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NUCLEAR
IG Says Company Did Work Outside Contract
Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
Iran warns of preemptive strike to prevent attack on nuclear sites
Iran may get uranium from S. Africa following cooperation deal
Iran a Nuclear Threat, U.S. Says
No New Japan Nuke Shutdowns Needed After Checks
N Korea accuses US of seeking to destroy six-way talks
Raytheon Delivers Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Payloads For Fort Greely
Russian defense minister says US anti-missile system is no threat
Rumsfeld says missile defense shield to be ready by year's end
Bush Assails Kerry on Missile Defense
Bush Promotes His Plan for Missile Defense System
Bush takes bow for missile defense
Rumsfeld Defends U.S. Missile Shield as Triumph
FBI Muzzles Former Colorado Agent
Contract for plant outages at Seabrook
Fail Safe?
Entergy CEO cancels VY visit; negotiations with union set for today
Judge backs Harbor Island fine
MILITARY
US Accounts for Global Surge in Military Spending
U.N. Tries to Calm Frontier After Burundi Massacre
Kenya Masai vow to intensify protests over land
U.S. agrees not to sell AMRAAM to Egypt
Singapore sets up high-tech experimental urban fighting force
Britain Charges 8 In Alleged Terror Plot
8 Suspects in Terror Plot Appear in British Court
Army to Pay Halliburton, For Now
Army, in Shift, Will Pay Halliburton
Pentagon Backs Off Halliburton
Halliburton gets reprieve on Army contracts
Raytheon Gets U.S. Missile Work
Defense Worker Charged With Corruption
China Hints U.S. Must Return Guantanamo Separatists
Iraqi Cleric Rebuffs Overture For Peace
Rebel Cleric Accepts Truce Terms, Iraqi Conference Is Told
8-Day Battle for Najaf: From Attack to Stalemate
Al-Sadr welcomes Vatican mediation
Iraqi vote postponed amid protests
Military police investigating over cases of 600 abuse against Palestinians
Israel to Build More Housing At Settlements
Sharon Issues Bids for New Housing Units for Settlers
Israeli Helicopter Fires at Gaza Building
NATO begins training mission in Iraq
Cleric Who Died in Pakistan Custody 'Tortured'
Rumsfeld: Use Caution in Reform of Intelligence
Paying the Price for a No-Fault Security Strategy
Army Guardsman Sues to Get Out
Soldier Sues Over Tour Made Longer
Whistle-Blower Threatened
We Have How Many Troops in Europe?
Aristide Foe Acquitted in Brief Retrial
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rumsfeld: Use Caution in Reform of Intelligence
Rumsfeld Wary About Shuffling Spy Duties
Homeland Security 101
Va. Man Held In Saudi Jail Seeks U.S. Aid
POLITICS
Republican Rep. Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified
Kerry rips Bush's troop plan
Kerry's fellow 'Swiftees' dispute his Purple Hearts
VFW recalls Kerry's anti-war past
ENERGY
Energy Department Doles Out Oil and Gas Research Funding
ACTIVISTS
VOTE for Wildlife! New on the Web
Exclusive: Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower
Nuke protest seeks boaters
N.Y. Mayor to War Protesters: Shop Till You Drop, Too
Inquiry Into F.B.I. Questioning Is Sought
Just Keep It Peaceful, Protesters;
Group Asks to Protest in Central Park
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- business
IG Says Company Did Work Outside Contract
Nuclear Workers' Program Probed
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9537-2004Aug17.html
A company heavily criticized for its handling of a federal compensation program for sick nuclear weapons plant workers is performing tasks it was not hired to do, a government investigation found.
New Orleans-based Science and Engineering Associates, which recently became Apogen Technologies, is an information technology company contracted by the Energy Department to build a database system for the program. But the company also ended up hiring nurses and preparing worker claims for doctors to review.
A report by the inspector general of the General Services Administration found that the additional work was "outside the scope" of what the company was hired to do.
Jack Lebo, a spokesman for IG Daniel Levinson, said companies can lose contracts or be asked to pay the government back when they do "outside the scope" work. However, that rarely occurs.
Mike Smith, a spokesman for the contractor, disagreed with the IG's review. "We believe it's all in scope and what the DOE contract called for SEA to do," Smith said.
Levinson's initial findings were outlined in a July letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, Grassley sent a scathing letter to Energy Department officials and others yesterday.
"In simple terms, the payments to SEA/Apogen, and the company's work, were not authorized by the contract and thus were improper, irregular and potentially unlawful," Grassley said.
He said government officials either "knew about the violation and allowed it, or were too negligent to detect and stop it."
Richard Miller, a policy analyst with the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group, said the IG's findings explain problems workers have encountered with the compensation program.
"By bypassing contracting rules, DOE wound up with an under-qualified contractor whose expertise is in scanning documents and putting them in a computer, but was required to know how to set up an efficient, multistep workers' compensation claims evaluation process," Miller said.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the agency is reviewing Grassley's letter and, as previously announced, is seeking to "establish a new contract for the work performed by SEA/Apogen in the past."
Apogen is competing for the new contract, Smith said.
The department and its contractor have been criticized during multiple congressional hearings for their handling of the compensation program, which is supposed to help workers exposed to toxic substances while building bombs.
Energy has received about $95 million for the program since Congress created it four years ago. However, 31 out of about 25,000 workers who filed claims have received payments, according to department records.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
A death sentence here and abroad
by Leuren Moret,
August 18, 2004
San Francisco Bay View
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml
At an April press conference, a group of New York Army National Guard vets raised their hands when asked if they have health problems. The soldiers, all from the 442nd Military Police Company, are complaining of headaches and fatigue after what they think is exposure to depleted uranium during their recent tour in Iraq. Photo: www.american freepress.net
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam"
Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.
And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.
This week the American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.
Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense's Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.
This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.
Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as "spectacular ... and a matter of concern."
This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.
In simple words, DU "trashes the body." When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: "I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."
Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.
The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.
They brought it home
Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.
In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans' families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.
How did they hide it?
Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.
Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry's father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.
Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.
They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.
The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.
The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.
Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.
Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.
The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.
Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.
Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.
Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon "and nothing overseas ... nothing political."
Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn't work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.
Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.
How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The "next DU war" had already been planned, and those planning it wanted "no skunk at the garden party."
The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret
A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, "The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America's Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire," details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU "show on the road" and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.
The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their "godfather" and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a "war against terrorism" long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.
Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby's neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.
When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world's oil deposits are located - he replied: "It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger."
In Zbignew Brzezinski's book "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives," the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The "South" region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.
A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!
No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy."
Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the "smog of war" from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.
In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren't telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.
To learn more
Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:
American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn.
Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity," http://www.americanfreepress.net/depleted_uranium.html;
Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked," http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html
August 2004 World Affairs Journal.
Leuren Moret: "Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War," http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
August 2004 Coastal Post Online.
Carol Sterrit: "Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up - GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death," http://www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01
World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004: http://www.worlduraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/speakers.htm
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.
Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm
"Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War" by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret, http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html
Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental commissioner in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at leurenmoret@yahoo.com.
-------- iran
Iran warns of preemptive strike to prevent attack on nuclear sites
DOHA (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818194114.p2i3ppzv.html
Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned Wednesday that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
"We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.
"America is not the only one present in the region. We are also present, from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan; we are present in the Gulf and we can be present in Iraq," said Shamkhani, speaking in Farsi to the Arabic-language news channel through an interpreter.
"The US military presence (in Iraq) will not become an element of strength (for Washington) at our expense. The opposite is true, because their forces would turn into a hostage" in Iranian hands in the event of an attack, he said.
Shamkhani, who was asked about the possibility of an American or Israeli strike against Iran's atomic power plant in Bushehr, added: "We will consider any strike against our nuclear installations as an attack on Iran as a whole, and we will retaliate with all our strength.
"Where Israel is concerned, we have no doubt that it is an evil entity, and it will not be able to launch any military operation without an American green light. You cannot separate the two."
A commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards was quoted in the Iranian press earlier Wednesday as saying that Tehran would strike the Israeli reactor at Dimona if Israel attacks the Islamic republic's own burgeoning nuclear facilities.
"If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about Dimona nuclear center, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons, and Israel would be responsible for the terrifying consequence of this move," General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr warned.
Iran's controversial bid to generate nuclear power at its plant being built at Bushehr is seen by arch-enemies Israel and the United States as a cover for nuclear weapons development.
The latest comments mark an escalation in an exchange of threats between Israel and Iran in recent weeks, leading to speculation that there may be a repeat of Israel's strike against Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981.
Iran insists that its nuclear intentions are peaceful, while pointing at its enemy's alleged nuclear arsenal, which Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing.
Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera it was not possible "from a practical standpoint" to destroy Iran's nuclear programs because they are the product of national skills "which cannot be eliminated by military means."
He also warned that Iran would consider itself no longer bound by its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the event of an attack.
"The execution of such threats (to attack Iran's nuclear installations) would mean that our cooperation with the IAEA led to feeding information about our nuclear facilities to the attacking side, which (in turn) means that we would no longer be bound by any of our obligations" to the nuclear watchdog, he said.
Diplomats said in Vienna Tuesday that the IAEA would not say in a report next month whether Iran's nuclear activities are of a military nature, nor will it recommend bringing the case before the UN Security Council.
The IAEA board is due to deliver the report on Iran's nuclear activities during a meeting at the organization's headquarters in Vienna from September 13 after the last of a group of IAEA inspectors returned from Iran last week.
The UN's nuclear agency is conducting a major probe into Iran's bid to generate electricity through nuclear power.
The Islamic republic has agreed to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment pending the completion of the IAEA probe, but is working on other parts of the fuel cycle and has recently resumed making centrifuges used for enrichment.
----
Iran may get uranium from S. Africa following cooperation deal
By Gideon Alon,
Haaretz Correspondent,
Wed., August 18, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/465986.html
Iran and South Africa signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday on bilateral cooperation. The deal paves the way for the two countries to expand trade ties, and may include South Africa selling uranium to Tehran. The memorandum was signed by South African Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and his Iranian counterpart Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani. This was the first such visit by a South African defense minister to Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
At Tuesday's signing ceremony, Shamkhani praised South Africa for its position on Iran's nuclear weapons program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. He said that the agreement will lead to the expansion of bilateral cooperation in all areas
Lekota reportedly said that making peaceful use of nuclear energy is the legitimate right of the Islamic Republic.
Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, the head of Military Intelligence's research department, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that Iran is expected to have full nuclear ability by early 2007. Kuperwasser also said that Iran will purchase the technology it needs to enrich uranium by the first half of next year.
Iran said Tuesday it would destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. A senior commander warned that Iranian missiles could reach Dimona.
"If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it produces and stockpiles nuclear weapons," said the deputy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, in a statement.
Zolqadr was referring to the site of Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, a coastal town on the Gulf. Built with Russian assistance, the reactor is due to come on stream in 2005.
Iran says its nuclear program is strictly for the generation of electricity. But Israel and the United States strongly suspect Iran is secretly building nuclear weapons.
Zolqadr did not say how Iran would attack Dimona, but the head of the Revolutionary Guards' political bureau, Yadollah Javani, said Iran would use its Shahab-3 missile.
"All the territory under the control of the Zionist regime, including its nuclear facilities, are within the range of Iran's advanced missiles," Javani said in a separate statement.
Iran announced last week it had successfully test-fired a new version of the Shahab-3, which has a range of 1,296 kilometers. Israel is about 965 kilometers west of Iran.
Israel has developed with the United States the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system. It is said to be capable of intercepting and destroying missiles at high altitudes.
----
Iran a Nuclear Threat, U.S. Says
State Dept. Official Cites Country's Claims to Other Nations
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9726-2004Aug17.html
Iran told British, French and German officials last month that it could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb within a year, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said yesterday in arguing the case for international pressure on the Islamic Republic.
In a speech at the Hudson Institute, Bolton characterized Iran as a grave danger. He said the U.S. strategy would be to isolate rather than "engage" with the country, a tactic European allies are still hoping will work.
Bolton's comments came as the Bush administration is preparing for a key meeting in Vienna. The United States hopes to persuade allies to further rebuke Iran and refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which can impose sanctions or embargoes.
"They've told the EU three [Britain, France and Germany] that they could produce, they could enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon within a year and they could produce nuclear weapons within the range of our own assessment, which is a way of threatening the Europeans to get them to back down," Bolton said of Iran.
It remains unclear whether Iran is capable of carrying out its threat. U.S. officials say Iranian diplomats may have been bluffing when they met with European officials in Paris in July. And there were discrepancies between Bolton's account and those of European and U.S. diplomats, who said that Iran's deputy negotiator, Hoseyn Moussavian, said Iran could start enriching uranium within a year, but it would take longer to enrich enough for a weapon.
France, Britain and Germany have been trying to persuade Iran through diplomatic means to give up its nuclear ambitions but have had little success. Iran insists its nuclear efforts are aimed at producing energy, not weapons, but it agreed to suspend questionable activities. That deal collapsed in June after Iran was rebuked by the IAEA for failing to fully cooperate with international inspectors.
Still, the European powers have been reluctant to go to the Security Council and want to avoid sanctions or the possibility of an oil-embargo. Their strategy remains negotiations and diplomacy, which Bolton indicated was increasingly failing.
"This regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote engaged," Bolton said.
European and U.S. intelligence estimates are that Iran is concealing its nuclear capabilities and could be five years away from building a bomb.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been scouring Iran for signs of a weapons programs and are trying to verify Iran's claims. They have uncovered some contradictions and omissions, but no direct proof of a weapons program. The inspectors are investigating nearly a dozen suspicious elements of Iran's nuclear program, including sophisticated centrifuge parts and equipment bought on a nuclear black market run out of Pakistan.
"It is the accumulation of this public and uncontradicted evidence, not just our own sensitive intelligence information, that leads us to our conclusions about Iran's true objectives," Bolton said.
Bolton also cited a recent press report that said Iran had tried to buy deuterium gas from Russia. The substance could be used to boost an explosion in a nuclear bomb.
Two U.S. officials said the press report could not be substantiated.
-------- japan
No New Japan Nuke Shutdowns Needed After Checks
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-japan-accident.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - No more Japanese nuclear reactors need to be closed for inspections, the operators said on Wednesday after submitting reports ordered by the government following Japan's deadliest nuclear industry accident last week.
Four workers were killed on Aug. 9 when super-hot non-radioactive steam gushed from a broken pipe at a plant run by Kansai Electric Power Co. at Mihama, in western Japan.
Seven workers were injured in the accident, which heightened public mistrust of Japan's scandal-prone nuclear industry.
A day after the mishap, Kansai Electric said the pipe that burst had not been inspected in 28 years and that no action had been taken even after the company was advised by a sub-contractor that the pipe was potentially dangerous.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), Japan's nuclear watchdog, had told the 10 nuclear power firms to check documentation to ensure that inspections on pipes similar to the one that ruptured at Mihama had been carried out properly.
The agency had told the firms to submit their reports by Wednesday. If the records had shown that inspections had been neglected, the plants would have had to shut down for checks, an official at Japan's Trade and Industry Ministry said.
Similar checks have been ordered at non-nuclear power plants.
The companies excluding Kansai said their inspections had been carried out properly, although a NISA official said it was premature to say that all was well.
``They're saying there are no problems, but we have to take a good look through the reports and in some cases we may have to tell them to carry out additional checks,'' he told Reuters.
Kansai Electric has already said it will gradually shut all of its reactors for safety checks, starting last Friday.
CONFIDENCE LOW
Resource-poor Japan, which has 52 nuclear reactors, relies on atomic energy for more than a third of its electricity needs and ranks 16th in the world in dependence on nuclear power, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
France, in comparison, relies on atomic energy for 80 percent of its electricity needs while the United States gets about 20 percent of its power from atomic plants.
The accident at Mihama was another black eye for Japan's nuclear power industry, although accidents are rare.
Data compiled by Japan's Industry Ministry show there were six unplanned stoppages of 51 Japanese reactors in operation in 2001, compared to 161 unplanned stoppages at 56 French reactors.
But public confidence in the industry is low following a string of safety scandals and the industry's reputation for covering up problems.
Tokyo Electric Power Co Ltd., the world's biggest privately owned electric utility, had to temporarily close all 17 of its reactors after revelations in 2002 that it had tampered with safety records.
However, the only previous fatal accident at a nuclear plant in Japan was in 1967, when one person died in a fire at a plant in Ibaraki prefecture just north of Tokyo.
As with the latest incident, there was no radiation leak.
The worst previous accident at any nuclear facility in Japan occurred at a uranium-processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in September 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was triggered after three poorly trained workers used buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a tub.
The resulting release of radiation killed two workers and forced the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.
-------- korea
N Korea accuses US of seeking to destroy six-way talks
SEOUL (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818120035.bagtqf5t.html
North Korea accused the United States Wednesday of "laying a time bomb" to destroy six-nation talks aimed at resolving a stand-off over the communist state's nuclear weapons drive.
Rodong Sinmun, the North's ruling Workers Party newspaper, criticized Washington was taking a series of "smear" moves to topple the Pyongyang regime and blockade the communist state.
Warning the "foundation of the six-party talks is collapsing," Rodong denounced recent US claims of human rights abuses and drug trafficking in North Korea. It also targetted new US military buildup in and around South Korea.
"This is little short of laying a 'time bomb' in the way of the six-party talks and a deliberate act of driving the talks to a collapse," Rodong said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
Rodong said some leaders in Washington were seeking to delay the six-way talks due to resume in Beijing by the end of September.
"Some of the US ruling quarters even assert that the six-party talks are unnecessary and meaningless and the next round of the talks may be put off till the time after the presidential election slated for November," it said.
North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman had hinted Monday that Pyongyang may not attend a working group meeting to prepare for the next round of talks, citing what it called a hard-line US policy.
But Washington and Beijing played down the North Korean hints.
A third round of talks which brought together the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia in Beijing in an effort to resolve the impasse ended in June without tangible progress.
The stand-off over North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, violating the 1994 nuclear freeze of its separate plutonium producing program.
Little progress has been made at the previous three rounds of talks.
-------- missile defense
Raytheon Delivers Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Payloads For Fort Greely
Tucson AZ (SPX)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04y.html
Raytheon has delivered the first deployable flight elements of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Ground- based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program from its Missile Defense Kinetic Kill Vehicle production facility in Tucson, Ariz.
The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) payload is designed to intercept hostile ballistic missile targets outside the atmosphere in the midcourse phase of flight.
The delivered payloads evolved from the EKV design that has been successfully flight tested over the last four years. By September, Raytheon will have delivered all required EKVs for the GMD program's initial deployment and testing.
The initial payloads are the first of 20 kill vehicles scheduled for delivery over the next two years for deployment at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
To satisfy the GMD deployment requirements, Raytheon built a world-class manufacturing facility combining the quality of spacecraft manufacturing and the cost efficiency of high-rate missile production.
"Delivery of the initial EKVs marks a significant milestone in meeting the December 2002 presidential directive to deploy an initial missile defense capability for the United States," said Paul J. Walker, Raytheon vice president for Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles.
"The delivery of these payloads is the result of the commitment and dedication of employees from both Raytheon and the entire EKV team. Raytheon is proud to provide our fellow citizens with the ability to defend our homeland against the threat of ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction."
Raytheon is also responsible for the manufacture and deployment of the Standard Missile-3 interceptor for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program, which provides the capability to intercept ballistic missile threats from forward-deployed Aegis ships.
Raytheon is also providing the Sea-Based X-band (SBX) and Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) for the GMD segment, the Space Tracking and Surveillance System payload, the BMDS Radar, and THAAD radar and battle management software. The Boeing Company is the prime contractor for the Ground-based Missile Defense program.
----
Russian defense minister says US anti-missile system is no threat
MOSCOW (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818141015.3k9cxnsf.html
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday the creation of a US anti-missile defense system posed no threat to Russia.
"Personally, I don't see any threat to Russia's safety from the construction in the US of the first missile silos in its anti-missile defense system," Interfax quoted Ivanov as saying during a visit to a military base in the Caucasian region of North Ossetia.
Ivanov's comments came on the heels of an announcement by US President George W. Bush that the first ballistic missile interceptor had been installed at its silo in Fort Greely, in Alaska.
The Russian defense minister said he had been informed in 2000 that the US was planning to build ballistic missile interceptors in Alaska, adding that Russia was creating its own missile defense system.
"We have our own plans to develop strategic nuclear and space forces. I can assure you that the plans that we have will be rigourously carried out and observed," he said.
The construction of an US anti-missile system is a pet project of the Bush administration.
----
Rumsfeld says missile defense shield to be ready by year's end
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818161358.blk8ccp7.html
The United States will have a limited defense against incoming ballistic missiles by the end of this year, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday in prepared remarks, calling it a "triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism."
Rumsfeld hailed the developers of the missile defense system in a speech prepared for delivery to a conference in Huntsville, Alabama, a day after President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, clashed over the controversial project on the campaign trail.
"It has been two years since President Bush announced the decision to deploy an initial missile defense capability and in the past few weeks, the first interceptor was put in place at Fort Greely, Alaska," Rumsfeld said.
"By the end of this year, we expect to have a limited operational capability against ballistic missiles," he said.
"These achievements represent the triumph of hope and vision over pessimism," he said.
Plans call for having up to 20 interceptor missiles at Fort Greely and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California by the end of 2005.
Five ground-based interceptor missiles are slated to go into silos at Fort Greely by the end of this year, and three or four more at Vandenberg by early next year. Another 10 interceptors are to be added in Fort Greely by the end of next year.
Pentagon officials say they will form an initial capability to intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles fired over the Pacific at the United States.
In tests, target missiles have been successfully intercepted in five of eight attempts.
But the last intercept attempt was in December 2002, and critics say the system is being fielded without sufficient testing. Ten billion dollars have been budgeted for the program this year.
Rumsfeld defended what he said was "an evolutionary approach" to developing and deploying defenses against long-range missile attack by rogue states. "Rather than waiting for a fixed and final architecture, we are deploying an initial set of capabilities," he said. "They will evolve over time, as technology advances -- as we are able to make these limited defenses more robust."
Rumsfeld broke little new ground in his speech the Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville, which echoed one by Bush at a campaign stop Tuesday at a Boeing military equipment factory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"Those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don't understand the threats of the 21st century," Bush said. "They're living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."
But in a sharply worded response, Kerry national security adviser Rand Beers derided Bush's "near obsession with missile defense," and said that "the greatest threat facing our homeland comes from terrorists."
In the months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, "Bush and his closest advisors were preoccupied with missile defense and their misunderstanding about the threats we face continues to this day," Beers said in a statement.
----
Bush Assails Kerry on Missile Defense
By Mary Fitzgerald and Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9661-2004Aug17.html
RIDLEY PARK, Pa., Aug. 17 -- President Bush reaffirmed his administration's commitment to building an antimissile system, accusing opponents of the program of "living in the past."
Although Bush did not mention his Democratic rival by name on Tuesday, his speech here at a Boeing Co. plant included a thinly veiled attack on John F. Kerry's stance on missile defense. "I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system don't understand the threats of the 21st century," he told 1,400 cheering Boeing employees and supporters.
Kerry has said he would cut back spending on missile defense.
Bush delivered his speech after taking a tour of the defense contractor's plant, which manufactures CH-47 Chinook helicopters and the V-22 Osprey for the U.S. Army. He told workers that equipment manufactured at the plant was "made by the best hands in America" and thanked them for "giving our troops what is necessary to keep safe."
The president noted that last month Boeing engineers loaded the first missile interceptor into a silo in Alaska -- describing that as the beginning of a national shield "envisioned by Ronald Reagan."
Standing on a platform flanked by two Chinooks, Bush said foes of the missile system are "living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country. We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: You fire; we're going to shoot it down."
Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers said in a statement that in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "Bush and his closest advisers were preoccupied with missile defense, and their misunderstanding about the threats we face continues to this day." He said Kerry was committed to developing an effective missile defense.
Striking a bullish tone, Bush also touched on issues such as education, values and the economy but devoted most of his speech to national security and the war on terrorism.
He said he was "disappointed" by Kerry's pledge to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq in six months if he is elected president. "I think that sends a terrible signal; after all, the enemy has to wait for six months and one day," he told the crowd. "It sends a bad signal to our troops over there. . . . It sends a bad signal to the Iraqis. They're wondering if America is going to cut and run."
Continuing his campaign theme that he can best be trusted in this era of terrorism, Bush said, "There's more to do to protect this country from the threats of the 21st century. If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift towards tragedy. This is not going to happen on my watch."
Mindful of Pennsylvania's highly coveted 21 electoral votes, Bush declared: "I also want to win Pennsylvania. I'm coming to this state and asking people for the vote," reminding supporters that it was his 32nd trip as president to the state.
Several demonstrators had earlier gathered at the plant's entrance and at an intersection a mile away. Some carried banners with antiwar slogans; one woman brandished a placard with "President Bush, you killed my son" written on it.
Michael Balzano, a Boeing consultant from Virginia, said the visit was an acknowledgement of the firm's role in the Iraq war. "It's good to see that being recognized," he said.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards's focus was on the economy, drawing enthusiastic applause during a town hall meeting in Fort Smith, Ark., when he argued that because of the Bush administration's policies, "we really do have two different economies."
Edwards, who spoke to about 150 people at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, called attention to the most recent jobs report, which showed a gain of 32,000 jobs in July, and a study last week by the Congressional Budget Office showing that Bush's tax cuts have primarily benefited the wealthy. "This is not an accident. . . . It is the intended result of the policies of this administration," Edwards said. "If you want to have two different economies in this country, one for people earning millions of dollars a year and one for everybody else, you should vote for George Bush. If you want to have one economy where everybody gets a chance to move up . . . you ought to vote for John Kerry and John Edwards."
Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) issued a statement saying that Edwards "still hasn't explained why he thinks Arkansans should vote for the most liberal ticket since George McGovern was the Democrat nominee." Bush narrowly won Arkansas in 2000.
This was Edwards's second visit to the state in 13 days, and he said that he, like many Arkansans, grew up in a small town and remembers "Friday night football and Sunday church."
But for the most part, voters here on Tuesday were more concerned about the economy. "I believe this year it will go for the Democrats because we've lost so many jobs," Joyce Rye, 67, a retired employee for Whirlpool, who drove from her home 25 miles away for the event. "There's a lot of people can't afford to buy medicine and they get just enough money that they can't get on the state Medicaid program. They're having a hard time."
Rod Jones, 47, a tool and die maker for American Standard and one of dozens of union members in the audience, also thinks the Democrats' chances are better this year because people are anxious about the economy. "It's a desperate situation," he said. "Bush needs to leave. He's done nothing for the average American person working."
Jones said Democrats should enlist former president Bill Clinton to get out the vote in his home state. "If Clinton would work Arkansas, Arkansas would go to Kerry hands down," Jones said. Edwards did not mention Clinton during his remarks.
Williams is traveling with Edwards.
----
Bush Promotes His Plan for Missile Defense System
August 18, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/politics/campaign/18bush.html
HEDGESVILLE, W.Va., Aug. 17 - Saying he was "living in the future," President Bush promoted his plans for a missile defense system on Tuesday and said that its opponents were putting the nation's security at risk, as he courted aerospace workers in Pennsylvania before rallying supporters in West Virginia.
"We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world, 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down,' " Mr. Bush told Boeing employees in Ridley Park, Pa., south of Philadelphia.
"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don't understand the threats of the 21st century," he said. "They're living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."
Mr. Bush did not mention his challenger, Senator John Kerry, by name. Mr. Kerry has called for diverting money from developing the missile defense system, which Democrats say is untested, to pay for expanding the military by 40,000 troops.
The president noted that Boeing engineers helped load the first ground-based missile interceptor into a silo in Alaska last month and called that "the beginning of a missile-defense system that was envisioned by Ronald Reagan."
The administration's plans, which rely on ground-based rockets, are sharply scaled down from the space-based shield envisioned by Mr. Reagan and derided in the 1980's as a "Star Wars" system.
Rand Beers, a national security adviser to Mr. Kerry, said Mr. Bush's "near obsession" with missile defense preoccupied the administration in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Beers said that Mr. Kerry believed that an "effective" missile defense was "crucial to our national security strategy," but that he "also understands the importance of facing our most pressing national security threats while continuing to develop and deploy a national missile defense which we know will work."
Mr. Bush's day trip wrapped up here in eastern West Virginia, near Martinsburg, with a rally before several thousand supporters who did not quite fill a high school football field.
Pennsylvania, which Mr. Bush lost by two percentage points to Al Gore in 2000, and West Virginia, which he won by six, are crucial battlegrounds in the election. Both states have been hit hard by job losses, and the presidential race is neck and neck in both, with Mr. Kerry showing slight leads in some recent polls.
The visit to a Boeing plant was Mr. Bush's second in five days. On Friday, in Seattle, he said the United States would go to the World Trade Organization if necessary to block European subsidies for Airbus, the leading Boeing competitor.
Mr. Kerry has said for more than a year that the federal government should subsidize Boeing in response, and his aides accused Mr. Bush on Tuesday of doing "too little too late."
The people who crowded into a factory parking lot were all invited, but it would have doubtless been a friendly crowd in any case. Boeing and its employees have given almost $60,000 to Mr. Bush this election year, more than double what they have given to Mr. Kerry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign financing.
The Ridley Park helicopter plant makes the dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook and the V-22 Osprey, a $40 billion system plagued by problems and fatal crashes.
Before his speech, Mr. Bush walked through an assembly building, climbed in a Chinook that was being refitted and took a wrench to a bolt.
"We've got more work to do to keep jobs here in America," he said minutes later, promising to "make sure trade is free and fair."
"We're going to work to get rid of the subsidies of Airbus that makes it difficult for Boeing to compete on a fair and level playing field in the world," he said.
The stop was on Mr. Bush's 32nd trip to Pennsylvania as president, and he noted that fact while making one of several jabs at Mr. Kerry, if the only one with a distinctly local flavor.
"A lot of people are wondering why I'm coming so much," he said. "It ought to be obvious to you. I like my cheese steak 'Whiz with,' " which, as anyone within a certain radius of South Philadelphia knows, translates as a Pat's King of Steaks sandwich slathered in Cheez Whiz and onions.
Mr. Kerry made the mistake of ordering a cheese steak last August and requesting Swiss cheese - when the choices included Cheez Whiz, American and provolone - for which he was widely lampooned.
----
Bush takes bow for missile defense
August 18, 2004
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040817-110254-7527r
President Bush yesterday hailed the advances he has advocated in a comprehensive missile defense system, taking a swipe at challenger John Kerry and other opponents by saying they are "living in the past."
Mr. Bush used his 33rd visit to the key electoral state of Pennsylvania to visit a Boeing factory in the eastern town of Ridley Park, where he complimented factory workers who have worked on the missile defense system and aircraft used in the war on terror.
The missile defense system, which is still in the experimental stages after first being proposed by President Reagan, is "a system necessary to protect us against the threats of the 21st century," Mr. Bush said.
"We want to continue to perfect this system, so we can say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down,' " the president said.
"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don't understand the threats of the 21st century," Mr. Bush said. "They're living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what is necessary to protect this country."
Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, generally has joined his party's long-standing opposition to funding a missile defense system, citing its cost and charging that early tests have shown it to be ineffective.
But in a campaign appearance this month, Mr. Kerry said, "I don't believe in rapid deployment of a system that hasn't been adequately tested. I will continue missile defense research, I will continue missile defense work."
The Kerry campaign's national security adviser, Rand Beers, mocked Mr. Bush's "near obsession with missile defense," and said the administration's desire to build a system dilutes the focus on fighting terrorists.
"In the months preceding 9/11, George W. Bush and his closest advisers were preoccupied with missile defense and their misunderstanding about the threats we face continues to this day," Mr. Beers said. "John Kerry believes an effective missile defense is crucial to our national security strategy. But John Kerry also understands the importance of facing our most pressing national security threats while continuing to develop and deploy a national missile defense which we know will work."
Mr. Bush took a tour of a helicopter assembly line at the Boeing plant, which builds the CH-47 Chinook helicopter, used daily in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I just came out of a sophisticated Chinook chopper that some brave soldier is going to be flying soon," Mr. Bush told the factory workers. "And I can tell him and I can tell his loved ones that chopper has got the best equipment, the best hydraulics, made by the best hands in America."
Mr. Bush lost Pennsylvania, a traditional Democratic stronghold, to Al Gore in the 2000 election 51 percent to 46 percent. Recent polling shows Mr. Kerry has a one to eight percentage-point lead in the state this year.
Mr. Bush leaves today for a campaign trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota, two other battleground states. He will spend the rest of the week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, preparing for the Republican National Convention at the end of the month.
----
Rumsfeld Defends U.S. Missile Shield as Triumph
August 18, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-missiles.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Wednesday called a fledgling U.S. ballistic missile defense system in Alaska a triumph for the Bush administration ``over pessimism and skepticism.''
Rumsfeld's remarks, prepared for delivery to a space and missile defense conference in Huntsville, Alabama, came after President Bush this week attacked those who want to cut and slow the costly program, including Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
``Some folks still argue that missile defense can't work, and that even if it did work, it is not a priority -- or that missile defense is potentially destabilizing,'' the secretary said.
``You have helped to prove the critics wrong,'' he said in the remarks prepared for an annual conference of military, government and contracting officials at Army missile defense headquarters in Huntsville.
Rumsfeld, like Bush in a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on Monday, did not mention Kerry or other critics by name. Kerry has promised to cut spending on missile defense but has not said by how much. About $50 billion has been budgeted over the next five years for the program.
The secretary noted that the first ground-based U.S. interceptor missile was in recent weeks put into place in Fort Greeley, Alaska, two years after Bush announced a decision to deploy an initial missile defense.
``These achievements represent the triumph of home and vision over pessimism and skepticism,'' he added.
Critics charge the limited early system of using a projectile to collide with and destroy attacking missile warheads remains unproven and is far too expensive.
Last March, 49 retired generals and admirals, some of them Kerry supporters, urged Bush to suspend plans for it and use the money to secure nuclear materials abroad and ports and borders at home, out of fears terrorists would smuggle destructive weapons into the country.
But Rumsfeld told the Huntsville meeting that testing showed ``missile defenses can work.''
``Your work is an inspiration to those proponents who never doubted it would succeed - and, I suspect, a disappointment to those who were convinced you would fail,'' he said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
FBI Muzzles Former Colorado Agent
Aug 18, 2004
CBS News 4
http://news4colorado.com/localnews/local_story_231164624.html
GOLDEN, Colo. - An active FBI agent who was planning to go public Wednesday with startling claims about Rocky Flats said he was muzzled at the last minute by the FBI, News 4 reports.
In 1989, special agent Jon Lipsky led a raid called "Operation Desert Glow" on the former Colorado nuclear weapons plant looking for evidence that workers may have been illegally burning plutonium and performing other environmental crimes.
Workers at Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, and in the 80s there were indications that such illegal activity might have been going on.
The raid led to a grand jury investigation of Rocky Flats. That grand jury had voted to indict eight people for environmental crimes, but the U.S. Attorney suddenly disbanded the panel, and its report was kept secret to this day.
Rockwell International, the operators of Rocky Flats at the time, eventually pleaded guilty to environmental crimes and paid a $12.5 million fine.
The authors of a book on Rocky Flats recently interviewed Lipsky, and said that he claims he was ordered by his superiors in the Justice Department to lie to them. Lipsky allegedly disobeyed and told the authors the truth.
On Wednesday Lipsky had planned to talk about the investigation for the first time publicly, but he simply said:
"I came here as a private citizen to talk about the dangers of recreation at Rocky Flats. I took vacation time to come here. Yesterday at 5:54 p.m., just as my family and I were driving into Denver, I received a call from the FBI ordering me not to talk about the Rocky Flats case. So, I can't tell you what I came to tell you."
Former U.S. Attorney Michael Norton said Tuesday that he is astonished that an active FBI agent would be claiming that he was ordered to lie.
-------- new hampshire
Contract for plant outages at Seabrook
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
NH Seacoast Online
By Rochelle Stewart
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/08182004/news/32689.htm
SEABROOK - FPL Energy and Westinghouse Electric Company have reached a $27 million contract that calls for Westinghouse to provide outage services at Seabrook Station.
The six-year, four-outage agreement covers steam generator and reactor coolant pump services, a reactor vessel 10-year in-service inspection, split pin replacement, reactor vessel head penetration inspections and ISI/FAC services.
FPL Energy Seabrook Station spokesman Alan Griffith said Seabrook Station is pleased with the agreement.
"It helps Westinghouse and Seabrook Station plan for these refueling outages," he said. "It certainly makes sense to have these types of agreements in place to facilitate the planning process."
Westinghouse plans to perform the first outage services work for Seabrook Station in the spring of 2005.
"This long-term contract is a 'win-win' for FPL Energy and Westinghouse," said George Dillon, vice president of U.S./Asia Operations for Westinghouse Nuclear Services, in a press release. "The enhanced ability to plan will allow us to apply heightened focus to quality of execution. For FPL Energy, they will not have to contend with outage-to-outage contracting or worry about resources not being available to support plant outage needs."
-------- new mexico
Fail Safe?
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
WBUR Here and Now
http://here-now.org/shows/2004/08/20040818_9.asp
It's called Technical Area 18, and it is said to be the most vulnerable nuclear storage facility in the Los Alamos National Laboratory complex. Technical Area 18 houses several tons of weapons grade uranium and plutonium.
The Department of Energy has ordered all fissile material removed from Technical Area 18. But according to a government watchdog group, when the University of California, which runs Los Alamos, recently proposed doing that ahead of schedule, DOE bureaucrats said no.
To explain how that could be, we are joined by Peter Stockton. He is senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, based in Washington DC.
We also speak with Bryan Wilkes, he a spokesman for the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for managing the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
Guests:
Peter Stockton, Senior Investigator for the Project on Government Oversight.
Bryan Wilkes, Spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
-------- vermont
Entergy CEO cancels VY visit; negotiations with union set for today
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
BRATTLEBORO Reformer Staff
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,102%7E8862%7E2341621,00.html
Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard will not be coming to Vermont Yankee this Thursday as planned.
According to Brian Cosgrove, director of public affairs, plant officials decided to cancel the visit, which was slated to happen on the same day that 148 employees belonging to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers will be voting on a contract offer.
If the offer is rejected, the workers will strike at midnight, when the current contract expires.
In addition to ongoing negotiations with the union, the plant is in the middle of an engineering assessment by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The inspection, ordered by the Vermont Pubic Service Board as part of its conditional approval of the 20 percent power increase, began on Aug. 9 and will continue until the end of the month.
Workers at the plant are also engaged in placing new security barriers around the plant.
Cosgrove also said that managers began "shadowing" employees who may be striking, in order to step into the roles should the strike occur.
Among the workers who may be picketing on Friday morning are reactor operators, auxiliary operators, instrument and control technicians and radiation protection technicians.
Leonard planned to hold an all-employee meeting during his visit, but with all the activity currently taking place at Vermont Yankee, plant officials said it seemed unlikely that it would be well-attended.
"It became evident that a lot of folks would not be able to be there," said Cosgrove.
Corey Daniels, chairman of IBEW Local 300, Unit 8, was critical of the last-minute cancellation.
"It's too bad when the CEO of a company can't look people in the eye and tell them how little they're worth, because that's exactly the message that we've all received," said Daniels.
Plant officials said they remain optimistic that a strike can be averted.
"We're going to continue to try with all our might," said Cosgrove. "We're talking in an atmosphere of mutual respect."
Daniel was less sanguine.
"I'm not confident we'll reach a resolution," said Daniels, adding that employees had lost faith in Entergy.
Contract negotiations resume today at 9 a.m. and a vote on the contract will happen late Thursday afternoon.
If the contract is rejected, Daniels said union members not working at midnight will await colleagues walking off the job just outside of the plant.
"There's no way we'd let them walk out of that gate without a reception," he said.
Carolyn Lorie can be reached at clorie@reformer.com
-------- washington
Judge backs Harbor Island fine
He reverses Superfund site ruling in case involving worker safety
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
By ROBERT McCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/186774_superfund18.html
A new court ruling backs a $48,500 fine that state inspectors levied against a major construction firm for dozens of worker-safety violations at the Port of Seattle's Harbor Island Superfund site.
The ruling against Washington Group International comes more than four years after a construction foreman reported to authorities that workers' health was endangered and pollution had been unleashed into Elliott Bay. The company continues to deny the charges. It will appeal the ruling by King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick.
Erlick overruled a state administrative judge who had sided with the company, calling the previous ruling illogical.
"I'm healing, but it's been a long 4 1/2 years," said Ron Slater, the construction foreman who alerted government officials to problems at the job site but later saw his career sidelined. Slater said he doesn't regret his actions. "If I let them get away with what they did, I don't see how I can live with myself."
At the time of the citations, workers complained that they had been subject to headaches, fatigue and nosebleeds, but were ignored.
The state Department of Labor and Industries, which brought the charges, was represented by Assistant Attorney General Michael Hall.
"We're elated," Hall said. "The Superior Court's decision is unambiguous and strong."
Washington Group is one of the two biggest financial partners in a consortium of companies that is the lone bidder to design, build and operate Seattle's new monorail. The firm also is a key subcontractor on the plutonium-finishing plant on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The work at Harbor Island was done by Morrison Knudsen, a Washington Group subsidiary.
The state, in citations issued to the company, said workers were ordered to move "leaky drums of unknown materials"; that a worker was splashed with the chemicals; and that no decontamination showers were provided. The company denies all the charges.
The case turned on whether Harbor Island was an "uncontrolled hazardous-waste site" under state regulations at the time of the work. By then, other contractors had removed known pollution "hot spots" under a legal settlement between the port and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But, because wastes had been dumped for decades by a hodgepodge of companies on the island, it wasn't clear whether additional pollution hot spots would be encountered.
Slater says they were, and he and his men were ordered to cover up any problems. Washington Group denies this.
"The Port of Seattle had told us all the known hazardous waste had been removed. We said that's great and also, there might be a potential there could be more hazards ... and we had to be on our watch," said Aaron Owada, an attorney for Washington Group.
As a result, the company took pains to control dust at the site that could spread around contaminants and monitored levels of lead in workers, finding no problems, he said. The state never took samples of dirt or water, so it can't say how contaminated the property was before Washington Group laid asphalt over it as outlined in the cleanup plan, Owada said.
"We felt the case citations should never have been issued," Owada said. "We had demonstrated that we had everything under control."
Both sides agree that the case will set a precedent for how construction firms must operate in Washington on old waste sites.
Washington Group argued that much more was happening than fixing up an old waste site. A whole new batch of facilities were being built for unloading containers from cargo ships. The company said it was doing regular construction work, not hazardous-waste cleanup.
But the state argued that just because something more than the required cleanup work was going on didn't mean Washington Group had any less of an obligation to protect its workers.
"It is incongruous and illogical that (state regulations) should be interpreted such that two employees, engaging in the precise same work, exposed to the precise same hazards, mandated by the same consent decree, should have different protection," the judge ruled, overturning a decision by Assistant Chief Industrial Appeals Judge Mark Jaffe.
Among the evidence the state presented to show that the firm understood its obligations were statements the company made to the state Department of Revenue seeking tax breaks for doing environmental cleanup work.
For instance, a June 5, 2000, submission by the company states the site was contaminated by lead, arsenic, cadmium and other hazardous substances "and must be remediated under order of the EPA." "I've only got a high school education, but I can read," said Slater, a former member of the Navy's Seabees battlefield-construction unit. "These hazardous-waste sites are very defined, very clear."
Slater, of Cle Elum, has since retired due to unrelated medical problems. But he says whistle-blowers like him are necessary to help the government keep an eye on firms doing its work.
"That is your river and your property, Terminal 18, and if somebody doesn't open their mouth, you're not going to hear about it," Slater said.
Monorail spokeswoman Natasha Jones declined to say whether her agency would require any more assurances about Washington Group's monorail bid before it awards the contract.
"At this point the (bid) has gone out, and the proposal has been received. We're going to evaluate it. I can't say any more beyond that," Jones said.
She also could not say whether the agency knew of the Harbor Island incident before Washington Group was qualified to bid and submitted its proposal.
"We can't respond to any projects that the contractor team may have worked on in the past."
P-I reporter Larry Lange contributed to this report. P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com
-------- MILITARY
US Accounts for Global Surge in Military Spending
by Thalif Deen
August 18, 2004
Inter Press Service
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=3319
UNITED NATIONS - After declining in the post-cold war era of the early 1990s, global military spending is on the rise again - threatening to break the one trillion dollar barrier this year, according to a group of UN-appointed military experts.
The 16-member group estimates that military spending will rise to nearly $950 billion by the end of 2004, up from $900 billion in 2003.
By contrast, rich nations spend $50-60 billion on development aid each year.
The 2004 estimates would be "substantially higher if the costs of the major armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were included," the experts say in a 30-page report released here.
The U.S. Congress has authorized spending of about $25 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004, but that is expected to more than double by the end of the year.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate in May that war spending in Afghanistan and Iraq was approaching about $5 billion a month. He predicted that total costs for 2005 would be $50-60 billion.
"At a time when global poverty eradication and development goals are not being met due to a shortfall of necessary funds, rising global military expenditure is a disturbing trend," warns the UN study.
The report, titled 'The Relationship Between Disarmament and Development in the Current International Context," will go before the 59th session of the UN General Assembly beginning mid-September.
"With the end of the cold war, global military expenditure started to decrease," the report said. "Many expected that this would result in a peace dividend as declining military spending and a less confrontational international environment would release financial, technological and human resources for development purposes."
But that never materialized, say the experts, who included Brigadier (retired) Richard Baly of the UK department for international development; Friedrich Groning, deputy commissioner of Germany's arms control and disarmament department; Catharina Kipp, director of the department for global security in Sweden; and Prasad Kariyawasam, director-general of the ministry of foreign affairs of Sri Lanka.
"Despite decades of discussions and proposals on how to release resources from military expenditure for development purposes, the international community has not been able to agree on limiting military expenditure or establishing a ratio of military spending to national development expenditure," they write.
At the height of the cold war between the United States and the then Soviet Union in the 1970s, global military spending rose to over $900 billion. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it kept declining, to about $780 billion in 1999. The recent increases are due primarily to a significant rise in the U.S. military budget.
"The United States now accounts for about half of world military spending, meaning that it is spending nearly as much as the rest of the world combined," says Natalie J Goldring, executive director of the Program on Global Security and Disarmament at the University of Maryland.
"This is difficult to justify on the basis of known or anticipated threats to U.S. national security," she added.
The world's top five spenders - the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and China - account for about 62 percent of total world military expenditure.
The U.S.-led "war on terrorism" - following attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 - has triggered a dramatic increase in U.S. military spending, boosting overall global figures.
U.S. spending alone has risen from $296 billion in 1997 to $336 billion in 2002 and $379 billion in 2003.
In contrast, Japan spends an average of about $44 billion annually on its military, France about $40 billion, the United Kingdom about $35 billion and China about $26 billion.
Goldring said that earlier this month, U.S. President George W Bush signed a military appropriations bill that provides about $417 billion for the Department of Defense in 2005. "But this is just the down payment on the year's military spending," Goldring told IPS.
The figure, she pointed out, does not include an estimated $10 billion for military construction, nearly $20 billion for Department of Energy military programs, and perhaps another $50 billion for additional costs of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq (beyond the $25 billion already authorized).
The final tab for this year, Goldring said, is likely to be about $500 billion.
"Despite President Bush's rhetoric about realigning military forces, the new military budget still funds cold war weapons designed to counter expected Soviet developments. But the Soviet Union hasn't existed for more than a decade," she said.
On Monday, Bush announced a major deployment of U.S. military forces worldwide, but it is not expected to reduce the overall size of the country's armed forces.
Goldring predicted that if Bush is reelected in November, the upward trend in the military budget is likely to continue.
"But even if Senator [John] Kerry is elected, the United States will still be paying the costs of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and commitment to poorly conceived military programs, such as ballistic missile defense As a result, military costs are likely to be difficult to control," she added.
Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center, said that according to the 2005 budget, the United States will spend about $1.15 billion a day, or $11,000 a second, on defense
"In comparison, we spend half that on public education per year per child in the United States," she said.
Under the Bush administration, Pentagon spending has increased more than 23 percent (in adjusted dollars). But while many Americans think that money is for the war on terrorism, that is not the case, Berrigan told IPS.
The defense allocation does not include the costs of ongoing fighting - about $5 billion each month - in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"These costs are paid through emergency supplementals. So far, the U.S. Congress has signed off on $190 billion in supplemental spending for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan," she added.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that between fiscal year 2005 and the end of the decade, the United States will spend $2.2 trillion on the military, feeding the already spiraling global defense spending, she added.
-------- africa
U.N. Tries to Calm Frontier After Burundi Massacre
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-burundi.html
BUJUMBURA/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeepers are scrambling to avoid new bloodshed in the volatile Great Lakes region of Africa following a massacre of Congolese refugees in western Burundi, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
African leaders meeting in Dar es Salaam declared the Hutu extremist rebel group that claimed responsibility for last Friday's massacre of more than 160 Tutsi Congolese refugees a terrorist organization but failed to impose sanctions.
``We are concerned about public statements by leading officials and military personnel in the area about a possible intention to retaliate for the massacre,'' U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said at the United Nations.
``We have limited means, of course, but we have deployed additional troops to the border area, we are continuing helicopter surveillance over the border area and we are patrolling Lake Tanganyika,'' Eckhard said.
U.N. human rights investigators called on Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo to identify and hold accountable those behind the massacre.
The Forces for National Liberation (FNL) said it had carried out the attack on a camp near Burundi's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo in which the refugees were hacked, shot and burned to death.
Burundi's decade-long civil war pits rebels from the Hutu majority against the politically dominant Tutsi minority.
CALLS FOR SANCTIONS
Some countries at the summit of African regional leaders had urged sanctions against the FNL.
``In light of the recent incidents and refusal of the FNL to desist from violence and to actively join the peace process, the summit resolves to declare the FNL a terrorist organization,'' Tanzanian Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete said in a joint communique.
Kikwete said the summit had urged the African Union and the U.N. Security Council to support their decision and for the relevant U.N. Security Council conventions and protocols on the combating of terrorism to apply on the FNL.
But the FNL said they were not worried by the terror-tag.
``It is not the first time they called us terrorists and we don't care. We are ready to go before an international court,'' FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana, told Reuters.
The nearly 3,500-strong FNL is the only group still fighting Burundi's government, and has repeatedly refused to participate in a peace process that has seen the country's former main Hutu rebels join a power-sharing government and national army.
Both Rwanda and Burundi have since threatened to send troops across the frontier into eastern Congo if Kinshasa fails to disarm Hutu rebels still on its territory and their allied militia.
A senior U.N. official in eastern Congo said Rwanda had recently sent three battalions to Cibitoke, a town in a lawless region of Burundi on the border with Congo, to join a battalion of Rwandan troops already stationed there.
Renegade Congolese commander Laurent Nkunda, whose troops seized the eastern Congo town of Bukavu in June to protect their Congolese Tutsi kin, also has threatened to resume fighting following the attack.
In Burundi's capital Bujumbura, police fired water canon and tear gas at crowds protesting against the massacre.
About 100 Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge, gathered outside the Democratic Republic of Congo embassy in the lakeside city to denounce the attack.
Police fired tear gas and water canon again later in the day to disperse close to 1,000 Burundi Tutsis in a march organized by anti-genocide Tutsi movements and some human rights groups. ``We're demonstrating to show our suffering, but the police are brutalizing us with tear gas,'' said protester Arthur Mugisha. ``We're demanding the United Nations intervene because Tutsis continue to be massacred in the Great Lakes region.''
--------
Kenya Masai vow to intensify protests over land
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-18/s_26580.asp
NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenyan Masai vowed on Tuesday to intensify protests calling for the return of land given to British settlers 100 years ago, after the government rejected their demand.
The land, mainly in Kenya's Rift Valley Province, was allocated in a 1904 accord, which expired at the weekend. The Masai say the agreement rendered them destitute because fertile land was given to settlers while they received arid, drought-prone areas.
Hundreds of Masai in colorful traditional dress demonstrated across the country on Friday, petitioning the Kenyan government not to extend the treaty.
But Lands and Housing Minister Amos Kimunya said on Tuesday the government did not recognize the agreement struck by a Masai Laibon (medicine man) and the British government.
"Their demand has no basis. I am not even entertaining it," he said. "They are free to demonstrate but the handling of government leases is not dependent on those demonstrations."
Kimunya said agreements entered by tribal leaders and the colonial government had been overtaken by events after Kenya became a republic in 1963 with its own constitution.
"Kenya was reconstituted as a republic in 1963 and started to follow its own laws and not an agreement entered by some elders," he said.
Kimunya said the government would decide soon on what to do about expired leases, taking into account recommendations it has received during the land reform process it is undertaking.
But Masai leaders accused Kimunya of arrogance, saying their claims were backed by history.
"The Masai will continue to make noise," the Masai's group leader Ben Ole Koisaba said. "We are seeking restitution. We are saying that we need to be compensated and that we need to recover any recoverable land. We are not asking for anyone to be evicted. If they do not listen, our next course of action will be to sue the Kenyan government and the British government at the local level and at the international court of justice where we shall seek to have our matter heard," Koisaba said.
Land is an explosive topic in Kenya, with successive governments blamed for failing to address land distribution seen by many Kenyans as inequitable.
-------- arms
U.S. agrees not to sell AMRAAM to Egypt
f-16.net
August 18, 2004
http://www.f-16.net/f-16_news_article1151.html
The United States was said to have agreed to an Israeli request to restrict the capability and use of advanced air-to-air missiles to Jordan and ban their sale to the rest of the Arab world.
The London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat reported on Wednesday that Israel persuaded the Bush administration to impose a set of restrictions on the sale of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile to Jordan. Earlier, the administration had agreed in principle to a Jordanian request for the AMRAAM for the kingdom's F-16 fleet.
The newspaper asserted that Israel agreed to an arrangement in which the AMRAAM would be sold to Jordan. But the agreement included a U.S. commitment to ban the export of the air-to-air missile to other Arab states.
Earlier this year, the administration relayed an informal request to Congress to sell the AMRAAM to Egypt. Several senior House and Senate members expressed their opposition to the proposed sale.
-------- asia
Singapore sets up high-tech experimental urban fighting force
Aug 18, 2004
SINGAPORE (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818035605.5z810e6a.html
The Singapore military is converting an entire infantry battalion into an experimental fighting force to test new weapons and tactics for urban warfare, the defence ministry confirmed Wednesday.
A key task of the 3rd Battalion of the Singapore Infantry Regiment is to test high-tech new weapons that will transform the military into a modern fighting force that can handle terrorism, a ministry statement said.
"The development of urban operations and the Advanced Combat Man System will be critical," said Army chief Major-General Desmond Kwek.
Weapons details were not released but the Straits Times newspaper said the Advanced Combat Man System would provide infantrymen with sensors allowing them to exchange information and fight the enemy in the dark.
Soldiers could be equipped with wrist-mounted keypads to communicate with each other, while robots could be used to find and attack enemy forces before soldiers move in to finish the job, the newspaper said.
Maj. Gen. Kwek said the changes reflected the army's changing role after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, which prompted security forces worldwide to reassess their strategies and structures.
"The army's mission has extended beyond the preparation for hotwar to include the need to be responsive and ready to deal with a whole new range of missions in peace such as counter-terrorism, low intensity conflict and operations other than war," Kwek said.
"Our combined arms operations, urban fighting and infantry drills need to be reviewed and strengthened with new developments in info-technology, sensors, precision, remote and unmanned technology," he said.
Singapore, a small but affluent city-state, has one of Asia's most modern military forces, backed by reservists with at least two years of mandatory national service, allowing them to be mobilised quickly in case of war.
The defence ministry has 3,000 scientists, engineers and technology specialists involved in research and development to invent solutions that will give the Singapore military an edge in battle.
-------- britain
Britain Charges 8 In Alleged Terror Plot
Plan Targeted U.S. Financial Buildings
By John Mintz and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7913-2004Aug17.html
British authorities charged eight alleged al Qaeda operatives yesterday with conspiracy to commit murder and other counts in connection with a reported plot to attack the International Monetary Fund building in Washington and other sites in New York and Newark.
One of those charged was Dhiren Barot -- known publicly until yesterday as Eisa Hindi -- who is suspected of conducting surveillance of U.S. financial buildings that was detailed in computer files seized recently in Pakistan. The discovery of the computer documents led the U.S. government on Aug. 1 to raise the terrorism alert to orange, or "high risk," for the financial sectors in Washington, New York and Newark.
U.S. officials said they are considering filing criminal charges of their own against Barot and his seven alleged al Qaeda colleagues. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in a statement yesterday that federal prosecutors "will explore every aspect of this case and evaluate whether additional charges, including potential charges in the United States, are appropriate."
Barot, 32, who was reared in a Hindu home and who converted to Islam, has used other aliases, including Issa al Britani. The commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks referred to him by that name in its final report, released last month. It said that an al Qaeda leader in custody told interrogators that in early 2001, Osama bin Laden had sent "Britani" to the United States "to case potential economic and 'Jewish' targets in New York City" for possible attack.
The eight men charged yesterday -- all of them British citizens, according to police in London -- were among 13 detained on suspicion of terrorist activity by British authorities in raids on Aug. 3.
Under British law, terrorism suspects can be detained for two weeks without being charged. British authorities had until 3 p.m. London time to file the charges, and the criminal counts were formally filed at 2:55 p.m.
The eight suspects, who have been held in a central London police station, are scheduled to appear before a district judge at the high-security Belmarsh prison southeast of London this morning.
Mudassar Arani, the lawyer for seven of the men, could not be reached yesterday. But she recently told reporters that the solitary confinement of her clients during two weeks of interrogation amounted to psychological abuse.
Besides Barot, the names of most of the seven other men charged had not been disclosed publicly until yesterday.
He and Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24; Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31; Omar Abdul Rehman, 20; Junade Feroze, 28; Zia Ul Haq, 25; Qaisar Shaffi, 25; and Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by using "radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives to cause disruption." The charges said those crimes were committed between January 2000 and this month.
Barot and Tarmohammed were charged with possessing a "reconnaissance plan" for the Prudential Financial headquarters in Newark that contained information "likely to be useful" to terrorists, between Feb. 19, 2001, and this month.
Barot was charged with possessing reconnaissance plans for the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup Center in Manhattan and Washington's IMF building at 19th and G streets NW -- plus two notebooks with information on explosives, poisons and chemicals -- during the same 2001 to 2004 time period. Shaffi was charged with having an extract of a terrorist guidebook containing information on the preparation of chemicals and explosives recipes between the same dates. The charges did not shed light on why the specific dates -- between Feb. 19, 2001, and this month -- were cited.
Magnus Ranstorp, a counterterrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland, said Britain might find it difficult to prosecute this case, shrouded as it is in secret intelligence, because European nations in particular have had trouble mounting criminal cases that rely on information gathered by intelligence agencies. One example, he said, was a German court's decision to void the conviction of student Mounir Motassadeq for involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks because U.S. officials refused to turn over classified data mentioning him.
"Proving these cases in a court of law without revealing too many intelligence secrets is even harder in Europe than it is in the U.S.," he said, because of many European nations' legal standards.
Pakistani officials said that in any trial of the British defendants, key prosecution testimony could come from Pakistani computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Pakistan in July and whose computer files yielded the surveillance documents. Pakistani officials said that British intelligence officials have spoken extensively with Khan since the Aug. 3 detentions in Britain. Senior Pakistani intelligence officials declined to comment on whether Khan has cooperated with U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, though some hinted that he has.
"He'll not be extradited to any country," said a Pakistani intelligence official who dealt with Khan's case. "The decision to testify or not against Hindi [Barot] in Britain will be his own." Added one Pakistani intelligence official: "He is the key witness against Hindi and other folks arrested in Britain."
Senior Pakistani intelligence officials said Barot met Khan during a meeting in Pakistan last March. U.S. intelligence officials said they are not certain Barot and Khan met then in Pakistan, though they were both in the country about the same time.
Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Special correspondent Glenda Cooper in London and staff writer Walter Pincus and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
--------
8 Suspects in Terror Plot Appear in British Court
August 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Terror.html
LONDON (AP) -- Eight men accused of plotting to commit murder and cause mayhem with radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals or explosives appeared in court Wednesday in a case linked to a U.S. terror alert this month.
The defendants included an alleged senior al-Qaida operative also charged with scouting prominent financial targets for terror attacks in the United States -- including the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Prosecution lawyer Sue Hemming said the eight suspects were motivated by ``a strong and deeply held ideology'' and were willing to carry out extreme acts. She said police have about a hundred computers and thousands of files to examine as part of what promises to be a long and complex investigation.
``We've only hit the tip of the iceberg as far as a lot of this evidence goes,'' she told the high security Belmarsh Court in south London.
None of the eight entered a plea and all were ordered held in custody until a court appearance next week.
The charges -- filed Tuesday after two weeks of interrogation -- for the first time officially linked recent arrests across Britain and Pakistan to the Aug. 1 terrorism alerts surrounding the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Inc. headquarters, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank buildings in Washington, and the Prudential Financial Inc. building in Newark, N.J.
One defendant, Dhiren Barot, 32, was charged with possessing reconnaissance plans for the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund, the Citigroup building and the Prudential building; and with possession of notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters.
A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Barot is the suspected al-Qaida figure previously identified as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi.
After the Aug. 1 terror alert involving those buildings and the World Bank in Washington, the U.S. government acknowledged it had no evidence of plans for imminent attacks. The charges specified that Barot had the plans as early as Feb. 19, 2001.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday that federal authorities were considering whether to press charges in the United States against the men and to seek their extradition
During Wednesday's court appearance, prosecutors did not elaborate on the charges. Nothing was said about the connection between the murder conspiracy charge and the charge of conspiring to use chemicals, gas, radioactive materials or explosives, nor how either charge connects to the alleged reconnaissance.
U.S. counterterrorism officials have said that they believe Barot, known by dozens of aliases including Issa al-Britani, was the author of documents, written in fluent English, describing surveillance at U.S. financial buildings during 2000 and 2001. The information was found on computers and in e-mails during the July raids in Pakistan.
Barot was described as a trusted senior al-Qaida operative sent in early 2001 to do surveillance on possible economic and ``Jewish'' targets in New York on the orders of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, according to U.S. interrogations of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Pakistani officials said this week that Barot, known as a veteran of the Islamic militant battle against Indian forces in Kashmir, also traveled in March to a militant hide-out near the Pakistan-Afghan border and met with other terrorist suspects.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported Wednesday that Barot came from a Hindu family that immigrated from Kenya in the 1970s, and that he had converted to Islam in his early 20s.
According to the British police charges, Barot; Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 24; Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31; Omar Abdul Rehman, 20; Junade Feroze, 28; Zia ul Haq, 25; Qaisar Shaffi, 25; and Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, were accused of conspiring ``with other persons unknown'' to commit murder between January 2000 and Aug. 4, 2004.
The eight also were charged with conspiring between those dates to cause a public nuisance by using radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives to cause ``disruption, fear or injury.''
Tarmohammed was also charged with possessing a reconnaissance plan of the Prudential Building. Shaffi was charged with possessing an extract from the ``Terrorist's Handbook'' on the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.
They are scheduled to appear at London's Central Criminal Court on Aug. 25.
A ninth man, Matthew Philip Monks, 32, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon -- an air pistol. He pleaded innocent and was freed on bail pending a trial Sept. 29.
Two other men arrested in the Aug. 3 sweep in Britain were released without charge, and a further two were re-arrested on non-terrorist charges.
The British raids were linked to the July arrest in Pakistan of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer engineer and al-Qaida suspect, U.S. and Pakistani officials have said.
Maps, photographs and other details of possible targets in the United States and Britain were found on computers belonging to Khan and to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian indicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, who also was arrested in Pakistan, according to the officials.
Associated Press reporter Ted Bridis in Washington contributed to this story.
-------- business
Army to Pay Halliburton, For Now
Firm Gets More Time To Justify Iraq Claims
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8013-2004Aug17?language=printer
Only hours after deciding to withhold some payments to Halliburton Co. because of questions about billing for its work in Iraq, the Army reversed itself yesterday and said it would give the giant contractor more time to justify its claims.
The decision capped two days of confusion over whether the Pentagon would withhold 15 percent of payments to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. under federal procurement rules that require contractors to provide clear justification for their bills.
On Monday, Halliburton announced that the Army would give KBR a third extension to provide the needed documentation, meaning it would continue to be paid in full. Early yesterday, the company said in a statement that the Army called and apparently reversed itself, saying that withholding on new invoices would begin today. Halliburton estimated that $60 million a month could be withheld, pending negotiations about the bills.
Then in the afternoon, officials at the Army Materiel Command -- which oversees the logistical services contract with KBR -- did another turnabout and decided not to withhold any payments.
Spokeswoman Linda Theis said senior Army officials had decided to review the contract more closely for the next five days, but she said no one told her why.
"I'll ask, but I'm not sure anybody will tell me," Theis said, adding that she's not sure who made the decision. "Let's just say it's breathing space."
Theis said Halliburton has received extensions because there are not enough people in the government or at Halliburton to review the many bills the company has submitted, in part because no one anticipated how much work they would need to account for.
"It was the pace. It was the magnitude of this contract," she said, adding that the Army is trying to be "fair and equitable."
Early in the day, Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall challenged the legality of the decision to withhold payments and said in a written statement that the company would file papers in court seeking to have it overturned. "Halliburton is confident that the government action is not justified and expects that its legal arguments will be upheld in litigation," Hall's statement said.
The company later received a letter from the Army Materiel Command, requesting "additional information from KBR," Hall said.
"At this time," Hall said, "we understand the bills are currently being paid in full." Hall said she did not understand the change.
Congressional Democrats have accused the Pentagon of going easy on KBR, which has received about $6 billion for work it has done in Iraq and Kuwait under the logistical services contract known as LOGCAP. Halliburton has also received at least $2.5 billion for helping Iraq rebuild its oil industry. Government investigators and Defense Department auditors have repeatedly raised questions about whether KBR overcharged for food, housing and fuel and kept proper records.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) has questioned whether Vice President Cheney, who was Halliburton's chief executive before reaching office, played any role in helping the company. Cheney's staff has derided such suggestions as politically motivated.
In response to a new Defense Department audit that described Halliburton's cost estimating system as inadequate, Waxman said last week that the Pentagon is not doing enough to hold the company accountable.
"The Bush administration is giving Halliburton special treatment yet again," he said in a written statement. "Even after eight critical audit reports by three different government agencies, the Pentagon is still waiving procurement rules and extending deadlines for Halliburton to submit accurate cost information."
Theis, the Army Materiel Command spokeswoman, dismissed suggestions that Halliburton is receiving special treatment.
Halliburton officials said that even if the government decides next week to withhold money from new invoices, it would not have a significant impact on the company's liquidity. That's because Halliburton would then withhold payments to subcontractors. "At the end of the day, we do not expect this will have a significant or sustained impact on liquidity," said Cris Gaut, Halliburton's chief financial officer.
--------
THE CONTRACTS
Army, in Shift, Will Pay Halliburton
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/politics/18halliburton.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Reuters) - The Army reversed a decision late Tuesday to withhold payment on 15 percent of future payments to the Halliburton Company on its contracts in Iraq and Kuwait, giving the company more time to resolve a billing dispute.
The Army had said earlier Tuesday that it had decided that starting Wednesday it would withhold 15 percent of payments on future bills from the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root because it had not issued paperwork justifying its costs. But the Army later indicated it would continue to reimburse the company in full.
Government contractors normally cannot be paid more than 85 percent of their invoices until they fully account for their costs. Twice this year, the Army set this rule aside for Halliburton as the company cataloged its costs and explained how it was billing the government. The most recent reprieve expired Sunday.
The waivers granted to Halliburton have annoyed several members of Congress, who say the company has had undue privileges because of its former ties to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney led the company from 1995 until he became the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2000.
Halliburton, an oil services and construction company that has more than $8 billion in Iraq-related contracts, said shifting needs and the intricacies of providing logistical support to American troops made it difficult to account for its many costs quickly.
"Because of the size and scope of the tasks in Iraq and the fact that the process is complex and constantly changing," the Army Matériel Command and Kellogg Brown & Root "have agreed to work closely together to produce the final results," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Monday in an e-mail message.
There have been confusing signals from both the military and the company in recent days over the billing dispute and whether the Army would take any action.
The company put out a statement on Monday that money would not be withheld, but then announced Tuesday along with the Army that it had been told payment of 15 percent of future invoices would be withheld starting Wednesday.
So far, Halliburton has been paid more than $4.3 billion under its logistics contract in Iraq.
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Pentagon Backs Off Halliburton
August 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Halliburton.html
HOUSTON (AP) -- The Pentagon backed off its threat not to pay a Halliburton Co. subsidiary for troop support work, instead giving the company more time to justify its bills to the Army.
The decision late Tuesday was the latest in an ongoing exchange between the military and the oil services conglomerate once led by Vice President Dick Cheney.
``This is a very complicated issue and this exchange proves our point,'' Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said Wednesday in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. ``As we have said, we are in continued negotiations and working with the client to get this done right.''
Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for the Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., a part of the Army Materiel Command, didn't immediately return calls for comment Wednesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Houston-based Halliburton had said the government planned to withhold 15 percent of its monthly payment, or about $60 million a month, from the company's KBR subsidiary on a contract to provide meal services, laundry, mail and housing for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That reversed an announcement Monday, when the company said the Army Materiel Command had given it more time for its subcontractors to prove their costs before implementing a clause in a contract allowing the withholding of payments. Halliburton has already been granted extra time twice.
Theis told The Washington Post in Wednesday's editions that Halliburton received extensions because there is insufficient staff in the government or at the company to review its many bills.
``It was the pace. It was the magnitude of this contract,'' she said, adding that the Army is trying to be ``fair and equitable.''
Halliburton had said Tuesday it expected to ask for a ``judicial determination'' on whether the withholds apply to the contracts. Hall said it ``hasn't been determined'' where or with whom the claim will be filed.
The company has been awarded more than $6 billion in contracts related to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but the company has been under fire for allegedly overcharging the government. Halliburton says it is a political target, denies wrongdoing and disputes whether withholding payment is legally justified.
Halliburton said its subsidiary would offset any loss by simply keeping 15 percent from payments to subcontractors.
Shares of Halliburton rose $1 to $28.30 in midday trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Halliburton gets reprieve on Army contracts
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aug. 18, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1092823688232&call_pageid=968350072197&col=968705923364
HOUSTON - The Pentagon backed off its threat not to pay a Halliburton Co. subsidiary for troop support work, instead giving the company more time to justify its bills to the Army.
Yesterday's decision ended a two-day exchange between the military and the oil and gas giant once led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, according to a newspaper report.
Earlier in the day, Houston-based Halliburton had said the government planned to withhold 15 per cent of its monthly payment, or about $60 million (all figures U.S.) a month, from the company's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary, which provides meal services, laundry, mail and housing for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The announcement was a reversal from one Monday, when the company said the Army Materiel Command had given it more time for its subcontractors to prove their costs before implementing a clause in a contract allowing withholding of payments. Halliburton has already been granted extra time twice.
Halliburton received extensions because there is insufficient staff in the government or at the company to review its many bills, Linda Theis, a spokesperson for the Army Materiel Command, told The Washington Post for a story in today's editions.
"It was the pace. It was the magnitude of this contract," she said, adding the Army is trying to be "fair and equitable."
Halliburton said yesterday it expects to ask for a "judicial determination" on whether the withholds apply to the contracts. Spokesperson Wendy Hall said it "hasn't been determined" where or with whom the claim will be filed.
The company has been awarded more than $6 billion in contracts related to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but the company has been under fire for allegedly overcharging the government. Halliburton says it is a political target, denies wrongdoing and disputes whether withholding payment is legally justified.
Halliburton said its subsidiary would offset any loss by simply keeping 15 per cent from payments to subcontractors.
Shares of Halliburton rose 68 cents to $27.98 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Raytheon Gets U.S. Missile Work
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-defense-raytheon-tomahawk.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Raytheon Co. (RTN.N) was awarded a contract worth as much as $1.6 billion for full-rate production of about 2,200 Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles, the company and the U.S. Department of Defense said on Wednesday.
The newest version of the Tactical Tomahawk carries a two-way data link which will allow the missile to be redirected after its launch, and it can also be programmed to loiter. In addition, the purchaser will have up to 15 years to bring the missile back to the factory for a check up, almost double the 8-year warranty on the earlier Block 3 missiles.
Block 4 missiles cost about half a newly built Block 3 missile, according to Raytheon spokesman Alan Fischer, though he said the per-unit cost was not publicly available.
Raytheon said the contract was worth $287 million in fiscal 2004. The contract extends through fiscal 2008, according to the Pentagon.
The Navy used more than 800 of Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon's older Tomahawk missiles during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The new missile also includes equipment designed to make it more difficult to jam its Global Positioning System satellite links.
About 2,135 missiles are earmarked for the U.S. Navy, while the United Kingdom is due to receive about 65. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed in June 2011, Raytheon said.
Raytheon shares closed down 37 cents at $33.93, before the announcement was made.
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Defense Worker Charged With Corruption
Associated Press Writer
By MARK SCOLFORO
August 18, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-defense-corruption-charge,0,880006.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A Defense Department worker illegally steered millions of dollars in government money to a communications company that gave him and his family $500,000 in cash and benefits, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Kevin D. Marlowe concealed his interest in Vector Systems Inc., a Harrisburg business that he helped obtain $11 million in contracts, prosecutors said in announcing a 68-count indictment. The Harrisburg-based business and other members of his family also were charged.
Marlowe, 51, of Dillsburg, a senior contracting officer with the Defense Information Systems Agency, hired personnel from Vector Systems to run government computers and purchased other service from the company, prosecutors said.
A grand jury indicted Marlowe on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, conflict of interest, concealing records, obstruction, conspiracy, suborning perjury and receiving illegal gratuities.
"In effect, the public trust was being bought and sold," U.S. Attorney Thomas Marino said at a news conference.
Vector Systems provides information-technology services to U.S. government departments and agencies, according to its Web site.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is a Defense Department agency responsible for planning and operating part of the nation's military communications network.
Messages left at a phone number believed to be Kevin Marlowe's home were not immediately returned. It could not be determined if he has a lawyer.
Also indicted for conspiracy and other charges were Benjamin D. Share, 75, vice president of Vector; David M. Tynio, 36, head of Vector subsidiary OmniGraphics; and Frederick W. Marlowe II, 56, Kevin Marlowe's brother. Vector Systems and OmniGraphics were also indicted as corporations.
Tynio said he hadn't heard about the indictments. "You just gave me some news I wasn't ready for," he told The Associated Press.
Share's attorney, Joseph U. Metz, said his client "categorically (denies) all charges."
-------- china
China Hints U.S. Must Return Guantanamo Separatists
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-china-guantanamo.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing has hinted that if the United States releases any Guantanamo Bay detainees from its restive Muslim far west Xinjiang region, they should be handed over to Beijing and not sent to a third country.
Many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs who make up the majority of Xinjiang's 19 million people favor greater autonomy for the region.
In recent years, some have staged riots and deadly bomb attacks both in Xinjiang and in other parts of China, including Beijing, as part of a campaign to establish an independent state one day that they would call East Turkestan.
``The United States should handle the issue according to international rules and with a view toward international anti-terrorism co-operation and bilateral ties,'' spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement on the Foreign Ministry Web site www.fmprc.gov.cn.
China was responding to a report that the United States did not plan to send such detainees -- captured while fighting alongside the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- back to China but was trying to find another destination for them, the official Xinhua news agency said.
``The East Turkestan terrorists are part of an international terrorist force and pose a great threat to international society,'' Kong said.
The number of Chinese being held at Guantanamo Bay was not known. However, a few detainees from several countries, including several from Britain and Spain, have been freed and sent home.
China's support of the U.S.-led war on terror since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington has won U.S. understanding for its problems in suppressing the Uighur separatist movement and the United Nations has since listed the East Turkestan group as a terrorist organization.
``The U.S side should act cautiously and not send the wrong signal to the East Turkestan terrorist force,'' Kong said.
He said the group was to blame for the deaths of as many as 162 people and for wounding 440 in more than 260 attacks in Xinjiang, which has borders with such heavily Muslim nations as Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The group not only planned bomb attacks, assassinations and other attacks but was collaborating with al Qaeda and Chechen groups, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said.
Last month, China executed two Uighur separatists and jailed 16 to terms ranging from five years to life on charges of damaging national security after they were convicted of illegally producing explosives in one of its biggest such cases in recent years.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Cleric Rebuffs Overture For Peace
Sadr Refuses to Meet Baghdad Delegation
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7025-2004Aug17?language=printer
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 17 -- Rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr on Tuesday rebuffed a delegation of Iraqi political leaders seeking a face-to-face meeting to persuade him to disband his militia and vacate a large Shiite Muslim shrine here, increasing chances of intensified U.S. and Iraqi military action to evict him and his followers.
The eight-member delegation, led by a senior cleric who is a relative of Sadr's, crossed a U.S. military cordon and braved nearby gun battles to reach the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. The goal was to forge a deal with Sadr to end a potentially destabilizing confrontation and convert his militia into a political organization that would take part in elections.
The delegates, who waited for Sadr for three hours in a darkened receiving room, never saw him. His aides said he failed to appear because of continued aggression by U.S. forces, which have engaged in intense offensive operations against Sadr's militiamen in Najaf's old city, near the shrine. Qais Qazali, a Sadr spokesman, condemned the United States for "preventing peaceful negotiations."
Military assaults occurred before and after the delegation's visit, with U.S. Army units using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to expand their zone of control in the old city and U.S. Marines lobbing 155mm artillery shells into the massive cemetery north of the shrine. But a senior American commander in Najaf insisted that operations paused during the attempted peace talks. "We sat still for the entire time," said Maj. David Holahan of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which commands U.S. forces in Najaf.
To this correspondent, who accompanied the delegation, it appeared that both sides were partly correct. As the delegation arrived, the distinct, repetitive thud of a Bradley's 25mm main cannon echoed through the labyrinthine alleys leading to the shrine, answered occasionally by the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade, likely fired by Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen. But as the evening wore on, the sound of American armaments ceased and was replaced with more than a dozen bone-rattling booms of Mahdi Army mortars being fired from next to the shrine.
As the delegation approached the shrine in two sedans, without armed guards and with only white undershirts tied to the antennas to indicate they were noncombatants, members saw a city in the vise of war.
In neighborhoods away from the shrine that are under U.S. control, the streets were deserted save for patrols by Iraqi policemen wearing face-covering balaclavas.
In closer-in areas, militiamen roamed the streets with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They had set up barricades on streets and gun nests in abandoned buildings. To avoid detection by Marine snipers perched atop the city's tallest buildings, reinforcements were being ferried in through a network of alleys that cut through rows of old brick buildings.
Although the Mahdi Army has been described by some U.S. military officials as a hobbled outfit that has taken hundreds of casualties in the past week, Sadr's militia appeared to be everywhere in the neighborhood near the shrine. Scores of armed young men walked along the streets.
When the delegation entered the walled-off, white marble courtyard of the shrine, about 1,000 of Sadr's supporters converged on the group, stamping their feet, raising their fists into the air and shouting, "Long live Moqtada!"
To Sadr's followers, the United States' June 28 transfer of political authority to an interim Iraqi government was meaningless. In their view, the presence of 140,000 U.S. troops on Iraqi soil means their nation is still under occupation.
"We want peace. We don't want war," declared Samir Narem, a tall, bearded man in an ankle-length tunic who joined the crowd that turned out for the delegation. "But we don't want occupation. We will die before we give up."
As dusk turned to darkness and a warm breeze wafted through the city, strings of green lights hanging from the wall of the shrine illuminated the courtyard and the intricate mosaics on the brick walls. Scores of young men, who had completed their evening prayers, reclined on large carpets unrolled over the marble floor. Every now and then, someone would lead the crowd in chants of "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!"
"We are here to protect the shrine from the Americans and their pawns in the government of Allawi," said an English-speaking engineer from the southern city of Basra, referring to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. "If we have to give our lives to protect this place, so be it. We will go to paradise," said the man, who gave his name only as Abbas.
The members of the delegation are all participants in a national conference that was convened Sunday in Baghdad to select an interim national assembly. Although the assembly was to have been elected by Tuesday, the proceedings have been dominated by efforts to resolve the crisis in Najaf, where U.S. forces have been in combat with the Mahdi Army for weeks. The conference is scheduled to reconvene on Wednesday to hear from the delegation and to choose members of the new assembly.
Political leaders spent much of Tuesday in closed-door meetings trying to persuade leaders of Shiite religious parties to back down from a demand that their members receive at least 51 of the 100 seats. Although Shiites constitute a majority of Iraqis, conference organizers and leaders of parties representing Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds do not want all the Shiite members to be chosen by religious parties.
The delegation to Najaf was led by Hussein Mohammed Hadi Sadr, an elderly Shiite cleric and distant relative of Moqtada Sadr. It also included a woman who is a cousin of Moqtada Sadr; a leader of a Shiite religious party; a member of the former U.S.-appointed Governing Council; and the brother-in-law of interim President Ghazi Yawar.
The group had wanted to travel to Najaf on Monday but was unable to arrange transportation.
Concerned that its convoy might be ambushed along the way, the group was flown to a Marine base on the outskirts of Najaf by a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. Once delegation members arrived at the base, they had to wait an hour for unmarked civilian vehicles to take them into the city.
As soon as they entered the shrine, they got signals that they would not meet with Sadr. "If you have connections with the U.S. leader, you should call him and ask him to withdraw his forces a little bit so that we can bring Sayed Moqtada Sadr safely here," said Ali Smeisim, Sadr's deputy, using a religious honorific for the cleric.
"Isn't he in Najaf?" Hussein Sadr asked.
"He is -- in a secret, secure place," Smeisim said.
"The U.S. forces do not follow our orders," Hussein Sadr said. "It is not necessary for him to come. Take me to him."
"Well, it's a secret place," Smeisim responded. "As you know, we are in war conditions."
With that, the delegation was left to wait for three hours before leaving. The group gave Smeisim a communique from the national conference that calls for Sadr to dissolve the Mahdi Army, vacate the shrine and join the political process.
As the delegation members left, they publicly expressed optimism. Sadr's representatives "don't reject what came from the national conference," Hussein Sadr told reporters. "The message reached Moqtada Sadr."
As he spoke, his voice was quickly drowned out by a loud fusillade of gunfire and the emotional outburst of militiamen as a corpse shrouded in white, signifying that the deceased was a martyr, was paraded through the courtyard.
Rajaa Khozai, one of the delegates, said she hoped the group would be able to return Wednesday or Thursday and meet with Sadr. But there were no immediate plans to do so.
One of the members, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting "was not as successful" as they had hoped. "Moqtada needs to make a dramatic move for peace," the member said. "We had hoped to convey that to him directly."
As they prepared to board their helicopter to take them back to Baghdad, the members seemed resigned to a continuation of the fighting and perhaps an escalation.
"At least we showed Moqtada Sadr good faith," said Akeel Saffar, a member of Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party. "Now let's see what Moqtada does."
Correspondent Karl Vick and special correspondent Omar Fekeiki in Najaf contributed to this report.
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Rebel Cleric Accepts Truce Terms, Iraqi Conference Is Told
August 18, 2004
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 18 - An Iraqi national conference was told today that the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr had accepted conditions proposed by an Iraqi delegation to end fierce fighting in the holy city of Najaf, including the withdrawal of his militia from one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines. Spokesmen for Mr. Sadr could not be immediately reached for comment, and it was unclear whether the announcement signaled an end to the fighting between Mr. Sadr's militias and the American forces in the city, or if Mr. Sadr's intentions to end the stand-off would be carried out.
The conditions were delivered on Tuesday by a delegation from the Iraqi national conference that flew to the city in American army helicopters and met the cleric's aides in the Imam Ali shrine. The delegation had also urged Mr. Sadr to disarm and transform his fighters into an organization that would join the political process.
Mr. Sadr refused to meet with Tuesday's delegation in person, citing the continuing fighting between his men and the Americans.
For almost two weeks, his forces have battled Americans in Najaf, in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, and in several cities across southern Iraq. Earlier today, Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, said that Iraqi, not American, forces would be the ones to take any action to eject the militia from the shrine. He demanded that Mr. Sadr's militia surrender, according to news reports quoting his remarks on Arab television.
A delegate to the national conference, which has been meeting in Baghdad since Sunday to form a national assembly, read a letter that she said was "news" from Mr. Sadr's office of his "approval of the conditions that the national conference has suggested."
Drawing applause from the audience as they listened, the delegate, Safia al-Souhail, said Mr. Sadr asked for "everyone, especially the government and the members of the national conference, to participate in fulfilling what Mr. Sadr suggested.
"Otherwise it will be the fault of everyone if the negotiations are impeded," she read.
Then a member of the Shiite Dawa party, Jalil Shamari, read a statement in front of the full auditorium, saying the "initiative is welcome." Mr Shamari, who said he was contacted by one of Mr. Sadr's representatives and told that the cleric had a message for the conference, said that Mr. Sadr "accepts the three items that were in the letter of your conference to stop the bloodshed of Iraq, and to build a new Iraq which needs the effort of everyone, its sons and its daughters."
Mr. Sadr also asked the conference to put in place a "mechanism" to follow up, Mr. Shamari said.
The conference said earlier today that it would not send a second delegation to Najaf after Mr. Sadr refused to meet on Tuesday with its first peace team.
Members of the mission had nevertheless said they were not upset that Mr. Sadr had turned them away, and both sides said lower-level discussions had been cordial.
Elsewhere in Iraq, insurgents fired a mortar round into a busy market in the northern city of Mosul today, killing 5 civilians and wounding 21, said officials quoted by Reuters.
A soldier was killedtoday when a patrolling unit came under attack in eastern Baghdad, the American military said.
Fighting in Najaf has intensified sharply in the past three days, said Capt. Coby Moran, operations officer of the First Battalion of the Fourth Marine Regiment, one of three American battalions, with a total of about 3,000 troops, fighting here.
American commanders say they have inflicted heavy casualties on Mr. Sadr's forces, with at least 1,000 men inside the holy site and many more guerrillas scattered around the Old City.
Marine snipers killed 62 people on Tuesday, Captain Moran said.
The delegates at the national political conference in Baghdad have been trying to form a national assembly. Bargaining went well into Tuesday night, with as 1,100 Iraqis from different political parties, tribes and social groups competing for seats in the assembly.
In this country's first open and nationwide political debate since Saddam Hussein came to power in the 1960's, Iraqis representing the diverse population of 25 million, including Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, sparred to claim as many seats as possible in the assembly, which will act as a parliament until elections in January.
Delegates tonight were debating whether to continue the conference for a fifth day or to stay late into the night to vote and choose the members.
-------
LOOKING BACK
8-Day Battle for Najaf: From Attack to Stalemate
August 18, 2004
By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/international/middleeast/18najaf.html?pagewanted=all&position=
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 17 - Just five days after they arrived here to take over from Army units that had encircled Najaf since an earlier confrontation in the spring, new Marine commanders decided to smash guerrillas loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Acting without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials, the Marine officers said in recent interviews, they turned a firefight with Mr. Sadr's forces on Thursday, Aug. 5, into a eight-day pitched battle, one fought out in deadly skirmishes in an ancient cemetery that brought them within rifle shot of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. Eventually, fresh Army units arrived from Baghdad and took over Marine positions near the mosque, but by then the politics of war had taken over and the American force had lost the opportunity to storm Mr. Sadr's fighters around the mosque.
Fighting here continues, and what the Marines had hoped would be a quick, decisive action has bogged down into a grinding battle that appears to have strengthened the hand of Mr. Sadr, whose stature rises each time he survives a confrontation with the American military. It may have weakened the credibility of the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, showing him, many Iraqis say, to be alternately rash and indecisive, as well as ultimately beholden to American overrule on crucial military and political matters.
As a reconstruction of the battle in Najaf shows, the sequence of events was strikingly reminiscent of the battle of Falluja in April. In both cases, newly arrived Marine units immediately confronted guerrillas in firefights that quickly escalated. And in both cases, the American military failed to achieve its strategic goals, pulling back after the political costs of the confrontation rose. Falluja is now essentially off-limits to American ground troops and has become a haven for Sunni Muslim insurgents and terrorists menacing Baghdad, American commanders say.
The Najaf battle has also raised fresh questions about an age-old rivalry within the American military - between the no-holds-barred, press-ahead culture of the Marines and the slower, more reserved and often more politically cautious approach of the Army. Army-Marine tensions also have surfaced previously, notably when the Marines opened the Falluja offensive.
As they replay the first days of the Najaf battle, some commanders are wondering if a more carefully planned mission would have had a better chance to succeed.
"Setting conditions for an attack requires extensive planning and preparations," said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, who commands an Army battalion that arrived to reinforce the Marine unit here two days after the fight began. "If you don't have those things in place and you attack, a lot of times it fails."
When the United States transferred power to the interim government in June, both American and Iraqi officials insisted that authority for major decisions on the use of force would be exercised by the new Iraqi leadership, in particular Dr. Allawi, a former enforcer for Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who defected in the 1980's and became leader of an exile political party. Senior United States military commanders emphasized that while they retained command of their troops, the forces were there to serve the Iraqi government.
But in the battle in Najaf, at least, the marines here say they engaged Mr. Sadr's forces at the request of the local Iraqi police. They did not seek approval from senior military commanders or from Iraqi political leaders, with the exception of the governor of Najaf. The governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, an Allawi appointee, refuses to confirm having given the green light, although American commanders in Baghdad cited his commands repeatedly as the political cover for the Marine attack.
In past week, the interim government has twice halted major American-led attacks on Mr. Sadr's forces as they were about to begin. It now says it will use Iraqi troops for future battles. But it is far from clear, judging from the lukewarm assessments of American commanders in Najaf, that the American-trained Iraqi units that fought alongside the Americans last week are capable of taking the lead in any showdown with Mr. Sadr.
The seeds of the Najaf battle were sown on July 31, when the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, commanded by Col. Anthony M. Haslam, replaced units of the Army's First Armored Division and First Infantry Division, which had fought Mr. Sadr's militiamen for weeks in the spring before a series of truces around Najaf. The marines began to skirmish with the Iraqi fighters almost as soon as they took responsibility for this holy city of 500,000, American officers and Mr. Sadr's militiamen say.
Senior officers in Baghdad, as well White House officials who discussed the battle in Washington, say the latest fighting began when a Marine patrol drove directly past one of Mr. Sadr's houses in Najaf - violating an informal agreement that American units would stay away from Mr. Sadr's strongholds, treating them as part of an "exclusion zone" that was at the heart of the cease-fire in the city.
Two days later, on Aug. 5, fighters in Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army staged a 2 a.m. attack on a police station in Najaf. Usually, the police are an easy mark, but this time, the White House official said, "they shot back" and called for American reinforcements. When the militiamen pushed forward a third time, about 7 a.m., American commanders in Baghdad said, the governor, Mr. Zurfi, called for American reinforcements.
American intelligence officials monitoring Mr. Sadr said he then summoned reinforcements from around the country, and Ambassador John D. Negroponte, the top American official in Iraq, "decided to pursue the case," one official said. One result was a domino effect, with the fighting in Najaf soon replicated in more than half a dozen cities and towns across southern Iraq that are Mahdi Army strongholds, including the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, Diwaniya, Kut, Al Hayy, Nasiriya, Amara and Basra.
The battle in Najaf quickly centered on a huge cemetery adjacent to the Imam Ali Shrine, which had been off limits to American troops as part of a truce worked out after earlier fighting in April. At its closest point, the L-shaped cemetery, more than five square miles of tombs and catafalques and crypts, is only a few hundred yards from the shrine. Marine commanders in Najaf acknowledge that they did little planning for the battle, but say they gambled that they could reach the walls of the Old City so fast that they would outrun the political firestorm sure to result.
"We just did it," said Maj. David Holahan, second in command of the Marine unit in Najaf.
Inside the cemetery, the battle was exceptionally fierce, marines said. Mr. Sadr's guerrillas had secreted away many weapons caches and explosive devices, and as the marines forced their way forward, they traded shots - and hand grenades - with insurgents who were sometimes only a few yards away.
The ferocity of the rebel resistance surprised the marines, who had seen Saddam Hussein's army disintegrate last year as they marched north to Baghdad. "The ones we fought the other day are a hell of a lot more determined," Lt. Scott Cuomo said.
By early evening on Aug. 5, the battalion had sent out an urgent request for reinforcements. Senior commanders sent the First Battalion of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, a heavy Army unit, from Baghdad.
Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the First Cavalry Division commander overseeing American troops in Baghdad, said during a visit to an American base in Najaf on Sunday, Aug. 15, that the division did not know until the last minute that the 1,800 marines in Najaf might need reinforcements. The Fifth Cavalry Regiment's tanks and other armored vehicles were patrolling in Baghdad when the request for help arrived, he said. By then, American troops in the capital were under intense pressure themselves, fighting Sadr militiamen in Sadr City and in skirmishes in other Shiite districts.
Army units began to prepare to move immediately, but the 120-mile drive from Baghdad, through some of the most rebel-infested territory in Iraq, took two days, Colonel Miyamasu said, with the forces arriving in Najaf on Saturday. By then, many marines had been fighting for almost 48 hours straight, in temperatures that topped 120 degrees each day.
Still, they had managed to press forward to the west and south, reaching the southern edge of the cemetery, just a few hundred yards from the mosque. But with the Army battalion unprepared to fight Saturday, the marines decided to retreat.
The next day, Aug. 8, the Army re-entered the cemetery. But by then, with political pressures building in Iraq and across the Muslim world, American forces faced immense pressure not to damage the Imam Ali Mosque. The Army never tried to reach the south wall of the Old City, and soldiers fighting inside the graveyard needed permission to fire heavier weapons in the direction of the mosque. The fight became a stalemate.
"If we had arrived one day earlier or the marines had attacked one day later, I'm not sure we'd be in this position," Colonel Miyamasu said.
In Baghdad, commanders seemed curiously disconnected. On Monday, Aug. 9, a senior military official told reporters that American forces had cut off Mr. Sadr's forces in the Old City and the cemetery from the rest of Najaf. But no cordon existed, and none would be set up until Thursday, when the second Army battalion arrived.
Marine officers have said they killed several hundred guerrillas, weakening Mr. Sadr's forces for future fighting, at a relatively low cost in American casualties - 8 marines and soldiers killed and about 30 wounded.
"We put a major hurt on his hard-core militia members,'' Major Holahan said. "Things happened pretty well from a military point of view."
Mr. Sadr's spokesmen have disputed the American figures for their dead, saying fewer than 30 were killed.
On Friday, the Iraqi government and Mr. Sadr's forces reached a tentative cease-fire. Although negotiations with an Allawi government delegation from Baghdad quickly collapsed, amid new threats from Dr. Allawi and his aides of a resumed push on the mosque, Mr. Sadr appeared to have once again withstood American threats and firepower.
Iraqi officials have said the new plan is to use Iraqi units to force Mr. Sadr from the mosque, while assuring fellow Muslims, in interviews broadcast across the Arab world, that they will allow no damage to the shrine.
"I am disappointed," Colonel Miyamasu said Friday, after the cease-fire was announced. "A target of opportunity has passed." But he said American forces would continue to press Mr. Sadr as long as the Iraqi government wanted.
"It's not over," he said. "It's just going to be different."
Alex Berenson reported from Najaf for this article and John F. Burns from Baghdad.
--------
Al-Sadr welcomes Vatican mediation
AFP
18 August 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/22640BD9-6513-4705-B6A2-7C8E6AEDF1C6.htm
The Vatican has confirmed that Pope John Paul II is ready to mediate between Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr and US-led occupation forces.
A spokesman for al-Sadr, whose forces are locked in an intense battle inside the city with US-led troops, has already welcomed the proposal.
But Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini said on Tuesday the Pope was only willing to mediate if requested to do so by both sides in the conflict.
"The Holy See, obviously, is always disposed to help the parties to talk to each other and have a dialogue, on condition there exists a real will to commit to a peaceful solution to the crisis," he said.
The mediation is expected to be directly handled by the Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, who is said to be closely following developments in Iraq.
Honest talks
"The Apostolic Nuncio in Baghdad [Fernando Filoni] is following developments directly, and the secretary of state remains in close contact either with him or the Chaldean patriarch [Mar Emmanuel Delly] or the country's bishops' conference," said Benedettini.
Sodano said in an interview with Italian state radio on Monday that all sides should "respect the holy character of the city. Therefore, the appeal that I make in the name of the Pope is that there is a return in any case to honest talks".
John Paul II warned US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair against going to war in Iraq in the weeks leading up to the invasion, sending a top Vatican official to both Baghdad and Washington last year.
The vain attempt to avert the conflict, which he warned would be seen as a "clash of civilisations" between Muslims and Christians, included separate private talks at the Vatican with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Tariq Aziz and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
--------
Iraqi vote postponed amid protests
aljazeera
18 August 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/205E1A3B-0BB8-4A0B-9E41-AD5AC5B82D9E.htm
Iraqi political and religious leaders postponed the selection of a 100-member interim national assembly until Wednesday as delegates sought to reach a consensus on its membership, officials said.
The chairman of the meeting to pick the assembly Fuad Maasum said on Tuesday, independent and non-governmental delegates would be allowed to submit their own candidates on Wednesday.
Delegates apparently protested against the candidates Maasum presented at the conference being handpicked by the pro-US appointed interim government.
"We will vote tomorrow. It's getting too late because if we stay here they will not let us leave the building after midnight," he said, telling delegates to return on Wednesday at 10:00am (0600 GMT).
Independent delegates have criticised the conference as being stacked by officials and government delegates, saying the assembly due to be chosen to oversee the interim government could amount to a rubber stamp.
About 450 delegates at the conference accused the main political parties of hijacking the vote, saying most members were chosen long ago in secret.
Threats
Many had threatened to quit the conference unless the voting mechanism was changed.
But Maasum suggested that one list be put to the vote, saying "the idea of one list was crucial to maintain balance and accord".
Of the 81 seats on the interim legislature to be decided by the vote, 21 are to go to party members, 21 to provincial leaders, 11 to minorities, 10 to tribal figures, 10 to civil society organisations and eight to independents.
Maasum, a Kurdish politician and former exilee, insisted the process had been fair.
Aljazeera's correspondent in Iraq says the procedure will follow the United Nations model of voting.
Members of the defunct governing council, appointed by the US-led occupation authority have an automatic right to sit on the legislature, bringing its membership up to a total of 100, 25 of whom are to be women.
Nineteen seats are, however, reserved for members of the defunct Council on the assembly, which will also have a role in organising elections due by January.
-------- israel / palestine
Military police investigating over cases of 600 abuse against Palestinians
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818125417.lknnve8w.html
Israeli military police have investigated more than 600 cases of alleged abuse by soldiers against Palestinians during the intifada, the chief military prosecutor told MPs Wednesday.
General Menachem Finkelstein told the Israeli parliament's constitution, justice and law committee that the case files include 217 violent incidents, 181 cases where Palestinian property was damaged or stolen, and 88 instances involving shooting, a committee spokeswoman told AFP.
Another 114 cases involved various other charges, from the use of Palestinians as human shields to delays caused by the soldiers at checkpoints, according to a document from the committee received by AFP.
A total of 90 indictments have been handed down to soldiers -- 34 for property damage and theft, 23 for violence and 22 involving shooting incidents. Another 11 incidents related to various other complaints.
Complaints about abuse at military checkpoints led to more than 80 files being opened and over 35 indictments handed down.
More than 56 trials have taken place and in all of them, the soldiers were convicted, most of them on charges of violence and theft and some are currently serving prison sentences.
Since January, the military police has opened 120 cases, and some 30 indictments have been handed down.
More than 4,000 people have been killed since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian uprising, most of them Palestinians.
--------
Israel to Build More Housing At Settlements
Critics Say Plan Violates 'Road Map'
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7688-2004Aug17.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 17 -- The Israeli government disclosed Tuesday that it would build 1,000 new housing units at four Jewish settlements in the West Bank, prompting sharp rebukes from Palestinians and Israeli peace activists who said the construction would strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank and violate promises to freeze settlement growth.
The units would be in addition to 600 that Israeli officials said two weeks ago would go up soon at a major settlement just outside Jerusalem. Hundreds of other units are in the planning pipeline, according to pro- and anti-settlement activists and Israeli media reports.
Israeli officials contend that the peace plan known as the "road map" allows the population of settlements to grow, as long as the newcomers remain within existing boundaries.
The new housing units will not violate any agreements with the United States because they were permitted "in accordance with President Bush's letter of the 14th of April to Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon, regarding the large settlement blocks," said an official in Sharon's office, who would not agree to be quoted by name.
In that letter, Bush reversed years of U.S. Middle East policy by endorsing Israel's claim to parts of the West Bank seized in the 1967 Middle East war and saying it was unrealistic to expect Israel to abandon major West Bank settlements and return to its pre-1967 boundaries. The letter did not directly address settlement growth, other than reiterating the U.S. commitment to the road map.
The road map obligates Israel to freeze "all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)" and to immediately dismantle settlement outposts -- estimated to number 51 by Peace Now, an advocacy group, and 28 by the Israeli government -- established since Sharon took office in March 2001. Outposts typically are small communities on remote hilltops that are established by settlers, without government permission, as the first step toward new settlements or settlement expansion.
"The Israelis have accepted the road map and its stipulations with respect to settlement activity, and we expect the Israelis to abide by their commitments," a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. He would not elaborate. In Washington, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the Bush administration was waiting for details on the issue from the Israeli government.
"This is an extraordinary step the government is taking -- it's an act of madness," said Yariv Oppenheimer, a spokesman for Peace Now, which opposes the settlements.
"Instead of disengagement, we're getting more settlement in the West Bank, without knowing that disengagement in Gaza will really take place," he added, referring to Sharon's plan to pull Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers out of the Gaza Strip.
"These new housing units are destroying the road map and efforts to revive the peace process," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister and chief negotiator with Israel. "The question to President Bush is: Has the Israeli government delivered on any promises on the cessation of settlement activity?"
Israeli officials say the Palestinians are responsible for the demise of the road map because they did not rein in Palestinian militant groups and violence. Israeli officials have insisted that doing so was a prerequisite to advancing the peace plan.
Tuesday's disclosure came in the form of an advertisement by the Housing Ministry that said contracts were available for the construction of new units in four Jewish settlements: Beitar Illit, about six miles southwest of Jerusalem; Ariel, about 20 miles north of Jerusalem; Karnei Shomron, about six miles northwest of Ariel; and Maleh Adumim, the West Bank's largest settlement, about two miles east of Jerusalem.
The housing construction contracts were originally scheduled to be announced about 10 days ago, but Sharon ordered a delay so the plans could be reexamined for compliance with U.S.-Israeli agreements, Israeli government officials said.
Following Tuesday's disclosure, settlement leaders accused the prime minister of playing politics with the new units to curry favor with hard-line nationalist and religious members of his Likud Party. During a Likud convention on Wednesday, members are scheduled to vote in a secret, nonbinding ballot on whether to form a coalition government with the more dovish Labor Party. Such a coalition would significantly improve Sharon's chances of winning government support for his Gaza Strip disengagement plan.
Airstrike in Gaza Kills Five, Including Militants
GAZA CITY, Aug. 18 -- Israel's air force launched an attack near a Gaza City home early Wednesday, killing at least five people, including three Palestinian militants, according to witnesses and officials on both sides. Seven people were wounded, four critically.
Palestinians said an explosion struck near a house belonging to Ahmed Jabari, an activist in the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas.
Two of the dead were identified as Hamas militants and another as a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad. The two others were not immediately identified.
In a separate development, Israeli soldiers on Tuesday shot and killed a 9-year-old Palestinian boy in Nablus as he sat on the front steps of his home eating a sandwich, relatives said.
Nearby youths had been throwing stones at the troops, the boy's aunt said. An Israeli military official said soldiers fired at Palestinians throwing concrete blocks, stones and a firebomb in three separate incidents, but was not aware that anyone was killed.
--------
Sharon Issues Bids for New Housing Units for Settlers
August 18, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/international/middleeast/18mideast.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 17 - The day before the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, faces sharp debate about his policies at his Likud Party convention, his government made an effort on Tuesday to pacify his critics, issuing tenders for 1,001 new, government-subsidized apartments for settlers in the occupied territories.
Whatever the internal politics of the decision, it will annoy Washington, Western diplomats said. Israel accepted the Bush administration's peace plan, called the road map, which calls for a freeze on all Israeli settlement activity. While Israeli officials insisted that the housing was long planned and remained within current settlement boundaries, the new activity will renew the debate in Washington over Israeli compliance.
"It's difficult to see how 1,001 new housing starts are consistent with the road map,'' a Western diplomat said today. "It's a big number.''
Israel has been building settlements for years, no matter the ideology of the government, in the face of American opposition. The Israelis argue that what they call "thickening," or building within current settlement boundaries, does not violate a freeze.
The Bush administration has not publicly agreed or disagreed with that interpretation, and the White House and the State Department do not always agree, either. President Bush has been a strong supporter of Mr. Sharon, and on a recent trip here the director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams, told the Israelis that Mr. Bush trusts them on the settlement issue. That trust is not entirely shared among some career diplomats or in the European Union.
Next month, a team of American experts is scheduled to arrive to examine aerial photographs and maps to help decide whether Israel is living even within its definition of a settlement freeze, a United States Embassy spokesman, Paul Patin, said Tuesday in Tel Aviv. "We expect Israel to abide by its commitments in the road map,'' Mr. Patin said.
The tenders - which are likely to be followed in the next few months by approval of another 633 housing units - were approved previously, but suspended several months ago by Mr. Sharon. A new housing minister, Tzipi Livni, has reviewed the tenders and now has had permission from Mr. Sharon to issue them.
The American ambassador here, Daniel Kurzer, was not informed in advance of the announcement.
The tenders, or construction bids, are for units in West Bank settlements that include Karnei Shomron (42 units), Ariel (214), Maale Adumim (141) and Beitar Elite, near Bethlehem (604). A Housing Ministry spokesman, Kobi Bleich, said the settlements are all within "the Israeli consensus,'' meaning that Israel wants to annex them in any future peace deal. They are also within the boundaries of the barrier Israel is building on the West Bank, which the International Court of Justice has declared illegal wherever it is built on occupied land. The Israeli Supreme Court has judged the barrier legal, but has demanded some changes in its route to make it less onerous for Palestinians.
For the tenders, the state offers to subsidize up to 50 percent of development costs, including paving roads and installing sewage, electrical lines and street lamps, and is expected to spend nearly $15 million.
Saeb Erekat, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said, "This shows Sharon has no respect for the commitments he gave to President Bush to dismantle outposts and freeze construction in settlements.''
But some settlers see the announcement as a political ploy by Mr. Sharon to pacify them and his critics. "Sharon has no intention of building even one of those houses,'' Pinhas Wallerstein, a leader of the Yesha settlers' council, told an Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. "This is ugly manipulation, a political ploy and fraud with a view to the Likud convention.''
Mr. Sharon faces opposition within Likud to his plan to form a unity government that includes the opposition Labor Party. Mr. Sharon wants to ensure that his proposal for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip can get through the government and Parliament; he lost his formal parliamentary majority several months ago over opposition to the plan.
At the convention on Wednesday, there will be a secret ballot on the plan to bring in Labor that will be opposed by crucial government ministers like Benjamin Netanyahu, the finance minister, and Silvan Shalom, the foreign minister. Mr. Netanyahu's free-market policies are likely to be constrained by Labor, and Mr. Shalom is likely to lose his job to the Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres.
But Mr. Sharon, who is lobbying party members to vote with him, may ignore the vote of the convention if it goes against him. He sees a realignment that would involve breaking up Likud in any event.
In Nablus on Tuesday, Israeli troops searching for weapons and enforcing a curfew shot and killed a 9-year-old Palestinian boy, Palestinian medics told The Associated Press. They did not see the shooting, they said, but the boy, Khaled Usta, was hit in the chest by a bullet and died outside his house.
Soldiers also shot and wounded two Palestinians who threw stones at military jeeps. In house-to-house searches, the soldiers discovered explosives and two homemade rockets, along with a handbook on how to prepare them, the army said. They also found a cache of guns, ammunition and equipment used to prepare explosives.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians as they approached the settlement of Atzmona carrying what appeared to be a bomb. A militant faction affiliated with Fatah said the two men, from Khan Yunis, were shot while planting a bomb near an army jeep.
In Gaza City, a senior Hamas leader survived an Israeli assassination attempt, but at least five other Palestinians were killed in an explosion at the leader's home, Reuters reported. Hamas gunmen said a missile fired by an Israeli drone hit the home of Ahmed al-Jabari. The Israeli military later took responsibility for the attack.
--------
Israeli Helicopter Fires at Gaza Building
August 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Gaza.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles in Gaza City after nightfall Wednesday, one at a building in the Zeitoun neighborhood, witnesses said, setting a fire.
Residents said the first missile's target was a car battery factory, in a building with two empty apartments. Rescue workers could not approach the structure because of burning chemicals and but said there were no casualties.
The target of the second missile strike was not immediately known.
The targeted building belongs to the family of Reem Raiyshi, who blew herself up at the Erez checkpoint between Israel and Gaza in January, killing four Israelis. She was the only female suicide bomber from Gaza.
The Israeli military had no comment.
Earlier Wednesday, however, Palestinian militants fired two mortar shells at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip, wounding one person, Israeli military sources said. Israel often launches harsh reprisals after attacks on its settlements.
In the past, Israeli helicopters have targeted metal workshops in the area. Israel charges that militant groups use them to manufacture weapons, including rockets.
-------- nato
NATO begins training mission in Iraq
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Aug 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040818151233.9o7zoobo.html
A team of NATO experts has begun work helping to train Iraq's new army in the war-scarred country, after arriving there over the last week, a NATO official said Wednesday.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreed to deploy the training mission at a June summit, after overcoming reservations notably from France about sending alliance forces into Iraq.
The official at NATO's Brussels headquarters gave no details of the activities of the 50-strong Training Implementation Mission in Iraq, led by Dutch Major General Carel Hilderink.
"They have started training," he said, adding that NATO training of Iraqi forces has also started outside Iraq.
NATO said at the weekend that the training mission "will contribute to the goal shared by the entire international community -- to help Iraq provide for its own peace and security."
The mission's tasks include liaising with the Iraqi interim government and US-led multinational forces, helping Iraq establish defence and military headquarters and identifying Iraqi personnel for training outside the country.
The dispatch of the NATO team follows a request by the new government in Iraq, which took over at the end of June following after taking power from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority which had run the country since last year's war.
NATO's 26 member nations were only able overcome a row and agree to send the mission by sidestepping the delicate issue of exactly who is in command of it.
France, which spearheaded opposition to last year's Iraq war, notably pressed for guarantees that US-led forces will not command the NATO operations.
-------- pakistan / india
Cleric Who Died in Pakistan Custody 'Tortured'
August 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-pakistan-death.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An Afghan Islamic cleric who died in custody in Pakistan on Wednesday had signs of torture on his body, an intelligence official said.
Pakistani security forces arrested Qari Mohammad Noor along with three associates last week in a raid on an Islamic school, or madrassah, in the central city of Faisalabad.
Intelligence officials said Noor, who was suspected of helping al Qaeda members find accommodation in Faisalabad, died in police detention and an autopsy found he had wounds on his body.
``He has signs of torture and wounds on his body,'' one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A statement from Faisalabad police chief Abid Saeed said Noor was brought to a hospital on Wednesday where ``apparently he died of heart failure.''
``A joint team (of police and other security agencies) is conducting investigation into the mysterious death'' said the statement carried by official APP news agency.
Saeed earlier told Reuters that Noor was suspected of involvement in ``anti-state activities.'' He gave no other details.
The statement said a three-member medical board conducted an autopsy and its final report was being awaited.
It said Noor was an Afghan national. Noor was arrested as part of a crackdown launched since the arrest in Pakistan last month of an al Qaeda computer expert, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan.
Khan has proved a key source of information on the identity of operatives from Osama bin Laden's organization and its plans to launch attacks on British and U.S. targets. His arrest has led to the detention of more than 60 suspected militants in Pakistan.
News of Noor's death came as Pakistan published pictures of six ``most wanted terrorists'' on Wednesday, and offered $340,000 each for information leading to the arrest of two militants wanted for assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf.
A large number of al Qaeda men are thought to be hiding in Pakistan's rugged tribal region, near the Afghan border, or in major cities after fleeing the U.S.-led war on terror waged in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
-------- spies
Rumsfeld: Use Caution in Reform of Intelligence
August 18, 2004; Page A01
Washington Post Staff Writers
By Josh White and Mike Allen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7833-2004Aug17.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned senators yesterday that moving hastily to centralize all U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts under a new national director could spawn confusion while the country is at war and could prevent vital information from getting to those on the battlefield.
Pledging to work with Congress to "strengthen our ability to live in this new and dangerous world," Rumsfeld said that he believes the Pentagon and the CIA have created a strong, interlocking relationship to close gaps revealed by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Adding another layer of bureaucracy, he said, could place "new barriers and filters" between the Defense Department's intelligence offices and the field commanders who rely on their data. He added that he prefers having separate agencies that can focus on their specialties rather than a "single and preeminent national intelligence organization."
The testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee marked Rumsfeld's first appearance in a series of congressional hearings this month on proposals to remake the U.S. intelligence system -- the bulk of which is run by the Department of Defense. The Sept. 11 commission proposed establishing a national intelligence director to oversee the CIA as well as the intelligence offices at the Pentagon and other government agencies.
While Rumsfeld voiced general support for a national intelligence director, he did not stake out a position on what has become a central question in Washington: whether to give such a new chief authority over the budgets and personnel of the 15 intelligence agencies.
The Defense Department accounts for about 80 percent of the $40 billion annual U.S. intelligence budget, including intelligence offices in each branch of the armed services; the Defense Intelligence Agency, which acts partly as clearinghouse for information; the National Security Agency, which intercepts codes; the National Reconnaissance Office, in charge of spy satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which exploits and analyzes mapping information.
Rumsfeld said the administration's position on the details of intelligence reform is being worked out.
"It is important that we move with all deliberate speed; however, moving too quickly risks enormous error," Rumsfeld told the committee. "And we are considering these important matters while waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty will be great."
Rumsfeld's careful comments reflect a debate that continues within the administration over the details of intelligence reform.
Initially, President Bush embraced the Sept. 11 commission's proposal for an intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center, but officials said he did not want to give the director spending power and hiring-and-firing authority.
Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and other Democrats have called on Bush and Congress to enact the commission's full slate of recommendations, however, and the president's aides have signaled that the White House is considering giving the new director at least some of the authority urged by the commission.
Administration aides acknowledged yesterday the political imperative of responding vigorously to the commission but say they do not want to create problems for future presidents.
"Some want to take a knee-jerk response and say we should just do all this right now," said a senior aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid about the decision-making process. "But it's important that you look at all the ramifications of the actions that you're taking. As we move forward quickly, it's important that we do so responsibly, as well."
A Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon has not formulated an official stance on the issue, said yesterday that defense officials are embracing the general idea of a new intelligence program.
"It's a great concept, but the ball's in the air right now, and it's too premature to say how it will affect DoD," the official said. "A big part of [the national intelligence director's position] would be DoD. You want to make sure you're putting the right information into the hands of the people on the ground who pull the trigger so they are the best they can be."
At yesterday's hearing, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin also urged a deliberate approach. He said his agency and the Pentagon have worked over the past three years to break down barriers and coordinate efforts at home and overseas -- improvements he said addressed many of the shortcomings identified by the Sept. 11 commission.
"Speed and agility are not promoted by complicated wiring diagrams, more levels of bureaucracy, increased dual hatting or inherent questions about who is in charge," McLaughlin said. "I believe that short, clear lines of command and control are required in whatever structure you establish, regardless of what you call its leader." McLaughlin took over at the CIA after the retirement of George J. Tenet. Bush has nominated Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) to become the next director of the CIA, a job that would change considerably if a national intelligence director were in charge of all U.S. intelligence agencies.
Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee agreed yesterday that changes should be the result of careful study.
Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said that he wants action soon to strengthen intelligence to confront a constant and evolving threat of terrorist attack. But he said he did not want to offer drastic changes that could cause "turbulence or disruption in the intelligence system" when the nation is at war.
Among the options, Warner said, are creating a national director as proposed by the commission, or a less dramatic reorganization that would give the CIA director greater authority over budgets and the activities of other intelligence agencies, an approach similar to that in legislation proposed by Goss and others.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said he hopes Congress will focus on the structure of the intelligence community and on how intelligence has been used by the administration.
"As we consider legislation for the reorganization of the intelligence community, we should recognize the significance of both types of failures: those resulting from poor organization and management, and those resulting from politicizing intelligence," Levin said.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee that reorganizing the intelligence community is an obviously complex and difficult task. He implored Congress to remember that the military depends on intelligence on a scale unparalleled in the government.
"As we get more and more clarity on the gaps and deficiencies in our intelligence today, we have to guard against creating new problems," Myers said. "And the details matter very much."
-------- us
Paying the Price for a No-Fault Security Strategy
16 Aug 04
Military Week
http://militaryweek.com/kk081604.shtml
If George W. Bush is remembered for his innovation as president, it may be for his execution of a national no-fault security strategy. While the previous inhabitant of the White House certainly appeared irresponsible, the current one may have perfected the art of evading responsibility, and even institutionalized it.
Americans ought to reflect on just how the no-fault strategy works, and for whom.
The President, Vice President and Pentagon admittedly went to war in Iraq based on doubtful information provided, with caveats, by the CIA. The President, Vice President, and senior appointees at the Pentagon then took the shakiest of that doubtful information and presented it as hard fact to drum up political support in the Congress and around the country. The CIA Director has resigned, and the Congress has indicated that the CIA needs cultural reform. However, all executive political decision-makers involved still hold their jobs, and have not been reprimanded. After all, it wasn't their fault!
The Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, darling of the administration and prime ministerial material for Iraq despite his conviction for bank fraud in Jordan, is now suspected of giving "Axis of Evil" charter country Iran top secret United States intelligence. The United States pet government in Baghdad has issued arrest warrants for Chalabi and his equally well-connected nephew Salem, on charges of counterfeiting and murder, respectively. His Pentagon and National Security Agency advocates and conduits to the White House remain in places of trust, heads held high as proud civil servants. Of course, none of it was their fault.
The official evaluation of 9-11 prevention and response amazingly confirms that no government firings or demotions are needed. All political masters and their civil servants were innocent of any negligence or even poor performance. Whatever happened, it wasn't their fault.
Paul Bremer, former high governor of Iraq, was expected to properly manage the reconstruction and the development of a pre-democratic state in Iraq. The GAO now has a whole series of reports on how badly that operation has gone, replete with illegalities, waste, and sheer bureaucratic idiocy. Did we fire Paul Bremer, or send him home as an example of what we will not tolerate in our security policy? Of course not. It wasn't his fault!
Contractors now provide most of our extended global support for our extended military operations. A July 2004 GAO report found a variety of problems in this arena, specifically with the well-connected monstrosity called Halliburton. The answer? Stop picking on Halliburton! It's not their fault (or Dick Cheney's)!
The Bush Administration has been criticized for revealing the name of a CIA NOC agent who worked WMD proliferation issues in political retaliation, and more recently, in revealing the name of a highly valuable double agent we had in the al Qaeda organization, apparently in a gambit to raise domestic polling points. Some might presume that this kind of thing is counterproductive in fighting terrorism and making the world safe for democracy. No matter, it simply wasn't anyone's fault.
In the Bush administration, some actually do pay the price for policy and strategy mistakes. Detainees held in Guantanamo and elsewhere, caught up in the driftnets of the "war on terror," are deprived of due process, legal representation, and exposure to either their families or the charges against them, for years. No effective advocacy for these guilty parties is in sight. Our government insists it was their fault.
Over 150,000 soldiers and marines are deployed, extended, and deployed again in Iraq and Afghanistan, often without the equipment and training they need and the meals and fuel for which the government paid, into an operating environment where the mission statement boils down to simply "Stay alive." For every man or women who dies in Iraq or Afghanistan, seven to ten others are evacuated and receive some type of medical or psychological treatment, often including the long term physical therapy and the fitting of prostheses. Of those who return in one piece, many have been exposed to depleted uranium or have long term reactions to the various inoculations received prior to and during their deployment. Hey, they are all volunteers, right? They signed up for it!
There are ten to twenty thousand contractor security personnel in Iraq, and their deaths and injuries are not reported. The deaths of coalition members and the deaths of Iraqis of all ages and genders are also rarely mentioned. Well, the former are well-paid for what they do, and the latter asked for it.
Here's a number that gives an idea of who's paying, and who will continue to pay. We currently have 518,739 disabled "Gulf War I era veterans" receiving disability compensation, representing more than 73 times the number of wounded from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq. No doubt, our long-term Iraq occupation under hostile fire will add, in similarly disproportionate terms, to that number of disabled and sick veterans. Well, surely the Veterans Administration will come to their aid, even with the Bush budget cuts.
And don't forget, the enlisted folks charged with abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison and other American prisons overseas are being held accountable, with courts-martials and a hostile government to ensure they pay the price. And why not? Those soldiers should have known better than to do what they were told by their chain of command. What were they thinking?
The latest news for the rest of the country relates to growing risk of terrorist attacks, skyrocketing oil prices, wholesale prices up and a roaring trade deficit. Free trade, including trade deficits, theoretically mean lowered costs for domestic consumers, even as specialization sends certain jobs overseas. That's not working out these days, but hey, it's no one's fault.
George W. Bush, John Kerry, and most of the Congress appear quite pleased with the current no-fault security strategy. I wonder if the average American is as delighted.
--------
Army Guardsman Sues to Get Out
California Man Challenges Military's 'Stop-Loss' Rule
Reuters
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9535-2004Aug17.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17 -- A decorated combat veteran filed a lawsuit Tuesday asserting that the government cannot prevent reservists from leaving the military when their enlistment periods end.
The suit against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other military officials names the plaintiff as John Doe. It says he served in the Marine Corps and Army for nine years on active duty and three years as a reservist. "This lawsuit seeks to stop the forced retention of men and women who have fulfilled their service obligations," said attorney Michael Sorgen. "When their period of enlistment ends, they should be entitled to return to their families."
He called the suit the first of its kind.
The Army has issued "stop-loss" orders preventing tens of thousands of soldiers designated to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the military if their volunteer service commitment ends during their deployment.
The Pentagon has relied heavily on reservists to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The order violates Doe's right to due process and the terms of his enlistment contract, and is contrary to law," the lawsuit reads. "The involuntary extension of Doe's military enlistment constitutes a serious infringement on his liberty protected by the Constitution."
The San Francisco-area man, who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Northern California, fought during the invasion of Iraq. Married with two young daughters, he is seeking a release from service when his Army National Guard term ends in December.
The suit names the plaintiff's commander as Capt. Kincy Clark, who heads Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, based in Dublin, Calif. The unit reported for duty Monday and is expected to train for several months before going to Iraq in February or March.
"We have some soldiers who are obviously not overjoyed about being deployed," Clark said in a telephone interview. "I have had to look them in the eye and say, 'Hey, you are going.' "
He added that reservists know when signing up that "stop loss" or extension of service is a possibility.
--------
Soldier Sues Over Tour Made Longer
August 18, 2004
By DEAN E. MURPHY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/national/18suit.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17 - A member of the California Army National Guard filed suit in federal court here Tuesday challenging the Bush administration's so-called stop-loss policy, asserting that his pending deployment to Iraq "bears no relation to the threat of terrorism against the United States."
Under stop-loss, military personnel can be prevented from leaving the armed forces upon completing their enlistment terms. The plaintiff in this case, identified as John Doe to protect his privacy, is believed to be the first soldier to challenge the legality of the policy's application to deployment in Iraq.
The soldier is described in the suit as a sergeant from the San Francisco Bay Area who completed more than nine years of active service in the Army and the Marine Corps, including combat duty last year in Iraq. He then joined the California Army National Guard last December, the suit says, under a program that allows veterans to enlist for one year. On July 6, however, he was informed that his enlistment had been extended by two years and that his unit was mobilizing for duty in Iraq, the suit says.
"Doe's active-duty service kept him separated from his family for extended periods, and his service in Iraq has caused him to suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome," the suit states. "Doe's return to civilian life has allowed him to re-establish his family life and to attempt to recover from this combat trauma."
Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Army has invoked stop-loss to extend the tours of more than 45,000 soldiers. Opponents have criticized the policy as a "back-door draft,'' while military officials say it allows them to keep units together for the sake of cohesion instead of incorporating transfers or recruits.
A spokesman for the California National Guard said the unit at issue in the suit was mobilized on Monday in Dublin, Calif., near San Francisco, and was expected to be deployed to Iraq after six months of training in Texas. (The plaintiff has been temporarily excused from the training, the suit says, because of his treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome.)
The spokesman, Lt. Col. Doug Hart, declined to comment on the suit but did defend the stop-loss policy.
"The option is put into law so that the military can provide national security," Colonel Hart said. "This is something that Congress has approved, and it is a tool that the president and the military can use if they need to."
But the suit asserts that President Bush's executive order of Sept. 14, 2001, which authorized the deployment of Reserve and National Guard troops to active duty, was intended to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States resulting from a "continuing and immediate threat." The suit says the change of government in Iraq removed the threat there.
"Iraq no longer poses any threat of terrorism against the United States, if it ever did," the petition states. "In March of 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq that removed Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."
At a news conference in San Francisco, Marguerite Hiken, a leader of the fiercely antiwar National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force, said the stop-loss program was a major source of phone calls from unhappy and despondent soldiers to her organization's hot line.
"Are the number of calls increasing? Yes," Ms. Hiken said. "Are they more intense? Yes."
Michael S. Sorgen, a lawyer for the plaintiff, described him as "very loyal, patriotic and brave." But, Mr. Sorgen said, he wants to remain anonymous because "there might be some people who see this wrongly as an unpatriotic act."
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Whistle-Blower Threatened
August 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/national/18reservist.html
HAGERSTOWN, Md., Aug. 17 - The Army reservist who tipped off investigators to abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison by his fellow soldiers is in protective military custody because of death threats, family members said on Tuesday.
The reservist, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, 24, received the threats after his role in the scandal was publicly revealed in May, his sister-in-law, Maxine Carroll, said.
Ms. Carroll said in a telephone interview from her home in Windber, Pa., that she did not know where Specialist Darby was and refused to put a reporter in touch with his wife, Bernadette, who is Ms. Carroll's sister.
Specialist Darby's mother, Margaret T. Blank, of Corriganville, Md., said soldiers moved his and his wife's belongings out of their apartment weeks ago.
A spokesman for the command did not return a telephone call for comment.
--------
We Have How Many Troops in Europe?
Plus, the skinny on what they do there.
slate.msn.com
By Phillip Carter
Aug. 18, 2004
http://slate.msn.com/id/2105295/
President Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on Monday that he planned to move more than 70,000 troops from Cold War-era bases in Europe and Asia to permanent bases on U.S. soil. How many troops does the United States have in Europe and Asia, and why are they still over there?
After the Cold War ended, the United States kept troops in Europe largely for two reasons-to maintain a tangible security commitment to Europe and NATO, and because it foresaw future conflicts in the Middle East and anticipated that it would be useful to have troops stationed in Europe that could respond quickly. American troops were kept in Asia to deter a North Korean invasion of South Korea and to promote stability in East Asia.
Currently, the United States has 116,400 military personnel from all four services assigned to its European Command, an organization that oversees U.S. military affairs in 93 countries spanning Europe, North Africa, and part of the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of these-56,000 soldiers and 15,000 airmen-live and work in Germany. Turkey, Britain, and Italy each host several thousand soldiers, too. The remaining number in Europe is comprised of small specialized detachments and diplomatic missions; nearly every U.S. embassy in the world has a small Marine Corps detachment and a military attaché.
Nearly all of the U.S. military presence in Asia remains concentrated in two countries-Japan and South Korea. The U.S. Pacific Command keeps about 37,500 troops in South Korea and 47,000 troops in Japan (including Okinawa). Another few thousand troops are scattered around the Pacific: There is a sizable Air Force detachment on Guam and the U.S. Army operated a chemical weapons disposal detachment on Johnston Island until June of 2004.
During the Cold War, of course, these troops were stationed overseas as part of a strategy known as "forward deployment." If the Soviet Union or North Korea were to invade, these units would already be located near the battlefield and would not need to be flown or shipped anywhere the way U.S. forces were before the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of troops were stationed during the Cold War in then-West Germany, Turkey, Britain, and elsewhere to oppose the Soviet invasion that never came. After the Cold War, the United States cut these troops by two-thirds, moving many large units back to the United Stated and disbanding others as part of the post-Cold War military drawdown.
So, what have the remaining troops been doing since the Cold War ended? During the 1990s, American units in Asia practiced what they would do in case of a North Korean invasion, conducting major military exercises such as "Foal Eagle" and "Ulchi Focus Lens" with the South Korean army. U.S. Army units in Germany also conducted peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Air Force units in Europe focused primarily on providing logistical support to the Army units stationed there and on enforcing the "no fly" zones over Iraq between 1991 and 2003. When not deployed, U.S. military units in Europe spent their time training and conducting exercises with other NATO nations.
Today, the military units stationed in Germany spend most of their energy on Iraq. Ramstein Air Base and the U.S. Air Force units there serve as a logistics and transportation hub for operations; the Landstuhl military hospital at Ramstein takes care of serious U.S. casualties from Iraq. The 1st Armored Division deployed to Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations in April 2003 and just returned home to Germany after more than a year in combat. The 1st Infantry Division is currently in Iraq, approximately halfway through its yearlong tour of duty. President Bush's proposal calls for these units to remain in Germany through at least 2006, when they will be permanently reassigned to U.S. bases yet to be determined.
Nearly all of the U.S. military presence in Asia remains concentrated in two countries-Japan and South Korea. The U.S. Pacific Command keeps about 37,500 troops in South Korea and 47,000 troops in Japan (including Okinawa). Another few thousand troops are scattered around the Pacific: There is a sizable Air Force detachment on Guam and the U.S. Army operated a chemical weapons disposal detachment on Johnston Island until June of 2004.
So, what have the remaining troops been doing since the Cold War ended? During the 1990s, American units in Asia practiced what they would do in case of a North Korean invasion, conducting major military exercises such as "Foal Eagle" and "Ulchi Focus Lens" with the South Korean army. U.S. Army units in Germany also conducted peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Air Force units in Europe focused primarily on providing logistical support to the Army units stationed there and on enforcing the "no fly" zones over Iraq between 1991 and 2003. When not deployed, U.S. military units in Europe spent their time training and conducting exercises with other NATO nations.
Today, the military units stationed in Germany spend most of their energy on Iraq. Ramstein Air Base and the U.S. Air Force units there serve as a logistics and transportation hub for operations; the Landstuhl military hospital at Ramstein takes care of serious U.S. casualties from Iraq. The 1st Armored Division deployed to Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations in April 2003 and just returned home to Germany after more than a year in combat. The 1st Infantry Division is currently in Iraq, approximately halfway through its yearlong tour of duty. President Bush's proposal calls for these units to remain in Germany through at least 2006, when they will be permanently reassigned to U.S. bases yet to be determined.
-------- war crimes
Aristide Foe Acquitted in Brief Retrial
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9895-2004Aug17.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Aug. 17 -- A former paramilitary leader, accused by human rights groups of leading death squads in the 1990s, was acquitted on Tuesday of a 1993 murder in a one-day trial that was conducted largely after midnight and that brought harsh criticism from human rights activists.
In a verdict reached around dawn after a trial that began Monday, Louis Jodel Chamblain was found not guilty of the murder of Antoine Izmery, a pro-democracy activist and businessman. Prosecutors charged that Chamblain and accomplices, including former Port-au-Prince police chief Jackson Joanis, killed Izmery because he was a key supporter of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The prosecution called eight witnesses during the jury trial, but only one appeared, and that witness said he knew nothing about the case, the Associated Press reported, quoting Viles Alizar of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. He said two defense witnesses showed up but offered few details.
The acquittal of Chamblain is one of the first significant acts by the new U.S.-backed interim government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue. It was installed following the ouster in February of Aristide, who departed the country under pressure from U.S. diplomats after a three-week armed uprising.
Chamblain was a key leader in the rebel uprising against Aristide. Earlier this year, he and several other former military leaders returned from years of exile in the Dominican Republic and the United States, vowing to kill Aristide or chase him from power.
Chamblain was second in command of a notorious paramilitary group, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH, that was formed by military leaders who overthrew Aristide in 1991, seven months after the former priest became the nation's first democratically elected president. Human rights groups describe FRAPH as a death squad that killed several thousand Aristide backers over the next few years.
In 1994, the United States sent about 20,000 troops to restore Aristide to power, ousting the military dictatorship. Aristide was reelected in 2000.
Chamblain and Joanis, who fled into exile after the 1994 U.S. invasion, were convicted in absentia in 1995 of the killing of Izmery; Chamblain was also convicted in absentia in the 1994 deaths of several Aristide supporters in Raboteau, a slum whose residents were loyal to Aristide. Under Haitian law, they were entitled to a retrial. Chamblain is still being held pending a retrial in the Raboteau case; Joanis remains jailed on murder charges in a separate 1994 killing.
"This is a very sad day in the history of Haiti," Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday, blasting the trial as a "mockery" and alleging that Haiti's interim government had "failed to ensure justice and show its willingness to tackle impunity." The rights group said the trial was hastily called, describing it as "an insult to justice" and to those who were killed.
Some opponents of Aristide said that Chamblain's acquittal was not the result of political taint or weakness, but of a simple lack of evidence. Hans Tippenhauer, who was among business and civic leaders who worked peacefully for years to force Aristide from office, defended the actions of the interim government and said that Aristide and his Lavalas party had brought charges against Chamblain for political reasons.
"Mr. Chamblain was one of Lavalas's worst enemies and they went after him," he said. "But I don't think they ever really had enough evidence to convict him."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Rumsfeld: Use Caution in Reform of Intelligence
By Josh White and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7833-2004Aug17?language=printer
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned senators yesterday that moving hastily to centralize all U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts under a new national director could spawn confusion while the country is at war and could prevent vital information from getting to those on the battlefield.
Pledging to work with Congress to "strengthen our ability to live in this new and dangerous world," Rumsfeld said that he believes the Pentagon and the CIA have created a strong, interlocking relationship to close gaps revealed by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Adding another layer of bureaucracy, he said, could place "new barriers and filters" between the Defense Department's intelligence offices and the field commanders who rely on their data. He added that he prefers having separate agencies that can focus on their specialties rather than a "single and preeminent national intelligence organization."
The testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee marked Rumsfeld's first appearance in a series of congressional hearings this month on proposals to remake the U.S. intelligence system -- the bulk of which is run by the Department of Defense. The Sept. 11 commission proposed establishing a national intelligence director to oversee the CIA as well as the intelligence offices at the Pentagon and other government agencies.
While Rumsfeld voiced general support for a national intelligence director, he did not stake out a position on what has become a central question in Washington: whether to give such a new chief authority over the budgets and personnel of the 15 intelligence agencies.
The Defense Department accounts for about 80 percent of the $40 billion annual U.S. intelligence budget, including intelligence offices in each branch of the armed services; the Defense Intelligence Agency, which acts partly as clearinghouse for information; the National Security Agency, which intercepts codes; the National Reconnaissance Office, in charge of spy satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which exploits and analyzes mapping information.
Rumsfeld said the administration's position on the details of intelligence reform is being worked out.
"It is important that we move with all deliberate speed; however, moving too quickly risks enormous error," Rumsfeld told the committee. "And we are considering these important matters while waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty will be great."
Rumsfeld's careful comments reflect a debate that continues within the administration over the details of intelligence reform.
Initially, President Bush embraced the Sept. 11 commission's proposal for an intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center, but officials said he did not want to give the director spending power and hiring-and-firing authority.
Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and other Democrats have called on Bush and Congress to enact the commission's full slate of recommendations, however, and the president's aides have signaled that the White House is considering giving the new director at least some of the authority urged by the commission.
Administration aides acknowledged yesterday the political imperative of responding vigorously to the commission but say they do not want to create problems for future presidents.
"Some want to take a knee-jerk response and say we should just do all this right now," said a senior aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid about the decision-making process. "But it's important that you look at all the ramifications of the actions that you're taking. As we move forward quickly, it's important that we do so responsibly, as well."
A Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon has not formulated an official stance on the issue, said yesterday that defense officials are embracing the general idea of a new intelligence program.
"It's a great concept, but the ball's in the air right now, and it's too premature to say how it will affect DoD," the official said. "A big part of [the national intelligence director's position] would be DoD. You want to make sure you're putting the right information into the hands of the people on the ground who pull the trigger so they are the best they can be."
At yesterday's hearing, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin also urged a deliberate approach. He said his agency and the Pentagon have worked over the past three years to break down barriers and coordinate efforts at home and overseas -- improvements he said addressed many of the shortcomings identified by the Sept. 11 commission.
"Speed and agility are not promoted by complicated wiring diagrams, more levels of bureaucracy, increased dual hatting or inherent questions about who is in charge," McLaughlin said. "I believe that short, clear lines of command and control are required in whatever structure you establish, regardless of what you call its leader." McLaughlin took over at the CIA after the retirement of George J. Tenet. Bush has nominated Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) to become the next director of the CIA, a job that would change considerably if a national intelligence director were in charge of all U.S. intelligence agencies.
Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee agreed yesterday that changes should be the result of careful study.
Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said that he wants action soon to strengthen intelligence to confront a constant and evolving threat of terrorist attack. But he said he did not want to offer drastic changes that could cause "turbulence or disruption in the intelligence system" when the nation is at war.
Among the options, Warner said, are creating a national director as proposed by the commission, or a less dramatic reorganization that would give the CIA director greater authority over budgets and the activities of other intelligence agencies, an approach similar to that in legislation proposed by Goss and others.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said he hopes Congress will focus on the structure of the intelligence community and on how intelligence has been used by the administration.
"As we consider legislation for the reorganization of the intelligence community, we should recognize the significance of both types of failures: those resulting from poor organization and management, and those resulting from politicizing intelligence," Levin said.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee that reorganizing the intelligence community is an obviously complex and difficult task. He implored Congress to remember that the military depends on intelligence on a scale unparalleled in the government.
"As we get more and more clarity on the gaps and deficiencies in our intelligence today, we have to guard against creating new problems," Myers said. "And the details matter very much."
--------
Rumsfeld Wary About Shuffling Spy Duties
August 18, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/politics/18panel.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the acting director of central intelligence urged Congress on Tuesday to move cautiously in adopting recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. They also joined in opposing the commission's call for the C.I.A. to cede to the Pentagon the authority for covert paramilitary operations.
At the same time, both Mr. Rumsfeld and the acting C.I.A. chief, John E. McLaughlin, suggested that they were now grudgingly open to the commission's central recommendation: the creation of the post of national intelligence director to oversee the government's 15 intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and spy agencies within the Pentagon.
Both had opposed the concept, and what appears to be their change of heart reflects President Bush's recent announcement that he supports the idea of a national intelligence director, but one with less power than the commission envisioned.
Proposals to create a job of national intelligence director are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers clearly worried that a failure to act quickly on the commission's findings could have repercussion in the November elections.
This week, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, a Republican, suggested that he was willing to oppose the White House and would introduce legislation to create a powerful national intelligence director who would have budgetary and personnel authority similar to that recommended by the commission.
In its report last month, the bipartisan panel said such a director was needed to end the turf battles and miscommunication that, it said, plagued the intelligence community before Sept. 11, 2001. Its recommendation would give the director substantial authority over the Pentagon, which is estimated to control nearly 80 percent of a $40 billion annual intelligence budget.
At an unusual midsummer hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of a flurry of Congressional hearings this month in response to the Sept. 11 report, Mr. Rumsfeld testified that the creation of the job "could conceivably lead to some efficiencies in some aspects of intelligence collection."
But he warned that "the devil is in the details" and that it would be a mistake to move hastily.
"I doubt that we should think of intelligence reform being completed in a single stroke," he testified. "We need to remember that we are considering these important matters while we are waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great."
Even as Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McLaughlin suggested that they could support creation of a national director post, they said they were opposed to another commission recommendation: the transfer of authority over secret paramilitary operations to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.
The commission's final report found that the C.I.A.'s paramilitary operations, like those used to root out terrorist leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere, had a history of unsatisfactory results before the Sept. 11 attacks and that "the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations."
But asked about the proposal, Mr. Rumsfeld testified, "At the moment I certainly wouldn't recommend it."
"There are certainly things that the Central Intelligence Agency does that are covert that the Department of Defense ought not to do," he said. "They do things that are authorized by statute and by findings that we're not organized, trained or equipped to do and don't want to do."
Mr. McLaughlin agreed. "I would not accept this recommendation for a couple of reasons," he said, noting that the C.I.A. had a "niche role" in carrying out paramilitary operations that it would be difficult for the Pentagon to carry out.
"I think we have a perfect marriage now of C.I.A. and military capabilities," he said. "C.I.A. brings to the mix agility and speed. The military brings lethality. That was a combination that was so effective in Afghanistan," he said.
In urging unhurried deliberation on the recommendations of the commission, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McLaughlin had a receptive audience on the Armed Services Committee, which traditionally defends the prerogatives of the Pentagon.
The committee's chairman, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, opened the hearing with a statement suggesting that the commission had overreached in some instances, and that a hasty overhaul of agencies "could result in turbulence that might degrade the level of intelligence so essential'' in the war against terrorism.
He suggested that Congress, rather than creating a new post of national intelligence director, might instead provide greater authority to the director of central intelligence to direct the work of all 15 government spy agencies, perhaps even changing the title of the C.I.A. head.
Mr. Warner said that rather than provide direct budget authority to a national intelligence director, Congress might try to establish a more formal "partnership" in which the director would work with the defense secretary in presenting an intelligence budget and in choosing the leaders of Pentagon spy agencies, like the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
While several Senate committees are considering the commission recommendations at hearings this month, the job of writing legislation has been left to the Governmental Affairs Committee, which is expected to produce a bill by Oct. 1. House leaders have said they will have legislation ready by next month.
--------
Homeland Security 101
wired.com
By Michael Myser
Aug. 18, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,64608,00.html
The tedious task of signing up for classes could become more exciting for students as they return to college campuses this month to find a growing number of homeland security and terrorism course offerings.
In an effort to attract federal funding, draw new students and prepare graduates for careers in the expanding field of homeland security, universities are augmenting existing courses and launching entire programs around security, defense and terror issues.
Most university course books now include at least a few related classes. For example, students at the University of Richmond can enroll in Rhetorics of Terror/ism, Homeland (In)Security, and the State, which examines the root causes of terrorism and current United States security concerns. Rice University offers Jihad and the End of the World, a religion class that explores the concept of holy war in the Islamic world.
Students taking the Urban Security course, at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, analyze blast loads and explosion mitigation in order to learn how to design buildings that can withstand acts of terrorism.
Departments like Syracuse University's Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, Ohio State University's International and Homeland Security program and Denver University's Homeland Security Certificate program are also popping up in an attempt to coordinate security education across the country.
"It's not unusual for educators to provide content-specific courses as different issues arise," said Mel Bernstein, director of the Department of Homeland Security's University Programs Office. "We're trying to get an assessment of these. Many are going to be very valuable, but they need to prove they can meet our needs."
According to Todd Stewart, a retired major general and director of Ohio State's program, there is no consensus on what constitutes a homeland security course, let alone a coherent program.
"Programs in this area come in all shapes and colors," he said. "Some are just doing research; others are offering a curriculum and certificate. Some have taken an existing course and simply changed the title for marketing purposes."
Stewart expects programs will remain fairly wide-ranging until there's a better agreement on what someone working in homeland security is expected to know upon graduation.
"Before there's recognition (of homeland security) as an academic undertaking, there needs to be acceptance and understanding of it as a profession," he said. "That hasn't happened yet."
In an attempt to gain some consensus, in March 2003 Stewart founded the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security. Today, about 150 universities are part of the consortium, sharing information with one another and the government in developing course work and research goals.
For its part, the DHS encourages students and universities to take an interest in homeland security courses, and offers funding to some individuals and programs. The agency has already named the University of Southern California, Texas A&M and the University of Minnesota Homeland Security Centers of Excellence, awarding the schools and their respective partners $45 million over the next three years. USC will focus on risk analysis and economic impact of terrorist threats and events, while Texas A&M and Minnesota will study agriculture and food defenses.
According to Bernstein, more such centers are on the way. The DHS recently put out a call for proposals for universities to focus on the social aspects of terrorism and counterterrorism, and to explore the roots of terror and how the United States responds to terrorist acts.
The DHS currently offers about 300 scholarships and fellowships to undergraduates and graduate students. The agency also provides summer internships in DHS-related organizations across the country and awards stipends during the school year.
Potential job opportunities abound, as the DHS alone employs an estimated 180,000 people across the 22 federal agencies that were combined to create the department. Add in state and private-sector positions, and demand for graduates well-versed in dealing with violence, fear, bombs, religion and government will become more acute.
"It's definitely an emerging discipline," said Dan McBride, a former federal agent and senior faculty for Kaplan College's Terrorism and National Security Management Certificate program. "These lay the groundwork for the future. What you'll start seeing are undergraduate degrees and Ph.D.s in various fields with expertise in homeland security."
In the meantime, students can sign up for classes like Terrorism Issues at Clemson University, which covers a myriad of national security concerns, including arms control, terrorism, counterintelligence and weapons of mass destruction. Or Missouri University's Science & Technology and Terrorism & Counterterrorism, combining engineering and political science to learn about the types of technologies used by and available to terrorists. Or, Why do "They" Hate Us? from St. Lawrence University, a historical and political examination of 9/11.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Va. Man Held In Saudi Jail Seeks U.S. Aid
By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9896-2004Aug17.html
A federal judge said yesterday that he will rule within days on a court action seeking the release of a Falls Church man whose family says he is being improperly detained in Saudi Arabia at the behest of U.S. authorities.
The Saudis have not filed criminal charges against Ahmed Abu Ali, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who has been in custody since June 2003. But the U.S. government said in court papers that the kingdom indicated that it plans to charge him with providing support for terrorism.
Abu Ali, who was studying in Saudi Arabia, was among at least four people arrested last year in a crackdown on a Pakistani organization trying to drive Indian forces out of the disputed Kashmir region. But unlike the other three, who were extradited to the United States and charged, Abu Ali has remained in Saudi Arabia.
Members of Abu Ali's family turned last month to the U.S. courts for help in winning his release. They contend that the United States, not Saudi Arabia, is behind his detention and that he has been denied due process. The prospect of criminal charges has added new urgency to their effort and led them to seek an emergency order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
At a hearing yesterday before Judge John D. Bates, Abu Ali's attorney, Morton Sklar, said the charges are a coordinated effort to ensure that Abu Ali remains out of the reach of U.S. courts -- a contention that the Justice Department rejected yesterday.
Even if no charges are filed by Saudi Arabia, the authority of a U.S. court over a prisoner in another country is a matter of much legal debate, lawyers said yesterday.
The Supreme Court ruled this year that the detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a right to contest their incarcerations in U.S. courts. But no one disputes that the Guantanamo detainees are in the custody of U.S. forces.
By contrast, Abu Ali is being held by the Saudis. But Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights, said Abu Ali is effectively in the custody of the United States.
While he acknowledged that the court could not order Saudi Arabia to do anything, Sklar said the judge could order the United States to ask Saudi Arabia not to charge Abu Ali and to return him.
Ori Lev, a lawyer for the U.S. government, attacked Sklar's arguments. Abu Ali is most certainly in the custody of Saudi Arabia, and therefore a U.S. court has no authority in the matter, he said. "The United States does not control Saudi Arabia," Lev said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- us politics
Republican Rep. Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified
August 18, 2004
by Don Walton,
Lincoln, Nebraska, Journal Star,
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2004/08/18/top_story/10053833.txt
In a dramatic departure from the Bush administration, Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter says he now believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified.
"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.
That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," the 1st District congressman said.
"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."
As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."
Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
His four-page letter represented a departure from his support for a 2002 House resolution authorizing the president to go to war.
His vote to authorize the use of military force - even pre-emptive force - was based on faulty, or misrepresented, intelligence that led to the fear Saddam Hussein would share weapons of mass destruction with terrorists, Bereuter said.
"Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action," he said.
In a floor statement accompanying his 2002 vote, Bereuter urged that the international coalition be broadened and the administration adequately plan for the consequences of war and not divert resources from the battle against al-Qaida and the stabilization of Afghanistan.
Despite acknowledged intelligence failures and failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, President Bush continues to forcefully argue the war was justified because Saddam represented a threat to the United States, his neighbors and the people of Iraq.
While criticizing the manner in which the administration went to war, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has said he still would have voted for the authorizing resolution knowing what he knows today.
Bereuter pointed to a list of negative consequences arising from the war.
"The cost in casualties is already large and growing," he said, "and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible.
"From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force.
"Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world."
Bereuter sent the letter to constituents who have contacted him about the war.
"I felt I should send you a forthright update of my views and conclusions on that subject before I leave office," he said.
Bereuter will depart the House after 26 years to become president of the Asia Foundation on Sept. 1.
Congress and the administration "must learn from the errors and failures" related to the attack and its aftermath, he said.
"The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent, and the damage to the support and image of America abroad all demand such an assessment and accounting."
In addition to "a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence" concerning weapons of mass destruction, Bereuter said, the Bush administration made a number of errors in prosecuting the war despite warnings about the consequences.
"American and coalition forces were inadequate in number to take effective control of Iraq when the initial military action was completed," he said.
Other mistakes included disbanding the Iraqi army and placing responsibility for reconstruction with the Department of Defense instead of the Department of State, he said.
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@;journalstar.com.
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Kerry rips Bush's troop plan
Says redelpoyment may hinder war on terror
Aug. 18, 2004
The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5745916/
CINCINNATI - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Wednesday criticized President Bush's proposal to recall up to 70,000 foreign troops as a hastily announced plan that raises more doubts about U.S. intentions than it answers.
Bush, meanwhile, was trying to capitalize on what some analysts see as a political realignment in northwestern Wisconsin that could put the state in the president's column in November.
"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars," Kerry said. "But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way."
Bush announced his plan to bring home troops from Cold War-era bases in Europe and Asia on Monday before an earlier session of the same gathering of 15,000 members of the VFW. The president said the repositioning of forces would help save money on maintaining bases overseas.
Kerry singled out for criticism Bush's plan to cut 12,000 of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea.
"Why are we withdrawing unilaterally 12,000 troops from the Korean Peninsula at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea - a country that really has nuclear weapons?" Kerry asked.
Kerry quoted Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona as saying that North Korea is probably more dangerous than since the end of the Korean War in 1953. "This is clearly the wrong signal to send at the wrong time.," Kerry said.
Kerry argued that Bush's policy would dangerously reduce forces at a time when the nation is fighting the al-Qaida terrorist network in 60 countries across the globe.
"Let's be clear - the president's vaguely stated plan does not strengthen our hand in the war on terror," he said. "It in no way relieves the strain on our overextended military personnel. It doesn't even begin until 2006 and it takes 10 years to achieve. And this hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitments than it provides real answers."
Kerry's campaign cited a three-month-old Congressional Budget Office report that said pulling back troops from overseas would produce at best only small improvements in the United States' ability to respond to far-flung conflicts. The report also said a large reduction of the U.S. military presence overseas could cost $7 billion up front, although annual savings could be more than $1 billion.
Pentagon officials who spoke on condition of anonymity this week said the CBO study used different assumptions than the president's redeployment plan. They said the amount of savings for the Bush plan could not be calculated until officials determine precisely which units will return to the United States, what domestic bases they will use and what overseas installations will be closed.
Pentagon officials also say plans to trim U.S. troops in South Korea would not give North Korea an advantage. Military officials have said that advances in U.S. military firepower and a stronger South Korean military mean there can be more military power in the south with fewer soldiers.
Support for Bush
In response to Kerry's criticism, the Bush campaign released a list of statements from Republican senators, former military officers and others praising the president's proposal as essential to fighting new threats facing the United States.
"John Kerry's opposition to troop realignment demonstrates a backward-looking view that blindly embraces the status quo and ignores the realities of the post-9/11 world," said retired Gen. P.X. Kelley, who commanded the Marine Corps from 1983-1987.
Kerry received a polite if not overwhelmingly positive reaction from the VFW. Large portions of the crowd applauded with each promise to protect veteran's benefits and with many points he made about Iraq and terrorism. But there was a clear divide, with scores of veterans sittings with their arms folded while others clapped. One man heckled Kerry, calling him a liar, as VFW sergeants at arms admonished him.
"I'll say it myself. He's a liar," said John Ranson of Fort Thomas, Ky., a 57-year-old Vietnam War veteran who sat a few feet away from the heckler. He said Kerry has not supported U.S. troops as senator or as a Vietnam veteran who protested the war.
But there was no shortage of Kerry supporters, including some who voted for Bush in 2000. "He's got a mess overseas," Dale Hall, 49, of Franklin Park, Ill., said of Bush. "I stand behind the troops, of course, but he's not done a good job."
With voters focused on the war on terror, the VFW convention was the perfect backdrop for both candidates to tout their war plans. The convention was set in Ohio, a top battleground state, with a live audience targeted by both campaigns.
Criticizing Kerry
Besides describing his redeployment plan, Bush used his appearance before the veterans to criticize Kerry for saying he plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq during his first six months in office.
Although veterans lean Republican, Kerry also is seeking their support in this election. Kerry touts his own service in the Vietnam War as a mutual connection and is even bucking the tradition of suspending campaigning during the opposing party's national convention to speak to the American Legion.
Kerry plans to speak to the group at their convention in Nashville on Sept. 1, in the middle of the Republican National Convention. Kerry spokeswoman Allison Dobson said it's the only event he has scheduled during the GOP gathering in New York City.
Leading up to his party's convention, Bush rolled out Wednesday on his third bus tour of Wisconsin since May, when he campaigned in the Mississippi River farmlands that eluded him in the 2000 election. He lost the state by fewer than 6,000 votes.
Last month, Bush rode a bus through the heavily Republican western suburbs of Milwaukee and addressed a campaign rally in Green Bay, where the electorate is more evenly split.
Northwestern Wisconsin, the setting for Wednesday's trip, appears to be shifting Republican.
While Democrat Bill Clinton won the area twice, "this is rural, small-city and it doesn't seem to have the demographics of Democratic counties," says Marquette University political science professor John McAdams.
Bush stops first Wednesday in Chippewa Falls, an area he won by 700 votes four years ago. His second stop is in an area that includes Hudson, the fastest-growing city in the state and where voters narrowly endorsed him four years ago.
The presidential race between Bush and Kerry is close in Wisconsin and Minnesota, which Bush also planned to visit Wednesday. He was scheduled to speak at a rally in St. Paul.
Fifth trip of the year The trip will be Bush's fifth of the year to Wisconsin and fourth to Minnesota, matching Kerry's count.
After this latest campaign swing, Bush heads south for a week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Kerry's appearance before the VFW was to be the first time he responded to Bush's redeployment plan, but others speaking on behalf of the campaign have criticized it along the same lines.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark said Bush's plan "will significantly undermine U.S. national security." Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, accused Bush of playing politics with the issue and trying to distract from the strain on the military by prolonged deployments in Iraq.
Kerry's criticism of Bush comes as the Democratic challenger tries to cut the president's advantage on terrorism and national security. Bush is often seen as the stronger leader on those issues in public opinion polls, but Kerry's aides say the president is vulnerable, especially as voters learn more about Kerry's record of service.
The Vietnam-era military records of both candidates remain an issue in the race, with former sailors accusing Kerry of exaggerating his war record and Democrats questioning whether Bush showed up for duty in the Texas Air National Guard.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a decorated Vietnam veteran who campaigns with Bush but has worked closely with Kerry in the Senate, has called for a cease fire.
"I wish we would stop opening wounds from a war of more than 30 years ago and talk about the war we're fighting now," McCain told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I believe they both served honorably."
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Kerry's fellow 'Swiftees' dispute his Purple Hearts
washtimes
August 18, 2004
By John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040818-121346-4803r.htm
A number of the combat commanders, fellow officers and other men who served with Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam have challenged his accounts of combat heroism in a new book, "Unfit for Command" (Regnery Publishing), by John E. O´Neill, who took over command of Swift Boat PCF 94 from Lt. Kerry, and Jerome R. Corsi, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Vietnam War protest movement. Each of these excerpts from "Unfit for Command" includes comparisons of Mr. Kerry´s earlier published accounts to recollections of others who served with him.
First of three excerpts
In the history of Swift Boats in Vietnam, all military personnel served a tour of duty of at least one year unless seriously wounded. Among the few exceptions was John Kerry, who requested to leave Vietnam in 1969 after four months, citing a regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts.
Kerry, now the four-term senator from Massachusetts and the Democratic presidential nominee, is also the only known "Swiftee" who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.
None of Kerry's three Purple Hearts was for serious injuries. They were minor scratches, resulting in no lost duty time.
Each of these decorations is controversial, with considerable evidence (and in two cases, incontrovertible and conclusive evidence) that the injuries were caused by his own hand and not the result of hostile fire.
Kerry's injuries are a subject of ridicule among fellow Swiftees.
"Many took exception to the Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry," Swift Boat veteran William E. Franke, a Silver Star recipient, wrote to the authors in March. "His 'wounds' were suspect, so insignificant as to not be worthy of the award of such a medal."
Franke and about 200 others, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, came forth in May to question Kerry's deception. These veterans from Kerry's unit signed a petition calling on him to execute Standard Form 180 and allow the public complete access to his service record.
Swiftees have remarked that if Kerry faked even one of these awards, he owed the Navy 243 additional days in Vietnam before running for anything.
In a unit where terribly wounded personnel like Shelton White (now an undersea film producer for National Geographic) chose to return to duty after three wounds on the same day, Kerry's actions were disgraceful.
Indeed, many share the feelings of Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported when he was commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam in 1968-69: Kerry simply "bugged out" when the heat was on.
Kerry volunteers
The Navy first brought Swift Boats to Vietnam in 1966 to control the coast. The high-speed, 50-foot aluminum boats - designated PCFs, for Patrol Crafts Fast - were specifically designed to intercept and inspect offshore traffic. They carried mortars.
Swift Boats, or PCFs, had no armor and relied on speed and firepower. Each boat had a six-man crew and operated as part of a small division.
Kerry volunteered for service on the Swifts. Given his extreme opposition to the Vietnam War and his view that it was an immoral enterprise, Kerry's action has always puzzled most Swiftees. But in the early days, Swift Boats saw infrequent combat, which is apparently why they attracted Kerry.
"Although I wanted to see for myself what was going on, I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry wrote in his 1986 contribution to "The Vietnam Experience: A War Remembered."
In late 1968, the Swift Boat mission was redefined to root out the enemy hiding in the difficult terrain of the canals and rivers of the Mekong Delta.
On Nov. 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty to Coastal Squadron One, Coastal Division 14, at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. He had served a year without seeing combat aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that spent five weeks off the coast of Vietnam doing guard duty for planes.
Cam Ranh, a French tourist town with a well-protected, deep-water harbor and beautiful white beaches, was generally regarded as the safest place in Vietnam. Kerry, promoted five months earlier to lieutenant junior grade, spent one month of his four-month Vietnam tour training in Cam Ranh Bay.
Kerry's campaign Web site, johnkerry.com, presents his first Purple Heart incident in typical heroic fashion: "December 2, 1968 - Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury."
Kerry's account
Kerry recalled the incident as "a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat" in Douglas Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" (William Morrow, 2004).
As Kerry described the situation to Brinkley, he grew bored in his first two weeks in Vietnam while awaiting assignment of his own boat.
So Kerry volunteered for a "special mission" on a boat the Navy calls a skimmer, but which he knew as a "Boston whaler." The craft was a foam-filled boat, not a Swift Boat.
Kerry and two enlisted men were patrolling along what Kerry described as "the shore off a Viet Cong?infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh" when the action started around 2 or 3 a.m. Here are Kerry's words, quoted by Brinkley:
"The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared 'starlight scope,' I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband."
Kerry said he turned off the motor and paddled the Boston whaler out of the inlet into the bay. Then he saw the Vietnamese pull their sampans onto the beach; they began to unload something. As recounted in "Tour of Duty," Kerry decided to light a flare:
"The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles I had once seen on TV's 'Wild Kingdom.' We opened fire ...The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time, one of the sailors had started the engine, and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet."
That was the entire action. As Kerry explained to Brinkley, he was not about to go chasing after the Vietnamese:
"We were unprotected; we didn't have ammunition; we didn't have cover; we just weren't prepared for that. ... So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed."
Kerry and his crew loaded their gear in the Swift Boat that was there to cover them and, with the Boston whaler in tow, headed back to Cam Ranh Bay.
"I felt terribly seasoned after this minor skirmish," Kerry recalled in the Brinkley book, "but since I couldn't put my finger on what we had really accomplished or on what had happened, it was difficult to feel satisfied. I never saw where the piece of shrapnel had come from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted me."
Boston Globe's account
A somewhat different version is recounted in "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography" (PublicAffairs Reports, 2004), by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney and Nina J. Easton.
In this account, Kerry emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston whaler in a free-fire curfew zone, and that "anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot."
Questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire, and the Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
"The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry's medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: '3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty.'"
The Globe asked the campaign whether Kerry was certain he received enemy fire and whether Kerry remembers the Purple Heart being questioned by a superior officer. The campaign did not respond to those specific questions and, instead, provided a written statement that the Navy did find the action worthy of a Purple Heart.
Two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry's crew began shooting.
"When John told me to open up, I opened up," Zaldonis recalled to the Globe.
Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy to notice how Kerry was hit.
"I assume they fired back," Zaldonis said. "If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing it - what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for me to tell." Runyon said he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
"I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked," Runyon told the Globe. "I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm."
So even in the Globe accounting, it was not clear there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel.
The Globe reporters noted that upon the group's return to base, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, Kerry's superior officer in Coastal Division 14, was skeptical about the injury. The Globe account quoted William Schachte, a lieutenant in command for the operation who went on to become an admiral. "It was not a very serious wound at all," Schachte said in 2003.
Still, on April 18, when NBC correspondent Tim Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the incident, Kerry described it as "the most frightening night" of his Vietnam experience.
The Globe reporters noted that Kerry declined to be interviewed about the incident.
What happened
At the time of this incident, Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training. He was aboard the skimmer using the call sign "Robin" on the operation; Schachte, using the call sign "Batman," also was on the skimmer.
After Kerry's M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone's eye out.
There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that towed the skimmer, that he was wounded.
There was no report of hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal such hostile fire. No other records reflect hostile fire. There is no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty.
To the surprise of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sick bay miles away. Kerry was examined by Letson, who never has forgotten the experience and related it to his Democratic county chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign.
Letson, observing Kerry's unimpressive scratch, asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"
Kerry answered, "I've been wounded by hostile fire."
Accompanying crewmen told Letson that Kerry had wounded himself. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet), and put a small bandage on Kerry's arm.
The following morning, Kerry appeared at the office of Cmdr. Hibbard and applied for the Purple Heart. Hibbard turned down the award.
Hibbard's account
When the authors interviewed Hibbard on June 17, he was emphatic that Kerry's slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly merit the Purple Heart.
Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
Hibbard: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didn't know him from Adam.
Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first Purple Heart?
Hibbard: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant, using a Boston whaler to try to interdict a Viet Cong movement of arms and munitions.
The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission. Our units had fired on some VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members, I remember Schachte being there.
This was 36 years ago; it really didn't seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying, "I got wounded," and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, "We didn't get any fire. We don't know how he got the scratch."
Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn't been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn't look like much to me; I've seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.
Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
Hibbard: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired himself.
The injury was self-inflicted, that's what made sense to me. I told Kerry to "forget it." There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew. Besides, it was nothing really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn't getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.
Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident, then?
Hibbard: I don't know. It beats me. I know I didn't recommend him for a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended himself, that's all I can figure out. If it ever came across my desk, I don't have any recollection of it. Kerry didn't get my signature. I said "no way" and told him to get out of my office.
The doctor's account
Kerry somehow "gamed the system" nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his continued refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever other documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense and God.
Only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is no "after-action" hostile fire or casualty report. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this "most frightening night" of Kerry's Vietnam experience.
Letson agreed with Hibbard, in a statement the doctor gave us in April, that Kerry's injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
"The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay, where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
"Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area," Letson continued. "According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
"The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
"What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle," Letson continued.
"I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than three or four millimeters. It did not require probing to find it, nor did it require any anesthesia to remove it. It did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a Band-Aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any injury to the boat.
"I remember that Jess Carreon [Letson's corpsman, now dead] was present at the time, and he, in fact, made the entry into Lieutenant Kerry's medical record."
Letson also said: "Lieutenant Kerry's crew related that he had told them that he would be president one day. He liked to think of himself as the next JFK from Massachusetts."
Most fellow Swiftees who were with Kerry at Cam Ranh Bay never knew until Kerry decided to run for president that he had somehow successfully maneuvered his way to this undeserved Purple Heart. But in Coastal Division 14, Kerry's attempt to gain the award through fraud marked him as someone who could never be trusted.
When Kerry was dispatched to go to An Thoi with Lt. Tedd Peck (who would retire as a Navy captain), Peck told him: "Kerry, follow me no closer than a thousand yards. If you get any closer, I'll teach you what a real Purple Heart is."
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VFW recalls Kerry's anti-war past
August 18, 2004
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040817-112443-7056r.htm
The Veteran of Foreign Wars made it clear yesterday that it is none too pleased with Sen. John Kerry's 1970s role in the defunct Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which, at the time, called the VFW a "a paramilitary, pro-war organization" out of touch with young veterans.
Mr. Kerry was VVAW's chief spokesman during the early 1970s and is slated to make a campaign pitch today in Cincinnati to the annual convention of the VFW.
But in 1971, Mr. Kerry's anti-war group denounced the VFW as a war-mongering lobby responsible for getting the United States into the Vietnam War and harbored hopes of perhaps replacing the VFW as a veterans' group.
"All our national officers are Vietnam veterans. I am too, and where ... is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War now?" said VFW spokesman Jerry Newberry.
Noting that VFW members filled the 6,000-seat convention hall in Cincinnati to capacity, Mr. Newberry said, "When I asked all those who had served in Vietnam to stand up, almost all of them did. That speaks for itself."
Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said yesterday that his boss "has always stood up for what he believes. He has a record of fighting for veterans benefits, finding out the truth about POWs and MIAs in Vietnam and getting funding for victims of Agent Orange. He'll stand up for veterans in the White House just like he has in the U.S. Senate."
Mr. Kerry, whose presidential campaign has emphasized his service as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, joined VVAW in 1970, after returning from Vietnam and denounced the VFW in a 1971 book.
"We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States.' ... We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars," he wrote then.
A 1971 VVAW fund-raising letter, titled "Men of Peace" and signed "yours in peace," accused the VFW and the American Legion of promoting an agenda of "world domination."
A copy of the letter, obtained by The Washington Times, is part of an extensive collection of VVAW's papers in the collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison. Records do not indicate whether the letter was sent.
The American Legion and the VFW "were partly responsible for the military attitudes in this country though their unlimited lobbying power - somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million," the VVAW letter said. "That kind of influence must be confronted and dealt with."
VVAW "could support counteractions that will allow men to exist without the threat of nuclear annihilation or constant military ones," said the fund-raising letter.
The letter suggests that Mr. Kerry's group might replace both the VFW and the American Legion, which it said "have not been able, at the national level in the past five years, to recruit successfully among the younger veterans. These younger veterans are obviously not content with a paramilitary, pro-war organization representing them. We are their answer."
The VVAW letter suggests to potential donors that the dissident group could in time diversify and offer benefits similar what the VFW and the American Legion were offering, "but with a view toward total world peace rather than world domination."
In response to that claim, Mr. Newberry, the VFW spokesman, said yesterday: "We have 1.8 million members, this is our 105th annual convention and, again, where ... are the Vietnam Veterans Against the War? And quote me on that."
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Energy Department Doles Out Oil and Gas Research Funding
August 18, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-18-09.asp#anchor8
The U.S. Energy Department has awarded some $10 million for nine projects designed to boost the development of domestic oil and gas resources.
According to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the new projects will address issues to further boost President Bush's emphasis on energy security.
"The less dependent we are on foreign energy sources, the more secure we are at home," Abraham said. "We must increase domestic supplies of oil and gas while simultaneously protecting the environment. This new undertaking will meet both needs."
The agency says the awards address issues that currently restrict domestic oil and gas production, support development of new technologies and explore more efficient and environmentally responsible oil and gas production.
The nine projects concentrate on two primary areas - access to resources on federal lands and produced water management.
Two projects - totaling $2.94 million - target energy production on federal lands and center on data exchange and analysis between federal, state and local government agencies.
The last seven projects target "produced water," the largest waste stream associated with oil and gas production.
This includes a $2.68 million project to address produced water management from production through treatment and beneficial use, as well as to study the hydrogeology and soil science of the Power River Basin.
Production of water and natural gas from coal beds, coalbed methane, has increased dramatically over the past 10 years and the gas currently accounts for about six percent of the total produced in the United States. The Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana has emerged as one of the most active new areas of coalbed methane production since 1997.
Estimates from state and federal officials and industry representatives of the total number of coalbed methane wells expected in the basin over the next 20 to 30 years vary from 15,000 to 70,000 wells.
Water is also brought to the surface during production of coalbed methane. The water in coal beds contributes to pressure in the coal beds that keeps methane gas adsorbed to the coal. During production, this water is pumped to the ground surface to lower the pressure in the reservoir and stimulate release of methane from the coal.
An example of the work being done is the use of carbon dioxide injection to minimize the amount of water produced with coal bed methane natural gas. The Bush administration has overseen a massive expansion of coalbed methane production in the Powder River Basin, but its plans have been beset with legal challenges and environmental concerns.
The awards also include $877,000 for a project to identify, verify, and compile best management practices for produced water from conventional oil and gas operations, as well as $1.14 million for an effort to develop a new reverse osmosis technology to efficiently treat the high total dissolved salts in produced water.
-------- ACTIVISTS
VOTE for Wildlife! New on the Web
Wed, 18 Aug 2004
From: Wildlife Online <NationalWildlifeFederation@nwf.m0.net>
One of the best things you can do for wildlife and wild places is to exercise your right as a citizen to vote. Welcome to NWF's election website where you can find information about candidates, polling places and how to register to vote.
http://capwiz.com/nwf/home/
----
Exclusive: Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Risks Jail To Speak to Democracy Now! In First Nat'l U.S. Interview
August 18, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/static/vanunu.shtml
Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear installation from 1976 to 1985. He worked there at a time when Israel was insisting it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. What Vanunu discovered is that Israel had secretly developed an extensive nuclear program, hiding its existence from the Israeli people and parliament, and the world.
Vanunu leaked information and photos of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in London. He was subsequently kidnapped by Israeli spy agency Mossad in Italy and then jailed. He would go on to spend 18 years behind bars including 11 in solitary confinement.
He was released on April 21 under strict government restrictions.
Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman reached Vanunu on his cell phone in East Jerusalem where he has been staying since his release in April. He defied the Israeli government's restriction on speaking with foreigners to talk with us.
The nationally syndicated radio and TV program Democracy Now! aired the interview on its August 18th broadcast. The show is archived online at http://www.democracynow.org. Below is a transcript of the interview.
AMY GOODMAN: Hello? Is this Mordechai Vanunu?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. This is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! And I would like to be able to talk to you. We are a public radio and television program in the United States.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Good evening.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to be with you.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: How does it feel to be free? How does it feel to be out of prison?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well it is wonderful to be free. But I am not allowed to speak to foreigners and I am not allowed to leave the country. So I'm not so happy. But on the other side I am very glad that I can at least enjoy some freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli government has called you a traitor. What is your response to that?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, I answer this. When I get out of the prison, I am saying many, many times that I am very glad, happy and proud to reveal its nuclear secrets to all the world and to let all the world to see the stupidity of Israel's nuclear weapons policy and the danger of a nuclear weapons policy in secret by Israel. And I was not a traitor. The real traitors are Israel's government who was behind this nuclear weapons policy for 40 years, and continues. They are betraying the Israeli citizens, and betraying the Arab community, and betraying all of humanity and the world, the human beings of all the world. They are the real traitors.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the secrets that you reveal that you think were most significant?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Excuse me, but I could not understand, hear you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Mordechai Vanunu, the secrets you feel were most significant for the world to know? You were imprisoned 18 years ago. Can you say what you were trying to reveal to the world?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, it was very open and very clear: the secrets that were published by the Sunday Times in 1986. The main points were: one, the amount of Israel's nuclear weapons, how many Israel had, that no one could predict or know, including the CIA. They were thinking about a number like 10 or 15. But I came out with a number between 150 to 200. Second point is no one here could predict or know that Israel was involved or started producing the hydrogen bomb -- the most advanced and powerful atomic bomb that can kill millions of people. And that has no justification -- no need for Israel's existence. They don't need hydrogen bomb. That was my revelation that was proved, with photos, to all of the world. That was the very important news that I brought to the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did you know this?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I knew that because I worked in the place, in the building where my job was producing the materials for nuclear weapons. My job was to produce plutonium that was used for atomic bomb. I knew how much they produced every day, every year. So I could make out the amount and see exactly how many bombs can they do. I also was producing, working on other materials for the hydrogen bomb. They call it lithium-6 and tritium. I was working on these and the only use for lithium-6 is the hydrogen bomb. And I also take photos of hydrogen bomb, from another part of the building. It was not part of my job, but I succeeded to go and take photos of the hydrogen bomb. My revelation was Israel [had] started producing a neutron bomb. I succeed to take photograph of the model of the neutron bomb. This means Israel was ready to use nuclear weapons in the next war, in 1986 if it had war with Iraq, or Iran or Syria. It could use them against armies. That means the beginning by Israel using atomic bomb.... That was the most dangerous point in the Middle East: Israel, they could have used nuclear weapons like no other state there...
AMY GOODMAN: So, Mordechai Vanunu, you say that they had 150 to 200 atomic bombs, that they had developed them. That they were building a hydrogen bomb, and a neutron bomb?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And have they done that at this point? It's 18 years later.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I don't know what they did in 18 years. We can just assume they have much more and powerful, more advanced technology, all the new computers, everything could be much more easier and help them to build much more and many more nuclear weapons. I just assume. I don't have any new information, what happened in 18 years.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what you did at that point? You took photographs, you wanted to get the information out. How did you end up doing that? And how did you end up being captured?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I worked in Dimona in 1980's, I decided I was going to bring this information to the world. Because they were lying, cheating and no one predicted or knew what exactly was happening. So, all the information was in my brain. In my mind. I worked every day there, so I knew all the details. But I needed only some proof. So the proof was photos. I smuggled the camera, it was no problem to smuggle the camera there. And I took 60 photos, two films, during the time when there was no one in the control room, in the building. Night shift or Saturday shift there are less people. After that I didn't develop the films. I keep them closed because I knew that if I develop them, someone can report me to the Shin Bet. So I decided the only place I can speak to the world is from outside Israel. So decided immediately to leave Israel as soon as possible. And with the two films went on my way towards the United States. But I decided then to take them to the far east because I knew with speaking these secrets there would be danger to my life and could end my freedom. So that was then. And I also did not have much experience with the media. But on the way, I met someone who brought me to the Sunday Times. And the Sunday Times made the story. And I gave them the films, the photos. And that's how we had the Sunday Times article.
AMY GOODMAN: And how, Mordechai Vanunu, were you ultimately captured?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: When they heard, when they receive the information about what I am doing in London. Even before London they come, two agents of the Mossad come to Sydney, Australia, when I first meet Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist, they started to follow me. They continued to follow me in London and tried to stop the article by all they could do. So, what they decide to do is to kidnap me. The way is to send someone to bring me to Rome, because they did not want to kidnap me in England. They sent an agent, a woman and American citizen working for some US secret organization. They used her. They convinced her to bring me to Rome. I decided that I should leave London because I knew that they followed me in London. I said I should run away from London. So after the Sunday Times published the article I decided to go with her to Rome. When we arrived to Rome, they were waiting for me in her home, and immediately they jump on me and drug me and took me by car from that home to an abandoned ditch -- where there was a yacht waiting in the sea. From the sea came a boat with some Israeli commando soldiers who took me by the commando boat to the yacht and put me on the yacht. In the yacht I asked people, who are you. And they said we are Israelis, French and British. I saw French men who speak only French, I saw Israeli men who speak English, I never saw any British. But they say there are British. There are much more involved. Many more countries involved in the kidnapping. Like, the Italian driver who drove us from the airport, the American woman, Cindy. She is not Jewish. She is not an Israeli woman. She is an American woman from Philadelphia. All these, this cartel of spies who kidnapped me was the same group also involved in the nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. They tried to [inaudible] the man who tried to reveal their nuclear proliferation to Israel and to try and stop this nuclear proliferation. So they kidnapped me and sent me back to Israel. Israel silenced me for 18 years.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know Cindy's full name?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. She just used the name Cindy. But if there is any real investigation, they can go to the British airport and find the files they filled in 1986 in October. The airplane is British Airways Flight 405 to Rome. There are files that can reveal her own identity. I have the airplane ticket from London to Rome with her signature. But Israel's Shin Bet, the Mossad do not want to give it to me. They are holding it [inaudible] at the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: So you weren't suspicious of her from the beginning? Are you saying that she lured you with a physical relationship?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I wasn't suspecting her, because I thought what they can do in Rome they can do anywhere. They should not bring me to Rome. But her task was to lure me to Rome. And I went with her to Rome.
AMY GOODMAN: So, when they captured you, you contend that they drugged you, they brought you to Israel. Talk about the famous photograph of you in the back of an Israeli vehicle with your hand up. You'd written a number on it.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I arrived to Israel, they told me you are not allowed to speak about the kidnapping, just secret. I was very angry. I don't accept such rule. I said the kidnapping is a crime. I have the right to speak about the crime done against me. They didn't like me to speak about this crime. So I decided to reveal it to the public. I also was worried that they are spreading lies. They tried to say that I wasn't kidnapped. I'd come back. It means if I'd come back to Israel, it means I was a spy, a Mossad spy who had revealed some secret and come back. So the kidnapping is the proof that what I said was true... So I decided to let the world know this truth. So when I had the opportunity to come to talk to public after 7 weeks in the ShinBet jail, I wrote on my palm hand, Vanunu Mordechai kidnapped in Rome. So I used the word hijacked, not kidnapping, because I didn't know English very well at the time. And then we now added to the press, I put my palm on the ground, and they saw the message. And that message destroyed another conspiracy to cheat the CIA and many [others] who didn't know the truth about how I ended up in Israel. And those spies who kidnapped me tried to save their face or their game, their spy game, by cheating the world telling them the men who kidnapped you would return. So I destroyed another cheating by the palm hand destroyed by a very big game.
AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Mordechai Vanunu, who is speaking out for the first time on a national broadcast in the United States on Democracy Now!, the largest public media collaboration in the country. You were imprisoned for 18 years. Can you talk about your treatment in jail.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, the Shabak Mossad, ShinBet Mossad were very very angry upset with my revelations. After making a mockery [of them] to all the world... They were very angry and they tried to destroy this man who made them zero in all the world. The spy organization who was respected in all the world find themselves naked. So they decided to get him to give themselves the chance to change this man to destroy him to make him ... to prove that they are still strong, this spy organization. So from the beginning they put me in total isolation for seven weeks after my kidnapping they even didn't admit I am in an Israeli prison. No one knows where I am. Only by my standing against the judge and all the Israelis who wanted to keep me in administrative arrest. I demanded I should be in trial-no administrative arrest-- so that forced them to admit I am in an Israeli prison.
Next they decided to put me in total isolation. The first two years, they keep me in a small room, filled with light 24 hours and camera inside. I couldn't sleep for two years, they tried to break my nerves. They used a lot of psychology to brainwash. I demanded to meet a priest. They give me a priest, but without able to speak to him or him speak to me, only through notes. A ShinBet man sitting near the priest, reading the notes. I'm sending him notes, they're reading them. We couldn't meet as a human being. A woman came to Israel from U.S. I had a girlfriend. She came to see me. And again they did not let us meet, they said only by notes, you cannot speak to her, touch her nothing, so I refused to this condition.
During the 11 and half years I was in total isolation alone in a cell, only for two hours everyday to go to walk in a courtyard also alone. The cell was also isolated from all the prison. I was allowed to meet my family every two weeks for a half hour. I wasn't allowed to use the phone. My mail was delayed for three months and censored. Some of it disappeared, some destroyed. The Ashkelon prison was controlled by Shabak Mossad, because they have a section inside the prison. Could you believe Shabak Mossad are sitting inside the prison hiding themselves from the people. They used the guards to control the prison so the real people who control the prison is the Shavak Mossad
AMY GOODMAN: Where is the Ashkelon Prison?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Ashkelon prison is... about 40 miles from Tel Aviv or 20 miles from Dalia .
AMY GOODMAN: How did you maintain your sanity? You were completely isolated for how many years in solitary confinement?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: 11 years in total isolation. I decided from the first weeks that it's going to be a big war between me and the Shabak-Mossad who are now my enemy, and they will do all they can to destroy me, and I shall do all I can to survive. So I use my simple brain, and my initiative. Like if they say I cannot speak to anyone, I decided I can speak, I spoke by reading in a loud voice from the New Testament in English... I used to do a lot of psychology exercises or physical exercise, I did Yoga. I hear the BBC World Service, I hear the Voice of America. I read books, and I used to follow anything that happened to me there, anything that come by food, by letter, anything I knew. The Shabak Mossad psychologic spy are fighting me and I should follow them. That was my way, and I also use the music after five years, I started hearing opera, opera, it was very good instrument to keep the spirit very strong because you feel like you are yourself singing opera, and I used to hear a lot of opera, they send me tapes. I used to hear the opera Fidelio. That was similar to my story. I used a lot of psychology for my initiative.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Mordechai Vanunu. He is now out of jail after 18 years. Are you allowed to speak on the telephone?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I'm allowed to use the phone, but I'm not allowed to speak to foreigners. Now when I am speaking is contrary to the restriction. But I think because I have given interview to the BBC and the day passed, nothing happened and I think - what I'm talking is about my humanity, my human rights and I think it's the government, or either a spy, who looks very stupid to fight someone who is speaking about his freedom of speech, freedom of movement, his human being, human rights. So I don't think they will be stupid [enough] to arrest me or to question. But if they can do anything - it is Israel. Israel, all of the world knows, they're [able] to do anything.
AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu can you talk about the restrictions on you right now since you have left prison. First of all where are you?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Since I left the prison April 21st, I took straight car from the prison to Saint George Cathedral in East Jerusalem, so I'm staying now in the Saint George Cathedral guest house. The Bishop accepted me and is expecting me to stay here, and since that day until now I'm sitting here, and the restriction is not to speak to foreigners for 6 months, that is a very stupid restriction. I can speak to any Israeli citizen about anything, but not to foreigners. And I rejected this restriction by speaking English to everyone. The other restriction is if I want to move from Jerusalem to another city, I should [notify] the police. Anywhere I want to move, I should [notify] the police. If I want to sleep in other home, I should [notify] the police. I am not allowed to go to any embassy, because they are afraid I will go ask for asylum. Another important, very danger- or important restriction is not to leave the country for one year, I'm not allowed to leave Israel for one year, they are not giving me a passport. So, those are the restrictions. We appealed to the Supreme Court. The leader of the Supreme Court followed the Shabak Mossad demand in fact they just give them another stamp. The Supreme Court again proved to be injustice, and not respecting the basics of democracy, the basics of human rights - to have the right of movement and the right of movement and the right of freedom of speech.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to leave Israel?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Absolutely. I want to leave Israel after suffering seventeen and a half years in total isolation and very cruel , barbaric treatment by the Mossad Shabac inside the prison. Also because Israeli media damaged my image in all of Israel amongst the Jewish people, and some of them hate me, some of them threatened my life when I was released. Some of them are anti-Vanunu because I became a Christian, so I am not free and I am not safe in Israel. And I am demanding to leave Israel to be free... It could only happen in a free state, the United States or Europe.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to move to the United States?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes. I would like to move to the United States. I have adopted parents in Minnesota. I have many, many friends in the United States, who used to write to me and send me letters and cards for many years during eighteen years. I read a lot of your history of United States and am very appreciative of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: What date were you released from prison, Mordechai Vanunu?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: April 21.
AMY GOODMAN: So it's April 21, and now we're coming on the end of August. May, June, July, August. Four months later, why have you decided to speak out at this point? Which could well risk your having access to a telephone or - well, it's not clear what will happen now that you are violating the restrictions that have been placed upon you.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I came out of prison, I was ready to speak. But what happened is we met a very large riot of rightwing people, religious Jewish people who threatened my life. Then my brother was staying with me, and others say "Don't speak. Stay in the center. Don't get out. Don't have any access to the media." But I am now, since my two months of work start speaking after the BBC interview, I am ready to speak. Why does the media didn't come to me? I was ready to speak. Then I start giving my phone number and meeting people... So I am ready to speak because I used all my fight and want in seventeen and a half years in prison was the demand for freedom of speech. I believe the human being have the right to freedom of speech. I don't have any secrets. All what I'm speaking about is my view. My political view as a human has a right to express his view in any subject. That is my risk speaking again and again, as I am not speaking about secrets, because all the secrets have been published by the Sunday Times. And all what I have to say is my political view. And I have the right to speak them if Israel is a real democracy. And I hope you in the United States will support me, and support my right to freedom of speech. It does not damage Israel. I have a right to say my view, and anyone want to hear me, it's OK. If any one doesn't want to hear, they have the right to not to hear.
AMY GOODMAN: The foreign affairs and defense committee chair Yuval Steinitz of Likud party, said that you should be returned to prison or placed in administrative detention or house arrest to prevent you from revealing more of Israel's nuclear secrets. He said that you broke the law by giving an interview to the Arabic newspaper al Hayat and should be prosecuted for it. He said that it's unfortunate that the defense establishment doesn't take the committee's recommendation to place you under house arrest as was done with Marcus Klingberg who was convicted of espionage. And then you have the member of Knesset, Ophir Pines-Paz of Labor, who said you are playing with fire and continuing to hurt Israel's security, saying I don't know why this phenomenon is being treated with equanimity. He said this is a professional provocateur who's making a joke of the legal system. Your response.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: My view, there is people who make jokes is they - those who put the stupid restriction not to speak to foreigners, that I am allowed to speak to Israel, but then not allowed to speak to foreigners. If they had said I have secrets, then they should say you are not allowed to speak to anyone, not only to the foreigners. If there is danger, they should say from the beginning, "Don't speak to anyone." So they make joke from themselves, not me. Second point, Marcus Klingberg, the spy, was released from freedom before ending his sentence, so he was under restriction because he was freed five years before the end of his sentence, so they gave him this privilege to get out and to live in freedom. If they had want me, they should have done the same with me, take me out of prison five years ago. But in my case I am after seventeen and a half years in prison, served all my sentence, and I should be free and should be allowed to leave the country. And the main point is I have the right to speak my views. I'm speaking my political view, my analysis. I have not revealed any new secrets. I do not have any secrets. All that I'm saying it was repeating what have been published at least eighteen years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: You said that Israel had 100 to 200 atomic bombs and was developing a neutron and hydrogen bomb but at that point didn't have it.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: The hydrogen bomb was started to be built in 1986 or 1985. I took the photo of part of the real hydrogen bomb which was published by the Sunday Times.
AMY GOODMAN: [And Israel] had already made 100 to 200 atomic bombs?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes. They used to produce about 40 kilograms of plutonium each year which is enough for 10 atomic bombs.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your job at the Dimona plant?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: At the Dimona plant my job was producing plutonium, producing lithium-6, tritium and I also worked part-time in the nuclear waste area where they are dealing with nuclear waste. But my main job was to produce this material: plutonium, lithium, tritium.
AMY GOODMAN: And how long did you work there?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Nine years.
AMY GOODMAN: When you spoke with your co-workers, did other people share your feelings?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. No one. Maybe some of them were concerned that Israel was producing nuclear weapons. But no one there doubted what was the policy. Maybe some of them in their hearts they were worried what was going on. But no one would dare to go and speak. That is the difference.
AMY GOODMAN: And who did you see at that plant? Did you see people from other countries coming through -- visitors or even working there? Or government officials, perhaps from the United States?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. I have no information about foreigners working there... When I worked there they brought the prime minister Shimon Peres in September 1985. In 1984 I saw... the Defense Minister. Every new prime minister and new defense minister came, the head of Mossad, the head of Shabak came to visit to see Israel's nuclear power, not foreigners. Maybe there were but I didn't know about it.
AMY GOODMAN: And how do you think Israel being a nuclear power effects the Middle East?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: My view: the nuclear weapons Israel built make it very aggressive and powerful. In 1962 Israel was ready to deal to make real peace with the Arab world after the independence war in 1948... But then I believe some people had the idea to get Israel nuclear weapons, to build the French reactor in Dimona. That power made Israel free not to make real peace with the Arabs; made Israel free not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem. ... they [took] the West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai and keep them until now. Now Israel is much more aggressive, not to give anything to the Palestinians or to make real peace with Syria or Lebanon or Jordan or the Palestinians. So the nuclear weapon is used as a political power. Without even using nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons help Israel do what it wants without respecting international law or respecting the Middle East states... But my view is that my revelation in 1986 it prevented Israel from using nuclear weapons. Otherwise it is my view that they were ready to use nuclear weapons in their next war, it could have happened in the Cold War. My revelation let the world see what they had and made it impossible for Israel to use nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: Has Israel ever admitted that it had nuclear weapons?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: You and others can find out. I am like you, reading the newspaper, hearing the media. You and others can see what they said. Everyone in fact thinks they have, but they are playing games. My view is that they are cheating themselves. Israel continues to cheat themselves and with the United States play this cheating game -- to play like no one is watching them. The king is naked but no one wants to see the king is naked. That is the truth. And Israel is succeeding to impose on the United States and all the world to play this game.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they ever tell you at the Dimona plant not to speak about what you saw inside? AV: I signed a secret document not to speak about anything. More than that no one at Dimona were telling you that you are producing nuclear weapons. No one mentioned the word 'atomic bomb.' Some of them there don't know what they are doing --they are producing materials without knowing exactly what those materials are used for. Everything you are watching there you are not allowed to speak about.
AMY GOODMAN: if they do end up putting you back in detention, if they jailed you again, how do you feel about that?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I would feel very bad but I will continue to demand to be a human being, to believe and to behave as a human being; to have the right to speak; the right to have freedom of speech. And I will continue to demand my total freedom to leave Israel. I hope they will not do not do such a mistake and someone -- possibly from abroad, from the United States or Europe -- will tell them that they should respect the human rights of this man. And to end this game of tricking the world by claiming there is no atomic bombs when all the world knowing exactly what they do and exactly what they saw when I gave photos to all of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu, do you have any regrets about what you have done?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, what do you expect, if I am strong enough to survive all that they have done to me, it means that I have never regret. And much more, I all the time always was convinced and convinced that I did the right thing. That I was following my conscience and the right of the people in all the world to know such teaching and the most danger atomic bomb subject. And also when I saw the cold war ended and Russia collapse and South Africa become free and the nuclear race ended and the United States and Russia started destroying nuclear weapons from 100,000 nuclear weapons to twenty nuclear weapons, all this only was encouraging me that I did the right thing. And also I think what Israel spy Shabak did to me in prison fighting me that make it very clear that I did the right thing. I'm very happy and glad that I revealed the true face of Israel and let all the world and the Israeli people see the true face of Israel who used to remind the world "holocaust, holocaust" every hour, every day, but in fact Israel have a holocaust factory. This Jewish state was producing holocaust weapons and they have no right to speak about holocaust so I was very happy to reveal this truth.
AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu now your life every day, are you confined to the house you are in? How do you spend your days?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: Now I'm staying in St. George Cathedral guest house in East Jerusalem, I decided not to visit the West Jerusalem, not to visit any Israel state because if I'm not allowed to leave Israel, I'm not allowed to speak to foreigners, so I too will not go see Israel. So I'm staying in East Jerusalem, walking around, going to restaurants outside, going to the old city, meeting a lot of Palestinians. Many Palestinians are happy to see me, and very - appreciate what I did, they saw me as a hero. I'm staying in St. George, doing emails, trying to learn computer, trying to read newspaper, watching TV and this summer also enjoy to go to swim - it's very good psychological treatment to swim everyday. And very happy and glad to meet human beings, I like to meet human beings, to speak and to eat with them and to be among the people. And point - the issue I want to remind you why the Shabak-Mossad will not do anything because if I am staying here in East Jerusalem among the Palestinians, those Palestinians who are recognized by Israel as the enemy, so if I have any secrets I could have passed to this enemy. So if I am staying among Palestinians for three months, four months, the Shabak-Mossad give up, they cannot expect from me anything - so what they can do? So I am staying here in East Jerusalem among Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu, you said that after six months they would lift the restriction on you speaking on the cell phone to foreigners and after a year you could travel. So you're only two months away from that restriction being lifted and yet you are risking a lot now by speaking on the cell phone to a foreigner. Why take that risk now?
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I don't know if they will lift the restriction after another two months, they have the right to extend them or to end them, I don't know what they will do on October 21st. Especially after the supreme court rejected my appeal now they can do anything they want, no one can say anything, they can extend them. The Supreme Court give them a blank check to do what they want so I don't know. Again, I am not risking anything because what I am telling you, I told to many Israeli people here from the left who come to see me. I said the same to the BBC that was broadcast in Israel TV. So all what I am telling you is repeating what I already said and what I already published 18 years ago. So that was the way to see it and I will not see it as risking anything. I'm only trying to bring my case to the United States to raise the awareness to my case in the United States because I have no chance here in Israel that someone will help me to get out or to receive my rights. I would like that someone in the United States to do for me - to demand my human rights. Imagine if a man like me was in another state. Imagine, or remember what the United States - when Sharansky was in Moscow. What you do, what the Congress in Washington - Senate did - to Russia for nine years when Sharansky was in prison. But when it comes to a man like me in Israel, all the Congress, Senate in Washington is ignoring me and not doing [anything] for my release, or [fighting] for my human rights. So I hope you and others can bring my case and raise the awareness to these situations and demand my human rights.
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Nuke protest seeks boaters
18/8/2004
by Nick Mann,
Guernsey (UK) Press and Star
http://www.thisisguernsey.com/code/showarchive.pl?ArticleID=011793&year=2004&category=news
GREENPEACE wants local yachtsmen to join a peaceful protest against a nuclear shipment passing the island.
The US and French governments are planning to transport up to 150kg of weapons-grade plutonium from New Mexico to Cherbourg.
It will pass within 20 miles of Guernsey and eight miles of Alderney.
'If we get a few local boats going, that would be great,' said local Greenpeace activist Jon Castle, who is currently living in England.
'When the ships come, it's going to be a very peaceful protest, just yachts, so the public can witness the moral outrage. There won't be any attempts to stop them because it's not appropriate in this case.'
He added that the island was tied into the nuclear system through its cable link with France and so was morally responsible.
'We're just a small island and voice, but it's important for witnessing and to make a moral commitment to make our voice known.'
It was important not to be complacent and take the matter lying down, he added. 'We deserve a voice in it and the more we do it together, the better.'
The shipment is being undertaken as part of the US and Russian programme to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
It is being shipped to France by the Department of Energy because there is no US facility capable of manufacturing it into experimental plutonium fuel, mixed oxide fuel.
'We're against the Mox fuel because you generate more waste and you have to transport it all across the water. Once you've got this stuff, you should keep it there for 20,000 years.'
Two Greenpeace yachts, the Akela and Rori, are currently in St Peter Port Harbour to help raise the profile of the campaign.
They will be travelling on Saturday to Cherbourg, where 20 others are already set to protest, in an attempt to generate more interest through means such as street theatre.
Mr Castle, who will take his 31ft yacht, the Eowyn May, on the protest, said the island should get involved because it is part of the global community.
'And also because it's passing through our waters and no one bothers to ask us what we think.
'The Yanks have decided to do a trade in plutonium and it's passing within a few miles of the coast of Guernsey.'
The plutonium will be transported 1,500 miles across the US to the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina.
From there it will undertake the 4,100-mile trip to Cherbourg in the two ships, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal.
Trucks will take the plutonium 700 miles to Marseilles, where it will be processed and taken back to Cherbourg and the same ships used to take it back to America. 'Occasionally it's just the actions of a few people that make a spark and it can take off, so it's good to give it a go,' said Mr Castle.
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N.Y. Mayor to War Protesters: Shop Till You Drop, Too
Washington Post
By Michael Powell
August 18, 2004
NEW YORK, Aug. 17 -- Why worry about antiwar views, anarcho-syndicalist politics and "Dump Bush Now!" placards when something serious is at stake -- like money?
The billionaire media mogul who happens to be New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided that if antiwar protesters are to descend on his city by the hundreds of thousands for the Republican Convention, he may as well turn them into shoppers. So with just a hint of the sardonic, Hizzoner announced Tuesday a "Peaceful Political Activists" visitor program modeled after the one offered to Republican delegates.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, addressing the media in this 2001 photo, is offering protesters the chance to sample the city at a discount. (Beth A. Keiser -- AP)
Affix a "Peaceful Activist" button and a protester can claim a free glass of Montepulciano wine with dinner at La Prima Donna, rent a room at the boutique Dylan Hotel ($150 a night) and get dibs on discounted theater tickets. Perhaps "42nd Street" for the Quakers from Kansas and "Naked Boys Singing" for the South Beach set?
Cowboy-booted Republicans and nose-ringed demonstrators: Everyone's welcome. If this sounds like marketing to Royalists and the Jacobins who would like to behead them, that's pretty much the idea.
"New York is the place to get your message out, any message," Bloomberg says. "It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach. So you might want to try a restaurant." Hizzoner offers another example: "Or you might want to go shopping, maybe for another pair of sneakers for the march."
The program to welcome radicals comes backed by the full marketing power of the city's tourist wing, NYC & Co. Link to a Peaceful Political Activists home page through www.nycvisit.com, (we're not kidding), and find pages of events and every legally permitted demonstration. Stuck with time to kill between the Planned Parenthood demonstration and the Ukuleles for Sanity Concert? Take the "Bohemians and Beats of Greenwich Village" tour, walk by Stonewall Place (where the Gay Liberation Movement took militant wing), and end up with another tour: "Radical and Immigrant Heritage of the Lower East Side. Walk the streets where . . . socialists, anarchists and free-thinkers gathered."
Some of the lists prepared by the tourism agency are tailored to political tastes, but a certain ecumenicalism is assumed. The Museum of Sex offers the same $5 discount to Republicans and protesters.
Few protesters seemed amused. They note that their people are more likely to sleep on church floors, in hostels or on friends' couches than seek a $189 junior suite at the Avalon Hotel. Terrible cynics all, they assume Bloomberg wants to divert attention from his politically unpopular battle with United for Peace and Justice, the largest of the antiwar groups. Organizers want to end their Aug. 29 antiwar march -- which is expected to draw a quarter-million or so people -- in Central Park. But Bloomberg rejoins that so many feet would chew up the grass.
He has offered the organizers, take it or leave it, a spot along the West Side Highway. They've refused and called him "Mayor Meanie." Polls show about 80 percent of New Yorkers agree with the demonstrators.
Word about the discount plan no sooner leaks out on Tuesday than Beka Economopoulos of Code Pink: Women for Peace ("Not an organization but a phenomenon") dresses like a pink-swathed Statue of Liberty and stands outside the midtown headquarters of NYC & Co. "If the mayor wants to welcome us, then he should do more than get us tickets to a play," she shouts. "Give us a permit to rally, not a discounted dinner we can't afford."
Upstairs, Bloomberg stands flanked by two former mayors, David Dinkins and Ed Koch. Koch, a famous gourmand who is happiest when in conversation with almost anyone, plans to walk the floor of the Republican Convention handing out palm cards listing his 20 favorite restaurants. But he has a certain affection for protesters, too -- he argued for so long with so many when he was mayor.
"I remember the good old days when I'd come into City Hall around 7:30 in the morning and there would be two groups of protesters setting up their picket lines, and another group that had slept overnight in the park," Koch says. "I would walk over and say: 'Good morning, protesters!' "
"And they'd respond: 'Hello, Mayor!' "
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Inquiry Into F.B.I. Questioning Is Sought
August 18, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/politics/18protests.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - Several Democratic lawmakers called on Tuesday for a Justice Department investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's questioning of would-be demonstrators about possible violence at the political conventions, saying the questioning may have violated the First Amendment.
In a letter to the department's inspector general seeking an investigation, the three lawmakers said the F.B.I. inquiries appeared to represent "systematic political harassment and intimidation of legitimate antiwar protesters."
Signing the letter, which was prompted by an article on Monday in The New York Times, were Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and two other Democrats on the panel, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert C. Scott of Virginia.
Officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they had not seen the letter and could not comment on its specific points. They defended the recent efforts by the bureau to question potential demonstrators around the country, saying the inquiries have been aimed solely at detecting and preventing violence at the Republican convention in New York and other major political events.
"The F.B.I. is not monitoring groups or interviewing individuals unless we receive intelligence that such individuals or groups may be planning violent and disruptive criminal activity or have knowledge of such activity," Cassandra M. Chandler, an assistant director of the bureau, said in a statement released late Monday.
After having received reports of possible violence, Ms. Chandler said, "the F.B.I. conducted interviews, within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, in order to determine the validity of the threat information.''
"Violent acts,'' she added, "are not protected by the U.S. Constitution, and the F.B.I. has a duty to prevent such acts and to identify and bring to justice those who commit them."
In recent weeks, beginning last month before the Democratic National Convention in Boston, F.B.I. agents have contacted a number of people who have been active in political demonstrations in at least six states: Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri and New York. Many of those contacted have been active in past demonstrations, and agents have
asked whether they planned acts of violence at upcoming protests, whether they knew of anyone who did and whether they realized it was a crime to withhold such information.
Three young men in Missouri were also trailed by federal agents and subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury last month to tell what they knew of protest plans, forcing them to cancel a planned trip to Boston to participate in a demonstration there.
Officials of the F.B.I. would not say how many interviews the bureau had conducted. Civil rights advocates who have monitored the process estimated that at least several dozen people had received visits from agents at their homes and elsewhere in recent weeks. They said they were continuing to collect anecdotal information from demonstrators who had been approached by federal agents.
In a newly disclosed episode in Colorado, two college students said that an F.B.I. agent approached the faculty adviser for their campus group late last month and that the agent showed photographs of the students, Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said. The students did not want their names or college disclosed, Mr. Silverstein said, because "they're really scared out of their minds."
The inquiries were made after a legal opinion in April by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department endorsed the constitutionality of past efforts by F.B.I. counterterrorism agents to solicit help from local police forces to gather intelligence on antiwar and political demonstrations. The opinion said any chilling of First Amendment rights was "quite minimal" and was "substantially outweighed" by concerns for public safety at big demonstrations.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Tuesday that he was troubled by the pre-emptive nature of the inquiries, which he said had deterred some demonstrators from protesting.
"This looks like it's much more about intimidation and coercion than about criminal conduct," Mr. Romero said. "It's not enough for the F.B.I. to say that there's the potential for criminal activity. That's not the legal threshold, and if that were really the case, they could investigate anybody."
Representative Conyers and his colleagues raised similar concerns in their letter. They asked the inspector general to examine internal documents at the Justice Department and F.B.I. on political protests and to determine if the inquiries "focused on actual threats of violence or merely involved legitimate political and antiwar activity."
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Just Keep It Peaceful, Protesters;
New York Is Offering Discounts
August 18, 2004
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/nyregion/18buttons.html
Thinking about smashing windows or overturning cars during the Republican National Convention? Think again: that will cost you a discounted buffalo chicken salad from Applebee's or a cheaper ticket to see "Tony n' Tina's Wedding."
In a transparently mercantile bid to keep protesters from disrupting the Republican National Convention later this month, the Bloomberg administration will offer "peaceful political activists" discounts at select hotels, museums, stores and restaurants around town during convention week, which begins Aug. 29.
Law-abiding protesters will be given buttons that bear a fetching rendition of the Statue of Liberty holding a sign that reads, "peaceful political activists." Protesters can present the buttons at places like the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Sex, the Pokémon Center store and such restaurants as Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too and Applebee's to save some cash during their stay.
If only the Romanovs had thought of this.
"It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday, when he announced the program at NYC & Company, the city's tourism office, which will distribute the buttons to all comers to its Midtown office.
Protesters can also get the buttons from groups that have a legal permit to rally. But Mr. Bloomberg conceded yesterday that not everyone who wore a button would be strictly vetted for his or her peacefulness. "Unfortunately, we can't stop an anarchist from getting a button," he said, though he doubted any of them would want to wear one.
The discount program comes at a time when Mr. Bloomberg is under increasing pressure from the largest protest group, United for Peace and Justice, which is demanding the right to protest in Central Park, a request the city has repeatedly rejected. As a result, the city faces the prospect that the largest rally, planned the Sunday before the convention, will be an illegal gathering.
A spokesman for the group, Bill Dobbs, dismissed the discount program yesterday as a publicity stunt.
The city contends that it wants to give as warm a welcome to protesters as to delegates. "Most times, people try to keep protesters from coming," the mayor said, "and they certainly don't go out of their way to accommodate them."
In offering the discounts, the city also has its economy in mind. Officials want to make sure that hotels and restaurants are as fully booked as possible during the convention week; many have reported that reservations are slow for that week.
The discount program for protesters is modeled on one for delegates to the convention, and there are some notable differences. Protesters are offered $5 off admission to the Museum of Sex, while delegates are not. But delegates get $3 off the space show at the American Museum of Natural History, a discount not offered to protesters. The Republicans get "Rent," the people who oppose them get "Tony n' Tina's Wedding."
Bloomberg administration officials say the list of offerings for protesters may grow. An up-to-date list appears on nycvisit.com; visitors to the site can click on "Welcome peaceful political activists." There, the discontented but hungry can also find information about the city's history and tour guides for the "politically minded visitor."
Mr. Bloomberg also said that the police officers and firemen who had been holding loud demonstrations at his public appearances in the past few weeks would qualify.
Yesterday, outside the mayor's news conference, Joe Miccio, a firefighter who came to hector the mayor, fingered the button presented to him by a reporter with some confusion. "We are peaceful political activists," he said, puzzling over the notion of discounted hamburgers and office supplies (at Kroll's Office Products, free magic marker included). "We'll take a look at it."
The city says it expects at least 200,000 people - both out-of-towners and aggrieved New Yorkers - to protest around the city between now and the end of the convention on Sept. 2. And, as Mr. Bloomberg pointed out, they will need to eat.
With the convention a week and a half away, there are already some who may not qualify for the discounts. Yesterday, four members of Code Pink, a women's protest group, were arrested for trying to dangle a 40-foot-long banner from their ninth-floor window at the Sheraton Hotel across from Mr. Bloomberg's news conference, the police said.
Jodie Evans, a co-founder of the group, identified the women as Andrea Buffa and Colleen Galbraith of San Francisco, Claire Varoney of Los Angeles and Danielle Feris of New York City. The charges against the women are pending, the police said yesterday afternoon.
Gary Ferdman, the executive director of Sensible Priorities, a business consortium, said yesterday that he came up with the idea for the discount program when the city decided it needed to reach out to protesters. "I'm afraid this Central Park thing is really going to blow up," he said after the news conference, perhaps speaking more bluntly than city officials about the motivations for the program.
In announcing the program, Mr. Bloomberg was joined yesterday by former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins. While Mr. Dinkins said that he might have handled the request to protest in Central Park "differently," Mr. Koch said he agreed with the Bloomberg administration's plan to keep the largest protest off the Great Lawn. That decision has angered many New Yorkers, particularly those who have ambivalent feelings about the convention, which Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly said will be an economic boon for the city.
Among more veteran protesters, the city's offer had a certain appeal. "Since we're both guests, New York City should treat us equally," said Aron Kay, who is also known locally as the Mad Yippie Pie Thrower. Mr. Kay is the organizer of a protest planned for outside Mayor Bloomberg's townhouse on the Upper East Side on Aug 22.
"Maybe we would like to eat in a restaurant or catch a play," he mused. Before or after haranguing the mayor? "I would say after," he said.
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Group Asks to Protest in Central Park
August 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-GOP-Convention-Protests.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- An anti-war group planning a massive demonstration the day before the GOP convention asked a judge on Wednesday to overrule city officials and let protesters gather in Central Park.
Lawyers for the group, United for Peace and Justice, filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan seeking an order prohibiting the city from denying the group use of the park and finding that the denial violated the state Constitution.
City officials say that the expected crowd at the Aug. 29 rally, which could exceed 250,000 people, would damage the grass.
But the lawsuit noted that the park has been used in the past such gatherings as a Paul Simon concert attended by 750,000 people, a papal Mass that drew 250,000 people and regular performances by the New York City Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
The Constitution was violated "by discriminating on the basis of content in allowing cultural but not political events," the group claims.
Last week, the group had backed out of a deal it had reached with the city that allowed it to rally along a Manhattan highway after marching past convention headquarters at Madison Square Garden.
The organization's leaders said they changed their minds about the West Side Highway as an alternative to Central Park because they couldn't resolve issues like access to drinking water and how crowds gathered along the long, narrow highway space could hear the speakers.
On Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was disappointed that the lawsuit had been filed, but said the city would not relent without a court order.
"We are not going to give a permit for Central Park," he said. "I've said that many times. I don't know how many times I've got to say it." The fight between city officials and the anti-war group has prompted some organizations to urge activists to gather in the park anyway, risking arrest.
But Leslie Cagan, the group's leader, has said that United for Peace and Justice is trying to secure permits because the group wants a family-friendly gathering where participants don't have to worry about clashes with police.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg announced a plan aimed at encouraging peaceful protest during the convention, offering discounts on meals at some restaurants, hotel rooms and Broadway tickets.
"There is no reason we shouldn't welcome them in the same way we are welcoming the delegates and the press," Bloomberg said.
Protest groups said Tuesday they were less than impressed with the city's attempts at hospitality. They said hotel rooms remain unreserved and theater tickets unsold because Bloomberg has alarmed many potential visitors.
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