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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 policy on Afghanistan is described as a failure because it hinges on producing a Western-style democracy with religious tolerance and women's rights -- all of which he characterizes as an "anathema to Afghan political and tribal culture and none of which has more than a small, unarmed constituency."
"We are succeeding only in fooling ourselves" in Afghanistan, he argues. The current insurgency by the Taliban "gradually will increase in intensity, lethality and popular support and ultimately force Washington to massively escalate its military presence or evacuate," he writes. Neither the United States nor its Afghan surrogates "have built anything political or economic that will long outlast the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces," he predicted.
In a broader critique, he said, "U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious: we are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency -- not criminality or terrorism -- and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces."
----
Axis of Deceit
June 26, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh10.htm
Axis of Deceit
By Andrew Wilkie
Black Inc, 288pp, $29.95
The agent who broke ranks over Iraq tells a cautionary tale for young would-be spies. Reviewed by Tom Allard
Andrew Wilkie, the intelligence analyst who caused the Government so much grief when he resigned on the eve of the Iraq War, was in many ways the most unlikely of whistleblowers.
From a conservative, rural family with a long and proud history of military service, Wilkie went to the Royal Military College at Duntroon as soon as he completed high school. As a high-spirited army cadet, he took great pleasure in a night-time raid to trash the permanent protest site of the anti-nuclear movement outside Old Parliament House.
Twenty or so years later, after a long military - and shorter intelligence - career, Wilkie is now a member of the Greens, what passes for the radical left of Australia's parliamentary system, and standing for election against a conservative Prime Minister, John Howard.
His book, Axis of Deceit, touches on this transformation but, aside from scattered vignettes and the prologue, focuses more on policy than on the personal.
This was the somewhat disappointing aspect of a book that is otherwise a clear-eyed and persuasive treatise on how the coalition of the willing conned the public about its motives for war and exaggerated and manipulated the intelligence it received.
Wilkie had a unique perspective, serving in the lead-up to the Iraq War as a senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments (ONA), with access to most of the intelligence on Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
First of all, Wilkie knew what the real reason for war was - a strategic play to insert a favourable government in the Middle East and create a new ally that would allow the US to rely less on Saudi Arabia for its oil and political support. Indeed, this view was regularly relayed to the Australian government as ONA also produced a "prolific" amount of assessments on the US and its motivations toward Iraq.
So Wilkie watched with growing disgust as a case for war was mounted on what he considered completely spurious reasons - that Saddam Hussein, with his alleged links to terrorists and his alleged WMD, represented a serious threat to international security.
Wilkie, in fact, believed incorrectly that Saddam did have WMD, although not in any substantial quantities.
Nonetheless, he tells how he and some of his ONA colleagues watched with disbelief as the US and Britain produced increasingly alarming evidence of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and nuclear ambitions. Much of it was parroted by Australian political leaders, always directly citing the overseas source of the information but without conveying the deep reservations that the Australian intelligence community had about its veracity.
Wilkie, perhaps unsurprisingly, lays most blame for the deception at the feet of the Howard Government rather than on the intelligence services themselves. Still, some of the most interesting passages of Axis of Deceit deal with how the intelligence agencies operate and how they have become politicised.
According to Wilkie, a conformist and conservative culture predominates and those who rise to senior positions are those who "play the game". Wilkie also provides an intriguing account of one facet of this politicisation, the briefing of opposition leaders by ONA officers. Such briefings are rare, and highly coveted by oppositions, but "only material that supports the government's position is allowed to be conveyed", says Wilkie.
This was particularly the case in an "unbalanced" briefing given to then Opposition leader Simon Crean about Iraq's WMD. (To this day, John Howard defends the absence of WMD in Iraq by saying Labor also believed Saddam had WMD.)
Another example of politicisation given by Wilkie was the decision by the former director-general of ONA, Kim Jones, to send back an analysis that Wilkie compiled which found that Afghanistan remained in a state of violent chaos and asylum-seekers should not be returned there.
In many respects, the most fascinating part of the book is the chapter "Life on the Inside", where Wilkie gives readers a glimpse of what it was like to work in intelligence. Each working day, Wilkie would have to stand in a Star Trek-style plastic tube to be scanned before entering the ONA building. His attempt to join Australia's most secretive spy service, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, offers compelling insights even after reams of information were culled by Federal Government censors.
Axis of Deceit is a comprehensive, well-researched and cogent critique. For a concise summation of the core issues, the major deceptions and the failings of the intelligence community and governments in the lead-up to the Iraq War, readers could do a lot worse.
And for those considering a career in the intelligence services, it's a must-read on the foibles, eccentricities and demands of agencies that naturally have a certain glamorous cachet but, in reality, can be dispiriting and tedious places of employment.
Tom Allard is the Herald's defence and foreign affairs writer.
-------- un
Kofi Annan requests the Ukraine to protect the UN personnel in Iraq.
RBK Kiev
26.06.2004
26 June 2004
(Non-official translation from Russian)
http://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews.shtml?/20040626200632.shtml
Following up a meeting with the UN Secretary-General K.Annan in New York, the Ukraine's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Kostyantyn Grischenko informed of Mr. K.Annan's request to consider the Ukraine participating in the UN personnel's protection unit in Iraq. ...
Minister suggested,that the Ukrainian military activities in Iraq brought about an acceptance of the Ukraine as "a top-rank expert" in both NATO (the USA inclusively), and the UN. ...
Mr. K.Grischenko noticed, that the Ukraine must also "tackle tasks of implementing the national economics interests" in Iraq, but it "should be a parallel process, no special conditions and pressure involved". ...
The ANHAM, where the Ukraine is a business partner, was already granted a $ 120mln. contract to upgrade new Iraqi forces and police ammunition. The Ukraine is in charge of 65% of a project, which are $78 millions.
-------- us
U.N. Hopes U.S. Won't Pull Peace Forces
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-US-War-Crimes.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he hopes the United States will not withdraw from peacekeeping operations after its failure to win an exemption from international prosecution for war crimes.
The United States abandoned the effort Wednesday after Annan urged the Security Council not to go along. It was a major retreat for Washington in its fight against the International Criminal Court and a rare intervention by the U.N. chief.
``I think the outcome was a good one for the council, and I think also for the Americans,'' Annan told a news conference on Friday.
The secretary-general had raised ``serious doubts'' about the legality of an exemption and warned against dividing the Security Council. He had said a new exemption ``would be a very unfortunate signal to send at any time -- but particularly at this time.''
Washington argues that the court could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions of American troops.
When the court was formally established on July 1, 2002, the United States threatened to end its involvement in far-flung peacekeeping operations established or authorized by the United Nations if it didn't get an exemption for American peacekeepers.
The council approved two one-year exemptions but balked at a third, with many council members objecting because of the Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers.
Annan was asked whether he was concerned that the United States might now follow through with the threat and create difficulties for peacekeeping operations.
``I hope everyone will see it as a helpful decision, and I hope the U.S. will not introduce other threats or ... carry out this threat made two years ago to withdraw from peacekeeping operations,'' he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters Wednesday that the issue of future peacekeeping operations was still being studied.
Every request will be examined, he said, and a key factor will be ``what the risk might be of prosecution by a court to which we're not party.''
The 94 countries that have ratified the 1998 Rome Treaty creating the court maintain it contains enough safeguards to prevent frivolous prosecutions and insist that nobody should be exempt.
In addition to seeking U.N. exemptions, Washington has signed bilateral agreements with 90 countries that bar any prosecution of American officials by the court for alleged war crimes committed on their soil.
Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham said the United States will continue to seek such agreements to protect its soldiers.
The secretary-general stressed that after previous divisions -- most seriously over the war in Iraq -- the council came together this month and unanimously endorsed the transfer of sovereignty to a new Iraqi interim government on June 30.
``The unity of the council is extremely important. It is not form. It substance,'' Annan said. ``When they are united and they work well together, they have greater impact and their decisions are usually sound.''
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More GIs At Prison May Face Charges
Abu Ghraib Investigators Examine Intelligence Unit
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6716-2004Jun25.html
BAGHDAD, June 25 -- Army investigators continue to sift through photographs and evidence of alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison to try to identify more soldiers who were involved, possibly including members of military intelligence, and sources close to the investigation said more soldiers would likely be charged.
Investigators are looking closely at the actions of three Army junior reservists with the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion -- Spec. Roman Krol, Spec. Israel Rivera and Spec. Armin J. Cruz, the sources said. All seven soldiers charged to date were members of a military police unit.
Investigators have identified the three military intelligence soldiers in a photograph taken in late October in a hallway in a cellblock on Tier 1 at the prison, where most of the abuse is alleged to have occurred, according to the sources. The picture shows three shackled detainees naked and splayed on the floor, while a military police officer leans over them and the three intelligence soldiers and others stand nearby.
Both Krol and Rivera have acknowledged that they are shown in the photo. Rivera testified to that effect on Thursday at an investigative hearing for Spec. Sabrina Harman, one of the seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company charged with abuse, and Krol told The Washington Post last month that he was one of the soldiers in the photograph.
Cruz declined to testify on Thursday, citing his right to avoid self-incrimination.
Harman's court session, known as an Article 32 hearing, concluded on Friday after her defense attorney, Frank Spinner, admonished the Army for assigning her to the prison in the first place. The unit's company commander testified a day earlier that the soldiers were poorly trained for their mission and were overwhelmed by the prison population, which outnumbered them 100 to 1.
"The government prosecution seems to believe that Specialist Harman, who sells, makes and delivers pizza for a living, is supposed to come in and challenge" her superiors, he said. Harman "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. I think the Army set her up. I think the Army should take the blame."
Lawyers for the accused soldiers have said their clients were being made scapegoats for their commanders. No senior officers have been charged with abuse.
But an Army prosecutor said on Friday that Harman should be prosecuted. "We've shown ample evidence that these charges warrant a general court-martial," Maj. Michael Holley said during closing remarks. "There should be no question in your mind."
Harman, 26, an assistant pizza shop manager from Alexandria, is accused of conspiring with the other soldiers to abuse detainees, unlawfully striking several by jumping on them, posing in a photograph with a corpse, writing "rapeist" on the leg of a detainee and putting wires on the hands of a detainee while he stood on a rations box. According to documents outlining the charges against her, Harman told the detainee on the box that he would be electrocuted if he fell off.
Spinner said Harman was not the one who hooked up the wires and threatened the detainee. He pulled out a witness statement from a detainee named Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh. In it, Faleh told investigators that "a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis." He said the soldier was saying, "Which switch is on for electricity?"
Spinner said the defense wanted to call Faleh as a witness but was told he could not be found. Spinner said, "We saw him at Abu Ghraib on Tuesday."
Harman was "trapped in a situation she couldn't get out of," Spinner told the Article 32 investigative officer, Maj. Gary "Scott" Carlson. He compared her situation to that of Spec. Matthew Wisdom, who testified on Thursday that he reported what he had seen the night of Nov. 8 and then asked to be transferred from the prison. His team leader, Sgt. Robert Jones, followed up on his behalf and had Wisdom reassigned.
"He reported it and what did they do?" Spinner asked. "They reassigned him out of the unit. He reports it and instead of opening an investigation, they just took him out of the situation."
During the hearing in a small courtroom at Camp Victory, an Army base near Baghdad International Airport, Harman sat between Spinner and her military defense lawyer, Capt. Patsy Takemura. She took notes as two witnesses testified on Friday at the conclusion of her hearing.
Carlson has the authority to recommend that her case be referred to a court-martial.
Earlier this week, a U.S. Army judge accepted a request by attorneys for three of the soldiers to question the top commanders in Iraq and their subordinates. The judge issued the rulings at pretrial hearings for Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick.
Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, the first soldier to face a court-martial in connection with Abu Ghraib, pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to a year in prison.
Speaking after the hearing on Friday, Spinner said he had "no doubt that Iraqi detainees have been physically abused on a wide scale that would be beyond the military's ability ever to prosecute."
"The chain of command, they know it, too, and the problem is that people won't step up and admit it," he said. "To do it now would only subject them to prosecution. There's no question our Marines and soldiers were put into impossible circumstances, and they were doing the best they could. . . . I think the prosecution of these cases is just gut reaction to public opinion and pressure."
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Over 60 Days, Troops Suppressed an Uprising
But Success in South Left Murky Outcome
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq -- After a year in Iraq, Lt. Jon Silk and the rest of the Army's 1st Armored Division had tickets home. But before dawn on April 5, he and his platoon rumbled toward this southern city of shrines and cemeteries, headed into war.
Over the next 60 days, more than 5,000 troops from the division engaged in the most sustained urban combat operation of the now 15-month occupation. In desert cities that once welcomed American troops, they battled a Shiite uprising that threatened to upset the June 30 transition to an Iraqi interim government. Their orders were stark: Smash the uprising, and capture or kill its leader, the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Silk soon found himself in a swirl of continuous combat, the kind of close fighting that the military had expected, but mostly avoided, during the 2003 invasion. Pinned down while pushing across a narrow bridge to retake the city of Kut, he watched four soldiers in his 15-man platoon fall wounded. "It was insane the amount of fire we were taking," he said later.
By the time the uprising was over, silenced in a cease-fire June 4, the U.S. military success appeared decisive. While 19 U.S. soldiers had been killed in combat and scores wounded, military officials estimate that 1,500 insurgents were killed. Sadr's militiamen had been driven from positions many had died defending.
But like much of the occupation, the battle for the Shiite holy cities yielded a more ambiguous political outcome. Sadr remains at large; U.S.-sponsored polls show him to be one of Iraq's most popular figures. Hundreds of his militiamen escaped, perhaps to fight another day.
The mixed messages echo in the experiences of soldiers from the 1st AD, as the division is known, who next month will leave an Iraq more violent than it was when they arrived 15 months ago. The battles revealed lessons about their enemy and themselves, and about the unpredictable winds of history in Iraq.
"This was what we expected when we first got here, not at the end," said Sgt. Jacob Garcia, 34, of Corpus Christi, Tex. "The fighting should have gone from heavy to light."
This is an account of the 60-day campaign as it was seen by dozens of the soldiers who fought in key battles from April 8 through June 4 and by the commanders who guided them. It is also drawn from a tour of the area. Many of the battles took place in four cities -- Kut, Karbala, Najaf and Kufa. The soldiers were led by four lieutenant colonels, all in their early forties, each seasoned by a year in the country.
The uprising began April 4, when U.S. troops in an east Baghdad slum moved to disarm members of Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, who were protecting the young cleric from arrest for allegedly sponsoring the killing of another Shiite leader. A 10-hour gun battle ensued that killed nine U.S. soldiers and wounded 51 others.
The uprising quickly spread south. Although a third of the 1st AD's 38,000 troops and much of its equipment had been packed up for a scheduled rotation back to Germany, those orders were canceled.
Within hours, elements of the division's 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 2nd Brigade were rolling south toward Kut, where Sadr militiamen had driven off Ukrainian troops and seized the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA.
The Bridge, Kut: April 8-11
Capt. Mike Wall's Bravo Company rolled into Kut near midday on April 8 and confronted a daunting landscape for a tank commander. The Tigris River slices the city in half. On the other bank sat the seized CPA compound. But it looked doubtful whether the narrow bridges knitting the two sides together could support a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank.
That evening, Lt. Col. T.C. Williams, the 42-year-old battalion commander from Potomac, Md., devised a plan for Wall's company. The tanks would roll 20 miles north to a secure Tigris crossing, then hook south toward the CPA headquarters in darkness. The ploy worked: Caught off guard by the 45-mile looping attack, Sadr's men abandoned the building with little resistance.
To retake all of Kut, however, U.S. forces needed to control another bridge a quarter-mile south of the CPA compound, and then join up with Wall's company. The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's "Killer Troop" led by Capt. Jon Dunn pushed across the span after midnight on Good Friday.
Sgt. Luis Savina, 29, was in the lead platoon as it crossed the bridge into a traffic circle overlooked by an Iraqi police station. The police had fled or joined the insurgents, and as the soldiers arrived, rocket-propelled grenades from the militia hammered their unarmored Humvees. Insurgents trained floodlights on his soldiers from the police station, washing out their night-vision goggles. The Americans shot out the lights. New ones came on.
"It was pretty perfect," said Savina, of Agawam, Mass. "They say three out of 10 soldiers never pull the trigger in battle. Fortunately, my platoon doesn't have that problem."
The close-quarters combat made it impossible for Dunn to call in airstrikes without risking friendly-fire casualties. Apache helicopters above the city were vulnerable to ground fire if they hovered long above the battlefield in search of a safe shot.
"Everything easy was hard that day," said Dunn, a 30-year-old from Woodbridge, Va.
As daylight approached on April 9, Silk's platoon pulled back to the middle of the bridge, giving the Apaches and an AC-130 gunship room to fire. Airstrikes on the traffic circle and the palm groves that lined the river drove the insurgents back.
Near dawn, Silk's platoon pushed across the bridge to find bloody tracks where wounded insurgents had been dragged away. Waiting in the traffic circle were two Bradley Fighting Vehicles sent as a greeting by Wall from the CPA headquarters.
"They seemed kind of pleased," said Wall.
Governor Street, Karbala: May 1-11
By May 1, about 200 Sadr militants had dug in near Karbala's gold-domed shrines of Abbas and Hussein, two of Shiite Islam's most sacred sites. The militia controlled Karbala's government and had access to its funds.
Karbala had been the responsibility of a brigade of Polish soldiers. Like Spain, Ukraine and other U.S. partners responsible for security in the Shiite south, the Polish government had prohibited its soldiers from conducting offensive operations. The rules rendered them useless when Sadr's militia rose up.
"We gave coalition partners land to manage because we thought we were at a particular phase in the mission," said Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the division commander. "We thought we had transitioned in certain places. When the uprising occurred and that transition took a step backwards, it put them in an awkward position."
"Essentially we had ceded control of the city on April 7," said Lt. Col. Garry P. Bishop, commander of the 37th Armored Regiment's 1st Battalion.
Bishop, 40, a fiery West Point graduate from Philadelphia, was ordered to drive Sadr's forces out of Karbala. He believed the militia planned to make a stand in the shadow of the shrines. His plan called for a show of force that might frighten off Sadr's men and avoid a pitched battle over the mosques.
On May 5, beginning at an amusement park that the militia used as a weapons depot, Bishop's tanks moved down Governor Street toward the shrines. Kiowa and Apache helicopters zipped overhead, clearing snipers from hotel roofs. Sadr militants, meanwhile, drew ammunition from stockpiles along irrigation canals that were off-limits to tanks.
"As we started moving along, we'd be getting pinged with sniper fire, RPGs," said Sgt. David Taylor, 37, a veteran tank commander from Copperas Cove, Tex. "They'd pop out from behind walls and take potshots at us."
In two-man teams, soldiers left the tanks to disable roadside bombs, snipping wires and blowing up the devices. "Snipers were our biggest problem," said Sgt. Aaron Owen, 30, of Powell, Wyo., whose driver was shot in his helmet. "They chewed us up pretty good. I've got holes in my pants" from shrapnel, he said.
The flailing quality of the insurgents' early stand gave way to a more skilled defense the closer troops got to the Mukhaiyam mosque, a former funeral home that Sadr had declared a holy place. U.S. commanders throughout the south saw the same pattern.
Several said Sadr's militia appeared to be led by highly competent commanders, even though most fighters seemed poorly trained. Concentric circles of defenses were built around the leadership's refuges, weapons depots and other strategic sites. The closer U.S. troops moved to command centers or ammunition stockpiles, the more adept the resistance became.
As he rolled toward the mosque, Taylor had the "primary sight" blown out of his tank. The field hospital began treating more arm and leg wounds -- a sign that snipers knew the limits of body armor and had the skill to take advantage of it.
"The enemy started to change," Bishop said.
The Cemetery, Najaf: May 14-24
Since mid-April, Lt. Col. Pat White's soldiers of the 37th Armored Regiment's 2nd Battalion had fought nightly against an estimated 2,500 militiamen in this southern city.
The militants fought from minarets and the plumes of palm trees, a favorite sniper perch. The U.S. tactics were almost as rudimentary: Columns of unarmored Humvees patrolled the city, sector by sector, as lures for "enemy contact."
White told his company commanders: "Draw them out, kill as many as you can, and don't stop until you have."
For weeks, Sadr's foot soldiers had used the impenetrable acres of Najaf's cemetery, the largest in the Islamic world, as a staging area. Just blocks away is the Shrine of Imam Ali, the holiest place in Shiite Islam. As the battle loomed, both sites were designated by U.S. commanders as "exclusion zones" for their troops.
Soldiers said the rules of engagement around the zones allowed them to fire into the areas only if they could see an attacker, a nearly impossible standard given the cover provided. Dempsey said the zones were recommended by Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the head of the U.S. forces in Iraq, and drawn up in consultation with local commanders.
U.S. officers knew that damaging the shrines would inflame opinion in Iraq and worldwide against the Americans. The British, the firmest U.S. partner in Iraq, were already angered by what they saw as provocative U.S. military tactics in the holy cities.
"One private first class with one tank round could have unhinged this whole thing," Dempsey said.
U.S. soldiers said the zones awarded a tactical advantage to Sadr's men, who used them as refuges. Operating near the Shrine of Imam Ali, U.S. patrols came under steady fire that they did not return. Each night, mortars fell on their camp -- 495 in all -- fired from a mosque complex in Kufa, a few miles to the east, also protected by an exclusion zone.
"Our soldiers were getting hurt in the same places every day because of these zones," said Spec. Christopher Stinespring, 30, of Arthurdale, W.Va. "There was nothing we could do."
On May 14, Lt. Colin Cremin, the executive officer of "Aggressor" Company, arrayed tanks on the cemetery's edge and immediately came under fire.
"There were hundreds of them in there, and they had positions everywhere, popping up among these catacombs," said Lt. Michael Watson, a platoon leader from Bentleyville, Pa. "They were intelligent about their positions. They had to know our [rules of engagement] in regards to the holy sites."
As Watson's men pursued the fighters on foot, a grenade arced over the cemetery wall and exploded beneath a Humvee. After the loss of one Humvee a week earlier, sparking a celebration by Sadr's men, the soldiers refused to surrender this one. The resulting firefight turned into a six-hour defense of a burning car.
"We weren't going to let them dance on it for the news," said Capt. Ty Wilson, 31, of Fairfax, Va., who commands "Apache" Company. "Even all the guys they lost that day, that still would have given them victory. Once they saw we weren't going to leave it, though, they really stepped up the attack."
After the troops took mortar fire for days from behind the cemetery wall, a tank was sent to knock down a 200-foot section, exposing the fighters inside. Qasim Alwan, a Najaf resident who watched the fight, remembered the animosity it inspired.
"Most people were out of their houses because they feared the war, and what was happening in the cemetery," said Alwan, 36. "What happened disrespected what the cemetery means to us."
But the mortar attacks stopped.
Mukhaiyam Mosque, Karbala: May 11-21
By May 11, Sadr's militants had withdrawn into a square-mile area around Karbala's shrines. For the first time, Bishop's soldiers contended with an exclusion zone of their own.
That evening Bishop sent hundreds of soldiers into buildings around the Mukhaiyam mosque. Sgt. Shane Hill, a 24-year-old from Chicago, entered a boys school a block west of the mosque. He found tank rounds and four men who identified themselves as Iraqi police officers bound and gagged, badly beaten and smelling of urine.
As Hill worked to clear the school, mortar shells fell in the courtyard, fired by teams of insurgents who faded into the old city. Bisho, observing from a few blocks away, would not let his men pursue them into the exclusion zone. Asked how he made the decision, Bishop said, "By being here a year."
The battle moved to the shrines. Over 10 days, Bishop's soldiers played cat-and-mouse with insurgents who took cover among the city's alleyways, covered archways and low rooftops. Residents were caught in the fighting. The soldiers estimate that 20 civilians were killed in Karbala during the fighting, a figure that could not be independently verified.
Squeezed into a few downtown blocks, Sadr militants began using children to shuttle ammunition, soldiers said. Youngsters carrying large plastic bags darted from corner to corner, and the soldiers would not shoot them. "We all grew up knowing you don't hurt women and children," Taylor said. "And they used that to their advantage."
Sadr militants accused U.S. forces of killing hundreds of civilians, a claim denied by U.S. commanders. Hussein Hadi, the assistant director of Najaf's general hospital, said 81 civilians were killed and 353 others wounded during the weeks of fighting. Many of Sadr's militiamen wore black uniforms, making it relatively easy to distinguish between civilian and insurgent. But that changed as the battle wore on.
On May 21, Bishop's men destroyed two arms stockpiles and two Sadr headquarter buildings. The remaining militants, whose numbers swelled to more than 400 over the course of the fighting, vanished overnight.
Kufa: May 24-June 4 By the last week in May, Najaf's war of attrition had entered its endgame. From two sides, battalion-size tank units converged on the town of Kufa, a few miles east of Najaf, where Sadr delivered Friday sermons.
In darkness, tank platoons began pushing into Kufa across a bridge over the Euphrates. Fighters holed up in a former palace and a technical college watched over the west side of the river. Each night, soldiers shot tank rounds into the buildings.
On the night of May 24, Lt. Col. Bob Burns, commander of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's 3rd Squadron, sent three tanks under Capt. Geoff Wright on a scouting mission across the bridge. As the convoy turned north toward the Kufa mosque complex, the heart of Sadr's militia, six rocket-propelled grenades hit the lead tank.
"Every alley had four- to five-man teams, firing," said Wright, 31, of Emmaus, Pa. "The sheer amount of it was awe-inspiring."
Wright's tanks pounded back for hours as they looped through Kufa. When he returned to base, only one of three tanks was deemed "mission-capable." The following day Sadr's aides announced a truce.
"They may be poor, they may be untrained," Wright said. "But they are not cowards."
Before the start of Friday prayers a few days later, Burns sent a tank company across to verify the truce. It was the first daylight operation in weeks of combat.
The traffic appeared heavy when they crossed the bridge at 7:45 a.m. As they moved toward the mosque, a message blared from its loudspeaker, calling on Sadr's supporters to "fight for Allah and you will go to paradise." The firing started immediately.
"It was the first time I'd seen a Mahdi Army fighter up close," Wright said. "He was 17 or so. I was shocked he was so young."
Riding in an open Humvee, Spec. Rodney Clayborn, 21, swung down an alley following the source of grenade fire. Moments later he looked toward the rooftops and saw a ball of flame rushing at him.
"I tried to shoot it down," he said. "But it hit and blew up right in front of us."
The grenade concussion knocked Clayborn out and when he revived the Humvee was being riddled with rifle fire. He scrambled out of his seat, bleeding from shrapnel wounds to his arms, legs and right ear. He saw his sergeant on the ground, wounded badly in the arm.
"He asked me if he was going to make it," recalled Clayborn, tears streaking his smooth face. "I kind of paused, and said, 'Yes, you're going to be fine.' He didn't believe me."
He wasn't sure himself, although he turned out to be right. Screaming for help, Clayborn summoned several soldiers who pulled him out of the alley.
"I think it's God's plan to have me stay here until this mission is finished," said Clayborn, of Lancaster, Calif., who received a Purple Heart after the fight.
The cease-fire took effect on June 4, days after troops arrested two key Sadr lieutenants, one of them in a convoy that commanders believed may have carried Sadr himself. Within days, Sadr announced plans to form a political party and compete in elections next year. What remained of his army flowed out of the city in minibuses.
"We'd routinely stop caravans of men 18 to 25 years old," said Capt. Brandon Payne, 29, of Chattanooga. "They had no weapons, so we couldn't do anything."
No one is certain exactly how many Sadr militants remain, although division intelligence officers say there are no more than several hundred. Dempsey said he never formally agreed to a cease-fire, and said he could not be sure that the fighters who survived would not regroup. Nonetheless, he defended the timing of the decision to stop fighting.
"It was clear there was a point at which the people of Najaf would blame the militia for what was happening, and beyond that they would blame us," Dempsey said of the decision. "We watched that point carefully."
But many soldiers believe the decision was premature, and that it will haunt the Iraqi government after the 1st Armored Division has gone home.
"Our effort here has been semi-wasted," said Staff Sgt. Luke Andrzejewski, 35, of San Francisco. "They have lived to fight again, and that's exactly what they'll do."
-------- war crimes
Former CIA Contractor to Be Jailed Until Trial in Afghan Prisoner Assault
By Estes Thompson
Associated Press
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6582-2004Jun25.html
RALEIGH, N.C., June 25 -- A federal judge on Friday ordered former CIA contractor David Passaro to remain jailed until his assault trial after prosecutors said witnesses would testify Passaro beat an Afghan detainee so badly he begged to be shot.
After a detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Webb connected a 1990 assault by Passaro when he was a Hartford, Conn., police officer and the alleged beating of Abdul Wali in an Afghanistan prison. Webb said the Connecticut case "started a pattern I see repeated here of structuring stories, setting plans."
Passaro faces four counts of assault and assault with a dangerous weapon -- a large flashlight. Wali, who was 28, died at a U.S. base in Afghanistan on June 21, 2003.
During Friday's hearing, prosecutors questioned Passaro's girlfriend about allegedly coded telephone conversations the two had about money and Passaro's passport.
Bonnie Heart, a Wake Forest police detective who met Passaro online, said she and Passaro received a letter from prosecutors in February. After that, she said, they discussed how she should handle his financial affairs if he was arrested.
Heart, a seven-year officer, testified that Passaro asked her to get his dozen or so guns out of his house after his arrest, but she said she did not know much about firearms. She also said she and Passaro never discussed his work for the CIA in Afghanistan.
"It is inconceivable to me that a person who has been a police officer for seven years would testify that she was unfamiliar with firearms," the judge said. "That dovetails with testimony that they didn't discuss the CIA."
Earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Candelmo said three members of the 82nd Airborne Division would testify Passaro beat Wali with a heavy metal flashlight 10 to 30 times and kicked him so hard he came off the ground.
A paratrooper will testify that when Passaro left the room to take a break during one interrogation session, Wali begged one of the paratroopers guarding him "to please shoot me," Candelmo added.
Defense attorneys have cited an Afghan governor's comment that Wali died of a heart attack, but a spokesman for that governor recently said he suspected heart problems only because U.S. officials insisted the man was not mistreated.
At the time of Wali's death, Passaro was working as a CIA contractor in Afghanistan and was on leave from a civilian job with the Fort Bragg-headquartered Special Operations Command.
If convicted, Passaro faces up to 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
--------
C.I.A. Contractor to Be Held Till Trial
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/national/26contractor.html
RALEIGH, N.C., June 25 (AP) - A C.I.A. contractor accused of beating an Afghan detainee who later died will be held without bond until his trial, a federal magistrate ruled Friday.
The magistrate, William Webb, linked a 1990 assault by the contractor, David A. Passaro, when he was a police officer in Hartford, Conn., and the beating of the detainee, Abdul Wali.
Mr. Passaro, of Lillington, N.C., is charged with four counts of assault and assault with a dangerous weapon, a large flashlight.
Mr. Wali, who was 28, died at an American base in Asadabad, Afghanistan, in June 2003.
Alan DuBois, the public defender representing Mr. Passaro at the hearing, argued that the government was using fragments of conversations to build an inaccurate picture of his client.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Ashcroft's Gulag
Boston Phoenix
by Harvey Silverglate
June 26, 2004
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/silverglate3.html
Boston is home to the Ponzi scheme, named after the notorious swindler Charles Ponzi who, in 1919, amassed a fortune by fooling investors tempted by reliable returns. The plan worked this way: by delivering regular payouts from "earnings," Ponzi established a track record that attracted ever more investors. The catch was that investors were not paid with profits on anything real, but out of funds invested by later investors. And later investors were paid from investments made by those who followed them. And so on. It was an ingenious façade until the music stopped - which was, of course, inevitable.
Ponzi ended up doing time in federal prison, and yet Attorney General John Ashcroft - the man who today is in charge of guarding against such criminal maneuvers - seems to be something of a Ponzi schemer himself. Only this time what is at stake is not the hard-earned cash of hapless investors, but our national security.
On June 14, Ashcroft unveiled the federal indictment of Nuradin M. Abdi, a 32-year-old Somali citizen living in Ohio who was charged in a conspiracy to bomb an unidentified shopping mall in Columbus; if convicted, he could face 55 years in prison. Although the indictment itself was mostly boilerplate, the prosecutors' motion to deny bail contained all kinds of damning detail about Abdi's comings and goings between Canada and Ethiopia, and his training in "radio usage, guns, guerrilla warfare, bombs [for] violent Jihadi conflicts overseas and any activity his al Qaeda co-conspirators might ask him to perform here in the United States."
Well, this may or may not be true. We have no way of knowing, now or in the future, because there has not been and likely never will be a trial. And even if Abdi were to plead guilty and "admit" all these facts, we could not have any confidence in their truth. Why? Because one of Abdi's alleged co-conspirators was none other than Iyman Faris, a former Ohio truck driver who was more or less forced to plead guilty last year to planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. For that crime, Faris was sentenced, in October 2003, to a prison term of 20 years. A public trial was not an option for Faris; his choice was either to plead guilty or be detained indefinitely, incommunicado, as an "enemy combatant." Under such circumstances, any information he may have provided implicating Abdi must be considered dubious at best.
To an observer unfamiliar with Faris's unusual situation, the case against Abdi sounds pretty straightforward, typical of cases involving state witnesses: in an effort to reduce his long prison sentence, Faris must have ratted on his former partner-in-crime to federal investigators and then to a grand jury, resulting in Abdi's indictment. Justice prevailed, and useful intelligence is making us safer.
But is it? Even if Faris were simply a convict hoping to gain a reduced sentence, he would still have all the credibility problems we normally associate with rewarded witnesses - who, as Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz often says, "are taught not only how to sing, but also how to compose." However, Faris is not just an ordinary convict, much less an ordinary witness; he's not even an ordinary rewarded witness. As Carl Takei and I explained in this column back in March (see "Crossing the Threshold," News and Features, March 5), Faris falls into a special category of individuals who are the victims of a prosecutorial ruse reminiscent of the Stalinist show trials described by Arthur Koestler in his powerful novel Darkness at Noon. There, we said: "In ... Darkness at Noon ... the protagonist is accused of crimes against the state and is given a choice by his jailers. If he signs a confession and admits wrongdoing, he will receive a public trial. But if he refuses to cooperate, his case will be dealt with 'administratively' and out of sight. This two-track justice system, in which problem cases were whisked from view and dealt with in secret while public trials merely paraded the coerced guilt of the 'accused,' converted the Soviet Union's justice system into an appalling masquerade."
And, indeed, Faris, a naturalized US citizen of Kashmiri birth, was the victim of just such a masquerade. He was secretly arrested in March 2003, charged with plotting to destroy the famous bridge, and held incommunicado for two months. Then he was made an offer he couldn't refuse: he could either plead guilty and cooperate with the FBI, or President Bush and the Department of Defense would declare him an "enemy combatant." Once so declared, his criminal case would be terminated without trial, and he would be held incommunicado indefinitely, without access to legal counsel. Rather than fall into such a purgatory, Faris agreed to plead guilty, sign a statement of "facts," and be sentenced to 20 years. It was a long sentence, but a 20-year tunnel with light at the end of it was better than the alternative.
Faris told FBI interrogators that the signed statement of "facts" they were going to present to the sentencing judge was a fabrication. During his public sentencing hearing in October of last year, he interrupted the proceedings to insist, again, that he'd been pressured by prosecutors and agents to sign the false statement of facts. Faris's frantic pleas went unheeded by the sentencing judge, who went along with the program. So did Faris's lawyer, former federal prosecutor J. Frederick Sinclair, who cooperated with the feds to draft the plea agreement in which Faris waived every single right, including the right to appeal or even to obtain his case records. Faris then began serving his sentence.
So it should come as no surprise that, half a year later, Faris's name has popped up as a co-conspirator in yet another plot, this time with another alleged member of Al Qaeda, Nuradin M. Abdi. Thanks to the extreme secrecy surrounding these cases, we cannot be certain that Abdi was indicted based on whatever it was that Faris, under continued pressure by the feds, told his interrogators. And, after all, the pressure on Faris was not the usual one applied to "turned" witnesses, in which the defendant is sentenced, and then sings and composes to get a reduction; instead, the pressure was on him to sing and compose merely to be allowed to plead guilty and get the 20 years, rather than fall into the "enemy combatant" mire.
A hint of the relationship between Faris's Kafkaesque dilemma and Abdi's indictment is provided by the Washington Post's June 15 report that "prosecutors have spent the past six months building a criminal case against [Abdi]," according to unnamed "officials." Faris was sentenced on October 29, and it is quite possible that he told a tale about Abdi just around the time he was desperately seeking to avoid designation as an enemy combatant. And, of course, we have no idea what other harsh methods federal interrogators may have used to win Faris's cooperation, now that, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, we understand the repertoire of persuasive techniques in their arsenal (see "Advice of Counsel: Torture Is Okay," This Just In, June 18).
Let's be very clear about why the Justice Department has developed this ruse for circumventing the courts: a trial jury, once aware of these circumstances, would never believe a word of Faris's testimony against Abdi, but if the pattern established in the Faris case is any guide - and it almost certainly is - the Abdi case will never go to trial. Given that there's no sign of substantial corroborating evidence from reliable sources other than Faris, even a novice lawyer could probably get Abdi acquitted by any moderately fair-minded jury - but without a trial, that won't make any difference.
Abdi almost certainly will face the same Hobson's choice earlier presented to Faris: he can either plead guilty or, if he insists on going to trial, President Bush will prevent such a trial by designating him an enemy combatant, meaning he will be turned over to indefinite military custody and held incommunicado. Then, of course, he will get no visits from relatives, friends, or lawyers. I'd wager that Abdi's case will follow this pattern and end just as Faris's did, with a Soviet-style show-trial plea of guilty. And then the cycle can begin over again.
See the emerging picture? It's an endless series of faux prosecutions in which defendants are threatened to "cooperate" and plead guilty, or face indefinite incommunicado imprisonment, with all the physical and psychological terrors that accompany finding oneself in a bottomless legal pit. Like a Ponzi scheme, the structure of these prosecutions resembles a pyramid: defendants are pressured to testify against other friends, associates, and cohorts, who are then indicted regardless of whether the testimony, given under enormous pressure, would ever stand up in a real trial - and, in fact, it never will have to stand up at a real trial. Those new defendants are then, in turn, subjected to the same pressures. None of the "evidence" ever gets to be heard and evaluated by a jury of honest Americans, but the march of prosecutions and guilty pleas rolls onward, and the Bush administration's war on terror is palmed off on the public as a huge success.
This is one helluva way to run a war on terror. After all, Ashcroft was certainly right when he warned, as he did at the June 14 press conference announcing the Abdi indictment, that "we know our enemies will go to great lengths to lie in wait and to achieve the death and destruction they desire." But what's really scary is that if these kinds of show trials - the law-enforcement and judicial equivalents of Ponzi schemes - are what Ashcroft & Company are doing to protect the nation, then we are likely in worse trouble than even the pessimists among us imagine, for we have no reasonable assurance that we are capturing and imprisoning the right people. It's all a great public-relations front for the FBI and the Departments of Justice and Defense. In the end the testimony and the intelligence they've gathered by such means add up to little more than, in Macbeth's words, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-------- homeland security
Security for GOP Convention Detailed
By Michelle Garcia
The Washington Post
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6537-2004Jun25.html
NEW YORK, June 25 -- The heart of midtown Manhattan will be closed to cars, taxis, delivery trucks and buses for the four-day-long Republican National Convention beginning in late August. Closer to Madison Square Garden, police will bar even pedestrians.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) outlined the first detailed security plans for the convention, which will run from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, in his weekly radio address on Friday. "The disruptions will be a little bit annoying but minimal," Bloomberg said, adding that the convention will pump $250 million into the local economy.
But the closings he forecast are anything but minimal. Traffic in midtown already moves at less than 4 mph, and the street closures and rerouting -- which will last 13 hours each day -- could bring traffic to a near-standstill. The closures could cost local businesses many thousands of dollars.
Police officers will also inspect trucks and vans in nearby neighborhoods in an effort to avert a terrorist attack.
"We're concerned about cars begin used as weapons," said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne.
Pedestrians will be permitted within a block of the convention site, but only those with credentials will be allowed into the immediate area. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who joined Bloomberg in making the announcement, said officers will escort workers and business patrons into the convention zone.
Commuter and subway trains will enter and depart normally from Pennsylvania Station, which is beneath Madison Square Garden. But uniformed and undercover officers will make mass sweeps of the trains, Browne said.
In Boston, by contrast, officials have urged downtown workers to avoid the downtown area and telecommute for the week of the Democratic National Convention, which will begin July 26. Transit officials have suggested that Bostonians headed to the neighborhood around the convention center do not carry backpacks or briefcases.
New York police said they have not ruled out random checks of bags on the streets and subways during the Republican convention.
Barbara Randall, executive director of the Fashion Center, a nonprofit group that support business improvement in the Garment District, estimates that the security measures will affect nearly 2,000 manufacturing and retail shops in the district, which is centered in midtown. She declined to estimate the cost of the disruptions.
"Deliveries are going to be a problem -- there's no way around it," she said. "When and how these folks are going to take deliveries is going to be a problem for a lot of these small businesses."
City officials have suggested that local businesses reschedule delivery and service visits for after midnight.
Although taxis will not be allowed into the convention zone, the city has promised delegates a free subway MetroCard.
-------- human rights
U.N. Investigators Appeal to U.S.
Human Rights Workers Seeking Access to Detention Centers
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6756-2004Jun25.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 25 -- A group of 31 U.N. human rights investigators issued a rare joint appeal to the United States to give them access to detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The request came at the end of a week-long meeting in Geneva on the impact of the U.S.-led counterterrorism campaign on human rights. It signaled mounting frustration over the Bush administration's refusal to open the doors of its detention centers to U.N. human rights monitors.
The statement asks that four specialists -- trained to check for evidence of torture, arbitrary detention, medical and physical abuse, and judicial independence -- be invited to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay "at the earliest possible date" to determine whether the human rights of prisoners are "properly upheld." They would present their findings to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
"The way prisoners are treated in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo is totally contrary to international law and humanitarian law," said Doudou Diene of Senegal, the United Nations' special rapporteur for racism and discrimination. We want to "send a team of special rapporteurs to go and visit those places."
U.S. officials said that they are providing detainee access to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and they see no need for the United Nations' rights experts to duplicate that work.
Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said the Bush administration was "very disappointed" that the United Nations' human rights investigators had singled out the United States for criticism when they "have plenty to do" investigating abuses in places such as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Cuba.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross has full access," Grenell said. "I don't think the U.N. human rights rapporteurs should be placing this as a priority knowing there are other human rights priorities around the world."
Although the United States grants the Red Cross access to its main detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, it has sought to prevent the organization from interviewing some of the most important detainees.
In addition, ICRC spokeswoman Amanda Williamson said, the organization has been pressing the Bush administration to provide "access to people held in undisclosed places of detention."
"We haven't been granted access yet, but the dialogue still continues," she said.
The treatment of prisoners of war is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which requires combatants to provide access to the International Committee for the Red Cross.
U.S. officials say that they have no obligation to grant access to human rights investigators. "Their position is that it's a question of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention and not a human rights issue," said a U.N. official.
The Bush administration has rebuffed previous requests by the acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, and by other U.N. human rights units to visit Guantanamo.
But Ramcharan published eyewitness accounts by several detainees who alleged they were subjected to arbitrary arrest and beaten while in detention in Iraq.
Saddam Salah Abood Rawi, 29, interviewed by U.N. officials in Amman, said in the June 9 report that American guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had kicked and beaten him, knocking out two teeth.
Grenell criticized the report, saying that the United States was "disappointed that some of the reports findings allege human rights violations in very general terms and fail to indicate where and when such abuses occurred."
-------- police
F.B.I. Sees Delay in New Network to Oversee Cases
June 26, 2004
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and LOWELL BERGMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/politics/26FBI.final.html?pagewanted=all&position=
F.B.I. officials said yesterday that they would not be able to fully deploy a long-awaited computer system to manage the bureau's case files before the end of the year as promised, and that they could not predict when the entire system would be in place.
As a result, an important technological component of the administration's domestic security effort remains in limbo.
The Virtual Case File system, which would allow agents to share information easily - a critical shortcoming of the present system - is already two years behind schedule and one bureau official who spoke on condition of anonymity went so far as to suggest that the program might ultimately have to be abandoned.
Other F.B.I. officials denied that the situation was that dire, but they acknowledged that the program development was far slower than the bureau had initially expected. In a statement released Friday in response to inquiries from The New York Times, the bureau stated that it "continues testing" the system to "work through some remaining issues."
Officials said that instead of setting up a fully functional system by the end of the year, they would begin with a version of Virtual Case File that will have a small set of its planned functions in a small number of sites, probably including F.B.I. headquarters.
"The program is too large and too complex and too huge to say, `On Monday, you'll come in and you're going to have V.C.F. on your desktop,' " said Zalmai Azmi, the chief information officer for the F.B.I. "You can't do that with 28,000 users."
Only after the initial functions have been used reliably will its capabilities and network be expanded, Mr. Azmi said. But he insisted that the program was on track.
Mr. Azmi said that he did not have enough information to predict when the deployment might be completed, and that it would depend on how smoothly each stage went. The postponement represents a setback in replacing an antiquated system with shortcomings that were highlighted during investigations of the F.B.I.'s failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot.
In the aftermath of the hijackings, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, told a Senate panel that the bureau's computer system was so limited that it could not search its files for combinations of terms like "flight" and "schools," precisely the kind of combination that might have helped to discern the patterns of activity leading up to the attacks. Instead, Mr. Mueller said, the system could search for words like "flight" and "school" only one at a time.
As late as May 20, Mr. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was "my hope and expectation" that the new system would "be completed by the end of this year."
But in an interview this week, a senior agency official questioned why F.B.I. employees were now being trained in how to use the system if no one knew when it would become operational. The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said he thought that the continued delays might lead the bureau to re-evaluate the project.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has been critical of the F.B.I.'s progress in developing new technologies and said yesterday in an interview, "The fact that now the virtual file is not going to be ready by December is a real disappointment."
"The virtual file is one of the best tools the F.B.I. would have in fighting terrorism," Mr. Schumer said. "It's taking too long, they've made many missteps in the past. They're beginning to recover, but this is an example of how far they have to go."
According to a staff report from the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I.'s primary information system, which was designed using 1980's technology, was "already obsolete when installed in 1995." The commission report said that "field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on."
In 2000 Congress approved the Trilogy project, of which Virtual Case File is a part. Trilogy was conceived as a 36-month plan to improve the bureau's computer networks, systems and software. The Sept. 11 commission staff reported that the technology consultant who was brought in on the project by Louis J. Freeh, who was then the F.B.I. director, had told them that "given the enormity of the task at hand, his goal was merely to 'get the car out of the ditch.' "
Now, more than $500 million into the four-year-old project, the F.B.I. has received new computers and access to e-mail and the Internet for agents. Last month in Senate hearings, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, held up that example of progress for ridicule. "I've got a 6-year-old grandson who sends me e-mails," Mr. Leahy said. "This is not something that we should really say is a great accomplishment."
A National Research Council report released in May said that the F.B.I. was "not on a path to success" with the program, though a follow-up report released earlier this month said that the bureau had taken important steps to fix the problems and had made progress, but that "many important challenges remain."
Herbert S. Lin, an author of that report, said yesterday that the F.B.I.'s more gradual approach to introducing the Virtual Case File system was one of the most important recommendations of the report, and that it is, ultimately, "unquestionably good news," since "we never thought that this big-bang approach is the right way to do it."
Attorney General John Ashcroft argued before the Sept. 11 commission that the previous administration was to blame for the technology failings. "The F.B.I.'s information infrastructure had been starved," he said, "And by Sept. 11, it was collapsing from budgetary neglect."
But officials in government at the time speak of a technophobic bureau that neglected its computer systems. Bruce McConnell, an information technology official in the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration, said the problem had more to do with the culture and expertise of the F.B.I. than with money. He said in an interview yesterday that many F.B.I. agents, like other law enforcement officers, "are by nature conservative, and are not often the early adopters of new ways of doing things."
When agents rise through the bureau and become officials, Mr. McConnell said, their mindset does not change. "We gave them what we believed that they could spend wisely," he said, and also noted that Congress could have appropriated more money if it had seen fit.
Mr. McConnell had praise, however, for Mr. Mueller, who, he said, "to his credit, is spending a lot of time trying to figure out, 'how do I get my hands around this problem?' " Technology conversions cause headaches for the private and public sectors alike, he said.
The continued delays are nonetheless an embarrassment for Mr. Mueller, who has made the technology upgrade a centerpiece of his efforts to transform the F.B.I. into an organization that can fight modern terrorists as well as it solves crimes. Even privacy advocates who criticize the government for its efforts to cast a larger net for personal data say the F.B.I. needs to upgrade its internal network so it can make the best use of its own data.
"The F.B.I. needs systems like Trilogy in order to connect the dots," said Alan Davidson, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. "Why is Congress considering even greater expansions in data collection, raising real privacy concerns, when the F.B.I. is struggling to manage the data it lawfully collects today?"
-------- torture
UK police help anti-torture move
bbc
26 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3843325.stm
The police are to help the Foreign Office produce a manual on humane investigation techniques to help law officers abroad combat torture.
Both serving and retired police officers will help with the document, part of a £380,000 commitment to anti-torture projects by the UK Government.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that educating police and prison officers was vital in the fight against torture.
He was speaking on the UN day to commemorate victims of torture.
He added that the seriousness with which Britain was responding to allegations of brutality in Iraq by UK troops was a test of its commitment to human rights.
Combat torture
Britain became the third country in the world to sign the Optional Proposal to the UN Convention Against Torture last year.
The protocol promotes initiatives such as demanding that places of detention are inspected by international teams.
Mr Straw said the UK was determined to combat the torture wherever it occurred.
"We vehemently oppose torture as a matter of fundamental principle," he said.
"In the majority of torture cases around the world it is law enforcement officials who are guilty of abuse.
"The Foreign Office will be working with serving and retired UK police officers to produce a new manual guiding police forces on alternative and humane investigation techniques - in line with country-specific procedures."
He also said the Foreign Office would mark the UN Day for the victims of torture by lobbying other countries to join the UK in signing the UN's protocol.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
9/11 Panel Links Al Qaeda, Iran
Bin Laden May Have Part in Khobar Towers, Report Says
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6581-2004Jun25?language=printer
While it found no operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network had long-running contacts with Iraq's neighbor and historic foe, Iran.
Al Qaeda, the commission determined, may even have played a "yet unknown role" in aiding Hezbollah militants in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, an attack the United States has long blamed solely on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors.
The notion that bin Laden may have had a hand in the Khobar bombing would mark a rare operational alliance between Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups that have historically been at odds. That possibility, largely overlooked in the furor of new revelations released by the commission last week, comes amid worsening relations between the United States and Iran, which announced on Thursday that it would resume building equipment necessary for a nuclear weapons program.
The Sept. 11 panel's findings on Iran have been eclipsed by the continuing political debate over Iraq, which the commission said had not developed a "collaborative relationship" with al Qaeda despite limited contacts in the 1990s. That appeared to conflict with previous characterizations made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials in their justifications for launching the war against Saddam Hussein.
In relation to Iran, commission investigators said intelligence "showed far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al Qaeda than many had previously thought." Iran is a primary sponsor of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the Lebanon-based anti-Israel group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
The commission's Republican chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, also said in a television appearance last week that "there were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq."
But perhaps most startling was the commission's finding that bin Laden may have played a role in the Khobar attack. Although previous court filings and testimony indicated that al Qaeda and Iranian elements had contacts during the 1990s, U.S. authorities have not publicly linked bin Laden or his operatives to that strike, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen. A June 2001 indictment of 14 defendants in the case makes no mention of al Qaeda or bin Laden and lays the organizational blame for the attacks solely on Hezbollah and Iran.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of Rand Corp., said that although bin Laden's then-fledgling group was an early suspect in the blasts, "the evidence kept pointing to an Iranian connection, so people tended to discount a bin Laden connection."
"What the commission report is raising is that the relationship might have been much tighter and was in fact operational and not just spiritual," Hoffman said.
U.S. officials who have worked on the Khobar case are more skeptical. A law enforcement source with knowledge of the case, who declined to be identified because of the ongoing criminal investigation, said authorities searched carefully for an al Qaeda connection but found no basis for it.
The broader notion of links between bin Laden's group and Hezbollah or hard-line elements in Iran's security forces has been a hot topic in U.S. law enforcement and intelligence circles for years. Many analysts have viewed such an alliance as dubious, largely because of ancient animosities between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Several leaders of al Qaeda, a Sunni organization, have issued rabidly anti-Shiite proclamations.
Nonetheless, the United States previously compiled evidence of limited contacts between Iranian interests and al Qaeda. U.S. officials alleged that Iran was harboring al Qaeda militants who had fled neighboring Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion there.
Iran has denied that al Qaeda was operating from its territory, and announced earlier this year that it would put on trial a dozen suspected members of the terrorist group.
The original U.S. indictment of bin Laden, filed in 1998, said al Qaeda "forged alliances . . . with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States."
But the Sept. 11 commission's findings regarding Khobar Towers, if confirmed, would deepen the known relationship between al Qaeda, Iran and Hezbollah. A commission staff report issued June 16 said that in addition to evidence that the attack had been carried out by Saudi Hezbollah with assistance from Iran, "intelligence obtained shortly after the bombing . . . also supported suspicions of bin Laden's involvement.
"There were reports in the months preceding the attack that bin Laden was seeking to facilitate a shipment of explosives to Saudi Arabia. On the day of the attack, bin Laden was congratulated" by al Qaeda militants, the report says.
The report recounts some of the previously alleged contacts between al Qaeda and Iran or Hezbollah and concludes, "We have seen strong but indirect evidence that [bin Laden's] organization did in fact play some as yet unknown role in the Khobar attack."
The report also says that several years before the Khobar attack, "bin Laden's representatives and Iranian officials had discussed putting aside Shia-Sunni divisions to cooperate against the common enemy." A group of al Qaeda representatives then traveled to Iran and to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon for "training in explosives, intelligence and security," the report says.
Bin Laden himself, the report added, "showed particular interest in Hezbollah's truck bombing tactics in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 U.S. Marines."
Flynt L. Leverett, a Middle East expert in the Clinton and Bush administrations who is now a Brookings Institution scholar, said active cooperation between al Qaeda and Iran "cannot be ruled out as wholly implausible."
"There are going to be serious structural limits to how much al Qaeda and Iran might cooperate," Leverett said. "Within those limits, though, there is some room for very tactical and self-serving cooperation between al Qaeda and some parts of Iranian intelligence." Leverett cited as an example the allegations that Iran had harbored al Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan.
But Daniel Benjamin, a national security official in the Clinton administration, said he was "still skeptical" of any link between al Qaeda and Khobar, arguing that the evidence shows "that Saudi Hezbollah was very much a creature of some in Iran."
"I don't quite see the need that this operation had for assistance from al Qaeda," Benjamin said. "Second of all, my understanding of the larger relationship between Iran and al Qaeda suggests that while there were plenty of contacts, many more than there were with Iraq, it was never clear they developed a serious cooperative relationship."
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
--------
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Decision Not to Explore Quashed FBI Investigations Prior to 9/11 Tarnishes Hearings
counterpunch
By BRYAN SACKS
June 26 / 27, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/sacks06262004.html
At the twelfth and final public session of the 9/11 commission hearings this week in the NTSB building in Washington, DC, the disappointment was palpable among family members of the 9/11 deceased. A less-than distinguished panel of FBI and CIA agents took turns praising the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Al-Qaeda, and offered little hope that future efforts would be successful in stopping terrorism. But give the CIA and FBI this: they can still recognize a marketing opportunity when they see it.
Apparently unfamiliar with the concept of shame, representatives from two of the agencies whose failures bear clear responsibility for the events of 9/11 saw the morning session as an opportunity to shill for 'patience' and, tacitly, more money. One after another, in front of the surviving family members, many of whom clutched pictures of their dead sons, daughters, husbands and wives, the agents fawned over the incredible resourcefulness, commitment and dedication of Al Qaeda operatives (in one notable exchange, Al Qaeda was glowingly described as "innovative," "creative" and "entrepreneurial"-why not just say you were outsmarted?) The CIA agents referred familiarly to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama Bin Laden as 'KSM' and 'UBL'. The uninitiated might have gotten the impression they were speaking of protégés, and not hated enemies. Earlier, in a jaunty tone completely incongruous with the substance of his statement, the CIA's Dr. Kay told the commission that "(Al-Qaeda) may strike next week, next month or next year, but it will strike." The agencies took no responsibility for the attacks, and they were not challenged to.
But the nadir of the morning session came when commissioner James Thompson asked all of the panelists how best to combat the new type of stateless enemy Al-Qaeda represents. FBI special agent Mary Deborah Doran answered last. She had already warned the Commission in her introductory remarks that, as a "street agent", she was removed from the "policy and administrative decision-making processes" that determined the scope of the FBI's investigation of Al Qaeda, and thus could not speak to them (no one did that day, including Executive Assistant FBI Director John Pistole, seated to her right). Her answer to Thompson's question was: "I think what we need to do . . at the FBI street-agent level, is to continue what we've always done, and that is to pursue all the information that we do get. . . to its logical end. . ."
Here, in classic doublespeak fashion, Doran gives an answer that is a non-answer. She had to be aware that several FBI "street-level" investigations into the activities of the 9/11 terrorists were stymied by higher-ups in the weeks prior to 9/11, each under strange circumstances, and well before the street-level agents felt like they had reached their "logical end". Consider the following cases, all drawn from mainstream news sources, summarized in David Ray Griffin's well-researched expose, "The New Pearl Harbor":
1) Ken Williams of the Phoenix FBI office sent a now-famous July 10, 2001 memo to the counterterrorism division of the FBI suggesting that the organization institute a national program to keep tabs on suspicious flight-school students. This came just a few weeks after the CIA learned that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 plot and a well-known terrorist at that time who the CIA was monitoring, was recruiting jihadists to come to the US to take part in attacks here. Williams, who had previously been transferred to an unrelated arson case despite tracking the hijackers for more than a year, had been back on the case for about a month when he wrote the memo, which also warned of a possible "effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges" (Fortune, May 22, 2002). His suggestion for a national program was ignored before 9/11;
2) FBI agent Robert Wright of the Chicago field office, who had been investigating a suspected terrorist cell for three years, was informed in January 2001 that the case was being closed. This despite Wright's contention that his case was growing stronger. His investigation included individuals from the notorious Ptech, a software company which provided product for the White House, Congress, FBI, CIA, IRS, Army, Navy, and FAA and which was raided by federal agents in December 2002.
Three months before September 11, Wright wrote a stinging internal memo charging that the FBI was not interested in thwarting a terrorist attack, but rather "was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred." (UPI, May 30, 2002, cited in Griffin, p. 83);
3) Legal officer Colleen Rowley worked in the FBI's Minneapolis field office when agents arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August of 2001. The commission made repeated mention of the fact that Moussaoui, by that time, was considered a very dangerous person capable of crashing a plane into the World Trade Center. The Minneapolis felt so strongly about the need to detain him that a request was sent to FBI headquarters to search Moussaoui's laptop computer under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Approximately 10,000 requests under FISA over the past 20 years had been made without a single request being turned down, but the Minneapolis agency's request never got out of the FBI. The request had been excised of the critical intelligence that made the case for Moussaoui's connection to Al Qaeda in Chechnya on its path to FBI headquarters. Excised of that justification, the request was never forwarded for FISA consideration, spurring Rowley to charge that the FBI was "sabotaging" the case, and another agent to charge that headquarters was "setting this up for failure." (Senate Intelligence Committee, October 17, 2002; Time, July 21 and July 27, 2002 and Sydney Morning Herald July 28, 2002, each cited in Griffin, p. 81);
4) On Aug 28, 2001 the New York FBI office requested opening a criminal investigation in soon-to-be hijacker Khalid Almihdhar based on evidence he had been involved in the USS Cole bombing. The request was turned down, on the basis that, as Griffin puts it, "Almihdhar could not be tied to the Cole investigation without the inclusion of sensitive intelligence information." This led one frustrated FBI agent to write in an email that "someday someone will die--and. . . the public will not understand why we were not more effective." (Congressional Intelligence Committee, cited in Griffin, p. 83). Perhaps Doran, a New York FBI agent herself, knew something about this? She was not asked directly.
What these examples make clear is that FBI "street agents" and translators don't have the power to follow their investigations to their logical ends when they are obstructed by their superiors. In light of these facts, Doran's breezy recommendation that the FBI street agents "keep doing what we've always done" is entirely inadequate, and inspires no confidence. Neither Thompson nor any other commissioner pressed for a better answer. And while the FBI's "unprecedented transformation" after 9/11 testified to by FBI Executive Assistant Director For Counterterrorism John Pistole on April 14 may sound impressive to some, it does not explain nor address the past obstruction of promising investigations. Factor in the erosion of civil liberties required for its execution, and the "unprecedented transformation" appears to be of dubious value.
There are several other aspects about the FBI's behavior pre- and post-9/11 that scream out for further investigation. One of the most bizarre cases still unfolding involves the targeting of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was fired by the agency shortly after reporting a number of complaints to her superiors. According to a June 7, 2004 story in The New Republic, those complaints included the charge that a fellow FBI translator, Can Dickerson, tried to recruit Edmonds into a foreign organization whose documents Dickerson had been translating and which had been under investigation by the FBI. Edmonds then filed a wrongful termination suit and took her grievance to Senators Charles Grassley and Patrick Leahy, as well as the television program "60 Minutes," which aired an interview with her in 2002.
But the FBI has since gone to extraordinary lengths to silence Edmonds. In May, the Bureau re-classified all of the information it presented to Sens. Grassley and Leahy, nearly two years after it had become public. It even violated its own rules for reclassification in doing so. The reclassification has had the effect of silencing Grassley and Leahy on the matter, too, who had been pressing the Bureau for a fuller account of the matter. Now they were limited to writing classified letters to the FBI.
Edmonds, meanwhile, has seen her wrongful termination suit delayed for two years and most recently was informed by Judge Reggie Walton on June 14 that her hearing was delayed once again (for the fourth time), with no date set for a rescheduling. The delays result from an effort from Attorney General John Ashcroft to invoke the State Secrets Privilege, which can quash lawsuits on the basis that their continuation would damage national security. Judge Walton is still waiting for the government to make its case for the invoking of the States Secrets Privilege. In the meantime, as the New Republic notes, while Edmonds herself is not gagged, she is not permitted to reference any of the now-classified information that could substantiate her claims.
At her June 14 press conference outside the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC, Edmonds summarized her charges clearly, stating that for more than two years, "John Ashcroft has been relentlessly engaged in actions geared toward covering up my report and investigations into my allegations. His actions. . . .include gagging the United States Congress, blocking court proceedings on my (wrongful termination suit) by invoking the State Secrets Privilege, quashing the subpoena for my deposition on information regarding 9/11, withholding documents requested under the Freedom Of Information Act and preventing the release of the Inspector General's report of its investigations into my report and allegations."
She threw down a gauntlet to all citizens, members of Congress and federal officials that so far have not spoken out, saying, "To become an American citizen, I took the citizenship oath. In taking this oath, I pledged I would support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Therefore, not only do I have the right to challenge John Ashcroft's anti-constitution(al) and un-American actions, but as an American citizen I am required to do so. So are you."
Edmonds did testify with the 9/11 commission behind closed doors, but a host of disturbing questions still remain before the commission:
• Why weren't any of the agents mentioned above called to testify in the commission's public hearings? What legitimate claim to a thorough investigation can be made without their public testimony?
• Were the FBI agents who saw their investigations stymied at least deposed in private sessions?
• Why was Robert Wright's investigation derailed, and why did the government move to block significant portions of his book in 2002, such that it remains unpublished to this day?
• Why was the information connecting Moussaoui's connection with rebels in Chechnya excised before it reached the FBI Deputy General?
• And why have lower-level agents been demoted and/or punished for doing their jobs while their superiors, who spiked, obstructed or otherwise compromised their promising investigations been rewarded?
In sum, the day's hearings played as a commercial for supporting the efforts of the country's intelligence agencies without additional public scrutiny of them. We've seen that show before, and we know how it ends. If the commission's report fails to adequately address Sibel Edmonds' charges, and fails to address the obstructed FBI investigations prior to 9/11, the unanswered questions which haunt the 9/11 Inquiry will grow louder and more insistent, and neither the 9/11 families nor the concerned citizens of this country will have the closure they deserve.
Bryan Sacks is an adjunct instructor of philosophy for Immaculata University. He can be reached at bksacks@yahoo.com
Works Referred to:
1.David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. Northampton: Olive Branch Press, copyright 2004.
-------- us politics
An Outsider Tries to Shake the 'Spoiler'
Label Nader Distinguishes Platform and Vows to Stay in the Race
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6711-2004Jun25?language=printer
CONCORD, N.H. -- Ralph Nader was flanked by five supporters and two campaign aides at the Siam Orchid restaurant on Main Street. As usual, the fashion-unconscious candidate's coat pockets bulged, causing the flaps to hang open. He looked at the menu and asked, "What's the most innocuous combination of nutrients?"
"Mr. Nader, I'm Aaron Rizzio, and I'm your campaign coordinator in New Hampshire," one man said from across the table. Nader smiled. Rizzio asked whether the candidate was ready to address a meeting of his supporters.
"Where is it?" Nader asked.
"This is it," Rizzio replied.
Nader, 70, has every intention of playing a pivotal role in the 2004 presidential election, but his campaign is dogged by doubts, dissension and disorganization. The consumer activist is indefatigable, and his supporters are worshipful. But the pall of the 2000 election, in which many Democrats believe Nader tipped New Hampshire and Florida to George W. Bush, hangs heavily over the campaign.
In private, four of Nader's five supporters around the table said they will vote for Democrat John F. Kerry if polls in late October show Nader tipping the state to President Bush.
At Nader's previous campaign stop in a small conference room at Suffolk University in Boston, his top Massachusetts aide said he had tried to rent a larger meeting space at FleetCenter but was told the facility did not want to offend Democrats who were preparing to host their national convention there in July.
And at a California fundraiser, Nader said, two contributors were so fearful of the backlash from Democrats that they showed up in disguise.
"A lot of people get ostracized if they talk to us," Nader said in an interview at Cafe Luna on P Street in Washington, where he often meets reporters and conducts campaign business while his headquarters is being readied. At the California event, he said, "three people I've worked with for 25 years didn't come. These are people I've funded, groups I've started."
Nader still has some aces. Some Democrats find themselves lukewarm about Kerry and in greater agreement with Nader on issues. Nader has positioned himself as the "peace candidate": He wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within six months -- a position backed by neither Bush nor Kerry but endorsed by 40 percent of Americans.
A Gallup survey of registered voters last month found that Kerry led Bush 50 percent to 45 percent in 16 swing states; with Nader in the race, the Democrat and Republican were even.
Nader has been endorsed by the Reform Party, giving him ballot access in seven states, including Florida, where he won 97,488 votes in 2000 -- Bush's margin of victory there was 537 votes. A strong faction within the Green Party wants to nominate Nader at a convention Saturday night, and the likelihood of this was strengthened on Monday, when Nader chose longtime Green Party activist Peter Camejo as his running mate.
The Democrats are taking Nader seriously. This week, the Arizona Democratic Party joined an effort to block Nader from getting on the state ballot, and the Congressional Black Caucus heatedly asked him to drop out of the race.
On a recent Northeast campaign tour, Nader was hounded about whether he is helping Bush defeat Kerry. Nader stressed that he would draw more GOP voters than Democratic -- a stance belied by several polls, including a Washington Post-ABC poll in June.
In Boston, Nader was asked what Kerry could do to get him to quit. "Nothing," Nader replied. "This is not a game we are playing."
At Cafe Luna, Nader painted a picture of the Democrats' worst nightmare in late October polls: "Without me, Kerry is ahead. With me, he's behind by two points." Nader shook his head and said that would not prompt him to quit, even though he feels that Bush has been a disaster. "You never betray the people who sweated their hearts and minds for you," he said.
Democrats, many former admirers, accuse Nader of reckless egotism. He charges them with myopia. The "corporate paymasters" who are running the country are "not sweating" the 2004 election, Nader said, because Democrats do not offer a vision that is different from Bush's on getting out of Iraq, reducing military spending, raising the minimum wage and providing universal health insurance -- all of which Nader said ought to be core Democratic stands. Nader said the war in Iraq is "unconstitutional" and has called for Bush's impeachment.
In the Democratic primaries, only Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) shared his overall vision, he said, but Kucinich has been shut out by the party. "It's hard to run a cleanup campaign when you're inside a garbage can," Nader said.
But if Nader is certain about his course, the situation among his supporters is far more nuanced. New Hampshire provides a snapshot of the complexities roiling many battleground states. While Republicans tend to win most statewide elections here, conservatives often support centrist Democrats for president, said Andrew Smith, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.
There is a strong libertarian streak in the "Live Free or Die" state -- made up of voters that Republicans, centrist Democrats and some Nader supporters such as Bill Grennon of Concord all believe are potential supporters.
Nader won 22,198 votes here four years ago -- three times the margin of Bush's victory over Al Gore. The loss cost Gore four votes in the electoral college, leaving him with 266; Bush won with 271.
While Nader insists he did not tip the state to Bush, Smith said that without Nader in the race, enough of his supporters would have probably voted Democratic to allow Gore to win. If things get worse in Iraq, Smith said, moderate Republicans may decide not to vote at all or cast a protest vote for Nader. Some Democrats who feel strongly about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq might abandon Kerry. But equally likely, Smith said, is that many who supported Nader in 2000 will vote Democratic. If Bush and Kerry "are within 2 to 3 percentage points, then a 3 to 4 percent Nader vote could be the difference," Smith said. "But the war would have to be going as bad or worse than it is now."
In the new Post-ABC poll, 55 percent of Kerry's supporters said they were casting votes against Bush, rather than for Kerry. Choosing Kerry, Nader repeatedly tells doubtful Democrats, is merely choosing the "least worst" candidate.
The dilemma for Kerry supporters was on display after Nader's visit to New Hampshire, when the state Democratic Party organized a teleconference with two Kerry voters who supported Nader in 2000.
"I agree with virtually every word he says," said Paul Twomey, 55, of Chichester, referring to Nader. But "we're heading over a waterfall, and we can't fight over who's in charge of the ship. What we're facing right now is a catastrophe."
By contrast, Greg Stott, 32, an eighth-grade teacher from Goshen, voted for Nader in 2000 and plans to do so again. The difference between voters such as Twomey and Stott is that the schoolteacher believes not only that Bush is bad, but that worse will come if the Democratic Party courts centrist voters at the expense of its liberal base. Nader says the United States is drifting so far to the right that "pretty soon the Republicans of today will be the liberal Democrats of tomorrow."
"Even if he doesn't win, I'm planting the seeds for my children," said Stott, who has volunteered to help collect signatures to get Nader on the New Hampshire ballot. "I want universal health care. I want the environment to be taken care of. . . . On Iraq, Kerry wants us to stay in Iraq. Bush does the same. Ralph wants us out."
Nader dismisses Democrats' criticism of him as a "spoiler." Groups that support the Democrats or the Republicans would instantly support third-party candidates if their core concerns were ignored, he said. "If both parties were against choice, how many seconds would it take [abortion rights groups] to form a third party?" he asked. "If both were for gun control, how long would it take the NRA to form a third party? These are core issues. We have 30 issues that are being shut out."
Among Nader's core issues are the 100 million Americans who do not vote because, he said, they perceive no difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Partly because of gerrymandering, he said, about 95 percent of congressional districts are not competitive -- by which Nader means they are nondemocratic. About 45 million Americans, he noted, do not have health insurance, and the minimum wage has long lagged behind inflation. Bush and Kerry could never take on corporate crime and military overspending because big corporations and the military-industrial complex fund their campaigns, Nader said.
Seen in this light, winning the election is not really the point. Nader's supporters are focused not on 2004, but on 2040. In Concord, one supporter compared him to Mahatma Gandhi. Nader declined the likeness, but he frequently says that real change -- revolution rather than reform -- comes from outside the two-party system. He cited the campaign to win women the vote, the civil rights struggle and the abolitionist movement.
Paradoxically, given Nader's themes, minorities do not appear in large numbers at his campaign meetings. In Boston, Nader drew about 70 people, but there was only one African American, Kenneth Thomas, who asked the consumer advocate why he draws so little support from the black community.
Nader replied that it is not for lack of trying. Over the years, he said, he has championed issues that directly affect minorities, such as a higher minimum wage, universal health insurance, crackdowns on predatory lending practices, and the recent problem of lead in the drinking water in Washington. African American churches are solidly Democratic, he said, and black voters are loyal to the Democratic Party because of its role in the civil rights movement.
Here in New Hampshire, Nader's critics said that -- despite the candidate's populist themes, grass-roots support and shoestring campaign -- he seems unable to empathize with the practical concerns of ordinary Americans worried about their country.
Chuck Grau of Bedford, who attended Nader's meeting here, said he is worried that Nader might help Bush get reelected, which would prolong the "quagmire" in Iraq and bring back the draft. Grau has a son in the eighth grade. "I think Ralph is unsafe at any speed," he said, in a reference to Nader's 1965 book about auto safety. "My son may get drafted because of him."
Assistant polling director Claudia Deane contributed to this report.
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Cheney Owns Up to Profanity Incident and Says He 'Felt Better Afterwards'
June 26, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/politics/campaign/26cheney.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SIOUX CITY, Iowa, June 25 - Vice President Dick Cheney, long portrayed by his aides as unperturbed by partisan attacks, admitted Friday that he "probably" cursed at a senior Democratic senator this week, said he did not regret it and added that he "felt better afterwards."
Then Mr. Cheney quickly reverted to type, flying here for a tightly scripted campaign rally where he never mentioned the incident in a speech on terrorism and the economy to an adoring Republican crowd.
The revelation, if that is what it was, that Mr. Cheney is comfortable with the use of four-letter words and is willing to direct them at political opponents, was the latest in a string of developments over the past few weeks that have put the vice president squarely in the spotlight. And as he takes on a higher political profile, it is hard to tell who is happier, Republicans or Democrats.
At the rally here, Mr. Cheney was immediately forgiven by some members of the invited crowd for swearing at Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont on the Senate floor on Tuesday. It showed him, they said, to be a real person who is forceful in the face of unwarranted criticism.
"It tells me Cheney is very human," said Dennis Lumphrey, a hospital worker from Moville, Iowa, who was in the crowd. "It also tells me he's not going to get pushed around. He'll fight back. A lot of people around the world want to tell America what to do. We need to have our own direction and priorities."
President Bush's political aides said they anticipated no negative aftereffects. In fact, the White House announced that Mr. Cheney's campaign schedule would only intensify. Next weekend, he will take a bus tour through Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. And senior Republicans said he had proved himself a voice of wisdom and reassurance to voters on the two big topics of the race, the economy and the fight against terrorism.
"He's a tremendous asset to the Republican party," said Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "The rank-and-file Republican voters out there just love Dick Cheney. They appreciate his loyalty to the president, and they appreciate that he feels solid."
But Mr. Cheney has been drawing even more partisan fire than usual over the last few weeks. His aggressive defense of the administration's assertions that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda intensified the long-running partisan and ideological clash over whether he helped lead the nation to war under false pretenses.
He won a short-term legal victory when the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lower court had acted "prematurely" when it rejected his request to block disclosure of records from his energy policy task force. But the ruling brought the issue to the fore again, allowing Democrats to renew their attacks that he has sought to work behind closed doors to further the interests of energy companies.
Now more than ever, his opponents call Mr. Cheney among the most polarizing figures in politics. Democrats portray him as the power behind the throne and the personification of militarism, corporate corruption and government secrecy.
"We've got to get the White House back from a man who has abused his power as the leader of the free world," the comedian Billy Crystal told the crowd at a Democratic fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Thursday night. "Dick Cheney has got to go."
Mr. Bush's Democratic rival, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, regularly repeats Mr. Cheney's name in much the same way Republicans have long used that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton- as a symbol of all that is wrong with the policies and personalities of the opposing party.
"Cheney's definitely turned into a big, fat albatross around the president's neck," said Jim Jordan, Mr. Kerry's former campaign manager.
"His public image is very bad and getting worse," Mr. Jordan said. Mr. Cheney's aides and supporters said one of his great strengths as a campaigner was his ability to remain stoic about the way he is portrayed by Democrats and immune from the pressures of responding to the ups and downs of daily news cycles.
But the exchange with Mr. Leahy on Tuesday suggested that Democrats manage to get under Mr. Cheney's skin.
Interviewed by Fox News on Friday after a speech in Saginaw, Mich., Mr. Cheney did not specifically acknowledge using the expletive that he has been widely reported to have used. "Well, I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Mr. Cheney said. Asked whether he was angry about Mr. Leahy's suggestions that the Halliburton Company had received no-bid contracts in Iraq because Mr. Cheney ran the company before joining the Republican ticket four years ago, the vice president said that was part of it.
"Also, it had to do with - he is the kind of individual who will make those kinds of charges and then come after you as though he's your best friend," Mr. Cheney said.
Mr. Leahy's aides said the incident occurred when Mr. Cheney gathered with members of the Senate for a formal portrait on the Senate floor on Tuesday. Mr. Leahy was chatting with Republicans, they said, when he spied Mr. Cheney and approached him. When Mr. Cheney turned away, Mr. Leahy, the aides said, joked that the vice president was unwilling to talk to Democrats.
After Mr. Cheney expressed his "dissatisfaction" with Mr. Leahy, as the vice president put it to Fox News, Mr. Leahy "told Mr. Cheney that he and Senate Democrats didn't appreciate being called anti-Catholic," said David Carle, Mr. Leahy's spokesman. Mr. Leahy was referring to Republican accusations that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were "anti-Catholic" because they refused to confirm a judicial nominee, William H. Pryor Jr., who opposed abortion. Mr. Leahy is the senior Democrat on the panel.
Then Mr. Cheney stalked off, Mr. Leahy's aides said, using an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do.
In a statement issued after Fox News broadcast its interview with Mr. Cheney, Mr. Carle said, "It appears the vice president's previous calls for civility are now inoperative."
By forcing Mr. Cheney to address his personal conduct, the incident brought a rare moment of improvisation to the vice president's campaign, which has so far been a highly orchestrated affair directed primarily at raising money and rousing the Republican faithful.
Mr. Cheney does not do rapid response, the daily back and forth between the campaigns, and he rarely addresses issues like education or Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda. He plays the traditional vice-presidential role of attacking the opposition, but his stump speech parrots the same lines about Mr. Kerry that Mr. Bush uses in his speeches.
Mr. Cheney's strength, his aides and supporters said, is in setting out what the stakes are in the election.
"We'll have him do what he does best and has done best, which is to take the needed step back to provide perspective about the challenges we face and the policies we need," said Mary Matalin, a former senior aide to Mr. Cheney who will join him on the campaign trail this summer. "He's a political reality zone."
To soften up Mr. Cheney's somewhat wooden public persona, he is often introduced, as he was here, by his wife, Lynne Cheney. She told a story about how she wore a strapless red dress made by her grandmother on her first date with Mr. Cheney and how she credited the dress with their having a second date.
Republican strategists said Mr. Cheney, a former House member, takes a keen interest in the nuts and bolts of electoral politics.
"He has a very well developed sense of campaign strategy and campaign tactics," said one prominent Republican in Washington who has close ties to Mr. Cheney. "He understands how to read a poll and the cross tabs. He'll delve into message and the things that inform campaign decisions. But he's less likely to involve himself in detail than to try to spark people's thinking or challenge people's thinking."
Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting for this article.
-------- OTHER
-------- health
White House Tries to Rein In Scientists
Times
By Tom Hamburger
Sat Jun 26,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=2&u=/latimests/20040626/ts_latimes/whitehousetriestoreininscientists
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has ordered that government scientists must be approved by a senior political appointee before they can participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization, the leading international health and science agency.
A top official from the Health and Human Services Department in April asked the WHO to begin routing requests for participation in its meetings to the department's secretary for review, rather than directly invite individual scientists, as has long been the case.
Officials at the WHO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, have refused to implement the request, saying it could compromise the independence of international scientific deliberations. Denis G. Aitken, WHO assistant director-general, said Friday that he had been negotiating with Washington in an effort to reach a compromise.
The request is the latest instance in which the Bush administration has been accused of allowing politics to intrude into once-sacrosanct areas of scientific deliberation. It has been criticized for replacing highly regarded scientists with industry and political allies on advisory panels. A biologist who was at odds with the administration's position on stem-cell research was dismissed from a presidential advisory commission. This year, 60 prominent scientists accused the administration of "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."
The president's science advisor, Dr. John Marburger, has called the accusations "wrong and misleading, inaccurate."
The newest action has drawn fresh criticism, however, as the request has circulated among scientists.
"I do not feel this is an appropriate or constructive thing to do," said Dr. D.A. Henderson, an epidemiologist who ran the Bush administration's Office of Public Health Preparedness and now acts as an official advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "In the scientific world, we have a generally open process. We deal with science as science. I am unaware of such clearance ever having been required before."
Henderson worked for the WHO for 11 years directing its smallpox eradication program. He said he could not recall having to go through government bureaucrats to invite scientists to participate in expert panels, except in the case of small Eastern European countries. In 2002, Henderson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was praised by Bush as "a great general in mankind's war against disease."
A few scientists have been worried about the department's vetting demand since April, but concerns heightened this week when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) complained in a letter to Thompson. "The new policy ... politicizes the process of providing the expert advice of U.S. scientists to the international community," Waxman wrote.
Thompson's spokesman, Tony Jewell, called Waxman's criticism "seriously misguided."
"No one knows better than HHS who the experts are and who can provide the most up-to-date and expert advice," Jewell said. "The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows. If anyone thinks politics will interfere with Secretary Thompson's commitment to improve health in every corner of the world, they are sadly mistaken."
The WHO, founded in 1947, is the United Nations agency dedicated to health. It is governed by 192 member states and conducts forums, recommends international health and safety standards and draws leading scientists from around the world to expert panels that review the latest literature on chemical, biological, industrial and environmental threats.
The organization traditionally insists on picking experts to sit on official scientific review panels.
"It's an important issue for us," Aitken said. "We do need independent science. If we want government positions, we have government meetings. We have many, many of these government assemblies, but they address a separate set of concerns" than the scientific gatherings.
Scientists who attend the meetings are reminded that they are invited to offer their scientific views, not to represent their government or financial interests.
The letter to Aitken declaring the new vetting policy was signed by William R. Steiger, special assistant to Thompson. He came to Washington with Thompson from Wisconsin, and is the son of a congressman and the godson of former President George H.W. Bush.
"Except under very limited circumstances, U.S. government experts do not and cannot participate in WHO consultations in their individual capacity," Steiger wrote. Civil service and other regulations "require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."
The letter asserts that "the current practice in which the WHO invites specific HHS officials by name to serve in these capacities has not always resulted in the most appropriate selections."
The letter provided no specifics. But WHO panels sometimes have disagreed with positions taken by the administration. A WHO panel met in Lyons, France, this month and declared formaldehyde a known carcinogen - relying on studies that Bush administration political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency had rejected as inconclusive.
Voting members of the panel included scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who had been authors of the studies.
Several leading scientists said the new policy would undermine scientific deliberations.
"This is really tampering with a process that has worked very well," said Linda Rosenstock, the dean of the UCLA School of Public Health who directed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health under President Clinton. "To have this micromanaged at the HHS departmental level raises the specter that political considerations rather than scientific considerations will determine who is allowed to go" to the world's most important scientific meetings.
Rosenstock said that some WHO divisions - including the one reviewing cancer threats - have become targets of industry groups. "There is real concern that science could be trumped by politics and vested interests."
For Waxman, a frequent critic of the administration, the department's letter to the WHO is part of a pattern of mixing politics with science - and one he contends diminishes U.S. stature internationally.
Times staff writer Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Ireland Welcomes Bush With Protests
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6695-2004Jun25.html
NEWMARKET-ON-FERGUS, Ireland, June 25 -- President Bush landed in Ireland Friday evening and brought the controversy of the Iraq invasion and prison-abuse scandal with him, prompting street protests on turf that historically has been one of the most hospitable destinations for American presidents.
Bush and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern took a leisurely half-hour stroll -- in the rain and without umbrellas -- after the White House entourage pulled up to the stone-turreted Dromoland Castle. It will be the scene of summit talks Saturday between the United States and the 25-country European Union.
In the capital, Dublin, about 10,000 people protested the Bush administration's policies on Iraq and human rights, Irish news media reported. Organizers promised that five times that number would turn out in Dublin on Saturday.
The White House is eager to use the meeting to continue the slow process of mending relations with traditional allies who split with the administration over Iraq and have resisted contributing as much to the occupation as Bush had urged.
But Irish officials, who are hosting the meeting because their country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said they would use the summit to make European foreign policy differences clear to Bush.
Ahern has allowed U.S. military planes involved in the Iraq campaign to refuel in Ireland, despite overwhelming public opinion against the war. But his traditionally neutral country has sent no troops. The disclosure of abusive tactics at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and accusations of mistreatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, exacerbated European objections to Bush's policy.
"The United States has traditionally been strong on human rights, but this administration is ignoring international law," Sean Love, the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, said in a telephone interview.
The protest plans -- contrasting so starkly with the festive receptions for presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- prompted such massive security that the morning newspapers called the 6,000-officer deployment the largest in the history of the island. Naval gunships patrolled an estuary, armored cars searched bogs and article after article reported complaints that the civil rights of protesters were being trampled.
Before leaving Washington, Bush was challenged during an interview with Radio and Television Ireland on his claim that the invasion made the world safer and that "a free Iraq is going to be a necessary part of changing the world."
The interviewer, Carol Coleman, asked, "Why is it that others don't understand what you're about?"
"I don't know," Bush said. "History will judge what I'm about. . . . I don't really try to chase . . . popularity polls. My job is to do my job and make the decisions that I think are important for our country and for our world."
Daniel S. Hamilton, director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the EU-Bush meeting comes at "an awkward time for any serious talk or initiatives," since "most of the leaders don't necessarily want him to be reelected."
Despite the outcry over his policies, Bush quickly made himself at home. Irish television caught him fiddling with a window in the castle, wearing a white undershirt. With mixed success, the Irish government urged broadcasters not to use the shot. Television footage of the walk with Ahern showed the president waving a lit cigar.
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Turkish Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Turkey-Protest.html
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkish police fired tear gas as more than 100 left-wing demonstrators hurled rocks and used sticks to try and break down a police barricade during a protest Saturday ahead of President Bush's arrival in the country.
The clash came amid intense security in anticipation of Bush's visit and the opening of a NATO summit in Istanbul on Monday.
Some 6,000 people, mostly members of trade unions and leftist groups, gathered in the center of Ankara, with some chanting ``Murderer U.S.A. get out of the Middle East.''
The area was completely closed off to traffic and surrounded by more than a dozen police armored personnel carriers.
Shortly after the protest began, about 150 people rushed a police barricade, hitting the blue iron barrier with sticks.
``We will go beyond barricades protecting Bush,'' the group shouted.
Police fired tear gas at the group from an armored personnel carrier.
A few minutes later the group, the ``Socialist Platform of the Downtrodden,'' again attacked the barricade, throwing rocks at the police. The group is an umbrella organization representing several leftist labor unions in Turkey.
Police again responded with tear gas.
After the second clash, organizers of the main protest asked everyone to disperse and people began leaving the square.
Bush arrives in Ankara late Saturday and is to meet with Turkish leaders the next day before the summit in Istanbul. On Thursday, a bomb went off near the Ankara hotel where he is to stay, wounding three people.
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War Protesters Gather in Boston and Conn.
June 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Protests.html
BOSTON (AP) -- Anti-war protesters gathered at a city plaza Saturday calling for an end to U.S. occupation in Iraq and voicing skepticism about Wednesday's scheduled transfer of power to the Iraqis.
Police estimated Saturday's Copley Plaza crowd at 400 to 500 people, a turnout that disappointed rally organizers.
``My feeling is right now a lot of people are demoralized because trying to bring the troops home is like trying to move a mountain,'' said Jennifer Horan, a spokeswoman for United for Justice With Peace, a coalition that organized the protest.
But she added, ``We are here and we're not going away and more and more the American public is coming to support the idea that the troops should be brought home.''
Signs declared: ``Enough! Bring the Troops Home Now,'' and ``Democracy Yes! Empire No!'' Protesters also waved rainbow-colored flags with ``Peace'' written on them.
``We are here to say that it is time now to bring the troops home to their families where they belong,'' activist Paul Shannon told protesters. ``It is time to care for the thousands and thousands of broken bodies, minds and hearts created by this war.''
In Connecticut, a peace rally in New Haven drew about 125 protesters, including Claudia Allen, whose son is serving in Iraq.
``It troubles me to know that he is this day surrounded by violence and destruction,'' Allen told the crowd.
Allen, a member of Military Families Speak Out, said the war is undermining her son's relationship with his wife and their 2-year-old son.
``They are a threesome, a package deal, and very beautiful together. This war has ruined their life together,'' she said.
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Library group to poll on Patriot Act usage
Associated Press
By Mike Schneider
Sat, Jun. 26, 2004
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/9019886.htm
ORLANDO, Fla. - The American Library Association said Friday it will survey thousands of libraries to determine how often federal agents have used the USA Patriot Act to try to secretly obtain patrons' records.
The association wants the information in its fight to bring about changes to the law, said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the group's Washington office.
The act "jeopardizes library patrons' privacy in a way that has never been done before," she said at the start of group's annual conference in Orlando.
The association, which has 64,000 members, plans to launch the survey in the fall.
Investigators believe some of the Sept. 11 hijackers used library computers to communicate with each other over the Internet.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the idea that agents are running around libraries is absurd. "I would be happy for them to do" the survey, he said.
Currently, Section 215 of the Patriot Act lets the FBI order any person to turn over records without having to show probable cause during terrorism investigations. The library group has endorsed proposed legislation that would require the FBI to name the person whose records it is seeking and show they have a reason to believe that person is a suspected terrorist or spy.
In September, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Section 215 had not been used.
He has denounced concerns about the provision as "baseless hysteria."
But a document released this month under a Freedom of Information Act request made by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups indicated that Section 215 was used at least once after October 2003.
The document does not indicate where the request was made or what records were sought.
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