Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Elite armed force stands firm after shake-up
Candidate throws hat into ring
North Korea deal may fall to China
Whose Loose Nuke Are You?
The Nuclear Shadow
Time for major changes at Los Alamos
MILITARY
U.S. Sees Widening Crack in Taliban Leadership
Sudan Vows to Stamp Out Darfur Violence
Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts
Some Question Report On Chinese Space Arms
Taiwan's President Says China a Threat
AN ITALIAN OCTOBER SURPRISE
Fighting Halted in Embattled Najaf
Najaf Fighting Pauses to Allow Talks on Truce
Truce Talks Appear to Collapse in Najaf
Dozens killed as US warplanes strike insurgents in Iraqi city of Samarra
Israel Could Safely Withdraw From Golan, Army Chief Says
Israeli Missiles Hit Gaza Refugee Camp - - Witnesses
Russia Criticizes NATO's Expansion
Pakistan's Musharraf Vows to End Islamic Militancy
US, Russia defense ministers hold security talks
Scores Killed in Attack on U.N. Camp in Burundi
U.S. to Cut Forces in Europe, Asia
GAO Calls Stryker Too Heavy for Transport
Czechs probing Korean War experiments on US prisoners: press
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Times Reporter Subpoenaed in CIA Case
Nonprofits Scramble To Meet Terror Rules
D.C. Exasperated by Security Measures
U.S. Relaxes Entry Rules for Some Foreigners
Police Tactic Against Terror
Detainees Ruled Enemy Combatants
Military Tribunals Uphold Detentions of 4
American Caught With Taliban Seeks Review of 20-Year Term
Al Qaeda Showing New Life
POLITICS
'Fahrenheit 9/11' provoking strong reaction in the Arab world
Harkin wants Bush to end 'backdoor draft' of troops
Bush to Seek Widening of Intelligence Job
Out of Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations
ENERGY
Analysts: Oil Supply Cushion Is Thin
OTHER
British Hospitals Struggle to Limit 'Superbug' Infections
ACTIVISTS
Say NO to the President's Bomb Factory
Israeli peace activist branded a traitor
KEEP SPACE FOR PEACE WEEK ACTIONS
Bombers Turn to Butterflies Again
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Elite armed force stands firm after shake-up
The Saturday Interview
August 14, 2004
UK Times
By Angela Jameson,
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-1216032,00.html
Examining the new direction taken to protect Britain's energy industry NEXT month the United States will quietly attempt to ship 140kg of weapons-grade plutonium across the Atlantic to France. The controversial shipments are likely to attract criticism from anti-nuclear groups around the world.
The radioactive material - enough, critics say, for 50 or more nuclear weapons - will be carried by ships owned by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and be guarded by Britain's nuclear police force.
Since the September 11 attacks the possibility that fuel shipments could be ambushed by terrorists has made the job of guarding such cargos more critical than ever.
Bill Pryke, chief constable of the UK Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, will send at least 30 of his 613 officers to guard the ships en route to France. Pryke's police are leaders in their field who train with the Royal Navy and the SAS. They know how to deal with pirates and terrorists, how to survive in violent Atlantic seas when washed overboard, and how to look menacing to over-enthusiastic protesters.
For years radioactive material that could potentially be used in a dirty bomb - uranium and plutonium - has been given an armed guard in transit by rail, road or sea. Protesters in Cumbria refer to the officers who work the BNFL ships as "sea plods". In 1999 the sea plods helped to guard mixed oxide (Mox) fuel on its way to Japan. The next year, amid the glare of international attention, they rode shotgun on the return journey.
When not on the road, the constabulary guards seven civil facilities, including Sellafield, Europe's biggest nuclear facility, in Cumbria.
Next year, as part of a shake-up of the industry that was given Royal Assent last month, the constabulary will become an autonomous armed force with its own statutory police authority. After almost 50 years of policing, it will be independent of the nuclear operators - BNFL, Urenco and the UK Atomic Energy Authority - who have, until now, paid its bills.
In future Pryke will report directly to Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, and his force will receive its instructions and budget from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the new clean-up body that is to take ownership of Britain's 21 principal nuclear facilities. The force's transformation will be complete when, on April 1 next year, it becomes the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.
Pryke says the change has been a long time coming. Six years ago Antony Pointer, his predecessor, resigned after a dispute over policing the Dounreay site in Caithness. At issue was the balance between budgetary pressures and the need for tight security. After resigning, Pointer told a Commons committee that Britain urgently needed an independent overview of nuclear policing.
The row became bitter, but marked a turning point for the police force, Pryke says. "The organisation has really moved on since then."
Finally independent, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary - a secretive and aggressive body, according to anti- nuclear campaigners - will be required to be as open and accountable as any other force.
Pryke says: "It became very clear that there was a requirement to push the agenda forward. We need to separate out the police force so that it is independent of the nuclear industry, to improve its accountability, its transparency, its openness."
The launch of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority next year marks a sea change in the industry. The era of discovery is over and the need to clean up the damage, and wind down the remaining nuclear sites, is the new priority.
As part of the shift, clean-up contracts at the primary civil sites will be opened up to competition. That means an influx of private contractors in the next few years, presumably making the cops' job harder? "Security is right at the top of the agenda, alongside safety on each of the mission statements of the operating companies," Pryke says. "I can honestly say that if there is an initiative that needs to be taken it will be."
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary will be better funded than ever. Its budget of almost £28 million is up 65 per cent from Pointer's time. Staffing has also soared from the 471 officers of 1998. Inevitably, the events of September 11 helped to convince ministers of the validity of Pointer's argument.
Pryke says: "A lot of the preparatory work had been done between 1998 and 2001 and then 9/11 was a significant turning point in terms of the role we have to take. It really has turned the spotlight on the nuclear industry in terms of its security. We were well-placed because so much work had been undertaken. Not just people, but technological solutions and structural solutions like reinforcing buildings."
The Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 also gave the force powers beyond the seven civil nuclear sites that officers are primarily responsible for.
So how well-prepared is Britain to withstand a terrorist attack on its civil nuclear facilities? "As far as I'm concerned" - Pryke takes a long pause - "I'm satisfied that the relationships we have got with the operators, the regulator and the Government mean that we have adequate security around our nuclear facilities."
Moreover, there has never been a terrorist incident at a civil nuclear site in the UK.
Despite lurid headlines about the possibility of attacks from the air, one of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary's main tasks has not changed since the al-Qaeda threat emerged - dealing with protests.
Jean McSorley, head of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, recalls heavy-handed policing in the 1970s and early 80s. These days the protests are smaller and more good-natured. But it would take only one attempt to build a new nuclear power station for campaigns to be reinvigorated.
Pryke says: "People have the right to protest and there are, what I call, the limits of protest. Hopefully that's where professional judgments are made as to how you police the operation. But he also hopes that the changing nature of the industry has helped to foster a sense of pragmatism among protesters.
"There is a real determination in the civil nuclear industry to restore the environment. We have very talented people working within the industry and they very much want to restore the environment." He believes the public has welcomed the industry's attempts to open up since the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Tony Blair has left the door open to new nuclear power stations, although there seems to be no political appetite for a fresh scheme at present. Should that situation change, Pryke's armed nuclear police could be called on. If anti-nuclear campaigners, who have never targeted individuals, were to adopt the ruthlessness of animal rights activists, it would require sensitive policing. But it is a challenge that Pryke is unfazed by.
"It's always a possibility, but we could respond to it because of that flexibility and that's what people want from a force such as ours. It has to be able to adapt to changing needs."
-------- depleted uranium
Candidate throws hat into ring
By DANIEL BARLOW
Brattleboro Reformer Staff
August 14, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2334155,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Peter Diamondstone..., a member and co-founder of the Liberty Union Party, is seeking the Progressive Party's nomination for governor in the September primary....
One of the main reasons that Diamondstone is seeking the governor's seat is access to its "bully pulpit," he said.
With the seat elevating his mouthpiece, Diamondstone said he would work to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, withdraw all aid to Israel, pay reparations to Iraqis and Palestinians and cease the use of ammunition containing depleted uranium.
These policies are part of his health-care plan, he said, linking war, terrorism and radiation to the basic healthiness of humans.
"There are kids being born with hands growing out of their shoulders and with no arms by the spouses of U.S. troops at a rate of 10 times the occurrence within the rest of the population," said Diamondstone, discussing the effect of depleted uranium on reproduction.
His second goal as governor would be to seize the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon by eminent domain and then "let the citizens decide how long to keep it open, if they want to keep it open at all."....
-------- korea
North Korea deal may fall to China
August 14, 2004
The Age (Australia),
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/13/1092340459246.html?oneclick=true
When the Australian Foreign Minister visits Pyongyang next week, no one should expect a "peace in our time" result, reports Hamish McDonald from Beijing.
Early last month, a battalion of engineers from China's army pitched tents on the banks of the Yalu River and spent the next two weeks practising the assembly of pontoon bridges. Just what military engineers are supposed to do.
But the Yalu River forms part of the Chinese border with North Korea, and when news of the exercise leaked out, it set off speculation in South Korea and right-wing Japanese circles.
Was China preparing for the worst in North Korea, such as a military contingency in which it would be forced to intervene, or the collapse of its communist regime? Was it sending a none-too-subtle message to its prickly ally that Chinese support had its limits? Was it a signal that Pyongyang should stop stalling at the six-nation talks Beijing is sponsoring to persuade it to abandon its nuclear weapons efforts?
This week, the speculation prompted Beijing to admit to the exercise, which it said was just to prepare troops for dealing with natural disasters. The explanation sounded as lame as its acknowledgement a year ago that paramilitary police manning the North Korean border were being replaced by regular army troops: long-planned, nothing to do with the nuclear crisis that had just blown up.
Into this heated strategic environment, where North-East Asia's long-term alliances are creaking and grating like thawing pack-ice, Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, steps next week with a rare visit to the North Korean capital.
Initial Canberra reports ramped it up as a major diplomatic initiative - conjuring images of Mr Downer waving a piece of paper and declaring peace - but Australian officials say the objectives are far more modest, and the timing quite accidental, with the Pyongyang visit tacked onto regular ministerial talks with China.
The North Koreans might be stalling to see if President George Bush's hardline administration is replaced by another set of officials.
Mr Downer will spend only 20 hours in the North Korean capital, and will meet his counterpart, Paek Nam-Sun, and some other officials, but almost certainly not the supreme leader, Kim Jong-il.
The hope is simply that the North Koreans will turn up at the fourth round of six-nation talks in Beijing (involving the two Koreas with China, Japan, Russia and the United States), late next month.
"If they don't turn up or if they storm out, I would admit that our visit didn't work, but, equally, that bad outcome might happen without our visit," an Australian official said. "We are trying to push things in the right direction, but dealing with the North Koreans is tricky."
The official insisted Mr Downer would not be taking a message from Washington. "We are going with the blessing of the US and the other members of the six-party group, but we are not going in there with a letter from anybody. We're (going) because we're a concerned, interested member of the region."
The modest effort comes after Canberra switched to a softer tone with North Korea early this year. Its freeze on senior diplomatic contact, imposed after the North Korean ship Pong Su was intercepted after allegedly dropping off heroin in Victoria, was lifted.
Not much has been heard recently about the Proliferation Security Initiative to intercept exports of nuclear material from rogue states, in which Australia took an early leading role.
If the talks take place, the five other countries will be expecting a considered reply to a big American concession at the last round, enabling Japan and South Korea to send fuel oil and other aid to North Korea as soon as it agrees to a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of all its nuclear weapons and related production plants - as long as the dismantling starts within a few months.
Since the June talks, Pyongyang has noisily rejected the proposal, insisting it needs only to "freeze" its admitted plutonium effort and denying the mounting evidence that it has also been getting Pakistan's help with uranium enrichment.
Canberra worries that the North Koreans might be stalling to see if President George Bush's hardline administration is replaced by another set of officials next January, the official said. "Our concern is that the North will say: Look we've got the US presidential election coming up, so let's just put everything on the backburner for another six months."
The official said Pyongyang was being told: "This is the time to get serious. The US has put something on the table. You've put something on the table."
But more than cajoling from an American ally, it might be heavy hints from its own big brother China that get North Korea to a deal.
-------- russia
Whose Loose Nuke Are You?
August 14, 2004
Antiwar.com
by Gordon Prather
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/prather.php?articleid=3308
With the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 - and the prospect of massive land battles in Central Europe ended - both the Soviet Union and the U.S. began to dismantle tens of thousands of tactical "battlefield" nukes.
Two years later, with the Soviet Union about to come unglued, Russian officials came to "lobby" the U.S. Congress. The Russians planned to secure custody of all Soviet nukes, tactical and strategic; to dismantle those "excess" to Russian needs; to store and eventually dispose of the recovered fissile material as reactor fuel. The problem was, the Russians couldn't afford to do all that. Would Congress help?
Rarely has Congress responded so quickly to a request for money. The so-called Nunn-Lugar Act declared that it was in our national interest to help keep Soviet nukes, nuke materials and nuke scientists from getting "loose." Bush the Elder was authorized to "reprogram" up to $400 million to implement Nunn-Lugar from funds already appropriated for that fiscal year to the Department of Defense (DOD).
The optimum way to have provided direct Nunn-Lugar assistance would have been for the Department of Energy (DOE) - not DOD - to have been funded. Unfortunately, it was several years before Congress got around to authorizing DOE labs to deal directly with their MINATOM counterparts.
Hence, DOD had to contract with DOE to provide MINATOM thousands of "bird cages" to safely store the recovered fissile materials. To provide MINATOM fissile material protection, control and accounting equipment (MCP&A). To help the Russians install our MPC&A equipment and to train them how to use it.
As President Clinton took office, the number one threat to our national security was the prospect that Russia would not be able - even with our financial and technical assistance - to prevent Soviet nukes, nuke materials and nuke scientists from getting loose.
But for Clinton's Greenpeace entourage, U.S. national security was not as important as world peace. For them, 10,000 nukes in our hands was the threat, not a few "loose" nukes in the hands of terrorists.
So, Clinton made it quite clear to the rest of the world - if not to Congress - that he intended to pursue "a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control" as required by Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Clinton unilaterally subjected our "excess" nuke materials and nuke infrastructure to the full NPT Safeguards and Physical Security regime.
Clinton expected all other nations having nukes to follow our example.
Russia did - somewhat reluctantly - once Clinton and a Republican Congress made it clear that the promised Nunn-Lugar assistance was contingent upon it. Clinton had hijacked Nunn-Lugar, transforming it from a nuke proliferation prevention program into a nuke disarmament program.
At the 40th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1997, Director General Hans Blix announced the U.S.-IAEA-Russia Trilateral Agreement. We and the Russians each committed to "transparently" and permanently dispose of 34 tons of weapons-useable plutonium under the watchful eyes of the IAEA.
But there was a big problem. The Russians intended to make mixed-oxide (MOX) reactor fuel out of their excess weapons-grade plutonium. Once that was gone, they intended to continue making MOX from plutonium recovered from the "spent fuel" of ordinary nuclear power reactors. So the Trilateral Agreement essentially committed us to fund the recycling of spent fuel - heretofore prohibited in the U.S. - and a concomitant international rebirth of nuclear power.
No way would Clinton's Greenpeace entourage allow that to happen. So, Clinton never asked Congress for the necessary funds to implement the Trilateral Agreement.
As a result, when Clinton left office, the Russian loose nuke threat was at least as bad as when he entered.
Worse, as President Bush took office, there had been added the Pakistan "loose" nuke threat. Pakistan had dozens of fairly sophisticated "Islamic" nukes and openly supported the ruling Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. The ruling Taliban openly provided refuge to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Four years later, the Russian and Pakistani "loose" nuke threats are somewhat worse, and, thanks to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the North Korean "loose" nuke threat has been added.
Fortunately, Congress has authorized Bush to "reprogram" within DOD up to $50 million of Nunn-Lugar program funds in the current fiscal year for DOD "to resolve a critical or emerging proliferation threat" in a country not formerly part of the Soviet Union.
So, what do you suppose Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith will do with the $50 million? Bomb Bushehr?
Stay tuned.
-------- terrorism
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Nuclear Shadow
August 14, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/opinion/14kristof.html
If a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear weapon explodes beside the New York Stock Exchange or the U.S. Capitol, or in Times Square, as many nuclear experts believe is likely in the next decade, then the next 9/11 commission will write a devastating critique of how we allowed that to happen.
As I wrote in my last column, there is a general conviction among many experts - though, in fairness, not all - that nuclear terrorism has a better-than-even chance of occurring in the next 10 years. Such an attack could kill 500,000 people.
Yet U.S. politicians have utterly failed to face up to the danger.
"Both Bush administration rhetoric and Kerry rhetoric emphasize keeping W.M.D. out of the hands of terrorists as a No. 1 national security priority," noted Michèlle Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And when you look at what could have been done in the last few years, versus what has been done, there's a real gap."
So what should we be doing? First, it's paramount that we secure uranium and plutonium around the world. That's the idea behind the U.S.-Russian joint program to secure 600 metric tons of Russian nuclear materials. But after 12 years, only 135 tons have been given comprehensive upgrades. Some 340 tons haven't even been touched.
The Nunn-Lugar program to safeguard the material is one of the best schemes we have to protect ourselves, and it's bipartisan, championed above all by Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican. Yet President Bush has, incredibly, at various times even proposed cutting funds for it. He seems bored by this security effort, perhaps because it doesn't involve blowing anything up.
Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment sees the effort against nuclear terrorism as having three components. One is the Pentagon's version of counterproliferation, which includes the war in Iraq and the missile defense system; this component is costing $108 billion a year, mostly because of Iraq. Then there's homeland security, costing about $37 billion a year. Finally, there's nonproliferation itself, like the Nunn-Lugar effort - and this struggles along on just $2 billion a year.
A second step we must take is stopping other countries from joining the nuclear club, although, frankly, it may now be too late. North Korea, Iran and (perhaps to a lesser extent) Brazil all seem determined to go ahead with nuclear programs.
Dennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator, notes that if Iran develops nukes, jittery Saudi Arabia will seek to follow, and then Egypt, which prides itself as the leader of the Arab world. Likewise, anxiety about North Korea is already starting to topple one domino - Japan is moving in the direction of a nuclear capability.
The best hope for stopping Iran and North Korea (and it's a bleak one) is to negotiate a grand bargain in which they give up nuclear aspirations for trade benefits. Mr. Bush's current policy - fist-shaking - feels good but accomplishes nothing.
President Clinton's approach to North Korea wasn't a great success, but at least North Korea didn't add to its nuclear arsenal during his watch. In just the last two years, North Korea appears to have gone to eight nuclear weapons from about two.
A third step is to prevent the smuggling of nuclear weapons into the U.S. Mr. Bush has made a nice start on that with his proliferation security initiative.
A useful addition, pushed by Senator Charles Schumer, would be to develop powerful new radiation detectors and put them on the cranes that lift shipping containers onto American soil. But while Congress approved $35 million to begin the development of these detectors, the administration has spent little or none of it.
Finally, Mr. Bush needs to display moral clarity about nuclear weapons, making them a focus of international opprobrium. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is pursuing a new generation of nuclear bunker-buster bombs. That approach helps make nukes thinkable, and even a coveted status symbol, and makes us more vulnerable.
At other periods when the U.S. has been under threat, we mustered extraordinary resources to protect ourselves. If Mr. Bush focused on nuclear proliferation with the intensity he focuses on Iraq, then we might secure our world for just a bit longer.
Right now, we're only whistling in the dark.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Time for major changes at Los Alamos
By Joseph Perkins,
August 14, 2004
Santa Fe Review Appeal
http://reviewappeal.midsouthnews.com/news.ez?viewStory=24219
The computer disks containing top-secret information remain missing at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons facility in New Mexico.
Maybe the disks were snatched by Chinese spies, who, according to a congressional report, successfully infiltrated Los Alamos during the 1990s and made off with classified design information on every thermonuclear warhead deployed in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.
Maybe the top-secret files were stolen by Al Qaeda terrorists, ratcheting up their unholy war against the United States. Or maybe the disks were simply misplaced by some irresponsible scientist or another at Los Alamos who failed to take seriously his or her duty to safeguard America's nuclear secrets.
Now, if this breach of national security was a one-time occurrence, it might be forgiven, if not overlooked.
But this is just the latest in a long-running series of security breaches at the lab, which is managed for the federal government -- some would say mismanaged -- by the University of California.
That's why Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, has introduced legislation proposing that the federal government end its contract with U.C., which the university has held since 1943, when J. Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.
U.C. critics suggest that if security at the weapons lab was as lax during the Manhattan Project era as it is six decades later, Nazi spies just might have stolen the secrets that enabled this country to win the race with Hitler to develop the world's first atomic bomb.
"We simply have a cultural problem there in Los Alamos," said Allard, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which has oversight responsibility for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which has oversight for the national weapons labs.
The man in charge at Los Alamos actually agrees with Allard. "Once again," said G. Peter Nanos, "the failure of individuals to follow prescribed standards and protocols have brought disrepute" to the lab.
Indeed, the loss (or theft) of the top-secret computer disks, stored in an unguarded safe next to a soda machine, is the third security breach at Los Alamos in just the past nine months. But unlike the previous incidents, after which Los Alamos officials assured that missing materials did not compromise national security, lab officials concede that the latest incident is "very serious."
That's why even some of those who have, in the recent past, reflexively defended U.C.'s role in managing Los Alamos, have decided that the time has come for the university to quit the weapons lab.
Like the Los Angeles Times, which recently urged U.C. officials not to bid for renewal of its management contract, after the federal government opened it up to competition for the first time since the lab's inception.
"If it does compete," the Times editorialized this week, placing national security above parochiality, "U.C.'s bid may look less like a resume than a rap sheet."
Over the last four years, the editorial recounted, "vials of plutonium have gone missing; injuries have stemmed from such causes as lasers carelessly left on and radiation exposure; and classified e-mails have found their way to the Internet."
In fact, the institutional culture at Los Alamos has gotten so aberrant that the weapons lab has lost the unwavering support of its biggest benefactor on Capitol Hill, Sen. Pete Domenici, the New Mexico Republican.
"I have found myself increasingly defending the laboratory for failures of basic management ... and security," he stated in an open letter. But repeated security breaches have undermined his efforts.
The lab's "reputation as a crown jewel of science," a vestige of the Manhattan Project era, has been "eclipsed," Domenici continued, "by a reputation as being both dysfunctional and untouchable."
Well, Los Alamos management must not remain untouchable. National security demands a regime change at the weapons lab.
Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at Joseph.Perkins@UnionTrib.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Sees Widening Crack in Taliban Leadership
August 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-afghan-usa-taliban.html
KABUL (Reuters) - There are signs of the Taliban leadership ``falling apart,'' a U.S. military spokesman said on Saturday, citing reports this week that a breakaway faction no longer recognizes Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The one-eyed Mullah Omar became one of the world's most wanted men for helping shelter Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network until late 2001, when U.S. led forces drove the Taliban militia from power in Afghanistan.
Reuters reported Monday that a dissident group named Taliban Jamiat Jaish-e-Muslimeenhad broken away, taking with it about one-third of the Taliban's fighting strength.
``That's a significant development which demonstrates the Taliban are falling apart a little bit on the leadership side,'' Major Scott Nelson told a regular news briefing in Kabul.
Nelson said the military was still assessing what impact the split was having on the Islamist militants' strategy and operations against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
``That fissure is widening -- we see that. Specifically what that means we're still looking into it,'' he said.
The new group was being led by Mulla Syed Mohammad Akbar Aga, a 45-year-old commander from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Sabir Momin, who was the Taliban's deputy operations commander in southern Afghanistan, told Reuters Monday.
The rift within the Taliban comes hard on the heels of a series of arrests of al Qaeda members in neighboring Pakistan, suggesting success on two fronts in the U.S.-led war on terror.
There are around 18,000 U.S.-led troops combing the south and east of Afghanistan for Taliban and al Qaeda members.
Another eight thousand peacekeepers are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forcestationed in Kabul and northern parts of the country.
Friday, one U.S. soldier was wounded in a Taliban ambush of a convoy in southeastern Paktika province, and another was hurt when his patrol vehicle was hit by an explosive device in neighboring Zabul province.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters four fighters had been wounded.
The U.S. military has lost 98 servicemen in Afghanistan since late 2001, the most recent a soldier killed when the Black Hawk helicopter he was traveling in crashed due to a mechanical problem Thursday. The U.S. military says there was no hostile fire involved in the incident.
The peacekeeping force has been beefed up ahead of Afghanistan's landmark presidential election in October, as the Taliban and its allies are expected to intensify a campaign of violence. Close to one thousand people have been killed in the past year, including militants.
Taliban remnants are believed to have links with al Qaeda, the group they sheltered from the 1990s, and militant Islamic forces loyal to former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
-------- africa
Sudan Vows to Stamp Out Darfur Violence
August 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sudan-Darfur.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- President Omar el-Bashir pledged to end violence in Sudan's western Darfur region in comments aired Saturday, but his vice president said it was not practical to disarm within 30 days the Arab militias responsible for the killings of some 30,000 people.
El-Bashir blamed ``plotters'' and ``enemies'' for the violence in Darfur in remarks apparently aimed at defending his government's claims that rebel groups were behind the conflict.
Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, have carried out a campaign of killings in the vast western region, killing and raping black African villagers in what the U.S. Congress has called a genocide. The United States, European Union and humanitarian groups accuse el-Bashir's government of backing the militiamen in an attempt to put down the black African rebel groups.
Khartoum denies backing the Janjaweed. Some 30,000 have been killed in the violence, and 2.2 million people are in urgent need of food and other aid.
On July 30, the U.N. Security Council gave Sudan 30 days to disarm the militias and quell ethnic violence in Darfur region or face economic or diplomatic penalties.
``We are doing our best to meet that deadline but definitely, due to logistical problems and limitations we have at the moment, I don't think the time frame is practical,'' Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha told the British Broadcasting Corp., in an interview recorded on Aug. 9.
Darfur's troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and African farming neighbors over dwindling water and agricultural land.
Violence exploded in February 2003 when two rebel groups -- the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army -- took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen.
El-Bashir said the rebels began fighting because they were disappointed that successful efforts were underway to end a separate, long running conflict in southern Sudan.
``Every good thing that happens to Sudan is unfavorably received by plotters involved in a conspiracy (against the government) and, subsequently, the plotting of the enemies increases,'' el-Bashir said in his speech, which was taped Thursday.
The Sudanese government has also accused Western countries of fueling the strife in Darfur in a bid to take control of the country's natural resources.
But under heavy international pressure to end a crisis, el-Bashir said his government will stop the conflict.
``We are capable, with God's help, to rein in the strife in Darfur and settle the situation there in a way to that would realize security, social peace, the country's unity and sovereignty of the state,'' he said.
Sudanese government and the two rebel groups in Darfur -- the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army -- have said they will attend a new round of African Union-sponsored peace talks set for Aug. 23 in Nigeria.
-------- balkans
Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts
The Asahi Shimbun
August 14,2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200408140127.html
Now that an Iraqi interim government is in place, can the Iraqi people, who have put up with more than 20 years of war and sanctions, finally put their fears to rest and live in peace? I hardly think so.
As Iraq is now, the former Yugoslavia was once the target of violent airstrikes carried out without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. An international force attempted to enforce peace in the troubled Kosovo region. When I look at the current Kosovo situation, I cannot help but worry that Iraq, too, may one day be forgotten by the rest of the world as it wrestles with many serious problems.
Once again, I'm compelled to point out the folly of using force to try to bring a crisis under control or achieve an end, be it the settlement of humanitarian problems or democratization.
The International Citizens' Network, of which I am president, has been supporting refugees in the former Yugoslavia since 1993. In late May, I visited Mitrovica in the Kosovo autonomous province, which is monitored by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
Serb refugees, who had fled from across Kosovo, were living in shelters set up in school gymnasiums and classrooms, inside which thin mattresses were placed side by side. The bombings by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 did nothing to bring Albanian residents, who make up the majority within the autonomous province, and Serbs closer together. On the contrary, the ethnic confrontation has intensified since then.
According to UNMIK, the bodies of two ethnic Albanian brothers who lived in the village of Cabra, near Mitrovica, were recovered from a river on March 16. The Albanian media in Kosovo incited the public with reports that the brothers had drowned after they had been chased into the river by Serb youths.
Enraged Albanian residents attacked and destroyed Serbian Orthodox churches and Serbian homes and cemeteries, causing 5,000 Serbs to flee. The next day, Albanians rushed to Mitrovica, where many people were killed or injured in bloody interethnic clashes between Albanians and the Serb minority.
Although UNMIK repudiated the allegation that the boys had drowned because they were chased by Serbs, it failed to ease tensions. As a result, I had no choice but to rely on UNMIK police vehicles to visit the scenes of destruction.
According to local reports, a 16-year-old Serb boy was shot to death by two Albanian youths on the night of June 4. Although the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) is stationed there, the rule of law has yet to take root in Kosovo as a whole. While 95 percent of Albanian refugees have been repatriated, only 2 percent of their Serb counterparts, who are estimated to number between 200,000 and 300,000, have been able to return home.
What followed the NATO bombings was the persecution of Serbs and other minorities, including Roma, by Albanians. At least 135 churches were destroyed and 3,000 people were killed, abducted or went missing. But the international community, which once made such a fuss over ``the oppression of human rights of Albanian residents by Serbs,'' is virtually indifferent to the plight of Kosovo minorities and the violation of their human rights, which continues even now.
The amount of aid from the international community has also dropped to one-fifth what it was four years ago. Historically significant churches and monasteries that date back to the 11th to 13th centuries have also been destroyed. The unemployment rate in Kosovo jumped to 57 percent from between 30 and 40 percent before the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Drugs, smuggling, human trafficking and prostitution are also rampant.
Iraq is not the only country that has come under fire from tens of thousands of cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells in airstrikes undertaken without the approval of the international community. The same thing happened in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
UNMIK advocates the advancement of ``ethnic harmony'' and ``democratization'' in Kosovo. Like the slogans advocated in Iraq, they are pleasing to the ear. But once force is used as a means to resolve a conflict, reconciliation becomes extremely hard to achieve.
The only way to create hope is for the international community, by once again reflecting on the outcome of military action, to avoid triggering another chain of violence.
The author is president of the International Citizens' Network and a professor emeritus at Saitama University.
-------- china
Some Question Report On Chinese Space Arms
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63706-2004Aug13.html
It is only a passing reference in the Pentagon's annual spring report on Chinese military power, but it is one of the most provocative items.
Describing China's interest in space warfare, particularly in systems for attacking U.S. satellites, the Pentagon raises the possibility that China might be trying to develop "parasitic microsatellites" -- small satellites that attach themselves to larger ones to disrupt or destroy them on command.
The source cited in the Pentagon report for this suspected secret Chinese pursuit is a Hong Kong newspaper that in January 2001 published a story saying China had developed and ground-tested a parasitic microsatellite and would soon begin testing it in space. The Xing Dao Daily story has been cited two years in a row by the Pentagon -- in 2003 and 2004 -- both times with caveats saying the claim either "cannot be confirmed" or, more recently, "is being evaluated."
But the Defense Intelligence Agency, which wrote the reports, never tracked the origin of the newspaper story, according to Pentagon officials. Two U.S. specialists in space weaponry did -- and found it was lifted from a Chinese Web site of dubious repute.
"An examination of the January 2001 newspaper story casts strong doubts on the credibility of the story and its claims," Gregory Kulacki and David Wright write in a paper to be released Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
China's interest in space weapons is not in dispute. Chinese publications contain many discussions of using anti-satellite systems to neutralize U.S. military advantages. What is at issue, say Kulacki and Wright, is whether U.S. analysts have exaggerated the threat and undercut the credibility of the Pentagon report by latching onto a seemingly fanciful claim.
"Our concern is the quality of information that is being presented to Congress and the public on this and other issues," the two write. "Such concerns are especially relevant given recent revelations about intelligence failures and the implications such failures can have."
The Pentagon declined to make the report's authors available. But a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, said that before deciding to mention the article, defense analysts compared it "with known information about this anti-satellite threat" and found it consistent with China's military doctrine and the country's known work on tiny satellites.
"The facts themselves contained within the Pentagon's report on China's military power are accurate and based on a number of sources, not just one press report," he said.
But Kulacki and Wright are not alone in worrying the Pentagon may be trying too hard to connect the dots -- or seeing some dots where none exist.
"I've been very concerned that both in the United States and in China, the source-checking is not as rigorous as it should be," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a specialist in China's space program who chairs a department on national security decision making at the Naval War College. "Both sides will read statements by individuals and translate them into official policy. This parasitic satellite story is like a game of children's telephone: Someone raises it as a point once and it turns into an official government program."
Using keyword searches on several large Chinese-language search engines, the UCS researchers traced the "parasite satellite" tale to an October 2000 story on a Chinese Web site specializing in military affairs. That story, written by Hong Chaofei, a self-described "military enthusiast," contains some of the same passages and much the same information in the later Hong Kong article, the UCS researchers found.
"Hong runs a Chinese-language Internet bulletin board filled with fanciful stories about 'secret' Chinese weapons to be used against Americans in a future war over Taiwan," Kulacki and Wright say. "The poor quality of his technical descriptions, his use of extremely provocative language and the nature of the other materials on his Web site call into question his credibility."
In considering the credibility of the Hong Kong article, the UCS researchers add, the Pentagon also should have taken into account the Hong Kong paper's conversion from a once "staid but unprofitable" publication into a tabloid after its sale in 1999.
If the Pentagon is looking for insight into Chinese work on space warfare, say Kulacki and Wright, it can find plenty of references to microsatellites, laser weapons and infrared sensors in other Chinese publications -- but little mention of parasitic satellites.
"A full-text search on China's National Knowledge Infrastructure, a collection of databases with more than ten million articles from Chinese periodicals published since 1994, returned only one citation using different combinations of the Chinese characters for 'parasite satellite,'" the UCS researchers say. "The term appears in a single speculative sentence, set off by quotation marks, and is described as an exotic potential use of small satellite technology that could be employed sometime far in the future."
Plexico, the Pentagon spokesman, called the UCS report "additional information" that "our analysts will evaluate fully and weigh against the other information they have." He said "no policy decisions" have been made based on the Hong Kong article.
--------
Taiwan's President Says China a Threat
August 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-China.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- China is threatening Asia's security by aiming missiles at Taiwan, boosting annual military spending by double digits and preparing for a possible conflict with U.S. and Japanese forces, Taiwan's leader said Saturday.
President Chen Shui-bian criticized China as his island held a massive air show featuring advanced F-16 and Mirage jet fighters. The planes and the president's words were reminders that the Taiwan Strait is one of the world's most dangerous potential flashpoints.
Taiwan and China have been locked in a sovereignty dispute for five decades. Beijing says the island belongs to Chinese territory and must accept Communist rule or face war. But the Taiwanese have refused to join the mainland and have been drifting closer to seeking a permanent break.
Chinese leaders have shown signs they're getting impatient with Taiwan and might be leaning toward using force to unify the two sides, which split when the Communists won a civil war in 1949. A conflict could quickly involve the United States, which has long served as Taiwan's bodyguard.
Speaking at a democracy conference Saturday, the Taiwanese president warned that a bellicose China was a threat to the region, not just Taiwan.
``In recent years, China has been aggressively increasing its military might,'' Chen said. ``It has been increasing its annual military spending by double digits. It has been deploying missiles directly aimed at Taiwan. And it's planning to have the ability to stop U.S., Japanese and other international forces from getting involved in the Taiwan Strait.''
Chen added: ``China's plans to use its military to intimidate Taiwan is not only a challenge to Taiwan's democratic system, it's a challenge to the region's safety and security.''
Taiwan's advanced jets and ships have long given the island an edge against China's huge but clunky military. For years, China couldn't match the French-made Mirage and U.S.-built F-16s that streaked across the skies Saturday at the air show in northern Taoyuan County.
But China has been stocking up on advanced planes, destroyers and submarines from Russia. And the balance of military power is expected to soon tip in Beijing's favor.
The Taiwanese president also said he was worried about China's recent talk about adopting a law mandating that Taiwan accept unification. It's unclear how the law would be enforced, but Chen said that he suspected Beijing wanted to use the law as a legal foundation to attack Taiwan.
-------- europe
AN ITALIAN OCTOBER SURPRISE
by Matt Bojanovic
Saturday 14th August 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=2716
In April 2004, in Fallujah, hundreds were being buried in backyards and soccer fields. In Baghdad, thousands were lining up to give blood and money for Fallujah; there was rage at what was generally viewed as the collective punishment of that city, and even the usually compliant Iraqi authorities were beginning to raise objections. At that point, some Iraqi insurgents had a novel idea: they would grab the attention of public opinion in the West by detaining soft targets from the countries involved in the occupation.
On April 12 came the capture of four Italian "contractors." That's what soldiers of fortune are called in polite society. They work in distant lands for remarkable wages, sometimes as high as $1000 per day. They are former soldiers, provided opportunities in outfits owned by well-connected retired officers. The major advantage of using "contractors" is that they must provide for their own lodgings, protection, and transportation, and are not counted as Coalition casualties when they die. The four Italians were on their way back to Amman, when they were stopped at an American road block and relieved of the assault rifles they were carrying. The four Italians went back to the hotel and secured two handguns and an automatic pistol, that they hoped to keep hidden at the next road block. They took off again for Amman, and were captured. (Corriere della Sera, April 18, La Repubblica, May2)
The Sunday Telegraph of London, on May 2, interviewed Paolo Simeoni, former leader of the Italian security team to which the Italians belonged. He is quoted as saying: "We do not know exactly why the soldiers confiscated the weapons. The Iraqi interior ministry does not issue weapons permits to Westerners - they say that normally all you need to do is show an ID card, such as a passport. All my men had Italian passports on them, and Fabrizio had a pass for the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad's Green Zone. Normally that is more than enough proof that they were working in security for the coalition, but in this case the soldiers wouldn't accept it... If they had been British or American, I think it would have been fine. It may be that because they were Italians and their English was not quite perfect, the soldiers did not trust them." Another security consultant explained: "Four men with powerful assault rifles in a car might have stood a chance against these guys. Four men with just one MP5 and a couple of pistols between them would probably not have."
They were Italy's first POW's since WWII. They were not POW's in uniform, but to Italians that made no difference, their lives were at stake, they had mothers and sisters and wives, and that was enough. They had gone to Iraq for exactly the same reasons why Italian uniformed men are there: trust in their political leaders, esprit de corps, career opportunities, adventure, and combat pay. After all, the origin of the word soldier is the Latin "solidus", which was coinage paid Roman soldiers.
According to Il Manifesto of July 29 and July 30, being on mission abroad can involve a four-fold increase in pay, and it was not uncommon to have to bribe officers to insure being sent to Iraq. Italian soldiers would gladly shell out a month's salary or more, for the honor of being selected for the crusade. A colonel was arrested for taking some $8,000 from a lieutenant. He was accused of taking a total of $50,000 from seven men. On May 5 he was given a two-year suspended sentence, but he had managed to retire, at the grade of general, in advance of sentencing,. For an officer, Iraqi duty means more than combat pay, it also offers rapid promotion. In another case, a soldier gave $2000 to a colonel in exchange for foreign assignement, and had a money order receipt to prove it. Interviewed in Peace Reporter, Antonio Savino of the Carabinieri National Union, confirms that there was a lively market for assignments to Iraq--until it was all but ruined by heavy casualties in Nassiriya, where 20 Italians perished. (http://www.peacereporter.net/it/canali/storie/0000medioriente/iraq/040805)
When it became known that soldiers were contracting cancer after serving in areas contaminated by depleted uranium, the Iraqi career market just dried up.
On April 13 the four Italian POW's were seen on Al Jazeera. For their release, the following demands were made: the establishment of a timetable for the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq, the release of all detained Muslim clerics, and an apology for some intemperate remarks made by Premier Berlusconi about Islam.
Italian Foreign Minister Frattini answered that "negotiation with guerrillas is contrary to logic." Other notables of the ruling right wing coalition were equally determined. Cicchitto said that blackmail is "unacceptable since our soldiers are in Iraq on a peace mission." Schifani spoke against "weakness". Bondi said that the kidnapping "shows the inhuman character of terrorism, as denounced by the Holy Father." Anedda said that the "kidnappers are showing all their cruelty and rudeness." Minister of Justice Castelli closed the discussion with the remark that "those who do this kind of work make lots of money but run very high risks." (Adnkronos news agency, April 13) The four were being abandoned by the leaders who had encouraged them to go do their part in the War on Terror.
The patriot section of the Italian press responded by railing against "the civilization of Koran-inspired camel herders." There were warnings that "the patience of good democrats" has limits, and that "in Italy there are 800,000 Muslims, potentially 800,000 hostages." Should the hostages be killed, Moslems might no longer be safe in Italy, wrote Vittorio Feltri, editor of the liberist dailyLibero, on April 14.
On April 16 the insurgents killed, on camera, Fabrizio Quattrocchi. In his pocket he had a pass to the Green Zone, the seat of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. That pass had not been good enough to protect his little war party from being disarmed by the Coalition, but convinced the insurgents that the poor guy was somehow well connected to Proconsul Bremer.
The murder of Quattrocchi was announced on a TV talk show, and that is how his family heard about it. The families of the surviving hostages became an important pressure group. Some of the relatives became celebrities. They exposed the rainbow banner of the Italian peace movement from their balconies and joined peace marches, including one to the Vatican. The father of one of the hostages, who for two months carried a large Italian flag on a staff wherever he went, became a familiar figure on television. One day he led his relatives to blockade the railroad tracks near his home.
THE CONNECTION
The Italian Red Cross (CRI) is a reputable and effective organization, which brought two of its hospitals to Iraq. On April 18, Maurizio Scelli, special commissioner of the CRI, delivers a brand new emergency room to the Iraquis. Contacts are made with the Council of the Ulemas, the Muslim scholars previously involved in the negotiated release of a couple dozen hostages, including the Japanese. On April 19, Scelli leads a CRI humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Fallujah.
Negotiations are openly discussed in the Italian media and no denials are issuing from Rome. On April 20 the Italian governor of the province of Dhi Qar, which includes Nassiriya, is interviewed in La Repubblica. Governor Barbara Contini is a significant personage. A few days before, she had taken part in a meeting on the hostage situation with Premier Berlusconi, Vice Premier Fini, Foreign Affairs Minister Frattini, Minister of Defense Martino, Minister of Interior Pisanu, and the heads of the secret services. Governor Contini is quoted saying : "Is ransom the way out for the Italians? Everyone pays ransom. It's been so for centuries."
Indeed, when an insurgency holds foreigners as prisoners, there are four choices for the occupier: negotiated withdrawal, abandonment of the men to their fate, exchange of prisoners, and ransom. The Coalition leaders do not dare to admit defeat and withdraw. A prisoner exchange is problematic, since it would give belligerent status to the insurgents. Moreover, the Americans are in control of prisons and oppose any negotiations. An exchange for guerrillas held by the Kurds is proposed, but falls apart when it transpires that out of nine wanted prisoners, five have already been killed. (Corriere della Sera, June 9, paper edition, p.6)
Still, Premier Berlusconi has to do something: he had taken Italy to war against the will of the great majority of Italians, presenting the adventure as a "peace mission," and now he cannot afford appearing so heartless as to abandon his own men. The original inflexible attitude against negotiations had strengthened the opposition. Ransom is the only choice left open.
Corriere della Sera, on April 21, opens with the line, "It appears that ransom has been paid for the Italian hostages. Or not." Barbara Contini had told L'antipatico, on Channel 5, "Yes, a price has been paid. Now the Italians are out of danger." Later that day, she explains that it was all an "unpleasant misunderstanding". Through her spokesperson, Paola della Casa, she says that "there is always a price to pay, but I was not referring to money. I do not have the foggiest idea about any ransom demand."
On April 22, various sources openly speak of ransom. La Repubblica reports that payment of ransom is being considered. Panorama, a weekly owned by the Berlusconi family, declares that the office of the Premier has approved ransom, to be delivered after the men have been freed. The Italian news agency ANSA has a report in which an unnamed member of the Italian secret services recognizes that negotiations are taking place and that they have "para-political and economic aspects." He adds, "What we had to do, we did."
On April 22, Il Tempo of Rome, a business-oriented daily, thought to be close to the government, prints an article under the signature Fosca Bincher, said to be the alias of the director of Il Tempo, Franco Bechis. Quoting "important banking sources" the article reveals that Premier Silvio Berlusconi had arranged for ransom payment from his own personal fortune, not from state treasury. Former Italian president Francesco Cossiga is also quoted as saying, on Radio Padania: "I would not be surprised if Silvio Berlusconi had paid the ransom from his own pocket. I am not saying that Berlusconi paid, I am only saying that, knowing his generosity, I would not be surprised if he had paid the ransom from his own pocket. He sure is as wealthy as Uncle Scrooge, but unlike the one of the comic books, he is very generous. If Barbara Contini says that the three are out of danger, it means he made out a pretty big check."
Il Tempo thus continues: 'When it seemed to be all done, and the liberation of the hostages was expected yesterday, new obstacles emerged. "The process is not blocked, it's only delayed," said Berlusconi. He added: "The timeline has lengthened in respect to what we expected. Perhaps because they [the Americans] have delayed the permit for the Italian humanitarian aid column to Fallujah." '
Abdel Salam Kubaysi, of the Council of the Ulemas, is quoted in La Repubblica of April 22, denying "direct communications" with the hostage takers. However, he can say that if there is not an end to the fighting in Fallujah, the release of "those poor three boys" might be slowed down. Kubaysi added: "The Italian government, obviously, can pressure the White House so that Fallujah may return to life. After all, are you or are you not the best friends of Bush?" On April 19, Premier Berlusconi had proudly announced that with the departure of Spanish troops from Iraq, Italy was now "the closest ally of the United States in continental Europe." On April 23 Il Tempo reports from the Italian Chamber of Deputies that "the news of the 5 million euro ransom paid from the pocket of the Premier...did not surprise anyone."
La Repubblica of April 25, reported from Baghdad the rumor that a six million euro payment has already arrived, but that the fate of the hostages is tied to the fate of Fallujah. For the American command, it is important to smash the resistance in Fallujah, "but it is equally important not to lose, or risk losing, the Italian allies."
Roland Flamini of UPI thus explained the situation on May 7: "Keeping the hostages alive is considered vital for the continued deployment of Italian troops serving with the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq. The killing of a second man could create such a public backlash that it could force the Berlusconi government to pull out Italy's contingent."
THE PEACE PARTY'S EFFORTS
Emergency is an Italian NGO, organized in the early 90's by a surgeon, Dr Gino Strada, to establish hospitals in war zones. To give an idea of its reputation, Vauro tells this story on Il Manifesto of June 19: 'During the last war in Afghanistan I was...in a front line trench of the Northern Alliance, on the Bahgrahm front. A Mujaheddin commander called by radio his counterpart in the Taliban trenches, a few hundred yards away. "I have some foreign reporters here," he said. The Taliban commander, with a menacing laugh, said: "Send them here, I'll take care of them." He then added, "Where are they from?" "Italians." And the Taliban said, "Italia? Gino Strada, Emergency! For us they would be [honored] guests," and he said it without laughing, with respect.'
Emergency has had hospitals in Iraq for years, and it has an office in Baghdad. Emergency produces a video showing how the great majority of Italians oppose the war, how a million demonstrated against it. The video appears on Arab television networks. Gino Strada arrives in Baghdad on May 5 and soon concludes that there may be a division between the insurgents' military wing and their political wing: one wants ransom, the other would prefer to influence the Italian elections by releasing the prisoners to Italian peace movement leaders. Strada's contacts advise him that Salih Mutlak, a businessman who made his wealth in the smuggling trade, thanks to the U.S./UN embargo, has returned from Italy with five million dollars. They say that the balance of the 9 million dollar deal would be payable when the prisoners are released.
The Italian daily La Stampa reports on May 14 that Mohammed Al Kubaysi on April 30 has suggested to Italian Red Cross boss Scelli, that it would be a positive thing if seriously sick and wounded children in Fallujah were to be flown to Italian hospitals. A CRI jet brings dozens of patients to Rome on May 13.
The negotiations are slowed down by the arrest of an intermediary by American forces. The remains of Quattrocchi are delivered to the Italian Red Cross; Scelli brings them to Italy and returns to Baghdad. Cardinal Bertone says that negotiations are on course. The agents of SISMI, Italy's military intellingence, leave Baghdad, as if their work had come to a successful conclusion. (La Repubblica, June 10)
On June 2, Scelli leads a CRI humanitarian convoy into Najaf, the Shiite holy city that has seen heavy fighting, while anti-war demonstrations are taking place in Rome, against Berlusconi and the Bush visit, as demanded by the kidnappers. Demonstrations had already been planned and announced, when the demand was made. Al Jazeera shows the demonstrations. The hostage takers release a video in which the Italians make an appeal to the Pope.
On Friday, June 4, Foregn Minister Frattini cancels a trip to Japan "for family reasons." Pope John Paul issues a critical appeal against the war to the visiting President Bush, who answers that his own objective is to "spread peace and compassion." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040604-3.html
On Saturday, June 5, Al Kubaysi of the Council of the Ulemas calls Scelli and tells him that the hostages will soon be freed. (La Repubblica, June 11)
According to Nicola Madaro, Mayor of Sanmichele di Bari, the TV crews return to Sanmichele, waiting to record the joyful reactions of the family of Umberto Cupertino, one of the hostages. (L'Unita', June 9)
According to Emergency's website, www.peacereporter.it, between Saturday and Sunday, Gino Strada receives the report from the Imam of Fallujah that the matter is solved and that the prisoners will soon be released.
On Sunday, June 6, in a clear reference to the Abu Ghraib torture situation, the Pope mentions the oppressed, "especially those who suffer the humiliation of prison and the oppression of torture."
According to La Stampa of June 9, Ignazio LaRussa, parliamentary leader of the AN party of Vive Premier Fini, mentions that "friends of AN in the Jewish community in Milan had given me for certain the liberation of the hostages within 48 hours."
ICN-News, an Italian Evangelical news agency, in an article praising the ecumenical spirit of cooperation between churches, publishes on June 9 the text of an interview with Sheikh Ahmad El-Shammari, who says: " On June 6, I was dining with the leader of the Zauba'a clan, who assured me that the case was closed and that the hostages would be released, in a matter of hours. At once I phoned Bishop Shlimon Warduni... and told him to inform the representative of the Vatican in Baghdad."
THE RAID
At 2.23 pm on Tuesday, June 8, the news agency ANSA reports that General Mieczyslaw Bieniek, commander of Polish forces in Iraq, has announced the hostages' liberation. General Sanchez, at a press conference in the late afternoon of June 8, reveals that the hostages are in good health, that they had been held together, south of Baghdad, that some individuals had been detained, and that the operation, by coalition forces, was not the result of negotiations. http://www.iraqcoalition.org/transcripts/20040608_sanchez_hostages.html
On Sunday, June13, General Kimmitt gives an interview to Corriere della Sera. He says that the four hostages had been held handcuffed in a house in al-Mahmudiyah, that no shots were fired, and that the photo he is releasing was taken immediately after four of the guards had been captured. (Corriere della Sera, June 13)
The two preceding paragraphs represent the entire body of information released by the CPA in Baghdad that week.
Polish hostage Jerzy Kos had been taken from his Baghdad office on June 1, together with a colleague who escaped, two Iraqi women employees who were released, and three Kurdish guards, who were ransomed. (Corriere della Sera, June 10) Kos says he was freed in Ramadi. He is the engineer who represents a Polish engineering firm in Iraq, and we can assume that he is quite familiar with the map of Iraq. From al-Mahmudiyah to Baghdad airport he would be flying north-north-west for 30 kilometers, without crossing any river. From Ramadi to Baghdad airport he would be flying east, for perhaps 88 kilometers, crossing the Euphrates numerous times, since the river is meandering. The pilot, however, to avoid getting fired at over Fallujah, might well choose to lengthen the trip by a couple of kilometers, flying east-south-east for 35 kilometers over the al-Habbaniyah Lake, then flying east for 55 kilometers to Baghdad airport, crossing the Euphrates River at least once, perhaps three times. It's difficult to imagine how an engineer flying from al-Mahmudiya could become convinced he was flying from Ramadi.
Associated Press, in a story on the return of Kos to Warsaw on June 10, says the raid was in Ramadi. The employer of Kos, after speaking to him on the phone, says Ramadi. (Corriere della Sera, June 10, paper edition, p.5) La Stampa of June 9 says Ramadi. Premier Berlusconi, talking to an Italian TV show, Studio Aperto, at about 11.50pm on June 8, says "110 kilometers from Baghdad." (La Repubblica, June 12) >From the center of Ramadi to the center of Baghdad the distance is about 110 kilometers. The Premier says he spent "an anxious night" before giving the green light to the raid. (La Stampa, June 9) We can fairly assume that he discussed the raid with his collaborators during that anxious night, perhaps in front of satellite photos of the detention site, certainly in front of the map of Iraq. The war has become a very important issue in Italy. Berlusconi had sent his soldiers as peace keepers, but now they are taking casualties, they are involved in battle. We can fairly assume that, one year into the war, the Premier has become quite familiar with the map of Iraq.
The website of Emergency, www.peacereporter.it, reports a rumor: the location of the raid was a house in Abu Ghraib, a suburb of Baghdad. Monday night, neighbors saw cars stopping at a house, empty for months. Tuesday morning, coalition men in civilian clothes arrived and left with four men.
An Italian TV crew goes to Abu Ghraib and fails to find the address. Daniele Mastrogiacomo of La Repubblica goes there, finds the house, with dusty windows and a locked steel gate. He knocks at a neighbor's door, who says that he only heard, like everyone else, the sounds of two helicopters that landed in the neighborhood at ten in the morning on the day in question. Perhaps something interesting did happen in Abu Ghraib.
When General Sanchez announces the raid on June 8, details are so scarce as to raise eyebrows. After all, a successful POW release operation is just what you need when the news are bad, day after day. It's good for your own forces, it's good for reporters, it's good for the public. Here is the opportunity to pay back a reporter who has tried to keep some optimism in his reports during a dreary, horrendous sequence of torture photo days, car bomb days, kidnap days, and roadside bomb days.
There were excellent reasons to pick a couple of friendly reporters and bring them along on the raid. The general did not choose to do that, nor did he give reporters the opportunity to see the location of the raid. Or to see the four captured jailers and their weapons. Or to speak to the hostages, who may have needed a shower, but were otherwise in excellent conditions.
It's odd, that on this, the most positive day since the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Coalition does not want a big story. The international press gets enough from General Sanchez for a two line article. Not much to write home about, as if the general wanted the story to die down quickly. As if this had been an unpleasant job, undertaken to save the face of an ally, who is having his damn election on Saturday.
The secrecy after the operation surprised some. The spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Warsaw, Boguslaw Maievsky said: "The Americans have made the entire operation secret...We have to conform, and wait for them to tell us what happened". (La Repubblica, June 10) Others seemed pleased about the secrecy. Foreign Minister Frattini said, "Coalition forces have intervened, particulars cannot and must not be revealed." (Corriere della Sera, June 8)
On June 16 a 30-second clips of a video of the raid is released and is seen on Italian television. It looks like an exercise. The soldiers arrive by helicopter, thus losing the element of surprise and giving the enemy the opportunity to kill the hostages. They rush into a big, empty, abandoned one-story building, which looks like a school. The soldiers kick at already open doors, checking for booby traps. Then we have a gap, and the show starts again as we see the prisoners sitting on the floor in some room. We do not see the soldiers' entry into that room. (Corriere della Sera, June 17)
A problem: the scene does not fit well with the deposition given to the investigative judges of the Procura di Roma. Salvatore Stefio, in his deposition, said, "In the last days, in the apartment in which they [the Americans] came to get us, another hostage arrived, a Pole." Earlier, he had said, "We were alway locked in houses, apartments." (Corriere della Sera, June 10, paper edition, p.3)
General Kimmitt had already released a photo, saying it was the only photo of the raid. (Corriere della Sera, June 13) The photo showed the Polish engineer having his handcuffs cut with a bolt cutter, while Salvatore Stefio, whose handcuffs have already been cut, gives his thumbs-up. The two prisoners are on the floor. http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Esteri/2004/06_Giugno/13/pop_ostaggi.shtml
In Salvatore Stefio's deposition we read: "The door of the room where we were locked up was kicked in, and a voice, evidently of an American, screamed 'Go, go!' We came out and found these guys who told us we were free." We also read that, "In the jails also, they tied our feet, so that we could not move." When being moved from one location to another,"we were tied hands and feet" (La Repubblica, June 12) "we were hooded or had our eyes bandaged, and our hands were tied. ['mani legate' ] " (Corriere della Sera (June 10, paper edition, page 3) Here is a man who speaks with precision, giving two ways of blindfolding someone. You would not expect him to say "tied" when he means "handcuffed".
The hostages talked about their hands being tied only during transfers. Later, they complained about the scarcity of food, but they di not complain of being kept in handcuffs for a day or for two months. There was no mention of handcuffs in the released sections of the deposition.
Here is the June 10 AP report from Warsaw: "Jerzy Kos, after stepping off his plane, his face pale and voice trembling, said 'I am so moved, I can hardly speak.' They were imprisoned in a house in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, until Tuesday, when they heard helicopters approaching. The door was then blown in, kicking up a dust cloud and knocking the hostages to the ground. 'When I opened my eyes, I saw American soldiers. They said, "Don't worry, we are Americans." They held our hands and we ran to the helicopter - I will remember that for the rest of my life. It was fast and unexpected. They did it perfectly.' " Kos, a man in his 60's, also complained about the terrible food, but did not mention the pain of being kept in handcuffs during his captivity.
In the Sky News report from Warsaw Kos says: "With the Italians, we each crouched in our corner, without paying any attention to our armed guards, the room was filled with dust while the whole thing went on." The story ends as follows: "The US-led force in Iraq has so far refused to give further information on the rescue."
Listening to the rescue tales of the prisoners, one does not see men in handcuffs, with their feet tied. It seems that we may be dealing with two or three different rescues, one with an explosion, one without, one with a cloud of dust in the air, one with excellent visibility. One with the prisoners lying on the floor handcuffed, waiting for the bolt cutter to free them, one with the prisoners obeying the "Go, go!" order, coming out of the room on their own, to be told they are free. Perhaps the Italians were picked up in some house in Abu Ghraib, where they were left alone, and not bound. Perhaps the Polish engineer was freed in an actual raid in Ramadi. Perhaps they were all brought together to be actors in a valuable educational film. Perhaps the actors are blending details of their actual liberation into the story of the subsequent staged liberation.
Is it fair to suggest that the hostages might agree to lie a little? It's fair, because it would be shameful for them not to lie. If you are devoted to a cause and if the chief has paid millions for your life, the least you can do is give him your loyalty, and go along with a tall tale, one that will favor your saviour , your cause, and your future career opportunities. As H.L Mencken said, " It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."
The hostage liberation story is questionable because of the quasi-official admissions of ransom payment in April and May, the general expectation of impending release on June 6, the secrecy in which the raid was wrapped, and the conflict between witness statement and the released video.
The secrecy might be explained as the bureaucratic tendency to increase the importance of one's office through secrecy. ReadCatch-22: the fact that a letter is heavily censored is not evidence that there were any secrets in the letter. It only indicates that censors must censor, that this letter was censored, perhaps that the censors have gone mad, or that they are bored to tears and are inventing silly censorious games to spend their days on.
The other inconsistencies need clarification.
THE DENIAL
From the very first day, the ransom issue casts its shadow over the celebrations of a remarkably bloodless hostage liberation.
Commissioner Maurizio Scelli of the Italian Red Cross, interviewed by La Stampa, says "This is not a release, this is a liberation by military action. And we, of the Red Cross, have no merit in it."
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, says that "no negotiations were conducted with the kidnappers... the military raid was the result of good intelligence work and cooperation between Italian and coalition forces." (The New York Times, June 8) Frattini claims that the hostages have been freed thanks to "a new model of integration between diplomacy, intelligence, humanitarian aid, and armed forces." (La Repubblica, June 10)
Defense Minister Antonio Martino on June 9 says to Corriere della Sera, "I feared the worst. I expected any time the news of their killing... I was sure that they would make us find the bodies on election eve... It was for some time that I reflected over a military operation to free them. .. I hoped in a bit of luck..." [Was any money paid?] Not one lira."
On June 13, in an interview with Corriere della Sera General Kimmitt says, "Never heard this story of a ransom. Sounds ridiculous to me."
Commissioner Scelli of the CRI is quoted by L'Unita' of June 8 as saying: "We went to bring help and the people have been thankful and friendly and they gave us the strength never to give up in the past two months, to create that just consensus that would allow the liberation of the hostages....There was no direct negotiation with an emissary." Scelli tells ANSA: "Neither the government, nor the secret services, nor the embassy, have paid any ransom. The real problem is that too many people outside the institutions of govenment have entered the situation, muddying the waters....silence was the key." (ANSA, June 11) However, on the same date, according to La Repubblica, Scelli says that the matter could have been solved in twenty days, if there had not been certain parties offering 15 millions for the hostages. Il Manifesto of June 12 quotes Scelli saying: "Too many shysters, too many characters just landed in Iraq, who knows under what auspices, pretending to have relations they did not have, throwing on the scale money that no one had ever asked." So there it is once again, an official Italian source admitting that there were messengers bearing sacks of currency. Are we to believe those were philanthropists? Are we to believe those were not agents for some personage in Rome?
According to Il Manifesto of June 12, Scelli, on Friday June 11, said on Italian televison: "We were the principal interlocutors. Saturday something got stuck. The hours passed, no other message came, no one knew anything, and Monday we have the liberation by force." Problem: the raid took place Tuesday. If he had said June 7, you could assume he meant June 8. But he said Monday, in the context of a very important and very recent series of events in his life. Unless the reporter made a transcription error, Scelli's words suggest that there may have been two raids, one on Monday and one on Tuesday.
Vice Premier Fini is quoted by La Stampa as saying: "The hostages have been freed because the Italian government has remained firm, saying that with terrorists, one does not deal or talk." Fini also tells Radio Anch'io: "There has been no negotiation for the freeing of the three kidnapped Italians. If Gino Strada has evidence, let him present it." (ANSA, June 11)
Strada, in an interview with La Stampa of June 12, answers: "Evidence? I never spoke of evidence...I repeat what I said before...Twelve days ago...our mediator asked whether the man who was offering nine million dollars was our representative."
THE DISINFORMATION
Defense Minister Antonio Martino on June 9 says to Corriere della Sera, "I also thought that an Italian might be among the managers of the kidnapping." During the electoral campaign, Italian television had spinned the tale of a connection between the Italian anti-war movement and the insurgents. Quoting from the TV show Porta a Porta, "an Italian presence is evident in AlQaeda and the terrorists." In other words, some Italian connected to AlQaeda was running the hostage situation, in order to influence the Italian elections. On different TV shows, charges of treason were launched against the left, including anyone who would refer to combatants in Iraq as insurgents, instead of terrorists, which is the politically correct expression allowed in Italy.
Interior Minister Pisanu declares: "Some revolutionary movements have chosen a private initiative, inserting themselves into the negotiations to release the hostages." (ANSA June 12) He also attacks unnamed "con men, both Italian and foreign, who have tried to profit, financially and politically." ( La Stampa, June 13) Now how could such "con men" profit, if there were no sacks of cash from Italy being passed around?
After the raid, Premier Berlusconi, commenting upon the opposition's doubts, declares that their polemics have reached a maximum level of "cialtroneria." (ANSA June 12) A "cialtrone" is a low despicable scoundrel. La Stampa of June 12 quotes Berlusconi as charging the opposition with "masochistic, paranoic, and shameful anti-patriotism." The rulers are raging at the left, when all they need, to deflate any conspiracy theory, is some openness: allowing the hostages to be interviewed, and releasing video and photos.
Instead of openness, the government takes the disinformation route. The evening of June 10, two days before the election, the inquiring magistrates of the Procura di Roma receive from the Ministry of Interior the evidence that the kidnappers had decided to kill the hostages. It's a death sentence announcement, delivered as a message posted on a religious Islamic website based in Dallas, Texas. Its writer seems interested in insulting President Berlusconi, but there is no explicit demand for the withdrawal of Italian forces. Within the hour, the story is on ANSA, the Italian news agency, and millions of Italians hear that the hostages were to be killed "to give an answer to the arrogant Italian president Berlusconi." Il Giornale, owned by the Berlusconi family, tells us on June 11 that "ANSA confirms an atrocious suspicion: the three Italian hostages, until three days ago in the hands of the Islamic beasts... were to be slaughtered today to influence the vote of tomorrow..."
The site of state-owned Italian radio and television is www.rainews24.it. On June 11, it tells us that the inquiring magistrates in Rome do consider the death sentence message to be genuine, for the following reasons: "The Brigade al Quds, the signatory of the document , is the same which assumed the paternity of the massacre in Saudi Arabia in which the Italian cook Antonio Amato was killed. Furthermore, the statement is signed on June 5. That concords with the statements separately given yesterday by... the three hostages...who on June 4 became convinced they would be killed." Problem: the message was posted not on June 5, but after the raid. All television networks in Italy are either run by the government or are owned by Premier Berlusconi. By election day, every voter has heard about how the Islamists wanted to "punish the arrogant Italian president." Very few have heard that the death sentence was posted after the liberation. That would be the equivalent of sending out the wedding invitations after the bride has eloped with another suitor.
La Repubblica of June 12 reports that, trying to determine the origin of the planned execution story, it approached the various Italian secret services and antiterrorism units, including State Police and Carabinieri. The answers of police generals and agency directors varied between "smiles" and comments like "of that story we really don't want to know anything."
On June 11, the weeekly Panorama, owned by the Berlusconi family, gives a very detailed insider report on the hostage story. It claims that, as a result of diplomatic approaches, the terrorists almost came to free the hostages in April. At that point, some interlopers, connected to AlQaeda and to leftist troublemakers in Italy, sabotaged the release. SISMI, Italian military intelligence, contrary to what its director Nicolo' Pollari says (Corriere della Sera, June 16) discovered the kidnappers' jail. The house was put under electronic surveillance, the Italian hostages were heard talking to each other, and Jerzy Kos was heard talking to himself, in Polish. The Italian government, fearful that the hostages would be killed, postponed a rescue attempt until when the kidnappers, at midnight on Sunday June 6, were heard arguing on whether to kill all the hostages or only one.
On June 18, Panorama accuses Gino Strada himself of offering money for the hostages. It also reports that the Polish rangers, contrary to what General Bieniek says (Corriere della Sera, June 9) took part in the raid, and that the jail was discovered not on June 6 or 7, but about May 26. Panorama also reveals who the traitors were amongst the insurgents. If this were true, the magazine's publisher might be charged with treason, for compromising current or future intelligence operations to save other hostages. Fortunately, the articles are fantasy. Clearly, the idea is to create a smoke screen of confused extravagant tales and to place Gino Strada in the spotlight, in order to allow Berlusconi to quietly leave the stage, without having to explain the contradictions in the official story.
Gino Strada sums it all up: "A raid in which no shots are fired and no one dies is pretty unlikely ...The Americans came, rang at the door, and took what the Italian government had already paid for." (Corriere della Sera, June 11)
PATRIOTISM AND INTELLIGENCE
In Rome, at the news of the hostages' liberation, there was much patriotic fervor and flag waving. Politicians tried to involve the intelligence community in their own happy version of events, issuing congratulations to SISMI, military intelligence, for their part in the hostage liberation. A week later, after the election, the Italian services were distancing themselves from the official story.
As the United States Senate has the Intelligence Committee, so the Italian Parliament has COPACO, the Parliamentary Committee of Control on the Security Services. It held a hearing, at which testified Nicolo' Pollari, the Director of SISMI. After the hearing, the president of COPACO, Enzo Bianco, sitting next to Pollari, said: "The operation was imagined, directed, and wanted under complete responsibility of the United States. Italy limited herself to say, 'it's fine with us.' " Asked about the role of the Italian services in the discovery of the terrorists' lair, Bianco answered: "The responsibility for the event is in American hands." (Corriere della Sera, June 16)
It's quite normal, for a politician who is drowning in a scandal, to try to save himself by blaming the secret services. A major function of intelligence chiefs is to know how far to go protecting today's political leaders, and to know when to cut them loose, in the national interest. The services are staffed by men of the right, who often have long term historical perspectives. Politicians tend to be shortsighted men, blessed with a vision that may range, on clear days, as far as the next election. Directors of intelligence read history books, politicians read spy novels.
Italian leaders now feign offense at the suggestion that ransom was paid. They do not know that delivering currency to kidnappers has illustrious precedents: Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton, they all paid ransom, barrels of silver dollars, to the Barbary Pirates. Premier Berlusconi, who is famous for his devotion to America and for his love and admiration of President Bush, ought to be delighted; he ought to be proud of having so much in common with the Founding Fathers.
Did the plan work out? It was not a clean, quiet job, using backchannels, like the arrangements carried out by Republican Party operatives for the 1968 and 1980 elections. Still, there was perfect timing, the hostage rescue came four days before the election, and mobilized the center-right electorate. On the very evening of the rescue, announced after 2pm, 80% of Italians knew about it. Many, who would not have bothered to vote, went to the polls in a mood of patriotic celebration, and voted for the government coalition. Others marched to the polls trembling with rage at the left, for their treasonable doubts about the war and the hostage rescue, to say nothing of their youth, hair styles, and bad manners.
Actually, only the pacifist left, a very small section of the opposition, challenged the government. The rest of the opposition, the reformist left, did not call the government's bluff, rejecting the idea of making the war and the staged raid the key issue in the last days of the electoral campaign. The grand Iraqi development contracts promised by Berlusconi had not materialized, unemployment and deficit had worsened, the caskets had began rolling home, but the release of three, still poor, little soldiers of fortune, somehow gave validation to the war.
It was an October Surprise in June. It worked out fine for the former neofascist party of Vice Premier Fini, which gained votes. It worked, but not as well, for Premier Berlusconi, whose party did not collapse. It worked marvelously for Marco Rizzo, of the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani, who won big. Interviewed by Corriere della Sera, Rizzo said: 'Four comrades, they always try to get me to pay for dinner... I said: if they free the hostages, it's going to happen in the week before the election, and they said: "No, no... I'll bet you on that!" So I won four dinners... '
http://www.traprockpeace.org/italian_october_surprise.doc
-------- iraq
Fighting Halted in Embattled Najaf
Government Weighs Sadr's Cease-Fire Offer
By Karl Vick and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62076-2004Aug13?language=printer
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 13 -- U.S. forces abruptly ceased offensive operations here against the militia of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr on Friday to create an opportunity for peace talks between representatives of Iraq's interim government and people close to Sadr, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
Sadr issued a statement late Friday calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Najaf and for the Shiite holy city to be placed under the custodianship of two senior ayatollahs. One of Sadr's aides, Ali Smaisim, said that if the militia pulled out of Najaf, the cleric wanted its members to be granted amnesty and his supporters to be allowed to participate in politics.
Senior government officials in Baghdad met into the night Friday to discuss the proposal, but there was no immediate announcement of whether the terms were acceptable to Iraq's interim leadership. Government officials have demanded that Sadr disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, but this was not part of Sadr's offer, as it was outlined by Smaisim.
As the crisis has escalated, both sides have been pushed toward a settlement, despite concerns among U.S. military officials that any negotiated end to the hostilities that allowed Sadr to retain his militia could pose a serious threat to the interim government.
At 11 p.m. Friday, a spokesman for Sadr, Ahmed Shaibani, said a cease-fire agreement had been reached with government negotiators calling for a halt to fighting but not a withdrawal of forces. Shaibani, who called the talks "serious and positive, but difficult," said the deal applied only to Najaf and not to other Iraqi cities racked by violence between Sadr's militiamen and security forces.
Shortly after Shaibani's announcement, Sadr walked into the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf's old quarter, which was seized by the Mahdi Army last week, and exhorted his supporters to "keep fighting."
"I will not leave Najaf, and I ask all the holy warriors not to leave," he said. "I ask all holy warriors to stay firm and fight. We say this truce might be a trick. Don't be deceived."
In a brief but defiant address, Sadr called on the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to resign. Allawi's government, he said, was "rejected by all Iraqis."
"We got rid of Saddam [Hussein], but we got a worse government," he said.
Although Sadr's aides had told reporters earlier on Friday that the cleric had been wounded in the chest and leg by shrapnel, he did not appear to be hurt during his appearance at the shrine.
Despite Sadr's belligerent language, his militia remained largely quiet in Najaf on Friday. There were none of the mortar volleys fired at U.S. and Iraqi forces as they had been on Thursday, and almost no small-arms or rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Sadr appears to be keen to negotiate because his militia suffered significant casualties in a multi-pronged assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces that began on Thursday. Iraq's interim government seems equally eager to end the fighting because the instability here has spread across much of central and southern Iraq in recent days, sparking large demonstrations on Friday, apparent defections from police and national guard units, and strident criticism from neighboring nations.
Last weekend, Allawi vowed that there would be "no negotiations or truce" with Sadr, and on Thursday, Interior Minister Falah Naqib said the government had "no other solution" than military force for dealing with the Mahdi Army. On Friday, however, Naqib extended an olive branch to the cleric, promising that Sadr would "not be touched if he leaves the shrine peacefully," according to the Reuters news agency.
U.S. military commanders were skeptical that the truce would lead to a lasting deal. "My personal and my professional belief is that the militia has no intentions of adhering to any altruistic beliefs in a cease-fire," said Maj. David Holahan, the executive officer of the 1st Battalion of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. "They will use every opportunity they have to get an advantage on us."
U.S. commanders are concerned that any agreement that allows Sadr to retain his militia could result in another confrontation. The fighting over the past week has been remarkably similar to a fight between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army in April and May that ended with a truce allowing Sadr to keep his militia.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that "as long as those individuals don't understand the spirit of peace and reconciliation, and they are not willing to work for a democratic, free Iraq, they have to be dealt with."
Friday's truce abruptly halted a flurry of U.S. military activity associated with the offensive launched barely 24 hours earlier. During that time, the Army established an armored cordon around the narrow winding alleys and close-packed houses of Najaf's old city, while Marines fought their way into a disused school that had turned into a militia muster point.
Early Friday, just after midnight, Iraqi commandos raided a mosque just north of the city of Kufa, the Sadr stronghold that borders Najaf to the east. Marines accompanied the Scouts commando unit of the Iraqi National Guard's 36th Battalion, who rode to the fight in open-sided Land Rovers escorted by U.S. Special Forces. Near Kufa, the Iraqi force killed six Mahdi Army gunmen and captured a dozen more, according to the military.
Each side blames the other for the week-long violence. U.S. military officials say they were attacked when they went to the rescue of an Iraqi police station that had come under fire in Najaf; Sadr's supporters say the Americans violated the June truce by entering the city.
Sadr's supporters staged peaceful demonstrations in several cities across Iraq on Friday, denouncing the Iraqi government and the continued presence of U.S. troops. The largest gathering was in Baghdad, where thousands of Shiites converged on the entrance to the walled-off International Zone, where American and top Iraqi government officials work.
There were similar protests in Basra, Kufa and Diwaniyah.
The Iraqi demonstrations were echoed in neighboring Iran, where thousands marched in Tehran, the capital, to protest the U.S. actions in Iraq, chanting "Death to America" and burning American flags.
The confrontation in Najaf also exposed weaknesses in the Iraqi security services. There were several reports of Iraqi police pledging loyalty to Sadr and scattered instances of police mounting Sadr's portrait on their patrol cars.
"We are not ready to shoot even one bullet against any Iraqi, whether Mahdi Army or not," the Sadr City police chief, Lt. Col. Kadim Muhammed, said on al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite television network. An Iraqi National Guard officer, who spoke on another network, al-Arabiya, but was not identified, said two battalions "announced full solidarity with Sadr and will protest with Sadr until there is a cease-fire in Najaf." He said the National Guard had laid down its arms and would not work with the Americans.
But the claims were rejected by other security officials. "These are lies," Lt. Col. Heider Abdul Rasul, a commander of the National Guard, said in an interview. "This was theater created by al-Jazeera and the Mahdi Army."
The new U.N. envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, arrived in Iraq on Friday to restore operations that were halted after a truck bombing on Aug. 19, 2003, killed 22 people, including the previous envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
In a statement read by his spokesman, Qazi called for "a peaceful settlement of difference" in Najaf. He is to attend a national conference of 1,000 Iraqis, scheduled to begin on Sunday, that is supposed to select an interim national council.
At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan offered to mediate an end to the Najaf standoff, saying that stability in Iraq should be achieved through "negotiation rather than violence," according to a statement from Annan's office.
According to U.N. officials, Sadr's camp appealed to the United Nations to intervene diplomatically to end the fighting. The United Nations continues to maintain contact with Sadr's supporters, and Annan called on Sadr and other armed groups to dismantle their militias.
On Saturday, the U.S. military announced that two U.S. troops were killed in separate incidents Friday in Anbar province in western Iraq, according to the Reuters news agency. On Friday, gunmen in Basra abducted a British freelance journalist from his hotel room, but later released him after the intervention of Sadr's aides.
James Brandon, who works for the Sunday Telegraph and other publications, was shown on a videotape in which a hooded captor threatened his execution if foreign troops did not leave Najaf. Brandon was handed over at Sadr's office in Basra shortly afterward. He had a black eye but said he was in "good health."
Also Friday, U.S. airplanes dropped bombs on several targets in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah. Reuters reported that four Iraqis, including two children, were killed. The United States had no comment. The military has repeatedly bombed Fallujah, targeting a wanted Jordanian militant, Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Correspondent Doug Struck and special correspondents Khalid Saffar and Luma Mousawi in Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and staff writers Robin Wright in Washington and Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
--------
COMBAT
Najaf Fighting Pauses to Allow Talks on Truce
August 14, 2004
The New York Times
By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/international/middleeast/14iraq.html?pagewanted=all
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 13 - American troops and Moktada al-Sadr's rebel militiamen paused Friday after eight days of fighting to allow negotiations on a truce that would end the siege of a rebel bastion in the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the greatest pilgrimage sites in Islam.
Guns fell silent across most of the city as Iraqi government representatives met into the night at the provincial governor's headquarters with emissaries of Mr. Sadr, the populist Shiite cleric. His stand against American forces here has stirred a widespread insurrection across southern Iraq, starting in Najaf and then quickly setting off fighting in at least eight other predominantly Shiite cities.
The talks in Najaf appeared to have ended, at least for now, the risks of a climactic battle in the Old City here, and the threat that would have posed to the 1,000-year-old mosque, burial place of Imam Ali, revered as the founder of Shiite Islam. But the terms set by the two sides appeared far apart, at least publicly, and it was far from certain that a solution to nearly five months of sporadically deadly confrontation would be found.
Although Najaf has a profound religious significance to the world's Shiites, millions of whom visit the city each year, much more was at stake in the negotiations than re-establishing peace in this city of 500,000. If Mr. Sadr emerged from the negotiations with a deal that allowed him to say he had met American troops and their Iraqi allies in battle for Shiism's most sacred shrine and forced them back, many Iraqis say, he would significantly enhance his claim to be the principal tribune of Iraqi resistance to American military occupation.
Even as the talks opened, the cleric, a rotund, bushy-bearded figure in his early 30's with a shrewd instinct for the passions of Iraq's Shiite underclass, added a new dimension to his legend. Aides claimed he suffered shrapnel wounds to the face, chest and shoulder during a skirmish that was said to have occurred near the Najaf shrine shortly after dawn on Friday, just as the pause in fighting began. An aide, Ahmed al-Shaibany, told reporters that the cleric was "in a very good condition," in what he described as a safe place, but offered no other details.
Iraqi government officials and officials with the American command in Najaf said they could not confirm the report. But the mere word of it among his fighters set off a fresh round of fury against the Americans, with vows of suicide bombings and other renewed attacks. In meeting Mr. Sadr's challenge since he first staged an earlier series of uprisings in April, American officials - and now, the new Iraqi government that took power as Iraq regained formal sovereignty in late June - have had to wrestle with the knowledge that wounding or killing the cleric could set off a popular explosion.
In Washington on Friday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell outlined tough conditions for the Najaf talks, ones that aligned with statements by aides to Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister.
Dr. Allawi said Mr. Sadr and his fighters, known as the Mahdi Army, would be offered safe passage in return for disarming and accepting conditions that would restore government authority and preclude their seizing Najaf again. Mr. Powell said that the United States was leaving the negotiations to the Baghdad government, but that "it has to be a solution that ends this kind of outlaw activity on the part of the Mahdi Army and similar organizations."
Mr. Powell set terms that appeared to reflect a growing conviction in Washington that the Najaf confrontation has become a watershed, with repercussions that could crucially affect American hopes of wresting order out of what has become an increasingly chaotic situation across much of Iraq.
Along with Mr. Sadr throwing much of Shiite Iraq into turmoil, Sunni Muslim insurgents in a dozen cities have so defied American troops and the government in Baghdad as to have reduced much of Iraq into a patchwork of rebellion and disorder.
"The violence is being perpetrated by outlaws and by former regime elements and by terrorists who respect no truce, respect nothing except force," Mr. Powell said in the remarks at the State Department. "And as long as those individuals don't understand the spirit of peace and reconciliation, are not willing to work for a democratic, free Iraq, they have to be dealt with."
Instead of asking American officials how peace can be restored, he added, the issue should be put to "those who are causing the violence, who are setting off the bombs, who are destroying the hopes of the Iraqi people." Mr. Powell spoke after indications in Najaf that the negotiations had bogged down, with both sides saying, by Friday night, that they had found little common ground.
The sense of deadlock was compounded when Mr. Sadr reappeared late in the day at the Imam Ali shrine, according to a Reuters report that quoted an aide to the cleric, and said the tentative truce might be only a ploy to trick his men into laying down their arms.
"I will not leave this holy city," Mr. Sadr was reported to have said as supporters chanted, "No, no to America!" He added, "We will remain here defending the holy shrines until victory or martyrdom."
Mr. Sadr has specialized in sermons intended to inflame passions among his followers, while maneuvering shrewdly to avoid a final showdown with American and Iraqi troops. But his shrine address Friday hinted that he, as much as American officials, had sensed that the events in Najaf in the last week had made him, more than ever, the most threatening challenger to Dr. Allawi's government, and to hopes of establishing a stable, democratic government here.
"I advise the dictatorial agent government to resign," he said, according to the Reuters report. "The whole Iraqi people demands the resignation of the government. They replaced Saddam with a government worse than him."
For the people of Najaf, the talks brought relief from the miseries of the fighting, which made a battleground of much of the Old City area, especially a vast cemetery adjacent to the mosque, with hundreds reported killed or wounded. American troops mounted one last raid, a predawn attack on Friday on a minor mosque in Kufa, Najaf's twin city along the Euphrates River, that an American military statement said had been a "militant stronghold."
Marines conducting the attack left fighting inside the mosque to Iraqi forces, the statement said, while mounting a security cordon outside. It said several of the militiamen had been killed. The statement placed a positive slant on a situation that had deeply unsettled some United States commanders at the battlefront - preparing for days for what was expected to be a final assault on the Sadr strongholds in the Old City, then being ordered to call off the attack on Wednesday night in favor of a plan to cordon off the city's heart and "squeeze" Mr. Sadr and his men out. It said that by the time Friday's standstill came into effect, "over 80 percent of Najaf" was stabilized, "and is relatively calm except for isolated hotspots."
Reporters who toured the city on Friday said the cordon of tanks and troops that had sought to draw a ring of about a mile's radius around the Imam Ali shrine had been loosened, with civilians, and in some case militiamen, passing in and out. Traffic was flowing freely again through the city's eastern gateway at the Square of the 1920 Revolution, a monument to a Shiite uprising against British troops. American commanders said soldiers from units that had engaged in close combat with Mr. Sadr's fighters amid the crypts and tombstones of the cemetery had been pulled back to positions a mile north of the mosque.
Mr. Sadr's fighters also appeared to be holding their fire. Mortar attacks from the Old City into the cemetery ceased, as did ambushes of American convoys and patrols, said Maj. David Holahan of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the force that carried the brunt of the early fighting, before two battalions of the First Cavalry Division were sent south from Baghdad to reinforce the Marines. Mr. Sadr also reached an agreement with Najaf's governor, an appointee of the Allawi government, that allowed ambulances to enter the Old City and evacuate wounded militia fighters.
Troops at the main American base in Najaf, four miles north of the Old City, had mixed reactions.
Command Sgt. Maj. Steve Frennier, one of the cavalry division's top noncommissioned officers, said the soldiers were disappointed that the battle had been called off with Mr. Sadr still in control of the Old City and the southern part of the cemetery, abutting the mosque. "They're frustrated," he said.
While American officers claimed that more than 360 of Mr. Sadr's fighters had been killed in the fighting, they said American losses, up to the postponement of the major assault on Wednesday night, had been five marines and soldiers killed.
But marines who fought in the cemetery, taking four of those losses, said they were glad to avoid more close-quarters combat. The cemetery fighting was intense, with the marines and Mr. Sadr's militiamen sometimes separated by only a few feet. On the rebel side, many of the dead were left to rot in the cemetery during the fighting.
[Two United States servicemen were killed in western Iraq, the American military said in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reported. The military said one marine was killed in action and one soldier was killed during separate incidents on Friday in Al Anbar Province, which includes the volatile cities of Falluja and Ramadi.]
Alex Berensonreported from Najaf for this article and John F. Burns from Baghdad.
--------
Truce Talks Appear to Collapse in Najaf
August 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Najaf.html?pagewanted=all&position=
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Truce talks between Shiite militants and Iraqi officials broke down Saturday, raising the prospect of a return to the fierce fighting between militiamen and U.S-Iraqi forces that has shaken the holy city of Najaf for more than a week.
The government's chief negotiator, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, said talks were making no progress and that he was leaving Najaf. Aides to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blamed the United States and the Iraqi government on the breakdown.
The negotiations had raised hopes for a resolution to the uprising by al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has posed deep security and political problems for Iraq's fledgling interim government. After nine days of heavy fighting, Najaf has been quiet since Friday, when U.S. forces halted a major offensive against the militiamen to give talks a chance.
``I feel deep sorrow and regret to announce the failure of the efforts we have exerted to end the crisis in Iraq peacefully,'' said al-Rubaie, who serves in the government has national security adviser.
``Our goal was to spare blood, preserve security and for the militias to put down their weapons,'' he said, without giving specifics on what led to the breakdown.
Al-Sadr had demanded a U.S. withdrawal from Najaf, the freeing of all Mahdi Army fighters in detention and amnesty for all the fighters, in exchange for disarming his followers and pulling them out of the revered Imam Ali shrine and Najaf's old city, where they have taken refuge, aides said.
However, al-Sadr himself did not participate in the talks and al-Rubaie said he felt some ``elements'' were hindering his efforts to hold a face-to-face meeting with the firebrand cleric.
Al-Rubaie said he had proposed that al-Sadr's militia be disbanded and become a political movement.
``We have been talking and discussing these matters for three days but reached no positive conclusion,'' he said. ``After three days, my government thought there was no use in continuing.''
Al-Sadr aide Sheik Ali Smeisim said both sides had agreed on all points, but interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi suddenly told the government officials to break off talks and return to Baghdad.
``It is a conspiracy to commit a big massacre,'' he told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television station.
Ahmed al-Shaibany, another al-Sadr spokesman, blamed the talks' failure on the Americans, who also were not participating.
``There are particular points and demands we had that we specifically wanted the Americans to sign on, but they refused,'' he said.
Among those demands, he said, was U.S. compensation for the families of those killed in confrontations with the Americans.
The U.S. military has estimated that hundreds of insurgents had been killed in the fierce fighting that broke out in Najaf on Aug. 5, but the militants dispute the figure. Six Americans have been killed, along with about 20 Iraqi officers, it said.
The battles ended Friday as both sides respected a cease-fire during the negotiations to end the crisis.
Aside from the security dangers of the uprising, the fighting in Najaf -- one of the holiest cities in Shia Islam, 100 miles south of Baghdad -- has posed a political threat to Allawi's government, which is seeking to show it has control in the country but cannot lash out too harshly against al-Sadr's movement. The violence has angered many of the country's majority Shiites, including those who do not normally support al-Sadr.
About 10,000 demonstrators from as far away as Baghdad also arrived in Najaf on Saturday to show their solidarity with the militants and promising to act as human shields to protect the city.
Intense clashes between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and Iraqi police in the city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, killed about 40 militants and three police, Capt. Hadi Hassan, a police spokesman, said Saturday.
In other violence, U.S. warplanes bombed the largely Sunni city of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, after insurgents attacked U.S. troops with a mortar barrage and clashes erupted.
The military said about 50 militants were killed in the operation, but police Maj. Saadoun al-Dulaimi said 12 people were killed, including three policeman, and 36 were injured. The fighting in Samarra started Friday night when .
The U.S. military also announced Saturday that one Marine and one U.S. soldier were killed in separate incidents in the volatile Anbar Province. As of Friday, 930 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.
Al-Sadr, who has a long history of sending contradictory signals, demanded in an interview with al-Jazeera Saturday the resignation of the interim government and said the violence had broken out because he wanted municipal services restored and he refused to participate in the key national conference beginning Sunday.
``Had I agreed to participate with them and to not ask for the rights of the people, they wouldn't have done this to me and they wouldn't have targeted me in particular and targeted Shiism,'' he said. The interview appeared to have taken place before the talks broke down.
The U.S. military said the fighting began when al-Sadr's militants began attacking a Najaf police station.
Najaf Gov. Adnan al-Zurufi, meanwhile, said the government had no plans to arrest al-Sadr or force him to leave the city. ``We have no orders to arrest him (al-Sadr),'' he said. However, ``all militias should be disbanded and leave the city.''
U.S. troops and Iraqi officials want to ensure that any new truce would eliminate the flaws of the previous agreements, including one that ended a two-month uprising in early June. The Mahdi Army militia repeatedly violated that cease-fire, shooting at police and burying caches of weapons in Najaf's vast cemetery and using the time to regroup, according to U.S. officials and witnesses.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he hoped al-Sadr would respond ``in due course'' to charges placed against him by Iraqi authorities. An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr in connection with the death of a moderate Shiite leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoi, in April 2003. Al-Sadr denies any role in the murder.
Powell denounced al-Sadr and his militia as outlaws and said U.S. forces were ``squeezing'' Najaf in an effort to end the fighting, but reiterated that U.S. troops would not enter the holy shrine to push out the militants.
``We do not in any way wish to get involved with the mosque,'' Powell said. ``It's a very holy place for all Shia.''
In other developments Saturday:
-- An explosion hit a pipeline near Haswa that links the country's southern oil fields to refineries in Baghdad, setting it on fire, police Lt. Hadi Obeid said. The source of the blast was unclear, though insurgents have routinely sabotaged Iraq's crucial oil industry.
-- The U.S. military released 80 detainees from Abu Ghraib prison.
Associated Press writer Abdul Hussein al-Obeidi contributed to this report.
--------
Dozens killed as US warplanes strike insurgents in Iraqi city of Samarra
Aug 14, 2004
SAMARRA, Iraq (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040814124717.dlw5y6n2.html
US forces said Saturday they killed 50 insurgents when warplanes dropped 500-pound (230-kilogram) bombs on hideouts in a ground-and-air assault on Iraq's restive Sunni Muslim bastion of Samarra.
But there was no independent confirmation of the US death toll. After the fighting, the city's main hospital reported 25 Iraqis dead and 86 wounded, many of them women and children.
At least 43 buildings and homes were destroyed, including a police headquarters and the municipality, police said.
Mosques were heard urging people through loudspeakers to donate blood, and the general hospital said that of the 25 people killed, eight were members of the same family.
"There were a series of 500-pound bombs dropped on known enemy locations early this morning near Samarra," Captain Bill Coppernoll of the 1st Infantry Division told AFP.
"This was part of an operation called Cajun Mousetrap III which was conducted to assist in the freedom of movement for Iraqi citizens and deny the enemy sanctuary in the surrounding area.
"Initial reports indicate that approximately 50 anti-Iraqi forces were killed," Coppernoll added.
The military sustained no casualties during the assault, which started at midnight (2000 GMT) Friday and lasted into the early hours, he said.
Forces also raided suspected insurgent bases and weapons depots, he said.
Troops detained three suspected weapons suppliers and seized six AK-47 assault rifles, mortar rounds and bomb-making materials, said Coppernoll.
Residents said US military vehicles and tanks closed in from all directions on the city, north of Baghdad, which is considered a hotbed of Sunni militancy.
Police said their headquarters were badly damaged and they lost three of their comrades during the assault.
The offices of the political party of Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib were also destroyed, said police. Gutted vehicles lined the streets of the city north of Baghdad.
Samarra has been dogged by frequent clashes between US troops and insurgents. It has been largely off-limits to Iraqi police and security forces who have restricted their presence to the outskirts of the city.
The offensive against Sunni insurgents north of Baghdad came as US-led troops and Iraqi security forces also battled Shiite Muslim militiamen in the south and centre.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Could Safely Withdraw From Golan, Army Chief Says
August 14, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/international/14mideast.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 13 - Israel's senior army commander says his country could safely withdraw from the Golan Heights in any future peace settlement with Syria, without retaining any occupied territory there as a buffer.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the army chief of staff, broke with Israel's traditional position in an interview published Friday in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, saying: "From the point of view of military requirements, we could reach an agreement with Syria by giving up the Golan Heights. The army could defend Israel's borders wherever they are."
Israel usually argues that a complete withdrawal from the Golan, seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981, would leave northern Israeli towns once again vulnerable to Syrian missile and infantry attacks.
Israeli-Syrian peace talks collapsed in 2000 when Syria insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and Israel wanted some border adjustments near the Sea of Galilee.
General Yaalon's comments were published just a day after Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Israelis that many more settlements in the West Bank would have to be dismantled before any peace could be reached with the Palestinians and the outside world.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made no secret of his annoyance, authorizing an aide, Assaf Shariv, to say: "The prime minister was very angry when he heard of Ehud Olmert's comments. His comments were contrary to the positions of Ariel Sharon. The disengagement plan is the only plan on the table."
Mr. Sharon, with Mr. Olmert's prompting, is moving to disengage unilaterally from the entire Gaza Strip, which would involve dismantling Israeli settlements there. In a largely symbolic gesture, he also intends to dismantle four settlements in the northern West Bank.
The White House is demanding that Mr. Sharon include at least those four in what his Likud Party has long insisted is part of Judea and Samaria, the biblical land of Israel, and thus belongs to the Jewish state. For years, Likud's motto has been, "Not one inch." So the prime minister's willingness to pull back from that area is a considerable breaking of a taboo, but Mr. Sharon clearly does not want the Israeli right to become any angrier with him than it already is.
Mr. Sharon is busily trying to reshape his governing coalition so he can get his withdrawal plan through his cabinet and Parliament. On Wednesday, he faces a tough debate at a Likud convention.
So while he and his office chose to make no comment on Friday on General Yaalon's thesis about the Golan Heights, Mr. Olmert's remarks were something else.
Visiting Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank on Thursday, Mr. Olmert told residents that the evacuation of four settlements was "critical to reducing friction with the international community, and we will have to evacuate more settlements for this reason."
There was no justice in it, he said, but it had to be done to preserve Israel as a democratic Jewish state. "The United States is virtually our only friend," he said. "But even the U.S. supports retreat to almost the 1967 borders."
Mr. Olmert has made similar comments as far back as last December, when he spoke of the withdrawal of "tens of thousands" of Israeli settlers. There are now some 8,000 settlers in Gaza and 238,000 settlers in the West Bank - and an additional 200,000 if one includes Israelis who moved into East Jerusalem after the 1967 war.
There are some who see Mr. Olmert as a stalking horse for Mr. Sharon, sending up trial balloons for him. In the last 18 months, said Shlomo Avineri, a philosopher and former diplomat associated with the Labor Party, "Olmert has been six months ahead of Sharon."
"He spoke of disengagement in Gaza before Sharon uttered a word," he said.
Mr. Olmert's comments are now making "Sharon uncomfortable, because it opens him to criticism from the right," Mr. Avineri said. "But it also makes him look more accommodating and gives him a road sign to the next step."
Mr. Olmert is working to outmaneuver his main rival to succeed Mr. Sharon as leader of Likud, the former prime minister and current finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the West Bank on Friday, a Palestinian gunman ambushed and killed a Jewish settler, Shlomo Miller, about 50, who was in his car patrolling the perimeter fence of the settlement of Itamar, on a hill overlooking Nablus. The Palestinian, who used an AK-47, tried to escape with the Israeli's M-16, and was shot to death by settlement security guards. Responsibility for the attack was claimed in Nablus by Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement.
The group identified the Palestinian as a 27-year-old lieutenant in the Palestinian Preventive Security police. In Gaza on Friday, four Palestinians were wounded as Israeli soldiers and tanks escorted two bulldozers into a section of Gaza City to demolish houses belonging to other Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis.
In Jerusalem, the police announced the arrest of a third Palestinian in connection with a bomb set off near the Kalandia checkpoint on Wednesday, which killed two Palestinian civilians and wounded 18 people, including 6 Israeli border police officers. After the arrest, the police then lifted the state of high alert in Jerusalem.
--------
Israeli Missiles Hit Gaza Refugee Camp - - Witnesses
August 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast-missile.html
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli helicopter gunships fired two missiles into the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip Sunday, Palestinian witnesses said.
They said at least one missile hit an open area, while the other hit near an empty home. The missile strike followed clashes with militants. There was no immediate word on casualties.
-------- nato
Russia Criticizes NATO's Expansion
August 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Russia.html
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Saturday criticized NATO's expansion into three former Soviet states on the Baltic Sea and warned that NATO warplanes flying patrols over those countries create a risk of accidental incidents.
Ivanov, speaking at a press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, questioned the need for the patrols but said they pose no real threat to Russia. The patrols are flown by four NATO fighter jets because the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have no air forces of their own.
``We cannot understand how these four planes can intercept al-Qaida, the Taliban, or anything else,'' Ivanov said. ``The only thing they can intercept is a mythical Soviet threat.''
Rumsfeld said there was no need for friction between NATO and Russia. He suggested Russia strike an accord with the Baltic nations to avoid any ``unnecessary incidents'' -- a possible reference to what might occur if a warplane violates a country's airspace.
Ivanov also questioned NATO's need for the three Baltic countries, which joined the alliance in April, saying through a translator, ``The Baltic countries are consumers of security, not producers.''
Russia has expressed concern about NATO's expansion before. But since the expansion four months ago, some U.S. officials see Russia reasserting itself with its Soviet-era republics.
Rumsfeld was in St. Petersburg on Saturday and Sunday for several meetings with Ivanov on a variety of security issues, including terrorism and weapons proliferation. Ivanov said one focus was establishing a joint effort to control and interdict the spread of shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles, a weapon that many fear could be used to shoot down airliners.
During the press conference, Ivanov also seemed open to cooperating with the United States on missile defense programs.
A U.S. anti-ballistic missile system, aimed at shooting down North Korean missiles launched over the Pacific, is expected to go online within months, and the U.S. military is beginning upgrades on a radar system in Greenland that would track missiles fired over Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Some Russians are concerned the radar might somehow be a threat.
``A radar of that type obviously doesn't threaten anybody,'' Rumsfeld said, saying it was being upgraded to track missile launches by rogue states.
Indeed, Ivanov said Russia was interested in developing such a radar for itself.
In recent years, Russia and the United States have been at odds over the Bush administration's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its decision to proceed with building a missile defense system.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan's Musharraf Vows to End Islamic Militancy
August 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-pakistan.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf vowed Saturday to crush Islamic militancy, saying there would be no let up in the Muslim nation's biggest ever crackdown on al Qaeda operatives and other radicals.
Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, said foreign militants linked to Osama bin Laden's network and their local allies posed the biggest challenge to Pakistan, which was celebrating its 57th anniversary of independence Saturday.
``We will crush them and will not allow them to move forward,'' he said, speaking at a musical show held to mark the anniversary.
Musharraf made no direct reference to a spate of recent arrests across the country, including top al Qaeda operatives, which have raised hopes that security forces may be getting closer to bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
Officials have played down such hopes, saying the whereabouts of world's two top wanted men were still a mystery. They are believed to be holed up in the mountainous region on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
In its massive sweep since July, Pakistan has caught about 30 foreign and local militants, revealing growing evidence of links between al Qaeda and local militant groups.
The local militants developed links to al Qaeda guerrillas in the 1980s when they jointly fought in the U.S.-backed Afghan war against Soviet occupation with the active support of Pakistan's powerful military.
But Islamic militants turned against Musharraf's government after he joined the U.S.-led war on terror in the wake of September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
Saturday, six hand-made bombs exploded in the southwestern city of Quetta but caused no casualities.
The southwestern Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital, has been wracked by religious and sectarian violence in recent months but police suspect local nationalists vying for more political and economic rights were behind such attacks.
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
Musharraf survived two assassination attempts in December blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants and his hand-picked prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz narrowly escaped a suicide attack last month.
But Musharraf said his government would remain undeterred in its hunt against militants.
``In my view, the biggest challenge to this country is the spread of terrorism by some elements of foreign countries with the collusion of some Pakistani religious and sectarian extremists,'' Musharraf said.
``But we can't be scared of terrorism. We can't be defeated.''
Friday, security forces arrested an Islamic radical linked to the assassination attempt on Aziz.
Others arrested in the recent crackdown include Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani wanted for the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in east Africa and a Pakistani computer engineer Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan.
A computer seized from Khan last month showed the bin Laden's network was considering attacking financial institutions in the United States and Heathrow airport in London, intelligence officials said.
As the crackdown on Osama bin Laden's shadowy network gathered pace, security has been stepped up in major Pakistani cities for Saturday's independence celebrations, reflecting government concerns about a militant backlash.
The official APP news agency said Pakistani security agencies had unearthed a plan to sabotage the August 14 celebrations and attacks on government installations.
``A number of potential terrorists, who were planning the attack, have been picked up by the security agencies from different parts of the country,'' the report said quoting unspecified security sources.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said there were no ``specific'' security threat.
``However, we did get some reports that there could be some sort of security threat on the independence day or on the eve of independence day,'' he told Reuters.
-------- russia / chechnya
US, Russia defense ministers hold security talks
Aug 14, 2004
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040814074439.0kzaxuo1.html
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov hosts US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld here Saturday for security talks expected to range widely over issues from Iraq and Iran to missile defense.
"With Russia, I think it's fair to say there is just a plethora of issues, every issue in the region," said a senior US defense official briefing reporters ahead of Rumsfeld's trip.
Rumsfeld, who arrived here Friday from talks with Ukrainian leaders in Crimea, had a full schedule of cultural events as well, which US officials hoped would provide opportunities to informally sound out Ivanov on recent trends in Russian policy.
"There have been reports as you know about disturbing trends in Russia as far as trends about democratic and political development, media freedoms," the US defense official said.
"These are also areas I would expect we would have discussions with the minister to get his perspective," he said.
Rumsfeld, who visited Afghanistan earlier this week, intended to brief Ivanov on the situation there as the country braces for presidential elections in October amid fears of violence by Taliban insurgents.
Likewise in Iraq, Rumsfeld has been calling for contributions of foreign troops to protect the UN mission that will help organize elections there even as US troops move to crush a Shiite insurgency in Najaf.
US concerns about Iran's nuclear program, as well as its longstanding opposition to a Russian deal to build a nuclear reactor in Iran, also were expected to come up in the talks here.
In a stop in Azerbaijan this week, Rumsfeld said Iran's nuclear ambitions were a major worry for the world amid fears that states possessing nuclear weapons might cooperate with terrorists.
Russian concerns about a US missile defense system which is due to be operational later this year also were expected to come up.
US officials said Rumsfeld was prepared to discuss cooperation with Moscow on missile defense.
Another thorny issue is Georgia, where tensions have flared between Moscow and the new government of President Mikhail Saakashvili over the country's breakaway South Ossetia region.
Rumsfeld in a visit to Georgia in December publicly urged Moscow to make good on commitments under a 1999 agreement to withdaw its troops from the country.
-------- un
Scores Killed in Attack on U.N. Camp in Burundi
August 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Burundi-Massacre.html?pagewanted=all
BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) -- Dozens of attackers raided a U.N. refugee camp in western Burundi, shooting and hacking to death at least 180 people, witnesses and local officials said Saturday.
A Burundian Hutu rebel faction claimed responsibility for the attack late Friday near the Congolese border, saying its fighters were in pursuit of Burundian soldiers who fled to the camp from a nearby army position.
The assailants screamed war cries as they rushed into the camp and set it ablaze, local official Louis Niyonzima told The Associated Press.
The camp sheltered Congolese ethnic Tutsi refugees, known as the Banyamulenge, who fled fighting in Congo's troubled border province of South Kivu, Niyonzima said.
``What we have seen so far are many, many, many bodies of children, women and men,'' Eliana Nabaa, spokeswoman of the U.N. mission in Congo said. ``People were sleeping when the attack happened. People were killed as they tried to escape.''
``The scene is absolutely horrific. There are many people burnt,'' Nabaa said by telephone from Bukavu, capital of South Kivu. She said the attackers were well armed and organized.
Isabelle Abric, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Burundi, said 159 people were killed on the spot and 101 others were wounded in the attack on the camp in Gatumba, 12 miles from the Congolese border. At least 30 of the wounded died later in hospital, she said.
The bloodshed in the camp came after gunmen attacked a Burundian army position about a half-mile away.
``These guys were armed with grenades, machetes, and automatic weapons. While the attack was going on they were beating drums,'' said Fernando del Mundo, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.
Pasteur Habimana, spokesman for the National Liberation Forces, justified the assault on the camp by saying Burundian soldiers were hiding there after the attack on the post.
``We were also attacked by armed Banyamulenge militiamen who lived in this camp,'' he said. ``The camp was a genuine Banyamulenge militiamen headquarters.''
Habimana earlier said the victims were killed by Burundian soldiers who fled into the refugee camp to escape the rebel assault.
A spokesman for the Burundian army could not be immediately reached for comment.
The National Liberation Forces is the last main rebel movement fighting the government in Burundi's 10-year-old civil war, which has killed some 260,000 people.
War broke out in 1993, when Hutus took up arms after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu. Burundi's Tutsi minority has effectively run the country for all but a few months since independence in 1962.
Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye visited the camp Saturday and described the massacre as ``a shame'' and asked the Congolese government to assist in investigations.
``What I can say is that it is Burundi which has been attacked. The attackers killed innocent refugees who sought refuge in Burundi,'' Ndayizeye said. The rebels ``declared that they attacked a military camp and that the soldiers fled in this camp but I saw no soldier's body except those of young children, women and old persons.''
The attack occurred one day after Congolese Vice President Azarias Ruberwa visited the camp to encourage the refugees to return home.
In the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, government officials were heading into meetings Saturday to discuss the killings. They had no immediate comment.
United Nations officials are studying whether the attack was carried out with the assistance of Congolese tribal fighters known as the Mayi Mayi or Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo, she said.
The Rwandan insurgents include members of the former army and the extremists Interahamwe militia who fled to Congo after playing a key role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in the 100-day slaughter organized by the extremist Hutu government then in power.
A renegade Congolese army commander -- whose troops briefly seized Bukavu in June over complaints that Banyamulenge kinsmen were targeted by Congolese authorities -- said the attack in Burundi proved his charges. But he stopped short of threatening retaliation.
Renegade Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda, accused the Congolese army of letting attackers of the Burundi operate in its zone unchallenged.
``This event proves me right,'' Nkunda said by telephone. ``This confirms that there's an extermination plan against the Banyamulenge.''
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, speaking in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, said the massacre ``proves what we have been saying over time, that there have been incidents that are ignored by the international community and the U.N. where people are being killed in eastern Congo, being targeted for who they are.''
The massacre will further complicate U.N. efforts to encourage Congolese refugees to return home, said M'Hand Ladjouzi, head of the U.N. mission in Congo's troubled North Kivu province.
``This is a setback in our efforts to ensure security here,'' Ladjouzi said. ``We are trying to find out who did this. Their aim is to complicate the situation. Obviously, they did this to stop all the efforts the international community is making.''
Associated Press writer Jack Kahorha contributed to this report from Goma, Congo.
-------- us
U.S. to Cut Forces in Europe, Asia
By Mike Allen and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64206-2004Aug14.html
President Bush will announce Monday that he plans to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the first major reconfiguration of overseas military deployments by the United States since the Cold War ended, White House officials said yesterday.
Bush, who will reveal his plan in a speech to the annual convention of the 2.6 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati, plans to say that the change is necessary to adapt the nation's military to the demands of the global war on terrorism and to take advantage of new technologies, said a senior aide involved in developing the plan.
Two-thirds of the reduction will come from Europe, most of them Army soldiers in Germany, and most of the troops will be reassigned to bases in the United States, the aide said. Officials said exact details of the moves have not been finalized, but some of the troops from Germany and South Korea will be moved to expansion countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Eastern Europe.
The plan is the latest iteration of a discussion that has been going on for several years between the Pentagon and the White House about reconfiguring troops abroad now that the Soviet Union is extinct and the United States is the world's lone superpower. Administration officials have talked for more than two years about their intention to move 60,000 troops out of Europe, mostly from Germany, and 30,000 from East Asia, mostly from Japan and South Korea.
"We are reshaping our military to meet the threats of the 21st century in a way that is considerate to the military and friendly to military families," the aide said.
Bush's aides said he will use his speech at the Republican National Convention in New York next month to cast himself as the only candidate who can keep the nation safe and who understands the stakes in the war on terror. Officials said his Monday speech is designed to broaden his vision of national security beyond the war on terror, and he will frame the realignment of the military as an effort by the United Statesto keep its new commitments around the world.
The latest version of the plan was first reported yesterday on the Web site of the Financial Times of London.
The official would not say how long the redeployment would take but said it would involve lengthy negotiations with the countries where the troops are stationed. The administration has been discussing the plans for months with several of the governments, including South Korea, and details went out to some embassies in cables late yesterday, administration officials said.
The new plan flows from the notion that U.S. Army bases in Germany no longer serve a genuine military purpose. While the U.S. government believes it is important to retain at least one major air base in Germany -- primarily as a way station for U.S. troops en route to Europe and the Middle East -- the belief is that moving ground troops further east is a natural consequence of the post-Cold War expansion of NATO.
Eastern European nations -- most notably Poland and Bulgaria -- have been far more enthusiastic supporters of U.S. policy in Iraq than have been older NATO allies and Belgium. Also, U.S. commanders long had chafed at environmental rules that have severely restricted training and maneuvers on German soil.
In East Asia, U.S. commanders recently have taken moves to reshape the U.S. military presence in South Korea, both moving troops from downtown Seoul and also redeploying troops southward from posts along the Demilitarized Zone to bases in the middle of South Korea.
The VFW's 105th annual convention has drawn more than 15,000 members to Ohio, a crucial swing state for Bush where Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has shown strength because of lost manufacturing jobs.
--------
GAO Calls Stryker Too Heavy for Transport
Weight of Armored Vehicle Cuts Flying Range of C-130 Aircraft, Congress Is Told
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63730-2004Aug13.html
The Army's new medium-weight armored vehicle, the Stryker, weighs so much that it curtails the range of C-130 military cargo aircraft that carry it and under certain conditions make it impossible for the planes to take off, a new report for Congress found.
"The Stryker's average weight of 38,000 pounds -- along with other factors such as added equipment and less-than-ideal flight conditions -- significantly limits the C-130's flight range and reduces the size force that could be deployed," said the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress.
A 2002 demonstration of the Stryker showed it ready to fight 10 minutes after being unloaded from a C-130. But a new GAO study disputes that claim. (Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
Indeed, the report said, a C-130 with an average-weight Stryker wouldn't even be able to take off from higher elevations in Afghanistan, such as Bagram or Kabul, during daylight hours in summer.
The findings support the claims of critics that the eight-wheeled Stryker -- now in use in Iraq -- won't be able to meet the original goal of being able to roll into a C-130, be flown 1,000 miles and leave the plane immediately able to engage in combat. When 2,000 pounds of associated equipment such as ammunition is loaded into the aircraft with the typical Stryker vehicle, the report said, the C-130's range is about 500 miles -- and if heavier equipment is loaded it's much less. The report noted that the Army subsequently has dropped that 1,000-mile range requirement for the system.
The Stryker program -- expected to have a total cost of about $8.7 billion for acquiring about 1,800 vehicles -- is the centerpiece of the Army's controversial attempt in recent years to move away from heavy, tank-oriented forces and become more agile, both in getting to the battlefield and in maneuvering on it. Critics, however, worry that the Stryker is too vulnerable to enemy fire, and that attempts to strengthen it would decrease its ability to be deployed.
Indeed, two years ago, those critics had gained so much attention that the Army put on a demonstration in which four of the combat vehicles were airlifted to Andrews Air Force Base. Before an audience that included one leading skeptic, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a C-130 pulled up in front of a hangar, dropped its ramp, and offloaded a Stryker and all its gear, plus two crew members and nine infantrymen, in less than 10 minutes.
But the GAO report found that the weight of the Stryker and its gear and crew makes such a scenario unlikely in a real combat deployment, because it probably would be necessary to move much of the "equipment, ammunition, fuel, personnel and armor on separate aircraft." After being unloaded from the C-130s, the Strykers then would be outfitted with their armor and prepared for combat, a time-consuming task.
Asked what he now thinks of the October 2002 demonstration at Andrews, in light of the GAO findings, Gingrich was bitterly critical of the Army, calling the display "a cheap stunt."
"It was a nice piece of public deception," Gingrich said. "The senior Army deliberately misled the Congress and the secretary of defense about air transportability."
An Army spokesman didn't have any immediate comment on the GAO report, which was released when the Pentagon was all but closed on a Friday in August. He noted that the Defense Department, when asked by the GAO for comment, stated that it "concurs that operational requirements for airlift capability . . . need clarification."
The GAO's findings are especially troubling for the Army because fighting in Iraq over the last two years has resulted in changes to the Stryker that make it even heavier. New armor is being issued to the vehicles to protect them against rocket-propelled grenades, which have been a major danger to U.S. forces in Iraq.
The report also said that some variants of the Stryker, such as the Mobile Gun System, are heavier than the average version, and so are "probably too heavy" to be transported very far via C-130.
-------- war crimes
Czechs probing Korean War experiments on US prisoners: press
PRAGUE (AFP)
Aug 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040814150338.khaovjj3.html
A Czech office set up to investigate communist-era crimes has been helping the United States probe claims that Czechoslovakian doctors experimented on US prisoners from the Korean War, its spokesman said Saturday.
Jan Srb, spokesman of the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (UDV), told the Czech news agency CTK that the United States was interested in the doctors' activities during the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The UDV investigation however has not confirmed any accusations, Srb said.
In 1992, former general Jan Sejna claimed in the United States that doctors from what was then Czechoslovakia took part in experiments performed on the US PoWs.
Sejna emigrated in 1968 and worked for US intelligence.
Srb said the office was also helping uncover information about US soldiers lost during military conflicts.
After World War Two there were about 200 US soldier graves in what is now the Czech Republic and formerly was part of Czechoslovakia.
The UDV also uncovered information about 21 US military personnel arrested in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s under communism, most of whom were based in Germany and were lost on the border.
In return, the UDV is seeking help from US authorities in the case of Pavel Minarik, a Czechoslovak communist secret agent who was convicted of planning in the 1970s to bomb US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe in Munich, where he worked as a reporter.
The UDV asked US officials to assess the damage such an attack would have caused, to help file charges against him.
Minarik was convicted in 1993 of planning an attack and sentenced to four years in prison. After an appeal a court ordered further investigation by the UDV and the prosecution was halted last year.
The Czech Supreme Court then allowed the prosecution to continue and Minarik faces eight to 15 years in prison.
Radio Free Europe later moved its headquarters from Munich to Prague.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Times Reporter Subpoenaed in CIA Case
Associated Press
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64071-2004Aug13.html
NEW YORK, Aug. 13 -- New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been subpoenaed by the grand jury trying to determine who leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer, the newspaper said Friday.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the Times will fight the subpoena, which the newspaper said was issued Thursday. Miller is one of several reporters who have been asked to testify in the probe.
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak revealed the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame on July 14, 2003, citing two "senior administration officials" as his sources. Knowingly disclosing an undercover official's identity can be a felony.
Plame's name appeared in Novak's column about a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, published a newspaper opinion piece criticizing President Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger.
Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to check the allegation. Novak wrote that Plame had suggested her husband for the mission, a claim Plame and Wilson have denied.
On Monday, an Aug. 6 court order was unsealed holding Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in contempt of court for refusing to testify before the grand jury. Time magazine is appealing the ruling. If it loses, Cooper could be jailed until he agrees to appear, or a maximum of 18 months, and the magazine could be fined $1,000 a day.
Also subpoenaed was NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, who agreed to be interviewed under oath to avoid a court battle. NBC News President Neal Shapiro said Russert answered limited questions about a telephone conversation with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "without revealing any information he learned in confidence."
Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, who has written that a Post reporter received information about Plame from a Bush administration official, was subpoenaed Monday. In June, prosecutors interviewed Post reporter Glenn Kessler, regarding two conversations he had with Libby in July 2003.
Kessler has said he told prosecutors that Libby did not mention Plame, Wilson or the CIA-backed trip to Niger and that he testified only because Libby signed a waiver releasing Kessler from any promise of confidentiality.
-------- homeland security
Nonprofits Scramble To Meet Terror Rules
Worker Screening Required for CFC Funds
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64040-2004Aug13.html
When Capital Hospice, a nonprofit that provides care to about 4,000 terminally ill patients and their families in the Washington area each year, hires an employee or takes on a new volunteer, its background checks are extensive, as required by state and federal law and health care accrediting organizations.
But next week, it will add one more check: screening its 600 workers and volunteers against voluminous government lists of suspected terrorists.
"From this point forward, we're going to review everybody who is employed," including volunteers, hospice spokesman Spencer Levine said yesterday.
If it doesn't undertake the checks, it risks being dropped from the Combined Federal Campaign, the fundraising drive among federal workers who jointly contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to Capital Hospice through the CFC each year.
The terrorist watch list checks are a new requirement for nonprofits -- social service organizations, private schools, arts groups and others -- that participate in the CFC.
The 40-year-old CFC received pledges totaling about $250 million last year. Of that, $50 million came from Washington area federal workers who contributed to about 3,000 national and local organizations.
According to the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the CFC, the rule is required by an executive order President Bush signed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Under the order, organizations must ensure that no private or public money is diverted to terrorist groups.
A coalition of 16 national nonprofits led by the American Civil Liberties Union vowed this week to fight the rule, which affects the thousands of national and local nonprofits across the country that will take part in the fundraising starting Oct. 1.
The ACLU has dropped out of the CFC, saying that conducting such checks would violate the privacy rights of its employees. Other nonprofits, including Amnesty International USA, said this week that they also would quit the CFC, saying the lists are riddled with errors and so full of common Arab and other ethnic names as to be virtually useless.
Yesterday, OPM -- which is declining to comment publicly on the issue -- e-mailed the organizations that run its local CFCs and advised them to expect more defections.
But representatives of many nonprofits based in the Washington area interviewed yesterday said they either were not aware of the requirement until this week's publicity or were confused by its provision.
The American Red Cross, based in the District, said it plans to comply with the directive and check the names of its 4,000 employees nationwide against the lists. But a spokesman for its local affiliate, the Red Cross of the National Capital Area, said it was unaware of the provision. "We haven't heard of anything, and we haven't signed anything," Cameron Ballantyne said.
The rule requires CFC participants to certify that they do not "knowingly employ" suspected terrorists or contribute money to organizations with terrorist ties. It refers charities to U.S. government Web sites that list tens of thousands of people and organizations with alleged ties to terrorist activities.
But officials at So Others Might Eat, a Washington organization that provides food, housing and other services to the poor, said they believe the organization's regular background checks of employees and job applicants are sufficient to meet the CFC standard.
Other than that, "absolutely, we will not knowingly hire folks that are on watch lists," said Emily Patillo, development coordinator for So Others Might Eat. Last year, the organization received about $800,000 from the CFC.
Global Impact, which administers the local CFC, said it held several seminars during which it alerted local charities to the new rule. But because it was the first year, "some of the charities may not have realized the implications of the rules and instructions when they signed their application," spokesman Anthony De Cristofaro said.
De Cristofaro said his organization has checked the names of its 52 employees against the list. "We feel our . . . instructions were very explicit."
----
D.C. Exasperated by Security Measures
Sat Aug 14, 2004
By DERRILL HOLLY,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=20&u=/ap/20040814/ap_on_re_us/capital_security_fight
WASHINGTON - Near the White House, stores now rely on handcarts - not trucks - to get their deliveries. Ambulances face delays. And officials worry about what will happen when summer ends and commuters once again push full-scale into the city's center every day.
The recent round of terror-related security alerts has caused broad new restrictions in the nation's capital, inconveniencing people who live and work here and leading to increasingly bitter words between federal and city officials.
"You can't continue to close streets without doing death to commerce in this city - to tourism in this city, to the tax base in this city," Mayor Anthony A. Williams said recently.
City officials have complained for a decade about "security creep" restricting access - and especially since Sept. 11, 2001, when the terror attacks prompted agencies' security directors to put up more concrete barriers around federal buildings.
But when the Homeland Security Department raised the terror alert warning level for high-profile financial targets on Aug. 1, and new roadblocks and checkpoints were put up near the Capitol shortly afterward, District of Columbia officials reacted with an unprecedented level of outrage.
Trucks are now subject to cargo searches at random checkpoints around the city, and there are 14 permanent checkpoints near Capitol Hill. Commuter buses now face routine delays or detours.
While previous closures have prompted loose commitments to consult with the city beforehand, federal officials concede that has rarely occurred. The dispute over the new Capitol roadblocks prompted an Aug. 9 meeting that produced an agreement for monthly meetings to discuss street-level security concerns - and Capitol police agreed to allow city emergency vehicles to proceed through their checkpoints.
White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend said recently that city officials are being consulted. But few are satisfied.
"This is a living city, and it simply cannot move if we have as many checkpoints and street closings as they have foisted on us," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district's nonvoting representative to Congress.
Norton and others worry that when congressional staffers and large numbers of federal employees return to regular commuting in September, after the traditional August vacation, the city will face traffic gridlock.
For Sang Mon Yant, manager of a liquor store not far from the White House, the new restrictions already have created a monumental headache: Large deliveries to his store now must be prearranged with law enforcement authorities. "If they come in late, they have to reschedule," he said.
On streets immediately adjacent to the White House, the situation is even more restrictive. Shipments of food, office supplies and other goods now must be loaded onto handcarts and hauled into areas where trucks and panel vans are no longer allowed.
Fire officials are concerned the security restrictions could delay ambulance calls.
"When traffic is tied up for one reason or another, traffic is often squeezed to another road," said Alan Etter, spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.
Driss Benjelloun, a Moroccan-born street vendor who sells jewelry two blocks from the White House, says tourists and commuters who used to walk by his table now avoid the area, reducing his sales by half. "Sometimes the streets are closed and you have to go around many blocks just to get over here," he said.
A task force formed by the National Capital Planning Commission is trying to ensure that the city is secure without creating unnecessary hardship for its residents or harming the city's aesthetics.
But Richard L. Friedman, the task force chairman, said the chain link fencing, concrete walls and other makeshift barriers around some of the city's monuments and notable buildings are not the answer.
The commission instead has recommended the use of trees, light poles, newspaper stands and heavy planter boxes.
"We can't let the terrorists win by making Washington look like Beirut," Friedman said.
-------- immigration / refugees
U.S. Relaxes Entry Rules for Some Foreigners
Associated Press
Saturday, August 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64067-2004Aug13.html
The government said Thursday that it will no longer treat some foreign visitors harshly just because they stayed too long on previous trips.
Effective immediately, foreigners allowed to enter the United States on passports -- those from visa-waiver countries, many in Europe -- will not be handcuffed, searched or denied entry if it turns out they had stayed a few days longer than they should have on previous visits, a Department of Homeland Security official said.
In the past, these people "were treated as criminals," said Robert C. Bonner, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection commissioner. The visa-waiver program allows citizens from 27 nations that are U.S. allies to enter the country without visas.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, foreigners who had stayed longer than allowed have been denied reentry and taken into custody if a return flight to their home country was not immediately available.
The new policy restores to inspectors some of the discretion curtailed after Sept. 11. Some of the hijackers had overstayed their visas but were allowed reentry into the United States, investigators have found.
Inspectors at major airports and other ports of entry will be allowed to decide whether the visitor is a security risk. If not, the officers can allow the visitor to enter the country for as long as 90 days.
-------- police
Police Tactic Against Terror: Let's Network
August 14, 2004
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/nyregion/14plot.html?pagewanted=all&position=
In January, their mission was to speak before a mosquito sprayers' convention in Harrisburg, Pa. In April, the detectives attended a meeting of self-storage business owners in Atlanta. This summer, they were in Naples, Fla., mingling with propane gas vendors at their trade association's annual conference.
These are, admittedly, not the sort of assignments that investigators envision when they join the New York Police Department. But such missions, however mundane, have become as much a part of police counterterrorism efforts as the posting of detectives in places like Tel Aviv and Singapore, the planning for a bioterror attack or the identification of Arab speakers on the force.
Involving more grunt work than glamour, the city's counterterrorism effort has largely been built atop a nuts-and-bolts program of cultivating contacts with the businesses that might become unwitting parts of the next terror plot. Detectives visit scuba shops and hardware stores. They talk to parking garage attendants and plastic surgeons, hotel managers and tool rental companies, bulk fuel dealers and trade schools.
Police officials acknowledge that the program, which grew out of an effort two years ago to contact businesses that sold explosives, is something of a needle-in-a-haystack approach to stopping an attack or tracking down terrorist cells that may be plotting one. But in the post-9/11 world, in light of the failure of government agencies to act on a range of clues in the weeks and months before the attacks, they argue that no effort to develop this kind of early-warning system is wasted.
Called Operation Nexus, the program has focused on particular types of businesses based on intelligence that the department has culled from sources like an Al Qaeda manual for terrorist operatives and debriefings of some of the group's leaders and foot soldiers, said David Cohen, the deputy commissioner for intelligence.
Those debriefings and other evidence have suggested, among other things, that Al Qaeda has at least considered, if not plotted, using scuba divers to blow up bridges, riding in tourist helicopters for surveillance, turning trucks and limousines into rolling bombs and using special torches to cut the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.
And Mr. Cohen noted that Qaeda members are trained to avoid the police.
"The next Mohamed Atta is far more likely to intersect with someone in the private sector than a law enforcement officer," he said, referring to the leader of the Sept. 11 plot.
Mr. Cohen, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who oversees the program, said it is based on personal contact with people and repeated visits to various businesses. "If you take the time to talk to people, it leaves an imprint," he said.
The effort is focused largely in and around New York City, where six or so detectives have made close to 20,000 visits, returning to some businesses time and again to leave their business cards and the department's terrorism hot line number. The detectives are encouraged to spend time with the businesses, leaving an outline of what they describe as possibly suspicious activity tailored for each type of business: more than 60 altogether, said Lt. Christopher S. Higgins, whom police officials credit with developing the program from concept to reality.
At an agricultural or mosquito-spraying business, which the authorities fear could be used to spread a biological agent like anthrax, the detectives cite possible warning signs like the loss, theft or attempted theft of equipment or machine components. They tell business owners to call if they encounter evasive customers who inquire about equipment but seem to lack previous experience in the industry.
Businesses that offer used emergency vehicles for sale are told to watch for requests to buy fire or police vehicles with radios or other equipment intact. Army-Navy and uniform stores are warned to watch for people who say they are in the military or civil service but who make statements suggesting their stories are false.
"We're going to have eyeball-to-eyeball contact with that individual who may be approached by someone who wants to do harm to our city," Mr. Cohen said, noting that the business owners themselves can best spot an anomaly.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who instituted the program, said it quickly expanded from its initial focus on explosives and marinas, at a time when there was heightened concern about terrorists using boats in attacks, to a wide range of other businesses. They include chemical and insecticide companies, livery car businesses, truck and van rentals, travel agencies and self-storage businesses, where the authorities fear terrorists could store explosives or radioactive materials for a dirty bomb.
"We're looking for anything that with a little thought could be used by a terrorist," Mr. Kelly said.
Glenn Martin, a vice president of Helicopter Applications Inc., an agricultural spraying company in Pennsylvania, said that in a presentation to the Northeast Agricultural Aviation Association in Harrisburg this year, two Nexus detectives provided companies that do mosquito-spraying and crop-dusting with some insight into what they should look for. "It just drove the point home, basically," he said in a telephone interview. "We have to be more vigilant."
Other jurisdictions, including the Metropolitan Police in London, have studied New York's program and are trying to use it as a model in some fashion, Lieutenant Higgins said. The New York State Office of Public Security recently put in place a mirror image of the city's program across the state.
In at least one instance, though, the New York City detectives have raised the hackles of law enforcement authorities elsewhere. Last year, to test the program's effectiveness, detectives called scuba shops in New Jersey without identifying themselves and made several suspicious requests, seeking to pay cash for diving lessons and to avoid the required paperwork.
The store owners called the New Jersey authorities, who were unaware of the New York detectives' actions and were annoyed that they had not been notified, an official said.
Over all, the program has won high marks. Many current and former counterterrorism analysts say an aggressive approach, devised to provide an early warning that operatives or their supporters are already at work in this country, is critical to any antiterrorism effort.
"In today's day and age, where the ramifications of terrorism are so great, you've got to prevent,'' said Larry Mefford, who oversaw the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism and counterintelligence programs until he retired last year. "You can't wait for the attack, especially when you're talking about the future and the possible use of weapons of mass destruction.
"If you don't have a system like this, you're saying by default, 'They'll never get through our defenses,' and we obviously know from our past experience that that's not realistic."
As high as the stakes are, the work itself can be grindingly dull, visiting business after business and trying to remain energized. "This is the part of the business that is unrelenting and unglamorous," Mr. Cohen said.
Lieutenant Higgins said he usually fields three teams of two detectives each day, and they are expected to visit more than a dozen sites a day. Each visit is recorded in an extensive database that tracks the contacts, listing the detective assigned, the type of business, hours of operation, those who were spoken to, and whether they have any security equipment, like video cameras, that can capture images of people who come in.
Mr. Cohen said the program is a crucial part of the city's shield even if it is hard to quantify its effectiveness. For one thing, it is hard to know whether an attack has been prevented, officials noted. For another, callers to the terrorism hot line do not generally identify whether their call was prompted by a Nexus visit.
"The risk is the farther we get from 9/11, complacency sets in, and we simply won't let that happen," Mr. Cohen said. "So we start out the day knowing that we are the bull's-eye. So how many have we stopped, we don't know. We do know a couple of things: We know we've been attacked; we know they have said very clearly they want to come back; we know we are high on the target list."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Detainees Ruled Enemy Combatants
Review Finds First 4 of 25 Cases Are Classified Properly
Associated Press
Saturday, August 14, 2004;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62902-2004Aug13.html
A military review of the cases against four terrorism suspects held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that they are classified properly as enemy combatants and will not be freed, the official overseeing the process said yesterday.
The four cases were the first of 21 reviewed to be decided. There is no appeal. Four additional cases were being heard yesterday at Guantanamo Bay, raising the total to 25. Their outcomes were not expected to be revealed immediately.
The Pentagon has insisted since it began holding individuals captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terrorism nearly three years ago that they are enemy combatants, not prisoners of war, and can be held indefinitely without charges or access to lawyers.
Human rights organizations have challenged the Pentagon on this, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced this year that the cases of each person held at Guantanamo Bay will be reviewed once a year to determine whether they are security threats to the United States.
When the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that the detainees had the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon quickly organized the separate review process to determine whether each detainee is an enemy combatant as defined by the Pentagon.
Navy Secretary Gordon R. England, who oversees the reviews but has no say in the outcome of individual cases, said an enemy combatant is "anyone who is part of supporting the Taliban or al Qaeda forces or associated forces engaging in hostilities against the United States or our coalition partners." The detainees are not represented by lawyers.
The reviews began July 30. In a change of policy yesterday, the Pentagon stopped releasing detainees' nationalities when their cases are heard. Nationalities, but not names, of the first 21 were released at their hearings, including five Thursday.
Lt. Cmdr. Beci Brenton, a spokeswoman for the review process, said the decision to stop providing nationalities was made after some countries objected to the release of that information.
Barring an unforeseen delay, all 585 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will have their cases heard before the end of the year, England said. He said the hearings are taking longer than originally expected, mainly because of language barriers, but additional translators are being hired.
--------
Military Tribunals Uphold Detentions of 4
August 14, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/politics/14gitmo.html?pagewanted=all
In their first decisions, military tribunals considering the status of the people held at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, ruled yesterday that four detainees had properly been designated as enemy combatants who may be held there indefinitely.
The tribunals, which opened for business on July 30 and which resemble courts only in broad outline, will ultimately consider the status of all of the nearly 600 people held at Guantánamo. Their rulings yesterday were more surprising for their speed than their substance.
The government did not release the names or nationalities of the four men involved or even whether they had appeared at their hearings. At a news briefing, Gordon R. England, the secretary of the Navy, said yesterday that 11 of the 21 detainees whose hearings had been held so far decided not to participate.
Lawyers for some of the detainees said the tribunals, known formally as Combatant Status Review Tribunals, did not comply with rulings of the Supreme Court in June requiring that people held as unlawful enemy combatants be able to challenge their detentions in a fair proceeding with due process protections.
"The government is treating a historic loss in the Supreme Court as though it were a suggestion slip," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has assisted in the representation of some detainees.
Lawyers for the detainees say federal court is the proper forum for adjudicating their rights. They have filed 13 petitions on behalf of 71 detainees before five judges, all in the Federal District Court in Washington, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some detainees.
The judges are considering preliminary issues in those cases.
"We're not near the merits," said Jeffrey E. Fogel, the center's legal director, said of the court proceedings. "We're fighting over the right to meet with our clients. You can't litigate these cases if you can't meet with your clients."
Though the government will presumably rely on the Guantánamo tribunals' decisions in court as adequate to justify the detentions, it is not clear whether federal judges will defer to the tribunals.
The Supreme Court gave the lower courts only limited guidance about how those held may challenge their detentions.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority in one case, that of Yaser Hamdi, an American captured in Afghanistan and held as an unlawful enemy combatant, said Mr. Hamdi was entitled to "receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decision maker," adding that he "unquestionably has the right to access to counsel."
It is possible, Justice O'Connor continued, that constitutionally adequate hearings could be held "by an appropriately authorized and properly constituted military tribunal" that observed due process.
"In the absence of such process, however," she added, "a court that receives a petition for a writ of habeas corpus from an alleged enemy combatant must itself ensure that the minimum requirements of due process are achieved."
Critics of the Guantánamo tribunals say they do not satisfy the Supreme Court's requirements. Detainees, according to the July order establishing the tribunals, are provided with military officers, not lawyers, to act as their "personal representatives"; the representatives may review only "reasonably available information"; the detainee may call only "reasonably available witnesses"; the tribunals are made up of "three neutral commissioned officers of the U.S. Armed Forces," not independent judges, and the rules of evidence do not apply.
"If you look at the rudiments of due process," Professor Freedman said, "these panels don't start to begin to meet it."
The government and lawyers for the detainees also differ on what it means to be an enemy combatant. Justice O'Connor said it was proper to detain someone who was "part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners" in Afghanistan and who "engaged in an armed conflict against the United States" there, at least so long as hostilities in Afghanistan continue.
The tribunals are using a broader definition of enemy combatants. They include those who support Al Qaeda, and they substitute a requirement that the detainee "committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces" for Justice O'Connor's requirement of taking up arms against the United States.
At yesterday's news briefing, Mr. England said he expected the tribunals to finish their work in the next several months. More than 150 cases are in progress, he said.
Though the proceedings are moving with lightning speed by civilian judicial standards, Mr. England expressed frustration at the pace.
"It's a harder process than we had earlier anticipated," he said. "That is, it's more time-consuming just to do all of the appropriate translation, interviews with detainees themselves, having the right translators available, being able to translate the information."
--------
American Caught With Taliban Seeks Review of 20-Year Term
August 14, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/politics/14detain.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the young American captured in Afghanistan after joining the Taliban and now serving a 20-year prison sentence, called on the Justice Department on Friday to review his case in light of the department's announcement this week that it might soon free another American captured with the Taliban.
"We hope that the government gives Mr. Lindh the same reconsideration they have extended to Mr. Hamdi," the lawyers said in a statement, referring to Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who is expected to be released soon to return to his family in Saudi Arabia.
Justice Department officials had no immediate comment on the statement.
Mr. Lindh, a convert to Islam who is now 23, was sentenced to 20 years in prison as a result of a plea agreement reached in July 2002.
Within weeks of his capture, in December 2001, the United States took another American, Mr. Hamdi, into custody in Afghanistan.
But while it was clear immediately to his captors that Mr. Lindh was an American, military officials have said it took several months for them to learn and verify that Mr. Hamdi was American, and he was initially treated as a foreign enemy combatant and moved to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for interrogation.
This week, the Justice Department disclosed that it was negotiating with defense lawyers over the release of Mr. Hamdi, who has never been charged with a crime.
A lawyer for Mr. Lindh, James J. Brosnahan, said in an interview that a decision to release Mr. Hamdi should prompt discussions in the Justice Department over whether Mr. Lindh deserved similar treatment.
"We're not today saying exactly what we're going to do,'' Mr. Brosnahan said, "but this is a situation in which there's an enormous disparity, and basic fairness would conclude that the department ought to take a look at this."
He said Mr. Lindh had received especially harsh treatment because of the timing of his capture, which occurred within three months of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"It was sort of a ferocious reaction to him, which in human terms is understandable but in terms of fairness is not understandable," the lawyer said.
Mr. Brosnahan said Mr. Lindh was being held at a medium-security prison in California - he would not say exactly where - and was a model prisoner.
"He's studying, he's using his time productively," the lawyer said. "The last time I saw him, he had read about 100 books in the recent months before that."
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda Showing New Life
U.S. Surprised by Signs of Regrouping
By Dan Eggen and John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63897-2004Aug13?language=printer
In the more than two years since U.S. forces destroyed al Qaeda's haven and much of its leadership in Afghanistan, many U.S. intelligence officials and terrorism experts had come to believe that other Islamist extremist groups now posed the gravest threat.
From Istanbul to Madrid, local jihadists mounted daring and deadly attacks with little apparent support from Osama bin Laden's crippled network. President Bush and other U.S. officials boasted that two-thirds of al Qaeda's senior leadership had been captured or killed and that those who remained, including bin Laden, were desperate and on the run.
But the wave of arrests and intelligence discoveries in Pakistan in recent weeks that led to a new terrorism alert in the United States caught many U.S. officials and outside experts by surprise. It revealed a network of operatives connected to past al Qaeda operations and aligned with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the imprisoned mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The new evidence suggests that al Qaeda is battered but not beaten, and that a motley collection of old hands and recent recruits has formed a nucleus in Pakistan that is pushing forward with plans for attacks in the United States, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
The key questions, according to intelligence officials and experts from both nations, are whether the new guard is capable of coordinating significant terrorist attacks and whether any coherent leadership has emerged to take the place of Mohammed and other senior al Qaeda leaders now in U.S. custody.
U.S. and Pakistani officials said in interviews this week that they are unsure whether bin Laden is still taking an active role in directing plots, although some evidence suggests that he is.
"We've been able get some information and some clue, an overview of the present structure of al Qaeda, how it functions," Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, said in an interview in Islamabad this week. "This structure is in a continuous tailspin ever since the arrest of KSM [Khalid Sheik Mohammed]. It has certainly been weakened."
One senior U.S. counterterrorism official, however, said al Qaeda's "resiliency and their ability to reconstitute is truly remarkable."
"Until you put your hands on bin Laden and [deputy Ayman] Zawahiri and the other cast of characters, they are not going to switch gears or change careers. This is what they do," the official said.
"The challenge is to try to define the current al Qaeda and come to some consensus that the al Qaeda that took the embassies in 1998 remains today," the U.S. official added, referring to the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. "We just don't know."
The trail leading to the latest revelations about al Qaeda began in Karachi on June 12, with the arrest of Abu Musab Baluchi, a nephew of Mohammed's and a cousin of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for carrying out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The capture -- part of a crackdown after failed assassination attempts on Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president -- led a month later to the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani computer engineer who allegedly sent coded communications to al Qaeda operatives around the globe.
Perhaps the most important break from Khan's arrest was the discovery of a laptop and computer disks containing scouting reports and hundreds of photographs of financial institutions in the United States -- targets that officials said were exhaustively surveilled by al Qaeda in 2000 and 2001.
The discovery, along with evidence that the files had been accessed as recently as this year, led U.S. officials to raise the terrorism alert status on Aug. 1 for the first time in six months, this time focusing on financial sectors in New York, Washington and Newark. Investigators were aided further when they used Khan in a sting operation by sending coded e-mails to al Qaeda operatives in order to flush them out.
A White House official this week called Khan "a critical operational node in the al Qaeda chain." The official said Kahn "certainly had links with those who were responsible for doing the casings here in the United States."
The arrests continued. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a fugitive wanted in connection with the embassy bombings, was captured in Gujrat, Pakistan. In London, authorities apprehended two suspects: Eisa Hindi, suspected by some officials of conducting surveillance of the U.S. targets, and Babar Ahmad, who is a cousin of Khan's and who is accused of raising money for terrorists.
Counterterrorism officials said Hindi is an alias for Issa al-Britani, who is a subject of the recently completed Sept. 11 commission report. Under interrogation, Mohammed described al-Britani as a trusted al Qaeda operative whom he sent to conduct surveillance of possible economic and Jewish targets in New York. Mohammed told interrogators that the casing mission was ordered by bin Laden.
The FBI has launched its own search for possible accomplices in the casing of the World Bank, the New York Stock Exchange and other financial buildings. The suspects include Adnan G. el Shukrijumah, a highly sought fugitive who lived in Florida before the Sept. 11 attacks and who officials have long feared is planning an attack. Travel records and other circumstantial evidence suggest that Shukrijumah may have helped in the surveillance of financial buildings in New York before he left the country, according to law enforcement officials.
FBI agents in recent days located one man whom they suspected of casing the World Bank and International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, but it was a case of mistaken identity, one official said.
Many U.S. officials and terrorism experts view with alarm the arrests in Pakistan and London, in part because of the ties between the suspects and al Qaeda's old guard. The group is closely linked by blood or friendship, and several, particularly Khan, appeared to have access to the past surveillance plans and current communications within al Qaeda.
Juliette Kayyem, head of the national security program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, called the suspects "descendants of the old guard," saying: "There is still this network. It may not be as big or as powerful, but it's still around."
The computer files were heavily encrypted, indicating significant sophistication within the network, officials said. And the targets selected for surveillance suggest the influence of Mohammed who, according to the Sept. 11 commission, was preoccupied with attacking symbols of American capitalism such as the World Trade Center.
"What this is showing with al Qaeda is that they have a deeper bench than we imagined," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of the Rand Corp. "Even when they're nailing their top operational people, there's still a centralized command structure functioning. We thought KSM was really a deathblow. It wasn't. They just caught their breath and started up again."
Hayat, however, argued that al Qaeda's top leadership has lost much of its operational control.
"That element of directness is certainly not there," he said, attributing the loss to the "arrests and also the actions . . . taken earlier" by Pakistani authorities, including a May military assault on al Qaeda training facilities in the tribal region of South Waziristan.
Hayat also suggested that some important al Qaeda planners are still at large and "sitting outside Pakistan," although "it may not be appropriate to disclose their locations."
Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University who has studied terrorism since the late 1960s, said it is difficult to determine what the recent arrests and discoveries in Pakistan say about al Qaeda's viability.
"We don't know if this is the last gasp of what's left being rounded up, or whether they are much more resilient than we thought," Crenshaw said. "What we're not seeing is a lot of evidence of new leadership."
Crenshaw also noted that Khan's involvement in the sting may indicate a breakdown in loyalty to the outlaw network.
The Bush administration generally views the recent arrests and intelligence discoveries not only as a window into al Qaeda's operations, but also as a serious blow to what remains of the network. In a background briefing Thursday in Washington, one senior administration official characterized the arrests as "a strategic success against al Qaeda, as opposed to the wrapping up tactically of a single cell."
Some Pakistani intelligence officials are more cautious. They say that such arrests may have a limited impact both on al Qaeda, which they view as already dispersed, and Islamist terrorists who are inspired by bin Laden but not beholden to him.
"Almost every important al Qaeda arrest in Pakistan reinforced our analysis that al Qaeda breakaway cells, each consisting of no more than two dozen people, have emerged as more lethal and committed stand-alone groups," one Pakistani intelligence official said.
Lancaster reported from Islamabad. Staff writer Mike Allen in Washington and correspondent Kamran Khan in Pakistan contributed to this report.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
'Fahrenheit 9/11' provoking strong reaction in the Arab world
DONNA ABU-NASR,
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/14/international1311EDT0559.DTL
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is provoking strong Arab reaction. Kuwait banned it, Jordan tried to cut it, Syria has not decided, and Saudi commentators are denouncing it.
Many Arab moviegoers say with a twinge of envy that they wish the region, where free speech is for the most part restricted, had its own Moore. Some say it reinforces their bad image of the United States and shows Americans what their own media does not.
A few believe Moore is unfair to President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"When he condemned the war in Iraq ... he pictured it this way: Baghdad was happy and safe until cowboys Bush and Blair came," Saudi columnist Reem al-Saleh wrote in Kuwait's Al-Siyassah daily.
"He ignored 30 years of muscle-flexing invasions, villages massacred by chemical weapons ... millions of bodies, and mass graves. He has no right to hide the full truth."
Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and was driven out by the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War. Many Kuwaitis are grateful to the United States and enduringly suspicious of Saddam.
Gianluca Chacra, whose Dubai-based company released the film in the Middle East, said attendance is at blockbuster proportions.
"We were quite scared that due to the Saudi content it might not pass," Chacra said.
In the United Arab Emirates, the information minister, in an unusual step, asked to see it first, then approved it. In Jordan, the censors insisted the Saudi content be cut, Chacra said. They later took the film to "higher authorities," who OK'd it in full, he added.
Kuwait banned the film on the spot, Chacra said. He did not bother showing it to the censors in Saudi Arabia, where there are no movie theaters, only videos.
The movie is playing in the remaining four Gulf Cooperation Council countries. In Syria, Yousef Dakalbab, head of distribution at the government-run Public Cinema Organization, said the film "may be shown or may be banned."
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is playing in Lebanon and Israel and will open in Egypt later this month.
Emerging from a Beirut theater, 22-year-old student Shafiq Nassif said the film showed dead and mutilated Iraqis that Americans do not see much of on their TV screens.
"It's good that Americans can get to see this," he said.
For Radwan Rizk, a 47-year-old Lebanese gym owner, the message was double-edged: Moore's presentation shook his idea of American democracy, yet reinforced it, too.
"I hope that we can come to a point where we can criticize our own governments the way he did -- freely," Rizk said.
Dalal el-Bizri, a Lebanese sociologist based in Cairo, Egypt, warned that the movie "should not be allowed to reinforce the hatred that people feel for America."
"If you have a problem with the United States, hatred will not solve it," she said.
In Cairo, 28-year-old Noha Sayed Al-Ahl, who runs an arts and culture advocacy group, did not find the film tendentious.
Moore "used real footage and facts to support his point of view and used as much proof as possible to back up his claims. If he hadn't, somebody would have taken him to court," she said. "He really cares about America and the foreign policies of America and is brave enough to speak his mind and interpret events in an alternative way."
In a Beirut gym, two women in their 40s discussed the movie as they worked out.
"I loved the movie because it showed that Bush was a partner in terrorism through his dealings with the Saudis and (Osama) bin Laden's family," said Sana Rafeh, a preschool teacher.
Housewife Rabab Itani said Moore's take on terrorism was too narrow.
"There are Arabs and Muslims dying from America's policies every day and not only because of the Bush-Saudi connection," she said.
Many said the funniest parts were those depicting Bush, but Jordanian Tareq Khalil said he still believes "America is the most powerful country in the world and Bush is the strongest man."
Sulaiman al-Hattlan, a U.S.-educated Saudi columnist for the Al-Watan newspaper, said Moore lacked objectivity, and made too much of the U.S. Saudi relationship.
"The movie is using the Saudis as scapegoats for domestic, political issues in the U.S.," he said.
Still, al-Hattlan enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11." "In every Arab country we need one Michael Moore or more," he said.
-------- us politics
Harkin wants Bush to end 'backdoor draft' of troops
The senator, opposing the military's 'stop loss' policy, also calls Vice President Dick Cheney a 'coward.'
August 14, 2004
By LYNN CAMPBELL
DES MOINES REGISTER STAFF WRITER
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040814/NEWS09/408140335/1001/NEWS
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, responding to the call-up of a Des Moines police officer who has already completed his eight-year military commitment, Friday called on President Bush to end the "backdoor draft."
He also called Vice President Dick Cheney a "coward" for avoiding service in Vietnam and said Bush should return to the military.
"This is the result of President Bush's go-it-alone approach and his failure to plan for any kind of postwar period in Iraq," said Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. "It has stressed our armed forces to the limit."
Harkin echoed comments earlier this week by Des Moines Police Chief William McCarthy, who said the military's treatment of Des Moines Police Officer Rodell Nydam was "evil."
Nydam, 26, is being called back to Iraq despite finishing his National Guard commitment in April. He's being called up under the military's "stop loss" exemption, which can extend duty in wartime.
Harkin said first responders like Nydam are needed to protect the community and shouldn't be the ones being called back to serve. He said the "stop loss" exemption wasn't intended for situations like the war on Iraq.
"The part of the U.S. code that provides for this anticipates major wars, major national emergencies," Harkin said. "That is not what we're confronting right now. You think about using this law only in (extreme cases), only when we're really in dire, dire need."
David James, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Harkin's comments show a lack of understanding of the complexity of the region.
"Sen. Harkin's attacks and negative pessimism diminishes the importance of the 30 countries that are part of the coalition serving in Iraq," James said.
Harkin, who served as a jet pilot in the Navy and in the Naval Reserve, then attacked the military records of Bush, whose service in the Texas Air National Guard and Alabama National Guard have been questioned.
"Maybe the president should go back" into the military, Harkin said. "He didn't do much when he was young. How about Cheney? During the Vietnam War, Vice President Cheney said he had five deferments and he had other priorities."
During a visit to Clive on Tuesday, Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lacks the basic understanding of the war on terrorism to protect Americans. Harkin shot back Friday.
"When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," Harkin said. "Those of us who served and those of us who went in the military don't like it when someone like a Dick Cheney comes out and he wants to be tough. Yeah, he'll be tough. He'll be tough with somebody else's blood, somebody else's kids. But not when it was his turn to go."
Republicans shot back against Harkin. "His shrill negative attacks did nothing to get Howard Dean elected or get the nomination during the caucuses," James said, referring to Harkin's endorsement of the former Vermont governor before the Iowa caucuses.
----
Bush to Seek Widening of Intelligence Job
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64402-2004Aug14.html
President Bush is prepared to support additional hiring and budget power for a new national intelligence director, and the president's staff is preparing broader parameters for the job than he previously proposed, administration officials said yesterday.
Bush accepted the recommendation for the new position from the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the description his aides gave of the post did not include the authority over money and personnel that the commissioners insisted was essential to revamping the nation's intelligence structure.
Democrats and some national security specialists had complained that the job Bush proposed would make its holder a toothless bureaucrat, and the comments yesterday indicated that the White House sees a political necessity to beef it up. That could mean diminished authority for some current officials, notably Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, because the Pentagon controls about 80 percent of the nation's intelligence spending.
Under pressure from Democrats and families of Sept. 11 victims, Congress has begun a series of unusual August hearings on the commission's recommendations, with the aim of passing legislation before the Nov. 2 election. Commissioners have said they would lobby lawmakers to be sure the national intelligence director had the power they envisioned, and the White House appears to be moving rapidly in their direction.
A senior administration official, briefing four reporters yesterday, said that the White House staff is preparing options for broadening the job's definition, and that those ideas are to be submitted to Bush's national security principals and then to the president.
"The president wants us to move along," the official said.
The official said that one matter being considered is whether the legislation should spell out the details of the new office, or whether the law creating the post should be more general, with the specifics spelled out in a national security presidential directive or an executive order.
The campaign of Democratic candidate John F. Kerry charged in a news release yesterday that Bush's failure to create or support a national intelligence director earlier showed that "even after 9/11," the administration had been "weak on intelligence reform."
----
Out of Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations
August 14, 2004
New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/politics/14bush.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, "We're not going to cut and run while I'm in the Oval Office."
On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.
As soon as the rule was published, consumer groups yelped in complaint, while the government responded that it was trying to balance the interests of consumers with the competitive needs of business. But hardly anyone else noticed, and that was hardly an isolated case.
Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president's agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.
And most of it was done through regulation, not law - lowering the profile of the actions. The administration can write or revise regulations largely on its own, while Congress must pass laws. For that reason, most modern-day presidents have pursued much of their agendas through regulation. But administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been particularly aggressive in using this strategy.
"There's been more federal regulations, more regulatory notices, than previous administrations," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, though he attributed much of that to the new rules dealing with domestic security.
Scott McClellan, the chief White House spokesman, said of the changes, "The president's common-sense policies reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrongdoing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs."
Some leaders of advocacy groups argue that the public preoccupation with war and terrorism has allowed the administration to push through changes that otherwise would have provoked an outcry. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, says he does not think the administration could have succeeded in rewriting so many environmental rules, for example, if the public's attention had not been focused on national security issues.
"The effect of the administration's concentration on war and terror has been to prevent the public from focusing on these issues," Mr. Pope said. "Now, when I hold focus groups with the general public and tell them what has been done, they exclaim, 'How could this have happened without me knowing about it?' "
The administration has often been stymied in its efforts to pass major domestic initiatives in Congress. Even when both houses have been under Republican control, Senate Democrats, using parliamentary rules, have been able to block legislation eagerly sought by the White House and business groups, including bills on energy, bankruptcy and medical malpractice. So officials have turned to regulatory change.
Chad Colton, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all new regulations, defends the administration's handling of new rules, saying: "The process is very open, very transparent. Some regulations we post get hundreds of comments, even thousands." Mr. Colton acknowledged that most comments came from industry or from public interest groups. "But those groups represent consumers."
Clarence Ditlow, who directs one of those public interest groups, the Center for Auto Safety, said: "People in my line of work are frustrated. We try to work harder. But the amount of media attention and public attention to consumer issues has gone way, way down since 9/11."
Stuart M. Butler, senior domestic policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, while agreeing that the wars "push a lot of other issues off the page, literally and figuratively," said, "It cuts both ways." The White House "also can't get traction on issues they care about, like Social Security reform, because of all the noise from the war in Iraq."
Bush administration officials and their allies say they use regulations because new laws are not needed for many of the changes they have made and going to Congress every time would be needlessly complicated. But Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee, said regulatory changes did not benefit from the "checks and balances and oversight" that Congress provides.
New regulations first appear as notices of proposed rule-making in the Federal Register, which is published every weekday. Generally, government officials and others directly concerned with government business read this dense publication.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the new rule on the public release of auto-safety information on July 28, 2003, but outside the industry hardly anyone took notice. In the following months, allies of tire manufacturers and automakers flooded the agency with comments, and all of them "contended that the release of early warning data is likely to cause substantial competitive harm," the agency said. At the same time, consumer groups argued that the data "should be released because it is important to the identification of potential defects," the agency added.
When the agency published a revised final rule on April 21, 2004, it exempted from public release warranty-claim information, industry reports on safety issues and consumer complaints, among other data, saying that releasing that information would cause "substantial competitive harm."
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, filed suit, saying consumers needed the data to inform themselves about unsafe vehicles and tires. But Ray Tyson, the chief spokesman for the highway safety agency, said: "The suggestion that the American consumer is missing out is off the mark. I can't believe this information would be of much interest to the general public."
A Pro-Business Tilt
The overall regulatory record shows that the Bush administration has heeded the interests of business and industry. Like the Reagan administration, which made regulatory reform a priority, officials under Mr. Bush have introduced new rules to ease or dismantle existing regulations they see as cumbersome. Some analysts argue that the Bush administration has introduced rules favoring industry with a dedication unmatched in modern times.
"My thoughts go back to Herbert Hoover," said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. "No president could have been more friendly to business than Hoover" until the Bush administration.
While John D. Graham, administrator of information and regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, does not dispute the administration's pro-business tilt, he said there had been notable exceptions, which his office approved when government officials "provided adequate scientific and economic justification."
Examples, Mr. Graham added, include "stricter fuel-saving rules for S.U.V.'s" and "a 90-percent reduction in diesel-engine exhaust," as well as "mandatory criteria for the lifesaving performance of side-impact air bags" in cars.
But examples of countervailing, business-friendly changes abound, some that broke through the flak thrown up from the wars, and others that remain little known.
The administration, at the request of lumber and paper companies, gave Forest Service managers the right to approve logging in federal forests without the usual environmental reviews. A Forest Service official explained that the new rule was intended "to better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America's greatest natural resource, our forests and grasslands."
In March of 2003, the Mine Safety and Health Administration published a proposed new regulation that would dilute the rules intended to protect coal miners from black-lung disease. The mine workers union called the new rules "extremely dangerous," while a mine safety administration official contended, "We are moving on toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease."
In May 2003, the Bush administration dropped a proposed rule that would have required hospitals to install facilities to protect workers against tuberculosis. Hospitals and other industry groups had lobbied against the change, saying that it would be costly and that existing regulations would accomplish many of the same aims.
But workers unions and public health officials argued that the number of tuberculosis cases had risen in 20 states and that the same precautions that were to have been put into place for tuberculosis would also have been effective against SARS.
The next month, the Department of Labor, responding to complaints from industry, dropped a rule that required employers to keep a record of employees' ergonomic injuries. Labor unions complained that without the reporting, it would be difficult to identify dangerous workplaces. But the department, in a statement, argued that the records "would not provide additional information useful to identifying possible causes or methods to prevent injury."
The administration's 2004 budget proposed to cut 77 enforcement and related positions from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, while adding two new staff members whose jobs would be to help industry comply with agency rules. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao explained to a House committee that the agency would "continue to target inspections based on the worst hazards and the most dangerous workplaces." As the budget proposal was announced, President Bush and other senior officials focused most of their remarks on the large increases proposed for defense and domestic security.
A Case of Tired Truckers
In one little-known case, litigants say the administration managed to turn a Congressional mandate on its head. In 1995, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a startling study on fatal truck accidents. Thousands of people die on the highways each year in collisions with heavy trucks. The board studied 107 crashes in which the truck driver survived and found that more than half resulted from truck-driver fatigue. Nineteen of the truckers admitted to falling asleep at the wheel.
As a result of that report, Congress the same year ordered the government to revise driving-hour rules for truckers. Under regulations unchanged since 1939, truckers could drive 10 hours at a stretch and then had to rest for eight hours. The rules, Congress said, were to be changed to "reduce fatigue-related incidents and increase driver alertness." At that time, both the Senate and the House were under Republican control, and lawmakers began debating what to do.
The truck-related accident death toll hit a new high in 1997; 5,398 people died. Congress went further in 1999 and created a new federal agency, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and the Clinton administration set a goal of reducing truck-related accident fatalities by half over the following 10 years.
Consumer and driver-safety groups, including Public Citizen and Parents Against Tired Truckers, started lobbying the new agency to shorten the number of hours drivers could stay behind the wheel. But trucking industry officials argued that shorter shifts would disrupt delivery schedules, which in turn would raise prices on thousands of products delivered by truck.
Last year, the Department of Transportation finally issued a new rule, saying in a prepared statement that it would "save hundreds of lives" and "protect billions in commerce." The change would increase allowable driving time from 10 hours without a break to 11 hours. But after 11 hours, drivers would have to take 10 hours off instead of eight.
Trucking companies said they were satisfied with the rule while truck drivers deplored it, saying the added hours of driving time would increase driver fatigue.
Public Citizen and the other safety groups filed suit, saying the new rule, in all its detail, actually increased driving hours per week by 30 percent. The suit is pending. Joan Claybrook, the president of Public Citizen, said the new rule "does nothing positive, it does a lot of negative, and it's a big waste of four years' effort."
Courts Have Their Say
For all the ambition behind the campaign to remake the government's regulatory structure, courts have forced the administration to pull back a striking number of initiatives.
Last August, for example, the administration relaxed its clean-air rules by allowing thousands of corporations to upgrade their plants without having to install expensive pollution-control equipment, saying that would allow plants to modernize more easily, leading to greater efficiency and lower consumer costs.
Utilities had lobbied for change; environmental groups filed suit. In December, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked the rule, at least temporarily, indicating that the court doubted the administration had authority to modify the Clean Air Act by regulation.
In a case involving air-conditioners, the Department of Energy announced in May 2002 that it would weaken a standard issued during the Clinton administration to make home air-conditioners more efficient. The department did order an efficiency increase, but less than had been mandated under Mr. Clinton. An Energy Department official said: "This is not a rollback. It is an increase" in efficiency.
Major air-conditioner manufacturers had lobbied against the improved efficiency standard, saying the new models would be unaffordable. Right away, the attorneys general from seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California, filed suit to restore the old standard. In January of this year, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal right to revise the efficiency rule.
While the administration has had some successes in relaxing environmental rules, other changes have been stymied by the courts. A federal judge blocked a plan by the Department of the Interior to allow an energy company to drill for oil at one proposed location, adjacent to the Arches National Park in Utah, saying the government had not adequately considered the environmental impact of the plan. And an Interior Department judicial agency blocked a plan to develop the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.
Still, the administration is pleased with its overall record of regulatory change. Mr. Graham, the budget office official, eagerly acknowledged that the regulatory tilt had been toward business. "The Bush administration has cut the growth of costly business regulations by 75 percent, compared to the two previous administrations," he said.
Representative Obey said he believed most Americans remained unaware of many of the changes.
"Most people are busy just trying to make a living," he said. "And with all the focus on Iraq and bin Laden, it gives the administration an opportunity to take a lot of loot out the back door without anybody noticing."
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Analysts: Oil Supply Cushion Is Thin
Aug 14, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP)
By BRAD FOSS
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/O/OIL?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME -- With so much uncertainty roiling oil markets these days, analysts say one thing is clear: the world's supply cushion is perilously thin.
Whether the amount of extra fuel that could be pumped in a pinch is 1 million barrels a day, as many believe, or significantly more than that doesn't really matter, they say, because the amount of actual production at risk these days is even greater.
As a result, the threat of output disruptions in Iraq, Russia, Venezuela and beyond has thrust crude futures above $46 a barrel for the first time - the latest run-up coming even after Saudi Arabia offered the market all it had. If global demand continues to rise at current rates, don't expect cheap prices anytime soon, analysts said.
On Friday, the price of crude for September delivery surged to $46.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a rise of $1.08. That is crude's highest Nymex settlement on record, although on an inflation-adjusted basis it is still about $11 below the price leading up to the first Gulf War. In the past, a comfortable surplus of available output, or capacity, could be depended on to temper the blow that geopolitical fears might have on oil markets, said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of PIRA Energy Group in New York.
"But today all uncertainties must be immediately factored into the price," Goldstein said. "We simply don't have the cushion anymore."
Sure, there is no literal shortage of oil right now and prices would likely decline if the threat of sabotage against Iraqi oil infrastructure waned and the dispute between the Russian government and oil-giant Yukos gets resolved in a way that values the company's assets fairly.
But that would still leave oil markets vulnerable to other geopolitical flare-ups, analysts said, explaining why futures are trading above $40 through the end of next summer and many believe the $50 level will be reached before then. What changed, experts said, is that private and state-owned oil companies became cautious about oversupplying the market after prices collapsed in the early 1980s. The more circumspect approach to exploration and production, however, has allowed the capacity buffer to shrink and put the industry in a position where it must struggle just to keep up with rising demand.
"It's a problem that is at least a decade in the making," Goldstein said. "So it's not going to be solved in 10 days, 10 weeks or 10 months. It's going to take years."
Depending on who you ask, the world has anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million barrels a day of spare capacity - the bulk of it in Saudi Arabia - that could be tapped instantly to offset a temporary loss of supply.
"This is an exceptionally low ratio for an 81.4 million barrel per day supply system and is well below the 10-year average of 5.0 million barrels per day," notes A.G. Edwards senior oil analyst L. Bruce Lanni.
And it helps to explain why this week's attempt by Saudi Arabia to calm markets was ineffective.
The Saudis said they were willing to put on the market an additional 1.3 million barrels per day, virtually all of the country's available production. But for many experts that only served to highlight the market's supply limitations.
"They are getting very close to capacity levels," said Marshall Steeves, an energy analyst at the New York-based research firm Refco. "If demand keeps expanding, what are we going to be doing at end of the year?"
Robert Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, attributed the latest price surge to the fact that "there are a lot more trouble spots out there than we are normally confronted with," including terrorist attacks in May and June against oil workers in Saudi Arabia.
- Yukos, which pumps roughly 1.7 million barrels a day, needs to pay the Russian government $3.4 billion in back-taxes. Its woes have prompted worries that the efficiency of the company could suffer in the next six months to a year as assets are sold off and bankruptcy looms.
- In Iraq, output temporarily ceased this week as loyalists of a radical Shiite cleric threatened to blow up oil pipelines and port infrastructure. Iraq exports roughly 1.8 million barrels a day through the southern port of Basra.
- Add to the mix the persistent fear of political and labor unrest in Nigeria (2.4 million barrels a day) and Venezuela (2.2 million barrels a day), and the sheer complexity of the situation becomes dizzying, even for veteran energy traders.
Indeed, the list of politically unstable oil-producing nations has always been long. But what especially unnerved oil traders in recent months was the speed with which the world's oil appetite grew, even with higher prices.
The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based industry watchdog, said this week that it expects global demand to rise by 3.2 percent, or 2.5 million barrels a day, in 2004 - more than double its original estimate.
Some analysts also point to the dwindling levels of oil kept in storage in the United States as an area of growing concern. The supply of commercially available crude on any given day has fallen by about 15 percent over the past decade in spite of steadily rising demand.
But others say the situation is nothing to worry about as advances in information technology and logistics have enabled the oil industry - like much of the U.S. economy - to operate efficiently with less inventory.
"This is a genuinely tight market," said Leonidas Drollas, chief economist of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, downplaying the role of hedge-funds and other speculative investors in driving prices higher.
However, over the next 12 months he expects high prices to cause demand to taper off and production to increase.
"That's the classic response of the market," Drollas said. "Prices will weaken."
-------- OTHER
-------- health
British Hospitals Struggle to Limit 'Superbug' Infections
August 14, 2004
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/international/europe/14superbug.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON - When James Wollacott badly wrenched his knee while jumping on a trampoline in the back garden of his house, the healthy, athletic 20-year-old imagined a quick operation and a swift recuperation.
Instead, he spent three months in the hospital last year, bedridden and gravely ill, battling high fevers and a merciless staph infection. The infection was M.R.S.A., short for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as the "superbug,'' and Mr. Wollacott picked it up when doctors inserted in his kneecap four titanium pins.
More than a year after his accident, Mr. Wollacott, who lives in Essex, still has trouble walking, mostly because his knee failed to set and heal properly from the infection, and he faces long-term arthritis. "You just don't expect it," he said. "You don't expect going into a hospital and coming out worse."
Britain has one of the worst rates of hospital-acquired M.R.S.A. bloodstream infections in Europe, second only to Greece, and the problem is getting worse. The National Audit Office, a government watchdog organization, announced this month that there had been an 8 percent increase in the number of all staphylococcus aureus, or staph, infections in the bloodstream, to 19,311 in 2004 from 17,933 in 2001. Of those, 40 percent were resistant to the antibiotic methicillin.
But that reveals only a slice of the problem because the Department of Health, which began to keep figures on the infections in 2001, does not track the existence of staph infections outside the bloodstream, in wounds or in the urinary tract.
One in 10 patients contracts a staph infection while staying in England's hospitals, which rank among the oldest and most crowded in Western Europe. Because superbugs multiply easily in unhygienic surroundings, dirty hospital wards and unclean hands contribute to their spread from patient to patient.
While estimates remain sketchy, mostly because the cause of death is seldom narrowed to hospital-acquired infections, the National Audit Office stood by its assertion, first made in 2000, that the infections result in at least 5,000 deaths a year.
Staph infection rates in the United States are also increasing, said Dan Jernigan, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 300,000 patients a year are in the hospital with staph infections, and a third of those patients have M.R.S.A., a rate that has steadily increased in the past 30 years.
Edward Leigh, a conservative member of Parliament and the chairman of the Committee on Public Accounts, said there had been an "appalling lack of progress" in tackling the infections. "The picture is bleak," he said. "It is a matter of shame that our M.R.S.A. infection rate is among the worst in Europe."
Prime Minister Tony Blair, while not as dire in his choice of words, conceded that it was a "serious problem."
Responding to the increase in infections, John Reid, the health secretary, announced plans this month to try to curb the infection rates, including flying in experts, installing hot lines by patients' bedsides so they can alert the cleaning staff if something is dirty, improving supervision of the cleaning staff and ensuring that hospitals publish and display their infection rates.
He also advised patients to ask nurses and doctors to wash their hands before touching them, a suggestion that was ridiculed by patients' rights groups that say people in hospitals are often too sick and vulnerable to make such demands.
M.R.S.A., a type of bacteria, is abundant in everyday life. Most people carry it on their skin, and typically it causes no harm. It is only when it enters the body, either through wounds or punctures from intravenous drips, for example, that problems can occur. It can cause skin infections, sepsis and toxic shock.
Often, exposure to a superbug results in only minor problems. But at times, particularly in the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, it can be fatal.
Most staphylococcus infections can be treated with antibiotics, but bacteria are constantly evolving and becoming immune to these drugs, many of which have been overused by the general population. For years, the infections were treated with methicillin. Now, a few stubborn infections must be treated with vancomycin, the last drug in the arsenal to combat staph infections.
With Britons keen on learning more about the dangers of infection, newspapers around the country have been clamoring to find victims and to publish their sordid stories.
Leslie Ash, a well-known television star here who appears on the BBC show "Men Behaving Badly," has been fodder for newspapers since she landed in the hospital in April with a broken rib and a punctured lung.
Ms. Ash was treated and sent home but then forced to return to the hospital almost immediately when M.S.S.A., or methicillin-sensitive staphylococcus aureus, attacked her body. The television star, who is still in the hospital, can barely walk and is seriously ill. For a time she was almost entirely paralyzed.
In Britain, staph infections have taken root for several reasons. A number of hospitals were built decades ago and are not designed to isolate infected patients; few have single and double rooms. Instead, wards of six or eight people are common, and there are frequently not enough wash basins. The government is also under pressure to prune long waiting lists for elective procedures, a factor that has aggravated crowding and increased workloads.
"I think from the patient's point of view, it increases anxiety," said Pat Troop, the chief executive for the Health Protection Agency, a government organization that focuses on public health protection. "People go into a hospital and they are anxious anyway. You can't stop these infections totally. There will always be a level of infection, but the aim is to keep it at a minimum."
Claire Rayner, the 73-year-old head of the Patients' Association and a prominent member of the community, said she had spent a lifetime vouching for Britain's National Health Service, the government agency in charge of medical care. But no more, she said.
Mrs. Rayner, a former nurse, is so worried about the spread of infections that she opted not to send her husband to the hospital after he fell and got a gash in his brow.
"The average wait can be up to six or seven hours," Mrs. Rayner said. "I'm not letting a man with an open wound sit in a ward with a room full of people, full of I-don't-know-what bugs."
Mrs. Rayner caught a minor case of M.R.S.A. three years ago, when she was in the hospital for an operation on her knee. She has been in several hospitals for a variety of reasons since then, and says she is appalled by the filth and the hygiene practices. In one case, she watched dirt and dust pile up in the corner of a ward. Nurses and assistants did not always wash their hands. She had to call for a basin when she needed to vomit, and then the nurse ran off and left her alone.
Some hospitals do a better job than others. The problem is rare among England's handful of private hospitals, although those facilities seldom see the most vulnerable patients.
And while most Britons rely on government-financed National Health Service hospitals, a growing number, like Mrs. Rayner, are choosing to spend their own money on private care.
"It sounds awful complaining like this because in lots of way they were good," Mrs. Rayner said. "But I've stopped using the N.H.S. Our hospitals are going downhill."
Alison Langley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health, said the agency was determined to do more to combat the infections. In the meantime, there is no need to panic, she said.
"I'm not sure how to reassure people," Ms. Langley said. "But M.R.S.A. is not a death sentence."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Say NO to the President's Bomb Factory
by Dr. Helen Caldicott
I'm writing urgently to you today to tell you about the President's new nuclear bomb factory, and to ask you to sign http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/SignPledge.cfm sign a pledge opposing the United States launching a new arms race.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, President George W. Bush's Energy Department is seeking to mass produce the deadliest weapons ever made. Though the Cold War came to an end over a decade ago, the United States and Russia did not dismantle their weapons. Today, each country continues to keep 2500 nuclear bombs on hair trigger alert, aimed at an adversary who no longer exists, leaving the world at risk of destruction because of an accidental or terrorist launch, or a return to hostile relations between the United States and Russia.
Now, President George W. Bush is pushing to return us to a new arms race. To our peril, the United States has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a cornerstone of arms control, prompting Russia to withdraw from the START II agreement. The so-called Moscow Treaty has no verification controls, no real deadlines and allows each country to continue to stockpile weapons .
Now the White House is asking Congress this year to approve $30 million dollars to fund the construction of a brand new nuclear bomb factory, which will be able to produce up to 500 new nuclear bombs every year -- a request that Representative David Hobson (R-OH) called "completely out of touch," at a hearing last week in Washington. Even though the U.S. still has over ten thousand nuclear warheads in storage, 3000 in submarines still patrolling the world's oceans, and 2500 on hair trigger alert, the Administration and Congress are funding increased spending levels in these areas -- more than during the height of the Cold War.
Those elected officials represent you. During an election year, we should be telling our representatives that new nuclear weapons make us all more vulnerable -- not more safe. The United States already has enough nuclear bombs to wipe out all life on earth many times over. What possible reason could it have to build thousands more? The Nuclear Policy Research Institute is working with a broad coalition of organizations to stop this nuclear bomb factory in its tracks. But we must move quickly.
What You Can Do Today.
First, we ask you to sign on to the Pledge Opposing the new Arms Race, http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/SignPledge.cfm and ask your friends to sign on as well. Your message will be delivered to the White House. Over the coming months, we will email you periodically with updates about how you can get involved in the movement and other actions that you can take to eliminate nuclear weapons. Together we are building consensus and visibility for our nuclear free future.
With warm regards, Helen Caldicott, MD
----
Israeli peace activist branded a traitor
14/08/2004
UK Telegraph
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/14/wmid14.xml
Tali Fahima, held on suspicion of aiding militants, has become both a poster girl and a figure of hate, reports Inigo Gilmore in Tel Aviv
As Tali Fahima was led through a door at the back of the courtroom, her handcuffed hands clasped tightly as if in prayer, the television cameras swarmed around her.
The young Israeli at the centre of the commotion appeared unfazed, glancing through her black rimmed glasses at the reporters, but saying nothing.
Her mother, Sara, watching the scene unfold in a Tel Aviv court yesterday, told journalists she had no comment to make. The Fahimas, with their darker Sephardic Jewish features and Arabic family name, appeared strangely out of place among the white, Ashkenazi (European) activists who had turned up to support them.
The court appearance was the latest episode in the story of the 28-year-old one-time supporter of Ariel Sharon's Likud Party now detained on suspicion of helping to plan attacks against her fellow Israelis. To her supporters she is a peace activist, campaigning for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. To her detractors she is a traitor.
At the centre of the case is her friendship with Zakariya Zubeidi, a 29-year-old leader in the West Bank town of Jenin of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, which has been blamed for the deaths of several Israelis in roadside shootings. He has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks and is one of Israel's most wanted men, surviving five attempts on his life.
Fahima became intrigued by Zubeidi last summer after reading an article about him, and asked a reporter for his telephone number, prompted by her curiosity about what led him to kill her people. After they spoke she started visiting Jenin even though Israel prohibits civilians travelling to Palestinian areas.
Fahima was arrested on Monday at the Salem checkpoint on the road to Jenin. Days earlier a Shin Bet official had telephoned her at her mother's home and raised the subject of her financial difficulties in what her lawyer said was a not-too-subtle attempt to recruit her.
Hailed by sections of the Israeli media as the "poster girl of the Left", she has been the subject of feverish speculation - some of it fuelled by the Shin Bet security service - that she could have been romantically involved with Zubeidi, a suggestion her friends and family angrily dismiss.
For the activists her case is a critical test in a wider battle with the authorities. With the erection of a security barrier, there is less interaction between Palestinians and Israelis, while the intifada has led to activists being branded traitors by more conservative Israelis. The security services, which interrogated Fahima for several days in May and then released her, yesterday received court approval to hold her until next Thursday for further questioning. Her lawyers, who are prevented from seeing the Shin Bet file on her, appealed unsuccessfully, saying there was no evidence against her.
Her friends say she is now paying the price for daring to raise issues which to many Israelis are taboo. She has suggested that Palestinian militant leaders, whom Israel casts as "terrorists", are in fact "freedom fighters".
While under house arrest in May, she told the Jerusalem Post: "He [Zubeidi] told the story from the Palestinian side - what we in Israel are prevented from knowing. He told me things I never knew, things Israel tried to hide from me since Israel tells a one-sided story."
Fahima has even suggested that she is prepared to become a "human shield"' to protect Zubeidi and such comments led her to being fired from her job in a law firm. She has been targeted as a hate figure by the Israeli Right which has denounced her as a naive "collaborator" who has fallen under the spell of a murderous terrorist.
As she was being led to a court hearing this week, she passionately defended Zubeidi, describing him as "freedom fighter" and saying she would never betray him.
"He does not plan attacks," she said. "Even if he does, so what? They live under occupation. Do you even know what that means?"
Her friends stress that Zubeidi was once a peace activist fluent in Hebrew whose mother, also a campaigner, and brother were both killed during Israeli raids into Jenin.
Her lawyer, Smadar Ben Natan, said that the authorities were trying to turn the case into a political show trial. She said that Fahima's rights were being violated after she was interrogated, for 10 hours on Wednesday, with her hands cuffed behind her.
"They don't ask her anything about these alleged charges, they just repeat things over and over about Zakariya being a terrorist," she said.
"The authorities want to break her down because they're afraid, especially because she is different from other activists in that she comes from a Right-wing background."
Hava Keller, 73, an Ashkenazi activist attending court, said: "Tali's unusual. She does not belong to any group, she did not grow up in peace activist circles, she acted alone and that is why the Israeli authorities are afraid of her. They want to break her, but she's very, very strong, she's remarkable."
Her friend, Youssef Asfour, who lives in Jaffa, said: "They want to put bad things into the minds of Israeli citizens so they will turn against her and the worst of all is to suggest that someone might be sleeping with the enemy.
"It's all nonsense. The reality is they are the same age, they get on well and it's a friendship based on mutual respect. The authorities don't want people to believe that Jews can be friends with Palestinians like Zakariya. Tali has shown they can."
----
KEEP SPACE FOR PEACE WEEK ACTIONS
From: "Global Network" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Date: Sat Aug 14, 2004 10:34am
Sept. 25 - Oct. 2, 2004 Keep Space for Peace Week: International Days of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space
No Election Time Deployment of "Missile Defense"! No Weapons in Space! No Nuclear Rocket! End the War in Iraq! Keep Space for Peace! Fund Human Needs!
Sept 25 - Oct 2 Local Actions (List in formation):
1) Bath Ironworks, Maine (Oct 2 Vigil & potluck gathering) globalnet@mindspring.com
2) Cape Cod, MA (Oct 2 Demo) swalker@capecod.net
3) Croughton RAF/USAF base, UK (Oct 2 Rally) oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk
4) Ft Greely, Alaska (Sept 25 Peace Camp begins) ftsaf@uaf.edu
5) Fylingdales, UK (Sept 25 Demo) cndyorks@gn.apc.org
6) Kennedy Space Center, FL (Oct 2 Demo) (321) 632-5977
7) Menwith Hill, UK (Oct 2 Demo at USAF spy base) percy@lindisandchris.karoo.co.uk
8) Molesworth Joint Analysis Centre, UK (Sept 26 Schubert's Quartet "Death and the Maiden" Concert at base main gate) acheetham@beeb.net
9) Saintes, France (Oct 29-31 Rally for Int'l Disarmament) acdn.france@wanadoo.fr
10) Stennis Space Center, Mississippi (Oct 1 vigil) jeanegan@tulane.edu
11) Stockholm, Sweden (Oct 1-3 Conference entitled "Nuclear weapons in space? NPT and the Nordic countries role in US space plans") agneta.norberg@spray.se
12) Stuttgart, Germany (Oct 2 Rally at EUCOM)
Wolfgang.Schlupp-Hauck@t-online.de
13) Vandenberg AFB, CA (Sept 25 Demo) mindful@redshift.com
14) Washington DC (Oct 2 Nat'l Memorial Procession to White House) mobuszewski@afsc.org
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone) globalnet@mindspring.com http://www.space4peace.org
----
Bombers Turn to Butterflies Again
by Norman Solomon,
August 14, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/solomon.php?articleid=3305
We saw butterflies turning into bombers. And we weren't dreaming. At the time when the Woodstock festival became an instant media legend in mid-August 1969, melodic yearning for peace was up against the cold steel of American war machinery.
The music and other creative energies that drew 400,000 people to an upstate New York farm that weekend rejected the Vietnam War and the assumptions fueling it. Thirty-five years later, the Jimi Hendrix rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" could still serve as an apt soundtrack for U.S. foreign policy, with bombs bursting in air over urban neighborhoods across much of Iraq.
A Woodstock reunion, scheduled for Aug. 20-22 in the town of Bethel, N.Y., comes while the gap between the nation's commander in chief and huge numbers of its citizens is enormous.
Among those on the bill for the 35th anniversary event is the Country Joe Band. Its four musicians were original members of Country Joe and the Fish. No doubt the band's upcoming Woodstock performance will include "Cakewalk to Baghdad," a caustic tune based on boasts-from such right-wing media darlings as Richard Perle and Ken Adelman that the U.S. military's quest for victory in Iraq would be a "cakewalk." "Now moms and dads don't worry 'bout / Your soldier boys and girls," the song goes. "We're just sending them cakewalkin' / Around the world / When the coffins come home and the flag unfurls / Cheer for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle."
Of course this song has echoes from the excruciatingly grim humor of the Country Joe and the Fish classic "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," which resonated not only with antiwar activists but also with many U.S. soldiers in Vietnam a third of a century ago.
The new song, written by Country Joe Band bass player Bruce Barthol, became a CD just days ago. It foreshadows yet more military adventures that are gleams in some policy-makers' eyes: "Next we're gonna cakewalk into Teheran, / Gonna cakewalk to Damascus and Pyong-yin-yang / When we strut on in, / Everybody's gonna cheer / They'll be wavin' old glory, / We'll have kegs of beer, just like that..."
Media consumers may like to think that U.S. news outlets have become oh-so-sophisticated in recent decades and are now quite willing to report on tough criticisms of American jingoism. But I'm still waiting for a single major U.S. media outlet to do a decent job of reporting on the relaunched Country Joe Band, currently touring as a superb musical ensemble. Naturally, the band isn't on a corporate label, and you won't find "Cakewalk to Baghdad" at the mall superstore. But the music and lyrics can be heard and read at the band's site. As it happened, a new upsurge of massive violence was engulfing many Iraqi cities on Aug. 10 while the planning board in the town of Bethel issued a permit for the Woodstock reunion to go forward. It will be a much smaller event than the famous first gathering, but the closing stanza of the "Cakewalk" song will be no less resonant when Country Joe McDonald, David Bennett Cohen, Gary "Chicken" Hirsh and Bruce Barthol perform it:
"Do you think we'll see those Bush boys patrollin' the streets / Like our soldiers got to do in Basra and Tikrit? / We gonna see Richard Perle cakewalkin' 'round / The streets and alleys of Baghdad town?"
Few of the musicians who played at the first Woodstock will be there this time around. But many will be present in spirit - among them, Richie Havens, who is still touring after all these years. At a recent Havens concert, I was uplifted by his spiritual energy and humanistic commitment. Along the way, he performed the song that Joni Mitchell wrote long ago about Woodstock, the one that tells of a dream about bombers in the sky turning into butterflies.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.