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NUCLEAR
MacArthur Foundation Funds Creative Threat Reduction
WNA News Briefing
High Accident Risk Is Seen in Atomic Waste Project
Chernobyl veteran dies on hunger strike in south Russia
'Safe' Levels May be Raised for Dirty Bomb Attacks
Spanish nuclear plant to close in 2006
Signs of New Tension Emerge in India-Pakistan Peace Effort
N Korea, angry over US Congress vote
States, Environmentalists Challenge Power Plant Cooling Water Rule
Audit: Groundwater Cleaning Ineffective
MILITARY
Karzai Replaces Top Deputy On Ticket Kabul Put on Alert To Avert Violence
Afghan Leader, in a Surprise, Picks a New Running Mate
Nicaraguan army to destroy missiles
Iraq reconstruction flawed, say experts
Partial defeat in McDonnell Douglas suit
U.S. Military Picks IBM to Build Supercomputer
Taiwan shows force on beach facing Chinese mainland
China, Taiwan and U.S. Display Military Might
Iraqi Official Killed in Ambush
Early Steps, Maybe, Toward a Democracy in Iraq
U.S. Seeks to Provide More Jobs and Speed Rebuilding in Iraq
Reality TV hits home in Baghdad
Iraqi clerics laud Japan's role in reconstruction
Bent on Israel's destruction
Despite His Troubles, Arafat Endures as Leader and Symbol
Buried mines and ordnance continue to maim Iraqi civilians
For an Arab model, emirates
Peacekeepers 'stood by as Kosovo mob burnt homes' By Kim Sengupta
Iraqi Says U.S. General Witnessed Abuse
Suicides on the rise in Russian army: prosecutor
Sudan hits back over sanctions
Army Chief Sees No Need for Draft
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Amtrak Announces Precautions
At Ports, Cargo Backlog Raises Security Questions
Human Rights Watch slams Pentagon tribunals for status reviews
Less to Memorize, More to Learn;
Islamic Charity Says F.B.I. Falsified Evidence Against It
As Cities Struggle, Police Get By With Less
Penal system population hits new high at 6.9 million adults
Hussein's Day, Not Forgetting Cookie Snacks
Olympic Security Web
POLITICS
9/11 Report Says Plotter Saw Self as Superterrorist
Factual Back-Up For Fahrenheit 9/11: Section One
GOP 'War Room' Is On-Site
Iranian Prosecutor Shuts 2 Newspapers
In Enemy Territory, Republicans Fight the Democratic Party Line
At the Democratic Convention, Reporters Outnumber Delegates 6 to 1
In Boston, a Ringing Call for Change
Bush, Aides Discuss Findings of 9/11 Panel
Kerry, Campaigning in Virginia, Urges Extension of 9/11 Panel
Nation's First Trial Over Punch Ballots Begins in Ohio
ENERGY
Nevada University Will Produce Biodiesel With Ethanol
OTHER
Aloe May Save Lives on Battlefield, Study Finds
ACTIVISTS
Cage pen angers DNC protesters
Vanunu defies ban on speeches
Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire
-------- NUCLEAR
MacArthur Foundation Funds Creative Threat Reduction
July 27, 2004
CHICAGO, Illinois, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-27-09.asp#anchor2
The Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, has been awarded $2.2 million over five years for scientific training and research to develop new methods for controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The grant will support the development of an international framework for preventing the exploitation of biotechnology, contribute to the creation of new policy initiatives to prevent nuclear proliferation, and help promote security in outer space.
The funding is part of a set of four grants totaling more than $5 million announced last week by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago aimed at reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and space weapons.
Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation, says the foundation has been helping policymakers deal with the dangers posed by these weapons for 20 years, and at no time has the situation been more urgent than it is today. "Since 9-11, these dangers have risen to the top of the policy agenda," he said, "as governments seek to prevent biological or nuclear terrorism and stop the proliferation of such weapons to international terror networks."
"The Foundation's contribution to international peace and security is to increase scientific and technical expertise on weapons dangers, to promote new thinking about nonproliferation and disarmament, and to help educate policymakers working to reduce these dangers," Fanton said.
As part of this set of grants, $2.1 million over five years has been awarded to Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for its Managing the Atom Project to identify and highlight opportunities for securing existing weapons-usable material within the next four years and to provide governments with practical ideas to strengthen the international nonproliferation regime.
The MacArthur support will fund close to 50 fellowships for young scientists and engineers to conduct research on nuclear weapons issues and the safeguarding and protection of dangerous fissile material.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has been awarded a grant of $550,000 to help reduce biological weapons dangers by promoting cooperation between scientists generating new biotechnologies and policymakers responsible for international security and public health.
The Center will use the funds to build a consortium of international experts from the scientific, public health, public safety, law enforcement, and medical communities who will develop a common international agenda for biological threat reduction.
The research and consultation will help identify gaps in the policy agenda, develop practical steps for improved biosecurity, and build bridges between leading researchers in the life sciences and those responsible for preventing new biological hazards.
The Arms Control Association received a grant of $400,000 for continued support of its flagship publication, "Arms Control Today," which provides information and analysis, and acts as a forum for debate on policies to promote arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation.
With assets of about $4.5 billion, the Foundation makes grants totaling about $180 million each year. More information about the Foundation's International Peace and Security Program and the work it supports can be found in the Focus on Issues section of the Foundation's website: http://www.macfound.org.
----
WNA News Briefing
27 July 2004
World Nuclear Association
http://www.world-nuclear.org/nb/nb04/latestnews.htm
A weekly summary of international news relevant to the nuclear energy industry. [NB04.30-1] China: The State Council has approved two projects involving the construction of four new nuclear power reactors. The two projects are the second phase of the Lingao nuclear power plant in Guangdong province and construction of the first phase of the Sanmen plant in Zhejiang province. Two 1000 MWe units will be installed at each site. China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group - which will construct and operate the two reactors at Lingao phase 2 - plans to launch the project at the end of 2005 and use advanced technology from France. Phase 2 is expected to be operational by 2011 or 2012. China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) will acquire technology for the Sanmen plant through future bidding. A decision on the second phase of the Qinshan nuclear power plant, also in Zhejiang province, has been delayed. This project would add two more 650 MWe reactors to the Chinese-designed plant. (China Daily Online, 22 July; Nuclear Market Review, 23 July, p3; see also News Briefing 04.22-1)
[NB04.30-2] Canada: Cameco Corp has been issued with a uranium mine construction licence by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for the construction of specific surface facilities at the Cigar Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. The licence is valid until 31 January 2005. Cameco applied to the CNSC for approval to construct and modify both the surface and underground facilities at the Cigar Lake project in order to bring the mine into commercial operation. In an update to that application, Cameco sought approval to construct certain surface and underground facilities at the site prior to the CNSC deciding on its application for the full construction project. The CNSC said it was satisfied that Cameco would remove the surface facilities in a timely and safe manner, should the full construction application be declined. (CNSC, 21 July; see also News Briefing 04.27-1)
[NB04.30-3] Canada: Cogema Resources Inc has been issued with a decommissioning licence by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for its Cluff Lake uranium project in northern Saskatchewan. The licence allows the company to decommission the mining facility, which consists of two underground mines, four open-pit mines, a mill, waste management systems, and associated site facilities. The granting of the licence follows five years of environmental assessment, public discussions and regulatory review. Contracts will now be issued for activities such as covering and sealing the tailings area and dismantling the mill. This will be followed by several years of monitoring to ensure the environment is being protected. Meanwhile, Cluff Lake has also achieved ISO 14001 certification, which verifies that environmental management systems used by Cogema Resources are strictly monitored and conform to rigorous international standards. (Areva, 21 July; CNSC, 20 July; see also News Briefing 04.16-4)
[NB04.30-4] US: Clan Resources has signed an agreement to acquire eight uranium properties in Oregon and Utah, all of which have had some level of past uranium (and in some cases vanadium) exploration and development expenditures. Among the uranium properties, the Aurora property in southeastern Oregon and the Velvet property in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah are the most explored and developed. In addition, Clan has been granted first refusal to acquire any or all of an additional suite of prospective uranium properties in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, South Dakota and Wyoming. (Ux Weekly, 26 July, p4)
[NB04.30-5] US: The Department of Energy (DOE) issued two Records of Decision (RODs) on 20 July for the construction and operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion facilities at its Portsmouth and Paducah gaseous diffusion plants. The RODs were issued following reviews of Final Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) released in June, which considered three alternative locations on each site. Based on these EIS, the DOE has selected the preferred location of the facilities at Portsmouth and Paducah. Groundbreaking ceremonies will take place this week at both sites. (Ux Weekly, 26 July, p5; see also News Briefing 04.20-4)
[NB04.30-6] UK: An accurate terrorist attack on one of the country's nuclear plants would be extremely difficult to conduct, according to a report by the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology (POST). The report, requested by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, aims to 'provide parliamentarians with an overview of what is publicly known about the risk of sabotage of nuclear facilities by terrorists'. It highlights the difficulty in targeting the most sensitive buildings in a nuclear facility. The report states that there is 'sufficient information in the public domain to identify possible ways terrorists might bring about a release of radioactive material from a nuclear facility ... However, this information is not sufficient to draw conclusions on the likelihood of a successful attack, or the size and nature of any release'. It notes that 'additional protection measures have been put in place to increase security and to strengthen emergency planning at and around nuclear facilities' since 11 September 2001. The report - entitled 'Assessing the Risk of Terrorist Attacks on Nuclear Facilities' - is available through the POST website. (POST, July)
[NB04.30-7] France: Electricite de France (EdF) has postponed a decision on a site for its planned demonstration 1600 MWe European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR). The delay makes it likely that the preferred EPR site or sites will not be designated until September at the earliest, pushing back the company's schedule for the project. EdF's tentative schedule calls for EPR licensing to begin after conclusion of the planned national debate on the project that would follow site selection - probably in the autumn of 2005. First concrete could be poured in 2007 and the reactor could be ready for startup in 2012. (Nucleonics Week, 22 July, p1; see also News Briefing 04.29-6)
[NB04.30-8] Hungary: The request by Paks NPP for permission to restart the Paks-2 nuclear power reactor has been conditionally granted by the Nuclear Safety Directorate of the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority (HAEA). The approval gives Paks the right to start the unit as soon as it has complied with the conditions. The 468 MWe VVER unit has been idle since an incident in April 2003, during annual refuelling and maintenance, led to the damage of 30 fuel elements. (HAEA, 26 July; Energy in East Europe, 23 July, p14; see also News Briefing 04.24-7)
[NB04.30-9] South Korea: The first phase of a three-step program toward increasing the thermal power rating of four Westinghouse 950 MWe pressurised water reactors (PWRs) at Kori and Yonggwang by about 5% has been completed by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP). If detailed engineering studies are carried out as planned, the uprates could be completed by about 2006, officials said. The uprates, which involve making alterations in set points in systems and equipment, but would require no major plant modifications, are planned for the Kori-3 and -4, and Yonggwang-1 and -2 units. (Nucleonics Week, 22 July, p5)
[NB04.30-10] US: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) may have to delay its evaluation of the Yucca Mountain licence application until an official decision is made on the radiation protection standards, NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said. He said that if the evaluation is delayed, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) plan to open the proposed repository in 2010 could be delayed by five years or more. If the ruling by the Court of Appeals that annulled the radiation protection standard holds up through appeals, then the DOE might have to wait to submit the licence application until a new standard is set. Attorneys for the NRC are reviewing the Commission's responsibilities for evaluating a licence application in light of the court ruling. Either an appeals court decision, legislative action by Congress, or a new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will need to be in place before the NRC can fully review the application. An outcome may not be reached until 2007, McGaffigan said. (SpentFUEL, 26 July, p1; see also News Briefing 04.28-10)
[NB04.30-11] UK: The government announced that a new state-owned 'company limited by guarantee' (CLG) will be established jointly by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) to hold the shares in the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Management Executive (Nirex) and oversee its business operations. The new company will serve to greater transparency and accountability in the management of radioactive waste in the UK. Nirex shares are currently owned by the UK's main producers of radioactive waste - British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL), UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and British Energy (BE). Although primarily funded by the new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Nirex will be independent of the NDA. (DEFRA, 21 July; Nirex, 21 July; see also News Briefing 03.29-15)
[NB04.30-12] Japan: A plan to urge Kansai Electric Power Co to construct an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the town of Mihama in Fukui prefecture has reportedly been approved by the town's assembly. The decision comes despite strong opposition to the idea by the prefectural government. In addition, Kansai - which operates three reactors at its Mihama plant - has already stated that it plans to locate the facility elsewhere. (Power in Asia, 22 July, p21; see also News Briefing 03.09-15)
[NB04.30-13] UK: Two equity holders in British Energy (BE) - Polygon Investments and Invesco Perpetual - are opposing the government rescue plan for the troubled nuclear utility. With a combined 11% stake in BE, the two investment groups want to buyout bondholders with a cash offer of up to 800 million UK pounds (US$1472 million) and seize back 30% of the company. Although the European Commission (EC) looks set to approve the rescue plan later this year, shareholders must still approve the plan. Polygon and Invesco are seeking to block this approval. BE chairman, Sir Adrian Montague, has threatened to delist BE if shareholders do not support the existing rescue plan. (The Guardian, 26 July, p20; Daily Telegraph, 27 July, p25; see also News Briefing 04.25-13)
[NB04.30-14] US: Eight states and New York City have launched an unprecedented civil action against five of the country's largest power utilities, demanding that they reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions because of global warming. Attorney generals from California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, as well as New York City's corporation counsel, filed a public nuisance lawsuit in the federal court in Manhattan. They contend that CO2 emissions can be reduced by increasing efficiency at coal-burning plants, switching from coal to cleaner-burning fuels, investing in energy conservation, and using clean energy sources. The companies being sued are American Electric Power Co, Southern Co, Xcel Energy, Cinergy and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). They collectively own 174 fossil fuel-burning power plants that produce 646 million tonnes of CO2 annually. The case is part of a growing movement among state authorities in the US to challenge President Bush's refusal to take action on climate change. (The Guardian, 22 July, p15; see also News Briefing 02.47-16)
-------- accidents and safety
High Accident Risk Is Seen in Atomic Waste Project
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NY TIMES
July 27, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/national/27nuke.html?th
WASHINGTON, July 26 - An Energy Department plant under construction in Hanford, Wash., that is designed to remove highly radioactive waste from leaking tanks and immobilize it in glass has a 50 percent chance of a major accident over its 28-year lifetime, according to an independent government audit.
The audit, which drew little notice when issued three years ago by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has recently gained prominence through the efforts of Robert Alvarez, an adviser to the energy secretary in the Clinton administration.
The regulatory commission, whose report cited several design problems, was the last outside agency to perform an in-depth engineering review of the project. Since then, the Energy Department has altered the design, and has also sped construction in an effort to cut decades and tens of billions of dollars off the cost of solidifying the waste, which is left over from half a century of nuclear weapons production.
In a second report, however, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional auditing agency formerly known as the General Accounting Office, criticized the department earlier this month for carrying out major construction before the design is complete, a risky technique called fast-tracking. The plant "departs from conditions appropriate for fast-track management," the G.A.O. said.
The Energy Department maintains that it has resolved the design problems and that it has no alternative to fast-tracking the project if it is to meet its promises, issued to the State of Washington and the Environmental Protection Agency in signed agreements, to empty the tanks into glass canisters by 2028.
Plans are for the factory, which the department hopes to open in 2011, to use technologies that have never been demonstrated on so broad a scale. It is to carry on a process called vitrification, in which the wastes, some of which will be radioactive for millions of years, are dissolved in an extra-strong form of glass and poured into steel canisters, which are then welded shut.
The plan is to bury the canisters eventually at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in a "glassified" form that is far more stable than the salts, sludges and liquids in 177 underground tanks now at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Many of those tanks have leaked, and some have oozed waste into the Columbia River.
But Mr. Alvarez, the former adviser to the Energy Department, said that the plant would have as much radioactive material inside as a nuclear reactor and that "the likelihood of it getting out is much greater."
Mr. Alvarez is the author of a paper on Hanford that has been accepted for publication by Science and Global Security, a peer-reviewed journal at Princeton. In an interview, he referred to the Hanford cleanup as "perhaps the most expensive, complex and risky environmental project in the United States." He said he was unable to determine what changes the Energy Department had made since the regulatory commission's report that would reduce the risk of a major accident at Hanford.
Roy J. Schepens, manager of the Office of River Protection, an Energy Department unit in Richland, Wash., that is in charge of the waste tanks and the vitrification project, said the commission's conclusions about the chances of a major accident concerned previous efforts at the site by a private company, BNFL, formerly British Nuclear Fuels Limited.
When BNFL's price estimate rose to $14 billion from $3.2 billion, the Energy Department dropped that company and hired another, Bechtel National, to build the plant as a government-owned project. The commission, which generally regulates only private facilities, then left the site.
Responding to the most recent criticism, by the Government Accountability Office, John Britton, a spokesman for Bechtel National, acknowledged construction problems, including improper testing of a stainless-steel tank that is supposed to hold liquid used in scrubbing the gas given off by heated waste.
"We had some quality-assurance issues with the vendor," Mr. Britton said, though adding that construction was going well.
Mr. Schepens, the Energy Department official, pointed out that a Congressionally created independent body, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, monitored Hanford. He also said there had been many design improvements since the regulatory commission's audit.
Among them are plans for hardware that would limit the flow of radioactive waste into the glass; water in the waste can cause steam explosions when hitting molten glass. Another change is continuous mixing of the wastes and venting the tanks where it is stored, to get rid of hydrogen, an explosive gas produced by radiation in the tanks.
Mr. Schepens said the risk of an accident at the plant would be comparable to that at a civilian reactor, though Mr. Alvarez pointed out that the department had a history of melter accidents.
The cost of the project undertaken by Bechtel National has risen to $5.7 billion, a third more than the estimate. One reason is that the Energy Department decided to make the plant bigger so it could get the vitrification done more quickly. Another is that trying to build the plant while it was still under design caused costly delays.
The accountability office said it feared that the department might end up with a plant that could not treat all the waste. In fact, the department built a vitrification plant in South Carolina in the 1990's to deal with similar wastes and is still trying to resolve operating problems there. One of the problems is hydrogen gas in the system that prepares waste for the melter.
In a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said the regulatory commission's estimate of the accident risk was "quite startling." The senator said that "it is not at all clear how and if D.O.E. has responded to the N.R.C.'s findings regarding safety issues at the waste treatment plant."
----
Chernobyl veteran dies on hunger strike in south Russia
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727042844.v8g0x6a8.html
A veteran of the world's worst nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl died in Russia's southern Krasnodar region while on hunger strike, the Interfax news agency reported.
Pyotr Budenny went on hunger strike after a six-year wait for local authorities to provide him with proper housing Chernobyl veterans are entitled to within three months of registration, chief of Russia's Chernobyl Union Vyacheslav Grishin said late Monday.
Budenny, 58, who had had both his legs amputated due to blood circulation failure, a typical Chernobyl affliction, before moving to Krasnodar in 1998, lived in a clay house with his wife.
"Pyotr began his hunger strike in early July, but a week later he was taken to an intensive care ward. After he left the hospital, he resumed the strike, but had to be taken back to intensive care several days after," Grishin said.
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the core of Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded and for 10 days the nuclear plant spewed radioactive material equivalent to more than 200 Hiroshima bombs into the air, contaminating a large part of Europe.
According to a Soviet estimate at the time, 31 people died as a result of the accident. But since 1986 an estimated 25,000 people from all over the former Soviet Union who came to clean up after the accident have lost their lives.
----
'Safe' Levels May be Raised for Dirty Bomb Attacks
Draft Guidelines Standardize Acceptable Levels of Radiation
July 27, 2004
NPR
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3623230
The Department of Homeland Security is set to issue guidelines that will likely change the way emergency workers would respond to a dirty bomb attack. NPR received a preview of the new safety standards, which significantly increase the level of radiation exposure considered safe for emergency workers and residents.
For instance, the guidelines advise that residents should only be evacuated if they are in danger of getting a radiation dose greater than 1,000 dental X-rays; that's about four times the exposure a person gets each year from natural resources.
As NPR's David Kestenbaum reports, the new guidelines suggest that a dirty bomb does not pose as great a risk as the guidelines drawn up by many emergency services have suggested.
An overview of the new draft "protective action guidelines" recommended by the Department of Homeland Security:
First Responder Exposure: Over the course of the initial event, the new guidelines say it's safe for firemen, police and EMTs to receive a total exposure of five rem. That's the equivalent of 5,000 dental X-rays, or 20 times the radiation people normally are exposed to in a year from natural sources.
Evacuation: Residents do not need to be evacuated in the days immediately following the attack unless exposure surpasses one rem, or the equivalent of 1,000 dental X-rays. In some cases, exposure as high as five rem may be allowed.
Relocation: More permanent relocation would only be ordered if over the course of first year the total additional dose to a resident would be two rem -- eight times the radiation dose people normally get in a year. For subsequent years, the allowable additional radiation dose would be 500 millirem, which is twice the average annual background radiation dose from natural sources.
-------- europe
Spanish nuclear plant to close in 2006
MADRID (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727121409.yrzfxyzi.html
Spain's nuclear plant at Zorita, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north east of Madrid will close at the end of April 2006, a spokesman for operator Union Fenosa said Tuesday.
The facility, the third-biggest Spanish electricity producer had initially appealed against in 2002 a decision by the finance ministry to close the plant on April 30, 2006, but revealed it had withdrawn the appeal without stating why.
In appealing, the firm had insisted that the plant could function safely through to 2008.
Zorita is Spain's oldest plant having opened in 1968. It generates about two percent of the country's nuclear-based electricity.
A further six "first generation" Spanish plants will remain in operation, though Spanish nuclear energy production, at just under one third of overall energy production, remains relatively small scale compared with neighbouring states such as France.
Environment groups, including Greenpeace, had repeatedly called for the the plant to be closed on safety grounds after a several reported breakdowns.
-------- india / pakistan
Signs of New Tension Emerge in India-Pakistan Peace Effort
July 27, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/international/asia/27kash.html?pagewanted=all
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 24 - Seven months after India and Pakistan began a peace effort, signs of strain are emerging.
Pakistani officials are expressing growing frustration over the failure of the two countries to engage in a detailed discussion of Kashmir, the disputed territory over which the nuclear-armed neighbors nearly fought a third war in 2002.
Indian officials, saying the process should not be rushed, accuse Pakistan of failing to dismantle militants' camps and charge that the infiltration of Pakistani-backed militants into the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir has resumed in recent weeks. American diplomats, who also called for the dismantling of training camps earlier this month, say they continue to back the peace efforts strongly. A peace agreement between India and Pakistan is considered vital to stabilizing Pakistan and Afghanistan, two major fronts in the American-led effort to curb terrorism.
The Pakistani Army's perception of India as a major military threat has largely been responsible for Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and financing of Islamic militant groups battling Indian forces in Kashmir. Advocates of a settlement to the 56-year dispute say peace would foster economic growth, curb militancy and strengthen democracy in the region.
The dispute over the majority Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, a small but staggeringly beautiful Himalayan territory that both countries claim, is one of the most stubborn in the world, rivaling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its passions, suspicions and deadlock.
When India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947, Kashmir's Hindu maharaja acceded to majority Hindu India. Majority Muslim Pakistan, maintaining that Kashmir belonged to it, has demanded that Kashmiris be allowed to vote for independence or to join India or Pakistan.
The nuclear armed rivals have fought two wars over Kashmir, with the first leaving the territory divided between them. Since 1989 Pakistan has covertly backed a separatist insurgency by Islamic militants against India, which has killed between 40,000 and 80,000 people.
[Violence in the Indian-held portion of Kashmir continued on Monday as suspected separatist rebels decapitated a 55-year-old man and his two children because they suspected them of being informers for security forces, Reuters quoted the Indian police as saying. In another incident, separatists aimed a grenade at soldiers visiting a hospital in northern Kashmir, wounding 26 civilians and two soldiers.]
Pakistani officials emphasized that they remain committed to the peace talks, but they said that the disappointment extends to President Pervez Musharraf himself. They said General Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, did not want talks on normalization in other areas to advance while Kashmir is not discussed.
"In the president's mind, it should not be seen as all the issues have been resolved except for Kashmir," said an aide, who like many officials involved in the talks spoke only on condition of anonymity. "It should be seen that there is progress."
Pakistani officials said they consider the next phase of talks "very important" but emphasized they were not setting a deadline. A series of meetings between Indian and Pakistani officials will culminate in talks between the countries' foreign ministers in New Delhi on Sept. 5 and 6.
"If they are not moving toward a Kashmir solution, then this is a waste of time," Sheik Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's information minister, said in an interview. "Time will prove whether they are serious or not. The ball is in their court."
In a recent interview in New Delhi, a senior Indian official warned that the peace efforts will fail if Pakistan makes an agreement on Kashmir a "precondition" for talks in other areas. Indian officials have said the gradual improvement of relations between the countries, in areas like trade and nuclear security, will make brokering a settlement to the stubborn dispute easier.
"You cannot be setting deadlines to a very complex and old issue," an Indian official said in a telephone interview on Sunday. "You can't start by talking about Kashmir."
Both Indian and Pakistani officials praised the achievements of the talks so far, including the restoration of air, rail and bus links between the countries. But they confirmed that the Kashmir dispute itself has been discussed neither in public meetings nor in back-channel negotiations.
-------- korea
N Korea, angry over US Congress vote, threatens to quit nuclear talks
SEOUL (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727101208.o5v5xalp.html
North Korea said Tuesday it may consider pulling out of talks aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff in an angry response to the passage of a US human rights bill critical of the Stalinist state.
The US House of Representatives last week unanimously passed the bill, called "North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004," which moves to the Senate for a later vote before becoming law.
The bill calls for concrete steps on North Korean human rights abuses including aid to human rights groups and defectors.
North Korea's foreign ministry, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, branded the bill a tissue of lies that slandered the Stalinist state by raising "non-existent" human rights issues.
Faced with such "ceaseless political provocations," the statement attributed to an unnamed ministry spokesman said North Korea could pull out of talks with the United States and boost its military firepower.
North Korea "is compelled to ponder over whether there is any need to continue dialogue with the US for the settlement of the nuclear issue at the moment," the spokesman was quoted as saying.
"The reality reinforces our conviction that it is the only way of protecting the sovereignty of the country and defending socialism which guarantees our life (is) to increase its physical deterrent force for self-defence to cope with the US evermore undisguised hostile policy toward it."
Among provisions in the bill are financial aid to rights groups and defectors and measures allowing North Koreans to apply for asylum in the United States.
North Korea and the United States are engaged in six-nation talks on the nuclear standoff that also include China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
Three rounds of talks have been held so far with another scheduled for September.
North Korea has offered to freeze its plutonium-producing nuclear weapons programme in return for aid and other concessions but Washington, which accuses Pyongyang of running a separate uranium-based scheme, is demanding an end to all the communist state's atomic ambitions.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
States, Environmentalists Challenge Power Plant Cooling Water Rule
By J.R. Pegg
July 27, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-27-10.asp
Six Northeastern states and a coalition of environmental groups filed separate law suits Monday challenging a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that regulates the intake of cooling water by existing power plants.
Both suits charge the rule is far too lenient and fails to minimize power plant fish kills as required by the Clean Water Act.
Power plants withdraw billions of gallons daily from reservoirs, rivers and lakes to cool their turbines. The practice kills large numbers of fish and other aquatic organisms that are drawn into intake pipes along with cooling water.
The regulation being challenged is known as the Phase II rule - it applies to some 540 existing power plants that withdraw more than 50 million gallons of water per day.
"The law requires EPA to issue and enforce rules that direct power plants to use the best and most effective technology to protect our nation's waterways," said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "Once again, EPA has put the demands of power plant operators ahead of what is best for our environment. These rules violate the Clean Water Act and, if left unchallenged, will do serious harm to the aquatic environment."
Spitzer was joined by attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island in a petition for review filed with the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Some nuclear power plants use two billion gallons of water a day to cool turbines. (Photo courtesy Tennessee Emergency Management Agency) The New York-based organization Riverkeeper, along with 13 other environmental groups, filed a separate suit Monday in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
Both the environmentalists and the attorneys general have asked EPA to stay the regulation, set to become effective on September 7, 2004, until their challenges have been considered in court.
The agency is reviewing the suits and did not comment on their merits.
The challenged rule is the second of three cooling water intake regulations the EPA is required to develop under the Clean Water Act and pursuant to a consent decree filed in 1995 as a result of a lawsuit brought by several environmental groups.
The Phase I rule, which was finalized in 2002, called on new facilities that draw 10 million gallons of water or more a day from natural water bodies to use cooling systems with recirculated water.
These systems, known as "closed-cycle" cooling, can reduce fish kills by some 95 percent.
But the Phase II rule, finalized on July 9, allows existing plants to withdraw billions of gallons per day through their "once through" cooling systems, rather than converting to closed-cycle cooling.
It requires plants to reduce the number of aquatic organisms drawn into the cooling system by 60 percent.
Further reductions or a mandate to use closed-cycle cooling would be too expensive for the industry, according to the EPA, which estimated the Phase II rule will cost the utilities some $400 million annually to implement.
The agency estimates the environmental benefits of the rule, including improvements to recreation and commercial fishing, are worth some $80 million annually.
The environmental groups and the attorneys general say the rule's standard fails to meet the Clean Water Act's requirement that the cooling water intake structures "... reflect the best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact." Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says the rule puts the interests of the industry above the environment. (Photo courtesy Connectictu AG's Office) In addition, they contend language in the rule could allow existing plants to avoid being subject to the regulation solely on the basis of cost.
"Effectiveness, not cost, should be the key factor in choosing water quality equipment," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. "Once again, the Bush administration is stepping backward, compromising natural resources in deference to special interests. This surrender is unacceptable and illegal."
Both suits take aim at language in the regulation that allows facilities to meet the performance standards through the use of restoration measures, including the creation of artificial wetlands or the operation of a hatchery to replace wildlife.
The Phase I rule also contained that provision, which was struck down in February by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court ruled that the EPA does not have the authority to allow power plants to opt for restoration of aquatic resources in lieu of installing technology to prevent fish kills. Critics of the rule contend utilities falsely assume the cost of using water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs is free. (Photo courtesy NRC) The Phase II rule "is unlikely to survive judicial review," said Reed Super, Riverkeeper senior attorney and lead counsel in Monday's lawsuit and the Phase I litigation.
"The Second Circuit court was very clear that the Clean Water Act requires best technology, not after-the-fact attempts at mitigation," Super said.
Federal regulation of cooling water intake has been a long time coming.
A 1972 amendment to the Clean Water Act called on the agency to create appropriate regulations - in 1977, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded EPA's first attempt at under on procedural grounds.
Environmentalists sued in 1993, filed a consent decree in 1995 and in 2001 the EPA issued the Phase I rule. Phase II was finalized in February and published in the Federal Register on July 9.
The Phase III rule, scheduled for proposal in November 2004, will be for existing electric generating plants using smaller amounts of cooling water and for other manufacturers.
-------- washington
Audit: Groundwater Cleaning Ineffective
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 28, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Groundwater.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has not made significant progress in treating contaminated groundwater at the Hanford nuclear reservation, a federal audit concluded.
The agency has estimated that 80 square miles of Hanford's groundwater were contaminated at levels exceeding state and federal drinking water standards during decades of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
The study released Tuesday by the Energy Department's inspector general reviewed the effectiveness of the agency's methods for water treatment. Those so-called pump-and-treat systems siphon contaminated water out of the ground, run it through filters and re-inject it.
Those systems have been ``largely ineffective,'' the audit concluded. The department has spent more than $85 million over the past eight years and will continue to spend about $8 million annually to operate the systems, the audit said.
More than $230 million is scheduled to be spent on the surface barriers.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Replaces Top Deputy On Ticket Kabul Put on Alert To Avert Violence
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15331-2004Jul26.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 26 -- Officially announcing his candidacy in the country's first democratic election, President Hamid Karzai dropped one of his vice presidents from his ticket, raising fears in the capital that the spurned faction leader might react violently.
NATO's international peacekeeping force in Kabul was on heightened alert and conducting additional patrols through the city after First Vice President Mohammed Fahim, who is defense minister and commands a factional militia from northern Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, was left off Karzai's slate. "This is a sensitive time in the Afghan political process," said Cmdr. Chris Henderson of Canada, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force.
Henderson and the spokesman for U.S. forces in Kabul said they had not noticed any unusual Afghan military or militia activity but would remain vigilant. The people of Kabul "have nothing to worry about," Henderson said.
Rules established for the presidential election, which is scheduled for Oct. 9, state that cabinet ministers cannot run for office unless they surrender their posts. Fahim was unwilling to give up leadership of the Defense Ministry, a source of power and patronage. He had also refused to disarm his militia, which was a key component of the Northern Alliance coalition that allied with the United States in late 2001 to drive the radical Islamic Taliban movement from power.
Many foreign diplomats, aid officials and human rights groups had said they regarded Fahim's status as a key test of Karzai's seriousness about confronting and disarming Afghanistan's warlords as he sought a popular mandate to legitimize his 2 1/2-year interim administration.
After spending weeks trying to persuade Fahim and other factional leaders to disarm and support the political process -- and accept key government positions in return -- Karzai had been widely accused of sacrificing a fair election to ensure a peaceful one. By now splitting with Fahim, Karzai might bolster his legitimacy with voters, but he also finds himself facing a potentially tough race against a viable opponent. Another key figure from the Panjshir Valley, Education Minister Yonus Qanooni, announced unexpectedly that he would run against Karzai and that he had Fahim's backing.
Fahim, an ethnic Tajik, made no public comment about the move by Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun.
As Karzai announced his candidacy Monday under intense security at the Presidential Palace, Fahim, Qanooni and Foreign Minister Abdullah -- all prominent Panjshiris -- were not among the assembled officials and advisers.
"Fahim is my brother and very close friend," Karzai said, responding in Dari to a reporter's question. "There's no disagreement." Speaking in Pashto, the other main Afghan language, Karzai said of Fahim: "I'm very sorry he's not here beside me. He's my friend, and I respect him."
In a move apparently intended to split the Panjshir Valley Tajiks, Karzai named as his running mate for the job of first vice president Ahmed Zia Massoud, the Afghan ambassador to Russia and a younger brother of the slain Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. "I thought we should have a younger generation," Karzai said of his choice.
But Qanooni said on BBC Radio's Dari-language service that he had the support of another of Massoud's brothers, Ahmed Wali Massoud. Ahmed Wali Massoud declined to be interviewed about his intentions.
For the post of second vice president, Karzai retained Karim Khalili, a member of the Hazara minority.
Karzai's break with Fahim ends an uneasy partnership that began soon after the Northern Alliance, composed of Tajiks from the Panjshir Valley and other northern ethnic groups, swept into Kabul in the wake of the fleeing Taliban in November 2001.
At a conference near Bonn the following month, Afghan factions chose Karzai as president, but while the Pashtun leader had strong U.S. backing, he had no army of his own and little authority beyond Kabul. Fahim, who assumed command of the Northern Alliance after Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, had claimed the Defense Ministry portfolio, and his militia was the dominant force in much of Afghanistan.
Karzai's first move to assert independence from Fahim came in July 2002, when the president replaced his Defense Ministry guards with U.S. Special Forces troops. When international peacekeepers took over security in Kabul, the bulk of Fahim's forces were pushed out of the city but did not disband or disarm. Karzai also removed Qanooni as head of the Interior Ministry, shifting him to the lesser post of education minister.
In recent days, Karzai has made other moves aimed at breaking the power of some of the warlords who have continued to dominate Afghan politics since the fall of the Taliban. On July 20, he removed or demoted three militia leaders from their positions of command in the Afghan army -- Gen. Attah Mohammad, who was one of the most powerful Northern Alliance commanders; Gen. Hazrat Ali, who helped U.S. forces in the search for Taliban remnants and al Qaeda forces in eastern Afghanistan; and Gen. Mohammad Khan, a former anti-Soviet resistance fighter from the south.
Another powerful regional leader whose faction was part of the Northern Alliance, Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, announced through his spokesman last week that he would run for president against Karzai.
Monday was the deadline for candidates to submit their applications, and the final list will be announced by the election commission on Thursday. About 20 Afghans had expressed an intention to run. Karzai is favored to win the election, but the large field could force him into a runoff if no candidate receives a majority of the votes.
Taliban fighters still active in the south and southeast of the country have threatened to disrupt the vote and have staged several attacks in recent months against election workers and voters carrying registration cards. But military officials said the attacks so far appeared uncoordinated and had been relatively ineffective.
--------
Afghan Leader, in a Surprise, Picks a New Running Mate
July 27, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/international/asia/27afgh.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 26 - President Hamid Karzai surprised many here on Monday by entering the October presidential race with the brother of a martyred hero as his choice for vice president, rather than his powerful defense minister.
Mr. Karzai's decision to drop the defense minister, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, showed the growing divide within the government over the persistence of armed private militias, which the president has called the greatest threat to the country's nascent democracy.
Marshal Fahim has the support of many of the powerful warlords and regional commanders in the north who have felt increasingly unhappy with efforts to disarm them and to reduce their power in the central government.
Mr. Karzai's action was hailed by diplomats as a bold move and a message to all of the warlords to disarm and work for the elections. But it also showed his political vulnerabilities.
Mr. Karzai's new vice-presidential nominee, Ahmed Zia Massoud, is a younger brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance who was killed by Al Qaeda suicide bombers on Sept. 9, 2001. Dressed in a dark suit and tie, he stood beside Mr. Karzai at a news conference at the presidential palace. He has been serving for the past few years as Afghan ambassador to Russia.
The decision came after intense negotiations and heightened tension in the capital in recent days as Marshal Fahim, the defense minister, pressed hard to retain his other position as first vice president.
Immediately after Mr. Karzai's announcement, the education minister, Yunus Qanooni, announced his candidacy for president and said he was resigning from the government. He said he had the support of Marshal Fahim; the foreign minister, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah; and Mr. Massoud's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Massoud, who represent the core of the Panjshiri group, which has until now played a dominant role in Mr. Karzai's transitional administration.
Mr. Qanooni, who last month expressed his support for Mr. Karzai for president, is likely to represent the most serious challenge to Mr. Karzai in the Oct. 9 election.
Mr. Karzai did not suggest any role for Marshal Fahim in a future government. "I wish him happiness and good, but unfortunately he is not among us in this team," Mr. Karzai said. The president was to visit Pakistan this week but on Sunday suddenly postponed the visit when the crisis over Marshal Fahim arose.
One foreign official said Mr. Karzai had several meetings on Sunday in which everyone, including foreign diplomats, United Nations officials and Afghan leaders, told him to drop Marshal Fahim.
Although Marshal Fahim has been seen as the major block to progress on disarmament, he also has been seen by his own ethnic Tajiks, and in particular the resistance fighters, or mujahedeen, as a leader who has given away much of their hard-earned dominance.
Mr. Karzai's choice of Mr. Massoud was not immediately welcomed by the ethnic Tajiks, or Panjshiris, who represent the second largest ethnic group in the country. Most appeared unhappy that he had suddenly dispensed with Marshal Fahim, whom they still see as the strongest protector of their interests.
"The past two days have been very easy, just negotiating and talking," Mr. Karzai said, making light of the intense politicking of the past 48 hours, as he postponed the state visit to Pakistan and delayed selecting his running mates until the deadline for nominations on Monday.
Mr. Karzai chose one of his current vice presidents, the Shiite leader Abdul Karim Khalili, to be his second vice-presidential running mate.
His American and Afghan bodyguards were on special alert on Monday, warning journalists not to move as the president, flanked by ministers, walked out to make his announcement on the grounds of the palace, where no small number of Afghanistan's presidents and kings have met untimely deaths in the past.
The American ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, promised Mr. Karzai that the United States would support whatever choice he made, one American official said. Mr. Khalilzad also met with Marshal Fahim over the weekend. The defense minister was attempting to negotiate for a position until the last minute, but then seemed resigned to being replaced, the official said. Fears that he would resort to violence or order tanks onto the streets did not materialize. "Fahim did not look like someone ready to go to war," the official said.
Mr. Qanooni was not happy with the way Marshal Fahim had been dropped, saying it "damages the stability of Afghanistan and the national unity of Afghanistan." Yet he made it clear at a news conference on Monday evening that he wanted to take the battle for power away from guns and war, and wage it instead through the ballot box.
"We are proud that we have brought our honored country, Afghanistan, to a level that military competitions are replaced by political competition," he said. "If we win, it will be a success, and if we don't win, it will still be a success. We believe in political pluralism. We believe in parliamentary challenges."
-------- arms
Nicaraguan army to destroy missiles
MANAGUA (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727200914.bsme0x3z.html
Nicaragua said it would like to meet US demands to destroy its 1,841 SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, depending on the compensation offered.
Army commander Javier Carrion said that 333 of the shoulder-fired missiles were bound for the scrap heap on Thursday.
"If the United States should compensate the country and the army some other way, then we could discuss the destruction of all of the missiles," he said Monday.
The United States has pressured Nicaragua to destroy the Russian-made missiles, lest they wind up in the hands of terrorists.
President Enrique Bolanos agreed to meet the US demand and ordered the destruction of 666 of the missiles this year. A first lot of 333 has already been destroyed.
-------- business
Iraq reconstruction flawed, say experts
July 27, 2004
By Hannah K. Strange
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040726-053029-5356r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 26 (UPI) -- The Bush administration does not have the structure in place to cope with the privatized postwar reconstruction industry in Iraq, experts said Monday.
Speaking at the Global Defense Contractors' Conference in Washington, Peter W. Singer, national security fellow at the Brookings Institute, said that the government still lacks the personnel and expertise to conduct proper oversight and management of military outsourcing in Iraq.
Singer, who formerly served on the Balkans task force in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, noted that outsourcing in Iraq is 15 times higher than it was in Bosnia, yet only twice as many people are doing oversight.
The comments come in the wake of a Government Accountability Office report released last week that criticized the administration for a "piecemeal approach" to planning and a lack of oversight, leading to a failure to correct poor contractor performance or control efficiency and spending.
Both the positives and negatives of the business world have been brought into the military arena, Singer explained. Although there is greater scope for efficiency, specialization and lower costs, firms are also more vulnerable to market forces and imperatives of the profit margin.
The United States could not have carried out the operation in Iraq without private sector contracting to the military, he stressed, but some of the "darkest episodes" in the war have involved contractors.
Allegations of war profiteering and over billing have plagued private contractors in Iraq, particularly Halliburton, which is being investigated by the Defense Contract Audit Agency for alleged overcharges, including $88 billion for 3.4 million meals that were never delivered. The DCAA and Halliburton disagree over whether billing should be based on base camp population or meals actually served. Such a situation might never have arisen, said the GAO report, had there been more careful government oversight.
"Some companies and some employees within them are more interested in doing well than doing good," said Singer.
"In every human organization you're always going to have these bad apples. ... The difference here is that we don't have the structure set up to deal with those bad apples, and until we do it's going to raise scandals and complications for everyone involved," he said.
The recent revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison highlighted the dangers of using private contractors to carry out military work. Contractors are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, leading to an absence of accountability in the event of inappropriate or criminal behavior.
A lack of proper vetting of employees can also lead to individuals with insufficient qualifications or undesirable backgrounds operating on the ground, said Singer, which can endanger military efforts. He cited the case of an employee of a British firm in Iraq, subsequently discovered to have been discharged from the British military for working with an Irish terrorist organization.
The spiraling demand for work in the country has lead to many workforces ballooning in size within a few months, leading to a "watering down" of talent, Singer said. "If you were just making cookies, that would be a problem." The GAO report also cited a lack of qualification among employees, even responsible for oversight, as a major problem.
Approximately 60 firms are operating in Iraq at present, with an estimated 20,000 employees. As an astounding example of the lack of government accounting, Singer pointed out that the Pentagon had asked him to provide that figure for them.
Robert Adams, CEO of New Global Initiatives, a subcontractor operating in Iraq, spoke of a lack of dedication evident in the government and the corporate sector.
The administration did not properly understand the level of commitment the operation would take, he said. "They should have been better prepared," he said.
"They didn't envision the activities of foreign terrorists and of former Ba'ath Party members. They just weren't ready for it," he said.
There has been a failure to utilize the resources of America's multi-ethnic society, he added. There are at least a quarter of a million Iraqi-Americans who have a real commitment to Iraq, he said, and can communicate with local Iraqis in a meaningful way.
New Global Initiatives has four senior management members who are Iraqi-American, he pointed out, and who can narrow the gap between the two communities.
The company provides funding and assistance to local Iraqis who have ideas for community projects such as women's centers or orphanages. Only Iraqis can bid, and have primary responsibilities for everyday operations at every step of the way.
Such a method of engagement is critical, he said, adding that the failure of contractors to employ people who have a true vested interest in or understanding of the country is "astonishing."
The corporate sector does not understand, he said, "the difference between dropping bombs in Belgrade and dropping bombs in Baghdad."
Last week a former senior security adviser in the occupation authority told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a key reason Iraqis haven't cooperated with the coalition against the insurgency has been resentment over the lack of progress in improving conditions and solving unemployment.
Although Adams felt that Iraqi expectations were sometimes unrealistic, he agreed that the "stumbling approach" to the postwar operation sent a confused message to the Iraqi people.
There are certainly many challenges to be resolved, said Singer. However the reality is that in warfare, there is an increasing gap between supply and demand, he said, and the market for defense contracting will continue to thrive.
"This industry is here to stay," he said. "We'd better deal with it that way."
----
Partial defeat in McDonnell Douglas suit
July 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040727-105740-6089r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 27 -- A U.S. federal appeals Tuesday ruled McDonnell Douglas cannot keep the Air Force from revealing its tanker maintenance overrun costs.
McDonnell Douglas, a subsidiary of Boeing, objected to the Air Force telling competitor, Lockheed Martin Aircraft Center, the details in an Air Force contract to McDonnell Douglas for maintenance and repair of the KC-10 and KDC-10 aircraft, both advanced tankers for refueling warplanes.
In what the appeals panel called a 'reverse' Freedom of Information Act case, McDonnell Douglas appealed a decision by a federal judge to allow the information to be revealed to Lockheed.
McDonnell Douglas said revealing the information would put it at a competitive disadvantage.
Using FOIA, the appeals court upheld the judge's ruling as it pertained to cost overruns, but blocked the transfer of information on costs during the exercise of contract options, and on vendor pricing.
--------
U.S. Military Picks IBM to Build Supercomputer
Device Will Model Atmosphere, Oceans
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16518-2004Jul26.html
The Defense Department has picked International Business Machines Corp. to build the U.S. military's fastest supercomputer and the fourth-fastest in the world .
The supercomputer, which IBM said will cost less than $100 million, will be used to produce short-term weather forecasts for Navy fleets at sea. The Pentagon said the supercomputer's immense power will allow military scientists to model atmosphere and ocean dynamics for the entire surface of the Earth. The computer also will be able to analyze aircraft material at a molecular level to produce wings less likely to crack and to examine the flow of water around submarine hulls to improve their design.
The machine will be able to complete 20 trillion operations per second, about three times the capacity of systems at the Naval Oceanographic Office at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where it will be housed.
One reason the military, which was legally required to tap a domestic producer, selected IBM was because it proved its machine would "fail gracefully," shifting to backup computing power seamlessly in case of a problem, said Stephen Adamec, director of the supercomputing center at Stennis Space Center.
The world's fastest computer, the Earth Simulator, can execute 35 trillion operations per second. The machine, built by Tokyo-based NEC Corp. and housed in a Japanese government laboratory, models long-term climate change. The second- and third-fastest computers are at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories.
IBM is working on a prototype of a new supercomputer called Blue Gene/L that it expects to be the fastest in the world within the next few years. Blue Gene/L will rely on thousands of standard microprocessors, unlike the custom chips that power the Earth Simulator. The use of standard microprocessors means a less expensive supercomputer.
The military's new supercomputer falls somewhere between the Earth Simulator and Blue Gene/L because its chips will be partly customized, said Debra Goldfarb, a vice president in IBM's deep computing division. The processors in the military's supercomputer cost a fraction of the highly specialized chips in the Earth Simulator, and they are produced in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds.
The Blue Gene/L project was initially conceived in 1999 to study protein folding, a mysterious process that leads to diseases such as Alzheimer's when it goes awry. But the effort eventually became a way for the company to explore expansion of the supercomputer market beyond governments and universities to businesses.
"The people who used supercomputers lived in ivory towers," said Goldfarb. "That has limited the marketplace and stunted innovation."
The military's supercomputer is made up of 368 of IBM's high-end corporate servers, the same ones used by Fortune 500 companies to generate the best drilling plans for oil fields or analyze the market for complicated financial securities. The processors are part of the family of chips that powers Apple's G5 Macintosh desktops and Nintendo's video game consoles. The supercomputer will comprise 30 to 40 3,000-pound "cabinets" the size of large vending machines.
-------- china
Taiwan shows force on beach facing Chinese mainland
TAIPEI (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727110152.6o2bpjsy.html
Taiwan's military flexed its muscle Tuesday with a fleet of attack helicopters and heavy artillery demonstrating their determination to fend off any attack on a beach facing the Chinese mainland.
Eight AH-1W attack helicopters and as many OH-58D Scout helicopters were shown on television firing missiles, rockets and guns at targets in a drill simulating a Chinese invasion on a beach in western Taiwan.
M-109 self-propelled cannons and M-110 eight-inch howitzers, as well as F-16 fighters and Seagull fastboats armed with anti-ship missiles were mobilized in the exercise, which is part of Taiwan's biggest annual manoeuvres codenamed "Han Kuang 20" (Han Glory).
Last week around 5,000 troops took part in exercises on the south coast simulating an attempt to repel a beach landing.
Two air force Mirage 2000-5 jets also landed on major freeways in an exercise to "review the air force's capability in using freeways for emergency landings and logistic support in case of war."
The exercises come amid growing tensions with China.
New Defense Minister Lee Jye said all the armed forces' various strategies needed to be "verified" through drills, which will climax when President Chen Shui-bian presides over major wargames slated for August 25 in southern Pingtung county.
Separately, Chen will Thursday visit Taiwan's two Dutch-built Sword Dragon-class submarines during a cruise off the main naval base in Tzuoying, in southern Kaohsiung county, the navy said.
Some parliamentarians criticized the high-profile visit as provocative at this juncture, but others said it was aimed to underscore the importance of the eight conventional submarines the United States has offered to sell to Taiwan.
The submarine deal is at the heart of a controversial special budget of 610 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) to buy advanced weaponry, including modified Patriot anti-missile systems and anti-submarine aircraft, over a 15-year period from 2005.
The draft budget is pending parliament's final approval.
The navy says the submarines are critical to counter China's naval buildup.
Taiwan's display of military muscle comes after the China News Service said Monday China had held a military exercise in its southeastern province of Fujian as part of stepped up preparedness for conflict with the island, which it regards as part of its territory.
More than 3,000 troops took part in the war games.
Large scale joint sea, land and air drills on Dongshan Island, 150 nautical miles west of Taiwan, are also imminent, Hong Kong's pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po daily had said.
The holding of the drills by Taiwan and China -- still technically at war despite their commencement of civil contacts in 1987 -- has sparked concerns from the United States and calls for restraint.
But ruling Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Lee Wen-chung played down concerns.
"These are all routine manoeuvres. I don't see the possibility of imminent war at this moment," Lee said.
Since pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian was re-elected in March, Beijing has stressed its long-standing vow to take Taiwan by force should the island try to declare formal independence.
The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war.
--------
China, Taiwan and U.S. Display Military Might
Exercises a Reminder of Potential for Conflict Over Island
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16425-2004Jul26.html
BEIJING, July 26 -- About 18,000 Chinese troops using their country's most advanced weapons systems last week rehearsed coordinated air, sea and ground attacks on Dongshan, an island in the South China Sea that resembles Taiwan in terrain and weather.
At about the same time, Taiwanese pilots 185 miles northeast landed advanced Mirage 2000-5 fighters on a blocked-off freeway to practice what they would do if their air bases were hit during a Chinese missile assault on the disputed territory.
Providing its own martial background music, the U.S. Navy staged a global readiness drill with seven carrier groups around the world to show that the United States could muster overwhelming force anywhere, including Taiwan, despite the war in Iraq.
Asia's season of concurrent military exercises reached a high point with the Dongshan maneuvers. The activity provided a reminder that, although Iraq is the main focus of military conflict for the moment, the standoff over Taiwan remains one of the world's most dangerous flash points.
The three governments involved, China, the United States and Taiwan, all insisted their military maneuvers were not timed to match those held by the others and should not contribute to the tension surrounding Taiwan. But their officials acknowledged that one purpose of holding such exercises was to demonstrate military resolve and ability to potential foes as well as friends.
China's eighth annual exercises around Dongshan Island, which lies just off the mainland's southern rim, concluded Friday after a week of activity. The government-run China Youth Daily said the exercises were intended to allow the military to practice joint combat operations and show Taiwan's independence advocates that China has the power to back up its threat to recover the island by force, if necessary.
In unusually detailed reporting on China's secretive military, the official newspaper said recently acquired Su-30 fighter jets, a Sovremenny-class destroyer and a Kilo-class submarine participated in the maneuvers. The drill, which coordinated different branches of the military, was designed to display the ability to seize air and sea dominance over Taiwan, the newspaper said.
A U.S. military official said the Dongshan maneuvers showed "some enhancements this summer that we haven't seen before" in coordinating air, sea and ground forces, but that they did not mark a startling departure from past exercises.
Taiwan's annual Hankuang exercises, which began Wednesday and are also scheduled to last a week, were unusual in that they opened with a landing by the two Mirage 2000-5s on Sun Yat-Sen Freeway in central Taiwan. According to reports from Taiwan, the landing was the first such use of the freeways since drills in the late 1970s.
Pilots operating the French-built aircraft practiced refueling and re-arming with air-to-air missiles, simulating what they would do if they were called on to combat a Chinese air attack if their normal landing facilities were destroyed. In addition, the maneuvers included practice operations against a mock Chinese amphibious landing and against an airborne attack by Chinese paratroops.
The Taiwanese maneuvers, although spectacular because of the freeway landings, seemed to have less real bearing on the island's defenses than a debate underway in the Legislative Yuan, or parliament, over a $16 million special budget allocated by President Chen Shui-bian's government for purchase of weapons from the United States. From among several weapons systems under consideration, PAC-3 advanced anti-missile defenses have been cited as the likely highest-priority purchase.
The Bush administration has pressed Chen's government to devote more resources to defense, in particular for the PAC-3 system to counter approximately 500 short-range ballistic missiles that China has deployed along its southern shore just across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait. A recently issued Pentagon report on the Chinese military estimated that the Beijing government was adding about 75 missiles a year to the array as part of a general modernization program.
The report said that China's defense spending has reached between $50 billion and $70 billion a year under the modernization program, ranking it behind only the United States and Russia. That estimate was considerably higher than the Chinese government's declared military budget for 2004, which reached $25 billion after an 11.6 percent increase from 2003.
The United States' global exercises, Summer Pulse '04, have touched the Taiwan issue peripherally, according to U.S. officials. The operation, taking place through mid-August, was designed to show "global surge capability," or the ability to use force in several places at once even with 140,000 U.S. troops locked into Iraq, according to Navy Capt. John Singley, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command.
Two of the seven carrier strike groups involved, the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS John C. Stennis, will conduct maneuvers in the Pacific, but not near Taiwan, Singley said.
Tao Wenzhao, deputy director of the American Studies Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Chinese officials had been informed of the dimensions of Summer Pulse and were not alarmed. The subject did not arise in official conversations during a visit to Beijing last week by Adm. Thomas Fargo, the head of the Pacific Command, Singley said.
But Fargo was told of China's growing frustration over Taiwan and what it fears is Chen's intention to push for independence during his second four-year term, which began May 20. The Bush administration's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, got a similar message when she visited here this month.
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, who heads the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, was reported recently to have told military leaders that China should take steps to recover Taiwan by the year 2020. Tao, although uncertain of the accuracy of the remarks attributed to Jiang, said that as reported they should not be seen as a military deadline but rather as an expression of a national goal over the next two decades.
"That means we realize it will take years to solve the Taiwan issue," he said.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Official Killed in Ambush
Egyptian Envoy Freed; Other Hostages Shown in Videos
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16433-2004Jul26.html
BAGHDAD, July 26 -- A senior Interior Ministry official was ambushed and killed along with two bodyguards on Monday as he left his home for work, officials said. At least five other Iraqis were killed, and several foreign workers taken hostage were shown in videotapes released Monday.
Late Monday, an Egyptian diplomat held hostage by militants over the weekend was released in good condition, Egyptian officials said, according to the Associated Press. Mohamed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, a top diplomat at the Egyptian mission, was abducted Friday as he was leaving a mosque in the capital.
"He has been released and we have received him," said Badr Din de-Souki, at the Egyptian mission in Baghdad, the AP reported.
The dead Iraqi official, Mussab Awadi, was deputy chief in the tribal affairs department of the Interior Ministry. At least six ranking Iraqi government officials have been assassinated this year, in addition to a number of local councilmen, a local head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, the dean of law school at Mosul University, an oil company official and dozens of security personnel.
Fighters opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq have declared that they consider anyone who collaborates with the United States a target, although some of the killings apparently have been motivated by individual or tribal grievances. The threat of violence has forced officials to surround themselves with security guards, who have in turn become targets.
An Iraqi woman, her child and a guard died Monday when a man driving a maroon Chevrolet Caprice detonated explosives at the entrance to a U.S. military camp in Mosul, 220 miles north of Baghdad, according to a U.S. military spokesman. The car was packed with rockets and mortars, but many of the armaments did not explode, the spokesman said.
In southern Iraq, four cleaning women were gunned down, two killed and two wounded, as they waited for a bus to take them to work at a British base in Basra, where they were employed by the U.S.-based Bechtel Corp.
"I pretended to be dead so they didn't shoot me. I was covered in the blood of my friends," a survivor, Montaha Khalil, told the Reuters news agency in Basra.
[A mortar attack early Tuesday in a residential area of Baghdad, near the compound housing the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy, killed an Iraqi civilian and wounded another, Reuters reported.]
The tally of kidnapped foreign workers also rose Monday. Two Jordanians were shown in a videotape obtained by Associated Press Television. The kidnappers threatened to kill the men, both drivers, in 72 hours unless their employer, a Jordanian construction and catering company, halted work in Iraq. In separate videotapes received by Arab television networks, two Pakistanis and an Iraqi were shown being held by men who made similar demands. The Pakistani government had said Raja Azad, 49, an engineer, and Sajad Naeem, 29, a driver, were reported missing over the weekend.
The kidnappings, aimed at undermining support for the U.S.-led military presence in Iraq, have continued after the Philippine government withdrew its contingent of 51 troops earlier than planned after a kidnapped Filipino truck driver, Angelo de la Cruz, was threatened with execution.
In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo defended her decision in an address to the Philippine Congress on Monday.
"I cannot apologize for being a protector of my people," she said. "Sacrificing Angelo de la Cruz would have been a pointless provocation. It would have put the lives of 1.5 million Filipinos in the Middle East at risk by making them a part of the war.
The U.S. government and its allies in Iraq have charged that the decision encouraged kidnappers to take more hostages.
"The Philippine government succumbed to blackmail," Labeed M. Abbawi, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, said over the weekend. "This is not good for us, or even for the Philippine government. This sets a precedent from which these elements get encouragement. Immediately after that, these groups starting issuing a lot of threat."
Seven foreign truck drivers -- three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian -- were seized last week. The kidnappers said in videotapes released Monday that they would extend the deadline for talks. The group has demanded that the Kuwaiti company employing them stop working in Iraq.
Six hostages have been killed since April, at least three of them by beheading.
--------
POLITICS
Early Steps, Maybe, Toward a Democracy in Iraq
July 27, 2004
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/international/middleeast/27conf.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 26 - Whether democracy is really coming to Iraq, or whether it is even possible here, seemed of no immediate concern to Dr. Ahmad Abu-Raghif, a physician in Baghdad. He was game anyway.
He showed up at a university hall here on Sunday with a good haircut, a blue suit and a big smile: the outfit of the office-seeker worldwide. He buttonholed 50 people, he said, at the grass-roots caucus, making the pitch for their votes.
"I explained myself to a lot of people," Dr. Abu-Raghif, 37, said before the voting began. "I have a Ph.D. I am a city council member. And I think I am a good candidate to win." Plus he had personal connections, which never hurt.
"Some of them are my patients," he confided.
His Western-style vote-corralling is part of what may become the birth of democracy in Iraq, something that never really existed here. As with much in Iraq since the American invasion, the experiment is at once inspiring and troubled, full of potential but not at all assured of success.
Caucuses like the one Dr. Abu-Raghif attended have been convening around Iraq to select roughly 1,000 delegates, who will hold a national conference in Baghdad in the next week.
The concrete goal of the conference is to vote - openly and freely - on a 100-seat transitional council that will oversee the government of Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, until national elections are held in January. But the conference is also meant to function as an opportunity for a national dialogue, in which for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis from all religions, regions and political and ethnic groups begin to discuss the way forward.
With widespread violence and fragmentation, that has turned out to be difficult, so much so that the United Nations is urging Iraq to postpone the conference at least briefly.
A thousand or more fledgling politicians make a tempting terror target, aside from the many logistical challenges - as basic as where everyone will sleep - that surround such a big event. But the major issue is that many groups considered crucial to any broad national dialogue are refusing to take part, largely because they view the process as controlled by the United States.
Wamidh Nadhmi, a newspaper editor and a leader in two nationalist parties that are refusing to attend, said exercises like the conference seemed aimed more at "public opinion in America to tell them that authority was passed to the Iraqi people.''
"This argument might help Mr. Bush in his election, but the change is very little in Iraq," he said. "We do not want to be part of this American solution."
In recent days United Nations officials have been urging the conference's organizers to postpone it to give more time to bring groups like Mr. Nadhmi's on board.
Others who have refused to attend but are considered major players include the Muslim Scholars Association, a relatively moderate group of Sunni Muslim clerics and intellectuals, and the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has a large following among poor and angry Shiites.
Jamal Benomar, the United Nations diplomat who is advising Iraq on the conference, called it "a huge challenge" that "cannot be rushed." He said more time was needed to convince reluctant groups that they should join and to publicize the event more to lend it wider legitimacy.
"It is not just to delay it for the sake of delaying it," Mr. Benomar said. "That is not acceptable. If it is to make it more successful, and to minimize the risks, I think it is worth considering. But again, this is a national conference. It is an Iraqi conference, and it's up to the Iraqis to decide."
But Iraqi officials are balking at any delay. The transitional laws that created the new government and scheduled the elections for January also specified that the national conference was to take place by the end of July. Fuad Masum, the Iraqi official who is organizing the conference, said the credibility of the law, and thus the entire process of creating a permanent government, requires that it be held on time.
"The operation is proceeding forward," Mr. Masum said.
But he did not minimize the problems. "Naturally it's not an easy procedure," he said. "It is something practically new for Iraqis."
The idea of a national conference was floated last fall by many Iraqi leaders as a way that Iraqis themselves, rather than the American occupation, could chose a new government and do so in a broad and public way.
That remained the hope of some leaders here this spring as the former United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi worked with the United States and Iraqi leaders to craft an interim government to take sovereignty at the end of June.
But the ultimate compromise settled on an appointed government, with the conference to be held afterward. That deflated any hopes for a more powerful or immediate role for the conference, even if its specific task of appointing the transitional council remains important. The council, while unable to pass laws, will be able to veto government decisions, approve the 2005 budget and question Dr. Allawi.
In many ways, though, the conference is significant as a test of support for the new government and as an early glimpse of how Iraqis are trying to move forward in this experiment toward democracy.
One favorable sign is that several major groups that refused to take part in Dr. Allawi's government are now taking part in the national conference, thus endorsing at the least the process established in May by the United States and the United Nations. The most important are the various branches of the Dawa Islamic Party, the Shiite Muslim party that is the biggest in Iraq.
Khudar Jaafar al-Kuzai, the party's leader, said it could not endorse Dr. Allawi's government because it was appointed - "something that Iraqis reject," he said. This new conference, he said, is much closer to an election and may help prepare the nation for actual elections in January.
"We are very pleased to take part in this experiment," he said. "We want to live this experiment."
After 35 years of dictatorship under Mr. Hussein, the process is unlike anything most Iraqis have ever seen. The conference has two complicated stages, which started with the selection recently of 1,000 delegates from the nation's tribes, political parties and trade and artistic unions.
More than 500 of the delegates are being selected from the various regions by local caucuses, an exercise in the chaos of democracy that has struck some here with both surprise and anger.
The biggest problem so far, organizers say, is that among the groups that want to take part, there has been an almost unmanageable number of candidates. In Kut, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, 1,248 people competed for 22 seats. In Najaf, a city considered sacred by Shiites because of its shrines, there were 920 candidates for 20 seats, prompting complaints from Mr. Sadr's group and other leaders that the process was not inclusive or democratic enough.
At the caucus in Baghdad, one of four for this city of five million people, 436 people competed for 40 seats, 10 of which were set aside for women. Women are to hold 25 percent of the seats on the council.
In some ways the Baghdad caucus, held in an auditorium at Baghdad University, was a democrat's dream: candidates stood up with a microphone and nominated themselves openly as men on stage wrote out their names in marker on whiteboards for everyone to see.
The most ambitious, like Dr. Abu-Raghif, worked the crowd, which was itself not elected but appointed by political parties, local government councils and aid groups. Voting was on pieces of paper, tucked into five wooden ballot boxes, and the counting was public.
"We have heard about the development of Europe, how they began with simple steps like this one," said Arian Said Kalaf, 59, a well-known poet and columnist in Iraq who was competing for a seat at the conference. "We want to follow the same track."
But others complained of disorganization, of secret deals, of candidates who were looking only to enrich themselves by becoming part of politics here - complaints, to be fair, that are often heard in democracies worldwide. Expectations here, though, are high.
"They have to put their country before themselves," complained Dhia Hamandi, 64, a merchant active in local affairs, who was also vying for a delegate's seat. "That's the most important thing. But 90 percent of these people put themselves first."
The challenges of the national conference, the date of which has not yet been announced, are even more daunting. The 1,000 delegates must whittle themselves down to a 100-member council. Of course, 22 of the seats are already taken by former members of the Iraqi Governing Council, which was appointed last year by American officials to help run the nation.
To be fully legitimate, Iraqis and foreign diplomats say, it must somehow squeeze in representatives of all of Iraq's 25 million people: every region; the Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, as well as Christians, Turkmen and other minorities; women; and various political parties.
It must try to do so, as the United Nations has worried, without the participation of several major Iraqi groups, some of which have ties to the violent insurgents but still address the issues most important here: violence, reconstruction, the justice system.
Perhaps most immediately, it must do so in an atmosphere of violence, in which insurgents have turned increasingly to kidnappings and assassinations of members of the new government.
"Imagine how worried I am about this big occasion," said Mr. Masum, the conference organizer.
--------
RECONSTRUCTION
U.S. Seeks to Provide More Jobs and Speed Rebuilding in Iraq
July 27, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/27reco.html
WASHINGTON, July 26 - Impatient with slow progress in the rebuilding of Iraq, the State Department is conducting a major review of the $18.4 billion program, seeking ways to provide more jobs and visible results more quickly to Iraqis, according to American diplomats and private advisers.
The aid effort, intended to transform Iraq's crumbling infrastructure as it wins the support of the Iraqi people, was adopted by Congress in the fall of 2003. While the Pentagon was initially put in charge of designing projects and doling out contracts, it has increasingly shared authority with the State Department.
But the program has moved more slowly than many officials had expected: only about one-third of the money has been designated for specific projects so far, and most of those ventures are still in planning stages.
The Pentagon's approach to the aid - focusing on huge power, water and other building projects, with billion-dollar-plus "prime contracts" given to a small number of American companies - has been criticized by development experts and some diplomats as misdirected and wasteful.
A new look at spending goals and methods has been a priority of the new American ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, who took charge of the American mission after the transfer of formal sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 28.
William B. Taylor Jr., a State Department official who previously worked in Afghanistan, is managing the review, which officials hope to complete by early August. Later this year, he is expected to take over as the Baghdad-based chief coordinator of aid, replacing David J. Nash, the retired navy admiral who has directed rebuilding so far.
State Department officials agree that Iraq's decayed and war-damaged infrastructure needs an overhaul, and they say they do not expect to fundamentally alter the aid program's aims, although they will consult with Congress on recommended changes.
But they are asking, for example, whether larger amounts should pass through Iraqi ministries with careful conditions rather than be handed to Western firms; whether labor-intensive building methods, spreading jobs and benefits, can be more strongly supported; and whether some large-scale infrastructure needs might just as well be met by international lending agencies like the World Bank, according to a senior State Department official.
"The Iraqis deservedly have a reputation for knowing their own system," the official said in an interview on Monday, noting the enormous confusion and start-up costs as Western firms moved quickly into the alien territory of Iraq during the past year. Diplomats are going out of their way to describe the review as a routine and long-planned step. But after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, some officials complained that the Pentagon pushed aside the State Department's planning for restoring the traumatized society. Aid experts criticized what they saw as the military's reflexive "big project, big contract" approach to aid. The Defense Department remains formally in charge of most contracting in Iraq, but must share increasing authority with the State Department.
"The projects have been way too large," said Rick Barton, an expert on economic reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research organization in Washington. "Building large infrastructure is not usually what you do first in a post-conflict society."
"You need to get things going in the right direction, and the process will pick up speed later on," he said of economic reconstruction. "If you try to build pyramids in the beginning, it will suck up all the money," as well as provide easy targets for sabotage, he said.
In recent days, for example, the Iraqi minister for public works noted that because of large and rising costs for security, insurance and administration, expensive water projects will end up providing only half as much potable water as projected.
Pentagon and State Department officials have described the comparatively quick and positive results of small aid projects managed by military commanders in the field, and they are looking for ways to duplicate the success. "People see their situation improve and that the coalition is paying for it," the senior State Department official said.
The infrastructure needs are huge, Mr. Barton agreed, but many problems can be better attacked "in bite-sized pieces." Instead of handing off most tasks to multinational corporations, he said, "we need to really engage the Iraqis, possibly making use of the local governing councils we've created."
"We need to make sure the Iraqis have ownership," he said, "so when something goes wrong, they'll fix it themselves instead of blaming outsiders."
--------
Reality TV hits home in Baghdad
July 27, 2004
The Christian Science Monitor
By Annia Ciezadlo
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0727/p01s04-woiq.html
BAGHDAD - The scene: a humble clay house on one of Baghdad's meanest streets. A knock at the door. When the man of the house answers, he is astonished.
"We have presents for you!" warbles Shaima Emad Zubair, a young siren with tangerine lipstick. Batting her blue-mascaraed eyes, she pokes her microphone his way. Behind her, several boys unload a washing machine, refrigerator, TV, sofa set, and more from the back of a truck as a camera crew films. "This is a big surprise," says Ahmed Hassan Kadhim, standing in the doorway with a gap-toothed grin. "What can I say?"
"We've brought you a whole set of furniture!" says Ms. Zubair. "We're trying to compensate you for what you lost!"
"Labor and Materials" is Iraq's answer to "Extreme Home Makeover" and the country's first reality TV show. In 15-minute episodes, broken windows are made whole again. Blasted walls slowly rise again. Fancy furniture and luxurious carpets appear without warning in the living rooms of poor families. Over six weeks, houses blasted by US bombs regenerate in a home-improvement show for a war-torn country.
"The main point isn't to rebuild the house, but to show the change in the psychology of the family during the rebuilding," says Ali Hanoon, the show's director. "The rebuilding has a psychological effect on the families - their memories, their lives, are in these walls."
The idea is simple: Take Iraqi families whose houses were destroyed. Rebuild their houses, filling them with new goods, all donated by viewers who respond to the message flashed at the end of the show. (Donations count as zakat, the one-fifth of yearly income all Muslims must give to charity.) The show is so popular that a host of scam artists now circulate Baghdad pretending to collect "donations" for the families on it, now national celebrities.
"I watched it from the first house that they rebuilt, which was the house of Umm Hussein," says Rasha Said Redha, a young housewife from the working-class neighborhood of Hurriya. "When they opened the house, I began to cry, I was so happy."
Staffed by a crew of jolly ex-Baathists - most of them worked for Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information - "Labor and Materials" airs every Friday on Al Sharqiya ("The Eastern One"), Iraq's first privately owned satellite channel. The scrappy station is the newest venture of London-based Iraqi media tycoon Saad Bazzaz, who owns the Arabic- language daily Azzaman and is reputed to have political ambitions.
For now, the station is supported by investors. But shows like "Labor and Materials" are expensive - each of the two houses rebuilt so far have cost about $28,000 - and the station is considering trading donations for advertising.
Today, the crew is going to the Sunni stronghold of Adhamiya, a tough neighborhood where residents still battle US troops. For protection, everybody wears white baseball caps with the Sharqiya logo emblazoned in Arabic, which they jokingly call their hijabs (head scarves). Two months ago, Mahdi Army militants pistol-whipped a Sharqiya cameraman, thinking he was a Western journalist, and stole his equipment. They gave it back when they realized he was from an Iraqi station.
"OK, everybody, put on your hijabs," says Riyadh Salman, the show's gentle bear of a producer, as the car pulls up to Kadhim's house.
Inside, an overwhelmed Kadhim watches while the crew unloads box after box into a room. "On our program, the last episode is like Christmas," says Mr. Hanoon, smiling with pride.
Kadhim's house was reduced to a smoking ruin on April 9, 2003, as coalition troops battled fedayeen loyalists in a cemetery across the street. Today, it has been recreated down to the last detail. "There were scorpions in our house, the walls were black with smoke, there was no roof," says Ahmed Abbas Kadouri, Kadhim's adult son, showing photos of charred walls. "And you see it now."
Mr. Kadouri applied to a host of aid agencies - US, European, and Iraqi - without result. Then Sharqiya chose them for its second house. (Usually, families apply via e-mail - so far, the station has received 3,000 applications from Baghdad alone).
Standing in a forest of new appliances, Kadhim recites a Koran verse about how good deeds multiply. "Those who spend their wealth in the way of God are like a grain of corn," he says emotionally. "It grows seven ears, and each ear has a hundred grains."
As the crew leaves, the family spills out on to the street for a joyous sendoff. Beside their door is a plaque: "On May 4, 2004, AL SHARQIYA TV rebuilt this house, which was destroyed by war," it reads, the station's name in large green letters.
"Just wait," jokes Kadhim. "Tonight, there will be more fighting, and the house will be ruined again. And it will say 'This is the house that was rebuilt, and then rebuilt again, by Al Sharqiya television!'"
Everybody laughs, but the joke is serious. The night before, US troops battled militants in their neighborhood, breaking one of Kadhim's brand-new windows.
On the way back to the station, the crew stops to look at a house whose roof was ripped off. As they film it, a blast rips through the air, and smoke billows from a nearby mosque. The next day, "Labor and Materials" shows footage of the blast, which killed a young boy, as well as of Kadhim's house. "I like the program, and Al-Sharqiya, because it expresses the suffering of Iraqis without making it pretty," says Mrs. Redha. "It shows the reality."
-----
Iraqi clerics laud Japan's role in reconstruction
The Japan Times
July 27, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040727a8.htm
Senior Iraqi clergymen expressed gratitude Monday for Japan's reconstruction efforts in their country and asked for further support in the fields of medicine, electricity and the media.
During a meeting with Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, members of the Inter-religious Council of Iraq, a nonsectarian organization of Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, voiced hope that Japanese firms and citizens' groups will come to Iraq to help rebuild the nation, according to a ministry official.
The religious leaders cited medical support for children, restoration of hospitals and electric power generation, and technical support for media organizations, as key fields where assistance is needed, the official remarked.
"The security situation in Iraq is gradually improving," Seyed Hassan Bahralulom, a Shiite member of the council, was quoted as saying by the official. "But we still need outside support for reconstruction."
Kawaguchi said the Self-Defense Forces deployed to the southern Iraq city of Samawah engage in humanitarian aid activities and Tokyo has pledged to provide $5 billion in aid by the end of 2007.
She thanked the religious leaders for their efforts when five Japanese nationals were briefly held hostage in Iraq in two separate occasions in April by gunmen demanding that Japan withdraw its troops from Iraq.
-------- israel / palestine
Bent on Israel's destruction
July 27, 2004
By Alon Ben-Meir
A UPI Outside View Commentary
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040727-084756-6033r.htm
New York, United States, Jul. 27 (UPI) -- Having been a witness for nearly three decades to the plight of the Arabs and Israelis and involved in one form or another in the ups and down of the conflict between them that has caused so much suffering and sacrifice, I sometimes wonder if the situation is simply hopeless.
Only a few days ago, I almost succumbed to these feelings during a discussion I had on Iranian television with three prominent Arabs: Hosni Ez el-Din, Hizbullah's media spokesperson, Bsharah Marhuz, a member of the Lebanese Parliament, and Ahmed Ramadan, the Director of al-Quds Press.
The discussion began with the violence instigated by the assassination of a senior Hizbullah operative in Beirut, Lebanon. Ez el-Din insisted that Israeli agents were behind this atrocity and that Hizbullah will not limit its revenge to the two Israeli soldiers killed the following day. I said that Ez el-Din had no more evidence than I did as to the real perpetrator or perpetrators and, in any event, the tit-for-tat violence will result in only more killings. I underscored this point by referring to the past four years of the second intifada and the destructive consequences for both sides, especially for the Palestinians.
But this argument fell on deaf ears: For Ez el-Din, Israel is the sole culprit, the sole aggressor; and the only language it understands is that of counter-violence. Israel would not have exited southern Lebanon, he stated, had it not been for Hizbullah's constant attacks that killed nearly 1,000 Israeli soldiers. Similarly, Israel will be chased out of the occupied territories only through continuing violence. Unfortunately, in making this argument, Ez el-Din seems to ignore that there are no political, territorial, religious, or cultural comparisons between southern Lebanon then and the West Bank now. When I tried to explain that this equating of the two situations had destroyed the nascent Palestinian entity emerging in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, Ez el-Din remained unmoved. To him, violence is the reason-d'etre behind the Palestinian revolution; it will end not just the Israeli occupation: it will destroy Israel itself.
For Ahmed Ramadan, the security barrier Israel is building is the source of all evil. He sees the "wall" as both a violation of international law and the source of tremendous hardship for Palestinians. And he views it as another of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's schemes to grab Arab land in the name of Israel's national security. Ramadan insisted that Israel must heed the call of the International Court of Justice and the U.N. General Assembly and tear down the barrier immediately. Although I personally feel that the barrier symbolizes both sides' failure to resolve their conflict, it has also unfortunately become a necessary evil to end the carnage inflicted by the suicide bombings.
That said, it is impossible to deny that the barrier inflicts terrible hardship on many Palestinians, which is why Israel's own Supreme Court instructed the government to reroute part of it and compensate those Palestinians who have been harmed by its existence.
But that Israel has been building the barrier to stop the suicide bombings seems never to have crossed Ramadan's mind. That Sharon himself initially objected to the wall, fearing the isolation of Israeli settlements to its east, but then was forced to yield to public pressure, did not matter to Ramadan either.
The truth is that the barrier may have aggravated the conflict, but it did not cause it. No "wall" existed in the Summer of 2000, when Israel offered the Palestinians 97 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza (under the Barak-Clinton plan at Camp David), an offer Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat flatly rejected. Rather than continuing negotiations, he then green-lighted the unprecedented violence that subsequently shattered every vestige of civility between the two peoples.
Ramadan's amnesia had led him to view the tearing down of the barrier as the sine-qua-non for any future relations between the two sides. Instead of removing the causes for the barrier, Ramadan and his like-minded followers use it as an excuse to their doing absolutely nothing to end the senseless violence while even encouraging it.
Bshara's argument against the Israeli occupation rang the same disingenuous old bells that many members of the Palestinian Authority, including Arafat, have sounded. According to these arguments, peace would require an Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza and the repatriation of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their original homes in Israel proper.
I told Bshara that I could understand the demand to end the occupation. Besides dehumanizing the occupier and the occupied, under any circumstance, Israel must end the occupation sooner than later.
But ending the occupation is not Bshara's or the Palestinian Authority's real goal. When I asked Bshara and his colleagues if there is any circumstance that will make them accept the reality of Israel, they answered that Israel must first to withdraw from the territories and then repatriate the Palestinian refugees. Specifically, they first seek to end the Israeli occupation by whatever means, preferably violent ones, and then obliterate Israel "as a Jewish state" through demographic means -- that is, via repatriation of millions of refugees. This is precisely what Arafat demanded at Camp David, and it remains the demand of most Palestinian leaders and their supporters throughout the Arab world.
Finally, I asked Bshara and the other panelists if they really expect that Israel would ever voluntarily commit political suicide by accepting, even in principle, the repatriation of the refugees? If their answer was no, then wouldn't such a requirement doom any prospect for peace? Caught up in the frenzy of their own rhetoric and in trying to outscore one other in the vehemence of their arguments, they seemed not concerned by these questions. At that moment, I realized how tragic it is that the Palestinian people must continue to pay so dearly for their misguided leaders and for the intellectuals who greatly affect public opinion.
After our hour-long discussion, I sadly concluded that the three gentlemen simply did not want to hear any truths, or see the reality on the ground. They preferred the comfort of their own delusional rhetoric and denial. I was able to find some solace, however, in recent events in Gaza, where the people are finally saying "enough is enough" and in the belief that this change in attitude will spread to the West Bank. The recent unrest and lawlessness in Gaza are the products of years of abuse by self-centered leaders who have betrayed the Palestinian people. The public's rejection of the corruption of Arafat and his cronies and the demand for change and democratic reform may eventually strike a deep chord.
As Israel proceeds with its unilateral plans to withdraw from Gaza and part of the West Bank, we can expect a long, tough, and possibly bloody struggle. It will struggle between hard-core extremists who want to preserve the status quo and those who seek to break free of the senseless violence that could rob them of their future as it has destroyed their past.
The writer is Middle East Project Director at the World Policy Institute, New York, and a professor of International Relations at New York University.
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
--------
NEWS ANALYSIS
Despite His Troubles, Arafat Endures as Leader and Symbol
July 27, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/international/middleeast/27mide.html?pagewanted=all
RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 26 - Yasir Arafat the politician has had a rough 10 days. Gunmen turned their weapons on his security forces in the Gaza Strip, his prime minister submitted his resignation, and his parliament sent him a rare rebuke. But Yasir Arafat the icon appears to have suffered only minor scratches.
The recent turmoil put on display an easy-to-miss truth about Mr. Arafat's place among the Palestinians. His policies have become fair game for criticism and even expressions of despair, yet he remains the enduring symbol of Palestinian aspirations to full nationhood. Even as violence flared in the streets of Gaza, his staunchest Palestinian critics were not making explicit calls for his ouster.
Many of the sharpest complaints about corruption and ineffectiveness in the Palestinian leadership have come not from rivals, but from within his own Fatah movement, the core of his support. Almost anywhere else, this would signal that a leader was in trouble.
In Mr. Arafat's case, it has meant something more subtle: he must endure harsh criticism, and perhaps make some political concessions. Still, many Palestinian and Israeli political experts agree, there is no serious threat to his position, at least for now.
Ahmed Qurei, his prime minister, had said he was quitting because of the chaos in Gaza and the disarray in the security agencies, and he had expressed frustration at the limited powers allotted to the prime minister under Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat and Mr. Qurei now plan to meet Tuesday. There were hints that they were patching up their dispute, and that Mr. Qurei might be willing to rescind his resignation, delivered on July 17.
Mr. Arafat said Saturday that he would support any cabinet changes sought by the prime minister. But it was not clear whether he was prepared to yield on the most important issue, his tight control over all of the Palestinian security forces.
In Gaza, militants linked to Fatah have carried out a series of kidnappings and battled members of the Palestinian security forces. The fighting embarrassed Mr. Arafat and reflected his inability to rein in the factions in Gaza, where Israel's government says it intends to pull out soldiers and settlers. Yet the militants identified the problem as the corrupt security chiefs appointed by Mr. Arafat, not Mr. Arafat himself.
The militants, from Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, say they are waging a vigilante campaign against corruption, while remaining loyal to Mr. Arafat.
"We do not like taking the law into our hands," the group said in a statement last week. But, it added, "the leadership is neglecting our plight and suffering."
Indicting "the leadership" did not include Mr. Arafat though. Instead, Al Aksa described him as "the symbol of our struggle" and called on him "to seriously and immediately go after those who are corrupt."
When Palestinian lawmakers gathered in Ramallah to address the crisis, they, too, opted for an indirect approach. They said Mr. Arafat should accept Mr. Qurei's resignation and appoint a new government with expanded powers to combat lawlessness. In effect, they turned to Mr. Arafat as the man who could fix the problem, not as the one who had helped create it.
"We have a saying in Arabic: The man sees the wolf but prefers to just follow his tracks," said Salah Tamari, the minister of youth and sports. "Arafat is the wolf, and we should have had the guts to confront him, and not just work around him."
So Mr. Arafat, 74, has remained on familiar political ground: maneuvering around the infighting Palestinian factions, an exercise at which he has been consistently successful for more than 30 years.
He often seems to thrive during times of crisis, embracing his role as a unifying figure for the Palestinians, a people of many competing groups without either a state or strong institutions.
There are Islamic militants like those in Hamas and more secular nationalists like those in Fatah. Some leaders seek a bargain with Israel on a two-state solution, while groups like Hamas reject any acceptance of a Jewish state. There are rivalries between Palestinians who stayed in the West Bank and Gaza all through the Israeli occupation and others who went into exile with Mr. Arafat for more than a quarter century.
Mr. Arafat's powers have been whittled away in the last few years, and he now presides over a crumbling and impoverished Palestinian Authority. Israel has confined him to his battered compound in Ramallah for more than two years, while the United States and some European nations have stopped sending diplomats to visit.
Though he has found it increasingly difficult to exercise day-to-day leadership, there is little doubt that his voice would still carry the day on any substantive issue affecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"From his point of view, I'm sure he feels he has survived many crises like this one," said Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator and a critic of Mr. Arafat. "He can probably outmaneuver his rivals in this crisis, but I'm skeptical that he is prepared to make any real changes."
Most Israelis are happy to see Mr. Arafat squirm, but they also believe there will be no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as long as he remains in power.
Shlomo Avineri, a political science professor at Hebrew University, sees him as skilled in exploiting a tradition that avoids direct attacks on political rulers.
"There is no tradition of legitimate criticism against the leader, and this is true throughout the Arab world," Mr. Avineri said. "You can criticize corruption, or maybe a particular policy, but not the leader himself."
-------- landmines
Buried mines and ordnance continue to maim Iraqi civilians
By Dogen Hannah
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tue, Jul. 27, 2004
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9255405.htm
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Fifteen-year-old Zana Hussein Mahmood was shepherding cattle when he found an intriguing finger-sized metal tube. Nine-year-old Arjan Mohammed Hussein was digging in the yard when he found one.
Both boys paid dearly for their discoveries.
The tubes exploded. Mahmood lost the tips of two fingers on his right hand and shrapnel peppered his face and right shoulder. Hussein lost his right hand.
Though the Iraq-Iran war ended almost 16 years ago, millions of land mines and detonators like those that injured Zana and Arjan remain implanted along the roughly 1,000-mile border between the two countries.
Unexploded mines - along with ordnance from that war and a little from the U.S.-led invasion - are taking a toll in Iraq, especially in the high mountains and broad valleys of northeastern Iraq bordering Iran.
"Worldwide, it's one of the most severely affected areas," said Sherko Rashid, who manages a program based in Iraq's Sulaimaniyah province to find and remove land mines and unexploded ordnance. It's supported by a Norwegian charity.
Much of Sulaimaniyah was a battleground during the almost nine-year war. Iraqi and Iranian forces planted land mines to defend their positions, while firing mortars and artillery to weaken those of their enemy.
Poor records make it difficult to know how many land mines were sown, let alone where they are, Rashid said. By one estimate, 10 million to 15 million are scattered around northeastern Iraq alone.
Postwar explosions of mines and ordnance killed an estimated 3,500 Iraqi civilians in Kurdistan - the northern and northeastern provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Irbil and Dohuk - between 1991 and 2002. They injured 6,000.
Mahmood, the 15-year-old shepherd, had thought he could gently pick up the detonator before his cattle disturbed it.
"As I lifted it, it exploded," he said from his bed in a Sulaimaniyah hospital. "I was told by my friend that there were mines here, but I wasn't sure to what extent."
Alone at the time he was injured, Mahmood ran for about 15 minutes to his house. His family drove him three hours to the nearest hospital in a borrowed car.
Mahmood's injuries were mild compared with victims who lose limbs, but he fears losing his fingertips will stigmatize him as an amputee.
"I'm very sad," he said.
Land mines have economic consequences, too. They deny people access to grass for grazing, land for cultivation or water for irrigation, Rashid said. Disabilities also make it difficult for victims to work.
It's been nine years since Haider Hamma Aziz, 31, stepped on a land mine as he walked to his relatives' village in northeastern Iraq. He lost both legs at mid-thigh.
Aziz, once a farmer, hasn't worked since then. He lives in his father's house in Sulaimaniyah, with his wife and 3-month-old son. He has no income.
He feels "handicapped twice," he said, because he lost his livelihood along with his legs.
Often, he spends the day at Handicap International, a Belgium-based charity that has run a clinic in Sulaimaniyah since 1991. It makes prosthetic limbs and shows amputees how to use them.
Aziz is trying out a new pair of prosthetic legs, his second since his injury. Bracing himself between parallel bars, he took a dozen or so steps before resting, standing with his artificial knees locked upright and sipping a soda.
His regimen runs from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. almost daily. He hopes to spend less time in his wheelchair and get to the bathroom by himself. He doesn't even hope to work.
"People won't offer me work because I'm disabled," Aziz said.
On a rocky hillside an hour's drive from Sulaimaniyah and within sight of the Iranian border, deminers have worked since September 2002 to clear 20 acres of mines. They've finished less than two acres, unearthing 51 mines and 11 pieces of ordnance. They hope to be finished with the 20 acres by May 2005.
The site, near an Iraqi observation post used before and during the Iran-Iraq war, had been used for animals to graze. It includes a vineyard and lies within a few hundred feet of the main road linking several mountain villages.
"There have been a lot of casualties" from mines and ordnance embedded in the hillside, said Hersh Mohammed, who leads the 13-man demining team. That makes clearing it a top priority.
Deminers, hired and trained by Norwegian Peoples' Aid, work in heavy, Kevlar vests as they inch along narrow lanes. They drop to their knees when their metal detectors squeal a warning and begin to scrape away teaspoonfuls of earth with a trowel or bayonet.
Shrapnel, tin cans and other litter set off many false alarms. Elsewhere, telltale blue-tipped wooden stakes mark where the team has detonated mines with controlled explosions. In some uncleared places, weathered mines lie half-buried, exposed by years of erosion.
The miners earn $320 per month, a middle-class salary in Kurdistan.
Still, said Rashid, the Norwegian group's local demining program manager, "it's not easy to find a person for the job."
Farman Othman, 27, now a supervisor, did it for five years.
"You serve humanity when you clear mines," he said.
-------- mideast
For an Arab model, emirates
July 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040727-094811-3038r.htm
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jul. 27 -- One of the ironies of history may be that in the quest for reforms, smaller Muslim countries may end up as models for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and others whose policies of repression impoverish and enslave their people.
Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates are two good examples for those Arab "ruling lions" who keep issuing that old tired slogan of "striking with a fist of steel" every time some opposition demands reforms. These warnings, one might add, no longer frighten nor intimidate, as we can see in every Arab country.
For some months now, obtuse Arab rulers and some of their servile press pundits have screamed that social and economic reforms cannot be imposed by Americans or Europeans. Reforms must conform to our "Arab and Muslim" traditions.
We agree that reforms cannot be imposed from outside. But where are those reforms? What are they? Why are they taking so long to come? Will they ever happen? And while we wait, are those saying that reforms can only be gradual aware of the fact that time is way past for this kind of "one step forward, two steps backward" approach.
Reforms are not an American or Western request. Just look at what is happening in Palestine. There is a full-fledged rebellion against the Palestinian National Authority, headed by Yasser Arafat.
Once feared, Arafat is watching his authority and any respect that came with it melt before his eyes. He stands accused by his Palestinian people of corruption and nepotism. Hanan Ashrawi, one of the most respected nationalistic voices in Palestine, said Sunday that Arafat "must" relinquish what she described as his "monopoly of power."
As Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have shown, nothing is forever when people rise in anger, and -- this is one hell of an angry Arab world -- collapse can come at the blink of an eye.
The summer has begun and with it the long procession by Arab rulers, rich businessmen and their families escaping to their luxurious vacation homes in Europe on the Riviera, Lebanon and elsewhere. They may consider a one-way ticket. This is not just another summer. Things political have never been hotter, more confused and as challenging. What is happening to Arafat can happen to anyone.
To those who do not wish to imitate Western models, why not copy successful Muslim models of evolution?
Could it be that the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, and perhaps even little Qatar, are the countries to look at? As we live in the region, let us examine the UAE premise.
Take Dubai, for example. And beyond it, of course, the UAE, of which Dubai is the driving engine.
Here is one of the fastest growing city-states in the world - Dubai on the Creek - with a total population of at least 1.4 million that includes a minority of UAE citizens, mixing and living peacefully with an ever growing majority population of expatriates: Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, Britons, Americans, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Palestinians - you name it.
Go to the shopping malls, the movies, the restaurants, the hotels, the beaches and see them all. Each has his or her own space.
There is no intrusion. No conflict. Stroll about, on a Thursday or a Friday, on a busy mall for a bit of wonder trip, see the extraordinary mixture of cultures, languages, nationalities and, above all, see acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness. Want to see globalization at work? Visit Dubai, and the rest of the UAE.
People running this place have shown minds at work. Planning, executing and churning out prosperity and civilization is hard work, it means taking risks, making unsure bets. But it is the basic success formula for any society. Instead of religious police, as in Saudi Arabia, running about with a stick to beat you up if your dress code does not meet their approval, there is a live-and-let-live attitude.
Bottom line - as long as you respect the fundamental Arab character of this nation, we respect you.
Some time ago I spoke to a few students at the American University of Sharjah. I was astounded by the mix of young ladies; some dressed in the local black enveloping Abaya and others in blue jeans and T-shirts. At first, it really hits you because the contrast is so sharp, but then you notice how "seamless" the university community is. The students speak a number of languages. They are very well educated.
It just hit me that any of these kids can put an American, French, English, Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, or Chinese student of their age in their pocket, as they are more sophisticated, better informed, more open to ideas, and part of a multi-ethnic society. They are truly international in a world where everything now is global, not local.
Above all, there are their values. They accept your right to be. Acceptance is a big asset to walk with through life.
As I said, it may turn out to be that the UAE and the two other countries I have mentioned may show the Muslim world the way to go. You can become international without relinquishing an inch of your identity.
Youssef M. Ibrahim , a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com
-------- nato
Peacekeepers 'stood by as Kosovo mob burnt homes' By Kim Sengupta
independent.co.uk
27 July 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=545060
Nato forces and United Nations police in Kosovo were responsible for a "catastrophic" failure to protect minority communities during the upsurge of violence earlier this year, a report claimed yesterday.
Human Rights Watch said there was a "near complete collapse" of security, allowing gangs of Albanians to drive Serbs, Roma and Ashkali (Albanian-speaking Roma) from their homes in the Yugoslav province.
The report, based on interviews with officials and victims, describes how, time after time, heavily armed soldiers of the Nato-led K-For stayed in their barracks as Serb homes were burnt and looted. Relief, when it did arrive, was often too little, too late, leading to a new status quo in which displaced communities found it impossible to return home.
In the village of Svinjare, a mob of armed Albanians marched past the main French K-For base before burning all of the 137 Serbian homes. The Nato troops stayed in their barracks watching buildings just a few hundred metres from their base go up in flames.
In nearby Vucitrn, French K-For soldiers failed to intervene while Albanian gangs set fire to 69 Ashkali homes, just 10 minutes' drive from the military base.
At Prizren, in the south-east, German K-For troops failed to protect the Serb population and the historic Orthodox churches and monasteries despite repeated and frantic calls for assistance from German UN police in the town.
The entire village of Belo Polje was burnt to the ground by the mob. This time it was Italian K-For troops who locked the gates of an adjacent base.
Even in the capital, Pristina, Serbian civilians had to barricade themselves into the upper floor of an apartment block, while Albanian gunmen shot out the windows from the streets and looted the flats below. It took K-For and the UN police more than six hours to come to their aid.
On 17 March, the report said, 33 separate riots broke out over a period of 48 hours involving more than 50,000 Albanians. Nineteen people were killed, 4,100 people were displaced from their homes, and at least 550 homes and 27 Orthodox churches were destroyed.
Among the catalysts for the violence were reports that a group of Serbs with dogs had driven three Albanian boys to their deaths in a river; the blocking of the main road from Pristina to Skopje by Serbs after the shooting of a Serb teenager; and a march by veterans of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army protesting at the arrest of former KLA leaders on war crimes charges.
Human Rights Watch concluded: "This was the biggest test for Nato and the United Nations in Kosovo since 1999, when minorities were forced from their homes as the international community looked on.
"They failed the test. In too many cases, Nato peacekeepers locked the gates to their bases and watched as Serb homes burnt."
-------- prisoners of war
Iraqi Says U.S. General Witnessed Abuse
Associated Press Writer
By TED BRIDIS,
Jul 27 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=1&u=/ap/20040727/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prisoner_abuse
WASHINGTON - The American general who headed the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib personally witnessed abuses there, an Iraqi man alleged in a federal lawsuit protesting his treatment.
In a videotaped deposition from Iraq (news - web sites) played Tuesday, Saddam "Sam" Saleh Aboud said he endured beatings at the prison. During one session, his hood was removed and he said he saw Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.
Aboud identified Karpinski from a photograph in a news magazine that his lawyer, Michael Hourigan, showed him.
"He was adamant that there was an occasion when he was being tortured, in Tier 1A, when she was present and watching and laughing as he was being tortured," Hourigan said. He said Aboud did not know Karpinski's identity until he told him.
"He knew she was a supervisor because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform," Hourigan said. "He said the other soldiers would defer to her."
Neither Karpinski nor her lawyer could be reached immediately for comment. They did not return several telephone calls and e-mail messages from The Associated Press on Tuesday.
A Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the pending litigation.
Karpinski, who was suspended by the Pentagon in May, previously has denied knowing about any abuses at the prison until photographs surfaced at the end of April. U.S. investigators have not implicated Karpinski directly in any of the abuses.
Aboud's claims were presented as supporting evidence in a federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Aboud, three other alleged victims and the family of a fifth man who died at the prison. It seeks unspecified damages.
It's at least the second such lawsuit nationwide against two military contractors, Titan Corp. of San Diego and CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Va., whose employees worked in Iraq.
Titan and CACI each denounced claims in the lawsuit that their employees participated in abuses at Abu Ghraib. A statement from CACI described the lawsuit as a "malicious and farcical recitation of false statements and intentional distortions."
In the lawsuit itself, lawyers do not mention Karpinski. They allege that Aboud and others were beaten, forced to stand naked and threatened with military dogs. Aboud also alleges that he was forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner.
-------- russia / chechnya
Suicides on the rise in Russian army: prosecutor
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727145407.ao1bhnkn.html
Suicides are on the rise in Russia's demoralized armed forces, the military prosecutor general said Tuesday, adding that over half of the military officials who took their own lives were driven to it by their commanders.
Some 109 people committed suicide in the first half of this year, Alexander Savenkov told reporters, up 38 percent from the first half of last year.
"We can safely say that 60 people were driven to suicide", he added.
Savenkov cited embezzlement as another growing problem plaguing the army.
While no figures are available for the total sum embezzled this year, the losses in the embezzlement cases which resulted in sentences this year amounted to over half a billion rubles (over 17 million dollars).
According to official figures, over 7,000 army members were sentenced this year on various charges, and the number of crimes within the armed forces is also rising, with 10,000 infractions registered for the first semester of this year.
Financing has dropped in the military and morale has been low since the collpase of the Soviet Union, with the army bogged down for most of the past 10 years in a brutal war in separatist Chechnya, and Moscow struggling to find funds to replace outdated equipment.
President Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin have launched several military reform drives, but analysts say there have been few improvements and that corruption among senior staff still runs deep.
-------- un
Sudan hits back over sanctions
BBC
27 July, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3928997.stm
Sudan has summoned senior UK and German diplomats to protest at "threats to national security" after the EU pushed for sanctions over the Darfur conflict.
Sudan's foreign minister said that UK statements about possible military intervention were "unacceptable".
The UN is set to discuss a resolution this week which would impose sanctions on the pro-government militia accused of mass killing and rape in Darfur.
More than a million people have fled their homes and up to 50,000 have died.
Aid agencies warn that thousands more could die in refugee camps from disease and starvation unless help arrives immediately.
'Hostile activities'
An emergency meeting of Sudan's cabinet was called for Tuesday to discuss Darfur and the threat of sanctions.
"We regard this... as a threat to Sudan's national security and a violation of our country's national sovereignty," said Sudan's junior Foreign Minister Najuid al-Khair Abdul Wahab.
He also accused Germany of supporting Darfur rebels.
Sudan is lobbying to block the proposed UN sanctions.
China, Pakistan and Algeria are said to oppose immediate sanctions but US diplomats say they are confident that a majority of Security Council members back its draft resolution.
The pro-government Arab militias - or Janjaweed - are accused of ethnic cleansing against the black African population.
The Sudanese government denies backing the militiamen. In early July it promised to disarm them.
'Ashamed'
African leaders are set to seek an "African solution" to Darfur at a special summit in Ghana on Thursday, called by African Union (AU) chairman President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria.
His envoy, former Nigerian leader Abdulsalami Abubakar, said he was "ashamed" to see what Africans had done to their fellow human beings, after visiting refugee camps in eastern Chad.
"I will report to the African Union chairman to lobby the African Union so that governments can speed up and increase their assistance," he said.
The AU has previously said it would deploy 300 troops to Darfur by the end of July.
A Rwandan military official said 150 Rwandan troops would leave for Darfur in early August but said their rules of engagement had still not been finalised, reports AFP news agency.
The EU ministers appealed to the Security Council "to pass a resolution with a view to taking further actions, including imposing sanctions, in case the government of Sudan does not immediately fulfil its obligations and commitments".
"There is no indication that the government of Sudan has taken real and provable steps to disarm and neutralise the armed militia, including the Janjaweed," their statement after talks in Brussels said.
'Not adequate'
The EU also agreed to send extra funds worth more than $30m to ease the humanitarian crisis.
Ministers urged the Sudanese government to admit more aid workers to provide emergency food and shelter for the people displaced in the region.
In neighbouring Chad, aid workers are continuing efforts to distribute supplies in two camps where operations were suspended for several days last week because of violence.
Relief agencies say more international help is required. France, which has an air base in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, is coming under pressure to do more.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is currently heading for Darfur, via a stop in Chad.
-------- us
Army Chief Sees No Need for Draft
Schoomaker Upbeat on Recruiting, Concedes Some Concerns
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16332-2004Jul26.html
The Army's top officer said he expects to hit recruiting targets next year and does not foresee a circumstance under which resumption of the draft might be needed to satisfy the global demands placed on the U.S. military.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, also explicitly rejected the idea of sharply boosting the Army, as some in Congress have recommended, saying at a Pentagon news conference that "we are currently growing the Army as fast as we can." Congress recently authorized a short-term addition of 30,000 troops, bringing the active-duty Army to about 512,000, and Schoomaker said the Army will consider in 2006 whether to support making the increase permanent.
He also said that the fighting in Iraq, far from hurting the Army's modernization efforts, actually has had "very positive" effects on the effort to adjust the service to the new demands of the 21st century. "We are changing and we are making great progress in this regard," Schoomaker said. "We're making some of the most significant changes in our Army that we have made since World War II."
Schoomaker's comments focused almost exclusively on the question of how Iraq and other deployments are affecting Army personnel and modernization. He said he was speaking in part because some news stories "have been inaccurate or misleading." He did not elaborate.
In recent months the Army has taken a series of unusual steps to cope with the strain of meeting its deployment needs in Iraq. The number of U.S. troops there has risen to about 141,000 in recent months to confront the insurgency, instead of declining as planned earlier.
That has prompted the Army to keep thousands of soldiers in Iraq beyond their planned tours of 12 months, to impose "stop-loss" orders requiring some soldiers to stay in the Army even after their scheduled exit dates and to plan to send to the Middle East two units that specialize in training troops at home.
More recently, the Army has recalled several thousand soldiers who left active duty but are still contractually obligated to serve if called upon. The troops, part of the Individual Ready Reserve, will fill empty positions in units scheduled for deployment overseas, including combat support roles such as mechanics, logistics and civil affairs. It was the first time since the Persian Gulf War that the Pentagon has drawn on the Individual Ready Reserve.
Schoomaker and other generals at the news conference conceded that there are some worrisome signs, including that the number of recruits in the delayed entry program -- those waiting to ship out -- has shrunk to its lowest level in three years. "We will be working very hard over the fall to increase that," Schoomaker said.
He also noted that while the active-duty Army and Army Reserve are meeting their recruiting goals, the Army National Guard currently is at only 88 percent of its target. He said he is "cautiously optimistic that we will make our goal."
Some state officials recently have expressed concern that deployments of Guard units to Iraq are making them less able to respond to fires, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the head of the National Guard Bureau, who was also at the news conference, conceded that four states -- Idaho, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire -- have half their Army Guard contingents deployed. But he said that any situation can be handled by using those states' Air Guard troops or nearby states' Army Guard troops. So, Blum concluded, "they are well prepared to handle forest fires or acts of Mother Nature or acts of a terrorist."
Discussing Iraq, Schoomaker said the sustained combat there has been a "forcing function" for change. "This war . . . provides momentum and focus and resources to transform," he said.
Under Schoomaker, the Army has accelerated a reorganization aimed at making troops more easily deployable, better able to fight once they get to a war zone and better able to withstand the strain of long missions, such as Iraq, which Army officers expect will be the rule for decades to come.
The continuing combat in Iraq has focused the Army on what it needs to do, and made it easier to remove some barriers to change, Schoomaker indicated. "It is a tough management challenge, but it's a unique strategic opportunity for us to take advantage of, and that's what we're doing."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Amtrak Announces Precautions
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16878-2004Jul26.html
As a security precaution, nearly all Amtrak passengers who want to ride the rails between Washington and Boston during the Republican National Convention -- Aug. 28 through Sept. 2 -- will have to make reservations in advance, the railroad announced yesterday.
Amtrak also warned of delays during the convention because of tighter security on all trains to and from New York's Pennsylvania Station, which is partly under the convention site, Madison Square Garden. Street access to that station will be limited to two entrances.
Trains will be searched before they leave in the morning, and police will conduct inspections while trains are en route. Bomb-sniffing dogs will be aboard trains and at Penn Station, Amtrak said.
The only exception to the all-reservation rule will be weekend round trips on commuter trains between New York and Philadelphia and between New York and Harrisburg, Pa.
Security officials at the Democratic National Convention underway in Boston have closed the North Station rail terminal, which shares a building with the convention site. Rail commuters are bused in from a nearby city.
--------
At Ports, Cargo Backlog Raises Security Questions
July 27, 2004
By JOHN M. BRODER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/national/27port.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LOS ANGELES, July 26 - Severe cargo congestion and labor shortages at American seaports are creating long delays in delivering goods and potential threats to national security, dockworkers and security experts say.
The problems are particularly acute at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest, handling roughly a third of the nine million cargo containers that arrive in the United States each year.
David Arian, president of Local 13 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which works the Los Angeles waterfront, said the facilities and work crews here could not keep up with the volume of incoming freight. Mr. Arian said that as a result some new port regulations from the Department of Homeland Security were not being followed.
"The specific regulations for checking seals to ensure integrity of containers and cargo in them are presently not being enforced," Mr. Arian said in a telephone conference call on Thursday. "In terms of checking people coming into the terminals, the only people they're checking are longshoremen. We've been down there 70 years, and we're the most secure part of the work force. The truckers they don't check at all."
He said that terminal operators had begun to hire small numbers of additional workers to handle the freight backlog but that as many as 13,000 extra full- and part-time waterfront workers were needed in the Los Angeles ports alone.
Jim McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, operator of the major West Coast seaports, sharply disputed Mr. Arian's contentions about enforcement.
"I can tell you unequivocally that all P.M.A. members are in compliance with all the federal regulations," Mr. McKenna said. He said that containers were sealed before they were loaded on ships bound for the United States and that there was no opportunity for tampering with them before they arrived here. He also said that everyone entering a secure marine terminal must present identification or paperwork granting access.
"We are responsible for the ports," he said. "It's our cargoes, our customers, our workers. The flow of cargo would be disrupted beyond repair for us not to comply with security regulations."
Security and intelligence experts have identified the nation's 361 seaports and the 60,000 mostly foreign-flagged ships that sail in and out of them each year as prime targets for a potential terrorist attack. But ships and seaports have received only a small fraction of the attention given the aviation system since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they said.
Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander and a maritime security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, contends that cargo containers will one day be used as "the poor man's missile" to deliver devastating weapons to American shores.
"The question is when, not if," said Mr. Flynn, author of "America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us From Terrorism," published this month by HarperCollins.
He said American ports were ill equipped to handle the volume of freight passing through them daily, particularly compared with the sophisticated marine terminals in Singapore, Hong Kong and Rotterdam. He said overcrowding and outmoded transportation and cargo-handling systems made the American ports an easy target for theft and terrorism. "Inefficiency leads to insecurity," he said in a telephone interview.
Bush administration officials said port security was a high priority and described what they called a multilayered system intended to prevent a seaborne attack by cargo ship.
In an appearance at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach last month, Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, said port security began even before ships bound for the United States were loaded at foreign ports. He said that intelligence agencies tracked shipments and that federal law required every ship sailing for American shores to file a manifest of all cargo.
"We will now be better able to harden physical infrastructure, verify the security of individual vessels before they approach a U.S. port, and better restrict access to our port areas," Mr. Ridge said.
James F. Michie, a spokesman for the United States Customs and Border Protection, which polices land crossings and ports, said it was impossible to inspect every container entering the country. But he said American ports were moving and screening containers at a rate consistent with the current threat alert level of yellow, for elevated.
Mr. Michie said that some containers were physically inspected and that others were scanned by radiation-detection devices and other high-technology tools.
"It is a system that is under development; we think it's the best we've got now, but it's going to get better," he said. "We think we're on the right track."
The problems are worsened by the surge in traffic in containerized freight. Ever larger ships - some with more than 7,000 cargo containers each - are docking at American ports, which are poorly equipped to move the freight. The average container now sits on the dock for seven or eight days before being loaded onto a rail car or a truck chassis for transport to the interior of the country, said Blair R. Garcia, a strategic planner at the TranSystems Corporation, which analyzes and designs transportation facilities nationwide.
Mr. Garcia said port congestion and freight backlogs had national security considerations beyond the possibility of terrorists' using ships or cargo containers as weapons delivery systems.
He said the Pentagon had a new requirement that commercial shippers and ports be able to load and move the equipment for five Army divisions in 75 days, with a goal of reducing that to 30 days. By contrast, in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the military moved six divisions in 180 days.
"You can imagine what kind of stress that puts on our commercial assets and infrastructure as we're also trying to move commercial goods," Mr. Garcia said.
-------- human rights
Human Rights Watch slams Pentagon tribunals for status reviews
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jul 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040727171547.t5dzkjbf.html
Human Rights Watch charged Tuesday that new Defense Department tribunals to review combatant status will not give detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a fair chance to challenge their detention.
The tribunals, which could begin this week, "are seriously flawed," the rights group said in a statement.
"They are not set up to be impartial, they will place severe limits on detainees' ability to make their claims, and they are predicated on the Pentagon's erroneous belief that all enemy combatants at Guantanamo can still be held under the laws of war," it added.
The status review tribunals, consisting of three military officers, will review the available facts about each detainee to determine whether he is being lawfully held as an enemy combatant.
Detainees can testify and present witnesses or affidavits on their own behalf, and they can avail themselves of assistance from a "personal representative," a military officer who is not a lawyer and is not bound by any rules of confidentiality.
They will not have access to classified information in their files, but their representative is supposed to give them an unclassified explanation of the case against them.
The Pentagon created the process after Supreme Court rulings late last month raised questions about whether the prisoners have been accorded due process and affirmed their right to challenge their detention in US courts.
"Human Rights Watch questions whether the status review tribunals can be genuinely neutral and impartial. The military order creating these tribunals explicitly designates the detainees as enemy combatants, consistent with the position that senior US military and administration officials have maintained for over two and a half years," the group said.
"To find that a detainee is not an enemy combatant, military officers on the panel will have to accept the claims put forward by a detainee over the stated position of their superiors."
-------- immigration / refugees
Less to Memorize, More to Learn;
U.S. Is Rewriting Citizenship Test
July 27, 2004
By JASON PESICK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/national/27citizen.html
WASHINGTON, July 26 - In an effort to improve the quality and fairness of the citizenship test taken every year by hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the government is overhauling the naturalization exam.
Like the current exam, the replacement will test applicants in two areas: proficiency in English and knowledge of United States history and government. A major intent is to make sure the exams are administered uniformly. The new test will also try to ensure that prospective citizens understand basic concepts of American democracy and are not merely reciting facts by rote.
"We're looking to standardize the process," said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Currently, the difficulty of the history and government test depends on which 10 questions the proctor chooses from an exam book. To pass, an applicant has to get six right. Sample questions on the current exam include: What are the colors of our flag? Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death"? and Who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court?
A review of the citizenship exam began in September 2001. The immigration agency is working on a study guide for the history and government part. When that is done, there will be a 60-day period for public comment. Then the agency will revise the exam and test its effectiveness. It plans to begin using the new exam in 2006.
Gerri Ratliff, the director of the test design project, said those involved in devising the test included civics experts, educators and groups that aid immigrants, as well as the National Academy of Sciences.
The current exam requires applicants to demonstrate proficiency in English by reading a single sentence out loud and then writing a sentence dictated by the test giver.
On the new test, applicants will have to talk about what two photographs show and write a description of another. They will also read a paragraph and answer four or five multiple-choice questions about it.
In the government section of the new test, a question might ask an applicant to select from a short list a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
-------- police
Islamic Charity Says F.B.I. Falsified Evidence Against It
July 27, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/27muslim.html
WASHINGTON, July 26 - A shuttered Islamic charity in Dallas, accused of being a financial front for Middle East terrorists, charged Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation falsified evidence and "fabricated a case" against it in an effort to show that it financed Palestinian suicide-bombers.
The charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, brought a formal complaint with the Justice Department inspector general and requested an investigation, saying that the F.B.I. used as the crux of its case a "distorted" and erroneous translation of sensitive Israeli intelligence material. The Holy Land group said it hired an independent translating service in Oregon, which cited 67 discrepancies or errors in translation in a four-page F.B.I. document used in the case.
The F.B.I. and the inspector general's office said they had not yet seen the request for an investigation and could not comment on the specifics of the accusations. But an F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that "our investigation was based on the facts that were developed, and I'm not aware of any concerns expressed with regard to the translations used in the case."
The inspector general recently completed a separate investigation into a former F.B.I. translator's accusations that the bureau failed to address widespread problems in its ability to translate terrorist-related intelligence. That report remains classified, though officials are seeking to release a declassified version.
The Holy Land group was the biggest Islamic charity in the United States before the Bush administration froze its assets after the Sept. 11 attacks, accusing it of using charitable contributions to help finance terrorist activities by Hamas, a Palestinian group that was designated a terrorist organization in 1997.
For Holy Land, a group described by Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2002 as "the North American front for Hamas," the request for a Justice Department investigation represents a last-gasp effort to defend its tattered name and remain in business in the face of a continuing criminal investigation.
"We're one thousand percent confident of our innocence, and we're going to fight as long as we can to get the truth out," Shukri Abu Baker, the foundation's former chief executive, said in an interview on Monday. "It's open season on American Muslims in this country, and that's what really scares me in all this."
At the center of the foundation's accusations is a 54-page memorandum prepared by the F.B.I. in November 2001 that lays out the case against the group. It traces the F.B.I.'s suspicions about the group to a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia of foundation leaders - in which the F.B.I. said that participants were heard to refer to financial support for "Samah," or Hamas spelled backwards. The memorandum said that "evidence strongly suggests that the HLFRD has provided crucial financial support for families of Hamas suicide bombers, as well as the Palestinians who adhere to the Hamas movement."
But in its complaint, the foundation says that the F.B.I. memorandum was "in almost every instance materially misleading" and that the officials who prepared it - including one whom a special intelligence court had cited for giving it misleading information - made misrepresentations that "were either intentional or in reckless disregard of the truth."
In particular, the group cites statements in an F.B.I. document from a Holy Land manager in the West Bank, who reportedly acknowledged that the foundation gave some of its money to Hamas. Holy Land said in its complaint that the manager's original statement, taken down in Hebrew by Israeli officials, did not include such an admission and that "it only appeared in what appears to be a falsified, anonymous translation of that statement that the F.B.I. used to support its case."
The complaint also cites what it described as other important omissions in the F.B.I. document. In one instance, the F.B.I. memorandum pointed to Holy Land's financial support for a Hamas-affiliated hospital in Palestine, Al Razi Hospital, but it did not mention that the United States Agency for International Development had also helped the same hospital.
A federal judge in 2002 refused to reverse the Bush administration order freezing Holy Land's assets, and an appellate court last year upheld that decision, finding that there was "ample evidence" that the group had financial ties to Hamas.
But John Boyd, a lawyer for the foundation, maintained in an interview that the courts relied on secret evidence, including the challenged F.B.I. memorandum, and that Holy Land was never allowed to present a full defense.
"The government's case rests on highly questionable evidence, and my hope is that someone in a position of authority is finally going to take a look at what happened here," Mr. Boyd said.
For his part, Mr. Baker, Holy Land's former chief executive, said he remained worried that he and others affiliated with the foundation might be arrested at almost any time. "We live in constant fear and anxiety," he said.
While the Justice Department has not charged anyone at the foundation with the direct financing of Hamas, it earned a conviction this month against Ghassan Elashi, the foundation's former chairman, and his four brothers for illegally selling high-technology goods to Syria and Libya.
--------
As Cities Struggle, Police Get By With Less
July 27, 2004
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/national/27police.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CLEVELAND - Many cities with budget shortfalls are cutting their police forces and closing innovative law enforcement units that helped reduce crime in the 1990's, police chiefs and city officials say.
Nowhere is this more true than here in the Midwest. This year, Cleveland has laid off 250 police officers, 15 percent of its total force. Pittsburgh has lost one-quarter of its police officers over the last three years, and Saginaw, Mich., has lost almost a third in that time.
Elsewhere, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has let go 1,200 deputies in the last two years, leading it to close several jails and release a number of inmates early. In Houston, the police chief laid off 190 jail guards in July and assigned their duties to existing police officers.
In Cleveland, detectives have been assigned to patrol duties, specialized units like the gang and auto theft squads have been eliminated, and ministations spread around poor neighborhoods have been closed and the community police officers who worked at them have returned to patrol cars.
"It's been very painful and emotional," said Ed Lohn, Cleveland's police chief, whose father was also a policeman here. "We've had to cut some successful programs and go back to an older style of policing, doing patrols and answering calls for service."
Chief Lohn said it was too early to tell whether crime had risen, noting that crime rates often fluctuated for a complex set of reasons, including economic conditions. But the number of arrests is down sharply, with fewer officers on the job.
Merchants and residents in poorer neighborhoods say they see more young people loitering on the street and more drug deals, signs that may presage an increase in crime.
The cities cutting their police forces are struggling with financial problems that have persisted even as some states are beginning to report an increase in tax revenue after a few very lean years. The financial strain has been compounded by a decline in supplemental money from the federal government and the states.
Cleveland has long suffered from a declining industrial and population base and the resulting falloff in tax revenue. When Jane Campbell took office as mayor in 2002, she said she was surprised to find a budget deficit instead of a surplus. That year, Mayor Campbell raised fines and fees. But it was not enough. Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, lost about $20 million in payroll tax revenue from 2000 to 2003.
This year, facing a budget gap of $60 million, Cleveland turned to reductions in essential services.
Because the police force represents almost 30 percent of Cleveland's budget, Mayor Campbell said, big cuts finally had to be made in law enforcement.
Further, she said, the state trimmed its aid for Cleveland's police force by $4 million this year.
The federal cutbacks are even more notable. Since 1995, Cleveland has received $34 million for new police officers, Mayor Campbell said.
But this year it will receive only $498,000 from Washington for all police programs, and President Bush's proposed budget would cut that figure in half.
The pressure on police departments has grown in some ways even as their budgets have fallen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has greatly decreased its crime-fighting work, like investigating bank robberies and drug deals, to concentrate on counterterrorism operations.
And many of the nation's 17,000 police forces have been ordered by the federal government to deploy more officers to combat terrorism, in tasks like guarding airports and water works. Cleveland spent $9 million on federally mandated counterterrorism operations last year, with little reimbursement from the federal government, Mayor Campbell said.
Donald Pussehl Jr., the police chief in Saginaw, summed up what many police officials are saying about the cuts and redeployments. "We are going backwards, and that's really unfortunate," Chief Pussehl said.
"We are having to discontinue many of the proactive strategies like community policing, which we developed in the 90's, and just go back to basics like sitting in patrol cars waiting for calls for service after a crime has been committed," he said.
Some police officials worry that the situation will worsen, if Mr. Bush succeeds in making further reductions in federal aid to the police, as proposed, in favor of contributions for domestic security.
"I think the cuts proposed by the White House for federal aid to police could be devastating to us," said Joe Polisar, the police chief in Garden Grove, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles in Orange County, who is also the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "This is funding that helped us lower the crime rate and money we have come to rely on, and now the White House is proposing to cut it on top of our municipal budget cuts," Chief Polisar said.
There are three main federal aid programs to local police departments, all administered by the Justice Department. They are the Community Oriented Policing Services Program, known as COPS; the Local Law Enforcement Block Grants Program; and the Byrne Memorial Grant Program.
The community policing program, which was begun by President Bill Clinton, added 118,000 officers across the country. Mr. Bush has proposed $97 million for the program in the next fiscal year, down 80 percent from $481 million this year.
The president has proposed reducing money for the other two programs to $508 million from $884 million this year.
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said much of the money would flow instead to the Department of Homeland Security. "In the post-9/11 world, where terrorism is one of our most critical concerns, resources that were formerly provided through the Department of Justice will now be provided through the Department of Homeland Security," Mr. Kolton said.
But Chief Polisar said the programs being set up in the Department of Homeland Security would be less helpful to the police. "They are robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said.
Officer Jose Cora of the Cleveland police said the reduction in services would probably persist until local economic conditions improved significantly.
Officer Cora was reassigned this year to drive a patrol car instead of working in a ministation on community policing. "I got to know people real well in the ministation, knew all the kids by their first names, and when something happened, they'd come by and tell us," he said.
"We'd work on small things, to stop the big things from happening, like finding lawn mowers stolen from someone's garage," Officer Cora said. "We wouldn't make an arrest, just tell the person who stole it to do some community service, and that would probably prevent some larger crime later."
The owner of One Stop Foods, a convenience store on Cleveland's southeast side, said there had been a noticeable increase in crimes since the police layoffs began in January.
"You got more drug dealing on the street and more kids stealing stuff from the store," said the owner, who gave his name only as Junior.
Gil Kerlikowske, the Seattle police chief, said police executives across the country were apprehensive.
"Just a couple of years ago we were sitting back and saying how good a job we had done, reaching out to the communities and reducing crime to record lows," Chief Kerlikowske said. "Now the money is drying up, and there is an uptick in crime, and I'm worried that a lot of our good work is going to disappear."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Penal system population hits new high at 6.9 million adults
July 27, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040726-103059-270r.htm
The nation's federal, state and local correctional system population reached a record of nearly 6.9 million adult men and women last year, an increase of about 131,000 over 2002, the Justice Department said yesterday.
About 3.2 percent of the nation's adult population, or 1 in every 32 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole in the past year, according to the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
The correctional system population included 2.07 million adults in federal, state and local prisons and jails, as well as 4.07 million on probation, supervision after a conviction, and 775,588 on parole, conditional supervised release after a prison term.
The nation's parole population grew by 23,654 men and women in 2003, or 3.1 percent, almost double the average annual growth of 1.7 percent since 1995.
The BJS said 25 percent of those incarcerated had been convicted of a drug offense, 17 percent for driving while intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol, 12 percent for larceny or theft, 9 percent for other assault, 7 percent for domestic violence, 6 percent for minor traffic infractions, 5 percent for burglary, 4 percent for fraud and 3 percent for sexual assault.
At the end of last year, the number of adults on probation or parole reached a record high of more than 4.8 million, 70 percent of all persons under federal, state or local correctional supervision, the report said. More than 1 million of the nation's probationers and parolees were in Texas (534,260) and California (485,039) alone.
Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska and New Hampshire had an increase of 10 percent or more in their probation populations in the past year. The adult probation population decreased in 19 states, led by Minnesota, with a 10 percent decline.
Of the almost 2.2 million probationers discharged from supervision during 2003, the report said about 3 in 5 successfully met the conditions of their supervision. About 16 percent were incarcerated because of a rule violation or a new offense; 4 percent had absconded, or fled; and 13 percent had their probation sentence revoked without incarceration.
The report said 17 states had double-digit increases in their parole populations in the past year. Five states had increases of 20 percent or higher: North Dakota, Alabama, Kentucky, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Twelve states had decreases, led by Hawaii, down 11 percent.
The report said that about 470,500 parolees were discharged from supervision during 2003. Forty-seven percent had successfully met the conditions of their supervision, 38 percent were returned to incarceration with a new sentence or because of a rule violation, and about 9 percent had fled. One percent failed to successfully meet the conditions of supervision, but were discharged without incarceration.
--------
THE PRISONER
Hussein's Day, Not Forgetting Cookie Snacks
July 27, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/international/europe/27sadd.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein is passing his time in solitary confinement by reading the Koran, writing poetry, gardening and snacking on American-style cookies and muffins, The Guardian reported Monday.
The Iraqi human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, was quoted as saying in an interview that Mr. Hussein's health was "generally good" but that he was being treated for high blood pressure and had a chronic prostate infection.
Mr. Amin spoke to the newspaper after he had visited Mr. Hussein in prison on Saturday. The location of the prison has been kept secret.
"One of the poems is about George Bush, but I had no time to read it," said Mr. Amin, a Kurd originally from Kirkuk, who had spent much of his life in exile in Europe and the United States. "He is looking after a few bushes and shrubs and has even placed a circle of white stones around a small plum tree."
Mr. Hussein is being held in a white-walled air-conditioned cell, a little more than 9 feet wide and 13 feet long, Mr Amin said. He is kept apart from the other prisoners, who can mix freely during the daily three-hour exercise periods.
Like the other high-value detainees, Mr. Hussein's day begins with a substantial breakfast, an MRE (meal ready to eat), which provides 1,300 calories. He also gets hot food twice a day, which could consist of rice or potatos and broccoli, along with either fish, beef or chicken. For dessert, there might be oranges, apples, pears or plums, but Mr. Amin said that Mr. Hussein had developed a penchant for American snacks like muffins and cookies.
There is regular access to showers and a barber, and a personal grooming kit that includes soaps, toothpaste, comb, shampoo and deodorant, and plastic sandals.
For relaxation, the minister said, there are no newspapers, television or radio, but there are 145 books - mainly novels and travel books - donated by the Red Cross, which visits the detainees every six weeks. "
-------- terrorism
Olympic Security Web,
Defense Missiles in Place
Jul 27, 2004
My Way
By Karolos Grohmann
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/417543|top|07-27-2004::06:47|reuters.html
ATHENS (Reuters) - Athens' Olympic security umbrella, including dozens of armed Patriot defense missiles and hundreds of surveillance cameras, started operating Tuesday, as organizers prepare to safeguard next month's Games.
Almost 300 closed-circuit cameras were sweeping main avenues and squares while three police helicopters and a Zeppelin airship, equipped with more surveillance cameras, hovered above the capital.
Dozens of new Pac 3 (Patriot Advanced Capability) missiles were armed and in position at three locations around the capital, including the Tatoi military base near the athletes' Olympic Village, to provide a defense umbrella over Athens during the Games.
"This is the start of the operations. The system will gradually be operated in full," a police source told Reuters. "The helicopters and the Zeppelin will be flying almost around the clock from now until the end of the Games."
Army officials at the base said the Patriot defense missiles were locked into their launchers and ready to use against a potential threat from the air from now until the end of the Games on August 29.
"This particular squadron, along with other missile guided squadrons, is part of an anti-missile umbrella formed in the Athens region for the protection of the Olympic Games," squadron leader Lieutenant-Colonel Agamemnon Koliakos told Reuters Television.
Security forces Tuesday also received 11 state-of-the-art surveillance vans, which will receive and monitor images from around the city. The coast guard will position six of them around the port of Piraeus, where seven luxury cruise ships to be used as hotels will berth during the Games.
Greece is putting in place the most expensive Olympic security plan ever, worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.22 billion).
By the August 13 opening ceremony, authorities will be deploying more than 70,000 security staff as well as thousands of cameras to secure the first summer Games since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
NO THREATS
Greece has set up a seven-nation security advisory group, including France, Germany, Israel, Spain, the United States, Britain and Australia to provide intelligence and training, and has called on NATO for air and sea patrols.
But the government has assured there was no indication, or intelligence "chatter," of a potential attack in Greece during the Games, a statement backed by the international police organization Interpol.
"I am not aware of anything like this," government spokesman Thodoris Rousopoulos said after story in The New York Times suggested Greece was concerned Muslim militants in the country could prepare for a strike during the Games. ($1-.8215 Euro)
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
9/11 Report Says Plotter Saw Self as Superterrorist
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16232-2004Jul26?language=printer
To hear Khalid Sheik Mohammed tell it, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were nothing compared with what he had in mind.
The original plan, which Mohammed says he presented to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1998 or 1999, called for hijacking 10 jetliners on both coasts of the United States and crashing nine of them. The kicker would have been the final plane, which he would commandeer personally. After killing all the men on board, Mohammed would alert the media and deliver a speech excoriating the U.S. government for its support of Israel and repressive Arab regimes.
According to the new report from the Sept. 11 commission, the idea is classic KSM -- as Mohammed is referred to in U.S. intelligence reports -- mixing grim nihilism with a flair for the dramatic and always putting Mohammed at the center of things.
Mohammed's original vision of Sept. 11 provides "a glimpse of his true ambitions," the commission says. "This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star -- the superterrorist."
Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, has been in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location since March 2003, when he was captured in a safe house in Pakistan. The commission's report, which was released last week, reveals rafts of information gleaned from the classified interrogations of Mohammed for the first time and relies heavily on the interviews in its examination of how the attacks were carried out.
The report portrays Mohammed, now 39, as a flamboyant and zealous operative who was continually hatching grandiose plans for terrorist attacks, even as bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders urged him to stay focused on the Sept. 11 plot. The document also acknowledges doubts about Mohammad's credibility and reveals that he viewed himself as an independent contractor beholden to no one -- including bin Laden.
"No one exemplifies the model of the terrorist entrepreneur more clearly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the commission wrote. "Highly educated and equally comfortable in a government office or a terrorist safe house, KSM applied his imagination, technical aptitude and managerial skills to hatching and planning an extraordinary array of terrorist schemes. These ideas included conventional car bombing, political assassination, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide operatives."
Mohammed's radicalism began early, when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age 16. Like his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who would go on to orchestrate the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Mohammed grew up in Kuwait but traces his lineage to Baluchistan, an area straddling the Iran-Pakistan border. As a teenager, he became "enamored of violent jihad at youth camps in the desert," the commission report says.
His first encounter with the country he would later attack with such fury came in 1983, when he enrolled at Chowan College, a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, N.C., before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. In what could be considered his first terrorist plot, Mohammed says he considered assassinating Rabbi Meir Kahane when he lectured in Greensboro, N.C., in the mid-1980s. The commission says that the claim "may be mere bravado" and that Mohammed exhibited few outward signs of radicalism in North Carolina.
But after earning a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986, Mohammed immediately journeyed to Afghanistan to join the mujaheddin fighting the Soviet occupation there. Over the next seven years, he wandered from one position to the next, and in 1992 he fought with mujaheddin in Bosnia. He then moved his family to Qatar to work as a project engineer with that country's utility ministry.
Throughout this period, Mohammed was always close to the network of radical Islamists who had fought the Soviets, but he clearly was a minor player, according to the commission account. That would soon change.
On Feb. 26, 1993, a massive explosion ripped through the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, killing six but failing to topple the towers as the bombers had hoped. The investigation of the attack led U.S. investigators for the first time to Mohammed, who had wired $660 to one of the conspirators the year before. The probe also revealed the plot organizer as Yousef, Mohammed's nephew, who was just three years younger than his uncle.
Yousef's infamy appealed to Mohammed. "Yousef's instant notoriety as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing inspired KSM to become involved in planning attacks against the United States," the Sept. 11 panel found.
Within a year, he and Yousef, a fugitive, went to the Philippines to work on a plot that would serve as the inspiration for the Sept. 11 attacks. "Project Bojinka" called for the bombing of a dozen U.S. jetliners over the Pacific over two days. Mohammed and his nephew began assembling chemicals, timers and other materials while also finding time to consider an assassination attempt on President Bill Clinton.
Yousef was captured in 1995. His uncle, on the lam from U.S. authorities, would settle in Afghanistan and turn his attention to even bigger plans.
The first meeting between Mohammed and bin Laden came in 1996 at Tora Bora, the refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan where bin Laden would elude U.S. military forces after the Sept. 11 attacks. The two had known each other from their days as Afghan mujaheddin, but, the report says, "they did not yet enjoy an especially close working relationship." The report says Mohammed "has acknowledged that Bin Ladin likely agreed to meet with him because of the renown of his nephew, Yousef."
Mohammed presented bin Laden and one of his senior lieutenants, Muhammad Atef, with a virtual menu of terrorist plots, including the Philippines jetliner scheme, a plan to bomb U.S.-bound cargo ships and a proposal "for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States," the report says. This idea was the seed for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bin Laden made no commitments but asked Mohammed to join al Qaeda. Mohammed declined. Even after joining al Qaeda several years later, "KSM states he refused to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Bin Ladin, thereby retaining a last vestige of his cherished autonomy," the report says.
Mohammed also claims that he would have worked with any terrorist group, not just al Qaeda, and that he would have gone forward with the Sept. 11 attacks even if bin Laden had canceled them.
"KSM presents himself as an entrepreneur seeking venture capital and people," the commission report says. "He simply wanted al Qaeda to supply the money and operatives needed for the attack while retaining his independence."
Mohammed began recruiting hijackers and making other preparations for the attacks in early 1999. He collected aviation magazines; information on U.S. flight schools; telephone directories for San Diego and Long Beach, Calif.; flight simulator software; and other materials. He also bought Hollywood movies depicting hijackings -- but edited the films to cover up female characters before screening them for al Qaeda trainees.
Over the next two years, Mohammed arranged travel, financing and communications as the Sept. 11 hijacking teams, headed by Mohamed Atta, came together in the United States. Although the panel concludes that bin Laden and Atef -- who was later killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- were deeply involved in choosing hijackers and other major decisions, Mohammed was in charge of making sure the attacks happened and mediated conflicts among the hijackers.
In U.S. interrogations, Mohammed has claimed that it was he and his colleagues who pushed a reluctant bin Laden to attack the United States; the commission disagreed, saying Mohammed was "probably inflating his own role."
Mohammed also plays down the importance of Atef and other militants allied with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the report says. He claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar quit commando training after a week because it was too rigorous, but other al Qaeda detainees say he completed the course. As it happens, Mohammed did not get along with Almihdhar and would have fired him if bin Laden had not intervened.
Abu Zubaida, another senior al Qaeda official now in U.S. custody, maintains that Mohammed's original plan for Sept. 11 was more humble and that it was bin Laden who urged him to expand it. "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?" Abu Zubaida quotes bin Laden as saying. Some high-level al Qaeda detainees also portray Mohammed as an opportunist, although he was popular with the al Qaeda rank-and-file.
Throughout this period, U.S. officials had no inkling of Mohammed's importance as an al Qaeda leader and did not conclude until well after the hijackings that he was the mastermind. Mohammed is also suspected of killing kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002.
Even after the 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 and ranked as the deadliest terrorist assaults on U.S. soil, Mohammed portrayed himself as still unsatisfied. In an interview with the al-Jazeera satellite channel after Sept. 11, he claimed that an al Qaeda reconnaissance committee had identified 30 potential targets in the United States.
But, according to the commission report, "KSM has admitted that his statement . . . was a lie designed to inflate the perceived scale of the 9/11 operation."
-------- propaganda wars
Factual Back-Up For Fahrenheit 9/11: Section One
July 27, 2004
MichaelMoore.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/f911notes/
THE FOLLOWING IS THE LINE BY LINE FACTUAL BACKUP FOR 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11'
Section One covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 from the 2000 election to George W. Bush's extended visit to Booker Elementary on the morning of September 11th.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush. Before that, some other networks had called Florida for Gore, and they changed after Fox called it for Bush.
- "With information provided from the Voter News Service, NBC was the first network to project Gore the winner in Florida at 7:48 pm. At 7:50 pm ,CNN and CBS project Gore the winner in Florida as well." By 8:02 pm , all five networks and the Associated Press had called Gore the winner in Florida. Even the VNS called Gore the winner at 7:52 pm. At 2:16 am, Fox calls Florida for Bush, NBC follows at 2:16 am. ABC is the last network to call the Florida for Bush, at 2:20 am, while AP and VNS never call Florida for Bush. CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/02/cnn.report/cnn.pdf
- Ten minutes after the top of the hour, network excitement was again beginning to build. At 2:16 a.m., the call was made: Fox News Channel, with Bush's first cousin John Ellis running its election desk, was the first to project Florida -- and the presidency -- for the Texas governor. Within minutes, the other networks followed suit. "George Bush, Governor of Texas will become the 43rd President of the United States," CNN's Bernard Shaw announced atop a graphic montage of a smiling Bush. "At 18 minutes past two o'clock Eastern time, CNN declares that George Walker Bush has won Florida's 25 electoral votes and this should put him over the top."PBS: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/election2000/election_night.html
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The man who was in charge of the decision desk at FOX on election night was Bush's first cousin, John Ellis.
- "John Ellis, a first cousin of George W. Bush, ran the network's 'decision desk' during the 2000 election, and Fox was the first to name Bush the winner. Earlier, Ellis had made six phone calls to Cousin Bush during the vote-counting." William O'Rourke, "Talk Radio Key to GOP Victory," Chicago Sun-Times, December 3, 2002.
- A Fox News consultant, John Ellis, who made judgments about presidential 'calls' on Election Night admits he was in touch with George W. Bush and FL Gov. Jeb Bush by telephone several times during the night, but denies breaking any rules. CNN, November 14, 2000; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/14/politics/main249357.shtml
- John Ellis, the Fox consultant who called Florida early for George Bush, had to stop writing about the campaign for the Boston Globe because of family 'loyalty' to Bush. CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/14/politics/main249357.shtml , November 14, 2000.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote countin' woman and that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell them by the color of their skin."
- "The vote total was certified by Florida's secretary of state, Katherine Harris, head of the Bush campaign in Florida, on behalf of Gov. Jeb Bush, the candidate's brother." Mark Zoller Seitz, "Bush Team Conveyed an Air of Legitimacy," San Diego Union-Tribune, December 16, 2000.
- The Florida Department of State awarded a $4 million contract to the Boca Raton-based Database Technologies Inc. (subsidiary of ChoicePoint). They were tasked with finding improperly registered voters in the state's database, but mistakes were rampant. "At one point, the list included as felons 8,000 former Texas residents who had been convicted of misdemeanors." St. Petersburg Times (Florida), December 21, 2003.
- Database Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, "was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida. Oliver Burkeman, Jo Tuckman, "Firm in Florida Election Fiasco Earns Millions from Files on Foreigners," The Guardian, May 5, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,949709,00.html . See also, Atlanta-Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001.
- In 1997, Rick Rozar, the late head of the company bought by ChoicePoint, donated $100,000 to the Republican National Committee. Melanie Eversley, "Atlanta-Based Company Says Errors in Felon Purge Not Its Fault," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001. Frank Borman of Database Technologies Inc. has donated extensively to New Mexico Republicans, as well as to the Presidential campaign of George W. Bush. Opensecrets.org, "Frank Borman."
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Gore got the most votes in 2000.
- [A] consortium [Tribune Co., owner of the Times; Associated Press; CNN; the New York Times; the Palm Beach Post; the St. Petersburg Times; the Wall Street Journal; and the Washington Post] hired the NORC [National Opinion Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the University of Chicago] to view each untallied ballot and gather information about how it was marked. The media organizations then used computers to sort and tabulate votes, based on varying scenarios that had been raised during the post-election scramble in Florida. Under any standard that tabulated all disputed votes statewide, Mr. Gore erased Mr. Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes. Donald Lambro, "Recount Provides No Firm Answers," Washington Times, November 12, 2001.
- "The review found that the result would have been different if every canvassing board in every county had examined every undervote, a situation that no election or court authority had ordered. Gore had called for such a statewide manual recount if Bush would agree, but Bush rejected the idea and there was no mechanism in place to conduct one." Martin Merzer, "Review of Ballots Finds Bush's Win Would Have Endured Manual Recount," Miami Herald, April 4, 2001.
- See also, the following article by one of the Washington Post journalists who ran the consortium recount. The relevant point is made in Table I of the article. http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Congressional Black Caucus members tried to object to the election outcome on the floor of the House; no Senator would sign the objections.
- "While Vice President Al Gore appeared to have accepted his fate contained in two wooden ballot boxes, Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried repeatedly to challenge the assignment of Florida's 25 electoral votes to Bush.... More than a dozen Democrats followed suit, seeking to force a debate on the validity of Florida's vote on the grounds that all votes may not have been counted and that some voters were wrongly denied the right to vote." Susan Milligan, "It's Really Over: Gore Bows Out Gracefully," Boston Globe, January 7, 2001.
- The Congressional Black Caucus effort failed for "lack of the necessary signature by any senator." Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) had previously advised Democratic senators not to cooperate. 'They did not.'" Robert Novak, "Sweeney Link Won't Help Chao," Chicago Sun-Times, January 14, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "On the day George W. Bush was inaugurated, tens of thousands of Americans poured into the streets of D.C. They pelted Bush's limo with eggs."
- "Shouting slogans like 'Hail to the Thief' and 'Selected, Not Elected,' tens of thousands of protesters descended on George W. Bush's inaugural parade route yesterday to proclaim that he and Vice President Dick Cheney had 'stolen' the election." Michael Kranish and Sue Kirchhoff, "Thousands Protest 'Stolen' Election," Boston Globe, January 21, 2001.
- "Scuffles erupted between radicals and riot police while an egg struck the bullet-proof presidential limousine as it carried Mr. Bush and wife Laura to the White House." Damon Johnston, "Bush Pledges Justice as Critics Throw Eggs," The Advertisers, January 22, 2001.
- See also film footage.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "The inauguration parade was brought to a halt and the traditional walk to the White House was scrapped."
- Bush made one concession to the weather -- or to security concerns: He stayed in his limousine nearly the entire length of the mile-long inaugural parade, waving through a slightly foggy window. He got out to walk only for a brief distance when his motorcade reached the VIP grandstands in front of the Treasury Department and the White House. Doyle McManus, et al., "Bush Vows to Bring Nation Together," Los Angeles Times, January, 21, 2001.
- Bush's limo, which traveled most of the route at a slow walking pace, stopped dead just before it reached the corner of 14th St. and Pennsylvania Ave., where most of the protesters had congregated. Then it sped up dramatically, and Secret Service agents protecting the car on foot had to follow at a full run. When they reached a section of the parade route where the sidewalks were restricted to official ticketholders, Bush and his wife, Laura, who wore a flattering electric turquoise suit, got out of the limo to walk and greet supporters. Helen Kennedy, "Bush Pledges a United US," New York Daily News, January 21, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "For the next eight months, it didn't get any better for George W. Bush."
- In a poll conducted September 5 to September 9, 2001, Investor's Business Daily and the Christian Science Monitor showed President Bush's approval rating at 45%, down from 52% in May ( Investor's Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor Poll, conducted by TIPP, 9/5 to 9/9, 2001). Zogby's polling had Bush at 47% in late July 2001, down from 57% in February (Zogby, 7/26 to 7/29, 2001).
- In June 2001, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed President Bush's approval rating at 50 percent, which was the lowest presidential approval rating in five years. Richard L. Berke, "G.O.P. Defends Bush in Face of Dip in Poll Ratings," The New York Times, June 29 2001
- On July 26, 2001, in an article entitled "Bush Lacks the Ability To Force Action on Hill," Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote, " It may be premature to conclude that Bush has lost control of his agenda, but lawmakers and strategists in both parties said that Bush's next year is much more likely to look like the fractious month of July than like the orderly march toward Bush's tax cut this spring.... The troubles began, of course, with Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords' departure from the GOP, giving control of the Senate to the Democrats. But the problems are nearly as bad in the House, where moderates who supported Bush's tax cut are proving recalcitrant on other issues. They rebelled against GOP leaders on campaign finance reform and held up Bush's "faith-based" legislation over concerns about discrimination. Next week, they're likely to oppose Bush's proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
- California energy crisis also took a toll on Bush's approval ratings. Due to rolling blackouts and rising utility bills Bush's ratings took a toll among Californians. The poll showed that almost as many Californians disapproved of the President's job as approved of it with an approve/disapprove of 42/40. "Calif. Governor Says He'll Sue to Force Government Action," The Houston Chronicle, May 30, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "In his first eight months in office before September 11, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time."
- "News coverage has pointedly stressed that W.'s month-long stay at his ranch in Crawford is the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. Washington Post supercomputers calculated that if you add up all his weekends at Camp David, layovers at Kennebunkport and assorted to-ing and fro-ing, W. will have spent 42 percent of his presidency 'at vacation spots or en route.'" Charles Krauthammer, "A Vacation Bush Deserves," The Washington Post, August 10, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Bush relaxes at Camp David, Kennebunkport and his ranch in Crawford Texas.
- As of April 2004, President Bush had made 33 trips to Crawford during his presidency, bringing his total to more than 230 days at the ranch in just over three years. "Add his 78 trips to Camp David and five to his family's compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bush has spent all or part of 500 days - or about 40 percent of his presidency - at one of these his three retreats." "Bush Retreats to a Favorite Getaway: Crawford ranch," Houston Chronicle, April 11, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: On Sept. 10, 2001 , Bush joined his brother in Florida where he slept the night in "a bed made of fine French linens."
- Bush has not been bashful about visiting Florida, ground zero in the vote-recount battle that followed last year's election. On this trip, he was spending a good deal of time with his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush. " President to Push Congress on Education in Fourth Florida Visit," Associated Press, September 10, 2001; See also, CNN Inside Politics, September 10, 2001.
- Two individuals prepared the president's room "and made the bed with some of the family's fine French linens." Tom Bayles, "The Day Before Everything Changed, President Bush Touched Locals' Lives," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, September 10, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "As the attack took place, Mr. Bush was on his way to an elementary school in Florida . When informed of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, where terrorists had struck just eight years prior, Bush just decided to go ahead with his photo opportunity."
NOTE: It should be emphasized that at the time Bush was notified of the first plane attack, he (unlike the rest of America) was already aware that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes, per the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB). He was also aware, of course, that the World Trade Center had been historically a target for terrorist attacks. He nonetheless went ahead with this photo opportunity in a school full of children.
- "Mr. Bush arrived at the school, just before 9 am, expecting to be met by its motherly principal, Gwen Rigell. Instead he was pulled sharply aside by the familiar, bulky figure of 51-year-old Karl Rove, a veteran political fixer and trusted aide of both Mr. Bush and his father, George Sr. Mr. Rove, a fellow Texan with an expansive manner and a colorful turn of phrase, told the President that a large commercial airliner (American Flight 11) had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre . Mr. Bush clenched his teeth, lowered his bottom lip and said something inaudible. Then he went into the school." William Langley, "Revealed: What Really Went on During Bush's 'Missing Hours,'" The Telegraph, December 16, 2001.
- "The airborne attack on the World Trade Center was at least the second terrorist attempt to topple the landmarks. In 1993, terrorists sought to bomb one building so that it would explode and fall into the other. The plot did not succeed, but six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured." Cragg Hines, "Terrorists Strike from Air; Jetliners Slam into Pentagon, Trade Center" The Houston Chronicle, September 11, 2001.
- August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside US": "Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks... FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." August 6, 2001, Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside US, http://www.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whitehouse.pdf
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "When the second plane hit the tower, his chief of staff entered the classroom and told Mr. Bush the nation is under attack."
- "At 9:05 a.m., the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., stepped into the classroom and whispered into the president's right ear, 'A second plane hit the other tower, and America's under attack.'" David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr., "After The Attacks: The Events; In Four Days, A National Crisis Changes Bush's Presidency," The New York Times, September 16, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat."
- "It was while attending a second-grade reading class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., to promote his education reforms that President Bush learned America was under attack. In the presence of her VIP guest, teacher Sandra Kay Daniels, 45, conducted the day's lesson, which centered on a story about a pet goat." "9/11: A Year After," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2002.
- President Bush listened to 18 Booker Elementary School second-graders read a story about a girl's pet goat Tuesday before he spoke briefly and somberly about the terrorist attacks. "Bush hears of attack while visiting Booker," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, September 12, 2001.
- See also film footage.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything."
- "[H]e lingered in the room for another six minutes [after being informed of the second plane]... [At] 9:12, he abruptly retreated, speaking to Mr. Cheney and New York officials." David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr., "After The Attacks: The Events;In Four Days, A National Crisis Changes Bush's Presidency," The New York Times, September 16, 2001 .
- "Mr. Bush remained in the elementary school for nearly a half an hour after Andy Card whispered in his ear." Michael Kranish, "Bush: US To Hunt Down Attackers," Boston Globe, September 11, 2001.
GO TO SECTION TWO
Factual Back-Up for Fahrenheit 9/11: Section Two
THE FOLLOWING IS THE LINE BY LINE FACTUAL BACKUP FOR 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11'
Section Two covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 from Bush's failure to meet with Richard Clarke, to the August 6th memo, and ends with the Saudi flights out of the US after 9/11.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counterterrorism?"
- "[T]hey didn't allow me to brief him on terrorism. You know, they're saying now that when I was afforded the opportunity to talk to him about cybersecurity, it was my choice. I could have talked about terrorism or cybersecurity. That's not true. I asked in January to brief him, the president, on terrorism, to give him the same briefing I had given Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell and Condi Rice. And I was told, 'You can't do that briefing, Dick, until after the policy development process.'" Richard Clarke interview with Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press, March 28, 2004.
- "Clarke asked on several occasions for early Principals Committee meetings on these issues [outlined in his January 25, 2001 memo] and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. He wanted principals to accept that al Qaeda was a 'first order threat' and not a routine problem being exaggerated by 'chicken little' alarmists. No Principals Committee meetings on al Qaeda were held until September 4, 2001." National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 8, "National Policy Coordination," pp 9-10; http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing8/staff_statement_8.pdf
- See Testimony of Richard A. Clarke before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 24, 2004:
MR. ROEMER: Okay. Let's move into, with my 15 minutes, let's move into the Bush administration. On January the 25th, we've seen a memo that you had written to Dr. Rice, urgently asking for a principals review of al Qaeda. You include helping the Northern Alliance, covert aid, significant new '02 budget authority to help fight al Qaeda --
MR. CLARKE: Uh-huh.
MR. ROEMER: -- and response to the U.S.S. Cole. You attached to this document both the Delenda Plan of 1998 and a strategy paper from December 2000. Did you get a response to this urgent request for a principals meeting on these, and how does this affect your time frame for dealing with these important issues?
MR. CLARKE: I did geta response. The response was that in the Bush administration I should, and my committee, the counterterrorism security group, should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-cabinet level committee, and not to the principals, and that therefore it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals meeting. Instead, there would be a deputies meeting.
MR. ROEMER: So, does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group, as you had previously done?
MR. CLARKE: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then, when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of al Qaeda as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the problems, the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and, launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address al Qaeda in the context of all of those interrelated issues. That process probably ended, I think, in July of 2001, so we were readying for a principals meeting in July, but the principals' calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Maybe Mr. Bush was wondering why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI."
- "This question of resources will also come up in the commission's questioning of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was brand-new on the job in the fall of 2001 and on September 10th cut the FBI's request for new counterterrorism money by 12 percent." John Dimsdale, "Former FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General John Ashcroft to appear before 9/11 commission tomorrow," NPR Radio: Marketplace, April 12, 2004. See also, 2001 budget documents including Attorney General John Ashcroft FY 2003 budget request to Office of Management and Budget, September 10, 2001, showing $65 million offset in the FBI budget for counter-terrorism equipment grants: http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/FY03ASHCROFT.PDF
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001, said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.
- August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB): "Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s. A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of 'Blind Shaykh' 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists. Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." August 6, 2001, Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Inside US, http://www.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whitehouse.pdf
- "The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al-Qaida supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here." Clarke J. Scott, "Clarke Gave Warning on Sept. 4, 2001; Testimony Includes Apology to Families of Sept. 11 Victims, Associated Press, March 25, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: On August 6 th, 2001, George W. Bush went fishing.
- "President Bush swung into vacation mode Monday, fishing for bass in his pond, strolling the canyons on his 1,600-acre ranch, taking an early-morning run. Associated Press, "President Bush Vacationing in Texas," August 6, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Was it the guy my daddy's friends delivered a lot of weapons to?"
- In 1995, a member of Reagan's National Security Council and co-author of his National Security Directives, Howard Teicher, signed a sworn affidavit stating: "From early 1982 to 1987, I served as a Staff Member to the United States National Security Council.... In June, 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran. President Reagan decided that the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. Pursuant to the secret NSDD, the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required. This message was delivered by Vice President Bush who communicated it to Egyptian President Mubarak, who in turn passed the message to Saddam Hussein. Under CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA made sure that non-U.S. manufacturers manufactured and sold to Iraq the weapons needed by Iraq. In certain instances where a key component in a weapon was not readily available, the highest levels of the United States government decided to make the component available, directly or indirectly, to Iraq. I specifically recall that the provision of anti-armor penetrators to Iraq was a case in point. The United States made a policy decision to supply penetrators to Iraq." Affidavit of former Howard Teicher, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. CARLOS CARDOEN et al, January 31, 1995. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1413.htm
- "Questions have been raised about whether the United States not only ignored foreign arms shipments to Iraq, but actually encouraged or even arranged them. A former National Security Council official, Howard Teicher, said in a 1995 court affidavit that the CIA made sure Iraq received weapons from non-U.S. manufacturers." Ken Guggenheim, "War Crimes Trial for Saddam Could Reveal Details of Past U.S. Help," Associated Press, January 24, 2004.
- "There is ample documentation demonstrating that the Reagan and Bush administrations supplied critical military technologies that were put directly to use in the construction of the Iraqi war machine. There is also strong evidence indicating that the executive branch's failure to crack down on illegal weapons traffickers or keep track of third party transfers of U.S. weaponry allowed a substantial flow of U.S.-origin military equipment and military components to make their way to Iraq." William D. Hartung, Weapons at War; A World Policy Institute Issue Brief, May 1995. See also, Alan Friedman, Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq, (Bantam Books, 1993); Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq, (Houghton, Mifflin, 1991).
- "Rep. Dante Fascell, D-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said ... that the United States could not 'make a claim for purity' on arms sales, since the U.S. government has sold weapons to Iran, Iraq 'and everybody else in the world.'" Robert Shepard, "Congress Approves Aid for Former Soviet Republics," United Press International, October 3, 1992.
- "A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program. Those officers, most of whom agreed to speak on the condition that they not be identified, spoke in response to a reporter's questions about the nature of gas warfare on both sides of the conflict between Iran and Iraq from 1981 to 1988. Iraq's use of gas in that conflict is repeatedly cited by President Bush and, this week, by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as justification for "regime change" in Iraq. The covert program was carried out at a time when President Reagan's top aides, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then the national security adviser, were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurds in Halabja in March 1988." Patrick E. Tyler, "Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas," The New York Times, August 18, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my state when I was governor?"
- "A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas." "Taleban in Texas for talks on Gas Pipeline," BBC News, December 4, 1997 (Sugarland is 22 miles outside Houston.)
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Or was it the Saudis? Damn, it was them."
- "The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document. One U.S. official who has read the classified section said it describes 'very direct, very specific links' between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators 'that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental.'" Of all the hijackers, 15 of the 19 were Saudi. Josh Meyer, "Report Links Saudi Government to 9/11 Hijackers, Sources Say," Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "In the days following September 11th , all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded."
- "On the morning of September 11th, there were 4,873 instrument flight rule (IFR) flights operating in U.S. airspace. As soon as Secretary Mineta was aware of the nature and scale of the terrorist attack on New York and Washington -- that we were faced with, not one, but four possible hijackings, and several other rumors of missing or unidentified aircraft -- the Secretary ordered the air traffic system shut down for all civil operations. Jane F. Garvey on Aviation Security Following the Terrorist Attack on September 11th, September 21, 2001; http://www.faa.gov/newsroom/testimony/2001/testimony_010921.htm ; see also, "Airports to Remain Closed, Mineta Says," Department of Transportation Press Release, September 12, 2001
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "The White House approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis."
- Fearing reprisals against Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12; http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing10/staff_statement_10.pdf
- "Now, what I recall is that I asked for flight manifests of everyone on board and all of those names need to be directly and individually vetted by the FBI before they were allowed to leave the country. And I also wanted the FBI to sign off even on the concept of Saudis being allowed to leave the country. And as I recall, all of that was done. It is true that members of the Bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can't say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." Testimony of Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, National Security Council, before The Senate Judiciary Committee, September 3, 2003.
- "I was making or coordinating a lot of decisions on 9/11 and the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. Since you pressed me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State, or the White House Chief of Staff's Office. But I don't know." Testimony of Richard A. Clarke before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 24, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country."
NOTE: It should be noted that even though the film does not make the allegation, strong evidence has recently come to light that at least one private plane flew to pick up Saudi nationals while private flights were still grounded. Moreover, for nearly three years, the White House has denied that this flight existed. This was reported in the June 9, 2004 St. Petersburg Times article cited below.
- After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people,mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12; http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing10/staff_statement_10.pdf
- It should be noted that the US Customs and Border Protection document released by the Department of Homeland Security under the FOIA, Feb 24, 2004 lists 162 Saudi Nationals who flew out of the country between 9/11/2001 and 9/15/2001, departing from New York's Kennedy airport, Washington's Dulles, and Dallas Fort Worth. http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2004/homelandsecurity.pdf.
- For an official list of Saudi Passport holders (names redacted) who flew out of the country between 9.11.2001 - 9.15.2001, see US Customs and Border Protection document released by the Department of Homeland Security under the FOIA, Feb 24, 2004; http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2004/homelandsecurity.pdf.
- TheSt. Petersburg Times reported on Jun 9, 2004:
o "Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left. The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky. The Saudis then took another flight out of the country."
o Moreover: "For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose... The terrorism panel, better known as the 9/11 Commission, said in April that it knew of six chartered flights with 142 people aboard, mostly Saudis, that left the United States between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001. But it has said nothing about the Tampa flight... The 9/11 Commission, which has said the flights out of the United States were handled appropriately by the FBI, appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight.
o "Most of the aircraft allowed to fly in U.S. airspace on Sept. 13 were empty airliners being ferried from the airports where they made quick landings on Sept. 11. The reopening of the airspace included paid charter flights, but not private, nonrevenue flights." Jean Heller, "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis; The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly." St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 2004
GO TO SECTION THREE
Factual Back-Up for Fahrenheit 9/11: Section Three
THE FOLLOWING IS THE LINE BY LINE FACTUAL BACKUP FOR 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11'
Section Three covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 from Osama's relations with his family through Bush's military records and ends with Bush's business history, including Arbusto, Harken and the Carlyle Group.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: In 2001, one of Osama's sons got married in Afghanistan; several family members attended the wedding.
- "Bin Laden as well as his mother, two brothers and a sister, who flew from Saudi Arabia, attended the wedding of one of his sons, Mohammad, in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Monday, the Arabic daily Al-Hayat said.... Another of bin Laden's sons married one of al-Masri's daughters in January. Al-Hayat said several members of the bin Laden family, who run a major construction company in Saudi Arabia, also traveled from the kingdom to attend the wedding. Agence France Presse, "Bin Laden Full of Praise for Attack on USS Cole at Son's Wedding", Thursday, March 1, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "We held hundreds of people" immediately after 9/11.
- "More than 1,200 foreigners have been detained as part of the government's investigation into the terror attacks, some spending months in prison. Some civil liberties advocates have complained, but government officials insist they are simply enforcing long-standing immigration laws." "A Nation Challenged," New York Times, November 25, 2001.
- "The Department of Homeland Security announced new rules yesterday designed to prevent a recurrence of the lengthy detention of hundreds of foreign nationals, many of whom were prevented from making telephone calls or contacting lawyers for months after they were jailed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The guidelines, made public yesterday by Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, were welcomed by civil rights groups that had bitterly denounced the detention of 762 immigration violators after the attacks, based on sometimes ill-founded FBI suspicions that they had links to terrorism. The new rules are a response to a highly critical 198-page report last June by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. It concluded that in the chaotic aftermath of the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hundreds of Arab and South Asian men who had committed sometimes minor immigration violations languished in jail without timely review by U.S. officials. Guards mistreated some of them. The average detention lasted three months, and the longest was 10 months before the immigrants were cleared of terrorism ties and released from jail." John Mintz, "New Rules Shorten Holding Time for Detained Immigrants," Washington Post, April 14, 2004.
- "In the days, weeks and months following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, hundreds of American immigrants were rounded up and detained, often under harsh or abusive conditions, in the name of keeping America safe. Not because of evidence (or even sound hunches) that they were involved in the terrorist attacks that brutally ended the lives of more than 3,100 people. Not because they were found to have ties to - or even knowledge of - terrorist groups who might threaten American security in the future. Instead, hundreds of immigrants were arbitrarily snared in this dragnet, marked for arrest and thrown (literally, at times) in jail. The exact number is unknown, because the government refuses to release that information. They had one thing in common: Almost all were Arab or South Asian men, and almost all were Muslim... Once arrested, many immigrants were labeled "of interest" to the September 11 investigation and thrown into legal limbo - detained for weeks or months in connection with a criminal investigation, but denied the due process rights that they would have been entitled to had they actually been charged with crimes." ACLU, "America's Disappeared: Seeking International Justice for Immigrants Detained after September 11," January 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The FBI conducted "a little interview, check[ed] the passport."
Last year, the National Review reported that the FBI conducted brief, day-of-departure interviews with the Saudis -- in the words of an FBI spokesman, "at the airport, as they were about to leave." Experts interviewed by the National Review called the FBI's actions "highly unusual" given the fact that those departing were actually members of Osama bin Laden's family. "They [the FBI] could not have done a thorough and complete interview," said John L.Martin, the former head of internal security at the Justice Department. "The Great Escape : How did assorted bin Ladens get out of America after September 11?" National Review, September 29, 2003.
- "Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the Bin Ladin flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity." National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12; http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing10/staff_statement_10.pdf
- "I talked to several people who were with the FBI during the actual repatriation. And they told me there was a lot of back-and-forth between the FBI and the Saudi Embassy. And the Saudi Embassy tried to get people to leave without even identifying them. The FBI succeeded in identifying people and going through their passports. But, in many cases, you had the FBI meeting people for the first time on the tarmac or on the planes themselves as they were departing. That was not time for a serious interview or a serious interrogation." Interview with Craig Unger, CNN, September 4, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: White House released records in response to Moore's charge of deserter.
- Left-leaning filmmaker Michael Moore got the discussion started in January, when he endorsed Clark for president and called the president a 'deserter.' The White House responded by releasing the president's service records, including an honorable discharge. James Rainey, "Who's the Man? They Are; George Bush and John Kerry Stand Shoulder to Shoulder in One Respect: Macho is Good. Very Good. It's Been That Way Since Jefferson's Day," Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: There is one glaring difference between the records released in 2000 and those he released in 2004. A name had been blacked out. In 1972, two airmen were suspended for failing to take their medical examination. One was George W. Bush and the other wasJames R. Bath.
- See National Guard Bureau, Aeronautical Orders Number 87, September 29, 1972, Attachment B, paragraph 7 (original document):
The Document as Released in 2000: Page 1 | Page 2
The Document as Released in 2004: Page 1 | Page 2
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: James R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Laden family.
- See Notarized Trust Agreement, Harris County, Texas, signed by Salem M. Binladen, July 8, 1976 (original document), Attachment C ("I, Salem M. Binladen, do hereby vest unto James Reynolds Bath, 2330 Bellefontaine, Houston, Texas, full and absolute authority to act on my behalf in all matters relating to the business and operation of Binladen-Houston offices in Houston, Texas." Notarized Trust Agreement, Harris County, Texas, July 8, 1976.
- "According to a 1976 trust agreement, drawn shortly after [George H. W.] Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston. Binladen, along with his brothers, owns Binladen Brothers Construction, one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East." Jerry Urban, "Feds Investigate Entrepreneur Allegedly Tied to Saudis," Houston Chronicle, June 4, 1992.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: George W. Bush and James R. Bath had become good friends.
- "Bath, 55, acknowledges a friendship with George W. Bush that stems from their service together in the Texas Air National Guard." Jonathan Beaty, "A Mysterious Mover of Money and Planes," Time Magazine, October 28, 1991.
- "In a copy of the record released by the National Guard in 2000, the man in question, James R. Bath, was listed as being suspended from flying for the National Guard in 1972 for failing to take a medical exam next to a similar listing for Mr. Bush. It has been widely reported that the two were friends and that Mr. Bath invested in Mr. Bush's first major business venture, Arbusto Energy, in the late 1970's after Mr. Bath began working for Salem bin Laden." Jim Rutenberg, "A Film to Polarize Along Party Lines," New York Times, May 17, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "After they were discharged, when Bush's dad was head of the CIA, Bath opened up his own aviation business, after selling a plane to a man by the name of Salem bin Laden, heir to the second largest fortune in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi bin Laden Group."
- "Bath opened his own aircraft brokerage firm in 1976." Jonathan Beaty, "A Mysterious Mover of Money and Planes," Time Magazine, October 28, 1991. (Bush was CIA director, 1976-1977.)
- "Sometime around 1974... Bath was trying to sell a F-27 turboprop, a sluggish medium-range plane that was not exactly a hot ticket in those days, when he received a phone call that changed his life. The voice no the other end belonged to Salem bin Laden... Bath not only had a buyer for a plane no one else seemed to want, he had also stumbled upon a source of wealth and power that was certain to pique the interest of even the brashest Texas oil baron." Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, pp,19-20 (Scribner: New York, 2004).
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "George W. Bush founded an oil company, a drilling company, out in west Texas called Arbusto, which was very good at drilling dry holes."
- "After graduating from the Harvard Business School, Bush organized his first company, Arbusto Energy (Arbusto is Spanish for Bush) in 1977 on the eve of a run for Congress. According to records on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arbusto didn't start active operations until March 1979.... According to 1984 securities filings, Bush's limited partners had invested $4.66 million in Bush's various drilling programs but they had received cash distributions of only $1.54 million. However, Bush's CFO stated, 'We didn't find much oil and gas,' adding 'We weren't raising any money.' George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, "Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings," Washington Post, July 30, 1999.
- "Bush eventually renamed his company Bush Exploration and later merged with a firm called Spectrum 7. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the firm lost money from 1979 to 1982 and that investors who put in nearly $4.7 million got back just $1.5 million. Published reports contend that Bush Exploration was salvaged by Cincinnati oilmen Bill DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. Bush today says otherwise, that his company was on firm financial footing and that the merger was a strategic one. Either way, George W. drilled his fair share of dry holes. As Conaway rues to this day, the company 'never hit . . . the Big Kahuna.'" Maria La Ganga, "Bush Finesses Texas 2-Step Of Privilege, Personality," Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2000.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "There is no indication that daddy wrote a check to start Bush off in his company."
- "Seed money, upward of $4 million, was largely raised between 1979 and 1982 with the help of [Bush's] uncle, financier Jonathan Bush. The Arbusto investor list is filled with family and famous friends. His grandmother, Dorothy W. Bush, chipped in $25,000. Corporate luminaries like George L. Ball, chief executive of Prudential-Bache Securities, invested $100,000. Macomber and William H. Draper III, who invested more than $125,000, were later named presidents of the U.S. Export-Import Bank during the Reagan and Bush administrations." Maria La Ganga, "Bush Finesses Texas 2-Step Of Privilege, Personality," Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2000.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bush's good friend James Bath was hired by the bin Laden family to manage their money in Texas and invest in businesses. And James Bath himself, in turn, invested in George W. Bush."
- See Notarized Trust Agreement, Harris County, Texas, signed by Salem M. Binladen, July 8, 1976 (original document), Attachment C ("I, Salem M. Binladen, do hereby vest unto James Reynolds Bath, 2330 Bellefontaine, Houston, Texas, full and absolute authority to act on my behalf in all matters relating to the business and operation of Binladen-Houston offices in Houston, Texas." Notarized Trust Agreement, Harris County, Texas, July 8, 1976.
- See 1981 Schedule 4 spreadsheet showing $50,000 investment by James Bath in George W. Bush's Arbusto Exploration, Attachment D (original document).
- Bath's business relationship with Salem bin Laden, and other wealthy Saudi businessmen, has been well documented. See, e.g., Mike Ward, "Bin Laden Relatives Have Ties to Texas," Austin American-Statesman, November 9, 2001; Jerry Urban, "Feds Investigate Entrepreneur Allegedly Tied to Saudis," Houston Chronicle, June 4, 1992; Thomas Petzinger Jr., et al., "Family Ties: How Oil Firm Linked to a Son of Bush Won Bahrain Drilling Pact," The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991.
- "[E]arly 1980s tax records reviewed by TIME show that Bath invested $50,000 in Bush's energy ventures and remained a stockholder until Bush sold his company to Harken in 1986." Jonathan Beaty, "A Mysterious Mover of Money and Planes," Time Magazine, October 28, 1991.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bush ran Arbusto nearly into the ground, as he did every other company he was involved in until finally one of his companies was bought by Harken Energy and they gave him a seat on their board."
- "Bush's name ...was to help rescue him, just as it had attracted investors and helped revive his flagging fortunes throughout his years in the dusty plains city of Midland. A big Dallas-based firm, Harken Oil and Gas, was looking to buy up troubled oil companies. After finding Spectrum, Harken's executives saw a bonus in their target's CEO, despite his spotty track record. By the end of September 1986, the deal was done. Harken assumed $ 3.1 million in debts and swapped $ 2.2 million of its stock for a company that was hemorrhaging money, though it had oil and gas reserves projected to produce $ 4 million in future net revenue. Harken, a firm that liked to attach itself to stars, had also acquired Bush, whom it used not as an operating manager but as a high-profile board member.... It was one of the biggest breaks of Bush's life. Still, the Harken deal completed a disappointing reprise of what was becoming a familiar pattern. As an oilman, Bush always worked hard, winning a reputation as a straight-shooter and a good boss who was witty, warm and immensely likable. Even the investors who lost money in his ventures remained admirers, and some of them are now raising money for his presidential campaign. But the story of Bush's career in oil, which began following his graduation from Harvard Business School in the summer of 1975 and ended when he sold out to Harken and headed for Washington, is mostly about his failure to succeed, despite the sterling connections his lineage and Ivy League education brought him." George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, "Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings," Washington Post, July 30, 1999.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Bush was investigated by the S.E.C. The James Baker law partner who helped Bush beat the rap from the SEC was a man by the name of Robert Jordon, who, when George W. became president was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
- "A week before George W. Bush's 1990 sale of stock in Harken Energy Co., the firm's outside lawyers cautioned Bush and other directors against selling shares if they had significant negative information about the company's prospects. The sale came a few months before Harken reported significant losses, leading to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The June 15, 1990, letter from the Haynes and Boone law firm wasn't sent to the SEC by Bush's attorney Robert W. Jordan until Aug. 22, 1991, according to a letter by Jordan. That was one day after SEC staff members investigating the stock sale concluded there was insufficient evidence to recommend an enforcement action against Bush for insider trading." Peter Behr, "Bush Sold Stock After Lawyers' Warning," Washington Post, November 1, 2002.
- "President Bush has chosen as ambassador to Saudi Arabia a Dallas attorney who represented him against ... allegations arising from his sale of stock in Harken Energy Co. 11 years ago." G. Robert Hillman, "Bush Taps Dallas Attorney to be Ambassador to Saudi Arabia," The Dallas Morning News, July 21, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "After the Harken debacle, the friends of Bush's dad got him a seat on another board, of a company owned by the Carlyle Group."
- "Fred Malek, a senior advisor to Carlyle, who also served as the director of the 1988 Republican Convention, suggested to Carlyle that the President's eldest son, George W. Bush, would 'be a positive addition to Caterair's board.' Mr. Malek was also a Caterair director and vice chairman of Northwest Airlines, a major Caterair customer. 'I thought George W. Bush could make a contribution to Caterair,' stated Malek. Malek further claimed, 'He would be on the board even if his father weren't President.'" Kenneth N. Gilpin, "Little-Known Carlyle Scores Big," New York Times, March 26, 1991
- Co-Founder of Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, talking about setting up Cater Air after Carlyle acquired it: "When we're putting together the board," Rubenstein said, 'somebody came to me and said 'Look, there is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board? Pay him a salary and he'll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management and so forth.' ...We put him on the board and (he) spent three years. Came to all the meetings. ... And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - 'You know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.' The board member told him, Rubenstein said, 'Well I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.' And I said, 'Thanks.' Didn't think I'd ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush,' Rubenstein said. 'He became president of the United States. So if you said to me, name 25 million people who would be president of the United States, he wouldn't be in that category. So you neverknow." Nicholas Horrock, "White House Watch: With Friends Like These," UPI, July 16, 2003 .
Section Four covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 covers the Carlyle Group and Saudi money in the United States and its connection to the Bush family, their friends and associates.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "The Carlyle group is a multinational conglomerate that invests in heavily government-regulated industries like telecommunications, healthcare and, particularly, defense."
- "The Carlyle Group is one of the world's largest private equity firms, with more than $18.3 billion under management. With 23 funds across five investment disciplines (management-led buyouts, real estate, leveraged finance, venture capital and turnaround), Carlyle combines global vision with local insight, relying on a top-flight team of nearly 300 investment professionals operating out of offices in 14 countries to uncover superior opportunities in North America, Europe, and Asia. Carlyle focuses on sectors in which it has demonstrated expertise: aerospace & defense, automotive & transportation, consumer, energy & power, healthcare, industrial, real estate, technology & business services, and telecommunications & media." Carlyle Group web site, http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/company/index.html
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The Bin Laden and Bush families were both connected to the Carlyle Group, as were many of the Bush family's friends and associates.
- In the early 1990s, George W. Bush served on the board of directors for CaterAir, an airline catering company. CaterAir was owned by the Carlyle Group. Kenneth N. Gilpin, "Little-Known Carlyle Scores Big," The New York Times, March 26, 1991. "George W. Bush left the company in 1994, a year after his father's presidency ended." Ross Ramsey, et al., "Campaign '94 Fisher's Staff Slips Up On Spanish," The Houston Chronicle, September 17, 1994.
- In the mid-1990s, George H.W. Bush joined up with the Carlyle Group. "Under the leadership of ex-officials like Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, Carlyle developed a specialty in buying defense companies and doubling or quadrupling their value. The ex-president not only became an investor in Carlyle, but a member of the company's Asia Advisory Board and a rainmaker who drummed up investors. Twelve rich Saudi families, including the Bin Ladens, were among them. In 2002, the Washington Post reported, 'Saudis close to Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister ... were encouraged to put money into Carlyle as a favor to the elder Bush.' Bush retired from the company last October, and Baker, who lobbied U.S. allies last month to forgive Iraq's debt, remains a Carlyle senior counselor. Kevin Phillips, "The Barreling Bushes; Four Generations of the Dynasty Have Chased Profits Through Cozy Ties with Mideast Leaders, Spinning Webs of Conflicts of Interest," Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2004.
- The bin Laden family first invested in Carlyle in 1994. Representing Carlyle's Asia Board, George H.W. Bush visited the bin laden family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kurt Eichenwald, "Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group," The New York Times, October 26, 2001.
- James Baker was a Carlyle Senior Counselor beginning in 1993. Carlyle Group web site, http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/team/l5-team391.html.
- Bush's OMB chief, Richard Darman, was with Carlyle by 1994. Bob Cook, Mergers & Acquisitions Report, December 12, 1994.
- George W. Bush was with Caterair -- owned by Carlyle -- until 1994, after Fred Malek, a senior advisor to Carlyle, who also served as the director of the 1988 Republican Convention, suggested to Carlyle that the President's eldest son would "be a positive addition to Caterair's board." Kenneth N. Gilpin, "Little-Known Carlyle Scores Big," New York Times, March 26, 1991.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Carlyle Group was holding its annual investor conference on the morning of September 11th in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. At that meeting were all of the Carlyle regulars, James Baker, likely John Major, definitely George H. W. Bush, though he left the morning of September 11th. Shafiq bin Ladin, who is Osama bin Laden's half-brother, and was in town to look after his family's investments in the Carlyle Group. All of them, together in one room, watching as the uh the planes hit the towers."
- On the morning of September 11, 2001, "in the plush setting of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, DC, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual international investor conference. Frank Carlucci, James Baker III, David Rubenstein, William Conway, and Dan D'Aniellow were together, along with a host of former world leaders, former defense experts, wealthy Arabs from the Middle East, and major international investors as they terror played out on television. There with them, looking after the investments of his family was Shafiq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's estranged half-brother. George Bush Sr. was also at the conference, but Carlyle's spokesperson says the former president left before the terror attacks, and was on an airplane over the Midwest when flights across the country were grounded on the morning of September 11. In any circumstance, a confluence of such politically complex and globally connected people would have been curious, even newsworthy. But in the context of the terrorist attacks being waged against the United States by a group of Saudi nationals led by Osama bin Laden, the group assembled at the Ritz-Carlton that day was a disconcerting and freakish coincidence." Dan Briody, The Iron Triangle, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003, p. 139-140. See also, Melanie Warner, "What do George Bush, Arthur Levitt, Jim Baker, Dick Darman, and John Major Have in Common? (They All Work for the Carlyle Group)," Fortune, March 18, 2002,
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "With all the weapons companies it owned, The Carlyle Group was in essence, the 11th largest defense contractor in the United States."
- "By virtue of its holdings in companies like U.S. Marine Repair and United Defense Industries, Carlyle is the equivalent of the eleventh-largest defense contractor in the nation. It has $16.2 billion under management and claims an average annual return of 35%." Phyllis Berman, "Lucky Twice," Forbes, December 8, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "It owned United Defense, makers of the Bradley armored fighting vehicle. September 11th guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year. Just 6 weeks after 9-11 Carlyle filed to take United Defense public and in December made a one day profit of $237 million dollars."
- "On a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237 million selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army's fifth-largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the Sept. 11 attacks. ... On Sept. 26, [2001], the Army signed a $665-million modified contract with United Defense through April 2003 to complete the Crusader's development phase. In October, the company listed the Crusader, and the attacks themselves, as selling points for its stock offering. Mark Fineman, "Arms Buildup is a Boon to Firm Run by Big Guns," Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2002.
- "Still, in its annual report for 2001, United announced that it had been awarded a three-year, $697 million contract to complete full upgrading of 389 Bradley units and had added a $ 655 million contract modification to complete the Crusader's 'definition and risk-reduction phase contract,' which would be worth $ 1.7 billion through 2003. Together, the Crusader and Bradley programs contributed 41 percent of United sales in 2001, the report said. With Crusader and the Bradley upgrade in hand, a decision was made to sell United stock to the public in late 2001." Walter Pincus, "Crusader a Boon to Carlyle Group Even if Pentagon Scraps Project," Washington Post, May 14, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "With so much attention focused on the bin Laden family being important Carlyle investors, the bin Ladens eventually had to withdraw."
- "Following the attacks on September 11, the bin Laden family's investments in the Carlyle Group became an embarrassment to the Carlyle Group and the family was forced to liquidate their assets with the firm." Kurt Eichenwald, "Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings with Carlyle Group," The New York Times, October 26, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bush's dad stayed on as Senior Advisor to Carlyle's Asia Board for another 2 years."
- "Former President Bush was at one time the Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board but retired from that position in October 2003. He holds no other positions at Carlyle." http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/news/l4-presskit681.html#8
- "The former president is no longer a company adviser, but he still has investments there, Mr. Ullman (vice president for corporate communications) said." Dallas Morning News, "Michael Moore keeps heat on at premiere", May 18, 2004
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: George H. W. Bush receives daily CIA briefings.
- "One of the people who corresponded with [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson is George H. W. Bush, the only president to have been head of the C.I.A.-- he still receives regular briefings from Langley." Vicky Ward, "Double Exposure," Vanity Fair, January 2004.
- Former President Bush has made efforts to keep abreast of foreign affairs, partly by exercising his right to be briefed by CIA personnel about developments around the globe. Ha'aretz, "George Bush Sr. Vouches for Son's Support of Israel to the Saudis", July 16, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "They are benefiting from the confusion that arises when George H. W. Bush visits Saudi Arabia, on behalf of Carlyle, and meets with the royal family and meets with the bin Laden family. Is he representing the United States of America, or is he representing an investment firm in the United States of America or is he representing both?"
- Few firms could have rivaled the Carlyle Group for its array of high-powered friends. The Washington-based venture capital house had been likened to a retirement home for Gulf War veterans, and the likes of George Bush Sr, James Baker, and John Major 'can take credit for its rapid rise.' The Observer noted in a profile, "It used to be fashionable to deride Carlyle as a second-rate influence-peddler and dismiss its stable of retired politicians as superannuated 'access capitalists.'" ... Carlyle had sponsored visits by Bush Sr. to South Korea and China, and his clout with the Saudi government - perhaps Carlyle's most important customer - is also likely to be valued. Conal Walsh, "The Carlyle Controversy: With Friends in High Places: Former World Leaders Give Carlyle Group Unrivalled Prowess in Lobbying for Business," The Observer, September 15, 2002.
- "'It should be a deep cause for concern that a closely held company like Carlyle can simultaneously have directors and advisers that are doing business and making money and also advising the president of the United States,' says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit-making Washington think-tank. 'The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together. What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about US policy in the Middle East? What hat does he use when he deals with South Korea, and causes policy changes there? Or when James Baker helps argue the presidential election in the younger Bush's favour? It's a kitchen-cabinet situation, and the informality involved is precisely a mark of Carlyle's success.'" Oliver Burkeman Julian Borger, "The Winners: The Ex-Presidents' Club," The Guardian, October 31, 2001.
- "The Saudi family of Osama bin Laden is severing its financial ties with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm known for its connections to influential Washington political figures... In recent years, Frank C. Carlucci, the chairman of Carlyle and a former secretary of defense, has visited the family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as have former President George Bush and James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state. Mr. Bush works as an adviser to Carlyle, and Mr. Baker is a partner in the firm." Kurt Eichenwald, "Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group," New York Times, October 26, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Another group of people invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses $1.4 billion over a number of years."
- "In all, at least $1.46 billion had made its way from the Saudis to the House of Bush and its allied companies and institutions." Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 200, (Scribner: New York, 2004). For a complete breakdown of the investments, see Unger's Appendix C, pp. 295-298.
- This number includes investments made and contracts awarded at the time that Bush's friends were involved in the Carlyle Group:
James Baker was a Carlyle Senior Counselor beginning in 1993. Carlyle Group web site, http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/team/l5-team391.html.
Bush's OMB chief, Richard Darman, was with Carlyle by 1994. Bob Cook, Mergers & Acquisitions Report, December 12, 1994.
George W. Bush was with Caterair -- owned by Carlyle -- until 1994, after Fred Malek, a senior advisor to Carlyle, who also served as the director of the 1988 Republican Convention, suggested to Carlyle that the President's eldest son would "be a positive addition to Caterair's board." Kenneth N. Gilpin, "Little-Known CarlyleScores Big," New York Times, March 26, 1991
Bush Sr. was first involved in Carlyle by the mid-1990s and no later than 1997.Kevin Phillips, "The Barreling Bushes; Four Generations of the Dynasty Have Chased Profits Through Cozy Ties with Mideast Leaders, Spinning Webs of Conflicts of Interest," Los Angeles Times, January 11 , 2004; Dan Briody, The Iron Triangle, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.
- Additional back up for these numbers is as follows:
Saudi investments in the Carlyle Group worth $80,000,000. Craig Unger, "Saving the Saudis," Vanity Fair, October 2003. The number was reported to Unger by the head of Carlyle, David Rubenstein, in an interview.
In 1994, Carlyle owned military contractor BDM was "awarded a contract to provide technical assistance and logistics support to the Royal Saudi Air Force." Worth: $46,200,000. PR Newswire, "BDM Federal Awarded $46 Million Contract To Support Royal Saudi Air Force," October 27, 1994.
During the 1990s, the Vinnell Corporation (a BDM subsidiary) held contracts to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard, worth $819,000,000. Robert Burns, "US Advises Saudi Military On Range Of Threats-Including Terrorism," Associated Press, November 13, 1995.
In 1995, BDM collected a contract to "augment Royal Saudi Air Force staff in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics and engineering plans and programs." Worth: $32,500,000. Defense Daily, "Defense Contracts," June 23, 1995, as cited by Craig Unger.
In 1996, BDM was awarded a contract "to provide construction of 110 housing units at the MK-1 Compound, Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia, for Technical Support Program personnel assisting the Royal Saudi Air Force.... This effort supports foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia." Worth: $44,397,800. Department of Defense News Release, "BDM Federal, Incorporated," April 1, 1996.
During the late 1990s, Vinnell was awarded a contract "for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) Modernization Program. The three-year contract, awarded competitively, calls on Vinnell to continue to support SANG training operations and related activities." Worth: $163,300,000 . PR Newswire, "Vinnell Selected for Award of $163.3 Million Contract for Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program," May 3, 1995. Kashim Al-An, "Saudi Guard Gets Quiet Help from US Firm with Connections," Associated Press, March 22, 1997.
In 1997, BDM was awarded a contract "to provide for 400 contractor personnel to support the Royal Saudi Air Force in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics, supply, computer, reconnaissance, intelligence and engineering plans and programs." Worth: $18,728,682 (note: this is a "face value increase to a firm fixed price contract"). Defense Daily, "Defense Contracts," February 4, 1997.
Note: Carlyle purchased BDM and its subsidiary Vinnell in 1992 and sold it to TRW in Dec, 1997.
In November 2001, Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton was awarded "a contract to provide services for the Saudi Arabian Oil Company's (Saudi Aramco) Qatif Field development project in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia." Worth: $140 million. Halliburton press release, "Halliburton Awarded $140 Million Contract by Saudi Aramco," November 14, 2001.
The same month, a consortium of three companies led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR won a "contract for engineering, procurement, and construction of an ethylene plant for Jubail United Petrochemcial Company, a wholly owned company of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation." Worth: $40 million. MaggieMulvihill, et al., "Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train," Boston Herald, December 11, 2001 ; Halliburton press release, "Halliburton KBR, Chiyoda, and Mitsubishi Win SaudiArabian Ethylene Project," November 19, 2001. (Note: The $40 million figure cited for this contractin all likelihood is much too low. Three separate energy industry journals place the value of the contract at $350 million. While there are two other companies involved, all reports point out that Halliburton KBR led the consortium and thus, if the contract were $350 million, it is likely that their cut would be-as lead contractor-significantly more than $40 million. See, Petroleum Economist, "News in Brief," January 14, 2002; Chemical Week, "KBR, Chiyoda, Mitsubishi Win Jubail Ethylene Contract," December 5, 2001; Middle East Economic Digest, "Projects Update: Petrochemicals," March 7, 2000.
Soon after Harken bought out George W. Bush's company Spectrum 7 in 1986 and placed Bush on their board of directors, a Saudi sheik swooped in to save the troubled Harken. Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17% stake in the company. Worth: $25,000,000. Thomas Petzinger Jr., et al., "Family Ties: How Oil Firm Linked to a Son of Bush Won Bahrain Drilling Pact; Harken Energy Had a Web of Mideast Connections; In the Background: BCCI; Entrée at the White House," Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991.
In 1989 Saudi Arabia's King Fahd donated money to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. At the time, Ms. Bush was the First Lady of the United States. The King's contribution represented almost half the amount the organization was able to raise that year. Worth: $1,000,000. Thomas Ferraro, "Saudi King also Contributed to Barbara Bush's Foundation," United Press International, March 13, 1990.
Following George H. W. Bush's departure from office, Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, donated money to the Bush Sr. Presidential Library fund. Worth: At least $1,000,000. Dave Montgomery, "Hail to a Former Chief," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 7, 1997.
Both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush attended the elite Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts. In the summer of 2002 the Academy announced it had established a scholarship in Bush Sr.'s name. Saudi Prince Alwaleed binTalal bin Adul Aziz Alsaud -- the same Prince who bailed out EuroDisney in the mid-Nineties -- was among the donors to the scholarship. Worth $500,000. Phillips Academy-Andover press release, "A Statement from Phillips Academy-Andover Regarding the Bush Scholars Program," December 31, 2002.
Among the many presents George W. Bush has received from foreign leaders and dignitaries during his term as President, perhaps none is grander than the one Prince Bandar bestowed upon him. Bandar gave the current president a "C.M. Russell oil canvas painting of a native American buffalo hunt...." Worth: $1,000,000. Siobhan McDonough, "Gifts to President are Gratefully Received, Quickly Carted into Storage," Associated Press, July 14, 2003.
Section Five covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 from Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11 through the natural gas pipeline in Afghanistan.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Amnesty International condemns Saudi Arabia as a human rights violator.
- "Saudi Arabia systematically violates international human rights standards even after agreeing to be bound by them. For example, in September 1997 Saudi Arabia acceded to the Convention against Torture. Yet, torture is widespread in Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system. (Saudi Arabia acceded to the Convention against Torture and the Convention against Discrimination on Sept 23, 1997)." Amnesty International, "Saudi Arabia: Open for Business," February 8, 2000. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE230822000?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES% 5CSAUDI+ARABIA
- "Sharon Burke, Amnesty International USA's advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said her organization confirmed with the Saudi Ministry of the Interior that three men were beheaded for sodomy." Washington Blade, January 4, 2002, http://www.sodomylaws.org/world/saudi_arabia/saudinews15.htm
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bush tried to stop Congress from setting up its own 9/11 investigation.... When he couldn't stop Congress, he then tried to stop an independent 9/11 commission from being formed."
- The original effort by the White House was to limit the scope of the 9/11 investigation to only two congressional committees. "President Bush asked House and Senate leaders yesterday to allow only two congressional committees to investigate the government's response to the events of Sept. 11, officials said." Mike Allen, "Bush Seeks To Restrict Hill Probes Of Sept. 11; Intelligence Panels' Secrecy Is Favored," Washington Post, January 30, 2002.
- "I, of course, want the Congress to take a look at what took place prior to Sept. 11. But since it deals with such sensitive information, in my judgment, it's best for the ongoing war against terror that the investigation be done in the intelligence committees," President Bush said. David Rosenbaum, "Bush Bucks Tradition on Investigation," The New York Times, May 26, 2002.
- "Angry lawmakers [McCain, Pelosi, Lieberman] accused White House Friday of secretly trying to derail creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while professing to support the idea." Helen Dewar, "Lawmakers Accuse Bush of 9/11 Deceit," Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The White House censored 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report.
- "Top U.S. officials believe the Saudi Arabian government not only thwarted their efforts to prevent the rise of al-Qaida and stop terrorist attacks, but also may have given the Saudi-born Sept. 11 hijackers financial and logistical support, according to a congressional report released Thursday. Those suspicions prompted several lawmakers to demand that the Bush administration aggressively investigate Saudi Arabia 's actions before and after Sept. 11, 2001 -- in part by making public large sections of the report that pertain to Riyadh but remain classified. The passages, including an entire 28-page section, discuss in detail whether one of America's most reluctant allies in the war on terrorism was somehow implicated in the attacks, according to U.S. officials familiar with the full report." Josh Meyer, "Saudi Ties to Sept. 11 Hinted at in Report," Houston Chronicle, July 25, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: More than 500 relatives of 9/11 victims filed suit Saudi Royals and others. The lawyers the Saudi Defense Minister hired to fight these 9/11 families was the law firm of Bush family confidant James A. Baker.
- "James Baker, whom Bush recently sent abroad seeking help to reduce Iraq's debt, is still a senior counselor for the Carlyle Group, and Baker's Houston-based law firm, Baker Botts, is representing the Saudi defense minister in Motley's [plaintiff's council in class-action suit in connection with September 11th attacks] case." New York Times, "A Nation Unto Itself," March 14, 2004
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Saudi's have $860 billion dollars invested in America.
- "Over the next twenty-five years, roughly eighty-five thousand 'high-net-worth' Saudis invested a staggering $860 billion in American companies - an average of more than $10 million a person and a sum that is roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Spain." Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, (Scribner: New York, 2004).
- "Allan Gerson, an attorney who represents about 3,600 family members of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks ... said he is not suing the Saudi government, but he is pursuing 'Saudi interests' in the United States he estimated totaled about $860 billion." " $113 Million in Terrorism Funds Frozen," CNN, November 20, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: In terms of investments on Wall Street, $860 billion is "roughly six or seven percent of America."
- "With a total market capitalization exceeding $12 trillion, the NYSE Composite represents approximately 82 percent of the total U.S. market cap." New York Stock Exchange News Release, "NYSE to Reintroduce Composite Index," January 2, 2003. ($860 billion is about 7 percent of $12 trillion.)
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Citigroup, AOL TimeWarner have big Saudi investors.
- "His name is Alwaleed bin Talal. His grandfather was Saudi Arabia's founding monarch. With huge stakes in companies ranging from Citigroup Inc. to the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain, he is one of the richest men on the planet....Last year, Forbes magazine ranked Alwaleed the fifth-richest man in the world, with a net worth of nearly $18 billion. His Kingdom Holding Co. spans four continents. Over the years, he has acquired major stakes in companies such as Apple Computer Inc., AOL Time Warner Inc., News Corp. and Saks Inc., parent of retailer Saks Fifth Avenue ." Richard Verrier, "Disney's Animated Investor; An Ostentatious Saudi Billionaire Prince Who Helped Bail Out the Company's Paris Resort in the Mid-'90s is Being Courted to Do So Again," Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2004.
- "Carlyle's first major transaction with the Saudis took place in 1991 when Fred Malek steered Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a flamboyant 35-year-old Saudi multibillionaire, to the firm for a deal that would enable him to become the largest individual shareholder in Citicorp." Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, (Scribner: New York, 2004).
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "I read where the Saudis have a trillion dollars in our banks, their money."
- "Others have said the investment is even more, as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks - an agreement worked out in the early 1980s by the Reagan administration, in yet another effort to get the Saudis to off-set the US budget deficit. The Saudis hold another trillion dollars or so in the US stock market." Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, p. 60, (Crown Publishers: New York, 2003).
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bandar is one of the best protected ambassadors in the world with a six-man security detail provided by the State Department."
- "The dean of the diplomatic corps by virtue of his long assignment in Washington, Bandar is the only ambassador who has his own State Department security detail -- granted to him because of 'threats' and his status as a prince, according to a State Department spokesman." Robert G. Kaiser, et al., "Saudi Leader's Anger Revealed Shaky Ties," Washington Post, February 10, 2002.
- "Prince Bandar is often considered the most politically savvy of all the foreign ambassadors living in Washington. That may or may not be true -- but he certainly is the best-protected. According to a Diplomatic Security official, Prince Bandar has a security detail that includes full-time participation of six highly trained and skilled DS officers. (DS officers are federal government employees charged with securing American diplomatic missions.)" Joel Mowbray, Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens American Security, (Regnery, 2003).
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bandar is so close to the Bushes they considered him a member of the family. They even have a nickname for him, Bandar Bush."
- "When President [George H.W.] Bush arrived in Riyadh, he took Bandar aside and embraced him. 'You are good people,' the president said. Bandar claims that Bush had tears in his eyes. Visiting the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Saudi ambassador was affectionately dubbed 'Bandar Bush.' Bandar returned the favor, inviting Bush to go pheasant hunting at his English estate. (Since leaving the White House, Bush has also profited by acting as a kind of glorified door-opener for the Carlyle Group, an investment company that handles considerable Saudi wealth.)" Evan Thomas, et al., "The Saudi Game," Newsweek, November 19, 2001 .
- "The Saudi ambassador attended the unveiling of former President George H.W. Bush's official portrait when he returned to the White House in 1995. He was among the guests at a surprise 75th birthday party in 2000 for former first lady Barbara Bush, and the former president has vacationed at Bandar's home in Aspen, Colo. Bandar has been a guest at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Just last year he presented the first family with a C.M. Russell painting, a gift worth $1 million that will be stored in the National Archives, along with other presents from well-wishers destined for a [George W.] Bush presidential library." Mike Glover, "Kerry Criticizes Bush on Saudi Meeting", Associated Press, April 23, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Two nights after September 11th, George Bush invited Bandar Bush over to the White House for a private dinner and a talk."
- Two days after the attacks, the President asked Bandar to come to the White House. Bush embraced him and escorted him to the Truman balcony. Bandar had a drink and the two men smoked cigars. Elsa Walsh, "The Prince," The New Yorker, March 24, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Bandar's government blocked American investigators from talking to the relatives of the 15 hijackers.
- "The report strongly criticized top Saudi officials for their 'lack of cooperation' before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became known that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis....One top U.S. official told the joint inquiry staff that the Saudis since 1996 would not cooperate on matters relating to Osama bin Laden. Robert Baer, a former CIA officer, said the Saudis blocked FBI agents from talking to relatives of the 15 hijackers and following other leads in the kingdom." Frank Davies, et al., "Bush rejects call to give more 9/11 data," Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Saudi Arabia was reluctant to freeze the hijackers assets.
- Riyadh has not yet fully joined the international effort to block bank accounts thought to be financing terrorist operations, U.S. officials say. But the Bush administration, fearful of offending the Saudis, has not yet raised a public complaint. Elaine Sciolino, et al., "U.S. is Reluctant to Upset Flawed, Fragile Saudi Ties," New York Times, October 25, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan."
- "A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas." "Taleban in Texas for Talks on Gas Pipeline," BBC News, December 4, 1997 (Sugarland is 22 miles outside Houston.)
- "The Taliban ministers and their advisers stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus. Their only requests were to visit Houston's zoo, the NASA space centre and Omaha's Super Target discount store to buy stockings, toothpaste, combs and soap. The Taliban, which controls two-thirds of Afghanistan and is still fighting for the last third, was also given an insight into how the other half lives. The men, who are accustomed to life without heating, electricity or running water, were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marvelled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms. After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists - who have banned women from working and girls from going to school - asked Mr. Miller about his Christmas tree." Caroline Lees, "Oil Barons Court Taliban in Texas," The Telegraph (London), December 14, 1997.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney, Halliburton."
- On October 27, 1997, both Unocal and Halliburton issued press releases about their energy work in Turkmenistan. "Halliburton Energy Services has been providing a variety of services in Turkmenistan for the past five years." Press Release, "Halliburton Alliance Awarded Integrated Service Contract Offshore Caspian Sea In Turkmenistan," October 27, 1997. http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/1997/hesnws_102797.jsp ; "ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, Oct. 27, 1997 - Six international companies and the Government of Turkmenistan formed Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) in formal signing ceremonies here Saturday." Press Release, "Consortium Formed to Build Central Asia Gas Pipeline," October 27, 1997.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Enron stood to benefit from the pipeline.
- Dr. Zaher Wahab of Afghanistan, a professor in the US speaking at International Human Rights Day event, "explained that Delta, Unocal as well as Russian, Pakistani and Japanese oil and gas companies have signed agreements with the Turkmenistan government, immediately north of Afghanistan, which has the fourth largest gas reserve in the world. Agreements also have been signed with the Taliban, allowing these oil and gas giants to pump Turkmenistan gas and oil through western Afghanistan to Pakistan, from which it then will be shipped all over the world. The energy consortium Enron plans to be one of the builders of the pipeline." Elaine Kelly, "Northwest Groups Discuss Afghan, Iranian and Turkish Rights Violations," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 31, 1997.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Kenneth Lay of Enron was Bush's number one campaign contributor.
- Mr. Lay, also a friend to former President George Bush, was the top campaign contributor to Mr. Bush's 2000 presidential election." Jerry Seper, "Colossal Collapse: Enron Bankruptcy Scandal Carves a Wide Swath," The Washington Times, January 13, 2002; "Although Enron is George W. Bush's No. 1 career donor, the president also is heavily indebted to the professional firms that aided and abetted the greatest bankruptcy and shareholder meltdown in U.S. history." Texans for Public Justice, "Bush Is Indebted To Enron's Professional Abettors, Too," January 17, 2002 http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=255
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Then in 2001, just five and a half months before 9/11, the Bush administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban government."
- "A Taliban envoy appealed to the Bush administration Monday to overlook his group's support of extremist Osama bin Laden and the destruction of priceless centuries-old Buddhist sculptures and lift sanctions on Afghanistan to help alleviate a humanitarian crisis threatening the lives of a million people. Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi delivered a letter from the Taliban for President Bush that called for better U.S.-Afghan relations and negotiations to solve the dispute over the Saudi-born Bin Laden. Robin Wright, "Taliban Asks US to Lift its Economic Sanctions," Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2001.
- "The Town Hall forum was Hashemi's final meeting in a weeklong visit to California, where he spoke at several universities, including USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley. Later Thursday, he left for New York for another stop on his public relations tour before going to Washington, where he is scheduled to deliver a letter from his party to the Bush administration." Teresa Watanabe, "Overture By Taliban Hits Resistance," Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2001.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies.
- "Osama bin Laden has claimed credit for the attack on U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, which killed 18; for the attack on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed 224 and injured nearly 5,000; and were linked to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole on 12 October 2000, in which 17 crew members were killed and 40 others injured. They have sought to acquire nuclear and chemical materials for use as terrorist weapons." "Britain's Bill of Particulars" New York Times, October 5, 2001.
- "Osama bin Laden, in recent years, has been America's most wanted terrorism suspect, with a $5 million reward on his head for his alleged role in the August 1998 truck bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people, as well as a string of other terrorist attacks... Most recently, the F.B.I. has named Mr. bin Laden as a prime suspect in the suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole, which was attacked in Aden harbor, 350 miles by road southwest of here, on Oct. 12, with the loss of 17 sailors' lives." John F. Burns, "Where bin Laden Has Roots, His Mystique Grows," New York Times, December 31, 2000.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Hamid Karzai was a former Unocal advisor.
- "Cool and worldly, Karzai is a former employee of US oil company Unocal -- one of two main oil companies that was bidding for the lucrative contract to build an oil pipeline from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to seaports in Pakistan -- and the son of a former Afghan parliament speaker." Ilene R. Prusher, Scott Baldauf, and Edward Girardet, "Afghan power brokers," Christian Science Monitor, June 10, 2002. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0610/p01s03e-wosc.html.
- Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal adviser, signed a treaty with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf and the Turkmen dictator Saparmurat Niyazov to authorize construction of a $3.2 billion gas pipeline through the Heart-Kandahar corridor in Afghanistan." Lutz Kleveman, "Oil and the New 'Great Game," The Nation, February 16, 2004.
- TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH: "He was a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, while they studied the construction of a pipeline in Afghanistan." Chipaux Francoise, "Hamid Karzaï, Une Large Connaissance Du Monde Occidental," Le Monde, December 6, 2001.en minutes
Section Six covers the facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 from the Patriot Act through the war in Iraq.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal advisor."
- "Mr. Khalilzad himself knows how compasses change. In the mid-1990's, he briefly defended the Taliban while working as a consultant for Unocal, the oil company that was then trying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. He later became one of the Taliban's fiercest critics." Amy Waldman, "Afghan Returns Home as American Ambassador," New York Times, April 19, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Afghanistan signed the agreement to build a pipeline through its country carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea ."
- "The framework agreement defines legal mechanisms for setting up a consortium to build and operate the long-delayed US$3.2-billion natural gas pipeline, known as the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, which would carry gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan. It would be one of the first major investment projects in Afghanistan in decades." Baglia Bukharbayeva "Pakistani, Turkmen, Afghan Leaders Sign US$3.2 Billion Pipeline Deal," Associated Press, December 27, 2002.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "In the year 2000, [John Ashcroft] was running for re-election as Senator from Missouri against a man who died the month before the election. The voters preferred the dead guy."
- "Sen. John Ashcroft on Wednesday graciously conceded defeat in his re-election campaign against the late Gov. Mel Carnahan and urged fellow Republicans to call off any legal challenges." Eric Stern, "Ashcroft Rejects Challenge To Election; Senator Says He Hopes Carnahan's Victory Will Be 'Of Comfort' To Widow,"St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 9, 2000 .
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "During the summer before 9/11, Ashcroft told acting FBI director Thomas Pickard that he didn't want to hear anything more about terrorist threats."
- "Former interim FBI chief Thomas Pickard testified Tuesday that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorism when Pickard tried to brief him during the summer of 2001, as intelligence reports about terrorist threats were reaching a historic level." Cam Simpson, "Ashcroft Ignored Terrorism, Panel Told; Attorney General Denies Charges, Blames Clinton," Chicago Tribune, April 14, 2004.
- See also film footage.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "His own FBI knew that summer that there were al Qaeda members in the U.S. , and that bin Laden was sending his agents to flight schools throughout the country."
- [T]he July 2001 'Phoenix' memo, written by an FBI agent in Arizona, warned about 'an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest' taking flight training. It urged the agency to collect data on flight schools and foreign students, and to discuss the potential threat with other intelligence agencies. ...[O]ne of the men mentioned in the memo was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 with a senior al Qaeda facilitator, Abu Zubayda. R. Jeffrey Smith, "A History of Missed Connections; U.S. Analysts Warned of Potential Attacks but Lacked Follow-Through," Washington Post, July 25, 2003.
- Excerpt from "Phoenix Memo": "The purpose of this communication is to advise the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by USAMA BIN LADEN (UBL) to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Phoenix has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the State of Arizona." Read the entire Phoenix Memo at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "[T]he photo of the man in the newspaper was not the Aaron Stokes they had come to know, [a member of Peace Fresno]. He was actually Deputy Aaron Kilner. And he had infiltrated their group."
- "Aaron Kilner, 27, who joined the force in June 1999 and had been assigned the last 18 months to the anti-terrorist team under the vice-intelligence unit, apparently was killed instantly when his blue Yamaha motorcycle slammed into the right front side of a 1999 Buick, Fresno police said." Louis Galvan, "Crash Kills Off-Duty Detective, Victim Joined Fresno County Force in 1999," Fresno Bee, August 31, 2003.
- "It remains unclear why the Fresno County Sheriff's Department infiltrated the peace group there, but Pierce said his department's actions were legal. 'We can be anywhere we want to that's open to the public,' Pierce said in a telephone interview from his Fresno office." Sam Stanton and Emily Bazar, "More Scrutiny of Peace Groups, Public Safety Justifies Surveillance Since 9/11, Authorities Say," Sacramento Bee, November 9, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Barry Reingold's story.
- "Then there's San Franciscan Barry Reingold, who was awakened from his afternoon nap by a buzzing intercom on Oct. 23. He called down to the street to find out who it was. 'The FBI,' was the response. He buzzed the two men up, but decided to meet them in the hall. 'I was a little bit shaken up,' says Mr. Reingold. 'I mean, why would the FBI be interested in me, a 60-year-old retired phone company worker?' When they asked if he worked out at a certain gym, he realized the reason behind the visit. The gym is where he lifts weights -- and expounds on his political views." Kris Axtman, "Political Dissent Can Bring Federal Agents to Door," Christian Science Monitor, January 8, 2002. See also, Sam Stanton, Emily Bazar, "Security Collides With Civil Rights, War On Terrorism Has Unforeseen Results," Modesto Bee, September 28, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Congress did not read the Patriot Act before voting on it.
- "Later that morning [of October 12], the House voted 337-79 to pass the bill. The outraged dissenters complained that no one could possibly have had the time to read the enormously complex 342-page law that amended fifteen different federal statutes and that had only been printed out hours before." Steven Brill, After; How America Confronted the September 12 Era, (Simon & Schuster, NY: 2003).
- "Many lawmakers were outraged that a bipartisan bill, which had passed the Judiciary Committee by a unanimous vote, was set aside for legislation negotiated at the last minute by a very small group. Members rose to say that almost no one had read the new bill, and pleaded for more time and more deliberation.... Asked about complaints that lawmakers were being asked to vote on a bill that they had not read, the chairman of the Rules Committee, Representative David Dreier, Republican of California, replied, 'It's not unprecedented.'" Robin Toner & Neil A. Lewis, "House Passes Terrorism Bill Much Like Senate's, but With 5-Year Limit," The New York Times, October 13, 2001.
- See also film footage of Congressmen Conyers and McDermott.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Transportation Security Agency says it's okay to take four books of matches and two butane lighters in your pockets as you board an airplane.
- "Consistent with Department of Transportation regulations for hazardous materials, passengers also are permitted to carry no more than four books of matches (other than strike anywhere matches) and no more than two lighters for individual use, if the lighters are fueled with liquefied gas (BIC-or Colibri-type) or absorbed liquid (Zippo-type).'' 49 CFR 1540; http://www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/68_FR_9902.pdf
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Thanks to the budget cuts, Trooper Kenyon had to come in on his day off to catch up on some paperwork."
- "Budget cuts that laid off 129 Oregon State Police officers earlier this year have left a single trooper to cover the 1,400-square-mile territory and 100 miles of state roads around this city on Oregon's central coast." "Layoffs Leave Oregon Trooper Alone in Big Coastal Territory," Seattle Times, October 6, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "On March 19th, 2003, George W. Bush and the United States military invaded Iraq, which had never attacked or threatened to attack the United States. A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen."
- "Iraq has never threatened nor been implicated in any attack against U.S. territory and the CIA has reported no Iraqi-sponsored attacks against American interests since 1991." Stephen Zunes, "An Annotated Overview of the Foreign Policy Segments of President George W. Bush's State of the Union Address," Foreign Policy In Focus, January 29, 2003. Segments of President George W. Bush's State of the Union Address," Foreign Policy In Focus, January 29, 2003
- "Iraq never threatened U.S.security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country. And now they're hoist on their own canard." Maureen Dowd, "We're Not Happy Campers," The New York Times, September 11, 2003.
- "Iraq never threatened the US, let alone Australia. The basic consideration was and remains the perception of America's wider strategic interest in the Middle East." Richard Woolcott, "Thread bare Basis To The Homespun Yarn That Led Us Into Iraq," Sydney Morning Herald, November 26, 2003-(Woolcott was Australia's Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs And Trade during the first Gulf War.)
- For definition of murder of civilians (as opposed to combatants), see Article 3 of the Geneva Convention . ("For persons taking no active part in the hostilities, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time (a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds.")
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The Coalition of the Willing included Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, Romania, The Netherlands, and Afghanistan.
- White House list of Coalition members, March 20th, 2003: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/print/20030320-11.html
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Morocco , according to one report, offered to send 2,000 monkeys to help detonate landmines.
- "The administration has even turned to the animal kingdom for help in the war. First came the dolphins, those really smart mammals recruited to help clear mines at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Then came word that Morocco was offering 2,000 monkeys to help detonate land mines." Al Kamen, "They Got the 'Slov' Part Right," Washington Post, March 28, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "The government would not allow any cameras to show the coffins coming home."
- "For the past 13 years, the Pentagon has barred reporters from witnessing the transport of soldiers' flag-draped coffins to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware." Amanda Ripley, "An Image of Grief Returns," Time, May 3, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "At the end of January, of '04, the unemployment rate in Flint was actually 17 percent."
- Flint City, Jan 04, Unemployment Rate, 17.0%. Office of Labor Market Information, Michigan State Government. http://www.michlmi.org/LMI/lmadata/laus/lausdocs/049lf04.htm
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Bush "proposed cutting the soldiers' combat bonus pay 33 percent and assistance to their families by 60 percent."
- The Bush administration announced that it would roll-back 'modest' increases of benefits to troops. The Army Times noted, "the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger from $225 to $150 (a cut of 33%) and family-separation allowances from $250 to $100 (a cut of 60%) for troops getting shot at in combat zones." http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292259-1989240.php
- "Thanks to a law passed this year, troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other high-risk areas now receive $225 a month in supplemental pay. That's an increase of $75 from the previous amount for combat pay. Under that same law, soldiers who have been forced to leave behind spouses and children receive $250 a month in additional separation pay to help cover child care and other additional expenses caused by assignment overseas. That's an increase of $150 over the previous supplement. ... In its 2004 budget request, the Pentagon asked Congress to cut both combat pay and separation pay back to the previous levels." "Our Opinions: Proposal to Reduce Pay No Way to Salute Military," Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 15, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "He proposed cutting $1.3 billion in veterans' health care and closing seven veteran's hospitals. He tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans and opposed full benefits for part time reservist."
- "On Nov. 12, the Office of Management & Budget opposed restoring $1.3 billion in funding for Veterans Administration hospitals that the House Appropriations Committee had cut. ''It's as if they're not even aware [that] there's a war on terror going on,' says Steve Thomas, an American Legion spokesman and Navy vet who notes casualties in Iraq could make demand for VA services soar." Stan Crock in Washington, with William C. Symonds in Boston, "Will The Troops Salute Bush In '04?," Business Week, December 8, 2003.
- "The White House had expressed its 'strong opposition' to the Senate's effort to expand military health benefits to reservists and National Guard members, and boost 'veterans' health care spending by $1.3 billion." Jonathan Weisman, "Bush Aides Threaten Veto of Iraqi Aid Measure," Washington Post, October 22, 2003.
- In early 2003, the Bush administration announced that it was closing "seven of its 163 veteran's hospitals in an effort to 'restructure' the Department of Veterans Affairs." Suzanne Gamboa, "VA Proposes Overhaul, 13 Facilities Would Close or See Major Changes," Associated Press, August 4, 2003.
- In 2003, the Bush administration proposed increasing prescription drug costs for veterans, a proposal that would have doubled the cost of prescription drugs. "The Bush plan would have included a new $250 enrollment fee and a co-pay increase from $7 to $15 for veterans earning over $24,000." The House amended the proposal to reject the Bush administration's fee increases and to recoup the $264 million in costs by reducing administrative funding for the VA. "Panel Rejects Extra Funds for AmeriCorps," Washington Post, July 22, 2003.
- "The Bush administration is flatly opposed to giving the Guard and Reserve access to the Pentagon's health system." Opinion, The Daily News Leader (Staunton, VA), October 25, 2003.
- "U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has helped push a bill through the Senate to improve the health care benefits of Guard and Reserve members. This bill has had broad bipartisan support since it was introduced in May. Last week Graham had his health care plan attached as an amendment to the $87 billion supplemental appropriations bill that President Bush is seeking to pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House should take up the amendment next week. Strangely, the Bush administration has opposed this new benefit for Guard and Reserve members, arguing that it would be too expensive." Staff, "Helping our Guard and Reserve," The Greenville News, October 16, 2003.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Nearly 5,000 wounded in the war.
- "A year ago at this time, more than 160 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. The total since has risen to more than 800, and last week the Pentagon reported that the number wounded in action is approaching 4,700." Pete Yost, "Bush Hails U.S. War Dead and Veterans," Associated Press, June 1, 2004.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "Out of the 535 members of Congress, only one had an enlisted son in Iraq."
- "Only four of the 535 members of Congress have children in the military; only one, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has a child who fought in Iraq." Kevin Horrigan, "Hired Guns," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 2003.
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Media Play
GOP 'War Room' Is On-Site
Republicans Dish Out Instant Rebuttals in Beantown
By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16218-2004Jul26.html
BOSTON, July 26 -- In a nondescript fifth-floor office a stone's throw from FleetCenter, Tim Griffin allows himself a smile.
The Republican National Committee's research chief, one of 30 GOP operatives here to rain on the Democratic parade, has on his computer screen a photo of a John F. Kerry press pass from Detroit. The pass happens to feature a gleaming Rolls-Royce -- hardly the preferred vehicle of the working masses Kerry hopes to attract -- and Griffin, having spotted it in the Washington Times, is posting the image online.
When 40 reporters showed up for a Republican news conference Monday morning, they were handed laminated Kerry passes emblazoned with the luxury car, a big red X and the words "Democrat Cosmetic Convention."
Here in the heavily Democratic capital of one of America's bluest states, President Bush's campaign and the RNC have set up shop, determined not to abandon their megaphone even though Kerry and his party will drown them out all week.
"We understand we're going to be on the jump page," said Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie, who also appeared Monday on CNN, Fox and CNBC. But, he said, "it's not just important to show the flag. In this information age, you can't just let a news cycle go by without responding and getting into the mix."
Besides, he said, "it's kind of fun to be behind enemy lines."
This is no ordinary storefront operation. In the "war room," filled with computers and television sets, Republican staffers are monitoring everything that Kerry and his party stalwarts say, looking for anything they can paint as wrong, exaggerated or, to use their favorite term, a flip-flop.
Rich Galen, a former Newt Gingrich aide who is here as a GOP spinner, said he first took Gingrich and a few others to the Democrats' San Francisco convention in 1984 because "by the second day everyone has covered everything there is to cover and they're down to the guy selling the Nixon bobble-head dolls on the street."
Not that Republicans have a patent on the idea. The Democratic National Committee will be doing the same thing during Bush's convention in New York. "It's to keep them honest -- simple as that," said DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera. "It's rare that the other side breaks through. That will not stop us."
Nor has it stopped the Republican invaders. In one office, regional press secretaries deal with local journalists. Behind another door with a "Viva Bush" bumper sticker, other staffers focus on black and Hispanic outlets.
In the radio room, Scott Hoganson, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, has 115 interviews booked for Tuesday with the likes of Gillespie and GOP activists Galen and Mary Matalin. According to a wall chart, Gillespie will hit the air in Grand Rapids, Mich., at 7:35 a.m., Cleveland (8:10), Seattle (9:06), Laura Ingraham's syndicated show (9:30), Los Angeles (10:35), Fargo, N.D. (12:10 p.m.), Cincinnati (2:05), Philadelphia (6:05) and Phoenix (8:10), on a program hosted by G. Gordon Liddy's son, Tom.
And if all else fails, "I'm the guest of last resort," Hoganson said, "because I'm better than dead air."
Bush aides say without blushing that they are just setting the record straight. "We're probably the only people in Boston who want to focus on Kerry's record in the United States Senate," said Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.
Rapid reaction is the key. Griffin drafted a news release Sunday after ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) whether Kerry is a liberal and the senator argued that "labels don't really have much meaning today." One of Griffin's 10 opposition researchers dug up golden-oldie quotes of Kennedy slamming Republicans with such terms as "Neanderthals" and "right-wing ideologues." "He seems to have changed his opinion of labels," said Griffin, who listed the quotes under a headline: "Hey Ted, What About These?"
Monday began with a 9:30 conference call with GOP governors, members of Congress and party leaders across the country, who are given their talking points. They, in turn, carry the message in interviews with their local media outlets.
At 10 a.m., Gillespie took the podium in front of a telegenic background (DemsExtremeMakeover, the name of the RNC's Web site du jour) while reporters across the country dialed in to hear the remarks. A satellite on the roof beamed the pictures to any TV station that wanted them.
Gillespie, joined by Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Texas Rep. Henry Bonilla, called the Democrats "a very angry, bitter, harsh party." Bonilla said Kerry was playing to "an extreme, angry, hard left constituency."
As reporters left the building, they were met by Kerry spokesman Phil Singer, who had tried to get inside. He was accompanied by a man in a red cape and black mask, hired by the DNC, called Enron Ed. "This is the first time there's been any oppo to the oppo," Singer declared.
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Iranian Prosecutor Shuts 2 Newspapers
Outlets Reported on Trial That Implicated Official in Death of Detained Photographer
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16431-2004Jul26.html
ISTANBUL, July 26 -- An Iranian prosecutor has ordered the closures of two newspapers that reported last week on a trial involving a case in which he is alleged to have been involved.
The prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, shut down Jomhouriat, which had published for only 12 days, and Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh over their coverage of the trial of an intelligence agent accused of beating and killing an Iranian Canadian photographer at a prison in the Iranian capital, Tehran, last year. Mortazavi, who supervised interrogations at the prison, has been accused by Canadian authorities of having a role in the killing. The only person charged, however, was the agent, Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi.
On Saturday, a Tehran court acquitted Ahmadi, and Iran's hard-line judicial branch subsequently declared that the case would never be solved.
The shuttering of the newspapers served as an example to other Iranian news media, sources in Tehran said. According to the sources, who said they were warned by Mortazavi's office not to give interviews to the foreign press but who passed information through intermediaries, the papers may be able to reopen in August.
"It shows how Mortazavi has done everything he could to hide and cover up the evidence," said Stephan Hachemi, son of the slain photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi. "There is no hope. They have proved that Iran has no intention whatsoever of bringing justice to the case of Zahra Kazemi."
When Kazemi died in detention after a blow to the head, Mortazavi ordered Iranian officials to announce that she died of natural causes, according to two outside investigations. She was later found to have died of a brain hemorrhage caused by a fractured skull.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, an attorney who represents Kazemi's family, threatened to take the case to international courts.
Iranian reformers embraced the case of Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian citizen who was widely seen as a surrogate for Iranian nationals who disappear into a judicial system that answers only to the theocracy's most senior cleric. But outcry over this case spread beyond the country's borders.
Canada recalled its ambassador after he was denied a promised seat at the trial. The envoy had also been recalled last summer after Kazemi's body was buried in Iran without an opportunity for an independent autopsy abroad.
"This trial has done nothing to answer the real questions about how Zahra Kazemi died or to bring the perpetrators of her murder to justice," Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew declared in a statement.
Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group based in Paris, denounced the trial as "a masquerade of justice orchestrated by the Iranian authorities" and called for the European Union to impose sanctions. The group also protested the shuttering of the two newspapers.
In a symbolic gesture, about 300 journalists bound their hands Monday to protest mounting restrictions on free expression. Ebadi attended the meeting of the Journalists' Professional Association.
For hard-liners in Iran, the judiciary has long served as both a stronghold and a sanctuary, where appointed conservatives have been able to thwart the efforts of elected reformers. Mortazavi has been its most notorious operative, closing more than 100 newspapers that questioned Iran's authoritarian rule.
But after 25 years as one of the world's most isolated states, Iran has also made clear an appetite to cultivate economic and diplomatic ties abroad. The decision to open its shadowy nuclear program to international inspectors was linked to promises of trade with Europe.
External pressure forced Iran's judiciary to proceed with the trial, which could only embarrass hard-liners, according to foreign diplomats based in Iran. After Ahmadi was acquitted, the state offered to pay "blood money" to Kazemi's family, "as Islamic law stipulates . . . for a Muslim within state responsibility when perpetrators of a crime are not identified," the judiciary said in a statement published by Iran's official news agency.
Hachemi, the victim's son, scoffed at the offer and called for Canada to break diplomatic relations with Tehran, as Washington did in 1979 after the takeover of the U.S. Embassy there. "Since we don't have a dialogue with Iran, what's the use of having an ambassador?" he said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the reformist faction of the government on Monday repeated an offer to the judiciary for "a full and transparent investigation."
A diplomat based in Tehran said that such a probe would be highly unlikely after Mortazavi and other hard-liners thwarted two earlier investigations but added that the case "is not going to die an easy death."
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REPUBLICAN STRATEGISTS
In Enemy Territory, Republicans Fight the Democratic Party Line
July 27, 2004
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/campaign/27war.html
BOSTON, July 26 - In case anyone missed the fact that Senator John Kerry was booed at Fenway Park on Sunday night or that Teresa Heinz Kerry told a newspaper reporter to "shove it," a few dozen Republicans made sure these tidbits were not lost in the Democrats' overflow of scripted e-mail messages and the happy television chitchat bubbling up from their convention.
The Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee have temporarily transplanted their "war room" from suburban Virginia to a small bunker just two blocks from the Fleet Center, where the Democrats are expected to nominate Mr. Kerry for president on Thursday night.
John Feehery, who in Washington is a spokesman for the Republican speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, is among those encamped at the bunker here. He managed to obtain a credential that allowed him into the Fleet Center on Monday afternoon and to circulate among news organizations, handing out his memorandum mentioning Mr. Kerry's reception at Fenway and his wife's remark. (Credentials won by the other side are by now a standard feature of war-room tactics; most emanate from lobbyists in Washington who like to play both sides.) Mr. Feehery is only one soldier in the Republican field operation. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is overseeing about three dozen people, including a rotation of "spinners" like Ralph Reed and Mary Matalin, and top Republican strategists. There is a regional desk focused on battleground states and a nerve center with computers monitoring and cataloging all things Kerry. The effort here is coordinated with scores of surrogate speakers in the battleground states so all are talking from the same page.
"The goal is to get into the stories," Mr. Gillespie said in an interview in his bare-bones bunker office. "We know we're swimming upstream and that our quotes are going to be on the jump page. But we don't want to let charges go unanswered and we don't want to allow them to ditch the senator's record, because we believe it's important in the debate."
It is the Republican view that Mr. Kerry's voting record in the Senate shows him to be a liberal, partial to tax raises and weak on defense and that the convention is trying to conceal that information, hence the new Republican Web site DemsExtremeMakeover.com.
But what makes the blood flow among Republican workers is something unexpected, like Mrs. Heinz Kerry's remark. "It was the most dramatic dichotomy between the Kerry campaign's assertions that they want to be positive and the reality," one worker said.
The planting of the party flag in enemy territory began on a limited basis in 1984 at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who is working out of the bunker here. The practice became more common in 1992 when the Clinton campaign called it the war room and aggressively countered the first President George Bush.
The evolving technology has changed the nature of these movable war rooms, which are driven by the Internet, satellite feeds, surrogate speakers and talk radio, but also, as Mr. Feehery demonstrated, by old-fashioned shoe leather.
"What's changed the dynamic is 24/7 cable news coverage," Mr. Gillespie said. "The satellite feeds into battleground states is a little bit new."
Mr. Gillespie plans to brief reporters every morning with the Republican spin to counter the Democratic spin. He is also importing different Republican officials all week to amplify the party line. On Monday, Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey of Massachusetts and Representative Henry Bonilla of Texas stood at his side for the briefing. Then they fanned out for interviews.
Mr. Owens sat in the bunker's television studio and conducted interviews via satellite with 10 television stations across the country and 6 radio stations. Six of the television interviewers were in Denver, where the governor lives and works, but the Boston setting gave his interviews a dash of pizazz. It also spoke to the mounting concern among Republicans that Colorado could swing Democratic this year.
Just what bang the Republicans got for the buck was not clear. Mr. Owens spent much of his interview time assuring his listeners, at least those in Colorado, that he would be back in the state on Monday night, and got in only an occasional mild poke at Mr. Kerry.
"Colorado is a battleground state," he said between interviews, explaining his style. "I'm really not hard-edged when it comes to politics."
As the Democrats build toward Mr. Kerry's likely nomination on Thursday night, the Republicans plan to import other marquee names, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, who lost to Mr. Kerry in the last Senate election.
Mr. Gillespie said it was essential to provide the Republican point of view. But he acknowledged there was a point when reporters might cease to toggle between the campaigns for comment.
"You could go on exponentially," he said with a laugh. "It's like endless mirrors back to back."
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At the Democratic Convention, Reporters Outnumber Delegates 6 to 1
July 27, 2004
By DAVID CARR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/arts/27REPO.html
Every four years they arrive at the political conventions from all over the country, a disparate group of people with a common passion. They check in, get their badges and swan onto the convention floor, then take up beery residence in the hotel bars at night. After years of waiting and many months of buildup, their moment has finally come. And much of that takes place before the delegates arrive.
Political reporters are a hardy, predictable bunch. They come to a coronation that has been scheduled for months - like the Democratic convention, which opened last night - and immediately begin whining about the absence of news and bathrooms. But they are secret admirers of this particular inflection point in the pageant of democracy, and many are surreptitiously beside themselves with excitement.
Who can blame them? Even the most dour, campaign-hardened veteran is not immune to the hoopla, to having a role and access to an event that often lacks suspense but is not short on lasting implications.
After a summer of throwing their coverage down a rathole as the public took an interest in everything but the coming election, they finally have the eyes of America upon them. Confronted by an event where they will actually meet their public, schlumpy reporters drop off their corduroy coat at the dry cleaner for an annual fumigation. Even cable shouters take on a sudden level of gravitas when framed by convention bunting.
Everywhere the attendant media look at a convention - the herd of satellite trucks, the phalanx of security, the whup-whup of helicopters overhead - tells them one thing: it is all here. It is all happening right now.
"It is sweet agony," said Howard Fineman, Newsweek's chief political correspondent and a convention regular for a quarter century. "On one level nothing happens, but it is nothing at the very center of the world that you are part of. You are immersed to the eyeballs in the concentrated form of the culture you cover."
Mr. Fineman points out that for a reporter of things political, conventions imprison sources and ensure that a year's worth of check-ins can be packed into a few weeks in the heat of summer in Boston and New York. And he is not immune to the charming folkways of convention reporting.
"I like the old-fashioned exercise of walking around the floor talking to delegates," he adds, "even though they have as much actual power as members of the old Supreme Soviet."
Pity the poor delegates, who are chiefly roaring human backdrops and are outnumbered 6 to 1 this year by the 15,000 media members. And pity further the poor party types who are charged with the care and feeding of the horde.
"For the most part they are very reasonable," said Peggy Wilhide, communications director of the Democratic National Convention. She has to make sure that everyone from Dan Rather to the reporting crew from the World Wrestling Entertainment is properly credentialed and situated. "I would say that occasionally, someone becomes, ah, difficult, but then we all do when we are tired and frustrated."
Frustration is as much a part of the media experience at the convention as the pomp. When the story of the day is that the delegates from Utah are thinking about turning their backs to the podium to express their collective displeasure with one of the speakers, it can be difficult to get the news juices flowing.
But flow they do.
"I actually think that there are a lot of interesting, revealing bits of information during a convention," said Jake Tapper, a reporter for ABC News who will attend the Republican convention in New York. Mr. Tapper may be trying to keep dissonance at bay, but he sounds genuinely excited discussing the nuances of the speaking schedule in the forthcoming event.
Eric Eskola has made the trip from Minnesota, where he is the state capitol reporter for WCCO-AM, to 10 conventions. "Even without drama, conventions are the kind of gathering place that makes them a Woodstock for the political set," he said. The delegates, he added, are far from beside the point.
"To get to the level that they are at, they have to care deeply about politics and the process," he said, "and that kind of enthusiasm is fun to document."
Others say that the sheer frisson of donning badges and goofy hats en masse should not be mistaken for an occasion of civic moment.
"The rituals that are part of our culture have a way of outliving their usefulness," said William Powers, media columnist of The National Journal. "I think this is mainly a media story now."
But even if the agenda produces little of import, reporters will always have each other.
"These are the official conventions of the political parties, but they are the unofficial conventions of the political media, as much as when widget manufacturers get together," said David Von Drehle, a reporter for The Washington Post who is taking a pass this year because he has four young children, not because of a lack of interest.
"The big rap is that it is substanceless, but the conventions represent the first crystallization of the presidential election," he added. "Everything up until now is prelude and this is opening night."
-------- us politics
In Boston, a Ringing Call for Change
Clinton Rallies Democrats On Day One of Convention
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15605-2004Jul26.html
BOSTON, July 26 -- Led by former President Bill Clinton, the Democratic National Convention opened here Monday night with a tough and sustained critique of President Bush's policies and a partisan rallying cry to delegates to convert their bitterness over the disputed 2000 election into fresh energy aimed at electing John F. Kerry in November.
To a chorus of cheers and sustained applause, Clinton called the 2004 election a stark choice between two major political parties with deeply held and fundamentally different views of how to meet challenges at home and abroad.
"We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilities and shared opportunities . . . where we act alone only when we have to," he said. Republicans, Clinton added, "believe in an America run by the right people -- their people -- in a world in which America acts unilaterally when we can and cooperates when we have to."
Clinton staunchly defended the Massachusetts senator, saying that when young men such as himself, Bush and Vice President Cheney found ways to avoid going to Vietnam, Kerry volunteered for service there. And he mocked Bush and the GOP for suggesting that Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), would be soft on terrorism. "Strength and wisdom are not conflicting values," he said. "They go hand in hand."
With Kerry and Edwards campaigning their way to Boston through battleground states, the opening-night program also featured former president Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). The Democratic luminaries sent a jolt of energy through Boston's FleetCenter that got the convention off on the high note that organizers had hoped for.
Gore opened his speech with humor about his fate in the 2000 election and then issued an appeal to both those who backed Bush four years ago and those who supported third-party candidate Ralph Nader, urging them to reconsider what their actions had meant for the country.
"I want to say to all Americans this evening that whether it is the threat to the global environment or the erosion of America's leadership in the world, whether it is the challenge to our economy from new competitors or the challenge to our security from new enemies, I believe we need new leadership that is both strong and wise," Gore said.
Carter was even more pointed in his critique of Bush's record. "The United States has alienated its allies, dismayed its friends and inadvertently gratified its enemies by proclaiming a confused and disturbing strategy of preemptive war," he said. "With our allies disunited, the world resenting us and the Middle East ablaze, we need John Kerry to restore life to the global war against terrorism."
Despite claims by Kerry campaign officials and Democratic Party leaders that this convention would accentuate the positive, the first night's speeches echoed the same criticisms of Bush that Kerry, Edwards and other candidates for the Democratic nomination have sounded throughout the campaign.
But with Kerry in an extremely tight contest with Bush and seeking to use the four-day gathering to flesh out his political profile and convince voters that he is fit to serve as commander in chief in a time of terrorism, Monday's speakers also sought to highlight what they described as Kerry's courage and fitness to lead and said he would provide a needed contrast to the leadership style of the incumbent president.
"He will lead the world, not alienate it," Hillary Clinton said. "Lower the deficit, not raise it. Create good jobs, not lose them. Solve a health care crisis, not ignore it."
The 44th Democratic convention marked the first major party convention since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the extraordinary security around FleetCenter and throughout this historic city offered a reminder to the dramatically altered landscape on which the 2004 election is being fought.
That changed climate has put new burdens on the Democratic challenger to demonstrate his national security credentials and, Kerry advisers said, much of the work of this convention will be aimed at giving voters confidence in his leadership. "The major thing we're trying to achieve is for people to see him . . . as someone who is ready to lead this nation," Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager, told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Democrats have the luxury of focusing almost exclusively Kerry and his credentials this week because of the extraordinary unity within the party. In contrast with past conventions, many of them wracked by major disputes and minor wrangling, the delegates have set aside whatever differences they have behind a wall of unity in their desire to defeat Bush.
One more sign of that goal to set aside differences came Monday afternoon, when former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who shaped the Democratic race through much of 2003 only to see Kerry overtake him in the Iowa caucuses, released his delegates in a symbolic gesture of solidarity and urged them to support Kerry and Edwards when the roll is called on Wednesday night.
Clinton produced the evening's highlight reel, with an oratorical flourish designed to remind voters of the prosperity his eight years in office brought to the country and to argue forcefully that it was Democratic policies that had produced those conditions.
Bush, he said, squandered "an amazing opportunity to bring the country together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in the struggle against terror" in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Instead, he said, the president and his congressional allies chose to "push the country too far to the right and to walk away from our allies."
Clinton said Republicans supported tax cuts for wealthy Americans such as himself while cutting funding for programs aimed at helping children and working families with child care, job retraining and after-school assistance.
"If you agree with all that, by all means, reelect them," he said. "If not, John Kerry and John Edwards are your team for the future."
Clinton's speech, which concluded just as the networks were ending their prime-time broadcasts, was interrupted by several standing ovations and by frequent shouts of "You tell him, Bill!" from people in the hall. He was greeted by delegates waving Kerry-Edwards signs reading "America's Future."
"I can sum up my reaction in one word: phenomenal," said Jay Augustine, a delegate from Louisiana. "I thought he hit the nail right on the head with the positions that our country should be moving toward. You could not ask for a sharper contrast between what Democrats stand for and what the party in power believes in."
Gore was the first of the major speakers Monday night and he began on a humorous note with a reference to his bitter defeat in 2000, when he won the popular vote but lost the presidency after a 36-day recount in Florida that ended with a Supreme Court decision that tipped the Electoral College vote to Bush.
"I know from my own experience," he said, "that America is a land of opportunity where every little boy and girl has a chance to grow up and win the popular vote."
Gore was a sentimental and popular favorite among the thousands of delegates. People in the massive hall rose to their feet well before New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had finished his introduction. The roar for Gore was so loud that his name could barely be heard from the floor by the time Richardson finished.
Gore argued that Bush abandoned his pledges to unify the country and pursue compassionate conservatism. Instead, he said, Bush has weakened environmental protections, brought about the erosion of civil liberties and turned record projected surpluses into record deficits. "Let's make sure that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president," he said, "and that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court."
The former vice president saved his strongest words for Bush's conduct of foreign policy, an area he has spoken about repeatedly in the past two years, beginning with a speech in 2002 urging Congress not to give Bush the power to go to war with Iraq unilaterally. Gore said Bush diverted critical resources from the battle to defeat Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to lead the United States into Iraq.
"Wouldn't we be better off with a new president who hasn't burned his bridges to our allies and who could rebuild respect for America in the world?" he asked. Gore, who spoke before the major networks began their coverage, said Kerry, with whom he came to the Senate in 1985, demonstrated the same kind of courage on the floor of the Senate that he had shown in combat in Vietnam. "He never shied away from a fight, no matter how powerful the foe," Gore said.
In closing, Gore exhorted the delegates not to forget 2000. "To those of you who felt disappointed or angry with the outcome in 2000, I want you to remember all those feelings," he said. "But I want you to do with them what I have done: focus them fully and completely on putting John Kerry and John Edwards in the White House in 2004 so we can have a new direction in America."
"He really put the purpose of the convention in the proper perspective," said Ramon Garcia, a delegate from Edinburg, Tex. "He told us where we've been, where we are and where we're going."
Carter said Kerry knows the horrors of war and said the Massachusetts senator, far more than Bush, would safeguard the country against terrorism. "Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world," he said.
He described the choice for voters starkly. "Ultimately the issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and integrity of the American people or whether extremist doctrines and the manipulation of truth will define America's role in the world."
Between the main speeches, the convention featured video feeds from around the country with Americans offering short speeches of support for Kerry and Edwards.
The convention was gaveled into session promptly at 4 p.m. by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe. Earlier in the day, Cahill and strategist Tad Devine offered an upbeat appraisal of the Democrats' chances of taking back the White House in November. Devine painted an expansive portrait of the electoral map for the fall campaign, saying that the Kerry team made a strategic decision in the spring not to concentrate most of its resources in a few critical battleground states, such as Ohio, and instead attempt to enlarge the playing field to states Bush won and that have been trending Republican.
From the opening ceremonies through Thursday's acceptance speech, Kerry's Vietnam War experience will form one of the major subtexts of convention week and, Kerry advisers believe, constitutes one of Kerry's major assets as a candidate.
Democrats staged the first of what will be a series of veterans' events, this one featuring Kerry's Swift boat crew members from Vietnam as well as retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark and former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), who lost three limbs in Vietnam and has campaigned tirelessly for Kerry all year.
Staff writer Paul Farhi and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
--------
Bush, Aides Discuss Findings of 9/11 Panel
Lawmakers Plan for Hearings, Express Concerns Over Creating Intelligence Chief
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16605-2004Jul26.html
President Bush and top administration officials took early steps yesterday to sort through recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, while some in Congress cautioned against rushing too quickly into a reorganization of the U.S. intelligence system.
The president, on vacation in Crawford, Tex., held a teleconference on intelligence changes with Vice President Cheney and his national security advisers to discuss how to handle the key proposals of the commission.
Campaigning yesterday in Kennewick, Wash., and Portland, Ore., Cheney said Bush wants another term to vanquish terrorists.
"What this president has accomplished in 3 1/2 years is remarkable, but the danger has not passed. The threat remains," the Associated Press quoted Cheney as saying in Kennewick. "And in the time ahead, we need the same steadfast presidential leadership."
In its report last week, the commission recommended establishing the office of a national intelligence director, to be confirmed by the Senate, inside the Executive Office of the President. The director would oversee not just the CIA but also the other 14 agencies that make up the intelligence community and that spend about $40 billion a year. A National Counterterrorism Center would be created to supervise intelligence operations within the United States and abroad.
On Capitol Hill, leaders of two Senate committees were discussing scheduling hearings for next week, and House committees began looking at setting up sessions for later in August. At the same time, members of Congress and senior administration and intelligence officials voiced caution, publicly and privately, about making changes before thoroughly vetting ideas and weighing options.
"We must be careful with what we do and not overreact to political momentum and pressure. . . . Intelligence is finely attuned; there is no margin for error," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Hagel said he plans to tell the panel's chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), that "our committee should not roll over and play dead."
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence committee, warned: "Changing organizations to solve one problem can create weaknesses elsewhere. We must also remember that there are no easy solutions or silver bullets."
One aspect of the commission's proposed reorganization that drew skepticism was establishing the national intelligence director, or intelligence czar, as part of the White House.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he has "strong feelings that there was a need to depoliticize the head of intelligence" -- in part by keeping the official out of the Cabinet and establishing distance from the president. Warner also favors giving the top intelligence officer a fixed term that bridges from one administration to the next.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the committee and also a member of the intelligence panel, has already voiced concern about the political independence that an intelligence director would have inside the Executive Office of the President.
As Levin put it Sunday on CNN: "I think that we can do a great deal of reforming. But to me, the greatest issue is whether or not we can separate any kind of political pressure from the intelligence assessments. . . . Whatever organizational structure we come up with, whether it's a new centralized national intelligence director, a counterterrorism center or not, we have got to make sure that the assessments which are provided are free from politics."
A senior administration official said yesterday that Bush is sensitive to such issues and that the president has voiced concern that having an intelligence director as part of the White House could create the appearance of partisanship. Bush, he said, wants to find ways to strengthen the community's independence, not appear to weaken it.
One possibility, an administration official said, is for Bush to follow the course taken in appointing Ridge. In October 2001, in response to congressional pressure, Bush set up by executive order the outlines of what became the Homeland Security Department and appointed Ridge as executive director and a Cabinet member.
It was not until the next year that legislation to create the department was approved by Congress and Ridge was confirmed by the Senate as a Cabinet member.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) asked the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs to evaluate the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations and put together a legislative package by Oct. 1.
The committee has tentatively scheduled a hearing for Monday with two commission members, former senator Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and former deputy attorney general Jamie S. Gorelick, scheduled to appear, a committee spokesman said. The commission's chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R), and vice chairman, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), had other commitments, the spokesman said.
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Kerry, Campaigning in Virginia, Urges Extension of 9/11 Panel
July 27, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/campaign/27CND-DEMS.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1090976443-xn607yDvH51QWIYNLyoSjg
BOSTON, July 27 - As more than 4,000 Democratic National Convention delegates awaited his arrival here, Senator John Kerry, the soon-to-be presidential nominee, visited the huge naval base in Norfolk, Va., today and urged the Sept. 11 commission to work another 18 months.
"Now that the 9/11 commission has done its job, we need to do ours," Mr. Kerry said. "We have the strength as a nation to do what must be done. The only thing we don't have is time."
Accordingly, Mr. Kerry continued, "the commission should stay on the job for at least another 18 months, and beginning this December the commission should issue a status report every six months." Status reports are essential, he said, to answer some critical questions: Is domestic security being strengthened fast enough? Are intelligence agencies being reorganized to meet terrorist threats? Is America building alliances to fight a global war?
Mr. Kerry, who is campaigning up the East Coast and will arrive in Boston on Wednesday, seemed intent on not letting President Bush gain any momentum on issues raised by the final report of the bipartisan 9/11 panel, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Mr. Bush, who initially opposed creation of the 9/11 commission, has been conferring with senior advisers at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on which commission recommendations he should embrace, or even adopt without waiting for Congressional action. A White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, said in Crawford today that Mr. Bush had impressed upon his senior advisers "the importance of acting quickly."
A spokesman for the commission, Al Felzenberg, told The Associated Press today that the panel's chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, Republican of New Jersey, supported the idea of the commission's having extra time to continue its work. Both Mr. Kean and the commission's vice chairman, former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, have said the panel's findings must be acted upon - and soon - if the United States is to better protect itself from terror attacks.
At the Norfolk base, Mr. Kerry, a decorated Navy combat veteran of the Vietnam War, said: "If I were president today, if I had been president last week, I would have immediately said to the commission, `Yes, we are going to implement those recommendations, and we want you to stay on the job for at least another 18 months in order to make sure we do the job.'
"The president has the authority right now, today, to implement many of the commission's recommendations by executive order, and Congress needs to do its part where legislation and/or funding are needed." Many of the commission's recommendations cannot be put into effect without Congressional action, and the panel's members have worried aloud that legislative inertia will get in the way.
Although Mr. Kerry told his Norfolk audience that "we cannot let politics get in the way of protecting the American people," a Bush campaign spokesman, Steve Schmidt, told The A.P. that he believed that "a lot of people" would suspect Mr. Kerry of political gamesmanship."
Not to be outdone, the Kerry campaign accused Vice President Dick Cheney today of "playing politics with national security," as Chad Clanton, a Kerry campaign spokesman put it.
Mr. Cheney, defying the tradition of staying quiet during the opposition's political convention, told a Marine Corps audience today at Camp Pendleton in California that "terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength, they are invited by the perception of weakness," and that President Bush would never fall into the trap of simply waiting for another attack.
Mr. Clanton, of the Kerry campaign, said appearances like Mr. Cheney's today were intended to deflect attention from what he characterized as the White House's poor record on national security issues, including early opposition to creation of the 9/11 commission, followed by only grudging acceptance.
Mr. Kerry is to campaign in Philadelphia before arriving in Boston on Wednesday, where the convention has so far been blessed by fine weather, limited protests unaccompanied by violence and traffic jams much smaller than had been predicted. On Thursday, Mr. Kerry is to accept his party's nomination and deliver what is already being regarded as the most important speech of his career.
While Mr. Kerry is not scheduled to put in an appearance at the convention until then, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is to take the stage tonight to address the delegates. But she was already doing plenty of talking earlier in the day, expressing no regrets in several interviews over her telling a persistent journalist on Sunday to "shove it." In one such interview, on CNN, she said simply, "I say what I believe." Nor has her husband given any hint that he is uncomfortable with his wife's outspokenness.
Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, arrived in Boston this afternoon with his wife, Elizabeth. Before leaving Raleigh, N.C., they visited the grave of their son Wade, who was killed in a jeep accident in 1996, when he was 16.
Mr. Edwards is to speak Wednesday night. "I think anybody listening to this speech will think it's positive," he said aboard his campaign plane, according to The Associated Press.
-------- voting
Nation's First Trial Over Punch Ballots Begins in Ohio
ACLU Wants Machines Eliminated
Associated Press
Tuesday, July 27, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16524-2004Jul26.html
AKRON, Ohio, July 26 -- The nation's first trial to challenge punch-card balloting since the Florida fiasco four years ago opened Monday with a lawyer arguing that even isolated malfunctions in Ohio could change the November election results in this swing state.
Paul Mokey, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, argued in federal court that the state's punch-card machines are not uniform and that in several counties they are antiquated and do not allow voters to correct mistakes. The ACLU wants punch-card ballots declared unconstitutional.
Lawsuits filed by the ACLU against several other states have been settled with agreements to eliminate such ballots.
In Ohio, the ballots are used in 69 of 88 counties, representing nearly 73 percent of registered voters. In the 2000 presidential election, the ballots of nearly 94,000 Ohio voters were rejected.
Mokey noted that Cincinnati's Hamilton County, which had aging punch-card machines in the 2000 election, discounted 2,916 ballots with more than one candidate selected for president.
"In a close election such as that is predicted in Ohio this fall, those 2,916 votes could make the difference," Mokey said.
Punch-card balloting gained attention during the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where problems with the ballots led to 36 days of legal wrangling and recounts, until George W. Bush was declared the winner of the state, and thus the White House, by 537 votes.
Bush won Ohio by a larger margin, but in a recent poll of Ohio voters by the American Research Group, he was tied with Democrat John F. Kerry.
Rich Coglianese, an attorney for the state, said that there is not enough time to replace punch-card systems before the Nov. 2 election and that the state wants to be sure electronic voting machines are secure before using them statewide.
"The worst thing the state of Ohio can do is implement new voting machines with problems," he said.
The ACLU argues that punch cards are more likely to go uncounted than votes cast with other systems, and that use of the ballots violates the rights of black voters, who mostly live in punch-card counties.
Martha Kropf, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, testified for the ACLU that precincts with higher numbers of black residents have more cases of votes for multiple presidential candidates or none at all.
Coglianese said Ohio would show that there is no discrimination based on voting equipment.
Dana Walch, director of election reform at the Ohio secretary of state's office, acknowledged problems with punch cards and said there are plans to replace them by 2005 with machines that alert voters if they make a mistake.
Even if punch-card systems cannot be replaced before November, the ACLU still wants the judge to rule them unconstitutional. The ACLU has not endorsed an alternate system.
U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. agreed to the ACLU's request to hold further hearings to determine possible remedies if he rules in the group's favor.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Nevada University Will Produce Biodiesel With Ethanol
July 27, 2004
RENO, Nevada, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-27-09.asp#anchor5
The University of Nevada at Reno has won a $69,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to find a cleaner, more cost-effective way to produce biodiesel from waste cooking oil.
Biodiesel fuel is non-toxic, biodegradable and creates less air pollution than petroleum diesel. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar, the EPA says.
The grant will be used to fund a pilot project that will use ethanol to convert both virgin and waste cooking oil to biodiesel in a large-scale mobile continuous process unit.
The mobile production unit built by the university will be less expensive and cleaner to operate than the conventional process. Current methods to produce biodiesel are costly and require the use of methanol, which is toxic, corrosive and creates air pollutants. The project will use ethanol, which is less volatile, less toxic and cleaner.
There is no shortage of cooking oil to put through the process unit. U.S. restaurants and hotels produce over three million gallons of waste cooking oil annually, most of which ends up in sewers and landfills.
The university will utilize the biodiesel it produces to meet all of its diesel energy needs.
Another customer for the university's biodiesel fuel is just a few hundred miles down the road.
The Las Vegas area Clark County School district has 1,000 vehicles that are fueled with biodiesel, making it the largest biodiesel fleet in the world. Most of the biodiesel is produced with used frying oil from the Las Vegas casinos.
"Thanks to this project, yesterday's french fry grease is tomorrow's truck fuel," said Jeff Scott, director of the EPA's waste division for the PacificSouthwest office.
"Biodiesel is not only a viable alternative fuel with air quality benefits, but its use can also reduce the amount and expense of waste that gets sent to landfills across the country," said Scott.
The University of Nevada will work with the Washoe County District Health Department and the Nevada Department of Agriculture on this project.
A current list of fuel marketers that are registered to provide biodiesel fuel is available at http://www.biodiesel.org.
-------- OTHER
-------- health
Aloe May Save Lives on Battlefield, Study Finds
REUTERS USA:
July 27, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26262/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The aloe vera plant could provide a fluid to help keep alive trauma victims such as battlefield casualties until they can get a blood transfusion, U.S. researchers said yesterday.
Tests on rats show that the sticky fluid found inside the leaves of aloe vera can help preserve organ function after massive blood loss, the team at the University of Pittsburgh said.
Writing in the journal Shock, they said just small injections of the substance helped counteract the more immediate deadly effects of blood loss.
"We hope this fluid will offer a viable solution to a significant problem, both on and off the battlefield," Dr. Mitchell Fink, a professor of critical care medicine who led the study, said in a statement.
"Soldiers wounded in combat often lose significant amounts of blood, and there is no practical way to replace the necessary amount of blood fast enough on the front lines. When this happens, there is inadequate perfusion of the organs which quickly leads to a cascade of life-threatening events," Fink added.
"Medics would need only to carry a small amount of this solution, which could feasibly be administered before the soldier is evacuated to a medical unit or facility," he added.
The researchers, who got funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, tested the mucilage from inside aloe leaves. It is rich in sugar compounds called polysaccharides that affect the qualities of fluid.
"It may provide better diffusion of oxygen molecules from red blood cells to tissues because of its ability to better mix in the plasma surrounding red blood cells," said Marina Kameneva, an artificial blood expert who worked on the study.
They tested rats, injecting them either with the aloe derivative or salt solution after draining them of some blood.
Just half the 10 rats injected with saline survived, while eight of 10 rats that got aloe did.
In a second experiment involving more blood loss, five of 15 rats survived for two hours after getting aloe compared to one of 14 treated with saline solution alone. Seven animals receiving no treatment all died within 35 minutes.
Trauma is the leading cause of death for people under the age of 40 in the United States, killing 150,000 people a year. Loss of blood accounts for nearly almost half these deaths.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Cage pen angers DNC protesters
July 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040727-105105-1635r.htm
Boston, MA, Jul. 27 -- Anti-war protesters at the Democratic Convention are angered by the cage-like space they have been restricted to, the Boston Herald said Tuesday.
"Some protesters kicked iron riot fencing blocking Causeway Street and refused to enter the 'cage' before being escorted away by police," the paper said. However, there were no arrests, it said.
The protesters have been limited to a small restricted area reminiscent of an enclosed inner city playground or a prison exercise yard less than a hundred yards from Boston's FleetCenter, the site of the convention.
Critics claim the restricted conditions limit the exercise of free speech and are disturbingly reminiscent of a dictatorial state. However Boston police superintendent Robert Dunford defended the "protest pen" he designed for security reasons.
"They are closer to the delegates than they have been at any national convention," he said.
----
Vanunu defies ban on speeches
July 27, 2004
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040726-100243-3664r.htm
JERUSALEM - Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu yesterday leveled a broadside against the Jewish state in defiance of a high court ruling banning him from traveling abroad and talking to foreigners.
Speaking to reporters at the country's elegant High Court building, the 49-year-old former nuclear technician insisted that he could speak to whomever he wished.
"This is a very sad day and shameful day," Mr. Vanunu said after the court rejected his petition that he had no more secrets to tell about Israel's main atomic reactor at Dimona and that the travel ban violated his civil rights.
"I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man. If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it," he said.
Mr. Vanunu, 49, was abducted by Israeli agents and convicted of treason in 1986 after discussing his work as a midlevel Dimona technician with the London Sunday Times.
His revelations led independent analysts to conclude that Israel had amassed between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons - a superpower arsenal - and all but blew away the Jewish state's policy of "strategic ambiguity" over its nonconventional capabilities.
A convert to Christianity, Mr. Vanunu has sequestered himself at a Jerusalem church since he was freed April 21.
The three judges had been swayed by evidence, given in secret, of a diary and scrapbook kept by Mr. Vanunu in his prison cell that apparently was discovered upon his departure after serving all of his 171/2 year sentence.
Mr. Vanunu told reporters that he did write the scrapbook, but did not think the information would damage Israel's security.
Israeli security officials said they were pleased about the outcome of the court hearing.
They said that if Mr. Vanunu left Israel, he would reveal many more details of the processes and personalities at the desert reactor. Even though his information is 18 years old, Israeli officials fear he still could cause serious damage, a charge he denies.
"It's not revenge as such, but there is a need for the security community to deter any further whistleblowing or betrayal," said Ilan Lerman, a former intelligence colonel.
Most Israelis despise Mr. Vanunu as a traitor. They regard the country's nuclear capability as an insurance policy against numerically superior Middle East foes.
----
Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire
Wired News
By Mark Baard
Jul. 27, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64349,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4
BOSTON -- The estimated 5,000 protesters at the Democratic National Convention this week have so far bumped heads over their political differences. In some cases, they have even barred one another from their scheduled (and permitted) events.
But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.
The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.
The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.
Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
"You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.
Observers like Naro attend rallies and marches to record incidents where the authorities appear to be violating the protesters' constitutional rights.
Naro noted that when the Boston Police union was planning to protest at the DNC over a contract dispute with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "there was no talk of putting them into a free-speech zone. It's the people with the guns who get to have free speech."
On Tuesday, a sole, potbellied protester shouted into a microphone on a makeshift stage provided by the city. Right-to-lifers also crashed the place and covered the area with anti-abortion slogans, thinking the area would see more foot traffic.
But audience members, who have been almost exclusively reporters and photographers, must stand in the line of sight of the loudspeakers mounted along the steel beams overhead. Delegates on the other side of the fence will have a hard time hearing anything.
The Black Tea Society, an anarchist group, as well as the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union, have all sued to either uncage the free-speech zone, or move it closer to the delegates. But all of those efforts failed, and "the fence stays," said Boston Police Department spokeswoman Beverly Ford.
Anarchists are also wary of being tracked by the cameras mounted in the cage. Most have gotten the message, through wireless text messaging, websites and word of mouth, to avoid the cage and the surrounding Boston Police-patrolled "soft zone," which is immediately outside the "hard zone," an area controlled by the uniformed division of the Secret Service.
Cameras, monitored in Washington, D.C., by the Department of Homeland Security, can be seen on many street corners in the soft zone.
Protesters will thus be scarce through the soft zone.
"The word is to avoid any area that is fenced in," said Naro.
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