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NUCLEAR
Philippine nuclear plant costs US $155,000 a day but no electricity
US DU More Deadly Than Gas
Unfriendly fire
India, Pakistan agree on closer links
Iran's reformist government out of the loop on nuclear policy
UN inspects Iran 'nuclear' site
Atomic Ayatollahs
UN nuclear chief plays down chance of inspectors returning to Iraq soon
IAEA: Israel should end nuclear threat
Nuclear Stalemate
N Korea rejects "unrealistic" US offer but calls nuclear talks positive
U.S. Sees North Korea Deal a Long Way Off
ElBaradei Ready to Visit N.Korea for Nuclear Talks
Nuclear terrorism realities
A Boy and His Nukes
US struggles to revive nuclear power industry
MILITARY
Taliban Strikes Again
14 Afghans Are Killed for Registering to Vote
Sudanese Refugees Told to Stay Silent On Government
Chen defends massive Taiwan arms deal as parliament presses for cuts
Hill Anthrax response spread toxin
Power handed to Iraqis
Lebanese father appeals for release of US Marine in Iraq on Al-Jazeera
Counting the cost of war
Group Threatens Missing Marine 2 Americans Killed In Incidents in Iraq
Hours Later, Bremer Leaves Iraq; New Premier Outlines Agenda
U.S.-Led Forces Would Back Martial Law, Bush Says
Wary Iraqis Welcome the Handover but Ask, Now What?
In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency
Fuelling suspicion
Palestinian Rockets From Gaza Kill Two Israelis
Bomb Under Gaza Base Kills Israeli Soldier and Hurts 5
NATO Partners Agree to Train Iraqi Troops
As Bush Confers With NATO, U.S. Is Seen Losing Its Edge
A NATO meeting of the minds?
NATO set to help Iraq after surprise handover
Hussein to Be in Iraqi Custody 'Very Soon,' New Premier Says
Guerrilla Raids Force Chechen Refugees to Flee Again
Court to Hear Former Communist Spies Case
Court to Decide if Cold War Spies Can Sue CIA
Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules
Thousands in Guard units prepare for Iraq
Foreign forces, contractors given immunity in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
High Court Deals Blow to Bush's War on Terror
Bush Can Hold Citizens Without Charges
Excerpts from Supreme Court terror cases
Supreme Court Affirms Detainees' Right to Use Courts
Enemy Combatants Win Right to U.S. Courts
Police Warned by Court on Delaying Miranda Warning
Supreme Court Takes Medical Marijuana Case
Immigrant Smugglers Become More Ruthless
Secrets Of Unit 1391
Key general defends the 'Gitmo' way
What Did Bush Know?
POLITICS
Moore's Magic: 9/11 Electrifies
Aide Is Bush's Eyes and Ears on the Right
Talking Points re uranium from Niger to Iraq
Iraq Occupation Erodes Bush Doctrine
Lawmakers, Lobbyists Keep in Constant Contact
ENERGY
Fuelling suspicion: the coalition and Iraq's oil billions
OTHER
Great Lakes in Trouble Need Long Term Help
Environmental Factors the Major Cause of Cancer
ACTIVISTS
Thousands in Mexico City Protest Rampant Kidnappings, Violence
Diplomats Honored for Dissent Envoys Challenged Bush Foreign Policy
The Political 'Fahrenheit' Sets Record at Box Office
Protesters, Police Clash Near NATO Summit
Anti-NATO demonstrators clash with police at Istanbul summit
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Philippine nuclear plant costs US $155,000 a day but no electricity
AFP
30 June 2004
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific_business/view/92889/1/.html
MANILA: Nearly 30 years after work began on the Bataan nuclear power plant just north of Manila, Filipino taxpayers are still paying US$155,000 a day in interest on a structure that has never produced one watt of power.
Thelmo Cunanan, chief executive of state-run Philippine National Oil Co., said it had become the country's most outstanding white elephant.
"The fact that we are still paying interest on a project that is 30 years old and has not produced a watt of electricity should send at least one positive signal to the investment community," he told AFP in a telephone interview.
The signal was that "If we enter an agreement at least we pay our bills. There were times when I thought: why should we? Why don't we simply turn our backs and walk away from it but that is not the way we Filipinos do business."
The Bataan nuclear power plant was a knee jerk reaction by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the energy crisis of the early 1970s.
The oil embargo had put a heavy strain on the Philippine economy and Marcos saw nuclear power as the best way forward in terms of meeting the country's future power needs and lessening the nation's reliance on imported oil.
Construction began in 1976 and was completed in 1984 at a cost of US$2.3b.
The power station, 60 miles (97 kilometres) north of Manila, has been the centre of controversy from the day construction began.
When Marcos was overthrown by the so-called People Power Revolution in early 1986 a team of international inspectors visited the site and declared it unsafe and inoperable as it was built near major earthquake fault lines and near the Pinatubo volcano which at the time was dormant.
The first post-Marcos government of Corazon Aquino sealed the nuclear plant's fate for good when it banned the use of nuclear power and enshrined it into the constitution.
Debt repayment on the plant is the country's biggest single obligation.
Successive governments have looked at ways of converting the plant into an oil, coal or gas fired power station.
According to Cunanan a South Korean company recently expressed an interest in taking over the nuclear power station and developing it as a commercial operation. But the provision in the constitution ruled it out.
Cunanan said it would be unfair to name the company but said the government has not ruled out converting the plant into a fossil fuel power station.
Some studies in the past have shown that converting the plant may be too expensive.
The plant itself has been maintained despite never having been commissioned.
A Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce some 621 megawatts of electricity.
Much of the technology used in the plant was early 1970s but modified following the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.
-------- depleted uranium
US DU More Deadly Than Gas
When this war ends, George Bush will have caused the poisoning of hundreds of thousands more humans than he said Saddam Hussein poisoned.
By Frederick Sweet,
Monday, 28 June 2004,
New Zealand Scoop
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0406/S00330.htm
Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email your comments to Fred@interventionmag.com
In its 110,000 air raids against Iraq, the US A-10 Warthog aircraft launched 940,000 depleted uranium shells, and in the land offensive, its M60, M1 and M1A1 tanks fired a further 4,000 larger caliber also uranium shells. The Bush administration and the Pentagon said, there is no danger to American troops or Iraqi civilians from breathing the uranium oxide dust produced in depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions.
DU is the waste residue made from the uranium enrichment process. This radioactive and toxic substance, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate steel armor. Last July, two military DU weapons experts Dr Doug Rokke and George A. Parker, veterans of the Gulf War, issued a public warning against using these radioactive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [for full text, see: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/01/50000.html ] Rokke had been U.S. Army's DU team health physicist and U.S. Army's DU Project Director. Former British Army Sgt. Parker had been with the 1st Field Laboratory Unit, Biological-Warfare Detection Unit at Porton Down in Great Britain. His job had been management in the Gulf War of troop protection against weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Rokke warned:
"Depleted uranium munitions (DU) have been used effectively in combat since 1973. Their destructive capabilities are absolutely superior to any other known munitions that can be fired by tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft, and rifles. In addition the ADAM and PDM, which are land mines, are essentially conventional explosives wrapped in shell containing uranium or a 'dirty bomb.' Although DU munitions are an excellent weapon, they leave a path of death, illness, and environmental contamination. The radiological and chemical toxicity are due to uranium, plutonium, neptunium, and americium isotopes within each DU bullet. We also have all of the inherent contamination from the equipment, terrain, and facilities that were destroyed."
"Upon the completion of the ground combat phase of the Gulf war, I was assigned by Headquarters Department of the Army and consequently the U.S. Central Command to clean up the depleted uranium contaminated U.S. equipment and provide initial medical recommendations for all individuals who were or may have been exposed as a consequence of military actions."
"Our initial observations of the DU contamination can be summed simply by three words 'OH MY GOD!' Although my mission was limited to U.S. personnel and equipment all affected persons and equipment should have been processed identically. They were not! Although I and U.S. Army physicians assigned to the 3rd U.S. Army Medical Command issued immediate verbal and written medical care recommendations those still have not been complied with for not only all U.S. and coalition military DU casualties but for Iraqi military personnel and especially noncombatants, women and children, who were exposed to DU munitions contamination."
"A United States Defense Nuclear Agency memorandum written by LTC Lyle that was sent to our team in Saudi Arabia during March 1990 stated that quote: 'As Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), ground combat units, and civil populations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq come increasingly into contact with DU ordnance, we must prepare to deal with potential problems. Toxic war souvenirs, political furor, and post conflict clean up (host nation agreement) are only some of the issues that must be addressed. Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with possible exposure rates of 200 millirads per hour on contact.' end [of] quote."
Referring to Dr. Rokke's comments, Sgt. Parker concluded:
"I am now aware that armed forces personnel are considered as disposable items. Something to be used abused and then discarded when broken. Further more, when made ill by the use of politically sensitive weapons such as DU they are an expensive embarrassment to be silenced when voicing concerns."
"It is my sincere and heart felt belief that until such time as the UK and US governments can properly care for ill and dying veterans of war, they should refrain from deploying members of the armed forces overseas."
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, an opponent of DU weapons use since 1996, again raised his call for a ban on the use of these weapons in 2001. Since then DU weapons conferences, ironically, in Baghdad in 1999 and Gijon, Spain in 2000 had demanded a ban on DU use. "This new outbreak of leukemia among European [NATO] soldiers has reinforced what we said before," said Clark from New York in January 2001. "Is it acceptable by any human standards that we would permit one shell of depleted uranium to be manufactured, to be stored, to be used? No! Stop it now!"
According to a May 2003 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman admitted that A-10 Warthog aircraft -- the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry -- fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that had left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.
A Monitor reporter had seen only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. A 3-foot-long DU warhead from a 120- mm tank shell had been found to produce radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels.
Many scientists believe that uranium oxide dust inhaled or ingested by troops in the Gulf War is the cause, or a contributing cause, of the "Gulf-War Syndrome". Of the approximately 697,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Gulf during the war, more than 100,000 veterans are now chronically ill. Cancer rates in southern Iraq have increased dramatically. For example ovarian cancer in Iraqi women of the southern region has fully increased by 16-fold.
More recently, Bush's and the Pentagon's reassurances were vigorously challenged by nuclear physicists and physicians at a scientific meeting, the World DU/Uranium Weapons Conference held in Hamburg, Germany during October 2003. New data suggest that orders of magnitude more Americans and Iraqis may have been poisoned by uranium from depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions than Kurds had been killed by Saddam's gas in 1988. Review in Hamburg of the long term medical effects from DU exposures during the 1990s in Kosovo, Sarajevo, southern Iraq and from American veterans of the Gulf War reveal a frightening reality.
Conference scientists criticized as decades obsolete the Pentagon models used for reassuring the public about the long-term effects of inhaling uranium oxide particles from DU weapons. Citing the Pentagon model, the official 2003 Conference Statement concluded: "The knowledge on which this [Pentagon] model is based is faulty and outdated. This is like comparing [someone] sitting in front of a fire with [them] eating a hot coal."
According to the Conference, the mobility of the ceramic uranium oxide particles from DU weapons explosions is due to their re-suspension in dry weather. Measuring isotope ratios of U-238 and Pa-234m/Th-234 in water and air measurements by UNEP in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro has showed this. Uranium oxide particles are available for inhalation long after the war is over. Anyone in the general area of their prior use is at risk, several years after their use or contamination. This had been proven by urine measurements in Kosovo in 2001. All of the people sampled showed contamination from DU. This was also shown by urine tests of Gulf War veterans made 10 years after their exposure.
After the Gulf War, Iraqi and international epidemiological investigations enabled the environmental pollution due to using this kind of weapon to be associated with the appearance of new, very difficult to diagnose diseases (serious immunodeficiencies, for instance) and the spectacular increase in congenital malformations and cancer. This had been found both in the Iraqi population and also among several thousands of American and British veterans and in their children, a clinical condition now called Gulf War Syndrome. Similar symptoms to those of the Gulf War have been described for a thousand children living in Bosnia where American aviation similarly used DU bombs in 1996, the same as in the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia in 1999.
It is estimated that already some 300 tons of radioactive debris from DU weapons had been deposited in target areas during the 2003 Iraq War, affecting over 250,000 Iraqis. By comparison, Saddam Hussein -- who Bush had called an evil murderer -- only gassed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988. But by Bush launching his war on Iraq with DU weapons of mass destruction, he multiplied the casualties to the Iraqis, and also to American troops, by factors of hundreds relative to the infamous gassing of the Kurds. Therefore, by the time American troops leave Iraq Bush will very likely have poisoned hundreds of thousands more humans than he had accused Saddam Hussein of poisoning.
----
Unfriendly fire
Army's new 'green' ammunition, may pose health hazards too
By AMANDA LEHMERT STAFF WRITER,
June 28, 2004
Cape Cod Online
http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/unfriendlyfire27.htm
CAMP EDWARDS - In 1997 when the Environmental Protection Agency called a cease-fire at Camp Edwards, it marked the first time in U.S. military history that training was halted because lead and other chemicals from munitions threatened public health.
In 1999 on Camp Edwards, the National Guard received its first 108,000 rounds of tungsten-nylon bullets, which, it was believed, would solve pollution problems posed by the lead-based bullets once used. The tungsten wouldn't break up in soil and seep into groundwater, it was thought. Anxious to make sure similar cease-fire orders were not issued across the country, the National Guard switched to rubber bullets until the Army developed a "green ammunition" - a tungsten-based bullet that was thought to be environmentally friendly because it did not break down in soil.
Now, four years later, the tungsten bullets may not be as green as everyone had hoped. And federal health officials are studying whether exposure to large amounts of tungsten causes childhood leukemia.
A recently published study found that tungsten can break down in soil just like its lead predecessor. In the Cape's environment, once the tungsten breaks down, water from rain and snow could potentially carry it into the aquifer. The aquifer is the primary source of the Cape's drinking water.
It is still too soon to say whether the metal is collecting in the soil on the Upper Cape base ranges. The bullets used there are made of a tungsten-nylon mix and the military has not yet studied how that mixture reacts in different soil conditions.
Timeline April 1997: The EPA orders the military to stop firing lead bullets on base.
1999: Tungsten bullet proposed. EPA declines to label it "green." Massachusetts military receives its first shipment.
2001: The CDC probes a spike in childhood leukemia in Nevada. High levels of tungsten and arsenic found in residents' urine.
2003: Manufacturer stops making tungsten bullets after quality issues. Military begins search for another bullet.
But the tungsten issue, raised locally by base Environmental Officer Mark Begley, has been a test of the Environmental Management Commission, a group created by state law in 2002 to monitor military activity on the 22,000-acre base to make sure the environment is not damaged.
Commission members have not called for a halt in the use of the tungsten ammo but they are looking closely at the new research.
"What I see is the process working. Environmental management is always an ongoing process," said commission Chairwoman Virginia Valiela, who is also a Falmouth selectman. "It's necessary to ask probing questions."
National Guard officials have already met with the commission to talk about the new information on tungsten bullets and how the Guard plans to manage the firing ranges now.
EPA's cease-fire
For decades, many Cape residents have been concerned that military munitions polluted the Cape's sole-source aquifer, the top of which is under Camp Edwards' former artillery impact area and firing ranges.
To address this concern, then EPA Regional Administrator John DeVillars ordered an end to live firing at the base in April 1997 under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Officials were concerned that toxic residue from artillery and mortar shells or lead bullets could infiltrate the region's drinking water.
Since the cease-fire, the Army has spent about $5 million removing lead bullets fired at 17 of the base's small-arms ranges. Lead was found up to 19 feet deep in some places. And a study of the impact area revealed that perchlorate and toxic chemicals from explosives have made their way into the aquifer.
In addition, thousands of soldiers from New England who have trained at the Massachusetts Military Reservation have fired alternative bullets since that order. But military officials contend that firing rubber bullets is an inferior practice because it doesn't give soldiers the same experience as firing lethal, combat-style bullets.
At the time, Massachusetts National Guard officials were optimistic about the Army's development of a better "green" bullet.
In 1994, the Army had already started to look at alternatives to lead-based ammunition under the green ammunition program.
Tungsten, with the highest melting point of any metal, had already been considered as a replacement for larger depleted uranium munitions used by the Navy and for lead bullets in areas where bullet remnants could be deadly to water fowl.
Tungsten had virtually no known toxic effects and was considered to be insoluble, or incapable of being dissolved, according to Army research at the time.
Beyond the environmental concerns, the key question was whether it was a worthy combat ammo that would allow soldiers to train as they fight.
The Army spent $12 million to develop two 5.56 millimeter rounds, one made of a tungsten-tin alloy and a second made of a tungsten-nylon mixture, for the M-16 rifle and the M2-49 machine gun.
The bullets each cost about 15 cents more to manufacture, said John Middleton, the technical executive for small-caliber ammunition production at Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picantinny Arsenal, N.J.
A political solution?
The Army estimated the bullets would cost less over their life cycle when the cleanup costs associated with lead bullets were factored in. The fact that the bullet did not contain lead was a "significant improvement," DeVillars told the National Guard in a letter at the time.
But DeVillars also wrote that because information about how the bullet would interact with the environment was lacking, the EPA would not certify it as "green." In a 1999 letter, he urged the Army and the National Guard to review the bullets' environmental effects.
Peter Schlesinger, a Bourne resident and a member of the community group that monitors the Army cleanup, said introducing the green bullet was a political solution that came before the science.
"The science wasn't in as to whether it was safe," he said.
With or without the environmentally friendly label, the new bullets did not violate the EPA's 1997 order, which banned lead ammunition.
In 1999, when the first 108,000 rounds were sent to Massachusetts, Army officials were on the verge of a green ammunition revolution, with aspirations to have the bullets in widespread use by 2003.
"We were pretty hopeful," said Erik Hangeland, former chief of technology at the Army Environmental Center at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md.
The Upper Cape base was the first of about a half-dozen bases where the new bullets would be fired. More than 286,000 rounds were used by Massachusetts National Guard members last year alone.
But the popularity came at a price.
The contractor churning out the green rounds had trouble mass producing quality bullets, so the Army stopped production in 2003. Army officials went back to the drawing board in an effort to develop another environmentally friendly ammunition.
"It just made sense to go back and reopen the investigation," Middleton said.
Dissolving a myth As the Army was having problems producing tungsten bullets, some scientists at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., with the help of Army researchers, were getting unexpected results from experiments on tungsten alloys.
In work funded by the military, Christos Christodoulatos and his team studied what happens to tungsten in water solutions and soils with various pH levels, or acidity levels.
Their findings, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Forensics, reveal that tungsten and tungsten alloys dissolve in water and soil solutions - at rates that exceed the solubility of lead. The research appears to imply that tungsten bullets may be more polluting than the lead ones.
The people involved in the green ammunition program did an extensive literature review and determined tungsten was better than lead based on "the best available scientific information we had on tungsten when we considered it for use," Hangeland said.
The 2002-2003 Handbook of Chemistry and Physics also says tungsten is insoluble, said Col. Bill FitzPatrick, of the Environmental and Readiness Center at the Massachusetts Military Reservation.
The Stevens Institute team did a second study to determine what happened when tungsten was introduced in soils contaminated by lead. The research, which has not yet been published, used soils from Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Dix, N.J.
They found when tungsten was introduced at certain concentrations it was possible to make the lead move through soil faster than it did on its own. But tungsten's mobility decreased under acidic conditions.
Neither study considered a tungsten-nylon mixture, like the one used by the soldiers training on the Upper Cape base, so it is not yet possible to say if tungsten is leaching into groundwater, local officials point out.
Although there are literally hundreds of monitoring wells on the base and the water is regularly tested for metals, the Army and Air Force cleanup programs do not test for tungsten.
Possible link to leukemia By mid-2000 the tungsten-nylon bullet was a prevalent ammunition used by soldiers and police officers training at Camp Edwards. At the same time, five children in Churchill County, Nev., were diagnosed with leukemia.
Nevada epidemiologists said in a county that size, statistically only one child every five years should come down with the disease. But over the next few years, 16 children would be diagnosed with leukemia.
In 2001, Nevada officials called upon the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate what was causing the spike in childhood leukemia.
"We did not go there intentionally looking for tungsten at all," said Carol Rubin, chief of CDC's Health Studies branch.
Researchers found that the urine samples of children and adults living in Fallon, Nev., contained both arsenic and tungsten in concentrations higher than national averages, but not significantly different than levels found in urine from people who live in similar Nevada towns.
In Nevada, tungsten occurs naturally. But it was recently discovered the concentrations of tungsten in the environment there had increased by 50 percent. Scientists are still trying to figure out what caused the increase, and researchers from the University of Arizona at Tucson are starting to study the effects of human exposure to tungsten.
In one study, early results showed that tungsten could increase the growth rate of human leukemia cells, said Mark Witten, a research professor from the department of pediatrics.
The studies don't prove or disprove that tungsten was the cause of cancer, but the findings prompted the scientists to call for research into tungsten.
CDC officials nominated tungsten to be reviewed by the National Institute of Environmental Health for toxicological affects.
Hangeland said the Army is evaluating its ammunition inventory to find ways to make it more green.
"Tungsten hasn't totally been thrown out with the wash yet," he said.
Meanwhile, military researchers are exploring what happens to the tungsten-nylon bullets when they enter the environment. They plan to use soil from several bases where lead bullets have been fired, including soil from the Massachusetts Military Reservation, for more research this summer, FitzPatrick said.
Cape concerns While the jury is still out on the tungsten-nylon bullet, Begley, the Upper Cape base's environmental officer, isn't taking any chances.
About 4,000 people used the base ranges last year, according the annual report. Aside from the military-issue tungsten-nylon round, some police squads and groups from other government agencies use bullets at the base that may also contain tungsten, Begley said. Base officials do not keep specific statistics about other ammunition used at the base.
This month, Begley and FitzPatrick met with the Environmental Management Commission and the Community Advisory Council to discuss the latest information about tungsten.
"It's the water. The water is so important," Begley said. "Any training that could possibly impact water, we need to look at very closely."
The Science Advisory Council, which provides technical advice to the environmental commission, will discuss tungsten at its quarterly meeting this summer.
Environmental officials are aware the Army is researching tungsten. There are, however, no national standards for tungsten so there was little environmental officials could do to prevent the military from using it at the base, according to EPA spokesman Jim Murphy.
No matter what happens with tungsten, the Massachusetts National Guard could also adapt range management practices to prevent any substance - lead, tungsten or otherwise - from moving in the soil, FitzPatrick said.
"We could perhaps be shooting kryptonite in the future if we have the right capture system," Joe Materia of the Environmental and Readiness Center said.
The options include something as complex as concrete bullet traps or as simple as an "eyebrow," a structure that acts as an umbrella to keep rainwater from penetrating earthen berms at the ranges.
Costs of the systems vary, and so far the various bullet capture systems have been designed for use with lead bullets, not tungsten-nylon rounds.
FitzPatrick said the base may also be used to research new range control technologies. This summer, base officials will review the management practices for each range.
-------- india / pakistan
India, Pakistan agree on closer links
India and Pakistan to notify each other before testing missiles
Monday 28 June 2004
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1AC3A406-F9C9-4A1E-AC6A-27340C9F7275.htm
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan have agreed to notify each other before testing missiles, open consulates and work toward settling their five-decade dispute over Kashmir and other bilateral issues.
The agreements on Monday, by the two nations' foreign secretaries, are part of a step-by-step dialogue process that began last year.
The process is aimed at an eventual summit between the Indian and Pakistani leaders to resolve their conflicting claims to Kashmir, which has led to three armed conflicts.
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar met for six hours Sunday and Monday with his Indian counterpart, Shashank, who uses one name.
Khokhar brought invitations from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President APJ Abdul Kalam and Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi to visit.
Singh gave Khokhar a message to take back to Musharraf.
The foreign secretaries reiterated that the ongoing discussions "would lead to peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides," said a joint statement released by the two governments.
Concrete outcomes
Both sides said the talks were productive.
"There is a new spirit of engaging each other consistently and substantively," said Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Masood Khan.
"There is a new spirit of engaging each other consistently and substantively"
Masood Khan Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman
"You have to satisfy all the parties. That is the understanding that is emerging very rapidly."
Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said the foreign secretaries had "positive discussions and concrete outcomes."
In a series of new confidence-building steps, the two countries will work toward an agreement to notify each other before testing missiles. This follows an accord last week to set up a hotline to prevent accidental nuclear war.
The South Asian neighbours also will open consulates in Karachi, Pakistan and Bombay, India and restore their embassies to full strength of 110 staffers each.
The embassy staffs were reduced after a December 2001 attack on India's Parliament led to a break in diplomatic relations and snapping of all transportation links.
Since then, ambassadors and bus, train and air service have been restored.
Economic co-operation
India and Pakistan will free all fishermen seized in each other's territorial waters and work out ways to release other civilian prisoners, they said.
The foreign secretaries also discussed the possibility of opening a highway closed since the two nations became independent from Britain in 1947.
The road connects the two parts of Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have fought two full-scale wars and a 1999 border clash over Kashmir.
Transportation services between India and Pakistan to be restored
They haven't held substantive talks on the disputed Himalayan region since 1998, although Musharraf and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee discussed the issue, and failed to agree, in July 2001.
India accuses Pakistan of training, arming and funding militants fighting for merger of the Indian portion with Pakistan or winning its independence. Islamabad says it provides only moral support to an "indigenous" uprising.
The 14 years of violence in India's only Muslim-majority state has killed more than 65,000 people.
More meetings, on economic co-operation and the technical details to implement the agreements, are to be held from the third week of July to the end of August, when the secretaries will meet again, and the foreign ministers immediately afterward, the joint statement said.
-------- iran
Iran's reformist government out of the loop on nuclear policy: spokesman
TEHRAN (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628142106.knuo717h.html
The official spokesman for Iran's reformist government admitted Monday that the cabinet was effectively out of the loop on nuclear policy-making, a domain now in the hands of rising conservative forces.
In his first press conference for months, Abdollah Ramazanzadeh was pressed for more details on Iran's decision to resume the manufacture of centrifuges used for enriching uranium, a move that has drawn fresh criticism from the UN nuclear watchdog.
The official replied that top conservative cleric and national security official Hassan Rowhani as well as the foreign ministry had already addressed questions on Iran's ties with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"Policy decisions on this matter are not in the hands of the government, so I have nothing to say," said the beleaguered cabinet secretary of embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
He was also questioned why the cabinet had been so silent on a string of other sensitive topics since February's controversial parliamentary elections, which were easily won by religious hardliners after most reformist candidates were barred from even standing.
"I will stay silent," the spokesman said bluntly.
The February polls saw the conservatives cement their grip in the Islamic republic, and left Khatami and some of his cabinet isolated as some of the few reform-minded politicians still in public office.
During the electoral crisis, sources close to Ramazanzadeh even said he may resign, but he later denied this.
The official has since taken up an additional post as head of the Iranian Baseball, Cricket and Rugby Federation -- and betrayed the obvious fact that he no longer wanted to speak to reporters.
"The president ordered me to, so I have to," he said when asked why he had agreed to resume press briefings.
Khatami's second and final term in office ends in June 2005. Reformists have yet to put forward a potential replacement, in contrast to conservatives who have already fielded several names through the local press.
----
UN inspects Iran 'nuclear' site
Monday, 28 June, 2004,
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3848417.stm
Nuclear inspectors from the United Nations have visited a site where Iran has been accused of working on a nuclear weapons programme.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said his team had been given prompt access to the Lavizan site in northern Tehran.
Mr ElBaradei said the inspectors had taken some samples, and would visit further sites in Iran on Tuesday.
The US has accused of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran denies that Lavizan was ever a nuclear site, and insists it has no banned weapons programme.
The IAEA takes samples to test for traces of nuclear materials that might indicate signs of undeclared activities.
The IAEA found traces of enriched uranium at various Iranian sites last year - which Tehran says must have come in with equipment from abroad.
----
Atomic Ayatollahs
June 28, 2004
Heritage.com
New York Post
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed062804a.cfm
Iran ratcheted up international nuclear tensions late last week by announcing it would resume (as soon as tomorrow) building nuclear centrifuges - an essential element in nuclear-weapons development.
The rest of the world keeps protesting - and Tehran keeps thumbing its nose right back.
Iran insists its "civilian" nuclear power program is for "peaceful" purposes only. That's laughable - but the consequences aren't.
If other countries don't take decisive action soon, the world will have the 9th nuclear weapons state - and its first nuclear-armed state that also sponsors terrorism - faster than you can say "atomic ayatollah."
Efforts to stop Tehran's atomic quest have been lackluster so far. The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) latest rebuke, for example, didn't even stop the mullahs from making last week's in-your-face announcement. The European Union's "peace in our time" agreement with Iran last October on nuclear transparency and inspections has become a tragic joke.
Even Iran's old pals, Russia and China, don't buy Tehran's line anymore. Iran's nuclear mendacity and obfuscation has become so obvious - and embarrassing - that Beijing and Moscow deserted the Islamic republic and supported the critical IAEA resolution. (Although China has been accused recently of secretly aiding the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for oil . . .)
The confrontation between the IAEA and Iran has dragged on for two years now. And time is on Iran's side: Each day, it moves one step closer to achieving its nuclear ambition.
As the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA said, "The passage of time is not a neutral factor in proliferation cases." Iran may become a nuclear power in the next 18 months.
Supporting Iranian nuclear efforts are:
- A heavy-water reactor at Arak, which will produce large amounts of plutonium suitable for use in nuclear weapons.
- A nuclear-conversion facility at Isfahan to produce uranium hexafluoride, a basic ingredient for developing nukes.
Iran insists that these facilities are for producing nuclear fuel for its civilian energy sector, which will free oil and gas reserves for export.
But as John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, testified on Capitol Hill last week, "The costly infrastructure to perform all of these activities goes well beyond any conceivable peaceful nuclear program."
Plus, Iran, with the world's second-largest natural-gas reserves, wastes enough gas each year to generate four 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors' worth of electricity.
Bottom line: Iran doesn't need nuclear power.
Will the international community abandon its so-far-impotent ways? It's time for the U.N. Security Council to insist on broad, multilateral economic sanctions.
Tough sanctions made Libya knuckle under on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), may have crippled Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and, last week, led even North Korea back to the nuclear negotiating table.
But getting sanctions in place won't be easy. Countries such as France, Germany and Japan have invested heavily in Iran's centralized economy.
For instance, the French energy giant, Total Group, recently signed a $2 billion joint venture with the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company for natural-gas exploration. Germany's business presence in Iran exceeds France's, and the European Union is looking at a bilateral trade agreement with Iran as well. Japan? It recently signed a $2 billion deal for oil exploration in Iran. (Iran has the world's third largest deposits of oil.)
And China's insatiable energy appetite likely will prevent it from supporting Security Council sanctions.
If the international community lets Iran go nuclear, the U.N.'s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) would become a laughingstock, and no longer serve as a deterrent to nuclear proliferation. (Over the weekend, Tehran hinted, via a regime-friendly newspaper, at withdrawing from the NPT.)
A nuclear Iran would undermine stability in region, threatening the new Iraqi and Afghan governments and giving Syria and the Saudis strong incentive to go nuclear, too.
And Iran has long-range missiles on the drawing table - so NATO, Israel and the United States will become at risk.
It seems obvious: The Iranians aren't interested in negotiations - they're interested in having the bomb. We've tried to counter Iran's nuclear intentions through mommy-coddling diplomatic means for long enough: That approach has failed miserably.
It's time we all recognize this fact and agree to take the matter to the Security Council for more drastic action.
Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow. E-mail: peterbrookes@heritage.org
-------- iraq / inspections
UN nuclear chief plays down chance of inspectors returning to Iraq soon
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628102750.otp8rga4.html
UN nuclear chief Mohammed ElBaradei on Monday played down the chances of international atomic inspectors returning to Iraq in the near future, despite a new government there, saying the current security situation was a major problem.
ElBaradei said his International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would first need a "green light" from the UN Security Council to return to Iraq and then "would obviously have to weigh the security situation".
Speaking after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he added: "We work sometimes under a certain degree of risk. It has to be managed risk ... I think right now the current situation is a major impediment."
The United States had opposed the IAEA returning to Iraq but the US-led coalition formally ended its 14-month occupation Monday, handing power to a caretaker government two days earlier than expected in order to avoid attacks on the scheduled handover date.
ElBaradei had said in Cairo in April that the IAEA's "mandate for the inspection of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq) is still in force."
The inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the outbreak of the US-led war to unseat Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that began in March 2003.
Prior to this, the IAEA had issued a report to the effect that it had no proof that Baghdad had reconstituted its nuclear program.
The United States had said it did not want UN disarmament inspectors to return to Iraq, where its own search for mass destruction weapons -- the principal justification for the invasion and occupation of the country -- has found nothing.
ElBaradei said the IAEA would now be talking to the new Iraqi government.
But the current situation was "a bit messy. It's still not very clear," he said.
-------- israel
IAEA: Israel should end nuclear threat
Al-Baradai: Everyone knows Israel has nuclear weapons
Monday 28 June 2004
Al Jazeera,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/698EFA3E-3AA1-4574-94D3-69F7D9FD14C6.htm
The UN has called on Israel to put an end to the imbalance of power in the Middle East by dismantling its own nuclear weapons.
Muhammad al-Baradai said on Sunday that such a move would reduce frustration in the region caused by "what is seen to be a widespread imbalance".
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief is scheduled to travel to Israel in July to discuss making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, despite Tel Aviv's refusal to admit it has such WMDs.
"I think everybody takes it as a given that Israel has a nuclear capability, if not nuclear weapons," he said.
"We need ... to rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters on a visit to Russia. "Israel agrees with that, but they say it has to be ... after peace agreements.
"My proposal is maybe we need to start to have a parallel dialogue on security at the same time when we're working on the peace process."
Inspections necessary
Al-Baradai added he would like Israel to open up nuclear facilities to inspections by the IAEA.
International analysts believe Tel Aviv has built more than 100 nuclear weapons.
Its Arab neighbours have frequently accused the international community of double standards for requiring them to be free of nuclear weapons while doing little about Israel.
Al-Baradai concluded it was "not sustainable in any region or even globally to have some [people] rely on nuclear weapons and others being told they should not have nuclear weapons".
-------- korea
Nuclear Stalemate
In Beijing, the U.S. and North Korea once again agree to disagree
BY JOHN LARKIN
Jul. 05, 2004
TIME Asia Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501040705-658377,00.html
As the third round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program ended inconclusively in Beijing on Saturday, this diplomatic soap opera was beginning to look like a tired re-run. The latest episode was not without a dramatic plot twist: chief U.S. negotiator James Kelly proposed a plan under which North Korea would dismantle its nuclear weapons in phases in return for massive aid and a provisional guarantee that the U.S. would not attack. But the denouement seemed utterly predictable: the North was in no hurry to bite, vowing to study the proposal in due time, and both sides came away empty-handed. A senior U.S. official close to the talks said they were "not unfriendly," but added, "The results would have to be described as mixed."
Kelly's proposal did show some early promise: it marks a significant softening of the Bush Administration's demand that Pyongyang completely and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear programs before receiving benefits. But Pyongyang countered by demanding more aid for fewer concessions. As the U.S. official put it: "They want to offer as little as possible for the highest possible price."
One reason for the impasse is that both sides stand to gain by holding out until after November's U.S. presidential election. Pyongyang hopes to win a sweeter deal from John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee who favors bilateral talks with the North. And the Bush Administration believes re-election would give it a freer hand to deal firmly with the North, possibly through tougher sanctions. Until then, though, Bush needs to appear open to negotiation so that allies and domestic voters alike will not carp that war is his primary tool of foreign policy. "It seems both sides don't want to compromise," says Lee Jung Hoon, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul. "But neither wants to be seen as the culprit for the lack of progress."
-With reporting by Donald Macintyre/Seoul and Susan Jakes/Beijing
----
N Korea rejects "unrealistic" US offer but calls nuclear talks positive
SEOUL (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628100511.3asglhcb.html
North Korea on Monday rejected a new US proposal aimed at defusing a 20-month standoff over its nuclear weapons programs but welcomed a shift in Washington's hardline negotiating stance.
Pyongyang said the US plan to give North Korea three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for major economic and diplomatic rewards was unworkable, branding it "unrealistic".
North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman said in an English-language statement that the US plan "could not be supported by anyone as it totally lacked scientific and realistic nature."
Instead it said the United States should come up with immediate rewards for a nuclear freeze and drop its "unreasonable assertion" that Pyongyang is running a clandestine nuclear programme based on enriched uranium.
"A scrutiny of the US proposal suggests that, to out regret it only mentioned phased demands for disarming the DPRK (North Korea)," the spokesman said in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency monitored here.
North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear weapons drive in return for an end to US sanctions and energy assistance.
In return for concessions Pyongyang was prepared to "freeze all the facilities related to nuclear weapons" that would entail a ban on producing, transferring and testing nuclear weapons and would lead to the ultimate dismantlement of the nuclear weapons program, the statement said.
Prior to last week's Beijing talks, the United States had insisted that North Korea had to scrap its nuclear ambitions first, before it would receive concessions.
At the Beijing talks, however, Washington called for a step-by-step dismantling of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programs in return for aid and security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation.
North Korea welcomed Washington's retreat from its earlier demand for the unconditional scrapping of the North's nuclear weapons as a first step towards resolving the standoff.
"Some common elements helpful to making progress were found there," the spokesman said in the dispatch monitored here.
It also applauded Washington's decision to drop the term "CVID", referring to the US goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear facilities.
Washington has used the term as a mantra at previous rounds, much to the irritation of North Korean delegates, according to media reports here.
The statement was North Korea's first official reaction to last week's six-nation talks that ended without concrete progress.
It contrasted sharply with wholly negative statements issued by North Korea after each of the previous two previous rounds of six-party talks in the Chinese capital.
After the February round, North Korea said further talks would be meaningless. Last August, it described the first round of talks as "useless." On both occasions the Stalinist state said it would build more nuclear bombs.
Since then Washington has come under pressure from its allies in the region and partners at the talks to do more to help resolve the standoff.
China, South Korea, and Japan have taken the lead in engaging North Korea while Washington remained aloof.
However the deadlock over North Korea's alleged uranium-based scheme is the main stumbling block to progress.
North Korea has boasted openly of its plutonium-producing program at its Yongbyon complex, north of Pyongyang, but publicly denies any uranium-enriching activities.
The stand-off erupted in October 2002 when the United States said North Korea had acknowledged it was developing nuclear weapons through enriched uranium, violating a 1994 international agreement.
----
U.S. Sees North Korea Deal a Long Way Off
Monday June 28, 2004
By BARRY SCHWEID
(AP)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4255233,00.html
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration tempered its upbeat appraisal of negotiations with North Korea, saying Monday that an agreement to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons still is a long way off.
``Important differences remain between the parties,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in providing an assessment of a third round of talks that closed in Beijing last weekend.
On North Korea's part, its foreign ministry said positive progress was made, and the Bush administration was willing to consider its demand to be rewarded if it should halt the weapons program.
``Some common elements helpful to making progress in the talks were found,'' the ministry statement said.
As the third round of negotiations since August drew to a close last Friday, the Bush administration gave North Korea at least a passing grade in the negotiations and suggested the slow-moving talks to denuclearize the Korean peninsula might be making headway.
With Iran causing misgivings about its nuclear programs, the United States is eager to put out the smoldering fire on the Korean peninsula and may have found a way with economic inducements. President Bush has branded both countries as part of an ``axis of evil'' with deposed President Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
China's vice foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters Saturday that progress was being made, but a ``serious lack of mutual trust'' still exists among participants. He said the United States and North Korea remained far apart.
At the State Department's daily press briefing on Friday, spokesman Ereli said: ``Our view is that these have been constructive talks, that the proposals are getting serious consideration, and that we have a good basis for moving forward.''
On Monday, he was slightly less upbeat, but he called the talks constructive and said, ``We believe that the serious engagement that we saw in this third round in Beijing represents progress.''
The talks had moved slowly until the United States agreed to propose Japan and South Korea provide energy assistance to North Korea if North Korea would agree to stop working on nuclear weapons.
Also, President Bush has held out the offer of a promise not to attack North Korea.
North Korea, meanwhile, improved its offer of merely suspending the program to halting it outright under the right compensating conditions.
Ereli said the six nations - the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia - would meet again by the end of September. Lower-level officials will meet soon, he said.
On the Net:
Federation of American Scientists on North Korean nuclear program: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html
----
ElBaradei Ready to Visit N.Korea for Nuclear Talks
June 28, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-korea.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Monday he was ready to go to North Korea immediately to discuss the return of U.N. inspectors expelled from the communist state a year and half ago.
Speaking to reporters after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Mohamed ElBaradei said he had asked Lavrov to convey this message to the North Koreans.
``He (Lavrov) is going to North Korea this week,'' ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said. ``I told him he can tell them that I'm ready to come any time and discuss future cooperation.''
The latest round of six-nation talks on North Korea ended on Saturday, producing only an agreement to hold further talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up any atom bomb plans.
However, Washington showed greater flexibility than it has in past rounds by offering Pygongyang security guarantees and economic aid in exchange for scrapping its arms programs.
ElBaradei described the new U.S. offer as a ``step in the right direction'' and said he hoped Pyongyang would accept it.
While the return of IAEA inspectors is widely taken as a necessary condition of any deal reached with North Korea, ElBaradei said he was willing to meet the North Koreans directly before any agreement was finalized.
``I am ready to go anytime to North Korea ... even before any agreement (is reached), on how we can work with them in the future,'' he said.
ElBaradei has said if IAEA inspectors returned to Pyongyang he would want comprehensive inspection powers to enable them to verify the full extent of its nuclear program.
The IAEA's inspectors were expelled in 2002 and have not been permitted to return. Shortly afterwards, North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The countries taking part in the talks are the United States, China, Japan, the two Koreas and Russia.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear terrorism realities
June 28, 2004
By I-wei J. Chang
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040628-121252-5928r.htm
A nuclear catastrophe could occur if terrorists gained access to nuclear weapons or weapons-grade materials, and if regional conflicts or instability degenerated into wars in which nuclear weapons were used, said a report by researchers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to a Nonproliferation Conference last week.
Nuclear terrorism on the one hand, and regional proliferation and conflict on the other, are the two most pressing nuclear threats facing the world today, according to "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security," the preliminary report by George Perkovich, Joseph Cirincione, Rose Gottemoeller, Jon Wolfsthal and Jessica Mathews. The final version is to be released in January to the next U.S. administration.
Unlike countries, which may fear retaliation, terrorist groups could be undeterred about using nuclear weapons to achieve a political agenda, the Carnegie report said.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has expressed interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. While terrorist groups are not believed to have the ability to produce nuclear weapons, they may be able to seize such weapons or materials from other countries.
The report, issued at the conference in Washington, recommends securing nuclear weapons facilities, particularly those in the former Soviet Union, and ending worldwide the production of weapons-usable nuclear materials.
"If the U.S. and others just keep doing what they are doing today, a nuclear 9/11 is more likely than not in the decade ahead," said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
"Nuclear terrorism is, in fact, preventable," Mr. Allison said. "It is a challenge to international will, determination and stick-to-itiveness, not to our technical capabilities."
Russia and the United States, which have the two largest stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium left over from the Cold War, must take the lead, the report said. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently urged a Global Threat Reduction Initiative, to repatriate all Russian and U.S. nuclear fuel from research reactors around the world by 2009.
"This is neither a question of will, nor a question of resources," Mr. Abraham said June 14 at the National Press Club.
However, trends indicate Russia and the United States are re-emphasizing the role of nuclear weapons, said former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat who served four terms ending in 1997 and a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Nunn said U.S.-Russian agreements such as the Moscow Treaty don't seek a complete dismantlement of their nuclear arsenals, sending "a bad message to the rest of the world." He called on the American and Russian presidents to remove their nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert, which makes possible launching in 15 minutes.
If this were accomplished, Mr. Nunn said, "we could immediately eliminate the threat of rapid assured destruction and dramatically reduce the chances of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch."
Today, eight nations have nuclear weapons, according to the report. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) stipulated that only China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - the five countries that detonated nuclear bombs before Jan. 1, 1967, and the only permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - would constitute the nuclear world order.
The United States is the only country to have used atomic weapons - against Japan in 1945 to hasten its World War II surrender.
Israel, India and Pakistan are the three other nuclear-weapons states. North Korea and Iran also seek nuclear weapons and the deterrence such weapons confer.
Several countries have ended nuclear weapons programs since the 1970s, including Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and Yugoslavia. Recent examples are Iraq and Libya. The Carnegie report said many of them have the economic and technical resources to restart a nuclear program, and should be dissuaded.
The Carnegie report said that after nuclear terrorism, the most dangerous challenges are regional nuclear proliferation and conflict in Northeast Asia, the Middle East and South Asia.
Pakistan poses another concern, particularly after its head scientist A.Q. Khan and his associates were discovered to have operated a black market, selling nuclear designs and components to Libya, Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries.
"A nuclear North Korea is not some distant, potential reality, but something that exists here and now," said Kurt Campbell, former deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Agence France-Presse reported in late April that U.S. analysts believed North Korea had at least eight nuclear weapons, rather than two as previously suspected.
North Korea is "in the nuclear-weapons game," Mr. Campbell said. Asian nations continue to ignore this reality because they see greater urgency in the tension-ridden Taiwan Strait, he said. They may change their outlook if North Korea conducts missile tests, as it did in 1998, he added.
The Carnegie draft report made a bold recommendation: Any attempt by North Korea to export nuclear materials or weapons should be considered an "act of war against the United States."
But the United States is unlikely to attack North Korean nuclear facilities because it lacks support from allies Japan and South Korea, said Robert Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
On the other hand, if the United States believed that North Korea had transferred fissile material to another country or a terrorist group, "it should be considered an act in which we would follow rapidly with the force to end the problem and make sure that it would never happen again." In this case, Washington would not need the concurrence of its allies to protect its security interests, said Mr. Gallucci, a former negotiator of the 1994 Agreed Framework.
In the Agreed Framework, brokered during the Clinton administration, North Korea agreed to stop reprocessing plutonium in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors to generate electricity. In November 2002, North Korean officials admitted they had developed a secret nuclear program in violation of the Agreed Framework, and Pyongyang subsequently withdrew from the NPT. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found strong evidence last month that North Korea transferred almost two tons of uranium to Libya in 2001.
The Bush administration's bottom line is "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's nuclear program, though Mr. Campbell said the administration is divided on one policy toward Pyongyang. The U.S. should "prepare for the possibility that North Korea is unwilling to abandon its nuclear capabilities," said the Carnegie draft report.
"From North Korea's standpoint, it is no longer bound by the NPT because it withdrew from the treaty last year, so we are back to square one," said Byung-se Yun, a minister at the South Korean Embassy in Washington.
The draft report also recommends strengthening U.S. security alliances with South Korea and Japan to "enhance deterrence and stability on the Korean Peninsula" and reduce incentives for other countries to go nuclear.
The fissure in U.S.-South Korea relations over a common North Korea policy, coupled with China's rise as a military power, may limit U.S. influence in the region, said Scott Snyder, senior associate for international relations at the Asia Foundation.
"The weakening of the U.S.-Korea alliance enhances the likelihood that North Korea indeed may be able to attain nuclear status," he said, "because the absence of our ability to depend on that alliance severely constrains U.S. options to dealing with North Korea."
Iran's possible ambitions to produce nuclear weapons appeared more real last week as Iran announced it would resume enrichment activities, reneging on an October 2003 agreement with the United Kingdom, France and Germany to suspend fuel-cycle activities. Tehran did so after the IAEA board of governors criticized it for withholding information about its nuclear activities. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity.
In a region where Israel has nuclear weapons and other Middle Eastern states have, or are suspected to have, chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear Iran would add "grave volatility to an already conflicted region," the Carnegie report said. Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other nations might follow Iran's lead and initiate or renew nuclear programs, the report said.
European countries decided not to take Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council after the IAEA rebuke, but John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, told Congress last week that the United States is determined to do so.
So far, Americans have played "the bad cops" and Europeans are "the good cops," said Robert Einhorn, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "What's needed now is for the United States and Europeans to switch roles," he said.
Iran is unlikely to give up its nuclear program after investing many years and achieving progress in its enrichment activities, Mr. Einhorn said. Late last year, Iran said it successfully enriched small quantities of uranium using centrifuge and laser techniques, and separated a small quantity of plutonium, according to a 2004 report by the Congressional Research Service.
"I do know that without much stronger European sticks and much more attractive American carrots, the prospects [of Iran giving up its capability to have nuclear weapons] will be very small," Mr. Einhorn said.
Nuclear Numbers as of April 2004:
Nonproliferation Treaty Members:
US
Strategic delivery systems 1,039
Strategic nuclear warheads 5,886
Total nuclear weapons ~7,000
Russia
Strategic delivery systems 991
Strategic nuclear warheads 4,851
Total nuclear weapons ~18,000
China
Strategic delivery systems 32
Strategic nuclear warheads 32
Total nuclear weapons 410
France
Strategic delivery systems 132
Strategic nuclear warheads 288
Total nuclear weapons ~350
Britain Strategic delivery systems 64
Strategic nuclear warheads 200
Total nuclear weapons 64
NPT Nonmembers:
Israel (
Total nuclear weapons ~70
Pakistan (
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
A Boy and His Nukes
by Charley Reese,
June 28, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=2882
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia today is estimated to have 7,800 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal. I emphasize "estimated" because Russia, like all the nuclear powers, remains quite secretive about its nuclear arsenal. Altogether, Russia's nuclear arsenal of intact warheads is put at 17,000. The difference is classified as being in an "indeterminate" status.
The point is that the administration of George W. Bush has restarted the nuclear arms race. It did so by abandoning the START II treaty, by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and by expanding NATO to the borders of Russia.
If you were a Russian, none of those acts could be considered friendly. They can be viewed as unfriendly, especially in light of the president's new doctrine of "preemptive wars" that was not only announced but actually put into practice; his decision to deploy a virtually untested anti-ballistic missile system; and his decision to pursue the development of new types of nuclear weapons.
All of this makes up potentially the most catastrophic of Bush's blunders, but for some reason, it can't compete in the news media with the Laci Peterson trial or Kobe Bryant or the latest poll numbers on the presidential horse race.
The threat of nuclear war still exists. It could happen by accident or by a series of stupid blunders, such as those that caused World War I. Someone observed long ago that science would produce weapons of complexity that would far exceed the capacity of the simpletons who ended up in positions of political power to control them. History is a record of human stupidity writ in blood. I have often said that history is a lot scarier than Stephen King's horror stories. I get scared every time I hear Bush talk - or try to talk.
If the Boy Emperor wishes to exercise his ego by attacking practically defenseless Third World countries, that's one thing. To put the matter in brutally frank terms, the overwhelming majority of Americans have no loved ones in the U.S. military. The more than 800 Americans killed so far is less than the murder rate in some of our more badly governed cities. Since Mr. Bush is fighting his imperial war on credit, the general public is not even asked to sacrifice so much as a minor convenience.
Nuclear war, however, is another matter entirely. Such a catastrophe puts at risk the lives of all Americans, not to mention the rest of the world. Nothing any American president can do is more important than pursuing nuclear disarmament.
The collapse of the Soviet Union presented us with an almost miraculous opportunity to build a peaceful world, and Mr. Bush and the Clinton administration have blown it. We should have disbanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, just as the Russians disbanded the Warsaw Pact. We should have welcomed the Russians into the West like a long-lost brother. Instead, American politicians exploited Russia's temporary weakness and scorned it.
NATO is an organization without a legitimate purpose. It was created to beat back a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. There is no Soviet Union. There is no one even tempted to invade Western Europe. Yet the United States has not only kept NATO alive, but expanded it and misused it in a way that any sensible Russian leader must view with suspicion. It's no wonder the Russians have started to rebuild their strategic nuclear forces.
The major threat to Americans lives is not terrorism, but stupid leaders who don't have the sense to recognize that the mental equivalents of children should not be allowed to play with nuclear weapons.
Since the politicians refuse to do it, the American people will have to put nuclear disarmament back on the agenda. Your life and the lives of your children and grandchildren might depend on it.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US struggles to revive nuclear power industry
By Sheila McNulty
Houston Financial Times
June 28 2004
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373329420&p=1012571727162
As the US struggles with high oil and gas prices and an overdependence on foreign suppliers, Washington is trying to get a reluctant nuclear power industry to build itself up as an alter- native.
The US energy department is providing incentives to encourage US power companies to apply for licences to build the first new nuclear plants in 25 years. The department is also considering building a plant of its own.
The 103 operational US nuclear power plants are so old they are being forced to apply for 20-year extensions on their 40-year operating licences. Even though they provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy, no provisions have been made to continue that supply, much less increase it, once the plants are too old to operate.
A tedious application process, high costs and public resistance have made utilities skittish about new nuclear power for decades. In 1979, a partial core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island - which remains the worst-ever US nuclear plant accident - awakened the public to nuclear power's danger.
In 1984, public opposition prevented a completed $5.3bn (?4.35bn, £2.9bn) plant from opening in New York state. The devastating Chernobyl accident in Ukraine two years later all but finished the debate.
Today Mark Urso, who works in the nuclear services division of Westinghouse Electric, gives talks on nuclear energy. "Typically, the only thing they [the public] know or ask questions about are the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," he says.
There is another, arguably bigger obstacle than public opinion: the build-up of nuclear waste. Without an offsite repository, nuclear plants must store their own waste onsite. And when storage space is full, the plant can be threatened with closure.
Efforts to set up a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have been blocked for years by the state's governors and members of Congress, regardless of party.
Lee Raymond, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest publicly listed oil and gas company, has stated that nuclear has great potential, especially from an environmental standpoint. But he has noted that political opposition makes nuclear power a poor contender for meeting the rising US energy demand.
"The political reality in the US today would lead to the conclusion that there will not be any more nuclear power plants built in this country for a long time," said James A. Baker, the former secretary of state to President George H.W. Bush.
The utilities seem reluctant to prove them wrong, in spite of improvements in plant safety, mandated by US regulators, lower operating costs and a streamlined application process.
"No one has ever tried to use [the new process], so there is a lot of uncertainty about how the process will work," says William D. Magwood IV, director of the energy department's Office of Nuclear Energy.
The department has agreed to split costs to get three commercial operators to apply for permits to build new plants on specific sites.
Mr Magwood expects the Yucca Mountain dispute will be settled, allowing the site to begin receiving waste by 2010. Environmental concerns over fossil fuel pollution will force nuclear to the forefront, he says, noting that nuclear waste is contained as solids, not released into the air. President George W. Bush has aimed to reduce the economic growth-carbon emissions ratio by 18 per cent by 2012.
Many believe there is no better option than nuclear power for environmentally friendly energy. Larry Foulke, president of the American Nuclear Society, says: "It is unrealistic to think we can power factories with solar and wind mills."
But David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes the US must replace its ageing nuclear facilities. "We're now headed toward the wear-out phase, and we need to be on our guard," he says.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Taliban Strikes Again
In Vote-Related Attack As Many as 16 Killed in Afghan South
By Noor Khan
Associated Press
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9726-2004Jun27.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 27 -- Taliban fighters killed as many as 16 men after learning they had registered for Afghanistan's U.S.-backed national elections, the deadliest attack yet in a campaign aimed at sabotaging the nation's first free vote, officials said Sunday.
The killings took place Friday in the southern province of Uruzgan, and various reports put the number of dead at 10 or 16. News of the deaths emerged a day after a bomb ripped through a bus carrying female election workers in the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing two and wounding 13. A spokesman for the Taliban took responsibility for that attack.
The violence raised security fears and added to doubts over whether Afghanistan was ready to hold elections planned for September; it also increased pressure on NATO leaders, who were to meet Monday in Turkey, to deploy more peacekeepers here.
Time is running out for the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral authority to decide on the date for the vote if the election is to be held according to schedule. According to the electoral law, the date must be announced 90 days beforehand -- meaning by July 2, if voting takes place on the last day of September.
The Uruzgan attack underscored the risks faced by Afghans attempting to exercise their democratic rights, particularly in lawless areas plagued by Taliban-led insurgents who have threatened more attacks against election workers and voters.
Rozi Khan, the Uruzgan police chief, said assailants stopped a van carrying 12 men on a road about 18 miles from the provincial capital, Tirin Kot.
When the gunmen searched the men's documents and found that they had registered to vote, they opened fire. Two men escaped and alerted police, who found the 10 bodies but had made no arrests.
Obaidullah Khan, the top political administrator of Uruzgan, confirmed the attack but said 16 people had died and only one man survived.
It was impossible to immediately account for the discrepancy.
Obaidullah Khan said six or seven attackers had launched the assault while others hid in rocks nearby.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. military are adamant that the election take place on schedule -- although with three days left for voter registration, only about half of those eligible have signed up nationwide.
A U.N. spokesman, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, said Sunday he expected the electoral authority to extend the deadline for registration in some areas of the country so that regional and gender imbalances in the electoral rolls can be addressed. More than 4.5 million voters have signed up so far, and only about one-third of them are women. Remote, Pashtun-dominated areas where insurgents are most active are lagging behind.
--------
14 Afghans Are Killed for Registering to Vote
June 28, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/asia/28afgh.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 27 - Suspected Taliban fighters have carried out their most lethal attack yet in a widening campaign to derail Afghan national elections, executing at least 14 unarmed men because they had registered to vote, government officials said.
Jan Muhammad, the governor of the province of Uruzgan, said three survivors of the attack on Friday told officials that Taliban fighters had kidnapped and killed the men after discovering their voter registration cards.
"These three people were saying the Taliban were telling us, 'You are non-Muslims,' " Mr. Muhammad said. "You are helping them and you are getting these cards."
On Saturday, a bomb exploded on a bus carrying women who were election workers in the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing two women and wounding 13 others, including a 5-year-old girl. In a setback for the registration effort, United Nations officials immediately suspended all movement of registration teams made up of women in eastern and southern Afghanistan, areas where the largest number of attacks have been occurring.
A man identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for both attacks in telephone interviews, contending that the men executed on Friday were election workers and government soldiers, The Associated Press reported. People who say they are Taliban officials have issued threats against Afghans who take part in an election process that they say is intendedto strengthen the American-backed government.
The twin attacks mark a new level of brutality and may increase pressure on NATO leaders meeting in Istanbul on Monday to commit additional troops to secure the elections, which are scheduled for September. At least 400 Afghans have died in violence across the country this year, including factional fighting and attacks by suspected Taliban fighters on government officials, aid workers, election workers and now, apparently, on registered voters.
Afghan and United Nations officials have said another 5,000 NATO troops are needed to secure the elections. Along with attacks by suspected Taliban fighters, clashes and intimidation among armed rivals are expected in local contests. The elections are for president and Parliament.
On Friday, President Hamid Karzai again called for NATO to increase significantly the contingent of 6,000 troops it has in Kabul and the northern city of Kunduz. But European countries are expected to commit only an additional 1,800 troops, most of them to safer areas of the country.
The United States recently increased its troop levels in Afghanistan to 20,000 from 11,000, and American forces have been aggressively pursuing the suspected Taliban insurgents in the country's south.
Mr. Muhammad, the Uruzgan provincial governor, said in a telephone interview that 35 to 40 members of the Taliban stopped several cars at roughly 5 p.m. on Friday as they traveled between the towns of Khas Uruzgan and Tirin Kot, the provincial capital. He said the insurgents forced the men to drive and walk to Dai Chopan, a Taliban stronghold in neighboring Zabul Province, where they were killed.
Haji Naqibullah, who answered the phone in the district office in Khas Uruzgan, gave a similar account of the killings. But Mr. Naqibullah, who said he was a delegate to the country's constitutional convention last winter, said that 15 men had been killed, not 14.
The governor said he had dispatched troops to the area to look for the killers.
-------- africa
Sudanese Refugees Told to Stay Silent On Government, Militia Abuses
U.S., U.N. Leaders Expected To Press for Aid During Visits
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10226-2004Jun27.html
ABU SHOUK, Sudan, June 27 -- The Sudanese villagers in this western region of Darfur were bombed. They were raped. Their huts were burned and their grain pillaged. Now, those who fled the chaos say they are being silenced.
The Sudanese government dispatched 500 men last week to this sweltering camp of 40,000 near El Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, the refugees and aid workers said. The men, some dressed in civilian clothes, others in military uniforms, warned the refugees to keep quiet about their experiences when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan visit the region this week.
Darfur has been the scene of more than 16 months of conflict between residents of the region and Arab militiamen backed by the government. Aid workers say 30,000 people have been killed by the militia and more than 1.2 million forced to flee their homes.
"They kicked us and said, 'Stop talking,' " said Malki Ali Abduallah, 25, who fled the fighting six months ago with six children and a cooking pot. "I said, 'No, no, no. I am angry. I am tired. I don't want to be quiet.
"You already stole my life. What else can you take?" she recounted saying, sweating in the 115 degree midday heat as 40 people gathered around her in support, many telling similar stories.
Near the crowd, however, stern-faced men wearing safari outfits, pilot sunglasses and leopard-skin slippers listened in and made calls on cell phones. The villagers and the aid workers said the men were among those dispatched by the government.
The men also told the villagers that they would impersonate victims when the U.S. and U.N. delegations arrived and tell them that the government had done nothing wrong and that rebels operating against the government in the region were to blame, the villagers and aid workers said.
Sitting under the shade of plastic sheeting strung around branches, Tarni Ahmed, 35, mimicked the pose the militias make when they point their assault rifles. Then she raised her arms and turned up her palms.
"They took the food from my mouth. They grabbed the clothes from my body," she said, drawing a cheering crowd whose members started to say, "yes," in Arabic. Her voice grew louder and tears streamed down her face. "These things are very bad in my heart. I won't stop speaking. Let them shoot me."
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) visited the camp Sunday to survey the humanitarian crisis, which the United Nations and other aid agencies have said will kill hundreds of thousands from famine and disease if Sudan fails to allow greater access to the area and rein in the marauding Arab militiamen, known as Janjaweed. Four pickup trucks carrying dozens of militiamen raced around the area as the U.S. delegation toured the camp.
Powell's visit will be the highest-level U.S. visit to Sudan since Cyrus R. Vance, Jimmy Carter's first secretary of state, visited during a layover in 1978. Powell's visit is meant to send a strong message to the Sudanese government and threaten U.N. sanctions. The United States is investigating whether the Sudanese government is responsible for genocide because three African tribes, the Fur, the Zaghawa and the Massaleit, have been targeted during the fighting.
Annan, who is under pressure to take a firm stand after his apologies for not doing enough to stop a genocide in Rwanda in 1994, is also expected to press the Sudanese government to disarm the militia and open up access to aid groups.
Also Sunday, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the administration had asked Libya for help in getting aid to Darfur, the Reuters news agency reported.
"We're working with others, with the Libyans, to try to get a third route for supplies to get into Darfur. And we've been putting a lot of pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the Janjaweed militia from doing the horrible things that they're doing in that region," she said on "Fox News Sunday."
The fighting in Darfur began last year when groups of students and activists rebelled against the central government, demanding greater attention to development and more power. The Darfur rebels captured the military town of El Fashir, killing 75 soldiers and seizing weapons. The government then armed Arab militias and bombed villages. Apart from the Darfur crisis is Sudan's civil war. The United States pressed the government and rebels in the country's south to reach an agreement to end 21 years of war that killed more than 2 million people.
The congressional delegation led by Wolf and Brownback met with the governor of the region, Yusuf Kibir, who blamed the Darfur rebels for the crisis. "We didn't start the shooting," he said. "It was the rebels."
Wolf warned that a war crimes tribunal could be set up for Darfur. He mentioned the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, who has been indicted by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity, and former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial in The Hague for atrocities committed during the Balkan wars.
Brownback also urged an end to the violence. "Stop the killing of the innocent," he said.
-------- arms
Chen defends massive Taiwan arms deal as parliament presses for cuts
TAIPEI (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628103052.80blco16.html
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian Monday defended a planned 18-billion-dollar arms purchase as necessary to deter invasion threats from rival China while parliament pressed for cuts in the price tag.
"Taiwan will by no means be provocative towards the Chinese communists," Chen said while meeting with visiting US Congressman Scott McInnis.
"But in the face of the belligerent Chinese communists who have refused to renounce their use of force against Taiwan ... Taiwan has to step up its defense capabilities."
Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory, has repeatedly threatened to invade should the island declare formal independence.
"This is not a result of US pressure," he said as a Taiwan parliamentary delegation wrapped up a fact-finding trip to the United States over the arms deals.
Taiwan's cabinet on June 2 approved a special budget of 610 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) to buy advanced weaponry amid tensions with China.
The draft budget, pending parliament's final approval, calls for the purchase of eight submarines, a modified version of the Patriot anti-missile system PAC-III and a fleet of anti-submarine aircraft over a 15-year period beginning 2005.
But some critics have said Taiwan cannot afford the massive spending spree, while others say the new weaponry will not be delivered in time to help the island fend off an attack from China in coming years.
The planned submarine purchase has been at the centre of the controversy because US submarines would cost up to four times more than those on the international arms market.
Parliamentary speaker Wang Jin-pyng, the head of the delegation which visited the United States, said the defense ministry had asked Washington to quote new prices.
"Particularly the quotation for the submarine fleet is way too expensive," Wang told reporters.
Lawmaker Lee Wen-chung from Chen's Democratic Progressive Party said he estimated that the cost of the submarine fleet could be slashed by at least 100 billion Taiwan dollars if all of the ships were built in the United States.
The current plan requires that two submarines be built by Taiwan's state-run China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC), significantly raising costs.
US President George W. Bush offered the weapons sales in April 2001 as part of the most comprehensive arms package to the island since 1992.
The submarine deal, however, has progressed slowly as the United States has not built conventional submarines for more than 40 years.
Germany and Spain have reportedly declined to offer their designs for fear of offending China.
The United States remains the leading arms supplier to Taiwan despite its shift of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
-------- biological weapons
Hill Anthrax response spread toxin
(UPI)
June 28, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040628-113759-3083r.htm
Washington, DC, Jun. 28 (UPI) -- Contamination from the October 2001 anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill appear to have been more widespread than originally reported, a new report indicates.
Roll Call reports a recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report suggests the Capitol Police accidentally spread the bacteria from the anthrax-laced envelope beyond the Hart Senate Office Building where the letters containing the deadly toxin were first discovered.
The revelations the disease was spread to vehicles and other offices were announced as part of a series of recommendations for future response to the detection of environmental toxins at the Capitol.
An August 2002 Environmental Protection Agency report found that the Capitol Police Bomb Squad inadvertently contaminated gear bags and other equipment by placing them in the hallway outside contaminated offices in the Hart Building and then transferred to the House's Ford Office Building, which then required decontamination.
To detect any more efforts to transfer anthrax through the mail, 283 automatic detection systems are being installed in major postal distribution systems around the country.
-------- iraq
Power handed to Iraqis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Tarek el-Tablawy
June 28, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040628-105008-1334r.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The temporary stewards of Iraq's future reclaimed their nation two days early, accepting limited power today from U.S. occupiers who wished them prosperity and handed them a staggering slate of problems - including a lethal insurgency the Americans admit they underestimated.
With the passing of a sheaf of documents and a prime minister's oath on a red Quran, the land once ruled by Saddam Hussein received official sovereignty from U.S. administrators in a secretive ceremony moved up to thwart insurgents' attempts at undermining the transfer.
"The Iraqi people have their country back," President Bush said at a NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey.
On paper, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority granted power to Iraq's interim government at 10:26 a.m., 467 days after the U.S. invasion began. The reality is more complicated: Some 145,000 foreign forces - most of them American - remain in charge of keeping rebellion at bay.
The U.S. civilian authority, which rode in on a swift military victory that swept away Saddam's generation-long regime, withdrew quietly. Its leader, L. Paul Bremer, left Iraq aboard a military plane two hours after the transfer and was swiftly succeeded by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.
Hours later, NATO leaders agreed to help train Iraq's armed forces - a decision that fell short of U.S. hopes that the security alliance would take a larger role in Iraq.
There were no immediate reports of violence or threats linked to the power transfer, held in the heavily guarded Green Zone against a backdrop of Louis XIV furniture and a row of Iraqi flags - the same green-black-red banner that flew over the nation while Saddam was in power.
"Please let us not be afraid by those outlaws that are fighting Islam," interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address. "Some of them have already gone to the fires of hell and others are waiting their turn."
Bush, whose Iraq policy has drawn criticism abroad and, more recently, at home, was passed a note from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that put it this way: "Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign." Bush wrote "Let freedom reign!" on the note and passed it back, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
On the streets of the Iraqi capital, there was no sign of unusual activity or celebratory gunfire.
Iraq's tentative step toward democratic rule will operate under major restrictions - some imposed at the behest of the country's influential Shiite Muslim clergy, which wanted to limit the powers of an unelected administration.
The interim government will hold power for seven months until, by U.N. Security Council resolution, elections are held "in no case later than" Jan. 31. The Americans retain responsibility for security.
"The political arm of our operation here has gone out of business. Certainly the military operation has not gone out of business," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief, told AP Radio.
Though the government is unable to amend the interim constitution, it assumes responsibility for the daunting problems that have bedeviled U.S. occupiers for more than a year - public turbulence, a ruined infrastructure that has angered the citizenry and, most urgently, the accelerating and violent insurgency that has left hundreds dead. It must make initial attempts to stitch together a patchwork of ethnicities that Saddam pitted against each other - including Iraqi Kurds who had carved out a largely autonomous region in the north.
It also inherits responsibility for the fate of Saddam, the dictator-turned-prisoner whose harsh rule left tens of thousands dead. His brutality and Iraq's alleged terror links was one reason cited by Bush for the decision to invade.
Saddam will be transferred to the custody of his countrymen and will appear before an Iraqi judge in the "next few days" to face charges, officials said Monday. A military spokesman said he will remain in a U.S.-run jail because the Iraqi government lacks a suitable prison.
The months since his regime's demise have produced headache after headache for the U.S. government, even as it insists that slow, steady progress toward instituting democracy is under way.
As of Friday, 848 U.S. service members had died since military operations began last year, according to the Defense Department - 627 of them in hostile action. The number of Iraqi dead, officially unknown, is believed to be in the thousands.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the war will probably be $55 billion to $60 billion if troop levels remain unchanged.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found - the chief reason cited by Bush for war. Bombs have ravaged Baghdad, claiming the top U.N. official in Iraq among their victims. Abductions are increasing, violence has spiked and videotaped beheadings have horrified the world.
On a video shown Sunday, insurgents threatened to behead a U.S. Marine and a Pakistani driver they had kidnapped unless the United States releases all Iraqis in "occupation jails." Three Turks are also being held.
Most problematic for Washington has been the abuse of detainees by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad - a scandal brimming with details of sexual humiliation that has antagonized even Iraqis who support the U.S. occupation.
Some Iraqis said Monday's transfer meant little.
"The real date will be when the last American soldier leaves," Qassim al-Sabti, an art gallery owner, said after learning of the transfer. "Of course I feel I'm still occupied."
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential, year-old Sunni clerical organization that has criticized the occupation, said Monday's events "deceived the Iraqi people and the world."
"If the handover of authority had been accompanied by the withdrawal of the occupation troops, it would have been a proper handover and today would have been a day of festivities for all Iraqis to celebrate," Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a member of the association, said on Al-Jazeera television. "But what took place, as we've seen, is a formality."
The most recent U.S. occupations are cited, even by the countries occupied, as success stories. Japan, vanquished in World War II, emerged from American occupation as a budding economic powerhouse. The road for Germany was bumpier but is considered a similar triumph.
The transfer of sovereignty places Iraq's immediate future in the hands of two men with widely different styles and power bases: Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, physician and former Baath Party member with longtime ties to the State Department and CIA; and President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, American-educated engineer who lived for many years in Saudi Arabia and prefers traditional Arab dress.
"I will leave Iraq confident in its future," Bremer told them and fellow ministers at the handover ceremony.
Allawi lived for many years in London, while al-Yawer spent his time outside Iraq in the Arab world. Al-Yawer is seen as more in tune with Iraqi values and culture and has become widely popular as a champion of the Sunni minority. Although the presidency is largely ceremonial, many Iraqis expect al-Yawer to play an important role in public life.
Some world leaders expressed cautious enthusiasm at the developments. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, an outspoken opponent of the U.S.-led invasion, sent congratulations and offered "trusting collaboration." Jordan's King Abdullah II praised a "landmark in history of Iraq."
Others said the event was a sham. "Occupation will wear a new dress," said Syrian political analyst Haitham Kilani.
Ali Hussein Ali, a retired teacher, held blue prayer beads as he played dominoes at a Baghdad cafe.
"People are afraid to express their happiness," Ali said. "When security prevails, Iraqis will be very happy. They will celebrate when the American troops leave and when they are no longer taking orders from the Americans."
-----
Lebanese father appeals for release of US Marine in Iraq on Al-Jazeera
DOHA (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628150502.5zavi4bv.html
The Lebanese father of a US Marine missing in Iraq appealed Tuesday over the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera for the release of his son whom an armed group has threatened to behead.
"In the name of Allah and his Prophet Mohammed... I implore the committee of Muslim ulema (to intervene) for the release of my son," said Wassef Ali Hassoun from Tripoli in northern Lebanon.
The respected Sunni Muslim committee of theologians played a key role in the release of several foreign hostages during a fierce battle in April between insurgents and US troops in the western Iraqi town of Fallujah.
Doha-based Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape Sunday from an Islamic armed group which said it had abducted the Marine and would decapitate him unless all detainees in US-led coalition prisons were freed.
The group claims to have abducted the missing Marine after "infiltrating a US military base in Iraq," but gave no deadline for carrying out the threatened execution.
Hassoun went missing on June 21 near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, although military officials were unable to confirm Monday that he was being held hostage.
--------
Counting the cost of war
As handover looms, it's time to reflect on the money, blood and effort spent on Iraq
Monday • June 28, 2004
Inter Press Service
Jim Lobe in Washington
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/21495print.asp
UNLESS you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other big defence, security, or construction companies, chances are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad investment, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, according to a new assessment by a progressive Washington-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). In what it claims is the first comprehensive accounting of the costs of the war to the United States, Iraq and much of the rest of the world, IPS concludes that not only have US taxpayers paid a "very high price for the war", they have also become "less secure at home and in the world".
Citing a number of recent studies, the report, Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War, also notes that the US$151.1 billion ($257.7 billion) that will have been spent through this fiscal year could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/Aids medicine, childhood immunisation, and clean water and sanitation needs of all developing countries for more than two years.
The report's release comes just days before the planned handover by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of Iraq's "sovereignty" to the interim government. But its authors stress that the new Iraqi authorities will exercise only very limited authority, given the continuing presence and autonomy of more than 160,000 US and foreign troops under US military command, and their inability to rescind nearly 100 orders decreed by the CPA chief, Mr Paul Bremer.
It also comes amid a number of other negative assessments - including some by Mr Bremer himself and some by public-opinion surveys in Iraq about the occupation's achievements - both for the US and Iraq.
According to a mid-May poll commissioned for the CPA, over 80 per cent of Iraqis said they have no confidence in the occupation authorities and 55 per cent said they would feel safer if coalition forces left the country.
While the financial costs of the war are enormous, according to the report, the costs in blood - both for Americans and Iraqis - are by no means insignificant.
More than 850 US troops have been killed since the start of the war on March 19 last year, just over 700 of them since US President George W Bush declared the end of major hostilities on May 1 last year - making the post-combat phase of the war by far the bloodiest US engagement since the Indochina conflict in the 1970s.
In addition, more than 5,134 troops were wounded as of June 16, and 4,593 of them since the official end of combat. Nearly two-thirds of the wounded, according to the report, received injuries serious enough to prevent them from returning to duty.
But despite precision bombing and other weapons and tactics designed to reduce "collateral damage", the toll among Iraqis has been far more dramatic, according to the report, whose principal author was IPS' main Middle East analyst, Ms Phyllis Bennis.
As of June 16, it estimates that between 9,436 and 11,317 civilians have been killed as a direct result of the US invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured.
In addition, during "major combat" operations both during the invasion and after May 1 last year, an estimated 4,895 to 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed as of mid-June.
Moreover, these figures do not take into account the long-run health impacts of the estimated 1,100 to 2,200 tonnes of ordnance made from depleted uranium (DU).
Many scientists have blamed DU for illnesses among US soldiers in the first Gulf War and for a seven-fold increase in child birth defects in southern Iraq since 1991 - which were expended during the March 2003 bombing campaign.
Nor do they take into account the psychological impact of both the war and the skyrocketing violence - including murders, rapes and kidnapping - that followed the invasion and which now keeps many Iraqi children from attending school and requires many women to stay off the streets at night.
Violent deaths, according to the report, rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002, to 357 per month in last year.
Despite promises by the CPA to rebuild and expand Iraq's infrastructure, the country is still not producing as much electricity or as much oil on a sustained basis as it was just before the war, according to the report.
Its authors blame a combination of sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering by big US companies like Halliburton that captured virtually all of the reconstruction contracts despite the much greater experience of Iraqi firms.
Due to security concerns, school attendance is reportedly running below pre-war levels, while Iraq's hospitals and health systems have been overwhelmed by a combination of lack of supplies and unprecedented demand created by the ongoing violence.
"We have played a large part in destroying this country," said Bennis, who recalled the first Gulf War and the 13 years of US-backed UN sanctions that had already weakened much of Iraq's infrastructure before the war.
Washington's invasion and occupation have also exacted other costs for which the United States may have to pay for a very long time, according to the report, which cited a recent assessment by the conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) that the Iraq war has greatly increased recruitment by Al Qaeda and similar radical groups. The London-based think tank estimated Al Qaeda's membership at 18,000 with 1,000 active in Iraq.
That assessment also echoes the conclusion of a new book by a top active-duty Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer to be released next week that "there is nothing that Osama bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."
The author headed the CIA efforts to track down bin Laden and is considered an expert on Al Qaeda.
Washington has also dealt a serious blow to its own standing and credibility in the larger world, as well as in Arab and Islamic nations, according to the report, which cites recent surveys of public opinion in more than two dozen countries, including its closest European allies; the weakening of the United Nations and international law resulting from both the precedent created by going to war unilaterally and in the inhumane treatment of detainees in both Afghanistan and Iraq; and the alienation of the Iraqi public.
"Rather than winning hearts, US actions have destroyed lives," said Anas Shallal, an Iraqi-American who founded the Mesopotamia Cultural Society and contributed to the report.
----
Group Threatens Missing Marine 2 Americans Killed In Incidents in Iraq
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9571-2004Jun27.html
BAGHDAD, June 27 -- The Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera aired a videotape Sunday from a group threatening to kill a U.S. Marine it claimed to have captured by luring him from his post, and two Americans and four Iraqi boys were among those killed across the country in a succession of attacks.
A Defense Department employee was killed when rifle shots were fired at a cargo plane taking off from Baghdad's main airport, and a U.S. soldier was killed in a rocket attack on a base on the outskirts of the city. The Iraqi boys were killed when they were hit by mortar shells that apparently missed their target.
Late Sunday, al-Jazeera broadcast a video showing a blindfolded man in military fatigues as well as photos that appeared to identify him as Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. In a statement, the U.S. military said that Hassoun, a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, had been missing from his unit since June 21, but it could not confirm that he had been taken hostage. Al-Jazeera said a group calling itself Islamic Response claimed that it had captured the Marine. Unlike videos of two previous hostages who were beheaded, the broadcast tape had no audio.
Earlier Sunday, another Arab satellite television network, al-Arabiya, broadcast a video of a Pakistani hostage whom kidnappers identified as a driver for the U.S. military. A group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has asserted responsibility for much of the recent violence in Iraq, announced Saturday that three Turkish workers were also being held.
On Sunday, Turkey rejected demands to withdraw its citizens from Iraq, which the kidnappers wanted. Turkey has no troops in Iraq, but Turkish contractors and employees work in the country. The kidnappers, believed to be part of the same group that beheaded a South Korean and an American, said they would kill the hostages if the Turkish workers were not withdrawn by Tuesday night.
Also, two separate shellings of the Green Zone, the heavily guarded U.S. compound in central Baghdad, resulted in no reported injuries. But the day's violence underscored the fragile security situation in the country, as the U.S. transfer of political authority to the interim Iraqi government on Wednesday approaches.
Iraqi police said they had arrested three men in Baghdad who were carrying rockets and weapons en route to attacking a police station. Separate attacks in the northern cities of Mosul and Irbil killed two people and injured five Kurdish militiamen, according to wire service and local reports.
The boys killed Sunday were swimming along a bank of the Tigris River as the heat from the sweltering 108-degree day began to ebb when two mortar shells apparently aimed at the U.S. compound across the river fell short of their target. One of the shells created a crater at the water's edge. Hazim Ghafif, 24, who makes his living washing cars along the riverbank, said he stopped a passing car and carried youths, who he said appeared to be about 6 or 7, to be transported to the hospital. Two older boys were killed by the blast, he said. "This is violence and chaos, nothing else," Ghafif said. "Those against the Americans feel they have to do it because of the approaching end of American authority."
But the anger toward the occupation also was evident at the site, where two empty shoes and a pool of blood on the riverbank marked the scene. "The Americans did this," shouted a man waving a bloody shirt. "They shot the shells."
In the same attack, smoke was seen rising over the Green Zone, as it had during a similar mortar shelling in the morning. U.S. military officials have declined to provide access to the attack sites. The interim Iraqi government has vowed to stop the violence. The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said in successive television interviews over the weekend that the scheduled date for national elections, Jan. 31, could slip by one or two months if the security situation did not improve.
Late Sunday afternoon, small arms fire hit an Australian military C-130 cargo plane as it lifted off from Baghdad International Airport. Aircraft landing and departing from the airport often maneuver to minimize exposure to shoulder-held missiles or small arms fire from the surrounding neighborhoods. The gunfire did "no significant damage" to the airplane, according to a statement by the military, but a Defense Department employee was hit. The plane landed so medical treatment could be provided, but the victim died. The military declined to give more information.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, visited the southern city of Hilla, where two car bombs killed dozens of people Saturday night. Local hospital officials put number of dead at 31. U.S. military officials first said the death toll was 40, then revised it to 23.
"The people who did this are enemies of Iraq, not enemies of the occupation," Bremer said.
Also on Sunday, Allawi confirmed reports that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein would be charged in an Iraqi court in "a week or two." U.S. officials have said Iraq will press charges against Hussein but that he will remain in U.S. custody. A special Iraqi tribunal is seeking to try Hussein for crimes committed during his dictatorship, including for the deaths of 300,000 people.
[On Monday, the U.S. military announced that a Marine was killed in action Saturday in Anbar province west of Baghdad, according to the Reuters news agency.]
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Hours Later, Bremer Leaves Iraq; New Premier Outlines Agenda
June 28, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/28CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 - The American-led military occupation of this restive land formally ended today 15 months after Saddam Hussein was swept from power, with Iraq's new leaders taking over in a surprise ceremony that came two days ahead of schedule. The early transfer was designed to foil attacks by guerrilla insurgents whom American forces are still struggling to vanquish.
L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator who arrived last May to a country in flames, restored Iraqi sovereignty in a simple meeting called on no public notice, deep inside the heavily fortified American occupation headquarters area known as the Green Zone.
American aides and Iraqi officials, who were bracing for a wave of terrorist attacks on Wednesday, the date initially set for the transfer, said they had moved up the ceremony, and held it in near total secrecy, in order to foil any terrorist plots that might be in the works.
Standing amid an array of gilded furniture left behind by Mr. Hussein, Mr. Bremer handed the Ayad Allawi, the new Iraqi prime minister, a leather-encased note from President Bush, indicating that the American-led military occupation had formally ended. The Coalition Provisional Authority, the civilian administration that Mr. Bremer led, was dissolved.
As he did often in his tenure here, Mr. Bremer harkened back to the crimes of Mr. Hussein as a starting point for the American-led efforts to build a democracy in this country, which has never known it. Only a day before, Mr. Bremer said, he had visited Hilla, the site of one of the mass graves that Mr. Hussein dug for the thousands of victims of his murderous regime.
"Anybody who has any doubt about whether Iraq is a better place today than it was 14 months ago should go down to see the mass graves in Hilla, or see any of the torture chambers or rape rooms around this country," Mr. Bremer said. "Anybody who has seen those things that I have will know that Iraq is a much better place."
With that, Mr. Bremer flew by helicopter to the Baghdad International Airport, where he boarded an American C-130 military transport and left the country. The entire ceremony, witnessed by no more than 30 people, lasted about 10 minutes.
Only hours after Mr. Bremer's departure, the new American ambassador here, John Negroponte, landed at Baghdad International Airport.
Soon after Mr. Bremer departed, Dr. Allawi and the other members of his interim government, chosen during a United Nations-sponsored process earlier this month, took the oath of office, with Dr. Allawi and the new Iraqi president, Sheikh Ghazi Yawar, celebrating the restoration of the country's independence but warning that difficult days lay ahead.
"We want a free, democratic Iraq that will be a source of peace and stability for the region and the whole world," Mr. Yawar said. "We would like to express thanks to our friends in the coalition for their efforts and dedication."
"We want to tell them all their sacrifices will not go in vain," Mr. Yawar said. "We are determined, we are committed, there is no way to turn back."
In Istanbul, where they were meeting with NATO leaders, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the United States' principal ally in the Iraq war, praised Iraq's new leaders and pledged to stand behind them.
"They're gutsy, courageous and, as they say in Texas, they're stand-up guys," Mr. Bush said. "They'll lead. They'll lead their people to a better day."
According to the United Nations resolution declaring an end to the occupation, Mr. Yawar and his colleagues regained full control over their country, its people and its borders. But the reality is likely to be quite different; Iraq's new leaders, for all their assurances today, are still largely dependent on the United States and other countries for their security and solvency.
Some 160,000 troops from the United States, Great Britain and other countries still remain here, most of them tied down fighting a guerrilla insurgency whose ferocity and ruthlessness seems to grow by the day. It is unclear how much control, if any, the new Iraqi government will exercise over the foreign troops on its soil. Indeed, it is uncertain how much practical, day-to-day control the new Iraqi government will exercise even over its own army and police.
Even with Mr. Bremer's departure and the dissolution of the authority, the American government will retain enormous influence presence here, staffing an embassy that they say will be the world's largest and controlling the flow of more than $8 billion in American reconstruction aid.
The symbols of that new order were much in evidence at the Green Zone in the hours after Iraq's sovereignty had been formally returned. A bright new Iraqi flag flew over the sprawling compound for the first time, snapping under a smoldering sun. But as the ceremonies unfolded, American Apache helicopters swooped and circled overhead, bristling with missiles and guns.
What's more, by its own design, the new Iraqi leadership that took over today has publicly entertained only modest ambitions, forswearing any major treaties or domestic initiatives beyond defeating the insurgency and preparing for the country's first nationwide elections, scheduled to take place no later than January 31, 2004.
Sensing those limits, the Iraqi people welcomed the return of their sovereignty today with a mostly measured calm. When word of the ceremony began trickling out, Iraqis by and large did not engage in the celebratory gunfire and whooping cheers that greeted a recent victory of the Iraqi team or the capture last December of Mr. Hussein.
Still, many Iraqis expressed a guarded optimism that the chaos of the past 15 months would begin to subside, and that the country's new democratic institutions, implanted by Western armies, might be given a chance to work.
"There is only one thing we are looking for now - an elected government in the future," said Kamal Mohammed, a shopkeeper in the Sunni-dominated who brimmed with optimism for the new Iraqi state. "Even a 100-mile journey starts with a first step."
Dr. Allawi, the former Baath Party member and a leading opponent of Mr. Hussein, made no mention today of some of harsher measures he and his colleagues have been contemplating to help crush the insurgency. In recent days, Dr. Allawi has said that the new government may impose some form of emergency rule, which could restrict the Western-style freedoms enshrined in the interim constitution that Iraqis leaders drafted at great effort earlier this year. In Istanbul, President Bush said that coalition forces in Iraq would support any decision by the Iraqi leadership to declare martial law.
And Dr. Allawi said nothing of postponing the elections until the security situation improved, a suggestion he made last week, or of offering amnesty to guerrilla fighters in exchange for a laying down of their arms.
Still, Dr. Allawi used the occasion of his inauguration to deliver a stern warning to the insurgents, promising to expend all of the government's energy to hunting them down and wiping them out. He urged the Iraqi people to stand up to the "outlaws" who were attacking "Islam and Muslims," assuring them that "God is with us."
"I warn the forces of terror once again," Dr. Allawi said. "We will not forget who stood with us against us in our national crisis."
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U.S.-Led Forces Would Back Martial Law, Bush Says
June 28, 2004
By SUSAN SACHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/europe/28CND-NATO.html
ISTANBUL, June 28 - President Bush said today that coalition forces in Iraq would support a possible decision by the new Iraqi leadership to declare martial law to deal with escalating violence and terror attacks.
"Iraqis know what we know, that the best way to defend yourself is to go on the offensive," he said, speaking at a news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.
The two leaders, the main proponents of the invasion of Iraq, acknowledged that they had yet to convince many of their critics that the war was justified.
But Mr. Blair said the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis today demonstrated their commitment to fostering democracy in Iraq, not just ridding the country of a dictator and then occupying the country.
"From now on," he said, "the coalition changes. We are there in support of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people."
Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and other Iraqi leaders have said they are considering stringent measures, including the imposition of martial law, to establish a modicum of order in Iraq and gain credibility with the Iraqi public, whose main complaint during the 14-month occupation has been a lack of security.
President Bush and Mr. Blair pledged continuing military support for the new Iraqi government, saying their soldiers would help protect public property and provide security for national elections next year.
Under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution passed this month, the multinational force now in Iraq will remain under American command but work in coordination with Iraq's government.
NATO heads of state meeting in Istanbul today also offered to help train Iraqi security forces, although they said that individual NATO nations would decide what form any assistance would take.
Mr. Bush said the Iraqi leadership faced extraordinary security challenges that might require tough temporary measures. In particular, he cited Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist blamed for organizing a series of devastating bombings as well as the kidnapping and beheadings of foreigners in Iraq.
An American marine, a Pakistani and three Turks are believed to be in the hands of Zarqawi allies, who have threatened to kill them.
"Prime Minister Allawi, as head of a sovereign government, may decide he has to take tough measures to deal with a brutal cold-blooded killer," Mr. Bush said, in a reference to Mr. Zarqawi. "Our job is to help."
Mr. Bush spoke eight hours after the surprise handover of power to the interim Iraqi government in Baghdad, which came two days ahead of schedule out of security concerns.
The transfer of sovereignty was moved up from June 30 in response to the request of Mr. Allawi. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity in a briefing for reporters, said the idea had been discussed in Baghdad and Washington for about one week.
Mr. Allawi had told the administration that today would be "the right day," the official added, and the final decision to go ahead with an early handover was made late Sunday.
He said that Mr. Allawi had informed L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation administrator in Iraq, and that Mr. Bremer had notified Mr. Bush and his aides, who arrived in Istanbul Saturday night.
President Bush said he was convinced that the Iraqis were ready and able to take charge of their own affairs.
"Last Friday, we handed over the final ministry to the Iraqi government, so, in other words, we have been making a transfer of sovereignty all along," Mr. Bush said. "The final decision was made by Prime Minister Allawi. He thought it would strengthen his hand. I thought it was a smart thing to do, primarily because the prime minister was ready for it."
He went on to praise Mr. Allawi and the interim Iraqi president, Ghazi al Yawar, as strong leaders who had shown that they were ready for independence.
"They're gutsy, courageous and, as they say in Texas, they're stand-up guys," he said. "They'll lead. They'll lead their people to a better day."
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Wary Iraqis Welcome the Handover but Ask, Now What?
June 28, 2004
By EDWARD WONG and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/middleeast/28CND-REAC.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 - The handover of formal sovereignty had been kept under such tight wraps that Ahmed al-Ansary and Ashjan al-Akuli had heard nothing about it until some visitors dropped by their computer store at midafternoon and told them.
"I hope it's good," said Mr. Ansary, 28, the store owner. "If the Americans stay here, nothing will change. They need to pull out of the cities. We don't want to see their Humvees around."
A smile crept across the corners of Ms. Akuli's face. Not one of glee, but one of skepticism.
"Bremer has left, but the strings attached to the new government are very long," she said, referring to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, who flew out of the country to Kuwait around noon. "They can be pulled from Washington."
"Our leaders are just toys," she added. "They have independent thought, but they don't have independent action, which is the most important thing."
Such was the reaction among some Iraqis in the capital to the surprise announcement that, with a quick exchange of letters among politicians at 8 a.m., their country had formally left the netherworld of occupation and rejoined the ranks of sovereign states.
The United States was taking one step away from its control of Iraqi affairs.
That move stirred up nationalist sentiments among many Iraqis. But people also said they knew that the White House was still the dominant force here, and that the tenuous good will bestowed on Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the rest of the interim government could be short-lived if the government did not act quickly to solve basic day-to-day problems such as the lack of electricity and the shortage of jobs.
Perhaps there was no greater sign of the cautiousness of the Iraqi people toward today's events than the quiet that pervaded the streets of Baghdad. There were was no cathartic firing of AK-47's in to the air, as there had been just hours after the Americans announced the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, or even in the aftermath of soccer matches and weddings. Today, the streets were not filled with the cacophonous, celebratory honking of car horns, nor with crowds parading the Iraqi flag. American soldiers and Iraqi police also did not appear to have installed any heightened security measures, no extra roadblocks or checkpoints, despite fears that the insurgents would strike.
The bottom line was that people of Iraq, so inured to violence and misfortune, accumulated through decades of wars and massacres and living in the shadow of totalitarianism, appeared to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
"State employees are benefiting under the new government," said Ali Khadhum, 38, a salesman in a furniture store in the Jamaa neighborhood. "They have good jobs and better pay. But what about ordinary citizens? What about all the people with no jobs? Will the new government provide more jobs? What will happen to them in the future Iraq?"
Mr. Khadhum lived in the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City, where followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr have clashed with American soldiers throughout the occupation.
The store owner, Hussein Abdul-Wahid, also came from there and proclaimed himself a supporter of Mr. Sadr. He stood up from a kneeling position on a prayer rug in a corner of the store.
"Everybody is backing Sistani and Sadr," Mr. Abdul-Wahid said, referring to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq.
"They are our marjaiyah, our high clerics, and we follow them 100 percent. The Americans and the new government will be like Saddam. They won't give a big role to the clerics. They won't be allowed to have a big influence on the people."
Mr. Abdul-Wahid continued on with his metaphor about Mr. Hussein.
"Its good to do this handover two days early," he said, because it will confound "anyone who wants to ruin this."
"This is what Saddam used to do," he said. "He would pull off surprises like this to thwart his enemies."
Despite Mr. Abdul-Wahid's skepticism about the future governance of the country, there was a glimmer of cautious optimism in his words.
"I hope that this new government is going to meet the needs of the Iraqi people," he said. "Iraq suffered under such a severe regime for three and a half decades. The Iraqi people deserve good things."
At a nearby bookstore, the owner, Harith Anvar, 23, pointed out the obvious: No one's life had actually changed yet. Nor were there any immediate signs that that would happen.
"We haven't seen anything significant happen," said Mr. Anvar, the son of a former Baath Party official. "The coming days will prove whether it's good or bad. We need to see what's different. The government has to improve the basics, like electricity, water, the traffic in the streets. If we get these things, we will support the politicians."
"But I don't think any improvements take place," he added. "It's been nearly a year-and-a-half, and the simplest thing - electricity - is still missing. It's getting worse, not better."
Mr. Anvar, who lives in the upscale Hamra neighborhood, complained that his area went through two to three hours of blackout for every three or four hours of power.
Then there was the daily rhythm of violence. The body counts were higher than ever. Blood had stained so many streets of the capital in recent months.
"The most important thing is that the government should provide security," he said. "We need the most basic stuff. If this happens, then they'll move on to other things, and well say that this government follows the will of the Iraqi people."
The static feel of life on this day - its seemingly endless purgatorial nature here in Baghdad - was perhaps best exemplified by the long lines of cars that stretched from gas stations and the flaring tempers of their drivers.
Despite all that, Ismael Saddam, 32, a taxi diver who had been waiting in a gas line for half an hour in the pizza-oven heat, said he felt more dignity and national pride than he did Sunday, before the handover.
"It's for sure I feel that," he said. "You know, by our nature we reject occupation. So we accept an Iraqi ruler. It's much better than the occupiers, or the Americans."
As he spoke, he glared at an American tank and a Humvee rattling past, with their soldiers sitting behind large-caliber machine guns and shielded from the country they had conquered.
Mr. Saddam said he didn't have any great hope that much would change immediately or that America would let the Iraqis rule themselves completely, though he thought that Iraqis would be more inclined than Americans to fix problems like the gas lines.
"We have had such crises before and the government solved them," he said. "A total Iraqi government."
At a crowded fast-food shop in upscale Mansour, several television sets were tuned to Arab news channels covering the handover.
Customers neither ignored the televisions nor watched them raptly.
Mowaffak Noori, 30, a computer operator visiting from Kirkuk, one of the few people whose eyes were glued to the screen, praised the timing of the handover, which he said probably spared a lot of violence.
"I am really happy for that," he said. "That was really smart. The Americans really understood the mentality here."
While he said he felt happy about the handover, he had no idea what to expect.
"It's happiness mixed with worry," he said. "We just don't know who our new leaders are. Who is Iyad Allawi? We don't know what America's aims are here. Do they want the country and the region to be stable or not?"
But for the moment, he was allowing himself to cling to a thread of hope. "We'll see in the coming days," he said. "But it's for sure that the new government is going to work on behalf of the country."
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REBELLION
In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency
June 28, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/middleeast/28INSU.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAQUBA, Iraq, June 27 - At a teahouse in this palm-lined city, jobless men sit on wooden benches talking about killing American soldiers.
"Tell us one benefit they've given us since they've come here," Falah, a 23-year-old man in a shabby checkered shirt, said to an Iraqi reporter.
He boasted about driving a friend to stage attacks on American patrols. The two wait in a farm field by the main road. When the Humvees roll by, his friend fires a rocket-propelled grenade, Falah said. The two hit the ground. The soldiers open fire, but the Iraqis lie still until the patrol leaves.
"I really didn't ask my friend whether they have a boss or not and whether they organize their work or not," he said. "I really don't care as long as I can take part and drive the Americans out of our country. We are all resistance."
As Falah spoke, about a dozen men gathered around him. They nodded vigorously. This was Sunni-dominated Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where the resistance burns as fiercely as anywhere in Iraq.
With just days to go before the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, American commanders concede that they are far from quelling a stubborn and increasingly sophisticated insurgency. It has extended well beyond Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign fighters, spreading to ordinary Iraqis seething at the occupation and its failures. They act at the grass-roots level, often with little training or direction, but with a zealousness born of anti-colonial ambitions.
American commanders acknowledge that military might alone cannot defeat the insurgency; in fact, the frequent use of force often spurs resistance by deepening ill will.
"This war cannot be won militarily," said Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, which oversees a swath of the northern Sunni triangle slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. "It really does need a political and economic solution."
But the new government will find it tough to hammer out solutions to problems like high unemployment and lack of electricity any time soon. It will continue to come under attack, American troops will remain exposed, and the elections scheduled for January 2005 could be at risk. The Americans hope that the resistance will view the new government as legitimate, but insurgents are already assassinating Iraqi officials, and violence continues to inflame virtually every corner of the country.
On Saturday, black-clad insurgents here attacked the offices of the Iraqi National Accord, the party of the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi. The interim government has to persuade the people that it can protect everyone. The insurgents have a much easier task, one they have performed with considerable success so far: sow enough fear into people to undermine confidence in authority.
General Batiste said he did not expect the violence to subside after the transfer of sovereignty on Wednesday. A jobless man can still make $100 by agreeing to plant a roadside bomb or shoot at the Americans. "It'll be a busy summer," the general said.
American officials say Hussein supporters and foreigners like the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are directing some cells and are suspects in the major car bomb attacks and recent beheadings.
But much of the insurgency reflects street-level anger at the lack of progress in Iraq. The unemployment rate is still as high as 60 percent in many parts of the Sunni triangle, the region at the heart of the resistance. Iraqis complain about the chronic lack of power and clean water. Hard-line clerics are attacking the occupation in their sermons and are more popular than ever.
At the teahouse here, a muscular 40-year-old who gave his name as Abu Meshaal said: "We have experts in explosives and bomb making, ex-officers who have experience with such missions. We are everywhere, and we will not stop our work until the last soldier leaves Iraq.
"Each day, I get more enthusiastic when I hear that explosions are taking place here and there, in Baghdad and other provinces," he added.
The Sunni triangle - bounded by Ramadi and Falluja to the west, Tikrit to the north and Baquba to the east - remains the most troubled area in the country. In the south, the thousands-strong Shiite militia led by the firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr has quieted down in recent weeks, as the popular Mr. Sadr takes baby steps to jump into politics.
The total number of insurgents remains unclear, largely because American officials sorely lack reliable human intelligence. The insurgency does not appear to have a central command structure, said a military intelligence analyst in the Sunni triangle. Cells work independently but occasionally give each other logistical support or intelligence.
There are philosophical divisions within the resistance. Some Iraqis who support an armed struggle against the Americans bristle at bombs that kill their fellow citizens, insisting that only foreigner fighters are capable of such carnage. Some of those attacks could be a result of sectarian tensions flaring up among Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds.
But during the broad uprising across Iraq in April, a rare confluence of Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim insurgents took place in Baquba, as the Shiite followers of Mr. Sadr tried overrunning government buildings while Sunni fighters battled American forces.
Other groups appear to have moved in since, and the city now harbors a caldron of cells working together, officers say.
The April uprisings woke commanders up to the fact that the nature of the resistance had morphed into a more widespread movement than they had previously thought.
That transformation began in November. As the insurgency appeared to grow in strength that month, the military cracked down hard on supporters of Mr. Hussein. Their role in the insurgency waned, and the nature of the resistance became "a fusion between nationalist and Islamist sentiments among the Sunnis" that allowed leaders to recruit a broader pool of fighters, wrote Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, in a recent paper on the insurgency.
Professor Hashim, who has interviewed American commanders and insurgents in Iraq, said the anti-occupation movement has "benefited tremendously" from its new populist orientation.
"There is really no way to be charitable about this," he wrote. "From the vantage point of spring 2004, the U.S. has failed at all levels except the tactical military level; which, ironically, is the least important of all the levels in a counterinsurgency campaign."
Here in Baquba, commanders with the First Infantry Division say they face a more formidable foe than the one that confronted their predecessors from the Fourth Infantry Division, which left in March.
"The complexity has changed," said Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, commander of Task Force 1-6 Field Artillery, responsible for controlling Baquba proper. "The Fourth I.D. was finishing a war, cleaning up the bad guys. While that was happening, the infant insurgency was starting. Now it's more robust."
Commanders in Baquba said they have seen fighters operating recently in squads of about 20 each.
If Americans retaliate with overwhelming firepower, the insurgents simply melt away into the alleyways and farm fields.
In a pitched battle here on Thursday, insurgents set off roadside bombs to paralyze American patrols, then fired on them with AK-47's and rocket-propelled grenades, officers said. The incidence of roadside bombings - an efficient killer of soldiers - increased from 80 or so in April to more than 100 in May, said Col. Dana Pittard, commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team.
Insurgents have also turned their attacks to prime infrastructure sites like power stations and oil pipelines.
Interpreters for the military regularly receive threatening letters at their homes, and insurgents hand out fliers in the crowded bazaars threatening collaborators.
"They're very good at information operations," said Capt. Travis Van Hecke, an artillery commander here. "People are reluctant to help us."
In short, the insurgents understand that the center of gravity in this war is the support of the people. In Baquba, fighters usually distribute fliers in town hours before an attack, telling people to stay off the streets and close their shops.
But no one stirs up popular support better than the hard-line clerics. Their mosques have become rallying points for the insurgency.
"Is there a country that is subjected to occupation, abuse, looting and the stealing of his fortunes and killing of his people, but that when he raises his voice and says, `No!' it's called terrorism?" Sheik Shehab Ahmed al-Badri, the imam of the main Sunni mosque in Baquba, said in an interview on Friday.
"The reality is that the new government represents the occupation and its desire to stay here," he said. "We want full sovereignty."
Zaineb Obeid contributed reporting for this article.
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Fuelling suspicion
UK charity calls on US-controlled coalition to account for $20 billion in Iraqi oil revenue.
straightgoods.ca
by Christian Aid
June 28, 2004
http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature3.cfm?REF=709
The US-controlled coalition in Baghdad is handing over power to an Iraqi government without having properly accounted for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money, says a new report published by Christian Aid.
An audit, reportedly critical, of the coalition's handling of Iraqi revenues is not going to be delivered until mid-July - after the coalition has ceased to exist.
Christian Aid believes this situation is in flagrant breach of the UN Security Council resolution that gave control of Iraq's oil revenues and other Iraqi funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
"For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq, it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq"s money,' said Helen Collinson, head of policy at Christian Aid.
Resolution 1483 of May, 2003, said that Iraq's oil revenues should be paid into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), that this money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people, and be independently audited. But it took until April 2004 to appoint an auditor - leaving only a matter of weeks to go through the books.
Early reports of the audit indicate strong criticisms of the CPA's handling of Iraq's money. But the CPA is not going to be around to be held accountable.
In the run-up to the handover, nearly $2 billion of Iraq's money has been hastily allocated. The new Iraqi government will be committed to these spending decisions.
The lack of anything more than basic information about the CPA's spending of Iraq's funds is in stark contrast to the information on the US$18.4 billion of US taxpayers' money that is also being spent in Iraq. No less than four separate audits of the US funds are underway.
All this sets a very bad precedent for the incoming Iraqi government. "Too many oil-rich countries go down the road of unaccountable government, riches for the few, and poverty for the many. Iraq can avoid this route, but only by ensuring transparency," said Ms Collinson.
The lack of anything more than basic information about the Coalition Provisional Authority's spending of Iraq's funds is in stark contrast to the information on the US$18.4 billion of US taxpayers' money that is also being spent in Iraq.
Iraq's oil represents huge potential wealth. With half of the population still unemployed, the Iraqi people need to be able to see that the oil revenues are being spent to alleviate poverty and to improve their lives.
In October, 2003, Christian Aid revealed that an astonishing $4 billion of Iraq's oil revenues and other funds were unaccounted for. That report, Iraq: The Missing Billions, called for much greater clarity and for a thorough audit - which even at that time was months overdue.
Since then, the CPA has provided more information about what it is doing with Iraq's oil revenues. But it is still woefully inadequate. We still do not know exactly how Iraq's money has been earned, which companies have won the contracts that it has been spent on, or whether this spending was in the interests of the Iraqi people.
A senior UN diplomat told Christian Aid: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the DFI. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for, and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."
Iraqi construction companies charge about a tenth of what their US counterparts do. It was only in April 2004 - almost a year after the CPA took control of Iraq's oil revenues and started awarding contracts - that it belatedly began to reserve any contract from the DFI worth less than US $500,000 for Iraqi companies.
"What has the coalition got to hide by not making such information available for Iraq's own money? Is it putting the cash to the best use for the people of Iraq? Or is it still rewarding US companies with lucrative contracts?" said Ms Collinson.
Experts agree that it is almost impossible to work out what Iraq is earning from oil. Two different CPA documents give different figures for the oil revenue in the year to the end of May. One says $10 billion. The other says $11.5 billion. Christian Aid attempted its own calculation of Iraq's oil revenue using publicly available figures and came up with $13 billion.
Assessing Iraq's oil revenue is made so difficult because Iraq's oil production is still not being metered, as is standard industry practice. The CPA appears to have failed to prioritise a task that should form the bedrock of transparency over oil revenues.
Christian Aid is calling on the CPA to provide enough information so that Iraqis can see how their oil revenue has been earned and exactly how it is being spent - and for the UK government to use its influence as part of the CPA to make sure that this happens. We are also calling on the new Iraqi government, and the elected governments that will follow it, to be fully transparent about oil revenues and how they are spent.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinian Rockets From Gaza Kill Two Israelis
June 28, 2004
By JOSEPH BERGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/middleeast/28CND-MIDE.html?hp
SDEROT, Israel, June 28 - For the past three years, the people in this town on the edge of the Gaza Strip have lived with the persistent shock of Qassam rocket attacks, more than 200 of them, but they have withstood the assaults because the notoriously crude rockets have fallen harmlessly in fields, roads or backyards.
Today, the rockets claimed two lives just yards from a small kindergarten building - a 3-year-old boy on his way to the kindergarten with his mother, and a 50-year-old Bukharan immigrant from the former Soviet Union sitting on a sidewalk bench nearby. The residents said they were now wrestling more urgently with what the deaths - the first caused by a Qassam rocket anywhere in Israel and the first civilian deaths in Israel proper in almost three months - mean for their future here.
"I didn't feel anything until today," said Chana Melul, 40, a mother of three who rushed to the one-story stucco kindergarten building called Garden of Lilacs to see what had happened. "You think about the children and you care more."
Residents along the quiet residential street wondered whether Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, just three miles away, would increase their exposure to such deadly attacks or by bringing a measure of peace ease the assaults. They also questioned why they lived in so vulnerable a spot, where many days are punctuated by the whistle and thump of missiles. "People thought I'm mad," Mrs. Melul said. But she and others quickly added there was nowhere in Israel that was not vulnerable.
Some also argued that Israelis have to face up to the fact that the rockets - long steel pipe missiles cobbled together in Hamas workshops with fertilizer-based payloads of 20-pounds and ranges of up to six miles - have become more powerful and accurate. But others were forceful in saying that the attacks demand an increased effort for peace.
"This has been my life for the past three years," said Martine Simone, 44, who was talking emotionally in the kindergarten's playground with parents and other residents. "I love my country and I don't have a choice but to live here. But I'm prepared to give up things for peace."
Mostly there was sorrow in a town of 24,000 that was started 50 years ago to absorb immigrants coming to Israel from Morocco, Algeria and other North African countries and that today is also absorbing immigrants from the Soviet Union. Lives here have been pinched in recent years, with unemployment at 10 percent, but the Qassam shower has added a note of menace.
Five rockets struck today, the Army said, with one falling near a local college and the other just yards from the kindergarten, a tan stucco one-story building with 35 children. The slain boy, Afik Zahavi, was unusually late for school, one assistant teacher said, and so was outside the building when the rocket hit at 10 minutes after eight this morning, leaving a 6-inch deep gash in the street 15 feet from the kindergarten, and shattering cars, windows and one stone retaining wall.
Simcha Revivo, the assistant teacher, said she heard the blast, rushed the children into a small shelter, gave them sweets and water, then peeked outside and saw the mother, Ruthie Zahavi, lying on her back embracing her son who was lying on her stomach. She said his right arm had been severed, though other witnesses said the boy had lost a leg. The mother and her son were taken to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva, where he died and where she remains in critical condition. The dead man was identified as Mordechai Yossifov, 50, a father of two. Nine other people suffered shock or light injuries.
"He was a very sweet, intelligent boy," said Mrs. Revivo, her voice choking. "He usually came in early in the morning and he used to tell me stories of his father and his mother's nieces and nephews."
Ariel Cohen said Afik often played computer games at his house with his 5-year-old daughter. As Mr. Cohen spoke, May, a pupil at the kindergarten, clung in fright to his leg. "I don't know how to say to my daughter that the little boy will not be coming back," he said.
Nagging at many residents was the question of whether the boy's death could have been prevented had the town had an ambulance fully equipped for handling major trauma. The mayor, Eli Moyal, said he is furious at the government because he has been appealing for such an ambulance and other emergency measures for years for a town that is perhaps the country's most inviting target for Gaza militants.
"I'm not going to speak now," he said, "because we have the dead to bury."
Hamas took responsibility for the attack, Israel radio reported. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has a farm just outside Sderot, met with top security officials this afternoon. They discussed responses to the attack as well as one the night before in which Staff Sergeant Roi Nissim, 20, from Rishon Lezion, was killed by explosives planted in a tunnel that was dug under the Army's Orhan outpost in Gush Qatif. Israel responded to that attack with two missile strikes in Gaza City, according to Palestinian security officials, one of which hit a metal workshop. It was not known whether those strikes prompted today's Qassam attack.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Mr. Sharon, said that Israel would proceed with its withdrawal timetable, but added: "Whatever the political developments, this will not prevent us from acting forcefully before, during and after withdrawal from whatever place they emanate."
Itzik Ochayon, the boy's father, who is separated from his mother, said in an interview with Israel radio that Afik was "a wonderful child, an only child that came to me after 15 years. That's what God wanted. After 15 years he came and that's it, he is already not with me."
The country, he said, needs to do more to protect its children "Who is guarding our children?" He said, "There is nobody to guard them. And the children, they are our future."
"We were supposed to go to his end-of-year party in kindergarten tomorrow," he said. "And now instead we'll be going to his funeral."
---------
Bomb Under Gaza Base Kills Israeli Soldier and Hurts 5
June 28, 2004
By JOSEPH BERGER and GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/middleeast/28gaza.html
GUSH QATIF, Gaza Strip, Monday, June 28 - Palestinians set off a powerful bomb Sunday night in a lengthy tunnel they dug under an Israeli military base in the southern Gaza Strip, killing one soldier and wounding five, the army said..
Early Monday, Israel's air force hit back with at least two separate missile strikes in Gaza City, according to Palestinian security officials. A metal workshop was hit in one strike, but it was not immediately clear what the second target was.
Israel has frequently hit metal workshops, saying they are used to make weapons. There were no reports of serious injuries.
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is seeking to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza by the end of next year. The Sunday night bombing was not expected to change those plans, although Israel has said it is prepared to hit back hard at Palestinian factions involved in violence in advance of any withdrawal.
The bomb blast at the Gush Qatif junction brought down part of a concrete building at the Orkhan military base, set amid sand dunes. After several weeks of relative calm, the blast marked one of the most serious and unusual Palestinian attacks recently.
As soldiers and rescue workers scrambled to reach the wounded, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the base from a nearby Palestinian community, the military said.
During a heavy exchange of fire, two Palestinians, a 15-year-old boy and a policeman, were killed in the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis, The Associated Press reported, citing Palestinian medical workers.
Two Palestinian factions, Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the Sunday bombing, calling it revenge for a number of Israeli actions, including airstrikes that killed two Hamas leaders - Sheik Ahmed Yassin in March and his successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in April.
Hamas said that its members dug a 350-yard tunnel to reach the army post, which is on the edge of the Gush Qatif settlement bloc.
It was not clear where the tunnel began, although a Palestinian flour factory and at least two multistory Palestinian homes are nearby.
A powerful blast rocked the area at around 10 p.m., and the Israeli media cited witnesses who reported hearing a second explosion as well.
"It has taken quite a number of days to build this tunnel," said Gen. Shumel Zakai, an Israeli commander in Gaza.
In recent months, the Israeli military has carried out a series of deadly strikes against Palestinians on Israel's most-wanted list, including Sheik Yassin and Dr. Rantisi.
Israel claimed another military success on Saturday when it killed seven Palestinian militants, including three senior figures, who were hiding in a small tunnel underneath a home in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Palestinian factions have vowed to unleash an "earthquake" against Israel, but the Israeli security forces have thwarted numerous attempted attacks in recent months.
The Palestinians have not carried out a suicide bombing in three and a half months, the longest stretch between such attacks since the violence began in September 2000.
However, Gaza has been the scene of frequent violence in recent months despite Mr. Sharon's plan to remove Israeli soldiers and settlers from the coastal territory.
Palestinians killed 13 Israeli soldiers in Gaza during heavy fighting last month. Israel also carried out a weeklong incursion in May in Rafah, in southern Gaza, in search of weapons smuggling tunnels. More than 40 Palestinians, militants and civilians, were killed during that Israeli operation.
In Nablus on Sunday morning, Palestinians clogged the streets for a mass funeral, chanting "revenge, revenge," in response to Israel's killing of the seven militants the day before.
Israeli security forces set their sights on Nablus last week after arresting three young men from the area who were suspected of planning a suicide bombing in Jerusalem.
An interrogation indicated that the plot was orchestrated by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus, the military said.
On Thursday, hundreds of Israeli troops sealed off the city center and searched for militants, including Nayef Abu Sharkh, a senior figure in Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to the Fatah movement of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
Israel's military passed out leaflets with Mr. Sharkh's photo, which read, "You can help the citizens of your city by preventing the activity of this terrorist who is hiding like a terrified rat."
On Saturday, the Israel forces found Mr. Sharkh, apparently by accident.
A group of soldiers encountered two armed Palestinians, shooting one dead and chasing the other into the hide-out beneath a home deep inside the mazelike old city, or casbah, the military reported.
The soldiers hurled hand grenades and smoke grenades into the tunnel, and shortly afterward a suspected militant emerged from the other end of the passageway, which was attached to a neighboring house, the military said.
The troops called for anyone inside to come out, and when no one responded, the soldiers tossed more grenades into the passageway. Everyone inside was killed.
The dead included Mr. Sharkh, along with Jaffer Masri, a local commander for Hamas, and Fathi Bahti, a leader of Islamic Jihad, who was also known as Sheik Ibrahim.
Israel accused Mr. Sharkh of orchestrating multiple attacks, including a suicide bombing that killed 23 people last year in Tel Aviv.
Israel pulled its troops out of the center of Nablus early Sunday, but said it would continue searching for militants in the area.
Joseph Berger reported from Gush Qatif for this article and Greg Myre from Jerusalem.
-------- nato
NATO Partners Agree to Train Iraqi Troops
White House Wins Support It Had Sought With Grant of Request From Interim Leader
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10255-2004Jun27.html
ISTANBUL, June 27 -- NATO countries will set aside their objections and agree Monday to provide emergency military training for the interim government of Iraq, White House officials said Sunday.
Two weeks ago, President Jacques Chirac of France warned against "any meddling by NATO in this region." But responding to a request from Ayad Allawi, the prime minister of the interim Iraqi government that will assume political authority Wednesday, negotiators for the 26 NATO countries have agreed to give the alliance a direct role in providing military training and said they would call on members to increase their support for the new government.
Details of the agreement, including who will be trained, where and when, still must be worked out by the governments, officials said. But the White House described the move as giving President Bush the international imprimatur he had long sought for post-invasion operations.
Bush and the other leaders of NATO countries are scheduled to finalize the tentative training agreement Monday at the start of a two-day summit in the largest city in Turkey, which borders Iraq. Faced with a wave of bombings and more than 40,000 anti-Bush demonstrators, Turkish officials deployed warships outside waterfront hotels and 23,000 police and soldiers to protect the 3,000 government officials and more than 20,000 journalists attending the summit.
The White House views the agreement on training for Iraq, which follows NATO's decision to take over an international security force in Afghanistan, as a crucial step in its effort to guide the alliance away from its historic emphasis on the defense of its own territory and instead toward taking the offensive against terrorism around the world.
Bush, appearing with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the United States was "hoping to change the mission of NATO so it meets the threats of the 21st century, and we're going to work together to help make sure NATO is configured militarily to meet the threats of the 21st century, as well."
Bush plans to use the centerpiece address of his five-day overseas trip to hold up the secular democracy in Turkey, NATO's only majority-Muslim member, as a model for Iraq and the greater Middle East. Bush tried to make the same point by holding a meeting today with Turkish religious leaders that included a rabbi, an Islamic cleric and an Armenian Orthodox patriarch.
Before Allawi sent the letter, the White House received private assurances from NATO members that his request would be granted, according to aides traveling with Bush. The administration has had to dramatically lower its sights, however. Earlier this month, Bush sought foreign troops, NATO involvement and debt relief for Iraq at a meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations in Sea Island, Ga., but was rebuffed at various times by France, Germany and Turkey.
Diplomats said that to win the endorsement of Germany and France, the agreement allows for the possibility that some of the training will take place outside Iraq. At the insistence of the Bush administration, the operation will be a formal NATO mission rather than a project of individual countries.
James Appathurai, the NATO spokesman, said in a telephone interview that alliance ambassadors reached the initial agreement "without any sort of dramatic debate" because they "share a common view that we should assist Iraq as much and as quickly as possible so that it can provide for its own security and so that coalition forces will not be required."
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said from the Turkish capital Ankara on "Fox News Sunday" that "NATO will urge that this all happen on a very urgent basis, that this isn't a long planning exercise, that really they're in a phase of looking to quick implementation of these plans."
Bush said Saturday during a news conference in Ireland that a functioning Iraqi police force and military was his most important criterion for determining that the U.S. mission in Iraq was complete, and he suggested that robust NATO support would mean U.S. troops could come home sooner.
Bush, who had to change his deployment plans before the war when the Turkish parliament voted against allowing the use of its bases for a northern front, appeared Sunday with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and said he appreciated "so very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country and, at the same time, a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also in Istanbul, met Sunday with the foreign and defense ministers of Iraq's interim government.
Bush shook his head and replied "no" when asked whether the capture of three Turkish hostages by militants in Iraq had cast a pall over the summit. Bush did not speak at length about the hostage-taking, because of what aides called a desire to avoid encouraging the kidnappers. But a senior administration official who briefed reporters said Bush expressed sympathy to Turkish officials and "made clear that this episode demonstrates the kind of an enemy we are fighting, a totalitarian enemy which terrorizes and seeks to export chaos to the world, as well as chaos in Iraq."
Rumsfeld compared the recent attacks in Iraq to the Tet offensive of 1968, a turning point in American public opinion about the Vietnam War, when the Vietnamese communists seized cities throughout South Vietnam. He told ABC that the insurgents had clearly studied "the idea that if you go out and kill a lot of innocent people, even though militarily you achieve nothing, the psychological effect through the television, through newspapers is that they're there, that they're noisy, that they're achieving something big -- which is what the effect of Tet was."
--------
DIPLOMACY
As Bush Confers With NATO, U.S. Is Seen Losing Its Edge
June 28, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/politics/28DIPL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 27 - President Bush's trip to the NATO summit meeting in Turkey comes at a time of diminished diplomatic strength, in which international organizations and individual countries have forced his administration into some strategic compromises, foreign policy specialists and diplomats say.
As Mr. Bush tries to press NATO allies to play a greater role in Iraq, he faces resistance from critics of the administration's previously unilateral stances who worry that the Iraq mission may be on the brink of failure, those analysts said.
The resistance from normally friendly countries like Germany, France and Japan, and from international organizations long dominated by the United States, has forced the administration to rethink its plans for security in Iraq and for persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "What we are seeing is other nations joining to resist U.S. unilateralism and exacting a higher price," said Cliff Kupchan, vice president of the Nixon Center, an institute in Washington created by former President Richard M. Nixon that specializes in foreign policy. "We've seen pounds of flesh being exacted before. Now it's an aggregate pound of flesh."
Mr. Kupchan said international skepticism and domestic pressure from Americans seeking a more collaborative role with the world had prompted the administration to adjust its tone. But it may be too late, he said. "I don't think you can turn around three years of U.S. foreign policy with some midnight initiatives," he said. "The image of this president in the public's and the world's eyes is pretty much established."
Bush administration officials deny that their diplomatic strength has been undercut. "Throughout, there has been extended outreach to the international community on a myriad of issues," one foreign policy official said, "and the international community has responded. One has merely to note the number of countries active in the coalition in Iraq."
But this official acknowledged a new pragmatism in the administration. Certainly, allies remain reluctant to engage more with Iraq. But administration officials point out that they achieved United Nations authorization for staying in the country, and that more than half the NATO members are active on the ground there. But with the transfer of some authority to Iraq days away, American officials have had to accept limits on their continued presence, agreeing to leave the country if asked to by the Iraqi authorities, however unlikely that may be.
Last week, the United Nations moved to clip American wings by refusing to extend to United States troops immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Despite a heavy lobbying campaign within NATO, administration officials concede that the president is likely to win only token help in the form of military trainers. And on North Korea, American negotiators have been compelled by Asian allies to forsake a hard-line stance forbidding incentives to North Korea so that it will abandon its nuclear program. China, the host of the six-nation negotiations, urged the change; when South Korea and Japan signed on, the administration had to act to keep its partners from going their own way.
Polls show the president is losing ground among Americans on his signature issue of international security. Noting a more agreeable tone in foreign policy in recent weeks, some analysts see the growing influence of the president's political team over his more ideological advisers.
Still, foreign officials and international diplomats appear increasingly willing to tell the United States no, and that is getting the attention of American politicians. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, expressed frustration with NATO, questioning whether it could be expected to contribute troops in Iraq when it has been slow to meet its commitments for personnel and resources in Afghanistan. "It tends to be words, words, words," he said Friday.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the reluctance of NATO ambassadors was based in part on resentments over "the unilateral approach the United States has taken to world challenges."
"To some extent," Senator Levin said, "the reluctance here represents chickens coming home to roost."
Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution and a former national security council official in the Clinton administration, agreed. "More and more countries are saying we're just not willing to play your game anymore," he said. "They're saying, `We're not going to contribute forces to what we view as a failed policy in Iraq.' "
But, "The Europeans have a bit of a dilemma," said Stanley R. Sloan, a former Europe specialist at the Congressional Research Service and now a visiting scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. "They don't want the United States to fail in Iraq because it would hurt their interests as well." At the same time, Mr. Sloan said, such nations are loath to provide Mr. Bush with anything he could turn into a political victory at home. "They don't want to give George Bush something that will get him re-elected," he said. Their calculations hinge, he added, on the question, "Are things going so badly that they have no choice?"
The United Nations' refusal to grant Americans immunity from prosecution in the International Criminal Court may have little practical effect, because neither the United States nor Iraq has recognized the court. But the debate last week was widely seen as a rebuke to the administration for seeking to marginalize the new court by negotiating bilateral exemptions for Americans around the world.
Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, said the Security Council's position "was rather a vote in favor of the court than a rebuff of the United States."
But he acknowledged that the administration, with so many pressing foreign challenges, was being drawn back into the international fold for solutions. "There has been a U-turn," he said. "The U.S. has realized that the U.N. has a legitimacy and a weight that the coalitions of the willing don't have."
--------
A NATO meeting of the minds?
washtimes
June 28, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040627-112634-8562r.htm
The leaders of NATO countries that meet in Istanbul, Turkey, beginning today are likely to reach some degree of common ground on key security issues, most prominently on Afghanistan and Iraq. On Saturday, President Bush ended a two-day summit meeting with the European Union on a positive note, declaring an end to "bitter differences" with Europeans over the war in Iraq.
Last month, Mr. Bush's recommendation of a NATO role in Iraq was rejected at the G8 meeting in Georgia. But a request by Iyad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, for "technical assistance and training" for Iraqi security forces has apparently tipped the scales in favor of a larger NATO role. On Friday, diplomats said that in response to Mr. Allawi's request, France and Germany had dropped their opposition to Mr. Bush's proposal to have NATO train the Iraqis. The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, suggested that the training session could be a first step leading to greater involvement for the alliance in Iraq. More details of the operation are expected to be announced as early as today in Istanbul, when Mr. Bush and 25 other alliance leaders will likely give formal approval to the training program.
The military mission in Afghanistan has been a unifying effort within NATO, which took command over the 6,500-strong International Security Assistance Force last August. Despite the unified front, NATO countries have been delinquent in sending promised resources to Afghanistan. According to a recent report by the General Accounting Office, between 2001 and 2003, the United States pledged $3.3 billion but gave $1.42 billion, while the European Commission pledged $1.24 billion but gave $386 million. The report said an effort to train Afghan police officials was well behind schedule. While 20,000 were slated to be trained by the end of this month and 50,000 by the end of the year, only 9,400 have been trained so far.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, meanwhile, has been reduced to touring NATO capitals hat in hand, entreating governments to send badly needed - and often previously promised - supplies. "I don't mind taking out my begging bowl once in a while. But as a standard operating procedure, this is simply intolerable," Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said last Monday. The needs of the NATO operation run from big - such as a new headquarters and operational reserve - to small - such as a handful of C-130 transport planes, medium-lift helicopters and infantry and intelligence assets - Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said. Given NATO's vast assets, he added, "we have to ask ourselves why we still cannot fill [these needs]. What is wrong with our system that we cannot generate small amounts of badly needed resources for missions that we have committed to politically?" Indeed. NATO was given a U.N. mandate nine months ago to expand its operations beyond Kabul, and the organization planned to deploy five provisional teams around the country to provide reconstruction workers with military cover. So far, only a German-run team in the northern region of Kunduz is operational.
Starting today in Istanbul, getting leaders to agree on coordinated missions will be an important part of the agenda. The mission in Afghanistan proves, however, that holding countries to their pledges remains just as critical.
-----
NATO set to help Iraq after surprise handover
ISTANBUL (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628093942.3rxcy1ev.html
NATO leaders were expected Monday to endorse an accord to help train Iraq's new army, in a move made more pressing by the surprise earlier-than-expected handover of power in Baghdad.
US President George W. Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose war against Saddam Hussein nearly split NATO asunder last year, both immediately welcomed the transfer of sovereignty as the Alliance met for a summit in Istanbul.
"This demonstrates that there is confidence, there is a new Iraqi government that is able and willing to fight" insurgents and terrorists, said a US official travelling with Bush.
The surprise Baghdad announcement electrified the Istanbul gathering, which opened amid ratchet-tight security for fear of terrorist attacks and to keep out protestors, who clashed with police outside the summit venue.
The two-day summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was also expected to approve an expansion of the 6,500-strong international peacekeeing force in Afghanistan.
But it was Iraq which dominated the start of proceedings as NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer gavelled the summit conference open and welcomed heads of state and government from the 26 members.
In an unexpected move, the top US official, Paul Bremer, handed over legal documents to Iraq's interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, transferring sovereignty 14 months after the US-led invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.
Britain's Blair, who initially appeared caught short by the annnouncement, welcomed it. "The important thing is that from now on Iraq controls its own destiny," he said, according to a transcript of comments after he met Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
A spokeswoman for French President Jacques Chirac, who spearheaded the anti-war group in NATO last year, said he had "taken note" of the early handover but stressed that it is only one step in the political process there.
"We heard about it during President Bush's morning session," said the spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna.
NATO members agreed to a request from Allawi for help in training the new Iraqi army on Saturday at a meeting at their headquarters in Brussels, but it is still unclear whether the training will take place inside or outside Iraq.
France and Germany, which opposed the US-led invasion, have said they are unwilling to send troops into Iraq, but the interim foreign minister insisted on Sunday that training should take place on his country's soil.
The United States has long pressed for a wider NATO role in Iraq, and was also reportedly pressing to leave the door open for measures beyond merely training security forces in the future.
"We are hoping the (NATO) secretary general will task the military authorities to say what else can be done, what is the spectrum of options in addition to training that the alliance could do to assist the new Iraqi government," said a US defence official.
Outside the summit meanwhile demonstrations against the NATO summit turned violent.
At least 15 people were hurt, including five policemen, Anatolia news agency reported, as protestors hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at police and security forces responded with water cannons, tear gas and truncheons.
The other thorny topic on the agenda for NATO delegates is Afghanistan.
NATO chiefs have voiced optimism that the 26-nation military alliance will finally come good on its commitment to expand its peacekeeping force in Afghanistan as the central Asian country, torn apart by over two decades of war, readies for presidential and parliamentary elections in September.
Blair told the Financial Times:
"Afghanistan is now. It is in all our interests to help Hamid Karzai, the president, to stabilize Afghanistan, counter threats from terrorism and drugs and prepare for the first democratic elections," he said.
In its first-ever mission outside Europe, NATO took command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in August 2003. But it has so far confined operations to the capital, Kabul, and one military-civilian Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), in the northern city of Kunduz.
------- prisoners of war
THE PRIZE PRISONER
Hussein to Be in Iraqi Custody 'Very Soon,' New Premier Says
June 28, 2004
By IAN FISHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/middleeast/28ALLA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 27 - Iyad Allawi, the tough-talking doctor who this week will become the new interim prime minister of an unruly Iraq, said Sunday that Saddam Hussein would be physically transferred to the custody of Iraqis "very, very soon," probably within a few days after the Iraqis officially take power on Wednesday.
"We have the forces," he told several reporters in an interview. "We have the judicial system, and he is going to go to court. It's going to be a just trial, unlike the trials that he gave to the Iraqi people."
Dr. Allawi's comments were corroborated by Muwafak al-Rubaie, the new interim government's national security adviser, who said in an interview with CBS News that American soldiers would escort a handcuffed Mr. Hussein from his cell and turn him over to four Iraqi policemen for a formal arrest before an Iraqi judge, "either hopefully the second or third of July."
Together, the comments were the most specific public statements yet on Mr. Hussein's future and would seem to give Dr. Allawi, 59, and the new interim government a symbolic shot of credibility among Iraqis eager to see that they will have real power over their fate.
But Dr. Allawi also acknowledged another reality about Mr. Hussein's transfer in the interview: Foreign soldiers - most likely Americans - would probably guard the building where Mr. Hussein is imprisoned.
The difficult issue of control over Mr. Hussein, captured by American forces last December, illustrates how Dr. Allawi must walk a fine line as he takes power for seven months before full elections for a national assembly by Jan. 31, 2005. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in an interview Sunday on CNN, said he expected that physical custody of Mr. Hussein "would remain in our hands for the foreseeable future."
Dr. Allawi has won early support among Iraqis for promising tough action against insurgents who have killed hundreds of Iraqis and Americans here. In the interview, Dr. Allawi repeated that the new government might impose a state of emergency that could include curfews and limits on public movement.
Yet his authority to govern strongly will probably be limited sharply by the desires not only of Americans who will continue to have great military and financial sway here, but also by competing Iraqi political interests able to exercise power in ways that would have been snuffed under Mr. Hussein.
Those interests include, for example, religious Shiites, who have fought to curtail the powers of the interim government and want to invalidate the interim constitution, and ethnic Kurds, whose broad autonomy wrested from Mr. Hussein after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 is guaranteed by the interim constitution.
Even cracking down on insurgents may unsheathe a double-edged sword, when people are actually arrested with the backing of American soldiers - an unpopular necessity for some time to come.
People who know Dr. Allawi suggest this balance may pose a struggle for him, as a man unafraid of forceful action, who faces a deadly insurgency and must look after his own political interests when a permanent Iraqi leadership is chosen next year. "I don't think there is a contradiction of being firm and tough with bad people and being flexible with friends," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, the interim finance minister who attended an elite Jesuit high school in Baghdad with Dr. Allawi, along with another prominent Iraqi politician, Ahmad Chalabi.
But Mr. Mahdi added: "He should never forget that such work is not individual work. It is not an individual issue. It's a collective issue. I think he will do well if he will always remember that."
Senior Bush Administration officials in Washington say they have put great faith in Dr. Allawi because they regard him as a battle-hardened, politically adept and perhaps even ruthless politician who understands the meaning of force in Iraq's rough terrain. "Allawi is a tough nut," said a senior administration official. "That is to the good. I think he will lead, for better or worse."
Dr. Allawi's leaning toward strong action - as well as the checks against him - seemed on display in a short-lived flap over comments he made last week during an interview with Dan Rather of CBS News. He told Mr. Rather that the elections for a permanent government could be delayed for several months, from the Jan. 31 deadline specified in the interim constitution, if the level of violence here remained high.
But during the interview on Sunday, he backed away from the statement. "We will do it on the 31st of January," he said, claiming that a "great misinterpretation" had taken place in Mr. Rather's interview. The elections would be held by that date, he emphasized, "in any case," regardless of the security situation.
It is unclear what prompted Dr. Allawi's new statement. But the Jan. 31 deadline is held sacrosanct by the Shiite majority, most vocally by Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani; American officials too maintain that elections ought to be held by that deadline. American officials also seem sensitive to criticism that Dr. Allawi's style can appear more autocratic than democratic.
Dr. Allawi appears hemmed in to some degree by rules he inherited that could shape how Iraq is governed. Over 15 months of occupation, the American administrator has signed a set of orders amending existing Iraqi law. Among the most far-reaching is a provision that would allow a seven-member election commission to disqualify political parties and candidates in Iraqi elections. The rules also allow some high-level appointees, including the national security advisor and intelligence chief, to serve for five years, long past the term of the interim government.
The rules will remain the law unless rescinded or amended by Dr. Allawi's cabinet, according to the American occupation authority's general counsel, Scott Castle. He described the rules as "a product of extensive Iraqi involvement and international coordination."
By his résumé, Dr. Allawi, a neurologist, did not necessarily seem the natural choice for prime minister, though he had strong backing from both American officials and many colleagues on the Iraqi Governing Council. He is a secular Shiite, in a country where religion plays an ever greater role. He was a member of the Baath Party in its early years and once supported Mr. Hussein, though he had fought to overthrow him for the last three decades. In 1978, an assailant believed to have been sent by Mr. Hussein attacked Dr. Allawi in bed with ax, which left him hospitalized for a year.
He has strong ties to the Central Intelligence Agency - a connection that he said in the interview was natural for Iraqi exiles, as were his ties to other nations' security services - and lived since the 1970's mostly in England. Similar ties to the Americans and a long stay abroad helped dash any immediate political future for his former schoolmate, Mr. Chalabi.
But this perception of toughness - belied by a quiet voice and a chubby frame wrapped in dull suits - seems to be Dr. Allawi's greatest political asset. A recent poll commissioned by the American authorities here showed strong approval ratings for the new government (80 percent) and for Dr. Allawi personally (73 percent), the second highest after the new interim president, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar (84 percent). The same poll showed security, by far, the greatest concern of Iraqis. "I hope that Allawi is honest and he will work hard to eliminate those bad guys," said Abdul Rahman Khalaf, 40, the owner of an auto parts store in Baghdad. "Such violence should be faced toughly."
And in the interview, Dr. Allawi did not shy away from pledges to crush the insurgency.
"You see, the culture here in Iraq and in the Middle East really is to deal in a hard way with criminals, especially criminals who do affect the way of life and do hurt people, as the terrorists have been doing," he said in an interview in the heavily fortified Green Zone that is the center for American operations in Iraq.
"We know that those killers have been mercilessly going around spreading their poison and inflicting heavy damage on the Iraqi people," he said. "We are going to deal with them accordingly, and we are going to put an end to their activities. We are going to bring them to justice. And we are going to have stability and security prevail in Iraq."
Dr. Allawi made an appeal in the interview to NATO, meeting on Monday in Turkey with President Bush in attendance, to deliver on promises to train and equip Iraqi security forces, as a way to bring international strength, money and legitimacy to the fight in Iraq.
"We need really the training," he said. "We need the technical assistance and we need the equipment, very badly."
NATO members have already agreed in principle to a package of training and equipment, though they balked at sending NATO troops - something Dr. Allawi said he would strongly welcome at any point.
But even Dr. Allawi's tough measures to crack down on the insurgency carry risks that may require a delicate political touch. For the moment, Iraqi security forces are not strong enough to carry out such operations without American help, raising the danger that Dr. Allawi may be seen as tied too strongly to the United States, which is not popular in Iraq.
Many Iraqis supported the insurgency, and Dr. Allawi could face deep opposition if arrests and operations are deemed too harsh or widespread. Hameed Shahab Ahmad, head of the international studies department at Baghdad University, said this could, in the end, actually jeopardize Dr. Allawi's political future.
"We should open the space for political dialogue," he said. "This is the best way to change the situation in Iraq. The government should allow the leaders of the resistance to take part in the elections. I think if the government worked quickly to conduct free elections in Iraq, that will eliminate the pretext for resistance operations."
Dr. Allawi clearly understands the problem, and has in recent days proposed an amnesty program for people who supported the resistance but did not commit crimes. He said they could include members of the Mahdi Army, loyal to the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who carried guns on the streets in recent months. Mr. Sadr, who has himself said that he wants to join the political mainstream, has a widespread following among poor Shiites.
Three days before Dr. Allawi is to take power, the limits to his authority may not be his most immediate concern. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who has claimed responsibility for a spate of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations, has threatened to kill Dr. Allawi, who said he was worried for his family, but brushed off any personal fear.
"I know I am wanted," Dr. Allawi said. "Well, Saddam also tried to kill me. I am here in Baghdad. He is in prison," he added. "I assure you Zarqawi and the rest of the criminals will face the same end."
Iraqi employees of The Times's Baghdad bureau contributed reporting for this article. Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington.
-------- russia / chechnya
Guerrilla Raids Force Chechen Refugees to Flee Again
June 28, 2004
By C. J. CHIVERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/international/europe/28chec.html?pagewanted=all&position=
NAZRAN, Russia, June 26 -A woman from Chechnya, an invalid, sat by a mound of dirty possessions, her three grandchildren wandering in the dust nearby. Their refugee camp was emptying, but they were too poor to buy a ride on the trucks hurriedly heading out of here.
"I have been packed and waiting for three days," said the woman, Manzha Yansuyeva, 78. "I am hoping someone will pity us and help us move."
Following raids by Islamic guerrillas the night of June 21 in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Chechen refugees are in motion once more, saying they are being blamed for the guerrillas' success and must leave or face retaliation in the night. They are deeply afraid.
The guerrillas overran police stations and checkpoints here early last week, and, dressed in police uniforms themselves, systematically executed law enforcement and military personnel who tried to come to their besieged friends' aid. Nearly 100 people died before the guerrillas withdrew.
In the days since, Russian and Ingush police, wearing ski masks and carrying assault rifles, have accused Chechen refugees of assisting and sheltering the guerrillas. They have been rounding up Chechen men for questioning and, the refugees say, for beatings. In several camps housing refugees who fled the wars during the past decade between Chechen separatists and the Russian government, utilities have been cut off.
Thousands of Chechens are heeding what they regard as an implicit message, now fleeing Ingushetia for Grozny, Chechnya's capital. To stay, they say, is to risk their lives. "We haven't slept for days already," said Yakhita Dzhabrailova, 57.
Grozny hardly invites. Having suffered two wars in a decade, the city is in ruins, occupied by the Russian Army and controlled by grim-faced armed men whose affiliation - be it army, police, local militia or tribe - is rarely clear. Armored vehicles roam what passes for roads. Fighting continues in the mountains to its south. Ambushes, bombs and freshly planted mines occur sporadically almost everywhere else.
More frightening, civilians frequently disappear, seized in what human rights organizations and local residents describe as a mix of kidnappings for ransom and violence against residents accused of supporting, even knowing, the guerrillas.
It is a measure of the fear in Ingushetia that refugees are deciding that Grozny is their safest bet. The inherent dangers were evident on Saturday morning, when word circulated through one camp that two families had been killed in a rocket attack at a village on their way home.
Estimates of the number of Chechen refugees who remain in Ingushetia, a Muslim republic adjacent to Chechnya, range from 40,000 to 80,000. As many leave, some say their relocation is temporary, an effort to elude a period of retribution. Others say they are gone for good.
Dark irony lies in the departures.
A cornerstone of President Vladimir V. Putin's effort to convince the world that Chechnya has been stabilizing has rested on Chechen refugees. During the height of the second Chechen war, more than 100,000 Chechens sought refuge on Ingush soil; the Kremlin has hoped that coaxing them home would demonstrate security and hope.
But tens of thousands of refugees had not complied with Moscow's wish, choosing a suspended state of poverty and grief in Ingushetia over lingering horrors in Chechnya.
It took the outbreak of violence - an expansion of terror, not a reduction - to put them to motion. Even then the refugees took prodding.
At the Altiyevo dairy farm, a former Soviet collective where refugees built housing in cow stables, dozens of refugees said the authorities moved in on Wednesday, carrying rifles and shouting obscenities.
First, the refugees said, they gathered young men and took 36 away. Then the police threatened the women, telling the refugees they were complicit in the attack.
The next day, a Russian helicopter hovered over a nearby field, and the police came and searched the area, announcing they had found abandoned weapons and uniforms in the grass. This time, five or six elderly Chechens were beaten, and two were taken to a room, refugees said.
"They put pistols to their heads and made them sign blank pieces of paper," said Zukhra Khopizova, 25, who stood in a crowd of distraught women. The refugees said they fear the blank papers will be seen again, with confessions written in by an unknown hand.
Eight men have returned. Most took their families and quickly left.
At the Logovaz camp, the authorities also showed up in masks on Wednesday and forced the Chechen men to line up with shirts off, to see if any showed marks from firing a rifle in battle. The next day, two teenagers were snatched by masked men at a bus stop in front of the camp, the refugees said.
At the Kamaz camp, eight young men were taken, then released, refugees and rights workers said. At the Troyetskoye dairy farm, 22 men were briefly arrested.
A spokeswoman for the Ingushetia internal affairs ministry confirmed that the police were active in the camps and had taken suspects for questioning, but she said the refugees were still welcome. "It was what we call a pinpoint operation," she said. "You cannot call it a mass roundup. Our attitude toward the refugees has not changed."
She also said three Chechens had admitted to participating in the attacks.
With fearful refugees living alongside the police and Ingush families enraged by the guerrilla attacks, the tensions are crackling. At the central mosque of Nazran, the imam worried that violence would escalate.
"Our republic has always been known for its hospitality," said the imam, Khizar Tsovoyev. "Let Muslims all over the world pray for us, so we will have peace."
For now, there is no peace in the camps.
Aishat Edisultanova, 30 and pregnant, wailed and waved her arms at the camp in which she was living. Her husband had been taken, she said between sobs. She was terrified of staying there, because the Russians might return. She could not leave without her man.
"They said they would release him today!" she yelled. "He is not here!"
She looked helplessly toward the road, down which the released men had appeared. She wailed. Her companion pulled her away and began slapping her face. After half a dozen sharp slaps below the eyes, Ms. Edisultanova became subdued.
Minutes later, another man, Magomed Labazonov, 43, returned in a taxi from police detention. He said he had been kept in a mosquito-infested cell, a box three or four yards square, with 35 other men.
The women crowded around, some brushing his shoulders with affection, a few touching him as if he were a ghost. Around them, other families carried bundles of clothing into seven cargo trucks.
-------- spies
Court to Hear Former Communist Spies Case
June 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Communist-Spies.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to intervene in a lawsuit claiming that the CIA reneged on a promise of lifetime support to former East Bloc spies now living under assumed names in the United States.
The high court agreed to hear an appeal filed by CIA Director George Tenet, who is fighting the lawsuit filed by a husband and wife who defected to the United States from an unidentified country.
The suit is at a very early stage, in which the couple identified only as John and Jane Doe want access to documents and other information from the government. The Supreme Court's action means that request is on hold at least until the court rules on the case sometime next year.
A federal appeals court refused to dismiss the couple's lawsuit last year.
The Bush administration argued that a Supreme Court case from 1875 prohibits lawsuits against the government over alleged secret contracts for spy services.
Since its founding in 1947, the CIA has successfully used the old high court precedent to fend off lawsuits, the government argued in its Supreme Court appeal.
Allowing the couple's claims to go ahead in court ``seriously threatens to compromise the United States' foreign relations with other nations and to impair the ability of the CIA to conduct clandestine intelligence operations and to protect national security information from public disclosure,'' Bush administration lawyer Theodore Olson wrote.
The couple's suit ``cannot proceed without disclosing facts that would damage national security,'' namely whether the pair really did spy for the United States and if so what the spying entailed, Olson wrote.
The case involves a man who says he was a high-ranking diplomat who spied against his homeland during the Cold War in return for promises of help defecting and lifetime financial security.
He and his wife, also identified as a diplomat, now live near Seattle and are now U.S. citizens.
They claim the CIA essentially drafted them as spies during the Cold War, but cut them off financially years later. The CIA initially cited ``budget constraints,'' but later told the couple they had already received enough compensation for their spying services and would get nothing more, their lawyer said.
The alleged relationship began when couple was posted to a third country, also unidentified in court papers. They approached a U.S. Embassy employee and asked for help defecting to the United States, their lawyer told the Supreme Court.
They did not offer to spy and had no interest in doing so, they claim. The CIA stepped in, however, and whisked the pair to a safe house for 12 hours, where ``CIA officers employed intimidation and coercion'' to force the couple to remain in their diplomatic posts and feed information to the United States, they claim.
In exchange for the information, the CIA promised eventual help getting the couple to the United States, where they would receive ``financial and personal security for life,'' lawyer Steven W. Hale wrote.
``The agency pressured the Does into undertaking espionage that would virtually guarantee that their activities would become known,'' to their home country, ``putting them at lifelong risk of retaliation, including assassination,'' Hale wrote.
The CIA did help the couple defect and resettle in the United States, including helping the husband find a job, Hale said. They initially received a $27,000 annual stipend, housing and other benefits.
Trouble began when the husband lost his job in a corporate downsizing in 1997, Hale said. The husband had trouble finding a new job because of his age and his security arrangements with the CIA, which including using false name and resume, his lawyer said.
The case is Tenet v. Doe, 03-1395.
--------
Court to Decide if Cold War Spies Can Sue CIA
June 28, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-court-spies.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether a husband and wife, self-described former Cold War spies, can sue the CIA for reneging on assurances they would be supported financially for life.
The justices agreed to consider U.S. government arguments that the lawsuit by the couple, identified only by the pseudonyms John and Jane Doe, must be dismissed because courts are barred from reviewing claims that the CIA has wrongfully refused to pay for espionage services.
The couple, former citizens of an Eastern bloc nation, claimed the CIA recruited them during the Cold War to spy after they expressed interest in defecting to the United States. The husband was a high-ranking diplomat.
If they spied, they said they were assured the CIA eventually would arrange for their resettlement in the United States and ensure their financial and personal security for life. They claimed they carried out their end of the bargain, but the CIA reneged and abandoned them.
After the couple came to the United States, they eventually resettled in the Seattle area. Beginning in 1987, the husband got a job, with the assistance of the CIA, which provided him with a false resume and references.
1875 RULING
The couple received as much as $27,000 a year from the CIA until he began earning more than that in his job. But he lost his job in 1997 as a result of a corporate merger.
The couple said the CIA informed them that the money they had been paid previously had been adequate compensation for their services and that further support would not be provided.
A federal judge and then a U.S. appeals court ruled their lawsuit could go forward.
The Justice Department, on behalf of the CIA, appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the lawsuit must be dismissed based on an 1875 Supreme Court ruling.
In that decision, the court ruled the heirs of William Lloyd could not sue to recover money promised by President Abraham Lincoln in 1861 for spying on Confederate troops during the Civil War.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson of the Justice Department said the appeals court ruling in the CIA case ``undermines the regime for dealing with claims of alleged espionage agents that has functioned effectively for nearly 130 years.''
Since the CIA's creation in 1947, it has used the 1875 ruling to obtain dismissal of complaints claiming secret contracts to perform espionage services, he said.
Olson warned the appeals court ruling threatened ``to impair the ability of the CIA to conduct clandestine intelligence operations and to protect national security information from public disclosure.''
The couple's attorneys disagreed.
They said the appeals court decision to allow the case to proceed respected national security and broke no new legal ground.
The CIA has failed to assert the state secrets privilege in the case because there is no real risk to national security, they said.
The high court will hear arguments in the case in its term that starts in October.
-------- us
THE INTERROGATORS
Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Seen as Slowing the Hunt for Information on Terrorists
June 28, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/politics/28CIA.html
WASHINGTON, June 27 - Confusion about the legal limits of interrogation has begun to slow government efforts to obtain information from suspected terrorists, American intelligence officials said Sunday.
Doubts about whether interrogators can employ coercive methods, the officials said, could create problems at the start of a critical summer period when counterterrorism officials fear that Al Qaeda might attack the United States.
Interrogators are uncertain what rules are in effect and are worried that the legal safeguards that they had believed were in place to protect them from internal sanctions or criminal liability may no longer exist, the officials said.
Some intelligence officials involved in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program have told colleagues that they are bitter because their superiors, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, had assured them that aggressive interrogation techniques were necessary and legal.
Other intelligence officials have expressed a sense of resignation, saying they had a feeling that, from the early days in the war on terror, aggressive steps taken in an effort to protect the country from another attack would lead to criticism and internal investigations.
The uncertainty follows the Bush administration's decision to review and revise the legal basis on which interrogations of high-level Qaeda detainees have been conducted.
A Justice Department legal memo in August 2002 said the government had broad legal authority over detainees, approving tactics that stopped just short of a prisoner's death.
The memo said interrogators would use extreme interrogation methods without violating international treaties or federal law, which bars inhumane treatment.
Senior administration legal advisers announced last week that the legal memo, signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, had been disavowed. In repudiating the memo, they said it was too broad and created the false impression that the Bush administration condoned torture.
The C.I.A.'s interrogation program has been troubled.
A C.I.A. contractor has been indicted in North Carolina in the death of a detainee in Afghanistan. The Justice Department has been reviewing two other cases in Iraq in which C.I.A. personnel had contact with detainees who died.
C.I.A. personnel had become increasingly wary of the interrogation methods used in 2002 and 2003 against some detainees, including sleep and food deprivation and procedures in which detainees were led to believe that they might be shot, drowned or hanged.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the use of extreme measures had been halted while the government re-examined the law regarding how far interrogators could go in questioning terror subjects. A spokesman for the C.I.A. would not discuss the report, but other officials said that the status of a suspension was somewhat unclear and that the rules for interrogation were being reviewed but not necessarily rescinded.
Intelligence officials say the C.I.A.'s detention system was designed to handle only the most important Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Less important captives from the war in Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi prisoners, have been held by the American military.
With the approval of President Bush, the C.I.A. decided early in the war on terrorism to isolate top-level Qaeda detainees in remote and undisclosed locations outside the United States, keeping them far removed from the rules governing the American judicial system.
The agency also decided to segregate them from the larger numbers of low-level Afghan and foreign fighters sent to a detention facility at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The C.I.A. wanted complete control over the so-called high-valuedetainees; at Guantánamo, officials from several United States agencies had access to the low-level captives.
Abu Zubaydah, who managed Al Qaeda's recruiting system for its training camps in Afghanistan, was among the first Qaeda leaders to be captured, and his treatment in detention raised early concerns about the C.I.A.'s harsh tactics.
After his April 2002 capture in Pakistan, he was believed to have been taken to Thailand, where the local government had agreed to allow the C.I.A. to establish a secret interrogation facility for important prisoners. The tactics used on Mr. Zubaydah prompted concern among some F.B.I. agents who were aware of how the C.I.A. was treating him.
The Bybee memo was prepared after an internal government debate about the tactics used in Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation, and provided a legal basis for the use of coercive tactics used against other high-value detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have been a planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.
--------
Thousands in Guard units prepare for Iraq
Chicago Tribune
By E.A. Torriero
Mon Jun 28
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&e=1&u=/chitribts/thousandsinguardunitsprepareforiraq
Even as the U.S. prepares to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis this week, National Guard units across America are leaving their hometowns for assignment to Iraq.
For more than 50 years, Guard troops in rural east Tennessee trained for wars that passed them by. But hundreds of flag-waving folks lined the streets under gray skies here Friday to say an emotional goodbye to the 1st Squadron of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment as it headed off to war. It is the regiment's first combat deployment since before the Korean War.
"I guess it's now our turn at last," said Sgt. Maj. John Ridgell, 54, a grandfather, school principal, church deacon and sports coach who bid farewell to his family.
Four regiments, with a total of more than 25,000 soldiers, are in or headed to U.S. training sites, with Iraq their scheduled destination by year's end. They will join three Guard contingents already in Iraq with about 15,000 soldiers.
In all, five of these seven Guard units had not seen a combat call-up since World War II.
Pentagon critics see their deployment as a sign of an overtaxed military in which 100,000 U.S. soldiers are being sent to Iraq to replace 130,000 who have been there for a year or more.
Members of the National Guard are not as well-prepared for active duty as regular Army servicemen and women, critics charge. Mostly in their 30s or older, they are not in top-notch physical shape, critics contend, and lack the training for the complex battleground of Iraq.
A survey last December by military sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University found a lower morale level among Guard soldiers in Iraq than among full-time soldiers.
"They are nowhere near the level of proficiency that active troops are," retired Army Col. David Hackworth, a frequent Pentagon critic, told The Associated Press recently.
A spotty record in Korea
After Guard personnel earned a checkered record in the Korean War, the Pentagon didn't call them up for combat duty for decades. Now, in the era of an all-volunteer military and with a need for fresh troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department is turning to the so-called weekend warriors.
The deployment of Guard troops has been playing out throughout June across a huge swath of eastern and central Tennessee, where nearly 4,000 men and women of the 278th Regiment have been leaving home. Beyond the emotional strain on families, their departure has left these small communities struggling to replace their skills and duties.
The regiment's deployment is expected to last at least 521 days but may be up to two years, according to the assignment orders. At most, soldiers would get two weeks' leave during that period, commanders say.
Guard commanders vow their soldiers will be well-trained before they leave for Iraq this fall. First stop for the Tennessee regiment is Camp Shelby in Mississippi and then Ft. Irwin in the California desert. In all, soldiers will undergo between four to six months of "validation," as the Pentagon terms it. Their physical strength and skills will be tested. They will learn methods of enemy engagement, convoy escorting, artillery firing, manning checkpoints and dealing with the Iraqi culture.
The soldiers from Tennessee range in age from 18 to 59, and about one-quarter of them served during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Somalia or elsewhere while on active duty, commanders say. There are even a few Vietnam veterans in the bunch.
Roughly 10 percent of the 600 men assigned to the 1st Squadron, based in nearby Athens, Tenn., won't make it through the rigors of the summer courses, commanders predict. Soldiers will train in hot, humid weather and will not live in air-conditioned quarters. Those who are dropped will be replaced from a pool of 100 soldiers left behind in Tennessee.
"It's unrealistic to think that everyone can make it, so I have plans for backup," said Lt. Col. William Mark Hart, who commands the squadron.
Commander braces for deaths
Even before their deployment was announced in March, Hart began preparing his men for battle. Much has been learned in the last year about how to train soldiers against insurgents' attacks and the brutal conditions in Iraq, he said.
Hart has talked with Army commanders who returned from Iraq. He has calculated the odds and is braced for deaths and injuries among the men and women in his unit.
"I hate the thought of losing one soldier," said Hart, 49, who spoke candidly about the challenges for his squadron. "But it ain't all going to go all well. That's part of the deal when you go into a multifaceted battlefield like this."
Hart is on leave from a Defense Department contractor that deals with possible fallout exposure from radiation accidents. Hart's father, William, 78, was an armed forces veteran at age 40. After 30 years in the Guard, his son will see combat duty for the first time.
"It's kinda screwed up," said William Hart Sr., who served in the Air Force and Navy. "It's like he should be a veteran now when he is just going out."
While many of Hart's soldiers expressed pride at serving their nation, some admitted they are emotionally unprepared and even fearful. Many rued the disruptions to life and family.
Cpl. Craig Kennedy, 41, sold his trucking business and has been trying to console his daughter, Sylvia, 12, who stuck by his side last week at a small armory in this town of 5,500.
"She's scared I won't come back," Kennedy said. "We've been dealing with a lot of crying lately."
A few miles from the armory, Sgt. Maj. Ridgell sat with his wife on a bench swing spending his last night at home with two grown daughters and a 2-year-old grandson, Dylan.
`I'll honor my commitment'
To avoid the draft, Ridgell had signed with the Guard in 1971 after college. Through the years, as he became a school administrator, he never thought of leaving the Guard. He liked the training sessions and the bonding with the soldiers, he said. Plus the money helped put his kids through college.
At 54, Ridgell figures he could have found a way to get a medical waiver out of serving.
"But I am still in good physical shape," he said. "I knew this was a possibility when I signed up, and I'll honor my commitment."
On Friday morning, Ridgell's family stood in tears on a rain-soaked street at dawn as a convoy of soldiers in army vehicles drove out of Athens escorted by police and fire units. Ridgell saluted as he left in a Humvee.
"These soldiers will come back changed forever," Lt. Col. Hart said.
-------- war crimes
Foreign forces, contractors given immunity in Iraq
Reuters
By Sue Pleming
28 Jun 2004
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28496111.htm
WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. administrator in Iraq extended immunity from prosecution to foreign troops and contractors there just hours before handing over to the interim Iraqi government on Monday.
Officials with the outgoing Coalition Provisional Authority said Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator, signed revised Order 17 on Sunday to ensure that foreign military and contractors would be exempt from Iraqi legal action after the handover of limited powers to the Iraqis.
CPA spokeswoman Victoria Whitford said the order was agreed to with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi before it was signed. Bremer left Baghdad on Monday after a ceremony formally ending 14 months of U.S. occupation.
Unless the interim government acts to reverse the order, the immunity will be in place until the election of a new government late this year or in early 2005.
"This was discussed and agreed upon with the prime minister. There were no disagreements as far as I am aware. He (Allawi) is happy with the document," Whitford said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
Earlier this month, Allawi's office was quoted by the Washington Post as saying he had reservations about the U.S. request for contractors to get the same immunity from prosecution as U.S. soldiers after the handover.
Contractor immunity was highlighted by the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison Iraq in which employees from two U.S. defense contractors were named. The pair are not covered by U.S. military law and their legal fate is not yet known.
The issue of immunity for American troops is also contentious because of the abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces, some of whom have already been charged by the U.S. military.
EXTENSION
The order is an extension of one signed last year and followed consultations with the U.S. Departments of Defense and State and agreements with Britain and Australia, two other countries that have troops and contractors in Iraq, according to a memorandum from the CPA's general counsel's office.
The order is in the absence of a formal status of forces agreement and says forces from contributing nations and personnel would be subject to the jurisdiction of their home countries and be immune from arrest or detention in Iraq.
However, contractors or others who posed a risk of injury to themselves or others could be detained by U.S. and other forces pending their turnover to the country.
John Procter, a spokesman for the newly named Project and Contracting Office in charge of $18.4 billion in U.S. contracts in Iraq, said contractors had been pressing for this order to be signed before the handover.
"The fact that this was signed alleviated all their questions. This means we can continue on with our work rather than having this hanging over our heads. The situation has now been clarified," said Procter.
Contractors were concerned over their legal status prior to the handover and particularly worried about which laws would apply to tens of thousands of private security workers guarding them.
"We are very relieved that this has been signed and we can continue to get on with our work," said one contractor, who asked not to be named.
While foreign forces and contractors will be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq, one official pointed out this privilege could be waived, especially if a particularly egregious crime were committed against an Iraqi civilian.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
High Court Deals Blow to Bush's War on Terror
By James Vicini
Mon Jun 28, 2004
(Reuters)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040628/ts_nm/security_court_dc
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court placed the first limits on President Bush's war on terrorism on Monday and ruled that terror suspects can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement.
The historic moves on the day before the end of the high court's term marked a bitter defeat for Bush's assertion of sweeping presidential powers to indefinitely hold "enemy combatants" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the court's first rulings on Bush's terrorism policies.
In one ruling, the court said the nearly 600 foreign terror suspects held for two years at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba could turn to American courts to challenge their confinement. In another ruling, it said an American terror suspect held in his nation is entitled to a chance to contest the government's decision.
"Today's historic rulings are a strong repudiation of the administration's argument that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts," Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled American courts can consider the claims of Guantanamo Bay prisoners -- suspected al Qaeda members or Taliban fighters -- who said in their lawsuits they were being held illegally in violation of their rights.
"What is presently at stake is only whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
The ruling did not address the merits of the claims, and the detainees still could face a long legal battle to win their release or major changes in the conditions of their confinement.
But families of some Guantanamo Bay detainees and their lawyers said in London the ruling could mean the beginning of the end of the prison camp.
And lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case to the high court, said they would seek access to their clients within the week.
In the second ruling, the court divided by a 5-4 vote to rule that Bush has the power to detain American citizen Yaser Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan as a suspected Taliban fighter and who has been held in a U.S. military jail. It said the U.S. Congress authorized the detention of combatants in the narrow circumstances alleged in the case.
FAIR CHANCE TO REBUT GOVERNMENT
But in the more important part of the ruling, the justices by an 8-1 vote ruled he should get a fair opportunity to rebut the government's case for detaining him.
Four court members would have released Hamdi, saying his detention was unauthorized. Two of them -- Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- joined the main opinion by four other justices who said Hamdi should have a meaningful opportunity to offer evidence that he is not an enemy combatant.
The opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said constitutional due process rights demand that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant must be given "a meaningful opportunity" to contest the detention before a neutral party.
"History and common sense teach us that an unchecked system of detention carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of others," O'Connor wrote.
She left open the possibility the standards set out in the ruling could be met by military tribunals.
In the Hamdi case, only Justice Clarence Thomas of the nine court members totally supported the Bush administration's position.
In a third ruling, the court decided the case of terror suspect Jose Padilla on narrow procedural grounds, ruling he should have brought the challenge in South Carolina instead of New York, a decision that sidestepped whether Bush has the power to detain him. The high court allows him to bring his case again.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry hailed the rulings. "I would have wished this administration would have done what made sense several years ago and what was in keeping with the values and spirit of our country," he said.
----
Bush Can Hold Citizens Without Charges
By ANNE GEARAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 28, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/news/2004/jun/28/062800153.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday that Congress gave President Bush the power to hold an American citizen without charges or trial, but said the detainee can challenge his treatment in court.
The 6-3 ruling sided with the administration on an important legal point raised in the war on terrorism. At the same time, it left unanswered other hard questions raised by the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been detained more than two years and who was only recently allowed to see a lawyer.
The administration had fought any suggestion that Hamdi or another U.S.-born terrorism suspect could go to court, saying that such a legal fight posed a threat to the president's power to wage war as he sees fit.
"We have no reason to doubt that courts, faced with these sensitive matters, will pay proper heed both to the matters of national security that might arise in an individual case and to the constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties that remain vibrant even in times of security concerns," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court.
O'Connor said that Hamdi "unquestionably has the right to access to counsel."
The court threw out a lower court ruling that supported the government's position fully, and Hamdi's case now returns to a lower court.
The careful opinion seemed deferential to the White House, but did not give the president everything he wanted.
The ruling is the largest test so far of executive power in the post-Sept. 11 assault on terrorism.
The court has yet to rule in the similar case of American-born detainee Jose Padilla and in another case testing the legal rights of detainees held as enemy combatants at a U.S. military prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
O'Connor said the court has "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
She was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy in her view that Congress had authorized detentions such as Hamdi's in what she called very limited circumstances.
Congress voted shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks to give the president significant authority to pursue terrorists, but Hamdi's lawyers said that authority did not extend to the indefinite detention of an American citizen without charges or trial.
Two other justices, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would have gone further and declared Hamdi's detention improper. Still, they joined O'Connor and the others to say that Hamdi, and by extension others who may be in his position, are entitled to their day in court.
Hamdi and Padilla are in military custody at a Navy brig in South Carolina. They have been interrogated repeatedly without lawyers present.
The Bush administration contends that as "enemy combatants," the men are not entitled to the usual rights of prisoners of war set out in the Geneva Conventions. Enemy combatants are also outside the constitutional protections for ordinary criminal suspects, the government has claimed.
The administration argued that the president alone has authority to order their detention, and that courts have no business second-guessing that decision.
The case has additional resonance because of recent revelations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners and used harsh interrogation methods at a prison outside Baghdad. For some critics of the administration's security measures, the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison illustrated what might go wrong if the military and White House have unchecked authority over prisoners.
At oral arguments in the Padilla case in April, an administration lawyer assured the court that Americans abide by international treaties against torture, and that the president or the military would not allow even mild torture as a means to get information.
----
Excerpts from Supreme Court terror cases
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, June 28, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1154&slug=Enemy%20Combatants%20Excerpts
Excerpts from the Supreme Court terror-suspects cases:
RASUL V. BUSH, ruling foreign-born terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can challenge their detention in U.S. courts:
-Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority:
"The courts of the United States have traditionally been open to nonresident aliens. ... The fact that petitioners in these cases are being held in military custody is immaterial to the question of the District Court's jurisdiction over their nonhabeas statutory claims. ...
"Whether and what further proceedings may become necessary after respondents make their response to the merits of petitioners' claims are matters that we need not address now. What is presently at stake is only whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing."
-Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting:
"The consequence of this holding, as applied to aliens outside the country, is breathtaking. It permits an alien captured in a foreign theater of active combat to bring a petition against the secretary of defense. ... The military is currently detaining over 600 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay alone; each detainee undoubtedly has complaints - real or contrived - about those terms and circumstances. ... From this point forward, federal courts will entertain petitions from these prisoners, and others like them around the world, challenging actions and events far away, and forcing the courts to oversee one aspect of the executive's conduct of a foreign war."
HAMDI V. RUMSFELD, ruling a U.S. citizen seized on the Afghanistan battlefield can challenge his detention in U.S. courts:
-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the majority opinion:
"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens. ... (It) would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. ...
"Any process in which the executive's factual assertions go wholly unchallenged or are simply presumed correct without any opportunity for the alleged combatant to demonstrate otherwise falls constitutionally short. ...
"We have no reason to doubt that courts faced with these sensitive matters will pay proper heed both to the matters of national security that might arise in an individual case and to the constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties that remain vibrant even in times of security concerns."
RUMSFELD V. PADILLA, ruling terror suspect Jose Padilla improperly filed his appeal in New York, rather than Charleston, S.C., where he's being held at a Navy brig:
-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority:
"Whenever a ... habeas petitioner seeks to challenge his present physical custody within the United States, he should name his warden as respondent and file the petition in the district of confinement. This rule, derived from the terms of the habeas statute, serves the important purpose of preventing forum shopping by habeas petitioners. Without it, a prisoner could name a high-level supervisory official as respondent and then sue that person wherever he is amenable to long-arm jurisdiction. The result would be rampant forum shopping, district courts with overlapping jurisdiction, and the very inconvenience, expense, and embarrassment Congress sought to avoid when it added the jurisdictional limitation 137 years ago."
-Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent:
"This is an exceptional case that we clearly have jurisdiction to decide. ... At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society. ...
"Executive detention of subversive citizens, like detention of enemy soldiers to keep them off the battlefield, may sometimes be justified to prevent persons from launching or becoming missiles of destruction. It may not, however, be justified by the naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract information. Incommunicado detention for months on end is such a procedure. ... For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny."
Text of HAMDI decision:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=03-6696
----
Supreme Court Affirms Detainees' Right to Use Courts
June 28, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/politics/28CND-SCOT.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 28 - The Supreme Court ruled today that people being held by the United States as enemy combatants can challenge their detention in American courts - the court's most important statement in decades on the balance between personal liberties and national security.
The justices declared their findings in three rulings, two of them involving American citizens and the other addressing the status of foreigners being held at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Taken together, they were a significant setback for the Bush administration's approach to the campaign against terrorism that began on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Due process demands that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decisionmaker," an 8-to-1 majority held in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi-born United States citizen seized in Afghanistan in 2001. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the basic outlines of the decision.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the campaign against terrorism notwithstanding, "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
In the Guantánamo case, the court ruled, 6 to 3, that federal courts have the jurisdiction to consider challenges to the custody of foreigners. The finding repudiated a central argument of the administration.
"Aliens at the base, like American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. "United States courts have traditionally been open to nonresident aliens."
The dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
And in the other case involving an American citizen, José Padilla, the court ruled on what at first glance was a technical issue: that Mr. Padilla filed his habeas corpus petition in the wrong court. A 5-to-4 majority said he should have filed in federal court in South Carolina, since he has been held in a brig in Charleston, rather than in the Southern District of New York.
The majority said, too, that the proper target for his case is not Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld but, rather, Cmdr. Melanie Marr, who is in charge of the brig. "This rule serves the important purpose of prevent forum shopping by habeas petitioners," the majority held.
Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the opinion, joined by Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy. Justices John Paul Stevens wrote an emotional dissent that was joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Justice Stevens wrote that there was ample precedent for finding that the Southern District of New York, where a material-witness warrant was first issued for Mr. Padilla, was the proper court to take up the case, and he lamented that the majority seemed to sidestep the main issues.
"At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society," Justice Stevens wrote. "For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny."
The American Civil Liberties Union called the rulings historic and said they embodied "a strong repudiation of the administration's arguments that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts."
Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, "reaffirms that even in a time of war, the president does not have the authority to act as a tyrant."
Although the cases of Mr. Hamdi, Mr. Padilla and the Guantánamo detainees all arose from the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and weighed national security against personal liberty, they were considerably different from one another in circumstances.
The Guantánamo case involved foreigners: about 600 men of various nationalities seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan during operations against the Taliban; 16 of the detainees, all maintaining their innocence, filed suit. Their case, Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, named for the detainee Shafiq Rasul, was argued before the justices on April 20.
Besides the basic issue in their case, there was a secondary but still vital question involving the status of Guantánamo Bay itself.
Since a 1950 Supreme Court case has been interpreted to mean that enemy combatants held outside the United States have no right to habeas corpus, the detainees had to show through their lawyers that Guantánamo Bay is functionally, if not formally, part of the United States.
On the one hand, a long-ago treaty with Cuba said that it retained sovereignty over the base. On the other hand, the treaty also said that the United States exercised jurisdiction and control.
In any event, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last year that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees - a position that the Supreme Court rejected today.
The majority noted that the 1950 case cited by the administration involved German citizens captured by United States forces in China, then tried and convicted of war crimes by an American military commission in Nanking, and finally imprisoned in occupied Germany.
In contrast, the Supreme Court majority noted today, the Guantánamo detainees are not only held in territory arguably under United States control but they also have not had their guilt or innocence determined, unlike the Germans of a half-century ago, and have been held without formal charges.
Justice Scalia's dissent, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, was as emotional in tone as was Justice Stevens's dissent in the other direction in the Padilla case. The majority's holding in the Guantánamo case was so reckless as to be "breathtaking," Justice Scalia asserted.
Justice Scalia went on to declare that the majority's position needlessly upset settled law, and was particularly harmful in a time of war. "The commander in chief and his subordinates had every reason to expect that the internment of combatants at Guantánamo Bay would not have the consequence of bringing the cumbersome machinery of our domestic courts into military affairs," he wrote.
As for the Hamdi and Padilla cases, although they both involve American citizens, the similarities largely end there. For one, Mr. Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, where the Bush administration contends he was fighting for the Taliban. (His father asserted that he had gone to Afghanistan to do relief work.) Mr. Padilla was arrested at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
Their cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-6696, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, No. 03-1027, were argued together on April 28, having reached the Supreme Court by opposite paths.
Mr. Hamdi's lawyers were appealing a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond. That court held last year that Mr. Hamdi was entitled to challenge his detention by petitioning for a writ of habeas corpus. But the Fourth Circuit dismissed his petition after holding that the government had provided ample justification for classifying him an enemy combatant.
In the Padilla case, the government brought the appeal to the Supreme Court in hope of overturning a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York City. Citing a law passed by Congress in 1971 to prohibit the detention of citizens without explicit authorization by Congress, the Second Circuit found that the president was without authority to detain Mr. Padilla, despite the Congressional resolution authorizing military force after the Sept. 11 attacks.
--------
Enemy Combatants Win Right to U.S. Courts
June 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Enemy-Combatants.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the war on terrorism does not give the government a ``blank check'' to hold a U.S. citizen and foreign-born terror suspects in legal limbo, a forceful denunciation of Bush administration tactics since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ruling in two cases, the high court refused to endorse a central claim of the White House: that the government has authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them.
A state of war ``is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the most significant case of the day, a ruling that gives American-born detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi the right to fight his detention in a federal court.
Separately, the court said that nearly 600 men from 42 countries held at a Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can use American courts to contest their treatment. The Bush administration had argued that U.S. courts had no business second-guessing detentions of foreigners held on foreign soil.
The administration's detention policies have rankled allies overseas and outraged civil liberties and human rights groups at home.
Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, called Monday's rulings a broad repudiation of the administration's approach.
``The court said any citizen has a right to due process and that the administration's position that it has inherent executive authority ... to detain people is just wrong under the law.''
The court declined to rule on the merits of a third case arising from the hunt for terrorists. The justices sent back to a lower court the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and a convert to Islam who is being held as an enemy combatant amid allegations he sought to detonate a radiological ``dirty bomb'' and blow up apartment buildings in the United States.
The administration contends that all the men at issue in Monday's cases are enemy combatants -- neither prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions nor ordinary criminal suspects with automatic rights to see lawyers and know the charges against them.
All the cases dealt with rights of prisoners, an issue with added resonance since recent revelations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners and used harsh interrogation methods at a prison outside Baghdad.
At oral arguments in the terrorism cases in April, an administration lawyer assured the court that Americans abide by international treaties against torture, and that the president or the military would not allow even mild torture as a means to get information.
The Hamdi ruling is the most significant test so far of executive power in the fight to root out and contain global terrorism. The case included multiple holdings and some unusual alliances among conservative and liberal justices.
Eight justices rejected the administration's treatment of Hamdi on some grounds. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, by many measures the court's staunchest conservative, found no fault with the government.
By a vote of 6-to-3, the court placed Hamdi's case back in the hands of a federal judge, who presumably can rule on whether he should be released.
Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and liberal Justice John Paul Stevens said if the government had a case against Hamdi it should have charged him as a criminal, perhaps even as a traitor. Citizens cannot be held as enemy combatants so long as the usual protections of the Constitution are in force, the pair wrote.
In one bright spot for the government, a majority of five justices rejected that view and held that the president had authority to hold Hamdi as an enemy combatant.
Highlighting that holding, Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said, ``The military detains enemy combatants to prevent them from continuing to wage terror and war, as well as to gather intelligence to thwart further terrorist assaults.''
``Without the ability to detain these dangerous individuals, the American people and our soldiers in combat would face even greater danger from our terrorist enemies.''
O'Connor's majority ruling often takes a deferential tone toward the government, but still makes clear that Hamdi's treatment crossed the line.
``Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the nation during this period of ongoing combat,'' O'Connor wrote. ``But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship.''
Hamdi was born in Louisiana in 1980, while his Saudi father worked in the oil industry there. He grew up in Saudi Arabia. Hamdi's family says he was an innocent caught in the wrong place at the wrong time -- a 20-year-old relief worker swept up in the chaos of Afghanistan in the weeks following the terrorist attack.
The Bush administration says he was fighting with a Taliban unit and carrying a gun.
After U.S. forces routed the Taliban government, which the United States accused of harboring al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, Hamdi was shipped to Guantanamo with other so-called battlefield detainees.
He was eventually transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina after authorities verified his citizenship.
Padilla, also being held at the brig, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport as he got off a flight from Pakistan more than two years ago, alleged to have plans to mount terror attacks in America.
Both men have been interrogated repeatedly, and until recently were not allowed to meet with lawyers.
The Bush administration had won its arguments in lower court in the Hamdi case but lost in Padilla.
In the Padilla case Monday, a 5-4 majority led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist voted to throw out the lower court ruling on a technicality. The court's more liberal wing dissented.
Padilla can refile his case and challenge the government on stronger legal footing, although several lawyers said the government may now choose to file criminal charges instead.
The Supreme Court left for another day many hard questions about what rights enemy combatants may be due, and O'Connor noted that the term remains inexact.
The cases are Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 03-6696; Rasul v. Bush, 03-334 and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 03-1027.
On the Net:
Links to Monday's rulings:
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040628hamdi.pdf
Rasul v. Bush:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040628rasul.pdf
Padilla v. Rumsfeld:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040628padilla.pdf
--------
Police Warned by Court on Delaying Miranda Warning
June 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Miranda.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday warned police away from using a strategy intended to extract confessions from criminal suspects before telling them of their right to remain silent.
The court, on a 5-4 vote, said that intentionally questioning a suspect twice -- the first time without reading the Miranda warning -- is usually improper.
But the court left open the possibility that some confessions obtained after double interviews would be acceptable, providing police could prove the interrogation wasn't intended to undermine the Miranda warning.
Criminal defense attorneys and civil libertarians had complained that the strategy was being used to get around the Supreme Court's landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling, which requires that suspects in custody be told they have the right to remain silent.
The court had considered the treatment of murder suspect Patrice Seibert. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the two-step interrogation process used in her case was improper -- a decision upheld by the nation's highest court.
Such questioning can be successful because suspects may be more willing to talk before they're told they have a right to remain silent. And when told of their rights later, they may not realize their first confession cannot be used against them.
``The message for officers is you have to read rights first before questioning,'' said Amy Bartholow, Seibert's public defender. ``Criminal defendants will have more rights in the interrogation room.''
Also Monday, the court sided with police in a separate Miranda case, throwing out a decision in the case of a Colorado man who had told an officer not to bother reading him the Miranda warnings.
The two cases are the final ones in the Supreme Court's sweeping look this year at Miranda and how it is followed by U.S. law enforcement.
In January, the court ruled that police may not try to wrest confessions from criminal suspects facing formal charges without telling them they have a right to see a lawyer. Then in early June, law enforcement won a second case when the court refused to require special treatment for young people under questioning by police.
It took the Supreme Court more than six months to rule in the last two cases, an extraordinarily long time. They were argued back-to-back at the court in December.
Seibert was convicted of plotting to set a 1997 fire that killed a teenager who had been staying at the family trailer in Rolla, Mo., a rural town in the Ozarks. Police said she arranged to have her home burned to cover up the death of her 12-year-old son, who had had cerebral palsy, in order to avoid neglect allegations.
Justice David H. Souter, writing for himself and three other liberal justices, said that the practice is worrisome because questioning tactics are taught at national training sessions.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy agreed with those four that the interrogation technique ``undermines the Miranda warning and obscures its meaning.''
But the court left the door open for police to be able to use some confessions obtained after double interviews. Kennedy said that police must be able to prove that the interrogation was not done ``in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning.''
In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said it would be tough for lower courts to determine if officers had gone too far. She was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
``In virtually every two-state interrogation case ... courts will be forced to conduct the kind of difficult, state-of-mind inquiry that we normally take pains to avoid,'' she wrote.
In the second case, officers had come to Samuel Patane's house to question him about a domestic case, and they told him he had a right to remain silent, but he said he already knew his warnings. He then directed them to a gun in his bedroom and was charged with illegal possession of a firearm.
The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the gun could not be used as evidence against Patane because its discovery was the result of a statement made without a Miranda warning.
Thomas and two other justices said a failure to give a suspect Miranda warnings did not make such evidence inadmissible in court. O'Connor and Kennedy, while not going that far, said that the government presented a strong case for allowing evidence in the Patane case.
The cases are United States v. Patane, 02-1183, and Missouri v. Seibert, 02-1371.
On the Net:
Missouri v. Seibert:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040628seibert.pdf
United States v. Patane:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040628patane.pdf
-------- drug war
Supreme Court Takes Medical Marijuana Case
June 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Medical-Marijuana.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider whether sick people who smoke pot on a doctor's orders are subject to a federal ban on marijuana.
The court agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal of a case it lost last year involving two California women who say marijuana is the only drug that helps alleviate their chronic pain and other medical problems.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigrant Smugglers Become More Ruthless
Tactics Changing in Face of Federal Crackdown
By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10443-2004Jun27?language=printer
LOS ANGELES -- No one was going anywhere until the smugglers got their money.
They had led the group of illegal immigrants across desolate desert, sneaked them over the border, then packed them in vans and drove hundreds of miles to a hideaway here. What came next was not supposed to be part of the passage.
"The first thing they did was take all their shoes," said Jessica Dominquez, a local immigration lawyer. "Then they were all locked up, with no way to get out."
Some of the immigrants spent days trapped inside a shack in the San Fernando Valley, waiting for relatives to pay fees higher than they had expected. When police acting on a tip raided the place last month, they found about 80 immigrants packed shoulder-to-shoulder in darkness and filth.
It was a house of horrors they are becoming accustomed to seeing.
From Southern California to Texas, as a federal crackdown against illicit crossings intensifies along the nation's southwestern border, smugglers are taking ruthless new steps to exploit the multitude of poor immigrants from Mexico and Central America trying to reach the United States at any cost.
In the past few months around Los Angeles, authorities have discovered more than 650 illegal immigrants being held captive by smuggling rings -- inside trucks and motel rooms, in squalid bungalows without electricity, even at a brothel where they were being forced to perform sex acts for their freedom.
Around Phoenix, more than 200 suspected smugglers have been apprehended since last fall. Authorities have seized about 110 weapons and more than $5 million in cash from them.
Human smuggling has become such a large, lucrative enterprise that other criminal gangs are muscling into the market by ambushing smugglers once they cross the border, kidnapping the immigrants and then charging higher prices for their release. Earlier this year, a gang in Los Angeles even planted one of its members in a group crossing over from Mexico and then hijacked the smuggling operation.
"It's getting worse," said Greg Simons, a director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "We have people telling us that their loved ones are being held ransom and asking, 'What do we do?' It's ridiculous."
The latest smuggling ring uncovered here illustrates the new extremes of the problem, federal officials said. Seven smugglers were caught last month holding nearly 80 illegal immigrants captive inside a dilapidated 1,200-square-foot house whose windows were covered by iron bars or chicken wire.
According to court documents filed in the case, many of the immigrants were from Guatemala and had paid the smugglers at least $3,000 apiece. Their harrowing journey to Los Angeles had taken two weeks.
Many were bound for the East Coast. But they were being held hostage while the smugglers pressured their families for more money. The immigrants told federal agents they were not allowed to sleep or use the bathroom without the permission of the smuggling ring's leader, whom they called "El Diablo," or the devil.
Investigators said they found ledger books with names of hundreds of illegal immigrants who had been held against their will inside the house in recent months, along with cell phones and forms to transfer money by wire.
"Smugglers are so glorified in some Mexican music you'd think they just put people on a Greyhound bus and give them cold drinks on the way up," said Kevin Jeffery, a special agent in Los Angeles for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "It's simply not true. They're callous criminals. It's all about getting their money."
Human smuggling along the 1,950 miles of the southwestern border is an old trade. Smugglers always have demanded cash for crossings, but they once did most of their work near populated parts of the border. That kept costs low. Immigration agents remember when most immigrants had to pay lone "coyotes" about $250.
But security crackdowns in urban areas along the border, such as San Diego, have pushed crossings into remote desert ranges -- and increased demand for smuggling rings with the savvy and manpower to take immigrants to metropolitan areas. Smugglers now need drivers, scouts, decoys, rental cars and homes for hiding. Few now cross for less than $1,500.
"The stakes are being raised all the time," said Claudia Smith, who works on immigrant issues for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Security has been tightened along so much of the California border that smugglers are constantly attempting treacherous and at times deadly crossings through the Sonoran Desert and swarming into Arizona. Some of them have been reaching the East Coast by flying with fake identification out of Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport.
In response, federal officials are deploying scores of new immigration agents to the Arizona border and to the Phoenix airport. They also plan to use unmanned surveillance aircraft this summer along smuggling routes.
Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said the aggressive new tactics in Arizona are working. Smugglers are being forced to charge higher fees because they have to take more risks to avoid capture, he said, and their steep prices are deterring some from attempting crossings.
At one point this year, agents were apprehending an average of 2,500 illegal immigrants a day in Arizona, most of whom were crossing the border with the help of smugglers. That tally has dropped to about 1,600 a day recently.
"I think we're getting a better grip on the problem," Bonner said. "We are putting a lid on Arizona. That's the one door we need to slam shut."
But humanitarian groups say smugglers are only getting more cruel and cunning -- and appear to be a step ahead of law enforcement.
To evade new security measures around Arizona, they are driving many illegal immigrants to the Los Angeles area. Finding haven in such a vast multicultural metropolis -- and blending into round-the-clock crowds at Los Angeles International Airport -- is easier.
Some residents in the immigrant communities here where smugglers operate also are reluctant to tip off police or federal agents for fear that the immigrants being hidden will be deported.
Once discovered, smuggling rings can still be tough to bust because often only bit players in the shadowy enterprise -- drivers, clerks, lookouts -- get caught in raids on staging houses. And they can be hard to prosecute.
In April, authorities found about 90 illegal immigrants crammed inside a locked, decayed home in the Watts area of Los Angeles. They arrested two men and a woman at the scene and charged them with smuggling. But prosecutors later dropped the case, in part because the illegal immigrants had been released from custody.
At the time of the arrests, there was not enough space in a detention center to hold all of them. It also appeared unlikely, prosecutors said, that they would return to cooperate as witnesses or to speak to defense lawyers.
The alleged smugglers are being held for deportation proceedings, but may never be charged with crimes or lead investigators to the kingpins of the smuggling ring.
But in Texas recently, a Honduran woman pleaded guilty to organizing a smuggling operation that led to the deaths last spring of 19 illegal immigrants who suffocated inside an unventilated tractor-trailer. Prosecutors said she has agreed to testify against other key defendants in the high-profile case.
Immigrant officials call that news a hopeful sign. But they concede that much more must be done to disrupt or dismantle smuggling rings -- because they know that many immigrants will continue to rely on them, despite the growing perils.
"They hear the stories," Simons said. "But they need work. They need to eat. They're desperate."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Secrets Of Unit 1391
Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares
Newsweek
By Dan Ephron
June 28, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5251751/
June 28 issue - Sometimes a country's darkest secrets have a way of surfacing in the most offhanded manner. Gad Kroizer, an Israeli historian, was researching old British police buildings when he stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect. The map showed the location of 62 police compounds built by the British in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arabs and Jews who agitated against Britain's occupation were interrogated. What caught Kroizer's eye was a camp called Meretz, which he had not seen on any contemporary Israeli map or read about in any modern writing on security compounds in the Jewish state. "There was a discrepancy between the map I had and the lists I'd been looking at," says Kroizer, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches at Bar-Ilan University. "I started putting two and two together."
What Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper (published in the March 2004 issue of Cathedra, circulation: 1,500) was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members-all Arabic speakers-are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. According to Arabs who've been imprisoned in 1391, some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as "moderate physical pressure."
But the nightmare for those in 1391 is the isolation and the fear that no one knows where you are, say Arabs who've been held there as well as an Israeli who's been inside the prison. The location of the compound is so hush-hush that a court this year banned a visit by an Israeli legislator. Prisoners describe being hooded everywhere at the facility except in their cells. Jailers often tell them they're on the moon or in another country (in fact, the compound is less than an hour's drive from Tel Aviv). "This can be devastating emotionally," says Dalia Kerstein, whose Israeli human-rights group, HaMoked, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to close down 1391. "We've seen that psychological pressure in certain instances can be even harder on inmates than physical pressure."
Hassan Rawajbeh would be the first to agree. A member of the nearly disbanded Palestinian Preventive Security force suspected of taking part in a shooting attack on Israelis, Rawajbeh was picked up by soldiers in Nablus 18 months ago. Af-ter stops at two other detention centers, he was hooded, handcuffed and thrown on the floor of a van. When the hood was removed, he was in a tiny, windowless cell with black walls and almost no light. The chamber contained no toilet, only a bucket in the corner, which the 39-year-old Rawajbeh says his jailers would empty once every few weeks. A low buzzing droned constantly. Rawajbeh, who denies shooting at Israelis, was never beaten, but he says he was on the verge of a breakdown. "I was jailed six times before," he said earlier this month at his office in Nablus, where other Palestinians, some armed with pistols, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. "But those experiences were like five-star hotels compared to 1391."
For nearly four months, Rawajbeh saw no -one but his interrogators, who kept him naked for days at a time and prevented him from going to the bathroom. "You begin to feel like the jail exists only for you, that no one else is there," he says.
Israeli officials deny torturing inmates at 1391 or any other facility. But Gideon Ezra, the former deputy head of Israel's Shabak security service, says psychological pressure is one of the most effective tools interrogators have in the war against terrorism. Ezra, now a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party and his cabinet, says 1391 was actually set up as an interrogation center for non-Palestinian Arabs who entered Israel illegally. (Ezra says the number 1391 corresponds to the adjacent military base and has no particular significance.) "In cases like that, you need to find out very quickly who this person is and how he might harm you."
But at least one former inmate at 1391 says the comparison to Abu Ghraib is fitting. Mustapha Dirani was brought to the facility after being abducted by Israeli commandos from his home in Lebanon in 1994. Israel believed Dirani knew the whereabouts of a missing airman, Ron Arad, and wanted to glean information quickly, while he was still stunned from the kidnapping. Dirani, who returned to Lebanon five months ago in a prisoner swap, said in a phone interview that he was raped by a soldier in those first days at 1391 and sodomized by an interrogator he identified as George. His civil suit against the state for more than $1 million in damages is scheduled to start in January. "It's the same style as in Abu Ghraib. They take advantage of the fact that Arabs and Muslims are culturally conservative," says Dirani, who spent eight years at 1391 but was never tried for a crime. In what might look to some people like a foreshadowing of Abu Ghraib, Dirani said in an affidavit four years ago that he was interrogated naked for days and photographed repeatedly.
George has since left the intelligence unit that operates at 1391, according to Kerstein of HaMoked. She believes the Army might be worried the interrogator will divulge other scandals if the Dirani case ever goes to trial. In an interview with Israel's Channel Two television four months ago, George said Dirani invented the rape story to avoid retribution back in Lebanon for information he divulged to the Israelis.
Kroizer, the academic who stumbled on 1391, is still surprised by the attention his footnote received. Days after his paper was published, his editor got a call from Israel's military censor, who wanted to know why the article had not been submitted for inspection. "We publish an historical journal. We usually deal with issues that are at least 30 years old," says the editor, Benjamin Zeev Wexler. "But I thought it was interesting to note that this old British interrogation center was still operating today." For a few hundred Arabs held there over the years, it was no news at all.
With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem and Samir Zedan in Nablus
-------- torture
Key general defends the 'Gitmo' way
June 28, 2004
The Christian Science Monitor
By Ann Scott Tyson
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0628/p01s04-woiq.html
In an interview, General Miller defends his command and addresses abuses at Abu Ghraib.
ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ - Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a controversial figure in the prison-abuse probes, vehemently denies that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were tortured under his command and expressed disappointment that his recommendations for garnering better intelligence in Iraq were not fully implemented.
General Miller also states he would be "glad" to submit to questioning from defense lawyers for US soldiers accused of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib, after a military judgeordered him and three other US Army officers - including top Middle East commander Gen. John Abizaid - to do so last week.
"Anything that can help, I'll do it," says Miller, who oversees all US military detention operations in Iraq, where some 4,000 to 5,000 people are now in custody at a dozen centers. Defense lawyers for the seven soldiers charged so far in the case argue that the chain of command created an environment where soldiers believed abuse was acceptable.
"I'm a senior leader and I'm glad to help," Miller told the Monitor before stepping off a Black Hawk helicopter for a weekly stay at Abu Ghraib.
Miller says he spends the night weekly at Abu Ghraib, sleeping in an old cell of the prison that was infamous for its torture chambers under Saddam Hussein and is now at the heart of a scandal that has tainted the image of US forces in Iraq. "I live out here about one night a week. It's all about senior leaders being out here with the soldiers," said the general, who says he sleeps in the cell to avoid displacing soldiers at the crowded facility.
Miller is regarded as a central figure in the prison case because of his role in attempting to transfer lessons in intelligence gathering and interrogation from the detention facility at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo to Iraq. Miller ran the Guantánamo operation from November 2002 until he took up his Iraq post in April 2004.
The US did not grant the roughly 600 detainees at Guantánamo formal protection under the Geneva Conventions, as it has for all detainees in Iraq except alleged terrorists.
Miller said that declassified US government documents would show the "terrible scrutiny paid" to the legality of interrogation methods used at Guantánamo, reiterating that he spent a great deal of time with lawyers on that subject.
"There was no torture at Guantánamo," he said, adding, "I'm proud of everything done at Guantánamo" and also of the work he has led in Iraq.
Miller briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his tenure at Guantánamo on successes, including the "extraordinarily valuable intelligence" being extracted from detainees there.
As a result, he was chosen to lead an assessment team to Iraq last August and September to improve intelligence gathering there.
Miller completed a 12-page report that borrowed from interrogation, intelligence analysis, and detention methods from Guantánamo. In his report, Miller argues that no unified strategy for generating intelligence existed at Abu Ghraib. He calls for a trained guard force that would work with military intelligence interrogators, as well as new approaches to "maximize" the effectiveness of interrogation, under the advice of a military lawyer. But Miller's views conflicted with those of other generals, such as Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, who later concluded that a "template whereby military police actively set the favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility."
While Miller called for military police to prepare detainees for interrogation, he also recommended boosting the number of guards and interrogators. There was one guard for two detainees at Guantánamo; the ratio was far lower at Abu Ghraib, with one guard for up to 20 prisoners.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, testified in May that he and Miller "reviewed recommendations with the express understanding, reinforced in conversations between General Miller and me, that they might have to be modified for use in Iraq where the Geneva Convention was fully applicable."
However, parallels between the types of harsh treatment and interrogation techniques revealed by soldiers at Abu Ghraib and those used at Guantánamo suggest efforts to distinguish between the two places may not have succeeded.
For his part, Miller blames a failure of leadership at the prison for implementing only some of his recommendations - on detention and intelligence analysis - but not others that could have bolstered supervision and prevented abuses. "What we recommended was absolutely right, if they'd adopted the recommendations," he says.
"It was a terrible tragedy, an enormous mistake by a few leaders and soldiers that we're all ashamed of," he said of the abuses. Those included US soldiers beating detainees, humiliating them sexually, keeping them hooded and naked, and terrorizing them with dogs.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former head of the 800-strong military-police brigade that guarded Abu Ghraib when abuse took place, has accused Miller of a heavy-handed effort "to Gitmo-ize" the facility. Miller has denied those charges.
--------
What Did Bush Know?
The inside story of the official manual on how to torture without being prosecuted
Village Voice
June 28th, 2004
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0426/hentoff.php
[The] argument . . . is that the president, as commander in chief, is the law when it comes to the enemy. . . . [He is] unchecked by the courts or any other authority. . . . That's a very dangerous notion for a free country. -Newsday editorial, "Tormented Truths," June 10
In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld was asked by the CIA for legal advice about how to extract information from captured alleged terrorists. Rumsfeld turned to the Justice Department, and a memorandum was prepared by John Ashcroft's Office of Legal Counsel-and shown as well to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
The essence of this memo's language-as reported in a front-page June 8 Washington Post story-was very similar to the March 2003 extensive Pentagon justification of torture that broke in the June 7 Wall Street Journal. Ashcroft's office had said: "[It] may be justified" to torture captured Al Qaeda terrorists abroad "in order to prevent future attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network . . . " "Necessity and self-defense," said the Justice Department, "could provide justification that would eliminate any criminal liability."
It was this hitherto secret August 2002 memo from John Ashcroft's department that helped lay the groundwork for the much longer and more inflammatory March 2003 classified Pentagon report from a constellation of administration civilian and military lawyers. These attorneys, presumably graduates of top law schools, included participants from intelligence agencies and the Justice Department that have exploded the government's cover-up of its selective approval of torture.
That March 2003 report includes stunning analysis of the overwhelming extent of George W. Bush's power. As summarized by The Wall Street Journal, " 'constitutional principles' make it impossible to 'punish officials for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities' and neither Congress nor the courts could 'require or implement the prosecution of such an individual.' "
If the persnickety courts insisted on getting involved in accusations of torture, there is, says the memo, the defense of necessity and self-defense: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent future attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network. . . . In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
But these crafty lawyers on the Bush team provided another possible defense. In "exceptional interrogations," the torturer could claim he or she was following "superior orders." This is also known as the Nuremberg defense, urgently and unsuccessfully offered by Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials.
Now, what kinds of torture-according to these U.S. government memoranda-are permissible? Here we see an exercise in slippery semantics that recalls Bill Clinton's famous end run: "It depends on what 'is' is." John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "It is not the job of the Justice Department or this administration to define torture."
From the March 6, 2003, "Working Group Report" that John Ashcroft refuses to declassify, even though he says he is not even invoking executive privilege, the June 10 Financial Times has focused on this chilling excerpt:
" 'A defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering.' . . . The suffering may be physical or mental, but in the case of mental suffering, 'the harm must cause some lasting, but not necessarily permanent' suffering." Omitted is, how "lasting" is "lasting"?
Moreover, and read this one closely: "The adjective 'severe' conveys that the pain or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure." And as The Economist adds from the 2003 text: "To qualify as torture, the pain has to be 'equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.' "
But just knowing that severe pain is reasonably likely to happen does not meet the test of "specific intent." Accordingly, the defendant cannot be convicted of a crime.
This repellent semantic game approving torture is also in the August 1, 2002, Justice Department memorandum, "Standards of Conduct for Interrogations."
But what of the distinguished government lawyers who came up with these ways of evading the U.N. Convention on Torture, which this country signed in 1994, as well as the congressional statute forbidding our use of torture anywhere?
Scott Horton, former chairman of the New York Bar Association's international human rights committee, told Financial Times that these lawyers "could and should face professional sanctions. . . .
" 'There are serious ethical shortcomings here. . . . Lawyers who are employed by the U.S. government have a responsibility to uphold and enforce the laws of the United States. . . . To make an argument that the president's wartime powers give him the right to avoid these statutes is preposterous.' "
The Bush administration's lawless encouragement of torture has led to the abuses veering on torture at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan documented in The Washington Post, December 26, 2002 (a story followed in columns here); Guantánamo; and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Next week in this column, the CIA's super-secret prison interrogation centers somewhere around the world, as exclusively detailed on the May 13 Nightline, "The Disappeared." I have seen hardly any follow-ups to that frightening story. If you have, let me know.
How long will this new clear evidence from the Pentagon report of the Bush administration's euphemistically condoning torture have "legs," as newspaper people say? And how can Bush and company credibly protest when and if American captives are tortured overseas?
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Moore's Magic: 9/11 Electrifies
by Rex Reed,
6/28/2004
New York Observer
email at: rreed@observer.com.
http://www.observer.com/pages/onthetown.asp
Michael Moore leaves no turn unstoned. There are multitudes of shattering, seminal moments in his brilliant Bush-whacking documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, that reveal more about the cynicism, greed and ineptitude in the U.S. government than you will ever learn from any sound bite on the right-wing late-night cable-channel blabfests, but one will stay with me forever. Forget about the "official" reports from the White House about the activities of George W. Bush on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, insisting he learned about the Al Qaeda attacks while meeting with Florida pre-schoolers and quickly dashed from the room to save the country. The truth, it is now revealed, is that he was informed of the first attack on the World Trade Center before he even entered the schoolroom, and he decided to continue with his photo-op anyway. There he is on camera when Andrew Card informs him of the second plane and utters the fatal words, "We're under attack!"-but he continues to read My Pet Goat for another seven minutes, his eyes sliding sideways in his puzzled face, like a moron looking for a bathroom, until his staff insists that he leave. (He stayed for another half hour.) If nothing else, that defining moment says volumes about what we can expect from the President of the U.S. in the center of a supreme, history-altering crisis: He's just clueless.
There are other moments that will impact some viewers and polarize others. So many, in fact, that you watch Fahrenheit 9/11 with disbelief, and leave shaking with rage. Sometimes sarcastic, always funny, Mr. Moore is armed with facts, and he presents them accurately and succinctly. The controversial filmmaker stated on the Today show that White House mouthpieces have denounced the film as "outrageously false" without seeing it, and right-wing Republicans have charged Mr. Moore with staging a "left-wing conspiracy" to influence the forthcoming election. Well, duh. For years, reactionary conservatives have been famous for staging right-wing conspiracies of their own to disgrace and discredit elected Democratic public officials. Maybe this is payback time. Whatever it is, everyone should see Fahrenheit 9/11 first-before debating the issues. The purpose of any documentary is to influence opinion. But instead of the customarily droning voice that comments on the action and tells you what to think, this one asks tough, logical questions, gets rational answers, and never loses its entertainment value.
Mr. Moore, who has tackled corporate greed (Roger & Me) and gun control (Bowling for Columbine), now feels driven and obligated to strip the façade from a swaggering, bow-legged, grammatically challenged bully and a cabinet that is beginning to look more like the Third Reich every day. He accuses them of lying about their motivations for declaring war against Iraq, a country that never threatened America in the first place, killing thousands of innocent civilians in retaliation for the acts of 9/11 aggression, although not one of the terrorists was from Iraq, and killing more than 800 of our own American kids (all from ethnic or working-class families). Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein was a monster, but not the Iraqi women and children who have been "saved" from one villain only to be burned and shot and maimed for life without arms and legs by villains in a different uniform. At the same time, Mr. Moore shows Mr. Bush justifying American atrocities against Saddam Hussein by actually saying to the camera, "He tried to kill my daddy." Like his daddy, he knows he might also get kicked out of the White House after serving only one term. Still, he pursues a war that is losing the "hearts and minds" of even the boys who fight it (the interviews with our soldiers on the front lines will make you weep) while earning the U.S. unprecedented heights of global hatred and distrust, even from long-standing allies. And he does it on the golf course, ignoring the pressing domestic issues of health care, education, Social Security, unemployment and the economy while instructing frustrated reporters to watch his next drive. (In his first eight months in office, he was on vacation 42 percent of the time.) Meanwhile the current occupants of the White House, bolstered by an irresponsible press that has never bothered to ask the right questions, have courted public support by hammering home the kind of fear and born-again religious ideology that keep people subservient and paralyzed. Mr. Moore is saying that in the lineup of fear factors, terrorists and sinners may have replaced Communists and beatniks, but if you keep the people frightened enough, the bully always wins.
The movie begins with the awesome night in 2000 when the U. S. Supreme Court decided the election, not the American voters, then unveils footage that was never reported on TV of the Bush inauguration limousine being pelted with raw eggs. Instead of the traditional walk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was so afraid to leave the car that he became the first President in history who was forced to sneak into the White House through a back door.
It was downhill from there, and Mr. Moore has obtained amazing film to illustrate the graphic two-hour slam-dunk that follows. In the wimpy reportage that has dominated the media for four years, very few journalists have bothered to investigate the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Bush Presidency that keeps the people ignorant, to write about it, to explain it. Mr. Moore does it with wit and cleverness. There's no doubt that he would do anything to prevent a Bush re-election, but there is no conjecture here. No embellishment. He doesn't need any. Dubya & Co. are easy targets: Mr. Moore simply turns on his cameras and lets them hang themselves. He proves the $1.5 billion in profits the Bush clan has made from oil interests of the family of Osama bin Laden, the real perpetrator of the 9/11 disaster, then asks why, when all aircraft were grounded after 9/11, the White House allowed several planes to fly around the country picking up the bin Laden family and protectively escorting 142 Saudis out of the country without interrogation, overruling the protests of the F.B.I. You can say, "Yes, but his family has denounced Osama, so what's the problem?" The problem is that the Bushes, père et fils, were in business with his family at the same time that Osama was under surveillance as a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist and neglected to make a full disclosure.
Mr. Moore also reveals Dubya's military records, blotting out the name of a fellow pilot whose flight status was suspended for refusing to take a physical exam. The friend Bush was trying to protect turns out to be James R. Bath, who both managed the U.S. financial investments of the bin Laden regime and bankrolled the various oil interests of the Bush brigade. Cut to Dubya, arrogantly stating: "Access is power." Then, when he was investigated by the S.E.C., the man who got Bush out of hot water, Robert W. Jordan, was later appointed ambassador to-you guessed it-Saudi Arabia. The ironies pile up like body bags.
Now that the merde has hit the oscillator, so to speak, Mr. Moore charges that the Bush administration is still trying to hide evidence of its own stupidity by censoring 28 pages of the independent report by the 9/11 commission. If you don't gasp at the sight of Mr. Bush dining with the Saudi ambassador with part of the Pentagon in flames in the background, this movie is not for you. No need to talk about the President welcoming the Taliban to the State Department, knowing they were harboring the man who bombed the U.S.S. Cole. No need to go into the plans to build an underground pipeline through Afghanistan pumping money into a company owned by Vice President Dick Cheney. Alarmingly, it's all gone unreported by an irresponsible press corps. With $860 billion currently invested by the Saudis in American business, no wonder our tax money pays for a six-man detail to protect the Saudi ambassador in Washington. But why does it take Michael Moore to tell us? This is all very dispiriting. But unless you've lost your sense of humor completely, you've just gotta laugh when Mr. Moore intercuts Mr. Bush's tough talk from cowboy movies with actual footage of the corny cowboys in those movies saying exactly the same things.
I've hardly scratched the surface of this electrifying documentary. Mr. Moore even cruises through Washington reading from a loudspeaker the idiotic USA PATRIOT Act-hastily passed by Congress without ever reading it-and chronicling the lunacy it has inspired: groups and individuals harassed by cops for holding private club meetings, a woman who was refused admittance to an airplane because she was carrying breast milk. All diversionary tactics, says Mr. Moore, to distract the American people from viewing the corpses sent home from Iraq for funerals that have never once been attended by President George W. Bush, or debunking the myth of "weapons of mass destruction." People of all ages are shown voicing doubts about the kids who have died in a questionable war with no end in sight, and for what? Bush says, "Defending freedom." This movie says, "Making money." And talk about imbalance. Fact: Out of 535 members of Congress, only one has a child serving in Iraq. One of the most telling scenes in Fahrenheit 9/11 is Michael Moore, standing outside the U.S. Senate with a microphone, trying to convince members of Congress to enlist their own children for the war. Not a single Senator or Representative is willing to send his own children into harm's way. This is one of the few scenes in which the director appears at length. One of the things that makes this movie better and more convincing than his previous films is the way Mr. Moore stays mostly in the background, compiling facts and letting the evidence speak for itself.
The Cannes cognoscenti and the limousine liberals have already declared Fahrenheit 9/11 the blockbuster documentary of the year. Who knows how it will play in Punkin Crick? I think it should be required viewing for every American, but as usual, I fear the people who could learn the most from the issues it raises will avoid it like a fund-raiser for free abortions. Mr. Moore's opponents will label it ideologically fueled partisan agitprop, which it is, but any visionary who tries to cultivate change is destined to harvest adversaries. With his usual fury channeled and under control, Mr. Moore sets out to prick, probe and sound a wake-up call in an emotionally charged election year where the truth has been buried six feet under, and succeeds with humor and bite. The result is undeniably galvanizing, immensely watchable and damned good filmmaking. If it convinces one nonvoter to think, it will serve a purpose. The saddest and most infuriating thing I learned from Fahrenheit 9/11 is not the political hackwork, but the reality of what a lightweight the President is in the context of American history. George W. Bush may be the first President of the U.S. who has brainwashed himself.
----
Aide Is Bush's Eyes and Ears on the Right
June 28, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/politics/28ROVE.ready.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Karl Rove, the president's top political strategist, is famous in well-connected Washington for his tireless round of telephone calls and personal contacts with influential conservatives around the country.
But even Mr. Rove has his limits - calls he cannot make, hands he cannot shake and meetings he cannot attend. For those, he has Timothy Goeglein.
When opponents of abortion were holding a rally on Mr. Bush's first day in office, for example, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, called Mr. Goeglein from below the speakers' platform to press the White House for a statement of support. Within an hour, Mr. Brownback received a call with a vow that Mr. Bush would cancel federal support for international groups that provide or advise abortion, a break from the president's delicate approach to the issue during his campaign.
Mr. Goeglein, a slender, pink-cheeked 40-year-old Midwesterner who looks about half his age, is the official White House liaison to conservatives and to Christian groups. He is Mr. Rove's legman on the right.
"He is a constant set of eyes and ears," said Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Feulner said he saw Mr. Goeglein two or three times a week at meals, meetings or social events. "If I have a message I want to get to Rove or the administration, I will scribble out a note to Tim, and within 24 hours I will get a response back. For lots of things, he is sort of one-stop shopping for a point of access to the administration."
Christian conservatives, in particular, say that Mr. Goeglein (pronounced GAIG-line) has been an important conduit to the White House for their demands that Mr. Bush stop financing family planning groups that support abortion, heavily publicize a signing of anti-abortion legislation, block stem-cell research and oppose same-sex marriage - all calls that the president has heeded.
Mr. Goeglein also delivers special messages to the administration's most conservative supporters. After the most recent State of the Union speech, for example, Mr. Goeglein attended two meetings of conservative leaders in Washington to highlight elements of the speech that were most appealing to them, like support for teaching abstinence in schools. But he also gave assurances of the president's support for policies not mentioned in the speech, like an expansion of retirement savings accounts that would allow people to avoid taxes on most of their investment income.
In an interview in a briefing room near his office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, Mr. Goeglein - an earnest speaker who punctuates his conversation with the phrase "and I really do mean this" - insisted that his job was to convey information to and from the whole administration, not just his boss, Mr. Rove. "The wonderful thing for me is that I recognize each and every day that I work for the president of the United States, the president of all the people, not some."
But conservatives outside the White House say they view Mr. Goeglein mainly as an extension of Mr. Rove. And stalwarts of the right say that, even as some conservatives have grown sharply critical of the administration's spending or of the war in Iraq, his function as a hot line to the White House helps keep the Bush administration more closely allied with their movement than any previous administration has been.
"This Bush administration does better than Reagan and better than his father, it is very methodical about reaching out to people to try to meet their concerns," said Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer.
"Every time I have expressed something to Tim, when I later would talk to Rove, he would be absolutely right up on it and know precisely what my position was, so he can't do better than that," Mr. Weyrich said.
The Bush White House has other liaisons - to big business, Jewish groups, high-tech companies - but Mr. Rove has made courting conservatives and Christians a top political priority, in part to help turn out voters. Mr. Rove has often said conservative Christians disappointed him by about four million votes in 2000, nearly costing Mr. Bush the election.
Mr. Goeglein usually attends a White House meeting around 8:30 a.m. each weekday with Mr. Rove and eight other officials to settle on the administration's message for the day. Most days, Mr. Goeglein and Mr. Rove are also in frequent contact by telephone and e-mail after that, Mr. Goeglein said. Mr. Rove said Mr. Goeglein's field reports from the conservative movement had helped the White House make a number of decisions, including formulating its policy limiting stem-cell research and promoting the signing of a bill restricting some abortions.
"That is just a small list of the advice and help that Tim helps convey,'' Mr. Rove said in a telephone interview. "He listens well and he is able to synthesize what he hears, so he is a good guy for getting a lay of the land and hearing what people are saying. For a movement that tends to be a little fractious at times, this is a guy who crosses all kinds of lines."
His agenda over the last two weeks has included speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis; meeting with alliances of conservative groups about the president's "healthy marriage initiatives" and about judicial appointment battles in Washington; conducting a conference call with religious leaders to extol improvements in the economy; helping orchestrate the award of the Medal of Freedom to the neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz and the former Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, Robert L. Bartley; attending a book party for the Washington executive director of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group; and conducting a conference call with the chairman of the Republican Party for Catholics across the country.
A descendant of Macedonian immigrants, Mr. Goeglein grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., in a family with a painting business and few strong political commitments. The family attended a liberal Lutheran church, although Mr. Goeglein ultimately joined the more traditionalist Lutheran Missouri Synod.
By high school, he said, he had stumbled upon his first copies of William F. Buckley's National Review. He developed a passion for the highly refined and intellectual conservatism of the poet T. S. Eliot, the writers Russell Kirk and Friedrich Hayek, and Mr. Buckley himself.
Mr. Goeglein majored in journalism and English at Indiana University. But after interning for Senator Dan Quayle, he fell into politics, first working as a spokesman for Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, a champion of conservative Christian causes. In 2000, Mr. Goeglein was the spokesman for Gary L. Bauer in his Christian conservative campaign against Mr. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination.
Mr. Goeglein often helps the White House deal with specific religious concerns about public policy, like the belief of some evangelical Protestants about the place of modern Israel in biblical prophecy. For example, when the Bush administration supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from parts of the Gaza Strip, some evangelical Christians questioned Mr. Bush's move for biblical reasons. Mr. Goeglein said he set up briefings with Elliott Abrams, who is in charge of Middle Eastern affairs, and top national security officials to reassure prominent Christians.
"There were some evangelical concerns about a two-state solution," said Jay Sekulow, a friend of Mr. Goeglein's and chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice. "Tim did a very effective job explaining the rationale for that. Condoleezza Rice knows a lot more about that than I did, and after meetings with the relevant people that Tim set up, I was satisfied, and apparently Sharon was as well."
----
Talking Points re uranium from Niger to Iraq
June 28, 2004
by Joshua Micah Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_06_27.php#003106
By the time you read this post you'll likely already know that today's Financial Times makes stunning new claims about alleged sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq.
In brief, the main article in FT makes two points.
First, that there is much more information than the forged 'Niger-uranium' documents backing up the claim that Iraq (and other countries) sought to clandestinely purchase 'yellowcake' uranium from Niger.
(I think point two is the real point of the FT story, not point one. But we'll get to that in another post.)
The second assertion requires a touch more explanation.
If you're up on the arcana of the 'Niger-uranium' story you'll remember that they first came to light when a source -- an unnamed Italian businessman and security consultant -- gave copies of them to an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba.
(For more on the tick-tock of what Burba did with them and how they eventually got into US hands, see this piece by Sy Hersh from last year in The New Yorker.)
There has been endless speculation about who this mystery man was and who actually did the forging. Was he the forger? And if so, what were his motives? If not, who put them into his hands? And what were their motives?
According to the Financial Times article, that business man is likely himself the forger of the documents and he has a long history of bad acts which, they say, discredit him as a source of information. That last tidbit plays a key part in the FT story because, in their words, the provider of the documents is "understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel."
That's what the FT says.
I hear something different.
In fact, I know something different.
My colleagues and I have reported on this matter extensively, spoken to key players involved in the drama, and put together a detailed picture of what happened. And that picture looks remarkably different from this account which is out today -- specifically on the matter of the origins of those forged documents and who was involved.
I cannot begin to describe how much I would like to say more than that. And at some later point in some later post I will do my best to explain the hows and whys of why I can't. But, for the moment, I can't.
Let me, however, offer a hypothetical that might help make sense of all this.
Let's say that certain individuals or organizations are responsible for some rather unfortunate misdeeds. And let's further postulate that such hypothetical individuals or organizations find out that some folks are on to them, that a story is in the works -- perhaps more than one -- and that it's coming right at them. Those individuals or organizations -- as shorthand, let's call them 'the bad actors' -- might well start trying to fight back, trying to gin up an alternative storyline to exculpate themselves and inculpate others. If that story made its way into the news, at a minimum, it might help the bad actors muddy the waters for when the real story comes out. You can see how such a regrettable turn of events might come to pass.
This is of course only a hypothetical. But I thought it might provide a clarifying context.
So read the FT article. But also keep your ears open. It is, I'm quite confident, not the last word you'll hear on this story.
-------- us politics
Iraq Occupation Erodes Bush Doctrine
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10539-2004Jun27?language=printer
The occupation of Iraq has increasingly undermined, and in some cases discredited, the core tenets of President Bush's foreign policy, according to a wide range of Republican and Democratic analysts and U.S. officials.
When the war began 15 months ago, the president's Iraq policy rested on four broad principles: The United States should act preemptively to prevent strikes on U.S. targets. Washington should be willing to act unilaterally, alone or with a select coalition, when the United Nations or allies balk. Iraq was the next cornerstone in the global war on terrorism. And Baghdad's transformation into a new democracy would spark regionwide change.
But these central planks of Bush doctrine have been tainted by spiraling violence, limited reconstruction, failure to find weapons of mass destruction or prove Iraq's ties to al Qaeda, and mounting Arab disillusionment with U.S. leadership.
"Of the four principles, three have failed, and the fourth -- democracy promotion -- is hanging by a sliver," said Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council staff member in the Reagan administration and now director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center.
The president has "walked away from unilateralism. We're not going to do another preemptive strike anytime soon, certainly not in Iran or North Korea. And it looks like terrorism is getting worse, not better, especially in critical countries like Saudi Arabia," Kemp said.
As a result, Bush doctrine could become the biggest casualty of U.S. intervention in Iraq, which is entering a new phase this week as the United States prepares to hand over power to the new Iraqi government.
Setbacks in Iraq have had a visible impact on policy, forcing shifts or reassessments. The United States has returned to the United Nations to solve its political problems in Iraq. It has appealed to NATO for help on security. It is also relying on diplomacy, with allies, to deal with every other hot spot.
"There's already been a retreat from the radicalism in Bush administration foreign policy," said Walter Russell Mead, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow. "You have a feeling that even Bush isn't saying, 'Hey, that was great. Let's do it again.' "
Some analysts, including Republicans, suggest that another casualty of Iraq is the neoconservative approach that inspired a zealous agenda to tackle security threats in the Middle East and transform the region politically.
"Neoconservatism has been replaced by neorealism, even within the Bush White House," Kemp said. "The best evidence is the administration's extraordinary recent reliance on [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan and [U.N. envoy] Lakhdar Brahimi. The neoconservatives are clearly much less credible than they were a year ago."
The administration would not make a senior official or spokesman available for quotation by name to support its policy. But top administration officials insist the Iraq experience has not invalidated Bush doctrine, and they contend its basic principles will endure beyond the Bush presidency.
Policy supporters argue that current realities will keep some form of all four ideas in future policy. "Despite all the problems of implementation and despite mistakes made by the Bush administration, I don't see many other choices," said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle.
"No one thinks the Middle East pre-September 11 is acceptable, or that we should work with its dictators. No one says in a world of weapons of mass destruction we can rule out preemption or that they're not worried about the linkage between terrorism and states producing weapons of mass destruction," he said. "So I don't see much of an alternative to the Bush doctrine."
Challenges to its four central tenets, however, are likely to influence U.S. foreign policy for years, some analysts predict.
The Preemptive Strike
The most controversial tenet of Bush doctrine was also the primary justification for launching the Iraq war. In the president's June 2002 address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Bush said deterrence and containment were no longer enough to defend America's borders. The United States, he said, had the right to take preemptive action to prevent attacks against the United States.
"We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act," Bush told cadets.
In the policy's early days, its supporters hinted that preemption could eventually justify forcible government change in Iran, Syria and North Korea as well as in Iraq. But that sentiment is evaporating, because Iraq showed the "pitfalls of the doctrine in graphic detail," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Preemption has been "damaged, if not totally discredited," and the outcome in Iraq may prove to be "an inoculation against rash action" by the United States in the future, Carpenter said.
The administration is working overtime to reduce the sense of alarm that Washington is posed "on a hair trigger" to launch a new offensive against governments it does not like, said James F. Hoge Jr., editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. White House officials are relying on diplomacy to defuse confrontations over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the two other countries with Iraq that Bush labeled the "axis of evil."
The administration now contends its decision was discretionary, not preemptive, because Saddam Hussein had a decade to meet several U.N. resolutions. U.S. officials also say that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they had to learn to deal with threats faster -- and proactively.
"The notion that preemption has been discredited is entirely mistaken," said Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has argued for a muscular approach to international affairs.
"It's a fact of life in the international system, because of the reality of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Kagan said. "The normal lead time that a nation has to protect itself is not what it used to be, so preemption will have to be part of the international arsenal."
Unilateralism
Bush has repeatedly made clear his intent to act alone or with a U.S.-led coalition when the international community balks at confronting perceived threats.
"I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons," he said in his 2002 State of the Union address.
Later that year, he told the U.N. General Assembly that Washington would work with the world body to deal with the "common challenge in Iraq" but stressed that action would be "unavoidable" if Hussein did not comply. "The purposes of the United States should not be doubted," he warned.
Yet Washington has made a grudging retreat after its limited coalition could not cope with all the problems in Iraq, analysts say. The shift was evident when the administration turned to a U.N. envoy to form an interim Iraqi government after two failed U.S. attempts. It has also deferred to the United Nations to oversee elections and to help Iraq write a constitution.
"Going it alone doesn't really work in the world as it exists today," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan Brussels-based group that tracks global hot spots. "We need allies. We become more vulnerable and exposed when we don't have them."
The administration counters that its coalition included more than 30 countries, including the majority of NATO members, and that the idea is far from new. "Every administration reserves the right with respect to protecting vital American interests to act alone, but every administration seeks to avoid it," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy.
The War on Terrorism
Bush turned his sights on Iraq within weeks of the war in Afghanistan. "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror," he said in the 2002 State of the Union address. He added later: "The price of indifference would be catastrophic."
Whatever the merits of deposing Hussein, foreign and domestic polls now consistently show that the failure to find concrete evidence of significant ties or joint actions between the Iraqi leader and al Qaeda has dissipated international support for the United States and generated skepticism at home about the benefits of the Iraq war.
The Iraq war may even have hurt U.S. efforts to combat terrorism, analysts say, noting the increase in car bombings, hostage abductions and beheadings in Iraq as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia. "We have assisted al Qaeda in recruiting fresh adherents by the war in Iraq and the antagonism it's generated," Hoge said.
The administration is "drifting," Carpenter said. It "clings to the idea of state-sponsored terrorism as a motive for the Iraq war, but it was wildly off the mark," he said. "Afghanistan continues to be the real central front, to the extent there is a front at all."
U.S. officials say waging war in Iraq was vital to eliminate a refuge for extremists after Afghanistan.
Early supporters of administration policy also say the problem is not with the principles, but with their implementation. Any government has limited chances to enact policy, and early setbacks in execution can lead the public or policymakers to back away even if the ideas remain valid, Kristol said.
Promoting Democracy
The most ambitious aspect of Bush doctrine is pressing for political and economic reform in the Islamic world, the last bloc of countries to hold out against the democratic tide that has swept much of the rest of the world. Iraq was to be the catalyst of change.
"Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," Bush said in a November 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy.
Although the administration is still pushing its new democracy initiative for the wider Middle East, Muslim disillusionment with the United States over Iraq has deeply hurt this goal, analysts warn. Democratic and Republican foreign policy experts almost unanimously predict that progress will be much slower than expected even six months ago.
"The idea that the Middle East can be repaired by external intervention has been seriously damaged. And the ideas of reform are going to be a much harder sell after Iraq," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
After six decades as the main mediator in the region, the United States may also be losing its standing as an honest broker because of Iraq and the U.S. failure to fulfill promises to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Naim said.
The Iraq intervention also discredited the president's approach to regional peace. "The administration argued that if you removed the security threat in Iraq, you'd improve the chances of solving the Arab-Israeli conflict -- that the road to Jerusalem went through Baghdad. If anything, we learned it's just the other way around," Hoge said.
Supporters of the administration's efforts argue that promoting democracy is the oldest goal in U.S. foreign policy worldwide, dating back more than 200 years. Whatever the current problems, they contend, it will remain a top goal -- particularly in the Islamic world as a key to countering extremism.
The overall impact of policy challenges in Iraq, analysts say, is that the Bush White House has been forced back to the policy center or scaled back the scope of its goals. They cite the president's appeal for NATO assistance and cutbacks in the democracy initiative.
"It's a lesson in hubris," Carpenter said. "The administration thought it had all the answers, but it found out through painful experience that it did not."
Yet administration supporters say Iraq has not produced backtracking or policy reassessment. "Enormously sharp distinctions are being made between different policy views, which are largely artificial," Kagan said. "There was an enormous consensus going into this war and there's a consensus now about what needs to be done. So we are having a huge, vicious debate, and yet I'm not sure what the debate is about."
--------
Lawmakers, Lobbyists Keep in Constant Contact
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Monday, June 28, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10461-2004Jun27?language=printer
On the hustings in an election year, lawmakers go out of their way to say that they represent The People against the Special Interests.
Don't believe them.
Here in Washington, there's hardly a day of the week that Congress's senior lawmakers and staffers don't consult with large groups of corporate lobbyists at regularly scheduled meetings.
Every other Monday, top Democratic lobbyists meet in a Capitol Hill conference room with the Senate's highest-ranking Democratic staffers.
Every other Tuesday, Republican lobbyists from stand-alone lobbying firms meet with Republican senators, also on the Hill.
Every other Wednesday, Republican lobbyists from trade associations meet with a different set of Republican senators.
And every Friday at noon, about 20 Democratic lobbyists meet with the chief of staff of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), at Pelosi's Capitol office.
There must be a meeting on Thursday, too. I just haven't found it yet.
And that's the point. Lobbyists and legislators are in constant contact. They use each other to a fare-thee-well whether The People like it or not.
"It's a two-way street," said David Rudd, who attends the Monday meeting. These days he goes as a staffer -- executive director of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee. Before taking that job in February, he attended as a lobbyist for the Palmetto Group, which represented AT&T, Comcast, Pfizer and United Airlines.
Some people are shocked that such formal gatherings take place at all. And who can blame them? It's disheartening to learn how often elected representatives and emissaries of wealthy interests cooperate behind closed doors.
But that's not the half of it. In interviews with participants, a few other disturbing things become clear. First, none of the participants is ashamed about the meetings. On the contrary, lawmakers and lobbyists alike think there should be more of them, not fewer. The lobbyists, who normally try to keep their activities secret, aren't shy about acknowledging their roles in the meetings. Access to power is a lobbyist's stock-in-trade and those who meet routinely with top lawmakers and their aides have a leg up on their competition. Those lucky and well-connected enough to be invited into those circles are K Street's true insiders, the aristocrats of influence, and their incomes rise accordingly.
But the most surprising fact about these meetings is that lawmakers and their staffers believe they get more out of the meetings than the lobbyists do. Although it's rarely said aloud, legislators rely heavily on lobbyists (many of whom are former congressional and executive branch aides) for information and tactical support. The meetings are vehicles for providing both.
At almost every one of the gatherings, the congressional leaders beg the lobbyists for advice about how to handle their latest legislative problems. They also enlist the lobbyists as mouthpieces for their parties' messages of the day, and ask them to spy on fellow lobbyists for tidbits of news that can give their political party an advantage.
In other words, the legislators, not the lobbyists, do most of the pleading. Far from being reviled as Special Interests, the lobbyists are deputized as comrades-in-arms. Sometimes, of course, the lobbyists have nothing immediately to gain by counseling legislators. But they lend their judgment and legwork in the expectation that lawmakers and their staffs will repay the kindness by being receptive to their clients' desires down the road.
The lawmakers and aides insist that no lobbying is ever done on clients' behalf at the meetings. They also say that fund-raising is strictly forbidden there. And both may well be true. But they miss the point. The narrow-gauged lobbying that really matters to clients -- and that comes later during smaller meetings -- is made easier by the relationships formed in those big meetings. What's more, by unwritten rule, only lobbyists who are Big Givers (either personally or with their clients' money) are ever allowed to participate.
The benefits are tangible for the lawmakers as well. Some of President Bush's most successful legislative drives were orchestrated right in the Republican meetings. Senators used the encounters to encourage and monitor the private lobbying campaigns that promoted their own priorities. Bush's tax cuts, for example, wouldn't have wended their way through Congress without the hard work of the lobbyists in the room.
In return for the lobbyists' assistance, the lawmakers provide detailed updates of the legislative calendar and the outlook for key bills. That sort of intelligence, though rudimentary, is vital to corporations seeking to insert their favorite provisions into law.
Republicans convene the most elaborate and well-established of the tit-for-tat meetings. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) chairs the Tuesday gathering and from that spot has helped orchestrate private-sector lobbying campaigns that have led to passage of President Bush's priorities, including tax cuts. The Santorum meeting, which begins at 8:30 a.m., is where the idea of pressuring lobbying groups to hire more Republicans -- the so-called K Street Project -- originated. The 30 or so lobbyists who regularly attend represent corporate interests that range from Nevada gambling and the mutual fund industry to General Motors and Sears, Roebuck.
Senate Republicans have so many lobbyist allies that they've created at least one other meeting to accommodate them. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) chairs the Wednesday meeting with trade association executives and plays a similar coordinating role with them. The dozen or so participants in the 8:30 a.m. meeting include the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.
Feeling left out, Senate Democrats started their own clique a year and a half ago. Aides say the idea came from William Andresen, a former chief ofstaff to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and now a lobbyist for the Dutko Group. Andresen e-mailed his former colleagues on the Hill to inquire what was going on. His old friends would dutifully fill him in but decided that more of their colleagues-turned- lobbyists should also be let in on the deal.
"When people leave the Hill and go downtown into a corporate setting, they feel a little disconnected," says Jonathan Jones, chief of staff to Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and a host of the Monday meeting. "So we started to think about what we could do to reconnect these people. They should be part of our sphere. We should actively solicit their ideas about what we should do."
And thus was born the "Bi-Weekly Lobbyist Meeting" held at 3 p.m. every other Monday at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters. According to a recent invitation, the gathering's goals are "to help Democrats retake the majority in the Senate, to advance Democratic policy objectives, [and] to strengthen ties to Democrats in the business community."
Six to 10 chiefs of staff of Democratic senators mingle with 30 to 40 lobbyists. Occasionally Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.), who chairs the campaign committee, poke their heads into the room. And Michael Lewan, a former Lieberman chief of staff and now a lobbyist, uses the meeting to direct the Democrats' version of the K Street Project. He circulates a list of lobbying job openings to Hill staffers on the prowl.
Just another happy gathering that takes your breath away.
Jeffrey Birnbaum's e-mail address is kstreetconfidential@washpost.com.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Fuelling suspicion: the coalition and Iraq's oil billions
Christian Aid
28.06.04
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/406iraqoilupdate/index.htm
The US-controlled coalition in Baghdad is handing over power to an Iraqi government without having properly accounted for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money, says a new report published by Christian Aid.
An audit, reportedly critical, of the coalition's handling of Iraqi revenues is not going to be delivered until mid-July - after the coalition has ceased to exist.
Christian Aid believes this situation is in flagrant breach of the UN Security Council resolution that gave control of Iraq's oil revenues and other Iraqi funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
'For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq, it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq's money,' said Helen Collinson, head of policy at Christian Aid.
Resolution 1483 of May 2003 said that Iraq's oil revenues should be paid into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), that this money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people, and be independently audited. But it took until April 2004 to appoint an auditor - leaving only a matter of weeks to go through the books.
Early reports of the audit indicate strong criticisms of the CPA's handling of Iraq's money. But the CPA is not going to be around to be held accountable.
In the run-up to the handover, nearly $2 billion of Iraq's money has been hastily allocated. The new Iraqi government will be committed to these spending decisions.
Iraq's oil represents huge potential wealth. With half of the population still unemployed, the Iraqi people need to be able to see that the oil revenues are being spent to alleviate poverty and to improve their lives.
• Press release /28.06.04
• Iraq: The Missing Billions In October 2003 Christian Aid revealed that an astonishing $4 billion of Iraq's oil revenues and other funds were unaccounted for. Iraq: The Missing Billions called for much greater clarity and for a thorough audit - which even at that time was months overdue.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Great Lakes in Trouble Need Long Term Help
June 28, 2004
MADISON, Wisconsin, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-28-09.asp#anchor6
To raise public awareness of the threats to the Great Lakes, a Madison non-profit environmental education and communications group is launching an upbeat media blitz this summer.
The Biodiversity Project will sponsor magazine and radio advertisements, educational signs in the coastal state parks, Great Lakes BioBlitz events in Green Bay, Superior, and Milwaukee, and educational drink coasters in restaurants and taverns on Wisconsin's coast.
All of the materials are backed by a new website - www.greatlakesforever.org - featuring information about the Great Lakes ecosystem, threats to the health of the lakes and simple solutions everyone can take to help protect the Great Lakes.
Working with 50 partner organizations in Wisconsin and the region, including state and federal agencies, and local nonprofit groups, the Biodiversity Project identified four key issues where increased public concern could have an impact on the future of the Great Lakes - water quality, water supply, habitat protection and invasive species control.
"This campaign is a bit different," said Biodiversity Project Executive Director Jane Elder. "We're not just trying to achieve a short-term victory. Instead, we're trying to raise the overall profile of a suite of threats to the Great Lakes."
Jeffrey Potter, coordinator of the Great Lakes Forever program, says, "Pollution is closing our beaches and contaminating our fish. Invasive species and irresponsible development are threatening the survival of our native wildlife. And special interests are pushing to actually buy and sell Great Lakes water for a profit."
Great Lakes water has been contaminated by toxic pollutants such as mercury, PCBs, and agricultural pesticides for decades. Said Potter, "Threats to aquatic life become threats to human health when contaminated fish end up on our tables. Mercury-contaminated fish in particular are of great concern - potentially causing birth defects, high blood pressure, infertility and even brain damage."
Efforts to understand and mitigate the threat posed by mercury and other air toxics will receive $1.2 million in research grants from the Great Lakes Air Deposition (GLAD) Program.
An initiative of the Great Lakes Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), GLAD funds innovative research into airborne toxic pollution and its effects in the Great Lakes basin.
"Many of the toxic chemicals now entering the Great Lakes, including some of the most toxic, are mainly the result of air pollution," said Steve Rothblatt, director of the Air and Radiation Division of EPA Region 5. "The GLAD program helps generate the information we need to address these pollutants and informs decisions on measures to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem."
Research is useful, but the region still does not have a effective conservation plan and regulatory structure to protect Great Lakes surface freshwater and groundwater supplies.
"The Great Lakes are a treasure and so they should be cautiously protected," said Potter. "A strong, fully enforceable, management agreement between the federal and regional governments of the United States and Canada should be signed as soon as possible."
The Council of Great Lakes Governors - which includes the premiers of Ontario and Quebec - have made some progress on a management plan, but the existing "charter" on water withdrawal, signed in 1985, is non-binding. Since 2001, the governors and premiers have been working on a revised Charter Annex - nicknamed Annex 2001.
The Biodiversity Project is relying on informed public opinion to drive the protection of the five lakes, which with their connecting channels contain roughly 18 percent of the world's surface freshwater, second only to the polar ice caps.
More than 37 million people and a unique diversity of plants and animals inhabit the lakes and their surrounding lands.
"We're trying to build a deeper constituency for the lengthy effort that it will take to restore, protect and care for one of the world's largest freshwater ecosystems," Elder said.
Potter said, "We hope that this campaign will encourage individuals, families and communities to become more engaged in the future of their lakes."
-------- health
Environmental Factors the Major Cause of Cancer
June 28, 2004
BETHESDA, Maryland, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-28-02.asp
Most cases of cancer are linked to environmental causes, U.S. government scientists report, and simultaneously, a second group of government researchers says the number of cancer survivors is growing in the United States. Cancer is the second leading cause of death for Americans after heart disease.
But more people diagnosed with cancer are living longer today than ever before. A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) released Friday shows that 64 percent of adults whose cancer is diagnosed today can expect to be living in five years.
The majority, 61 percent, of cancer survivors are aged 65 and older, and the study estimates that one of every six people over age 65 is a cancer survivor. The findings are published in the June 25 issue of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, "Cancer Survivorship - United States, 1971 - 2001."
Cancers linked to environmental causes make up at least 80 percent of all cancer cases, according to a second new report by the National Cancer Institute, this one published with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Environmental causes include exposure to agents in the air and water as well as lifestyle factors such as smoking and diet.
"Most epidemiologists and cancer researchers would agree that the relative contribution from the environment toward cancer risk is about 80-90 percent," said Aaron Blair, Ph.D., the chief of the Occupational Epidemiology Branch in NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. "There is very solid evidence that environmental factors are the major cause of cancer," he said.
"When I use the word environmental, I mean it in a broad sense to include both lifestyle factors such as diet, tobacco, and alcohol, as well as radiation, infectious agents, and substances in the air, water, and soil," said Dr. Blair in the June 17 issue of the NCI publication "Benchmarks."
Evidence comes from studies of people who migrate from an area of high cancer risk to an area of low cancer risk, or the reverse, Dr. Blair said. They invariably take on the cancer rates of the country to which they move.
"Since the gene pool changes only after many generations, this means that these changes must be environmental, not genetic," said Dr. Blair. "And so, the migrant studies very clearly tell us that the wide range of cancer rates is largely driven by environmental causes."
For decades, Dr. Blair said, scientists have been conducting epidemiological investigations of the causes and distribution of cancers, looking at a variety of environmental and host genetic risk factors. "Almost always," he said, "the cancer burden is much greater for environmental causes than just the hereditable genetic factors."
Whatever the cause, people in the United States who have been diagnosed with cancer are living longer. Today, there are 9.8 million cancer survivors across the country.
"Being a cancer survivor is at the forefront of my self awareness," says 80 year old Mortimer Brown of Florida, a colorectal cancer survivor diagnosed at age 75. "It enters into the conversations that I have with myself about what I want to do, how I want to spend money, how I want to spend time, my energy, all of that. Being a cancer survivor has added another dimension to my identity. I am a cancer survivor."
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Friday, "The number of cancer survivors in this country has increased steadily over the past 30 years for all cancers combined. We expect the number of survivors to increase as improvements are made in cancer detection, treatment and care and as the population ages."
The authors of the survivorship study used incidence and follow-up data from NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program to estimate annual cancer prevalence - the number of people living following a diagnosis of cancer - and trends in cancer survivorship.
Breast cancer survivors make up the largest group of cancer survivors, 22 percent, followed by prostate cancer survivors (17 percent) and colorectal cancer survivors, 11 percent.
Seventy-nine percent of childhood cancer survivors will be living five years after diagnosis and nearly 75 percent will be living 10 years following diagnosis, the CDC and NCI study found.
In the past, public health programs concentrated on early detection and prevention of cancer, said CDC medical officer Dr. Loria Pollack. Now the focus has expanded to include cancer survivorship, transforming survivorship research into practice, and developing clinical guidelines to provide follow-up and health promotion to survivors, she said.
CDC's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control is supporting states, tribes and tribal organizations to develop and incorporate survivorship priorities into their comprehensive cancer control plans.
"There is a growing need to promote health and ensure the social, psychological and economic wellbeing of cancer survivors and their families," Dr. Pollack said.
CDC is also working with national organizations to promote education, awareness and community programs that offer services and support for cancer survivors.
"My concerns as a survivor have evolved the farther away I have gotten from treatment," says 24 year old Karen Dyer of New York, who was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma at age 15.
"During my treatment and for several years after...my primary concern was recurrence and, although I haven't had any, I would be lying if I say that I don't think about it all the time. [Now] I worry about secondary cancers," she told the President's Cancer Panel for its 2003-2004 Annual Report "Living Beyond Cancer: Finding a New Balance."
To prolong life for cancer survivors, avoiding further exposure to cancer causing factors is critical. Dr. Blair says the specific environmental factors involved differ by tumor.
Tobacco smoke is the major cause of lung cancer, he says, "But there is a long list of other chemicals that cause lung cancer - arsenic, asbestos, PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons), and chromium, to name a few."
"For breast cancer, hormone use is one of the major factors affecting risk. Prostate cancer has nothing that reaches the level of evidence of lung or breast cancer, although there are a number of strong leads. Physical inactivity is strongly linked to colorectal cancer, as well as a number of dietary factors - low fiber is probably implicated," said Dr. Blair.
Tobacco as a cause of cancer is easy to study, Dr. Blair says, because it is a single agent. Diet and environmental pollutants are more difficult, he said.
"The major limitation is that it is so difficult to characterize a person's diet over time," he said. "Typically it's not the diet today that is important for the cancer diagnosed today. We need to know what people ate in the past, and that is really hard to determine."
Environmental pollutants are linked to the incidence of cancer and its recurrance, although this field is also difficult to study, said Dr. Blair. "Researchers are beginning to focus on potentially hazardous substances in the water and air," he said. "This is a difficult research area and is every bit as hard to study as diet."
In response to the growing number of cancer survivors in the United States, many organizations are involved in survivorship issues, particularly the group founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong.
Triathelete Lance Armstrong was diagnosed in 1996 with advanced testicular cancer that produced a dozen golf ball-sized tumors in his lungs and lesions on his brain. He was 25 years old. He survived to win five consecutive Tours de France 1999-2003, making him the only American to accomplish this feat.
On Thursday, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) announced the Carpe Diem Junior Spirit of Survivorship Award. The award will honor a young person living with cancer who has demonstrated a resilient attitude toward his or her cancer diagnosis and inspired others to live strong. The winner will receive a $5,000 scholarship.
"This award celebrates young people in our communities who have overcome tremendous challenges and whose energy and dedication inspire others," said Betsy Goldberg, survivorship associate for the Foundation. "The Junior Spirit of Survivorship Award demonstrates that anyone - even young people - can be an effective advocate and a hero for other cancer survivors."
The Junior Spirit of Survivorship Award winner will join the ranks of the recipients of the prestigious Carpe Diem Awards, which recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to the world of cancer survivorship.
The CDC and the Lance Armstrong Foundation have published a National Plan for Cancer Survivorship: Advancing Public Health Strategies. Young people particularly need this kind of help.
"I was going through treatments at the age of, essentially, 13 to 18, the developmental years in my life," says 30 year old Sean Swarner of Colorado, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and primitive neuroectodermal tumor (Askin's disease) at age 13. "I really didn't understand the impact of what I went through until after I went through college and went for my master's degree...when I re?ected on my life and realized that what I went through didn't make me who I am, but it had an incredible impact on my life."
"I think it would have helped to actually have some type of, not necessarily support group, but literature, the Internet, anything to provide [information on] those long-term psychological effects," he said.
"Issues faced by cancer survivors include maintaining optimal physical and mental health, preventing disability and late-effects related to cancer and its treatment, and ensuring social and economic well-being for themselves and their family," said Dr. Julia Rowland, director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at NCI.
"NCI takes these factors into consideration when conducting research to identify, examine and prevent or control adverse effects associated with cancer," she said. "We are working to enhance survivors' quality of life."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thousands in Mexico City Protest Rampant Kidnappings, Violence
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10574-2004Jun27.html
MEXICO CITY, June 27 -- Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the capital Sunday in a protest against the rampant kidnappings and violent crime that have tarnished the image of North America's biggest city.
The protest attracted vast numbers of middle- and upper-class citizens who ordinarily stay in their walled homes. Wearing white clothes and carrying signs that read "Enough!" business leaders, professors, lawyers and others turned out to pressure officials to increase efforts to curb crime.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico City's mayor and a leading presidential candidate in the already heated 2006 campaign, has accused his political opponents of organizing the march to embarrass him and exaggerate the crime problem. But many protesters interviewed said they were fed up with crime that had personally harmed them.
"They assaulted me at gunpoint," said Emilio Carrera, 43, an industrial engineer, who was "express kidnapped," a common crime in which victims are held until captors withdraw money from the victim's ATM account. "They beat me, took my car, my wallet. It's a miracle I am still alive. I had a pistol for two hours right here," he said, pointing to his head.
Some marchers wore black ribbons or carried pictures of family members who died as a result of violent crime, and national news commentators characterized the protest as the biggest in years.
Many Mexican cities and towns do not have serious crime problems. But this metropolitan area of nearly 20 million is plagued by murders, assaults and kidnappings, as are Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and other cities along the U.S-Mexican border.
Last week, one of Mexico's top law enforcement officials said lax U.S. gun-control laws that allow arms to be sold "as if they were candy" were contributing to Mexico's violence.
Because many people do not trust the police, much crime goes unreported, making an accurate assessment of the problem difficult. Police have repeatedly been found to be involved in kidnappings. According to surveys by private and business groups, Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world, as well as one of the highest rates of ransom money paid to kidnappers.
Front-page news stories of horrific kidnappings and of their victims -- including two brothers recently killed and dumped in a garbage bin after their family paid the ransom -- have become commonplace in recent weeks. Economic analysts here say they are worried that that image is hurting Mexican tourism, scaring off foreign investment and spurring many in the upper classes to move abroad.
Scores of civic groups organized Sunday's march, including a nonprofit group called the Committee for the Defense of the Users of Public Transportation. While many wealthy people travel with bodyguards and chauffeurs, most people ride the subway and city buses, where robberies and assaults are not uncommon.
"Because of the lack of attention to this security problem, people die," said Dahlia Delgado, a spokesman for the public transportation group.
Hundreds of anti-crime initiatives, from the hiring of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a consultant to the formation of elite commando groups to counter kidnappers, have been tried in recent years. Sunday, organizers handed out leaflets demanding a special session of Congress devoted to reforming public security laws and revamping the prison system.
"We can't bear it any longer," said Maria Eugenia Juarez, a marcher who said a member of her family had been kidnapped. "Something has to change."
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Diplomats Honored for Dissent Envoys Challenged Bush Foreign Policy
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10462-2004Jun27.html
Budapest is a long way from Baghdad, but in May 2003, a U.S. Foreign Service officer in the Hungarian capital became convinced that American policy in Iraq was going awry. And he spoke up.
In a cable routed through the State Department's "dissent channel," Keith W. Mines argued a case -- long rejected by the White House -- that the United Nations should be given control over Iraq's political transition.
"There is no value in imposing an American lead if the American lead would be less effective than a U.N. Special Representative," Mines wrote. "At some point, it would seem that the reasons for going it alone in Iraq would be overshadowed by the need to create a viable Iraqi state."
For his willingness to challenge the Bush administration's conventional wisdom, Mines collected an award for "constructive dissent" from the State Department's professional association last week. The citation called his ideas "prescient" and noted that "some have, belatedly, been adopted."
Accepting a plaque, Mines said he hoped U.S. authorities had learned some lessons from the troubled Iraq occupation. Speaking to a knowing audience in the department's elegant diplomatic reception rooms, he said issues in Iraq are "too important to allow ideology to trump experience or imagination to trump reality."
It has been a rough two years for American diplomacy and a dispiriting period for the State Department, where diplomats have witnessed a sharp decline in respect for the United States abroad and a loss of influence on high-profile matters at home.
Earlier this month, 27 former senior diplomats and military commanders released a statement accusing the Bush administration of going astray on foreign policy, saying it is unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of world leadership. The group said the United States had become "overbearing" in foreign affairs, "insensitive" to allies and "disdainful" of the United Nations and NATO.
Frustration with the approach directed by the White House was an undercurrent at the awards ceremony, which John W. Limbert, president of the American Foreign Service Association, opened with a wisecrack about some of the best-known purveyors of current U.S. foreign policy.
Noting that he was a hostage in Iran with L. Bruce Laingen, who chaired the committee that selected the award winners, Limbert said to laughter, "While Ambassador Laingen and I are ex-cons, neither of us are neo-cons!"
The two principal citations went to Mines and Ronald L. Schlicher, the former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and a leading political adviser in postwar Iraq. He now leads the State Department's Iraq effort in Washington. Schlicher was credited with "intellectual courage and integrity" for his efforts on the West Bank when Israeli-Palestinian relations were reaching new lows and the Bush administration was bitterly divided over how to respond. At a moment of crisis, he recommended a controversial transfer of Palestinian prisoners under U.S. auspices.
The committee of former diplomats also said Schlicher "thoughtfully challenged" the conventional U.S. thinking on Iraq several times, most notably when he argued for a strategy that included leaders from the country's Sunni minority, largely dismissed after Saddam Hussein fell. He said there was no alternative, despite widespread distaste for many Sunni figures.
Schlicher said he was surprised to receive the award, because he never sent a cable through the dissent channel, which allows diplomats a way to register views they believe are not receiving adequate attention in Washington.
"In my case, it's more a frankness award," Schlicher said.
Laingen said Schlicher and Mines represent the best tradition of the Foreign Service, in which "we signed on for a career that has a larger cause, whoever is the occupant of the White House. Frankness is a form of dissent."
"These people stood up for views that differed from the White House. . . . That's constructive dissent," said Laingen, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a society of about 170 former ambassadors and senior government officials.
Two other awards went to Elizabeth A. Orlando, a diplomatic courier who interceded with managers to win overtime pay for other couriers; and Steven T. Weston, a junior officer in Luxembourg, who stepped in to advise a new ambassador in the absence of senior diplomats.
Mines, 45, had served in El Salvador, Honduras, Somalia and Afghanistan when he found himself working in political-military affairs in Budapest last year. Disappointed by the administration's decision to take charge of the political transition in Iraq, he drafted a cable titled "Let the U.N. Manage the Political Transition in Iraq."
"I wanted to go on record, in a formal channel, where people couldn't say, 'I didn't see that e-mail,' " Mines said. He explained in four detailed pages what he thought experienced U.N. officials could deliver that Americans could not, and why.
"Anyone who has worked with the U.N. agencies knows how slow and even occasionally inept they can be. At times, one wonders if things could be worse. They can," he wrote. "It is slow, but over time does yield results, often producing minor miracles in the process."
Unbowed, Mines recently sent another cable through the dissent channel. This one argues for a stronger commitment to an Iraqi national political gathering similar to Afghanistan's loya jirga, along with a phased, scheduled withdrawal of occupation forces into bases in Iraq, where they would be a less divisive force.
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The Political 'Fahrenheit' Sets Record at Box Office
June 28, 2004
By SHARON WAXMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/movies/28BOX.html
LOS ANGELES, June 27 - Michael Moore's anti-Bush "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest-grossing documentary of all time on its first weekend in release, taking in $21.8 million as it packed theaters across the country this weekend.
The movie, mocking President Bush and criticizing his decision to go to war in Iraq, was No. 1 at the box office, beating out the popular comedies "White Chicks" and "DodgeBall," which were playing on almost triple the number of screens.
Theater owners in large cities and smaller towns reported sellout crowds over the weekend, with numerous theaters declaring house records.
The phenomenal opening represented a decisive victory for Mr. Moore and for the Miramax movie executives Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who released the film independently after it was rejected by Miramax's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, as too political.
"We sold out in Fayetteville, home of Fort Bragg," in North Carolina, Mr. Moore said on Sunday. "We sold out in Army-base towns. We set house records in some of these places. We set single-day records in a number of theaters. We got standing ovations in Greensboro, N.C.
"The biggest news to me this morning is this is a red-state movie," he said, referring to the state whose residents voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. "Republican states are embracing the movie, and it's sold out in Republican strongholds all over the country."
Harvey Weinstein said: "It's beyond anybody's expectations. I'd have to say the sky's the limit on this movie. Who knows what territory we're in."
Mr. Moore's 2002 film, "Bowling for Columbine," had held the record for the highest-earning documentary until this weekend, taking in $21.6 million in its domestic run.
Market research leading up to the weekend had shown that the documentary would rank second or third at the box office after the two mainstream comedies. But "White Chicks" took in $19.6 million for the weekend on 2,726 screens, while "DodgeBall" took in $18.5 million on 3,020. "Fahrenheit 9/11," rated R, was released on 868 screens.
Even rival studio executives recognized that documentary's opening as exceptional. "This picture came from nowhere," said Tom Sherak, a principal at Revolution Studios, which made "White Chicks." "It's what movie viewing has become. If you make it feel like it has urgency, people will have to go."
Attendance for "Fahrenheit 9/11" resembled nothing so much as the other surprise movie event of this year, the fervor ignited by Mel Gibson's movie about the Crucifixion, "The Passion of the Christ." That film has taken in $370 million domestically and sailed to blockbuster status on a wave of media controversy and debate.
Mr. Moore and Mr. Weinstein are masters at creating media hype, and "Fahrenheit 9/11" benefited from the controversy over its release when Disney declined to distribute it in late spring. The film went on to become a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or in May, and was picked up for distribution by the independent distributors Lions Gate and IFC Films, who promised to release the film by the Fourth of July.
The movie depicts the Bush family's business ties to Saudi Arabia and portrays the president as over his head and out of touch; Mr. Moore goes to Flint, Mich., his hometown, to interview a devastated mother who has lost her son in Iraq and questions what he died for.
Mr. Weinstein predicted that "Fahrenheit 9/11" would certainly take in $50 million, and possibly $100 million. He said he expected the film to expand to twice as many theaters next week, and ultimately to be on as many as 2,000 screens, a scale that would redefine the traditional reach of documentary films.
Beyond making box-office history, the movie may be seen by some as a bellwether of political support for the president and the war. The film's weekend success was fodder for the Sunday morning political talk shows, as pundits wondered what the political influence of the film might be, if any, on President Bush's re-election campaign.
Mr. Moore said that the film was a wake-up call to the pundits too. "I can't tell you how many times in the last week I've watched commentators say, `But people who like Bush are going to stay home.' They broke it down that way," he said. "It was far too simplistic."
Mr. Moore said that he first got an inkling that his movie would be more than just an average release when he learned that it had broken the house records on Wednesday at the two Manhattan theaters where it opened.
Then on Friday night he said he went to watch the movie at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, and in the middle of the screening was recognized by audience members. "Suddenly everyone was turning around, and starting to applaud during the movie," Mr. Moore said. "I was going, `Sit down, watch the movie.' I had to get out of there."
He added: "Clearly something has happened here that no one expected. And there aren't words to describe how any of us feel this morning on hearing this news."
--------
Protesters, Police Clash Near NATO Summit
June 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Turkey-NATO-Protest.html
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Hundreds of protesters hurled fire-bombs and stones at police Monday as they tried to reach the conference center where NATO leaders were meeting. Police used tear gas and water cannons to stop the crowd, and dozens of people were injured.
The clashes took place in two Istanbul neighborhoods about two miles from a barricaded zone in the center of the city where the NATO leaders were meeting. The leaders include President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac.
In central Ankara, meanwhile, a security camera exploded in front of a defense ministry building, shattering some windows but causing no injuries, police said. News reports at first said it was concussion grenade but police ruled that out, saying the blast wasn't the result of an attack. Leftist groups have carried out several similar bombings in the runup to the summit.
In the Istanbul protests, 26 police officers and about 20 civilians were injured in the protests, officials said.
In the most violent protest, in Istanbul's Okmeydani neighborhood, about 2,000 demonstrators flipped cars over and hurled firebombs at police. Police fired water cannons and tear gas at the protesters and beat some with clubs. An armored personnel carrier moved through the street where small fires burned.
Another crowd of protesters gathered nearby and threw rocks at police who used pepper spray to disperse the group.
Police said 44 protesters were detained, the Anatolia news agency reported.
--------
Anti-NATO demonstrators clash with police at Istanbul summit
ISTANBUL (AFP)
Jun 28, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040628081206.3nb1sx4r.html
Central Istanbul turned into a battlefield Monday as demonstrators, protesting the NATO summit here, hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at police and security forces responded with water cannons, tear gas and truncheons.
At least 15 people were hurt, including five policemen, Anatolia news agency reported.
As the two-day summit of the 26-member alliance got under way amid tight security, some 2,000 people attempted to force their way through a road block into the so-called "NATO valley" -- a complex of conference halls and hotels enclosed with concrete barriers, where the meeting was being held.
"No passage to NATO," a banner read.
Police fired tear gas at demonstrators, sympathizers of leftist organizations.
An AFP correspondent saw demonstrators, wearing helmets and armed with slings, throwing petrol bombs, stones and sticks at the police.
Protestors appeared to have anticipated the tear gas, some wearing gas masks, others covering their mouths and noses with scarves.
Police attempted to break up the demonstration, using armored vehicles and spraying water.
The protestors overturned at least six cars and shattered their windows.
Truncheon-wielding police officers were seen kicking and hitting demonstrators and taking several of them away.
About 1,500 policemen, in riot gear with plastic shields, were deployed in the area as helicopters overflew the district on the European side of the Bosphorus, the busy strait which bisects Turkey's biggest city.
Passers-by coughed and clutched their stomachs, affected by the large amount of tear gas that security forces fired at the demonstrators.
As police chased demonstrators into smaller streets, the district's main avenue, Istiqlal, was covered with stones, banners bearing the names of small Turkish far-left groups and portraits of South American revolutionary Che Guevara.
A medical worker at the scene said about 10 officers suffered minor injuries, mainly from stones.
Anatolia news agency said "many" demonstrators were taken into police custody.
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