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NUCLEAR
Do cancers cluster around atomic plants?
Radiation Officer Charged With Fraud
Bomb possibly found near Ga.
Work to begin on nuclear recycling plant
Nuclear recycling plant construction starts soon
Iran warns EU against double standards over nuclear issue
Force Would Not Stop Any Iran Nuke Plans-Experts
Iraq Interior Ministry Says Report on Nukes 'Stupid'
Israel's must-have
Israel to Distribute Anti - Radiation Pills
N Korea promised aid to scrap arms plans
'N.K. regime can stay after denuclearization'
US won't be fooled again by North Korea nuclear freeze: Bolton
Arms Control Official Takes Swipe at Clinton's North Korean Policy
POGO: ax NNSA chief
Alaska Interceptor First in Defense System
Russia, U.S. pledge support for securing radioactive waste
Nuclear terror attack 'difficult'
RADIATION STANDARD: Yucca ruling has agency scrambling
Yucca Mountain debate needs dose of reality
Idle at Los Alamos: A Weapons Lab as Its Own Worst Enemy
15 on Investigative Leave at Los Alamos
FirstEnergy to repair faulty device at Ohio nuke
Exelon wants more security at Limerick nuclear plant
MILITARY
Warlord Runs for President of Afghanistan
U.S. Marine force pulls out of Taliban stronghold
MiG Under Fire for Arming Sudan
Bush Inks $5.6 Billion BioShield Legislation
Honesty not best policy as Blair sticks to the Big Lie
Britain Is Planning to Cut Troops by 15,000
Chinese military steps up war preparations: report
France calls on all EU members to help in defence
Europe Warms to Idea of Unified Military Agency
Fearing Big Battle, Residents Flee
Kenya orders citizens out of Iraq
25 Rebels Are Killed in Daylong Firefight in Iraq, U.S. Says
Israelis Violating Settlement Withdrawal Pledge, Group Says
Palestinian Council Rebukes Arafat; Backs Premier's Resignation
Guns Turned on Arafat's Authority
EU: Israel Violating International Law
France ready to help patrol Baltic airspace: minister
Greece Seeks NATO Troops For Olympics
Army: Much higher estimates of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan
U.S. acknowledges receiving Afghan prisoner from vigilantes
Army Inspector General Reports 94 Cases of Prisoner Abuse
Blasts hit Russian special forces
Russia launches Kosmos rocket with military satellite
Ex-G.I., Charged in Kabul, Says He Was on U.S. Mission
Israeli spy case twist
Report: US underestimated war cost
US Underestimated War Costs by $12.3 Billion - GAO
Fewer Army Recruits Lined Up
Running Low on Ammo
Army to Call Up Recruits Earlier
U.S. team concludes Navy pilot died in Gulf war
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court rejects islanders' appeal
MORE drug deals: Drug companies score another $18 billion off US taxpayers
Surveillance Video Shows Hijackers in Dulles Search
Bomb Threat Aboard Turkish Ship off U.S.
3 Americans begin trial in torture case
POLITICS
Congress Approves $417B Defense Bill
War Funds Dwindling, GAO Warns
War Costs Exceed Budget, Watchdog Panel Says
9/11 Commission Offers Critiques on Many Fronts
9/11 Panel Is Said to Sharply Fault Role of Congress
New Links Between Iran, Al Qaeda Cited
Panel to Hear of Halliburton Waste
Plane Carried 13 Bin Ladens
Bush Talks of Peace and Prosperity
The Movie Moore Should Have Made Fahrenheit 9/11 Meets its Match
ENERGY
NYC, Eight States Sue Utilities Over Emissions
OTHER
Nine New Hazardous Waste Sites Added to Superfund List
Wildlife Refuge Keep Out: Danger Unexploded Munitions
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace groups in France, NZ fined for using logo of nuclear firm
Endangered athlete
Groups Challenge Curbs on Protests
Protesters Accept a Stage Distant From G.O.P. Ears
War crimes tribunal to kick off week of resistance
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Do cancers cluster around atomic plants?
Thursday, July 22, 2004
By Trish Riley,
E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-22/s_25229.asp
Raised on fresh fruits and vegetables by his vegetarian mother, Ty-Michael Schmidt never even had a cold or ear infection before the age of five. Then doctors found a tumor in his abdomen. His mother and some scientists suspect the tumor has something to do with the fact that he lives near a nuclear power plant.
"I never knew a child with cancer until my son," said Audra Schmidt of Hobe Sound, Florida. "Now I know nothing but kids with cancer. At least 50 kids in our local area have it."
But there's not a cancer cluster in the neighborhood, according to the St. Lucie County, Florida Health Department, which conducted an in-depth study of the homes of 28 children with cancer.
During the same period, another 12 cases were identified in nearby Martin County. Tests were conducted on water, soil, air, and dust for 561 different chemicals and potential contaminants. The results were negative for all chemicals tested.
"We have yet to find any commonality," said James Moses, director of environmental health for St. Lucie County. "We are dealing with 30 cases from 1981 to 1997. There was no cancer cluster."
The study continues, though, because it did find a marked increase in childhood cancers of the brain and central nervous system: 15 diagnosed in three years, nine within a seven-month period. The report notes that the trend should be monitored and perhaps studied further.
Health officials did not test for Strontium 90 (Sr-90), a radioactive carcinogenic byproduct of nuclear fission. The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), a nonprofit research center in New York City, recently released a study linking increased incidence of childhood cancers to areas near nuclear power plants. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Environmental Health last year.
"Of the 14 areas studied, the two counties closest to the reactors in St. Lucie County had the highest cancer rates," said principal researcher Joseph Mangano, national coordinator of the RPHP. Mangano said the Florida State Cancer Registry lists four cases in St. Lucie County for children under 10 from 1981 to 1983, but this increased to 30 cases from 1996 to 1998. Accounting for a near doubling of population, the incidence still represents a 40 percent increase, compared to an average national increase of 11 percent in childhood cancers.
The RPHP has also been studying radiation levels in baby teeth of children around the country. Dubbed the Tooth Fairy Project, researchers report higher levels of Sr-90 near nuclear power plants, including St. Lucie and Miami-Dade counties. Water samples indicate higher levels of Sr-90 in areas within 20 miles of the nuclear power plants than in more distant locales. The study also found that the levels of Sr-90 in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer were nearly twice as high as levels in children who do not have cancer.
These results are hotly disputed by the multibillion dollar nuclear power industry.
"Their claims are false," said Rachel Scott, spokesperson for Florida Power and Light, which owns the St. Lucie and Miami's Turkey Point nuclear power plants. "Cancer levels are not higher in South Florida. The levels of Strontium 90 are not higher in South Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
The nuclear industry blames any Sr-90 still in the environment on residual effects of bomb testing. But a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report says because of decay, insignificant levels of Sr-90 remain in the soil and atmosphere from the bomb tests that ended 40 years ago.
"This touches a nerve in the nuclear power industry," said Stephen Lester, science director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ). "These plants are releasing small quantities of low-level radiation every day. The amounts may seem insignificant, but when you look at 50 cities, you can see it slowly has an impact." At least two families were sufficiently convinced to file suit against Florida Power and Light because of their children's illnesses, which include one death. "A huge thing at stake here is the state of nuclear power plants," said Nancy LaVista, attorney for the plaintiff families. "If in fact it is giving cancer to our children, we have a right to know and a duty to protect all citizens of Florida."
St. Lucie and Martin County families have joined forces to create a packet detailing their children's illnesses.
"It's not so much for our children, who are already sick," said organizer Debi Santoro, whose four-year-old daughter, Jadyn, contracted cancer when she was six months old. "It's for the children to come. These children are dying and they're not going to die in vain; they're going to help other children."
In another part of the country, New York's Westchester and Suffolk counties and the state of New Jersey have appropriated funds to study areas near nuclear plants where cancer clusters are suspected.
A 2003 report released by the European Committee on Radiation Risk found the risk from low-level radiation to be significant, concluding, "The present cancer epidemic is a consequence of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout in the period 1959 to 1963, and more recent releases of radioisotopes to the environment from the operation of the nuclear fuel cycle will result in significant increases in cancer and other types of ill health."
Meanwhile, U.S. industry officials label the reports "junk science" and push a nuclear energy agenda. The federal government and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are currently promoting legislation to renew interest in nuclear power and encourage the development of more new nuclear power plants for the first time since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
Stephen Lester of CHEJ suggests the power industry adopt his organization's new Be Safe Campaign. He said, "It's based on the fundamental principle of public health that says, 'If it is dangerous or has the potential to harm, proceed with caution.'"
Now 10, Ty-Michael Schmidt spent a year in the hospital undergoing radical experimental treatment for a rare form of cancer. Doctors have never been particularly encouraging about his prognosis, giving him only six months to live when he was diagnosed four years ago, but he is in remission and he's beaten the odds thus far. Doctors say his cancer can be traced to fetal cells, meaning it developed in utero.
For now, RPHP researchers recommend that concerned people try a remarkably simple precaution: Drink only water that comes from a deep, protected source or that has been filtered to remove Sr-90 particles (such as by reverse osmosis).
----
Radiation Officer Charged With Fraud
July 22, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radiation-Officer.html
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- A safety consultant who inspected mammogram and other diagnostic machines at more than 50 hospitals falsified reports and miscalibrated radiation equipment for at least 15 years, federal authorities charged Thursday. No patients were endangered, they said.
Perry M. Beale also allegedly lied to authorities about his qualifications, saying he was certified by the American Board of Radiology and that he had received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in radiologic technology, nuclear medicine and radiological physics. He had no such degree, authorities said.
``We know now that Perry Beale was a fraud,'' U.S. Attorney John L. Brownlee said.
Defense lawyer Richard Millner did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Brownlee said he expects Beale to plead guilty to all 38 counts of mail fraud.
Beale was suspended by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has not worked since then. His inspections affected thousands of mammograms, X-rays and other procedures in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., investigators said.
Dr. Charles Finder, the associate director of the Food and Drug Administration's Division of Mammography Quality and Radiation Programs, characterized Beale as one faulty inspector in a system that included numerous checks.
``FDA believes that, based on current information, Mr. Beale's activities posed no health risk to mammography patients,'' Finder said. ``Therefore these patients do not need to take any action as a result.''
Mammogram equipment manufacturers and installers, for example, perform their own checks that keep radiation emitted by mammograms in the ``proper ballpark,'' he said.
NRC spokesman Roger D. Hannah said it is unlikely anyone received lethal doses of radiation. Like the mammography machines, radiation equipment is operated with its own system of radiation checks.
----
Bomb possibly found near Ga.
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS,
Hilton Head Island Packet
http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/3700388p-3306504c.html
WASSAW ISLAND, Ga. -- A group says it might have discovered a missing hydrogen bomb that the Air Force accidentally dropped off the Georgia coast more than 45 years ago.
Derek Duke, a retired Air Force colonel, and others used equipment that detects radiation and large metal objects Tuesday to scour an area the size of a football field in Wassaw Sound, a shallow area near Tybee Beach that is about 12 miles from Hilton Head Island.
Duke said that radiation levels were seven to 10 times greater than normal in one spot. The group then detected a massive underwater object, he said.
"It might be nothing," Duke said. "Our big question now is, 'What do we do next?' "
Billy Mullins, associate director of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency, said the bomb is best left alone.
The bomb probably is entombed in 20 feet of mud, he said.
"If you want to determine for sure that it was the (nuclear bomb), you would have to dig it up with a big dredging type of operation," Mullins said.
He said that presents two risks: The dredge could hit the bomb and detonate the high explosives, threatening the salvage crew, and an explosion might blow a hole in a clay layer protecting an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Savannah.
"We really don't think it's in the best interest in the safety of Savannah to be digging around there when it's perfectly safe where it is," Mullins said.
The bomb contains uranium and 400 pounds of explosives, but doesn't have a plutonium capsule, Mullins said. With no capsule, the bomb is incapable of creating a nuclear explosion.
Bill Mottel, former head of the Savannah River Site and now a member of Hilton Head's Town Council, said people should not worry about salvage operations detonating a nuclear explosion. Although Mottel was not involved in operations involving the bomb, he said he was aware when the bomb was lost and later briefed more thoroughly as plant manager.
"It's totally safe, based on my judgment and experience," Mottel said. "It's not something you can kick and make it go 'boom.' "
Duke and others remain concerned that the plutonium capsule is in the bomb.
"If this is indeed the spot where the bomb is, the Air Force needs to come in and come clean," Duke said.
Tom Peeples, Hilton Head's mayor, said he hadn't heard the bomb may have been found. He said Wednesday he did not have enough information to comment on the possibility of removing it.
The crew of a B-47 accidentally dropped the 7,600-pound H-bomb in 1958 after it collided with another jet fighter. The military searched for the bomb for three months.
Duke said he plans to take the results of the search to labs for analysis. He is considering whether to hand over his findings to the Air Force or Georgia environmental officials.
-------- depleted uranium
Work to begin on nuclear recycling plant
Energy department: Piketon facility to operate by 2007
Thursday, July 22, 2004
(AP)
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/news/stories/20040722/localnews/896253.html
Fast fact
Piketon's plant is expected to handle about 20,931 cylinders, or 260,100 tons, of depleted uranium over the next 18 years.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Construction plans have been approved and work should begin soon on plants in Ohio and Kentucky that will recycle low-level nuclear waste into a more stable form, the U.S. Energy Department announced this week.
The Ohio plant will be built at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon and be operational by 2007. A sister facility will be constructed at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.
Piketon's plant is expected to handle about 20,931 cylinders, or 260,100 tons, of depleted uranium over the next 18 years. About 38,000 cylinders will be processed in Kentucky.
The Ohio plant, which once enriched uranium for weaponry and later for use in nuclear fuel, was closed in 2001 when operations were consolidated to Paducah. A $1.5 billion facility to enrich uranium using a new technology is expected to be completed at Piketon by 2010.
The recycling plant being built at Piketon will convert spent uranium hexafluoride from the plant's former enrichment operations, which currently is being stored in thousands of cylinders sitting in outdoor yards, into more stable material for storage, use or disposal.
It also will process cylinders of nuclear waste from the Energy Department's facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"We've been managing them safely and would continue to, but now there will be a permanent solution," said Laura Schachter, an Energy Department spokeswoman.
The new factory is expected to generate about 190 construction jobs and employ 150 full-time workers once it goes online, said Rep. Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Republican whose district includes the plant. Groundbreaking is scheduled for Wednesday.
Uranium Disposition Services, based in Oak Ridge, has a $558 million contract to build both the plants and run them for at least five years, after which UDS will bid for continued work.
The groundbreaking comes after four years of delays. Congress passed a measure in the late summer of 2002 giving the Department of Energy a short window of time to award a contract for the plant and start construction by July 31, 2004.
----
Nuclear recycling plant construction starts soon
Associated Press,
Thursday, July 22, 2004
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/07/22/loc_ohpiketon.html
WASHINGTON - Construction plans have been approved and work should begin soon on plants in Ohio and Kentucky that will recycle low-level nuclear waste into a more stable form, the U.S. Energy Department announced this week.
The Ohio plant will be built at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon and be operational by 2007. A sister facility will be constructed at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky.
Piketon's plant is expected to handle about 20,931 cylinders, or 260,100 tons, of depleted uranium over the next 18 years. About 38,000 cylinders will be processed in Kentucky.
The Ohio plant, which once enriched uranium for weaponry and later for use in nuclear fuel, was closed in 2001 when operations were consolidated to Paducah.
A $1.5 billion facility to enrich uranium using a new technology is expected to be completed at Piketon by 2010.
The recycling plant being built at Piketon will convert spent uranium hexafluoride from the plant's former enrichment operations, which is being stored in thousands of cylinders sitting in outdoor yards, into more stable material for storage, use or disposal.
It also will process cylinders of nuclear waste from the Energy Department's facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"We've been managing them safely and would continue to, but now there will be a permanent solution," said Laura Schachter, an Energy Department spokeswoman.
The new factory is expected to generate about 190 construction jobs and employ 150 full-time workers once it goes on line, said Rep. Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Republican whose district includes the plant.
Uranium Disposition Services, based in Oak Ridge, has a $558 million contract to build both the plants and run them for at least five years, after which UDS will bid for continued work.
-------- iran
Iran warns EU against double standards over nuclear issue
TEHRAN (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722084724.wsmteh05.html
Iran warned the European Union on Thursday to refrain from using "double standards" in its dealings with the Islamic republic over its nuclear activities, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi accused the EU of failing to live up to undertakings in a landmark deal with Iran in October which saw Tehran agree to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But Iran has accused the Europeans of damaging the deal by sponsoring a critical resolution adopted last month by the IAEA, which deplored a lack of cooperation by Tehran.
"If the EU is interested in extensive relations with the Islamic republic of Iran as a key player in the establishment of peace and security in the region, it should refrain from double standards and stand firmly committed to its undertakings," Kharazi said after holding talks in Cairo with EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana.
"We made it clear that the EU did not respect its undertakings consistent with the Tehran Declaration signed on October 21, 2003 or it has adopted double standard toward its commitment," he said without elaborating.
However, Kharazi added: "Despite the ups and downs in Iran-EU relations, the two sides are keen on developing mutual ties."
The clerical regime in Tehran is accused by the United States of using an atomic energy programme as a cover for top secret weapons development, a charge Iran denies.
Under the October deal with Europe's "Big Three" of Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment, allow tougher inspections and file a comprehensive declaration of its nuclear activities.
But since then, IAEA experts have discovering omissions in Iran's reporting, inspection visits have been delayed and the regime has backing away from a pledge to suspend all enrichment-related activities.
Iran's top national security body has said that the next round of talks with Britain, France and Germany on the nuclear issue would resume later this month.
----
Force Would Not Stop Any Iran Nuke Plans-Experts
Thu Jul 22, 2004
Reuters,
By Louis Charbonneau
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040722/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_2
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - A military strike on Iranian atomic facilities would delay but not destroy the development of any nuclear weapons program, diplomats and analysts said.
"Military action is not the answer," said a senior international diplomat involved in the investigation of Iran's nuclear plans.
"It would only push them underground, like in Iraq," said the diplomat, who declined to be named.
Israel has hinted it could use airstrikes to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which it and Washington believe are part of an attempt to acquire atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear power program.
But Iran denies the charge and Iranian Defense Minister Ali Skhamkhani said his country would respond to a military attack "with everything in our power."
Convinced that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, Israel bombed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981. But instead of stopping his quest for a bomb, Saddam went underground and worked in secret until the program was uncovered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 1991.
Several analysts and diplomats said Iran had learned from Iraq's mistakes and might be hiding nuclear sites from U.N. inspectors, who have been probing Tehran's atomic program for nearly two years to verify that it is peaceful as Iran insists.
"I think it's impossible to take out Iran's nuclear weapons program with military strikes," a defense industry expert, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "They can recuperate."
But Gary Samore, director of studies at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and a former adviser to former President Clinton, said military action could significantly delay any Iranian atomic weapons program.
"Military action could delay the development of nuclear weapons, assuming they know the right sites. It could buy them a considerable amount of time," Samore said. "At least part of Iran's clandestine program is now public. The question is whether there are parts we don't know about yet."
CALLS FOR SANCTIONS
The United States has not threatened Iran with military action.
For over a year, Washington has tried unsuccessfully to push the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose painful economic sanctions, for hiding its uranium-enrichment program for nearly two decades.
U.S. officials say this was a blatant violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but its call for reporting Iran to the Security Council has met with strong opposition from the European Union's three biggest states.
Israel Elad Altman, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya, Israel, said the French, German and British "carrot and stick" approach had failed and sanctions were needed. The European trio promised Iran peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for suspending its uranium enrichment.
Iran pledged in October to fully suspend the program but recently said it would resume the manufacture, assembly and testing of enrichment centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium for weapons.
"We must impose sanctions that really hurt," Altman said. "Iran needs sanctions that make them pay a price. If sanctions don't work, then they'll have to use military strikes. They don't need to hit every facility. It would just be symbolic."
Iran warned that military action would mean the end of cooperation with the IAEA. The agency has uncovered many potentially weapons-related activities in Iran, but no clear proof that Washington is right about Iran -- no "smoking gun."
"If military action is taken against Iran, it means that the (IAEA) had been put in charge of intelligence gathering for the parties that wanted to launch a military attack against Iran," Defense Minister Skhamkhani said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraq Interior Ministry Says Report on Nukes 'Stupid'
REUTERS IRAQ:
July 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26164/story.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the Iraqi newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.
Asked by Reuters about the report, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry said: "It's stupid."
The report, picked up the United Press International news agency, sent the U.S. dollar higher against other major currencies on the foreign exchanges.
Al-Sabah opened last year with backing from the former U.S.-led administration in Iraq.
The United States and Britain launched last year's invasion of Iraq over accusations that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. But no stockpiles of banned weapons have been found.
-------- israel
Israel's must-have
July 22, 2004
By Louis Rene Beres,
Washington Times Editorial
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040721-081701-9661r.htm
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei recently visited Israel, trying to convince Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to scrap his country's presumed nuclear arsenal as part of a regional peace agreement.
In the best of all possible worlds, such a proposal might be reasonable. But in the chronically unstable Middle East - where several Islamist states remain openly genocidal toward Israel and where Iranian nuclearization has scarcely been sanctioned - it is foolhardy. No country should ever be asked to be complicit in its own annihilation, and such complicity would be the certain result of any proposed IAEA "peace" plan.
Israel holds nuclear weapons only to prevent its catastrophic destruction by enemy-state aggression. It is inconceivable that Israel ever would resort to such weapons as an initial move of war. Certain Arab states or Iran, however, might at some future point consider nuclear attacks upon Israel with plainly genocidal intent.
What does Israel have to fear? Following the first authoritative report by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, the anticipated physical and biological effects could involve temperature changes; contamination of food and water by radionuclides; disease epidemics in crops, domesticated animals and humans due to ionizing radiation; shortening of growing seasons; irreversible injuries to aquatic species; widespread and long-term cancers due to inhalation of plutonium particles; radiation-induced developmental anomalies in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in incidence of skin cancers; and an increasing incidence of genetic disease.
Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of a nuclear attack upon Israel. These problems would extend far beyond the consequences of prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns would occur in the eyes of persons far from the explosions. Israelis would be crushed by collapsing buildings and torn to shreds by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging firestorms. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiations; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations; and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.
After an Arab and/or Iranian nuclear attack, even a "small" one, those few medical facilities that might still exist in Israel would be taxed well beyond capacity. Water supplies would become altogether unusable. Housingandsheltercouldbe unavailable for hundreds of thousands - perhaps even millions - of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages would be critical and long term.
Israel's complex network of exchange systems would be shattered. Virtually everyone would be deprived of the most basic means of livelihood. Emergency police and fire services would be decimated. All systems dependent upon electrical power could stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would be absolutely no therapeutic services.
Normal human society would cease. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry would augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They would also expect premature death, impairment of vision and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable.
Many balanced relationships in nature would be upset by the extensive fallout. Israelis who survive the nuclear attack would have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes would spread from the radiation-damaged areas in which they arose.
Insects are generally more resistant to radiation than humans. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of unburied corpses, uncontrolled waste and untreated sewage, would generate tens of trillions of flies and mosquitoes. Breeding in the dead bodies, these insects would make it impossible to control typhus, malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis.
Throughout Israel, the largest health threat would be posed by tens or even hundreds of thousands of rotting human corpses.
This is only the tip of the iceberg; indeed, it is a vast understatement of what could be expected. Interactions between individual effects of nuclear weapons would make matters far worse. It follows that Israel must never accede to IAEA proposals for regional denuclearization. Such proposals would render Israel unable to deter aggression, while failing utterly to prevent other states in the area from going nuclear. The likely final result, for Israel, would be to suffer genuinely existential harms.
Louis Rene Beres is a professor of international law at Purdue University. He chairs Project Daniel, a small high-level group advising Israel's prime minister on nuclear issues.
----
Israel to Distribute Anti - Radiation Pills
July 22, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Radiation-Pills.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Soldiers will begin distributing radiation sickness pills in cities near Israel's two nuclear reactors next month, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz informed the Cabinet of the project at a session on Sunday, the ministry said.
Distribution of the pills is to begin Aug. 8 in Dimona and Yavne, according to a report in Bamahane, a weekly publication for soldiers.
The pills are an iodine compound that blocks absorption of radioactive material by shutting down the thyroid gland. Bamahane reported that Israel has had the pills for decades, but decided to distribute them now to cut down on reaction time in case of a nuclear accident or attack.
The Maariv daily quoted unnamed security sources as saying that the decision does not indicate a change in the level of risk of a radiation incident.
In June, Israel announced it would collect the gas masks handed out to civilians over the past decade as protection against a possible chemical or biological attack from Iraq. The military said it decided to collect the masks because the threat from Iraq had been reduced after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.
In 1991, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles with conventional warheads at Israel.
-------- korea
N Korea promised aid to scrap arms plans
By Andrew Ward in Seoul
July 22 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373896178
Japan and South Korea have promised economic aid to North Korea if the communist state scraps its nuclear weapons programme. The pledge came yesterday as the US urged Pyongyang to follow Libya down the path to disarmament.
Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, and Roh Moo-hyun, president of South Korea, made the promise at a summit aimed at accelerating efforts to end the 20-month-old crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
"If the North Korean nuclear problem is resolved, we made clear that South Korea and Japan will co-operate," Mr Roh, flanked by Mr Koizumi, told a news conference on the Korean resort island of Jeju.
"My country will carry out detailed and comprehensive economic co-operation projects with the North, and Japan will actively pursue diplomatic relations and economic co-operation with the North." Offers of concessions from Tokyo and Seoul are not new but Mr Roh's comments reinforced the message that Pyongyang would be rewarded by the international community for scrapping its nuclear facilities.
John Bolton, US undersecretary of state for arms control, said in Seoul yesterday that Libya's decision last year to abandon its nuclear programme was a blueprint for how North Korea could improve its relations with the outside world. "The case of Libya has shown concretely the benefits that can flow when leaders of isolated regimes make the strategic choice to invest in their country's future and not in weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Mr Bolton urged Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, to consult his Libyan counterpart, Colonel Muammer Gadaffi, about Tripoli's decision. He said Libya was already benefiting from the lifting of some US sanctions, saying that hotels in Tripoli were now "teeming with western businessmen".
Mr Bolton is considered one of the most hawkish officials in President George W. Bush's administration but his comments yesterday lacked his usual bellicose criticism of the North Korean regime.
The US is widely viewed as having softened its policy towards North Korea in recent months as the turmoil in Iraq has reduced Washington's appetite for confrontation. Last month, the US offered a fresh package of political and economic incentives for Pyongyang to disarm. Mr Bolton said North Korea should not underestimate US resolve to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and ruled out any outcome other than the complete and verifiable dismantlement of both Pyongyang's plutonium-based nuclear facilities and its suspected uranium enrichment programme. "We will not be fooled again," he said, referring to North Korea's violation of its 1994 promise to stop developing nuclear bombs.
North Korea has ruled out a Libyan-style settlement, saying it does not trust Washington. A fourth round of talks on the crisis - involving the US, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas - is planned for September in Beijing. The previous three meetings have made little progress towards resolving the stand off.
----
'N.K. regime can stay after denuclearization'
By Choi Soung-ah (bluelle@heraldm.com)
2004.07.22
Korea Herald
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/07/22/200407220020.asp
A "strategic decision" by North Korea to give up its nuclear program would allow the Kim Jong-il regime to remain in power, a senior Washington official here said yesterday.
John Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security of the U.S. State Department, said North Korea should learn from Libya, stressing that taking a similar path would bring about security for the Kim regime.
"It is the case that we have tried to use the example of Libya to show that it is possible for a government to make a strategic decision that it is better off abandoning the search for weapons of mass destruction than continuing to pursue them," Bolton said in a news conference in Seoul.
John Bolton "And I think one of the lessons of Libya is that the regime can make the strategic calculation that it wants to give up weapons of mass destruction and remain in power. "We think this is important to show that one can give up weapons of mass destruction in a context where the regime that makes that decision stays in power."
If North Korea should decide at the "strategic level" to abandon its pursuit of WMD, Bolton also highlighted the possibilities that Pyongyang's "fundamental change" could lead to having a "fundamentally changed relationship" with Washington.
"This is a real-world example of how a changed behavior on the part of the rogue state seeking weapons of mass destruction can result in changed behavior by others," he said.
But Bolton added that one piece of evidence of the Stalinist state's lack of readiness to make any decision was that it continued to deny having a uranium enrichment program in addition to its known plutonium-based nuclear program.
Bolton's trip this time is seen to be aimed at promoting the Bush administration's Libya Process for its Asian allies to take part in coaxing North Korea to follow suit, as suggested by Washington in the third round of the six-nation disarmament talks in Beijing last month.
Washington lifted some restrictions on its commerce with Libya this year in return for giving up its WMD programs, and the North African country gained political and economic rewards from the international community as well. Most sanctions against Libya were lifted by April and formal diplomatic relations were established earlier this month between the United States and Libya.
Earlier in the day, Bolton - representing the right wing of the United States' foreign policy establishment and a known hard-liner on the communist country - said Washington did not want to wait until November to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff and was seeking progress now.
"The seriousness of the more detailed U.S. proposal presented by the United States at the last round of six-party talks should put to rest any reservations that our side is in a holding pattern until the next U.S. presidential election," Bolton said during a speech at Yonsei University on the topic "Lessons from Libya and North Korea's Strategic Choice."
----
US won't be fooled again by North Korea nuclear freeze: Bolton
July 22, 2004
Hi Pakistan
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en69894&F_catID=&f_type=source
SEOUL: Top US arms control official John Bolton said on Wednesday Washington would not be "fooled again" by North Korea's offer of a nuclear freeze, saying Pyongyang should follow the Libyan model and unconditionally scrap its nuclear weapons drive.
Bolton said that 10 years ago North Korea pledged a nuclear freeze under the 1994 Agreed Framework before breaking its word and deciding to "flip a switch and unfreeze its programs."
"We have a saying: 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.' We will not be fooled again," said Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security.
Last month at six-party talks on the nuclear standoff in Beijing, Pyongyang demanded rewards including a non-aggression pledge in return for a freeze which its says would be a first step in a process leading to the dismantling of its nuclear facilities.
Bolton spoke ahead of a summit meeting Wednesday between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun in the southern South Korean island of Jeju at which the two leaders focused on efforts to end to the 21-month-old nuclear standoff.
Speaking to university students here, Bolton, who arrived Monday for talks with senior South Korean officials and leaves Thursday for Japan, ruled out a reward to North Korea for a freeze and said the Stalinist state should follow the Libya model.
"Our experience with Libya shows that a freeze is unnecessary, and moreover, would simply delay the time when the people of North Korea could reap the benefits of rejoining the international community," said Bolton.
North Korea has accused the United States of demanding disarmament as a prelude to overthrowing the Pyongyang regime. But at later press conference Bolton said the Libya case proved the Pyongyang leadership could survive without nuclear weapons.
"This is important to show that one can give up weapons of mass destruction in a context where the regime, as a next-step decision, stays in power," he said.
Libya agreed in December to dismantle the country's nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs and renounce the pursuit of such weapons. In return, Washington lifted most sanctions against Libya in April.
Though Washington appeared to soften its stand during six-party talks in Beijing last month, Bolton said no specific rewards would be offered to North Korea for complying with US demands for the complete dismantling of all nuclear programs.
"The principle, though of not rewarding outlaw regimes merely for coming back into compliance with their past obligations is an important one for the United States to uphold. It is not only anathema to our values - it is a bad policy," he said.
He said the experience of Libya should make it clear to North Korea that it stood to gain by agreeing to scrap its nuclear programs.
The stand-off over North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating the 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing program.
Three rounds of six-way nuclear talks bringing together the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have been held in Beijing in an effort to resolve the impasse with a fourth round scheduled for September.
Roh told journalists following his 90-minute summit with Koizumi in Jeju, an island of South Korea's southern coast, that he expected rapid progress at the September talks.
"I hopefully expect rapid progress to be made at the next round of six-way talks in September," he said.
"We two leaders appreciate that the negotiations aimed at resolving the nuclear issue enter a stage for substantial negotiations with concrete proposals put forward at the third round of six-way talks."
However Bolton said it was unclear whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il had made the strategic decision to give up his nuclear weapons drive and said a resolution of the standoff was impossible unless North Korea acknowledged running a uranium program.
"So there is no misunderstanding - North Korea's continue denial of its uranium enrichment program precludes a solution to this problem," he said.
----
Arms Control Official Takes Swipe at Clinton's North Korean Policy
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
July 22, 2004
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C200407%5CFOR20040722b.html
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - The Bush administration will not repeat its predecessor's mistake of rewarding North Korea in return for temporarily freezing a nuclear weapons program, according to Washington's top arms control official.
In a speech in Seoul Wednesday, Undersecretary of State John Bolton criticized the Agreed Framework, the 1994 agreement between the Clinton administration and Pyongyang aimed at curbing Kim Jong-il's nuclear ambitions.
Under the agreement -- negotiated after former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang on an unofficial mission -- North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium-based nuclear program in return for U.S. fuel aid and the provision by the U.S. and its allies of alternative, civilian reactors for power supply purposes.
After President Bush took office, critics accused him of jeopardizing the finely-balanced deal by adopting a hostile policy toward the Stalinist state, in particular by labeling North Korea part of an "axis of evil" in his Jan. 2002 State of the Union address.
But it later emerged that Pyongyang had begun cheating even before Bush was elected. In Oct. 2002, the State Department challenged North Korea with evidence of a covert uranium-enrichment program and said the North Koreans admitted to it.
The uranium project violated the Agreed Framework, which quickly began to unravel.
North Korea demanded new bilateral negotiations to resolve the deepening crisis, but Washington refused, holding out instead for a multilateral formula that eventually took the shape of six-party talks hosted by Beijing.
"Some have accused the Bush administration of ignoring the North Korean nuclear issue, allowing it to fester, given our refusal to engage in direct, bilateral negotiations," Bolton said in his address at Yonsei University.
"This criticism is off the mark. The U.S. government tried the bilateral route and it failed -- it was called the Agreed Framework of 1994.
"Contrary to what critics of the Bush administration suggest, the Agreed Framework did not resolve the issue, it simply postponed it -- and ultimately made it worse," Bolton said.
"We tested Kim Jong-il's intentions when we rewarded him with carrots at the time and our reward was that he temporarily froze one nuclear weapons program based on plutonium, but started another based on uranium enrichment in secret. Eight years later, he was able to almost quite literally flip a switch to unfreeze and restart his plutonium program."
Bolton said the U.S. would "not be fooled again," but would pursue a lasting and meaningful solution to the crisis.
North Korea wants economic and diplomatic rewards in return for, first, a freeze, and later, the dismantling of its plutonium facilities. It denies the existence of a uranium-based program.
But Bolton reiterated Washington's principle of "not rewarding outlaw regimes merely for coming back into compliance with their past obligations."
Instead, he urged Pyongyang to follow the example set by Libya.
Muammar Gadaffi agreed late last year to scrap his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs unconditionally and has done so. In return, Washington scrapped some sanctions against Tripoli earlier this year and has moved toward restoring full diplomatic ties.
The Libyan developments should make it clear to North Korea that it would benefit from scrapping its nuclear programs, Bolton said.
"Our experience with Libya shows that a freeze is unnecessary, and moreover, would simply delay the time when the people of North Korea could reap the benefits of rejoining the international community."
'US not in holding pattern'
Three rounds of six-way nuclear talks involving the U.S., North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have been held in Beijing in an effort to end the 21-month standoff. A fourth meeting is scheduled for September.
During the third round, last month, U.S. representatives put forward a comprehensive proposal making gains for North Korea conditional on a permanent scrapping of all nuclear programs.
The plan gives North Korea three months to freeze its nuclear facilities as a step toward fully dismantling them. In return, it would receive -- provisionally -- a security guarantee from the U.S. and the fuel aid from other partners. Those benefits would become permanent once the programs were dismantled.
North Korea has yet to respond formally.
Some critics of the U.S. approach have suggested that Washington favors putting off movement on resolving the crisis until after November, but Bolton denied that was the case.
The "seriousness" of the U.S. proposal put forward at the last six-way talks "should put to rest any reservations that our side is in a holding pattern until the next U.S. presidential election," he said. Many experts suspect that it is Kim who may be playing for time, holding out for after the U.S. election in the hopes of a Democratic victory.
"The flaw with this approach ... is that the six-party talks are a fragile diplomatic instrument and a failure to reach a breakthrough at the upcoming September round could lead to their collapse altogether," cautioned analyst Donald G. Gross in a new publication by the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Pacific Forum.
"Waiting until November is like playing Russian roulette," warned Pacific Forum president Ralph Cossa, writing in the same journal.
"There is no guarantee that a Kerry administration, if there was to be one, would be any more flexible on this point, or that Congress would allow it to be."
----
POGO: ax NNSA chief
By: Paul Parson paul.parson@oakridger.com
Oak Ridger Staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/072204/new_20040722040.shtml
A Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group is calling for the resignation of the top official at the National Nuclear Security Administration - the agency in charge of managing America's weapons complex for the Department of Energy.
On Wednesday, the Project on Government Oversight said Linton Brooks "has failed in his role as chief overseer of security in the Department of Energy, as evidenced by the many security lapses we have witnessed at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory."
Recent problems at the weapons lab include the disappearance of two electronic data storage devices and a tip that classified information had been sent over the lab's unclassified e-mail system several times in recent months.
POGO also cited other security breaches at Los Alamos during Brooks' watch, including the loss of two vials of plutonium last year.
Locally, the Y-12 National Security Complex falls under the purview of the NNSA. The Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant also faced a security problem last year when somewhere between 200 to 250 keys turned up missing from there.
-------- missile defense
Alaska Interceptor First in Defense System
Thu Jul 22, 2004
By RACHEL D'ORO,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&u=/ap/20040723/ap_on_re_us/missile_defense_alaska_2&printer=1
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A ground-based missile interceptor was installed Thursday in Alaska's Interior - the first component of a national defense system designed to shoot down enemy missiles.
Crews at Fort Greely lowered the 55-foot-long, three-stage interceptor into one of six silos built behind a double perimeter fence reinforced by heavy barbed wire.
"We're coming to the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks," said Major Gen. John Holly, who heads the ground-based missile defense program for the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Missile Defense Agency.
Five additional interceptors will be installed at the 700-acre complex - another four at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California - by the end of the year. Ten more will be installed at Fort Greely by late 2005, launching the Bush administration's multibillion dollar system.
Missile defense is an essential part of President Bush (news - web sites)'s national security policy. It hasn't been as politically divisive as President Reagan's more elaborate "Star Wars" program, but Democrats complain the administration is spending billions of dollars to deploy interceptors without conducting adequate tests to see if they will even work.
According to Missile Defense Agency officials, the interceptors will be linked to a vast network of satellites, radars, computers and command centers. In an attack, satellites would alert the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, triggering a response by interceptors topped with optical sensors while a complex radar system would track incoming enemy missiles.
As illustrated by a video simulation produced by the agency, the interceptor would zero in on the warhead more than 100 miles over the Pacific Ocean, destroying it at speeds faster than 15,000 mph.
Critics disagree.
The interceptors have not proven their reliability, hitting targets only five times in eight tests, said Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon. He said they failed even when using advanced information "an enemy would never give us," including when they were launched.
"It's not something you want to depend on in real battle," said Coyle, now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. "It's also misleading to say we don't have any defense now. If troops in North Korea (news - web sites) saw that country building a missile, they would blow it up on the ground. They would never wait to see if it was launched."
Congress has appropriated more than $10 billion for the missile defense system for the next fiscal year, and Missile Defense Agency estimates for 2004-2009 run as high as $53 billion.
A group of independent economists estimates the entire system could cost as much as $1.2 trillion, based on government estimates of individual components - many of which have yet to be developed or tested, Coyle said.
"It's like building a house without a floor plan," he said.
Defense agency officials said the interceptor has proven increasingly reliable, passing four of the last five tests. More testing is expected this summer with target launches from Alaska's rocket range in Kodiak.
"The interceptor being installed today has undergone rigorous tests and checkout activities," Holly said.
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites), said the system is better than none. "The fact is, we're vulnerable," he said. "It's not intended to be all the answer. Nobody's selling it like that."
-------- russia
Russia, U.S. pledge support for securing radioactive waste sites in Kyrgyzstan
Thursday, July 22, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-22/s_26089.asp
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Russia and the United States have pledged US$560,000 to secure radioactive waste sites that Kyrgyzstan inherited from the Soviet nuclear industry, an official said Wednesday.
Russia's Nuclear Energy Agency pledged US$160,000 and the U.S. State Department will give $400,000 for securing and rehabilitating uranium waste sites in Kaji-Say, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of the capital Bishkek, said Kyrgyz Emergencies Ministry spokesman Emil Akmatov.
The waste sites contain 170,000 cubic meters (6,002,824 cubic feet) of radioactive uranium waste, Akmatov said.
The Russians will carry out an assessment, and the State Department will finance work to secure the waste sites and move waste to safer areas.
Akmatov said the project, which will start in August, still won't address all the issues related to the waste sites at Kaji-Say.
In June, the World Bank approved a $8.9 million grant to rehabilitate radioactive waste sites in southern Kyrgyzstan that threaten to contaminate the water resources of the Fergana Valley, the most densely populated region of Central Asia that is shared by Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear terror attack 'difficult'
BBC
Thursday, 22 July, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3915639.stm
An accurate terrorist attack on a UK nuclear plant would be extremely difficult to carry out, according to a parliamentary report.
The report highlighted the difficulty in targeting the most sensitive buildings in a nuclear facility.
It concluded that a successful attack would be "highly unlikely" to kill large numbers of people immediately, but could cause widespread cancers.
The report is for MPs and peers, and does not provide recommendations.
Published by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, the report is a compilation of information already in the public domain.
Nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand some forms of terrorist attack, such as large aircraft impact, but existing safety and security regimes provide some defence Assessing the Risk of Terrorist Attacks on Nuclear Facilities
Warning on human rights
It stated: "There is sufficient information in the public domain to identify possible ways terrorists might bring about a release of radioactive material from a nuclear facility.
"However, this information is not sufficient to draw conclusions on the likelihood of a successful attack, or the size and nature of any release."
It added that "after September 11 2001, additional protection measures have been put in place to increase security and to strengthen emergency planning at and around nuclear facilities."
Much information on security at British plants is classified to prevent it from aiding any terrorists planning an attack, the report said.
Safety features built into nuclear plants in the UK made a deliberate release of radioactive material by terrorists who forced their way into the control room unlikely, even if they were able to get past security guards and barriers.
"A ground-based attack ... would need to be highly co-ordinated and would require detailed site-specific knowledge of plant operations and design," the report said.
A wide range of potential terror threats to nuclear facilities, from 11 September-style suicide aircraft attack to the deliberate release of radioactive material, is included in the report, entitled Assessing the Risk of Terrorist Attacks on Nuclear Facilities.
Worst-case scenario
The possibility of detonating a hijacked fuel tanker alongside a coastal plant, like Sellafield in Cumbria, was also considered.
It also examined the potential danger if material released in an attack on reactor sites in northern France could drift across the Channel to the UK or that terrorists could target shipments of nuclear material.
In a worst-case scenario, the report said aircraft impact could cause "significant release of radioactive material with effects over a wide area".
"Nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand some forms of terrorist attack, such as large aircraft impact, but existing safety and security regimes provide some defence."
Expert analysis showed the difficulty of accurately targeting the most sensitive buildings in a nuclear facility, the report said.
Environmental concerns
While there are overseas studies about potential nuclear breaches, the Post report warned that international comparisons could be misleading, as nuclear plant designs vary from country to country.
For environmental group Greenpeace, the report was evidence that nuclear power plants should be shut down.
"This report highlights the risks of terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants and underlines why the government should close these installations as soon as possible," said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley.
"Existing nuclear facilities are not designed to withstand terrorist attacks and it is not possible to make new plants attack-proof either."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
RADIATION STANDARD: Yucca ruling has agency scrambling
NRC seeks recommendation on whether to accept nuclear waste dump application
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Jul-22-Thu-2004/news/24367426.html
Regulators are uncertain what to do in the wake of a court decision that has greatly complicated the Yucca Mountain Project.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked its general counsel to study whether the agency can or should accept an application for a Nevada nuclear waste repository that is beset with uncertainties after judges voided a radiation health standard this month, chairman Nils Diaz said.
"We need to get to a decision to accept the application or not," Diaz said after a scheduled commission meeting. "We are not at that point."
The new clouds over the Yucca program increase the likelihood that a repository will be delayed years beyond a 2010 target opening, NRC commissioner Edward McGaffigan added.
"From the date on which clarity emerges, that puts it probably at 10 years," he said. "In the best case you could shave a year or two."
The NRC, along with the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, is sorting out a host of legal, technical and procedural questions raised by the July 9 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
A three-judge panel threw out a 10,000-year radiation protection standard for the repository, saying its authors at the EPA disregarded a 1995 National Academy of Sciences study that suggested protective standards should be set for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years longer.
Department of Energy officials said they still plan to file a license application later this year. They expect the NRC will begin a formal review while the court ruling is appealed, or as the EPA or Congress forge new standards.
The judges withheld their ruling on the radiation standard until after appeals requests are decided. While there is an expectation the ruling will be appealed within the 45 days allowed, none has been announced yet. Spokesmen for the EPA and for the Energy Department did not return calls on Wednesday.
The government activity is being monitored closely by officials in Nevada, who believe the court delivered a potential knockout blow by voiding part of the repository's radiation protections.
The state is prepared to take the government to court if repository licensing goes forward, said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
"Our view is that (the NRC) cannot accept an application." Loux said. "It seems to me it is time for the commission on their own to take a stand on the issue and stop worrying about what the industry says and doesn't say."
McGaffigan said the nuclear industry is proposing the NRC docket the license application and work on segments that do not involve long-term radiation until the 10,000-year standard is settled.
In addition to the web of tunnels where 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste will be stored, the Yucca facility will consist of an above-ground complex where the nuclear material will be placed in containers for disposal.
"You could be working theoretically on the easier parts first, getting some of the work out of the way, but you would still be waiting for the (radiation) standard to do the hard stuff," said McGaffigan, who stressed he has not taken a position on the matter.
Diaz also said he will not consider the details of moving into a Yucca licensing phase until NRC attorneys advise whether the application could even be accepted.
The NRC had supported the 10,000-year radiation standard voided by the court. McGaffigan said he was troubled by the National Academy of Sciences study that formed the basis for the court's ruling.
McGaffigan said scientists on the study panel assumed residents in the repository vicinity in the far future "are going to be dumber than people today" and would be unable to filter impurities from water supplies.
"There is technology available in the 21st century that would drive (radiation) doses pretty darn close to zero and meet all the EPA standards," he said. "I suspect that humans will not be dumber in the 5000th century than in the 20th century."
----
Yucca Mountain debate needs dose of reality
Wednesday, July 21st, 2004
Tri-City Herald
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opinions/story/5325291p-5263295c.html
What's missing from the latest debate over Yucca Mountain is reality.
Opponents of the plan to build a nuclear waste repository in Nevada are demanding an all-or-nothing answer.
That is, they either will accept a perfect plan or no plan.
That might be an appropriate approach if Yucca were a referendum on whether the United States should be producing nuclear waste.
But it is not. That choice was made long ago, during the frenzy of trying to win World War II. Now the nation has nuclear waste scattered across 39 states, where it sits in relatively vulnerable conditions -- such as single-shell tanks at Hanford -- waiting for a safer place to go. That place is Yucca. It is the government's best attempt to plan for safe storage.
Notice that says "best." Not "perfect."
The difference between the two is apparent in the disagreement over establishing radiation protection standards for the site.
An appeals court ruled this month that a 10,000-year prediction of safety is too short.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the feds must follow the lead of the National Academy of Sciences. That's a direction that could push the radiation protection standard as high as a million years.
It's true that some of the waste will be reaching its most dangerous state after 10,000 years. But consider, for a moment, just how long 10,000 years is. That's the recorded history of man with an extra 4,000 years thrown in for good measure.
Predicting even out that far seems a questionable feat, given the number of unknowns. The chance that scientists would de-velop new technology for treating or using nuclear waste before then is as likely as anything else.
Extending that look to as many as a million years is a fool's errand. But opponents are insisting on the longer window, which could effectively kill the project.
In typical full-speed-ahead Department of Energy fashion, Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow told Congress last week that Yucca won't be slowed by the court ruling.
He said there is no reason why the department cannot file the project application with the 10,000-year standard now, then update it later if the Environmental Protection Agency re-quires the million-year standard.
Still, there is the little matter of the law cited by the court that requires EPA to follow the recommendations of the National Academy. Barring a reversal of the court's decision, Congress will need to change the law to keep the project on track.
There is no perfect solution to storing nuclear waste. But there is a good one, and that's Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Lawmakers cannot allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
-------- new mexico
Idle at Los Alamos: A Weapons Lab as Its Own Worst Enemy
July 22, 2004
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/national/22lab.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 21 - Sixty years after he arrived here at the nation's most secretive weapons laboratory to help build the atomic bomb, Paul Numerof was back this week. But he could have wished for a better welcome.
Carrying notes for a memoir of his Manhattan Project days, which he wanted to research in the vaunted Bradbury Science Museum, Dr. Numerof, 82, a retired pharmaceutical executive from Vail, Colo., found the museum doors locked - an unlikely casualty of the security lapses that have shut down the Los Alamos National Laboratory as never before in its long and stirring history. That would not have happened in his time, he said; in those days, security "was tight, really tight."
In what Los Alamos officials portray as a struggle for survival, the $2-billion-a-year laboratory on a mesa 7,400 feet up in the Jemez Mountains north of Santa Fe halted work indefinitely last Friday, ceasing all but vital military operations.
On Wednesday, Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle E. McSlarrow, who visited the laboratory on Monday, asked the National Nuclear Security Administration to call in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help search for two computer disks holding classified data, though Mr. McSlarrow acknowledged, "We are unaware of evidence of activity with a hostile intelligence motive."
Two weeks after the two Zip disks were reported missing, it is still unclear what is on them, what happened to them and whether their disappearance endangers national security. And many current and former employees are skeptical of the crackdown.
A senior scientist who, like many at Los Alamos, spoke on condition of anonymity, said that of all the possibilities, "least likely is that they are compromised, meaning stolen."
Dr. Harold Agnew, who was director of the laboratory from 1970 to 1979, questioned the gravity. "I just don't think it's a big deal," Dr. Agnew said. "They're responding to politics, I think. There are rules, and people are breaking the rules; they should be fired. I don't think it's any national disaster or calamity."
In two previous incidents of missing computer disks in the last year, Los Alamos officials quickly said that the disks had most likely been destroyed and that there was no danger to national security. The laboratory is now conducting a full inventory of approximately 40,000 computer data storage devices that contain classified information.
"It's reasonable to think when you look under the rocks we will find other things," said James Fallin, the laboratory's public affairs director.
Asked why it was necessary to shut down nonsensitive operations like the museum, the cafeteria and the health center, Mr. Fallin replied, "You start making exceptions, you start making gaps."
He said the order from the laboratory's director, G. Peter Nanos, a retired admiral, was unequivocal, along the lines of, "Stop! Put down your sharp tools and take a deep breath." In a turbulent meeting with the staff on July 14, Mr. Nanos used coarser language to refer to some employees, according to people who were there. (He did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.) Another "all hands" meeting is set for Thursday.
"Director Nanos believes the managers know who the bad actors are," Mr. Fallin said. "Those not willing to comply will face appropriate action." He also said the laboratory would be calling on employees to report colleagues who violate security.
The combative tone has confounded and dismayed many scientists here, angering some and drawing many conflicting reactions from a cadre long regarded as one of the world's most elite concentrations of scientific brainpower, where research on the human genome, H.I.V. and ocean currents vies for attention with development of weapons.
The furor has also raised questions about the management of the laboratory. For all of its 61 years, it has been run by the University of California under contract to the Energy Department and its predecessors. (The university also runs two other premier government laboratories, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley.) A prime rival, the University of Texas, has expressed interest in bidding for the prestigious Los Alamos contract, now up for grabs starting next year.
"Ninety-nine percent don't understand what Pete is doing," said Charles Keller, an astrophysicist and retired weapons scientist who said he had served under every director after J. Robert Oppenheimer. "Nobody took anything lightly," he said of the people he worked with. Most likely, he went on, the problem of missing data lies in the proliferation of ever-smaller and easy-to-lose computer storage devices that hold ever more information.
But more could be going on behind the scenes, he suggested. "The odds-makers say the answer is the University of Texas," Mr. Keller said with a wry smile. "Now, what was the question?"
Some expressed sympathy for the tough measures. "I'm supportive of it changing," said Susan Spach, a staff member on leave and typically oblique about her specific duties, as she and her group of disappointed youngsters came face to face Tuesday with the locked museum door. Ms. Spach said that "unfortunately some bad people" did not abide by security rules and that "more individuals need to pay more attention." And she said, "I'd hate for a few people to destroy my job."
Some say the explanation is 9/11.
"The real problem is that we live under a magnifying glass in a way the lab never has before," said a senior laboratory scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The disarray follows a series of security incidents and other embarrassments that goes back years but culminated in what Mr. Fallin called "a perfect storm, a convergence of a lot of, at times, disassociated events."
One was the debacle over charges against Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist widely branded as a spy suspected of leaking highly classified warhead data to China. After a bungled five-year investigation, he pleaded guilty in 2000 to a single felony count of mishandling secrets and was released, having spent nearly nine months in solitary confinement.
In 2001 and 2002, according to a federal indictment, two laboratory employees used an official account to buy personal television sets, barbecues, vacuum cleaners, hunting gear, tires and other equipment. They pleaded not guilty last month. The university reimbursed the government about $350,000, officials said.
In April 2003, the Energy Department put the University of California's future stewardship into question by ordering the contract up for bid in 2005. Eight months later, the lab lost track of nine floppy disks and a large-capacity storage disk, all with classified information, a disclosure that brought the laboratory to a more limited stand-down.
Last month, keys to doors of a research center containing nuclear materials were missing for 16 hours, through two shift changes of guards, before they were found.
And even as the search was on for the two missing Zip disks, the laboratory confirmed that it was investigating the sending of secret information over unsecured e-mail. The final straw may have been an accident days ago that exposed a 20-year-old intern to eye injury from a laser.
Still, many at the lab voice puzzlement over the severe reaction from Mr. Nanos, University of California overseers and Energy Department officials in Washington.
"People are in a little bit of shock and a lot of denial," an employee said, adding that on Monday - the day department officials and two members of Congress descended on the laboratory - she and colleagues spent most of the day reviewing basic safety and security procedures and gossiping. "Everyone came to work," she said. "We have to look at videos. They are teaching us the protocols for signing things in and out, how to secure your computer."
Some said security had grown casual. "You're behind the fence in a secure area," said the senior laboratory scientist. "You assume that if it isn't in your safe, it's in someone else's safe." He added: "It's not that things are lost. It's how accurate you want to be. The nation now requires a higher standard."
Dr. Agnew, the former director, said that the laboratory contract could prove especially attractive to other institutions because of the University of California retirement plan, now worth billions of dollars. "Any commercial outfit would like to get that," he said.
Mr. Keller, the retired weapons scientist, said the answer to the security concerns was evident. "The last time I checked, Los Alamos prided itself on problem solving," he said. "Appoint a group to see what's needed here. Solutions R Us."
Kenneth Chang contributed reporting from New York for this article and Sandra Blakeslee from Santa Fe, N.M.
--------
15 on Investigative Leave at Los Alamos
July 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Lab-Security.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Fifteen employees at the Los Alamos National Laboratory were placed on leave amid an investigation into the disappearance of two computer disks containing classified information, the director of the nuclear weapons lab said Thursday.
Four other employees also were placed on leave by Director Pete Nanos in a separate investigation involving an intern at the lab who suffered a serious eye injury from a laser.
Nanos said the workers were stripped of their badges and will not be allowed back in until their cases are resolved. They can show up at the lab only for purposes of the investigation.
``We've essentially moved them aside,'' Nanos said.
He did not identify the workers or say what they may have done wrong. Of the jobs they perform, he said: ``Suffice to say it's all levels.''
Of the 15 employees on leave over the missing disks, Nanos said 11 had access to a safe where the classified material was stored.
The worker suspensions come a week after the lab's manager, the University of California, ordered a halt to classified work while a probe into the missing disks was under way, and to allow for a wall-to-wall inventory at the lab, which has suffered a number of security lapses in recent years.
Nanos, who has since ordered a complete work stoppage at the lab, said it could be months before some higher-risk work resumes.
Officials have not said what was on the disks. Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said Wednesday that he wants the FBI's help in the investigation, but added there was nothing to indicate espionage was behind the disappearance.
Nanos said the lab has not determined how long the disks had been missing. He said they were believed to have been accounted for in an April inventory, but that is now being questioned because there may have been some irregularities in that inventory. Previously, they were accounted for in December.
The other investigation involves a July 14 experiment during which an intern was injured by a laser that researchers had thought was not producing a light at the time, lab officials said.
Nanos said he had an ``all-hands'' meeting with workers Thursday to stress the seriousness of the situation. He said some workers are still in ``denial'' about problems at the lab.
The missing disks and the eye injury are the latest of a series of embarrassments at the lab, ranging from missing classified data to a scandal over fraudulent use of credit cards.
-------- ohio
FirstEnergy to repair faulty device at Ohio nuke
REUTERS USA:
July 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26161/story.htm
NEW YORK - FirstEnergy Corp. (FE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said Tuesday it would repair a monitoring instrument at the 1,320- megawatt Perry nuclear plant in Ohio after the device indicated a false radiation reading in the ventilation system early this morning.
In a statement, FirstEnergy, of Akron, Ohio, said the ventilation system processes and filters gas from the plants turbine. The instrument monitoring the system indicated higher than normal levels of radiation, which automatically activated additional monitors. Those monitors all indicated normal readings.
Plant technicians took multiple gas samples to verify that the single reading was incorrect, and began inspecting the defective monitor early Tuesday morning. There was no release of radiation to the environment, and the plant continued to operate at full power.
In accordance with plant procedures, FirstEnergy declared an Alert at 3:44 a.m. EDT to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Alert was over at 9:01 a.m. An Alert is the second lowest of the NRCs four emergency classifications.
The Perry station is located in North Perry, Ohio, about 35 miles northeast of Cleveland, Ohio.
-------- pennsylvania
Exelon wants more security at Limerick nuclear plant
07/22/2004
By Seth Goldstein,
The Phoenix,
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12432254&BRD=1673&PAG=461&dept_id=17915&rfi=6
LIMERICK - Exelon Corp. has presented plans to the township to build a larger training center and install seven guard towers at its Limerick Generating Station.
The training center and guard towers are part of mandated security upgrades ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC issued the regulations in 2003 to address concerns about security at the nation's nuclear power plants in light of the terrorism threat, Exelon spokesman Craig Baines told the township supervisors Tuesday.
The 84,000-square-foot training center would be located in a parking lot adjacent to the learning center, just northeast of the second cooling tower, he said.
The training center is being moved closer to main facilities at the nuclear plant for security purposes, said Chris Curtis, another Exelon representative at Tuesday's meeting.
"By moving it closer to the rest of the facility it helps us better protect our assets," Curtis said.
The guard towers will be strategically placed throughout the facility to improve the security, Curtis said.
The NRC has mandated that these improvements be completed by Oct. 29, Curtis said.
Township Supervisor Rick Fidler said he was aware of the importance of the new structures, but he said he believes that Exelon is asking for an excessive amount of waivers from township ordinances.
"I don't understand why the township should let you do what you want to meet your deadline," Fidler said. "If you were willing to still do some of the things the township is requiring and meet your deadline, I think we would look at this a little more favorably."
Fidler reminded Exelon officials that the township does not receive tax revenue from the Limerick plant. While Exelon needs to meet federal requirements, Fidler said he doesn't see how township residents would benefit from the supervisors granting waivers.
The security features that the NRC has required Exelon to install will make the community safer, Curtis replied.
The elimination of the parking lot and the company's request for a waiver from its obligation to install additional lighting around the building were listed as major concerns by the supervisors.
Curtis said there is plenty of parking at the facility now. The lighting around the proposed building area is more than sufficient, he added.
Exelon had originally informed the township that construction would start by April 2003.
"What took you so long?" supervisors' Chairman Ken Sperring asked.
Curtis explained that Exelon needed clarification about the NRC's requirements for the security upgrades.
Once the requirements were clarified, Exelon proceeded with development of the building, Curtis said.
Wary of granting approval without Exelon meeting some of the township's requirements, Fidler asked what penalties Exelon is facing for not meeting the NRC deadline.
Curtis said the NRC has not specified what penalties might be imposed for lateness.
Sperring pointed out that Exelon knew about the NRC requirements for more than a year, but waited until now to come to the township.
Curtis said Exelon was working on its designs for the upgrades.
Supervisor Frank Grant asked how long Exelon would need to review ordinances required by the township. About a week, Curtis said.
The board put off deciding on approval of the building project until its Aug. 3 meeting.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Warlord Runs for President of Afghanistan
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 22, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5987-2004Jul22?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan - A powerful Afghan warlord will challenge President Hamid Karzai in the country's historic October elections, his spokesman said Thursday. Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to run after securing support across the war-riven country's deep ethnic divides, his spokesman Faizullah Zaki said. He also was feted by thousands of supporters at a rally Thursday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
"He didn't want to depend on his own movement, he wanted more people to support him, and today the people showed that," Zaki said. "He will run for president."
Dostum, like another half dozen likely challengers, lacks the national appeal to pose a direct threat to Karzai at the ballot box. A former communist and commander of a feared militia during the country's civil wars, he is widely mistrusted.
But he could win support among fellow ethnic Uzbeks who live mainly in the north of the country and help force a run-off if Karzai fails to secure more than 50 percent in a first round set for Oct. 9.
Dostum's Jumbesh militia, based mainly in the northeast of the country, was part of the Northern Alliance forces that helped the United States drive out the Taliban in late 2001.
He has supported Karzai as interim leader, cultivated links with the U.S. government and currently holds the post of presidential security adviser for the north.
But he has been marginalized by the prominence of rival Tajiks in key ministries such as defense, and he opposed the centralized state enshrined in a new constitution pushed through by Karzai in January.
Zaki said Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, had already collected the names of 10,000 backers needed to become a candidate and would hand in his nomination to election officials in Kabul by Monday's deadline.
----
U.S. Marine force pulls out of Taliban stronghold
7/22/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-07-22-marines-withdraw_x.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Marines have pulled out of a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan after killing more than 100 enemy fighters, their commander said Thursday.
The 2,000-strong force, which lost just one Marine, has withdrawn to an American air base in the southern city of Kandahar and is preparing to leave the country, Col. Frank McKenzie said. That withdrawal had already been announced.
The contingent, part of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, deployed in late March in an attempt to divert militants from attacking preparations for historic elections.
But violence has continued and parliamentary elections have been shelved until April. A vote for president is set for Oct. 9, more than three months later than originally scheduled.
McKenzie said he "would not challenge" reports that more than 100 enemy fighters were killed during the Marines' four-month tour in Uruzgan, home of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and neighboring areas. He declined to give an exact figure.
One Marine was killed and 11 injured in combat operations, often conducted jointly with Afghan troops. None of the Afghans were killed, but about 15 were wounded, he said.
The fighting was the bloodiest in Afghanistan since last fall and brought to more than 600 the number of people killed in violence here this year.
McKenzie said his forces' "decisive combat success" had helped pave the way for Afghans in the Uruzgan area to register to vote in the upcoming elections.
But the level of fighting also illustrates the enduring resistance to foreign troops and the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai more than two years after the fall of the Taliban.
Some 17,000 U.S.-led troops remain in Afghanistan, including a battalion from the 25th Infantry Division which has replaced the Marines in Uruzgan.
-------- arms
MiG Under Fire for Arming Sudan
The Moscow Times
By Lyuba Pronina
July 22, 2004
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/07/22/041.html
Sudan said the fleet of MiG warplanes that it ordered from Russia in 2001 will be used to safeguard its economic interests.
Amnesty International on Wednesday blasted Russia for shipping warplanes to Sudan at a time when Khartoum is under fire for providing military support to an Arab militia accused of an ethnic cleansing campaign that has left 30,000 people dead and 1 million homeless.
In a rare news conference Wednesday, the Sudanese ambassador to Moscow said his country was "very satisfied" with Russia for filling a 12-jet order five months ahead of schedule.
The ambassador, Chol Deng Alak, dismissed concerns the new MiGs would be used to attack indigenous black tribes, saying they were bought to prevent Sudan from being "an easy target" for other nations.
"We are very satisfied with the delivery. We need these jets to safeguard our economic interests," Alak said.
But Amnesty International researchers say they had received testimonies from civilians in Sudan who claimed to have been bombed by Russian-made MiGs and Ukrainian Antonov general-use transport craft operated by the Sudanese air force.
"Just as the UN Security Council starts discussing a resolution against Sudan, Russia sends its MiGs," Amnesty researcher Benedicte Goderiaux said by telephone from London.
"This makes Russia indirectly responsible," she said, adding that Amnesty and other human rights groups are working with a number of UN member countries to get an all-out arms embargo introduced against Khartoum.
Khartoum is coming under increasing pressure from the international community for its failure to stop racial attacks by the janjaweed, a well-armed Arab militia operating out of the western region of Darfur.
The United States has accused Khartoum of backing janjaweed fighters in a campaign of ethnic cleansing marked by burning and looting villages, murder and rape. The United Nations has called the conflict the worst humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment.
Although the timing for MiG, which agreed to arm Sudan with warplanes back in 2001, is clearly unfortunate, it is unlikely that the fighters will be used in the conflict, said Ruslan Pukhov, chief editor of Moscow Defense Brief, a military magazine. "The militia is using small arms and light weapons. They can be using Antonov transports to drop bombs, but using MiGs would be ineffective," he said.
Pukhov said Sudan needs the jets to counter neighboring Egypt, which has more than 100 U.S.-made F-16s.
For its part, MiG said the deal with Sudan should pave the way for future orders and help open the way for deals with other states in Africa, where the company has not played a major role.
Sudan is the 29th country to own and operate MiG-29s, and although the jet has been in service for more than 20 years, MiG general director Valery Toryanin said demand is rising in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The contract with Sudan is the first major one to be completed by MiG since Toryanin took over the company late last year at a time when its future was in doubt. "Timely and quality delivery of the contract allows us to look forward to a follow-up," he said.
MiG hurried to deliver the 12 jets -- 10 MiG-29SE fighters and two MiG-29UB combat trainers -- so that the Sudanese air force could show them off during the upcoming celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the republic's armed forces, he said.
Toryanin said in all this year, MiG would clear 36 jets from its assembly and repair facilities and deliver them to foreign clients. Twenty of the 36 are new, the rest are being upgraded or repaired, he said.
"We are confident of large orders," he said, adding that MiG expects to sell about 200 jets and increase its order books to $2 billion in the "near future."
"We have had delays on some contracts but we are speeding ahead with our facilities working in two to three shifts," he said.
Toryanin admitted that MiG is in talks with Algeria, but refused to comment on reports that Algiers is ready to buy 50 fighters.
-------- biological weapons
Bush Inks $5.6 Billion BioShield Legislation
July 22, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-22-09.asp#anchor1
President George W. Bush has signed into law a measure to protect the United States from terrorists armed with biological weapons. The legislation authorizes $5.6 billion over 10 years to stockpile vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents.
With thanks to the Senate and House members from both parties who worked on and sponsored the legislation, Bush signed the Project BioShield legislation at a ceremony in the Rose Garden on Wednesday.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, America saw the destruction and grief terrorists could inflict with commercial airlines turned into weapons of mass murder," Bush said during the ceremony.
"Those attacks revealed the depth of our enemies' determination, but not the extent of their ambitions," he said. "We know that the terrorists seek an even deadlier technology, and if they acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, we have no doubt they will use them to cause even greater harm."
The need for the legislation was underlined by the 2001 anthrax mail attacks on Capitol Hill, New York and Florida. The perpetrator of these attacks has not been found.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already taken steps to purchase 75 million doses of an improved anthrax vaccine for the Strategic National Stockpile.
The Strategic National Stockpile is a national repository of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, life-support medications, IV administration, airway maintenance supplies, and medical/surgical items. It is designed to supplement and re-supply state and local public health agencies in the event of a national emergency anywhere and at anytime within the United States or its territories.
"Under Project BioShield, HHS is moving forward with plans to require a safer second-generation small pox vaccine, an antidote to botulinum toxin, and better treatments for exposure to chemical and radiological weapons," Bush said.
Project BioShield legislation provides research and development funding. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson Wednesday directed the the National Institutes of Health to launch two research programs - one to speed the development of new treatments for victims of a biological attack, and another to expedite development of treatments for victims of a radiological or nuclear attack.
Since 2001, the United States has increased funding for the Strategic National Stockpile by a factor of five and increased funding for biodefense research by a factor of 30, the president said. The U.S. government has also secured enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate every American if needed.
Officials have worked to improve the safety of food and deployed advanced environmental detectors under the BioWatch program to provide early warning of a biological attack.
-------- britain
Honesty not best policy as Blair sticks to the Big Lie
22 July 2004
By Eamonn McCann featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
belfasttelegraph.co.uk http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/story.jsp?story=543565
The BBC reported on Tuesday that "Iraq fatigue is setting in," suggesting that Tony Blair, having survived another powder-puff Commons assault, was now home free and off the hook.
Come the autumn, MPs will have moved on to "the domestic agenda." We'll hear no more about the lies that lured the country to war.
Maybe so. After all, one of the most egregious of the Iraq lies has now been repeated so often it has morphed into a factoid.
Blair said again this week that Saddam Hussein expelled the UN weapons inspectors in 1998. This was a lie. But a lie which has been repeated so often it has acquired an eerie patina of truth.
The reason the weapons inspectors left Iraq in December, 1998, was that Bill Clinton ordered them out so as to clear the ground for a bombing offensive.
The head of the then inspection unit, UNSCOM, Richard Butler, recalled in his memoirs receiving a telephone call on December 15 from Clinton's UN ambassador Peter Burleigh: "(He) informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be 'prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff...' I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff."
The inspectors began pulling out the same day - without the knowledge, much less consent, of the UN itself.
The following day, the Security Council expressed "concern... that it had not been consulted." By then, US bombs were creating their own facts in Baghdad.
One of the reasons this lie has become perhaps the most successful in the litany of lies which led to the Iraq war is that so many have a vested interest in letting it lie.
Robin Cook and Clare Short were in the Cabinet at the time, for example, and voiced no objection.
And that light-minded faction of anti-war opinion which craves to attribute all the evils of the war to the corrupt family values of the Bush clan is reluctant to admit that Bush didn't break with - but merely intensified - the Iraq policy of his predecessor.
In his hugely enjoyable, politically shallow Farenheit 9/11, Michael Moore contrives to deal with the difficulty by omitting any mention of Clinton's bomb assault.
The fall-back lie of pro-war propagandists on the rare occasions they are confronted with the truth of this matter is that the inspectors had to go because they were getting nowhere. Saddam was giving them the run-around. Not true.
In his invaluable Iraq - Lies, Half-truths and Omissions (recently updated and again available) David Morrison cites Richard Butler's summation of the recent inspection record on the day before he was summoned in and ordered out by Clinton's emissary: "UNSCOM inspectors had visited some 300 sites in the previous month, at only five of which was there any problem of access, and at none of which was access refused."
Clinton, with Blair's acquiescence, didn't order the inspectors out because they were being prevented from doing their job. They were ordered out because the job was going rather well.
A vista had come into view, appalling to US and British warmongers, of the UN being left with no option but to lift sanctions on Iraq. So they sent in the bombers and began pumping out the Big Lie with which they successfully persist.
The second most successful of the Iraq lies is that Bush and Blair chose to invade without a second UN resolution because President Chirac had made it clear France would veto any resolution authorising invasion, no matter what the circumstances.
There is no truth in this. But it's now repeated day in and day out, as if it were uncontestable.
So, well might Blair console himself that, come the autumn, relentless repetition will have transmogrified his more recent lies, too, into seeming truth.
Of course, if journalists were doing their jobs as well as the inspectors were doing theirs, he'd never get away with it.
--------
MILITARY DOWNSIZING
Britain Is Planning to Cut Troops by 15,000
July 22, 2004
By ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/international/europe/22brit.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, July 21 - Britain announced major changes in its armed forces on Wednesday, saying it would cut troops in the navy, army and air force but introduce more advanced technology to fight modern wars against terrorism and to deal with fast-moving crises.
The cuts, trimming about 15,000 troops, would not, however, affect Britain's commitment to maintaining its current level of 9,000 soldiers in southern Iraq, deployed in support of American troops farther north, the government said.
In Parliament, Geoff Hoon, the defense secretary, said the cuts were intended in part to save money and make Britain's armed forces more flexible and efficient.
"The threats to Britain's interests in the 21st century are far more complex than was foreseen following the disintegration of the Soviet empire," Mr. Hoon said. In the future, he said, Britain will spend more on weapons like pilotless drones and computer systems to link battlefield units. The Royal Navy is also planning to acquire two aircraft carriers and more modern warships.
Mr. Hoon indicated that the cuts would mean shrinking the Royal Air Force to 41,000 from 48,500, the navy to 36,000 from 37,500 and the army to 102,000 from an estimated 108,000. About 10,000 civilian jobs linked to the military are also to be cut. At the same time, 12 older-model naval vessels and three squadrons of Jaguar warplanes will be retired, Mr. Hoon said.
The announcement drew complaints that the measures, intended to save about $5.2 billion by 2008, would leave British forces overstretched. Besides Iraq, British troops are deployed in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Northern Ireland.
One Conservative lawmaker, Patrick Mercer, said the troops cuts were "an act of madness created by financial strictures rather than any sort of tactical analysis."
Mr. Hoon's plans to dismantle four battalions technically numbering around 650 soldiers each could draw criticism from supporters of regiments like the Black Watch, which is now deployed in Basra in southern Iraq and is rumored to be among those set to be disbanded in their present form or combined with other units.
Nicholas Soames, the opposition Conservative defense spokesman, said in Parliament that the military would feel "betrayed politically and morally" by the changes.
Government officials have described the changes as the most significant in a generation, reshaping Britain's armed forces from cold war thinking that prized numerical strength and large arsenals of tanks, warplanes and ships over flexibility.
-------- china
Chinese military steps up war preparations: report
HONG KONG (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722072132.fldtss10.html
China has stepped up its preparations for war with Taiwan in its southeastern province of Fujian, a report said Thursday.
The pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po said a high level conference was recently held in Fujian "to speed preparations for military warfare."
Quoting unidentified sources, it said the key reason for the conference was to push forward military reform, boost fighting capability of the People's Liberation Army and to improve its standards.
The report also said military exercises in Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian, had "entered a peak."
Scores of military vehicles were carrying army officials and soldiers to Huandao Road Beach for military exercises every day during high tides, it said.
"Huandao Road in Xiamen is only a stone's throw away from the Dadan, Erdan islands where the Taiwanese army is stationed," it said, adding that although military drills were held there annually, the scale and duration year was "unusual."
China has recently stepped up its rhetoric against Taiwan, warning pro-independence forces it has the military strength to invade the island.
Tension between Beijing and Taipei has been heightened since Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was re-elected this year, with China fearful his pro-independence moves were aimed at gaining formal independence.
China's largest war games of the year are currently underway in the Taiwan Strait, pro-Beijing Hong Kong papers have said, aimed at simulating an invasion of Taiwan and demonstrating air superiority.
Taiwan air force jets, meanwhile, staged rare landings on closed off freeways Wednesday as part of exercises to show its readiness in the event of an attack by China.
The military followed it up Thursday with amphibious drills in southern coastal towns.
The United States Wednesday urged both sides to ensure their military exercises were not provocative and did not add to cross-strait tension.
Beijing has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunified, by force if necessary, since the Communists won a civil war and drove the defeated Nationalists into exile on the island in 1949.
-------- europe
France calls on all EU members to help in defence
RIGA (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722144128.cxhn35vc.html
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie called Thursday on all 25 members of the European Union to participate in their common defence, emphasizing the part to be played by the 10 countries which joined the bloc in May.
"There are no big and small countries where defence is concerned, each has its place and each has something to contribute," she told a news conference after talks with her Latvian counterpart, Atis Slakteris.
Alliot-Marie, who is touring new EU member countries, drew attention to Latvia's knowhow in under-water mine-clearance and to the special knowledge which it and the other Baltic states had of Russia -- their former senior partner in the Soviet Union.
The minister also said that France wanted to "participate in a concrete way to the surveillance of the airspace of the Baltic States".
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia do not have reconnaissance aircraft of their own and rely on fellow NATO members to patrol their skies. The Netherlands recently took over from Denmark and Belgium in this field.
Alliot-Marie had a working dinner on Wednesday with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and met the armed forces chief of staff, Admiral Gaidis Andrejs Zeibots, and the speaker of parliament, Ingrida Udre, on Thursday.
She was due to travel to Estonia later in the day.
--------
Europe Warms to Idea of Unified Military Agency
July 22, 2004
By HEATHER TIMMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/business/worldbusiness/22defend.html
FARNBOROUGH, England, July 21 - Hopes are high in Europe for the newly created European Defense Agency, which aims to consolidate military research and spending across the 25 countries, amid some skepticism from the private sector.
Executives from European military companies attending the air show here this week said a unified front was probably the best way for Europe to provide security and resist what they said were heavy-handed sales tactics used by United States aerospace companies and the American government.
But the executives fear the European agency will be hobbled by bureaucracy, stifled by shrinking military budgets and ultimately rendered impotent by the inability of its members to agree on anything at all.
"There's a great debate in Europe about the amount of research and development spending, and about how Europe takes care of its own defense without being reliant on the United States," said Ian McNamee, managing director of Gripen International, a Swedish-British company that makes fighter jets. The company is owned by Saab and BAE Systems.
After tensions over the Iraq war threatened to destabilize the European Union's shared foreign security policy, the European Defense Agency was formed in November and received financing in June. The agency's annual budget is only $30.6 million in an industry of monumental worldwide spending: Europe's military spending was $195 billion in 2003, and the total figure in the United States, Canada and Mexico was more than $400 billion.
Still, the agency's mandate is huge: pinpoint Europe's military shortfalls, then coordinate spending and research among European Union countries long accustomed to competing.
Plans for such an agency have existed for many years, "but this is the first time that the E.U. has had the political authority to launch collective military operations," and has defined goals for what it is trying to achieve, said Alyson J. K. Bailes, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which monitors military spending worldwide. Military suppliers in Europe are on the offensive. Consolidation in the United States has created giant competitors that are pressing countries around the world to buy American weapons and equipment, even as Congress talks of a "Buy American" bill that would limit the United States' purchase of European military products.
Tension between the industries in the United States and Europe is being fueled by an increasingly shrill fight between Airbus and Boeing over research and subsidies.
Military budgets, meanwhile, are shrinking in Europe. Most recently, on Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense in Britain scaled back its budget. The ministry said that it planned to cut 15,000 jobs and save $5.2 billion by 2008, by reducing the number of troops and improving technology.
"The European defense industry needs to become far more effective and efficient," said Mark Stoker, a military economist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "There needs to be someone leading from the front."
The new agency is being run initially by Nick Witney, formerly director general of international security policy at the Ministry of Defense in Britain; Europe's defense ministers will be on the board. The success of the agency could be important to ensuring the independence of European companies and countries, industry executives say.
Mr. McNamee of Gripen said, "I don't think anyone wants to become a vassal state to the United States" and be forced to buy products without access to the technology behind them.
That is not to say that European companies have not had any success in selling to their neighbors. In June, Gripen won a $750 million contract to lease 14 JAS-39 fighter jets for the Czech Republic, beating out Lockheed Martin's F-16.
Officials in the United States have been critical of the new agency, in part because it operates outside of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. European companies argue that the European Defense Agency will ultimately be beneficial to the United States.
"We're not doing this against the United States, as is often wrongly understood," said Philippe Camus, chief executive of the aerospace giant EADS, and one of the most vocal supporters of the agency's creation. "We're doing it to be a real partner, not to contradict."
A strong European agency will have a greater ability to contribute to the Western world's overall military capacity, he said.
New members of the European Union say they are cautiously enthusiastic.
"It's difficult to find the proper border" between cooperation and competition, said Leos Liska, development manager at LOM Praha, a Czech Republic company that modernizes aircraft to fit NATO standards and trains pilots.
One big issue will be who owns the copyrights for products developed under the umbrella of the new agency, Mr. Liska added. Still, he said, "We have to quickly embark on this movement; it is time to catch a wave."
-------- iraq
Fearing Big Battle, Residents Flee
U.S. Weighs Move on Samarra, Now Controlled by Factions
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4196-2004Jul21?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 21 -- Tens of thousands of people have fled Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, in recent weeks, expecting a showdown between U.S. troops and heavily armed groups within the city, according to U.S. and Iraqi sources.
Residents of the city said guerrillas told people to leave neighborhoods in anticipation of a larger battle after a clash on Tuesday in which U.S. warplanes bombed two houses, killing at least four people, according to military authorities.
"I will not go back to Samarra," said Mohammed Mohammed, 37. He brought his extended family of more than 70 brothers, cousins and children to Baghdad this week because of the dangers. "We expect the resistance will be very strong when the Americans go in. And the Americans have no mercy."
Samarra is now controlled by a volatile mix of tribes and gangs, some split along religious lines, and supporters of ousted president Saddam Hussein, according to interviews with numerous Samarra residents who have fled to Baghdad. On July 8, some of those groups launched an attack in which a car bombing was followed by a fierce volley of mortar fire. Five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi National Guardsman were killed and 40 people were injured.
Even before that, U.S. military authorities had been planning how to retake control of the city without a bloodbath. Officers said they were determined not to let Samarra follow what they call the Fallujah model. U.S. forces made an agreement to stay outside Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad, in order to end fierce clashes there during April. The city is now under the control of insurgents.
"We're not going to make that pact," said Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, commander of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, which operates in the area. "Right now, it is a town where nobody is in charge. That, we will fix. At the end of the day, there will be a city under competent civil government."
U.S. military planners complained in private that Fallujah was a bad deal, allowing the city to become a rallying point and stronghold for guerrilla forces.
"It's the lily pad theory. Fallujah exports itself to Samarra, which exports itself to the next place," said Lt. Col. James Stackmo, an intelligence officer for the division, headquartered in Tikrit. "In Samarra, there's probably 100 to 300 fighters who are holding the town hostage. We're not going to allow a militia in Samarra. We're not going to do it."
The U.S. military will try to mount a joint operation with Iraqi security forces, officials said. Under the plan, U.S. forces would likely seize Samarra in a powerful assault, then have Iraqi National Guard or police officers patrol the city.
"It's not a situation that will necessarily evolve into what we saw in Fallujah in April," said Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, the Army's deputy operations chief in Iraq. "We learned then how important it is to make sure we have capable Iraqi security forces in place to maintain security when the multinational forces withdraw from an area."
"We've pulled back a little. But don't think for a minute that's permanent," Stackmo added.
But formation of a competent and well-trained Iraqi force has taken more time than officials had hoped. Officials said it has been particularly difficult to mount a contingent willing to take on the challenges in Samarra. The mortar attack on July 8 was aimed at a compound used by U.S. and Iraqi National Guard troops. Since then, many of the guardsmen have quit rather than participate in the fighting in Samarra, according to Mohammed.
"There's no National Guard. And the police in town do their patrols, but they take their orders from the mujaheddin," said Mohammed, who said he had been in Samarra on Tuesday.
"Right now, the mujaheddin and insurgents control everything," said Hassan, another Samarra resident who left the city with his family to move in with relatives in Baghdad. He refused to give his last name, fearing retribution.
Most of Samarra's 300,000 or so residents are Sunni Muslim, but the city also is home to two important Shiite shrines and has a small minority of Kurds. Residents said relations with U.S. forces began to deteriorate last winter after American troops fired on a wedding party that was celebrating in a traditional way by shooting weapons into the air. The wedding party, members of one of the larger extended clans in the city, vowed revenge.
They have been joined by religious militants intent on waging a holy war, by former members of Iraq's disbanded Republican Guard who still sometimes wear their uniforms in the city, and an assortment of other tribes and groups willing to join the fight for sentiment or for money. Some of the fighters came from Fallujah, Mohammed and other residents said, and some came from outside the country.
"Samarra used to drive Saddam crazy," Batiste said. "There are seven tribes. There are two or three cells," he said, and one or two of them are composed of Hussein loyalists. "One is a terrorist cell. There's a criminal family that's always been in Samarra. And there is a lack of competent leadership, partly because there's so many tribes vying."
The groups are threatening and killing anyone who they believe cooperates with U.S. authorities or even with the Iraqi government, the residents said.
"They just go into a house and kill the owner and burn it," Hassan said. Some of the groups also have been enforcing a strict religious code, closing liquor stores and cafes, insisting that women wear head coverings and berating young men who wear bluejeans.
"I was walking down the street when one of them demanded of me, 'Why are you wearing bluejeans?' " said a 17-year-old, who did not want to give his name. "They put a gun to my head. They said, 'Why is your hair so long?' Even before I went back to the house to change, I went to get a haircut."
For several weeks, Samarra residents have been slipping out of town. Many have houses or extended families in Baghdad, and have moved in. Some travel back and forth, depending on their reading of the dangers on a particular day.
A military source in Baghdad cited reports that said as many as 40 percent of the residents have left Samarra. Some residents of the city said the figure was higher.
"The businesses are closed. No one is in the streets," Hassan said. "Any stranger who comes in is looted and robbed. If you go in now, it seems like a city of ghosts."
--------
Kenya orders citizens out of Iraq;
Marines kill 25 Iraqis in clashes
7/22/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-22-ramadi_x.htm
BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. Marines killed 25 insurgents and captured 25 others during several hours of fierce fighting in Ramadi, a hotbed of the insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces, the American military said Thursday.
The fighting Wednesday in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, wounded 14 U.S. servicemen, but none of the injuries were life-threatening. Ten of the wounded subsequently returned to duty, the Marines said. (Related video: Ramadi fears continued violence)
In Baghdad, insurgents fought U.S. soldiers on Haifa Street, the scene of a shootout earlier this month, an unidentified hospital official told Associated Press Television News. Two Iraqis were reported wounded.
Interior Ministry official Sabah Khadum said Iraqi police and intelligence forces arrested 200 people, including several "non-Iraqi Arabs," during the Haifa Street operation and discovered a huge cache of weapons. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained that fighters from neighboring countries are battling coalition forces.
Meanwhile, Indian officials in Baghdad worked with Egypt and Kenya to free three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian, whose kidnapping was announced Wednesday, an Indian official said from New Delhi on condition of anonymity.
The Kenyan government has called for all of its citizens to leave Iraq immediately.
Also Thursday, Iraqi police report they have found a decapitated body in an orange jumpsuit on the banks of the Tigris River in northern Iraq.
The identity of the body, discovered Wednesday night in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, was not immediately clear, police said.
Taha Abdullah, a police official in Beiji, told The Associated Press that police found a new body Wednesday on the banks of the Tigris. Alongside the body was a head in a sack, he said.
"U.S. troops took the body to a hospital in Tikrit," Abdullah said. Witnesses reported seeing a headless body in an orange jumpsuit at a hospital in Tikrit on Thursday.
Iraqi and U.S. officials warned of a potential surge in threats and abductions when the Philippines withdrew its troops.
Updated reports Thursday say the group of Iraqi militants kidnapped seven men on Wednesday, not six.
One of the Indian hostages appeared on video broadcast on Indian television stations. He identified his employer as Kuwait and Gulf Link, or KGL. The video also showed the Egyptian hostage speaking and one of the Kenyans speaking in English.
"KGL sent us by force to Iraq. Now they (the captors) have caught us. They say we are siding with America. Along with us, our trucks have also been seized," the hostage, identified as Tilak Raj by Aaj Tak news television, said. "We are being treated well. They are giving us food and drink. We are three Indians, three Kenyans and one Egyptian."
The group holding the seven said it would behead a captive every 72 hours beginning Saturday night if their countries did not announce intentions to withdraw troops and citizens from Iraq, and it warned that every Kuwaiti company dealing with Americans "will be dealt with as an American."
The threat came two days after the Philippines withdrew its 51 peacekeepers from Iraq, acquiescing to the demands of militants holding a Filipino truck driver. Angelo dela Cruz returned to the Philippines on Thursday, two days after his release.
Egypt, Kenya and India are not part of the 160,000-member U.S.-led coalition. However, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed last week to India and Egypt for troops.
The daylong clashes in Ramadi began after insurgents detonated a roadside bomb near a Marine convoy Wednesday afternoon in an ambush attempt. As many as 10 Iraqi fighters then attacked Marines with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
That skirmish led to ensuing engagements pitting members of the 1st Brigade Combat team against an estimated 75-100 insurgents, the Marines' statement said.
American ground forces backed by U.S. warplanes clashed with insurgents for hours, during which time the Marines safely detonated two homemade bombs, including one placed in a car.
Twenty-five insurgents died in the fighting and another 17 were wounded, the statement said.
Ramadi is located in Anbar Province, a Sunni-dominated area west of the Iraqi capital which has been a hotbed of anti-coalition insurgency.
Marines spokesman Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson said the situation in Ramadi was "relatively quiet" Thursday and "Marines continue to operate from bases within the city, as they have since arriving early this year."
Ramadi shopkeepers were seen shuttering their stores Thursday, apparently in fear of more clashes.
"We were told by the opposition (insurgents) to close our shops and leave the area because there would be fighting in the market," said Mohammed Medhat, owner of a grocery store in Ramadi's central market area. "I'm a father. I need to earn money to feed my children. We can't keep living with this fighting."
There were no immediate reports of U.S. deaths Thursday. On Wednesday, the death toll of American troops in Iraq since the war started in 2003 reached 900 after a roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed one U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldier.
India on Thursday called for the swift release of three Indian truck drivers captured with three Kenyans and one Egyptian, saying the Indians had nothing to do with the war. A militant group calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners" took responsibility for their capture.
"We are in touch with authorities in Baghdad and Kuwait and are making all efforts to ensure an early and safe release of the hostages," Indian External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh said in Islamabad, Pakistan. "The hostages are noncombatants, and I appeal to all those who have influence to assist in ensuring the safe return home of these innocent people."
Egyptian presidential spokesman Magad Abdel Fattah said his country's diplomats were trying to find out more information about the kidnappings and trying to win their release.
"We are dealing with all the political leaders, we are dealing with all the religious leaders, we are dealing with everyone we know," he told the AP on Thursday.
Rana Abu-Zaineh, manpower planning manager of the KGL Transport Co., confirmed from Kuwait that seven company employees were kidnapped in Iraq.
"The most important thing for KGL is that the seven people arrive here safely and talk to their relatives, whatever that takes," she told the AP in Kuwait.
--------
25 Rebels Are Killed in Daylong Firefight in Iraq, U.S. Says
July 22, 2004
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/international/middleeast/22CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 22 - American troops killed 25 insurgents in a daylong firefight on Wednesday in the hardline Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the military said today. Meanwhile, insurgents said they were holding a seventh foreign truck driver, a day after announcing they had kidnapped six hostages and would behead one every three days unless their demands were met.
The seventh hostage was from Kenya, one of three from that country now held by the kidnappers. Kenya's government called today on its citizens to leave Iraq immediately and urged the captors to release the Kenyans.
"We just feel like the Philippines," said the government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, in an interview with The New York Times. "We have to look after our citizens. We don't want any of our citizens to suffer."
New video footage of the hostages - abducted after the Philippines on Monday completed the withdrawal of its 51 troops in exchange for the life of a truck driver kidnapped earlier this month - showed seven nervous men stating their names and pleading for their lives.
"We want to go home, please help us so that we are not cut up into pieces because then you would bear the guilt of orphaning our children," one of the hostages, speaking in an Egyptian accent, said in a video provided today to Agence France-Presse.
On Wednesday, a group calling itself the Holders of the Black Banners said it had kidnapped three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian, though a piece of paper held up by one of the captives in a videotape showed seven names. Today, the group said the seventh hostage was Kenyan.
The kidnappers have threatened to execute the hostages unless the employer, a Kuwaiti trucking firm, shuts down operations in Iraq and all nationals from their three home countries leave Iraq. India, Egypt and Kenya do not have soldiers in Iraq, but the new interim government has asked India and Egypt to send troops to help stabilize the nation.
American and Iraqi officials had urged the Philippines not to accede to the kidnappers' demands, for fear of encouraging more abductions in Iraq.
But Mr. Mutua said his government's call on Kenyans to leave Iraq was similar to the warnings by the American and British governments over the past year for their citizens not to travel to Kenya because of terrorist threats. Kenya has been lobbying hard for the lifting of the advisories, which caused severe damage to the tourist industry.
"It's the same thing as when the U.S. and British issued their travel advisories to Kenya," Mr. Mutua said. "We are saying we don't think Iraq is a safe place."
The Kenyan government contacted the American Embassy in Nairobi today seeking information on the three hostages, and some basic information was provided.
The family members of the Kenyan hostages spoke today on Kenya radio, saying they were all family men with children and good Muslims, and seeking their release.
In downtown Baghdad, a car bomb exploded this afternoon on busy Palestine Street, hitting a passing minivan. Police officers at the scene said four people were killed.
The battle in Ramadi, the military said in a statement, began about 3 P.M. on Wednesday after a roadside bomb - the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq - exploded near an American convoy. The convoy was then attacked with rifle fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the statement said.
The fighting widened into a battle with between 75 and 100 insurgents, as soldiers on the ground called in fire from unidentified aircraft. Reports from Ramadi on Wednesday said that at least one United States helicopter was involved in the battle.
In the fighting, 13 marines were injured, though none of them were in danger of dying, the statement said. In addition to the 25 killed, the statement said 17 insurgents were wounded and another 25 arrested.
The statement said soldiers found a roadside bomb and a car bomb, along with other weaponry.
Early today, a firefight broke out on Haifa Street in downtown Baghdad as Iraqi police and national guardsmen carried out another raid against insurgents and criminals in the capital. Two weeks ago, at least four people died on Haifa Street in another gun battle. Sabbeh Kadhim, a spokesman for the Iraqi interior ministry, said 200 people were arrested on Wednesday.
Violence surged around the country on Wednesday. In addition to Ramadi, American troops battled insurgents overnight in Samarra, a hard-line Sunni Muslim city, killing what a military official said were six attackers. In Baghdad, a rocket hit a hospital, killing four patients, and a car exploded on a narrow street, killing another four people.
Foreigners working for companies employed by the American military have been a frequent target among the dozens of kidnappings in Iraq since April, when violence in Iraq spiked to its highest level. On Wednesday, the police in Saudi Arabia discovered the head of a slain American hostage during a raid on a militant's hide-out.
It was not clear whether the kidnapped men were seized in a group or in separate incidents.
India said today it was trying to win the release of its kidnapped citizens and reiterated that it would not send troops to Iraq, the Reuters news agency reported. "We will only be extending humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people," said Edaepakath Ahmad, the Indian junior foreign minister.
Iraqi and American officials urged the Philippines not to bend to the captors' demands, for fear of encouraging more kidnappings. "We have warned all the countries, companies, businessmen and truck drivers that those who deal with American cowboy occupiers will be targeted by the fires of the mujahedeen," read a statement given to The Associated Press. "Here you are once again transporting, goods, weapons and military equipment that backs the United States Army."
Earlier on Wednesday, a senior military official in Iraq said there had been a recent spike in violence here, after a lull in large-scale attacks of several weeks that coincided with the official transfer of sovereignty from the American occupation to a new interim Iraqi government. The official, briefing reporters in Baghdad, noted a spate of car bomb attacks, killings of Iraqi officials and kidnappings aimed at spreading what he said was "fear and terror in the populace."
"Hostage taking has one goal only: that's to draw the attention to the cause of terrorists," the official said. "It serves no other function."
Marc Lacey contributed reporting from Kenya for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Violating Settlement Withdrawal Pledge, Group Says
July 22, 2004
By JOSEPH BERGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/international/middleeast/22CND-MIDEAST.html
JERUSALEM, July 22 - Despite six months of talk about withdrawal from much of the occupied territories, new houses and starter caravans continue to be erected at many Jewish settlements, and fresh expansion into disputed land continues unabated, according to Peace Now, an advocacy group for peaceful negotiations with the Palestinians.
To emphasize its point the group, which also monitors settlement growth, presented at a news conference aerial photographs - taken between February and early July - that it said showed new trailers, buildings, roads and other infrastructure on settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Yet withdrawal from all 21 Jewish settlements here is supposed to be completed by the end of next year. Four settlements in the West Bank are also to be evacuated under the plan.
The expansion, Peace Now said, violates pledges by the Israeli government to limit settlement growth to land within the current boundaries, as well as breaching the spirit of the withdrawal plan announced by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February.
However, the group could not say whether any of the expansion in the Gaza Strip had taken place after early June, when the Israeli cabinet actually approved a plan to withdraw all 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Nevertheless, the settlers in the Gaza Strip, most of them ideologically committed to a vision of a greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, acknowledge that they have indeed been building new homes.
Yacov Chalamish, a resident of Atzmona, said four new homes have been started there in the past two months. Even though the government stopped financing new construction two weeks ago, he said, the settlers have received private loans and donations.
"Most of us are sure that nothing will come of the disengagement," said Mr. Chalamish, a former member of the Atzmona settler council. "The government stops the money, a new government comes in and the money comes back."
Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the 21 Gaza settlements, confirmed that expansion continues.
"We are Jewish people and what we know is that to continue to build on Jewish land is the most natural thing to do," he said.
The Associated Press, quoting Interior Ministry documents, said this week that the number of Jewish settlers moving to Gaza Strip communities slated for evacuation has increased by 4.3 percent since Mr. Sharon's disengagement announcement.
Peace Now produced a report that said that in the past few months the settlements in the Gaza Strip have developed 190,000 square meters (2,044,400 square feet) beyond their already developed areas - most of it fresh agricultural land but some for houses and trailers as well.
Expansion is also continuing in the outposts, embryonic settlements that are outside the localities which Israel officially finances, the group said. The Israeli government had dismantled two outposts south of Ofra, but two new ones have been started east of Ofra, according to Dror Etkes, the organization's settlement coordinator.
At least 12 outposts have been expanded so far this year, Peace Now said, calling in its report for "the government to stop trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes and remove all the outposts in the West Bank immediately."
In another development, the Israeli Army reported today that it had uncovered and destroyed two more tunnels along the Israeli-Egyptian border that were used for smuggling weapons. In one, a tunnel 24 feet deep, a pulley block and ropes were found, and in the other, about 20 feet deep, a knife, sand bags and ropes.
Seventeen tunnels have been discovered this year and 90 since September 2000, the Army said. The Army also destroyed a workshop in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, that it said was used for building weapons.
Amid the violence, security concerns and debates over Israeli policy, the political struggle that has preoccupied the Palestinian leadership crisis continued today.
Yasir Arafat, who has been locked in a test of wills with his prime minister, apparently made an overture Wednesday to defuse tensions. The Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei, submitted his resignation on Saturday. Mr. Arafat has repeatedly refused to accept it, but has not given Mr. Qurei what he wants - effective control over security in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Today, Imad Falouji, a Palestinian lawmaker met with Mr. Arafat at his Ramallah compound and emerged saying that Mr. Arafat would follow Palestinian law, which grants the interior minister, who reports to Mr. Qurei, total authority over security.
But Mr. Arafat did not make the announcement himself, raising questions about the statement's impact, and Mr. Qurei did not respond to the offer.
Several thousand members of Fatah, Mr. Arafat's own movement - some of them in masks and brandishing rifles - rallied tonight in Gaza City, calling for Mr. Arafat to dismiss his cousin, Moussa Arafat, as head of national security in Gaza.
Mr.Arafat tried Monday to pacify earlier protests by appointing Abel Razek Majaida, a senior security commander who had been shunted aside two days earlier, to become Mousa Arafat's boss as the overall head of general security in Gaza and the West Bank.
But tonight's marchers contended that Moussa Arafat ought to leave, and they pressed for jobs for a younger generation of leaders before the Israelis leave Gaza.
"This demonstration is not against Arafat," said one masked member of the Al Aksa Martys Brigade of Yasir Arafat. "We tell Arafat that we are his sons; he's our father. But we're not accepting corruption."
Shortly after the rally, Israeli helicopter gunships fired rockets at a car carrying a leader of Islamic Jihad, Hazem Erhaem , 24, and his bodygyuard, killing both men.
Taghreed El Khodary in Gaza City and Khaled Abu Aker in Ramallah contributed to this article.
--------
Palestinian Council Rebukes Arafat; Backs Premier's Resignation
July 22, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/international/middleeast/22mide.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 21 - The Palestinian parliament on Wednesday stepped up the political pressure on Yasir Arafat by giving overwhelming approval to a resolution urging him to accept the prime minister's resignation.
The Palestinian parliament is one of the livelier legislatures in the Arab world, a region where lawmakers rarely challenge national leaders. Still, it is unusual for legislators to take a position directly opposed to Mr. Arafat, who has refused to accept the resignation by the prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, on Saturday.
Mr. Arafat wants Mr. Qurei to stay in office but so far has not offered to grant him expanded powers. The lawmakers voted 43 to 4 for a nonbinding measure that also called on Mr. Arafat to form a new government that would have greater control over the security forces and the authority to introduce political reforms and combat corruption.
The debate took on added urgency after a shooting on Tuesday night that seriously wounded Nabil Amr, a legislator and a former information minister who has often been critical of Mr. Arafat's leadership.
Mr. Amr was part of a seven-member committee that drew up the recommendations presented to the legislature on Wednesday. He was shot twice in the leg after returning home on Tuesday night.
"This is further proof of the dangers of the continuation of the state of paralysis of the security apparatus," Mr. Qurei said in a statement issued by his office.
On Wednesday evening, shortly after the parliament's vote, masked Palestinian gunmen seized a local official in the West Bank city of Nablus but freed him after a few hours later.
The current crisis began Friday, when Palestinian militants kidnapped two Palestinian security officials and four French aid workers in the Gaza Strip. All were released within hours. But Mr. Qurei said Saturday that he was quitting, because of the lawlessness in Gaza and the disarray in the security services, which are controlled by Mr. Arafat.
On Wednesday night Mr. Arafat signed a decree consolidating about a dozen Palestinian security agencies into three, a senior aide, Jibril Rajoub, told Reuters. The United States and some European countries are among those demanding such a reorganization.
It is not clear whether the move is substantive or merely cosmetic. Mr. Arafat's critics say he must also hand over control of the security forces to the prime minister; there was no indication that Mr. Arafat had taken such a step.
Mr. Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has met with visitors in recent days, including the cabinet on Tuesday, but he has made no public comments.
Under pressure from Western countries and Palestinian critics, he reluctantly agreed to create the prime minister's post last year. But the two prime ministers appointed since then have been frustrated by their narrow mandates.
The continuing turmoil gave the Palestinians little opportunity to cheer a victory on Tuesday at the United Nations, where the General Assembly voted 150 to 6 to demand that Israel obey a World Court ruling and tear down its West Bank separation barrier. Israel said it would continue building the barrier, which about one-quarter complete.
"The resolution suggests that Israel should remove the shield protecting its citizens, while doing nothing tangible about terrorism," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. "Israel has every moral rght in the world to complete this defensive barrier."
The Palestinians say Israel is free to build the barrier on its pre-1967 borders, but not in the West Bank.
--------
Guns Turned on Arafat's Authority
Long-Standing Tensions Erupt Into Attacks Against Government in Gaza
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4163-2004Jul21.html
GAZA CITY, July 21 -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is facing the most serious internal threat to his authority in a decade, as militants are turning guns against their own government and long-festering political tensions are erupting into gunfights and kidnappings in the streets of the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian officials, militant leaders and analysts.
The internecine violence has exposed deep fissures in Arafat's Fatah political movement, the dominant faction in the 10-year-old Palestinian Authority, and has escalated demands across Palestinian society that Arafat surrender some of his powers and reform a governmental system riddled with corruption.
Isolated for more than two years in his presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat has exercised diminishing control over his party and his supporters in Gaza. The events unfolding in this crowded, impoverished enclave suggest that Fatah is engulfed in full-scale fratricide. Feuding Fatah political leaders have created their own militias, the movement's armed wing has turned against its creators, and reform efforts have become entangled in the power struggles.
"It's a catastrophe," said Ahmed Helis, general secretary of Fatah in the Gaza Strip. "The truth is that both sides are corrupt. There's not a good side and a bad side. And Fatah hasn't accepted what's really happening."
"It's very serious, much more serious than any time before -- since the beginning of the Palestinian Authority, since the formation of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in 1964," said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, political analyst and reform advocate. "The whole society is now upset and wants reform."
Some Palestinian officials argue, however, that calls for reform are being used as camouflage by individuals and organizations attempting to seize power in Gaza.
"I don't want anybody to believe what is happening in the streets of Gaza has anything to do with reform," said Marwan Kanafani, a Palestinian legislator. "It's a simple power struggle. It's hurting us, and it's going to get worse. People are disgusted and panicked and afraid."
The crisis has been spurred largely by competition among Palestinian factions to stake claims on power in an eventual Palestinian-controlled Gaza, according to Palestinian officials and militants. After four years of crushing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed withdrawing Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers from the enclave within the next few years.
The tensions came to a head during four days of chaos that began Friday, when the Palestinian Authority's top police official in Gaza was kidnapped by militants from the Popular Resistance Committees, a loose-knit group of disaffected members of larger Palestinian militant organizations, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah. The gunmen paraded Ghazi Jabali, the senior security chief in Gaza, through the streets of a refugee camp, accusing him of stealing $22 million in public funds.
When Arafat then replaced Jabali with his cousin, Moussa Arafat, crowds of Palestinians attacked the authority's military intelligence headquarters in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, and later about a dozen people were wounded in a battle between al-Aqsa gunmen and uniformed Palestinian security forces in the border city of Rafah. Competing militant groups demonstrated in the streets of Gaza City on Monday, some protesting government corruption, others supporting the officials accused of being corrupt.
Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia submitted his resignation on Saturday, complaining that his government could not contain the turmoil in Gaza, but Arafat refused to accept it. On Wednesday, the Palestinian Legislative Council approved a resolution urging Arafat to accept the resignation of Qureia and his cabinet because of their failure to control the "tragic and dangerous" situation.
Later Wednesday, Arafat approved a reform initiative that would merge the Palestinian Authority's roughly one dozen security branches into three agencies, according to Palestinian officials quoted by the Reuters news agency in Ramallah. Palestinian reformers and foreign governments had urged Arafat to take such a step for more than a year, but it was not clear what practical effect it would have if implemented.
The spectacle of Palestinian militants in pitched gunfights with Palestinian government forces has alarmed many people here, even those who have repeatedly expressed dismay over police abandoning their posts in the face of Israeli tanks or doing little to combat common crime.
"I don't want to watch our own people fighting each other," said Ibriham Shaban, 52, who owns a shoe shop in downtown Gaza City. "Fights between brothers are much more dangerous than fights with the Israelis."
Abu Mohammad, a spokesman for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who would not be quoted by his full name because he said he is wanted by the Israelis, acknowledged that his group is troubled by taking up arms against the organization that created it. But he said the militants, who recently issued a 10-page manifesto calling for reform in the Palestinian Authority and urging Arafat to relinquish some of his powers, are frustrated by Arafat's failure to address their concerns.
"We don't want to trade the corruption of the Israeli occupation for the corruption of Palestinians when they pull out of here," Abu Mohammad said as his bodyguards patrolled the street nearby.
Many Gaza officials said they believe that Mohammed Dahlan, the former Palestinian security chief in Gaza and a longtime Arafat rival, was behind the kidnapping of Jabali on Friday. While Dahlan has strong support among some Fatah factions and security forces in Gaza, he also has been tainted by rumors that he used his government position to amass personal wealth. Dahlan declined requests for an interview.
But Ziad Abu Amr, an independent legislator and advocate of government reform, said: "This is not a personal problem. It's a lack of change, a lack of reform. Superficial measures here and there are not adequate."
Underscoring the continuing violence, Nabil Amr, an outspoken critic of Arafat, was shot in the foot several times by gunmen near his home in Ramallah Tuesday night, according to Palestinian officials. Amr, a lawmaker and former Palestinian information minister, was taken by ambulance to Jordan for surgery Wednesday. He issued a statement saying he would not be silenced by the attack.
Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem and special correspondent Sufian Taha in Ramallah contributed to this report.
--------
EU: Israel Violating International Law
July 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Europe.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- The European Union's foreign policy chief said during a visit to Israel on Thursday that the Jewish state's West Bank separation barrier violates international law and would be just as effective if built on Israeli territory.
Javier Solana's comments came just two days after the 25-nation EU infuriated Israeli leaders by supporting a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to tear down the barrier in compliance with a world court ruling.
``We have respect for the right of the country to construct a fence in its own territory but we do think that the route that the fence has taken is not one that is compatible with international law,'' Solana said during a joint news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
Moments earlier, Shalom said, ``The government and people of Israel are deeply disappointed by Europe's decision to vote with the Palestinians and against the fence.''
``The EU should be engaged in promoting Palestinian reform in Gaza and Ramallah, not Palestinian manipulation in the U.N.,'' Shalom said, adding that Europe's vote ``encourages the Palestinians to continue their evasion of responsibility'' on fighting terror.
The two men met for an hour before the news conference amid an atmosphere of rising tensions between Israel and Europe. Israeli media reported that Israel blamed France for persuading EU countries to support the U.N. resolution.
Israel has long accused the E.U. of being unbalanced and has pushed Europe to the sidelines of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking efforts.
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused to meet with envoys from the so-called Quartet -- the United States, Europe, the United Nations and Russia. Sharon's spokesman said then that Israel would not discuss peacemaking or security issues with Europe.
Israel says the string of fences, walls and barbed wire that will eventually stretch 425 miles keeps out suicide bombers. Palestinians say the barrier is a land grab since it cuts into the West Bank at several points. About 100 miles of the barrier are built.
``The fence goes through occupied territories and from the very beginning we have been against that, it's no surprise,'' Solana said.
``The security of Israel and the protecting of the Israeli people is something we have always supported and we'll continue to support. I know that the fence has saved many lives but it would have saved as many lives if it would have been constructed inside Israel.''
Israel's Foreign Ministry summoned European ambassadors for consultations Wednesday to express Israel's displeasure over the European position on the barrier.
Shalom said Israel had hoped the meetings with Solana would focus on improving Israeli-European relations, but they were redirected because of the U.N. vote.
``This visit is now taking place in the shadow of Europe's vote ... Much of our time today was spent in a frank discussion of the issue,'' Shalom said.
Solana had photo opportunities and meetings with Israeli government officials canceled Thursday. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel decided to give Solana an especially ``difficult and cold reception.''
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution Tuesday calling on Israel to take down the barrier and comply with a nonbinding ruling issued earlier this month by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israel has refused to comply to the world court ruling and the U.N. resolution. Neither of them are legally binding, but both have symbolic significance.
-------- nato
France ready to help patrol Baltic airspace: minister
RIGA (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722114809.oh9d3idd.html
France is prepared to help patrol the airspace of NATO's three new Baltic members, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Thursday.
"France is prepared to take part concretely in the surveillance of the airspace of the Baltic states," Alliot-Marie told a news conference after meeting her Latvian counterpart Atis Slakteris in Riga.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics which are neighbours of Russia, joined NATO on March 29 and lack the aircraft needed to protect their own airspace.
NATO aircraft are currently patrolling the airspace, with Dutch troops having taken over the duties from Belgium and then Denmark.
Alliot-Marie said France was also prepared to help stage a conference on patrolling Baltic airspace and to help train Latvian experts.
--------
Greece Seeks NATO Troops For Olympics
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3020-2004Jul21.html
The Greek government has asked NATO to consider dispatching a contingent of troops, possibly including U.S. forces, to help provide security at next month's Olympic Games, top Pentagon officials said yesterday.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said NATO is studying the request at its headquarters in Brussels. They did not provide details of the request and declined to discuss any intelligence indicating that terrorists might be planning to target the Olympics in Athens.
The United States has agreed to contribute 400 Special Forces soldiers to help protect the Games, the Associated Press quoted a U.S. counterterrorism official as saying. But it has not yet been decided whether the troops would be in Athens, on the nearby island of Crete or remain on alert in Europe, the news agency reported.
In any case, Rumsfeld and Myers made it clear that any U.S. soldiers helping to provide security for the Games would do so under the auspices of NATO, a 26-nation alliance that includes Greece.
"Greece has been working closely with NATO," Rumsfeld said at a news conference at the Pentagon. "And NATO has been, to the extent it's able, responding to the government of Greece's requests and thoughts and suggestions."
Myers, standing alongside Rumsfeld, said: "The Greek government has made a request of NATO. NATO is evaluating that request. . . . And once that decision's made, then we'll look at the kind of capabilities that might be required to help."
Asked if that help would involve U.S. troops, Myers said, "It's all possible. Sure."
Rumsfeld interjected that "it wouldn't involve U.S. troops, per se. It would be only a NATO mission."
The dispatch of foreign troops or armed guards to Greece for the Olympics is a sensitive issue because the Greek constitution generally prohibits foreigners from bearing arms on Greek soil. There are exceptions, however, for armed guards of foreign leaders and for NATO troops, officials said.
-------- prisoners of war
Army: Much higher estimates of abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan
7/22/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-07-22-prisoner-abuse_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military has found 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army's inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.
The number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by the Pentagon, which had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations.
The inspector general investigation, ordered Feb. 10 after the allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of top Army officials in Washington, concluded that there were no systemic problems that contributed to the abuse. In some cases, the report found, the abuse was abetted or facilitated by officers not following proper procedures.
In contrast to its own findings, however, the Army report also cites a February report from the International Committee for the Red Cross that alleged that "methods of ill treatment" were "used in a systematic way" by the U.S. military in Iraq.
Seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cresaptown, Md., were charged in the prisoner abuse scandal, which unfolded this past spring with the release of pictures of abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Questions also arose about prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the deaths of detainees, as well as whether abuse was part of interrogations.
Sen. John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had been pressing for the results of the inspector general report for several weeks, called the last-minute hearing Thursday before Congress leaves for the rest of the summer Friday.
The Army has not yet made the entire report public but released parts during the public hearing.
The Army inspector general report, looking at the period from Oct 1. 2001 through June 9 of this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, is by far the most comprehensive examination of the abuse that sent shock waves through both the Arab world and the United States.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, testifying at the hearing, said he accepted responsibility for the abuses committed by soldiers.
But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the committee, said it was "difficult to believe there were not systemic problems with our detention and interrogations operations."
The Army inspector general report found that since the fall of 2001, overall the United States had held more than 50,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, a number never before made public.
--------
U.S. acknowledges receiving Afghan prisoner from vigilantes
7/22/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-07-22-us-afghanistan_x.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The U.S. military acknowledged Thursday it held an Afghan man for a month after taking custody of him from a trio of American counterterror vigilantes who have since been arrested on charges of torturing prisoners at a private jail they ran in the Afghan capital.
The American military has tried to distance itself from the group, led by a former American soldier named Jonathan Idema, insisting they were freelancers working outside the law. But spokesman Maj. Jon Siepmann acknowledged that the military had received a detainee from Idema's group at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on May 3.
Siepmann said Idema had appeared "questionable" the moment he presented the detainee, and that suspicion grew when, one month later, the man turned out not to be the top suspect that Idema had described.
"That doesn't mean at the time that we knew Mr. Idema's full track record or other things he was doing out there," Siepmann said. "This was a person who turned in a person who we believed was on our list of terrorists and we accepted him."
Siepmann declined to identify the detainee or the fugitive he was mistaken for.
He said it was unclear how Idema, who officials say had been posing as a U.S. special operations soldier, identified himself to soldiers at Bagram, or if he asked for anything in return for the detainee.
The U.S. government has offered rewards for the capture of a string of top fugitives, including a $50 million bounty on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Siepmann said officials were looking into whether Idema had other contact with U.S.-led forces here, but insisted he was in Afghanistan "entirely of his own volition."
Officials in Washington have also denied the trio were employed or sponsored by any arm of the U.S. government.
"We did not commission him to go out and look for terrorists," Siepmann said.
Afghan security forces seized Idema, two other Americans and four Afghans on July 5 after freeing eight prisoners from a makeshift jail in Kabul. The arrests came only after international peacekeepers contacted the U.S. military about their own suspicion of Idema's group, which duped the NATO-led force into helping in three raids in late June.
The seven defendants went on trial in Kabul on Wednesday, charged with hostage-taking and torture.
Idema, of Fayetteville, N.C., and codefendants Edward Caraballo of New York City and Brett Bennett could be jailed for up to 20 years if convicted. Afghan and U.S. officials have left open whether they will be sent to the United States to face more charges.
The Americans didn't testify. But in court Wednesday, Idema told reporters that the group had tacit support from senior U.S. Defense Department officials and that they once offered to put his team under contract.
Idema said he was in daily telephone and e-mail contact with officials "at the highest level," including in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office.
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did. They absolutely supported what we did," Idema said. "We have extensive evidence of that."
A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no evidence that Idema or the two other Americans were in contact with the Defense Department.
Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari adjourned the case for two weeks to give the seven accused more time to prepare their defense.
Idema appeared in court in a khaki uniform with an American flag on the shoulder. A beard and sunglasses gave him a look indistinguishable from that of many of the American security agents commonly seen around Kabul.
Idema, who is reportedly 48, claimed his group had halted a plot by "world-class terrorists" to blow up Bagram with fuel trucks and assassinate Afghan leaders.
The court heard three of Idema's former captives describe being beaten, held under water and left without food.
Taxi driver Ahmad Ali said his head was forced repeatedly into a basin of water and that he was beaten on the feet and stomach. He said he was fed two pieces of bread in seven days.
"They kept showing me pictures of people and asked if I knew them," Ali said. "They said they'd bring my family and beat them as well."
Idema, who claims to have fought the Taliban in 2001-2002, offered protection for journalists and hawked purported al-Qaeda training videos to television networks. He is featured in a book about the Afghan war called "Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for bin Laden."
Prosecutor Mohammed Naeem Dawari said cameras and weapons were seized at their Kabul hideout, and that the Americans were "making a film on counterterrorism."
Dawari said Caraballo, 35, was a cameraman and that Bennett, 28, "seemed to be a journalist."
--------
Army Inspector General Reports 94 Cases of Prisoner Abuse
July 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Prisoner-Abuse.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military has found a total of 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army's inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.
The Pentagon had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations since the prisoner abuse scandal broke this spring. The 94 number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by Pentagon officials.
The inspector general investigation, ordered Feb. 10 after the allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of top Army officials in Washington, concluded that there were no systemic problems that contributed to the abuse. In some cases, the report found, the abuse was abetted or facilitated by officers not following proper procedures.
In contrast to its own findings, however, the Army report also cites a February report from the International Committee for the Red Cross that alleged that ``methods of ill treatment'' were ``used in a systematic way'' by the U.S. military in Iraq.
Sen. John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had been pressing for the results of the inspector general report for several weeks, called a last-minute hearing Thursday before Congress leaves for the rest of the summer Friday.
Warner apologized for the late notice of the hearing, but said he had wanted to get the information to the committee members as soon as it was available.
The Army has not yet made the entire report public but released parts during the public hearing.
The Army inspector general report, looking at the period from Oct 1. 2001 through June 9 of this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, is by far the most comprehensive examination of the abuse that sent shock waves through both the Arab world and the United States.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, testifying before a hastily called Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, said he accepted responsibility for the abuses committed by soldiers.
But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the committee, said it was ``difficult to believe there were not systemic problems with our detention and interrogations operations.''
The Army inspector general report found that since the fall of 2001, overall the United States had held more than 50,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, a number never before made public.
-------- russia / chechnya
Blasts hit Russian special forces
Russia's North Caucasus region has seen a surge in violence
Thursday 22 July 2004
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B97DBC51-6B90-4532-A6A1-C09717347EF2.htm
At least eight people have been hurt in two separate blasts at a base of the OMON special police near Russia's strife-torn province of Chechnya.
Interfax, quoting local police, said the first explosion on Thursday, caused by a bomb, occurred outside the OMON base in Makhachkala in Dagestan, neighbouring Chechnya.
The agency said the blast occurred as a bus carrying OMON police officers arrived at the base. One of the injured was said to be a woman who was in a serious condition, but the others had only slight wounds.
An hour later, a second explosion took place about 50 metres from the base, Interfax said. No one was injured in this explosion, according to preliminary information.
Dagestan, on the Caspian Sea, has suffered from an overspill of violence from Chechnya where separatist groups are fighting Russian forces and has been the scene of kidnappings, killings and bomb explosions in the past five years.
-------- space
Russia launches Kosmos rocket with military satellite
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722185533.30mc7dpx.html
A Russian Kosmos rocket carrying a military satellite blasted off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome late Thursday, a spokesman for Russia's space forces said.
The Kosmos-3M rocket was launched at 9:46 pm (1746 GMT), the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the spokesman as saying.
The military satellite was the fifth one to be sent into space since the beginning of this year.
-------- spies
[...Should you get caught, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of you or your mission...]
Ex-G.I., Charged in Kabul, Says He Was on U.S. Mission
July 22, 2004
New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/international/asia/22afgh.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 21 - A former member of the United States Special Forces, charged here on Wednesday along with two other Americans with running their own vigilante war on terrorism, said he had been on a secret mission approved by the Pentagon at the highest level - even as an Afghan prosecutor said the men had maintained under questioning that they had no connection with the government.
Talking to reporters on Wednesday before the court session began, the defendant, Jonathan K. Idema, said that he had been in direct contact with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's office "five times a day, every day" and that he had e-mail messages, correspondence and tape recordings to prove it.
"We were working for the U.S. counterterrorist group and working with the Pentagon and some other federal agencies," he said. "We were in contact directly by fax and e-mail and phone with Donald Rumsfeld's office."
He added, though, that he had declined an offer from a Pentagon official to go to Afghanistan under contract.
The comments expanded on his claims in a pretrial hearing on Sunday that he had arrested and interrogated men while working directly with American and Afghan officials.
The American Embassy and the international force headquarters in Kabul have both maintained that Mr. Idema - a former Green Beret who was on active duty for three years in the 1970's - has no connection to any United States government or military body. The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said last week that the American government "does not employ or sponsor" any of the men.
Mr. Idema and the two other Americans, Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo, a television journalist, stood for two hours as the Afghan prosecutor, Muhammad Naeem Dawari, formally laid out the charges against them to a packed courtroom of about 300 journalists and members of the public in downtown Kabul.
The three men are accused of hostage taking, holding people in a private jail, illegally entering the country and being in possession of illegal weapons. Additionally, the prosecutor said they should pay compensation to the victims they detained. Four Afghan men arrested with them - two interpreters, a cleaner and a guard - are being charged as accomplices in hostage taking.
Mr. Dawari said the three Americans had set up their own antiterrorism unit to arrest suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Security forces found eight prisoners in their house, who all said they had been subjected to torture, he said. He identified men who had been held prisoner in the house, three of whom gave the court, by special request of the judge, an account of their detention.
The prosecutor told the court that Mr. Idema had said under interrogation that he had no connection with any American governmental department and that he had entered Afghanistan from India without a proper visa. Mr. Idema had admitted detaining men in his house, saying that they were members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, Mr. Dawari said, and that that he was intending to hand them over to the Afghan or American authorities. Mr. Bennett had also said he had no formal connection to any American government agency, telling the authorities that he had come to work for the counterterrorism center but only answered to Mr. Idema, the prosecutor told the court.
Mr. Caraballo had told questioners that he was in the country to work on a video documentary on the fight against terrorism there.
Mr. Dawari said that the two Afghan interpreters had admitted under questioning that the Americans had held prisoners and tortured them, and that the Afghan defendants had taken part in the detention of the prisoners. The judge, Abdul Baset Bakhtiari, gave the defendants 15 days to arrange legal representation and prepare their defense. Only Mr. Caraballo had an American lawyer present to represent him. Mr. Bennett asked the court for more time for his defense lawyer to arrive from America. It was not clear if Mr. Idema was also seeking legal counsel. Judge Bakhtiari said he would consider a further extension if necessary.
Michael Skibbie, the American lawyer representing Mr. Caraballo, said his client would plead not guilty to all charges. Despite the fact that the proceeding was a pretrial procedural hearing, the court then invited three men who said they had been held prisoner by the Americans to give their accounts of being detained. The men - who were identified as Ghulam Sakhi, a shopkeeper; Maulavi Muhammad Siddiq, a primary court judge; and Sher Jan - said that they had been held for days, hooded and given little to eat. They said they had been beaten and kicked, had scalding water poured on them, and had their heads immersed repeatedly in a bucket of water to the point that two of them said they had passed out.
--------
Israeli spy case twist
July 22, 2004
The Christian Science Monitor
by Matthew Clark
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0722/dailyUpdate.html
Reports allege that suspected Mossad agent wanted for passport fraud in New Zealand was an Israeli diplomat.
ONE News of TV New Zealand reports that a third man at the center of an Israeli spy scandal was a diplomat for Israel.
BBC reports that New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff alleged that Zev Barkan was an attache at two Israeli embassies in Europe. Mr. Goff told New Zealand radio that Mr. Barkan was employed at the Israeli embassies in Vienna and Brussels between 1993 and 2001.
TV New Zealand reports that "the revelation is further evidence that the Israeli government was behind a bungled attempt to fraudulently obtain a New Zealand passport."
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reports that the Austrian Foreign Ministry confirmed the reports that Barkan served for a number of years as an Israeli diplomat in Vienna. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has neither confirmed nor denied connections to Barkan, reports Ha'aretz.
Eli Cara and Uri Kelman, alleged agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, pleaded guilty to belonging to an organized criminal group and attempting to obtain a false New Zealand passport and are now appealing a six-month prison sentence handed down last week.
Shortly after the two were sentenced last week, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark launched a verbal attack and slapped diplomatic sanctions on Israel, saying that actions of the men and those of the Israeli government had "seriously strained relations" with New Zealand.
On Tuesday, The New Zealand Herald reported that "New Zealand intelligence agencies are understood to have bugged the two Israeli passport fraudsters and gained concrete evidence that they were Mossad agents."
New Zealand also voted Tuesday in favor of a UN resolution demanding that Israel demolish its controversial security barrier. The US and Australia voted against the measure, along with Israel and three Pacific island nations.
Meanwhile, Cybercast News Service reports that Jewish community leaders in New Zealand have asked their government to block a visit by a "revisionist historian who calls the Holocaust a 'legend'." Controverial British historian David Irving has been banned from entering countries such as Canada, Australia, and Austria for his views.
In an editorial Thursday, The New Zealand Herald calls Irving's views on Hitler and the Holocaust "utterly discredited," but defends his right to enter the country and speak freely.
Freedom of speech means that within established legal boundaries, differing views must be heard. That includes arguments devoid of credibility. ... Mr Irving's views do not exceed the boundaries of free speech. ... Free speech must be a robust right, not one that is truncated when it becomes an inconvenience or when the viewpoint is unpalatable.
More practically, it is verging on the nonsensical to ban an author whose views are already widely known in this country, if only through reports from overseas. Mr Irving's work can be ignored, such is its lack of merit.
Irving has dismissed those hoping to prevent him from visiting New Zealand as "the traditional enemies of the truth" on his website.
CNS News explains that this is a tough time for the Jewish community there.
The country's small Jewish community is feeling vulnerable following their government's diplomatic rift with Israel over allegations of espionage, and following the rare desecration of headstones in a historical Jewish cemetery in Wellington.
Shortly after the prime minister announced the sanctions against Israel last week, Jewish graves in Wellington were smashed and desecrated with Nazi slogans.
-------- us
Report: US underestimated war cost
Pentagon faces a shortfall this year of $12.3 billion
Thursday 22 July 2004,
Aljazeera and Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DCA9CB58-8C2A-49D7-8D93-9E775C039892.htm
The United States underestimated this year's cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by $12.3 billion, says a congressional report.
The report by the Government Accountability Office released on Wednesday said the shortfall is forcing the Defence Department to shift funds from other uses, including pushing expenses from the 2004 fiscal into 2005.
"Analysis ... suggests that anticipated costs will exceed the supplemental funding provided for the war by $12.3 billion for the current fiscal year," the report said.
Congress approved an $87 billion emergency spending bill in October 2003 to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September.
Fiscal impact
Democrats estimate that the Pentagon has $5 billion left to fund the 2004 shortfall but will need to find $7 billion to cover it in the last two months of the fiscal year.
"The administration has failed to budget for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan," said top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, John Spratt.
"The time is long past for the administration to present a full accounting of the cost of the war and to ask Congress to put up the resources needed to fund it."
The report warned that deferring activities planned for the 2004 fiscal year "adds to the requirements that will need to be funded in fiscal year 2005 and potentially later years and could result in a 'bow wave' effect in future fiscal years".
It also criticised the Department of Defence for lack of transparency into how the money it was sent by Congress has been spent. The report said "large amounts" of funds were classified as miscellaneous, providing "little insight" into where the money went.
Related:
Pentagon freeze on Halliburton bills
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BD1C0A9D-8D56-4E3A-9E48-B7E2B68C6BC2.htm
Pentagon finance manager resigns
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/635B6007-9DD0-436C-BFF6-E6521520B1C7.htm
----
US Underestimated War Costs by $12.3 Billion - GAO
July 22, 2004
Story by Anna Willard
REUTERS USA:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26173/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said yesterday it may tap emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan earlier than requested as a congressional report found that the Bush administration underestimated war costs by $12.3 billion.
The report fueled criticism that the wars were badly planned and comes as Congress prepares to approve this week $25 billion in war funds that the White House requested for the 2005 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Those funds will become available when the legislation is passed.
But a Pentagon spokeswoman said the Defense Department may need to use that money earlier if Congress does not approve a request to divert unused money from other Pentagon accounts.
"If we do not get the ... reprograming, we will have to tap into the $25 billion earlier than fiscal year 2005," the spokeswoman said.
The report by Congress' investigative arm found that the Defense Department has been forced to shift funds from other uses, including pushing expenses from the 2004 fiscal year into 2005, in a move likely to boost war costs further down the line.
"Analysis ... suggests that anticipated costs will exceed the supplemental funding provided for the war by $12.3 billion for the current fiscal year," the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.
Congress approved an $87 billion emergency spending bill in October 2003 to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September.
Democrats estimate that the Pentagon has $5 billion left to fund the 2004 shortfall but will need to find $7 billion to cover it in the last two months of the fiscal year.
WARTIME PRESIDENT
"George W. Bush likes to call himself the wartime president, yet ... he has grossly mismanaged the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq," said a spokesman for Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry.
"This latest report ... is another example of how George W. Bush planned for the best case scenarios and failed to prepare for the realities of war."
A Pentagon spokeswoman said it is hard to predict the exact cost of a war. "No one knows how long it's going to last and what nations will support it or end support." The report warned that deferring activities planned for the 2004 fiscal year "adds to the requirements that will need to be funded in fiscal year 2005 and potentially later years and could result in a 'bow wave' effect in future fiscal years."
Democrats say the White House is trying to avoid using the $25 billion in the 2004 fiscal year to keep down the size of the record budget deficit ahead of the November election.
The White House is expected to seek a larger emergency spending bill after the U.S. election for Iraq and Afghanistan - which Democrats say will top $50 billion.
The GAO also criticized the Pentagon for lack of transparency into how the money has been spent. The report said "large amounts" were reported as miscellaneous, providing little insight into where the money went.
Lawmakers have agreed to tighten controls and want monthly reports on the how the latest $25 billion will be used.
But, the GAO said, "additional actions are necessary."
In a separate report, the GAO criticized the Army and Halliburton for their logistics work in Iraq, citing the Army's poor planning and problems with the Texas contractor's cost controls.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)
----
Fewer Army Recruits Lined Up
Manpower Concerns Raised as Pool Shrinks to Three-Year Low
By Thomas E. Ricks and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4013-2004Jul21.html
The Army's pool of future recruits has dwindled to its lowest level in three years, worrying Pentagon officials as the service is being stretched by the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq.
The Army watches the number of future soldiers in the "delayed entry" program -- those who have enlisted but have not been shipped to boot camp -- as a way to make sure it has enough recruits to keep training camps fully manned in the coming months.
That number has declined to about 23 percent of the number of recruits being shipped this year -- the lowest percentage in three years, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army's personnel office.
"It is an indicator that troubles us, but it isn't shocking," Hilferty said. He said Army officials believe that the situation is "cyclical" and is likely to recover.
The slippage, Hilferty said, reflects statistical factors more than a new reluctance among American youth -- the Army, he said, has expanded its training base, and so it can take in more recruits rather than making them wait for spaces to become available.
Overall, Hilferty said, Army officials continue to watch the recruiting situation with concern but remain confident that they will meet their targets. The Army's recruiting target for this year was recently raised from 71,500 and is expected to be set at about 77,500, Hilferty said. "There's no doubt that we'll make this year's mission, and we're confident we'll make next year's," he said.
Of his boss, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the head of Army personnel, Hilferty said, "He's concerned about recruiting and retention -- but he's always concerned about recruiting and retention."
Members of Congress also are expressing concern, especially about the National Guard and reserves. Their recruiting has become more difficult in recent months as they have taken on more of the burden of the Iraq occupation. The Guard and reserves make up about 40 percent of the 146,000 U.S. troops there.
"I heard yesterday from the National Guard back home in Missouri that their retention is, as a result of today's situation, sliding downhill very, very fast," Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said at a hearing yesterday of the House Armed Services Committee. "Some of the units in the Missouri National Guard are now down to only 80 percent, when they were just a few months ago up to 100 percent."
The Army has relied on several unusual measures in recent months to maintain troop levels in Iraq. It has extended some units there beyond their planned tours of 12 months, it has used "stop-loss" to require some soldiers to stay in the Army after their scheduled end of service, and it has recalled thousands of soldiers who have left active duty and are part of the Individual Ready Reserve.
The Army has called up 5,600 soldiers from the IRR, and about 9,500 of the soldiers on active duty as of Sept. 30 will be part of the stop-loss program -- about 2 percent of the entire Army, said Brig. Gen. Sean J. Byrne, the Army's director of military personnel policy.
Byrne told reporters at the Pentagon last week that he expects the IRR call-ups to continue for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in the fall and spring, meaning that thousands of former soldiers -- some of them retirees -- likely will be called back into service in coming months.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview yesterday that the Army is clearly stretched too thin in personnel and equipment, with both taking a battering during serious conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. He said using stop-loss and the IRR to fill gaps are dangerous signs.
"There's huge pressure to find any way to make their numbers," said Reed, who has worked to increase the size of the Army and believes the force still needs more. "They're just improvising every day. The fear I have is that there's an immediate cost, but also a much more profound long-term cost."
The latest indication of the strain on the Army is the new disclosure about worries about the size of the delayed entry pool. In 2001, the number of future soldiers in the pool, as a percentage of the number of recruits joining the Army that year, declined to 22 percent, about where the ratio is now, Hilferty said. A year earlier, it had slipped to 19 percent.
Historically, the Army is most comfortable when the level is around 35 percent -- indicating that about one-third of the people who will go to basic training over the next 12 months already have enlisted.
--------
Running Low on Ammo
Military Turns to Overseas Suppliers to Cover Shortages
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4044-2004Jul21?language=printer
The U.S. military has assembled the most sophisticated fighting arsenal in the world with satellite-guided weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles that shoot Hellfire missiles. But as billions of dollars have poured into the technology for futuristic warfare, the government has fallen behind on more mundane needs -- such as bullets.
The protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and heightened combat training with live ammunition have left the military short of small-caliber bullets. To offset the squeeze, the Army is taking unusual stopgap measures such as buying ammunition from Britain and Israel. It is also working to increase domestic production.
"The big complex programs don't do any good if there aren't bullets for the rifles," said Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a research group based in the District.
Shortages in basic battlefield gear struck soon after the start of the Iraq war, when combat forces outfitted in high-tech uniforms ran short of body armor and armored Humvees. The tight supplies of bullets reflect a shutdown of factories in recent years and the unexpected level of resistance in Iraq, industry analysts said. The Army relies on one plant for its small-caliber ammunition, sharply limiting its options.
The Army estimates that it will need 1.5 billion rounds of small ammunition this year for M-16s and other rifles, triple the amount produced in 2001. The primary U.S. military supplier is the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, a government-owned facility run by Alliant Techsystems Inc. It will manufacture 1.2 billion rounds this year. "To fill that gap, we had to do some things rather quickly," said Brig. Gen. Paul Izzo, the Army's program executive officer for ammunition.
The military has a stockpile of 1 billion rounds but resists dipping into it except for extraordinary emergencies. "We have a good-sized stockpile" that we keep as "our trump card," Izzo said.
Alliant aims to boost production to 1.5 billion rounds a year, but it is not expected to reach that target for another year. In the meantime, the Army has turned to alternate suppliers. In June, it bought about 130 million rounds from Britain's stockpile. In December, it awarded contracts to Israeli Military Industries Ltd., based in Ramat Hasharon, and Winchester Ammunition, a unit of Conn.-based Olin Corp., to produce 70 million rounds each of 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunition.
The military will begin moving away from those temporary suppliers next year when it expects to hire a second small ammunition maker to provide 300 million rounds a year on a long-term basis to supplement output at the Lake City plant in Independence, Mo. Alliant is expected to face competition for the contract from Falls Church-based General Dynamics, which already makes large-caliber ammunition.
A second supplier will give the military the ability to quickly accelerate production if needed, Izzo said. "I am responsible for making sure we have an industrial base that is flexible and responsive," he said.
U.S. bullet production has dwindled to just the Lake City plant from five factories that turned out small ammunition during the Vietnam War. "In essence the Army underestimated what its future ammunition needs might be," said Loren B. Thompson, defense consultant for the Lexington Institute, an Arlington think tank.
The military had only one maker of the protective inserts for interceptor body armor. When shortages appeared during the Iraq war, the government accelerated production and now has seven suppliers turning out the gear. Only one factory produces armored Humvees, but output has risen sharply. The number of armored Humvees produced has reached about 350 a month, up from about 60 a month last year. Production is expected to reach 450 a month by the end of the year.
The Army estimates that it consumes about 5.5 million rounds of ammunition in Iraq and Afghanistan each month. About 72 million rounds have been used in Iraq. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the military began requiring that soldiers conduct live-fire training twice a year, instead of once, consuming about a 100 million rounds a month. The other services, Navy and Air Force, use about 200 million to 250 million rounds a year.
Alliant Techsystems, based in Edina, Minn., has tripled the workforce at the Lake City bullet plant in the past four years to 1,950 workers, from about 650, and is still hiring. The company pulled machines out of storage and spent millions updating the technology to reach production of 1.2 billion rounds a year, up from 350 million in 2000, company spokesman D. Bryce Hallowell said.
Alliant's 10-year contract to run the facility was expected to generate $100 million a year but has leapt to more than $300 million, Hallowell said.
The Army's use of an Israeli company for ammunition supplies has raised concerns among some in Congress. Insurgents in Iraq could use the Israeli purchases as a recruiting tool, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. "It would be utilized by those who wish us ill," Abercrombie said. "To me it seems a very serious issue."
Abercrombie said he was also concerned that the military should not depend on foreign suppliers to address critical war needs. "We need to keep the manufacturing base here and if that costs a little more money, so what?" he said. "If defense is worth having, it's worth paying for."
The Army said it has complied with "Buy America" regulations and that Israeli Military Industries was one of only two providers available. Industry officials acknowledge that the military's options are limited.
Israeli Military Industries said the ammunition will be manufactured in Israel but the raw materials, including propellants, projectiles and primers, come from U.S. sources. "We're there to help as long as we can," said Michael Davison Jr., president of the company's U.S. operations. "It's obviously something very important that the U.S. get the assistance it needs from its friends and allies, and this is a situation in which IMI can do that."
Other U.S. commercial ammunition makers could help fill the gap but cannot break existing contracts with private sector clients or foreign militaries, said Richard Palaschak, director of operations for the Munitions Industrial Base Task Force, a trade association. "There is not a lot of surge capability . . . within the U.S. industrial base," Palaschak said. "So when you get into a situation where [demand has increased] it was clear they had to do some extraordinary things to satisfy the requirements."
Some in Congress are concerned that the Army could be overpaying for the ammunition. The Army has refused to disclose the size of the contracts with Winchester or Israeli Military Industries but acknowledges they are paying a premium of 15 to 20 percent that it attributes to start-up costs, testing and the lower production rate.
"With that kind of cost differential, did we really need" this ammunition immediately, given the Army's stockpile, asked Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Weldon estimated that the government is paying a significantly higher premium on the bullets.
"If you have to scramble to bring up capacity, then you're likely to pay a premium," said Christopher Hellman, director of the Project on Military Spending Oversight at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "Again it calls for more long-term attention to the basics before spending on super complex programs for the future."
--------
Army to Call Up Recruits Earlier
July 22, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22recruit.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 21 - In what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military, the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts in October.
As a result, recruiters will enter the new year without the usual cushion of incoming soldiers, making it that much harder to make their quotas for 2005. Instead of knowing the names of nearly half the coming year's expected arrivals in October, as the Army did last year, or even the names of around one in three, as is the normal goal, this October the recruiting command will have identified only about one of five of the boot camp class of 2005 in advance.
Army officials say that they have been unable to defer as many enlistments as in the past because 4,500 more recruits were needed at midyear to help meet a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers in the active duty force, which is to grow to 512,000 by 2006. The increases are largely driven by the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an interview on Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army's top personnel officer, said that the Army would use incentives like cash bonuses, educational benefits and choice base assignments to help meet its overall recruiting and re-enlistment goals next year, as it has in almost every year when it started with so few advance recruits. But he acknowledged that factors including the American casualties in Iraq and the improving job market made filling the ranks a challenge.
"I worry about this every single day - recruiting and retention," said General Hagenbeck, who commanded forces in Afghanistan in his previous assignment. "We are recruiting a volunteer force during a time of war. We've never done that before."
He also described plans to bring on as many as 1,000 new recruiters before the end of the year, and said the Army was looking to expand the role of private civilian contractors.
Still, some critics on Capitol Hill and among Army recruiters say that tapping into the bank of recruits is a telling sign that the Army is having problems filling its ranks to meet the deployments of more than 120,000 soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In recent weeks, the Army has said it will recruit thousands of sailors and airmen who are otherwise scheduled to leave the Navy and Air Force because of cutbacks. Starting this month, the Army may delay the retirements of soldiers with at least 20 years' experience if they are in jobs that face critical staffing shortages. The Army's top training forces at Fort Polk, La., and Fort Irwin, Calif., are being deployed for the first time, to Iraq, raising concerns among some officers that troops will not be given the most strenuous preparation possible before they leave the United States.
"The Army is stretched dangerously thin," Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, in a hearing on Wednesday.
"We are growing the Army as fast as we can," General Schoomaker said later in the hearing.
In interviews with recruiting officials, as well as in internal memos and e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times, this pressure to meet recruiting goals is evident.
"Guys the mission is at risk!" Col. Peter M. Vangjel, a deputy commander of the Army Recruiting Command, wrote to battalion commanders and top enlisted soldiers in an April 21 e-mail message. "We can NOT miss this mission. I need your full support."
Colonel Vangjel continued, "The CG is the next guy to talk to you about this," referring to the commanding general of the recruiting command, Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle. "Don't let it happen."
But in a June 23 memo to the same senior recruiters, Colonel Vangjel expressed disappointment, saying that in the previous several months, the command "experienced a downward production trend."
Army officials disclosed Wednesday that none of the Army's five recruiting brigades met their missions between March and July, forcing the service to tap into its bank of recruits to make up the difference.
General Hagenbeck said that Army recruiting was shaped by a number of intangibles, most notably the economy, which attracts possible recruits into the private sector when it is strong and sends them toward the military during a downturn.
General Hagenbeck also described the critical role played by parents, teachers and coaches as to whether high school graduates consider Army service - recruiters call them "the influencers." Fears that these influencers would no longer endorse Army service were raised in April, he said, when the military's public standing sustained severe blows.
An Army survey conducted as the nation was rocked by pictures of military police abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison - which coincided with a spike in combat deaths - raised concerns that the "influencers were drawing back," he said.
A month later, though, those negative perceptions had diminished, the Army found, and there is no solid evidence that recruiting will be affected over time, the general said.
Once soldiers initially enlist, they usually wait one month to one year before they formally enlist and are shipped to basic training. As of June 30, there were 2,260 recruits in the delayed entry program, down from 12,236 recruits a year ago.
By dipping into this personnel bank, some recruiting officials said, the Army is eating its seed corn. "They are stealing from the future to accomplish their current accession mission," said one Army recruiting official, referring to the enlisted recruits sent to basic training.
Some congressional officials said, though, that the Army was making a smart move. "But they must be prepared to put additional manpower and funding against recruiting to achieve the increased recruiting objectives and to restore the D.E.P. at the same time," said one senior House Republican aide, using the program's acronym.
General Hagenbeck said the Army was doing that. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Army had moved hundreds of recruiters into other jobs, as the service was easily filling slots. In the current environment, General Hagenbeck said, 100 to 200 civilian recruiters will staff recruiting stations and seek out enlistees, and 650 to 1,000 soldiers will be moved into recruiter slots before the year's end.
General Hagenbeck said that all 10 of the Army's active-duty divisions had met their re-enlistment goals, but it is coming at a steep price. The Army is offering re-enlistment bonuses up to $10,000 a soldier. The retention budget has nearly doubled in five years, to a request for $204 million in the proposed budget for 2005.
Army officials and members of Congress say that much of the data on recruiting and retention trends are anecdotal, and may remain so at least through the next troop rotation to Iraq, when soldiers could leave the service as they emerge from a "stop loss, stop move" order that held them in their units for the duration of their deployments.
--------
U.S. team concludes Navy pilot died in Gulf war
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
July 22, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040722-121156-4199r.htm
Members of the U.S. team investigating the fate of Capt. Scott Speicher have concluded that the Navy fighter pilot is dead, according to sources close to the mission.
But his remains have not been found. A promising lead to finally resolving the matter vanished recently when buried remains thought to be Capt. Speicher's turned out not to be of the downed pilot.
The sources said Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the former director of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), has told officials in recent days that investigators now believe the pilot shot down in 1991 over Iraq is not alive.
The conclusion is based largely on the fact that all leads to Capt. Speicher's whereabouts have turned up no evidence he is alive.
"What I have heard [Gen. Dayton] say is there is no evidence he was ever in captivity," said a senior defense official.
ISG officials now believe Capt. Speicher either died in the crash or shortly thereafter in Iraq's vast western desert, a second official said.
Capt. Speicher's F-18 Hornet was shot down on the first night of Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 17, 1991. The canopy on his crashed jet was photographed some distance from the crash site west of Baghdad, giving rise to hope that he had ejected and was alive.
Later, an Iraqi defector claimed to have seen him alive, prompting the Navy to change his status from killed in action to missing-captured.
But the ISG's investigation since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 has failed to find any evidence he is alive. Two once-promising tips failed to resolve the matter.
In one case, Bedouin tribesmen said they believed Capt. Speicher was buried near the crash site.
"There are Iraqis who believe he died in the desert," said the defense official.
The ISG went to the site and unearthed remains, heightening hopes that the Speicher mystery had finally been solved. The remains were sent to Dover Air Force Base, Del., home to a military mortuary. But a DNA examination determined the body was not Capt. Speicher's, officials say.
In a second lead, a Bedouin claimed to have the pilot's handgun and was willing to turn it in. But the Bedouin never appeared with the gun. Investigators are speculating that the tribesman may have been threatened by Iraqi insurgents or foreign fighters and thus disappeared.
Navy Secretary Gordon England changed Capt. Speicher's status to missing-captured, and would be the official who would decide whether to change it back to killed in action.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is expected to deliver a report on the pilot's status to Mr. England in the coming months, after the ISG files its assessment.
When Mr. England changed the status to "missing-captured" in October 2002, he said in a memo:
"While the information available to me now does not prove definitively that Capt. Speicher is alive and in Iraqi custody, I am personally convinced the Iraqis seized him sometime after his plane went down."
The Washington Times previously reported on a secret DIA written report that cast doubt on the truthfulness of the defector who claimed to have seen Capt. Speicher alive in 1998.
The report refers to defector No. 2314 who had worked in Saddam Hussein's Special Security Organization (SSO), the branch that enforced loyalty to the Ba'ath Party.
Labeled "secret. no foreign," the report states that the military "has debriefed several doctors whom 2314 indicated should have knowledge of Speicher. All denied having any knowledge. Two have passed a polygraph exam. ... None of the information provided by 2314 has proven accurate."
The June 23, 2003, DIA report adds that the military "has searched every known location associated with Speicher. Other than at Hakimiyah prison, where U.S. forces found the initials 'MSS' carved in a cell wall, no significant evidence of his status has been discovered."
The Iraq Survey Group has devoted a number of personnel to the Speicher search. But its main goal is to find out what happened to Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Court rejects islanders' appeal
Diego Garcia was taken over for a military base in the 1970s
BBC
Thursday, 22 July, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/3918749.stm
A group of islanders exiled from their Indian Ocean home when it was turned into a military base have failed in their bid to return to their homeland.
Judges at the Court of Appeal also refused the Diego Garcians permission to challenge a High Court ruling preventing further claims for damages.
The exiles were forced to leave their island in the 1970s when it was taken over by the UK government.
On ruling, one of the judges said their complaints were legally unsustainable.
'Underhand conduct'
He also said the treatment of the islanders had been "shameful" but noted their complaints had been brought outside the time limit for launching legal proceedings.
In October 2003, the British passport holders, who have been staying in Crawley, West Sussex, lost a claim for compensation at the High Court.
Thursday's ruling prevents either them or their descendants from challenging that decision.
Lord Justice Snedley, sitting with Lady Justice Butler-Sloss and Lord Justice Neuberger, said: "This judgement brings to an end the quest of the displaced inhabitants... for legal redress against the state directly responsible for expelling them from their homeland.
High unemployment
"They have not gone without compensation but what they have received has done little to repair the wrecking of their families and communities, to restore their self-respect or to make amends for the underhand official conduct now publicly revealed by the documentary record."
The group arrived at Gatwick Airport in July 2003 and West Sussex County Council was ordered to pay for hotel accommodation for them.
They were exiled from their home when it was turned into a British and US military base.
They were sent to Mauritius, but high unemployment rates prompted them to come to Britain, where they were granted citizenship, and take action against the UK government.
-------- drug war
MORE drug deals: Drug companies score another $18 billion off US taxpayers
By Jane Stillwater
Thu Jul 22, 2004
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com
"George Bush just signed into law a bill that will give drug companies nine billion dollars to produce 25 million doses of anthrax vaccine," they just told me on the radio. Why is the Bush administration spending our money on 25,000,000 doses of anthrax vaccine? What good will being vaccinated for anthrax do if we have no jobs, are homeless and hungry and don't know how to read! If Bush is trying to scare us, guess what? It's not working. I'm more afraid of retiring with no savings, no Social Security and no Medi-Care than I am of being gassed by anthrax.
Now yet another bill is in Congress, trying to make yet another back-street drug deal. When (not if) it passes, nine billion dollars more of our taxes will go toward drug testing every student and employee (www.drugtestingfails.org) in America. Here's a clue, George: If you stop your guys in Afghanistan from growing the world's largest supply of heroin poppies, we will no longer need this $9,000,000,000 drug deal!
Am I angry? YES! We Americans need to stop paying through the nose so that George Bush can keep his drug company friends supplied with lines of OUR dime bags. Americans need to wise up and "Just say no" to the rape of our pocketbooks by corporate drug lords.
"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!"
-------- homeland security
THE PLOT
Surveillance Video Shows Hijackers in Dulles Search
July 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22video.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1090540376-qfw/2MI5zydRm2zfggEr1Q
WASHINGTON, July 21 (AP) - Surveillance video from Dulles International Airport the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, shows three of the five hijackers being pulled aside to undergo additional scrutiny after setting off metal detectors but then permitted to board the flight that later smashed into the Pentagon.
The video shows an airport screener hand-checking the baggage of one hijacker, Nawaq Alhazmi, for traces of explosives before letting him continue to board American Airlines Flight 77 with his brother, Salem, a fellow hijacker, who did not set off the alarm.
The disclosure of the video comes a day before release of the final report by the Sept. 11 commission, which is expected to include a detailed accounting of the events that day.
Details in the grainy video are difficult to distinguish. But an earlier report by the commission describing activities at Dulles is consistent with the men's procession through airport security as shown on the video.
No knives or other sharp objects are visible on the surveillance video. But investigators on the commission have said that the hijackers at Dulles were believed to be carrying utility knives in their pockets or in their luggage, which at the time was legal.
The video shows the hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Majed Moqed, each dressed in slacks and collared shirts, setting off metal detectors as they pass through security. Mr. Moqed set off a second alarm, and a screener manually checked him with a handheld metal detector.
Mr. Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi had been known to be associated with Al Qaeda since early 1999 by the National Security Agency and were put on a terrorism watch list on Aug. 24, 2001.
The fifth hijacker, Hani Hanjour, believed to have been the person who flew Flight 77, passed through Dulles security that morning without being subjected to a secondary security check, according to the video.
The Associated Press obtained the video from the Motley Rice law firm, which represents some survivors' families who are suing the airlines and security industry over their actions in the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Even after setting off these alarms, the airlines and security screeners failed to examine the hijackers' baggage, as required by federal regulations and industry mandated standards, or discover the weapons they would use in their attack," a lawyer, Ron Motley, said.
Elaine Teague, who is suing over the death of her 31-year-old daughter, Sandra, said she had been shown the video by the F.B.I. Ms. Teague said she was surprised at the relaxed security, given that airlines had received three warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration.
--------
Bomb Threat Aboard Turkish Ship off U.S.
foxnews
July 22, 2004
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,126666,00.html
WASHINGTON - A report of a bomb aboard a Turkish merchant ship Thursday forced the U.S. Coast Guard (search) to escort the vessel away from the port of Philadelphia and anchor it near the mouth of the Delaware River, where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean, senior Defense officials told FOX News.
The ship's master became irritated with the length of time a routine Coast Guard search was taking and made comments about a possible explosion, officials said. He refused to allow authorities to search certain portions of the vessel, called the Cenk Kaptanoglu (search).
But the captain later told authorities he'd been joking about the bomb, officials told FOX News. The ship, which was carrying coal, had not yet been boarded for its second inspection.
Still, the Coast Guard took his comments "very seriously" and planned to conduct a "multi-agency" search, officials told FOX News.
A spokesman told The Associated Press that the Coast Guard had "no evidence whatsoever" that there actually was a bomb on board the vessel.
The Coast Guard confirmed that the ship was regarded prior to this incident as a "high-interest vessel," meaning authorities had been tracking its previous movements because of several factors, including its last port of call, its flag country and intelligence reports.
"We did a risk-based analysis, and decided to proceed with the inspections," a Coast Guard official told FOX.
FOX News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
-------- torture
3 Americans begin trial in torture case
July 22, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Stephen Graham
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040721-092948-3320r.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan - Three Americans went on trial yesterday on charges they tortured eight prisoners in a private jail, with the group's leader saying he had tacit support from senior Pentagon officials who once offered to put his team under contract.
The U.S. military says the men were freelancers operating outside the law and without their knowledge.
Jonathan Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift jail in Kabul on July 5.
Standing before a three-judge panel in a heavily guarded national security court, the men listened quietly to the charges, including hostage-taking and "mental and physical torture."
Three of their former captives described being beaten, held under water and left without food.
The Americans didn't testify. But Mr. Idema said afterward that the abuse claims were invented. He said his men had arrested "world-class terrorists" and that he was in daily telephone and e-mail contact with officials "at the highest level" of the U.S. Defense Department, including in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office.
Mr. Idema said a four-star Pentagon official named Heather Anderson "applauded our efforts" and wanted to place the group "under contract" - an offer they refused for fear it would limit their freedom to operate.
There are no four-star female officers in the U.S. military. The name Heather Anderson is not listed in the Pentagon phone book.
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did; they absolutely supported what we did," Mr. Idema told reporters crowding around the dock. "We have extensive evidence of that."
An official from the U.S. Embassy observed the trial but declined to comment on the proceedings, where only one of the Americans had an attorney.
Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari adjourned the case for two weeks to give the three Americans and the four Afghans accused of helping them time to prepare their defense.
There was no attorney for Mr. Idema, a bearded former American soldier once convicted of fraud, who appeared in court in a khaki uniform with a reversed American flag on the shoulder.
Mr. Idema wore sunglasses in the courtroom, completing a look that once fooled even NATO peacekeepers, who sent explosives specialists to help him with three raids before realizing they had been duped into thinking he was with U.S. Special Forces.
Mr. Idema, who reportedly is 48, said his group delivered suspects to U.S. Special Forces in the past. Maj. Rick Peat, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said he had no information on such a transfer.
The American military says it has no idea what motivated Mr. Idema's group, which flew into Afghanistan on April 14, but there were indications they were intent on making money.
Mr. Idema, who claims to have fought the Taliban in 2001 and 2002, offered protection for journalists and hawked purported al Qaeda training videos to television networks. Mr. Idema, of Fayetteville, N.C., is featured in a book about the Afghan war called "Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden."
The prosecutor said Mr. Caraballo, 35, was a cameraman and that Mr. Bennett, 28, who wore a military uniform in court, "seemed to be a journalist."
Michael Skibbie, an American lawyer representing Mr. Caraballo, confirmed that his client was a journalist from New York City.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Congress Approves $417B Defense Bill
July 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon would get an additional $25 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 7 percent more for the rest of its programs in a $417.5 billion defense bill Congress overwhelmingly approved Thursday.
With money for 39 more Army Black Hawk helicopters, a Virginia-class attack submarine and a 3.5 percent pay raise for the troops, the measure illustrated strong wartime support for the military, crossing party lines.
Eager to affirm their backing less than four months from Election Day, the Senate approved the measure 96-0 and the House shipped it to President Bush by 410-12. The votes came just hours before Congress was to start a six-week summer recess.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the bill showed Congress' support for ``the men and women in uniform who risk their lives for our country each day.''
It was the first of the 13 spending bills financing the government for 2005 that the Republican-run House and Senate sent to the White House.
With record federal deficits prompting the GOP to try reining in most domestic spending, numerous disputes make completion of most of the other measures unlikely until after the government's budget year starts Oct. 1.
In other budget work:
-- The House approved a $10 billion military construction measure by 420-1. First, as expected, it dropped an expansion of a housing program for soldiers' families that conservatives said broke budget limits. The Senate has not yet voted on its version.
-- The House Appropriations Committee passed a $90 billion bill financing the Transportation and Treasury departments after voting 42-16 to give civilian federal workers the same 3.5 percent raise as members of the military. Bush recommended a 1.5 percent increase for civilians.
-- The same House panel approved $92.9 billion for veterans, housing and space programs after fighting off separate efforts by Democrats and conservative Republicans to increase veterans health-care spending.
The bill cuts funds for NASA, environment and science programs and increases veterans health care to $30.3 billion -- still $1.3 billion less than veterans' groups want. By voice vote, lawmakers added more than 1,100 home-district projects to the measure, including $250,000 for Banning, Calif., to build a municipal pool and $900,000 for work on the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Fla.
The $25 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan represented a victory for Congress over Bush, who began the year insisting no extra funds would be needed until after the elections.
Under pressure from lawmakers, he requested the money in May, saying he would not need to spend it until autumn. He proposed being able to move the money among Pentagon accounts as he wished.
Instead, the war money will be available when Bush signs the measure into law. He will only be able to shift $2 billion without Congress' permission.
The $25 billion will probably be less than half what will be needed next year. On Wednesday, congressional auditors estimated the Pentagon will need another $12.3 billion for the wars to make it through September.
``The administration has fallen down on the job in budgeting for these wars, and its budget projections simply are not to be trusted,'' said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
Administration officials say they expect to have enough money through September by moving money among accounts.
The war funds include money for body armor, reinforced Humvee vehicles and $500 million to train the new armies of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dropped was House-passed language requiring the Pentagon to reveal the private security contractors it hires for work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- an outgrowth of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
The bill has $1.6 billion less than Bush requested for the Pentagon but nearly $25 billion over this year's total, excluding money for Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has nearly $78 billion for weapons purchases, $3 billion more than Bush requested. Included is more money for Air Force unmanned Predator aerial attack vehicles, Stryker combat vehicles for the Army and a DD(X) destroyer.
There is $10 billion for continued work on a national missile defense system. And there is $100 million for the Air Force to modernize its fleet of midair refueling tankers -- though House language was dropped requiring 80 of the craft to be purchased from the ailing Boeing Co.
Included were several non-defense items, including $500 million for fighting wildfires, $95 million to help victims of warfare in Sudan and $25 million each for Boston and New York to bolster security during this summer's Democratic and GOP conventions.
Before approving the Treasury-Transportation bill, the House panel rejected by 26-25 a Democratic effort to kill a provision barring the Treasury Department from letting banks accept a Mexican identification card for financial transactions.
It also rejected, 29-26, a Democratic proposal to bar Treasury contracts for companies that have avoided some U.S. taxes by moving their offices overseas.
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War Funds Dwindling, GAO Warns
Pentagon Needs Billions More This Year in Iraq, Afghanistan
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4065-2004Jul21.html
The U.S. military has spent most of the $65 billion that Congress approved for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is scrambling to find $12.3 billion more from within the Defense Department to finance the wars through the end of the fiscal year, federal investigators said yesterday.
The report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress's independent investigative arm, warned that the budget crunch is having an adverse impact on the military as it shifts resources to Iraq and away from training and maintenance in other parts of the world. The study -- the most detailed examination to date of the military's funding problems -- appears to contradict White House assurances that the services have enough money to get through the calendar year.
Already, the GAO said, the services have deferred the repair of equipment used in Iraq, grounded some Air Force and Navy pilots, canceled training exercises, and delayed facility-restoration projects. The Air Force is straining to cover the cost of body armor for airmen in combat areas, night-vision gear and surveillance equipment, according to the report.
The Army, which is overspending its budget by $10.2 billion for operations and maintenance, is asking the Marines and the Air Force to help cover the escalating costs of its logistics contract with Halliburton Co. But the Air Force is also exceeding its budget by $1.4 billion, while the Marines are coming up $500 million short. The Army is even having trouble paying the contractors guarding its garrisons outside the war zones, the report said.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the Defense Department continues to believe that extra funds will not be needed this fiscal year. President Bush had requested a $25 billion reserve to cover shortfalls that may arise between Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year begins, and February, when the White House plans to submit a detailed funding request for military operations. But for now, Duffy said, there are no plans to tap the reserve. He added: "This president has said repeatedly the troops will have what they need, when they need it. That's why he has stood steadfastly in support of funding for our troops."
Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's comptroller, said that though the fiscal 2004 budget is tight, "the department still anticipates sufficient funding to finance ongoing operations."
Democrats quickly pounced on the report, charging that the Bush administration is turning a blind eye to military funding issues to avoid adding to the overall budget deficit or conceding that the Iraq operations are off-course.
"George W. Bush likes to call himself a wartime president, yet in his role as commander in chief, he has grossly mismanaged the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq," contended Mark Kitchens, national security spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry. "He went to war without allies, without properly equipping our troops and without a plan to win the peace. Now we find he can't even manage a wartime budget."
The GAO report detailed just why a $65 billion emergency appropriation has proved to be insufficient. When Bush requested that money, the Pentagon assumed that troop levels in Iraq would decline from 130,000 to 99,000 by Sept. 30, that a more peaceful Iraq would allow the use of more cost-effective but slower sea lifts to transport troops and equipment, and that troops rotating in would need fewer armored vehicles than the service members they replace.
Instead, troop levels will remain at 138,000 for the foreseeable future, the military is heavily dependent on costly airlifts and the Army's force has actually become more dependent on heavily armored vehicles. The weight of those vehicles, in turn, has contributed to higher-than-anticipated repair and maintenance costs. Higher troop levels have also pushed up the cost of the Pentagon's massive logistical contract with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.
About 4,000 Navy personnel in Iraq and Kuwait were not expected to be there, contributing to a $931 million hole in the Navy's budget for fiscal 2004. The Marine Corps was supposed to have decreased its presence in Iraq but instead has 26,500 Marines in the country and an additional two expeditionary units supporting the war on terrorism.
The strain is beginning to add up, the GAO said. The hard-hit Army faces a $5.3 billion shortfall in funds supporting deployed forces, a $2 billion budget deficit for the refurbishing of equipment used in Iraq and a $753 million deficit in its logistics contract. The Army also needs $800 million more to cover equipment maintenance costs and $650 million to pay contractors guarding garrisons.
The Air Force has decreased flying hours for pilots, eliminated some training, slowed civilian hiring and curtailed "lower priority requirements such as travel, supplies and equipment," the report said.
The Pentagon comptroller told GAO investigators that the Defense Department has sufficient funds to cover the shortfalls, provided Congress gives officials more authority to transfer money among accounts.
But the GAO report warned that there will be a serious downside to that approach, especially the deferral of maintenance and refurbishing plans until next year.
"We believe that the deferral of these activities will add to the requirements that will need to be funded in fiscal year 2005 and potentially later years and could result in a 'bow wave' effect in future years," the report cautioned. "Activities that are deferred also run the risk of costing more in future years."
A "bow wave" refers to a time when deferred costs confront Congress all at once, making it impossible to meet the demands.
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FINANCING
War Costs Exceed Budget, Watchdog Panel Says
July 22, 2004
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22cost.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 22 - Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are running $12.3 billion over budget this year, and Pentagon officials are trying to make up for the shortfall by transferring money from other accounts and delaying refurbishment of worn-out equipment in Iraq, the General Accountability Office said Wednesday.
The office, a nonpartisan Congressional agency, estimated that the Army was running about $9.4 billion short of what had been budgeted. By putting off other kinds of spending until next year, the military is likely to run up higher costs in future, said the agency, which was formerly the General Accounting Office.
Administration officials have acknowledged that costs in Iraq are running higher than the $65 billion that Congress approved for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the administration's urging, Congress is expected to pass an appropriations bill this week that contains $25 billion in funds for Iraq that can be used immediately.
But the new report suggests that the military could use up nearly half of that money by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
Democrats seized on the report, attacking the administration for consistently underestimating war costs.
"The administration underestimated troop levels, underestimated the tempo and cost of operations, and underestimated the cost of logistics, maintenance, spare parts and services by contractors,'' said Representative John M. Spratt Jr., Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the House Budget Committee.
In March, the administration estimating the cost of keeping soldiers in Iraq at $4 billion a month. But the costs have risen to about $5.5 billion a month, according to Congressional budget analysts, largely because attacks against American forces and the new Iraqi government show no sign yet of abating.
The G.A.O. estimate on military spending in Iraq is almost the exact opposite of the budget outlook for reconstruction. Congress approved $18.7 billion for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of that for Iraq, but only a few billion have actually been spent.
Much of the delay stems from the insecurity confronting foreign contractors in Iraq, the same factor that has caused American commanders to keep troop levels at much higher levels than expected.
Pentagon officials refused to comment on the accuracy of the General Accounting Office's estimate, but they acknowledged that costs were running well above the original budget and that they needed to divert money from other parts of the military budget.
If Congress passes a Pentagon authorization bill this week, as House and Senate leaders hope, Pentagon officials would be able to dip into the $25 billion in emergency financing immediately. But Pentagon officials said they did not want to use that money until the beginning of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.
-------- investigations
9/11 Commission Offers Critiques on Many Fronts
Report to Be Released Today
By Dan Eggen and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4129-2004Jul21?language=printer
Today's report by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will roam far beyond the hijacking plot and the government's failure to detect it, touching on issues including weapons-proliferation policies and the United States' treatment of detainees captured in the war on terrorism.
An excerpt of the report obtained by The Washington Post, for example, indicates that the panel will address the Bush administration's controversial decision not to grant prisoner-of-war protections to captured al Qaeda suspects, calling for the development of "a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists."
The report also urges more aggressive efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining weapons of mass destruction and reveals that in 1998 U.S. officials worriedly discussed reports that al Qaeda "was intent on carrying out a 'Hiroshima,' " according to the excerpt.
The nearly 600-page report is a broad indictment of the government's efforts to combat al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks. The document, to be released at a news conference here this morning, identifies as many as 10 opportunities to potentially unravel the plot and recommends a dramatic overhaul of counterterrorism efforts, including creation of a Cabinet-level intelligence chief, according to officials who have read the document, which has been the subject of a strict embargo.
President Bush and lawmakers from both parties were briefed on the findings yesterday by the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean (R), and vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton (D). Before his meeting, Bush told reporters that the government was doing everything it could to protect the country from terrorists and defended his administration's handling of the al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11.
"Had we had any inkling, whatsoever, that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and Earth to protect America," Bush said. "And I'm confident President Clinton would have done the same thing. Any president would have."
The commission's report includes sharp criticism of congressional oversight in terrorism and intelligence issues and proposes reorganizing the way committees are structured, lawmakers said.
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said he wants the Senate to start work "immediately" on ways to streamline Congress's management of intelligence issues, although a six-week recess begins Friday.
"The question is about congressional oversight, or is Congress doing its job?" Frist said. "The answer is Congress is doing a very good job, but there are going to be very clear areas of improvement."
But House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said yesterday that Congress will be unlikely to consider any major changes this year, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge signaled administration opposition to the idea of a new intelligence chief.
"I don't think you need a czar," Ridge said on Fox News Channel. "We already had one level of bureaucracy that we don't need."
Republican and Democratic lawmakers continued to spar over who is responsible for failures outlined by the commission. Hastert, while saying he did not want the report to become a "political football," noted Tuesday that it "covers eight years of the Clinton administration and eight months of the Bush administration."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) responded, "It happened on President Bush's watch," but she added that the report was not focused on assigning blame.
More details about the report dribbled out yesterday, including confirmation from lawmakers who have been briefed that the commission is not recommending creation of a domestic intelligence agency akin to Britain's MI5.
Also yesterday, the Associated Press released a portion of a surveillance tape from Washington Dulles International Airport showing several hijackers being pulled aside for extra scrutiny on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Commission investigators found in an interim report released in January that three of the five hijackers who boarded American Airlines Flight 77, which would crash into the Pentagon, set off magnetometers but were eventually allowed to proceed. Investigators believe the hijackers were probably carrying knives used in the hijacking.
In its report, the commission appears to raise questions about the Bush administration's legal approach to al Qaeda detainees apprehended overseas, although the extent of the panel's critique is not clear because an excerpt obtained by The Post is incomplete.
"New principles might endorse the application of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict," the report says, according to the excerpt. "That article was specifically designed for those cases in which the usual laws of war did not apply. Its minimum standards are generally accepted throughout the world as customary international law."
The recommendation appears to reinforce the views and longtime understanding of the military legal community, while rejecting the claims of some Bush administration officials that some detainees are not entitled to Geneva protections as a matter of standard practice.
The administration has said that while the Geneva Conventions apply to combatants captured in Iraq, they do not apply to suspected al Qaeda members such as those held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Justice Department has also said the conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, including many of those detained in Afghanistan.
In a separate section, the report finds that government actions to freeze the financial assets connected to Osama bin Laden or his suspected supporters "appeared to have little effect," even when working through the United Nations. And it noted that in many cases, when confronted with legal challenges, the United States and the United Nations were often forced to unfreeze the assets.
Another section says that efforts to combat Islamic terrorism should "be combined with a parallel, vital effort to prevent and counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
The commission recommends initiatives including the development of an international legal regime with universal jurisdiction that would enable the capture, interdiction and prosecution of weapons-of-mass-destruction smugglers; an expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which allows the United States and some allies to board ships suspected of transporting illegal weapons materials; and increased support for a 1991 plan to secure dangerous nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union.
One source who has been briefed on panel findings said the report casts doubt on whether the Bush administration has justified its use of some expanded powers under the USA Patriot Act, which gave the FBI broader authority to conduct surveillance and searches in terrorism investigations following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Staff writers Mike Allen, Dan Morgan and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.
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9/11 Panel Is Said to Sharply Fault Role of Congress
July 22, 2004
By CARL HULSE and PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22panel.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 21 - The unanimous final report of the Sept. 11 commission will sharply criticize Congress for failing in its role as overall watchdog over the nation's intelligence agencies and will call for wholesale changes in the way lawmakers oversee intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department, lawmakers and others briefed on the panel's findings said Wednesday.
The people who went to the briefings said proposals to revise Congressional oversight would be among dozens of sweeping recommendations aimed at preventing future attacks. The report, scheduled to be made public on Thursday, will detail the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Lawmakers and other government officials who have read or been briefed on the book-length report said that among its recommendations the commission would call for a reorganization of domestic-intelligence programs within the F.B.I., although not for a separate domestic security intelligence agency; for an office within the White House with an estimated 200 employees to coordinate the work of the 15 intelligence agencies; and for an interagency counterterrorism center to absorb the smaller antiterrorism center that the C.I.A. operates.
Officials had previously disclosed the central recommendation, the creation of a post of so-called national intelligence director to coordinate the intelligence community, with budget authority over the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. But they offered new details about the proposal on Wednesday, saying the report called for the intelligence director to operate in the executive office of the president and to have cabinet-level authority, but not to be in the cabinet itself.
The officials also gave details about the criticisms of the government's performance before 9/11, saying one passage of the report found that Al Qaeda and the 19 hijackers exploited "deep institutional failings within our government" over a long period. The officials said the report did not directly blame the Bush or Clinton administration for the failures, even as it harshly criticizes several agencies, especially the C.I.A. and F.B.I.
Although Congressional oversight was not a focus of the commission's public hearings, officials said Congress's management of intelligence will also be a target of criticism in the final report, with the commission's urging lawmakers to scrap the watchdog system now used for intelligence and domestic security.
The s report will propose that both the House and Senate establish permanent committees on domestic security to oversee activities that are the jurisdiction of dozens of competing committees, officials said. The report will also reportedly recommend that the existing House and Senate intelligence committees be given much broader discretion over intelligence policy and spending, or alternatively to establish a joint House-Senate intelligence panel.
The proposals involving Congress are certain to touch off fierce turf wars in the House and Senate, where lawmakers historically protect the power they wield through their responsibility for setting policy and budgets for federal agencies. Such jurisdictional fights have for years blocked similar proposed changes in the intelligence field, but some lawmakers said Wednesday that they should not stand in the way of the changes recommended by the panel.
"If we're going to, based on the findings of this report, respond and improve, we are going to have the challenge of overcoming the institutional inertia which is a product of a lot of what we have in Washington, D.C.," the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said after being briefed by the panel's leaders. "That's going to be the challenge for us as leaders."
As they braced for the release of the report, Republican Congressional leaders prepared to emphasize the changes they have enacted since 9/11. But the conclusions and recommendations show that the bipartisan independent commission believes that significant work remains.
The recommendations could force House and Senate leaders either to follow through on the ideas or risk being accused of ignoring the findings in the event of another attack.
"Before, this was unpredictable," the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said as she urged strong consideration for the proposals. "Now it is predictable, and we all have a heightened responsibility to avoid another tragedy."
The House has a temporary special committee on domestic security while the Senate has none, dispersing those responsibilities through its committees like Defense, Appropriations and Commerce. The shortcomings of even the House approach were exhibited this month when an effort to write comprehensive domestic security legislation for next year broke down in jurisdictional disputes with other committees.
"It goes without saying that chairmen of committees are generally very vigorous in guarding their committee's jurisdiction," Representative Jim Turner of Texas, senior Democrat on the House domestic security panel, said. "But to get this job done, we can't move at a snail's pace."
Congressional aides with long experience in the intelligence field said the proposals for the intelligence panels would represent major changes and would encounter significant resistance.
The intelligence panels now have authority to set policy for the intelligence agencies. They share that power with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, because the military controls such a large segment of the intelligence apparatus. The actual spending for the agencies is established through the appropriations committees, mainly by subcommittees responsible for military spending.
Under the panel's recommendation, as described by the lawmakers and aides, the intelligence committees would gain much greater control over policy and spending, a significant shift in the Congressional approach. Aides said the report would also urge consideration of a joint House-Senate panel responsible for intelligence agencies. That, too, would be rare, because House and Senate committees usually draw up individual items of legislation and then work out the differences in conference committees.
"That would be a major change for Congress," a Democratic official familiar with the report said about the intelligence committee alternative. That official and others said the report represented a clear criticism of Congress's oversight role.
But Dr. Frist, the Senate majority leader, said he did not see it that way. "Congress is doing a very good job,'' he said. "But there are going to be very clear areas of improvement."
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New Links Between Iran, Al Qaeda Cited
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4191-2004Jul21.html
Even before its official release today, the final report by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reignited the political debate over Iraq and whether al Qaeda had a significant relationship with Saddam Hussein, as President Bush and other administration officials have alleged over the past two years.
The report, to be released at a Washington news conference this morning, echoes earlier findings by the Sept. 11 commission's staff that Iraq and al Qaeda had no "collaborative relationship" and dismisses as unfounded reports of a meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, said officials familiar with the document.
On Iran, by contrast, the report concludes that al Qaeda's relationship with Tehran and its client, the Hezbollah militant group, was long-standing and included cooperation on operations, the officials said. It also details previously unknown links between the two, including the revelation that as many as 10 of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have passed through Iran in late 2000 and early 2001 because Iranian border guards were instructed to let al Qaeda associates travel freely, sources familiar with the report have said.
Commission and government officials emphasize that they have found no indication that Tehran knowingly helped in the plot. But the commission report will cite evidence that Iran allowed al Qaeda members into the country even after the attacks.
The Sept. 11 panel has also raised the possibility that al Qaeda may have had a "yet unproven" role in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen and has been blamed on a Saudi Hezbollah group. Iran is a primary sponsor of Hezbollah, or Party of God, which the United States considers a terrorist group.
Many of the commission's findings about Iran were discovered only in recent weeks from, among other sources, electronic intercepts and interrogations of al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody, sources familiar with the commission's findings said. Even before then, Chairman Thomas H. Kean (R), a former New Jersey governor, said, "There were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq."
Al Qaeda's ties to Iraq are sketchier. At the leadership level, Osama bin Laden and his associates for years saw Hussein as one of the secular Muslim leaders who had to be replaced. On the other side, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence recently reported, Hussein dealt harshly with Islamic extremists, and the CIA had intelligence reports that "the regime sought to prevent Iraqi youth from joining al Qaeda."
The Sept. 11 commission was the first to disclose that bin Laden at one time sponsored Ansar al-Islam, an anti-Hussein, Sunni Kurdish group in northern Iraq, but the al Qaeda leader dropped that aid at the request of the Sudanese. At that time, the Sudanese were providing bin Laden with haven and the Khartoum government wanted good relations with Iraq.
Although an Iraqi intelligence official may have met with bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, after two failed attempts, the CIA told the panel, nothing apparently developed from the meeting. The Senate report also cautioned that one source for the 1994 meeting was an Italian newspaper article published four years later and that other information came from "raw reports from foreign sources."
Two senior bin Laden lieutenants now in CIA custody, Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, both insisted that al Qaeda cooperation with Iraq would have been difficult. Abu Zubaida, according to the Senate report, told CIA interrogators that joint activities were "extremely unlikely," although he admitted it was possible there were communications he did not know about.
The Sept. 11 commission raised questions about whether al Qaeda was behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack and challenged Vice President Cheney's repeated assertion that Iraq may have been connected through one of the plotters.
The CIA considers Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the 1993 bombing, to have been an independent operator, although he trained in Afghanistan and subsequently trained al Qaeda recruits. His entry into the United States on a phony Iraqi passport before carrying out the bombing is no indication Iraq was involved in the plot because stolen Iraqi passports "were common at this time," a CIA report said.
The vice president has repeatedly pointed to Abdul Rahman Yasin, a fugitive from the 1993 Trade Center prosecution, because he fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance. But CIA officials told the Senate panel that Yasin, an Iraqi, was held "in custody since that time" in Baghdad by Iraqis who explained they feared the United States would misrepresent his role. Yasin, however, disappeared after the U.S. invasion.
The Sept. 11 commission also adopted the position of the FBI and the CIA that there is no evidence to support allegations, again repeated by Cheney, that Atta met Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the Iraqi Intelligence Service chief, in Prague, in the spring of 2001. A surveillance camera and cell phone records place him in Florida and Virginia during that time. Photographs of another alleged meeting between Atta and al-Ani in October 1999 were also analyzed by CIA and found inconclusive. Intelligence at that time placed Atta in Egypt, visiting his family.
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Panel to Hear of Halliburton Waste
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4051-2004Jul21?language=printer
In the spring of 2003, not long after John Mancini arrived in Kuwait City as procurement employee for Halliburton Co., he came to an unsettling conclusion: No one cared about his skill at buying goods and making sure government money was wisely spent.
Over the next three months, Mancini said in a recent interview, he watched as colleagues at Halliburton subsidiary KBR paid inflated fees for cell phone services, bought hundreds of rolls of duct tape for $60 each and obscured the waste by failing to file paperwork properly. In one case, he said, a fellow procurement employee recorded a multimillion-dollar purchase as a $200 order, then dismissed it as a mistake.
After he and others raised questions, Mancini said, the company sent in a team to prepare for government audits. "The waste was unbelievable," said Mancini, who left KBR after three months. "This was pure negligence."
Stories like Mancini's will be the focus of a hearing today by the House Committee on Government Reform, as it examines allegations of waste, abuse and profiteering related to the Army's contracts in Iraq with Halliburton, the oil services company that Dick Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said she did not know the particulars of Mancini's allegations, but that the company would look into them.
Mancini isn't scheduled to testify, but the committee will hear from several KBR executives. Halliburton officials have acknowledged some misspending in Iraq -- including $6 million in overcharges that the company repaid -- but have said repeatedly that the company is doing a good job overall.
"KBR is pleased to have the opportunity to appear before the Committee . . . so we may describe our efforts in Iraq to support our troops in a very difficult, demanding and dangerous mission," Hall wrote in an e-mail. "We recognize that any effort like this demands oversight.''
The hearing is shaping up as a political sparring match over Halliburton because of the Cheney connection. The minority Democrats, led by Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), pressured Republican leaders to allow whistle-blowers to testify, in part to promote the company as an election year issue.
Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said "the so-called whistle-blowers" simply misunderstood the logistical reality of life during wartime. He said he was giving the Democrats a chance "to put up or shut up" on an issue that won't go away.
"They're taking a series of anecdotes and trying to turn them into some kind of scandal," Davis said in an interview yesterday.
Under a wide-ranging contract called LogCAP, Halliburton furnished the Army with logistical support throughout the Middle East. It was guaranteed a certain level of profit and allowed to pass on all costs to the government, with the assumption that it would operate efficiently. Halliburton has been awarded work in Iraq worth about $5.6 billion through May, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.
One issue to be explored at the hearing is whether the Houston-based Halliburton, its subsidiary KBR and their subcontractors overcharged the government for food, oil, housing and other services, while failing to properly oversee spending.
Scheduled to testify are several former employees interviewed earlier by Waxman's staff. One told of filling out time cards saying he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week, even though he put in no more than a week's worth of labor. Another said the company removed spare tires from new Mercedes and Volvo trucks and then abandoned one that had a flat tire.
Marie deYoung, who began working on LogCAP in December 2003, said she will tell the committee that the company tried to mislead government auditors by limiting the amount of information entered into computers -- a practice that "contributed to cost overruns and poor management."
The committee will also hear about two new studies about contracting in Iraq, one from the GAO and one from Waxman's staff.
The GAO report said its investigators found "a pattern of contractor management problems," including poor financial reporting and an inability to schedule work in a timely way. The report said the Army did not plan how to use LogCAP effectively until after the fall of Baghdad. The Army also did not limit spending on the contract until this spring, after Halliburton's cost estimates increased from $5.8 billion to $8.6 billion.
The report said "the contractor's managers at individual sites have no knowledge of the costs associated with their task orders." Hall said the company worked with oversight teams from the Pentagon "and have refined systems and improved our processes and performance."
A separate report prepared for Waxman by staff Democrats says that a no-bid contract with Halliburton to import gasoline and other fuel into Iraq resulted in $167 million in extra charges before the government began using in-house experts to handle the task. A Defense Department audit last year said the company overcharged by about $61 million. Hall said the Army was aware of the prices it paid to buy and deliver fuel from Kuwait to Iraq and that KBR believes the terms of the new contract are significantly different.
Waxman dismissed Davis's contention that only politics is at play in the examination of Halliburton contracts. "It's inexcusable that taxpayer money should be squandered in overpayments," he said. "We have an obligation to see whether billions of dollars are being wasted."
--------
Plane Carried 13 Bin Ladens
Manifest of Sept. 19, 2001, Flight From U.S. Is Released
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4014-2004Jul21.html
At least 13 relatives of Osama bin Laden, accompanied by bodyguards and associates, were allowed to leave the United States on a chartered flight eight days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a passenger manifest released yesterday.
One passenger, Omar Awad bin Laden, a nephew of the al Qaeda leader, had been investigated by the FBI because he had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a leader of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which the FBI suspected of being a terrorist organization.
The passenger list was made public by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who obtained the manifest from officials at Boston's Logan International Airport. Lautenberg's office was given the document in recent weeks and released it before today's issuance of the final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Although much was already known about the "bin Laden flight," Lautenberg provided additional details, including the information that the plane, a 727 owned by DB Air and operated by Ryan International, began its flight in Los Angeles and made stops in Orlando, Dulles International Airport and Boston before continuing to Gander, Newfoundland; Paris; Geneva; and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The aircraft, tail number N521DB, has been chartered frequently by the White House for the press corps traveling with President Bush.
A staff report by the Sept. 11 commission this spring said the flight was one of six chartered flights carrying 142 people, mostly Saudi nationals, from the United States between Sept. 14 and 24 after airspace was reopened. The U.S. government had allowed, before commercial airspace was reopened, at least one domestic flight for Saudis who had feared for their safety, Lautenberg's staff said.
The commission reported that there were 23 passengers and three private security guards on the bin Laden flight. However, the manifest lists 25 passengers, plus the three guards employed by CDT Training Inc. of Elmwood Park, N.J. After a request for permission to allow the bin Ladens to leave reached Richard A. Clarke at the National Security Council, the flight departed Logan Airport in Boston at 11 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2001.
Dale Watson, former FBI counterterrorism chief, said yesterday that FBI agents "scrubbed the people who were leaving, and I was informed none of them were anybody we needed to detain or not allow to leave."
Lautenberg, in a statement, said that Bush "needs to explain to the American people why his administration let this plane leave." White House spokesman Sean McCormack said the contentions that the flight should not have been allowed to leave have been "debunked by the facts."
Ron Ryan of Ryan International said yesterday that he is "quite confident" that the Saudi Embassy arranged the flight through a Ryan partner called Sport-Hawk. He said the bin Ladens "were quite concerned for their safety," which alarmed the crew. "The Saudi Embassy offered to pay more money if our crew had a concern," he said.
But he said all were reassured because "the FBI and Secret Service were heavily involved. They were in abundance every place we were."
The commission staff reported that each of the Saudi flights "was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure." The staff said that 22 people on the bin Laden flight were interviewed by the FBI and that the FBI checked databases for information on the passengers. The commission said none of the passengers was on the terrorist watch list.
The flight manifest lists 13 people with the bin Laden surname and others with Brazilian, British, Indonesian and Yemeni passports. Passenger Omar Awad bin Laden had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a nephew of Osama bin Laden who was involved in forming the U.S. branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Alexandria. Federal agents raided the office this spring in connection with a terrorism-related investigation. The FBI has described the group as a "suspected terrorist organization."
Among the other passengers was Shafig bin Laden, a half brother of Osama bin Laden who was reportedly attending the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group, a politically connected investment company in Washington, on Sept. 11, 2001. Also on board was Akberali Moawalla, an official with the investment company run by Yeslam bin Laden, another of Osama bin Laden's half brothers. Records show that a passenger, Kholoud Kurdi, lived in Northern Virginia with a bin Laden relative.
The bin Laden flight has received fresh publicity because it was a topic in Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Researcher Margot Williams and staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Talks of Peace and Prosperity
President Shifts Tone, Hints at His Plans for a Second Term
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4441-2004Jul21.html
President Bush turned abruptly last night from the martial rhetoric that had marked the first year of his reelection campaign and unveiled fall themes emphasizing his quest for peace abroad and his plans to make the nation more prosperous through what he called "a new era of ownership."
Bush said his goals include improving accountability in high school education and making health care more available and affordable. Responding to the economic hardships that have hurt his approval ratings, Bush said he wants to make the nation "even more job-friendly" through such longtime conservative goals as restraining regulations, taxes and lawsuits.
"This nation is on a rising path, and with four more years we'll achieve more growth, new and higher-paying jobs, and greater opportunity for all of our citizens," Bush told 7,000 Republicans who had paid at least $2,500 apiece to hear him. "We will continue to lead the cause of freedom and peace, and we will prevail."
Bush's address at the Washington Convention Center contained the first formal hints of his plans for a second term, which he had frustrated many supporters by withholding while failing to gain a lead over Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), his Democratic opponent.
Bush's new agenda is heavier on business goals than the "compassionate conservatism" he espoused in his previous campaign. He delighted the crowd by renewing his support for industry-friendly measures that have failed to pass during his first term, most notably an energy policy that would encourage more domestic production, as well as limits on lawsuits and damage awards for medical malpractice.
"You cannot be pro-small-business and pro-trial-lawyer at the same time," Bush said, referring to the profession of Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).
Bush did not give policy specifics, but his advisers said he is planning an education agenda that is a successor to the No Child Left Behind Act that he signed in 2002. "Now we must move forward and make certain that our high schools are doing their jobs, as well," he said. "Every high school diploma must mean that our graduates are prepared for jobs, for college and for success."
Aides said Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, had hoped to make the addition of private accounts to Social Security a centerpiece of the campaign. With older voters in Florida and elsewhere remaining skeptical, Bush will talk often about the issue but will emphasize the need to work out the specifics with Congress rather than offering a plan of his own, the aides said.
Bush's "opportunity society" agenda will also call for measures to promote homeownership, as well as retirement savings accounts, which would increase the amount that could be saved with taxes deferred, and lifetime savings accounts, which would give tax advantages to saving for education, medical costs and other expenses. "During the next four years, we'll help more citizens to own their health plan, to own a piece of their retirement, to own their own home or their own small businesses," Bush said. "We'll usher in a new era of ownership in America, with an agenda to help all our citizens save and build and invest, so every person owns a part of the American dream."
One senior administration official said that much of the agenda will consist of repackaged "smaller items played up as big-ticket." Bush is constrained in what he can propose by a budget deficit that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated at about $450 billion for this year and expects will continue for the next decade.
Bush, hailing an "advancing and confident country," spoke five days before Democrats open their national convention in Boston, six weeks before the Republican convention in New York and 104 days before the election. A poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found what the center's analysis called "mostly good signs for Kerry," whose party dominated on domestic issues and was at least competitive with Republicans on every issue except the handling of terrorism.
The president included a vigorous defense of his decision to invade Iraq, despite the loss of about 900 U.S. troops. "We've turned the corner in extending freedom throughout the world," he said.
Bush said the nation's long-term safety requires changing "the conditions that give rise to terrorism in the Middle East -- the poverty, and the hopelessness, and the resentments that terrorists too often exploit."
Showing that he is not ending his attacks, Bush laced the 35-minute speech with barbs at Kerry and Edwards. "Whether their message is delivered with a frown or a smile, it is the same old pessimism," Bush said. "And to cheer us up, they propose higher taxes, more federal spending and economic isolationism."
A Kerry campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, called the speech a rehash, saying it was "difficult to spot what was new about it besides the hype."
Bush plans to lie low at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., during the Democratic convention, then begin promoting his agenda during a Midwest swing late next week, including a Saturday bus trip.
--------
The Movie Moore Should Have Made Fahrenheit 9/11 Meets its Match
July 22, 2004
antiwar.com
by Michael Ewens
http://antiwar.com/ewens/?articleid=3072
Anyone demanding an intelligent and factual analysis of the march to war on Iraq need only look to Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire (HC hereafter). Released by the Media Education Foundation and written by Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally, this documentary immediately focuses on the right question: why did the United States government attack Iraq, a nation that posed no threat to U.S. national security? The film covers the crucial element of all the motivations that led to the war: ideology. While also discussing oil, domination and military strategy, the film rightly concentrates on the existence of a small but influential cabal of Bush administration neoconservatives forever bent on spreading American power and influence. This simple answer to a complicated question represents HC's greatest strength.
The film relies heavily on the use of interviews with experts and pundits from among others, Noam Chomsky, Karen Kwiatkowski, Daniel Ellsberg and Scott Ritter. Although some interviewees are given too much leeway to speak beyond their respective expertise (e.g. a sociologist speaks as a political scientist and historian), the bulk of the commentary and analysis comes not from narrator Julian Bond, but rather a group of concerned experts. This trait contrasts starkly to the film's "competitor" Fahrenheit 9/11, which relies on Michael Moore's conjecture and curious interview style. The welcome inclusion of Noam Chomsky's comment that neoconservatives are not conservatives is but one example of the expansive use of interviews.
The film describes the now well-known chronology of the neoconservatives. Former Cold War hawks demanding a proactive response to the growth of Soviet power, neoconservatives were left with nothing to fight when the U.S.S.R collapsed. However, their prescriptions for American empire didn't fade away. Paul Wolfowitz's "Defense Planning Guidance (DPG)," written during the first Bush administration, described a policy of aggressive use of American military and political power to secure resources, weaken enemy states and ensure stability for the American economy. This position was poorly received by both the administration and American public, tired of constant conflict and large military budgets. Without the support of a Republican administration, neoconservatives like Rumsfeld, Feith and Kristol joined think-tanks such as Project for a New American Century. Here, they penned more policy prescriptions similar to the Wolfowitz DPG, beginning to highlight the urgent need for regime change in Iraq. Again, the reports fell on deaf ears. The Wolfowitz Doctrine, as it was named, was eventually implemented after the events of 9/11 and officially endorsed by the administration at Bush's 2002 West Point speech. HC's portrayal of these events reflects the importance of public fear to the selling of the war on Iraq and the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
Before 9/11, neoconservatives in the administration were without tools to increase public and political support for the war on Iraq, hence the failure to implement the Wolfowitz Doctrine. HC contends that it was the manipulation of the public's fear of further terrorist attacks that sold the invasion of Iraq and consequently a realized American empire. The administration increased Americans' fear by constant, vague terror warnings while labeling the War on Terror as an epic battle between good and evil. Normon Solomon trenchantly points out that instead of proclaiming that the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself," the administration and neoconservatives stressed the doctrine that "the only thing we have to fear is not enough fear."
In order to firmly convince Americans of the urgent need to invade Iraq, the neocons claimed that America needed "access to valuable resources" or "a military footprint in the Middle East that will increase American influence in that volatile region." Instead, the administration sold the war as a defensive measure to thwart imminent attacks by WMDs and al-Qaeda/Saddam alliances. The film highlights the inconsistencies in this rhetoric and juxtaposes it with current administration statements claiming ignorance of such rationalizations. Any viewer who thought that the Iraq war was a last resort and an integral part of the war on terror will leave this film feeling duped.
The film temporarily strays from its focus when it addresses the question: "Why Iraq?" Some of those interviewed give blanket statements such as "It was all about oil" and "It was all about Empire." In the end, however, I was impressed by the variety of opinions expressed. The film's approach correctly assumes that the war on Iraq cannot be explained away with one simple statement. Rather, internal ideological disputes between neoconservatives, political maneuvering and expediency led to a compromised march to war, one that initially appealed to the UN and spent months on a PR campaign with the American public. While one interviewee made the aforementioned blanket statements, another countered, "Oil is not a sufficient explanation." Such an approach is respectable and convincing. In the end, the viewer understands what the war in Iraq was not about: liberation, democracy, freedom or the War on Terror. The major motivations include the perceived need for a friendly regime in Iraq, a military footprint in the Middle East, easier access to resources, intimidation of America's (more specifically, the government's) enemies and an expanded American empire.
The skeptical viewer may ask near the end of the film: What about Kosovo? Somalia? What about every other military intervention in the name of "humanity" or "democracy"? Is this intervention, though grander in scale, any different? Antiwar.com has consistently maintained that each war is always sold as something it isn't by similarly exploiting fear, morality or patriotism. It is interesting to think where these documentaries were during those similarly damaging wars. Hijacking Catastrophe also has one glaring omission: Israel. Perhaps for fear of condemnation, HC disregards the myriad connections between the neocons and American support of Israel.
Overall, Hijacking Catastrophe is a must-see film for anyone searching for an objective and convincing analysis of the ideological and political underpinnings of the war on Iraq devoid of the emotion and partisan baggage that saturates the debate.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
NYC, Eight States Sue Utilities Over Emissions
July 22, 2004
REUTERS USA:
Story by Deepa Babington
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26176/story.htm
NEW YORK - Five big U.S. power companies were sued yesterday for creating a public nuisance, accused by eight states and the city of New York of being the largest global-warming polluters in the country.
The lawsuit - the first by state and local governments against private companies over carbon dioxide emissions blamed for contributing to global warming - demands cuts in pollution but does not seek monetary damages, the group said at a news conference.
The companies named in the suit were No. 1 U.S. power producer American Electric Power Co. Inc., Southeast utility Southern Co., the Tennessee Valley Authority public power system and Midwestern power companies Xcel Energy Inc. and Cinergy Corp.
The lawsuit accuses the five companies' power plants of being responsible for almost a quarter of the U.S. utility industry's annual carbon-dioxide emissions and about 10 percent of the country's total.
It seeks, at minimum, a 3 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions each year for 10 years.
The power companies being sued said they are striving to cut emissions and had programs in place to cut even more.
The group of attorneys general filing the suit include New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who in the past has sued utilities running coal-fired plants and accused President Bush's administration of not enforcing clean air regulations.
"The federal government has abdicated responsibility on this matter and that is why we are filling the breach," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said at the news conference. He drew a parallel to the states' suit against big tobacco companies.
"For those who say we may fail, I say think tobacco. As in tobacco, we have a uniquely dangerous public health threat on our hands."
The other states involved in the suit are California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Two land conservation groups, New Hampshire Audubon and Open Space Institute, filed a separate, similar public nuisance case against the same five companies yesterday, said the Natural Resource Defense Council, an environmental group representing both organizations.
Both suits were filed in federal district court in Manhattan.
"Much has been done already in the United States and by our industry on carbon and more is expected to be done," a Southern Co. spokeswoman said. "There are no simple answers to this issue. It requires long-term planning."
An Xcel spokesman said the company is in the midst of some of the largest voluntary emissions reductions programs including a $1 billion program to cut emissions from the twin cities area. It also plans to triple its portfolio of wind generation in the next eight years.
An AEP spokeswoman said filing lawsuits is not a constructive way to address the emissions issue and that the company has committed to cap and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by a cumulative 10 percent by 2006.
But the states are not impressed.
"We are aware of what the companies have been doing and obviously voluntary actions so far have been inadequate," Spitzer said at the news conference. (Additional reporting by Carolyn Koo, Richard Valdmanis and Timothy Gardner)
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Nine New Hazardous Waste Sites Added to Superfund List
July 22, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-22-09.asp#anchor3
Nine more hazardous waste sites have been added to the Superfund National Priorities List, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Wednesday.
One is an inactive lead mine in Missouri where lead, cadmium, zinc, and arsenic have been detected in surface water bodies downstream from the site and pose a threat to recreational fisheries and wetlands in the area.
Another is a ground water plume contaminated with chlorinated solvents in the city of Grants, Cibola County, New Mexico. The site is located in a mixed commercial/residential area. Most people within four miles of the site rely on municipal water systems, and five municipal wells are located within that four mile radius.
The Picayune Wood Treating facility in Picayune, Mississippi where soil, surface water and groundwater are all contaminated with arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, cyanide, benzene, methylisobutylketone, toluene, ethylbenzene, total xylenes, styrene, several polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and phenols as well as several dioxin and furan compounds, EPA tests have shown.
The Picayune site is in a residential, commercial, and industrial area with a public park, a daycare center, elementary school and residences in the immediate vicinity.
The nine sites were proposed in the Federal Register on March 8 for a 60 day public comment period. The proposals received only comments in favor of a Superfund listing.
The nine sites being added are:
- Jacobsville Neighborhood Soil Contamination, Evansville, Indiana
- Annapolis Lead Mine, Annapolis, Missouri
- Picayune Wood Treating, Picayune, Mississippi
- Grants Chlorinated Solvents Plume, Grants, New Mexico
- Diaz Chemical Corporation, Holley, New York
- Peninsula Boulevard Ground Water Plume, Hewlett, New York
- Ryeland Road Arsenic, Heidelberg Township, Pennsylvania
- Cidra Ground Water Contamination, Cidra, Puerto Rico
- Pike Hill Copper Mine, Corinth, Vermont
Additionally, EPA has proposed 56 sites now waiting final agency action - 50 non-federal sites and six federal facility sites. If these sites are eventually funded, EPA will work with states, tribes, local communities and other partners in identifying land reuse options and opportunities at these sites.
Nationally, more than 70 percent of all Superfund sites are cleaned up by those responsible for the pollution, the agency says. When the EPA has to fund cleanup, agency officials work to get reimbursed from polluters under the EPA cost recovery program.
Since the beginning of the Superfund program, more than $22 billion in cleanup commitments and funding have been provided by the parties responsible for toxic waste sites.
With the addition of the nine new sites, there are now 1,245 sites on the Superfund list - 1,087 non-federal sites and 158 sites at federal facilities.
For Federal Register notices and supporting documents for the nine new Superfund sites, go to: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm
----
Wildlife Refuge Keep Out: Danger Unexploded Munitions
July 22, 2004
NORFOLK, Virginia, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-22-09.asp#anchor4
A former aerial bombardment and gunnery range in Chesapeake Bay that now is a national wildife refuge has been designated a Temporary Danger Area for the next year because unexploded munitions are showing up in shallow waters.
The Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge in Poquoson, Virginia is closed to the public, but officials say members of the public are entering the refuge anyway, exposing themselves to the dangerous explosives.
"We're concerned primarily about safety. The current situation emphasizes the need to respect the serious potential danger inherent in former bombing ranges," said the Service's Joe McCauley, who manages the refuge.
Plum Tree refuge covers 3,275 acres of low dunes and marsh, interspersed with small circular ponds created by aerial bomb impacts.
To ensure public safety, the Norfolk District Engineer, Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have established the Temporary Danger Area, the Corps has issued a public notice to community members throughout Hampton Roads, and the U.S. Coast Guard has issued a notice to mariners.
The Temporary Danger Area covers the southern part of the old bombing range where unexploded ordnance is known to exist. The Danger Zone extends into the water 300 feet from the shoreline or deeded property boundary, whichever is greater.
The Virginia Marine Resources Commission and Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries will enforce the Danger Area.
The Corps will also conduct a study to analyze the current risk, based on the increased munitions exposure. "One of the goals of the study is to respond to the Service's request that we explore ways to safely offer public recreational opportunities on the refuge where feasible," said Norfolk District Engineer, Col. Yvonne J. Prettyman-Beck.
The area was used for aerial bombardment and gunnery practice from 1917 to the late 1950s. The Service acquired it for a refuge in 1972. Public access is not permitted on the refuge with the exception of Cow Island, which is open for permitted waterfowl hunting.
Although the Temporary Danger Area is only being established around the southern part of the old bombing range, the refuge remains a no trespassing area.
The Corps is working with the federal and state partner agencies, and the City of Poquoson to develop a long term strategy that will provide for public safety, and if feasible, increase public access.
In the short term, signs will be improved and public comments accepted on the Temporary Danger Area for the next 30 days.
In the long term, a risk analysis will be conducted of differences between the northern and southern half of the refuge to determine if public access can be increased. A scoping meeting will allow all stakeholders to comment on the development of a permanent Danger Area, and the Corps intends to design and implement longer term risk management for the refuge. Exposed ordnance will be removed where feasible, officials said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace groups in France, NZ fined for using logo of nuclear firm
PARIS (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040722094638.xw95eejo.html
The French and New Zealand associations of the ecology group Greenpeace have been fined for abusing the logo of the French nuclear group Areva on their websites, according to a court ruling announced Thursday.
The two associations were ordered to pay Areva 13,500 eurosdollars) in damages and interest for "denigration" of the logo, which in 2002 had been pasted on the Greenpeace websites with a skull next to it.
The ruling by the Paris first circuit court, dated July 9, rejected Areva's claim that Greenpeace had "counterfeited" its logo.
The Areva group comprises five state-owned nuclear firms -- Cogema, CEA Industrie, FCI, Framatome ANP and Technicatome.
Greenpeace is a fierce campaigner against the French nuclear industry, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the country's electricity supply.
----
Endangered athlete
By refusing to stand for the playing of God Bless America, Blue Jays slugger Carlos Delgado is behaving a lot like Muhammad Ali, and less like Tiger Woods
Joe O'Connor
National Post
July 22, 2004
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/sports/story.html?id=8517c0c2-a2b8-4e61-b54c-69c09dff0e83
The death of a civilian, killed by a stray bomb during U.S. Navy testing in his native Puerto Rico in 1999, was Carlos Delgado's political awakening.
Carlos Delgado is rich because he can hit a baseball. Tiger Woods is rich because he can hit a golf ball. But while the two black athletes live in similar income brackets, they are entirely different species.
And Delgado is on the endangered list.
When the Toronto Blue Jays slugger walked into Yankee Stadium for a game last night he did so as Public Enemy No. 1. His crime has been to turn the baseball diamond into a private anti-war demonstration, where, for more than a year now, he has refused to stand outside the dugout and doff his cap when God Bless America is played during the seventh inning stretch.
"I don't know Delgado at all, I just watch him hit home runs on television," said Geoff Smith, a history professor at Queen's University. "But Muhammad Ali carved out an entire new framework of political critique in the 1960s and I think that most black stars who have deigned to speak about politics follow in his footsteps.
"The interesting thing to me is why people like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods haven't been more outspoken, haven't followed [Irish rock star] Bono, for example, with his critique of the way we deal with HIV/AIDS. Michael Jordan had more potential impact than anyone else in history, but did he do anything with that? No. Tiger Woods doesn't do anything, either."
Smith acknowledges that Jordan and Woods -- and, for that matter, Wayne Gretzky -- are not obliged to become political actors. Indeed, the professor argues most athletes are not educated enough to make an informed comment on the state of the world. But while an athlete might not have an advanced education, he or she is still capable of learning.
Delgado was plucked from his Puerto Rican home and fed into the Blue Jays farm system when he was 16 years old. And though his only degree is in the science of hitting, he always understood right from wrong. The first baseman's political awakening began in April, 1999, when he saw news that a civilian, David Sanes, had been killed by a stray bomb during American naval manoeuvres on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
Delgado did his research, and he learned that the U.S. Navy had been using Vieques for target practice since the Second World War -- with devastating results. Much of the island is in dire environmental shape, while its 9,300 residents are desperately poor and beset by health problems they blame on the uranium-depleted shells that were tested there.
"It's still in the environment, it's still in the ground, it's still in the water," Delgado said this week. "That's why they've got the highest cancer rate of any place in Puerto Rico."
The slugger would add his name, along with the Dalai Lama and Hillary Clinton, to a list of high profile people urging the Navy to pull out of Vieques. He also donated US$100,000 to the islanders. Faced with a growing public-relations nightmare, the Navy finally left the island on May 1, 2003.
But by then, many of the weapons that had been tested on Vieques were being dropped on Iraq.
Nearly two years before the Navy sailed out of Vieques, baseball commissioner Bud Selig had ordered all the teams to play God Bless America. Selig's decision to make a political statement during games in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks left Delgado with no choice but to make one of his own.
"I'm not trying to get anyone mad," Delgado has said of his one-man protest against the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. "This is my personal feeling."
When Ali said he "ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" and then refused to serve in Vietnam in 1966, those were his personal feelings too, and they cost him his heavyweight title. Sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos expressed their personal feelings on the podium at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, when they stood, arms raised in the Black Power salute, during the playing of the American national anthem.
But that was then. Now any would-be anti-establishment athlete who has a political statement to make is now part of the establishment -- and for the most part market savvy enough to know when to keep quiet.
"I find black athletes of great talent being able to attach themselves not to the [American] state but to the free market, and the price they can draw in terms of supply and demand, and many of them have done very well," Smith said. "And [the free market] is not necessarily a place where they want to talk about something that is controversial that will in effect make their status as an athletic hero more controversial -- that's what they don't want."
At least most of them don't.
During the 1998 NBA season, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the Star Spangled Banner, claiming it conflicted with his Islamic beliefs, and the Denver Nuggets guard soon found himself out of a job. Seven years earlier, Craig Hodges of the Chicago Bulls was blackballed by the league after protesting the Gulf War during a team visit to the White House. And last year, Canada's very own Steve Nash drew heavy criticism for speaking out on Iraq. Delgado, meanwhile, already has enough money in the bank to live happily for years. He also has the courage to stand up for what he believes in.
As for Tiger and Michael?
The world is still waiting to hear from them.
--------
Groups Challenge Curbs on Protests
Moves in Boston Called Repressive
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4376-2004Jul21.html
BOSTON, July 21 -- A federal judge on Wednesday toured a designated protest area encased with concrete barriers, steel fencing and razor wire, after activists planning to demonstrate during next week's Democratic National Convention charged Boston police with infringing on their free speech and making them unsafe.
Attorneys for the coalition led by the Black Tea Society, which describes itself as antiauthoritarian, argued in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court that the area set aside by the city is unsafe and too heavily barricaded to allow for free speech.
In another case, the judge, Douglas P. Woodlock, heard arguments from Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), which was denied a permit to parade about 2,000 people from Boston Common to the FleetCenter on Sunday, the day before the convention is to begin. Woodlock did not indicate when he would rule on this case but scheduled another hearing for Thursday.
Federal officials have designated the convention a special security event and have warned that terrorists may be plotting to disrupt the election season.
Protesters say police are using that pretext to deny them basic rights.
"The overall message is that there is an incredible overuse of force that implies you are not welcome to come to Boston to be heard," said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which along with the National Lawyers Guild is arguing both cases.
A lawyer for the Boston Police Department, Mary Jo Harris, called the restrictions "reasonable."
Several dozen protest groups plan activities during next week's convention, including a Sunday afternoon antiwar rally on Boston Common organized by ANSWER, which refers to Republicans and Democrats as "the twin parties of the war machine." The Black Tea Society plans marches against police brutality on Monday and U.S. oil policy on Thursday.
Other groups include several families of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They will be pushing a 1,400-pound stone in honor of "unknown civilians killed in war" from Boston to New York, where Republicans will gather next month.
Organizers of the largest anti-war demonstration scheduled for the Republican National Convention announced Wednesday that they will accept New York's offer to use the West Side Highway.
United for Peace and Justice, the lead organizing group for an event expected to draw 250,000 on the eve of the convention, had asked to hold the demonstration in Central Park, but the city refused and offered the highway.
"At this point, to keep fighting and not have an agreed-upon location for the rally would undermine our ability to mobilize people," said Leslie Cagan, the group's national coordinator.
The demonstration area in Boston is about one block from the FleetCenter, directly under an unused elevated highway. It was moved from a site farther away after activists complained, and is near a bus depot to be used by delegates all week.
The suit filed Wednesday charges that opaque fences will prevent protesters from communicating with delegates, and that the low ceiling and two narrow exits make it dangerous to demonstrators.
The dispute over the parade planned for Sunday hinges on whether demonstrators can walk down Causeway Street, which leads past the side of the FleetCenter.
"It means something to be able to say we marched to the doorstep of the [convention]," said Dustin Langley, a spokesman for ANSWER. "We'll fight it in the courts or we'll fight it in the streets."
Special correspondent Michelle Garcia in New York and researcher Lucy Shackelford in Washington contributed to this report.
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Protesters Accept a Stage Distant From G.O.P. Ears
July 22, 2004
By DIANE CARDWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/nyregion/22protest.html
The group planning the largest protest during the Republican National Convention agreed yesterday to hold a giant rally along the West Side Highway, acceding to the demands of the Bloomberg administration, which opposed the group's effort to demonstrate in Central Park.
"We are not happy about this," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar umbrella group. "The clock is ticking; we need to move on," she added. "So, we decided to take the high road here."
More than a year ago, the group began seeking a permit for 250,000 people to rally on the Great Lawn in Central Park on Aug. 29, the day before the convention begins. But the Parks Department rejected that site, saying that the area could not hold that many people and that a huge rally would damage the lawn.
Instead, police officials suggested that demonstrators mass somewhere between 14th and 23rd Streets on Seventh Avenue. From there, they could march north past Madison Square Garden, where the convention will be held, head west on 34th Street to 12th Avenue and then south along the highway to around Chambers Street, where a soundstage for the rally would be set up. Protest organizers and police officials estimate the crowd could stretch as far north as 34th Street.
Protest organizers originally balked at that plan. But in accepting the city's offer yesterday after failed attempts to sway the administration, they conceded that they had been outflanked by officials, who delivered a public ultimatum last week to accept the Hudson River site or take the city to court, which could have led to a long battle with an uncertain outcome.
"In terms of the rally location, we got nothing," Ms. Cagan said, adding that she hoped the raft of public support for a rally in the park would somehow benefit the group in gaining other concessions from the city. "We have a body of experience, we actually know what we're talking about when we go into these meetings," she said. "That should help."
But the acceptance of the highway proposal now brings to the forefront a host of details officials and organizers must hash out.
Chief among them is where officials would place an emergency vehicle lane, how barricades will be configured and how people will be able to join or leave the protest. In addition, organizers say they are concerned about the use of surveillance video cameras and police helicopters, which can make it difficult for demonstrators to hear.
Organizers have asked that the city consider helping to defray the cost of equipment, which Ms. Cagan said would run at least $150,000 more than it would have in Central Park. In addition, organizers are asking the city to help provide access to things like water and transportation, since the new location is far from mass transit and lacks the shade of Central Park.
"If the weather on August 29th is anything like what it was like today, then water is actually a public health issue and a public safety issue," Ms. Cagan said, adding that her group would like to discuss these questions directly with the mayor's office, which has thus far delegated the negotiations to the Police Department.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said the police were "proceeding now with the details to accommodate a safe and peaceful demonstration, including the deployment of barriers as appropriate." He added, "The amenities cited by the organizers are customarily supplied by the demonstrators or organizers themselves."
And there was little indication from the mayor's office that the custom was likely to change. "We're not in the business of providing lunches or sound systems or transportation for permitted events," said Edward Skyler, the mayor's press secretary. "I think they see some sort of political value in having the city tell them no, so they keep coming up with preposterous demands."
Organizers have argued that the city is providing amenities like free MetroCards to the Republican delegates, but Mr. Skyler said they were being paid for with private donations.
If the protesters "want to find corporate sponsors for their protests, let them go ahead," he said. "New Yorkers shouldn't have to see their tax dollars spent on subsidizing protests."
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War crimes tribunal to kick off week of resistance
July 22, 2004,
Workers World
By Heather Cottin
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/tribunal0722.php
The People's War Crimes Tribunal on Iraq, set for Aug. 26, will draw antiwar activists from around the world to New York City to kick off the Week of Resistance to the Republican National Convention. Beginning a week that will escalate into protests of hundreds of thousands against the Bush administration, the Aug. 26 hearing will be coordinated by the International Action Center, said IAC co-director Sara Flounders.
"We expect the hearing to demonstrate that the U.S. war on Iraq has been a unilateral attack on the lives, sovereignty, culture, health and future of the people of Iraq," said Flounders. "It will show that the United States government has broken international laws and committed crimes against humanity. It will demonstrate that the resistance of the people of Iraq is a legitimate response to the invasion of their country."
During the U.S. war against Vietnam, British philosopher Bertrand Russell first proposed the idea of an international war crimes tribunal that would expose U.S. aggression, resulting in 1967 in a tribunal that was a powerful condemnation of U.S. policies.
When former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others founded the IAC, one of its chief purposes was to oppose the U.S. lawbreaking that marked the first Gulf War and the killer sanctions. Subsequently, the IAC has conducted a people's tribunal against the U.S./NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, and assisted a tribunal reviewing the genocidal U.S./UN attack on Korea in the 1950s.
Groups from many countries got together to form the World Tribunal on Iraq, based on Russell's tribunal. These groups have already organized tribunal hearings in Japan, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Turkey and here in New York, where they found evidence of U.S. guilt of war crimes, including crimes against humanity and the most serious, crimes against peace.
The IAC has participated in this effort. IAC spokespeople testified in a hearing in Japan in March via video and Flounders testified at the Brussels, Belgium, three-day hearing in April that examined U.S. policymakers' long-term plans to wage war on Iraq.
Representatives from many of these tribunal groups will join with anti-war activists from India, South Korea, the Philippines, England, Spain, Italy, and Egypt in New York on Aug. 26 to bear witness to the U.S. criminal war and occupation of Iraq.
Solidarity of world anti-war movement
The organization of these international tribunals is a testimony to the strength and solidarity of the worldwide anti-war movement. In some of these countries, Spain and Turkey for example, the people's movements have forced the recall of troops or prevented their governments from joining the bogus "coalition of the willing." Movements in South Korea and the Philippines have shaken their government's resolve to participate in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
Flounders said that the Aug. 26 program would include "testimony on the treatment of Iraq's civilians, including the children. Expert witnesses with experience during the war and after in Iraq's hospitals will speak on the health crisis brought about by the war."
She explained: "We have invited experts to give testimony on the destruction of the water system of Iraq, on the sacking of the museums and libraries, on the deliberate targeting of hospitals, universities and schools. Testimony about the weapons of war, from depleted uranium to cluster bombs, will show a deliberate pattern of waging war on the civilian population.
"We also expect to bring up the torture carried out, not only in Abu Ghraib prison, but as a routine part of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including the illegal arrest of thousands of Iraqis," said Flounders.
"We also have invited representatives of the movement of U.S. servicepeople who oppose the war, including war resisters and their relatives and supporters, to testify about the growing GI resistance," she said.
The IAC has announced it will publish a journal with some of the text, photos and documentary evidence that will make its case against the U.S. authorities. The group plans to distribute thousands of copies of this document during the week of resistance against the Republican National Convention that follows the tribunal.
"We are constructing a new website to publish the results of the People's War Crimes Tribunal hearing on Iraq," said Flounders. "There will be testimony on the website with evidence of the havoc the U.S. occupation has created in Iraq.
"Most significantly, the website will allow people around the world to see that the anti-war movement in the United States is ready to judge the Bush administration guilty. Visitors to the site can vote to judge this criminal U.S. gang guilty."
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