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NUCLEAR
Return of the Tybee Bomb
Kazakhstan vows to remain nuclear free
UK taken to court over nuclear waste dispute
Nuclear Weapons Stealth Takeover
UN to help tackle Iraq pollution
"The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children"
DU - The stuff of nightmares
Washington's secret nuclear war
U.S. Seeks Tougher Tone in Resolution on Iran's Nuclear Program
'No proof' of Iranian nuclear weapons programme
U.N. Watchdog Details S. Korean Atomic Efforts
North Korea Offers to Show Site of Blast to Diplomats
North Korea Says Blast Was for Hydroelectric Project
Seoul seeks Russian help in restarting N.Korea nuclear talks
Nuke material experiments have nothing to do with weapons
Uranium research toughens dialogue
Test of Missile Defense System Delayed Again
U.S. Repatriates Uranium From Uzbek Reactor to Russia
Radiation Risk of Attack Played Down
Officials Can't Say Nukes Safe From Terror
Old Bomb, New Search?
Radiation Release Possible in Plant Attack
Lawmakers question agency's monitoring of nuclear power plant security
'Hot spot' found in Flats buffer zone
Dead Birds Prompt Rocky Flats Investigation
The Public, and Cheerful, Face of Nuclear Power By MAREK FUCHS
MILITARY
Afghan Region's New Governor Says Violence Is Ended; Denounces Warlord
Death by fire: the agonising way out for trapped Afghan women
Darfur death toll at 10,000 a month
Pakistan's air chief says U.S. may sell it F-16s
8 Firms Vie for Pieces of Air Force Contract
Syria tested chemical arms on civilians in Darfur region: press
After Hong Kong Election, China Faces New Calculus
Iraqi Environment Ministry and UN to Assess Polluted Sites
Car Bomb Kills at Least 47 at a Police Headquarters in Baghdad
U.S. Planes Bomb Suspected Militant Refuge in Iraq
Bombing in Baghdad will not halt march towards democracy: Britain
U.S. Attacks an Iraqi City With Double-Edged Sword
Israel Approves Plan to Compensate Settlers
Tel Aviv court approves administrative detention for Fahima
Sharon pledges Arafat expulsion
Sharon rejected U.S. proposal for talks with Syria
Iraqi president seeks help from NATO, EU
Pak to release over 200 Afghan detainees
Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
Putin Moves to Centralize Authority
Washington Offers Guarded Critique of Putin's Plans
Many Beslan victims gravely ill
Chechen envoy warns of bloodshed
Lithuania Won't Shut Down Pro-Chechen Site
Russia threat unsettles Georgia
Russia pours $5b into terror fight
In Senate Hearing, C.I.A. Pick Pledges Nonpartisanship
CIA Nominee Promises to Shed Partisanship
Wounded numbers still rising as insurgency takes heavy toll
'Weekend Warriors' Play Big Role for U.S. in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court Clears Way for Moussaoui Trial
Support for Intelligence Plan
Security flaws found at D.C. schools
POLITICS
$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda
Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers
Bush's Records Keep Trickling Out
Edwards slams Bush's record in Tucson visit
The Presidential War Path
ENERGY
Tankless water heaters are more energy efficient
OTHER
New Priorities in Environment
9/11 Contamination Is High at Bank Tower, Study Says
Green Meeting in Brazil to Propose Environmental Court
Connection Between Environmental Toxins and Breast Cancer?
ACTIVISTS
U.S. Wants to Cancel Poorest Nations' Debt
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Return of the Tybee Bomb
New Air Force attention and possible location discovery renews interest in 46-year-old saga.
Bret Bell bret.bell@savannahnow.com
912.652.0456
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Savannah Now (Georgia)
http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/091404/2441929.shtml
Just when you thought Tybee Island's waters were safe ... the bomb is suddenly back.
Actually, it's never really gone anywhere - for 46 years a 7,600-pound hydrogen bomb has remained buried beneath 20 or so feet of muck a few miles off the beach in Wassaw Sound.
But the federal government has taken a renewed interest in Tybee's very own broken arrow. After years of ignoring retired Air Force Col. Derek Duke's efforts to pinpoint the weapon's location, it decided last month to take a look at what he's got.
And now the Tybee Bomb is all the rage. On Monday, CNN aired a lengthy story on the subject. Last week, NBC's "Today Show" ran its own piece. ("Very interesting story," host Matt Lauer commented.) National Geographic is preparing a documentary.
All the attention isn't exactly the kind of publicity this tourist-craved community seeks.
"I wish they'd forget about the whole thing," City Councilman Jack Youmans said. "They're just wasting their time. It ain't going to hurt anybody. And it scares the hell out of the tourists."
A B-47 bomber collided with a fighter jet during a training exercise and was forced to jettison the weapon in February 1958. Military crews searched the silted waters for 11 weeks before giving up the search for the for the Mk15 Mod 0 nuclear bomb.
It's the most interest the bomb has received since 2001, when the Air Force conducted an investigation and Tybee City Council held public meetings.
"I don't like this story at all," Tybee Mayor Walter Parker said. "If it poses any danger to the people, it ought to be found and removed. But I don't think any of this attention is good for Tybee."
Duke's interest began about six years ago. He and a small crew have researched military records and spent days trolling Wassaw Sound, which connects the Wilmington river with the Atlantic Ocean, with limited success.
Then, this summer, they found something: detection equipment, Duke said, discovered a large submerged object emitting high levels of radiation.
The government says the bomb poses no nuclear threat even though it does contain uranium and 400 pounds of explosives, it lacks a plutonium capsule needed for detonation. Duke cites documents that question this finding. The government said attempting to remove the bomb, and possibly detonating the TNT, would pose the greatest danger.
Last month the Air Force decided to take another look at Duke's data.
Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky said a team of experts from the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Air Force and National Nuclear Security Administration will determine "in the very near future" whether to open a new investigation.
"We still believe it is completely safe and entombed ... but we felt it was a prudent step in today's day and age to look at all information that might pinpoint the location of the bomb," he said.
For Duke, it's vindication.
He has been ridiculed by some for attempting to profit from the bomb. At one time, he asked the government to pay the company he formed $900,000 to locate the weapon. Duke said he's only interested in public safety.
And he does have supporters. Tybee resident Pam O'Brien, a council member during the 2001 bomb hearings, said more digging is needed.
"I'm pleased to see the attention this is getting. There are too many questions and inconsistencies that still need to be addressed," O'Brien said. "When others in government say they would prefer to put their heads in the sand and forget about it, they should remember that it is the same sand that the bomb is buried in."
-------- asia
Kazakhstan vows to remain nuclear free
September 14, 2004
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040914-070917-6062r.htm
Astana, Kazakhstan, Sep. 14 (UPI) -- Kazakhstan says it will quadruple its uranium production over the next 12 years but vowed to continue to remain a nuclear-free nation as enshrined in the Nuclear Proliferation treaty, a government minister has said.
"We have all the ingredients of making an atomic bomb ... but we would not do it," Kazakhstan's Minister For Energy and Mineral Resources, Vladimir Shkolnik, said in the capital, Astana.
The minister said that Kazakhstan is the largest producer of uranium in the world, but it would continue to abide by the NPT, which it has signed.
"We have plenty of uranium, and we are using it for peaceful purposes. Each month international observers scan our uranium stock and production," the minister told a group of foreign journalists invited by the Senate of Kazakhstan.
"We will increase out uranium production by four times by the year 2016. But all our uranium activities are under strict control and international scanner," Shkolnik said.
He said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia left behind 1,100 nuclear warheads in Kazakhstan territory.
"This arsenal was equal to 55,000 bombs of the size that was used in Hiroshima. We have returned the arsenal to Russia, which has since dismantled the warheads and the fuel is being used for the nuclear stations," Shkolnik said.
The chairman of the Senate, Nurtai Abykayev, said Kazakhstan shut down the nuclear testing facility on its own and not under the pressure from international community.
"Rather, we were offered billions of dollars of investment by several Muslim nations and neighboring countries that wanted us to retain the nuclear testing site," Abykayev said.
"But President (Nursultan Nazarbayev) decided to shut down the nuclear facility," Abykayev told reporters.
Kazakhstan was one of the main nuclear testing grounds in the former Soviet Union, and some areas are still reeling from the consequences of the previous tests. It has several nuclear waste sites and some remnants of the Soviet nuclear program, including the Mangyshlak Atomic Energy Complex near Aktau city. The reactor was shut down last year.
Energy Minister Shkolnik denied that Kazakhstan was selling uranium to Iran. "Our uranium sale goes through a strict check, and each gram of uranium sold is followed till the end," the minister said. "We are not selling it to Iran."
The minister said that Kazakhstan would buy stake in the Caspian Sea's huge Kashagan oilfield at the market price if British Gas and other consortium members had no objection to the deal.
British Gas has wanted to offload its more than 16 percent of share of the Kashagan oilfields. The last talks between BG and Kazakhstan held in London in July were inconclusive. A majority of the six- member Kashagan consortium had initially objected to the sale of BG stake to Kazakhstan.
Shkolnik denied that Kazakhstan would sell stake in Kashagan to China at a higher rate to make a quick buck. " We wont be selling anything to anybody," he told reporters.
"If you can get my words out to the shareholders of the Kashagan consortium, I can tell you for sure that Kazakhstan's direct participation in this project increases its viability and enhances the chances of its success.
"It will be really strange if we are denied the purchase," the minister said, adding the nation is willing to pick up the stake at the market price.
He said that the delay in the deal with BG would, however, not affect oil production at Kashagan. Kazakhstan produced 51 million tons of oil last year, and it plans to produce 150 million tons annually by 2050.
Kazakhstan has 12 billion tons of recoverable oil resources, which accounts for just over 8 percent of global share. Most of Kazakhstan's oil exports are to Russia and Iran.
-------- britain
UK taken to court over nuclear waste dispute
The European Union (EU) is bringing the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) to court over a dispute involving nuclear waste at the Sellafield reprocessing site. The European Court of Justice will hear the case on an as yet undetermined date, the EU Commission said in a statement released late last week.
Today B30 plant and its pool are shut. Still, the derelict storage pond is said to contain approximately 1,300 kilograms of plutonium. Of those, 400 kilograms are likely corroded. Photo. Richart Hauglin Erik Martiniussen, 2004-09-14 10:57
In the statement made by the EU Commission (EC), the UK is accused of not providing a credible plan for how to deal with spent plutonium and uranium, which lies at the bottom of a storage pond that is more than 40 years old, at the Sellafield nuclear site in the north-west of England.
UK delivered just a draft "We are taking this action to demand that British authorities comply with their responsibilities," EU energy commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, told Reuters last week.
The conflict centres on the aging and derelict storage pond located at the Sellafield site. The storage pond, which was built in the late 1950's, was originally used to hold spent nuclear fuel, or SNF, for reprocessing, and eventual production of weapons-grade plutonium.
The pond-and B-30, the plant that houses it- is now closed, but the pond still contains between 300 and 450 tonnes of SNF. But what is more disturbing perhaps is that no one knows the exact contents of the pond. Some of the waste within the pond has corroded or disintegrated, making the fuel removal of the spent plutonium and uranium fuel especially tricky. It also complicates the request filed last spring by the EU that the pond be cleansed, difficult to fulfil.
In March, the EU requested Britain to develop a comprehensive plan for removing the waste in the pond by June 1st 2004. The Directive adopted by the EC asked the UK to take all legal and administrative action necessary to put an end to the infringements detected at the Sellafield site.
In particular, the Directive mandated that by June 1st the UK present the EC with a complete plan that would guarantee that all the material stored in the pool would be properly accounted for. The same plan, as stipulated by the directive, was to guarantee the part of the site were B-30 is located would be fully accessible for the purposes of physical verification by Euratom safety inspectors.
The UK sent an official response on the request, but the EC obviously found the response inadequate. In its statement last week, the EC wrote that: "The proposed action plan is to be regarded as no more than a preliminary draft [...] nor does the UK's formal response contain either an investment project or an adequate financing plan."
Decision welcomed by Ireland
Commenting on the statement energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio said:
"We have to ensure that EU citizens are appropriately protected, that they are informed, that they have a guarantee that all nuclear power stations within the EU are functioning appropriately," the de Palacio said.
Irish environmental minister, Martin Cullen has welcomed the decision of the European Commission.
"The announcement that the UK in being brought to court reinforces our determination to ensure the safe closure of Sellafield," Cullen told News & Star Friday.
"The issue of access to information at Sellafield has been central to Ireland's two legal challenges to the UN Court of Arbitration. The decision is further evidence that the UK Government is struggling to cope with the legacy of 50 years of nuclear power,"
A spokeswoman at the UK's EU representative office in Brussels said the EC's concerns were related to accounting for what is done with the ageing Sellafield the pond-not environmental risks.
Facts about B-30
B-30, nicknamed "dirty 30" by workers at Sellafield, is a former storage and de-canning facility located at the Sellafield reprocessing plant built in close proximity to the coast of the Irish Sea.
The plant was commissioned in 1959-1960 as part of the expanding British nuclear programme. Its role was to receive and store spent nuclear fuel from British Magnox-reactors, and to remove the fuel cladding prior to the fuel's reprocessing.
After an accident at the Magnox reprocessing plant in 1974, a long reprocessing shutdown caused fuel to be stored underwater at B-30 for longer than is generally accepted normal. This resulted in corrosion to the Magnox fuel cans in the storage pond, giving the rise to increased radiation levels and poor underwater visibility. This slowed the rate of de-canning, increasing residence times, thus creating a vicious circle.
A number of steps were taken to counterbalance the problems, but none were successful, and B-30 continued to operate under difficult conditions until its replacement facility, the Fuel Handling plant, was commissioned in 1986.
Today B-30 plant and its pool are shut. Still, the derelict storage pond is said to contain approximately 1,300 kilograms of plutonium. Of those, 400 kilograms are likely corroded and lying at the bottom of the pond with other radioactive waste and sediment. Because of radiation levels near B-30, workers at the plant can only spend one hour at a day near the pond.
-------- depleted uranium
Nuclear Weapons Stealth Takeover
5 Admirals, U.C. Regents, Carlyle Group, and Rand
by LEUREN MORET
Tuesday 14th September 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3323
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/Moret-Nuclear-Carlyle16sep04.htm
"I think some of these folks would put nuclear tips on ice cream cones if they could."
U.S. Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) on efforts by Bush Administration officials to repeal a research ban on low-yield nuclear weapons.
Global Security Newswire 'Quote of the Day' May 19, 2003
UC AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS: THE KISS OF DEATH
The top-secret Manhattan Project was laid out by Robert Oppenheimer the night Ernest Lawrence took him to the Bohemian Club during WW II. It was a part of California's brutal rise to economic and political power, described in IMPERIAL SAN FRANCISCO: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. In 1939, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr had argued that building an atomic bomb "can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory." Years later, he told his colleague Edward Teller, "I told you it couldn't be done without turning the whole country into a factory. You have done just that." That was after Edward Teller had stuck the knife in Oppenheimer's back, and pulled his clearance. Teller (also known as 'Dr. Strangelove'), went on to promote a grandiose US nuclear weapons program for decades at the nuclear weapons labs: Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos. The program remained under a no-bid University of California management contract for 61 years. In a stealth takeover by the Carlyle Group, facilitated by 5 Admirals, the management contract will be transferred next year to the University of Texas where the military and the Carlyle Group will have control. A new 'ramping up' of the nuclear weapons program is underway, with program funding at the highest level ever - even higher than during the Cold War - extending nuclear weapons into outer space, into the very atmosphere that makes life on earth possible, and with no "real" enemy in site.
ESTIMATING THE COLD WAR MORTGAGE
In 1995 dollars, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) the US spent approximately 300 billion dollars on nuclear weapons research, production, and testing. Today in the nuclear weapons complex there are 10,500 contaminated sites, 2.3 million acres under DOE ownership, and 120 million square feet of buildings. The 1995 high base cost, estimated by the DOE Environmental Management program, to clean up the environmental legacy is $350 billion. That excludes the Nevada Test Site, Hanford, the Savannah and Clinch rivers, and the Columbia river which are considered to be "national sacrifice zones" because the technology does not exist to clean them up.
That was the cost for cleaning up the environment. The damage to the human health not only of Americans, but also to the global population, was predicted by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), in a 2003 independent report on low level radiation for the European Parliament, to be 61,600,000 deaths by cancer, 1,600,000 infant deaths, and 1,900,000 foetal deaths. "In addition the ECRR committee predicts a 10% loss of life quality integrated over all diseases and conditions in those who were exposed over the period of global weapons fallout."
The cost to the predominantly black community at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco is much greater. Navy ships brought back to Hunter's Point shipyard for decontamination by the Navy, after the first atmospheric tests in the Pacific, led to the establishment of the secret Naval Radiological Defense Lab (NRDL) which operated at the shipyard into the 1970's. Secret experiments exposing animals, plants, soldiers, prisoners, and local residents to radiation were conducted at the NRDL, where 550 civilian scientists worked with 65 Naval officers to study the biological effects of ionizing radiation. The radioactive waste and dead animals from the lab were dumped at the shipyard, filled a back bay, and sunk off the Golden Gate bridge in a battleship and 55 gallon drums, contaminating one of the richest fisheries in the world. The community today has the highest rates of breast cancer in women under 40 in the US, as well as high rates of other radiation related diseases. A former City of San Francisco coroner found that every Hunters Point resident he had done an autopsy on, had cancer no matter what the cause of death.
Even worse, the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), while conducting studies on infant mortality and cancer around nuclear power plants, discovered that milk contaminated with radiation has been shipped into black inner city communities - a genocidal plan which explains why blacks have the highest cancer rates, infant mortality, and asmtha (Gotham Gaz.May 2003) in the US, which has been blamed on poverty. The studies using US govt. data on radiation in milk revealed that at the time of Chernobyl the Pennsylvania Milk Board had been selectively shipping radioactive contaminated milk from dairies around the Three Mile Island and Peachbottom reactors into eastern black inner city communities (see Jay Gould, Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High Level Coverup). In an RPHP study on health improvements by race in San Francisco County, after the shutdown of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant in 1989, health improved for all ages, diseases and races except for blacks. Black infant mortality also increased after startups and accidents, but unlike improvements for whites and Asians which decreased after the 1989 shutdown, black infant mortality reflected startups and shutdowns at other nuclear power plants in California.
UC REGENTS MEETING - MAY 15, 2003: THE POINT MAN
One year ago Admiral Linton Brooks, Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under DOE, informed Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante and the UC Regents that the management contract for the nuclear weapons labs would be put up for competitive bid for the first time, with the award made in 2005. When a Regent asked if it would be for all the labs or just Los Alamos, he replied that "it would be for Los Alamos". Later another Regent questioned him again, and this time he said "it would be inconceivable for just one lab". He requested a competitive bid from UC, but the Regents were now leery of the politics involved, and Brooks was challenged by a fiery Bustamante. The Lt. Governor demanded to know why UC should waste millions of dollars preparing a bid when the University of Texas was the most favored institution to get the award, and had a member of the University of Texas on the blue ribbon panel making the award decision.
Admiral Brooks also informed the Board of Regents that "we're back in the bomb business" because Los Alamos had just produced the first plutonium "pit" since Rocky Flats closed down. He indicated that they would be making "mini-nukes" only, and nuclear weapons testing would start at the Nevada Test Site in 2005. An hour later, and 45 miles away, he announced to Livermore employees that "we're back in the bomb business" and they would be making big ones, little ones, and more. By this time it seemed to me that Admiral Brooks was a slippery character and I began to wonder why an Admiral was involved.
UC REGENTS MEETING - AUGUST 17, 2004: TWO ADMIRALS STAGE "THE SETUP"
On August 4, 2004, UC President Dynes, a physicist and consultant to Los Alamos and former Chancellor of UC San Diego, and Gerald Parsky, Chair of the UC Regents, visited Los Alamos and met with employees over recent security and safety lapses repeated at the lab. Parsky told them:
"The regents will be left with no choice about the contract competition if we do not feel confident that you understand the importance of security, procedures and safety at the lab. If we feel that you understand this and that steps are being taken to address these issues, the regents will not only endorse competing for this contract - we will compete to win."
During three minutes of public comment before the Regents on August 17, I informed them that the lab contract was going to the University of Texas, it was a 'done deal'. I told them that the management contract change was a chess move the Carlyle Group was making to privatize the nuclear weapons program, and owned 70% of Lockheed Martin Marietta, and that Lockheed a year ago had bought Sandia Labs (they make the trigger for nuclear weapons). When "Carlyle" was mentioned I noticed that the Chair, Gerald Parsky and Vice Chair Richard Blum (married to Senator Diane Feinstein) started shifting around in their chairs. Body language can say a lot. They began a disruptive and loud conversation carried on through the rest of my comments. As a Livermore whistleblower, I commented that the loss of computer discs with classified information and missing keys had happened practically every day for 61 years under sloppy UC management, and that science fraud as well as health and safety violations had been just as bad. [During my week of security briefing at Livermore in 1989 we were told that a scientist taking classified material home in his briefcase did not notice it had fallen off the back of his bike. A merchant found the battered briefcase in an intersection, and several days later a horrified lab security employee found that every page of a lengthy report with "CLASSIFIED" stamped on each page had been taped in the window of the merchant's shop hoping the owner would claim his lost secret documents.] What was even more egregious I pointed out, was an article in the July 10, 2004, issue of the Daily Mirror about the murder by the Mossad of Robert Maxwell, a British publisher. It revealed that Maxwell, who was the former owner of the Daily Mirror, was a high level Mossad agent, and had sold PROMIS software to Los Alamos with a back door for the Mossad to spy on the lab. In closing, I told the Regents that no matter who got the contract award, "the University of California would forever be known as the University that poisoned the world..."
As Admiral George P. Nanos, Director of the Los Alamos lab (appointed Jan. 2003), and Admiral S. Robert Foley Jr., UC vice president for laboratory management (appointed Nov. 2003), sat down at the table where the Regents waited, I began to wonder how many more Admirals were involved and why. It did not take long to find out. Admiral Foley informed the Regents about the missing CREM, computer storage devices with classified data, and acknowledged that the security lapse damaged the university's chances of retaining its Los Alamos contract. "This erodes your position, without any question at all. It's about as bad as it could be when you're trying to prepare for a re-competition". He announced that Jack Killeen had been appointed to the UC Presidents Office as special assistant for Los Alamos security: "Jack's our guy, he was with Wackenhut and he's our guy...". Among lab employees Wackenhut was better known for 'wacking' lab whistleblowers like Karen Silkwood, attempting to run people like Dr. Rosalie Bertell off the road, and has a well-deserved reputation for being a nasty outfit. President Bush and his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, are known to spend time together hanging out with cronies at the Wackenhut "country club" in Florida. Admiral Nanos continued and complained that employees would not follow the security and safety rules. When Foley chimed in that there were going to be more security incidents and lapses at the lab in the future before they got it straightened out, it began to look like a setup. Regents Blum, Parsky, Connerly and a few more leaned forward and demanded to know how it was possible, and stated it was unacceptable, that there would be more security lapses. Foley should have been fired on the spot for falling down on the job. It was obvious that Nanos and Foley were there to blame the employees, justify the management change, and discourage the Regents from competing for the contract. And justification for "cleaning house" and removing the "old guard" who would stand in the way of a takeover and for what is planned for ramping up the program.
An Editorial in the Oakland Tribune the day before remarked that the NNSA was established in 1991 after the Wen Ho Lee scandal, but had failed to address real security lapses since. NNSA is in bed with the lab administrators which it supposedly is overseeing. This had been exactly my experience at Livermore in 1991 when I reported graft, fraud, corruption, contractor overcharges, and health and safety violations on the Yucca Mountain Project and Superfund Project to Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector in the DOE Inspector General's office for the nuclear weapons labs, Site 51, and the Nevada Test Site. After bringing two inspectors to my house and taking my testimony, he reported to Duane Sewell, the "secrets keeper" at the lab, and Bert Hefner, lab PR person. When I called a month later to talk to Berta about the outcome, he said "we found no basis to your allegations... and I got a new office with a view and new oak furniture from Sewell...". My allegations had been reported many times to the FBI by other more senior lab staff... and they were ignored as well. The Editorial concludes:
"NNSA failed miserably in its policing responsibilities. It should be reorganized or axed, and Brooks and other top officials should be replaced with more independent, less-compromised leadership."
The meeting ended before Dr. Walter Kohn, a physicist representing the UC Faculty opposed to UC management of nuclear weapons labs, was able to speak before the Regents. Regent Sherry Lansing, CEO of Paramount Pictures, stood up and announced in a loud voice "...oh Walter, I want to hear your presentation [at a future meeting]... but I have a plane to catch...", and crossed the room to give him a big kiss. By this time I had decided to investigate the UC Regents and their ties to the defense industry. Later that evening, a friend told me "...they ARE the Carlyle Group...".
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS STUDENTS - The FIAT PAX Website
Right after the Regents meeting I contacted a group of students and a Texas State Representative Lon Burnam, opposed to the Univ. of Texas bid for the nuclear weapons management contract. A student told me about FIAT PAX, a website put together by UC Santa Cruz students listing the top 50 University recipients of defense funding for research (see below), and their ties to corporations (see below). The UC Regents with ties to the defense industry were listed with detailed bios. Parsky, the Chair, was the top fundraiser for Bush (after Ken Lay) in both Presidential election bids, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Vice Chair Blum was tied to the Carlyle Group, invested in URS Corporation (leading contractor with DOD), Korea First Bank [Carlyle is moving into Korea and taking over banks], and sits on the Board of Northwest Airlines. [A FOIA document revealed in 2001 that Northwest was the first airline to collaborate with NASA to install mind-reading technology in US airports to catch "terrorists".] Regent Lansing was a trustee of the RAND Graduate School, a branch of the RAND Corporation which had been involved in war-gaming nuclear wars between the US and the USSR, and acts as a bridge between US universities and the military. I also learned that the Carlyle Group managed large amounts of endowment funds for the University of Texas, and that CALPers, the State of California workers pension fund which is the largest in the nation owns 5.2% of Carlyle. FIAT PAX sums it up:
"The University of California's system wide finances are incredibly entangled with weapons manufacturers. The UC's retirement plan portfolio is invested in dozens of military-industrial contractors through stock purchases. At least five corporations within the UC retirement portfolio conduct virtually no business other than weapons manufacturing and military subcontracting, these are: General Dynamics with a UC investment of $21,471,120, Northrop Grumman for $16,125,200, Raytheon for $16,818,200, TRW for $8,327,650, and Lockheed Martin for a staggering $33,046,370."
"It is through these informal personal, formal institutional, and financial exchanges that universities serve the warfare state and its corporate allies. Personal relationships connect military, corporate, and university personnel while bridging the divide between these institutions. Formal institutional links establish cooperation and coordination across the military-industrial-academic complex. Be they research institutes, labs, and centers, or personal relationships spanning industry-university-military, the web of connections far exceeds any attempts to quantify."
And then I knew that the Admirals, and vested Regents, were the kiss of death to the UC bid.
ADMIRAL VISHNU BAGHWAT, FORMER CHIEF OF THE INDIAN NAVY
On July 17, 2004, Admiral Vishnu Baghwat replied to my question "Why are so many Admirals involved with the nuclear weapons contract bid?":
"The reason why the Navy and the Admirals are predominantly involved in the weapons is that until the Space military launch posts are ready and positioned with the minimum degree of reliability, the US Navy has more than 70 % of the first and second strike capability on its boats and hence an equivalent amount of the budget earmarked for strategic systems."
His comments made the link for me between the nuclear weapons program, the Navy, NASA, and other types of directed energy weapons developed in nuclear weapons labs intended for space. Marion Fulk, a former Manhattan Project scientist and retired Livermore nuclear physical chemist told me that nuclear weapons cannot be used in space without contaminating the atmosphere, and laser weapons will not work because there is too much space trash already up there which will impede the effectiveness of the lasers. Wars in space will create more space trash until it is impossible to leave the earth, which already according to Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, is very dangerous now since a paint chip nearly took out the windshield of the space shuttle. The US plans to weaponize space are a violation of the United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The intent was "to promote international co-operation in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space" and specifically prohibited the weaponization of space with ANY weapons, including nuclear weapons.
The 2001 Space Preservation Act, HR 2977 which was introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, let the cat out of the bag and revealed under the "Definitions" in the bill, that directed energy weapons which can target individuals and populations from space for the purposes of psychotronics, mind control, and mood control, are clearly the new space weapons intended to establish global dominance by the New World Order. Directed energy weapons developed in the nuclear weapons labs have been used on nuclear weapons lab whistleblowers, UC students, handed over to the EPA to use on environmentalists, and to the FBI to turn over to local law enforcement. These weapons are now land, air, and sea based. Space is the last frontier.
ADMIRAL BOBBY RAY INMAN - SPOOKS-R-US
Tipped off by a journalist in Washington DC, my investigation of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman revealed that he was THE Admiral at the center of the spider web. A look at his social network (see Namebase.org) helped put the 'puzzle palace' together, and I discovered he was National Security Advisor to five Presidents, Director of the NSA, Deputy Director of the CIA under William Casey, Vice Director of the DIA, Director of Naval Intelligence, President of SAIC, Chair of the 1985 Congressional 'Inman Commission' on Terrorism, affiliated with the Carlyle Group, on the advisory boards of Tufts and the University of Texas, represents SBC Communications Corporation at Cal Tech, Chairman Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, and a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. And, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman is a member of the University of Texas faculty. One could say he is a dangerous man.
One job he didn't get was Secretary of Defense under Clinton:
"1994: Former admiral Bobby Ray Inman, stung by press and Senate criticisms of his record, asked President Clinton to withdraw his nomination as secretary of Defense. A Clinton aide, George Stephanopoulos, later wrote that Inman had held back information during his White House background check."
A look at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) reveals just exactly what kind of activities are undertaken in a spook shop where there is no accountability, and what business Inman was conducting at SAIC
under his leadership. SAIC is one of the largest private employee-owned corporations, and like the Carlyle Group, escapes scrutiny (because it is privately owned) despite annual revenues of more than $5.9 billion. In 1990 it was indicted and pled guilty to ten felony counts of fraud on a Superfund site, called "one of the largest [cases] of environmental fraud..." in Los Angeles history. DOE contracted SAIC to manage and operate the Yucca Mountain Program, which I worked on as a scientist at the Livermore Lab. I became a whistleblower at Livermore in 1991 because of my knowledge of the extent of science fraud on the most important public works project in US history. SAIC's control over internet domain names, gained when they purchased Network Solutions Inc., caused a furor and identified the ties in SAIC to "the shadow ruling-class within the Pentagon". Basically SAIC is a private spook corporation, involved in voting machines (SEQUOIA etc.), controlling the internet (Network Solutions), training foreign militaries, and the contractor that set up global communications for the US military. The internet is being changed from a public resource to a lucrative operation influenced by spooks and former Pentagon officials. The internet was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project to begin with.
One of SAIC's prime clients is DARPA (DOD), which recently employed 5-time convicted felon Admiral Poindexter, an associate of Inman's going back to Iran-Contra. Poindexter was forced to resign over his involvement with PAM, a "terrorism futures market" DARPA project which predicted assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East. His earlier controversial program TIPS - the Total Information Awareness Program - was set up to spy on Americans. He was also involved in creating large information databases on Americans which are now being used to track citizens. SAIC also had contracts to develop information systems for the Pentagon, FBI and IRS. Police can now legally stop a person on the street, ask their name, type it into a palm pilot and come up with detailed personal information in a few seconds. An Associated Press story on Sept. 9, 2004, "Conn. City Uses Scanners to Nab Criminals" revealed that police in New Haven, Connecticut, are now driving around in police cars with infrared scanners connected to databases which they are using on license plates to hunt for "criminals", tax delinquents, and parking ticket violators. Some of the $25,000 scanners were paid for in one month from collected revenues. A military project, the real purpose of the internet is revealing itself:
"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." - Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The association of Admiral Inman, the Bush crime syndicate, Texas oil companies, and the Carlyle Group with the University of Texas explained why an advanced 4th generation nuclear weapons research program is there. And it explained why the University of Texas is so eager to take over the nuclear weapons labs. But this takeover resembles Inmans involvement with a stealth takeover of the Mars program transferring it from JPL management and control to NASA.
The NASA Deep Space Program was started at JPL to do space exploration more efficiently with lower costs. Criticism of NASA/JPL Mars mission failure problems in the Thomas Young Report released on March 28, 2000, revealed that the supposedly public space program had been hijacked into secrecy and that the military was calling the shots. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin on March 29, 2000, revealed at JPL the day after release of the report, just who was in control and the existence of an oversight committee that nobody at JPL knew existed:
"I'd also like to acknowledge Admiral Inman, head of the JPL Oversight Committee at Cal Tech. He couldn't be here today, but I talked to him by phone. His commitment to the team here is also unwavering. And I thank him for that."
Goldin was there "to address beleaguered personnel, scientists and engineers of the Nation's premier unmanned center for planetary exploration, and to somehow advise them of the new political and engineering realities, while simultaneously exhorting them to continue to new heights but now under more stringent NASA management". The real question is what was Admiral Inman doing as chair of a committee in a private university overseeing all civilian unmanned exploration of the planet Mars without the knowledge of anyone at JPL?
In two years Admiral Bobby Ray Inman took over the space program, and in another year from now he will have succeeded in taking over the nuclear weapons program. When Newsweek called him "a superstar in the intelligence community", it was for good reason.
A Naval officer I interviewed later replied when I asked him if he knew Inman "...oh yeah... he's one of the players...".
DEPOPULATION: 4th GENERATION NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND DEPLETED URANIUM
The development of 4th generation nuclear weapons is now underway in the US (in first place), Germany and Japan (tied for second place), followed by Russia and other nuclear and non-nuclear States. As an expert witness on the environmental and health effects of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry for the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held in Japan in 2003, I discovered that there was a connection between the use of depleted uranium by the US since 1991- in the Middle East, Yugoslavia, and Central Asia - and 4th generation nuclear weapons. [Carlucci, former Chairman of the Carlyle Group (1989-2003), sat on the Board of Directors of General Dynamics (1991-97) which is one of the main manufacturers of DU weaponry in the US.] International scientists, Drs. Andre Gsponer, J.-P. Hurni, and B. Vitali, watch-dogging nuclear weapons developments globally, pointed out that DU weaponry is being used to study the radiobiological effects of the new nuclear weapons now under development:
"It is shown that the radiological burden due to the battlefield use of circa 400 tons of depleted-uranium munitions in Iraq (and of about 40 tons in Yugoslavia) is comparable to that arising from the hypothetical use of more than 600 kt (respectively 60 kt) of high-explosive equivalent pure-fusion fourth-generation nuclear weapons."
The use of weapons in war are most effective when the weapons do not kill, but create long-term health and environmental consequences such as lingering illnesses which slowly destroy the health of the environment and productivity of a nation and the economy. The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam is a good example of an environmental disaster with lingering and long-term health effects on a population, as well as causing trans-boundary contamination. DU is a permanent terrain contaminant with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, forms immense volumes of nano-sized particles (smaller than bacteria or viruses) which are lofted permanently as components of atmospheric dust traveling around the world until they are rained or snowed out of the air. There is no possible protective clothing, air filters, or treatment for internal exposure to this form of a poison radioactive gas. It was proposed as a military poison gas weapon in 1943 under the Manhattan Project. Even worse, uranium targets the DNA, and the Master Code (histone) which controls the expression of the DNA, and slowly destroys the genetic future of exposed populations. The US CODE, TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 40 > Sec. 2302, defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as:
The term ''weapon of mass destruction'' means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of - (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors; (B) a disease organism; or (C) radiation or radioactivity.
The US has staged four nuclear wars since 1991 using illegal DU dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets as radiological weapons and released an amount of radiation into the atmosphere which is at least ten times more radiation than the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, released during atmospheric testing. In June 2003, the WHO predicted in a press release that cancer will increase 50% globally by the year 2020, which can only be from an environmental cause. Already medical and scientific journals are reporting mysterious increases of infant mortality in 20 regions of Europe (Lancet Jan. 2004), the UK (Guardian Aug. 2004), and the US (New Scientist Feb.2004). Infant mortality should be decreasing now as a continuing trend for more than a century because of improved education and prenatal care, instead it is increasing in the US for the first time in 45 years with no identified cause. For radiation specialists, infant mortality is the most sensitive indicator of radioactive pollution, a response researchers have identified as a result of exposure to low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plant accidents, releases, and startups. The global pollution from thousands of tons of DU in nano-size particles traveling around the earth and being deposited in the global environment will have a devastating long-term effect. Not only will it cause illnesses and genetic mutations in the future generations of those internally exposed, but it will have a depopulating effect long proposed by the US military. DU is the perfect weapon delivering nanoparticles of poison, radiation, and nano-pollution - the real killer - directly into living cells where they cause the cells to go haywire and dysfunctional:
"Should humans be so stupid as to continue both technological escalation and wars between nation-states, radiological warfare might well be a far more safe and humane way to conduct extermination of large numbers of people, or the emptying out of troublesome political centres, than any of the various biological alternatives."
MORE-4-US Research on population control is now being carried out secretly by biotech companies. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, a University of California microbiologist discovered that wild corn in remote parts of Mexico is contaminated with lab altered DNA. He was denied tenure at UC Berkeley when he reported this to the scientific community, despite the embarrassing discovery that the Chancellor denying him tenure was getting large cash payments from a biotech company each year. Chapela revealed that a spermicidal corn developed by a US company is now being tested in Mexico. Males who unknowingly eat the corn produce non-viable sperm.
Depopulation is quite another thing. It is killing off large segments of living populations. Even Prince Philip of Britain, a member of the Bilderberg Group, is in favor of depopulation:
"If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels."
Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund - quoted in 'Are You Ready For Our New Age Future?', Insiders Report, American Policy Center, December '95)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been proposing, funding, and building BioWeapons Level 3 and Level 4 labs at many places around the US - even on university campuses and in densely populated urban locations. In a BioWeapons Level 4 facility a single bacteria or virus is lethal.
For what purpose are these labs being developed, and who will make the decisions on where BioWeapons created in these facilities will be used and on whom? More than 20 world-class microbiologists have been murdered since 2001, mostly in the US and the UK - nearly all were working on developing ethnic specific BioWeapons.
Citizens around the US are frantically filing lawsuits to stop these labs on campuses and in communities where they live. Despite the opposition of residents living near UC Davis, where a BioWeapons Level 4 lab was planned with the support of the town Mayor, she suddenly reversed her position after a monkey escaped from a high security primate facility. When residents claimed that if UC Davis could not keep monkeys from escaping from their cages, they certainly could not guarantee that a single virus or bacteria would not escape from a test tube. The escaped monkey killed the project.
The extreme secrecy surrounding the takeover of nuclear weapons, NASA and the space program, and BioWeapons labs is a threat to civil society, especially in the hands of the military and corporations.
THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
The New World Order can be described as a network of members of the Bilderberger Group, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the Trilateral Commission. The membership in both the CFR and the Trilateral Commission by Admiral Bobby Ray Inman is of particular interest in light of the developments surrounding control by the military of the US nuclear weapons program and the NASA space program.
"The Council on Foreign Relations is the American Branch of a society which originated in England... (and)...believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established....
"The Trilateral Commission is international...(and)...is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States."
With No Apologies (1979) by former Senator Barry Goldwater
"The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."
- Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D., former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner.
THE MEDIA
At this time in history, it is incomprehensible how a nation can enjoy the benefit of the most sophisticated communications technology in world history and remain so uninformed... or dumbed down. The policies being carried out by the US government that are destructive, both domestically and around the world, are being conducted under a veil of secrecy. The only possible way this dumbing down or control of information could occur is that it has been socially constructed. It is a conspiracy of lies, manipulation and disinformation which increasing numbers of Americans are aware of and should be calling it treason:
"The Rockefeller family has always taken a lead role in the CFR. In the 1960s, while American men and women were dying in the jungles of Vietnam and while the military/industrial complex was sucking trillions of dollars out of American taxpayers' wallets, the Rockefeller dynasty was financing Vietnamese oil refineries and aluminum plants. If there had ever been a formal declaration of war, the Rockefellers could be tried for treason. Instead, they reaped dividends.
These are just a few of the abuses of power which demonstrate the results of the power elite's manipulations of our destiny as a society. If you've ever wondered why you don't hear about this network of power, just take a look at the CFR's membership roster. Many of the chief executives and newspeople at CBS, NBC/RCA, ABC, the Public Broadcast Service, the Associated Press, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and many other key media outlets are CFR members. International power orgs depend on the masses remaining ignorant for their plans to come to fruition."
David Rockefeller, a member of the Bilderberger's, thanked the media facilitators:
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years....It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."
- David Rockefeller speaking at the Bilderberger meeting in June 1991 in Baden Baden, Germany
MEDIA MEMBERSHIP: Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) Trilateral Commission (TC)
CBS
Laurence A. Tisch, CEO CFR
Roswell Gilpatric CFR
James Houghton CFR/TC
Henry Schacht CFR/TC
Dan Rather CFR
Richard Hottelet CFR
Frank Stanton CFR
NBC/RCA
John F. Welch, Jr., CEO CFR
Jane Pfeiffer CFR
Lester Crystal CFR/TC
R. W. Sonnenfeldt CFR/TC
John Petty CFR
Tom Brokaw CFR
David Brinkley CFR
John Chancellor CFR
Marvin Kalb CFR
Irving R. Levine CFR
Herbert Schlosser CFR
Peter G. Peterson CFR
John Sawhill CFR
ABC
Thomas S. Murphy, CEO CFR
Barbara Walters CFR
John Connor CFR
Diane Sawyer CFR
John Scali CFR
Public Broadcast Service (PBS)
Robert MacNeil CFR
Jim Lehrer CFR
Charlane Hunter-Gault CFR
Hodding Carter III CFR
Daniel Schorr CFR
Associated Press (AP)
Stanley Swinton CFR
Harold Anderson CFR
Katherine Graham CFR/TC
Reuters
Micheal Posner CFR
Baltimore Sun
Henry Trewhitt CFR
Washington Times
Amaud de Borchgrave CFR
Children's TV Workshop (Sesame Street)
Joan Ganz Cooney, Pres. CFR
Cable News Network (CNN)
W. Thomas Johnson, pres.
TC Daniel Schorr CFR
New York Times
Richard Gelb CFR
William Scranton CFR/TC
John F. Akers, Dir. CFR
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Dir. CFR
George B. Munroe, Dir. CFR
Donald M. Stewart, Dir. CFR
Cyrus R. Vance, Dir. CFR A.M.
Rosenthal CFR
Seymour Topping CFR
James Greenfield CFR
Max Frankel CFR
Jack Rosenthal CFR
John Oakes CFR
Harrison Salisbury CFR
H.L. Smith CFR
Steven Rattner CFR
Richard Burt CFR
Flora Lewis TC
Time, Inc.
Ralph Davidson CFR
Donald M. Wilson CFR
Henry Grunwald CFR
Alexander Heard CFR
Sol Linowitz CFR/TC
Thomas Watson, Jr. CFR
Strobe Talbott TC
Newsweek/Washington Post
Katherine Graham CFR
N. deB. Katzenbach CFR
Robert Christopher CFR
Osborne Elliot CFR
Phillip Geyelin CFR
Murry Marder CFR
Maynard Parker CFR
George Will CFR/TC
Robert Kaiser CFR
Meg Greenfield CFR
Walter Pincus CFR
Murray Gart CFR
Peter Osnos CFR
Don Oberdorfer CFR
WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE US NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM?
"Some people say Domenici is a sucker for big science. And they may be right."
Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), when asked at a press conference last week if his vigorous support for his state's Los Alamos National Laboratory had helped create a culture of complacency that contributed to last month's security and safety lapses.
In 1991, Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy at the nuclear weapons labs and the Nevada Test Site, told me:
"The nuclear weapons labs exist for the Pentagon... and the Pentagon exists for the oil companies..."
It is inappropriate for a university to be in control of nuclear weapons research and management. University of California faculty have long opposed UC management of the labs, supported by a majority of the students. UC is now in the position of managing, developing, proliferating, investing in, and profiting from Weapons of Mass Destruction. The fact that UC investments of $33,046,370 in Lockheed Martin Marietta (70% owned by Carlyle), and $21,471,120 in General Dynamics - one of the two biggest US manufacturers of DU weaponry which has been sold to 29 countries, make UC complicit in war crimes. Students and faculty should be informed of this. The State of California employee pension fund owns 5.2% of the Carlyle Group.
The military, should NEVER be in control of ANY nuclear weapons program, it should ALWAYS be in civilian hands. And the Carlyle Group, a private corporation with vested interests and ties to oil companies, has NEVER been investigated or subjected to ANY oversight whatsoever, and for that reason should not have any control or influence over US nuclear weapons policy and development. Admiral Bobby Ray Inman and his associates in the intelligence business have demonstrated their systematic abuse of the internet, voting machines, and American civil liberties. Should we give them the trigger, the nukes, the budget they want, and the cover of secrecy? I don't think so.
Management and oversight of the nuclear weapons labs belongs at the National Science Foundation, a US government agency, with the resources to make rational decisions and reign in the planned unlimited proliferation of nuclear weapons on earth and in space.
"There is a toxic quality to war that affects the inner life of individuals and, as a collective consequence, the society itself. In the degradation and dehumanization of the individual lies the destruction of all mankind." - Butler Shaffer
ALL governments are terrorist organizations...and for that reason Humanity is on the brink of extinction.
References:
IMPERIAL SAN FRANCISCO - Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin, UC Press January 1999.
"Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report" US DOE Office of Environmental Management Executive Summary, March 1995.
"Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production in the US and What the DOE is Doing About It" US DOE Office of Environmental Management, January 1996.
"ECRR: 2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk - Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes, Regulator's Edition: Brussels, 2003". http://www.euradcom.org
"Asthma; Infant Mortality; Recruiting Foster Parents" by Lynda Crawford Gotham Gazette May 05, 2003. http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/children/20030506/2/379
Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High Level Coverup by Jay Gould and B. Goldman (1990).
Letter to Employees of University of California-managed National Labs
Today at Berkeley Lab August 6, 2004 http://www.lbl.gov/today/2004/Aug/06-Fri/letter-jump.html
"A Career in Microbiology Can Be Harmful to Your Health: Death Toll Mounting as Connections to Dyncorp, Hadron, PROMIS Software and Disease Research Emerge", Michael Davidson and Michael C. Ruppert, February 14, 2002. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_microbio.html
Media coverage of Los Alamos security lapse, July 2004. http://www.4law.co.il/lanl1.htm
"NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports" by Frank J. Murray 8/17/02, Washington Times. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020817-704732.htm
Air Travel Privacy FOIA Documents: "NASA Ames Research Center Northwest Airlines Briefing December 10-11, 2001", Electronic Privacy Information Center. http://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/foia/foia1.html
Stop Carlyle! website http://isuisse.ifrance.com/stopcarlyle/enindex.htm
"Our Opinion: NNSA must share blame for Los Alamos mistakes" August 16, 2004, Oakland Tribune. http://ucnuclearfree.org/articles/2004/08/16_oped_nnsa-must-share-blame.htm
FIAT PAX - Let There Be Peace: A Resource on Science, Technology, Militarism and Universities http://www.fiatpax.net
"Defense Funding at 50 Universities" http://www.fiatpax.net/profiles.html
"The University Web of Corporate Power" http://www.fiatpax.net/dohe/universitynetwork.htm
"UC's retirement fund investments" http://www.fiatpax.net/iilinks2.html
United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/treat/ost/outersptxt.htm
HR 2977 Space Preservation Act of 2001 http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/hr2977.html
Social Network Diagram for Admiral Bobby Ray Inman http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_INMAN_BOBBY_RAY
"1994: Former admiral Bobby Ray Inman" http://www.appointee.brookings.org/sg/a2.htm
"Pentagon scheme for a futures market in terror" by Berry Grey, July 31, 2003, World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/fut-j31_prn.shtml
"BEST GUESS: Economists explore betting markets as prediction tools" by Erica Klarreich, Science News Oct. 18, 2003, V. 164 p.251-253. http://www.sciencenews.org
"Conn. City Uses Scanners to Nab Criminals" by Diane Scarponi, Sept. 9, 2004. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040909/ap_on_re_us/scanning_for_scofflaws
Summary of Thomas Young Report released on March 28, 2000 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/news71.html
"When The Best Must Do Even Better" remarks by NASA Admin. Dan Goldin at JPL on March 29, 2000. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/ftp/Goldin/00text/jpl_remarks.txt
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm
http://afghan-tribunal.3005.net/english/
FourthGeneration Nuclear Weapons: The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosives, Inertial Confinement Fusion, and the Quest for Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons, by Andre Gsponer and J.-P. Hurni (1999). http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/INESAPTR1.html
A comparison of delayed radiobiological effects of depleted-uranium munitions versus fourth-generation nuclear weapons by A. Gsponer, J.-P. Hurni, and B. Vitale, 4th International Conference of the Yugoslav Nuclear Society, Belgrade, September 30-October 4, 2002. http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0210071
"Letter to Congressman McDermott from Leuren Moret - February 21, 2003." http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm
"Preferential Staining of Nucleic Acid-Containing Structures For Electron Microscopy" by Huxley and Zubay, J. Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology (J. Cell Biol.) 11 (2): 273. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Huxley-Zubay-Staining1nov61.htm (Nov 1961)
"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" by Leuren Moret, World Affairs Journal August 2004. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
"Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets - A death sentence here and abroad" by Leuren Moret, Aug. 18, 2004, San Francisco Bay View. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Dirty-Bombs18aug04.htm
WHO press release 03/09/08: "Global cancer rates could increase by 50% to 15 million by 2020" http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2003/Cancer-Rates-15M3apr03.htm
"Sudden unexplained infant death in 20 regions in Europe: case control study" R.G. Carpenter et al, Lancet January 17, 2004, V.363, p.185-191.
"Rise in stillbirths prompts inquiry" by John Carvel, August 20, 2004, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1287041,00.html
"US infant deaths rise for first time in 45 years" by Shaoni Bhattacharya, Feb 12, 2003, New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99994675
"Three Mile Island: Health study meltdown" by Joseph Mangano, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, September/October 2004, Volume 60, No. 5, pp. 30-35. http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/so04/so04mangano.html
"Smart dust, roboflies, microbugs: UC is spying on you" by Leuren Moret February 26, 2003, San Francisco Bay View. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Berkeley-Library-Classified22feb03.htm
Statement by Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C337802379/E1557478132/
Statement by Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C337802379/E1557478132/
Statement on role of Rockefellers on Council of Foreign Relations http://isuisse.ifrance.com/emmaf/base/cfrnwo.html
Statement by David Rockefeller at Bilderberger meeting June 1991 http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C337802379/E1557478132/
MEDIA MEMBERSHIP: Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) Trilateral Commission (TC) http://www.freedomdomain.com/neworder/connections.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/Moret-Nuclear-Carlyle16sep04.htm
by : LEUREN MORET Tuesday 14th September 2004
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UN to help tackle Iraq pollution
Tuesday, 14 September, 2004,
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3656354.stm
The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has said it will help Iraq clean up the toxic pollution caused by a decade of conflict.
Starting next month, Unep will assess pollution "hotspots", ranging from oil spills to waste from military vehicles.
In a separate plan, it also hopes to analyse sites that may be polluted by excessive levels of depleted uranium.
Unep has said it will take many years to clear up the chronic damage to air, water and soil that Iraq has suffered.
Toxic chemicals
In the first leg of the operation, Unep will visit five of the hundreds of locations that Iraqi scientists fear are contaminated.
These will consist of industrial sites around Baghdad and Fallujah that contain thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals and pollutants, which pose a direct threat to human health.
"We estimate that there are more than 300 sites in Iraq considered to be contaminated to various levels by a range of pollutants," said Klaus Toepfer, Unep executive director.
Examples include the 5,000 tonnes of spilled chemicals at the Al-Doura refinery, and a seed store where 50 tonnes of seeds coated with dangerous fungicide were looted, raising the threat of contaminated bread supplies.
"My country is faced with a wide range of pressing issues that must be addressed if the Iraqi people are to enjoy a stable, healthy and prosperous future," the Iraqi environment minister, Mishkat Moumin, said.
Depleted uranium
Mr Toepfer revealed that Iraq's new government has also asked for help in clearing up hazardous depleted uranium, left by bombs used in the US-led conflicts.
Depleted uranium dust has been blamed for causing severe illness long after ammunition explodes, and became the focus of a propaganda battle under Saddam Hussein's regime.
Britain had handed over detailed maps of locations in southern Iraq where about 1.9 tonnes of depleted uranium was used in 2003, to help the clean-up, Mr Toepfer said.
"We did not get additional coordinates or information from the United States so far," he said. "We need the coordinates otherwise a study or assessment is not possible."
Unep is coordinating the whole project in cooperation with the Iraqi government as part of a wider $4.7m scheme funded by donors including Japan, Germany and Britain.
----
"The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children"
New German film exposes current radioactive warfare in Iraq
http://flybynews.com/cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1092365546,99873,
Veterans, military families, activists and interested individuals can now order an English version of a documentary film produced for German television by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn.
This stunning new video, has just been released by Ochoa-Wagner Produktion in 2004 in Germany and is available through Traprock Peace Center.
"The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" exposes the use and impact of radioactive weapons during the current war against Iraq. The story is told by citizens of many nations and opens with comments by two British veterans, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called Depleted Uranium (DU), weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children..
To purchase "The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" (VHS NTSC format) go to www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html
The purchase price is $25.00 for non-commercial, non-institutional use and includes normal shipping - first class mail within the US. (If you require expedited shipping, please call Traprock at 413-773-7427 as the shipping rates will vary.)
For an exclusive article on this film by Tedd Weyman, leader of Uranium Medical Research Centre investigative team that gathered samples for analysis, go to http://www.traprockpeace.org/tedd_weyman_10aug04.html
----
DU - The stuff of nightmares
By Julie Flint
The Lebanon Daily Star
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=8333
Two years before the invasion of Iraq, a report commissioned by the World Health Organization warned that the long-term health of Iraq's civilian population would be damaged by the use of depleted uranium (DU) - radioactive waste from the nuclear industry which is used to harden missiles, shells and bullets and which slices through tank armor like a knife through butter. The WHO did not make the report public. Odd, that.
DU has been called the "Trojan Horse" of the wars in Iraq - and Afghanistan and Kosovo and Bosnia - a weapon that keeps on killing. On detonation, DU armaments release a spray of radioactive dust that can be carried in the air over long distances and which, when inhaled, goes into the body and stays there. The dust remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years.
The WHO report was written by three of Europe's top radiation scientists, including Dr. Keith Baverstock, for more than a decade the WHO's leading expert on radiation and health. After retiring from the WHO, Baverstock leaked the report to the media earlier this year. It concluded that microscopic particles of DU would be blown around and inhaled by Iraqi civilians for years to come, and could trigger the growth of malignant tumors. Baverstock believes the WHO deliberately suppressed the report - probably under pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a more powerful UN body that promotes nuclear power. In response, WHO claims the IAEA's role was "very minor" and says the report was not approved for publication because "parts of it did not reflect accurately what a WHO-convened group of international experts considered the best science in the area of depleted uranium."
In other words, its own chosen experts got it wrong. Odd, again.
Had the study had been published in November 2001, Baverstock believes there would have been more pressure on the Allies to limit their use of DU during the invasion of Iraq - and to clean up afterward. But it wasn't published. As a result, Iraq is now playing host to some 350 tons of DU fired in 1991, but also to more than 1,000 tons reportedly fired in 2003. The "reportedly" is needed here because the armed forces are playing coy with figures. No wonder: handlers of DU in the US and Britain are required to wear masks and protective clothing. Imagine Iraqis having to dress like that for 4.5 billion years.
Nuha al-Radi, the much-loved Iraqi artist and diarist who died in Beirut on August 31, believed her leukemia could have been caused by DU. And if not DU, then something else to which Iraqis were knowingly exposed in the wars since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. For DU is not the only concern in the "toxic wasteland" that many scientists say Iraq has become. There are also the chemical weapons the Baath regime used against its own people, and in its war with Iran, and, most recently, the chemical and biological materials released into the atmosphere by Allied bombing of Iraqi stockpiles in the first Gulf war of 1991.
Nuha, who didn't believe the first war would take place, was devastated by the second. "The carnage takes place in apocalyptic proportions," she wrote at her lowest point. "Sometimes I want to cry, but I resist. I am totally withered, and feel so useless." We talked of working together on a film that would investigate the pollution of Iraq and its people. Nuha was convinced that DU was entering the water table and flowing into every corner of the country, poisoning everything. But she fell ill, and we did nothing.
Looking at the DU debate now, one thing is crystal-clear: there are two very district bodies of opinion - and both claim to be informed. The question is, by what?
On one side, there are the governments that use DU weapons, the IAEA, NATO and WHO, who maintain (publicly, at least) that DU is not particularly dangerous and has no long-term effects. On the other side, united by varying degrees of concern, are the European Parliament, which has called for an immediate moratorium on the use of DU weapons, Belgium, Portugal, France, Spain and Italy, who don't use them and want an inquiry into them; the United Nations Environmental Program; and many independent scientists, several of whom have first-hand experience of the legacy of DU.
After the first Gulf war, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a colonel in the US Army Medical Corps, was put in charge of Nuclear Medicine Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He discovered unusual radiation levels in veterans and became convinced not only that DU was killing them, but also that it was causing changes in the human gene pool that would damage future generations. He found "considerable resistance" from the government to his work on DU and was asked to stop. He refused. Two months after writing to President Bill Clinton to request an inquiry into DU contamination, he was fired - and went on to become Clinical Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington.
A nutter? Hardly. Yet Durakovic says soil samples from Iraq show radiation levels 17 times higher than is acceptable - threatening, he says, environmental "catastrophe." He believes that DU contamination from the 1991 war may have exposed the entire Gulf population.
When the 1991 war started, Dr. Doug Rokke, a Vietnam veteran, forensic scientist and retired army major, was recalled from academia and sent to the Gulf as part of the army's Depleted Uranium Assessment team. "The US Army made me their expert," he says. "I went into the project with the total intent to ensure they could use uranium munitions in war, because I'm a warrior. What I saw as director of the project led me to one conclusion: uranium munitions must be banned from the planet, for eternity, and medical care must be provided for everyone" - those on the firing end and those on the receiving end.
Many in Rokke's Gulf team are now dead. He himself suffers from serious health problems including brain lesions and lung and kidney damage. When government doctors finally agreed to test him in November 1994, three-and-a-half years after he fell ill, while he was director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, he was found to have 5,000 times the permissible level of radiation in his body - enough to light up a small village.
DU, he says, is the stuff of nightmares.
Julie Flint is a veteran journalist based in Beirut and London. This is the first of two articles on depleted uranium, which she wrote for THE DAILY STAR
----
Washington's secret nuclear war
The US has dropped tonnes of depleted uranium on Iraq
By Shaheen Chughtai
Tuesday 14 September 2004
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B2E2DF9B-1E0C-43F4-BBF6-074C1367E27C.htm
Illegal weapons of mass destruction have not only been found in Iraq but have been used against Iraqis and have even killed US troops.
But Washington and its allies have tried to cover up this outrage because the chief culprit is the US itself, argue American and other experts trying to expose what they say is a war crime.
The WMD in question is depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is used to coat ammunition such as tank shells and "bunker busting" missiles because its density makes it ideal for piercing armour.
Thousands of DU shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and - both during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing conflict - in Iraq.
"They're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU - it's all over the place"
"They're using it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU - it's all over the place," says Major Doug Rokke, director of the US army's DU project in 1994-95.
Scientists say even a tiny particle can have disastrous results once ingested, including various cancers and degenerative diseases, paralysis, birth deformities and death.
And as tiny DU particles are blown across the Middle East and beyond like a radioactive poison gas, the long-term implications for the world - DU has a shelf-life of 4.5 billion years - are deeply disturbing.
Sick soldiers
Only 467 US soldiers were officially wounded during the 1990-91 Gulf war.
But according to Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), of the more than 592,560 discharged personnel who served there, at least 179,310 - one third - are receiving disability compensation and over 24,760 cases were pending by in September 2004.
This does not include personnel still active and receiving care from the military, or those who have died.
And among 168,528 veterans of the current conflict in Iraq who have left active duty, 16% (27,571) had already sought treatment from the VA by July 2004.
"That's astronomical," says Rokke, whose team studied how to provide medical care for victims, how to clean contaminated sites, and how to train those using DU weapons.
Rokke admits the exact cause for these casualties cannot be confirmed. But he insists the evidence pointing to DU is compelling.
"There were no chemical or biological weapons there, no big oil well fires," he says. "So what's left?"
Cradle to grave
Dr Jenan Ali, a senior Iraqi doctor at Basra hospital's College of Medicine, says her studies show a 100% rise in child leukaemia in the region in the decade after the first Gulf war, with a 242% increase in all types of malignancies.
The director of the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, Dr Daud Miraki, says his field researchers found evidence of DU's effect on civilians in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan in 2003 although local conditions make rigorous statistical analysis difficult.
"Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumours protruding from their mouths and eyes," Miraki told Aljazeera.net. Some newborns are barely recognisable as human, he says. Many do not survive.
Afghan and Iraqi children continue to play amid radioactive debris. But the US army will not even label contaminated equipment or sites because doing so would be an admission that DU is hazardous.
This "deceitful failure", says Rokke, contradicts the US army's own rules, such as regulation AR 700-48, which stipulates its responsibilities to isolate, label and decontaminate radioactive equipment and sites as well as to render prompt and effective medical care for all exposed individuals.
"This is a war crime," Rokke says. "The president is obliged to ensure the army complies with these regulations but they're deliberately violating the law. It's that simple."
No remedy
But these blatant violations are practically irrelevant because Rokke's Iraq mission found that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no known medical remedy.
US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair used Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of illegal weapons to justify invading Iraq. But several prominent jurists hold Bush and Blair guilty of war crimes for waging DU warfare.
The vice-president of the Indian Lawyers Association, Niloufer Bhagwat, sat on an international panel of judges for the unofficial International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.
Bhagwat and her fellow judges ruled that the US had used "weapons of extermination of present and future generations, genocidal in properties".
Friendly fire
And not just against defenceless Afghan civilians.
"Bush was guilty of knowingly using DU weaponry against his own troops," Bhagwat told Aljazeera.net, "because the president knew the effects of DU could not be controlled".
A prominent US international human-rights lawyer, Karen Parker, says there are four rules derived from humanitarian laws and conventions regarding weapons:
- weapons may only be used against legal enemy military targets and must not have an adverse effect elsewhere (the territorial rule)
- weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict and must not be used or continue to act afterwards (the temporal rule)
- weapons may not be unduly inhumane (the "humaneness" rule). The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 speak of "unnecessary suffering" and "superfluous injury" in this regard
- weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment (the "environmental" rule).
Illegal weapons
"DU weaponry fails all four tests," Parker told Aljazeera.net. First, DU cannot be limited to legal military targets. Second, it cannot be "turned off" when the war is over but keeps killing.
Third, DU can kill through painful conditions such as cancers and organ damage and can also cause birth defects such as facial deformities and missing limbs.
"Use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the Geneva Conventions"
Lastly, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment.
"In my view, use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the Geneva Conventions," says Parker. "And so its use constitutes a war crime, or crime against humanity."
Parker and others took the DU issue before the UN in 1995, and in 1996, the UN Human Rights Commission described DU munitions as weapons of mass destruction that should be banned.
Deceit
Despite the evidence, Rokke says Pentagon and Energy Department officials have campaigned against him and others trying to expose the horrors of DU.
That charge is echoed by Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who has worked at the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons research laboratories in California.
White House denials are part of a long-standing cover-up policy that has been exposed before, she says.
"For example, the US denied using DU bombs and missiles against Yugoslavia in 1999," she told Aljazeera.net. "But scientists in Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria measured elevated levels of gamma radiation in the first three days of grid and carpet bombing by the US."
Moret said: "A missile landed in Bulgaria that didn't explode and scientists identified a DU warhead. Then, Lord [George] Robertson, the head of NATO, admitted in public that DU had been used."
Even the US army expressed concern about the use of DU in July 1990, some six months before the outbreak of the first Gulf war. Those concerns were later echoed by Iraqi officials.
Denial
But brushing his own army's report aside - now said to be "outdated" - US President George Bush has dismissed such warnings as "propaganda".
"In recent years, the Iraqi regime made false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq," says Bush on his White House website.
"But scientists working for the World Health Organisation, the UN Environmental Programme and the European Union could find no health effects linked to exposure to depleted uranium," he said.
Bush can point to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2001 that said there was no significant risk of inhaling radioactive particles where DU weapons had been used.
It said the level of radiation associated with DU debris was not particularly hazardous, but it accepted that high exposure could pose a health risk.
Scientific studies
WHO also commissioned a scientific study shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that warned of the dangers of US and British use of DU - but refused to publish its findings.
The study's main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, told Aljazeera.net that "the report was deliberately suppressed" because WHO was pressed by a more powerful, pro-nuclear UN body - the International Atomic Energy Agency. WHO has rejected his claims as "totally unfounded".
"[WHO's] report was deliberately suppressed"
The study found DU particles were likely to be blown around and inhaled by Iraqi civilians for years to come. Once inside a human body, the radioactive particles can trigger the growth of malignant tumours.
Bush's claim that the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) gives DU pollution a clean bill of health is also disingenuous.
UNEP experts have yet to be allowed into Iraq, its spokesman in Geneva Michael Williams told Aljazeera.net, citing security concerns.
And a scientific body set up in 1997 by Green EU parliamentarians - the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) - found that DU posed serious health risks.
An eminent Canadian scientist involved with the ECRR, Dr Rosalie Bertell, says the deadliness of DU derived not just from its radioactivity but from the durability of particles formed in the 3000-6000C heat produced when a DU weapon is fired.
"The particles produced are like ceramic: not soluble in body fluid, non-biodegradable and highly toxic," she told Aljazeera.net. "They tend to concentrate in the lymph nodes, which is the source of lymphomas and leukaemia".
Known killer
The US military and political establishment cannot plead ignorance. As early as October 1943, Manhattan Project scientists Arthur Compton, James Connant and Harold Urey sent a memo to their director, General Leslie Groves, saying DU could be used to create a "radioactive gas".
In 1961, two nuclear experts, Briton HE Huxley and American Geoffrey Zubay, informed the scientific community that DU targeted human DNA and "the Master Code, which controls the expression of DNA", Moret said.
In September 2000, Dr Asaf Durakovic, professor of nuclear medicine at Washington's Georgetown University, told a Paris conference of prominent scientists that "tens of thousands" of US and UK troops were dying of DU.
Death sentence
"There has to be a moratorium on the manufacture, sales, use and storage of DU," geoscientist Moret says, warning that this will not happen unless more Americans realise what is happening.
The Middle East has been severely contaminated, warns Moret. "That region is radioactive forever," she says, but worse is yet to come.
Moret says the air carrying DU particles takes about a year to mix with the rest of the earth's atmosphere.
The radiation released by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more than 10 times the amount dispersed by atmospheric testing.
As a result, DU particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive poison gas that promises illness and death for millions.
Rokke went to Iraq a fit and healthy soldier, but the major is now beset with a variety of illnesses and each day is a struggle.
He suffers from respiratory problems and cataracts while his teeth - weakened by DU radiation - are crumbling. At least 20 of the 100 primary personnel he worked with on the US army's DU project have died. Most of the rest are ill.
Meanwhile, WHO says cancer rates worldwide are set to rise by 50% by 2020, although it does not link this publicly to DU.
"They would never say that - they offered various strange explanations," said Moret. "But DU is the key factor. People will slowly die."
-------- iran
U.S. Seeks Tougher Tone in Resolution on Iran's Nuclear Program
September 14, 2004
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/middleeast/14iran.html?pagewanted=all
VIENNA, Sept. 13 - The United States lobbied Monday to toughen an International Atomic Energy Agency draft resolution on Iran's nuclear program, hoping to include a clear "trigger" that would send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions if the country fails to comply with I.A.E.A. demands by November.
The proposed resolution, prepared by Britain, France and Germany, gives Iran a November deadline to clarify inconsistencies in its nuclear energy program, suspected of masking efforts to build a bomb. But it falls short of setting specific requirements or explicitly threatening to send the case to the Security Council.
Nonetheless, the draft resolution is the toughest yet in a yearlong effort to persuade Iran to cooperate more fully with the United Nations nuclear agency and shows a shift in Europe's attitude toward Iran. The three European countries have in the past resisted American pressure to deliver a harsher rebuke to Iran.
"The Europeans are taking a very hard line now," said a European diplomat involved in the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iran warned Monday that it might resume efforts to produce highly enriched uranium that could be used to build a nuclear bomb if the United Nations continues pressuring it over its nuclear program. In March, Iran voluntarily agreed to suspend them.
"We can't imagine that the suspension will last very long," Hossein Mousavian, head of the Iranian delegation, told reporters at the I.A.E.A. headquarters here. He reiterated Iran's stance that under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty it has the right to produce fuel for nuclear reactors.
The United States and other countries, however, have long pointed to inconsistencies in Iran's program.
Despite the suspension Iran promised in March, it has never halted the manufacture of centrifuge parts by private workshops. This month, Iran said it planned to convert about 40 tons of "yellow cake" uranium into uranium hexafluoride gas, the raw material for centrifuge enrichment. Nuclear experts warned that the quantity involved was sufficient to produce fuel for several bombs.
The draft resolution circulated by the three European countries calls on the I.A.E.A. chief, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, to produce a full report on Iran's nuclear activities before the next meeting of the agency's board of governors. It states that on the basis of that report, the board will make "a definitive determination on whether or not further steps are required."
Everyone involved understands that those "further steps" include referral to the Security Council, which could lead to sanctions against Iran. The United States, which has lobbied for tougher action against Iran since details of its clandestine nuclear program were disclosed last year, is working to harden the resolution's language further and to include a clear trigger for action in November by giving Iran a list of requirements, like a comprehensive suspension of enrichment activity, that it must fulfill before then.
In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said the United States would still like the I.A.E.A. to refer the issue to the Security Council this month, rather than wait until November. But European diplomats say that the United States has little choice, because there are not the votes on agency's board of governors for a quicker referral.
Once the United States and the three European countries have agreed on the draft, the resolution will be submitted to the board for approval this week. The board can call for a vote, but resolutions are usually approved by consensus to avoid politicizing the agency's decisions.
Iran, which is not on the 35-member board, is negotiating with Britain, France and Germany to soften the resolution in return for renewed commitments on suspending some of its activities.
Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. But the discovery two years ago that its program was much broader than it had disclosed to the United Nations agency and contained inadequately explained irregularities have convinced the United States that the oil-rich country's goal is not to produce cheap energy but to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Some Iranian equipment, for example, was found to be contaminated with weapons-grade uranium, and Iran had worked on producing polonium 210, a radioactive isotope that can help set off a nuclear explosion.
"There's a whole host of activities that in our opinion don't have anything to do with putting electricity into a light bulb," one Western official said.
Meanwhile, Dr. ElBaradei gave the board additional information on South Korea's secret nuclear experiments, disclosed this month, calling them "a matter of serious concern."
He said that South Korea had produced about 330 pounds of "natural uranium metal" at three secret facilities in the 1980's and that some of the metal was used in laser-based enrichment experiments in 2000 to produce a small amount of enriched uranium.
The disclosure suggests that South Korea's nuclear experiments had a longer history than previously thought, though South Korea contends that rogue scientists were responsible. Dr. ElBaradei said he would deliver a fuller report on South Korea in November.
Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
----
'No proof' of Iranian nuclear weapons programme
UK Guardian Staff and agencies
Tuesday September 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1304406,00.html
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog today said he was not certain that Iran's nuclear ambitions were entirely peaceful - but added he had seen no evidence to back allegations that the country was attempting to build a bomb.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a closed door meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors about Iran, Mohammed ElBaradei said there was no smoking gun to back US claims that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons.
"Have we seen any proof of a weapons programme? Have we seen undeclared [uranium] enrichment? There is none of that," Mr ElBaradei said. "But are we in a position to say that everything is peaceful? Obviously we are not at this stage."
The IAEA board is this week considering a joint French, British and German resolution calling on it to make a final decision about Iran at a November meeting. It would have the option of referring Iran to the UN security council for sanctions if it still had doubts about its nuclear programme.
Iran, with Russian assistance and fuel, has been building civilian reactors to produce electricity, but the three European countries and the US fear it could produce weapons-grade fuel if it mines and enriches its own uranium.
The Europeans began a policy of "constructive engagement" with Tehran in October 2003 in an attempt it to persuade it end enrichment, but have shown signs of losing patience and moving towards Washington's position.
Iran promised to suspend its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for a wide range of "carrots" - including non-military nuclear and other technology and a guarantee that it could keep a peaceful atomic programme - but it has not yet done so.
Hossein Mousavian, the country's chief delegate at this week's IAEA meeting, yesterday adopted a defiant stance when he said Iran would begin enriching uranium very soon.
Diplomats said Iran and the three European countries were quietly negotiating behind the scenes, and would soon announce a more comprehensive suspension of Iran's enrichment programme.
Mr Mousavian told Reuters that Tehran wanted to bring the standoff over its nuclear programme to a head in November. "We have nothing against serious dialogue aimed at providing assurances that Iran's nuclear programme will never, never be diverted to military purposes," he said in an interview.
Mr ElBaradei said he hoped the resolution would prompt Iran and other countries to improve cooperation with the IAEA.
"It is important to acknowledge progress and say we would like to see accelerated cooperation by Iran [and] by the countries that have been involved," he said in a clear reference to Pakistan, which provided much of Tehran's previously secret uranium enrichment technology.
Iran claims traces of highly enriched uranium on its centrifuges were the result of contamination due to it buying the parts on the black market.
-------- korea
U.N. Watchdog Details S. Korean Atomic Efforts
Long Concealment Of Programs Cited
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17895-2004Sep13.html
VIENNA, Sept. 13 -- The director of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Monday revealed new details of South Korean nuclear experiments and efforts to conceal them during the past 20 years, casting doubt on some of the government's claims, which he described as deeply troubling.
After reports surfaced two weeks ago about secret uranium enrichment and plutonium experiments, the South Korean government said the activity was limited and was reported to the U.N. nuclear agency as required. Senior Bush administration officials have praised the U.S. ally for coming clean voluntarily and for cooperating with inspectors.
But in his first public comments since the International Atomic Energy Agency announced its investigation, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said enrichment work "took place in three separate facilities that had not been declared to the agency," and he told the IAEA board that South Korea revealed its plutonium work only after it was confronted with evidence that inspectors had amassed over a number of years.
"It is a matter of serious concern that the conversion and enrichment of uranium and the separation of plutonium were not reported to the agency as required," ElBaradei told board members who gathered in Vienna Monday at the start of a week-long meeting.
"I would ask the Republic of Korea to continue to provide active cooperation and maximum transparency in order for the agency to gain full understanding of the extent and scope of these previously undeclared activities and to verify the correctness and completeness of South Korea's declarations," ElBaradei said.
By contrast, he gave Iran high marks for its recent cooperation and said several key issues regarding the country's nuclear work had been clarified. But those positive steps may be jeopardized, ElBaradei warned, if Iran continues to build equipment that could be used for bomb-making.
"I have continued to stress to Iran that during this delicate phase, while work is still in progress to verify its past nuclear program, and in light of serious international concerns surrounding the program, it should do its utmost to build a required confidence through the agency," he said.
His mix of praise and criticism came as the Bush administration was struggling to make diplomatic headway on Iran and the Korean Peninsula. On Monday, U.S. and European diplomats shuttled between conference rooms at the IAEA meeting in an effort to bridge differences over how to deal with Iran. The Bush administration wants a resolution setting a deadline for Iran to fully suspend all suspect nuclear work or face U.N. Security Council measures. European diplomats, holding out the possibility that inspectors could answer any remaining questions by then, prefer to await the outcome of the IAEA inspections.
Iran's lead negotiator here, Hoseyn Moussavian, said Iran has halted work, for the moment, on the construction of a large-scale centrifuge operation that could be used to enrich uranium. "We have taken maximum steps for confidence-building," he told reporters in Vienna. ElBaradei dispatched inspectors to Iran several days ago to tag equipment but it remains unclear under what terms the Iranians would continue to hold off on the work.
ElBaradei said that negotiations are at a sensitive stage and that he has been consulting with all parties. He said he could not set a timeline for completing the Iran investigation but said he wanted remaining issues to be clarified by the end of the year.
He did not say whether Iran should be reported to the U.N. Security Council for violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But diplomats at the IAEA said South Korea was increasingly facing a referral to the council.
ElBaradei also provided information about the nuclear operations uncovered in South Korea, including experiments in plutonium conducted in the early 1980s, production of nuclear equipment in the mid-1990s and remarkably successful uranium enrichment work in 2000.
Both Iran and South Korea are signatories of the international nuclear treaty that the IAEA was set up to help implement. In the 1970s, the South Korean government announced it was giving up its nuclear weapons program under U.S. pressure. In 1991, it signed an agreement with North Korea to ban uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing on the Korean Peninsula. The North is believed to have violated that agreement, and U.S. intelligence estimates indicate that North Korea may have as many as eight nuclear weapons.
An explosion last week in North Korea set off alarm that it may have conducted a nuclear test. On Monday, North Korean officials told a visiting British diplomat in Pyongyang that the explosion and resultant billowing cloud of smoke was caused by the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project, Western diplomats said.
The North Korean government said over the weekend that six-nation talks aimed at ending its nuclear ambitions must be tied to a full investigation of South Korea's nuclear work.
On Tuesday, after leaving Pyongyang, the British official told reporters that North Korea was committed to holding such talks, but was not prepared to set a date, the Reuters news service reported from Beijing.
--------
North Korea Offers to Show Site of Blast to Diplomats
September 14, 2004
By JAMES BROOKE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/asia/14korea.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 14 - North Korea will show foreign diplomats as early as Tuesday the site of a mysterious explosion that it said was intended to blow up a mountain for a hydroelectric dam, British journalists reported Monday night from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Satellite photos of a mushroom cloud rising Thursday from a huge nighttime explosion raised international concern that North Korea had tested a nuclear bomb on Sept. 9, the 56th anniversary of its founding. There have been no reports of increased radiation releases from North Korea's neighbors, China, Russia or South Korea.
"It was no nuclear explosion or an accident," said North Korea's foreign minister, Paek Nam Sun, according to a BBC correspondent in Pyongyang who was traveling with Bill Rammell, a minister with the British Foreign Office. "It was a deliberate, controlled detonation to demolish a mountain in the far north of the country."
The Press Association of Britain gave similar details about the explosion in a pool report, and the official New China News Agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry official as giving an identical explanation. In a pool report received by Reuters, Mr. Rammell said the British ambassador in Pyongyang, David Slinn, could visit the site near the Chinese border as early as Tuesday.
North Korea's first mention of the incident came four days after the blast, in reaction to what it called a South Korean "smear campaign" about a possible a nuclear test.
"Plot-breeders might tell such a sheer lie," the Korean Central News Agency said Monday. Referring to South Korea's admissions about its own experiments with nuclear fuels, the agency said, "The story about the explosion is nothing but a sheer fabrication intended to divert elsewhere the world public attention focused on the nuclear-related issue of South Korea."
But many South Koreans voiced skepticism about a nighttime explosion in a military area known to have a ballistic missile base.
Officials here are studying the topography of the blast site for evidence that there is river large enough to support a major hydroelectric project. Generally, construction engineers avoid blasting at night, partly for safety reasons and partly because extensive lighting is usually needed, a luxury in power-starved North Korea.
Hours after the blast, a two-mile-high cloud was traced to a site in Kimhyongjik County, about 20 miles from China. The thinly populated county has the rugged topography needed for hydroelectric projects.
Last week, Reuters reported, North Korean television showed images of bulldozers moving earth at a mountain site for what it said would be a hydroelectric power plant, about 40 miles east of the reported explosion. Last May, North Korea's news agency reported that construction had started on a power plant in Samsu County, about 50 miles from where the explosion took place.
There are as many unanswered questions about the blast as there are about the explosion that leveled a railroad station on April 22, killing 171 people shortly after a train passed carrying North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il.
One analyst here said the murkiness surrounding the blast is consonant with North Korea's studied ambiguity about its nuclear program. "Taking into consideration North Korea's strategies - brinkmanship diplomacy and strategic ambiguity when dealing with the U.S. - I think this incident was in line with their usual tactics," Kim Tae Woo, a nuclear policy specialist at the Korean Institute of Defense Analysis, a government-financed research center, said Monday. "It was a way to send out the message and boast that they can stage such a large-scale explosion if they wanted to."
In what was perhaps another message, Mr. Rammell, the British Foreign Office minister, said North Korean officials had told him during his four-day visit that they were committed to continuing six-party talks on their nuclear weapons program with South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, but "weren't prepared to commit to a date," Reuters reported.
--------
North Korea Says Blast Was for Hydroelectric Project
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
By Jack Kim,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-14/s_27157.asp
SEOUL, South Korea - A huge explosion in North Korea last week was a deliberate blast to pave the way for a hydroelectric dam, Pyongyang said on Monday.
Washington and Seoul have said the explosion was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test. South Korean media said an accident at an underground munitions depot or a weapons factory was a likely explanation for possibly two blasts.
South Korea's financial markets, which can react sharply to developments in the North, ignored the blast reports, which came as diplomats were seeking to persuade Pyongyang to return this month to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs.
"It was no nuclear explosion or an accident. It was a deliberate controlled detonation to demolish a mountain in the far north of the country," a BBC correspondent in Pyongyang with British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell quoted North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun as saying.
Britain's Press Association gave similar details in a pool report, and China's Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry official as giving the same explanation.
Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.
The BBC said when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts, he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.
Rammell was the highest British official to visit Pyongyang, and he had been expected to meet the North's leader Kim Jong-il. He also asked Paek to allow diplomats to visit the blast site.
"He has said he will consider that request and get back to me," Rammell said.
South Korean officials confirmed indications of one large explosion - or possibly two - on the night of Sept. 8 and early morning of Sept. 9.
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told a parliamentary committee on Monday "a peculiar cloud" and seismic activities were detected in separate areas that may be from unrelated incidents some 100 to 120 km (60 to 75 miles) apart.
Missile Bases in Area
South Korean media did not home in on the possibility of controlled explosions for building work.
South Korean intelligence detected two explosions on the night of Sept. 8 to 9, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper in South Korea said, suggesting a possible accident at a military factory or a munitions depot.
The area in Ryanggang that borders China has been known to have a secret missile base, but the site of the accident is some distance away, the source was quoted as saying.
Analyst Kim Tae-woo at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis said it was probably an accident.
"Rodong missile bases are located in the blast area, and extremely explosive liquid fuel, which is also very flammable, is used in production and in operation of missiles," Kim said. "I believe it was a mere accident triggered by mishandling."
A train blast in April in North Korea's Ryongchon rail station that killed at least 170 people was believed to have been sparked by careless handling of explosive materials.
Analyst Kim Kyung-sool at Korea Energy Economics Institute said Ryanggang offers rich resources for hydroelectric power, with several smaller plants in place, but there had been no reports of a larger-scale project.
The North's state television last week showed footage of what it said was the construction site for a hydroelectric power plant about 60 km (40 miles) east of the reported explosion. The video showed earthmovers with rugged mountains in the background.
U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, played down the possibility of a nuclear test.
North Korea is believed to be developing nuclear weapons; Washington has said it may have one or two or even more already.
The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions the Bush administration had received recent intelligence reports that some experts believed could indicate North Korea was preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion.
The news broke as South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States sought to persuade Pyongyang to resume talks on its nuclear ambitions. The North, which threatened at earlier talks to test an atomic bomb, says it sees no need for more talks.
Additional reporting by Park Sung-woo, Lee Shin-hyung, Frances Yoon, and Lee Jun-goo in Seoul and Marie Frail in Beijing
--------
Seoul seeks Russian help in restarting N.Korea nuclear talks
MOSCOW (AFP)
Sep 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040914152539.vrs8zdmr.html
Russian and South Korean diplomats held talks in Moscow on Tuesday focused on efforts to persuade Pyongyang to resume faltering six-way talks about its nuclear weapons program, the foreign ministry said.
Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Alexeyev met with South Korean counterpart Lee Soo-Hyuck, Seoul's top nuclear negotiator.
"Both sides agreed to intensify efforts to resume the negotiating process so that all participants can search for a compromise solution," a statement said.
The Russian official said he was not certain North Korea would agree to take part in the next round of talks as scheduled this month in Beijing, but he voiced hope that another date could be fixed.
"We agreed to pursue consultations in various formats and are counting on the fourth round being held, if not in September, then within a reasonably short time," Alexeyev was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.
The trip completes a round of bilateral consultations between South Korea and other members of talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the United States.
North Korea has indicated it may not attend the talks aimed at resolving the two-year-old impasse over its nuclear ambitions.
The Stalinist country maintained a tougher stance after South Korea disclosed its own nuclear experiments to enrich uranium four years ago and to extract a small amount of plutonium in the 1980s.
Both enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to manufacture atomic bombs, but South Korea said its experiments were purely for academic purposes.
A Russian delegation led by Sergei Mironov, the speaker of Russia's Federation Council (upper house of parliament), met Monday with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, ITAR-TASS reported.
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun is to visit Russia next week for talks on curbing North Korea's nuclear weapons drive and trans-Siberian railway links.
----
Nuke material experiments have nothing to do with weapons: S. Korean official
September 14, 2004
Xinhua
http://english.people.com.cn/200409/14/eng20040914_156909.html
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said on Monday evening the nuclear material experiments that South Korean scientists conducted years ago had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Ban made the remarks during a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Colin Powell, according to a statement issued by South Korean Foreign Ministry.
For his part, Powell said he understood the experiments were done by some scientists for academic purpose and they had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, the statement said.
Earlier Monday, Ban also held telephone conversations with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing over the issue.
Over the past couple of weeks, Seoul has acknowledged two separate experiments, one in 1982 and the other in 2000, which resulted in the production of small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium -- the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
These acknowledgments triggered speculations about the country's nuclear ambitions, despite Seoul's repeated assertion that they were purely academic activities that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Monday held a Board of Governor meeting and discussed the experiments. The nuclear watchdog of the United Nations has expressed serious concern over the issue.
----
Uranium research toughens dialogue
Concealable lasers undermines S. Korea's assertions that work was done by 'rogue scientists'
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Tri-Valley Herald
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2400313,00.html
For enriching uranium, South Korea chose a sophisticated and easily concealable method using exotic green lasers that throws into question government assertions that it was the unauthorized work of "rogue scientists."
The method, pioneered separately by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Soviet researchers in the 1970s, would have cost at least several million dollars and posed nuclear-safety risks that would not have gone unnoticed in a U.S. laboratory.
South Korea's belated admission that its scientists experimented with laser-isotopic separation of uranium metal and tried harvesting plutonium from reactor fuel are certain to complicate negotiations over suspect nuclear activities in North Korea and Iran.
Arms-control experts said the revelations could harden the resistance of North Korea and Iran to freezing their nuclear efforts.
"If South Korea isn't dealt with in the same way as Iran, then Iran can say it hasn't been dealt with fairly and that if you're a U.S. ally, you get a pass," said David Albright, a scientist and former weapons inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security.
U.S. officials quietly dissuaded South Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons in the mid-1990s, after catching wind of plans by its military leader- ship to build a plutonium-producing reactor and purchase large "hot cells" for chemically separating plutonium from reactor fuel.
But the more recent revelations suggest that its scientists kept pursuing small-scale experiments in uranium enrichment and plutonium separation as potential routes to an arsenal to deter North Korea.
South Korean diplomats and research executives told the International Atomic Energy Agency that a small group of scientists pursued laser enrichment without the knowledge or approval of the government.
But the group worked inside the large, well-funded Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Taechon, a town established by the government as its "Science City." And the team had been pursuing laser spectroscopy and enrichment techniques for a decade before the uranium enrichment experiments that the government now says took place in January and February of 2000.
It took 25 years and close to $2 billion for Livermore to perfect atomic vapor laser isotopic separation or AVLIS, as the process is known. Scientists use a high-temperature or an electron beam to vaporize uranium metal inside a special chamber pumped free of oxygen or supplied with an inert gas. That's essential because particles of uranium, in contact with oxygen or water, can burst into flame.
Scientists then shoot laser beams shoot through the cloud of molten uranium to energize U-235 atoms, changing their electrical charge so that they are drawn to charged plates inside the chamber.
It's an expensive proposition, with more sophisticated, production versions costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate safely.
"Certainly the laser technology itself is probably several million dollars, and I would think they would spend a similar amount on the system itself to vaporize and separate the uranium," said one U.S. expert.
In the early 1990s, a private U.S. nonproliferation researcher began tracing the South Koreans' efforts through their published scientific reports.
"These guys were pretty sharp. They had a trained cadre of physicists in this area, and they were working with three or four universities," said the researcher, Mark Gorwitz.
The South Koreans moved to separation of medically valuable rare-earth elements, such as gadolinium and lanthanum.
"Obviously uranium was one in a series of elements to look at. It's a logical progression," said Gorwitz. "It shouldn't have come as a surprise" to South Korea, the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency.
According to South Korean statements, its scientists used five pounds of uranium metal as feedstock and ended up with 200 milligrams of laser-enriched uranium.
According to Republic of Korea statements to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the enrichment levels ranging to from a few percent to 77 percent, well beyond commercial reactor fuel and in the realm of weapons-grade enrichment.
But U.S. experts say the amounts, if borne out by investigation, suggests the South Korean team was still working at a "benchtop" experimental level and never teased good efficiency out of their lasers.
"They were probably at the stage where they were playing with the process and trying to tune it, but they obviously didn't do very well," said another U.S. expert in laser separation.
South Korea never reported the experiments, as required under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Albright suspects the scientists pursued laser separation just to be sure they could do it, if South Korea were later forced to build nuclear weapons by confrontation with a nuclear armed North Korea.
"The scientists may have been thinking, 'If the day comes when we need to do this, yeah we can,'" he said.
The consequences are likely to hamper efforts at restraining the nuclear efforts of North Korea and Iran, Albright said.
"It makes it harder," he said. "North Korea can be genuinely worried, and they're paranoid so they see the worst things. It will feed into the hardliners there that say they really need a nuclear arsenal, and it gives them a tremendous proproganda club."
North Korea may agree to inspections to verify the state of its nuclear work only if South Korea also agrees to open its military facilities.
"North Korea can make demands for things to happen in South Korea that may not be so easy for S. Korea to agree with," Albright said.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.
-------- missile defense
Test of Missile Defense System Delayed Again
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18975-2004Sep13?language=printer
The Pentagon's last hope of flight-testing critical new elements of an antimissile system, before activating the system this autumn, appeared to vanish yesterday with the disclosure that the next flight test has been postponed until late this year, well past the November election.
The Air Force general in charge of the program said the setback will not affect plans to begin operating the system in the next month or two. But the delay leaves the Pentagon pressing ahead with a system that will not have been flight-tested in nearly two years -- and never with the actual interceptor that will be deployed.
The postponement also comes against the backdrop of a wide disparity in estimates about the system's likely effectiveness that has emerged among key Pentagon officials.
The Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator has calculated that the system may be capable of hitting its targets only about 20 percent of the time. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which is responsible for developing the system, offers estimates of greater than 80 percent, according to several officials familiar with the classified figures.
The missile defense system, a top Bush administration priority, is designed to send interceptors into space to knock down enemy warheads. The first two interceptors have already been lowered into silos at a newly constructed launch facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, and more are to follow.
Since the last flight test in December 2002, a number of critical hardware and software changes have been incorporated into the system, and officials have counted on the next test to gather critical data about the system's accuracy and reliability.
Democratic lawmakers and other critics of the system accused the administration yesterday of playing politics with the test schedule, seeking to avoid the risk of an embarrassing flop during the presidential campaign.
"This has been a program so fraught with political calculation, rather than strategic and scientific thought, that I would assume there's some political aspect to the delay," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee.
But Lt. Gen. Henry A. "Trey" Obering III, MDA's director, attributed the delay solely to technical considerations.
"I have not been asked, influenced or pressured one way or another with respect to putting this system through its paces, through its tests," he said in an interview, disclosing the postponement.
The flight test, already delayed several times, had most recently been slated to occur at the end of September. Obering said he decided to delay it until the end of November after learning last week of a number of modifications to the test interceptor that were not checked out fully in ground tests.
The modifications were made after the interceptor had been moved to a U.S. launch site in the Marshall Islands, Obering said. The interceptor will now be shipped back to a U.S. assembly facility for reexamination.
Another factor contributing to the delay, Obering said, was the inability so far to find the root cause of a software glitch in the flight computer of the interceptor's booster rocket. That glitch led to an earlier flight test delay -- from mid-August to late September -- as the interceptor was removed from its silo to put in a new computer.
Obering said the problems with the test interceptor should have no bearing on the deployment at Fort Greely. Although the interceptors being installed there underwent the same modifications as the test interceptor, they were thoroughly checked at assembly plants, he said. Further, the flight computer glitch seems to involve only test telemetry data, which is not an issue for the Fort Greely interceptors.
Nonetheless, Reed and others said they are baffled at how the administration could be proceeding with deployment while hesitating to test the system.
"If you're not confident enough to take a chance on a test, how can you say that this can engage successfully in a real operational mission?" the senator said in an interview. Since the start of intercept tests in 1999, the Pentagon has had difficulty keeping up a consistent pace of flights. A couple of early test failures led to months of delay as the causes of the failures were probed.
Several successful intercepts after President Bush was elected gave the test program momentum. But after a failure in December 2002, MDA officials ordered a halt to more intercept tests until a newly designed booster could be completed.
The booster carries a "kill vehicle" into space. That vehicle -- a 120-pound package of sensors, computers and thrusters -- then separates and homes in on an enemy warhead, destroying it with a collision.
Development of the booster has proven more problematic than expected. As a result, several intercept tests that the Pentagon had planned to run last year and this year have been postponed, cancelled or recast as component tests.
The administration thus finds itself proceeding with deployment after only eight intercept tests -- all held before Bush's decision 21 months ago to start fielding a system in 2004. Five were hits, but all occurred under heavily scripted conditions.
All also involved a surrogate booster that flew only half as fast as the booster that will be used in the system. That booster has been launched successfully several times, but it has never flown attached to an actual kill vehicle. The maiden flight of the booster and kill vehicle is slated to be a central feature of the next test.
The absence of realistic flight testing has prompted Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator, to say he will not be able to provide a confident assessment of the system's viability ahead of the planned deployment. In recent weeks, his Operational Test and Evaluation office has argued with MDA over widely different estimates of the system's likely effectiveness.
The differences, Obering said, reflect disagreement over which test data to include in computing the estimates.
-------- russia
U.S. Repatriates Uranium From Uzbek Reactor to Russia
September 14, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-14-09.asp#anchor2
Eleven kilograms (24 pounds) of enriched uranium fuel, including highly enriched uranium (HEU) that could be used for nuclear weapons, were returned to Russia from Uzbekistan Thursday in a secret mission conducted by the United States, Uzbekistan, and Russia, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday.
"The recovery, return and eventual elimination of this highly enriched uranium are an important milestone in our campaign to reduce this dangerous material worldwide," Abraham said. "It was only with the strong cooperation of the Uzbeks and Russians that we were able to successfully complete this important international security mission."
The highly enriched uranium was airlifted under guard from an airport near Tashkent, Uzbekistan to a secured facility in Dmitrovgrad, Russia. There, the uranium will be down-blended to low enriched uranium that can be used to generate electricity but not for weapons.
Russia was the original supplier of the fuel which powered Uzbekistan's 10-megawatt VVR-SM reactor, the largest facility of its kind in Central Asia.
The enriched uranium was loaded into two specialized transportation containers provided by the Russian Federation.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards inspectors and U.S. Department of Energy technical experts were present in Uzbekistan to monitor the process of loading the fuel into the canisters.
Along with a decision to return the uranium to Russia, the Uzbekistan government also has made a decision to convert the research reactor to use low enriched uranium fuel, furthering nuclear nonproliferation goals.
The mission was conducted under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), which aims to remove or secure high-risk nuclear and radiological materials and equipment around the world that pose a threat to the United States and to the international community.
Secretary Abraham said, "I applaud the efforts of Uzbekistan for its cooperation with the United States, Russian Federation, and the IAEA under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation by returning HEU to Russia."
This is the fifth shipment of uranium being returned to Russia. In the past year, the Energy Department has repatriated a total of 48 kg of HEU fuel to Russia from Romania, Bulgaria and Libya. And, in August 2002, 48 kilos of Russian origin HEU were repatriated from a research reactor near Belgrade, Serbia.
About 130 research reactors around the world still run on weapons grade HEU.
Next week, Abraham said the United States and Russia will be hosting more than 300 participants at the GTRI International Partners' Conference. The conference will be held in Vienna in conjunction with the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual General Council. It is intended to focus international attention on efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials that pose a threat to the international community.
-------- terrorism
Radiation Risk of Attack Played Down
Associated Press
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18903-2004Sep13.html
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded it is unlikely that significant amounts of radiation would be released in a deliberate crash of a jetliner into a nuclear power plant but said engineering tests have not entirely ruled out the possibility of radioactive releases.
The NRC said studies on a limited number of power plants by federal research labs and agency staff showed that even if there were initial releases of radioactivity, plant operators would have time to act to reduce the impact on public health.
The government and nuclear industry have been concerned that al Qaeda might target a nuclear power plant.
--------
Officials Can't Say Nukes Safe From Terror
Tuesday September 14, 2004
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
The Associated Press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4494905,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot independently verify that every nuclear power plant is taking required safeguards to protect against a terrorist threat, congressional investigators said Tuesday.
Senior NRC officials strongly challenged that assessment and said the agency, through onsite inspectors and other activities, is aggressively monitoring security compliance at the nation's 103 reactors at 65 sites.
The Government Accountability Office told a House subcommittee that the NRC's monitoring of reactor security has been largely ``a paper review'' that falls short of assuring that industry security plans are meeting the more stringent requirements now demanded.
At the same time, the GAO, which is the auditing arm of Congress, said critical ``force-on-force'' mock attacks to physically test security at the plants will not be completed at all facilities until late 2007.
``It will take several more years for NRC to make an independent determination that each plant has taken reasonable and appropriate steps to protect against the (terrorist) threat presented,'' GAO investigator Jim Well told a House Government Reform subcommittee on national security.
NRC officials, who also testified before the panel, strongly disputed the GAO assessment and said the agency has increased inspection hours at the power plants fivefold and has physically reviewed 80 percent of the security items plant operators must address.
``We have inspectors (at the plants) all the time,'' said Luis Reyes, the NRC's executive director for operations. ``We are there where the rubber meets the road when it comes to inspections.''
The GAO report also criticized the NRC for ``not following up to verify that all violations of security requirements have been corrected'' and for not filing official reports on all such incidents.
At least two NRC inspectors are assigned to each of the 65 commercial nuclear power plant sites in 31 states. Reyes acknowledged they have broad responsibilities and do not file written reports on all security shortcomings - only ``the more significant ones.''
Those viewed as of ``low level'' importance are evaluated on a sample basis, he said. ``It's a matter of resources.''
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the subcommittee, said there still ``is no reasonable assurance plants are adequately protected'' even though the NRC in April 2003 developed new standards as to what kinds of potential terrorist attacks plant operators must be prepared to repel.
He accused the NRC and industry of trying to ``minimize the risks'' of a terrorist attack that could lead to a radiation release and accepting ``a cozy, indulgent regulatory process that looks and acts very much like business as usual.''
That brought an emotional response from Roy Zimmerman, head of the NRC's security office, who said he was concerned that lawmakers were assuming the NRC is not paying attention to security.
``We're laying awake at night. We've very concerned,'' Zimmerman said. ``We're constantly looking and working very long hours to get out ahead of those that want to do us harm. We're not lackadaisical.''
In separate testimony, nuclear industry representatives said utilities have spent more than $1 billion on security improvements and increased security forces by 60 percent, hiring 3,000 additional officers, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
``Nuclear power plants are the most secure commercially owned facilities in the country,'' said Marvin Fertel, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group.
Among the improvements cited were expansion of security perimeters around plants, more patrols within security zones, installation of new barriers to protect against vehicle bombs, installation of high-tech surveillance equipment, increased communications and coordination with local, state and federal police authorities. The NRC also has required plants to conduct force-on-force mock drills once every three years, instead of once every eight years as required before 2001.
On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
Nuclear Energy Institute: http://www.nei.org
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Old Bomb, New Search?
Paul Rea
WSAV News 3
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.wsav.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSAV/MGArticle/SAV_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777946654&path=!frontpage
In 1958 a B-47 bomber training along the east coast was struck by another plane. Rather than risk landing with a full load, it dropped its single weapon over the waters near Savannah.
That weapon, a Mark 15 nuclear bomb was never recovered. A fully armed Mark 15 would have a plutonium core surrounded by conventional explosives. At the time of the drop, the military claimed the plutonium core was not installed meaning the bomb could not create a nuclear explosion.
The Air Force has said for decades that the weapon cannot be found but a Statesboro man has challenged that and for the past 7 years has been searching for the so-called Tybee Bomb. Now Derek Duke says he may have found it. "We have found something that would lead you to believe that we have found it."
They narrowed down the location of the bomb to an area of Wassaw Sound about the size of a football field. They say their equipment showed radiation levels 7 to 10 times higher than normal and they located what appears to be a large object at the bottom of the sound in about 20 feet of water. "We got remarkably high radiation levels centered about this exact spot where they said it landed."
He forwarded his findings to the Air Force, and the military seems to be taking him seriously. Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky told CNN this morning that a team of experts is reviewing Duke's findings with an eye toward performing a search of their own.
Duke says he is optimistic his long campaign to find and dispose of the weapon is nearing an end. "I've never believed that we would be better off to ignore it and let sleeping dogs lie."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Radiation Release Possible in Plant Attack
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 14, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plants-Aircraft.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded that it is unlikely significant amounts of radiation would be released in a deliberate crash of a jetliner into a nuclear power plant, but that engineering tests have not entirely ruled out the possibility of radioactive releases.
The NRC said studies on a limited number of nuclear power plants by federal research labs and agency staff showed that even if there were initial releases of radioactivity, plant operators would have time to take actions to reduce the impact on public health. It was the most expansive public comment to date on what might happen in a terrorist attack.
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz, in an interview with The Associated Press, said Monday that while ``it is possible there would be some damage and there could be some (radiation) releases ... it is not probable.''
Nevertheless, added Diaz, ``We cannot rule out the possibility that damage would occur and radioactive releases would take place. We're saying it would be very difficult for significant damage to take place (and) to get a major release of radioactivity in a very short time.''
The government and nuclear industry have been particularly concerned since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that al-Qaida might target a commercial nuclear power plant. There is some evidence that a reactor may have been a potential target when the 2001 attacks were being planned.
Before 2001, neither the nuclear industry nor its government regulators had seriously considered the vulnerabilities of a reactor to a deliberate crash of a large aircraft loaded with fuel.
Since then, the NRC has been examining a number of classified engineering studies on such an attack. It has been using research from the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories as well as its own studies to determine how vulnerable commercial power reactors are to such an attack.
In the facilities analyzed, the studies found the likelihood of damaging the reactor core and releasing radioactive material that could affect public health and safety is low, Diaz wrote in a Sept. 8 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Diaz wrote that ``in the unlikely event'' that a crashing aircraft would cause a radiation release, ``there would be time to implement the required on-site mitigating actions'' to protect public health.
Elaborating on the letter, Diaz said Monday it is the agency's view that even if there is damage to key areas of the power plant, the extent of damage would not be so severe that actions cannot be taken to reduce the threat of significant radiation exposure to the public.
Nevertheless, the NRC assessment appeared less certain that an industry-backed study released in late 2002, which said categorically that a large jetliner would fail to penetrate a nuclear power plant's concrete containment dome.
That study, conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that engineering models showed that a fully fueled Boeing 767 would fail to breach a reactor's four-foot-thick concrete containment dome. The industry cited the study as showing there would be no radiation release.
Marvin Fertel, vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, said he saw no conflict between the industry-backed study and the NRC findings. He said the government studies, details of which are classified, ``apparently looked at other parts of the plant and reached basically the same conclusion we did that it's very hard to get a large release.''
Diaz said the NRC conclusions were based on data that involved more than just the impact of an aircraft on the reactor containment dome. He said more than one containment dome design was studied as well as the potential impact of an aircraft on different parts of a power plant complex where damage might have an effect on plant safety and operation.
----
Lawmakers question agency's monitoring of nuclear power plant security
Washington-AP,
Sept. 14, 2004
http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=2301552&nav=3YeXQujZ
Congressional investigators say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can't verify if power plants are taking the right precautions against terrorism.
The Government Accountability Office testified before a House Subcommittee in Washington today. GAO officials say the NRC's monitoring of reactor security has mostly been on paper, and falls short of assuring security.
But nuclear security officials disagree.
Head of NRC security Roy Zimmerman says officials lay awake at night thinking about security. He says he's worried lawmakers were assuming that federal nuclear authorities aren't paying attention.
Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays is on the chairman of the House subcommittee. He says there is still no reasonable assurance that the plants are adequately protected -- and that the NRC is minimizing the risks of a terrorist attack that could lead to radiation release.
-------- colorado
'Hot spot' found in Flats buffer zone
Plutonium level still under regulatory limit
By Alisha Jeter, Camera Staff Writer
September 14, 2004
http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/county_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2423_3180414,00.html
Officials overseeing scientific sampling in the Rocky Flats buffer zone are trying to determine how a trace of plutonium higher than typical levels got there.
The nearly 6,000-acre buffer zone has been generally regarded as a clean area, absent of radiological materials routinely used at the former nuclear munitions trigger-making operations plant that once populated a 385-acre core the buffer surrounds.
"There are no historical releases recorded for the buffer zone," said cleanup contractor Kaiser-Hill Co.'s Lee Norland, manager of data and documentation for sampling and close-out for the site's comprehensive risk assessment.
Norland discussed the finding Monday with the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, which includes leaders from communities around the site south of Boulder County.
Despite expectations, samples of dirt taken in March as part of an overall sampling of the buffer zone showed a "hot spot" near Colo. 128 on the site's northern border.
The area yielded a reading of 7.25 picocuries of plutonium per gram of soil - about 100 times the typical background level of 0.066 picocuries per gram for the site. The reading does not, however, exceed the 50-picocuries-per-gram regulatory limit for Rocky Flats. A picocurie is a measurement of radioactivity.
When the sample was analyzed a second time, the reading dropped to 2.56 picocuries per gram of dirt. The sample was taken from a 30-acre grid area of the buffer zone, one of about 115 areas mapped across the buffer zone using geographic information systems technology, Norland said. All of the other cells reported readings within expected ranges, Norland said.
Kaiser-Hill officials attributed the range in readings to the nature of the test. Within each 30-acre grid, five samples are taken and consolidated to produce a composite result for the grid, they said.
Additional analysis is ongoing to determine whether the contamination is at one spot or evenly spread throughout the grid area. New samples were taken Thursday, and data is expected within about a month, Norland said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will do its own samples next week, said Mark Aguilar, Rocky Flats project coordinator for the local EPA office.
Jane Uitti, a policy analyst for the Boulder County Board of Commissioners and a member of the coalition of local governments, expressed concern about the hot spot's proximity to Boulder County land, particularly the Coalton Trail. She said she'll be interested to find out exactly where the contamination is located.
"We would have significant concerns about what is over there," Uitti said.
----
Dead Birds Prompt Rocky Flats Investigation
Sep 14, 2004
(AP)
http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_258125852.html
BOULDER, Colo. The government is investigating the deaths of about 150 birds in a Rocky Flats sewage-treatment tank, a move that could lead to charges or fines against the lead cleanup contractor at the former nuclear weapons site.
Rocky Flats cleanup workers discovered the dead cliff swallows in a concrete tank in July, said Dave Shelton, vice president of environmental systems and stewardship for the contractor, Kaiser-Hill Co.
"We were surprised we've never had anything like that before," Shelton said Monday.
Shelton said Kaiser-Hill notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is testing dozens of birds to determine the cause of death.
The 175,000-gallon tank contained a solution of ethylene glycol in water, Shelton said. Ethylene glycol, a common ingredient in automobile antifreeze, tastes sweet but can cause kidney failure and death.
Shelton said the birds had built nests under the lip of the tank, which was open. The company could face misdemeanor charges and fines of up to $15,000 per bird if found in violation of the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Roger Gephart, who is leading the investigation for the wildlife service, said if the tank's contents killed the birds he will file a report with the U.S. Attorney's Office.
"Then it's up to them," Gephart said.
The tank has been drained and the entire sewage-treatment plant is scheduled for demolition and removal by the end of the year, Shelton said. He said Kaiser-Hill has placed netting over other tanks to prevent birds from getting inside.
Rocky Flats, about 10 miles west of Denver, made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until production was shut down after a 1989 raid. The Energy Department plans to convert the site into a wildlife refuge when the cleanup is completed in two years.
Kaiser-Hill is the lead contractor in the department's $7.2 billion cleanup.
Other officials with the contractor are investigating how a trace of plutonium higher than typical levels could be found in a nearly 6,000-acre buffer zone around the site. The "hot spot" was found along the northern border of the site.
Kaiser-Hill data official Lee Norland work is ongoing to determine whether the contamination is at a single spot or spread out. The Environmental Protection Agency will do its own samples next week, said Mark Aguilar, the agency's Rocky Flats project coordinator.
-------- new york
PUBLIC LIVES
The Public, and Cheerful, Face of Nuclear Power By MAREK FUCHS
September 15, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/nyregion/15profile.html
WHITE PLAINS - ONE day it's a faulty steam valve causing a temporary shutdown; the next it's an environmental group clamoring for a permanent shutdown. No matter what the news swirling around the Indian Point nuclear power plant - and given the vehement opposition to it, the news is not always favorable - out trots Jim Steets, the plant's most visible spokesman, with an easy smile and an eagerness to field any question.
He comes from his tan, 12th-floor office here in White Plains to step in front of the tape recorders and cameras and accuse the plant's critics of herd thinking, uninformed biases and worse. He then waxes close to rhapsodic about the benefits and proficiencies of Indian Point, located in Buchanan, in northern Westchester County.
Though he occasionally gets tough, framing his argument with the subtlety of a medicine ball, Mr. Steets has such a friendly bearing that even those who complain that he argues in blind or bad faith concede that he is, well, a nice guy.
Mr. Steets, boyish-looking at 51 despite a wintry thatch of hair, says the plant's detractors are simplistic and overly suspicious, but he sees some similarities in himself. "I am idealistic, just like they are," he said. "We're just on the opposite ends of what we believe in." Not that he isn't surprised sometimes to find himself cast as the public face of one of the nation's most criticized nuclear plants. "If you had asked me 20 years ago, I'd say, 'Nah, I'll never be a shill for nuclear power.' My image of it at that point was of the nuclear industry criticizing how it was portrayed on 'The Simpsons.' Give me a break."
But in the three years since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Steets's job as a spokesman for Entergy, which owns the plant, has not been an easy lift. The latest piece of bad news is "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," a documentary by Rory Kennedy that had its premiere on HBO last week. It contends that a terrorist attack on Indian Point could be easy and apocalyptic, calling the security inadequate and citing the plant's location 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, in one of the most densely populated spots in the country.
Ms. Kennedy is the sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer for Riverkeeper, the environmental group that probably ranks as Indian Point's most vocal opponent. At one point in the movie, the two Kennedys hover unimpeded in a helicopter over Indian Point - proof, they say, of the plant's vulnerability.
Mr. Steets scoffs, calling that action typical of the opposition's tendency toward stunts and polemics. "We knew it was R.F.K. up in that helicopter and were confident that he did not intend to fly it into a containment dome," he said. "Do we have to shoot him down to prove a point to him? If we play the game to their ridiculous level, someone would get hurt."
Before Sept. 11, opposition to Indian Point, which supplies 20 to 40 percent of the electricity to New York City and Westchester County, came from a small assortment of groups concerned about its poor safety record, but the wider community seemed only vaguely aware of the plant's presence. After one of the hijacked planes flew by the plant on its way to the World Trade Center, public fear put Indian Point into a defensive crouch. Even Mr. Steets said he had worried briefly that the plant could be vulnerable.
"I wasn't sure about the capabilities of the structures to withstand an assault from the air," he said. "We are all smart people," he added, referring to his colleagues in public relations, "but not that sophisticated." All it took to reassure him was visits from structural engineers who explained the "physics of force" and the soundness of the plant's containment domes.
But Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, is not reassured. "Jim is a nice, amiable guy," he said. "But he's regrettably guilty of using the same deceitful public relations tactics that his and other polluting industries are famous for.''
MR. STEETS'S interest in public relations was piqued early, when he was a communications student at Fordham University. He may be one of the few undergraduates to have sat in a dorm room lost in fascination at the concise, well-structured explanations coming from spokesmen interviewed on the television news. A few years later, Mr. Steets, who grew up a block from the beach in Spring Lake, N.J., was hired to handle publicity for power lines being installed by the New York Power Authority.
He arrived at Indian Point a decade ago, working in the shadow of the domes until about 18 months ago, when he moved to his current office so he could be in the loop with the Entergy executives who work here. (He keeps the radio near his desk tuned to an album-rock station in the hope of hearing his favorite, Led Zeppelin.) He commutes from Middletown, N.Y., where he lives with his wife and three children; he plays basketball to stay trim and release the tension from his job.
His office conveniently overlooks the county office building. That way, Mr. Steets jokes, he can stand up from his desk and "shake a fist at Andy Spano," the county executive, who began calling for the plant's closing after Sept. 11. Lately those calls have been muted. Indian Point's safety record has improved, electricity demand keeps increasing, and since the blackout last summer, the idea of importing power from afar is less attractive. Two years ago, Westchester residents were talking worriedly about matters like spent-fuel pools, but there is less of that today. "The middle-grounders have just gone back to the middle ground," Mr. Steets said, declaring victory. "People want to know the plant is safe. Then they want to turn on 'The Apprentice.' "
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN
Afghan Region's New Governor Says Violence Is Ended; Denounces Warlord
September 14, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/asia/14afghan.html?pagewanted=all
HERAT, Afghanistan, Sept. 13 - The new governor of Herat, Sayed Muhammad Khairkhwa, spent Monday, his first day at work, ensconced at the top of the hill in the city's finest guesthouse, surrounded by American troops with maps and satellite dishes and dozens of Afghan National Army soldiers.
Despite his heavily guarded seclusion from the people, Mr. Khairkhwa, 51, expressed confidence in an interview that the violence in the city on Sunday, when at least nine offices of United Nations and other international organizations were looted and burned, was over and would not be repeated.
Mr. Khairkhwa blamed his predecessor, the mujahedeen commander and two-time governor Ismail Khan, and Mr. Khan's dictatorial policies for the unrest of recent weeks. The violence began after Mr. Khan was removed from his post by President Hamid Karzai.
Violence also continued Monday in southern Afghanistan in Zabul Province, which has been another seat of resistance to Mr. Karzai. In a 12-hour battle, American troops killed 22 militants, the American military said.
In Herat, Mr. Khairkhwa promised major changes - in particular to allow political pluralism, and support human rights and women's rights, areas that Mr. Khan had been criticized for repressing. The governor's first action was to replace the chief of Herat Television and Radio, who had been a strong supporter of Mr. Khan, in a move that the United Nations welcomed.
The United Nations sent a senior level delegation to inspect the damage to its offices and assess security, while evacuating most of its foreign staff in Herat to the capital, Kabul.
Filippo Grandi, the deputy special representative to Afghanistan, was adamant in saying that the mission would rapidly resume its work in western Afghanistan, because elections, which the United Nations is helping to organize, are less than 30 days away. Fifteen staff members were staying in Herat to clean up and set up offices again, while the bulk of the workers were being evacuated for a few days, he said on his return to Kabul. It was unclear why the United Nations was the target, though militants trying to disrupt the elections have frequently attacked election workers.
Mr. Filippo said the United Nations office had clearly been a target of the violence, which began with protests against Mr. Khan's removal, because various neighboring buildings were not touched. "The results of the attack were quite shocking," he said. "I have hardly ever seen the type of destruction that I saw'' in the United Nations office.
"The office is in ashes," he said. "Everything is burned. They spilled gasoline and threw matches, and the whole office does not exist anymore, and it's a big office."
The new governor, Mr. Khairkhwa, went further, suggesting that his predecessor had encouraged the violence. "In my opinion the atmosphere was created,'' he said. "People do not do this by themselves."
Mr. Khan was at home on Monday, surrounded by supporters, and declined requests for an interview. "He has many guests, but also he is not clear in what he wants to say at this stage," an aide said. Mr. Khan had also advised the new governor against visiting him because the people were still upset, the aide said.
His former intelligence chief, Nasir Ahmad Alawi, acting as his spokesman, said Mr. Khan had urged people not to resort to violence and to accept the government's decision. "There will not be any violations now," the spokesman said. He said the demonstration had been without leadership and that some destructive people had taken advantage of the situation.
Mr. Khan does not intend to accept the position of minister of mines and industries offered to him by Mr. Karzai and will remain at home in Herat and advise on ensuring security in the region, Mr. Alawi said. The new governor was dismissive of the idea, saying that no such post had been offered to Mr. Khan.
The city was back to normal on Monday after the violence, and residents walked around the streets looking at the damage. Yet the central government's decision to remove Mr. Khan has polarized the city, and if the violence has ebbed, the discontent remains.
"Our people are not happy, I am not happy, nobody is happy," said Abdul Rashid, 30, one of Mr. Khan's guards, who has been a fighter with Mr. Khan's forces since the age of 15. He and his fellow soldiers said they blamed Mr. Karzai for ousting their hero from his position, but they were also critical of the American military and the United Nations.
Opponents of Mr. Khan's rule remained cautious in their remarks, still wary of reprisals that some have suffered in the past for speaking out.
One government worker estimated that 60 percent of the local residents were happy to see Mr. Khan go, and 40 percent were not, but he asked that his name not be used. "I could lose my job for saying this," he said.
A member of the opposition council of professionals said it was too soon to know if the changes were permanent and asked not to be quoted.
--------
Death by fire: the agonising way out for trapped Afghan women
The Guardian
Declan Walsh in Herat
September 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1303803,00.html
Saya's agony was nearly over. Cheeks charred, fingers blackened and with 70% of her body burned, the 18-year-old woman lay prone on the hospital bed, racked with unimaginable pain.
Whimpering her mother's name, she jerked her bandaged arms in small, staccato movements, desperately seeking relief. There was none. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed. "Another day, maybe two," predicted the doctor.
A stony-faced relative stood over Saya, whisking away flies with a black shawl. It was all a terrible mistake, she said, an unfortunate cooking accident. No it wasn't, said nurse Afifa Hariar, standing behind.
"It's another suicide case," she tutted quietly, arms folded. "They always try to keep it a secret."
Self-immolation is the terrible choice of hundreds of Afghan women every year. Trapped in unhappy marriages or hemmed in by a conservative Islamic society, they take an appalling escape route: dousing themselves in household fuel, closing their eyes, and striking a match. Most are between 16 and 20 years old, say doctors.
The gruesome consequences are to be found in the burns unit at Herat hospital, a severely under-equipped facility in one of Afghanistan's most prosperous provinces.
Last Saturday 15 bandage-swaddled women lay on beds crammed into the tiny ward, groaning softly.
Many were genuine accidents but at least four had attempted suicide, staff estimated - about the average for a city that registered 80 self-immolations in the first seven months of this year.
Shame and stigma mean few women admit what has happened, but the staff have a keen eye for the telltale signs.
"When we see the depth of the burns, or smell the fuel on their clothes, we know it is no accident," said the unit's head, Homayon Azizi.
The reasons behind the suicides are complex but closely intertwined with women's subordinate position in Afghan society. Forced marriage is the predominant factor, say medics and human rights workers.
Parents marry their daughter off to older men, sometimes in exchange for a dowry as high as £4,000. The unions are intolerable to some women, because of either a violent husband or an interfering mother-in-law.
Zarah, 19, set herself on fire at the climax of an argument with her husband, just three months into their marriage. After she moved to his rural home, he started to beat her for "disobedience".
"I believed I would die. I wanted to prove to my husband that I didn't want to live with him," said Zarah, who has now returned to her parents' home.
She has divorced her 22-year-old husband, but will pay a high price for the rest of her life. The blaze melted the skin on the upper half of her body, in effect welding her chin to her chest and webbing her arms to her torso. Disfigured and disabled, she cannot work and may never remarry.
"Every day we take her to hospital for treatment, and every night she is suffering and crying," said her mother, Sharifa.
Although self-immolation occurs across Afghanistan, its incidence is highest in Herat, a western province where a degree of sophistication clashes with social conservatism.
The now ousted warlord-cum-governor, Ismail Khan, built libraries and actively encouraged female education. But he also imposed a strict social code which starves women of opportunities to leave the home and work.
Herat's proximity to Iran, 75 miles to the west, was also a factor, said Palwasha Kakar of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Many Afghans have lived as refugees in Iran, and are aware of the relative freedoms enjoyed by women there.
"Women in Herat are a little bit more sensitive. They see suicide as the only way to solve their problem," said Ms Kakar.
The idea of death by burning may come from Iranian television, which can be received in Herat and sometimes broadcasts images of female suicides. Or it may be simply that household fuel is the only available weapon of self-destruction.
Dr Azizi is not only battling a disturbing trend. His staff treat about 700 patients a year - three times as many as a similar burns unit in Europe - but work on a pitiful budget. Staff are regularly overwhelmed, patients' relatives have to buy their own medicine, and there is no proper plastic surgery equipment.
International donors have promised Afghanistan aid this year. But in Herat, there is not even enough to pay for surgical gloves.
There is one hope. HumaniTerra, a French aid agency, flew Dr Azizi to Marseille earlier this year for specialist burns training. It intends to do the same for other Afghan doctors this December.
"This phenomenon is not just about the drama of suicides. Don't forget there is a new generation of young Afghans who are working hard to improve their country," said the programme director, Philippe Leroy.
Moreover, HumaniTerra has plans to invest $500,000 (£330,000) in a new burns unit in Herat. But first, says the agency, the Afghan health ministry must honour its commitment to put up the building, which will cost about the same amount.
As with much in Afghanistan, that depends on the outcome of the October 9 presidential election. "We're very confident it will happen," said Dr Leroy. "But you can only believe it when you see it."
-------- africa
Darfur death toll at 10,000 a month
The Guardian
David Gow in Brussels and agencies
September 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1303981,00.html
Up to 10,000 people a month are dying of disease in the Darfur camps, many of them children, despite the international aid effort, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
A study in the west and north of the region by the WHO and the Sudanese government pointed to a monthly toll of 6,000-10,000 in the displaced population of 1.2 million. "Thousands of these are children," David Nabarro, head of WHO's health crisis action group, told Reuters.
"These mortality figures are of considerable concern ... What is disturbing is that we are already six months into this crisis."
The death rate was up to six times that of an African country without a humanitarian crisis.
The figures were released as EU foreign ministers urged the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to set up an international commission of inquiry into all violations of human rights in Darfur, including possible acts of genocide.
The British and French ministers, Jack Straw and Michel Barnier, stopped short of following the US secretary of state Colin Powell in using the word "genocide" to describe the activities of the Janjaweed and other militias in Darfur.
But Mr Straw said that whatever phrase was used - genocide, ethnic cleansing or civil war - a new UN security council resolution should urge Mr Annan to set up an urgent inquiry "into all alleged human rights abuses, including allegations of genocide".
The EU ministers said there was "no indication that the Sudanese government has taken real and verifiable steps to disarm and neutralise" the militia, and urged it to bring to justice militia leaders or army officers suspected of serious human rights violations.
Mr Straw said he was "pretty confident" that any new UN resolution would contain a renewed threat of sanctions.
"They will come much closer unless we see very much better cooperation on the crucial issue of law and order in Darfur," he said.
The US is already pressing for sanctions.
Mr Barnier said the EU could send a contingent of police officers to help the African Union mission in Darfur.
France has already sent 200 soldiers to the neighbouring state of Chad, where there are an estimated two million refugees from Darfur, to help monitor the border.
The WHO says that diarrhoea is the leading cause of death in Darfur, particularly of children, but violence is also a "significant cause".
The interview-based survey did not go into the nature of the violence, Mr Nabarro said.
"You should not be seeing these sort of figures six months into an emergency, and they reflect the fact that we still have a huge humanitarian challenge ahead of us," he added.
But the mortality rate was in line with the 50,000 dead which the UN and other international bodies have been using as the probable toll since the crisis erupted, Mr Nabarro said.
The US has accused the Sudanese government of condoning genocide in Darfur by not halting Arab militia attacks on the African tribes which Khartoum suspects of supporting two rebel movements in the vast and arid region.
The revolt began early last year after years of skirmishing between African farmers and Arab nomads contesting the right to land.
The rebels accuse Khartoum of arming the Janjaweed to crush them and their civilian sympathisers, an accusation the government denies.
The US administration is pressing for international sanctions against Khartoum and the EU said on Monday that it would impose sanctions if Sudan did not not take adequate steps to disarm the militias.
Around a quarter of those surveyed in the camps said they had no access to safe drinking water and between a third and a half had no latrines, Mr Nabarro said.
Insecurity and logistical problems brought on by the rainy season were hampering the relief effort, and the humanitarian agencies were also suffering a continued cash shortage.
"The fact is that our relief operation for a number of reasons is not doing the job," he said.
-------- arms
Pakistan's air chief says U.S. may sell it F-16s
Reuters
By Amir Zia
Sep 14, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1965&ncid=731&e=4&u=/nm/20040914/india_nm/india_172007
KARACHI (Reuters) - The United States has given an indication it may sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, but Islamabad is looking at other options as well for the purchase of high technology aircraft, its air force chief said on Tuesday.
Pakistan has been unable to buy high technology aircraft for the last two decades because of sanctions, the chief of the Pakistan Air Force, Air Marshal Kaleem Sadat, told reporters.
The press briefing took place on the first day of an international defence exhibition that formally opened in Karachi under tight security.
Exhibitors and delegates from more than 50 nations, including the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France, are participating under a security blanket because of fears of terror attacks from al Qaeda and local Islamic militant supporters.
"The Western countries were denying us access to their markets and their products," Sadat said. But after Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks, this attitude was changing, he added.
"Now there is a change in their attitude. They have indicated that they are ready to give us F-16s. The work (on such a sale) has stopped because of the (U.S.) elections.
"There is a possibility that we will get more F-16s," he said. "This is not a rumour, it is from the American government."
Sadat said the United States had been generous in giving billions of dollars in economic aid and writing off debt.
"But Pakistani public opinion is still against Americans because ... they think the Americans want to keep them weak," he said. He added that he had been urging Americans to change this perception.
Pakistan bought 40 F-16s in the early 1980s when the country was serving as a base for the U.S.-backed resistance against the former Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan (news - web sites).
But another order for the purchase of 70 F-16s in the late 1980s failed to materialise because the United States imposed sanctions on the country for its clandestine nuclear programme.
After almost a decade Pakistan got its money back, having paid for the planes in advance.
SANCTIONS HIT PAKISTAN AIR FORCE
Sadat said Pakistan's air force had suffered because of the sanctions. The disparity between Pakistan's and India's air forces had widened as a result of Pakistan's inability to buy frontline fighter aircraft, he said.
"You do not need mathematics to tell that."
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, and came close to a fourth conflict in 2002.
While the nuclear-armed neighbours have embarked on a tentative peace process, Pakistan complains of India's growing superiority in the sphere of conventional weapons.
Besides F-16s, Pakistan has been looking to equip its air force with Swedish Grippen and Chinese F-10s, Sadat said.
Sadat explained that JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, co-produced by Pakistan and China, were expected to be inducted into the air force some time in 2006. "The JF-17 Thunder is aimed to replace Mirage 3 and 5, A-5 and F-7 aircrafts," he said. He said the medium-technology aircraft matched the Mirage in performance, but its avionics and weapons were better.
-------- business
8 Firms Vie for Pieces of Air Force Contract
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18883-2004Sep13.html
The real competition is about to begin for the eight government contractors picked to update the Air Force's communication systems -- modernizing databases and giving forces in battle better access to information -- under a program that could be worth as much as $9 billion total.
Now, the winners are eligible to vie for specific task orders under the large umbrella contract.
Eighteen companies submitted proposals to be included in the project, called the Network Centric Solutions program. The Air Force announced the eight winners, including four small businesses, late Friday. General Dynamics Corp. of Needham Heights, Mass.; Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. of McLean; Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda; Northrop Grumman Information Technology of Herndon; the Centech Group Inc. of Arlington; Multimax Inc. of Largo; Telos Corp. of Ashburn; and NCI Information Systems Inc. of Reston are now eligible to compete for the work.
Much of it involves integrating networks, developing software systems and providing computer hardware to Air Force units. All of the technology is intended to meet a single standard, said Melva Strang, program manager for the contract, which is managed by the Air Force's Standard Systems Group out of Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. "The fact that the architectures will be standardized and we can speed up the transfer of information will make a huge difference in how quickly decision-makers can make decisions about what's going in the battle environment," Strang said.
For example, an Air Force employee at a base in Germany will be able to tap into a database system in Utah.
All of the winning companies were required to pull together large teams of contractors that will work with them on each task order. General Dynamics' team, for instance, includes Boeing Co., Accenture Ltd. and Arlington-based CACI International Inc. Northrop Grumman will work with Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego and McLean-based BearingPoint Inc., among others.
It is impossible to predict how much revenue the winners will derive from the award as they compete for different task orders. But their inclusion in the group is significant because it narrows the field of companies that will be eligible for the work.
"It was highly competitive, highly demanding, . . . and the proposal was a major undertaking for any company large or small," said Carleton S. Jones, president of Largo-based Multimax, one of the four small companies picked to participate in the program. "We think it's very significant. It makes us a preferred source for everything covered in the scope of the contract."
The scope is broad. It could include everything from telephone service to network security products. Along with the Air Force, contracting offices throughout the Department of Defense will be able to use the contract to buy goods and services from companies chosen to participate.
Strang said work under the contract, which could last up to five years -- a three-year base period and two optional one-year extensions -- is expected to begin within 30 days.
-------- chemical weapons
Syria tested chemical arms on civilians in Darfur region: press
BERLIN (AFP)
Sep 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040914180025.zy5950dw.html
Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people, the German daily Die Welt claimed in an advance release of its Wednesday edition.
The newspaper, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims.
It said that witnesses quoted by an Arabic news website called ILAF in an article on August 2 had said that several frozen bodies arrived suddenly at the "Al-Fashr Hospital" in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in June.
Die Welt said the sources had indicated that the weapons tests were undertaken following a military exercise between Syria and Sudan.
Syrian officers were reported to have met in May with Sudanese military leaders in a Khartoum suburb to discuss the possibility of improving cooperation between their armies.
According to Die Welt, the Syrians had suggested close cooperation on developing chemical weapons, and it was proposed that the arms be tested on the rebel SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in the south.
But given that the rebels were involved in peace talks, the newspaper continued, the Sudanese government proposed testing the arms on people in Darfur.
Details of what were in the weapons were not disclosed.
The Sudanese government has been accused of arming and backing Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, which have rampaged through the western Darfur region for the past 19 months.
An estimated 50,000 people have been killed and 1.4 million more uprooted in a campaign against Darfur's black African population, which began in February 2003 when Khartoum and the Janjaweed cracked down on a rebel uprising.
The United States has accused Syria of trying to acquire materials and the know-how to develop chemical weapons and claims that Sudan has been seeking to improve its capability to produce them for many years.
-------- china
After Hong Kong Election, China Faces New Calculus
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18904-2004Sep13?language=printer
HONG KONG, Sept. 13 -- The Chinese government refrained on Monday from saying much about the results of Sunday's elections in Hong Kong, but the country's Communist leaders had reason to be pleased.
Defying expectations, their allies, who support Beijing's hard line against democratic aspirations in this former British colony, maintained a firm grip on the legislature. Pro-democracy candidates, who form the only opposition bloc on Chinese soil, were limited to minor gains. And the threat of a potentially disastrous showdown over political reform in the territory has subsided.
But now comes another crossroads for the Chinese leadership. Will it take its success at the polls as a mandate to continue stonewalling popular demands for greater democracy in Hong Kong? Or will it reach out while the opposition is weak and open talks about limited reform with the confidence that its own candidates can prevail in elections?
"I think Beijing will feel more relaxed now," said Ivan Choy, a political scientist at Chinese University. "It may make them less hostile to democracy, and perhaps more willing to start a discussion."
This is the argument that the territory's largest pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, has always used: If you want to persuade the Chinese government to expand elections, don't march in the streets or support government critics. Instead, vote for candidates loyal to the government in Beijing and show the Communist leadership that democracy in Hong Kong is not a threat.
Now that the alliance has replaced the Democratic Party as the largest party in the Legislative Council, that proposition might be put to the test.
The problem for the Chinese government is that the strong showing by pro-Beijing candidates in the election -- they won 35 of the council's 60 seats -- can be attributed almost entirely to the skewed electoral system that the public wants the government to revamp.
For example, 23 of the new pro-Beijing legislators won election in the 30 council seats that are filled by special constituencies of businesses, industry groups and professionals, most of which are staunchly pro-government.
The democrats want to eliminate these constituencies, some of which are made of just a few dozen corporations. Others have suggested enlarging them. But if Chinese leaders took even that small step, it would probably benefit the pro-democracy camp, which managed to win in the largest constituencies, including the 77,000 teachers and the 17,500 accountants. In fact, although democrats picked up only seven of the 30 seats, they won about half of all votes cast in the special constituencies.
Pro-Beijing candidates also fared well because of the tortuous voting rules used to allocate the 30 council seats filled by direct elections. Sunday's biggest upset occurred in one district where pro-democracy candidates were expected to win four of six seats. But Martin Lee, a founding father of the territory's democracy movement, won 50,000 more votes than he needed, drawing support from a fellow democracy advocate and allowing a pro-Beijing rival to prevail.
Lee had campaigned aggressively in the final days before the election, afraid he might be ousted after 18 years in the council, and on Monday, he appeared on the verge of tears that his efforts had cost a colleague, Cyd Ho, her seat by about 800 votes. "I have not won a constituency so unhappily," he said.
Ho was gracious in defeat, but noted that democrats had won more than 200,000 votes in the district to the 140,000 won by the pro-Beijing camp, yet the six seats were divided evenly between them. "This is one more good reason for us to strive for 100 percent democracy for all the seats," she said.
The Chinese leadership will be reluctant to tinker with an electoral system that so clearly favors its allies. It also remains worried about what impact democratic reforms in Hong Kong might have on the mainland, where forming an opposition party is illegal and elections are generally shams.
But Christine Loh, a former legislator and political analyst, said a decision by the Chinese leadership to stand fast and block political reform in the territory could backfire. "The more people understand the unfairness of the current system, a system designed to repress the public will, the more the system becomes a cause for potential instability," she said. "Election results like this only highlight the problem."
In April, China ruled out direct elections to choose all the territory's lawmakers and a successor to its unpopular chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, who was appointed by officials in Beijing. As many as a half-million people marched on July 1 to protest the decision.
But in the short term, the Chinese government is unlikely to face a governance crisis in Hong Kong. With 25 seats in the legislature, the pro-democracy opposition may be able to make life difficult for Tung but it will not be able to block bills.
As a result, the opposition faces a tough decision about whether to stick to demands for universal suffrage to choose Tung's successor in 2007 and the entire legislature in 2008, or to try to engage the government in discussions about more limited reforms.
Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democratic Party, noted that a large majority of voters cast ballots for pro-democracy candidates, demonstrating that public support for universal suffrage remained high. But the democrats managed to win barely 60 percent of the vote, about the same share they won in 1998 and slightly less than they picked up in 2000.
Loh said the inability of the opposition to expand its support further suggests it needs to develop a platform of economic and social policies to supplement its campaign for greater democracy. "They have to persuade people that they have policies, that they could really govern if given the chance," she said. But she said the task is difficult because the coalition is united primarily by its pro-democracy position and split on other issues.
One sign of rising public frustration is the surprise victory by veteran street activist Leung Kwok-hung, also known as "Long Hair" for his flowing, dark locks. Leung, who built a reputation by disrupting public meetings and shouting at Tung, won more than 60,000 votes, three times the number he garnered four years ago.
His uncompromising views on China's violent 1989 crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square and other subjects could exacerbate tensions between Hong Kong and Beijing. Hong Kong politicians often play down or refrain from criticism of Beijing's policies on the mainland, and try to distance the territory's democracy movement from the efforts of dissidents and others in China the government considers subversive.
But almost immediately after winning election, Leung paid tribute to "those who sacrifice their time, their lives for the cause of democracy in China and Hong Kong," mentioning one exiled dissident and friend who he said had been tortured.
-------- iraq
[Note that there's no mention of depleted uranium in this article. I wonder why. et]
Iraqi Environment Ministry and UN to Assess Polluted Sites
September 14, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-14-01.asp
Environmental contamination left by years of war is about to be investigated by Iraqi scientists working on a new $4.7 million project funded by the government of Japan. Impacts on human health and the environment left by oil and chemical fires and spills will be assessed at five of 300 polluted sites across Iraq in preparation for a long term plan to clean up the country.
The project will be coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment, both agencies announced today.
Iraqi Environment Minister Mishkat Moumin said, "My country is faced with a wide range of pressing issues that must be addressed if the Iraqi people are to enjoy a stable, healthy and prosperous future. Delivering a clean and unpolluted environment is a key piece in this jigsaw puzzle towards a better future."
Going in, the scientists will be trained in the latest laboratory and field testing skills, and they will become the nucleus of the first independent Iraqi team of environmental assessors.
They will share samples with UNEP's Post Conflict Assessment Unit in Geneva so that testing of the samples can be carried out both in Iraq and in independent, reputable laboratories in Europe.
"We estimate that there are more than 300 sites in Iraq considered to be contaminated to various levels by a range of pollutants," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer. "This pilot project will focus on up to five of them."
Already, the new project has pinpointed 10 priority sites from which five are likely to be chosen.
One priority investigation is the Al-Mishraq Sulphur State Company site 20 miles south of Mosul in northern Iraq where sulphur mining, sulphuric acid and aluminium sulphate manufacturing have taken place.
A month-long fire of unknown cause in June and July 2003 emitted a plume of contaminated gas over Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
"Assessments are urgently needed," said the UN and Iraqi agencies, "to evaluate the impact of sulfur fires on surrounding soils, vegetation and surface and groundwaters." There are also environmental concerns about air pollution and effluent discharges.
The Midland (Al-Doura) Refinery Stores is another priority site targeted for investigation. The Iraqi Environment Ministry wants to assess the impact of chemical spills of more than 5,000 metric tons of chemicals, including tetra-ethyl lead, on nearby soils, vegetation and water sources.
Investigations are also planned at the Al Suwaira Seed Store where seeds have been coated with methyl mercury fungicide. Around 50 metric tons of contaminated seeds that were stolen during the recent conflict have the potential to contaminate food supplies such as bread. Assessments are also expected to focus on the impact of fungicide residues on soils and water sources.
The project will also identify an oil pipeline site where recent attacks have led to explosions, oil trench fires and oil discharges into the surrounding environment.
There have been recent concerns surrounding recycling of scrap metals from stockpiles of damaged and destroyed military vehicles. It is planned to assess one scrap metal site in order to evaluate possibly uncontrolled releases of contaminants such as halons, asbestos and engine oils to nearby soils and water sources.
Once the precise threats have been established, the UNEP/Iraqi team will be in a position to recommend remedial action.
"This new project, which has been given generous support from the government of Japan, will also be assisting the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment to strengthen its skills in other areas including environmental law, natural resources management and taking part in multi-lateral environmental agreements on everything from protecting the ozone layer to trade in endangered species," Toepfer said.
Toepfer says the new initiative underlines the Iraqi government's "commitment to put environmental issues in the center of the reconstruction efforts," despite the continuing difficulties prevailing in the country.
Moumin said, "We warmly welcome our growing cooperation with UNEP and their commitment to strengthen our ministry and help deliver meaningful change on the ground."
The training of Iraqi experts in scientific and environmental assessment will build on recent training workshops on modern laboratory techniques held in Switzerland and Jordan, funded in this case by the government of Germany and the UK Department for International Development.
----
Car Bomb Kills at Least 47 at a Police Headquarters in Baghdad
September 14, 2004
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/14CND_IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 14 - A suicide car bomb packed with artillery shells exploded outside police headquarters here this morning, ripping into a crowd of hundreds of young men seeking to join the nascent Iraqi police force, killing at least 47 people and wounding 114 others, police and health officials said.
That attack was followed by a drive-by ambush northeast of the capital, in which gunmen sprayed a van carrying police officers, killing a dozen people in the restive city of Baquba. In the afternoon, another car bomb exploded in downtown Baghdad near a convoy of sport utility vehicles carrying civilian contractors, but only the bomber was killed, witnesses and police officers said. Fighting between American soldiers and insurgents left eight Iraqis dead in the western city of Ramadi, a Health Ministry spokesman said.
Together, the assaults marked one of the deadliest days in Iraq in months, as insurgents continued a campaign to strike at the very heart of the American-backed interim government here, topple its fledgling institutions and drive out American forces. The morning bomb killed more people than any since July, when a suicide car bomb killed scores of people in Baquba, including men lining up outside a police recruiting center.
The latest bloody push began on Sunday, when insurgents staged a coordinated, hourslong attack on the fortified government headquarters and on other sites around the country, resulting in the deaths of at least 78 Iraqis and the wounding of at least 200.
Credit for this morning's bombing and the attack on the police in Baquba was claimed in two Internet statements by Tawhid and Jihad, or One God and Holy War, a group led by the fugitive Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Reuters. False claims have recently appeared on the Internet, and those made today could not be independently verified.
The escalating violence throughout the country, following on the heels of an incendiary uprising by Shiite militiamen last month, demonstrates that the insurgency has actually gained in strength, efficiency and popularity since Prime Minister Ayad Allawi took office on June 28, and that the interim government has so far failed to exercise enough power or win enough street support to quell the hostilities.
Despite insistence by Bush administration officials that general elections for a constitutional assembly will be held by January, the disintegrating state of security here is raising serious doubts about whether such elections can take place or whether their results will be viewed as legitimate by any meaningful share of the population.
The ceaseless bloodletting was brought into stark clarity today at the scene of the first car bomb, which exploded around 10 a.m. in the Haifa Street area, where insurgents have repeatedly clashed with American soldiers. Bits of flesh hung from trees, concertina wire and buildings, while boys raced around scooping up chunks onto pieces of cardboard and one man held up a torso-sized portion. Police officers, bystanders and journalists at the scene could not take a single step without walking through pools of blood or treading on pieces of flesh.
At least a half-dozen cars were incinerated, and bits of glass and metal, as well as dead birds, lay scattered across the street.
People gathered a pile of 100 shoes and sandals belonging to the dead and wounded.
"It happened all of a sudden," said Ayad Hussein, 24, a young man who in the morning went to police headquarters hoping to get a job interview and by noon was lying bandaged and half-naked in a bed at nearby Karama Hospital. "I flew into the air and landed on the ground. I saw body parts all over the place."
The health minister, Abdul Sahib al-Alwan, strode out of the hospital after visiting with doctors and said that "the terrorist groups are attempting to impede the rebuilding of Iraq."
By some estimates, at least 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, while the death toll among American forces has passed 1,000.
The bombing was the first attack in recent memory outside the headquarters of the Iraqi police, a white-walled compound on the western side of the Tigris River and near a neighborhood populated by remnants of the former ruling Baath Party.
Despite repeated attacks in the last year on large groups of men standing outside police and army recruitment offices, police officers told the job seekers this morning to wait outside the compound. One policeman at the scene said that this had been done because many of the people showed up without an appointment. And so hundreds of men from across Iraq gathered on a corner where children usually play pool on outdoor tables and video games inside a shop.
"They have a big compound, they can let us all in," said Muhammad Hassan, a potential recruit, who was walking to police headquarters when the bomb exploded. "But they drove us away from the headquarters."
Perhaps as disturbing as the attack itself, though, was the reaction of the crowd at the scene. Gripped by an anti-American fervor all too common these days, dozens of men rushed at a Western cameraman and chanted, "Bush is a dog, Bush is a dog!"
Others yelled: "Bush the pimp! And even Allawi is a pimp, because he's collaborating with Bush."
They held up bits of the artillery shells that officials said had been part of the bomb and declared that American warplanes had fired missiles at the police recruits. The rumor was echoed even by wounded police officers.
"I saw American helicopters bomb one of the cars, and then they bombed another car," said Sgt. Kassim Mahmoud, 32, as he sat grimacing in pain in Karkh Hospital, his left leg wrapped in a bloody bandage. "But I don't think this will make us afraid."
Two policemen standing next to him looked on silently in agreement as nearby nurses put white gauze on the back of a man lacerated by dozens of pieces of shrapnel. The man gritted his teeth in pain and shut his eyes. Tears streamed from their edges.
At the bomb scene, a woman in black robes knelt down by a pool of blood and began wailing, almost collapsing to the ground.
"Where are our sons?" she said. "What have the Americans done to us? What have our sons done to the Americans?"
At Karama Hospital, another woman threw a shoe at a car carrying an American reporter and photographer as it left the area. "Kill the Americans," she said. "Slaughter them one by one!"
In the northern city of Bayji, home to Iraq's largest oil refinery, an early-morning fire at a pipeline forced a shutdown of oil flow, the First Infantry Division said in a statement. Security guards reported hearing an explosion, and the North Oil Company was investigating the fire, the military said.
Farther north, near the Syrian border, American soldiers partly lifted a nearly two-week siege of the insurgent haven of Tal Afar and allowed some families to trickle back in. The move came one day after the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, warned the American government not to press its campaign in Tal Afar, which is populated mostly by Turks. Citing a Turkish television network, Reuters reported that insurgents had released a Turkish hostage, Aytullah Gezman, who was abducted in late July.
American officers have said soldiers from the Stryker Brigade invaded Tal Afar because it was functioning as a smuggling center for non-Iraqi insurgents. Residents of Tal Afar confirmed that in telephone interviews today with an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times who was turned away by American soldiers at a checkpoint outside the town.
One resident, Saleh al-Hamdani, described the insurgents as tall, dark-skinned, masked men, compared with most of the Turkish residents of the town, who are shorter, with lighter complexions.
"One day, an insurgent stopped in front of my house," Mr. Hamdani said. "He was exhausted, so I offered him some water. I had a short conversation with him, and it was clear from his accent that he's not Iraqi."
"I don't know where all those insurgents came from," he added. "I guess some of them were already inside the city, and others came from the mountains. It's not hard to get inside the city even when it's under siege, because of the valleys used for smuggling goods between Iraq and Syria."
"When the clashes erupted, a lot of people fled the city, so the insurgents used their houses as shelters," he added. "American planes retaliated by firing rockets on them, which caused a lot of damage in residential areas. Unfortunately, some gangs took advantage of the situation and started looting houses and government facilities."
Tal Afar is one of many cities that have become no-go zones for American soldiers. The most prominent is Falluja, west of Baghdad, where hard-line clerics and jihadists have set up a Taliban-style Islamist rule. Sooner or later, American officials say, they will deal with such places.
Otherwise, the general elections scheduled for January could be rendered meaningless even before they are to begin.
--------
U.S. Planes Bomb Suspected Militant Refuge in Iraq
Strike in Fallujah Kills 20; Ambulance Shelled During Raid
By Jackie Spinner and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17621-2004Sep13?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Sept. 13 -- U.S. warplanes on Monday bombed a suspected hideout in the insurgent-held city of Fallujah where associates of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi were meeting, the U.S. military said. The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that 20 people were killed and 39 wounded.
The U.S. military said its forces conducted a precision strike just after 6 a.m.
A hospital official said seven people were killed when an ambulance rushing wounded people from the targeted area was hit by a shell.
Zarqawi, who U.S. authorities say is allied with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, is alleged to have organized car bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against Americans and Iraqis. Many military analysts believe he is holed up in Fallujah, which Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters have controlled since U.S. Marines withdrew at the end of April after a three-week siege.
"Intelligence sources reported the presence of several key Zarqawi operatives who have been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraq Security Forces and multi-national forces," the U.S. military said in a statement Monday. "Based on analysis of these reports, Iraqi Security Forces and multi-national forces effectively and accurately targeted these terrorists while protecting the lives of innocent civilians."
Monday's strike was the latest against targets in Fallujah that U.S. officials say were used by Zarqawi's network.
Witnesses said U.S. warplanes repeatedly swooped low over Fallujah and bombed the residential Shurta neighborhood. Artillery units deployed on the outskirts of the city also opened fire for several hours.
Adel Khamis, a physician at the Fallujah General Hospital, said the dead included women and children, the Associated Press reported. The driver, a paramedic and five patients inside the ambulance that was hit by the shell were also killed, Hamid Salaman, a hospital official, told the AP.
The latest casualties came one day after at least 80 civilians and insurgents were killed around the country in some of the most intense violence in months.
The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that 17 people were wounded Monday in fighting between insurgents and U.S. forces in the capital.
U.S. forces killed six Iraqis when they opened fire on a village near the town of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, the Reuters news agency reported. Abdel Zahra Nasrawi, director of the Musayib Hospital, said seven Iraqis were injured by U.S. artillery shelling in Jarf al-Sakhar, near Hilla.
[The U.S. military said Tuesday that guerrillas attacked a U.S. patrol in Baghdad with a roadside bomb and gunfire, killing two soldiers and wounding three, according to Reuters.]
To the north on Monday, U.S. troops continued to block access to the city of Tall Afar as the provincial governor prepared to install a new mayor and police force there.
U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, accompanied by an Iraqi National Guard battalion, moved into Tall Afar early Sunday morning after launching an offensive last week. U.S. commanders said the goal was to expel 200 to 300 insurgents who had taken control of the local government.
By American accounts, two days of delays in installing a new local administration stemmed from unfinished work in the provincial government to choose a new mayor and put together a 600-man police force for Tall Afar, a city of about 250,000 people located about 60 miles from the Syrian border.
The officers said they hoped the still-unidentified mayor would be installed Tuesday or Wednesday at a castle that serves as Tall Afar's city hall. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, which is responsible for Tall Afar, and Duraid Kashmoula, governor of Nineveh province, would likely attend the ceremony, the officers said.
"There's basically a power vacuum right now," said Army Capt. Nathan Terra. "That's why we're keeping people out" of the city.
"If we don't," he added, "the bad guys will go right back in and we'll have to do this all over again."
The U.S. actions in Tall Afar are part of a larger strategy to reestablish control over restive areas of Iraq before elections scheduled for January. U.S. officials say that strong local authority and security are crucial for successful elections.
On Monday, U.S. troops pulled back to a forward operating base on the outskirts of Tall Afar and were no longer operating continuously inside the city, Army Maj. Thomas Osteen said. Troops who patrolled Tall Afar described a ghost town that was devoid of traffic and had few people on the streets.
Local officials and the U.S. military estimate that 50,00 to 100,000 residents fled the recent fighting in Tall Afar. Many remain in camps outside the city set up by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society.
There are conflicting reports on the number of casualties from the fighting, in which U.S. ground troops attacked and F-15 and F-16 jets dropped 500- and 2,000-pound bombs on what the U.S. military said were insurgent positions near one of the main roads at Tall Afar's northern boundary.
Task Force Olympia has said 67 insurgents were killed. The provincial branch of the Iraqi Health Ministry said 42 Iraqis have been killed since last Thursday, including an undetermined number of women and children.
Terra acknowledged that there were civilian casualties but said most of the dead were combatants. He said that as many as 104 insurgents were killed.
The fighting has shaken the region's complex political structure. The town, a transit point between the oil center of Mosul and the Syrian border, is populated mostly by ethnic Turkmens, bitter rivals of the Kurds who also reside in Iraq's northern region. The bombing has drawn protests from the Turkish government.
--------
Bombing in Baghdad will not halt march towards democracy: Britain
(AFP)
Sep 14, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1538&ncid=732&e=2&u=/afp/20040914/wl_uk_afp/iraq_unrest_britain
LONDON - The car bomb attack outside Baghdad's main police station will not derail Iraq's march towards a stable, democratic future, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
"The senseless killing of Iraqi people going about their daily business and working for a peaceful future is completely unacceptable," said Straw in a statement as the death toll from the blast reached 47.
"We utterly condemn these actions, which have been carried out by a terrorist minority in Iraq," he said.
"Such actions will not shake the resolve of the Iraqi interim government or the Iraqi people to bring about a stable and democratic future for Iraq," Straw added.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his full backing to the Iraqi administration.
"We have said all along that we recognise that there will be terrorist attacks in this period as terrorists try to disrupt the transition to democracy," said his official spokesman.
"Prime Minister Allawi, who is leading the Iraqi Government and their response to the terrorist attacks, has said that he is determined that they will not throw the transition to democracy off course, and that is a position we fully support," he said.
--------
U.S. Attacks an Iraqi City With Double-Edged Sword
Los Angeles Times
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Sep 14, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=5&u=/latimests/20040914/ts_latimes/usattacksaniraqicitywithdoubleedgedsword
BAGHDAD - Unable to enter the rebel-held city of Fallouja, U.S. forces have turned to airstrikes, the latest coming Monday. The U.S. claimed success, but images of reported civilian casualties threatened to further enrage Iraq (news - web sites)'s Sunni Muslim population.
Columns of black smoke rose from Fallouja after the attack at 6:07 a.m. Hundreds of residents fled the city - toward U.S. checkpoints that ring the area.
In the aftermath, the familiar conflicting reports emerged. The military lauded what it called a successful strike on the network of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant thought to be behind a wave of car bombings, abductions and other attacks in Iraq.
But officials in Fallouja decried what they said was the killing of innocent civilians. Ten houses were destroyed, at least 16 civilians were killed and more than 20 were injured, officials said.
Neither account could be independently confirmed.
Fallouja is considered the heart of Iraq's Sunni-led insurgency, which has stymied U.S.-led reconstruction efforts and thwarted the interim government. Unable to enter the town since the spring, U.S. forces have turned to an intense bombing campaign. The strategy seems to straddle the thin line between hurting the insurgency and enraging the citizenry. "Every time, they justify it by saying they are striking militants, but there are never any militants killed," Sheik Ahmed Abdel Ghafour, a leading member of the Muslim Scholars Assn., said Monday on Al Arabiya, an Arabic-language television network.
U.S. authorities have disclosed little about the effectiveness of the bombing runs, but on Sunday several high-ranking Marine officers described the campaign as a great success and confirmed that Zarqawi was a target.
The militant is said to be extremely wary of U.S. surveillance, be it from the sky, electronic eavesdropping or informants on the ground.
"He's very scared," said Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, outgoing commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force near Fallouja. "He won't be within two people of a cellphone. He protects his movements, and he's learned how to be elusive. So we continue to search."
The airstrikes, combined with skirmishes and all-out battles on the edges of Fallouja in recent months, have killed hundreds of militants and illustrate the divisions in the insurgent ranks, said Col. John C. Coleman, chief of staff for the expeditionary force, which patrols much of Sunni-dominated western Iraq. The strikes have seriously disrupted rebel operations in the town and surrounding areas, he said.
"There's a few more dead ones," Coleman said. "They won't operate with impunity. They're quite often now looking over their shoulders - in a vertical sense. They've varied their patterns of activities and they're not quite as free to operate as they might like to be."
The Marines pulled out of Fallouja in April after a three-day offensive, leaving an Iraqi force in charge. The Marines have not returned, and the city of 300,000 people has in effect fallen into the hands of guerrillas.
While bemoaning Fallouja's transformation into a guerrilla sanctuary, Marines say the pullout helped expose fissures among assorted factions - religious militants from inside and outside Iraq, loyalists of deposed leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), anti-U.S. nationalists and others.
No longer directly confronting U.S. forces, Coleman said, the rebels had been fighting among themselves, pressured by the U.S. bombing.
"When we attacked in that city, all the various factions that are represented ... coalesced in a marriage of convenience - and, basically, designated us as the common enemy," Coleman said. "They were arranged in a very tight, 360-degree circle, all faced outward at us, and they were all willing to engage us in the fight."
Absent the U.S. presence, the colonel said, intense opposition has arisen to the hundreds of foreign fighters - mostly from other Arab nations - who are said to have concentrated their forces in Fallouja. Reports indicate efforts to impose a Taliban-like Islamic regime there, with women forced to wear veils and religious authorities passing civil judgment.
One indication of the factionalism, Coleman said, is the frequent nighttime gun battles in town - confrontations that do not involve coalition forces.
"There are many nights in the city when we are doing absolutely nothing there, and there's a lot of activity," he said, noting that in the spring all fire was aimed at coalition forces. "Those same people are now shooting at each other."
In Monday's action, U.S. officials boasted of a "precision strike" on a meeting place allegedly used by Zarqawi.
"Intelligence reports indicated that only Zarqawi operatives and associates were at the meeting location at the time of the strike," the U.S.-led multinational command said. "Based on analysis of these reports, Iraqi security forces and multinational forces effectively and accurately targeted these terrorists while protecting the lives of innocent civilians."
But the images that appeared on Arab television - of destroyed homes and people burrowing through the wreckage for their belongings - suggested that civilians had been hit.
Times staff writer Ashraf Khalil in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Fallouja contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Approves Plan to Compensate Settlers
September 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/middleeast/14CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Sept. 14 - Israel's security cabinet approved a compensation package today that would pay roughly $200,000 to $300,000 to each Jewish family that agrees to leave the Gaza Strip under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan.
The move could bolster Mr. Sharon if a significant number of settlers accept the offer in the coming months and begin a voluntary exodus from Gaza.
Some Gaza settlers have expressed a willingness to take the payout, but many are staunchly opposed to the withdrawal and have joined a campaign seeking to derail the plan.
"We think that the vast majority will remain in their homes," said Josh Hasten, spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. He noted that the government has yet give formal approval to the evacuation, and he described the compensation plan as an attempt to pressure the settlers.
The security cabinet, which is made up of senior ministers, backed the compensation plan by a vote of 9 to 1. It authorizes the government to begin making advance payments, which could be up to one-third of the overall compensation that a family receives.
Mr. Sharon wants to evacuate all 8,000 settlers in Gaza and a few hundred settlers in the West Bank by the end of next year as part of his "unilateral separation plan" with the Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership supports the withdrawal, but objects to its one-sided nature, saying it should be coordinated between the sides.
Aharon Abramovitz, director general of the Justice Ministry and an architect of the compensation plan, called it "fair and appropriate."
He declined to cite the minimum or maximum payments to families. However, he outlined several typical scenarios under which families would receive payments ranging from $199,000 to $316,000.
The compensation formula includes several factors, including the number of years a family has lived in a settlement, the size of the house, and the family's current income.
The money is largely intended to cover the cost of a new home, though it also includes stipends for moving, rent for a year, and cash to help workers as they look for new jobs.
The government is proposing additional incentives and penalties to encourage voluntary departure and avoid possible confrontations between settlers and the Israeli security forces.
If a Gaza family moves to the Negev desert region in southern Israel, or the Galilee in the northern part of the country, the government will add an additional $20,000. Both regions are thinly populated and the government wants to develop them further.
If a family refuses to leave Gaza before a cutoff date that has not yet been set, it could lose up to $15,000 from its payment.
The overall price tag for the Gaza evacuation is expected to top $1 billion, according to Mr. Abramovitz. Compensation to the families will account for more than half the cost, and the withdrawal of the military and related operations will account for the remainder, he said.
Mr. Sharon still faces several hurdles as he pursues his Gaza plan. Despite today's vote in the security cabinet, Parliament must still approve legislation on the compensation package.
In addition, the cabinet gave its consent in June to the withdrawal in principle, but must vote again next year to approve the actual removal of settlements.
In a related development, Mr. Sharon said he opposed a national referendum on the withdrawal, telling the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot that he viewed it as a delaying tactic.
On Monday Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for such a vote, saying it would give all Israelis a voice on an extremely sensitive issue and could help preserve national unity.
Also today, Mr. Sharon again raised the possibility that Israel might kill or expel the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, who has been confined to his West Bank compound in Ramallah for more than two years.
"Regarding the expulsion of Arafat, we shall act according to the principle that we will do it at a time when it is convenient for us," Mr. Sharon was quoted as saying in Yediot Aharonot.
Mr. Sharon also hinted that Mr. Arafat could be killed, saying he saw no difference between the Palestinian leader and senior figures in the Hamas movement who were killed by Israel earlier this year.
"They all follow a policy of murder," Mr. Sharon told the newspaper. "Just as we have done with the other murderers, so shall we do with Arafat."
Mr. Sharon has given conflicting signals over the past year, sometimes suggesting that he will act against Mr. Arafat and at other times saying he has no plans to do so.
The Bush administration has made clear that it opposes any Israeli action that could physically harm Mr. Arafat, saying such a move would further inflame the region.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sharon has received death threats in recent days, apparently from Israelis opposed to the Gaza evacuation. Security officials have been expressing concern about the possibility of attacks by Jewish extremists, and Jerusalem's police chief, Ilan Franco, said the threats were under investigation.
In violence today, a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up near two Israeli soldiers guarding a gate that is part of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank. The bomber was killed and both soldiers were wounded outside the town of Qalqiliya, the Israeli military said.
Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group loyal to Mr. Arafat, claimed responsibility and said the attack was to avenge an Israeli missile strike that killed three Al Aksa members on Monday.
--------
Tel Aviv court approves administrative detention for Fahima
Haaretz By Zvi Harel
September 14, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/477955.html
Tel Aviv District Court President Uri Goren approved Tuesday an administrative arrest warrant issued against Israeli pro-Palestinian activist Tali Fahima for her alleged desire to carry out a terrorist attack on an Israeli target. The warrant issued by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz places Fahima under administrative detention for four months.
Judge Goren said he reached the conclusion that "Fahima is determined to execute a terror attack against Israeli targets and that there was no other choice but to place her under administrative detention."
According to the judge, his decision was based on "reliable intelligence sources," including the testimony of a Shin Bet security service agent who testified Monday.
Fahima has kept close ties with militants in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank city of Jenin, including the group's local leader, Zakariya Zbeidi.
She has been quoted as saying she would act as a human shield for Zbeidi to protect him from a targeted assassination attempt by the Israel Defense Forces.
-----
Sharon pledges Arafat expulsion
BBC
14 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3654928.stm
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has again said that Israel will expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the Palestinian territories.
In a newspaper interview, Mr Sharon said the expulsion would be carried out at what he called a convenient time.
He said he could see no difference between Mr Arafat and several top leaders of the militant Palestinian group, Hamas, whom Israel has killed.
The US has repeatedly warned Israel not to kill or expel Mr Arafat.
Mr Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority.
Despite widespread disenchantment at corruption in the authority and what many Palestinians see as misrule by Mr Arafat, he is still popular and the most important figurehead for the Palestinian national cause.
Correspondents are linking Mr Sharon's comments to a fierce political debate in his cabinet over his Gaza withdrawal plan.
'Same principle as Hamas'
In an interview with the Yediot Aharonot Mr Sharon said: "We took action against Ahmed Yassin and Abdelaziz Rantisi and a few other murderers when we thought the time was right.
"On the matter of Arafat's expulsion we will operate in keeping with that same principle. We'll do it at a time that suits us."
Mr Arafat has been effectively confined to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah since December 2001.
Israeli and US officials no longer have direct dealings with Mr Arafat having dismissed him as an obstacle to peace.
'Serious threats'
Most of the international community, including the United Nations and the European Union, still recognise Mr Arafat as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians and deal with him directly.
Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian spokesman and chief negotiator, said Mr Sharon's threats were being taken seriously.
"These kind of threats are very serious and are preparing the ground for a physical attack on President Arafat," Mr Erakat told the AFP news agency.
"We are holding Israel entirely responsible for these threats and warn them not to carry them out."
It is the third time in less than a week that a senior Israeli government figure has spoken of the possible removal of Mr Arafat.
-----
Sharon rejected U.S. proposal for talks with Syria
Haaretz
By Aluf Benn
September 14, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/477561.html
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected an American proposal last year to resume the talks between Israel and Syria, he said in a Rosh Hashana interview with Haaretz. "It was immediately taken off the agenda and they're not raising it any more," Sharon said, adding that White House envoy Elliot Abrams had made the proposal when the two met in Rome in November 2003.
"He wanted to talk with me then on the Syrian issue," said Sharon. "He spoke about what the Syrians were trying to do, that they would enter into negotiations with Israel."
During the conversation Sharon surprised Abrams, when he brought up for the first time his proposal for a unilateral move consisting of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and evacuating the settlements there.
Until that stage, the present American administration had not displayed an interest in the resumption of the peace talks between Israel and Syria, which had been in the center of the former administration's policy for this region. The Israeli-Syrian talks were halted in 2000, and since then relations between the U.S. and Syria entered a deep freeze. The Americans have been exerting heavy pressure on Damascus to modify its conduct and soften its radical positions.
It appears that after the fall of Mahmoud Abbas' (Abu Mazen) cabinet in the Palestinian Authority and the collapse of the political effort to promote the road map, the U.S. tried to to revive the Syrian track. Two weeks after Sharon met Abrams in Rome, Syrian President Bashar Assad made a public overture to resume the negotiations. In an interview with The New York Times, Assad called for renewed talks, and spoke of "normalization" with Israel "similar to the relations between Syria and the U.S."
Assad repeated these proposals last week at a meeting with former American ambassador Martin Indyk.
Sharon rejected Assad's proposals then and now, arguing that they were intended merely to soften, or remove, American pressure on Syria.
In the interview with Haaretz, Sharon reiterated his demands from Assad: removing the Palestinian terror headquarters from Damascus, stopping aid to the Palestinian terror groups, deploying the Lebanese army in the south of the state and keeping the Hezbollah away from the border, dismantling the Hezbollah's missile and rocket apparatus, and removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Lebanon.
"If we saw that all these measures are being taken, it would be possible to think," he said.
Sharon rejected out of hand a full withdrawal from the Golan, which had been discussed in the past in the peace talks between Syria and Israel.
Asked if he accepted Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon's assessment that if an agreement is reached with Syria, Israel could be protected without the Golan, Sharon responded: "I don't think we can agree to the Syrians' demands regarding the borders and water problems. I had the privilege to serve as Northern commander at the time of the water struggle. There is no way, under any circumstances, to return today to what we talked about in previous discussions. Those discussions, in the days of several prime ministers [Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak] were certainly very dangerous to Israel."
Asked if he was referring to prime ministers from both parties, Sharon answered "Yes."
The full interview with the prime minister will appear tomorrow in Haaretz's Rosh Hashanah edition.
-------- nato
Iraqi president seeks help from NATO, EU
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Sep 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040914142103.olpljyq6.html
Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar held talks in Brussels Tuesday on how NATO and the EU can do more to help stabilize and rebuild his violence-scarred country.
Al-Yawar, on the latest leg of a European tour, started with a meeting with NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer before talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana during the one-day trip.
His trip was clouded by a fresh upsurge in violence in his homeland, as a car bomb killed at least 47 people at Baghdad's main police headquarters and gunmen shot dead 12 policemen and a civilian in Baquba.
The 26-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is currently considering the expansion of a fledgling training mission already in Iraq, as agreed at a summit in Istanbul in June.
While in Brussels al-Yawar, whose role is largely ceremonial, was invited to a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the Alliance's top decision-making body. One diplomat said his trip to NATO would be "symbolic".
On Wednesday NATO ambassadors are expected to discuss options -- possibly including setting up a permanent training centre in Iraq -- although no immediate decisions are expected, diplomats say.
The options include that of NATO taking over all training currently carried out by the United States in Iraq -- although it seems unlikely that countries like France could accept such a prospect, diplomats say.
Another possibility would be to set up a permanent training "academy" in Iraq, the say.
The European Union, a major donor of aid to help rebuild Iraq, is currently considering how it can help organize elections planned for January, but threatened by a rising tide of violence.
EU foreign ministers agreed this week to send a new team of experts to Baghdad in the next few weeks, to produce proposals to put to an EU summit in November, to which Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been invited.
Like NATO, the 25-member EU was deeply divided by last year's Iraq war -- which pitted anti-war countries like France and Germany against a pro-US camp led by Britain -- but has rallied round to help reconstruction efforts.
The Iraqi president arrived from Poland where he assured lawmakers that Iraq was "a country in the process of being stabilised, where the reality is different to what you can see on television screens."
The Polish deputies did not appear convinced. "If he had the slightest power, he would have returned to Baghdad urgently after this attack," one remarked, without wanting to be identified.
Al-Yawar has also travelled to Germany and Italy. After Brussels he had been due to travel to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, but officials there said he has cancelled the trip.
-------- pakistan / india
Pak to release over 200 Afghan detainees
Pakistan News Service
September 14, 2004
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=77113
ISLAMABAD, September 15 (Online): Pakistan has announced to release more than two hundred Afghan prisoners soon.
According to a BBC report on Tuesday this decision of releasing Afghan prisoners was in the wake of an accord reached between President General Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan already has released many Afghan prisoners who were held captive on minor charges and release of more Afghan prisoners is in the offing.
The swap of prisoners will further improve Pak-Afghan relations, said Abdul Hali Farahi head of Afghan consulate in Peshawar.
According to a report of VOA on Tuesday he has appreciated this swapping of prisoners as recently Afghan authorities handed over 368 prisoners to Pakistani diplomats in Kabul. All these prisoners have now arrived in Peshawar.
He also welcomed Pakistan decision to release of more than 200 Afghan prisoners. Afghan government on the other hand has released more than 360 prisoners held in Afghan jails since fall of Taliban government.
-------- prisoners of war
Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/14/1351212
Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh joins us in our firehouse studio to talk about his new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. The book takes a look behind the public story of President Bush's "war on terror" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. Hersh provides a new account of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal that he exposed last spring and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. [includes rush transcript] A U.S. court martial in Baghdad last weekend sentenced a soldier to eight months in jail for maltreating and conspiring to maltreat Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
Specialist Armin J. Cruz confessed to forcing three naked inmates at Abu Ghraib jail to crawl along a floor before making them simulate sex acts. Cruz was spotted in a photo taken during abuses committed in October. He is the eighth American soldier to be charged over the abuses but the first from military intelligence.
Cruz pleaded guilty to conspiracy and maltreatment of prisoners and has agreed to testify against others charged in more serious cases of mistreatment at the U.S.-run prison west of Baghdad.
But while Cruz pleaded guilty, his lawyers contended throughout that he was just following orders from superiors. But how high does the scandal go? Today we look at the "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib." That's the title of a new book by Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh.
In his book, Hersh writes that at the height of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in May 2004, a Republican operative received the reassuring word that Vice President Dick Cheney had taken control of the situation. The operative "learned that Cheney had telephoned Rumsfeld with a simple message: No resignations. We're going to hunker down and tough it out." Hersh writes "Cheney's concern was not national security. This was a political call - a reminder that the White House would seize control of every crisis that could affect the re-election of George Bush."
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New Yorker. He is the author of several books, his latest is Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
http://www.democracynow.org/static/hersh_trans.shtml
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined today by Seymour Hersh. He exposed 35 years ago the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, has written a number of books since, and now, his latest book has just been published. It's called Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. Welcome to Democracy Now!
SEYMOUR HERSH: Glad to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: It's great to have you with us. Let's just start off with that "chain of command" and how you came to understand what was happening at Abu Ghraib?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, of course, nobody fully understands how you got to where we got. What's interesting about the Cheney call is that it isn't a call saying, "Oh, my god! What are we doing here? We've got to stop this. Let's clean it up. This is a terrible outrage. In the name of America, how can we behave this way, et cetera, et cetera." We're not getting that from him. We're getting, "Let's hunker down. Let's seal everything up." So, what happened is in this particular book, this sort of came out of the fact that I did a bunch of articles for The New Yorker in May, that I have talked to you about on-air, sort of posing the problem of Abu Ghraib and suggesting that there were higher officials involved.
After that, those articles, somebody who worked for Condoleezza Rice -- I'm talking about the people in the White House -- got in touch with me and told me that, in fact, there had been a lot of concern about prisoner abuse much earlier, that in the fall of 2002, this issue had had come up into the White House and gotten to the level of National Security Council meetings. It came about because the C.I.A. has an expert on Islam on its staff, somebody who was born in Palestine, and who -- I can't name him for obvious reasons, because I'm glad there's somebody with that knowledge in the government. I'm delighted to not -- not to do anything to expose him. But in any case, he was troubled because he was seeing all of the intelligence reports from Guantanamo. Guantanamo was the police prison that was set up in the wake of our invasion of Afghanistan. I think it started in January 2002, and by the middle of the year, there were 600 people there. Nothing was coming from there. Nothing. No good intel. So, he does the rational thing. He goes to the base, goes and takes a look. He talks to about 30 -- he speaks idiomatic Arabic -- he talks to 30 of the prisoners. Among the first things he sees, as he tells colleagues -- I haven't seen the report, I just know what he told colleagues about it, people who worked with him in the C.I.A. and in the White House -- he sees two men easily 80 years old, living in their own excrement bound in a jail, in a pen. He, in talking to people, there's absolutely no differentiation among those who are people who wanted to do something, conspired against America or were al Qaeda members, and those who are simply people just caught up in the American sweeps. There's no differentiation. His report basically says if they weren't al Qaeda by the time we captured them, by the time we release them, they sure will be.
Also, obviously, there's the total violation of the Geneva Convention, not processing people, and also in conversation with people, he described it as war crimes, the way we treated people. His report was done, a wonderful general named John Gordon, a retired Air Force general, four-star general, full general, who worked as a deputy director of the C.I.A., and military men understand something, which is you don't treat prisoners any differently than you want your own soldiers to be treated if they're captured. He was troubled by it. He began to lobby inside the White House to deal with this report. Of course, in the Bush administration, like I assume in all administrations, no bad news is wanted. So he lobbies people. He gets his pal, the C.I.A. analyst who did the report, to come brief some people. Of course, the vice president's office is against this. They don't want to talk about it. Everybody in Guantanamo is a bad guy. To hell with them. The general counsel, the counsel to the president, Gonzalez, also is very hostile, but he finds enough people who said, let's do something. So Condoleezza Rice has a meeting. Don Rumsfeld comes over to the meeting. There's a moment of epiphany when she says, please look into it. He says, I will. He goes off and assigns a 31-year-old aide who has had nothing to do with prisons in his life, is an arms control guy, to look into it. Nothing happens. As the general tells -- is known to have said later, he was really distressed that nobody would take it seriously.
So, what you have, if you want it talk about how Abu Ghraib began, what you have is a attitude that these people are not humans. Dehumanization. We do that more all the time, but you also have an attitude that it doesn't matter what you do. So, I proffer this -- that all of -- we have had what, nine or seven or eight investigations and reports, some of them very good about what happened in the field, but in terms of how this attitude began, how we began, how Abu Ghraib really came to be it's -- from the very beginning, nobody in the chain of command, nobody from the White House on down made it clear that we will treat these people decently. I'll tell you why it's important to do so. Anybody who knows anything about interrogation says the following -- you cannot get good information from coercion. This is just a given. You establish rapport. Particularly if you are dealing with jihadist people, who are willing to die for what they believe in, you're not going to get information by torturing them. It's just not going to work. So it's dumb and dumber to begin with. Secondly, it exposes our people to the same kind of retaliation, and also it's a total war crime. It's a crime against humanity, it's a crime against the Geneva Convention, and of course, it's also dangerous in a rational world to the presidency itself. Because if you don't inflict values at the very beginning, you do end up down the road with the kind of abuses we had. That's, I think, the story in a nutshell.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh is our guest this hour. His series of pieces in The New Yorker and more are now a book Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. We'll be back with him in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh. Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib is his new book. You have a pretty remarkable quote in here of J. Bibby, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. He wrote to Alberto Gonzalez, the White House counsel, quote: "We conclude that for an act to constitute torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."
SEYMOUR HERSH: What can I say? That's what he wrote. It was in a memo to the White House, and I generally characterize the legal memos written early -- this is a memo written in early 2002, as being a sort of internal competition to see who can be the hardest line guy there was. I think the gist of what he says in effect, he also in one of the memos described intent, that you cannot inflict torture if - it's not torture if your intent in abusing somebody or hurting somebody to get information was to protect the national security. In other words, what your intent is when you are hurting people, it's very important, and to what -- as important as the act. So, it's very hard for a journalist because if you use the word -- since the White House has its own definition of torture and the White House has its own definition of abuse, it's very hard to write about it, because the White House denies, you know.
One of the lawyers for the White House in a meeting I write about with a human rights official, somebody from Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, said, he describes the act of pulling a hood over somebody, goggles first and then a hood, he said, "People complain if we blindfold people." That's blindfolding, putting a hood over somebody's head and over goggles. And so, if you define things your own way -- Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist who knows a great deal about law, writes on legal issues, described these memos that were written by the White House as sounding like lawyers for the mafia writing memos to the capo about how to handle a problem. It's really sort of -- that this stuff came at the top of the government is -- again you have to say, 9/11 happened. America was stunned, upset, people were trying to hurt our innocence. There was fear involved. There was a tremendous fear on the part of the government that we knew nothing about these people very much. We didn't know much. Would they strike again? I'm giving you their arguments. So, therefore, extraordinary measures had to be taken.
AMY GOODMAN: With just this one case, Bibby, he ended up being promoted.
SEYMOUR HERSH: He's now a federal judge, I think in the Circuit Court of Appeals. Again, was he promoted because he wrote that memo? I would guess not, but still, it's not something I want on my resume, let's put it that way.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan?
SEYMOUR HERSH: This is -- it's interesting. I have been doing interviews, and you're the first person to ask me about it. This is a story that I didn't write. I was doing a lot of work, as you know, since 9/11. I have been sort of writing the alternative history of the war, with the help of people on the inside. I'm not -- you know, people -- there are people all along very high levels who don't approve of what's going on. It's very hard for people in certain positions in the military and the intelligence to come forward. Anaconda was an operation to take place March 1, 2002, where we were going to attack in the mountains, in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan.
The idea was to attack what we believed were a group of embedded al Qaeda living in redoubts, in caves, et cetera. And the army wanted to do it. There had been -- the war had been going on for months. It had been largely a special forces war and air force war. The army and the commander at this time was General Franks. Little did I know then that this Tommy Franks would end up running the war and be described as sort of a hero, because this was Katzenjammer Kids stuff what he did. It was really sort of really dumb. The plan was to recruit some Afghans and with the American soldiers, they initially wanted the marines, they were going to drive -- there was going to be no advanced bombing of the area or artillery, because we did not want to tip off the al Qaeda we were coming. Never mind we were dealing with all of the local Afghan tribes, all of whom we know, history shows, who pays the most determines their loyalty. The idea that you could run a covert operation, particularly the way we move, like General Motors, but that was the idea, so we could have no -- the air force wasn't allowed to do preparatory bombing. We're going to send boys from the Tenth Mountain Division out of Ft. Drum, New York. They're going to paratroop land by helicopter into an area. There's going to be no advance bombing and there's going to be no artillery. And the first wave is going to be a group of Afghans going up a mountain with the marines. The marines said, "Are you kidding?" I quote an ex-- a wonderful marine officer saying -- that's why I love the marines - "We said 'Are you nuts? F### you. We're not going. We'll go, fight and kill anybody, but we're not stupid. We don't go up a mountain without artillery and without intelligence.'" They wouldn't go, so they send the Afghans up, they get wiped out in what they call registered mortar fire.
In other words, the opposition had mortars aimed at the various congregation sites they had already planned in advance. They were going to be points where they rendezvous. And the fire was already registered. Clearly they knew what the points were going to be. When the Ft. Drum soldiers landed by chopper, up higher in the mountains, their landing zones were also the target of registered mortar fire. In other words, the enemy knew. I think they suffered 28% casualties, not deaths, mostly wounded from shrapnel and other shells in the first thee minutes. Then they ran down the mountain, 100 people, literally, some didn't, perhaps, but many did, including the junior officers, ran from an ambush, not irrational, leaving behind night vision gear, weapons, radios, they just shed themselves and went down the mountain, because otherwise they were in real trouble. They would have been wiped out. It's a nightmare. It was just a nightmare. Then, of course, the press is down below in Bagram near a base. After the first day was over, that's my favorite quote of the war, a lieutenant colonel from the Tenth Mountain Division briefs the American press corps that's down below about what a victory it was. And he said, "The best thing about it is we found and engaged the enemy right away." Which is -- I have to think I said it was a very strange way to describe an ambush. And an air force officer -- the air force went crazy about this. I got there after action started, which was just devastating, I mean, brutal. There's always interesting warfare, but this was extraordinary. They just said, this was the worst they have ever seen. One air force colonel, who is a wonderful, bright young air force colonel said to me, "Well, the army demonstrated that they were able to send a bunch of boys up a mountain to their death." That's what they showed in this mission. Complete disaster. They tried to tell the press as many as 700 al Qaeda were killed. Newsweek reported ten bodies were found. Shades of Vietnam again. But I didn't write it.
What makes it interesting, while doing reporting on it, I called Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, who is sort of an interesting guy in this stuff, because early in the war, early in my reporting on the war, I had written critically about a Delta Force operation. Delta is the secret unit of the army. The commander unit. They had been ambushed. The Delta guys were enraged. I'm talking about the first month of the war because they had been sent on this stupid operation and they had gotten hurt very badly. And they don't like it. Delta guys, they like to crawl in little holes for a week and get to their target. They were ordered to do it in a different way. Everybody denied the story like crazy. And Wes Clark, to his credit, told a bunch of newspapers, "Look, I know this is right." I had said 13 people were hurt and he said 12 was the number that he had. I saw in him somebody with a great streak of integrity, difficult he may be. In any case, I called him about this story while I was doing it. He encouraged me to write it. I didn't write it. About a year-and-a-half later, he's running for president. I mention this in the book, and I bump into him, and he jumped all over me. He said, "Why didn't you do that story?" I said, "Well, I just thought, it just would have been -- I just didn't do it." He said, "You should have done it. That was your job." Pretty scary. You know, he was right.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Seymour Hersh. He has written a book Chain of Command, about what happened at Abu Ghraib, and well beyond that. So, let's talk about what happened at Abu Ghraib. How you learned of it, and then we'll talk about the chain of command right up into the White House.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, the honest answer to that question is I learned about it because CBS wouldn't do it. CBS did break the story eventually and published the photographs. But I learned very early that CBS had these extraordinary photographs. I was ecstatic about it in a way. I'm pro-reporting. I'm glad to see tough reporting on the war. I hadn't seen them, but I heard there was a really devastating story. And I love stories. That's what we do for a living. So, nothing happened. Nothing happened. Eventually somebody who had been interviewed by CBS, somebody in the intelligence community, told me that they were sitting on a great story. So, I found out what the story was. I found the photographs, and I also found more importantly the internal report written by a general named Taguba, General Taguba, born in the Philippines, enormous integrity, wrote a blistering report. It still is the most outstanding thing. It says an awful lot about us, that there are people like that that can produce things like that, even about the military. That report is devastating, because everything that you want to know, that I have even learned, that the whole responsibility goes higher, it's not explicit in his report, but it's written with an edge of anger. It's clear that he's really profoundly distressed that so much wrong could be done, and so many people clearly knew about it. In any case, so I have all of this stuff, and that's how I got into it. Eventually before we could do it in The New Yorker, CBS did produce the photographs to their credit. They did an excellent job when they did it, Dan Rather. I presume there were people in the news side that were fighting. There is a war that we can't begin. This is - if you remember, General Meyers called up CBS, that was, it became known and got them to hold off. So, the story I wrote --
AMY GOODMAN: The head of the joint chiefs of staff.
SEYMOUR HERSH: General Meyers, yes --
AMY GOODMAN: Called CBS and said, "Don't do the story."
SEYMOUR HERSH: And they didn't do it. He gave them something -- they held off another week or whatever. That's their business, but they did eventually do the story. And by the time they did it, I had not only actually more photographs or I think more, I had another set, two different sets of them, but I also had the report.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you get them?
SEYMOUR HERSH: What do you mean?
AMY GOODMAN: The photos?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, from people who had them, of course. I'm not going to tell you that. I mean, you know, I honor your questioning, but -- I got them from people that had ever right to have them. And -- and the report -- it's never. It's always the cover-up. Although one thing I will say about the pictures, if we hadn't had the photographs or the Taguba report I could have written all week about abuses and nothing would have happened, because actually, as we know, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, International, various reporters had been producing extraordinary stuff. A lot of journalists, even some of the journalists from The New York Times and particularly The Washington Post, a reporter they had in Afghanistan had done a lot of very good stories interviewing people that had been in our custody in about them being exposed, the nakedness, et cetera, et cetera, but it didn't work. It didn't work because there wasn't any visual evidence. So, once -- and you know, my -- you know, The New Yorker, although it's a weekly, popping in on a Sunday and saying, we have to go next week with something, that's hard for them. And to the credit of The New Yorker people, I think I did three stories in three weeks, which you have to know what The New Yorker is like to know that's impossible, because of the fact checking and the editing. And you know, it's just -- it was amazing.
AMY GOODMAN: The famous picture on that first piece of a prisoner in a sort of Christ-like position, arms out, wires at the end of his fingers, the bag over his head. We actually just saw the kid in Boston at the Democratic National Convention, who had stood outside the army recruiting station in the same position to protest what had happened, and they originally charged him with being a terrorist. But you say you have even seen worse?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you have seen?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I'll tell what you the judgment was of the editors at The New Yorker, they published some pretty horrible pictures. There's a sense of out of respect for the Arab -- Arab men you know, in Arab society, as you know, the Koran says Arab men cannot be photographed nude in the front. It's so hard for Americans to understand that. We are sort of the slapping each other with towels in the shower crowd. If you go into a sports club in Cairo, for example. Everybody has a private stall and a private shower. Privacy is incredibly important. Not only to women, but clearly to men, too. Photographing somebody nude, photographing somebody in a simulated homosexual position, photographing them with women having thumbs up or thumbs down next to them are the ultimate humiliation.
AMY GOODMAN: So that the photograph when people ask why did these soldiers take these pictures, especially with the soldiers themselves in the pictures, since it incriminates them, it was part of the torture?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes. It's by the way, by every definition, this kind of psychological treatment of a prisoner is equivalent to torture. Every standard textbook and reference says this kind of excruciating humiliation is equivalent to torture. It's torture. You don't have to drive a nail into somebody's hand to torture them. Here's the important thing about the people in the photographs who are all being prosecuted and should be. They did wrong things. There's a couple of things to say about it. One, of course, is when we send our kids to war, we send them in the hands of officers in loco parentis.
The objective of the officers, the men in charge of the military, is not only to protect them from death, but also protect 18-19-year-old kids from themselves, from doing dumb things. There's a tremendous obligation on the part of the military to protect their soldiers. It's not only from casualties, as I said. It's a failing of such staggering proportions. In other words, is it really safe to send your child into the army, above and beyond getting wounded? The lack of sensibility, but more importantly, I write about a secret unit that I'm sure that you are going to ask me about in a minute, but one of the things, one of the intellectual underpinnings of what happened in Abu Ghraib, and you have to understand this, the people in the audience have to understand this, it's not just randomness, what happened. You can -- we in the fall of 2003, the United States of America was in huge trouble in Iraq, just like we still are. We know nothing about the insurgency then. We knew nothing then. We still know nothing about it. We don't know whether there's going to be another bomb like there was this morning tomorrow. We have no intelligence, zippo. We had no intelligence then. The insurgency by August of 2003, the U.N. had been hit, the Jordanian embassy where we really do a lot of operating, intelligence stuff, was hit. Lesser known, pipelines were hit again for oil. Water lines were hit, and electrical power stations were all hit anew in August. It was like a huge escalation.
So, there was panic in the White House because August is, what, almost a year from re-election time. So, it became a political issue, just as you noted in the beginning. Cheney and the White House moves together when there's politics involved. We have to do something. So, they not only -- they decided they had thousands, 10-20,000 Iraqis in detention. And they had been unlike in Afghanistan where they were picked up on a field, many of these people were picked up at traffic checkpoints or they were busted -- people broke into their homes and grabbed all of the men. We had -- the idea was get some of the guys in captivity who had nothing to do with the insurgency, get them photographed, get a dossier of them looking like they were committing homosexual acts, blackmail them and send them home into the community, and have them become our agents inside the insurgency. Tell them to join the insurgency. That was the intellectual idea, so I've been told. The idea was let's get some guys and turn them, because sexual humiliation does proffer enormous blackmail. You're ruined forever. Just like in the Arab world, they still kill the daughter that commits adultery, et cetera, et cetera. They try to. That's still a reality. And so, that was the intellectual idea. So, what the kids were doing, or the young men and women, they weren't all kids, some were in their 30's, the awful acts that we saw in the photographs were the playing out of a process that at the beginning had some sense but it simply deteriorated to the point where whatever the initial idea was, they began this in September of 2003, the idea was to get better intelligence and use the prison population to find some people that could do it for us. By October, the C.I.A., which is not adverse to being tough in certain interrogations, they pull their people out and send them home. Because the C.I.A. realized that this was a mess. If you are telling me that people in Washington weren't aware that there was real problems going on in the prison system, you have to be kidding.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Seymour Hersh. We have to break. When we come back, I'll ask about the secret unit and also about videotape he has said he has seen of Iraqi boys, prisoners, being raped at the Abu Ghraib prison, hearing the screams of the boys. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back with the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Our guest this hour is Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, exposed the My Lai massacre that changed history, the coverage of Vietnam. Now, 35 years later, though he's done many things in between, his latest book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. We're talking about the prison torture, how high up it goes. This issue of videotape, of boys in prison, Iraqi boys, being raped. Who's raping them?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I haven't seen or heard the videotape. What happens is in -- obviously, people with -- since I wrote those articles in The New Yorker, I was in contact with family members who have other materials; and essentially, some of the Iraqi -- some of the employees, the private contractors who were hired by the United States. As you know, there's 20,000 private contractors. That's a number I have heard. I can't verify it. But we -- in the prison system in the United States military, since we know nobody speaks Arabic, we don't have enough translators, they hire locals. They hire -- they go to various companies, C.A.C.A. Is one.
AMY GOODMAN: Kaky?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don't know what it stands for, but out of Virginia. They just got a huge new contract. These are people who do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business. They provide interpreters, among other things; that's part of their business. The private companies were all over Abu Ghraib, and they had local -- one of the people, one of the men from the private companies was -- did have forcible sex with -- there's women in the prisons, which is also a big contentious problem for the Iraqi population. The women are held in a separate unit, but they have children; and one of the children and one of the women was raped by a boy. There are photographs. There is testimony --
AMY GOODMAN: Was raped by --
SEYMOUR HERSH: One of the guards, rather. And witnessed by Americans taking photographs. There is testimony that has not been made public about this. I know that there's been statements made in various military proceedings. And the government's been very chary about writing -- putting out any information. People witnessed it. They had cameras, and I believe they were video cameras. They could have been still cameras. There were cameras photographing it, and the boy was screaming. But I don't have a videotape of it. I haven't seen a videotape of it. I know that such testimony has been given. So, it's -- there is testimony that's been given for some reason that we can always guess about. Look, you know, I'm -- it's -- women were doing things -- I actually learned about Abu Ghraib. I went to Damascus in Christmas of 2003 to interview an Iraqi -- a high ranking Iraqi officer that somehow had escaped being imprisoned by us. We -- many of the Ba'ath party leadership are still in a prison --Camp Cropper, I think, in Baghdad. And he came out to Damascus to see me, and he told me -- we spent three days -- and in one afternoon he told me a great deal about Abu Ghraib. Again, without a video camera, without a photograph of it. And one of the things that was most compelling about it was the women were writing letters to their families -- women in jail -- saying, "Please come kill me. I have been abused. Come kill me." So, you know -- an Israeli I know said to me, he said, "You know, I hate Arabs." This is an old-time guy. Old-time military guy, old-time Mossad-type guy -- intelligence guy. "I hate Arabs. I've been killing them for 50 years and they've been killing us for 50 years." And he said, you know, "Let me tell you something, Hersh. But one day we know with a wall, without a wall, we're going to have to live with those s.o.b.'s sometime. And let me say this to you: If we treated our prisoners the way you treated prisoners, we could never do that."
We have really dug a hole for ourselves on this Story, and that's why it's so profound. The book You're talking about, I think it's published this week. I finished this book in August, I mean, I'm jamming. And it was being translated -- as --page after page -- I think ten countries are publishing it -- all over England yesterday, and Germany, because there's -- you know --This is a bad thing for us.
AMY GOODMAN: The secret unit.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, three months after the war, we set up -- Look, the war takes place, as I said. They're panicked. We don't know what to do about it. We don't have intelligence. A lot of people in the world want to extradite people to us. We have a lot of friends, even in places -- Sudan, Yemen. Everybody responds to our America -- this terrible tragedy of the World Trade Center, etc. Getting people out of a country involve extradition, rendition they call it. Legal process. Not fast enough for Rummy -- Rumsfeld. So Rumsfeld sets up a secret unit known -- doesn't matter what the code name was, but it was - there's something known in the military as a S.A.P., Special Access Program. This is a very secret unit, often on the fifth floor (they call it the fifth deck) of the Pentagon in a secure area where all of our secret weapons -- the Predator aircraft, the Stealth bomber, were built in S.A.P.'s, because you can control access. There's something called an "unacknowledged S.A.P.‚" which is a really really secret unit, and you can run operations out of it. He set up an unacknowledged S.A.P. He needed a finding and they did tell the Congress. I can tell you right now I know, I write that I've talked to members of Congress who saw and signed the finding. It's a unit completely composed of men in undercover --probably Jordanian, Canadian passports, who knows? -- and their job is to find the bad guys, grab them out of their beds, no extradition. Put them --they have secret -- they have their own aircraft, their own helicopters--grab them, pull them out, and bring them to Egypt, Singapore, other places for interrogation. Initially by locals, eventually by us, very tough stuff. But to get intel. And this operation was called into Abu Ghraib. And I guess you could say we've been in the disappearing business; because we really don't know much about it. It still exists. It still goes on. I've written about it. I write in this book that -- I know some reporters in my old business, good reporters in Washington know about it. There hasn't been much reporting done on it. It's a secret unit that reports directly to Rumsfeld (and, obviously, approved by the President) so we can get -- we don't have to go through a legal -- you know going into a country to get somebody out you have to talk to our ambassador, the legal authorities, and et cetera. You just get them, put them on a Gulfstream 5, fly them to Egypt, bam, bam.
I think the program in the beginning was really well -- they tried to run it well. People involved tell me in the beginning that we got some very good stuff. The people we tried to get were bad guys. But eventually, and this is -- I write about this in the book, too --eventually it began to turn, became more political, and in the end, I quote somebody in the unit as saying, "What do you call it when you torture somebody to get information? And you leave them for medical help, and he doesn't get it and he dies?" And after a second, he said, "Execution." So, in the end, it ends up getting a little bit out of control. They did bring this unit, some elements of this unit into the Iraqi prison system in the fall. This is a decision made by the President. And this is where the idea of sexuality and using nakedness -- I think it came from this group because that's something they're very good at. Breaking down people that way.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, how high does this go? Chain of Command, is the title of your book.
SEYMOUR HERSH: If you're talking about Abu Ghraib, did Rumsfeld and the President know about it? No. If You're talking about the idea that -- a military unit is really interesting, anybody who served in the military knows, from a platoon to a company to a battalion to a division to the Secretary of Defense to the White House to the President, if you set the policy, if you say, we will not tolerate stupid abuse of people whose information we need, if you make it clear we're going to treat people with dignity, because we want our soldiers to be treated with dignity, and that's also the way to get the information we need, it would be -- go down like a rock from the beginning. It never happened. So it goes to the very top. That's why the story I tell at the beginning of the book about Conde Rice. I can't tell you that the President knew about this briefing from the C.I.A. official and that -- I can just tell you that everybody else in the White House did.
AMY GOODMAN: And that C.I.A. official who originally went down to Guantanamo and came back so disturbed -- conservative Palestinian?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes. Conservative Palestinian.
AMY GOODMAN: C.I.A.?
SEYMOUR HERSH: With integrity, an awful lot of integrity; and thank God there are people like that there. And there are there. And I can tell you there were many people in the C.I.A, many more than some of the reports want you to believe, the Intelligence Committee, who knew that there were problems with our intelligence all along, not only on W.M.D., but about the war. Just in general the idea that the C.I.A. misled the President is not true. This is a White House that wanted it the way they got it. They call it -- the cliché is - "intelligence to please." The pressure was always on the intelligence agency to tell us anything bad about Saddam and weapons you can. The standard for that information was much lower than for any other intelligence. Well, so, here we are. You know, we got the bombs going off. No solution to this war coming. No exit plan from this White House. No exit plan from John Kerry, either.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, do you believe this White House will be there again?
SEYMOUR HERSH: If I was a betting man? Sure. If John Kerry thinks that he can go to the Germans and the French and the Italians and say to them, you put your -- the Italians are there, the Germans and French -- his plan to get our allies to send their troops in there, it's just changing the color of the corpses. It's not going to work.
AMY GOODMAN: Given what John Kerry said in 1971, it's rather surprising 35 years later that he has not raising Abu Ghraib torture as an issue in this campaign?
SEYMOUR HERSH: In all fairness to him, I think the campaign is just barely -- the book was published yesterday. I don't know what the campaign is going to do. I've actually been in contact with -- some people have called and asked for copies of the book. I presume -- Look, torturing people --
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you have been writing about it for more than year.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, torturing, well, but torturing people is -- you know --
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. The book was published this week, the story he's been reporting for quite some time now. Thank you very much.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Glad to see you, Amy.
-------- russia / chechnya
Putin Moves to Centralize Authority
Plan Would Restrict Elections in Russia
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17838-2004Sep13.html
MOSCOW, Sept. 13 -- President Vladimir Putin announced plans Monday for a "radically restructured" political system that would bolster his power by ending the popular election of governors and independent lawmakers, moves he portrayed as a response to this month's deadly seizure of a Russian school.
Under his plan, Putin would appoint all governors to create a "single chain of command" and allow Russians to vote only for political parties rather than specific candidates in parliamentary elections. Putin characterized the changes as enhancing national cohesion in the face of a terrorist threat, while critics called them another step toward restoring the tyranny of the state 13 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
• Chechnya War a Deepening Trap for Putin (The Washington Post, Sep "Under current conditions, the system of executive power in the country should not just be adapted to operating in crisis situations, but should be radically restructured in order to strengthen the unity of the country and prevent further crises," Putin said during a televised meeting with cabinet ministers and governors. "Those who inspire, organize and carry out terrorist acts seek to bring about a disintegration of the country, to break up the state, to ruin Russia."
His plans must go through parliament, but the Kremlin controls more than two-thirds of the legislature directly and two other political parties quickly endorsed the ideas. Even the governors, who could lose their jobs, surrendered, either welcoming the plans or remaining silent.
"It's the beginning of a constitutional coup d'etat," said Sergei Mitrokhin, a former parliamentary leader from the liberal Yabloko party. "It's a step toward dictatorship."
Mitrokhin and others decried what they saw as the exploitation of the deaths of 328 children and adults in the southern town of Beslan to justify a power grab. "It's sad that the president has used such a topic as a pretext to do that in order to increase his own power," Mitrokhin said in an interview. "These measures don't have anything to do with the fight against terrorism."
The plan was the latest move in a five-year campaign by Putin to consolidate power and neutralize potential opposition in the new Russia. Since coming into office at the end of 1999, Putin's government has taken over or closed all independent national television channels, established unrivaled dominance of both houses of parliament, reasserted control over the country's huge energy industry and jailed or driven into exile business tycoons who defied him.
Putin had already effectively tamed the governors, who often defied the Kremlin under former president Boris Yeltsin. Early in his tenure Putin threw the governors out of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, and set up seven presidential envoys, sometimes called super-governors, to supervise them.
The newest moves take a vision he calls "managed democracy" to a new level. Although governors in Russia's 89 regions have been elected since 1995, Putin's plan would give the president the right to appoint them, subject to confirmation by local legislatures.
At the same time, the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, would consist only of members elected from party lists, meaning that political parties such as Putin's United Russia would exercise exclusive control over everyone who runs for election.
Under the current system, half of the 450 members of the Duma are elected in individual districts like members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The other 225 seats are divided up between parties based on the proportion of the vote they win in balloting by party. If a party wins 25 seats, then the first 25 names on its party list would be entitled to join the Duma.
Only four parties qualified for seats in the party-list half of the Duma in elections in December -- United Russia, the Communists and two nationalist parties allied with the Kremlin, Motherland and the Liberal Democratic Party. Two Western-oriented democratic parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, both fell short of the 5 percent minimum threshold. Therefore, the only members of those parties serving in the current Duma were those elected to individual district seats that would be eliminated under Putin's proposal.
Some parties almost openly sell places on their party lists for Duma elections. A place on a national party list went for about $1 million in the December campaign, according to one party official involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. In the case of Putin's United Russia, the party last year put popular governors at the top of its party lists, then after the election assigned the seats to other candidates. Viktor Pokhmelkin, one of the few pro-Western independents left in the Duma, called Putin's plan the restoration of "imperial management." In an interview, he added: "Today a very serious mistake has been made. The mistake is a threat to the future of the Russian state."
But most of the political establishment either supported or acquiesced to the Putin plan. Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Motherland party, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democrats, endorsed the changes. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov denounced the measures, but he commands only half the Duma seats his party did when Putin came to power, so he has little ability to oppose them.
Even the governors with the most to lose chose not to resist. The appointive system "existed at the beginning of the '90s . . . and democracy wasn't hurt by that," Gennady Khodyrev, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, said in a telephone interview. Asked if he was prepared to simply give up his office if Putin wanted him to, he said, "Of course I am, and I can explain why: If the president doesn't trust you, then you'll damage the region more than you'll benefit it."
Other supporters argued simply that Russia should return to the days of central power. "The problem is that our country is not ready for democratic elections," said Alexander Rutskoi, a former governor of the Kursk region. "Right now people elect people who speak louder than others and have more money than others."
In his public remarks, Putin offered little explanation for how the changes would defeat terrorism of the sort that visited Beslan earlier this month.
Putin signed a decree Monday giving state agencies two weeks to develop plans to fight terrorism and, during his televised remarks, spoke of creating a single powerful anti-terrorism agency. He talked in general terms about promoting citizen informants, banning extremist groups and prosecuting corrupt police officers. And he offered a vaguely defined plan to create a "Public Chamber" that would oversee security agencies.
Putin also acknowledged that his government had not done enough to tackle the economic roots of terrorism. "In the fight against manifestations of terror we have practically failed to achieve visible results," he said. "We failed to achieve visible results above all in liquidating its sources."
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Washington Offers Guarded Critique of Putin's Plans
September 14, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/international/14CND-REACT.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reacted with guarded criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin's new steps to consolidate his power over Russia's political system, warning that the fight against terrorism should not become an excuse to move away from "democratic reforms of the democratic process."
Mr. Powell, speaking in an interview with the Reuters news agency, said that administration officials would raise concerns about Mr. Putin's actions "in the days ahead" but he did not specify who would be taking this action. The secretary is expected to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the United Nations General Assembly next week.
The White House issued a separate statement from a senior official saying that Mr. Putin's action "raises some questions that we would like to address" with future meetings.
Taken together, the administration's reaction was seen as restrained, reflecting rising concerns in the administration over what has been a general souring of the relationship with Russia over the last year. Administration officials have been alarmed that even mild criticism of Russia in the past has only antagonized relations with Washington.
Mr. Powell, in defending the administration's record on foreign policy during the presidential election season, has frequently asserted that relations with Russia are better than they have been for many years. He has cited cooperation over terrorism as one of many areas in which Russia and the United States have worked together.
Critics, including many former Clinton administration officials, have charged that Mr. Bush and his foreign policy team have refrained from criticism of Russia's internal crackdown on dissent, a criticism that some members of the Bush team used to make about advisers to President Clinton.
In 2001, shortly after taking office, Mr. Bush declared that he had come to understand Mr. Putin's "heart and soul" and was looking forward to doing business with him. He has invited Mr. Putin to Camp David and to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and praised the Russian leader for his far-sighted vision and understanding of the war on terror.
Increasingly, however, administration officials, speaking anonymously, have been willing to say that there is a disappointment in the American government that relations have not improved the way many had hoped after Mr. Bush's initial statements on Mr. Putin.
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush telephoned Mr. Putin to offer sympathy after the massacre of school children in Beslan, and he and the first lady, Laura Bush, went to the Russian embassy in Washington to sign a condolence book.
But people around Mr. Bush say there has been no small concern about recent anti-democratic actions as the prosecution of business leaders who are also critics of the government, the handing out of government assets to friends of the Russian leader and the cancellation of oil exploration contracts with American companies, which American officials said was a sign that the Russian government no longer was as interested in doing business with the west.
Though he is also visiting the United Nations next week, it is not clear whether President Bush will be meeting with any Russian officials.
Despite supporting Russian actions against terrorists, and offering more cooperation on such matters as airline security and intelligence, some administration spokesmen have suggested that the problem of the rebellion in Chechnya is related to the region's chafing under Russian rule since czarist times and that these nationalist concerns must be addressed through negotiations.
Mr. Putin lashed out against that suggestion a week ago, and more recently administration officials have emphasized the importance of cracking down on terrorism through military action.
On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked at a question-and-answer forum if he thought that the attack in Beslan would lead to the Russians taking "a more aggressive stance, and standing more strongly with us as we continue to fight terrorists around the globe."
"I think they will," he replied, adding that Russia's failure to support the war in Iraq did not mean that it would escape being hit by terrorists. "I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target, that Russia, of course, did not support us in Iraq. They did not get involved in sending troops there. They've gotten hit anyway." He said Russia might be "reassessing" its tactics in light of the Beslan attack.
But administration officials seemed taken aback that if there was such a reassessment, it involved Mr. Putin's drastic move to consolidate his power over the legislative branch and regional governments in Russia, which experts say are not the source of any support for terrorist attacks.
--------
Many Beslan victims gravely ill
BBC
14 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3654654.stm
Fifty victims of the Beslan school siege remain in a serious condition in Moscow hospitals, where 122 wounded are being treated, Russian officials say.
A senior health ministry official, Sergei Goncharov, said half of those most seriously hurt were children.
Thousands of schools across the EU held a minute's silence on Tuesday in honour of the Beslan victims.
Meanwhile, 20 Chechens who renovated schools in the Moscow area over the summer have been arrested.
The Chechen conflict
Moscow regional security chief Nikolai Burkov, quoted by Russian media, said the group was detained near the capital's main Sheremetevo airport.
The militants who attacked the school in Beslan earlier this month, taking more than 1,200 hostages, are reported to have hidden arms and explosives on the premises while it was being renovated.
School term delayed
Officials have delayed the reopening of schools in Beslan - which was due to happen on Tuesday - as further security checks with sniffer dogs are carried out. They are now expected to reopen on Wednesday, Itar-Tass reports.
Russian officials say the death toll from the three-day hostage crisis now stands at 338.
Apart from the 122 being treated in Moscow, 207 survivors are in hospital in North Ossetia, including 123 children. None of the latter are gravely ill, Mr Goncharov said.
The North Ossetian interior ministry says 84 bodies - including those of 52 children - remain unidentified.
Russia has blamed the mass hostage-taking in Beslan on Chechen rebels backed by foreign Muslim militants.
It has offered 300m roubles ($10m; £5.7m) for information leading to the arrest of Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov.
-----
Chechen envoy warns of bloodshed
BBC
14 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3655438.stm
UK-based Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev has warned there could be more bloodshed unless peace talks are held.
Mr Zakayev, who was granted asylum by the UK in November, is accused of terrorism by Russia.
He said the Beslan tragedy, which has left at least 338 dead according to officials, will not be the last of the violence in the region.
Mr Zakayev, aligned with Chechen separatists, said the West must force President Vladimir Putin into talks.
At a press conference at Millbank House in central London, he said: "Putin's policy has not only not stabilised Chechnya, but has brought about a worsening of the situation.
"If Putin's policy towards Chechnya continues in the same vein, the Caucasus will radicalise even further and I am gravely concerned that more Beslans will be inevitable.
He called on western governments to make peace talks between Russia and Chechnya a "non-negotiable condition of Russia's continued status as a privileged interlocutor of the West in both trade and political forums".
The Beslan school siege saw militants, said by the Russian government to be Chechen rebels backed by foreign Muslim fighters, take more than 1,200 hostages.
Russia has offered 300m roubles ($10m; £5.7m) for information leading to the arrest of Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov.
Mr Zakayev - who is associated with Mr Maskhadov, head of the self-proclaimed Chechen government - condemned the siege.
Mr Putin has condemned both men and said he was unhappy that Chechen leaders had been granted asylum in the US and UK.
Mr Zakayev was not extradited to Russia as it was feared he would not get a fair trial on 13 charges relating to terrorism, murder and kidnappings.
He added: "I categorically refute all accusations by the Russian government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event."
-----
Lithuania Won't Shut Down Pro-Chechen Site
Associated Press
By LIUDAS DAPKUS
Sep 14, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=6&u=/ap/20040914/ap_on_re_eu/lithuania_chechen_web_site
VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuania on Tuesday refused a Russian request to shut down a pro-Chechen Web site that published a $20 million reward for assistance in the capture of Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), saying it cannot take action without a court order.
The service provider hosting kavkazcenter.com also refused to remove the site because it violates no laws in the Baltic country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned Lithuania's ambassador, Rimantas Sidlauskas, and requested that Lithuania close the Chechen-oriented Web site, which is hosted by Elneta, an Internet service provider in Vilnius.
However, Lithuanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mindaugas Lasas said Tuesday the site cannot be shut down before a ruling expected next year from the country's Constitutional Court. The case has been pending with the court since the Lithuanian State Security Department tried to suspend activities of the Chechen portal last year.
"Until the Constitutional court ruling, the Web site can operate freely from Lithuania," Lasas told The Associated Press.
Lithuania regained its independence during the 1991 Soviet collapse, and its relations with Moscow since then have sometimes been tense.
Elneta director Rimantas Pasys said Russia's political concerns were not a reason to take down the site.
"Everything is based on commercial relations. The Web site does not violate the laws of our country," he told The Associated Press.
"Administrators and editors work from Russia, they have passwords and can update information on the Web site. In Lithuania, there's only a server standing," he said.
Last week, the State Security Department asked the independent Journalists and Publishers Ethics Commission to look into possible terrorism propaganda and instigation of ethnic hatred contained in an article published on kavkazcenter.com.
The department was responding to the Sept. 8 pledge published on the site to pay $20 million for help in the capture of Putin, whom the article accused of war crimes.
Sources in the Journalists and Publishers Ethics Commission told AP Tuesday that members did not find any signs of terrorism propaganda or ethnic hatred after looking through the Web site's content.
The official conclusion of the commission was expected to be announced Thursday.
The Web site used to operate from servers in the United States and Britain, but was removed after its users were accused of sending thousands of spam e-mails to Internet users around the world. The site is now hosted by Elneta on a server located in the apartment of renowned Soviet-era dissident and political prisoner Viktoras Petkus.
The Kavkaz Center, founded in 1999, reports about events in Russia, Chechnya (news - web sites) and Muslim countries and supports the positions of pro-independence rebels in Chechnya.
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Russia threat unsettles Georgia
BBC
By Natalia Antelava
14 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3654110.stm
The Pankisi Gorge was a haven for Chechen militants until 2002 The US ambassador to Georgia says some international terrorists are still present in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge on the border with Chechnya.
His words echo concerns from Moscow that hostage-takers from Beslan could have infiltrated into Georgia.
Georgia shares its borders with the troubled republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia.
The country is worried it will become the first place where Moscow will carry out its threat of preventive strikes.
Hiding places?
All the major newspapers here have been speculating on their front pages about the possibility of a Russian attack.
Both Moscow and now the US ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, say they believe there are international terrorists still hiding in the Pankisi Gorge on the border with Chechnya.
Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has also said that he does not exclude links between Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia and the events in Beslan.
And the Russian media alleges that one of the hostage-takers from Beslan is hiding in the Kodori Gorge, in the country's other breakaway province of Abkhazia.
For its part, Tbilisi blames Russia for supporting these breakaway states.
Just last week, Russia launched a new train service between Moscow and Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia.
Officials in Tbilisi are adamant that no Chechens have crossed into Georgia and that the borders along the snow-peaked Caucasus mountains are under full control.
The question, they say, is whether Russia will choose to believe them.
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Russia pours $5b into terror fight
(AP)
September 14, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/14/russia.terrorism.ap/index.html
MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia announced Tuesday it was pouring $5.4 billion in additional funding into its security agencies, indicating it was trying to mobilize resources quickly for a battle on terrorism that President Vladimir Putin has called the country's No. 1 priority.
"The fight against terrorism requires a long-range perspective," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in announcing the funding, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported a day after Putin proposed a major extension of Kremlin control over political and security structures.
Russia's main security agencies -- the Federal Security Service, Interior Ministry, border guards service and Foreign Intelligence Service -- will split an additional $1.71 billion in funding. The Defense Ministry will receive an additional $3.66 billion, Kudrin said.
It was not clear, however, whether the government was earmarking new funds or Kudrin was highlighting increases already put in the draft 2005 budget -- to try to show skeptical Russians that authorities were taking action against terrorism. A Finance Ministry press officer, Alexei Strekalov, told The Associated Press that ministry officials themselves did not know.
Some $18.1 billion already had been earmarked for defense in 2005, a 28 percent increase over this year, and $13.6 billion for national security and law enforcement, a 20 percent increase.
Kudrin had already committed $68.5 million in next year's budget to a new anti-terrorism program to increase security in public places, including Moscow's subway.
In response to a series of terrorist attacks that killed 430 people in the past three weeks -- including a school in the town of Beslan -- Putin said a central, powerful anti-terrorism agency must be created, but details were not made public.
At an emergency meeting Monday of his Cabinet, top security officials and regional governors, Putin also announced a radical restructuring of Russia's electoral system that would increase Kremlin control over every layer of political life.
Under the plan, popularly elected governors would be replaced by those nominated by the president, and voters would cast ballots for parties instead of individual candidates -- ending the practice of legislators representing specific districts.
Currently, half the members of the lower house of parliament are chosen from party lists and half are elected in individual races. That chamber, the State Duma, is dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
Putin's supporters praised the plan Tuesday.
"Strong political parties are the basis of the political system," pro-Kremlin lawmaker Mikhail Grishankov told state-controlled Channel One.
Many newspapers, Web sites and radio stations, which have escaped the government control that has settled over Russia's mass media, called the plan a step backward for democracy.
The Kommersant daily newspaper said "the only representative of the executive branch who will be elected by all the people will be the president of Russia."
Izvestia commented that the plan reflected both the desire for a more efficient state and disillusionment with democracy.
"Over the 15 years of its new life, civil society in Russia hasn't really awakened," the newspaper said. "And the president has decided that in conditions demanding fast, effective, and often urgent decisions, it's better not to have such a society -- because the authorities are uncertain of the results of waking it."
Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few independent lawmakers to have been elected to the State Duma, accused Putin of violating the constitution. He told reporters that the Constitutional Court had established in 1996 that governors could only be popularly elected.
Human rights advocate Lyudmila Alexeyeva told the Vremya Novostei daily that the final subordination of the regions to the center "kills the very idea of the federation."
Stanislav Belkovsky, an analyst considered close to the former KGB officers in Putin's administration, said the president was "liquidating regional politics."
"In the current situation, the transition from federalism to a unitary state is political suicide," Vremya Novostei quoted him as saying. "What's happening now is the biggest mistake of Vladimir Putin's rule."
Most of Putin's initiatives had little to do with increasing Russians' security and everything to do with furthering the Kremlin's clout.
Putin's mistrust for local officials runs so deep, Izvestia said, "he has decided on an extreme step: finally to take responsibility himself for events in the country."
Meanwhile, about 20 Chechens who renovated schools in the Moscow region this summer were released Tuesday after being detained for several hours for lacking proper documents, Russian media reported.
The men were stopped by authorities near the capital's main international airport, Sheremetyevo, Ekho Moskvy radio said, citing regional security chief Nikolai Burkov.
Citing an unidentified security source, the Web site News.ru reported the Chechens had not registered with authorities upon coming to Moscow, as required by law. The men were fined before being released, the Web site said.
Russian media have reported that the attackers who seized more than 1,200 hostages in Beslan earlier this month hid explosives and armaments in the building during a summer renovation. Other reports discounted that theory, saying the attackers -- who included Chechens -- had enough room for the munitions in the three vehicles they drove into Beslan.
Also Tuesday, news agencies reported three riot police were killed and four others wounded in an attack in southern Chechnya. Fighters used rocket launchers Monday evening to hit the building where the police were stationed in the Nozhai-Yurt region, Interfax and ITAR-Tass said.
Chechnya has been wracked by war and violence for nearly a decade. Russian forces withdrew from the southern region in 1996 after separatist fighters fought them to a stalemate. Federal troops returned in 1999 after rebels were blamed for a series of deadly bombings.
-------- spies
In Senate Hearing, C.I.A. Pick Pledges Nonpartisanship
September 14, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/politics/14CND-GOSS.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is President Bush's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, asserted today in the face of occasionally sharp questioning by Democratic senators that if confirmed he would be an objective, nonpartisan spy chief.
"I pledge to be forthright and objective in the presentation of the intelligence information to you and to the policymakers of the executive branch," Mr. Goss told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing in which he also predicted that it would take more than five years for the C.I.A. to train and put in place all the clandestine operatives it needed.
The panel's chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, asked several questions that gave Mr. Goss a chance to promise his full cooperation with lawmakers if he became director of central intelligence.
Then Mr. Roberts said, "Mr. Goss, will you be a nonpartisan D.C.I.?"
"Yes, sir," Mr. Goss replied. "You have my word on that, Mr. Chairman."
The nominee faced much sharper, though still friendly, interrogation from the committee's vice chairman, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia. Mr. Rockefeller said in his opening remarks that he had concerns about whether Mr. Goss might simply be too partisan to be the "independent and objective national intelligence director that our country needs."
Although no forceful opposition to the nomination has publicly emerged, some Democrats have questioned whether Mr. Goss is too much of an insider, as a former C.I.A. operative in Latin America and Europe, to be objective and to carry out reforms. And some have also suggested that as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until his nomination by President Bush, Mr. Goss should bear some blame for recent intelligence failures.
Asked about assertions by the last director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, that it would take at least five years to attain a desirable level of intelligence data from spies and agents - called human intelligence, or humint - Mr. Goss said he thought five years would be optimistic.
"On a scale of 10, we're about 3 on build-back," Mr. Goss said. "In terms of years, I don't believe five is enough, but I can report some good news: that in my estimation that we have some that we will be able to bring on before five years is up. But the great bulk of what we need is more than five years out there.
"In terms of global eyes-and-ears coverage on the core mission, which is close-in access to the plans and intention of the enemy, the mischiefmakers, and other things we need to know in this country for our national security, it's a long buildout, a long haul."
On the issue of partisanship, Mr. Rockefeller zeroed in on a newspaper essay that Mr. Goss co-wrote with a fellow Republican congressman, C.W. Bill Young of Florida, that appeared in the Tampa Tribune in March.
"In it, you made a number of highly charged - partisan, in my judgment - allegations," Senator Rockefeller said to Mr. Goss. "And then you targeted Senator John Kerry," Mr. Rockefeller went on, referring to the Democratic presidential nominee.
To illustrate his point, Mr. Rockefeller read a section of the essay asserting that Senator Kerry " `was leading the way to make deep and devastating cuts in the intelligence community's budget and was leading efforts in Congress to dismantle' - dismantle - `the intelligence capabilities of the nation.' "
Mr. Rockefeller then recited budgetary figures rebutting Mr. Goss's position as stated in the newspaper article and asked, "Do you stand by your claims?"
Mr. Goss replied somewhat indirectly. "There is a record, and anybody is welcome to look at it," he said. "I have made a commitment to nonpartisanship."
Mr. Goss clearly anticipated Mr. Rockefeller's questions, which the senator had previewed in comments beforehand, and the nominee addressed them in advance, in his opening remarks.
"At times, perhaps, I've engaged in debate with a little too much vigor or enthusiasm," Mr. Goss said, referring to his eight terms in Congress, much of which has been spent as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Politics notwithstanding, Mr. Goss said, he had treated his colleagues in both parties "fairly and with the utmost respect."
"Rest assured," Mr. Goss said, "I do understand completely the difference in obligations the position of D.C.I. carries with it and that which the role of congressman carries. These are two completely distinct jobs in our form of government. I understand those distinctions and, if confirmed, I commit myself to a nonpartisan approach to the job of D.C.I."
Although the nature of the director of central intelligence post could change, given proposals for overhauling the American intelligence bureaucracy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and lapses in intelligence on Iraqi weapons, Mr. Goss would seem to have an excellent chance of being confirmed, perhaps as soon as next week, to succeed Mr. Tenet as head of the C.I.A.
Republicans control the Senate, with 51 seats, to 48 for the Democrats and 1 independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, who generally sides with the Democrats. And Mr. Goss was warmly introduced today by Florida's two Democratic senators, Bob Graham, who was Senator Roberts's predecessor as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Bill Nelson. They indicated that they would vote to confirm him.
"I am not unbiased," Mr. Graham said. "I believe that Porter Goss is an exceptional human being and will be an exceptional head of our central intelligence."
Mr. Nelson called Mr. Goss "a uniquely gifted individual" and exactly the right person to lead a revamping of the far-flung intelligence community.
And even with his pointed questions and comments, Mr. Rockefeller nonetheless praised Mr. Goss. "You have a long and distinguished career as a public servant," the senator said. "I applaud your willingness to undertake the possibility of this extremely difficult and complicated job."
Another Democrat on the panel, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, worried aloud that things would not change enough at the C.I.A. with Mr. Goss at the helm. "I hope you can convince me otherwise," Mr. Wyden said, citing his personal affection for the nominee.
Mr. Goss, 65, spent a decade as a C.I.A. case officer early in his career and is the first former spy nominated for intelligence chief since William J. Casey was picked by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
If he is confirmed, as increasingly seems likely, Mr. Goss will have more power than Mr. Tenet had, thanks to recent executive orders issued by President Bush that broadened the C.I.A. head's purview. But under the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks, the C.I.A. chief's role would be subordinate to that of a new national intelligence director who would have sweeping hiring-and-firing authority and budgetary powers.
President Bush has not indicated whether Mr. Goss may be in line for that new post, should Congress create it and Mr. Bush is re-elected.
Another Democratic panel member, Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, said Mr. Goss had "come to the committee with integrity," and she asked him if he could serve with Mr. Kerry, should Mr. Kerry win the presidency and decide to keep him on.
"Of course," Mr. Goss replied. "That would be up to President-elect Kerry's decision. But of course."
--------
CIA Nominee Promises to Shed Partisanship
Associated Press
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
Sep 14, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20040914/ap_on_go_co/goss_cia
WASHINGTON - President Bush's nominee to head the CIA promised Tuesday to shed his political past and provide precise, objective and independent intelligence to the president and Congress. But after a 4 1/2-hour confirmation hearing, some Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee were not convinced.
More than half the panel's Democrats said they were waiting until next week to say whether they will support Goss' confirmation. No one has promised publicly so far to vote against him.
With Republican control of the Senate, congressional aides say they expect Goss to win approval. Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has indicated he wants the Senate to vote on the nomination as early as next week.
"I have made a commitment to nonpartisanship," retiring Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., told the panel. He conceded that during his 16 years in Congress he may "at times" have engaged in debate with too much vigor.
"Rest assured, however, I understand completely the difference in obligations the position of (director of central intelligence) carries with it and that which the role of a congressman carries," said Goss, who formerly chaired the House Intelligence Committee.
Goss' demeanor rankled some Democrats. He said his record speaks for itself on a number of tough issues, including his initial opposition to the Sept. 11 commission and his positions on intelligence spending in the 1990s. Goss and the Democrats have each blamed the other for deep budget cuts.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., accused Goss of dismissing many of the questions from senators.
"Whoever briefed you for this hearing and said that when you get in a tight spot over something you have said or done, keep repeating 'the record is the record,' did you no great service," Durbin said.
After the hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said she wants to know which Goss she will be asked to confirm: the "fair, reasoned, knowledgeable" chairman she watched lead a joint congressional investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, or the partisan who has since been making "highly charged" comments on behalf of the Bush administration.
If confirmed, Goss would take over the agency just months after the CIA's last director, George Tenet, shocked some on the Sept. 11 commission by saying it would take five years to install the kind of clandestine service needed to deal with international terrorism. Tenet blamed the situation on tight budgets after the Cold War.
Goss, however, said Tuesday it would take more than five years to train and place all the clandestine operatives the CIA needs. "I don't believe five is enough," Goss said. "It's a long build-out, a long haul. It's been started. "
In his testimony, Goss also outlined a series of commonly cited priorities for the U.S. intelligence community. They included improving human intelligence and analytic capabilities, expanding intelligence sharing with state and local law enforcement agencies and enhancing foreign language capabilities.
A former Army intelligence and CIA clandestine officer, Goss would assume at a tumultuous time the helm of the CIA and the post's dual role as head of the 14 other agencies in the U.S. intelligence community.
At the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation, Congress and the White House are considering separating Goss' would-be position into two jobs - a CIA director and a national intelligence director. The commission said the latter position should be empowered with budget and personnel authority over the nation's spy networks.
Goss said Tuesday he believes the authority to control budgets for foreign intelligence should be consolidated in a central office. But if confirmed, he said, he will "play the cards that are dealt to me on this subject."
Bush has endorsed giving the new national intelligence director budgetary authority, but not all the powers the commission suggested. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has endorsed adopting the commission's 40-plus recommendations in their entirety.
Even as Goss focused on substantive intelligence issues Tuesday, Democrats repeatedly returned to sometimes terse exchanges about whether Goss could be an independent and nonpolitical CIA chief.
The panel's top Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, admonished Goss for his criticism of Kerry, including a March op-ed piece he co-authored titled "Need Intelligence? Don't Ask John Kerry." Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that Goss, as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1996 until August, was insufficiently committed to intelligence reform.
Feinstein also asked Goss about comments he made to The Associated Press about the prison abuse scandal in Iraq (news - web sites). During a May interview, Goss called ongoing Senate investigations "a circus."
"What you're saying by that comment is certainly a lack of respect not only for this committee, but this body," Feinstein said.
Goss said the comment was directed toward the "media frenzy" that was going on over the pictures of abuse at the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. "It was lighthearted jesting about our rivalries that go back and forth on the Hill," he said.
Goss also backed away from a controversial provision he included in an intelligence reform bill in June to loosen long-standing restrictions on the agency's ability to operate inside the United States.
"I do not believe that foreign intelligence apparatus should be used domestically," he said.
-------- us
Wounded numbers still rising as insurgency takes heavy toll
By Associated Press
9/14/2004
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/258/wash/Wounded_numbers_still_rising_a:.shtml
WASHINGTON (AP) More than 200 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq in the past week, the Pentagon said Tuesday, and the total since the invasion was launched in March 2003 is now 7,245.
Of the 219 wounded in the past week, 81 were returned to duty; the 138 others were not.
The Pentagon generally reports its wounded totals each week. Fatality totals are updated daily.
The number of Americans killed and wounded has grown rapidly amid an intensifying and increasingly effective insurgency. There were more wounded over the past five months about 4,000 than in the first 13 months of the war, when there were about 3,300, according to Pentagon reports.
The number of Americans killed as of Tuesday was 1,018, by the Pentagon's count. That includes three civilian employees of the Department of Defense. It does not include Army Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, who was captured April 9. His fate has not been officially resolved.
--------
'Weekend Warriors' Play Big Role for U.S. in Iraq
Reuters
By Will Dunham
Tue Sep 14, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MRSXTKX5T0JH4CRBAEZSFEY?type=domesticNews&storyID=6235607&pageNumber=1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They once were dubbed "weekend warriors," but Americans serving in the National Guard and Reserve are being used extensively in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- far more so than in the Vietnam War.
Roughly 40 percent of the U.S. forces deployed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part-time troops called to active duty from the military's reserve components, primarily the Army National Guard and Reserve. More than 81,000 part-time troops are currently deployed for those wars, the Army said.
By comparison, just over 7,000 Army National Guard soldiers were deployed to Vietnam out of the 2 million Americans who served in that long war in an era when some young men signed up for Guard duty to avoid combat.
"Let's face it, during the Vietnam War you had about as much chance of being hit by lightning as being sent to Vietnam if you were in a Guard unit," said defense analyst Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute.
Some families of National Guard troops have complained the Pentagon has not trained or equipped them as well as regular active-duty forces, and they never bargained for long overseas deployments in combat zones.
Both the Army National Guard, with about 345,000 soldiers, and Army Reserve, with about 210,000, were formed as part-time forces. Unlike the Army Reserve, which is made up of federal troops who can be mobilized for military duty if needed, those in the National Guard serve under the control of state governors usually for roles like disaster relief in their home states.
Some governors have complained that with National Guard troops deployed in such large numbers overseas, they are facing manpower shortages in their own states for tasks like fighting wildfires and dealing with natural disasters.
Amid all this, the military is lagging about 13.5 percent behind its recruiting goal for the Army National Guard for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30. "We're not going to make our goal," said Scott Woodham, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon.
National Guard soldiers have been called weekend warriors because of their commitment to train one weekend per month and two weeks per year when not on active duty.
GUARD FEATURES IN CAMPAIGN
The National Guard has figured in the presidential campaign, with Democrats questioning whether President Bush fulfilled his duties when he served in the Texas Air National Guard in the Vietnam War era.
Bush and Sen. John Kerry, his Democratic rival and a naval officer in the war, both are addressing the National Guard Association in Las Vegas this week.
Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers make up a big chunk of the deployed forces because the skills most needed in the current wars reside in these units rather than the regular active-duty Army.
"We are a nation at war. We need the entire Army to combat this war on terror," Hart said.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said after the Cold War, the Pentagon pushed skills expected to be in low demand -- including military police, civil affairs activities and language skills -- into reserve units to preserve the capabilities without spending much money on them.
Those turned out to be the very skills most vital in counter-insurgency campaigns, Thompson said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Court Clears Way for Moussaoui Trial
Suspect Ruled Eligible for Death Penalty, Cannot Interview al Qaeda Detainees
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18599-2004Sep13.html
A federal appeals court yesterday rejected a bid by Zacarias Moussaoui that would have made him ineligible for the death penalty, clearing the way for the first U.S. trial on charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denied Moussaoui's appeal of its order that he cannot interview key al Qaeda detainees. A trial judge had barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty and from presenting Sept. 11-related evidence as punishment for their refusal to turn over the witnesses.
Zacarias Moussaoui could ask the Supreme Court to hear the issue of his access to al Qaeda witnesses.
Yesterday's 2 to 1 decision by the three-judge panel in Richmond sends the case back to Alexandria for the judge to craft a compromise that allows Moussaoui to present at his trial statements made by the detainees without interviewing them.
Barring anything unforeseen, Moussaoui, who was charged nearly three years ago, is likely to go on trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria as early as March, lawyers involved in the case and legal experts said.
"Game over. This means a spring trial,'' said Andrew McBride, a lawyer closely following the case and a former federal prosecutor in Alexandria. "It's likely this thing is going to steam forward now.''
Moussaoui could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the issue of his access to al Qaeda witnesses, which for more than a year snarled the only criminal prosecution stemming from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Attorneys for Moussaoui would not comment yesterday.
But legal experts said the high court rarely takes up appeals before a case goes to trial. If the court made an exception in this case, it is considered unlikely that proceedings in Alexandria would halt again in the meantime.
A Moussaoui trial could be the only chance for the government and relatives of the victims -- who are expected to testify during the death-penalty phase -- to seek legal justice for the attacks. It would feature broad legal issues pitting a defendant's constitutional rights vs. the government's ability to wage the war on terrorism.
The 4th Circuit noted the stakes in the second sentence of yesterday's 88-page opinion. "We are presented with questions of grave significance,'' the judges wrote, "questions that test the commitment of this nation to an independent judiciary, to the constitutional guarantees of a fair trial even to one accused of the most heinous of crimes, and to the protection of our citizens against additional terrorist attacks.''
Prosecutors said that yesterday's ruling showed they had struck that balance. The decision "once again affirms our belief that the government can provide Zacarias Moussaoui with a fair trial while still protecting national security interests,'' Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said in a statement. He said the ruling "puts the Moussaoui prosecution back on track, and we look forward to presenting our case to the District Court."
Yesterday's ruling for the first time allows Moussaoui to submit written questions intended for the detainees, sources familiar with the classified portions of the decision said. But the interrogation process is so secretive that Moussaoui's lawyers won't know if the questions were asked or what the answers were unless the information happens to show up later in interrogation summaries, the sources said.
A French citizen, Moussaoui was charged in December 2001 with conspiring with al Qaeda in the attacks. The witness-access issue arose from a ruling in January 2003 by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema.
Brinkema granted a defense motion to depose a captured al Qaeda operative, Ramzi Binalshibh, the self-described planner of the attacks. Government attorneys objected, saying a deposition would interfere with a vital interrogation that could yield clues to future attacks.
Prosecutors first appealed to the 4th Circuit last year, arguing that Brinkema overstepped her authority because the judiciary could not second-guess military decisions. The 4th Circuit dismissed the initial appeal as premature but said prosecutors could appeal again if they refused to produce Binalshibh and were sanctioned by the judge.
Brinkema later ordered depositions of two more detainees, identified by sources as former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, alleged paymaster to the hijackers. She said the detainees, who are being held at undisclosed locations, had information that could help Moussaoui's defense.
The government refused to produce any of the detainees, and in response Brinkema struck the death penalty and all Sept. 11-related evidence. The 4th Circuit panel overturned those sanctions in its ruling in April.
Moussaoui's attorneys then asked the entire 4th Circuit to take up the case. The full court declined, but the same three-judge panel issued yesterday's opinion. Both decisions were written by Chief Judge William W. Wilkins Jr., with the concurrence of Judge Karen Williams. Judge Roger Gregory dissented in part because he opposed making Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty.
In the majority ruling, the judges agreed with Brinkema that the detainees had evidence that could help Moussaoui and rejected the government's contention that she had no right to order the depositions. But they said the sanctions she imposed were unnecessary and again ordered her to craft alternative versions of statements made by the witnesses, known as substitutions for live testimony.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Support for Intelligence Plan
Powell, Ridge Back One Director but Defer to Bush on Specifics
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18890-2004Sep13.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Congress yesterday that creating a new national intelligence director could guard against the type of faulty intelligence that led him to tell the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Appearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Powell also said it is "unlikely that we will find any stockpiles" of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, and he offered a strong criticism of the intelligence community's performance before the war in concluding that those weapons were there. Powell said he relied on those assessments in preparing the U.N. speech, which he now considers flawed.
Powell's testimony yesterday, delivered as congressional committees consider reorganization of the nation's intelligence system, contained some of his most extensive comments to date on the failures of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It also struck a more pessimistic tone than President Bush has about the chances that continued searching will uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush has said he is awaiting final reports of U.S. weapons inspectors.
Powell told the committee that over the past year he had found "that some of the sourcing that was used to give me the basis upon which to bring forward that judgment to the United Nations were flawed, were wrong." Moreover, he said the sources "had not been vetted widely enough across the intelligence community," and said he was "distressed" because some in the community "had knowledge that the sourcing was suspect and that was not known to me."
Powell said creating a national intelligence director -- one of the key recommendations of the Sept.11 commission -- would ensure that all the intelligence was brought together and evaluated for officials who make decisions on it, and would guarantee that "what one person knew, everyone else knew." With an "important, empowered national intelligence director, you are less likely to have those kinds of mistakes made," he said.
In testimony, Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge expressed support for appointment of a national intelligence chief, though each said there are still details to be worked out in the approach that will be supported by Bush.
Their comments came as several congressional panels wade through proposals of the Sept. 11 commission -- many of which Bush has endorsed, at least in part. The commission urged appointment of a national intelligence director to coordinate the activities of the CIA and more than a dozen intelligence agencies at the Defense Department and elsewhere in government. Among the details to be worked out by Congress is how much authority to give the new intelligence chief to direct spending and personnel decisions at those agencies.
The commission -- which concluded that a lack of coordination among those agencies failed to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- also recommended creation of a national counterterrorism center, a clearinghouse for counterterrorism information.
Ridge cautioned that the proposed counterterrorism center should not be given roles his department is already playing, such as providing terrorism data to state and local entities. "We don't want to start building up independent lines of communications," Ridge said.
Powell also indicated that the White House has still not determined just where the national intelligence director, or NID, will fit bureaucratically in the government. "We still have to look at exactly how the NID is placed organizationally within the executive branch," Powell said, noting that Bush had "made clear" it would not be in the executive office of the president, as the Sept. 11 commission recommended.
Powell also appeared to take issue with a suggestion by former CIA director Robert M. Gates that the new national intelligence chief have the CIA director as his deputy so that he is directly associated with one of the agencies in the intelligence community. The new intelligence chief, if divorced from any of the 15 agencies in the community, would be "in a more powerful position to question any of the information or judgments that he is being given from any one of the organizations of government," Powell said.
Senate confirmation hearings begin today for Bush's nominee to be CIA director, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.).
--------
Security flaws found at D.C. schools
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jim McElhatton
September 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040914-121937-1746r.htm
Security cameras in D.C. public schools often do not work, school doors are routinely left unlocked, and some of the school system's private security guards are inexperienced and fraternize with students who they are hired to protect, according to a report released yesterday by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General.
"At present, trespassers have relatively easy access to many District schools, student truancy continues, and concealed weapons can often be brought inside schools undetected," according to the report issued by interim Inspector General Austin A. Andersen.
The findings contrast sharply with comments made by school administrators, who last week expressed confidence that tough security measures would prevent a school siege such as the one in Beslan, Russia, where at least 327 hostages - many of them children - were killed earlier this month.
Despite a spate of school violence in recent years, including the fatal shooting of a student inside Ballou High School in February, the report also found that D.C. school administrators have not updated their security strategy in nearly 10 years.
The school system's "Zero Tolerance Plan," which was enacted in 1995, contains a series of initiatives that were never implemented, the report indicates.
In a Sept. 3 letter, interim D.C. Schools Superintendent Robert C. Rice told Mr. Andersen that the school system is forming a task force to study the problems highlighted in the report.
Mr. Rice also said school officials will replace broken security cameras, work with the D.C. Fire Department to secure unlocked or unguarded entrances and ask police to help evaluate security guard staffing levels.
The 24-page inspector general's report was based on a survey of 15 city public schools that investigators visited between the last quarter of the 2002-03 school year and the middle of the 2003-04 school year. The investigation revealed "serious security weaknesses" at all 15 schools.
The most common problems focused on unlocked or unguarded entrance doors, insufficient or inoperable surveillance equipment and unsatisfactory security guard performance.
"Several principals believed that some of the [guards] ... were too young and inexperienced for a high school setting and engaged in excessive fraternization with students," the report states.
In one case, administrators at Coolidge Senior High School said that some guards do not follow their orders and that others "exhibit disorderly conduct by using profanity in the presence of students," the report concludes.
A spokeswoman for the school system's private security contractor, Watkins Security of D.C. Inc., said yesterday that D.C. school administrators never complained about the company's security guards.
"There has not been one complaint that our guards have been fraternizing with the students," said Donna Henry, a spokeswoman for Watkins. "That is something we go to great lengths to make sure doesn't happen. If it does happen and it's brought to our attention, that person will be dealt with."
A PTA official had complained about the security guards fraternizing with students, but Watkins had said the complaints involved guards who worked for a previous security contractor, not Watkins.
The report also found that many schools do not have enough guards, or school resource officers. In many cases, each school resource officer is responsible for hundreds of students.
Ms. Henry said the school system, not Watkins, decides how many of the hundreds of private security guards to post at each school.
"We go by our contract," she said. "If they say three [guards] at a particular school, then that's what we go by."
In addition, the report faulted the school system for having numerous open or unguarded entrance doors at the schools.
For example, at Wilson High School, the majority of the 32 entrances were unguarded, and most of them did not have an alarm to alert security guards about trespassers, the report indicates.
Although doors at some entrances at Ballou were equipped with alarms, students tampered with the wiring and disabled the devices, the report indicates. In the February shooting, a student is thought to have smuggled a gun past a security guard.
"Until the door security problem is properly addressed, [schools] will not have adequate security mechanisms in place to prevent unauthorized access into school buildings," the report states.
School officials have said the city fire code prevents officials from locking doors if the doors require a key to unlock or if they take more than 30 seconds to open.
The report also found that most schools have closed-circuit television monitoring equipment, but that the devices often do not work.
A school system technology specialist blamed those failures on delays in getting parts to fix the cameras as well as thunderstorms that caused wiring damage, the report shows.
-------- justice
Justice to Probe FBI Role in Lawyer's Arrest
Faulty Fingerprint Analysis Linked American to Madrid Terrorist Bombings
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18899-2004Sep13.html
The Justice Department has launched two internal investigations into the arrest of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was detained by the FBI earlier this year because of a faulty fingerprint analysis that wrongly linked him to the deadly terrorist bombings in Madrid, according to a report released yesterday.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is investigating the FBI's conduct in the case, including whether Mayfield was targeted in part because of his Muslim beliefs, according to a report to Congress released by Fine's office. Separately, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is examining the role of federal prosecutors in the case, the report said.
The FBI apologized after initially linking Brandon Mayfield to the March 11 bombings in Madrid.
The FBI publicly apologized to Mayfield in May after admitting it had erroneously matched his fingerprint to a latent print found on a bag of bomb detonators linked to the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people on March 11. Spanish authorities first raised doubts about the FBI's judgment and ultimately identified the print as belonging to an Algerian man.
Mayfield, a convert to Islam, spent two weeks in jail. Fine's office is investigating his complaint that "the FBI inappropriately conducted a surreptitious search of his home based on the faulty fingerprint analysis and potentially motivated by his Muslim faith and ties to the Muslim community," the report said.
The disclosure of the internal probes was included in a broader report that details investigations of alleged civil rights and civil liberties abuses by the Justice Department under the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism law approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The legislation allows Fine to investigate such complaints if they involve Justice employees or contractors.
Fine said his office received more than 1,600 complaints during the six months ended June 21 but only 13 required additional investigation. More than 1,400 of the complaints were considered frivolous, did not involve the Justice Department or were outside Fine's jurisdiction.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Mayfield's case illustrates the government's abuse of secrecy rules.
"Were it not for the Spanish government and its persistence, [Attorney General] John Ashcroft would still be holding Brandon Mayfield," Conyers said in a statement. "What this tells us is that, without open and accountable government, we will never know how many people have had their rights violated by federal agents, and how many people are held without charges today."
Conyers also disclosed yesterday that Ashcroft spent more than $200,000 in taxpayer money on trips to 32 cities in August and September 2003 to drum up support for the Patriot Act.
A new Government Accountability Office study of the trips found that Ashcroft and his staff spent more than $77,000 for air transportation, according to congressional staffers who have been briefed on the findings. Nearly $40,000 was spent on hotels and other travel expenses, and U.S. attorney's offices spent more than $80,000 for conference room rentals and other costs, the staff members said.
Justice officials told the GAO they did not keep track of some costs, including meetings between federal prosecutors and lawmakers about Patriot Act legislation. The report is scheduled to be released this week.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18876-2004Sep13?language=printer
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.
A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.
The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans.
Although a majority of voters say they are concerned about the deficit, most view Kerry as only marginally better able to deal with it than Bush, according to polls. And Bush often invokes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in justifying the mounting governmental red ink. The president's aides, ever cognizant of his father's failure to articulate a convincing vision, said it was crucial for Bush to offer an ambitious new plan for the coming four years, despite the surge in government borrowing.
Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the new proposals "are affordable, and the president remains committed to cutting the budget deficit in half over the next five years," although last week's CBO report indicates that goal may not be attainable.
The White House has declined to provide a full and detailed accounting of the cost of the new agenda. The administration last week provided a partial listing of the previously unannounced proposals, including "opportunity zones," that totaled $74 billion in spending over the next 10 years. But there was no mention of the cost of additional tax cuts and the creation of Social Security private accounts. Discussing his agenda during an "Ask the President" campaign forum in Portsmouth, Ohio, Bush said Friday that he has "explained how we're going to pay for it, and my opponent can't explain it because he doesn't want to tell you he's going to have to tax you."
Some fiscal conservatives who are dismayed by the return of budget deficits found little to cheer in the president's convention speech. Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said that Bush's Social Security plan was money well spent by saving the system in the long run, but he added that Bush "has banked his presidency on the idea that people don't really care about the deficit, and he may be right."
"He's a big-government Republican, and there's no longer even the pretense that he's for smaller government," Moore said.
Kerry cited the deficit figures as fresh evidence that Bush's tax cuts were reckless and that he is taking the country in "the wrong direction."
The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign.
But Bush has had little to say about belt-tightening and sacrifice on the campaign trail. Nor has he explained how he would reconcile all his new spending plans with the mounting deficit.
Jason Furman, Kerry's economic policy director, said that Bush "wants to hide the true costs of his plan" and that taxpayers "would be shocked" to find out what he was really advocating.
"The Bush team has gotten a lot of traction with the point that the Kerry numbers and rhetoric don't add up," said Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It behooves them now to demonstrate that theirs do."
In his acceptance speech in Madison Square Garden on Sept. 2, the president called for the expansion of health savings accounts, which provide tax breaks for families and small businesses; creation of new tax-preferred retirement savings accounts; and creation of lifetime savings accounts, which allow tax-free savings for tuition, retirement or even everyday expenses.
The "Agenda for America" also includes increasing testing and accountability measures for high schools and opportunity zones to cut regulations and steer federal grants, loans and other aid to counties that have lost manufacturing and textile jobs -- a clear appeal to swing states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Bush has also promised to "ensure every poor county in America has a community or rural health center" and "double the number of people served by our principal job training program and increase funding for our community colleges."
A number of Bush's initiatives could have a big price tag. An estimate from the Social Security actuary's office, included in the 2001 report of a Social Security commission appointed by Bush, put the cost of adding private accounts to the government retirement program at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. With inflation, the figure would now be about $2 trillion. Much of the expense comes from continuing to pay most retirees at current benefit levels, at the same time that some payroll taxes are being diverted to the stock and bond market.
Although advocates of partial privatization contend that the transition can be financed without cutting benefits or raising taxes, the estimates mean the president's agenda could cost even more than the Bush projections of Kerry's proposal. Hassett, the AEI economist, said private accounts would lower the long-term cost of Social Security. "If you pay a few trillion in transition costs over a decade, then maybe the system doesn't go bankrupt," he said.
Bush also called for making permanent his tax cuts, which the administration has estimated at $936.2 billion to $989.75 billion over 10 years. The tax cuts include elimination of the inheritance tax, reductions in the top four income tax rates, an increase in the child tax credit, reduction in the marriage penalty, and cuts to the capital gains and dividend tax rates.
Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put the figure for extending the tax cuts at $2 trillion over 10 years and said other tax breaks Bush mentioned in his speech -- mostly related to health care -- would likely cost $50 billion to $100 billion over the next decade.
Another expensive part of Bush's agenda is the expansion of health savings accounts and creation of lifetime and retirement savings accounts. The new accounts are designed to have minimal cost in the first 10 years but have very large costs in the long run because they provide tax breaks when the money is withdrawn rather than up front.
The Congressional Research Service has estimated those two types of accounts would eventually cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.
Peter R. Orszag, a senior fellow in economic policy at the Brookings Institution, said a conservative estimate for the cost of Bush's permanent tax cuts and Social Security accounts would be about $4 trillion over 10 years. But Bush's agenda was vague and did not include details of how he would add Social Security accounts.
"It's hard to cost out rhetoric," Orszag said.
-------- propaganda wars
Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers
By Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18982-2004Sep13?language=printer
The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.
"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.
Matley's comments came amid growing evidence challenging the authenticity of the documents aired Wednesday on CBS's "60 Minutes." The program was part of an investigation asserting that Bush benefited from political favoritism in getting out of commitments to the Texas Air National Guard. On last night's "CBS Evening News," anchor Dan Rather said again that the network "believes the documents are authentic."
A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.
The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.
"I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake," said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font.
Newcomer drew an analogy with an art expert trying to determine whether a painting of unknown provenance was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. "If I was looking for a Da Vinci, I would look for characteristic brush strokes," he said. "If I found something that was painted with a modern synthetic brush, I would know that I have a forgery."
Meanwhile, Laura Bush became the first person from the White House to say the documents are likely forgeries. "You know they are probably altered," she told Radio Iowa in Des Moines yesterday. "And they probably are forgeries, and I think that's terrible, really."
Citing confidentiality issues, CBS News has declined to reveal the source of the disputed documents -- which have been in the network's possession for more than a month -- or to explain how they came to light after more than three decades. Yesterday, USA Today said that it had independently obtained copies of the documents "from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations" who declined to be named "for fear of retaliation."
It was unclear whether the same person supplied the documents to both media outlets. USA Today said it had obtained its copies of the CBS documents Wednesday night "soon after" the "60 Minutes" broadcast, as well as another two purported Killian memos that had not been made public.
A detailed examination of the CBS documents beside authenticated Killian memos and other documents generated by Bush's 147th Fighter Interceptor Group suggests at least three areas of difference that are difficult to reconcile:
• Word-processing techniques. Of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents. Nor did they use a superscripted "th" in expressions such as "147th Group" and or "111th Fighter Intercept Squadron."
In a CBS News broadcast Friday night rebutting allegations that the documents had been forged, Rather displayed an authenticated Bush document from 1968 that included a small "th" next to the numbers "111" as proof that Guard typewriters were capable of producing superscripts. In fact, say Newcomer and other experts, the document aired by CBS News does not contain a superscript, because the top of the "th" character is at the same level as the rest of the type. Superscripts rise above the level of the type.
• Factual problems. A CBS document purportedly from Killian ordering Bush to report for his annual physical, dated May 4, 1972, gives Bush's address as "5000 Longmont #8, Houston." This address was used for many years by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. National Guard documents suggest that the younger Bush stopped using that address in 1970 when he moved into an apartment, and did not use it again until late 1973 or 1974, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard Business School.
One CBS memo cites pressure allegedly being put on Killian by "Staudt," a reference to Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, one of Bush's early commanders. But the memo is dated Aug. 18, 1973, nearly a year and a half after Staudt retired from the Guard. Questioned about the discrepancy over the weekend, CBS officials said that Staudt was a "mythic figure" in the Guard who exercised influence from behind the scenes even after his retirement.
• Stylistic differences. To outsiders, how an officer wrote his name and rank or referred to his military unit may seem arcane and unimportant. Within the military, however, such details are regulated by rules and tradition, and can be of great significance. The CBS memos contain several stylistic examples at odds with standard Guard procedures, as reflected in authenticated documents.
In memos previously released by the Pentagon or the White House, Killian signed his rank "Lt Col" or "Lt Colonel, TexANG," in a single line after his name without periods. In the CBS memos, the "Lt Colonel" is on the next line, sometimes with a period but without the customary reference to TexANG, for Texas Air National Guard.
An ex-Guard commander, retired Col. Bobby W. Hodges, whom CBS originally cited as a key source in authenticating its documents, pointed to discrepancies in military abbreviations as evidence that the CBS memos are forgeries. The Guard, he said, never used the abbreviation "grp" for "group" or "OETR" for an officer evaluation review, as in the CBS documents. The correct terminology, he said, is "gp" and "OER."
In its broadcast last night, CBS News produced a new expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant. He said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents.
Any argument to the contrary is "an out-and-out lie," Glennon said in a telephone interview. But Glennon said he is not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos' authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network's offices.
Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font, disputed Glennon's statement to CBS. He said "fairly extensive testing" had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.
On last night's "CBS Evening News," Rather said "60 Minutes" had done a "content analysis" of the memos and found, for example, that the date that Bush was suspended from flying -- Aug. 1, 1972 -- matched information in the documents. He also noted that USA Today had separately obtained another memo from 1972 in which Killian asked to be updated on Bush's flight certification status.
CBS executives have pointed to Matley as their lead expert on whether the memos are genuine, and included him in a "CBS Evening News" defense of the story Friday. Matley said he spent five to eight hours examining the memos. "I knew I could not prove them authentic just from my expertise," he said. "I can't say either way from my expertise, the narrow, narrow little field of my expertise."
In looking at the photocopies, he said, "I really felt we could not definitively say which font this is." But, he said, "I didn't see anything that would definitively tell me these are not authentic."
Asked about Matley's comments, CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said: "In the end, the gist is that it's inconclusive. People are coming down on both sides, which is to be expected when you're dealing with copies of documents."
Questions about the CBS documents have grown to the point that they overshadow the allegations of favorable treatment toward Bush.
Prominent conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh are insisting the documents are forged. New York Times columnist William Safire said yesterday that CBS should agree to an independent investigation. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, called on the network to apologize, saying: "The CBS story is a hoax and a fraud, and a cheap and sloppy one at that. It boggles the mind that Dan Rather and CBS continue to defend it."
Staff reporters James V. Grimaldi and Mike Allen and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
--------
Bush's Records Keep Trickling Out
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18907-2004Sep13?language=printer
"The records have now been fully released."
That was White House press secretary Scott McClellan talking about records of President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. Unfortunately for McClellan, he said that on Feb. 10 -- before two more waves of records were released. In July, the Pentagon, citing an "inadvertent oversight," released records that it had previously labeled destroyed. And in recent days, the Associated Press and the Boston Globe have obtained still more records.
The White House is no longer saying the "entire file" has been released. In fact, the search for Bush's Guard documents continues -- and is being directed by a three-star general, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who has coordinated the administration's statements on the issue, says: "My understanding is there is a constant review spearheaded by the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] office at the Pentagon to ensure all documents are located."
Now there is some grumbling among Bush loyalists about Bartlett's handling of the Guard records; they say he may have drawn extra attention to the matter by sitting on the most recent batch of documents before releasing them publicly. And the newly released documents have refuted two claims Bartlett made in 1999: that Bush was appropriately released from his Texas unit because it had phased out the F-102 jets that he flew, and that Bush transferred to a reserve unit in Boston. The F-102s were still being flown by Bush's unit when he departed, and Bush never signed up with a Boston area unit.
Asked yesterday if he knew of any more Bush Guard records, Bartlett replied: "Based on our experience, we have continued to ask the Department of Defense and the National Guard Bureau for any and all official documents. They are working hard to ensure that we have recovered them all."
--
Only those with big bladders need apply for the White House beat. For the past year, the 20 or so correspondents toiling in the basement of the press room in the West Wing have been fighting to keep their toilet. "We've been using that toilet since Jimmy Carter was president," said Associated Press Radio correspondent Mark Smith. But after some trouble with the commode last year, the General Services Administration announced it was flushing the troublesome fixture.
Correspondents took their case to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, threatening: "We could also hold it -- but I think you'll agree we're cranky enough as it is." The GSA said it would cost $500,000 to fix the toilet -- earning it a place alongside the $400 hammer and the $600 toilet seat. McClellan would not dirty his hands in this plumbing dispute. The GSA then announced it had poured concrete into the "sewer ejectors," making the WC permanently unusable. As of yesterday, the toilet and sink were gone, replaced with a chair and a mirror.
--
In last week's Washington Post-ABC News Poll, John F. Kerry was viewed favorably by 36 percent of registered voters, down 18 points over the past six months. But just how low Kerry's standing has fallen cannot be appreciated fully without comparing his standing with that of other household names in Gallup polls over the years. Kerry finds himself in a dead heat with Martha Stewart and Joseph McCarthy, and behind Herbert Hoover -- although he narrowly beats O.J. Simpson.
Michael Jordan: 83 (2000)
Tony Blair: 76 (2003)
Pope John Paul II: 73 (2003)
Democratic Party: 54 (2004)
John Ashcroft: 49 (2003)
Michael Dukakis: 47 (1988)
Prince Charles: 45 (2003)
Herbert Hoover: 43 (1944)
Jesse Jackson: 38 (2003)
Vladimir Putin: 38 (2003)
John Kerry: 36 (2004)
Martha Stewart: 36 (2004)
Joseph McCarthy: 35 (1954)
Rush Limbaugh: 34 (2003)
Pete Rose: 34 (2004)
O.J. Simpson: 29 (1995)
Osama bin Laden: 1 (2001)
"In an unprecedented show of support for the Republican Party and President Bush, 18 percent of the 2004 delegation identify themselves as veterans or active military personnel," the Republican National Committee proclaimed on Aug. 16. It added that "approximately 140 delegates identify themselves as currently serving in the U.S. military."
That would indeed be an unprecedented show of support. Pentagon Directive 1344.10, dated Aug. 2, 2004, states that active-duty military personnel may not attend political conventions "unless attending a convention as a spectator when not in uniform." Serving as a voting delegate would appear to go beyond the "spectator" role that is permitted and into the prohibited realm of "participation."
An RNC spokesman said the "active military personnel" actually referred to reservists and National Guardsmen, who are not on active duty.
-------- us politics
Edwards slams Bush's record in Tucson visit
Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards (center) is welcomed to the Tucson Convention Center by Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
C.T. Revere
Tucson Citizen
Sept. 14, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0914edwards14.html
TUCSON - Focusing on President Bush's record will help John Kerry erase the edge Republicans have built since their convention, Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards told Tucson residents Monday.
"He said one thing at his convention that I agree with. He says he's going to be judged on his record. We want George Bush to be judged on his record," the North Carolina senator said.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will have a hard time selling themselves after four years marked by lost jobs, lower income levels and elusive health care coverage, he said.
"While George Bush has been president of the United States, 5 million Americans have lost their health care coverage. There are almost a million people in the state of Arizona who have no health care coverage," Edwards said. "Four million Americans have fallen into poverty under this presidency, under this administration. One and a half million private-sector jobs have been lost. Is it enough?"
Bush's foreign policy has made the world a more dangerous place, he added.
"Because of this president and this vice president, Iraq is a mess. By any measure, it's a mess. They have not done the job in Afghanistan and not only that, Iran and North Korea have re-formed their nuclear weapons development programs while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been in office."
(Iran has denied it is developing nuclear weapons; North Korea has said it has only a plutonium-based nuclear program, not one based on uranium, according to the Associated Press.)
Edwards, speaking to a crowd that promoters claimed was 10,000 but appeared closer to 7,000, said Bush and Cheney are getting nasty because they can't defend their record.
"You know what we're seeing: all these negative hateful attacks against John Kerry," he said before a group of Bush supporters began chanting, "Four more years!"
The crowd quickly drowned out the chant with a chorus of boos, then began chanting "Two more months!"
Edwards said he and Kerry would create jobs by eliminating tax breaks for companies that ship jobs out of the country and provide relief for those that create jobs here.
"What would be good for the American economy would be to outsource this administration," Edwards said.
The Democrats would make up to $4,000 in college tuition eligible for tax breaks and reward two years of public service by young people with four years of college tuition paid for by the government, he said.
The current $3,000 tax deduction for college tuition will automatically rise to $4,000 at the end of the year, according to USA Today. Smaller tuition tax credits may be available for some who don't claim the deduction.
Health care would be expanded by allowing citizens to enjoy the same coverage Congress receives and offering tax cuts for businesses that insure their workers, Edwards said.
Bush-Cheney spokeswoman Sharon Castillo said Kerry has no credibility in the discussion of expanding health care, citing a voting record in the Senate that she says undermined efforts to provide coverage to more Americans.
"He talks the talk, but he doesn't walk the walk," she said.
Castillo said Bush inherited an economic recession made worse by the Sept. 11 terror attacks of and the "dot-com bust."
Edwards said the administration has no excuse for lost jobs and the slumping economy.
"For the last 75 years, through 11 presidents, Democrat and Republican, starting with Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, presidents who led us through war, world war, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, all kinds of recession, every one of those presidents created jobs until this president, until George W. Bush," he said.
Edwards said the Kerry campaign will work to convince voters around the nation that Bush and Cheney have been bad for most Americans.
"When they tell lies, we're going to say they're lies," he said. "And we're going to make sure people know what's happened over the last four years, who's responsible for it."
--------
The Presidential War Path
LewRockwell.com
by Paul W. Lovinger
September 14, 2004
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/lovinger1.html
In war-peace matters, presidential rule has virtually replaced the rule of law in America. No signs of change appear: Senator Kerry and President Bush agree that a president may launch preemptive attacks, use nuclear weapons, terminate treaties, and initiate wars.
Kerry answered a questionnaire from the War and Law League and the San Francisco Examiner. (Ten candidates were queried. Five responded.)
Among questions: "1. Do you believe that what has been called preventive war or preemptive war is lawful? ... 2. Do you believe that a president can lawfully use nuclear weapons? ... 3. Do you believe that a president has the constitutional authority to terminate or withdraw from a treaty on his own?" Kerry answered "Yes" to all three (12-23-03).
Would you initiate war without Congress's approval? A president may "act quickly without consulting Congress or receiving express Congressional approval" in emergencies or "to defend U.S. national interests," Kerry wrote.
Have the U.S. wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2003-) been lawful? Kerry answered "Yes" to all.
Congress's War Power
President Clinton attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 without Congress's OK. In September 2001 Congress let Bush fight whoever he determined aided 9-11 or harbored the culprits; its resolution did not even mention Afghanistan. And in October 2002 Congress let Bush decide whether to attack Iraq. Kerry cast two "aye" votes.
U.S. founders' writings establish that "Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war" (Jefferson, 1805). Yet since Truman's 1950 Korean intervention, presidents have usurped the power and millions have died, including 114,000 Americans.
Would Kerry change things? "If I am President, I will be prepared to use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests.... I will not hesitate to order direct military action..." (UCLA, 2-27-04). He would launch a preemptive attack, given adequate intelligence of a terrorist threat, and would let no country or institution - presumably the United Nations - "veto what we need to do" (to news media, 7-16-04).
Although promising only to wage war "because we have to" (Boston, 7-29-04), Kerry reaffirms his 2002 war vote (8-9-04), even though Bush's reason for war has proved false. Kerry sees a "solemn obligation to complete the mission" (2-27-04). But what is the mission and when will it end?
Bush's Actions
Bush attacked Iraq in March 2003, supposedly to eliminate "weapons of mass destruction." There were none. In the 2000 report by Project for the New American Century, Bush associates openly marked Iraq for conquest as part of a U.S. empire.
Such aggression violates U.S. treaties, including the UN Charter (1945) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy (1928), which Nazi war criminals were charged with breaching. Richard Perle, as a Bush defense adviser, admitted the invasion of Iraq was illegal but favored it anyway (Guardian, UK, 11-20-03).
In 2002 Bush ordered plans for nuclear attacks on seven nations, four of them nonnuclear. Now he wants new types of nukes. Yet under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the U.S. pledges not to A-bomb nations lacking the bomb and pledges to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons. Using them would violate international law, UN's World Court declared (1996). And Bush withdrew from the ABM Limitation Treaty, without consulting Congress (2002).
Bush told an interviewer, "I don't know what you're talking about by international law - I better consult my lawyer" (CNN 12-11-03). Let's hope he has found out since the revelation of widespread violations of the Geneva Convention on treatment of war prisoners and the UN Convention Against Torture, U.S. treaties since 1950 and 1994 respectively.
Treaties Are Laws
The U.S., as Bush says, stands for the rule of law. This does not stop at the waterfront. The Constitution's Article 6 makes treaties federal laws. U.S. law forbids any citizen or serviceman to commit any war crime, i.e., any grave violation of the Geneva Conventions (1949) or The Hague Conventions (1907). The U.S. Army Field Manual incorporates those treaties.
Hague prohibits attacking or bombarding communities or undefended buildings. Yet the latest war has killed up to 13,802 civilians - mostly by U.S. bombardment of Iraqi communities - London's Iraqbodycount.org conservatively estimates (9-9-04).
The Nuremberg war crimes tribunal condemned plotting and waging aggressive war as a "crime against peace." Yet since 1999, U.S. forces have attacked three nations. Each time, a president has either started the war outright or gotten Congress to relinquish its power to decide.
Do the two contenders care about either the Constitution, which presidents swear to uphold, or international law? Their main issue seems to be who can better conduct unending presidential war.
For fear of "communism" and now "terrorism," Americans have condoned presidential dictatorship over life and death. Hope for the rule of law may fade away unless we, the people, demand it.
September 14, 2004
Paul W. Lovinger [send him mail], author and journalist, is secretary of the nonpartisan, San Francisco-based War and Law League, which he founded in 1998. It seeks the rule of law in U.S. foreign affairs.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Tankless water heaters are more energy efficient
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
From the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-14/s_26878.asp
Dear EarthTalk: I've heard that tankless water heaters are more energy efficient than traditional water heaters. How do they work?
- Felipe Gomez, Flagstaff, Arizona
In a conventional water heater, 30 to 60 gallons of water sit in the tank, constantly being heated and reheated, even when no hot water is in use. The heat from the tank keeps dissipating into the air, creating standby heat loss. This constant energy waste adds up and can constitute 10 to 20 percent of a household's heating costs.
Unlike traditional water heaters, tankless water heaters (also known as demand or instantaneous water heaters) heat the water only as it is used, thus eliminating standby heat loss and minimizing energy usage. Cold water travels through a pipe to the unit, where it passes over a gas or electric heating element in a thin enclosure. This exposes a lot of the water's surface to the heating element, thus enabling it to heat up quickly. The element only operates when the hot water faucet is turned on.
These heaters are also small and, thus, space saving, and can be attached to a wall or put under the sink or in a closet.
First put into widespread use in Japan and Europe, tankless water heaters began appearing in the United States about 25 years ago. While they do cost more than double the price of conventional water heaters - top-of-the line, high-capacity residential tankless models sell for up to $1,000 - a typical tankless unit lasts more than 20 years, compared to the 10-year life expectancy of a conventional water heater, according to the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. Also, consumers can make up the difference through energy savings.
While a constant supply of hot water is available through a tankless system, the flow rate may be somewhat limited, depending upon the needs of your household. Typically, a tankless water heater provides a flow of two to four gallons per minute. As with many tank heaters, simultaneous use of hot water appliances can affect the flow rate. Water-hungry appliances like dishwashers and washing machines may need to be operated at separate times. Alternatively, a second water heater can be installed at a high-demand location.
Gas-fired heaters tend to have higher flow rates and are less expensive than electric models. Leading tankless water heater manufacturers include Bosch, PowerStar, and Ariston, and the units are available at most big appliance and home superstores as well as through Controlled Energy Corporation, Tankless Water Heaters Direct, and several others.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
THE BUSH RECORD
New Priorities in Environment
September 14, 2004
By FELICITY BARRINGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/politics/campaign/14enviro.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end their journey at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the flatlands of North Carolina.
Both habitats could be transformed if current Bush administration initiatives come to pass. The birds would have oil rigs as neighbors in Alaska and be greeted by Navy jets simulating carrier takeoffs and landings in North Carolina.
That such projects could bracket the birds' path is not surprising in light of the priorities of the administration. Over the last three and a half years, federal officials have accelerated resource development on public lands. They have also pushed to eliminate regulatory hurdles for military and industrial projects.
From the start, Bush officials challenged the status quo and revised the traditional public-policy calculus on environmental decisions. They put an instant hold on many Clinton administration regulations, and the debates over those issues and others are intensely polarized.
The administration has sought to increase the harvesting of energy and other resources on public lands, to seek cooperative ways to reduce pollution, to free the military from environmental restrictions and to streamline - opponents say gut - regulatory and enforcement processes.
In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration's philosophy. "There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity," Mr. Leavitt said. "Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty."
The administration's approach has provoked a passionate response. Asked about his expectations in the event of President Bush's re-election, Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is the ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote in an e-mail message: "I expect the Bush administration to continue their assault on regulations designed to protect public health and the environment. I expect the Bush administration to continue underfunding compliance and enforcement activities."
Mr. Jeffords concluded, "I expect the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster for public health and the environment in the history of the United States."
For many environmental groups, Mr. Bush's legacy was assured in his first year, thanks to highly publicized decisions that effectively repudiated Clinton administration positions. Mr. Bush backed off a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide and abandoned the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. Then the administration pushed, unsuccessfully, for a law allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It scrapped the phaseout of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and briefly dropped a Clinton proposal to cut the permissible level of arsenic in drinking water by 80 percent.
The cumulative effect was striking. The decisions sought to reverse environmental action for which there was broad support. Polls by The New York Times in mid-2001 and late 2002 consistently showed public opposition to drilling in the Arctic refuge. A CBS poll in the same period showed that, by ratios of better than two to one, those polled said that environmental protection was more important than energy production.
The outcry ensured that some Bush administration initiatives favorable to the cause of environmental groups received little notice. They include the E.P.A.'s decision to force General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's in the Hudson River, a cleanup that has been delayed; legislation speeding the cleanup of urban industrial sites known as brownfields; increases in financing for private land set aside for conservation of animals and their habitats; and the first limits for diesel emissions in trucks and off-road vehicles.
The diesel regulations, said James F. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, would have as much impact on air quality as the rules that eliminated leaded gasoline. The clamor over the reversals, he said, "grossly overshadowed the accomplishments, which in scope and scale were of far greater consequence to environmental protection and natural resource conservation than anything people were complaining about."
The administration contends that free markets often provide the best solution to pollution. That belief underlies regulatory proposals to allow power plants that exceed their goals in reducing pollutants to sell cleanup credits to plants that fall short.
The failed "Clear Skies" act, incorporating this approach, was in many ways reborn in a pending regulation that Bush officials say would offer significant pollution reductions and that critics dismiss as a retreat from the mandates of the Clean Air Act.
Mr. Leavitt called the reasoning simple. "Rather than spend decades and millions litigating" to ensure power plants' compliance one at a time, "let's require everyone to do it essentially at the same time," he said. "And create incentives for them to do more as opposed to incentives to try to avoid."
Mr. Jeffords countered, "The relaxed Bush approach will produce more illness, disease and premature deaths than simply putting the federal government's full resources into achieving compliance with the Clean Air Act and pushing the development of cleaner, more efficient electricity generation."
The recent proposals for Alaska and North Carolina reflect some of the themes of the administration's overhaul of environmental policies.
In 1998, Bruce Babbitt, President Bill Clinton's interior secretary, opened to oil drilling four million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. That is 87 percent of the landmass of the reserve's northeast quadrant. The 580,000 acres held back, including Teshekpuk Lake, were considered crucial wetlands habitat for molting and nesting fowl - swans, geese, peregrine falcons and other species - and for caribou and the hunters who live off them. But geological surveys show that large volumes of oil lie beneath much of that area. In June, the Interior Department proposed opening the lake and most of the remaining acreage to drilling, because, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said recently, "that's where the resource is."
Well before that proposal, a panel of the National Research Council, a private, nonprofit institution, issued a mixed report on the cumulative effects of 40 years of oil development on the North Slope. Bird populations, it found, dwindled as the numbers of predators like foxes and brown bears grew unnaturally large. The predators were drawn to the area by oil-field garbage.
Edward Porter, research manager for the American Petroleum Institute, said the situation was unlikely to recur around Teshekpuk Lake because the exploration envisioned would have few permanent facilities.
At the birds' other way station, in North Carolina, the prospective disturbances would be the latest F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet jet fighters, which would touch down and take off from a new airfield 31,650 times each year.
A Fish and Wildlife Service advisory in March raised concern; the noise of a jet taking off is two to four times greater than the level that startles such birds into flight. During their winter sojourn, the birds accumulate the fat that fuels their next migration. The more jets startle them into flight, the more they burn fat needed for the journey.
The Navy's review concluded that the birds "would not be affected." Navy officers also argued that the risk of collisions between birds and planes - which is estimated to be higher than at any other airfield in the country - could be mitigated.
When local North Carolinians and the Audubon Society went to court to block the project, the administration closed ranks, and the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Fish and Wildlife Service, supported the Navy. A United States District Court judge has temporarily blocked the Navy from proceeding.
In many ways, the issues in the birds' neighborhoods speak to the aims, tactics and results of the Bush environmental strategy as much as the better-known inventory of decisions, like the scuttling of the Clinton ban on new roads in 58.5 million acres of roadless national forests.
Environmentalists, for example, accuse the administration of trying to pressure or ignore its scientists, from those of the Pocosin biologists in North Carolina to Environmental Protection Agency scientists working on global warming. In several instances at the agency and at the Fish and Wildlife Service, political appointees aggressively policed agency scientific work that could form the basis of new regulations.
Administration officials, some of whom were lobbyists for the industries they now regulate, say the crucial factors in their thinking are scientific rigor and economic logic. Such priorities were cited in the proposal to expand drilling in Alaska.
The effort to offer the set-aside section of the Alaska petroleum reserve for leasing parallels moves across the West. Bureau of Land Management offices and their land-use plans have been re-engineered to streamline leasing and drilling decisions. From the beginning of the fiscal year, the number of drilling permits has increased to 5,222, the bureau reported. If that pace continues, the annual total will be more than 50 percent higher than the average in the previous three years.
Ms. Norton says that "less than one percent of the surface acres of the Bureau of Land Management have any disturbance for oil and gas production." With new safeguards for wildlife and technologies allowing several wells to branch underground from one well pad, both energy and environmental needs can be satisfied, she said.
The means by which energy development accelerated, like the revamping of land-use planning guidelines, is pretty dry stuff. So are procedural questions; for example, when a local office should clear decisions with headquarters. In the Bush years, officials have relied more on less-visible administrative action than on legislation to advance their agenda. For instance, local Army Corps of Engineers offices have been instructed to check with headquarters before taking jurisdiction over wetlands slated for development, a process that critics say discourages wetlands protection.
The administration had developed a draft proposal to curtail federal wetlands jurisdiction but had to back off after it was disclosed last fall and conservative hunters and fishermen blanched. At a White House meeting, leaders of fishing and hunting groups argued that the plan would degrade large tracts of wetlands and diminish nearby wildlife. Mr. Leavitt quickly repudiated the draft. Last Earth Day, President Bush, standing by salt marshes in Maine, called for a net gain in wetland acreage.
Last fall, Mr. Leavitt, the former governor of Utah, took over from Christie Whitman. She had resigned as E.P.A. administrator after two years as what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called a "wind dummy" - a reference to the buffeting she took for the administration's unpopular initiatives.
The portfolio of issues Mr. Leavitt inherited is not in the same stage it was in in January 2001, at the start of the Bush administration. Many of the administration's environmental policies have laid a foundation for more comprehensive actions in a second term. Critics are convinced that efforts to increase oil and gas drilling on federal lands will accelerate, as will efforts to change laws like the Endangered Species Act.
Ms. Norton acknowledged that the issue of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example, would resurface because "that it is our largest prospect for onshore oil." She added, "There will be extensive environmental protections."
Asked if she would have done anything different in the last few years, she said: "I would have spent more time talking about our successes. Because we've accomplished a lot more than we've ever gotten credit for."
--------
9/11 Contamination Is High at Bank Tower, Study Says
September 15, 2004
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/nyregion/15deutsche.html
A new environmental study of the former Deutsche Bank building opposite ground zero, independent of the bank and its insurers, has confirmed the presence of high levels of asbestos, dioxin, lead and other contaminants throughout the unused 40-story tower.
The study was conducted by the Louis Berger Group for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which took over the building on Aug. 31 and plans to begin razing it by the end of the year. Though it has long been known that the tower was contaminated, the findings released yesterday will almost certainly add to the expense and complication - both structurally and politically - of dismantling the building.
The study is also intended to address health and safety concerns, the corporation said, by giving the public a fuller picture of conditions inside the damaged building and to help in planning engineering controls, work practices and disposal procedures.
Berger, an engineering and environmental consulting firm in East Orange, N.J., found high levels of quartz, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chromium and manganese in the building. Now that the corporation owns the building, samples will also be gathered from behind walls and in other hollow spaces.
The study was presented last night to a meeting of Community Board 1. Neighbors asked how contaminated debris would be trucked from the site, what regulations would govern the project and how open the process would be to the public.
Susan Fox, who lives close by, wanted to know whether there would be an evacuation plan. "We are going to put an emergency action plan in place," said Amy Peterson, the corporation's vice president for memorial, cultural and civic development.
Kimberly Flynn, an environmental advocate, asked how unusual it was to tear down such a large building with so many contaminants. Tom Lewis of Berger answered, "If you break it into bite-sized pieces, the contaminant aspect will be addressed."
Originally 1 Bankers Trust Plaza, the building was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999 and was badly damaged in the 2001 terrorist attack. The collapse of 2 World Trade Center across Liberty Street opened a 15-story gash in its facade. About 1,700 windows were broken. The building filled with trade center dust, ash, soot, debris and smoke. It has never been reoccupied and is now partly shrouded in black netting.
The area around the gash was repaired to keep the building structurally sound. Open to the elements and stripped to steel and concrete, it is separated by plastic barriers from the contaminated parts of each floor. There are areas more than 60 feet wide and 50 feet deep where metal decking has replaced concrete floors, conveying the extent of damage. Almost no trace remains of any office, except for a tiny swatch of ochre-colored carpet on the 12th floor.
Deutsche Bank called the building a total loss. Its insurers, Allianz Global Risks U.S. Insurance Company and AXA Corporate Solutions Insurance Company, said it could be cleaned and reoccupied. Under a settlement this year, the development corporation acquired the property for $90 million. It is to pay up to $45 million for cleanup and dismantling, with the insurers meeting costs above that. The Gilbane Building Company will oversee the project.
It now seems likely that the price tag for demolition will exceed $45 million. But Ms. Peterson said: "Cost is not a consideration. The extra cost will go to the insurers. What's a consideration for us is doing it safely."
"There's dust everywhere in the building, and we'd like to go in and get it out," she said. "It's been there for three years. It's not helping anyone to have it sit there. We are confident that we can come up with a plan that satisfies the regulatory agencies."
A public information session is to be held Sept. 23. The comment period runs until Oct. 13. The study and other information is on the corporation's Web site, renewnyc.com.
For a yardstick, Berger used two federal criteria for concentrations of contaminants in residential buildings: one for estimated existing levels in Manhattan and the other for target cleanup levels around the trade center site. Though "not directly applicable to a commercial deconstruction project," Berger said, they "put the results of this study into relative context."
Using these criteria, Berger found excessive asbestos in 24 of the 31 floors it tested, or 77 percent. It also found excessive levels of dioxin (in 99 percent of the samples), lead (97 percent), quartz (94 percent), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (80 percent), chromium (30 percent) and manganese (21 percent).
Berger said levels of nickel, beryllium and polychlorinated biphenyls did not exceed the levels specified by the criteria in any samples tested. Other contaminants - cristobalite, barium, cadmium, copper, zinc and mercury - exceeded the levels in fewer than 5 percent of the samples tested. Berger also said it found no detectable levels of mercury vapor.
Yesterday, workers clad in protective suits could be seen entering the building. Their role, Ms. Peterson said, is to double-check the windows and plywood boards on the exterior and to inspect the plastic barriers around the contaminated areas.
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Green Meeting in Brazil to Propose Environmental Court
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-14/s_27171.asp
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - A meeting this week sponsored by major energy companies will propose creating an international court to assess and punish environmental crimes, organizers said.
The Fourth Green Meeting of the Americas will seek proposals to promote development while protecting the environment, said Paulo Cesar Fernandes, one of the conference organizers.
The three-day meeting, which begins Tuesday, is sponsored by Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and other Brazilian energy companies. Some 3,000 people from more than a dozen countries are expected to attend, including politicians, business leaders, and environmentalists.
The main proposal will be the creation of an International Environmental Court, modeled after the World Court in the Hague, Netherlands.
The court will seek to balance economic development with protecting the environment, punishing environmental crimes on a global level, Fernandes said.
"The proposal for the court should come out in a 'Green Letter' that will be drafted by the end of the conference," he said.
Other topics will include climate change, water resources, biotechnology, forests, and energy.
Musa Amer Salim Odeh, the chief of the Palestinian Special Delegation to Brazil, will offer a presentation on the environmental consequences of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
New Zealand's ambassador to Brazil, Denise Almoa, will discuss her country's successes in the area of sustainable development.
Brazil has long been an important country for environmentalists because it is home to the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness. Efforts to balance development with environmental protections are especially urgent in Brazil, where logging, ranching, and grain farming claim nearly 25,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of forest ever year.
-------- health
Connection Between Environmental Toxins and Breast Cancer?
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
From the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-14/s_26878.asp
Dear EarthTalk: Is there a connection between environmental toxins and breast cancer?
- Ben Ward, Virginia Beach, Virginia
More than 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the United States, and 20 percent are likely to die from it. Breast cancers among women have climbed steadily in the United States and other industrialized nations since the 1940s.
More than half of women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have any of the known or traditional risk factors such as family history, hormonal factors, or a fatty diet, and researchers suspect that widespread exposure to environmental toxins is triggering the surge.
Strong evidence linking chemicals to breast cancer include studies showing that lifetime chemical exposure to naturally produced estrogens (female hormones produced by the ovaries and other adrenal glands) increases the risk of breast cancer. New evidence also suggests that exposure to compounds that mimic these natural estrogens, such as hormone replacement therapy and oral contraceptives, also increases risk.
Other compounds found to increase breast cancer risk include: polyvinyl chloride, a plastic commonly used in vinyl siding, shower curtains, and other products; the gasoline component benzene; and some pesticides and herbicides. Also strongly linked are organic solvents used in manufacturing processes, hydrocarbons produced by the combustion of gasoline and heating oil, and synthetic chemicals like dioxin, a byproduct of the paper bleaching process.
Many compounds long ago phased out of use in the United States - including DES, a drug taken by pregnant women to prevent miscarriage; the notorious pesticide DDT; and PCBs used in manufacturing - still persist in the environment and can also trigger the disease.
When New York health researchers noticed that breast cancer cases were increasing at alarming rates on Long Island during the 1980s and 1990s, they commissioned the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project to find out if exposure to some prevalent toxins - including DDT and PCBs - was to blame. Researchers actually found little evidence to support a definitive connection. However, the study did suggest that these chemicals were linked to enlarged tumor size, meaning that although they may not cause breast cancer, they may contribute to how fast the cancer grows.
Without many direct links between breast cancer and specific contaminants, regulation is unlikely, so women should take precautions on an individual basis. Exercising more, increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, lowering alcohol intake, and quitting smoking are good first steps. Avoiding exposure to contaminants at home or on the job will also help.
Meanwhile, environmental groups like the Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action are advocating for more Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of chemicals and pressing chemical makers to voluntarily limit the production of certain suspect substances.
-------- ACTIVISTS
U.S. Wants to Cancel Poorest Nations' Debt
Other Countries Concerned Proposal May Leave Global Lenders Short of Money
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18835-2004Sep13.html
Bush administration officials are advancing a plan to cancel billions of dollars in debt owed by some of the world's poorest countries, a move that could boost the United States' image abroad but which institutions like the World Bank fear could leave them strapped for cash.
The plan, disclosed by members of aid groups and government officials, would dramatically increase previous debt relief programs for at least 27 poor nations such as Uganda, Bolivia and Ethiopia.
The Treasury Department, which is putting the plan forward for discussion at a meeting in Paris this week, contends that the current approach has been too slow and piecemeal to truly free those nations from the burden of repaying money borrowed from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other global lenders. The Treasury is also proposing that for very poor countries, all future IMF and World Bank assistance come in the form of grants rather than loans.
The initiative, which would require broad support from the 184 member nations of the IMF and World Bank to be implemented, is getting a frosty reception from the governments of other rich countries and from the staffs of the lending institutions. Some critics oppose such drastic debt relief for certain countries as unwise and unfair to other indebted nations that don't qualify. Other opponents contend that the administration is trying to accomplish debt relief on the cheap, without imposing any direct cost on U.S. taxpayers, by fobbing off the cost on institutions like the World Bank, whose aid-giving ability may as a result be curtailed.
No matter whether the proposal is enacted, its impact, both political and economic, could be significant. It may help Washington secure support for its efforts to forgive most of Iraq's debt, because nations such as France have rejected granting more generous terms to Baghdad than to other, poorer nations.
Moreover, if, as some administration officials hope, President Bush takes a strong position on the emotionally charged debt issue, he may burnish his image both at home and overseas as a "compassionate conservative," winning plaudits from groups normally on the liberal end of the spectrum.
Marie Clarke, national coordinator for the Jubilee USA Network, a leading advocate of Third World debt forgiveness, said in a statement yesterday that her group was "very encouraged to hear that the U.S. Treasury Department is apparently pushing for full multilateral debt cancellation."
Officials from several government agencies confirmed the basic elements of the Treasury plan. They spoke only on condition that they be granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the proposal. A Treasury spokesman, Tony Fratto, who was in Paris yesterday with John B. Taylor, the undersecretary for international affairs, declined to comment.
Clarke noted that the Treasury plan for 100 percent debt forgiveness first surfaced in June during the Group of Eight summit in Georgia. At that time, it was opposed by a number of U.S. policymakers from outside Treasury, but sources said that since then Treasury officials have garnered greater backing from other elements of the administration.
"We had heard from the White House . . . that one of their big concerns was whether they would receive applause for taking this kind of action," Clarke said, adding that Jubilee USA has "been working around the country" with many religious groups to galvanize enthusiasm for the plan.
A complete debt write-off would be much more generous than the terms currently being granted to 27 countries under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. The HIPC plan, which was launched in 1996 and expanded in 1999, is aimed at reducing the countries' obligations to a manageable level, set as a multiple of their exports.
Currently, HIPC is saving the 27 countries about $900 million a year in debt payments, according to figures compiled by DATA, the group started by the Irish rock star Bono to advocate for Africa. But those countries are still paying about $800 million annually.
The IMF and World Bank have acknowledged that the HIPC program has failed to reduce most poor countries' debts to "sustainable" levels.
But even strong advocates of debt relief are worried that the Treasury plan would in effect reduce the help that poor countries get, particularly if the World Bank is unable to give as much aid as before. Sources said that the British government has strongly urged that an initiative like Treasury's should go forward only if rich nations somehow cover the cost of forgiving World Bank loans.
A spokeswoman for the British Treasury noted that in a July speech, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown endorsed greater debt write-offs, but added: "To achieve this, let us accept that we need to develop a new financing vehicle."
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