seeking to patrol Najaf until a cease-fire was established there earlier this month.
Shiite political leaders have sought for several months to persuade Sadr to disband his militia and transform his organization into a political movement. He has expressed a tentative willingness to do so. But his lieutenants have refused to participate in choosing a national congress due to convene next month, citing what they call a skewed formula for representing Iraq's ethnic and religious groups.
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baqubah contributed to this report.
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U.S. Forces, Iraqi Police Take Action After Attacks
Interim Government May Impose Emergency Rule
By Scott Wilson and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6715-2004Jun25.html
BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 26 -- U.S. military forces and Iraqi police pushed back Friday against an insurgency that a day earlier orchestrated attacks across central and northern Iraq, striking a suspected safe house in Fallujah and reoccupying two police stations in Baqubah that had been in the hands of armed guerrillas.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, officials of the interim government set to assume political power from the U.S.-led occupation next week said they may impose emergency rule in parts of the country if the violence continues. Warning of the influence foreigners are exerting on the insurgency, the officials called on all Iraqis to join the fight against an anti-occupation campaign whose effectiveness has surprised U.S. military commanders.
"Today is a day for the Iraqi people to say to these traitors: The time has come for a duel, and with God's help it will be a great duel, a great contest in which the Iraqi people will ultimately be victorious," said Hazem Shalan, the country's defense minister.
The surprise attacks across six cities and towns on Thursday appeared to have exposed for many Iraqis the vulnerability of the incoming government, which is scheduled to assume political authority on Wednesday after a 15-month occupation. But Iraqi officials sought to turn the uprising to their political advantage Friday by accusing foreign Arab fighters of carrying out the attacks that killed more than 100 Iraqis and three U.S. soldiers, while offering little evidence to support the claim.
U.S. warplanes dropped precision-guided bombs for the third time this week in a neighborhood of Fallujah, the city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has long been hostile to the U.S.-led occupation. Twenty people were reportedly killed. Marine tanks took up positions on the outskirts of the city, witnesses said, and traded sporadic gunfire with men inside.
U.S. military officials said the target was a safe house used by militants associated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose group asserted responsibility for the previous day's attacks. U.S. and Iraqi officials say Zarqawi is affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and they have blamed him for a string of car bombings targeting supporters of the occupation and for the beheading of an American businessman, Nicholas Berg.
In Baghdad, where a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded another on Friday, the country's new defense and interior ministers assured Iraqis that the interim government would take firm action against all members of the insurgency. U.S. and Iraqi officials have said the resistance consists of sympathizers of ousted president Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim-led government, disaffected Shiite Muslims and foreign Arabs who have come to fight the American project.
The interior minister, Falah Naqib, warned that he may impose emergency laws in some or all of the country. He called on the Iraqi people to help security forces "remove this cancer from their midst" by informing authorities of insurgents' whereabouts.
Shalan said Iraqi authorities would decide whether to impose an emergency decree "based on the degree of danger" and acknowledged that they had drawn up "an urgent plan for Baghdad and other provinces."
Among the plan's provisions, officials said, is the deployment of a 1,000-member counterinsurgency task force in the capital to work alongside U.S. forces. The unit, part of an Iraqi army that has fewer than 5,000 soldiers, is completing training at a base north of Baghdad.
Shalan said the emergency declaration was being contemplated in part because of public pressure for strong action by the government to restore order. But with U.S.-led military forces effectively in charge of Iraq's security, it was not immediately clear what impact -- other than a symbolic one -- such a declaration would have.
Some Iraqi officials suggested it would allow authorities to impose curfews and detain suspected insurgents without bringing them before an Iraqi judge, effectively extending certain provisions of martial law put in place during the U.S. occupation.
Although declaring an emergency could prove popular with Iraqis who support aggressive measures to combat violence, it would reprise a tactic used by Hussein as a cover for rampant human rights abuses.
In an interview published Friday in the German newspaper Die Welt, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said such a declaration "would make our task in Iraq more complex, because applying martial law is more a police problem than a military one -- at least one would hope so."
Shalan said the decision would be made by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and President Ghazi Yawar, in conjunction with other top security officials.
Here in the city hit hardest by Thursday's violence, streets that had been the scene of battle returned to an uneasy quiet. But just before 8 a.m. on Saturday, explosions and small-arms fire erupted downtown in an apparent attack on an Iraqi police station.
Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, commander of the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, said the skill that insurgents displayed Thursday was likely intended only as a test for U.S. forces. The day-long fight downtown killed two U.S. soldiers, 17 Iraqi police officers and more than 30 insurgents -- none of whom turned out to be foreign, he said.
Pittard said intelligence reports suggested that the insurgents were planning a fresh offensive to occupy government buildings, which he described as the "symbols of authority and authority in the city," before the official end of the U.S. occupation.
"If that was their attempt at a Tet Offensive, it was a yawner," Pittard told reporters here. "But it may have been a tactic to see how we would react. We have to give our enemy more credit."
Pittard said Iraqi police had reoccupied two police stations overrun the previous day. U.S. commanders said the police did so without fighting and that the insurgents may simply have abandoned the stations after stealing the assault rifles inside.
Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad.
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Iraqi Insurgents Are Surprisingly Cohesive, Armitage Says
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6583-2004Jun25.html
Officials in the State and Defense departments told senators yesterday that they know relatively little about the enemy in Iraq but they believe thousands of hidden fighters are more organized than previously thought and are likely to continue deadly attacks in coming weeks and months.
Admitting that U.S. officials have underestimated the insurgency, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a series of attacks across Iraq in recent days indicate that the attackers have a "central nervous system" that is showing increased coordination and effectiveness. While the U.S. military expects heightened violence as Iraq approaches the transfer of limited power to an interim government next week, the sophistication of recent attacks has come as a bit of a surprise, according to testimony yesterday.
Armitage, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators that they continue to believe that the insurgency is made up of a small minority of extremists and former members of Saddam Hussein's government who are bent on disrupting the drive for democracy in Iraq. But what was previously envisioned as a faltering insurgency has evolved into a significant security problem and a largely unknown quantity.
"I don't think anyone in this administration yet can tell you with a great deal of accuracy who they are and how many they are," Armitage said, responding to concerns from Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). Armitage said that attacks are probably the handiwork of former regime elements and those loyal to al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi. "I said one of our mistakes was that we didn't understand there was a central nervous system. Well, clearly there is."
With major combat operations in Iraq over for more than a year, the level of violence in Iraq is far higher than U.S. officials predicted. Attacks on the coalition and Iraqi civilian targets are expected to continue through the official handover of limited power Wednesday, and officials said yesterday they are concerned that such attacks could increase as the country heads toward its first democratic elections in December or January.
Armitage said he expects those who carried out recent attacks to "reload and try again," predicting they will "really exercise themselves" in coming months.
The enemy is now using car bombs and more conventional warfare in targeting government officials and the new Iraqi police force, and senators heard yesterday that well-financed extremist leaders appear to be recruiting unemployed young men with the promise of a paycheck. Officials said yesterday that some of the ongoing attacks appear to be organized out of Fallujah, where officials believe extremists are hiding amid civilians.
Wolfowitz said he believes most of the insurgency is made up of people who did not surrender after the U.S. invasion on April 9, members of Hussein's regime who quietly melted away from the military and security forces. For example, he said, had U.S. forces concentrated earlier on the buildup of forces in Najaf, cleric Moqtada Sadr "might not have gotten out of control the way he did."
Wolfowitz said Wednesday's handover to an interim government should make a major difference to Iraqis because the United States would no longer be viewed as an occupying force. Then, he said, Iraqis can fight for their own freedoms and unify against those trying to block that effort. So far, more than 200,000 Iraqis have signed up, and U.S. officials expect the new Iraqi army, police force and border patrol to be ready by next year. Coalition forces -- including 141,000 U.S. troops -- will remain in Iraq indefinitely to secure the new government.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grilled the panel on the progress in Iraq, complaining that the administration acknowledges it has not accomplished its goals in Iraq but is reluctant to admit to mistakes.
"It's interesting. Things didn't turn out as we anticipated they would, yet we didn't do anything wrong," McCain said.
Also yesterday, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he wants to see an overdue Army investigative report into detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. The investigation, which focuses on the role of military intelligence soldiers at the prison, has been delayed so that a higher-ranking general could be assigned to look at the actions of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who commands U.S. troops in Iraq. Wolfowitz said Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones is now in charge of the inquiry and will issue a report when he can.
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Army Used Speed and Might, Plus Cash, Against Shiite Rebel
June 26, 2004
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/middleeast/26BATT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq - In April, as festering resistance exploded into full-fledged rebellion, soldiers of the First Armored Division were given their final mission in Iraq: to wrest control of a string of southern towns from a radical Shiite militia intent on disrupting the scheduled transfer of sovereignty on June 30.
These American soldiers, some of whom had already left Iraq and others just short of leaving after a year in combat, would instead spend nearly three months in one of the most significant campaigns of the war.
The division's operation against the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, a rebellious Shiite cleric, is already being studied by an Army struggling to learn the lessons of a war that continues to evolve even as the formal occupation of Iraq changes gears next week.
As described by top commanders in Iraq and senior policy makers in Washington, the campaign was a mix of military tactics, political maneuverings, media management and a generous dollop of cash for quickly rebuilding war-ravaged cities - a formula that, if it survives the test of time, could become a model for future fighting against the persistent insurrections plaguing Iraq.
But on the eve of the transfer of power, the question is whether the tactical successes the commanders are quick to claim have guaranteed a lasting strategic victory.
As the division's new date for departure approaches, Mr. Sadr remains at large. Despite an Iraqi arrest warrant for the murder of a rival cleric, he recently hinted that he would challenge the new government in the political arena.
When the First Armored Division got orders to mount its counterattack against the Sadr militia, one-fourth of its 30,000 soldiers and more than half of its 8,000 tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces had already left Iraq. The division, along with the Second Light Cavalry Regiment, also under its command, did an about-face, recalling troops, unpacking gear and receiving unwelcome orders to extend its stay by 90 days.
"I called together all my commanders, and I told them that we were going to demonstrate that a heavy force could be agile - to put heavy and agile in the same sentence, a place where they had never been before," said Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, whose signature weapon is the 70-ton Abrams tank.
"And 15 hours later, from a standing start in Baghdad, we moved 170 kilometers down to Najaf, and were in contact with the enemy," General Dempsey said, referring to a distance of just over 100 miles.
As quickly as the military spent its ammunition, though, it spent its money in an effort to heal some of the wounds it was inflicting, and those dealt by the militia as well.
From the moment the Americans recaptured Kut, the first town where they reclaimed control, officers switched from military to civil operations. Having scattered the enemy, they pulled them back together and put them to work in an amusement park destroyed in the fight.
"These are young men who have been poisoned, unemployed, disenfranchised and very poorly led," General Dempsey said. "We found a local tribal sheik who said he could corral them. We hired him to repair the amusement park, and he in turn hired these young men."
The example was repeated in Diwaniya and all across south-central Iraq, where General Dempsey spent several hundred thousand dollars to pay locals to remove rubble, rebuild roads and finance claims for damaged homes and businesses.
The campaign against the Sadr militia in south-central Iraq also had to be fought elsewhere - inside military headquarters in Baghdad, in the command-and-control "Tank" at the Pentagon, inside the National Security Council at the White House and even at the United Nations, as senior commanders debated with civilian policy makers how best to counter this menacing militia presence that grew in the shadows of the American occupation.
On one side were those who believed that Mr. Sadr could be sidelined, and that to attack him would only stoke support among his followers in Iraq and beyond its borders. This view was convincing to the uppermost level of commanders in Iraq, and certainly was the stance of Bush administration officials, especially after they heard the opinions of Iraq's own nascent leadership. On the other side were those, mostly field commanders, who argued that Mr. Sadr was a growing threat in advance of the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and that eventually he would have to be arrested or eliminated to guarantee the future of a stable and democratic Iraq.
Mr. Sadr had taken refuge in one of the shrines in Najaf, the holiest site in all of Shiite Islam, making a direct assault on him very difficult without inflicting large civilian casualties and possibly damaging the shrines.
"We never had an operation to go after Sadr inside the holy city," said Maj. Gen. John Sattler of the Marine Corps, director of American military operations for the Middle East. "We did not want to endanger the holy shrines. We stayed clear of those."
So the plan focused on chipping away at the Sadr militia with controlled strikes, and working behind the scenes with more moderate Shiite clerics to isolate him and undercut his local support.
"The more he and his followers occupied towns like Najaf and Kufa, the more Iraqis were becoming fed up with the negative impact on their towns," General Sattler said. "We felt very strongly he was being marginalized."
During this period, other Shiite leaders made public calls for Mr. Sadr to withdraw his forces from the holy cities and return the cities to police and civil defense units operating under American command.
Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, said this did not mean ceding territory. But others, even within the military, worried that the Americans had in effect allowed large parts of southern Iraq to slip out of their control.
A number of field officers had argued - as a few still do - for a swift strike at Mr. Sadr himself.
One senior administration official said that after June 30, the decision about how to deal with him "is no longer up to us." The new Iraqi government will be making those calls.
But back in early April, officers and policy makers were wondering whether America was about to lose Iraq. General Dempsey, whose troops had previously been in charge of securing Baghdad and its suburbs, planned a far-reaching campaign to seize control of provincial capital after provincial capital.
"In Baghdad, our area of operations was 750 square kilometers, and now we were looking at 20,000 square kilometers," General Dempsey said. "In Baghdad, we had strictly urban terrain, and now we were looking at a complex mix of rural, tribal and some urban elements. My immediate decision was that we really didn't need to control the white spaces between the urban areas."
"What Moktada al-Sadr was trying to do was take a very narrow uprising - it was not a broad-based popular uprising; it was narrow - and demonstrate his ability to stand up to the coalition and in so doing broaden his support base," General Dempsey said. "We decided that we can't allow that to happen. It had to be dealt with very aggressively, very rapidly, very decisively."
His division would retake Kut, Diwaniya, Karbala and then Kufa and Najaf, and in that order.
He issued the order, and 19 hours later a brigade and 112 combat vehicles had made the 180-mile trip from Najaf to Kut.
The Americans first had to cross a bridge that engineers said could withstand the weight of their tanks - maybe.
Instead, General Dempsey sent smaller, armor-plated Humvees of the Second Light Cavalry charging over the bridge into the militia forces. The heavier tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles sidestepped 46 miles north to a stronger bridge at Numaniya and then back south along the river bank to Kut, attacking simultaneously and catching the militia fighters in the pincer.
Within 48 hours, the Americans recaptured the municipal building, the local TV station and bridges in and out of Kut. The Americans then took back Diwaniya, relieving a Spanish brigade that then withdrew after the new Spanish prime minister summoned them home, and securing a provincial capital that sits between two of the occupation forces' major supply routes.
The offensive into Karbala presented the Americans with their first battle in a town with a shrine, as Sadr militiamen had taken over a holy site and the adjacent main thoroughfare. Seventy-two hours of intense fighting brought hundreds of Iraqi casualties, but the militia still could not be dislodged.
"We didn't want to take our combat vehicles right up to the shrine, so we conducted a feint," General Dempsey said. "We ran a tank company team on each side of the ring road, north and south of the holy shrine."
The militiamen left the mosque area to confront the rolling and dismounted troops, not knowing that General Dempsey had put a pair of AC-130 gunships aloft to attack the exposed militiamen with devastating Gatling guns, cannons and howitzers.
"By the next day," General Dempsey said, "they had disappeared."
It was important, though, to prevent the militiamen, wherever they were encountered, from shooting and escaping to fight another day. "If you drive through an ambush, or get ambushed and seek shelter before returning fire, they will get away from you," the general said. "This is not going to be something where they can get away with shooting and scooting."
Yet another goal was to discredit Mr. Sadr inside Iraq.
Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, a First Armored Division assistant commander whose responsibilities include information operations, said the Americans "advertised" what Mr. Sadr had done on radio and TV and with handbills and posters. The list of accusations included stealing money from shrines and mosques to finance his organization, running an illegal religious court in all the major cities, using amusement parks in Kut, Najaf and Karbala to store weapons, establishing illegal checkpoints to shake down travelers and ruining businesses during pilgrimage periods in Najaf and Karbala.
Commanders wanted their offensive to be seen as "deliberate, patient, sensitive and precise" in its broader goals, in particular that the shrine in Najaf - the holiest site in Shiite Islam - would not be violated, General Hertling said. But other mosques would be hit if they were used as snipers' nests or arms depots, and soldiers and the news media accompanying them - Arabs as well as British and American reporters - were urged to document those militia violations of the laws of war.
On the battlefield, though, "we wanted to be seen as rapid, overwhelming, lethal and relentless," General Hertling said. Reporters were brought on missions for that reason, too.
The militia uprisings were set off in April after L. Paul Bremer III decided to crack down on Mr. Sadr by shutting down a popular Baghdad newspaper, Al Hawza, which American officials said had become a mouthpiece for Mr. Sadr's incendiary criticisms of the Americans. But Mr. Bremer's order caught American commanders by surprise.
A few days later, allied forces arrested a cleric who was a senior aide to Mr. Sadr, Mustafa al-Yaqubi. Within 24 hours, Mr. Sadr decided to escalate his fight, and Sadr militiamen were rampaging all across south-central Iraq.
The scale of the uprising caught Americans by surprise, but General Dempsey argued that the timing turned out to hurt Mr. Sadr in the end. "The enemy made a strategic error in timing its uprising when it did," he said. "If he had waited two more weeks, I was gone. First Armored would have been home. The American military never runs out of options. Other forces would have taken the mission. But these options all had a greater degree of risk."
General Dempsey lost soldiers during the Sadr campaign, soldiers who might otherwise be home alive if the division's tour had not been extended.
Asked what he would say to those families, General Dempsey replied, "I don't think they would expect me to say anything different than I would have to the family of a soldier who was killed in our first week here."
At the beginning of the uprising, commanders thought there were perhaps 200 hard-core militiamen in Kut and the same number in Diwaniya; that number is now down to under a dozen in each city. In Karbala, there were perhaps 750 armed Sadr supporters at the start, and there is no remaining evidence of the militia today. In the twin cities of Najaf and Kufa, commanders estimated about 2,000 militiamen at the start of the insurgency. Today, there are estimated to be 150 to 200 remaining, mostly inside the shrine in Najaf. They are contained, at least for now, though it is not clear whether they could regroup, since Mr. Sadr remains at large, and the arrest warrant against him was never executed.
In April and May, "Moktada al-Sadr could move with impunity, he and his militia, in virtually any of those places," General Dempsey said. "Now he moves with impunity around the holy shrine in Najaf, and that's it."
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INSURGENCY
U.S. Attacks Falluja as Iraqis Renew Hint of Martial Law
June 26, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/international/middleeast/26IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 25 - United States marines attacked the insurgent stronghold of Falluja with airstrikes on Friday, and Iraq's new government again strongly hinted that it would declare martial law, but said nothing about its timing or scope.
For the last several days, officials of the Iraqi interim government, including Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, have indicated they would declare a state of emergency, saying that, at a minimum, it could include a curfew, checkpoints and a ban on public demonstrations. Questions remain about the ability of the new Iraqi security forces to enforce such measures, and the extent to which the American military would be willing to help carry them out.
If nothing else, the declarations of the government signal that on the question of security - by far Iraq's chief problem - the new government intends to be nothing but tough. "It's the people who want stronger measures in Iraq," Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan told reporters on Friday, five days before the United States is scheduled to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis. "We've come to build democracy, and building democracy requires patience."
He said the government was preparing "an urgent plan" to secure the capital and was also considering emergency measures for the provinces. "It might be a limited area," he said. "It might cover more than one area."
Predicting more violence, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib urged Iraqis to report potential insurgent activity to state security forces. "It is the responsibility of every Iraqi to cooperate with us to remove this cancer from our midst," he said. "You cannot expect the police to do it on their own."
Neither cabinet member said anything about when such measures could start. As the transfer of power approaches, insurgent attacks have intensified, culminating with a coordinated set of strikes across the country on Thursday that killed more than 100 people. The Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his organization have claimed responsibility.
Earlier in the week, Mr. Allawi, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party with strong links to the Central Intelligence Agency, floated the idea of emergency measures in limited regions of the country. The prospect of any heavy-handed security measures that restrict basic civil liberties could prove awkward for the United States if American troops are asked to enforce them. On the other hand, such measures could enjoy popular acceptance if they are promulgated by Iraqi officials, rather than Americans. In any event, given Mr. Allawi's close links to Washington, it is unlikely that any new security policies would be undertaken without significant American input.
Iraqi government officials blamed foreign fighters for the latest violence. Predicting an imminent showdown with the insurgents, Mr. Shalaan promised to "confront the beastly attackers from outside the borders of the country."
On Friday, Marine aircraft bombed what American military officials called a safe house used by the Zarqawi network in Falluja. Qasim Mohammed Abdul Satar, who sits on the town's council of elders, said the bombs struck several houses in a neighborhood that had been attacked by American forces last Saturday. Reuters quoted an official of the American-led alliance as saying that 20 to 25 people were killed in the latest attack.
The Dubai-based Al Arabiya television network broadcast a speech by gunmen in Falluja denying Mr. Zarqawi's presence in the town. Three unidentified men, their faces shrouded, appeared on the screen. One read from a statement, saying, "We deserve to protect our city."
Also on Friday, a lawyer defending an American soldier accused in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal described his client as a scapegoat whose superiors were fully aware of what was going on. The soldier, Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, was shown in a photograph, posing with the body of a detainee who apparently died during an interrogation. According to a pool news report, her lawyer, Frank Spinner, told a military court that senior officers were aware of the abuse. Mr. Spinner said his client "was caught in a very difficult situation as a junior soldier."
"I don't think this young woman should ever have been put in that environment," he added. "I think the Army set her up."
Specialist Harman is also accused of writing "Rapeist" on the leg of a prisoner held on a rape charge. Her lawyer said Friday that the prosecution had presented no evidence that the prisoner knew what was being written on him. Therefore, he argued, her action could not be construed as abuse.
In Washington on Friday, the Army replaced Maj. Gen. George R. Fay with a more senior officer as chief investigator into the role of military intelligence in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The appointment of Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, deputy commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, to replace General Fay will delay completion of the military investigation, said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, The Associated Press reported.
Army officials said the decision to put General Jones in charge did not reflect on General Fay's performance, but was necessary to resolve a protocol problem in the investigation. At issue was the need to interview Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez as part of the investigation. General Sanchez is the top American commander in Iraq, and the Army wanted a lead investigator of at least equal rank.
In a related development, the Senate announced that it had confirmed the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., as commander of all American and coalition forces in Iraq, replacing General Sanchez, The Associated Press reported.
Fooad Al Sheikhly contributed reporting for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Troops Kill 7 Palestinians in Raid
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) -- Acting on a tip, Israeli troops ambushed Palestinian militants holed up in an underground tunnel Saturday, killing seven fugitives including the most-wanted man in the West Bank.
Army commanders said the killing of the fugitives was the main goal of a three-day operation to root out militants in the West Bank city of Nablus. Troops began withdrawing from the center of the city soon after the raid.
Soldiers also killed an eighth militant during an earlier raid in Nablus, the largest West Bank city.
Also Saturday, Israeli border police clashed with hundreds of Palestinians protesting Israel's West Bank separation barrier, beating demonstrators and firing rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the crowd.
The violence occurred in the Jerusalem suburb of A-Ram, an affluent area inhabited by Palestinians who left the city to escape overcrowding.
Dozens of people suffered from tear gas inhalation, and a news photographer was slightly wounded by police. A police spokesman said rioters threw stones, hammers and an ax.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called for a cease-fire with Israel during the Olympic games in Greece, scheduled for Aug. 13-29. He made the offer at a lighting ceremony for an unofficial Olympic torch.
``I declare our respect and commitment for an Olympic truce,'' Arafat said.
Israeli officials, who accuse Arafat of supporting militants, dismissed the offer as insincere.
Elsewhere, U.S. Mideast envoy William Burns met with Palestinian officials, seeking to build momentum for Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
``I stressed President Bush's determination to do everything that the United States can to help seize the opportunity presented by the Israeli initiative,'' Burns said after meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
Burns praised Egypt's efforts to help the withdrawal succeed. He also stressed that the Gaza pullback should be a step in the internationally backed ``road map'' peace plan, which envisions a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to negotiate with the Palestinians. Egypt, which borders Gaza, has served as a mediator and offered to train Palestinian forces ahead of the pullout, scheduled by September 2005.
Israeli military officials called the raid in Nablus a great success. An army commander, who identified himself only as Lt. Col. Itzik, said the men killed in the ambush were the main targets of the operation.
``We entered the city just to strike at these people, and no one else,'' Itzik said. ``We have now completed the operation and we have left the old city in light of this success.''
Palestinian witnesses confirmed that troops began withdrawing from the city center, the casbah, but remained on the outskirts of the neighborhood. Some 20,000 residents of the casbah remained indoors after a three-day curfew, unsure if they could go outside.
The tracking of the militants began earlier in the day, when troops shot toward two armed men, killing one, Itzik said. The second man fled, and later entered a hole under a closet in a house that led to a tunnel where seven other militants were hiding, Itzik said.
When troops threw grenades into the opening of the tunnel, dug two floors underground, the suspect exited from a different opening, suffering from smoke inhalation, Itzik said. Troops shot and threw more grenades into the hiding place, killing the wanted militants inside.
Among the dead was Nayef Abu Sharkh, a leader in the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Palestinian and Israeli security sources said Abu Sharkh was Israel's most-wanted militant in the West Bank.
Military officials said Abu Sharkh was responsible for a January 2003 double suicide bombing that killed 23 people in Tel Aviv and another in November 2002 that killed two people.
Palestinian hospital officials said Sheik Ibrahim, Islamic Jihad's top commander in the West Bank, was also killed. Ibrahim and Abu Sharkh were listed on a leaflet Israel handed out earlier this week asking residents to turn them in.
Four other militants were identified as members of the Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad and Hamas militant groups; the fifth had not yet been identified.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the bloodshed in Nablus and called for intervention by the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators -- the United States, the United Nations, European Union and Russia.
``In a time we see Egyptian efforts and William Burns' visit, we see the Israeli escalation as an attempt to undermine their efforts,'' Erekat said.
Meanwhile, Israeli police said nine people were arrested at the protest in A-Ram, which lies just yards outside Jerusalem city limits. Participants said about 100 foreign and Israeli activists were among the demonstrators.
The construction planned there is one of the most sensitive sections of the separation barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank.
Unlike fellow Palestinians with West Bank identity cards, most A-Ram residents have Jerusalem cards that allow them freedom of movement in the city and throughout Israel.
But the barrier will soon isolate A-Ram's 64,000 residents from their lifeline -- Jerusalem. About 25,000 residents work in the city, and thousands of children attend school there.
TV footage showed riot police pushing protesters to the ground during Saturday's confrontation. Witnesses said masked undercover police also moved into the area, beating protesters.
A Palestinian photographer for the French news agency Agence France-Presse was beaten in the head and kicked by police, witnesses said. He was lightly wounded, hospital officials said.
Israeli police said the forces had responded to violent rioting. They declined to comment on the reported beating, saying a complaint must be filed.
-------- nato
U.S. and European Union Pledge NATO Aid for Iraq
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush.html
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- With European Union support in hand, President Bush looked to seal an agreement for NATO to help stabilize Iraq as its fledgling government takes over this week. He shrugged off lingering European resentment of the war, saying ``We'll just let the chips fall where they may.''
NATO announced an initial agreement to help train Iraq's armed forces hours after Bush won support Saturday from the 25-nation European Union. Nineteen of NATO's 26 members overlap in the EU.
As the path for NATO involvement appeared to open up, the EU took a gentle swipe at Bush over abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American soldiers. The final communique declared, ``We stress the need for full respect of the Geneva Conventions,'' an unstated but obvious reference to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the U.S. treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. The conventions refer to international accords setting out guidelines for the humane treatment of prisoners.
With Bush standing beside him, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told a news conference in Ireland, ``These things, unfortunately, happened. We wish they didn't, but they do. And what's important then is how they're dealt with, how things improve for the future.''
Later aloft Air Force One on his way to the NATO summit in Ankara, Bush said U.S. armed forces are committed to complying with the conventions and that the acts of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were wrong. Bush issued the statement on a United Nations international day in support of victims of torture.
Bush is widely unpopular in Turkey, and his arrival Saturday in Ankara was preceded by a series of protests and bomb blasts, including one Thursday that injured three people outside the Ankara hotel where he will stay. Another blast that day on an Istanbul bus killed four people and injured 14. On Saturday, Turkish police fired tear gas as more than 150 left-wing demonstrators hurled rocks and used sticks to try and break down a police barricade during a protest ahead of Bush's arrival.
Throwing a cloud over Bush's visit, militants loyal to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said they have kidnapped three Turkish workers in Iraq and threatened to behead them in 72 hours. The kidnappers demanded the Turks hold demonstrations protesting the visit by the ``criminal'' Bush and that Turkish companies stop working in Iraq.
In Ireland a few miles from where Bush spoke, thousands demonstrated against Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.
Bush asserted that the bitter differences with European leaders over the Iraq war are over, declaring ``a common interest and a common goal to help the Iraqi people.''
Bush bristled at ongoing European criticism of his decision to invade Iraq, saying ``we'll just let the chips fall where they may.'' Asked about his apparent lack of support in Europe, Bush said, ``I must confess that the first polls I worry about are those that are going to take place in early November this year.'' The presidential election is Nov. 2.
The United States and the European Union agreed in a joint statement to back Iraq's request for NATO military help and support the training of Iraqi security forces, and to reduce Iraq's international debt, estimated to be $120 billion. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said later that diplomats reached an initial agreement to respond positively to the Iraqi request. Nineteen of NATO's 26 members are in the EU.
Opposition led by France and Germany has prevented a NATO military role on the ground in Iraq. France and Germany have both gone along with the request to help training.
Officials said the NATO summit would also announce agreement on plans to extend the alliance's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan which is currently limited to the capital, Kabul, and the northern city of Kunduz.
The plans to be adopted in Istanbul will extend the operation to five more northern cities through the deployment of small units to support civilian reconstruction.
Bush asked the EU to offer membership to Turkey, a key U.S. ally in the war against terror.
Iran's nuclear program was among the topics of concern at the summit in Ireland.
Participants said they were disturbed by Iran's intentions and insisted that the country be in full compliance with its international obligations not to create nuclear weapons.
In other declarations and statements issued at the close of the brief summit, the United States and EU agreed to:
--Better combat terrorism by sharing data on lost and stolen passports, work more closely on hunting down terrorist' financing networks and increasing cooperation between law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.
--Expand cooperation to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.
--Back continued peace talks to end 20 years of civil conflict in southern Sudan, and advance efforts being made by the United Nations to bring peace to all Sudan and address humanitarian and human rights crises in Darfur in western Sudan.
On the economic side, the United States and the EU signed an agreement Saturday to make the EU's planned satellite navigation system compatible with the existing U.S. Global Positioning System.
-------- space
Faulty Air Switch In Astronaut Suit Ended Spacewalk For American
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6525-2004Jun25.html
The problem that forced astronauts aboard the international space station to abort Thursday night's spacewalk was a manually operated auxiliary switch in Edward "Mike" Fincke's spacesuit that locked in the open position, officials said yesterday.
NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in a telephone interview that Russian engineers believe the malfunction in the switch, which increases the flow of oxygen, can be easily overcome with a quick check before Fincke, the American crew member, leaves the space station's airlock when the spacewalk is rescheduled.
Navias said NASA and the Russian Space Agency have decided that Fincke can wear the same Russian Orlan spacesuit when he and station commander Gennady Padalka next try the spacewalk, scheduled to happen no sooner than Tuesday, Navias said.
The spacewalk, undertaken to replace a faulty circuit breaker that shut down one of the station's four main gyroscopes two months ago, ended 14 minutes after it began when Russian mission control noticed that Fincke's bottled oxygen was depleting too rapidly. The controllers ordered Fincke and Padalka back inside the station and aborted the mission.
After "troubleshooting throughout the night," Russian engineers determined that the manually operated valve apparently "failed to seat properly" after Fincke tested it, Navias said. As a result, the valve was letting extra oxygen escape into the suit from Fincke's supply.
"The mechanism is called an injector," Navias explained. "The crew members use them outside if they feel too warm, or if the ground tells them pressure is too low. Pulling a lever on the outside of the suit enables a higher flow of oxygen through the suit."
Both Fincke and Padalka tested their injectors Tuesday during preparatory procedures, Navias said. "When you activate the system, there's a light on the helmet that tells the other crew members that the system is operating," he said.
Both lights went on and both lights went off when the astronauts pushed the levers down, Navias said, but oxygen from Fincke's bottle continued to flow.
Navias said the Russians think the problem can be resolved by making an additional check of the valve lever before the astronauts disconnect from the station's oxygen supply. The mission management team will make a final decision Tuesday on how to proceed with the spacewalk.
-------- spies
CIA Analyst Assails War on Terrorism
New Book Says U.S. Has Misjudged Muslims' Concerns and Intentions
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6669-2004Jun25.html
A new book by a senior CIA analyst who headed the agency's task force on Osama bin Laden sharply attacks the Bush administration's approach to Islamic terrorists, sternly criticizes the decision to invade Iraq and chides officials for trying to create a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan.
The author, who writes under the name "Anonymous," argues it is not dislike of freedom, democracy and Western culture that led bin Laden to wage war against America, but rather his disdain for U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world, particularly America's relationship with Israel.
Senior U.S. leaders, the book argues, mistakenly urge Americans to believe that the Islamic world is offended by the nation's philosophical emphasis on personal rights and liberties, and "that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we do."
"The focused and lethal threat posed to U.S. national security arises not from Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible perception that the things they most love and value -- God, Islam, their brethren and Muslim lands -- are being attacked by America," he writes in "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," which was just published by Brassey's.
The book contends that bin Laden has rallied support among Muslims by convincing them that Islam is under attack from the United States and that it is their responsibility to defend their faith: "Once Islam is attacked, each Muslim knows his personal duty is to fight."
The author's solution to the problem and forecast for the future are grim, based partly on his view that training camps have turned out not thousands of terrorists but perhaps "a hundred thousand or more insurgents."
"As long as unchanged U.S. policies motivate Muslims to become insurgents," he writes, the United States will have to "kill many thousands of these fighters in what is a barely started war."
The book's author is a 22-year veteran of the CIA who occupies a senior position in counterterrorism. He did not publish the book under his name because of his role at the agency, and has asked news organizations not to reveal his name for security reasons.
He served as chief of the bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999, a time when, he complains, senior leaders "downplayed intelligence" and "ignored repeated warnings" about the dangers approaching from Islamic terrorists.
U.S. intelligence officials are not pleased with the tone and conclusions of the book, and have watched with surprise as sales have risen. Yesterday, it was the 13th-best seller at Amazon.com, up from 325th last week.
The CIA reviewed the book before publication and determined that it did not contain classified information. "That does not mean we are happy with it," a senior intelligence official said yesterday. "We would prefer officers keep their personal views personal, but we are not in position to prevent him from expressing his personal views in writing done on his own time."
The official added that if the agency stopped employees expressing views that appear contrary to administration policy, they would also have to halt those who want to write in support of policy.
The author condemns the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, saying that "preemptive actions" were needed, but against the "imminent threat of bin Laden, al Qaeda and their allies," not Saddam Hussein.
He describes the invasion of Iraq as "an avaricious, pre-meditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages." He compared it to the 1846 U.S. war against Mexico.
Oil, the author contends, is at the core of U.S. interests in Muslim countries, leading the United States to support "the Muslim tyrannies bin Laden and other Islamists seek to destroy."
The Bush administration's pol