Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Pakistan frees three aides of disgraced nuclear hero
Pakistan Releases Three in Proliferation Probe
North Korea Rejects U.S. Nuclear Proposal
Nuclear Weapons Facilities Closed
Energy labs ordered to halt operations
Energy Dept. Shelves Removable Disks
U.S. Halts Secret Work at More Nuclear Laboratories
MILITARY
Omissions compromise report
DR Congo will demobilise 200,000 combatants: official
Defense IG report slams Lockheed Martin's plane
Ethnic Macedonians Riot Over New Laws That Aid Albanians
Fun with Bio-Terror
Gulf War veteran threatens MoD
Air Force Faulted on 50-Plane Purchase
Report Faults Planes Bought by Air Force
Military might and political messages
War and Emerging Remembrance
Egyptian Diplomat Taken Hostage
Tired of taking fire, Baghdad's police chief gets tough
Iraqi Insurgents Add an Egyptian Diplomat
Militants Torch Palestinian Police Station
Mexico Prepares To Charge Ex-President
Egypt envoy kidnapped by militants
NATO OKs Deployment of Afghan Troops
United States Needs to Take a Stand With Pakistan, Report Says
Russia Will Help Iraq Via Trade Not Troops
Russia Restates Iraqi Troop Refusal
Russia launches Kosmos rocket with military satellite
Lawmakers Make Plea to Keep Weather Satellite
Proposed NASA Cuts Draw a Veto Threat
Inside Intelligence Bin Laden's Inner Circle Eludes CIA
Brain injuries lead Iraq war injuries
Pentagon Finds Payroll Records for Bush's Military Service
Daily U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Contrasting Approaches to Terrorism
Survey: US Public Rejects Torture
POLITICS
Sen. Shelby Probe Referred to Ethics Panel
Archives Put In Cameras After Berger Took Papers
Destroying Freedom to Save It
The Puzzling 9/11 Report
Warner 'Deceived' on Rev. Moon Event
Net users warned of bin Ladin hoax
Pentagon finds missing military records of Bush
Leaders Pick Up Urgency of 9/11 Panel
Congress Plans Special Hearings on Sept. 11 Panel
Bush Weighs 9 / 11 Panel's Ideas as Pressure Builds
Gov't Debates Intelligence Chief Position
ENERGY
Energy draw in Central Asia
OTHER
Environment 'hot' topic in seeking change
World Bank turns 60 amid critiques
ACTIVISTS
Why Local Activists are Turning their Attention to Lockheed Martin
Judge upholds "free speech zone" at Democratic convention but O-K's march
A Chinese Bookworm Raises Her Voice in Cyberspace
Convention Protesters Upset With Site
Activists ponder DNC strategy
Protesters Make Last-Ditch Appeal On Pens
China's 'steel mouse' is still roaring - warily
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan frees three aides of disgraced nuclear hero
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Jul 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040724102504.swu1aafx.html
Pakistan has conditionally released three key associates of disgraced top nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan after more than six months in detention, placing strict restrictions on their movement and speech, officials and family sources said Saturday.
The three -- Brigadier Sajawal Khan, scientist Dr Nazir Ahmed and Major Islamul Haq -- were detained late last year under a probe into a proliferation network run by Dr Khan, the father of the country's nuclear programme.
Several scientists and officials of the country's main uranium enrichment facility, Khan Research Laboratory, were released earlier this year after remaining under interrogation for months.
Only one scientist, Dr Mohammad Farooq, is still in custody while Dr Khan has been under virtual house arrest since February when he was given a conditional pardon after he admitted leaking nuclear secrets to other countries and sought clemency.
"These three who have been released, they have been allowed to go home because they are not required for the time being," top military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.
"The investigations are still continuing. They have not yet concluded and anybody could be called back whenever there is a requirement."
Dr Khan, a national hero here, took full responsibility for nuclear leaks to Iran, Libya and North Korea. President Pervez Musharraf granted him a conditional pardon and he is living in the capital Islamabad.
Family members of Major Haq, who was principal staff officer to Dr Khan, said authorities had barred him and the two other officials from speaking to press or moving around.
"They have been sent home with strict conditions which amount to home detention," Eisamul Haq told AFP.
He said the three had been given written instructions that they would not leave their homes or speak to any outsider.
Sultan, however, said the officials had been asked to exercise caution for "their personal security".
----
Pakistan Releases Three in Proliferation Probe
July 24, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities have released three aides to disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan after holding them for months in a probe relating to a huge proliferation scandal, officials said on Saturday.
Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said out of about a dozen people detained late last year for questioning, the government was now holding only one, but added the investigation was not over.
``We have released all of them except one,'' he told Reuters.
Sultan said Mohammad Farooq, a key associate of Khan, was still being questioned.
``The investigations have not yet been concluded and anybody could be called back whenever it is needed.''
The three men released on Friday were Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, a former nuclear scientist, and two retired military officers, Sajawal Khan and Ehsan-ul-Haq, who were connected to the country's top uranium enrichment facility until it was headed by Khan in 2001.
Khan, praised at home as the father of the country's nuclear program, confessed in February in a televised address that he sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
The government sacked him as special adviser but President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him in recognition of his role in developing a nuclear weapon for the Muslim nation.
Khan has virtually been under house detention since the probe was launched against him and his network spanning across several countries.
Malaysian authorities in May arrested Sri Lankan businessman Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, the suspected middleman in Khan's network.
Family members of the freed men said the authorities had placed restrictions on their movements despite their release.
``It is basically a continuation of their detention. The only difference is that they are allowed to stay at home,'' Eisam-ul-Haq, brother of Haq, said.
-------- korea
North Korea Rejects U.S. Nuclear Proposal
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Saturday rejected a U.S. suggestion that it follow the example of Libya and abandon its nuclear weapons programs to open the way for economic aid and improved ties with Washington.
Calling the American proposal ``nothing but a sham offer,'' the communist state reiterated that it would freeze its nuclear facilities as a first step toward their dismantling, but only if Washington provides energy aid, lifts economic sanctions and delists the North as a sponsor of terrorism.
``It is a daydream for the U.S. to contemplate forcing the (North) to lay down arms first under the situation where both are in a state of armistice and at war technically,'' said an unidentified spokesman of the North's Foreign Ministry.
The comments, carried by the North's official news agency KCNA, came three days after a top U.S. disarmament official urged North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to learn from Libya and abandon his nuclear weapons development.
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Wednesday that lessons learned from Libya's pledge to eliminate weapons of mass destruction can be used in six-nation talks aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear standoff.
Three rounds of talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions have been held in Beijing since last year, but none has produced a breakthrough. The United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas took part.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi took bold steps toward mending ties with the West in December when his government announced it would renounce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and opened its weapons laboratories to international inspectors. In return, Washington has begun lifting sanctions, including travel restrictions, against the country.
On Saturday, the North Korean spokesman called the U.S. proposal ``little worthy to be discussed any longer.''
``The U.S. is foolish enough to calculate that such mode imposed upon Libya would be accepted by the DPRK, too,'' he said, using the acronym for his country's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
At the latest six-nation talks in June, the United States proposed that North disclose all its nuclear activities, helping to dismantle facilities and allow outside monitoring. Under the plan, some benefits would be withheld to ensure the North cooperates.
North Korea said it would never scrap its nuclear programs first and hope to get reward later. Instead, it insisted on ``reward for freeze,'' because ``there is no confidence between the DPRK and the U.S.''
A nuclear dispute flared in 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program, based on highly enriched uranium, in violation of international agreements and a 1994 pledge to Washington that it would not develop nuclear bombs.
North Korea has since restarted its old plutonium program frozen under the 1994 pact.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear Weapons Facilities Closed
The Energy Department tells several sites not to use removable disks with classified data. It's unclear how long work will be disrupted.
By Ralph Vartabedian and Christine Hanley
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 24, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuke24jul24,1,6150386.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Energy Department officials Friday effectively shut down part of the nation's nuclear weapons complex, fearful that security lapses discovered at Los Alamos National Laboratory had occurred elsewhere.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered two dozen national laboratories and several other nuclear weapons facilities to stop using classified information stored on computer disks, portable hard drives and tapes that employees can easily remove from work.
The biggest effect will be on the Energy Department's nuclear weapons facilities in California, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Such a shutdown has already been in effect for nine days at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The Energy Department's doubts about security began earlier this month, when Los Alamos officials reported they could not locate two computer disks that contained classified information. So far, they have declined to say what is on the disks, though members of Congress have suggested the loss represents a serious security breach.
Officials said they had no idea how long the order would continue or how many employees would have their work disrupted. Some labs and weapons plants said that hundreds and potentially thousands of their employees would be affected by the order, which takes effect Monday.
It is also unclear how the order would affect national security. Energy officials said they were still assessing the potential disruption to their commitments with the Defense Department for technical support for nuclear weapons. Pentagon officials declined to comment.
Under Abraham's order, sites cannot resume normal operations until they review security procedures, conduct inventories of all classified data stored on removable devices and can certify that the data is stored under proper security. Workers will be held accountable for any future problems, he warned.
Outside experts said Abraham's unprecedented order would curtail operations across the Energy Department's chain of laboratories, computing centers, accelerators and factories that employ more than 100,000 workers.
Abraham's order was based on growing concern that the Energy Department had a systemwide vulnerability to losing important bomb secrets stored on removable devices, known as Classified Removable Electronic Media, or CREM. Such devices allow a person to download massive quantities of data that can be easily concealed.
"The situation at [Los Alamos lab] suggests that we must minimize the risk of human error or malfeasance to a much greater extent," Abraham said in a statement. "Thus, while we have no evidence that the problems currently being investigated are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at all."
The Energy Department is responsible for as many as 8,000 nuclear warheads in the Pentagon's inventory that require periodic inspections and maintenance. Abraham's statement did not address how the department would cope with the lost work.
"Because we do not know the exact duration of the stand-down, it is not possible to provide information on the exact impact on our work for DOD," said Jeanne Lapotto, Energy Department spokeswoman.
Los Alamos' missing disks were supposed to be in a safe accessible by 11 employees, who along with eight others were suspended from their jobs Thursday by Lab Director George P. "Pete" Nanos. On July 15, Nanos halted all classified operations at the lab, and he suspended all regular work activities July 16.
Since then, top Energy officials have been reviewing operations across the nuclear weapons complex.
The use of computers by Energy Department scientists has grown more critical since the U.S. stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992. Scientists today depend on computer simulations to ensure nuclear bombs are reliable and safe.
The department is spending nearly $800 million a year on computing and is building several computing sites the size of football fields, according to a recent analysis by Chris Payne, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Scott Larson, a former FBI official who investigated the Wen Ho Lee security case at Los Alamos, said Friday that law enforcement officials were always concerned about the potential for employees to use CREM to walk out with large quantities of data. Larson, managing director at the Stroz Friedberg security consulting firm, added that nuclear weapons sites were under almost daily attack by hackers trying to obtain electronic data.
Energy labs were trying to assess the order's effect Friday.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has 876 employees who use portable devices. The effect on Livermore would depend on the length of the suspension, which lab officials were still trying to clarify with Washington officials, said spokesman David Schwoegler.
The lab has 12,000 pieces of CREM, ranging from items that are seldom used to those used every day by several people, Schwoegler said. To tighten up operations, the lab destroyed 3,000 pieces of CREM last year.
At the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, where nuclear weapons are dismantled and radioactive materials stored, officials expected it would affect all of its 4,700 employees even though the site is not a research center and not all of them are directly involved in classified projects, said spokesman Steven Wyatt. He said it was too early to say how long it might take to carry out the order. "We consider this a prudent decision by the department. We want to make sure this kind of information and data is properly safeguarded and protected," Wyatt said.
Officials at the Energy Department's Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, the main assembly and disassembly site for warheads, said they were still assessing the effect on their 3,500 employees. "Everybody will be working, but some operations will be shut down," said spokeswoman Brenda Finley.
Billy Stair, spokesman for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said less than 10% of the $1 billion in research involved classified projects. He estimated that a few dozen of the lab's 3,800 employees would be affected, and that it should not take more than a few days to comply. The lab did not expect to find any problems.
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and its 1,600 employees are spared because they do not do any classified work, said spokesman Neil Calder.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina expects minimal disruption, because only a small portion of the plant's work involves classified operations, said spokesman Jim Giusti.
Before the Los Alamos breach surfaced, Abraham recognized the vulnerability of classified information stored on removable devices. In a May 7 speech, he outlined a number of security upgrades and called for the elimination of all classified information stored on the portable devices.
Under the plan, scientists could work only on computer terminals that did not have their own storage devices, but instead relied on a central computer system in a secured area.
Outside watchdogs, such as the Project on Government Oversight, advocated such a transition three years ago and said it could be done in six months for less than $15 million.
"We knew the recurring breaches at Los Alamos were not isolated incidents," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, "but symptomatic of a wider security issue in the complex."
----
Energy labs ordered to halt operations
July 24, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040723-111408-7522r.htm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday ordered a halt to all Energy Department operations across the country that use the kind of computer disks reported missing last week at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Under his order, each Energy Department installation Monday will suspend operations involving removable data-storage devices such as computer disks. Each site will conduct an inventory of such items and perform weekly inventories after that. Staff members will get additional training and security procedures will be reviewed.
The trouble at Los Alamos "suggests that we must minimize the risk of human error or malfeasance to a much greater extent," Mr. Abraham said in a statement from Washington.
Energy Department officials did not say how long the halt in operations might last.
A department spokeswoman could not immediately say how many sites will be affected, but the installations that said they would comply included Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, the nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
The announcement comes after two computer disks were reported missing from Los Alamos on July 7. On Thursday, the lab announced that 19 employees had been suspended pending an investigation into the security breach and a separate incident in which a worker suffered an eye injury from a laser.
Officials at Los Alamos are searching more than 2,000 safes and vaults for the missing disks, Mr. Abraham said. Work at the nuclear lab, which created the first atomic bomb, has been halted for a week.
"While we have no evidence that the problems currently being investigated [at Los Alamos] are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at all," Mr. Abraham said.
The incident at the Los Alamos lab was the latest in a series of embarrassments there, including other security breaches and charges of mismanagement and theft. The lab's troubles prompted the government to put the contract to manage Los Alamos up for bid for the first time in its 61-year history.
The University of California has operated Los Alamos for the government since the lab was set up during World War II to build the atomic bomb.
Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, who has introduced legislation to terminate the contract, called Friday's action "a step in the right direction."
-------- new mexico
Energy Dept. Shelves Removable Disks
Response to Security Breach at Lab
Associated Press
Saturday, July 24, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10205-2004Jul23.html
The Energy Department, in response to a security scandal at the Los Alamos weapons lab, ordered a halt yesterday to classified work at as many as two dozen facilities that use removable computer disks like those missing at the New Mexico lab.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the "stand-down" at operations using the disks, containing classified material involving nuclear weapons research, is needed to get better control over the devices.
The disks, known as "controlled removable electronic media," or CREM, have been at the heart of an uproar over lax security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where work has been stopped as scientists search for two of the disks reported missing on July 7.
Nineteen workers have been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into the missing data devices and an incident in which an intern was injured recently in a laser accident.
The missing Los Alamos disks raised concern at the Energy Department about the handling of the devices at other facilities involved in nuclear weapons research, department officials said.
Abraham said he wants to "minimize the risk of human error or malfeasance" that could compromise the classified nuclear-related information held in the devices, which are used at Energy Department facilities nationwide in nuclear-related work.
"While we have no evidence that the problems currently being investigated are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at all," Abraham said in a statement.
The stand-down involves classified work across the government's nuclear weapons complex wherever the CREM storage devices are used, the official said. It will continue until an inventory of the devices is completed and new control measures on their use is put in place, said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis. Employees using the disks must also undergo security training.
Among the facilities that are preparing for an interruption of classified work are the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago; the nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, where a missing classified disk was reported found last week.
--------
U.S. Halts Secret Work at More Nuclear Laboratories
July 24, 2004
By KENNETH CHANG and SANDRA BLAKESLEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/politics/24lab.html
Repercussions from the loss of two computer disks at Los Alamos National Laboratory spread across the country yesterday as Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham ordered a halt to almost all classified work using such disks and other removable computer data storage devices at all Energy Department laboratories.
The shutdown, which begins Monday, will idle hundreds of workers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, the two laboratories that, along with Los Alamos, perform most of the research involving nuclear weapons.
Los Alamos has been at a virtual standstill for a week as its managers and 12,000 employees review security and safety procedures. On Thursday, the laboratory's director suspended 19 employees over security and safety violations, and yesterday a spokesman for the laboratory said 20 employees had taken early retirement in the past nine days.
In a statement, Mr. Abraham said that while there were no known problems at other laboratories, "we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at all."
The order allows exceptions for high-priority research approved by Kyle McSlarrow, the deputy secretary of energy, who is leading the investigation into the lost disks at Los Alamos.
Before resuming work, laboratories will have to conduct a full inventory of data storage devices, including floppy disks, memory cards and removable hard disks, and review and strengthen security procedures regarding the devices.
"These procedures are designed to guarantee a complete inventory of our classified electronic holdings and make certain that specific individuals can be held responsible and accountable for future problems," Mr. Abraham said.
Jeanne Lopatto, a department spokeswoman said: "The prudent thing to do is to stop and make sure the procedures are in place. The security issues are superseding the research right now."
The Department of Energy operates 59 research centers, of which fewer than half will be affected, Ms. Lopatto said. Department officials did not estimate how long the suspension of work could last.
Outside experts voiced doubt that the shutdown would cause any lasting harm if it lasted no more than a week or so. "There's no urgent weapon that needs to get into the stockpile that's being disrupted by this," said Christopher Paine, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear program.
Officials at some labs, like Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, said that only a small fraction of their work was classified and that they expected to be able to comply with Mr. Abraham's orders fairly easily.
"To the extent we are affected, we will be conducting the stand-down beginning on Monday," said Catherine Foster, a spokeswoman at Argonne. "It's my impression the inventory will not take long."
Even at Livermore, officials said they thought they could comply quickly. David Schwoegler, a spokesman, said that the lab had used a centralized computer system since 1990 and that two-thirds of its 12,000 data storage devices with classified information were stored in a central library. He added that Livermore was already complying with the requirement in Mr. Abraham's order that only a librarian can check out a disk.
The data storage devices at Los Alamos are currently spread out in 2,000 safes. On July 7, officials discovered that two Zip storage disks were missing from one of them. Eleven people knew the combination of the safe, which was located in a hallway next to a soda machine.
Two other disks from the same safe were briefly missing. Two employees had moved them to another building without recording the move, a violation of procedure that led lab officials to conclude that many employees were disregarding security.
Los Alamos is now consolidating its classified disks in central libraries and will not resume classified work until then. "It's going to take a while," said Kevin Roark, a spokesman.
Emotions at the lab ran high yesterday in the wake of the suspensions of 19 employees, many of them senior scientists, and the wave of early retirements.
Pete Miller, a retired laboratory official, said most of the early retirees were nearing retirement age but had not been quite ready to go.
"They are now planning to leave," he said. "There's a sense of just being tired and embarrassed for the institution."
Other employees complained about new rules imposed by G. Peter Nanos, the lab's director, who halted all work at the lab last week and then ordered a crackdown on lax security. But some said they felt a renewed sense of purpose.
"The mood today is somber, serious," said James Fallin, a laboratory spokesman. "The generation currently staffing the lab are writing the next or final chapter of this institution. It's a defining moment."
At the lab, some employees said they had a sense of living in a Catch-22 world. One materials scientist, insisting on anonymity, said his group "was informed that we are no longer allowed to review our safety documents."
"No one wants to be seen doing nothing so they are doing nothing in such a way as if it looks like they're doing something," he said. "People are locking themselves in their offices and going out for incredibly long lunch hours."
-------- MILITARY
Omissions compromise report
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Oregon Live
http://www.oregonlive.com/letters/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1090671243144450.xml
The national commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks rightly noted shortcomings in America's intelligence-gathering agencies, complacency in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and lack of preparedness throughout the political spectrum. The report is self-serving and incomplete, however.
The report doesn't mention how the former Immigration and Naturalization Service failed to properly screen and track the terrorists, several of whom overstayed their visas. Also, some members of the 9/11 commission helped pass laws that effectively neutered the FBI and CIA by erecting a "wall" prohibiting the sharing of vital intelligence.
The report also makes no mention of how civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union successfully pressured government agencies not to profile Arab men, even those on terrorist watch lists. These glaring omissions compromise the integrity of the final report.
HERBERT HAHN
Beaverton
U.S. actions create terrorists
The recommendations of the 9/11 commission are all well and good, but unless we also move vigorously in a totally different direction, we are doomed to endless war against terrorism as we attempt to defend our burgeoning empire.
The way to alleviate terrorism is to heal the injustices that create it. The terrorists don't need to propagandize to spread their message: All they have to do is tell the truth.
They tell of the endless genocide against the Palestinians, the deaths of more than a million children and infants as a result of our 12-year embargo against the people of Iraq, the tenfold increase of cancer in some parts of Iraq as a result of our so-called depleted uranium, the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Until we stop acting so dishonorably not only against the Arabs, but against all Third World countries through our thieving trade policies, we will never succeed against terrorism, as we are constantly creating terrorists by our actions.
DON SCHUMAN
Bend
Remove motivation to attack
The 9/11 commission report neglects to address the underlying reason we are the target of terrorists.
We can change all the intelligence agencies and their operations, but we will never be safe until we remove ourselves as a target.
We can make it more difficult for terrorists to attack if we coordinate our intelligence agencies. However, we also need to focus on how to remove the motivation for terrorists to attack.
HAROLD ZEAGLER
Cornelius
Pinpoint and block terrorists
Terrorism by its very definition is a covert and clandestine operation. Why does the Bush administration persist in fighting it with conventional warfare?
Terrorists try to remain invisible. Certainly our military must have difficulty knowing the difference between an Arab terrorist or insurgent and an ordinary Iraqi citizen.
Yet our soldiers have been sent to find this nearly invisible enemy in a foreign land while dressed in clearly recognizable uniforms, organized and housed in obvious military installations and transported in clearly marked military vehicles. They might as well have bull's-eyes painted on their chests and backs.
The only way to defeat terrorism is through intelligence. We have to identify the key people and keep them out of our country. It's that simple.
Dropping bombs on Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein may create the illusion of progress, but all we're really doing is killing thousands of innocent civilians and losing hundreds of our own young men and women, bravely serving their country, in a meaningless war. Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?
JOHN DENNER
Northeast Portland
WMD still hidden
Why is everyone so sure that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Our soldiers discovered a cache of American money and a mass grave where thousands of Iraqis were interred. Still, our inspectors did not find them.
I believe there were (are) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, well hidden but readily available to the Iraqi leaders whenever they come into power and decide to use them.
MARJORIE MILLER
Tillamook
Cheney should peek outside bubble
I welcome Vice President Cheney's visit to Portland during the Democratic National Convention ("Cheney will visit Portland," July 20).
John Kerry's and John Edwards' records of service to this country, protecting the rights of citizens, getting health care for every American and fighting corruption, will stand in stark contrast to the greed, fear-mongering and deception of the Cheney/Bush administration.
If he ever dared to peek out from his bloated, taxpayer-paid bubble, Cheney might find that most Oregonians are deeply unhappy with his ham-handed policies.
CHRISTOPHER NAZE
Southeast Portland
Working both sides of terror street
The Oregonian reports that President Bush continues to claim that his pre-emptive war on Iraq has made America safer. Apparently no one in his administration has bothered to tell Tom Ridge, head of homeland security, who continues to claim otherwise.
It is obvious that there is political benefit to the incumbent to keep the population on edge by making such claims, but to work both sides of the street at the same time boggles the mind.
RONALD G. TALNEY
Lake Oswego
War tragedy has human face
The recent features in The Oregonian about local soldiers killing and dying in a distant land were a heartbreaking reminder to all of us that this tragedy has a human face, and it belongs to the soldiers and innocent civilians who are maimed and killed every day.
Who sent those soldiers there? George W. Bush. Why did he send them? Because he misled the American public, claiming that there was clear evidence that Iraq was a threat to the United States.
But there was no threat. There was no evidence. And now Bush is turning his sights on Iran, thinking to divert us from the truth again.
Vietnam veteran John Kerry wouldn't have relied on faulty evidence to send more than 900 young men and women to die. That's just one of many reasons I'm voting for Kerry and John Edwards in November. I want someone who has witnessed the agony of war firsthand to make the decisions for our country.
LISA CANNON
Southeast Portland
Resettle Palestinians
There is a terrible irony in the United Nations General Assembly's vote to have Israel remove (not just move!) its fence and expose itself again to murderous attacks from its neighbors ("Palestinian prime minister stays on job despite his resignation," July 21).
The United Nations bears no little responsibility for the breeding of young Palestinian bombers in the frightful refugee camps the U.N. has helped maintain for 56 years. It has thus helped to retain their status as refugees to the third generation in conditions of misery, rather than help their integration into the surrounding society and economy.
The positive move that one might have expected from the United Nations is to recommend that the World Bank purchase the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip (thus compensating the current owners) and resettle the "camp" populations in these villages, where agricultural employment and sanitary conditions are readily available.
ZVI RAANAN
Southwest Portland
Palestinians displaced, 'caged'
David Sarasohn's spin is outrageous as he trashes Yasser Arafat and says Israel's wall is a security barrier "next to the West Bank" and that it "isolates Palestinian territory from Israel" (July 21).
Whose map is he looking at? The so-called security barrier route snakes deep into Palestinian territory, helping to capture much of the West Bank for the exclusive use of Israeli Jews.
Israel's "settlement" and "security" policies militarily enforce this continued dispossession of the Palestinians from their land in violation of international laws. Arafat is again the whipping boy, distracting us from the horror that the Palestinians have been forced off their lands by Israel and are now virtually caged onto 10 percent of their historic homeland.
The "core of this catastrophe" is not the emptiness of Arafat, but our empty-headedness in ignoring the international laws that should have protected the Palestinian people and help bring security to both Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, we give Israel our blessings and billions of dollars, and the tears and blood flow.
JENNIFER GROSVENOR
Southwest Portland
-------- africa
DR Congo will demobilise 200,000 combatants: official
KINSHASA (AFP)
Jul 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040724170138.u81h832b.html
About 200,000 combatants are to be demobilised and reintegrated into civilian life in the Democratic Republic of Congoa senior government official said on Saturday.
"The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which last year emerged from five years of armed conflict has 300,000 recognised combatants," said Azarias Ruberwa, one of four government vice presidents, adding that "200,000 fighters must be demobilised."
A peace pact enacted by Congolese President Joseph Kabila in April last year formally ended a five-year war in DRC that claimed some 2.5 million lives, both in combat and through disease and hunger.
Ruberwa was speaking to journalists at the official launch of the DDR programme for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration in the country.
He said the future national DRC army would be made up of about 80,000 to 100,000 men, and said that children under 18 and disabled soldiers would not be part of it.
The DDR plan has the backing of international organisations such as the World Bank and the European Union.
Ruberwa called on all those involved in the transitional phase in DRC to support the programme in order to "end the murderous upheaval" the country has experienced in the past several years.
-------- arms
Defense IG report slams Lockheed Martin's plane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040723-111418-4582r.htm
The Air Force has spent $2.6 billion to buy 50 planes that do not meet the military's requirements and cannot be flown in combat zones, Pentagon investigators reported yesterday.
The Air Force has continued to order more C-130J planes despite the fact that contractor Lockheed Martin hasn't delivered one that met requirements in the eight years since the program began, the report said.
Problems with the propeller-driven cargo planes include faulty computer and diagnostic systems and inadequate defense measures, the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General concluded. So far, none of the planes have been cleared for some of their primary missions: dropping troops and cargo into war zones and flying in conditions requiring the crew to wear night-vision goggles.
The inspector general's report concluded that Air Force and Defense Department officials mismanaged the program, requiring millions of dollars in upgrades and thousands of hours of work to make the planes capable of performing as well as the aging models they are supposed to replace.
The Air Force strongly denied the report's conclusions.
Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisition official, wrote to the investigators that the program is within its cost, schedule and contract guidelines. Lockheed Martin has started delivering planes that meet Air Force specifications and the necessary upgrades have either been completed or scheduled, Mr. Sambur wrote.
"While some of the facts presented in the DOD/IG report are accurate, the findings and conclusions ascribed to these facts cannot be supported," Mr. Sambur wrote in response to the inspector general's report. "The Air Force fully endorses the C-130J program."
Lockheed Martin spokesman Jeff Rhodes said the company agrees with the Air Force.
"The Air Force, ultimately the end user who is flying the aircraft, also says that the C-130J program is meeting cost, schedule, contract and regulatory commitments," Mr. Rhodes said in an e-mail statement.
Two Air Force squadrons haven't been able to perform their missions for more than four years because they have only C-130Js, the report said. The 815th Air Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and the 135th Airlift Squadron of the Maryland Air National Guard are supposed to drop troops and supplies into hostile areas.
Five other Air Force and Marine units have the C-130J planes but use older C-130s to perform their missions, the report said.
Air Force testers found so many problems with the planes that they stopped evaluations in 2000 so the problems they already found could be fixed, the report said.
The report cites problems with the planes including:
•Propellers for C-130Js designed for gathering weather data inside hurricanes were damaged in all tests. The weather planes also didn't have radar strong enough to penetrate storms as far as it should. Upgrades to fix those problems mean C-130Js won't be able to fly hurricane missions until at least next year.
•Diagnostic systems have a high rate of false positives, meaning maintenance crews spend a lot of time trying to repair components that aren't broken.
•The planes did not have an automated system for planning missions.
•The C-130Js are so different from older models that pilots qualified to fly older C-130s must be retrained to fly the new ones.
The Air Force continues to order more C-130Js despite the problems. The military is buying the planes as a commercial item - a process designed to allow the military to purchase goods on the open market that need few modifications for military use.
That process gives the Air Force less oversight and fewer cost controls, the inspector general's report said. For example, the commercial contract means Lockheed Martin doesn't have to give the Air Force data on how much the planes actually cost, so the Air Force has no way to check the company's profit margins.
Mr. Sambur suggested that the inspector general's office was biased against such commercial contracts, an accusation the office denied. The inspector general's office has been among critics of another Air Force plan to retrofit Boeing 767 jets for use as midair refueling planes.
-------- balkans
Ethnic Macedonians Riot Over New Laws That Aid Albanians
July 24, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/international/europe/24mace.html?pagewanted=all
JUBLJANA, Slovenia, July 23 - Police officers used tear gas and rubber bullets early Friday morning to help quell rioting in Struga, a lakeside town in southwestern Macedonia. It was the first major outbreak of civil unrest since the end of an interethnic conflict in the country three years ago.
Government officials said at least 17 people were injured in clashes as ethnic Macedonians, protesting plans that would give the country's Albanian minority greater rights and powers, ran through the town. Mobs attacked Albanian-owned shops and property as well as government cars and vehicles belonging to a European Union police monitoring mission.
The violence came a week after the Macedonian Parliament passed laws redrawing municipal boundaries and giving greater powers to local councils. Macedonians unhappy with the plans accuse the government of gerrymandering along ethnic lines.
The changes are linked to a peace plan devised by local leaders and foreign diplomats and advisers at the end of a seven-month conflict in 2001 between ethnic Albanian rebels and government security forces.
Albanians make up about 25 percent of Macedonia's population of two million, but in the north and west, and in towns like Struga, they have a majority. The new laws will give them control over matters like education, health and economic development.
The violence on Friday appeared to have been prompted by the visit to Struga on Thursday night of Macedonia's defense minister, Vlado Buckovski, and Nikola Kurciev, the leader of the Social Democrats, the main party in the Macedonian government. The two men were trapped inside the party's local headquarters, surrounded by a crowd throwing firebombs, according to the state-owned Macedonian Information Agency. The police used tear gas to help get them out, the agency reported.
While the slow-going peace effort has at times been threatened by ethnic Albanian gunmen and renegade security forces, this was the first time civilian protests had turned violent. Mainstream public opinion in the country's two main ethnic groups has supported the peace effort, but more recently Macedonian newspapers have been highly critical of the government's decision to change municipal boundaries. Critics say it has effectively gerrymandered local districts along ethnic lines.
The government is a coalition administration made up of Social Democrats and former members of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that was behind the 2001 conflict.
"It was not in the Ohrid peace agreement," said Saso Ordanovski, editor in chief of Forum, a weekly magazine. He was referring to the agreement that ended the fighting and laid the foundations for ethnic and political reforms. "It is damaging the agreement," he added. "Macedonians are increasingly afraid that Albanians are exercising their territorial interests."
More demonstrations are expected Monday in the capital, Skopje.
-------- biological weapons
Fun with Bio-Terror
by Gordon Prather
Antiwar.com
July 24, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/prather.php?articleid=3158
On the same day the "Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" [pdf] was released, President Bush signed into law the Project Bioshield Act of 2004.
Project BioShield is authorized to spend $5.6 billion over a five-year period to buy and stockpile vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other potential agents of bio-terror, as well as to develop new antidotes. The purchase of 75 million doses of an improved anthrax vaccine for the Strategic National Stockpile is already underway.
Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The disease can be fatal to vertebrates if the spores are inhaled.
Why the emphasis on anthrax? Well, a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, several congresspersons received letters containing finely divided anthrax spores, able to waft on the wind. Several postal clerks died, apparently as a result of inhaling anthrax spores.
The neo-crazies immediately demanded that we invade Iraq.
Here is what the Select Committee on Intelligence had to say about the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's biological warfare (BW) program, prepared by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to justify the October 2002 Congressional Authorization to invade Iraq.
"As 'Biological Warfare Program - Larger Than Before,' indicates, the primary assessment of the BW section of the NIE was that, not only had Iraq continued its BW program since 199I - in defiance of international efforts to disarm Iraq - but the program had advanced beyond what it had achieved prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
"This overall assessment is stated clearly in both the key judgments and the first sentence of the body of the BW section: 'we assess that all key aspects - R&D, production, and weaponization - of Iraq's offensive BW program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.'"
The 2002 NIE went on to say, "We assess that Baghdad also has increased the effectiveness of its BW arsenal by mastering the ability to produce dried agent."
In other words, Tenet said that by Sept. 11, Saddam Hussein had developed the capability to produce finely divided anthrax spores of the sort that congresspersons had received in the mail.
How could Tenet have made such "assessments"?
Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamal - director of Iraq's nuke, chem-bio and missile programs - defected to Jordan in 1995 and was extensively "debriefed" by Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the UN Special Commission on Iraq and Chief Inspector Maurizio Zifferero of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And by the CIA.
So Tenet knew that in 1991 Kamal had ordered the destruction of all Iraqi chemical and biological weapons - and the makings thereof - and the missiles to deliver them. Of course, Iraq had no nukes - or the makings thereof - to destroy.
Tenet knew that Kamal had identified each WMD site, the principal personnel working there and the progress they had made. A military aide who defected with Kamal supported Kamal's assertions. Furthermore, Kamal had brought thousands of supporting documents with him.
Then - according to UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter - the Iraqi government, fearful of what Hussein Kamal may have divulged, turned over hundreds of thousands of hitherto undisclosed documents about Iraqi WMD programs, confirming what Kamal had told them and what the UN inspectors had already known, and filling in many gaps.
So Tenet knew that the Iraqis - including Kamal - insisted that they had tried, but were never able to "weaponize" the liquid anthrax they produced, never able to disperse the spores as a lethal aerosol over the target.
And if Tenet knew that, so did President Clinton. Nevertheless, in December 1997, Clinton ordered all 1.4 million active duty personnel, as well as one million reservists and "mission essential" civilians, to be vaccinated against anthrax.
Why? Well, the neo-crazies were quite openly urging Clinton to invade Iraq, and he must have been seriously considering it. But about then Clinton got impeached, so the neo-crazies had to settle for a four-day bombing of Baghdad.
According to the New York Times, Clinton also said he was weighing a proposal to give anthrax vaccinations to police, fire, public health and other emergency officials in cities throughout the country. He said he was considering developing new vaccines, stockpiling antibiotics, and setting up emergency medical teams in major cities.
Actually, Clinton's principal regret may be that Sept. 11 didn't happen "on his watch." It didn't, so Bush got to do the "fun" things Clinton wanted to do.
-------- britain
Gulf War veteran threatens MoD
PETER MARTELL
Sun 25 Jul 2004
Scotsman
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=850482004
A SCOTTISH veteran has vowed to take the Ministry of Defence to the European courts if the independent inquiry into so-called Gulf War Syndrome fails to rule that the government was responsible.
Alexander Izett, 34, said he developed brittle bone disease after being vaccinated in the run-up to the war in 1990.
Izett, originally from Cumbernauld but who now lives in Germany, is among the 5,000 British veterans who have reported illnesses which they believe may have been caused by multiple vaccines or exposure to chemicals during the war.
But with the government failing to acknowledge the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, the former lance-corporal in the Royal Engineers says he will fight on until he gets justice for himself and other veterans.
Izett claims the MoD was negligent in failing to test the consequences of giving soldiers the powerful inoculations.
He said: "I am quite prepared to take my case to the European Court of Human Rights. It would not be just for myself, but for all veterans."
Izett gave evidence last week to the inquiry headed by Lord Lloyd of Berwick, which is due to report later this year.
However, he remains unconvinced that the ongoing inquiry will have the dramatic results he would like to see.
Izett took the drastic action last May of going on a 40-day hunger strike to highlight his plight. "My life was all I had left and I was prepared to lose that if it helped get this inquiry."
A spokesman for the MoD said it could make no comment on the challenge to take the ministry to the European Court of Human Rights unless papers were served. He added that the government remained committed to finding medical and scientific solutions to the ill health of the veterans.
-------- business
Air Force Faulted on 50-Plane Purchase
Transport Craft Fail Key Readiness Tests
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10266-2004Jul23.html
The Air Force spent $2.6 billion to buy 50 transport planes that do not meet the military's requirements, preventing squadrons based in six states from being fully prepared for their missions in the Middle East and elsewhere, the office of the Defense Department's inspector general disclosed yesterday.
After conducting a lengthy investigation set off by a whistle-blower's phone call, the inspector general's office concluded that the Air Force used an inappropriate procedure to buy the C-130J transport planes from Lockheed Martin Corp. and then mismanaged its production. It also said that senior Defense Department weapons-acquisition officials failed to provide the program with "effective oversight."
The 34-page report from the inspector general's office is its second major critique this year of the Air Force's top acquisitions official, Marvin R. Sambur. In April, Joseph E. Schmitz, the Pentagon's inspector general, accused Sambur's office of mismanaging contract negotiations for the production of a refueling aircraft derived from the Boeing 767. Schmitz said the Air Force had circumvented the required procedures to sign a contract costing from hundreds of millions to several billions of dollars more than necessary.
A classified paragraph in the April report said the Boeing 767 program shared "the same unsound acquisition and procurement practices that are currently evident in the C-130J program."
Sambur, in a statement appended to the new report, said that the C-130J program is "properly managed," the manufacturer is meeting its delivery schedule and the planes have been cleared to drop equipment over land and water and to conduct medical evacuations. The planes will soon be able to perform other missions, including airdrops of troops and heavy equipment, he said.
Other military officials confirmed yesterday that the planes have not passed key readiness tests, and so no C-130J has been used as planned by the Air Force Reserve, the Air National Guard or the Marine Corps in combat zones or military assaults. Specially modified versions have also not been approved for psychological operations and electronic warfare or for monitoring hurricanes.
That means that two squadrons in Mississippi -- as well as others in California, Rhode Island, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania -- are either relying on a dwindling number of older planes to assist the military's Central Command or are unable to carry out their missions at all, according to the report, signed by Assistant Inspector General Mary L. Ugone.
Air Force and reserve officials said yesterday that pilots are training for these functions and that the planes may be ready for more missions within the next year or so. Lt. Col. Guy Walsh, commander of the 175th Wing of the Maryland National Guard in Baltimore, confirmed that the C-130J transport planes that the wing has had since 1999 or 2000 are still not rated as mission-ready and are undergoing modifications at their base. But he said that "the progress I've seen has been tremendous."
Maj. Wayne Bunker of the Marine Corps Aerial Refueler and Transport Squadron 252, based in Cherry Point, N.C., said he has a "favorable" attitude toward the dozen new C-130Js that have been based there for the past 18 months. But, he said, that "it's not desirable" to be unable to use them operationally, and that making the transition from an older squadron has been burdensome. The aerial refueling pod on the C-130Js never worked, he said, forcing mechanics to pull the pods off older planes and to retrofit them onto the new ones.
An Air Force spokeswoman declined to comment. But Lockheed spokesman Joe Stout said in a written statement that the C-130J program is meeting cost, schedule and contracting commitments and that the company supports the written comments of Sambur. He also noted that Australian, British and Italian military pilots have flown the plane into Iraq and Afghanistan.
The C-130J was conceived by Lockheed in the mid-1990s as a commercial aircraft and was sold to the Air Force as an "off-the-shelf" plane requiring minimal modifications for military use. But Lockheed has not sold a single one of the propeller-driven planes to a commercial user, and the purchase price of a basic plane has risen steadily from $33.9 million in 1995 to at least $62 million in 2004.
The planes are undergoing a fourth set of modifications and, as of the end of 2003, had 33 outstanding deficiencies considered capable of causing "death, severe injury or illness, major loss of equipment or systems, or directly restrict[ing] combat or operational readiness," according to the inspector general's report. Congress has approved spending $4 billion for the planes, and the entire program is likely to cost more than $7.5 billion.
Under Pentagon contracting rules, commercial-style acquisition relieves contractors of the obligation to furnish cost and pricing data to military auditors. It also means Pentagon reviews of the production are truncated, and it enables contractors to be paid -- often in full -- for weapons systems before they have been tested to ensure that they meet combat needs.
In eight years, the inspector general's report said, "not one C-130J delivered aircraft was fully compliant with the contract specification. . . . The Air Force did not properly manage the program." It cited the fact that Sambur's office paid Lockheed "almost the full price" for every deficient plane and approved a new multiyear contract in March 2003 despite the absence of a "stable design."
"It's pretty outrageous," said Eric Miller, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan research group that has studied the C-130J program. "Cooperation with a defense contractor is one thing, but turning a blind eye to inferior workmanship is another. . . . It makes you wonder if anybody cares or is accountable."
--------
Report Faults Planes Bought by Air Force
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/politics/24plane.html
WASHINGTON, July 23 - The Air Force has spent $2.6 billion to buy 50 planes that do not meet the military's requirements and cannot be flown in combat zones, Pentagon investigators reported Friday.
The Air Force has continued to order more C-130J planes despite the fact that the contractor, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, has not delivered one that met requirements in the eight years since the program began, the report said.
Problems with the propeller-driven cargo planes include faulty computer and diagnostic systems and inadequate defense measures, the office of inspector general at the Pentagon concluded. So far, none of the planes has been cleared for some of their primary missions: dropping troops and cargo into war zones and flying in conditions requiring the crew to wear night-vision goggles.
The inspector general's report concluded that Air Force and Defense Department officials mismanaged the program, requiring millions of dollars in upgrades and thousands of hours of work to make the planes capable of performing as well as the aging models they were supposed to replace.
The Air Force strongly denied the report's conclusions.
Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisition official, wrote to the investigators that the program was within its cost, schedule and contract guidelines. Lockheed Martin has started delivering planes that meet Air Force specifications and the necessary upgrades have either been completed or scheduled, Mr. Sambur wrote.
"While some of the facts presented in the DOD/IG report are accurate, the findings and conclusions ascribed to these facts cannot be supported," Mr. Sambur wrote in response to the report. "The Air Force fully endorses the C-130J program."
A Lockheed Martin spokesman, Jeff Rhodes, said on Friday that the company agreed with the Air Force.
"The Air Force, ultimately the end user who is flying the aircraft, also says that the C-130J program is meeting cost, schedule, contract and regulatory commitments," Mr. Rhodes said in an e-mail message.
Two Air Force squadrons have not been able to perform their missions for more than four years because they have only C-130Js, the report said.
Five other Air Force and Marine units have the C-130J planes but use older C-130s to perform their missions, the report said.
-------- china
Military might and political messages
Asia Times
By Mac William Bishop
Jul 24, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/FG24Ad07.html
TAIPEI - Military exercises often have as much political use as tactical utility, and this week, China, Taiwan and the US all have conducted major exercises in or around the Taiwan Strait. These maneuvers send messages about the various countries' intentions in the Taiwan Strait.
China's exercises began on July 16 and were scheduled to end Friday, July 23. Meanwhile, the United States' global Summer Pulse 2004 exercises, which began in mid-July and will last until mid-August, have moved to the Western Pacific region this week. Taiwan also is holding its annual Han Kuang (Han glory) exercises, which began on Wednesday, July 21, and will last until July 28.
The fact that the exercises are being conducted virtually simultaneously is neither an accident nor coincidental. It is also no accident that former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, now the chairman of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, was quoted in a Hong Kong daily Wen Wei Po last week as in essence promising to attack Taiwan (seen as a wayward province) before or around the year 2020. The comments were made as China kicked off a major military exercise on Dongshan Island near China's southeast coast, only 280 kilometers from Taiwanese territory.
Yet even as China was showing off its military might near the Taiwan Strait, the US was conducting its own show of force in the Western Pacific, with an exercise called Summer Pulse 2004. This exercise is one of the largest naval drills the US has conducted in years, involving seven carrier strike groups - more than 120 warships, all over the world. The Pacific aspect of the exercise was widely interpreted by Taiwanese, as well as some Chinese and US pundits, as constituting a direct challenge to China.
The commander of US Pacific Forces, Admiral Thomas B Fargo, was in Beijing on a routine regional tour, and he was warned on Friday by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to stop military exchanges and arms sales to Taiwan. This is precisely what Li told US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice last week. Li said nothing about Summer Pulse 2004.
US military officials confirmed that the exercise was serving a purpose in this regard, but said it was an exaggeration to say that Summer Pulse was being held exclusively for the benefit of Taiwan and China. "It's a lie to say that the exercise is directed at China, but then again, it's a lie to say that it is not," a senior US defense source told the Asia Times Online.
Scheduling exercises no coincidence The scheduling of these exercises is no accident, the source said, speaking on condition he not be identified further. There were very clear reasons that the US would choose to conduct parts of Summer Pulse in the Western Pacific at the same time that China and Taiwan were conducting their own exercises: to demonstrate the United States' ability to project power and to show China that the US can still play a deterrent role in the region, despite its other operational commitments worldwide, as in the Middle East.
In short, the exercises are being held by the US to remind China that it is still serious about its commitment to defend Taiwan.
China has consistently vowed that it would unify with the democratic island of Taiwan at any cost. High-ranking party officials and senior People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers in the past have said that Beijing is willing to go to war to prevent Taiwan from becoming an independent country, and Taipei and Beijing have yet to agree to formal negotiations about Taiwan's status.
Political tensions between the two rivals have increased with the controversial re-election of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, and his administration's plan to formulate a new constitution is particularly worrying to Beijing. Chen promised in his inauguration speech on May 20 to confine the constitutional revisions to matters of administration and governance, and to avoid sensitive topics related to sovereignty.
"I am fully aware that consensus has yet to be reached on issues related to national sovereignty, territory and the subject of unification versus independence," Chen said. "Therefore, let me explicitly propose that these particular issues be excluded from the present project of constitutional re-engineering."
This pledge, however, did not assuage Beijing's fears that Chen had, in effect, established a timeline for independence.
China has, therefore, sought to employ various forms of pressure on Taiwan to remind the island's leaders that it was and remains deadly serious about preventing any slide toward independence. Jiang Zemin's comments and the publicity surrounding the PLA's military exercises can be interpreted in this light.
The exercises, in which 18,000 troops reportedly took part, have been conducted only 280km from the Taiwanese-controlled Penghu islands, also called the Pescadores. China's exercises are designed to demonstrate that country's ability to carry out joint operations, or missions involving naval, air and ground forces. These would be vital in carrying out a successful attack on Taiwan.
China seeks to demonstrate air superiority According to Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao newspaper, one of the primary goals of the exercises was to demonstrate China's ability to gain air superiority over Taiwan. Proving that it could control the air over the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance to China, as the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) has long been outclassed by its Taiwanese counterpart, both in terms of the quality of its aircraft and the training of its pilots, according to some defense analysts.
However, the combination of increased defense spending by China and structural problems with Taiwan's military is beginning to erode the qualitative superiority of Taiwan's Air Force, according to the US Department of Defense's most recent report to the US Congress on China's military capabilities.
"The [Taiwanese] Air Force's recently completed transition from 1960s fighter aircraft to modern 'fourth generation' [advanced aircraft such as the US-made F-16 or the French-made Mirage 2000-5] units retains many of the qualitative advantages over the PLAAF. However, fighter pilot shortages are stressing personnel, and training is conservative and overemphasizes defensive counter-air missions," according to the report, Fiscal Year 2004 Report to Congress on PRC Military Power.
Correcting China's relative lack of "fourth generation" fighter aircraft is one of Beijing's top priorities. And as China's 2004 arms budget is about US$26 billion (many analysts believe China's arms budget is much higher than the official figures indicate), the PLAAF will probably not have to go begging to acquire advanced weapons systems.
"The PLAAF and the PLANAF [PLA Naval Air Forces] are undergoing significant upgrades, which include acquiring fourth-generation aircraft, air defense systems, advanced munitions, and C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] equipment," the US Defense Department's report noted.
One of the reasons Beijing wants more capable air forces is due to the Chinese strategy of preventing intervention by "third parties" (ie the United States) in the event of a Taiwan Strait conflict.
The US, which is by law committed to providing for Taiwan's defense by selling weapons to the island, has in the past shown its willingness to intervene in crises in the Taiwan Strait. Notably, in 1996, former US president Bill Clinton dispatched two aircraft-carrier battle groups to the region after China began firing missiles into the waters of the Taiwan Strait. The missile tests were apparently designed to prevent the people of Taiwan from voting for Lee Teng-hui, an avowed pro-independence presidential candidate. The threats were unsuccessful - in fact, some analysts believe they had an effect opposite to that intended by China - and Lee won the election.
Strategic cross-Strait balance shifting to China However, the cross-Strait strategic balance has been rapidly shifting in China's favor over the past 10 years, and many analysts - including experts at the Pentagon - are starting to believe that the US would have a difficult time intervening on Taiwan's behalf should China decide to attack. Therefore, some elements of the US military want to show China that the US could respond - in a very substantial way.
Official statements from the US Navy confirm that the primary purpose of the drills was to demonstrate the US's ability to get ships where they were needed as quickly as possible.
"We've moved from our standard deployment pattern to the Fleet Response Plan, where we promised the president of the United States that we can put six carriers anywhere in the world within 30 days, and [two more carriers] shortly after that," Vice Admiral Michael McCabe, the commander of the US Navy 3rd Fleet, said in a statement on the US Pacific Command's website. "We've changed the way we maintain, the way we train, the way we equip and the way we deploy. As an example of that, this summer, in what's called Summer Pulse, we will have seven different aircraft carriers with their supporting ships operating in five different theaters."
However, a number of strategic assessments of possible "Taiwan scenarios" indicate that many US defense officials believe China is gaining the ability to defeat Taiwanese forces before foreign militaries could intervene. The US, then, is not relying on a purely military containment strategy.
"Washington does not in any way ignore China's military buildup and the possibility that it might in the long term pose a strategic challenge to the United States," said Richard Bush, the director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Bush is also a former director and chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US de facto embassy in Taipei.
"But successive administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, believe that US interests will be best served by a PRC [People's Republic of China] that is deeply integrated into the international community," Bush said. "If, on the other hand, the United States starts out by treating China as our enemy, it will surely become our enemy."
US not trying to 'surround' China Another US defense expert concurred with this assessment.
"The United States policy toward China is still an engagement policy. The long-term intentions of China toward Taiwan and the rest of Asia are not clear, but the US does not actively seek to contain China," said Larry Wortzel, the director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for International Studies in Washington. Nor is the US "surrounding' China", he said.
Taiwan, meanwhile, appears to be trying to adapt to the changing military balance in the Taiwan Strait, despite its relatively limited resources. Taiwan's Legislative Yuan has approved a nearly US$10 billion defense budget for this year, not including a "special budget" of approximately $16 billion earmarked for the procurement of a number of high-profile advanced weapons systems from the US. The special defense budget is at present the source of bitter debate within the Legislative Yuan, as many in Taiwan feel the money could better be spent elsewhere.
Despite the lack of a consensus on priorities, the military establishment in Taiwan is attempting to carry on as usual. The country began conducting its annual Han Kuang series of military exercises on Wednesday. The exercises, criticized by some observers as unimaginative and pointless, include a mock counter-landing operation, a rehearsal of an airborne assault, and several live-fire exercises.
But one of the most highly anticipated events in this year's exercise took place on Wednesday, when Taiwan's air force landed two Mirage fighter aircraft on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway in central Taiwan. When the freeway was built in the 1970s, several portions were designed to be used as temporary or emergency runways in the event of a war with China. Taiwan has five such freeways, several portions of which could theoretically be used as emergency airfields.
But the hype surrounding the landings was dismissed by some observers. "Landing on the freeway is no different from landing on a regular runway," said retired Taiwanese army general Shui Hua-ming. "The only difference is, well, it is the freeway, not an airport."
One foreign defense analyst held a different view. "The freeway landings are good, because it shows that Taiwan's military is trying something different," the analyst said, on condition of anonymity. "Usually, every year it was the same thing. They hold the same anti-amphibious landing exercise, blow up the same beach, and then turn around and everyone claps," he said.
Taiwan still hasn't fortified its airfields and hangars to increase their survivability in the event of a "saturation attack" by the PLA's Second Artillery Corps (China's missile forces), so the country was still vulnerable to the more than 500 short- and medium-range missiles that are deployed across the Strait, targeting Taiwan.
"This is a good sign," the analyst said. "It shows that Taiwan's military is willing to take a few risks and look for new alternatives to defend Taiwan."
Mac William Bishop is a journalist based in Taipei. Comments or queries may be sent to mwbtaiwan@hotmail.com .
-------- europe
War and Emerging Remembrance
German Veterans Begin to Add Narrative Piece to WWII
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10191-2004Jul23?language=printer
METZINGEN, Germany -- The shifting current funneled the landing craft toward the eastern end of Omaha Beach, where they disgorged men directly below Hein Severloh's camouflaged machine gun nest. He recalls emptying belt after belt of ammunition, raking the shoreline for hours as wave upon wave of American GIs struggled through the blood-red surf.
"I did not shoot for the lust of killing but only to stay alive," said Severloh, 81, a tall, soft-spoken man who said he must have shot hundreds of Americans on June 6, 1944. "I knew if only a single one survived he would shoot me."
For years Severloh told no one but his wife of what he did on D-Day. He said it was partly out of fear he would be labeled a Nazi and a killer, but also because fellow Germans didn't want to discuss World War II or hear about the experiences of army veterans. But over the past few years, historians, journalists and admirers have beaten a path to his farmhouse in this sleepy village in western Germany; Severloh has published a war memoir, been interviewed repeatedly by television, newspapers and magazines and been the subject of a televised documentary. He said he is gratified and amazed at the attention he has received.
As this country focuses on World War II more than 60 years after it began, Severloh's memories of the Allied invasion of Europe are part of an examination long suppressed by Germans. After decades of shame, fear and self-imposed silence, German soldiers and civilian victims are now venturing to describe their perspectives of the war. Beyond the traditional portrait of World War II as an epic battle of good vs. evil, the emerging view reveals a more complex narrative. Severloh's story has become part of the modern mix.
"We have new generations with new questions, and people are interested in what happened during the war without prejudging," said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin, a museum devoted to chronicling opposition to Adolf Hitler's rule. "We see, we know and we accept that Germany caused the war, but for the first time we are looking at all the aspects of what happened." Unlocking the Memories
Germany officially participated this year for the first time in commemorating D-Day alongside the United States, France and Britain. Other moments for reevaluation have included the 60th anniversaries of the July 20, 1944, failed assassination attempt against Hitler and the Aug. 1, 1944, beginning of the Warsaw Uprising, a savage 63-day battle against Nazi occupation forces that ended in a tragic defeat for Poland.
Recognition of these events follows a wave of books, television documentaries and articles focusing for the first time on German victims of the war -- both the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in the Allied fire bombings of major cities and the 13 million expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe. Next spring will bring celebrations of V-E Day -- Allied victory in Europe on May 8, 1945 -- and two films about Hitler that are expected to break the longstanding German taboo against portraying the Nazi dictator on-screen.
One reason for the renewed interest, analysts and historians say, is that members of the World War II generation are dying out, and people are keen to hear their stories firsthand before they vanish. Another reason stems from Germany's new role as a world power, with a more activist foreign policy and a willingness to dispatch peacekeeping troops to international trouble spots.
"If we want to participate in the world, we have to stand on firm soil as to the past," said former president Richard von Weizsaecker, 84, who also served as a young soldier in the German army in World War II.
Reinhard Hesse, the main speechwriter for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's D-Day and July 20th addresses, said the anniversaries have marked Germany's coming of age as a modern democracy. While the lessons of World War II used to be invoked as a rationale for Germans to avoid military operations, Hesse said, they are increasingly cited as a reason for Germans to become more involved.
For many Germans, the past was another country, a dark place shrouded by anguish, introspection and resentment. Gerhard Beick and Lothar Nickel are combat veterans who were drafted at age 19 and served in the legendary Afrika Korps -- in North Africa under Erwin Rommel. They recall coming home after the war from prisoner internment camps to cities in ruins and people obsessed with day-to-day survival, expressing no interest for the returning soldiers or their experiences.
"No one cared to hear about it and no one asked," Beick recalled. "We had all suffered, an entire generation. We came back to a destroyed country, destroyed cities, and we were interested only in personal survival. We tried to forget the war as much as possible."
There was always an undercurrent of guilt and suspicion. Nickel recalled that when Afrika Korps members began forming veterans groups in the 1950s, newspapers would not publish notices of their meetings, fearing that the men were surreptitiously reconstituting their old units.
"In the minds of a lot of people, we were seen as old Nazis," Nickel said. "But we were just young people dragged into the war."
One of the most abiding controversies centers on the failed assassination attempt against Hitler by military officers and civilians led by Col. Claus von Schenk Stauffenberg. In the first decade after the war, said Winfried Heinemann, a historian with the German army's Military Research History Institute, many Germans viewed the conspirators as traitors who had violated their personal oath to Hitler. At the same time, the communist government of East Germany depicted the plotters as right-wing reactionaries who sought to kill Hitler to save their own necks when it was clear the war was lost. But in later years, the conspirators came to be honored as shining examples of German resistance in a manner that seemed to suggest their actions absolved other Germans of complicity with Hitler.
The popular view has evolved to the point where a recent poll in Der Spiegel, a weekly magazine, showed that 73 percent of those polled felt admiration or respect for the plotters and 10 percent expressed disapproval or contempt. This year's solemn anniversary ceremony, held in the cobblestone courtyard where Stauffenberg and three of his fellow conspirators were executed by firing squad on the night of the failed coup, brought together dignitaries and more than 100 relatives of the four executed men.
Schroeder's speech sought to connect the German dissidents with resistance movements in Poland, France and the Netherlands, saying these disparate groups constituted the first seeds of modern European unity. But he acknowledged that in Germany, the resistance constituted a very small minority.
One of those in attendance was Georg Freiherr von Loe, a high school science teacher in his early fifties whose grandfather was one of hundreds of conspirators executed after the plot failed. Von Loe said that he had not attended previous commemorations but that his feelings of guilt now that the older generation is passing and his attempt to deal with questions from his children compelled him to make the six-hour drive from his home in western Germany, along with his wife and two of his children.
He and his family found the experience both moving and disturbing. "We have not slept well these last few nights because we have been discussing it," he said. "We need time to process what we have experienced." A Killing Machine
Severloh took 40 years to begin to process what happened to him on Omaha Beach. He had taken up a concealed position on the eastern side of the beach along with 30 other German soldiers, and he recalls watching the horizon turn black with dozens of ships and landing craft racing for the shore. His commanding officer, Lt. Bernhard Frerking, had told him not to open fire until the enemy reached knee-deep level, where he could get a full view.
"What came to mind was, 'Dear God, why have you abandoned me?' " he recalled. "I wasn't afraid. My only thought was, 'How can I get away from here?' "
But rather than run, Severloh slipped the first belt of ammunition into his MG-42 machine gun and opened fire. He could see men spinning, bleeding and crashing into the surf, while others ripped off their heavy packs, threw away their carbines and raced for the shore. But there was little shelter there. Severloh said he would occasionally put down the machine gun and use his carbine to pick off individual men huddled on the beach. He is still haunted by a soldier who was loading his rifle when Severloh took aim at his chest. The bullet went high and hit the man in the forehead.
"The helmet fell and rolled over in the sand," Severloh said. "Every time I close my eyes, I can see it."
Severloh said he was the last man firing from his position. By mid-afternoon, his right shoulder was swollen and his slender fingers were numb from constant firing. When a U.S. destroyer pinpointed his position and began to shell it, he fled to the nearby village of Colleville-Sur-Mer, where he was captured that evening.
In Severloh's telling of D-Day, there are few heroes and several surprises. The German occupiers had warm relations with their French farm hosts before the invasion, he contends. Lt. Frerking, who died on D-Day, was an honorable man who spoke fluent French and once gave one of his men 10 days' punishment for failing to help an elderly French woman with her shopping bags, Severloh said. The U.S. invaders slaughtered farm animals and soldiers, he said, yet that evening he and his ravenous U.S. captors shared a baguette.
Severloh said he first told his tale to an inquisitive correspondent for ABC News during the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984. But the real breakthrough came when an amateur war historian named Helmut Konrad von Keusgen tracked Severloh down. Von Keusgen, a former scuba diver and graphic artist, said he had heard from U.S. veterans about the machine gunner they called the "Beast of Omaha Beach" because he had mowed down hundreds of GIs that day. Severloh confessed he was that gunner. Von Keusgen ghost-wrote Severloh's memoirs, published in 2000, and still visits him regularly.
The two men contend that Severloh might have shot more than 2,000 GIs. That's an impossible figure, according to German and American historians, who say that although the numbers are far from exact, estimates are that about 2,500 Americans were killed or wounded by the 30 German soldiers on the beach.
"My guess is yes, he helped kill or wound hundreds, but how many hundreds would be hard to say," Roger Cirillo, a military historian at the Association of the U.S. Army in Arlington, wrote in an e-mail. He added: "Omaha is like Pickett's Charge. The story has gotten better with age, though no one doubts it was a horror show. Men on both sides were brave beyond reason, and this is the sole truth of the story."
Hein Severloh said he takes no pride in what he did, but telling his tale has given him a sense of relief.
"I have thought about it every single day that God gave to me," he said. Now, he said, "the pressure is gone."
Researcher Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Egyptian Diplomat Taken Hostage
Insurgents Warn Cairo Not to Send Forces to Iraq
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9107-2004Jul23?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 23 -- Militants took an Egyptian diplomat hostage Friday, saying the abduction was a warning to Egypt to rebuff appeals by Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi for help with security in Iraq.
Al-Jazeera television broadcast a videotape of the diplomat, whom it identified as Mohamed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb. He was surrounded by half a dozen figures wearing black hoods and white headbands.
The kidnappers said their actions were "in response to comments by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif that Egypt is ready to offer its security experience" to Iraq, al-Jazeera reported. Allawi was in Egypt on Thursday, trying to persuade Arab countries to contribute to a security force that would guard U.N. personnel if the United Nations were to send its staff back to Baghdad.
In Cairo, Foreign Ministry officials said Egypt had made no pledge of forces to Allawi. "Sending any forces or military personnel to Iraq was not a matter that has been proposed at all," the official Egyptian news agency MENA said.
The abduction of Qutb, the first diplomat among the more than 70 people kidnapped since April, was confirmed by the Egyptian Embassy in Baghdad. He was identified as the embassy's third-ranking official.
Many kidnap victims have been released, but Bulgarian authorities were studying a body and severed head found Wednesday on the banks of the Tigris River to determine whether they were the remains of a kidnapped Bulgarian truck driver.
Another videotape delivered to al-Jazeera Friday said seven foreign truck drivers taken hostage this week would be executed in 48 hours unless the Kuwaiti company that employs the men -- three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian -- ended its operations in Iraq.
Fifteen months after the United States declared an end to hostilities in Iraq, kidnappings and assassinations are almost daily events, carried out by a shadowy resistance that has proven to be surprisingly tenacious.
A retired Iraqi general who ran a job center with U.S. help was assassinated Friday in the northern city of Mosul, and two U.S. soldiers were killed when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb Thursday night in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Warplanes carried out another bombing in Fallujah in a search for a Jordanian rebel who has boasted of kidnappings and beheadings.
An Iraqi was killed by a roadside bomb near Samarra on Friday afternoon, according to a military spokesman.
The Defense Department identified a soldier killed Thursday by a roadside bomb as Pfc. Nicholas H. Blodgett, 21, of Wyoming, Mich. It also announced that Marine Lance Cpl. Mark E. Engel, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., died Thursday at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., of wounds he received in Iraq on July 6. A soldier killed Wednesday was identified as Spec. Danny B. Daniels, II, 23, of Varney, W.Va.
More than 900 U.S. military personnel have died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
In Mosul, Salim Majeed Blesh, 58, a retired Iraqi general, was shot and killed along with a neighbor as the two men walked to Friday prayers, according to Iraqi police. Blesh, a former top commander, had worked with U.S. occupation officials to set up a job center for Iraqis. Assassins have targeted Iraqis who worked on American reconstruction and occupation projects.
Near Baghdad, 10 members of a large family returning from a wedding party were killed Thursday night when their crowded van tried to pass another vehicle and struck a U.S. tank, according to a military spokesman. Ten Iraqis were injured.
Also in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded under a bus Friday, wounding the driver and eight passengers.
U.S. warplanes struck again at Fallujah, targeting forces that the U.S. military described as fighters for Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian guerrilla who is among the most-wanted insurgents in Iraq. Five Iraqis, including three children, were wounded in the bombardment, according to local reports.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, the chief spokesman for the military here, said in a statement that seven such bombardments in the past month "have eroded Zarqawi of support and ability to carry out terror attacks."
In the southern city of Kufa, a sermon at Friday prayers by a rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric, Moqtada Sadr, laid bare a split between him and his chief supporter in Iran, Ayatollah Kadhim Haeri. Sadr, a young cleric whose militia controls the Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala, has traditionally relied on support from Haeri, whose blessing has entitled Sadr to collect a large amount of tithings from Shiites in Iraq.
Haeri, according to Arabic news sources, signaled July 10 that Sadr was no longer authorized to collect the tithings on his behalf. And Haeri reportedly disputed the legitimacy of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
In his sermon, his first in four weeks, Sadr responded defensively.
"I suffered under Saddam [Hussein's] regime. Is this how I get paid for the resistance against the occupiers?" Sadr said.
The split could mean a significant loss of moral authority for Sadr, but it is unclear whether it will seriously weaken his power base. His bold opposition to the U.S. occupation and military have won him a following among poor Shiites.
In a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, the Um al-Qurra, the Friday sermon included a warning to U.S. troops to end their encirclement of Samarra.
"Americans isolated Samarra two weeks ago with tanks, armored cars and soldiers," said Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Ghafour Samarrii.
"Open the roads to Samarra," he appealed. "Depart from the policy of collective punishment. . . . Enough mockery. Enough cheating. Leave our land."
----
Tired of taking fire, Baghdad's police chief gets tough
DRAGNET: Officers impose gun control one house at a time, take each family's AK-47
John Koopman,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/24/MNGQC7SL3Q1.DTL
Baghdad -- Gen. Thamer was mad.
Someone shot two of his police officers. Killed one, wounded the other.
So he gathered 650 Iraqi police officers and descended upon a quiet neighborhood in Baghdad. When it was over, he had nearly 100 Kalashnikov assault rifles and three suspects in custody.
It's a new day in Iraqi law enforcement.
Since the interim Iraqi government took over responsibility for managing the country last month, police work in the capital and throughout the country has been the responsibility of Iraqis, from green recruits with hurry-up training to experienced veterans of the old regime. While police are a more visible presence on the streets, station houses and officers on patrol have been frequent targets for insurgents.
"The people have to know who is responsible," said Gen. Thamer Saadoun, in charge of police throughout the greater Baghdad area. "We will not stand for this."
The situation started last weekend, when two Iraqi officers were on patrol in the south side of Baghdad. Someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them. The missile missed, and the two men went to look for the shooter.
Thamer said the officers went into the neighborhood, and someone opened fire. One officer was killed, shot in the back.
No one came forward to identify the shooter. So the general ordered a sweep.
The U.S. Army provided a cordon around the neighborhood, along with units of the Iraqi National Guard.
One GI explained in this way why the Americans stayed on the outskirts while the Iraqi police took care of business: "This isn't our goat; we're just holding its legs."
Starting at about 4:30 a.m., 100 Iraqi police vehicles drove through the Army's traffic control point and parked along the street next to the neighborhood.
From a nearby mosque came the call to prayer. Thamer took a moment to face Mecca and offer his morning prayers. Then the police moved in.
Three shots rang out: Someone had forgotten to put his rifle on safe.
For an hour and a half, Iraqi police moved through the houses and returned carrying AK-47s and various other rifles and pistols.
Nearly every family in Iraq keeps an AK-47. It's for protection. Even the U.S. Army, in its weapons sweeps, allows families to keep one AK per adult male.
Not Thamer. He ordered every weapon confiscated, which caused a great deal of consternation among the residents. They emerged from the homes to confront the police and demand their guns back.
"Where were they when my officers were shot?" Thamer said. "They can come down to the police station and claim their guns, and we can talk to them."
An Army unit radioed the command post to say a local sheikh was there and wanted to pass.
"Let him wait," Thamer growled.
During the sweep, someone told the officers who had done the shooting. Dozens of officers loaded into several pickups and SUVs to find the suspects.
At the command center, bets were on over whether the Iraqi police would take any kind of revenge on those responsible for the murder. The odds were at 3-1 when the police rolled up with three men in custody.
They were taken out of the squad car and questioned briefly on the street. There was a lot of loud arguing in Arabic, but no punches were thrown.
"I knew I shouldn't have taken the bet," grumbled one soldier. "But it was a good bet."
Thamer said the surviving police officer had identified the type of weapon used in the attack. That type was found at the suspects' home, he said. The police will perform a ballistic test to determine if the bullets match.
"If they're talking about ballistic tests, they're moving forward," said one U.S. soldier familiar with Iraqi police procedures.
Nothing like this sweep has been done in Baghdad before. But there will be many more like it by his Iraqi Police, the general said.
"This was not about revenge," Thamer said. "It is our duty to make Baghdad safe. Today, the IP took charge."
E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.
----
Iraqi Insurgents Add an Egyptian Diplomat to Spate of Recent Kidnapping Victims
July 24, 2004
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/international/middleeast/24iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 23 - For the first time in the conflict in Iraq, insurgents here have kidnapped a diplomat, identified Friday as the third-ranking official at the Egyptian Embassy here, in a continuing spate of abductions aimed at American allies and nations that might assist the new interim Iraqi government.
Kidnappers here have apparently been emboldened by the Philippine government's decision to withdraw its 51 troops in Iraq in exchange for the life of a Filipino truck driver. Two days after the final Filipino soldier left on Monday, insurgents kidnapped seven more truck drivers - three from Kenya, three from India and one from Egypt - and threatened to behead one every three days unless their demands were met.
On Friday, the Arab news channel Al Jazeera showed a man identified as Muhammad Mamdouh Qutb, of the Egyptian Embassy here, seated in a chair before six men dressed in black, at least one of them armed, with white headbands. The kidnappers, calling themselves the Lions of God Battalions in Iraq, demanded that Egyptians not assist American forces in Iraq.
Earlier this week, the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, met in Cairo with his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Nazif, who said his country would help Iraq combat terrorism and asked in return that Egyptian companies be allowed to pay a role in reconstructing Iraq.
Al Jazeera reported that Mr. Qutb's kidnappers said in a videotape, "The abduction was in response to comments by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif that Egypt is ready to offer its security experience to the temporary Iraqi government."
"The hostage said in the tape that the Egyptian Embassy does not cooperate with the American forces and should help the Iraqi people in rebuilding," Al Jazeera reported. On Friday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry repeated its position that it has no plans to send troops to Iraq.
Since April, when violence spiked in Iraq, more than 50 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, forcing several nations to confront in an emotional and personal way the costs of supporting the American occupation or having their citizens or businesses assisting in the reconstruction effort.
Most hostages have been released. But at least three have been beheaded: an American businessman, Nicholas Berg; a South Korean interpreter; and a Bulgarian truck driver.
On Thursday, a decapitated corpse was discovered north of Baghdad next to a knapsack containing a human head. Bulgarian officials on Friday examined a videotape of the remains to determine if it was the second of two Bulgarian truck drivers kidnapped this month. A group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for kidnapping the Bulgarians and demanded a release of all Iraqis held in prisons here.
Bulgaria, which has 480 soldiers in Iraq, said it would not negotiate with the kidnappers. But as with the Philippines, the kidnappers' threats seem to reaping some results: Kenya, which has no troops in Iraq, has urged all its citizens working in Iraq to leave. After the truck drivers' kidnapping, India repeated its stand that it would not send troops to Iraq.
Meantime, the Kuwaiti company that employs the seven kidnapped drivers, the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, said Friday that it was in "negotiations at high levels" to secure the hostages' release but would not shut down operations in Iraq.
The issue of hostage taking, as well as beheading, has divided the many groups opposing the American military presence in Iraq, with several that have encouraged resistance against the Americans drawing the line at taking and killing hostages.
On Friday, the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who lead an uprising against American forces in April, rejected beheading hostages as a tactic of resistance. "We denounce those who decapitate prisoners," Mr. Sadr said at the main mosque in Kufa, south of Baghdad. "Islamic law does not permit them to do this, and anyone who does can be counted a criminal and be punished if seized."
It was the first time in two months that Mr. Sadr, who had gone into hiding to escape arrest by American troops, had delivered one of his usually fiery sermons in public, and his appearance seemed to underscore the shifting political ground in Iraq as the new government seeks to contain the violence here.
Prime Minister Allawi has sought to reach out to insurgent groups that pledge to renounce violence and to crack down on those that do not. With groups led by Mr. Zarqawi and those carrying out the recent kidnappings apparently outside Dr. Allawi's reach, Mr. Sadr seems willing in recent days, to some extent anyway, to moderate his stands in exchange for a role in the new political order here.
But Mr. Sadr and his aides have sent mixed public messages on his support for Dr. Allawi's government, and he remained equally ambiguous in his sermon on Friday. Despite his condemnation of beheadings, Mr. Sadr seemed careful not to stray anywhere near endorsing Dr. Allawi's leadership.
A group led by Mr. Zarqawi has taken responsibility for three confirmed beheadings of foreigners in recent months. On Friday, the American military conducted another airstrike in the hard-line city of Falluja against what it said were militants allied with Mr. Zarqawi, who has also claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq.
A military statement said the bomb, which had been aimed at 10 to 12 militants in a house, was dropped just after 6:30 a.m. and hit the building's courtyard. The statement did not mention any casualties, though news agencies quoted hospital officials and residents as saying five people were wounded, including some children. The military said the attack had been carried out with coordination and approval from the new Iraqi government.
On Friday, the military also announced the deaths of two American soldiers, killed Thursday by a roadside bomb near Samarra, a city north of Baghdad where troops and insurgents clashed earlier this week.
Also on Thursday night, 9 Iraqis died and 10 others were injured when their minibus struck an American tank in Baghdad, the military reported Friday. Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division, said the bus hit the tank while both vehicles were moving. He said the incident was under investigation.
In Mosul, in the north, a retired Iraqi general and a neighbor were killed as they went to pray in a mosque on Friday. The general, Salim Majid Blesh, had worked in an office established by Americans to find reconstruction work for Iraqis.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Kufa, whose name has been withheld forsafety, contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Militants Torch Palestinian Police Station
July 24, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Militants torched a Palestinian police station south of Gaza City on Saturday, the latest in a series of violent acts that has shaken the Palestinian government and Yasser Arafat's regime.
Gaza has been in turmoil for more than a week, igniting a political crisis in the Palestinian government based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Officials said the unidentified militants broke into the empty station in the dark hours of the morning in the town of Zwaida, about four miles south of Gaza City, pouring gasoline on mattresses and blankets and setting the building alight.
The fire also damaged the town council on an upper story of the building, which had recently been renovated with donations from the Danish government.
The building was empty and no one was injured, officials said. Police files, computers and communications equipment were lost in the blaze.
No group immediately claimed responsibility.
Ahmed Abu Zaid, the mayor of the town, said the purpose of the raid appeared to be to ``spread lawlessness and terror among the people.''
As town residents gathered to view the damage, Abu Zaid said the incident showed the need for measures to ``make the people feel that there is law and order.''
A larger disaster was averted when firefighters brought the blaze under control before it reached a storage area for cooking gas balloons in the rear of the building.
``The police cannot even protect their own station. Who's going to protect us?'' one angry resident asked the mayor.
Hassam Abu Zaid, the local leader of Arafat's Fatah political movement, called the raid a ``shameful act,'' and said, ``we call on (Arafat) to make sure that law and order are being implemented, and that good leaders and good commanders are fulfilling their duties.''
In Khan Younis, in the southern sector of Gaza, about 20 militants of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades took over the building of the local administration, demanding that their dismissals from security jobs be rescinded, a member of the group said.
The militant group is affiliated with Fatah, but its younger members have been angered by the monopolization of power in Gaza by Arafat's associates, most of whom are from an older generation raised in exile rather than under Israeli occupation.
They left the building after several hours after receiving promises ``from people we trust in the Palestinian leadership'' to resolve the problem of those who were fired, said the militant who identified himself only as Abu al-Haj.
There were no injuries or damage in the incident.
Unrest in Gaza began last week with a wave of kidnappings and demonstrations, prompting Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia to submit his resignation over the mounting lawlessness that he was powerless to control.
Arafat refused to accept the resignation, leading to a standoff between the veteran leader and his appointed prime minister, who was supported by the Palestinian legislature.
Anger against Arafat was heightened when he reshuffled the command of the security services, placing his widely distrusted cousin, Moussa Arafat, in charge of the Gaza public security forces.
In his first public comments since the upheavals in Gaza spilled over into a political confrontation with Qureia last week, Arafat denied Saturday the government was in a crisis.
``The prime minister has the full right to propose anything he wants, and whatever is suitable for him. I will support whatever he decides. I highly and fully trust him,'' Arafat said.
In the Jordanian capital of Amman, a Palestinian legislator and former Cabinet minister was recovering Saturday from wounds after he was shot in his Ramallah home. Nabil Amr has become an outspoken critic of Arafat and a champion of reform in the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Cabinet minister and peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the shooting showed that the Palestinian territories were sliding into chaos.
``This is a hideous, cowardly and ugly crime,'' Erekat told reporters after visiting Amr in a hospital.
Erekat was one of several Palestinian politicians who crossed from the West Bank to visit Amr on Friday. Among them were former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Interior Minister Hakam Balawi and the Israeli Arab legislator Ahmed Tibi.
-------- latin america
Mexico Prepares To Charge Ex-President
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8871-2004Jul23.html
The Mexican government sought yesterday to charge former president Luis Echeverria with genocide in connection with a massacre in 1971 in which security forces killed at least 30 young protesters in Mexico City, officials said. The pending arrest breaks with Mexico's long history of impunity for its political leaders and marks the first time a former president has faced the possibility of criminal charges.
Special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto asked a judge late Thursday to issue an arrest warrant for the 82-year-old former president, who governed from 1970 to 1976 during the most violent period of Mexico's campaign against anti-government activists, known as the "dirty war." Mexican news reports said Judge Jose Cesar Flores was expected to issue a warrant for the arrest of Echeverria and several former aides by today.
Officials in Carrillo Prieto's office, who declined to comment yesterday, have not publicly explained the legal basis for the genocide charge. Echeverria's legal advisers have argued that there is insufficient evidence for such a charge. David Penchyna, secretary of the national council of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until the election of President Vicente Fox in 2000, called the allegation of genocide "totally absurd" and accused the Fox administration of "politicizing justice" and seeking only to "annihilate its political enemies."
Echeverria's attorney, Juan Velazquez, told a television interviewer in Mexico City that the former president was ready to comply with the judge's ruling. Analysts said they considered it unlikely that Echeverria would be jailed, citing a law recently passed by Congress that allows judges to order house arrest rather than jail for defendants older than 70. The judge would have 72 hours after Echeverria's arrest to decide whether to issue formal charges.
The action against Echeverria marked an extraordinary departure for Mexico, where presidents from the PRI ruled with what amounted to dictatorial authority. Seeking charges against a former president was long considered politically impossible, and the prosecutor's decision to request Echeverria's arrest dominated the news in Mexico yesterday.
"This is a historic event without precedent in Mexico," said federal congressman Salvador Martinez Della Rocca, a former student activist who was present at the 1971 massacre and escaped when the shooting started. "It's important that these events go down in the history books, that the youth know the true history of their country, that we fought for our freedoms and the answer was a massacre."
Sergio Aguayo, a leading human rights activist in Mexico City, said the action against Echeverria broke "a very long Mexican tradition of impunity for presidents and powerful people." He said the potential genocide charges against Echeverria, similar to those that have been pursued against Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, showed that Mexico was evolving into a more democratic nation that would no longer tolerate abuses by its leaders. "What is important is the message that it sends that nobody is above the law," Aguayo said.
The move to bring charges against Echeverria, former internal security minister Mario Moya and former attorney general Julio Sanchez Vargas is a milestone in Mexico's efforts to investigate state crimes committed during the dirty war era, which extended from the 1960s to the 1980s. Fox campaigned on a pledge to shed light on the abuses of the past. Shortly after he took office, he acknowledged that the government had been responsible for the disappearances and killings of hundreds of activists.
He appointed Carrillo Prieto to investigate, but many critics doubted that the former law professor would have the political backing, power or will to take on the high-ranking PRI leaders who were widely believed to have directed the violence against activists. While some of the activists were members of radical guerrilla groups, many were students, teachers and farmers fed up with the PRI government's authoritarian policies.
"This is a fulfillment of Fox's campaign promise to somehow settle scores with the past," said Jorge G. Castańeda, Fox's former foreign minister.
The charges against Echeverria could also pose a dilemma for the Mexican political and judicial systems, several analysts said yesterday. They predicted that the accusation would deepen the rift between Fox and the PRI, which still controls Congress. They also said genocide was a difficult charge to prove, and failure could precipitate what Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Fox's former national security adviser and former ambassador to the United Nations, called a "deep crisis of credibility."
Aguilar Zinser said many Mexicans would assume that the judicial system had been compromised by corruption if Echeverria was not tried and convicted. "If the basis of the prosecution is not firm, it could be the beginning of a horrible time," he said. "It could lead to a lot of political revenge." He added that "the moral judgment has already been made" by the public about Echeverria's guilt.
For many Mexicans, Echeverria symbolizes the worst of the government's past abuses. He was interior minister, the second-most-powerful post in the government, on Oct. 2, 1968, when policemen and soldiers opened fire on anti-government protesters and killed an estimated 300 people in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza -- the most infamous incident of the dirty war era. He was president on June 10, 1971, when government-backed security forces opened fire on student demonstrators during a march in Mexico City, killing at least 30 people in what became known as the Corpus Christi massacre.
In international legal rulings, a finding of genocide has generally been required to meet the U.N. Convention definition of an act "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." The Mexican penal code's definition approximates that characterization.
Eric Olson, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Washington, said he doubted that the allegations against Echeverria constituted genocide, but he noted that the prosecution's case was unknown.
"This is uncharted territory in Mexico, but I think the prosecutor has taken a bold step," Olson said. "This could help clear up a real tragedy in Mexico's past and lend some credibility to Mexican institutions that are bankrupt of any credibility at this time. And I think there is a glimmer of hope that Mexican prosecutors and judges will do the right thing."
People interviewed on the street yesterday in Mexico expressed skepticism that Echeverria would be punished.
"Nothing's going to come of it, it's much ado about nothing," said Laura Dominguez, 61, a clothing designer from Sinaloa state. "I wish all the presidents would be charged for what they've done to this country. They've sunk the country into misery."
Researchers Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City and Bart Beeson in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, contributed to this report.
-------- mideast
Egypt envoy kidnapped by militants
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ravi Nessman
July 24, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040723-114155-1789r.htm
BAGHDAD - Militants kidnapped a senior Egyptian diplomat as he left a mosque yesterday and demanded his country abandon any plans to send security experts to support Iraq's new government, according to a video broadcast on the Al Jazeera television station.
Earlier yesterday, U.S. forces launched a strike against 10 to 12 suspected terrorists tied to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant blamed for attacks against foreigners in Iraq. The suspects were gathered in the courtyard of a house in Fallujah, the U.S. command said. The military did not mention casualties, but a hospital official said the attack wounded five civilians, including three children.
The abduction of Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb threatened to undermine efforts of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday to persuade Arab and Muslim countries to provide troops to protect the United Nations mission in Iraq.
A separate militant group holding seven foreign truck drivers, including one Egyptian, announced a new set of demands in a new video, insisting that their Kuwaiti employer pay compensation to those killed by U.S. forces in Fallujah. They have threatened to begin beheading the hostages starting today.
The practice of beheading hostages has stirred opposition in Iraq, with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led a two-month uprising against U.S. forces beginning in April, joining the criticism yesterday.
"We condemn what some people are doing regarding the beheading of prisoners and it is illegal according to Islamic law," Sheik al-Sadr said at the Kufa mosque south of Baghdad, where he led Friday prayers. "Anybody doing this is a criminal and we will punish him according to Islamic law."
However, Sheik al-Sadr also had harsh words for Mr. Allawi for authorizing recent U.S. military air strikes on Fallujah.
"You have proven that you are just an extension of the occupation," he said at the Kufa mosque, as young men raised their fists in the air and cheered his name and screamed: "We are with you till death, Sayed Muqtada."
"Allawi, I tell you, what right do you have to order the reopening of the Hawza paper, if you were not the one to shut it down in the first place," Sheik al-Sadr told his faithful.
"Damn him and damn the occupier," he said.
On Sunday, Mr. Allawi ordered the lifting of a ban on Sheik al-Sadr's weekly paper imposed by former U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer in late March because it had reputedly been instigating violence.
The closing of the paper and the arrest of one of his deputies in late March unleashed a rebellion that left hundreds dead.
Sheik al-Sadr's word carries weight with many within the country's Shi'ite majority but is essentially meaningless to the Sunni Muslims believed responsible for many of the kidnappings and killings.
Militants have kidnapped roughly 70 foreigners, many of them poorly guarded truck drivers, in recent months in an effort to force countries to withdraw troops from Iraq and to scare away contractors working on reconstruction projects. At least three hostages have been beheaded.
Mr. Qutb was the first diplomat taken hostage, and his capture signaled that insurgents are targeting more influential foreigners.
Only days earlier, Mr. Qutb had embraced freed Egyptian truck driver Alsayeid Mohammed Alsayeid Algarabawi, who was released by a different militant group Monday.
An Egyptian diplomat in Baghdad, who declined to be identified, said Mr. Qutb was abducted yesterday as he left a mosque. The black-clad militants, calling themselves "The Lions of Allah Brigade," claimed they abducted Mr. Qutb because Egypt said it was prepared to deploy security experts to help Iraq's interim government, according to Al Jazeera. No specific threat against Mr. Qutb was mentioned.
Egypt has offered to train Iraqi police and security personnel in Egypt, but declined to deploy military forces in Iraq.
In the narrated video, Mr. Qutb is seated in front of six masked men, some holding rifles. He said he was being treated well, adding that the Egyptian mission in Baghdad was not cooperating with the U.S.-led multinational force but was only trying to help the reconstruction of Iraq, according to the newscaster.
While Egyptians have shown sympathy for countrymen who went to Iraq to work and were taken hostage, the kidnapping of a diplomat was likely to focus public attention on their government's policies toward Iraq.
Many Egyptians and other Arabs extol Iraqis fighting Mr. Allawi's U.S.-backed government as freedom fighters and accuse their own governments of siding with hated America against Arabs.
The crisis came amid a new surge in kidnappings.
A group calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners" released videos Wednesday and Thursday saying it was holding three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage. The group said it would behead one every 72 hours beginning tonight if their Kuwaiti trucking company employer did not stop doing business in Iraq and the hostages' countries did not pull their citizens from Iraq.
In a new video broadcast on Al Jazeera yesterday, the group increased its demands: calling for the release of all Iraqi detainees in Kuwaiti and U.S. prisons and calling on the drivers' Kuwaiti employer to compensate relatives of people killed in Fallujah.
The new demands were almost certain to go unmet, but the tape yesterday - also narrated by the news reader - did not appear to repeat the beheading threat and bore no other specified threat against the men.
The militants gave the company a 48-hour deadline, but it was not clear that meant the initial deadline was extended until tomorrow.
Elsewhere yesterday, one person was killed and nine persons wounded - including a pregnant woman and two children - when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's northern suburb of Toubechi as a bus passed, officials said.
Gunmen killed a retired Iraqi officer, Maj. Gen. Salim Majeed Blesh, 58, and his neighbor, Sami Noori, 68, as they headed for prayers in the northern city of Mosul, police said.
Gen. Blesh had run a Mosul employment office set up by the former U.S. occupation government. His killing appeared part of a wave of attacks against police and officials working with U.S. forces.
-------- nato
NATO OKs Deployment of Afghan Troops
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Afghanistan.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- After months of delay, NATO has ordered hundreds more peacekeepers to Afghanistan to help provide security during presidential elections, but the deployment still appeared to fall short of 3,500 troops that were promised.
NATO ambassadors meeting late Friday approved two more battalions for Afghanistan, one each from Italy and Spain. A battalion has between 600 and 1,000 soldiers.
The alliance also cleared another 500 or so troops to beef up provincial reconstruction teams. Assuming the battalions were large, that would still make only about 2,500 troops.
``We need a little bit more to get to 3,500,'' said Lt. Col. Ludger Terbrueggen, spokesman at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium.
Cdr. Chris Henderson, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the Afghan capital of Kabul, said a third battalion would be on standby as part of a reserve contingent outside the country. He said the alliance had yet to decide which countries would supply the reserve force but insisted ``NATO has not failed in meeting its commitment.''
U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns called the reinforcements ``a significant step in the efforts of the international community to help the Afghan people.''
NATO took command of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan last summer. It currently has some 6,500 troops there, about half from Germany and Canada.
In October the alliance agreed to expand the force. But apart from Germany, which sent 240 soldiers to the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, NATO had been unable to persuade governments to provide needed troops.
The delay has cast doubt on the alliance's credibility as it seeks to reinvent itself as a global security force in the post-Cold War era.
The troops from Italy and Spain will arrive in Afghanistan by September and remain for about two months, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a statement. The election is planned for Oct. 9.
De Hoop Scheffer would likely work the phones over the next few days to raise more troops, Terbrueggen said.
The NATO troops serve apart from the 20,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force, which focuses on tracking down remnants of al-Qaida and the deposed Taliban government, mostly in the border area with Pakistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai pleaded with NATO leaders at their June summit to send more soldiers as quickly as possible.
Violence in Afghanistan this year has killed more than 600 people, including soldiers, international workers and civilians.
The allies committed themselves to increase troop levels to 10,000, but still struggled to come up with the soldiers.
France and other NATO members objected to an American proposal that NATO's elite new response force be deployed, arguing it should be saved for emergencies, not peacekeeping.
The NATO statement said the Italian battalion is ``an element'' of the rapid response force and will act as a reserve for the Spanish, who will provide a ``quick reaction force.''
They will probably be based in the capital, Kabul, but able to dash around the country to help out.
Spain pledged to increase its contingent in Afghanistan to 1,000, from about 140, after pulling its forces out of Iraq in April.
Germany, with 1,909 troops in Afghanistan, and Canada, with 1,576, are by far the most generous of the NATO contributors. France ranks next with 565. The remaining 23 NATO countries, plus 11 outside NATO, have pitched in about 2,500 combined.
De Hoop Scheffer said Afghan authorities will ``retain primary responsibility'' for security.
-------- pakistan / india
United States Needs to Take a Stand With Pakistan, Report Says
July 24, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/politics/24pakistan.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 23 - The 9/11 commission's report lends unusual attention to Pakistan, saying that the governments in Islamabad and Washington need to make "hard choices" if they are to make progress in the fight against Islamist terrorism.
The commission recommended that the United States end a lengthy period of ambivalence and mistrust toward Pakistan and commit itself to a period of sustained aid, including military assistance and support for that country's public education system as a counterweight to religious schools that foster extremism.
But that American support should come only if the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf proves that he stands for "enlightened moderation" and confronts Islamic extremists in Pakistan, curbs nuclear proliferation and paves the way for a return to democracy, the commission said.
Pakistani officials praised the report as an endorsement of their policies. "Quite obviously there are things that are critical," said a close aide to General Musharraf. But, he added, "when it comes to recommendations, it says that this is the one government that is the best hope."
Still, the commission was hardly glowing in its descriptions of Pakistan.
Pakistan is the first country listed by American and foreign government officials, the commission report said, when asked: "If you were a terrorist leader today, where would you locate your base?"
For the panel members, Pakistan is a problem and a solution. And at this moment, it is the site of the fiercest battles against international terrorists.
"It is hard to overstate the importance of Pakistan in the struggle against Islamist extremism," the report said. "Within Pakistan's borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of Al Qaeda terrorists, many Taliban fighters, and perhaps Osama bin Laden. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and has come frighteningly close to war with nuclear-armed India over the disputed territory of Kashmir."
The commission recommended that the United States overcome a legacy in which the two countries have been "allies of convenience" and decide definitively whether to back General Musharraf.
That American support would include sustaining current levels of humanitarian aid for years and developing a comprehensive approach to provide military aid and support for a better education system, to promote economic opportunity and counteract the religious schools that to produce militants.
Such backing cannot come too soon for General Musharraf, who finds himself increasingly boxed in on the domestic political front. On one side, Islamic militants with links to Al Qaeda are trying to kill him; he narrowly escaped two assassination attempts last December. On the other, the country's liberal elite are expressing growing disappointment with the failure of the general, and his American backers, to build up the strong government institutions that they say will stabilize the country in the long term.
Pakistani political analysts accuse the general of sometimes enacting policies that work at cross-purposes. They say that on one hand, he is mounting aggressive efforts to pursue Qaeda members hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But on the other, they say, General Musharraf has held back on cracking down on former Taliban and Islamic militants waging an insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, the disputed territory Pakistan and India have fought two wars over. Analysts say Pakistan must crack down on all militancy in the country.
On terrorism, the report noted, Pakistan nurtured the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Army and intelligence services, in particular, revealed an ambivalence toward confronting Islamic extremists and struggled to maintain good relations with the Taliban until September 2001, the report said.
On proliferation, Pakistan's record was equally problematic, the report said. The government, which claims not to trade in nuclear technology, insisted that it was unaware of the smuggling efforts of one of its most prominent citizens, A.Q. Khan, who is credited with making Pakistan a nuclear power.
Lastly, Pakistan has done little to resume democratic rule at the national level, the report said.
Such perceived shortcomings have been at the root of several difficult compromises the Bush administration has made, and which continue to this day. For example, despite strong indications that the Pakistani government knew of Mr. Khan's activities, the administration took General Musharraf at his word.
Ambivalence has long been a characteristic of United States-Pakistani relations, and the report detailed how the nations' alliance after Moscow's 1980 invasion of Afghanistan unraveled after the Soviets withdrew and was replaced by numerous American sanctions in the 1990's over Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons.
The report found that throughout much of the 90's, when the bin Laden threat intensified, American policy planners were primarily focused on the prospect of a South Asian war, and they did not challenge Pakistan on Afghanistan and Al Qaeda.
The relationship was steeped in suspicion. In 1998, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles on bin Laden camps in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. No terrorist leaders were killed. Officials in Washington speculated that one or more Pakistani officials might have tipped off the Taliban or Al Qaeda, the report said.
Until Sept. 11, 2001, policy discussions in the Clinton and Bush administrations were largely about whether to impose new sanctions or to ease sanctions, the commission found.
Enlisting the cooperation of General Musharraf beyond lip service was a difficult task until the Qaeda attacks, according to the report.
But two days after the attacks, top Bush administration officials seeking an overarching antiterror strategy concluded that if Pakistan did not help the United States, it could fall in the sights of the American military. At the same time, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with the Pakistani ambassador and urged several concrete steps - including stopping Qaeda operatives at its border, cooperating on intelligence and cutting off all shipments of fuel to the Taliban.
Pakistan made its decision swiftly. At a National Security Council meeting that afternoon, "Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that President Musharraf had agreed to every U.S. request for support in the war on terrorism," the report said. Mr. Bush then ordered the Pentagon to draw up a military plan to strike the Taliban.
David Rhode contributed reporting from Pakistan to this article.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Will Help Iraq Via Trade Not Troops
Sat Jul 24, 2004
By Sonia Oxley
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5763055
MOSCOW - Russia said on Saturday it had no intention of contributing troops to the U.S.-led force in Iraq, but was prepared to help by developing trade and easing debt burdens.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the pledge to build on Moscow's longstanding links with Iraq after talks with his opposite number Hoshiyar Zebari.
It was the first visit to Moscow by a top official since the interim government took over formal control of public affairs last month from U.S.-led occupying forces.
Russia, Lavrov said, had no plans to dispatch forces to Iraq, nor had the issue arisen during the talks.
"Russia is prepared to support the restoration of sovereignty of Iraq in other ways, particularly through trade," he said, offering action within the Paris Club of state lenders to help Baghdad with its external debt.
"This contribution will be no less than the contribution of the participants in the multinational forces."
Russia, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein without U.N. approval, had long been involved in Iraq's oil industry and is keen to move ahead with contracts, some dating from Saddam's term in office.
Local media had earlier quoted Zebari as saying he would ask Lavrov to contribute troops, but he denied this.
"I would like to clarify that I never made such a statement," he said. "Russia's position is well known."
Russian officials this week repeatedly denied reports, quoting a U.S. think tank, that the Kremlin had approved in principle plans to send forces to Baghdad.
Russia's interests in Iraq center on oil. Saddam canceled a $3.7 billion deal with oil major LUKOIL in 2002, accusing it of failing to meet its obligations to begin work. LUKOIL said its hands were tied by U.N. sanctions then in place.
LUKOIL says the deal is still valid and last month said it would produce its first oil from the West Qurna field next year.
Countries which opposed the war originally feared they might be shut out of lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq. Zerabi said Iraq was working with Russia on the question of contracts.
Russian specialists, including engineers trying to keep electricity supplies running, withdrew from Iraq this year after workers were kidnapped and killed in a series of attacks.
Lavrov said they would return once security levels improved.
Russia has also called for an international conference on Iraq, similar to one called after the removal of the hardline Taliban authorities in Afghanistan.
Zebari said Baghdad was considering the Russian proposal.
"The door for holding them (talks) is still open," he said.
----
Russia Restates Iraqi Troop Refusal
July 24, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Iraq.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Saturday that Baghdad would like to have Russian peacekeepers, but the Kremlin restated its refusal to become involved in the messy conflict.
``We need Russian peacekeepers,'' Zebari said, according to the Interfax news agency.
But Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow had no intention of becoming involved.
``This issue wasn't looked into,'' Lavrov said at a news conference. ``There are no such plans.''
Lavrov said that Russia was willing to consider restructuring Iraq's multibillion dollar debt through the Paris Club of creditor nations and offering economic assistance and personnel training.
``Such contribution would be no less significant than that by the participants in the multinational forces,'' Lavrov said at a news conference.
President Vladimir Putin said last year that Russia in principle would be willing to write off more than half of Iraq's $8 billion debt to Moscow.
Throughout this week, Russian diplomats were busy dismissing recent speculation that Russia would contribute troops in exchange for U.S. assurances that Russian companies could regain lost ground in Iraq.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said this week that Russia continues to believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake and that no possible incentives could persuade the Kremlin to send soldiers to Iraq.
Russia recently evacuated hundreds of energy workers from Iraq, where they were rebuilding power stations, after several abductions and other attacks. Russian officials said they could only return to Iraq after security situation had stabilized.
``We very much want Russian energy companies to return to Iraq to continue building four power generating facilities,'' Zebari said Saturday, according to Interfax. ``Of course, we understand that a secure environment needs to be created.''
The visit, in which Zebari also was to meet with Security Council head Igor Ivanov, was the first trip to Moscow by a senior Iraqi official since the U.S. returned sovereignty to Baghdad late last month.
----
Russia launches Kosmos rocket with military satellite
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jul 22, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040722185533.r8js0tbq.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.
-------- space
Lawmakers Make Plea to Keep Weather Satellite
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10023-2004Jul23.html
Two leading members of the House Science Committee have urged the Bush administration to reconsider its decision to bring down a NASA satellite used by scientists and forecasters around the world to study global climate and track tropical storms.
Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Tex.), ranking minority member of the subcommittee on space and aeronautics, sought additional funding to keep NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite aloft instead of allowing it to fall out of orbit and plunge into the ocean next year.
"As a research satellite, it has provided unprecedented insights into the nature of precipitation," Boehlert wrote in a letter late Thursday to White House science adviser John H. Marburger III. "The cost of keeping the satellite functional is minuscule compared to the value it provides."
Lampson asked President Bush in a letter yesterday to "find a few tens of millions of dollars over the next four years to preserve a key means of improving coastal and maritime safety."
"A viable funding arrangement can certainly be developed," the letter said.
The satellite, known by its initials, TRMM, was launched in 1997 as a joint venture between NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and was supposed to spend three years monitoring global climate.
Instead, it has lasted seven years and, with instruments and hardware functioning perfectly, has become an important tool for meteorologists tracking hurricanes and other cyclonic storms.
But with fuel for a controlled de-orbit running out, NASA earlier this year asked Japan and other U.S. user agencies to contribute $28 million to keep TRMM functioning for another two years.
Finding no partners, however, NASA decided to bring the satellite down.
--------
Proposed NASA Cuts Draw a Veto Threat
By Dan Morgan and Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10357-2004Jul23.html
The Bush administration has threatened to veto a major spending bill unless Congress reverses proposed cuts in the president's signature space initiatives to return to the moon.
The written warning from White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten marks an unusual departure from administration criticism of rampant congressional spending.
It came late Thursday, just hours after House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who disapproves of the proposed cuts, raised his concerns with President Bush and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. The bill in the White House sights is a $92 billion measure that also includes a $1.2 billion increase in veterans programs in 2005.
Bush made headlines in January when he outlined his "Vision for Space Exploration." He promised to "extend a human presence across our solar system" with a return to the moon by 2020 and eventual human space travel to Mars.
DeLay, whose newly drawn district includes the Johnson Space Center in Houston, has been one of the plan's most vocal supporters. In a June 3 speech on the House floor, he acknowledged that funds were tight, but added that "for four decades, America's mission in space has been one of the surest economic investments the federal government has made. . . . Despite the costs, risks and hardship, we can get there from here."
Citing budgetary constraints, the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday slashed the administration's request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by $1.1 billion -- eliminating $438 million NASA had sought to begin work on a new "crew exploration vehicle" to replace the space shuttle, cutting its request for medical and biological research in space by $103 million, and reducing funds sought for lunar exploration by $70 million.
The administration supports an increase of only 1 percent for programs unrelated to defense and counterterrorism. The limit has forced Congress to make tough choices and has led to cuts or outright elimination of a number of presidential initiatives.
Earlier this year, for example, a House spending bill deleted funds for new civics education and art exchange programs that are championed personally by the president and first lady.
Though the White House has expressed disappointment in such actions, there has been no veto threat.
But in this case, Bolton sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and others, stating that a veto would be recommended unless presidential initiatives receive "adequate funding levels."
Bolton also complained of cuts in the president's requests for the Prisoner Re-entry Initiative -- which would use faith-based groups to assist released inmates -- and the AmeriCorps national service program, a favorite of Laura Bush.
Of most concern were the proposed funding levels for NASA, which "would drastically delay plans for Fiscal Year 2005 critical technology design efforts that are needed to begin to implement the President's Vision."
There was no indication, however, that House members charged with drawing up the NASA budget planned to retreat from their decision.
Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for NASA, said in a statement that: "Our committee was given an extremely tight allocation this year, and it met its number one priority to increase veterans healthcare funding as authorized in the Budget Resolution passed by the House. Our goal was to create a fair bill, and I believe that we did."
Other members of Congress have suggested that flagging interest in the space initiatives by the Bush administration itself made the programs a logical target for cuts, given overall budget constraints.
"The president marketed this as a bold proposal, but has only espoused it one time," said Rep. Alan P. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), ranking minority member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA. "His silence since the initial proposal is deafening."
-------- spies
Inside Intelligence Bin Laden's Inner Circle Eludes CIA
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10247-2004Jul23.html
The CIA has intelligence agents inside Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network -- as it did before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- but they are not within the terrorist leader's inner circle where key information about any future attack would be discussed, a senior intelligence official said yesterday.
"They are beyond foot soldiers but not in the inner circle," the official said. The agents -- Afghans, Pakistanis, Uzbeks and others recruited and run by CIA case officers -- "are more senior than the agents [the U.S. had] three years ago who were on the periphery," the official said.
Aided by these agents, electronic intercepts, satellite imagery, and extensive help from foreign intelligence services, the United States over the past two years has captured or killed two-thirds of bin Laden's top aides and broken up plots against U.S. embassies, U.S. and foreign aircraft, and ships and other targets worldwide.
Although the U.S. intelligence community believes that al Qaeda today is far less capable than the team that put together the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden "looks to the United States still as the brass ring," another senior intelligence official said. "They still want to continue to attack us in the ways they did three years ago," he said during a Wednesday briefing, which was held on the condition that reporters not disclose his name or the identity of two other senior intelligence officials who spoke.
This is the first time that CIA officials have publicly described with such specificity the placing of agents and other steps aimed at cracking al Qaeda -- the sort of information that the agency generally guards very closely.
They made the revelations as part of a response to the stern criticism of the agency this week by the Sept. 11 commission. It portrayed U.S. intelligence as having failed dramatically before the 2001 attacks, largely because it lacked significant sources of human intelligence about bin Laden's organization.
The comments came at the briefing, held the day before the commission report was released, and in interviews yesterday that elaborated on some points.
"We have busted plots repeatedly" that were undertaken by "serious al Qaeda players" involving both aircraft and ships -- some in Northeast and Southeast Asia -- one official at the briefing said.
He said intelligence on the possibility of other attacks has recently been strong. "I wouldn't characterize what we have now as chatter," he said. "I think we have some fairly specific information that al Qaeda wants to come after us."
In 2001, the officials said, U.S. technical intelligence did intercept conversations of the Sept. 11 plotters over an al Qaeda command-and-control phone link. But U.S. analysts could not understand their "doubletalk" enough to disrupt the operation, the first official said.
"They [al Qaeda members] became aware that we were sitting on those phones, and they became doubly cautious and their doubletalk doubled as they progressed, so we were thwarted," he said. CIA Director George J. Tenet was able to give warnings of terrorist activity in the summer of 2001 because "we were able to pick up this drumbeat of threat . . . with rumors from the camps . . . [and] information from technical collection," he said.
A former senior intelligence official yesterday recalled listening to Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications, "20 or 30 times during the summer saying he believed the attack would come tomorrow."
The three senior intelligence officials at Wednesday's briefing said they recognize some of the failures pointed out by the commission, but feel that new approaches already in place are addressing the problems.
The Sept. 11 commission has called for a far-reaching revamping of the U.S. intelligence system by creating a national counterterrorism center within the president's office.
It would coordinate and oversee efforts by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the U.S. military and domestic law enforcement officials. The center would report to a new national intelligence director who would have budgetary and operational control over the CIA and the other 14 intelligence offices in the government.
Acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin has said the agency will study the recommendations, but he is on record as opposing the idea of a new intelligence director within the government.
The CIA's skepticism about the proposed structural changes was reflected in this comment by one of the officials conducting the briefing: "We have to be careful . . . to really understand where the intelligence community is today and to not do something that rolls back advances we've made."
-------- us
Brain injuries lead Iraq war injuries
July 24, 2004
By Brad Amburn
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040721-030507-2465r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 23 (UPI) -- Nearly two-thirds of injured U.S. soldiers sent from Iraq to Walter Reed Army Medical Center have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries -- a percentage thought to be higher than any other past U.S. conflict, military officials told United Press International.
About 60 to 67 percent of soldiers coming through the hospital with wounds as well as injuries from blasts, severe falls and motor vehicle accidents have suffered these potentially life-altering brain injuries, said Dr. Deborah Warden, national director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at Walter Reed, where the majority of patients with suspected head injuries from Iraq are sent.
Warden said this trend may seem grim but the increased number of cases actually serves as proof of an improved head injury survival rate from better armor, more sophisticated diagnostic tools, and soldiers and medical staff better trained to look for and treat these kinds of injuries that would have been fatal or gone unnoticed in past wars.
An ongoing investigation into the lifelong effects of war-related head injuries is at the forefront of these advancements in knowledge and treatment.
"As a medical field, we're much more sensitized to mild, closed brain injury ... and we know that there are consequences and ramifications for milder traumatic brain injury," Warden told UPI. "So we are screening and identify soldiers who have had less severe traumatic brain injury," which was not the case in Vietnam or earlier wars.
With the development of more sophisticated body armor and helmets made of Kevlar -- a bullet resistant material -- the survival rate of soldiers with traumatic brain injuries has greatly improved, whereas in past wars similar injuries would have been fatal, Warden explained.
She said soldiers who survive head injuries often suffer from a range of cognitive and emotional problems, including difficulty with memory, attention and reasoning, as well as high rates of depression, alcohol use, post-traumatic anxieties and irritability.
During the Vietnam era, brain-scanning technology, such as magnetic resonance imaging, did not exist to detect the extent of brain injuries, said Dr. Karen Schwab, assistant director at the Walter Reed brain injury center. This likely resulted in under-detection of traumatic head injury and inadequate treatment, she added.
This led to the beginning of a long-term investigation studying the effects of penetrating brain injuries on Vietnam veterans. A penetrating brain injury is one where a bullet or piece of shrapnel has passed through the skull and pierced the brain. The study is now entering its third phase of research at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
The study was started in the 1960s at Walter Reed by Dr. William Caveness, who wanted to investigate how penetrating head injuries affected epilepsy in soldiers -- who had a high incidence rate of the disease, said Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the study's principal investigator.
Grafman and fellow investigator, Dr. Andres Salazar, wanted to expand the scope of the investigation to learn more about cognition and brain function, yielding results that improved the evaluation of patients with head injuries and identified key components to their long-term outcomes.
"If you have a brain injury and you can no longer do a specific task then it is likely that that area of the brain was very important -- perhaps stored the memories that enabled you to do that task," Grafman told UPI.
"We knew the patients' long-term outcome was going to depend a lot more on their cognitive status than it would on whether they had epilepsy or not," Grafman continued. "And we probably would learn a whole lot about how the brain works and help the military change how they handle head injuries because during Vietnam there was no real standard of care."
In the early 1980s, the Department of Defense granted funding for the second phase of the study, to conduct a 15-year follow-up evaluation of 520 Vietnam veterans with head injuries who had participated in the first phase of research.
The investigation led to many neuropsychological advances that proved the importance of the prefrontal cortex in social functioning, and showed the Army that veterans with head injuries still experienced cognitive deficits -- in social behavior, reasoning, attention and planning -- that needed effective diagnosis and rehabilitation.
"We were able to see that many of these guys were not worked up or evaluated well after Vietnam, which led to new (head injury) units being established in military hospitals," Grafman said. "It also got the military, especially the Army, just extremely interested in head injuries in general and trying to figure out ways to minimize injuries when they occur medically or even prevent them by changing the helmet. So it had a powerful clinical impact."
The development of better helmets has reduced the number of penetrating head injuries in Iraq, but internal, concussive head injuries are more of a problem in this war, Warden said, particularly among paratroopers injured by rough landings.
The brain injury center has worked with the Army to develop even better helmets that provide more internal cushioning to prevent against concussions. These helmets currently are being integrated into service, Warden said.
Despite "great improvements in body protection," however, the head still is the most vulnerable part of the body to injury, Grafman said, so even though shells and fragments might be blocked, that still will not prevent traumatic injuries to the brain through weaponry that causes damage by impact and sound waves.
"Given this, it becomes even more important to better evaluate and provide good rehabilitation for soldiers," he added.
The third phase of the study currently under way at the NNMC could provide important clues to improved rehabilitation by "looking at cognition in a slightly more sophisticated way," said Dr. Vanessa Raymont, NNMC's head neuropsychiatrist.
The 30-year follow-up of the same Vietnam veterans will evaluate more social and everyday cognition, Raymont said, by focusing on how these injuries continue to affect executive functioning in the brain, including decision-making and reasoning.
This part of the study also will involve a genetic analysis of blood samples from participating veterans to see if there are any specific genetic markers indicating some soldiers might be more susceptible to developing problems from these types of injuries, Raymont said.
Although the study has covered only 12 veterans since its launch last April, Raymont said preliminary reports suggest a higher incidence of short-term memory problems, which may indicate people with head injuries are more prone to memory difficulties.
Psychological problems also seem to continue for many participants who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders and use alcohol to cope with the problems they have experienced, she said.
This study focuses on penetrating head injuries instead of internal ones more prevalent in current conflict, Raymont said, "(so) it is very feasible we could be looking at different outcomes" for veterans of the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq.
Grafman said the study's findings still will help soldiers in Iraq know what to expect with these injuries and will drive the importance of long-term rehabilitation.
"In the case of more blast injuries, it is likely they're going to affect more widespread parts of the brain than the typical shell fragment would," Grafman explained. "The more we learn about individual areas of the brain and how they function, the more knowledge we'll have about the kind of impairments that can occur" and more specified and effective treatments can be developed.
Treatment already is improving for brain injury sufferers, Schwab said.
"Clinicians tell us here, that when people are brought back for follow-up a year after their treatment, how well they're doing. It's impressive," she said. "People continue to make recovery, which is not to minimize their injuries when in fact a lot of them will need ongoing help."
The study will conduct a fourth phase in another 10 to 15 years to further examine long-term effects on these veterans.
Brad Amburn is an intern for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com
--------
Pentagon Finds Payroll Records for Bush's Military Service
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9464-2004Jul23.html
The Pentagon announced yesterday that it had found payroll records related to President Bush's time in the National Guard -- records that earlier this month were reported accidentally destroyed -- but the discovery did nothing to resolve the dispute over Bush's military service in 1972 and 1973.
The records cover the first quarter of 1969, when Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, and the third quarter of 1972, by which time he had transferred to the Alabama National Guard to enable him to work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend. It is Bush's claim of service in Alabama that has been challenged.
Bush moved to Alabama in May 1972, and his payroll sheet for July through September of that year shows no payment for those months, indicating no military service. But this lack of payment was apparent in pay records covering all of 1972 that the White House released in February along with a batch of Bush's other military files.
Defense officials yesterday attributed the earlier contention that the records had been destroyed to confusion over which boxes contained the relevant microfilm files at the Federal Records Center in Denver. The boxes are numbered, and the numbers are indexed in a binder, but government employees hunting for Bush's records last winter could not find the binder.
"Without it, they had to approximate the numbers and got them wrong," said Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. "When they couldn't locate the records, it was assumed they had been destroyed."
According to Pentagon officials, the payroll records of large numbers of service members were ruined in 1996 and 1997 in a project that attempted to salvage brittle microfilm reels.
In a search earlier this month to determine just how many records were lost, a DFAS employee came across the index binder, Hubbard said. This led to the boxes that contained Bush's missing records.
"We're talking about a 30-year-old manual process for managing records," Hubbard said. "That process has since been replaced."
White House officials have insisted Bush fulfilled his National Guard commitments, citing his honorable discharge in 1973. But some Democrats have accused him of shirking his duty.
Yesterday's announcement came days before Democrats are scheduled to begin a national convention in Boston to nominate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) as their presidential candidate. Supporters of Kerry have sought to contrast his military service with Bush's. Kerry enlisted in the Navy, volunteered for combat in Vietnam and earned several medals for valor.
Pentagon spokesmen denied political considerations played a part in timing the disclosure that Bush's files had been discovered. Hubbard said the records were uncovered July 15.
Notification of the discovery came in letters to news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for Bush's military records.
"The Department of Defense regrets this inadvertent oversight during the initial search efforts and the delay it caused in your receipt of these materials," said the letter, which was signed by C.Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review.
--------
Daily U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html
As of Friday, July 23, 899 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 665 died as a result of hostile action and 234 died of non-hostile causes. The department did not provide an update Saturday.
The British military has reported 60 deaths; Italy, 18; Spain, eight; Bulgaria and Poland, six each; Ukraine, four; Slovakia, three; Thailand, two; Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and the Netherlands have reported one death each.
Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 761 U.S. soldiers have died -- 556 as a result of hostile action and 205 of non-hostile causes.
The latest deaths reported by U.S. Central Command:
-- A Marine died Saturday of injuries received in action Friday in Iraq's Anbar Province.
The latest identifications reported by the Department of Defense:
-- No identifications reported.
--------
2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert
By Vladimir Radyuhin,
Saturday, Jul 24, 2004
Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2004/07/24/stories/2004072402401400.htm
MOSCOW, JULY 23. The United States suffers far heavier casualties in Iraq than it officially admits, a Russia military diplomat claimed.
The actual U.S. military losses in Iraq may have reached 2,000 personnel, more than twice the official figure of 900, as Washington badly understates its casualty statistics, a military diplomatic source told the Itar-Tass news agency.
"Official statistics do not include casualties among non-U.S. nationals who sign up to serve in the American armed forces in order to get a U.S. `green card.' According to reliable information the share of non-Americans in the U.S. force in Iraq may be as high as 60 per cent," the source said. "The real number of U.S. losses may be as high as 2,000 casualties and up to 12,000 wounded," the military diplomat said.
AP reports from Baghdad:
United States forces launched a ``precision attack'' on Friday morning against a suspected gathering of guerillas outside a house in the volatile city of Fallujah, the U.S. military said.
The attack did not kill anyone, but wounded five civilians, including three children, said Kamal Al-Ani, a local hospital official.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- terrorism
Contrasting Approaches to Terrorism
But 9/11 Report Shows Shared Frustrations
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10116-2004Jul23?language=printer
President Bill Clinton preferred reading detailed intelligence memos, which he marked up with notes and comments in order to receive written responses. President Bush sought early-morning, face-to-face briefings from CIA Director George J. Tenet.
Clinton tried to draw attention to the threat of terrorism by frequently mentioning it in speeches, but top aides would spend weeks or months arguing over the fine points in action memorandums -- which Clinton would tinker with before signing them. Bush was tired of "swatting flies" and wanted dramatic results, bristling at the tedium of interagency coordination. He saw little need for formal meetings, instead communicating with top officials via national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. The two presidents -- and their contrasting management styles and personalities -- loom large in the report released Thursday by the Sept. 11 commission. Although the bipartisan report assigns equal blame to both administrations for failing to prevent the terrorist attacks -- and draws no conclusions on either president's abilities in dealing with the threat -- the 567-page narrative for the first time places their actions and decisions in context, drawing often upon their own recollections and words.
Both Clinton and Bush (who was joined by Vice President Cheney) gave the commission private interviews, which until the report's release had been kept under wraps.
On one crucial detail, the presidents' memories differ substantially. Before Bush took office, the two men met for two hours, and Clinton recalled telling Bush that "by far your biggest threat is [Osama] Bin Laden and the al Qaeda." Bush told the commission that he did not remember much being said about al Qaeda, and that Clinton had emphasized North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The portrait of both men that emerges from the report is of dedicated, disciplined executives, struggling to understand and deal with a new and shadowy organization. A frustrated Clinton, in 2000, complained about the lack of military options and declared, "it would scare . . . al-Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp."
In his first CIA briefing, Bush wanted to know if the CIA could kill bin Laden, and he was told that eliminating bin Laden would have an effect but not solve the problem.
The report describes Clinton as obsessed with bin Laden and international terrorism -- and Bush as less interested in Iraq in the period before and after the attacks than some former aides have described in best-selling books.
The report broadly faults officials in both administrations for failing to understand how the creaky machinery of the federal government was not equipped to deal with the emerging threat of international terrorism. It also shows how conflicts between agencies or officials many levels below the presidency prevented effective action from being taken -- or how sometimes presidential actions muddied the waters.
Clinton wanted bin Laden dead, the report said, but "this intent was never well communicated or understood within the CIA."
In December 1998, Clinton signed a memo that would have allowed tribal officials in Afghanistan to kill bin Laden if they determined capture was not feasible. But in February 1999, Clinton received another memo that would have given the same guidance to the Northern Alliance -- opposition forces fighting the Taliban. This time, Clinton crossed out the language he had approved two months earlier and inserted more ambiguous language.
Clinton told the commission "he had no recollection of why he rewrote the language."
Both administrations dithered on whether to blame al Qaeda publicly for the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 members of the ship's crew. The report said bin Laden expected the United States to retaliate and appeared disappointed that it did not.
Clinton described himself as very frustrated that he could not get a definitive answer on whether bin Laden or al Qaeda was behind the attack, because otherwise he felt he could not launch strikes or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban leadership harboring bin Laden in Afghanistan. By late December, the most definitive answer Clinton received was that the CIA's "preliminary judgment" was that al Qaeda "supported the attack" -- which he and other top officials thought wasn't good enough.
Two months later, shortly after Bush took office, he received a CIA briefing and received the same "preliminary judgment." Lower-level aides who had worked for Clinton pressed for action against bin Laden, but Bush and his senior advisers worried that an ineffective airstrike would merely give bin Laden a propaganda advantage.
The report, which noted that the "procedures of the Bush administration were at once more formal and less formal" than the Clinton operation, said that ultimately senior Bush officials never had a "formal, recorded decision not to retaliate" for the Cole attack. Instead, through conversations involving Rice and Bush, Bush and Tenet, and Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a consensus was reached that "tit-for-tat" responses would be counterproductive, the report said.
Only after the Sept. 11 attacks did Bush formally declare that al Qaeda had been responsible for the Cole incident.
On the morning of the attacks, Bush was attending an elementary school event in Florida when he was told that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. He sat there, appearing emotionless, for another five to seven minutes. Bush told the commission he did this because "he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."
In the weeks immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, some key advisers, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, pressed for an attack against Iraq. The report said Bush shrugged off the advice.
When Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair nine days after the attacks, Blair asked about Iraq. According to a memo of the conversation obtained by the commission, Bush replied that Iraq was not an immediate problem.
Bush told the commission that former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke had mischaracterized an incident in his book, "Against All Enemies." In the book, Clarke said Bush, wandering into the situation room, pressed him in an intimidating fashion to find out whether Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush dismissed the idea that he would have wandered into the situation room alone.
Bush acknowledged he might have asked Clarke about Iraq shortly after the attacks, and another aide recalled an exchange between Clarke and Bush on Iraq but did not find the president's manner intimidating, the report said.
Bush told the commission that before the attacks there had been an appetite in government for trying to kill bin Laden, but not for going to war. Bush also said he believed a policy approved the day before the attacks might have led to an invasion of Afghanistan.
He told the commission that "would have seemed like an ultimate act of unilateralism," the report said. "But he said he was prepared to take that on."
-------- torture
Survey: US Public Rejects Torture
antiwar.com
by Jim Lobe
July 24, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3153
Two-thirds of U.S. citizens believe their government should "never use physical torture" against detainees, and 90 percent reject sexually humiliating prisoners, as was done by U.S. soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, according to a major survey of attitudes here.
The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), was released Thursday amid new reports of abuses by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi and other detainees. It also found that 60 percent of the U.S. public believe that all captured individuals should have the right to appeal their status to a neutral judge, even if they are not conventional soldiers as defined by the Geneva Conventions.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents said a soldier should have the right to refuse to follow an order if he or she believes it was a violation of international law.
It also found that supporters of Republican President George W. Bush were more likely to support harsher treatment of detainees than independents or respondents who said they intended to vote for Bush's Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry in the November elections.
Forty-four percent of the 892 randomly chosen adults said they intended to vote for Kerry; 40 percent for Bush; four percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader, while the rest gave no answer or were undecided.
The poll results, which also suggested the public is more willing to consider psychological techniques, such as sleep deprivation and hooding, than physical abuse or torture in trying to extract information from detainees, nonetheless showed strong rejection of methods that were designed to provoke fear or humiliation.
Nine out of 10 respondents, for example, said they would oppose sexually humiliating detainees - as depicted in the notorious photos taken at Abu Ghraib last October - under even the most urgent circumstances.
"Basically, the public supports the system of international laws restricting torture and coercion, though it would consider making some limited exceptions on the edges if there was high confidence that a catastrophic outcome would be prevented," said Steven Kull, PIPA's executive director.
The survey results were released just as U.S. Army Inspector General (IG), Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek told a Senate hearing his office had documented 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse, of which eight were related to prisoner interrogations, by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001.
It was by far the highest Pentagon figure to date of alleged abuse cases. Mikolashek, whose five-month investigation is just one of 11 on alleged abuses being carried out by the Pentagon, also reported that the United States has held more than 50,000 prisoners in the two countries during that time.
His report, which said the cases included theft, physical assault, sexual assault and death, insisted, "the abuses that have occurred are not representative of policy, doctrine or soldier training." But it also quoted a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from last February that asserted abuses were "used in a systematic way" by the military in Iraq.
"The IG's report is the most powerful evidence yet of the breadth of the problems in U.S. detention and interrogation in the 'war on terrorism,'" said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First (HRF).
"Ninety-four documented cases of abuse is not an isolated problem - it's bad policy that needs to be fixed in a comprehensive way," she added, reiterating recent calls by HRF and other international human rights groups for a comprehensive investigation of abuses, to be conducted by an independent commission or court of inquiry.
The PIPA survey, by far the most comprehensive on the subject of detainee abuse and attitudes toward torture since the "war on terror" was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, was conducted July 9-15 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.
Nearly nine in 10 respondents said they favored complying with international law regarding the treatment of prisoners as a general principle: 92 percent said they believed the names of all detainees must be registered and given access to the ICRC; 81 percent said detainees should have the right to a hearing before an independent judge to challenge the government's right to hold him; 77 percent said they should have the right to contact their families.
Asked whether unconventional fighters, and specifically alleged members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group believed responsible for the 9/11 attacks, should be accorded the same rights, 60 percent agreed while 37 percent disagreed. A majority of 53 percent of self-identified Republicans, however, said they disagreed.
When respondents were told that the Supreme Court had recently overruled the Bush administration's contention that it was not required to give detainees an independent hearing, 68 percent said they agreed with the court.
Asked about a range of interrogation techniques approved by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, nearly two-thirds of respondents - including a slight majority of Kerry supporters - said they favored using sleep deprivation in a situation where there is a strong chance that the detainee has information about a possible terrorist attack on the United States that may prove critical to thwarting it.
Fifty-six percent said they would favor keeping a hood over the detainee's head or bombarding him with loud noise for long periods of time to obtain the information. A slight majority of 52 percent said they favored using "stress" positions for an extended period under those circumstances.
But majorities ranging from 54 percent (withholding food and water) and 58 percent (using threatening dogs to frighten detainees) to 81 percent (beating, submersing or electric shock) to 89 percent (sexual humiliation) opposed such techniques even in the most urgent circumstances. Seventy-five percent of respondents said forcing detainees to go naked - a practice that, according to a variety of reports, was relatively common - could not be justified under any circumstances.
The survey found that those respondents who supported such techniques were significantly more likely to support Bush and identify themselves as Republicans than Kerry supporters or self-described Democrats or independents.
Asked how Bush's handling of the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay will affect their vote, 37 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for him, while 22 percent said more likely - a net negative of 15 percent. The rest offered no opinion.
But many respondents were unaware that Rumsfeld had approved some of these interrogation techniques; specifically, only 35 percent knew that he had approved of making detainees go naked, and 45 percent said they were aware he had approved of using threatening dogs. Of those who were aware of his approval of such methods, 59 percent said they were less likely to vote for Bush, while nine percent said it made it more likely they would vote for him.
Norman Ornstein, a public-opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said he thought the political impact of the prisoner-abuse scandal would be directed less at voter attitudes toward Bush than toward the situation in Iraq, particularly because it has undermined the moral justification for the occupation.
"Since Abu Ghraib, we've seen a steadily deteriorating percent of Americans who believe we did the right thing in going into Iraq," he said, noting that Bush is more likely to be hurt by the voters' disillusionment than by the perception that he was responsible for the abuses.
Ornstein also suggested that the beliefs expressed in the survey could change with events. "If this survey [were taken] one or two months after 9/11, you might have gotten a very difficult result," he said, adding that the attitudes could also change if another terrorist attack takes place.
(Inter Press Service)
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
Sen. Shelby Probe Referred to Ethics Panel
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Shelby-Leak.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department has referred to the Senate Ethics Committee an investigation into whether Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama or his staff leaked classified information, indicating that criminal charges are highly unlikely, a federal law enforcement official said Saturday.
The referral Thursday means that it is now up to the ethics panel to decide if any action is warranted against Shelby, a Republican who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Both the House and Senate intelligence committees were also briefed by prosecutors and the FBI about the findings of the investigation, said the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe remains officially open.
The investigation concerned the 2002 disclosure to news reporters of two messages intercepted by the National Security Agency a day before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Those messages contained the words ``the match begins tomorrow'' and ``tomorrow is zero day'' but they were not translated from Arabic until Sept. 12.
The intercepts had been disclosed by the NSA director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, during a private meeting of a joint House-Senate intelligence committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. Shelby was on the panel at the time.
Shelby has adamantly denied any wrongdoing and said he and his staff cooperated in the investigation. His spokeswoman, Virginia Davis, refused comment Saturday night and referred reporters to the senator's statement issued in January.
``My position on this issue is clear and well-known: At no time during my career as a United States Senator and, more particularly, at no time during my service as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have I ever knowingly compromised classified information,'' Shelby said in that statement.
It is a felony to intentionally leak classified information, but leak investigations rarely produce criminal charges because there are few witnesses and little or no paper trail to follow. Prosecutors also must prove that the person leaked the information with full knowledge it was a government secret.
The specificity of the wording in the 2002 leaks was particularly troubling to intelligence officials because it could tip off terrorists that a particular channel they were using had been compromised and thus dry up a valuable source of information by prompting them to use alternative means of communication.
-------- investigations
Archives Put In Cameras After Berger Took Papers
July 24, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/politics/24berger.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1090717881-ttnpSmjsjiwwN/7M+O/UGw
WASHINGTON, July 23 - Officials at the National Archives were so concerned about Samuel R. Berger's removal of classified documents last year that they imposed new security measures governing the review of sensitive material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras, government officials said Friday.
The new policy, issued March 31 to security officers at the archives, lays out toughened steps for safeguarding research rooms used by nongovernmental employees who are given special access to classified material. And it demands "continuous monitoring" of anyone reviewing such material.
The restrictions were put in place as a direct result of the Berger episode, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding the continuing investigation.
Mr. Berger, the national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, has acknowledged that he took several copies of classified documents from a secure reading room last year when preparing for testimony before the Sept. 11 commission. He said the removal was a careless mistake, but leading Republicans have accused him of stashing documents in his clothing intentionally, perhaps as a way of hiding information that could be considered damaging to the Clinton administration.
The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation to determine whether federal laws on the handling of classified material may have been broken, and the disclosure of the investigation this week forced Mr. Berger to step down as a senior foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign. Democrats have accused the Bush administration of leaking word of the investigation and exaggerating its importance to distract attention from this week's final report of the Sept. 11 commission.
After the issue first flared on Tuesday, Mr. Berger told reporters outside his Washington office that he had made "an honest mistake" and that he deeply regretted it.
He has maintained a low profile since then, even as the political furor over the case has grown. An associate of Mr. Berger said Friday that "this is a situation that any human being would find difficult.''
"He's tired," the associate said, "and he's reading through lots of e-mails from friends and doing work and just trying to deal with all this."
National Archives officials have reached no judgments on Mr. Berger's motives in removing the documents, and one law enforcement official said, "We don't know what he was thinking when he did it."
Nonetheless, officials at the National Archives viewed the episode as troubling enough that they reviewed their security procedures and issued new guidelines for dealing with nongovernmental researchers like Mr. Berger.
The guidelines do not refer specifically to Mr. Berger or his case, but they emphasize careful monitoring of researchers, prohibit cellphones, hand-held computers and other electronic devices in classified research rooms, and limit the volume and type of material that researchers may review.
Archive security officials use surveillance cameras at many of their public research sites. But the archives did not have cameras at the classified site in Washington that Mr. Berger used, and no video was taken of his research, officials said.
Concern over his case led the archives to install a surveillance system in the Washington research room and any areas used for classified research, said a second government official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration, said the agency routinely reviewed security procedures. But Ms. Cooper added that after the Berger episode, "it's fair to say that in light of the incident we took a look at what our procedures were and redid the guidelines and regulations to strengthen them."
The National Archives maintains about 25 public research sites around the country that allow researchers to sift through billions of pages of documents, the vast majority of them unclassified. For a small number of former senior government officials like Mr. Berger who retain security clearances, the agency also has separate classified research areas in Washington; College Park, Md.; and at some presidential libraries.
Mr. Berger, designated the Clinton administration's point man in reviewing documents for the Sept. 11 commission, visited the Washington research room three times in the summer and fall of 2003, spending a total of about 30 hours reviewing thousands of pages of classified documents, officials said.
After his second visit last September, security officials became suspicious because some copies of documents he reviewed appeared to be missing. Mr. Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, said Mr. Berger later realized he had mixed in with his leather portfolio three or four versions of a lengthy classified report on terrorism. The report centered on millennium bombing plots in December 1999, and it concluded that counterterrorism efforts had not made a significant dent in Al Qaeda operations and that "sleeper cells" may have taken root in the United States, officials said.
Mr. Berger also acknowledged that he improperly put in his pockets some notes he wrote in reviewing the documents.
-------- propaganda wars
Destroying Freedom to Save It
by Charley Reese,
July 24, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=3159
Linda Ronstadt dedicated a song to Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11 and got the boot from the Aladdin Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. They treated her shabbily, escorting her out of the building without allowing her to return to her room.
This came after some members of the audience booed and walked out of her show. If I had been a member of the audience, I might also have walked out, though I wouldn't have booed the lady. When one pays a hefty charge to be entertained, one has a right not to get a political lecture, regardless of its content.
Entertainers, being human beings and citizens, have the same right to express their political beliefs as anyone else. But the forum should be appropriate. Audiences who pay to hear a singer rightfully expect to hear songs, not political talks. So Ronstadt abused her audience, some of the audience members were rude to her, and she was in turn abused by the management of the hotel.
As for Moore's film, I finally saw a pirated copy of it. People should see it and decide for themselves what they think of it. I will say only this in Moore's defense: He doesn't hide his opinions; therefore, the audience is on notice. Most documentaries are equally slanted and propagandistic, but they hide behind a facade of objectivity, and that is far worse than what Moore does. You know going in that Moore is against Bush and against the war in Iraq.
Come to think of it, so am I, but for different reasons. Having had to suffer through the suits and countersuits related to the last presidential election in Florida, I don't share the notion that Bush stole the election. I'm against Bush because he misled the American people into a war and because of the stupidity and ineptness with which the aftermath of the war has been conducted.
Bush will never win his war on terrorism using only the military option, which is all he has, and, if he is re-elected, he might well destroy the America we all love in the process. A free society and a war state are incompatible. American foreign policy fuels the terrorists, and unless our policies are modified, the war will go on for literally decades. Bush shows no signs at all of re-examining our policies and, in fact, shows a scary ignorance of the rest of the world, most especially the Muslim world.
Not only is our own government becoming ever more secretive and slip-sliding toward authoritarianism, but the American people, whipsawed by demagogues and fearmongers, are becoming dangerously intolerant of people with different political ideas.
More than one wise person has said that those who are willing to swap freedom for security deserve and will get neither. It is always pointless to fight if in the process we destroy what we think we are defending.
To say, as the Bush administration has said, that you can't prosecute, convict and punish terrorists using our judicial system and observing the Constitution is to express a profound lack of faith in America and a sickening disrespect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If we can put Al Capone and others of his ilk behind bars using our constitutional process, we can certainly do the same to terrorists. We must never allow the government to destroy freedom in the name of protecting it.
As for tolerance, be careful about tossing it away. We've always had disagreements and debates, even passionate debates. That is the essence of a free society. When disagreement turns to hatred, however, we leave America and move into the dark territory that makes so many countries chaotic and unlivable. Hate not only produces reciprocal hate, but destroys the hater as well. It can darn sure destroy a free society.
----
The Puzzling 9/11 Report
by Sibel Edmonds
July 24, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/s-edmonds.php?articleid=3151
The countdown is finally over, and a 567-page 9/11 Commission report [pdf] is out. According to the Commission Chairman, they have seen "every single document" and have interviewed "every single relevant witness and authority." According to all Commission members, this report should be considered a resounding success, since it encompasses all information relevant to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and very little, almost none, has been redacted, classified, or glossed over. Yet we have heard no one screaming "classification," "sensitive diplomatic relations," "highly sensitive foreign business relations," or "national security implications." This is highly puzzling and curious.
This puzzles me, considering that every investigation by the Congress and the Inspector General (IG) into my issues, every report involving my already-confirmed allegations involving serious lapses within the FBI, and every legal procedure and due process dealing with my case alone, has been blocked, gagged, entirely classified, and stopped. It is extremely curious that while investigations and reports on one case alone has created so much havoc, a massive investigation and a report involving all intelligence agencies and other government bodies, including the State Department, has evoked zero objections based on "sensitive foreign relations," "highly classified intelligence matters," and/or "ongoing intelligence investigations."
This puzzles me, knowing the detailed information I myself provided to the commission during a three and a half hour tape-recorded briefing, yet finding only one footnote (footnote 25) briefly stating insufficient translation capability within the FBI. It is highly curious that the report mentions nothing regarding the "intentionally blocked translations by certain Middle Eastern Translators, who also breached FBI security, as confirmed by the Senate Judiciary"; nothing regarding "adamant resistance to investigations of certain terrorist and criminal activities; refusing to transfer them to counterterrorism from existing counterintelligence investigations, solely based on the vague notion of protecting certain foreign relations"; nothing regarding "continued efforts to cover up certain highly specific information received prior to September 11, even now, years after 9/11"; and nothing regarding "knowingly allowing certain individuals, directly or indirectly related to terrorist activities, to leave the United States months after 9/11, without any interrogation, and per the State Department's request."
This puzzles me, having firsthand knowledge of ongoing intelligence received and processed by the FBI since 1997, which contained specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales. It is highly curious that the report omitted all this information, knowing that others in the Congress have been briefed on these issues and have been given the names of targets involved, special agents, translators, field offices, and files. I am highly puzzled and curious.
After the many public hearing shows, in which the Commissioners very skillfully played their good cop/bad cop routine and displayed their lifelong mastery of the political art of saying but not saying, and asking but not asking, all parties and all agencies have readily accepted this report. The president apparently considered the report rosy and appropriately symbolized its presentation in his rose garden. The previous administration sighed with relief, having scored a negative 4, compared to the current administration's negative 6, in the blame game. Notorious Attorney General John Ashcroft left his over-secrecy and classification guns in their holsters. In fact, this report ended up being blessed by all those responsible for our nation's security and interests, which were severely violated on September 11. I, for one, am highly puzzled and curious. How about you?
----
Warner 'Deceived' on Rev. Moon Event
Aide Says Senator's Office Would Not Have Sanctioned Gathering at Dirksen Building
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10166-2004Jul23.html
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) accepts "full responsibility" for arranging the use of a Senate office building for a March ceremony in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared himself the Messiah, a spokesman for the senator says.
But the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman released letters this week that show that organizers "deceived" Warner's office, spokesman John Ullyot said Thursday. He said the office would not have helped arrange the event "had its true nature been disclosed."
Warner, 77, did not attend the March 23 event, and he did not realize it would involve Moon, Ullyot said. At the event, the Korean-born businessman and religious leader said his teachings helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."
Senate rules permit private groups to use official spaces for receptions and meetings but require the sponsorship of a senator. Although the Senate Rules and Administration Committee would not reveal which senator sponsored Moon's use of a room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Warner's office acknowledged its role Tuesday to The Washington Post and released a March 11 letter to the senator from a group called Christian Voice requesting a room.
But Warner's office said Thursday that it had found two earlier letters requesting space for the same event. The Jan. 7 and Feb. 17 letters, both under the letterhead of the Washington Times Foundation, were signed by the foundation's government liaison, Gary L. Jarmin, who is also president of Christian Voice. Moon's organization owns the Washington Times.
The January letter requested a Dirksen room for Feb. 4, and the February letter rescheduled the event after ricin, a toxin, was discovered in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on Feb. 2. Both letters billed the event as the foundation's annual awards banquet to honor individuals for "exemplary service in conflict resolution and/or promoting interfaith tolerance and cooperation both here in the U.S. and in the Middle East" between Israelis and Palestinians.
Ullyot said that Warner tries to accommodate many private requests for the appropriate use of public offices but that "in this case, we were clearly deceived, as the letters show."
"Nothing in the letters suggest that this would be a Unification Church event or that it would involve Reverend Moon in any way personally, and certainly not in a bizarre, quasi-coronation ceremony using inflammatory rhetoric," Ullyot said in an interview yesterday.
Although Warner believes that aides acted appropriately given the information provided, Ullyot said, the event clearly turned out to be "inconsistent with Senate traditions," and Warner "would not have forwarded a request for this event . . . had its true nature been disclosed."
If approached by Jarmin, the foundation or Christian Voice in the future, Ullyot said, "we will decline to assist."
Christian Voice has been linked to Moon's far-flung religious and business empire over the years, with Jarmin and Christian Voice's chairman, the Rev. Robert Grant, described as supporters of Moon. A March 8 invitation to the March 23 event said the primary sponsor was the "Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace IIFWP, founded by Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon."
Jarmin said yesterday: "It's disingenuous for anybody's office to say they were not advised. . . . I refute that we tried to mislead anybody at all." After the ricin incident, the awards banquet was held elsewhere, and Moon was not present, Jarmin said. "When we rescheduled . . . many of the details about the [March 23] event itself, the nature of the event, who was going to be participating, what kinds of awards were going to be given . . . none of this stuff had been finalized."Staff writer Charles Babington and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
----
Net users warned of bin Ladin hoax
Hackers are seeking to entice users through hoax emails
Saturday 24 July 2004
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9B442DF6-7B02-4D98-8898-24AA8EB74503.htm
Computer security experts are warning Internet users to stay away from e-mails purporting to contain evidence of Usama bin Ladin's "suicide".
The emails direct users to a website where a file containing photographs of the "suicide" can be downloaded, but in reality, it contains a Trojan horse which can allow hackers to gain remote control of infected computers.
"Computer users who fall for the bin Ladin hoax may be hit by a Trojan horse," the anti-virus firm Sophos warned on Friday, naming the new scheme the Hackarmy Trojan horse.
"Thousands of messages have been posted on to internet message boards and usenet newsgroups claiming that journalists from CNN found the al-Qaida leader's hanged body earlier this year," the security firm said.
"Hackers and virus writers will try all kinds of tricks to entice people into downloading their malicious code," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"It seems this time that the hacker has focused on the public's morbid curiosity and appetite for news on the war against terror," he said.
-------- us politics
Pentagon finds missing military records of Bush
July 24, 2004
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040723-111412-6124r.htm
The Pentagon yesterday released previously missing pay records for President Bush's service in the National Guard, undermining Democratic accusations that he had shirked his duty.
"It just proves yet again that the president fulfilled his military service in the National Guard and was proud to do so, which was why he was honorably discharged," White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy said.
Earlier this year, the White House released hundreds of pages of documents, including dental records, that showed Mr. Bush served in the National Guard more than 30 years ago. But payroll records for two quarters were missing, prompting prominent Democrats to accuse him of having been absent without official leave (AWOL), a felony.
"George Bush never served in our military in our country," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe told ABC News on Feb. 1. "I look forward to that debate with John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL."
The fact that Mr. Bush had been honorably discharged did not impress Sen. John Kerry.
"Was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be?" the Massachusetts Democrat demanded at the time. "Just because you get an honorable discharge does not, in fact, answer that question."
Yesterday, Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign declined comment on the disclosure of the missing payroll records. But DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera expressed suspicion.
"The supposed discovery of these records on Friday afternoon, as reporters converge on Boston to cover the Democratic National Convention, is highly questionable," he said in a prepared statement.
"If the Bush administration continues to search, maybe they'll find answers to the long list of unanswered questions that remain about George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard," he added. "Bush's military records seem to show up as randomly as he did for duty."
The White House did not ask the Pentagon to double check for the missing records, according to officials at both the White House and Pentagon.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Hubbard explained that when technicians initially searched for the records earlier this year, they could not find a binder containing accession numbers that would indicate where the records were stored. So they approximated the numbers in an effort to find Mr. Bush's payroll records for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.
"They approximated wrong, so they were not located for those two quarters," Mr. Hubbard said. "In 1996 and 1997, there was a restoration process ongoing, and it was assumed that these records were damaged in that process, so we had no reason to think that we had the accession numbers wrong."
Earlier this month, the Pentagon was attempting to determine the scope of its missing records.
"Our technician, in going through hundreds of boxes of records, found the binder and then was able to determine that the wrong numbers were used in the request," Mr. Hubbard said.
Armed with the correct numbers, the Pentagon tracked down the missing records at a storage facility in Denver. The records appear to prove that Mr. Bush performed his duties without incident.
"The important thing to stress is that these two quarters present no new information," Mr. Hubbard said.
Mr. Duffy, the White House spokesman, refrained from criticizing the Pentagon over the mix-up.
"It would have been our preference, perhaps, that these records would have been released with the other ones - that was not to be," he said. "Still, it's just more proof that the president served."
--------
Leaders Pick Up Urgency of 9/11 Panel
Congress and Bush Vow to Speed Reforms
By Dan Eggen and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9018-2004Jul23?language=printer
House and Senate leaders rushed forward yesterday with promises to quickly restructure the nation's intelligence agencies in the wake of damaging findings by the Sept. 11 commission, casting aside earlier doubts that Congress would tackle such complicated and politically divisive legislation this year.
The White House also signaled that President Bush may consider intelligence reforms before the November elections, contrary to earlier suggestions that such a move was unlikely.
The rapid responses underscored the deep impact of Thursday's 567-page commission report, which chronicled a breathtaking array of failures throughout the government to cope with the al Qaeda threat and protect Americans from terrorist attacks. The bipartisan report, which topped online bookseller lists yesterday, proposes a dramatic restructuring of the U.S. intelligence community and more effective control by Congress, and calls for tougher border controls and other steps to better guard against terrorism.
Commission leaders warned yesterday that the United States is at greater risk of a calamitous attack unless lawmakers and Bush act quickly to adopt the panel's recommendations. Chairman Thomas H. Kean (R) told reporters in Washington that "history will judge severely" a failure to move rapidly, and he criticized earlier statements from some GOP leaders who urged caution in adopting changes.
"To sit in the face of another possible attack on the American people, when your primary responsibility is to protect the American people, is not acceptable," Kean said. "We believe unless we implement these recommendations, we're more vulnerable to another terrorist attack. . . . Time is not on our side."
Senate leaders yesterday announced an agreement reached Thursday night between Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) that directs key lawmakers to come up with proposals by Oct. 1 for restructuring U.S. intelligence agencies and reorganizing congressional oversight of the issue.
And despite earlier signals of caution from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), he and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said late yesterday that they had directed appropriate House committees to "examine the commission's recommendations, begin hearings in August and report back to us with recommendation for specific legislation in September including specific proposals we will consider before Congress adjourns." They said they expect the committees to announce their schedule for hearings next week.
"The commission has done good work and made some important recommendations about how to improve America's security," the two Republican leaders said.
White House officials said Bush may embrace recommendations for intelligence reform before the November presidential election, but said they were not speeding up a separate review of the nation's intelligence system by another commission appointed by the president as a result of the faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Bush took the 9/11 commission's report with him yesterday to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., officials said, where he plans to work on proposals with aides before returning to Washington on Thursday, the day the Democratic National Convention draws to a close.
Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, is staying with Bush, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice plans to join him on Monday to work on the recommendations, officials said. Bush also directed White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to lead a task force to review the recommendations.
The moves would seem to ensure that the Sept. 11 attacks, along with the intelligence failures that preceded them, will remain prominent issues during the last months of the presidential race. The subject poses a political dilemma for the Bush campaign, which has sought to emphasize the president's war on terrorism while dismissing Democratic allegations that he ignored al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001, and has increased the terrorism risk by invading Iraq.
As recently as Thursday, Rice urged caution in moving forward with reforms too fast. Acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge criticized one of the panel's main recommendations for reform: the creation of a national intelligence director in the Cabinet to oversee the government's 15 intelligence agencies. The commission also urges the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center, to coordinate intelligence gathering and operations both domestically and abroad.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Thursday urged rapid action on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations. Kerry said that if reforms are not enacted and he is elected president, he would immediately convene a security summit to push for changes.
The pointed comments yesterday from Kean and his vice chairman, former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D), are the opening salvo in an aggressive campaign by the 10-member commission to lobby for its recommendations. Commission members, who are already appearing on television programs virtually around the clock, plan to fan out across the country in speaking engagements.
Kean said the group is working to enlist relatives of Sept. 11 victims to monitor and lobby federal lawmakers on a district-by-district basis. The panel, whose budget and existence expires by law next month, is also exploring ways to keep itself going independently to keep tabs on the government's progress, Kean said.
The effort is aimed at increasing the pressure on lawmakers and the administration to respond more directly to the commission's calls for reform, according to panel officials. "The status quo always has an army," Kean said. "To besiege that castle is very, very difficult, but that's what we've decided to do."
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband Ronald Breitweiser died in the World Trade Center, said she and other Sept. 11 relatives "will do whatever we need to do" to push the commission's recommendations. She criticized lawmakers for preparing to recess at the same time U.S. intelligence officials are warning of an increased terrorist threat.
"Our elected officials, the president and Congress need to prove to the American people that they're making national security a number one priority," Breitweiser said.
The decisions by House and Senate GOP leaders to hold hearings next month came after Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) endorsed legislation to enact the commission's major recommendations. Democratic congressional leaders had signaled that they were prepared to seize on the issue if GOP leaders did not act.
Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, said hearings will begin the first week of August.
Congress will return from its recess on Sept. 7 and is scheduled to wrap up work by early October. Collins and Lieberman said the legislation could be dealt with in early October or, failing that, in a post-election "lame duck" session. Staff writers Mike Allen and Dana Milbank contributed to this report.
--------
Congress Plans Special Hearings on Sept. 11 Panel
July 24, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/politics/24panel.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 23 - Moving swiftly on the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, House and Senate leaders announced on Friday rare August hearings to draft legislative changes.
At the same time, the panel chairman warned that President Bush and lawmakers would be held responsible if they failed to overhaul intelligence operations.
"We're in danger of just letting things slide," the chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, told a small group of reporters this morning as he offered new details of a lobbying campaign that the commission's members plan in the fall to ratchet up pressure on Congress and the White House, as well as Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
"If the Congress and the president delay unnecessarily, and it's difficult again for me to say exactly when they should act,'' Mr. Kean said, "but if it seems that they are delaying, I think they are going to be held responsible by the American people, especially if the experts are right and there is another terrorist attack."
Mr. Bush, who began a weeklong vacation on Friday at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., ordered his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to lead an administrationwide review of the recommendations and to report to him "as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said.
Mr. Kerry has embraced the bulk of the recommendations.
In Congress, which received withering criticism in the panel's report for lax oversight of the intelligence apparatus, House and Senate leaders stopped short of calling for a special session to consider the recommendations. Still, it was clear that the leaders felt enough urgency to work through the August recess, a time that in even years is traditionally devoted to campaigning.
"The threat of terrorism will be with us for a long time," the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said on Thursday night on the Senate floor with the minority leader, Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, by his side. "We need to fix the problems and correct the shortcomings cited by the commission so that we can make America safer."
To that end, Dr. Frist and Mr. Daschle deputized Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who is the ranking Democrat on that panel, to produce bills by Oct. 1 that would carry out two of the 9/11 panel's central recommendations. Those points are creating the post of director of intelligence and a counterterrorism center.
The Senate leaders also promised to name a bipartisan group to address the other central recommendation - changing the way Congress oversees intelligence agencies. That is a politically thorny task that could result in some lawmakers' losing power and others gaining it. The group will also be charged with making recommendations by Oct. 1, the leaders said.
Changing the way Congress conducts oversight is more a matter of changes in its rules than passing measures for the president to sign.
As the Senate leaders began to act, House leaders raced to keep pace. First, they announced that they had ordered committee chairmen to work through the summer recess to examine the report and recommend changes. Later, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who on Thursday said that he was not certain that any recommendations could be adopted this year, declared that a hearing schedule would be announced next week.
"Congress needs to act as quickly as possible to examine the commission's report and recommendations, and the House plans to immediately assess everything we have done in this regard since 9/11 and everything more we need to do," Mr. Hastert said in a statement issued with Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader.
The unusually swift response caught some lawmakers off guard. Ms. Collins was headed to Maine when she learned of her assignment. She and Mr. Lieberman hastily convened a news conference to announce that they would convene a hearing in the first week of August, right after the Democratic convention. The hearing would probably include Mr. Kean and his deputy chairman, former Representative Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, as witnesses.
The two men called for passing new laws by year-end, even if it means a special session after the November elections. Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton endorsed that idea.
"No longer is it going to be a sleepy quiet August around here," Ms. Collins said. "The American people expect us to act. This is a bipartisan commission that unanimously agreed on some very important recommendations. We need to respond to that, and we do not have the luxury of waiting months."
In the White House, even before the commission released its report, Mr. Bush reviewed candidates to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, which has an acting director, John McLaughlin. Mr. Bush has also been weighing proposals to overhaul the organization of the intelligence agencies, an issue that White House officials have said Mr. Bush would decide only after he had studied the commission's recommendations.
On Capitol Hill, the quick turnaround reflected, in part, the pressure on lawmakers not only by the 9/11 commission, but also by its victims' relatives, who have been extraordinarily vocal.
The families and the commissioners are engaging in an unusual publicity campaign to see to it that the panel's work does not gather dust on a shelf.
Outlining the summer plans for the panel, Mr. Kean said that its members would break into teams of one Republican and one Democrat each, traveling to speak discuss the recommendations and urge their adoption.
Though the commission officially goes out of business next month, Mr. Kean said members were contemplating options to let it continue as a private entity.
"We're willing to take our own time and use our own money and go out on the road to promote what we believe," Mr. Kean said.
In a veiled threat to members of Congress who are up for re-election, the former governor said he was discussing with victims' families monitoring the positions of members of Congress. Mr. Kean said he was eager to see Congressional candidates asked where they stood on the recommendations.
''The families have come together with us as a commission," he said. "And we are going out as a unified force to try to get these recommendations done."
Mr. Hamilton said the most radical idea in the report was a call to overhaul Congressional oversight, including its proposal for a single joint House-Senate intelligence committee or separate House and Senate panels, with direct budget authority over all 15 intelligence agencies.
He said the commission had heard from lawmakers who said oversight was so lax that the secret $40 billion annual intelligence budget was often approved after 10 minutes of debate.
''That is really absurd, that is genuinely nuts," Mr. Hamilton said. ''You've got to get a system whereby Congress has robust oversight of intelligence, because it is the only place where you get independent oversight of the intelligence community."
That recommendation, perhaps more than any other, is quite likely to generate turf battles that could doom it. By giving the oversight panels the power of the purse, Congress would be forced to strip the Appropriations Committees of their budget authority. On Friday, Senator Collins said that she was "absolutely delighted" that the task of adopting that recommendation did not fall to her.
The Sept. 11 commission is also quite likely to run into turf battles in the executive branch as it tries to turn into policy its recommendations for a director of national intelligence and counterterrorism center. The suggestions would require wholesale bureaucratic reorganization that would wrest power from individuals and institutions.
A spokesman for Mr. DeLay, Stuart Roy, said he was optimistic about achieving that change. He likened the recommendations to the debate over creating the Homeland Security Department. After the department became an issue in the 2002 elections, lawmakers returned here to quickly pass the bill that created it.
"This will probably unfold not unlike the homeland security debate did," Mr. Roy said. "Even though there were big issues, and it was a massive undertaking, you were able to quickly move on the issue because of the size of it and the seriousness of it."
Mr. Lieberman agreed.
"You know," he said, "when members of both houses go home for this recess, the folks back home are going to say: 'Why are you home? Why aren't you in Washington dealing with the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission?' I've already heard this in a few conversations with people back in Connecticut, who said: 'Get this done quickly. It's our safety and well-being at stake."
--------
Bush Weighs 9 / 11 Panel's Ideas as Pressure Builds
July 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-bush.html
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush said on Saturday he wanted to ``carefully examine'' recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission as pressure mounted on the president to act swiftly.
Congress rushed to respond to the panel's findings, announcing rare August recess hearings, while Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean warned that security experts expect another al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil and that ``time is not on our side.''
Kean said on Friday security experts believe militants will try to use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and added that if Congress and the president delayed making changes they would be held responsible by the American people.
Political analysts said Bush needed to embrace some recommendations within a week to 10 days or risk leaving himself open to criticism by Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry that he is not doing enough to prevent another attack.
``If he wants to nullify it as an issue, he should embrace the findings,'' said Stephen Wayne, professor of government at Georgetown University.
The commission's report, issued on Thursday, found ``deep institutional failings'' and missed opportunities to thwart the 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people, and recommended sweeping changes to U.S. intelligence operations.
In his weekly radio address, Bush acknowledged the country still faced grave threats, although he had already taken many steps to make the country safer, such as the creation of the Homeland Security department.
Yet, he said, ``no matter how good our defenses are, a determined enemy can still strike us.''
``CAREFULLY EXAMINE'' COMMISSION IDEAS
Bush did not specifically discuss the commission's central recommendations of a new government position to oversee intelligence agencies and the creation of a counterterrorism center.
But he said, ``We will carefully examine all the commission's ideas on how we can improve our ongoing efforts to protect America and to prevent another attack.''
The commission's recommendations ``will help guide our efforts as we work to protect the homeland,'' he added.
Bush, who is spending this week at his Texas ranch, has instructed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to coordinate the study of the recommendations, but he has been given no specific deadline.
With the Nov. 2 U.S. election threatening to delay any major action, Kean and the other commissioners pledged to spend the summer and fall lobbying officials to act quickly, and his comments on Friday appeared to help spur momentum.
Senate leaders said they hoped to have a bipartisan bill ready by Oct. 1 addressing the proposals for a national intelligence director and counterterrorism center.
Kerry, in a speech this month, pre-empted the commission by calling for an ``intelligence czar'' to oversee all spy agencies.
``Bush is between a rock and a hard place,'' said Larry Sabato, political scientist at the University of Virginia, who thinks not all the panel's ideas are necessarily good ones. ``He has to pick at least a few recommendations and start the process moving.''
Professor Wayne added, ``He can say he's studying it for a week or maybe 10 days.'' But if the momentum on homeland security keeps up after next week's Democratic convention, Wayne said the pressure on Bush will grow.
--------
Gov't Debates Intelligence Chief Position
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Intelligence-Chief.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It won't be easy to decide whether it's appropriate to create a Cabinet-level official to oversee the nation's vast intelligence community. Look no further than former CIA Director Jim Woolsey. He is 60 percent in favor and 40 percent against the move recommended by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
``I don't think this is one of those issues which is absolutely clear-cut. I think there is a risk of layering and adding an added bureaucracy,'' he told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week. On the other hand, he said, ``I believe the job could be done by one individual in ideal circumstances.''
The proposal for a single, stronger intelligence chief is not new: A presidential advisory board and an earlier congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks also floated the idea. And two California Democrats in Congress -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Jane Harman -- have introduced separate, but similar, legislation to better centralize the intelligence community under one office, intended to improve information sharing, coordination and decision-making.
President Bush has said he is studying the commission's recommendations. But acting CIA Director John McLauglin has warned that major structural changes could disrupt the agency's work in the war on terror. Officially, the agency is open to considering any proposed changes.
As with most reforms, there are pros -- and cons.
Today, based on the 1947 National Security Act, the CIA director not only heads his own agency but also oversees the intelligence community, which has grown to 15 agencies. But the director has neither budgetary authority nor day-to-day operational control of the other agencies, most of which are part of the Defense Department.
Opponents have a long list of reasons why they advise caution. One is that the CIA director's job was created intentionally to insulate it from the politics of policymaking that could intrude if the person sat on the Cabinet.
``A Senate-confirmed intelligence director sitting in the White House would be in the hip pocket of the president,'' said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``That individual would not have the kind of independence you need in that kind of role.''
Critics also worry about new layers of staffing and bureaucracy that likely would come with creation of the new job.
``I can guarantee you would have a staff of hundreds in short order,'' said Lee Strickland, who retired from the CIA in December after 30 years and now teaches at the University of Maryland.
Key congressional intelligence leaders are skeptical -- at a minimum. Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., says any changes must be carefully considered.
And House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., said no matter how wonderful the proposal appears, turf wars will interfere. ``In Washington, it won't work. It's impractical,'' said Goss, who has proposed alternate legislation that would give the CIA chief more power.
Still, those who favor the new intelligence chief idea say the current system simply isn't working. Created after the Cold War, when the intelligence community was much smaller, the CIA director's job has grown into a massive undertaking.
``The community's head -- the Director of Central Intelligence -- has at least three jobs: running the CIA, coordinating the 15-agency confederation and being the intelligence analyst-in-chief to the president. No one person can do all these things,'' the Sept. 11 commission said in its final report released last week.
Because of limitations on the CIA director's control over the intelligence community, the commissioners worried that the president ultimately winds up overseeing intelligence -- along with his vast domestic and foreign policy portfolio.
``The answer to the question that I repeatedly asked and numbers of us asked in our hearings -- 'Who is in charge? Who is our quarterback?' -- was almost uniformly the president of the United States,'' said commission member Jamie Gorelick, a Democrat. ``But this is not his full-time job. And it is an impossible situation for that to remain the case.''
Advocates for the new position also dispute the idea that it would be too political. They note that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all the military combatant commanders and the existing central intelligence director are appointed by the president.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Energy draw in Central Asia
July 24, 2004
By Ian Bremmer and Nikolas K. Gvosdev
A UPI Outside View
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040723-030854-6053r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 23 (UPI) -- The new Great Game is over: It ended in a draw.
Russia failed in its attempt to monopolize the Caspian region's energy transportation links. The construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, in particular, ensures that not all Caspian oil will cross Russian territory on its way west. On the other hand, exclusive transport of Central Asia's gas reserves remains in the control of the Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, and, as in Soviet times, will continue to pass through Russian-controlled routes.
Moscow cannot prevent limited American inroads into Central Asia. But, given the traditional dependence of Central Asian governments on Moscow, Russia will remain a heavyweight regional player for the foreseeable future.
There is nothing further to be gained by either side from geopolitical gamesmanship, but there is much to be won through partnership.
Given America's range of security commitments around the world, it is more vital than ever that Washington diversify its energy supply. Russia too has much to gain from a cooperative relationship with the West in the exploration, exploitation and transport of Caspian-area energy reserves. The technology and investment the West can provide are crucial for the realization of Russia's plans to maximize profits from exceptionally high oil prices as the non-energy sectors of the Russian economy struggle to become more competitive.
The foolish zero-sum notion that there are a certain number of barrels of oil in the region to be fought over by the regional powers is dangerously shortsighted, particularly at a time when the world's hunger for energy is growing so quickly and ever more pipelines and export routes are needed to get supplies to market.
The United States, the European Union, China, Russia and other Caspian states should view the Caspian area as a single integrated energy marketplace. Together they should begin a comprehensive "Eurasian energy dialogue" that will bring together the major outside investors, the United States and the EU with the region's key actors, especially Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
One element of this dialogue should be economic: helping to direct investment where it can bring the most effective return. Joint projects that combine the skills, resources and assets of Western, Asian and Russian firms can bring online energy deposits that would otherwise remain in the ground. By giving all players, including China a stake in the success of such an enterprise, the risk that any one actor will be able to monopolize new projects is reduced, and all states will become stakeholders in maintaining a universally beneficial Eurasian status quo.
Another part of the dialogue should center on those challenges to regional security that threaten new investment. Chechen insurgents would very much like to produce a wider war across an area of southern Russia vitally important to the transport of Caspian energy products. The threat of violent Islamist extremism has led to crackdowns by the authoritarian Central Asian regimes.
Governments must also battle the influence of organized crime if they are to attract investment in energy projects. Porous borders, smuggling and the drug trade, in particular, threaten the social and political stability necessary to establish a long-term international energy investment project.
Yet opportunities for real U.S.-Russian security cooperation in Central Asia are not being exploited. In Kyrgyzstan, both the United States and Russia maintain military bases, both ostensibly serve the same purpose: to prevent the spillover of Islamist terrorism into Central Asia. Yet, American and Russian forces have no mechanism for joint action -- not even the ability to communicate by cell phone.
Creating a joint U.S.-Russia base under the aegis of a NATO-Russia partnership, a proposal Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev has publicly endorsed, could lay the basis for practical cooperation that could then be extended, both to the countries in which Russia enjoys the dominant foreign influence such as Armenia and those seeking greater integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions such as Georgia, Uzbekistan or even Azerbaijan.
Russian and Western intelligence-gathering capacities complement one another. Russia continues to have the most effective network of contacts in Eurasia. First steps have already been taken in coordinating intelligence collection, marrying Russia's considerable human intelligence capabilities with American technological capacity. Russia and Western governments should create a new security organization, grounded in the NATO-Russia Council, which would develop joint institutions for joint security challenges.
The United States and Russia have already produced some positive non-zero sum security interactions, in helping to resolve Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's stand-off with Aslan Abashidze, for example.
Fears have risen in Russia and in Armenia recently that the added revenue produced in Azerbaijan by increased hydrocarbon production and transport could finance a new round of violence over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Joint operations in Bosnia and Kosovo in which Russian and NATO forces collaborated in peacekeeping for the first time provide a precedent for extending such cooperation to potential trouble-spots where instability threatens both Russian and Western interests.
There are few areas where a Russian-Western partnership can realize more mutually beneficial economic, political and security goals than in Central Asia. Successful partnerships there will encourage useful Russian-Western partnerships elsewhere, as in the construction of new Siberian pipelines to the Pacific. Missing the opportunities such a partnership might provide will threaten the stability of a region vitally important to both the "war on terrorism" and the development of future sources of energy.
(Ian Bremmer is president of the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. Nikolas Gvosdev is executive editor of The National Interest.)
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Environment 'hot' topic in seeking change
July 24, 2004
By Beth R. Alexander
United Press International (Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040723-062539-9163r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 23 (UPI) -- Coming at a high price for both investors and consumers, the environment is finally back on the agenda, signaling new hope for much-needed reform.
After a series of recommendations by environmental groups that highlighted just how deep oceanic problems have plunged, Congress introduced two major bills Thursday aimed at restructuring ocean management and cleaning up destructive acts that are taking a heavy toll on oceans and coasts.
The Oceans Conservation, Education and National Strategy for the 21st Century Act (known as the Ocean 21 bill), introduced by a bipartisan group of four congressmen -- Reps. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., Sam Farr, D-Calif., Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., and Tom Allen, D-Maine -- aims to provide a national vision for protecting and restoring polluted oceans.
The Deep Sea Coral Protection Act was introduced the same day by Greenwood and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J. These combined bills represent a major step forward for oceanic protection, according to experts at Oceana, an environmental protection organization.
"These measures will help convince the international community to protect the health of the ocean worldwide," said Oceana senior policy adviser Phil Klein.
In related news, scares of contaminated water caused by DuPont Washington Works have been causing a stir in recent weeks. DuPont's time is running out to respond to an Environmental Protection Agency report accusing the plant of negligence in submitting vital environmental information to the agency required under federal law.
DuPont has until Aug. 11 to respond to allegations that it failed to disclose the environmental problems associated with perfluorooctanoate acid, or C-8, which it uses in the Teflon manufacturing process, a chemical considered highly toxic by a group of government officials and scientists.
The Environmental Working Group included C-8 in the category of PFCs in a report released Thursday, describing them as "extraordinarily persistent chemicals that pervasively contaminate human blood and wildlife the world over."
In their own 31-page report, the EPA claims that DuPont "fails or refuses to recognize that its C-8 contamination in public drinking water is ongoing, that C-8 contamination extends into people's homes" and that "DuPont had never informed the government that it had water tests that showed C-8 in residential supplies in concentrations greater than the company's internal limit."
Residents of the Parkesburg, Pa., area have been lodging complaints for years that a nearby plant is releasing the putrefying chemical into their neighborhoods.
The EPA is infuriated that tests carried out by DuPont back in 1981 discovering C-8 in the umbilical-cord blood of a baby born to at least one pregnant employee were withheld.
A recent Senate symposium was held in order to deal with the precise problems that have led to the failure of corporations to disclose enough environmental information in their annual filings.
The event was held following the results of a study investigating whether existing requirements by the Securities and Exchange Commission were enough to ensure that individual investors could make informed decisions on their investments.
The SEC was criticized for its failure to systematically track the issues raised in its reviews of companies' filings, thereby inhibiting their ability to fully analyze the extent of problems relating to insufficient environmental disclosure.
A Government Accountability Office study commissioned by Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., concluded that the SEC should "explore ways to improve tracking and transparency of information" to provide private investors with a better understanding of the financial risks posed by environmental concerns. The study was based on wide cross-sectional surveys of 30 experts in the field.
"We are working in any way we can, company by company, to try to unearth the details of this risk and what our companies are planning to do about it," said Maine State Treasurer Dale McCormick.
The recent DuPont scandal was cited as one of the wakeup calls that have cost fiduciaries "boat loads of money."
The cost of cleaning up contamination was cited as a factor impairing companies' decisions to disclose the appropriate information.
The valuable lesson learned is to "pay attention to corporate government and insist on disclosure and transparency of company information in order to fully evaluate how far companies and their portfolios are impacted by climate change.
"Information is absolutely essential," McCormick said.
The study recommended that the SEC work with the EPA to explore ways to take better advantage of data relevant to environmental disclosure.
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
World Bank turns 60 amid critiques
July 24, 2004
By Chris Gaetano
UPI Correspondent
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040723-031456-1246r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 23 (UPI) -- On one side of the street stood the World Bank building. On the other side stood about 25 protesters. Signs and banners squared off with investments and loans on July 22nd, the 60th anniversary of the agreements that brought to life the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
To the World Bank on the one side of the street, it has been 60 years of poverty alleviation, third-world investment and improving the standard of living for people everywhere. To the protesters on the other side of the street, it has been 60 years of plundering third-world economies, devastating the environment and using debt as a weapon to keep poor nations in indentured servitude.
Thesis met antithesis on the 22nd as demonstrators representing organizations 50 Years is Enough (started 10 years ago and thus the name) and the Mobilization for Global Justice picketed outside of the World Bank building in the sweltering D.C. heat.
At about 9:30 a.m., protester Daphne Wysham yelled into a megaphone, "We're here today because it has been 60 years of destruction and 60 years of extractions! The E-I-R effectively says that the World Bank should get out of oil and that third-world nations are not better off and they are worse off!"
The EIR is the Extractions Industries Review, a report commissioned in 2000 by the World Bank amid harsh criticisms of its economic policies in the third-world. Issued in January 2004, the report stated that while the World Bank could have a positive effect on developing economies, the group's efforts must be tempered by a contribution to sustainable development in the countries that they intervene in. To do so, the report stated that the bank must be more positive of pro-poor planning and management policies, better social and environmental policies and a respect for human rights. The report concluded that the bank must undergo serious reforms to meet all these goals for sustainable development.
Specifically, the EIR called upon the World Bank to, among many other things, perform with increased transparency, not allow investment in places which there is a civil war, only deal with parties which respect rule of law and institute a policy of informed consent with stakeholders in World Bank dealings.
The protesters' centerpiece, however, was the recommendation that the World Bank phase out all oil investments by 2008 and instead devote its resources towards renewable energy development such as solar and wind power.
It is this recommendation that the World Bank has found the most contentious. In the management response statement to the EIR, the World Bank stated that because 1.6 billion people do not have electricity and 2.3 billion depend on fossil fuels, oil and coal will continue to be a major fuel source for the poorest nations.
Over 90 percent of the World Bank's energy investment portfolio is in fossil fuels.
The World Bank, in the management response to the EIR, did agree with the assertions EIR makes in the report that the extractive industry can contribute to sustainable development and that the World Bank should continue to support those industries. In addition, the response said that it would review many aspects of its current policy to better address humanitarian aims. The response did not, however, say what changes would result from those reviews, if any did indeed arise.
At 9:52 a.m., a makeshift model of an oil rig, composed of bamboo sticks and black construction paper, is knocked down by the protestors, prompting much cheering. The mood on their side of the street was jubilant. Across the road, guards with arms crossed watched silently.
When asked as to what drew him to this particular protest on this particular day, Tim Telleen-Lawton said, "What I heard about the Extractive Industry Review, which has been ignored by the World Bank, but can really help people." Telleen-Lawton has been involved in political activism for a number of years.
Luke Kuhn was a little bit more direct. "That oil is being stolen at gunpoint."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Why Local Activists are Turning their Attention to Lockheed Martin in Bonny Doon
by Santa Cruz Weapons Inspection Team (SCWIT.org) (California)
Email: info (nospam) scwit.org
17 Jul 2004
http://santacruz.indymedia.org/feature/display/10275/index.php
A newly-formed coalition in Santa Cruz is turning its attention to Lockheed Martin, which has a 4000 acre facility in Bonny Doon. Lockheed Martin (L-M) is the world's largest weapons contractor. It invents and develops high-tech war-fighting weapons, markets them to the Pentagon and to Congress, and sells them around the world on the open market. It pollutes the earth, both in the production of weapons and in their use in war. It has been convicted and fined for criminal violations of US law. And yet it has much more say about our government's policies than do ordinary citizens. Lockheed Martin buys access to our government representatives, largely with money it has made from selling weapons to our government, weapons that are both subsidized and paid for with our tax dollars. Profiteering from War.
Local Weapons Inspectors to visit Lockheed Martin in Bonny Doon on Friday, August 6
Santa Cruz Weapons Inspection Team
For More Information on Lockheed Martin: [ Direct Action To Stop The War I Arms Trade Resource Center I Counter Punch I Open Secrets I Corporate Swine I Corp Watch I War Profiteer Cards ] Why Local Activists are Turning their Attention to Lockheed Martin in Bonny Doon
"The World's Most Powerful Corporation"
"The world's most powerful corporation, one that literally controls the fate of the earth, is Lockheed Martin." -Helen Caldicott
A newly-formed coalition in Santa Cruz is turning its attention to Lockheed Martin, which has a 4000 acre facility in Bonny Doon. Lockheed Martin (L-M) is the world's largest weapons contractor. It invents and develops high-tech war-fighting weapons, markets them to the Pentagon and to Congress, and sells them around the world on the open market. It pollutes the earth, both in the production of weapons and in their use in war. It has been convicted and fined for criminal violations of US law. And yet it has much more say about our government's policies than do ordinary citizens. Lockheed Martin buys access to our government representatives, largely with money it has made from selling weapons to our government, weapons that are both subsidized and paid for with our tax dollars. Profiteering from War.
Just two months after September 11, the Pentagon contracted with Lockheed Martin for 3000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Planes, at the cost of 200 billion dollars. This contract has been touted as "the largest defense contract in history." In 2002, L-M received $19 billion in government contracts, including $2 for nuclear weapons. During the build-up before the war with Iraq, L-M boasted a 36% jump in profits, with a 15% increase in military aircraft sales alone. L-M is profiting from the war in Iraq, replenishing weapons for the Defense Department. For instance, L-M recently won contracts worth $109 million for kits that make dumb bombs "smart." L-M is the world's largest arms exporting company. It has sold more than 3000 F-16 combat aircraft around the world. The company also makes the Hellfire missile, "bunker buster" munitions and the massive C-130 transport plane. Developing Weapons of Mass Destruction L-M produces land mines, which kill indiscriminately. It produces weapons made with depleted uranium (DU), which contaminates the soil and the entire food chain. DU is linked to the "Persian Gulf Syndrome" which killed thousands of U.S. veterans, and thousands more Iraqis, after the first Gulf war.
This corporation has an integral role in the US Space Command's plans to wage war in space. L-M produces laser weapons, satellite surveillance equipment, and many components of the Missile Defense ("Star Wars") system. Lockheed Martin is involved in creating a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, which will likely stimulate a renewed nuclear arms race. It is working on nuclear "bunker busters," which are being built not for nuclear deterrence, but as an option for actual use in the War on Terror.
In spite of the fall of the Soviet Union, Lockheed Martin carries on with the nation's only Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program. It builds Trident II nuclear missiles, for use on Trident II Submarines. Components of Trident missiles are being built in Bonny Doon. Trident II Made in Bonny Doon?
There is a Trident II facility on Lockheed Martin in Bonny Doon. When Santa Cruz citizens campaigned against the Trident II program in the early 1980s, the government established a naval base on the grounds of Lockheed Martin in Bonny Doon, and moved the Trident II program onto the naval base. The Bonny Doon Trident II program has been shrouded in secrecy that continues to this day.
Why did Santa Cruzans oppose the program? The Trident II (D5) is a 3-stage missile with a range of 4000 miles. Each Trident II missile carries eight independently-targeted 475 kiloton thermonuclear warheads. Each Trident sub carries 24 of these missiles (192 warheads). Eighteen Trident submarines roam the world's oceans, each with the firepower to destroy an entire continent with nuclear weapons.
Past and current anti-nuclear activists in Santa Cruz say, "Not in my backyard. Not in anybody's backyard." The Trident II program threatens all life on earth. It must be shut down. Lockheed Martin's Political Influence Twenty-eight former L-M executives are members of the Bush administration. Lynne Cheney, the wife of the Vice President, is a former member of L-M's Board. Lockheed Martin is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, but because it has facilities in all 50 states, it has a "big political footprint." L-M curries favor by contributing to political campaigns at every level. It gave more than $2.2 million in political donations in 2002. Though weapons-industry PACs like L-M favor Republicans to Democrats by a 2 to 1 margin in contributions, they give to both in order to ensure access and influence.
Locally, Lockheed Martin is one of the top 11 campaign contributors to Anna Eshoo (D- 14th District). In the 1998 election cycle, Lockheed Martin was one of the top 5 campaign contributors of Diane Feinstein, contributing $14,500. (These funds come the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.)
Lockheed Martin pays lobbyists to convince the Pentagon that it needs the weapons it has designed, and to persuade members of Congress to approve lucrative weapons contracts that will please voters by bringing jobs to their districts. But L-M does not limit its lobbying efforts to marketing weapons of mass destruction. It also puts its lobbyists to work trying to influence our country's military, foreign, and even domestic policies. Contributing to the War in Iraq L-M played a role in developing support for the war in Iraq. Former Lockheed Martin vice-president Bruce Jackson chairs the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, which was formed in 2002 promote Bush's plan for war in Iraq. L-M produces many of the weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq. A Criminal Corporation L-M has been convicted of numerous crimes. For instance, in the 1970s, Lockheed Corporation (now L-M) admitted to paying $22 million in bribes to win overseas contracts. In 2001, LM paid a $4.25 million settlement agreement to the US for allegedly using Foreign Military Sales funds illegally in a contract to modify sonar systems used by Egypt. Lockheed Martin is not a good neighbor.
An Environmental Hazard in Bonny Doon?
Many L-M facilities around the country have been contaminated. Since L-M has been testing and developing weapons in Bonny Doon since 1957, it is reasonable to ask what kind of environmental controls are in place. What chemicals are being released into our environment? What materials are being shipped through our county? What emergency response plans are in place in case of an accident or a hazardous spill?
So far, our research indicates that such information, plans, and controls are inadequate. Our position is that the public's right to know what hazards they face should supercede L-M's (and the government's) right to secrecy. We request this information from L-M and from our government representatives.
For More Information on Lockheed Martin
Background Info on Lockheed Martin: Direct Action to Stop the War http://www.actagainstwar.org/article.php?id=165
Arms Trade Resource Center http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/051603.html#I
Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall10172003.html
The Center for Responsive Politics: http://www.opensecrets.org/1998os/detail/N00007364.htm See also: http://www.scwit.org
----
Judge upholds "free speech zone" at Democratic convention but O-K's march
July 24, 2004
KPLC TV (Louisiana)
http://www.kplctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2078521
BOSTON A federal judge has called a fenced-in "protest zone" at the upcoming Democratic National Convention "an affront to free expression" -- but rejected an effort to block its use.
Judge Douglas Woodlock also agreed with protesters' lawyers that the area, more than a block away from the convention site, looked worse than a concentration camp, with razor wire on a chain-link fence, and overhead netting.
But Woodlock indicated he had Secret Service information about possible protest tactics that made the site necessary, especially in a time of terrorism.
In another suit, Woodlock ruled protesters should be allowed to march directly past the convention site, Boston's FleetCenter. The march will be held Sunday, the day before the convention opens.
The city had wanted the protest parade to end at the demonstration center.
--------
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
A Chinese Bookworm Raises Her Voice in Cyberspace
July 24, 2004
By JIM YARDLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/international/asia/24prof.html?pagewanted=all&position=
THE restaurant in the fashionable Qianhai district is almost empty, courtesy of the afternoon rains, though a small young woman is sitting on an upstairs sofa, slightly uncomfortable in her chic surroundings. With her oval glasses, shy demeanor and slightly hunched posture, the woman, Liu Di, looks like a bookworm.
What she does not look like is a threat to anything, certainly not China's government. Yet the government has already imprisoned her for a year. In recent months, during significant dates on the political calendar, officials have posted security officers outside the Beijing apartment she shares with her grandmother. "They think I'm a dangerous figure," said Ms. Liu, 23, giggling slightly at the thought as she picked at a Thai rice dish.
It is Ms. Liu's other identity that has made her a target of the Communist Party. Known on the Internet as Stainless Steel Mouse, she is a dissident whose incarceration over her writings attracted international attention from human rights groups that demanded, and eventually helped win, her release.
Even now, roughly eight months after she was freed, Ms. Liu must live a watchful life. Upon her release, she resumed her studies at Beijing Normal University, yet for months administrators left it unclear whether she would be allowed to graduate. She monitored courses until she was finally awarded her diploma in late June with a degree in psychology. She did not attend the ceremony.
She still does not have a full-time job, nor is she certain when, if ever, she will cease to draw the government's attention. It has been a disorienting, dizzying ride for a quiet woman who rarely grants interviews and who says she has always felt like something of a misfit. It was, in fact, in cyberspace where she first felt accepted. "To me, the Internet is a huge virtual space," she said. "It is so different from real life. You can be more free."
MS. LIU first logged onto that other world when she was in college. She had grown up in Beijing in a family that revered books. Her father worked in the library of the China Fine Arts Museum, while her mother was a factory worker who died when she was 15. Her grandmother was a reporter for the government's main newspaper, People's Daily.
An awkward and shy child, she retreated into books, particularly science fiction. She was struck by Orwell's "1984," with its grim warning against totalitarianism. "It's very horrific," she said. "I had never thought about how human nature could be so dark."
By middle school, she had decided to become a writer and chose psychology as her college major because to write she thought she "needed to know more about human beings."
On campus in 2000, Ms. Liu noticed other students staring into their computers. "A lot of other students were logging on, so I started," she said. She combed through online college bulletin boards and personal Web sites before searching deeper and finding voices of discontent. "There were a lot of opinions and stories that couldn't be seen in newspapers," she recalled. "I liked it."
In cyberspace, Ms. Liu found her community. She plumbed literature for a nom de plume, trying Clockwork Orange and Banana Fish (a J. D. Salinger reference) before settling on Stainless Steel Mouse, from the science fiction of Harry Harrison.
She began participating in discussions on a Web site called "Democracy and Freedom,'' which is often at odds with the government. By 2001, she opened her own site, much of it dedicated to literature, but she also published some articles calling for more freedom. As cyberspace became her home, she began to defend what the Chinese call netcitizens.
She wrote an essay defending a man jailed because of political postings on his Web site. She defended another intellectual singled out by the government for organizing a reading association and for posting political essays online. She wrote a critical attack on an advocate of nationalism and began dabbling in satire and parody at the government's expense.
In one posting, she called for the organization of a new political party in which anyone could join and everyone could be chairman. She said it was a spoof. But by September 2002, college administrators issued a warning. "They said the postings I published on the Web went too far," she said. "Some of the stuff I thought was written in a joking manner. But they thought it was too far."
Terrified, she said, she scaled back on her online writing. But two months later, administrators ordered her to the campus police station, where officers took her to a Beijing prison. She was put in a cell with three other women, including a convicted murderer. Even today, she says she does not know which of her essays led to her arrest.
"I think a normal government should not be challenged by these writings," she said. "We are not promoting violence. We're not organizing to challenge the government."
In prison, she underwent some interrogation sessions. She said that she was frightened initially but that she was treated fairly well. She said that she had two meetings with a lawyer, and that her family was allowed to bring her books, magazines and university textbooks. She also learned from a guard that she was becoming famous in the outside world.
Human rights groups were holding up her case to protest the government's treatment of Internet dissidents. Shortly before Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was scheduled to visit the United States last November, the government suddenly released Ms. Liu and two other Internet dissidents. Her father escorted her from the prison, and she cried when she got home.
Of the international outcry over her arrest, Ms. Liu said she was stunned. "I'm delighted that people care about me," she said.
SHE spent her first month out of prison under house arrest at her father's apartment. Then, on Christmas Day, she was told house arrest had ended. In the end, she said she was never formally charged with a crime. But since her release, security officers have twice been posted outside her apartment - in March, during the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's legislature and on June 4, the 15th anniversary of the government crackdown against pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square.
Even so, Ms. Liu has resumed writing. Several months ago, she signed an online petition calling for the release of Du Daobin, another online Internet essayist. (Mr. Du had been jailed after calling for her release from prison. He was recently convicted of subversion but was given a suspended sentence.) She recently wrote an article in a Hong Kong magazine criticizing the arrest of two crusading newspaper editors in southern China.
Asked why she takes such risks given her history, she said, "It's the right thing for me to do, so I'm going to keep doing it."
She still surfs the Internet late into the night. Government monitors have managed to block her name Stainless Steel Mouse from some Web sites. But she said she sometimes uses another moniker: Titanium Alloy Mouse.
"Stainless steel is low end," she said, smiling. "Titanium steel is much higher end."
--------
Convention Protesters Upset With Site
July 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CVN-Protests.html
BOSTON (AP) -- As thousands of delegates, journalists and dignitaries stream into the FleetCenter, protesters for the next few days will be enclosed in a shadowy, closed-off piece of urban streetscape just over a block away.
The maze of overhead netting, chain link fencing and razor wire couldn't be further in comfort from the high-tech confines of the arena stage where John Kerry is to accept the Democratic nomination for president during the four-day convention that kicks off Monday.
Abandoned, elevated rail lines and green girders loom over most of the official demonstration zone that slopes down to a subway station closed for the duration. To avoid hitting girders, tall protesters will have to duck at one end of the 28,000-square-foot zone. Train tracks obscure the line of sight to much of the FleetCenter. Concrete blocks were set around streets in the area, a transportation hub on the north side of downtown.
Protesters likened the site Saturday to a concentration camp as they complained it is too far from the FleetCenter to get their messages across, even though the site is next to a parking lot where many delegates will pass on foot en route to the arena.
Authorities say -- and a judge agreed -- the discomforts are needed for security in the post-Sept. 11 era.
On a rainy morning made darker by overhead girders, protest leaders held a news conference at the demonstration zone Saturday to object to the site. Some called it a violation of their free-speech rights. As they spoke, pools of rainwater collected on pavement.
``We don't deserve to be put in a detention center, a concentration camp,'' said Medea Benjamin of San Francisco. ``It's tragic that here in Boston, the birthplace of democracy, our First Amendment rights are being trampled on.''
Two fellow protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink, who dressed in pink Statue of Liberty garb, taped their mouths shut. Some activists said while they understand the need for security, organizers went overboard.
``We are on high, high red alert for the protection of our civil liberties,'' said Claryce Evans, national coordinator for United Peace and Justice. American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild attorneys asked a federal judge to open up or move the zone.
U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock this past week called the conditions ``an affront to free expression'' and a ``festering boil.'' He refused to order changes, but is letting protesters march past the site Sunday. A coalition of protesters appealed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Authorities said they were lowering the maximum number of protesters to 1,000, from a previous 4,000, because of concerns of overcrowding.
----
Activists ponder DNC strategy
Left-wing Democrats are debating whether organized protests will split their ranks
By Anne-Marie O'Connor
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 24, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes192.htm
Even in the unified ranks of the Boston antiwar group United for Justice With Peace, fault lines began to form recently when activists started discussing whether to protest at the Democratic National Convention next week.
"Some people feel very strongly that we should have anybody but [President] Bush. They don't want to somehow play into the Republicans' hands," said Cynthia Peters, a coalition organizer.
The group decided to hold "People's Parties" instead, timed with Democratic Party events for convention delegates. Peters even encouraged national activists not to come to Boston, but instead hold People's Parties in their hometowns. Peters has mixed feelings about the approach, which is aimed at bolstering the chances of presumptive Democratic candidate Sen. John F. Kerry.
"The 'anybody but Bush' movement makes people think that if Kerry wins we can all go home," Peters said. "But under Clinton we saw the dismantling of welfare benefits. We saw sanctions against Iraq and the bombing of Baghdad. I am under no illusions that Kerry is going to radically diverge."
Another left-wing group, United for Peace and Justice, decided differently; it will protest, and it's coordinating an antiwar event near the convention Thursday, the day Kerry speaks. "There's a lot of 'anybody but Bush' pressure," said Bill Dobbs, the media coordinator of the New York-based group. "Lots of people who feel very strongly about getting rid of Bush. They want to give the Democrats a pass. We do not want to give the Democrats a pass. We think it's important to keep the pressure on both parties."
How this debate plays out will determine the strength of the protests at the convention. Behind the protest issue, of course, looms an even larger concern to the Democrats: Will left-wing protest candidates undermine Democratic chances the way votes for Ralph Nader worked against Al Gore in 2000? During the last election, many activists said the parties were so similar that it was not significant which candidate won. They protested at both the Republican and Democratic conventions, and some voted for Nader.
This time, some who protested before aren't sure. There's the war in Iraq. The weakening of some environmental laws. Civil rights concerns over the Patriot Act. The Republican attempt to constitutionally ban gay marriage. Activists, now members of well-organized antiwar movements, are debating - in living room meetings and e-mail exchanges, in the alternative press and on the Internet - whether to protest in Boston.
As a headline in the liberal magazine the Nation put it: "Progressive activists at the Democratic convention are faced with the question of whether to protest or just talk about their issues."
For some activists, at least, "the slogan 'The Evil of Two Lessers' has been replaced by 'Anybody but Bush,' " the Nation article said. "That leaves progressives with a question: whether to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention in Boston July 26-29 or give the Dems a pass and concentrate on the Republican National Convention in New York August 30-September 1."
Some people fear that antiwar protesters will blow it and undermine the "Dump Bush" effort, which they view as the overwhelming priority. Others are angry that a powerful liberal advocacy group, MoveOn.org, is playing an active supporting role for the Kerry campaign. To them, "giving the Democrats a pass" means not staging convention protests despite the fact that Kerry and many other Democratic lawmakers voted in favor of the resolution for the war in Iraq and helped to overwhelmingly pass the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11 attacks. There is talk that "progressive" delegates will stage a surprise antiwar action on the convention.
"People all around the world want Bush to be defeated," said John Beacham of the ANSWER Coalition in Los Angeles, who will protest in Boston and New York. "ANSWER knows that going out in the street and fighting for our right to demonstrate is more likely to further the people's goals of ending the occupation and bringing the troops home now."
Alternative conventions
Many on the left have settled on a compromise, attending one of the "people's conventions" planned in Boston. At People's Parties on Sunday night, organizers will pass around a "Fund the Dream" petition calling for the $100-billion defense budget to be reallocated for social projects.
The "Campaign for America's Future" will host three days of "Take Back America" events concurrent with the convention, open to Democratic leaders, activists and "progressive" delegates. Headliners will include former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), "Nickel and Dimed" author Barbara Ehrenreich, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former Vice President Al Gore.
"These are folks who want to help Kerry win, but they also want to make sure Kerry is accountable to progressive values," said Toby Chaudhuri, a spokesman for the group. "With the popularity of [Michael Moore's documentary] 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' there are indicators of the surge of progressive energy out there."
The sessions will deal with such issues as jobs, wages, healthcare, Medicare and education. One session - headlined by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy and Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa - will seek to discuss "a dynamic new alliance, representing working families, women, people of color, the middle class and the poor."
Another forum will air "the debacle in Iraq [that] has left America more isolated, more reviled, and less safe" - with such panelists as staunch antiwar Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the last of the Democratic candidates to withdraw from the presidential race, and Joseph Wilson, the former U.S. chargé d'affaires in Iraq and author of "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity."
On Tuesday the "Revolutionary Women 2004" event will feature Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Anaheim). Activists from the antiwar group Code Pink will also staff a table there, though they are planning to attend protests as well.
"We're going to do both," said Lora O'Connor, a California-based coordinator for Code Pink. "Even mainstream statistics show that the majority of Americans want the U.S. out of Iraq. We're trying to keep the heat on the Democrats, reminding them to represent true Democratic values."
That opens the question of whether the forums' all-star lineups will appease people who are weighing whether to mobilize for the kinds of confrontations with riot police that took place at the 2000 conventions - or whether the protesters will catapult criticism of Kerry onto the nightly news.
At its 2000 convention, the Republican Party managed to defuse potential protests from the Christian right and more extreme right-wing groups who refrained from publicly pressuring Bush on such issues as abortion in exchange for assurances that he would push their agenda once he was elected.
But many left-of-center activists seem to have the opposite strategy, eager to subject even sympathetic liberal Democrats to the kind of grilling that brings to mind the French saying that "when the left forms a firing squad, it's always in a circle."
"Did Kucinich Sell Out Antiwar Democrats?" demanded a headline of the public radio show "Democracy Now," whose host, Amy Goodman, questioned Kucinich on his delegates' recent acceptance of a compromise, hammered out with Kerry delegates, to accept a pledge to withdraw American troops from Iraq "when appropriate."
"Amy, I had to make a decision, whether I want to, you know, stay a Democrat and continue to work within the party or go in a different direction," Kucinich said July 14 on Goodman's show. "What we have isn't perfect, but it's, you know, a lot better than another four years of George Bush."
But many of Kucinich's admirers believe Bush is just one aspect of a larger problem and that it's up to activists like them to keep the Democrats honest.
"Bush didn't start these policies," said Frank Dorrel, publisher of the comic book "Addicted to War," who will go to Boston to attend a Veterans for Peace gathering and the Boston Social Forum just before the convention. "If we put in Kerry, and he continues the policies, what have we got?"
----
Protesters Make Last-Ditch Appeal On Pens
Coalition Files Appeal With 1st Circuit Court
July 24, 2004
The Boston Channel
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/3573020/detail.html
BOSTON -- As delegates are arriving for the Democratic National Convention Saturday, so too are demonstrators whose planned protests and parades will be strictly and tightly regulated by police. NewsCenter 5's David Boeri reported that the hotly-contested designated free speech zone near the Fleet Center was flooded with standing water Saturday.
Not that it would have mattered to the federal judge who, even after declaring the zone an interment camp last week, rejected the claims of protestors that it violated their first amendment rights.
"Who will challenge the vague rationale that national security, quote unquote, 'takes precedent over the cornerstone of democracy -- the right to free expression?'" asked Tony Palomba, of the American Friends Service.
The standing water, the coiled razor wire and high double fencing enveloped in additional mesh netting made an ironic contrast to the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in the stated cause of defending freedom.
"My son died in an immoral war in Iraq," he said.
"What country is this? We always claim that we are the most democratic, the most free country of this planet. We condemned countries like China, but right now we are using methods to suppress in the same way as country that we consider totalitarian," said Urzula Masny-Latos, of the National Lawyers Guild.
In Cambridge, Mass., Saturday, members of a mobilizing committee called Black Tea, whose clean-cut earnestness seems to undercut police concerns about agitators, condemned fear tactics and once again vowed to shun the designated demonstration zone.
"We have no intention of giving up every right that we have in this country to enter that area," said Elly Guillette, of the Black Tea Society.
Attorneys for two different groups of activists filed an appeal to the federal judge's decision upholding the government's security arrangement.
The matter goes to the 1st Circuit Court of appeals on Monday morning.
---
China's 'steel mouse' is still roaring - warily
Jim Yardley
The New York Times
July 24, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/530930.html
BEIJING The restaurant in the fashionable Qianhai district is almost empty, courtesy of the afternoon rains, though a small, young woman is sitting on an upstairs sofa, slightly uncomfortable in her chic surroundings. With her oval glasses, shy demeanor and slightly hunched posture, Liu Di looks like a bookworm.
What she does not look like is a threat to anything - certainly not to the Chinese government. Yet the government has already imprisoned her for a year. And in recent months, during sensitive dates on the political calendar, officials have posted security officers outside the Beijing apartment she shares with her grandmother.
"They think I'm a dangerous figure," said Liu, 23, giggling slightly as she picked at a Thai rice dish.
It is Liu's other identity that has made her a target of the Communist Party. In the cyberspace of China's expanding Internet, she is Stainless Steel Mouse, an online dissident whose incarceration over her writings attracted international attention from human rights groups that demanded, and eventually helped win, her release.
Even now, about eight months after she was freed, Liu must live a watchful life. Upon her release, she resumed her studies at Beijing Normal University, yet for months administrators left it unclear whether she would be allowed to graduate. She monitored courses until she was finally awarded her diploma in late June with a degree in psychology. She did not attend the ceremony.
She still does not have a full-time job, nor is she certain when, if ever, she will stop drawing the attentions of the government.
It has been a disorienting, dizzying ride for a quiet woman who says she has always felt like something of a misfit. It was, in fact, on the Internet where she first felt accepted.
"To me, the Internet is a huge virtual space," she said. "It is so different from real life. You can be more free."
It was in college that Liu first logged onto that other world. She had grown up in Beijing in a family that revered books. Her father worked in the library of the China Fine Arts Museum, while her mother was a factory worker who died when she was 15.
Awkward and shy, Liu said she retreated into books as a child, particularly the futuristic worlds of science fiction. She was struck by Orwell's "1984." "It's very horrific," she said. "I had never thought about how human nature could be so dark."
By middle school she had decided to become a writer and chose psychology as her college major, because to write she thought she "needed to know more about human beings."
On campus in 2000, Liu noticed other students staring into their computers. "A lot of other students were logging on, so I started," she said.
She combed through online college bulletin boards and personal Web sites before searching deeper and finding voices of discontent, including those calling out for more freedom in Chinese society. "There were a lot of opinions and stories that couldn't be seen in newspapers," she said.
In the ether of cyberspace, Liu had found her community. She plumbed literature for an online nom de plume, trying out Clockwork Orange and Banana Fish (a J.D. Salinger reference) before settling on Stainless Steel Mouse, drawn from the science fiction writings of Harry Harrison.
She began participating in discussions on Democracy and Freedom, a Web site that is often at odds with the government. By 2001, she opened her own Web site, much of it dedicated to literature, but she also published some articles calling for more freedom and openness. And as cyberspace became her home, she began to be more bold.
She wrote an essay defending a man jailed because of political postings on his Web site. She defended another intellectual who had been targeted by the government for organizing a reading association and for posting political essays online. She wrote an attack on an advocate of nationalism, and also began dabbling in satire and parody at the expense of the government.
She called for the organization of a new political party in which anyone could join and everyone could be chairman. She says it was a spoof. But by September 2002, college administrators summoned her with a warning. "They said the postings I published on the Web went too far," she said.
Terrified, she said, she scaled back on her online writing. But two months later, administrators ordered her to the campus police station, where officers took her to a Beijing prison. She was put into a cell with three other women, including a convicted murderer. Even today, she says she does not know which of her essays led to her arrest.
In prison, she underwent some interrogation sessions. She said that she was frightened initially but that she was treated fairly well.
She also learned from a guard that she was becoming famous.
Human rights groups were citing her case to protest the government's treatment of Internet dissidents and its paranoia about unfettered political speech. Shortly before Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was scheduled to visit the United States in November, the government suddenly released Liu and two other Internet dissidents. Her father escorted her from the prison, and she wept when she got home.
Of the outcry over her arrest, Liu said she was stunned. "I'm delighted that people care about me," she said.
She spent her first month out of prison under house arrest at her father's apartment. Then, on Dec. 25, she was told house arrest had ended. In the end, she said, she was never formally charged with a crime. But since her release, security officers have twice been posted outside her apartment - first in March, during the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's legislature; then on June 4, the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
Even so, Liu has resumed writing. Several months ago, she signed an online petition calling for the release of Du Daobin, another online Internet essayist. Du, in fact, had been jailed after calling for her release.
Asked why she still takes such risks, she said, "It's the right thing for me to do, so I'm going to keep doing it."
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.