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NUCLEAR
U.N. Official: 40 Nations Can Make Nukes
Blair: The threat of loose nukes is one of our own making
Iran Rebuffs U.N. Agency on Atom Issue
Big Powers Urge Iran to Heed UN Nuke Freeze Demand
Iran May Soon Resume Uranium Enrichment
Israel on agenda for UN nuclear watchdog general conference
Kansai Elec may delay reactor restart due to leak
N.Korea Seen Using South Atomic Issue to Stall Talks
N. Korea Won't Give Up Nuke Development
Libya Tells Iran: Be Like us and Comply with IAEA
U.S. Government Ships Plutonium to France
Study says nuke power more competitive
EPA Seeking New Yucca Radiation Standard
Yucca, cont.
MILITARY
Sudanese Decry U.N. Threat of Sanctions
Woman killed in Vienna as arms linked to Balkans wars explodes
Arms smuggling in Gaza at record high
Lib Dems attack Blair's Iraq wars
Contracts Awarded
With Transition, New Uncertainty for China's Authoritarian System
China's Ex-Leader Quits Post In Military
Hu Takes Military Reins, Completing Shift in China
Iran Is Helping Insurgents in Iraq, U.S. Officials Say
Why We Cannot Win
2 Senior Clerics Are Killed in Iraq; Hostage Deadline Passes
Effort to Train New Iraqi Army Is Facing Delays
Israel Launches Airstrike in Gaza City
Palestinian police carrying weapons despite Israel's ban
U.S. Pressing Syria on Iraqi Border Security
NATO Fails to Finalize Agreement on Iraq
Toll Rising on Pakistani Frontier
Soviet Scientists Planned "Invulnerable" Military HQ on the Moon
America Must Reach For Space Dominance: Teets
C.I.A. Nominee Says Iraq-Al Qaeda Link Was Overstated
US capital a magnet for foreign spies
CIA nominee Goss says he regrets partisan statements
Russia opposes sanctions on Sudan, eyes arms sales
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ohio Imam Gets Two Months in Prison
Judge Declines to Dismiss U.S. Airman Spy Case
Pentagon Sets Up HQ to Defend Capital
TSA Readies Secure Flight for Testing;
Rumsfeld Warns Military, Contractors on Trafficking
French Internet provider confirms US block on government sites
Arrests at GOP Convention Are Criticized
POLITICS
Cheney may have 'stretched Iraq intelligence'
CBS to Say It Was Misled on Bush Guard Memos
CBS Asserts It Was Misled by Ex-Officer on Bush Documents
Voters worry another war is in store
Three GOP Senators Urge Refocusing of Iraq Policy
Edwards Calls Hastert's Remarks 'Politics of Fear'
Edwards Is No Cheney -- And That's the Plan
Kerry Says Iraq War Raises Questions on Bush's Judgment
OTHER
Californians to Vote on Stem Cell Research Funds
ACTIVISTS
War protest elicits emotion on both sides
-------- NUCLEAR
U.N. Official: 40 Nations Can Make Nukes
September 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programs could retool them to make weapons, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Monday amid new U.S and European demands that Iran give up technology capable of producing such arms.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggested in a keynote address to the IAEA general conference that it was time to tighten world policing of nuclear activities and to stop relying on information volunteered by countries.
Beyond the declared nuclear arms-holding countries, ``some estimates indicate that 40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons,'' ElBaradei said. ``We are relying primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries, intentions, which ... could ... be subject to rapid change.''
His comments appeared prompted by a series of revelations of proliferation or suspected illicit nuclear activities over the past two years.
Libya last year revealed a clandestine nuclear arms program and announced it would scrap it; North Korea is threatening to activate a weapons program; Iran is being investigated for what the United States says is evidence it was trying to make nuclear arms; and South Korea recently said it conducted secret experiments with plutonium and enriched uranium, both possible components of weapons programs.
ElBaradei linked the need for strengthened controls to concerns about the international nuclear black market, which supplied both Iran and Libya and whose existence was proven last year.
The ``relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operate demonstrates clearly the inadequacy'' of the present controls on nuclear exports, he said.
ElBaradei did not name the countries capable of quickly turning peaceful nuclear activities into weapons programs. But more than a dozen European countries with either power-producing nuclear reactors or large-scale research reactors are among them, as well as Canada, and countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Most peaceful nuclear programs use enriched uranium -- a substance that when processed to levels of enrichment above 90 percent can be used to make nuclear warheads -- as a power source. Most countries also could extract plutonium from spent fuel for nuclear weapons use.
Iran's enrichment program has been the focus of increased world concern because of suspicions Tehran may not be telling the truth when it says it is interested in the technology only to generate power. Such suspicions are fed by 18 years of clandestine nuclear activities that were revealed only two years ago, including experiments with possible weapons applications; and some nuclear questions that remain unanswered.
A resolution passed unanimously Saturday by the agency's governing board demanded for the first time that Iran freeze all work on uranium enrichment and expressed alarm at Iranian plans to convert more than 40 tons of raw uranium into uranium hexafluoride -- the gas that when spun in centrifuges turns into enriched uranium.
Suggesting that Iran may have to answer to the U.N. Security Council if it defies the demands, the resolution said the next board meeting in November ``will decide whether or not further steps are appropriate'' in ensuring Iran complies.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in his comments to the conference, urged Iran to ``cooperate fully and immediately with the IAEA's requests.''
And speaking for the 25-nation European Union, Dutch delegate Justus de Visser asked Tehran to ``heed the content of the resolution, and in particular ... to suspend fully all its enrichment-related activities.''
Libya -- which has been embraced by the international community for renouncing its weapons ambitions -- also suggested Tehran ``cooperate with the IAEA to the full.''
``The Iranians have to meet these obligations,'' Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Matouq Mohammed Matouq told reporters.
But Iran remained defiant. Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi told Iranian state television that his country ``may resume (enrichment) any moment.'' And he reiterated Tehran's rejection of board's demands.
``The resolution is illegal,'' he said. ``The Islamic Republic of Iran ... will ignore the provisions of the resolution because it is beyond the responsibilities of the IAEA.''
Delivering the same message at the Vienna conference, Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh said his country will ``continue its nuclear activities without interruption.''
In his comments Monday, ElBaradei also urged Iran to comply with the resolution -- to ``verify its past nuclear program and ... do its utmost to build the required confidence'' by heeding the full suspension call.
He also touched on North Korea, saying it ``continues to pose a serious challenge'' to nonproliferation. North Korea cut its ties with the agency two years ago, saying it had quit the Nonproliferation Treaty. It is now engaged in on-and-off negotiations with the United States and four other countries on aid and other concessions it seeks in return for scrapping its nuclear weapons program.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: www.iaea.org
----
Blair: The threat of loose nukes is one of our own making
Dodge City Daily Globe,
September 20, 2004
http://www.dodgeglobe.com/stories/092004/opinions_092004019.shtml
Nuclear terrorism, thankfully, is still only a specter, not a reality. But the recent wave of bloodshed in Russia underscores the urgency of the need to prevent terrorists capable of indiscriminate slaughter from acquiring nuclear bombs.
To its credit, the Bush administration has finally launched an ambitious initiative to better secure nuclear and radiological materials, particularly in violence-racked Russia. But unless the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, introduced in May, becomes part of a far more comprehensive approach to nuclear theft and terrorism, it will fall well short of its goal of safeguarding the American people.
The initiative builds on the bilateral nonproliferation efforts of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a U.S. government-funded, post-Cold War effort that focused on securing Russia's nuclear arsenal. The new, expanded cooperative effort seeks to collect weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium from dozens of additional countries, and to lock them down in secure facilities.
But with U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces still on hair-trigger alert, we must recognize that present policies for reducing the risk of nuclear strikes against the United States by terrorists or rogue countries are inconsistent and self-defeating. On the one hand, in the name of deterrence, U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces both comply with their presidents' instructions to be constantly prepared to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other at a moment's notice. On the other hand, in the name of nonproliferation, the United States and Russia cooperate closely in securing Russia's nuclear weapons against theft.
By keeping thousands of nuclear weapons poised for immediate launch, even under normal peacetime circumstances, the United States projects a powerful deterrent threat at Russia. But at the same time, it causes Russia to retain thousands of weapons in its operational inventory, scattered across that country's vast territory, and to keep them ready for rapid use in large-scale nuclear war with America. To maintain the reliability of these far-flung weapons, Russia must constantly transport large numbers back and forth between a remanufacturing facility and the dispersed military bases. This creates a serious vulnerability: Transportation is the Achilles' heel of nuclear weapons security.
On any given day, many hundreds of Russian nuclear weapons are moving around the countryside; nearly 1,000 are in some stage of transit or temporary storage awaiting relocation. This constant movement between the far-flung nuclear bases and the remanufacturing facility at Ozersk in the southern Urals stems from the esoteric technical fact that Russian nuclear bombs are highly perishable. American bombs have a shelf life of more than 30 years, but Russian bombs last only eight to 12 years before corrosion and internal decay render them unreliable--prone to fizzling instead of exploding. At that point, they must be shipped back to the factory for remanufacturing. Every year many hundreds of bombs, perhaps as many as a thousand, roll out of Russia's Mayak factory. The United States turns out fewer than 10 annually. In Russia, transportation lines linking the factory to nuclear bases across 10 time zones provide fertile ground for terrorist interception.
Keeping a small strategic arsenal consolidated at limited locations near the Mayak factory would be the ideal. But the ongoing nuclear dynamic between the former Cold War foes creates the opposite environment, which undercuts security. Russian nuclear commanders are confronted with U.S. submarines lurking off their coasts with 10-minute missile-flight times to Moscow and thousands of launch-ready U.S. warheads on land- and sea-based missiles aimed at thousands of targets in Russia. They are compelled to match the American posture in numbers, alert status and geographic dispersal.
U.S. leaders must decide which goal takes precedence: sustaining the Cold War legacy of massive arsenals to deter a massive surprise nuclear attack, or shoring up the security of Russian nuclear weapons to prevent terrorists from grabbing them (or corrupt guards from selling them).
And terrorists grabbing such a weapon as it shuttles between deployment fields and factories is not the worst-case scenario stemming from this nuclear gamesmanship. The theft of a nuclear bomb could spell eventual disaster for an American city, but the seizure of a ready-to-fire strategic long-range nuclear missile or group of missiles capable of delivering such bombs to targets thousands of miles away could be apocalyptic for entire nations.
If scores of armed Chechen rebels can slip into the heart of Moscow and hold a packed theater hostage for days, as they did in 2002, might it not be possible for terrorists to infiltrate missile fields in rural Russia, seize control of a nuclear-armed mobile rocket roaming the countryside, and launch it at Europe or America? It's an open question that warrants candid bilateral discussion, especially since the 9/11 Commission report revealed that al-Qaida plotters considered this very idea.
Another specter concerns terrorists "spoofing" radar or satellite sensors, or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. By either firing short-range missiles that fool warning sensors into reporting an attack by longer-range missiles, or feeding false data into warning computer networks, could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in "retaliation?" False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are given, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and to decide whether to retaliate. Russia's deteriorating early-warning network, coupled with terrorist plotting against it, only heightens the dangers.
Russia is not the only crucible of risk. The early-warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute. As these nations move toward hair-trigger stances for their nuclear missiles, the terrorist threat to them will grow in parallel.
Even the U.S. nuclear control apparatus is far from foolproof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery: Terrorist hackers might be able to gain backdoor electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically of radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject certain types of firing orders that previously would have been carried out immediately.
Both countries are running such terrorist risks for the sake of an obsolete deterrent strategy. The notion that either the United States or Russia would deliberately attack the other with nuclear weapons is ludicrous, while the danger that terrorists are plotting to get their hands on these arsenals is real. We need to kick our old habits and stand down our hair-trigger forces. Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off alert would automatically reduce, if not remove, the biggest terrorist threats that stem from keeping thousands of U.S. and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles fueled, targeted and waiting for a couple of computer signals to fire. They would fly the instant they received these signals, which can be sent with a few keystrokes on a launch console.
We ought to reverse our priorities for nuclear security. The United States should not be spending 25 times more on its deterrent posture than it spends on all of our nonproliferation assistance to Russia and other countries to help them keep their nuclear bombs and materials from falling into terrorist hands. Both the United States and Russia should be spending more on de-alerting, dismantling and securing our arsenals than on prepping them for a large-scale nuclear war with each other.
The current deterrent practices of the two nuclear superpowers are not only anachronistic, they are thwarting our ability to protect ourselves against the real threats.
# Blair, a former Minuteman launch officer, is president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.
-------- iran
Iran Rebuffs U.N. Agency on Atom Issue
September 20, 2004
New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/international/middleeast/20tehran.html
TEHRAN, Sept. 19 - Iran on Sunday rejected a call by the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency to freeze all its uranium enrichment programs and warned that it would drop out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if its case was sent to the Security Council.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, said at a news conference that his nation would not accept any outside limitation on its uranium enrichment programs and that "no international body can force Iran to do so."
The response came a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution calling on Iran to suspend all enrichment-related activities before the agency's next meeting in November.
The agency has expressed alarm at Iran's plans to enrich nearly 40 tons of uranium. Experts say that would be enough to provide Iran with the material for several nuclear bombs. The Iranian government insists that its nuclear program is for electricity production only.
The resolution passed Saturday said the agency would consider whether to take "further steps" to penalize Iran. The United States has been pushing for Security Council sanctions against the country.
Mr. Rowhani, however, strenuously objected to the order to end enrichment.
"They cannot force Iran to suspend enrichment through the resolution," he said. "The Europeans also know that if there is a way, that way is through negotiations."
He added a threat, saying, "I believe that Iran will stop implementing the additional protocol if its case is sent to the Security Council, and Parliament will probably demand from the government to drop out of the nonproliferation treaty."
Iran's Parliament said Sunday that as a result of the resolution, it would not ratify the additional protocol to the nonproliferation treaty, which would allow more intrusive inspections of the country's nuclear facilities.
Mr. Rowhani said Iran would continue with its voluntary suspension of enrichment, a process in which uranium is converted into a gas and then fed into centrifuges, as a gesture of good will. But he indicated that related activities, like producing and testing centrifuges, would continue.
--------
Big Powers Urge Iran to Heed UN Nuke Freeze Demand
September 20, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States, the European Union and Russia urged Iran Monday to comply with the U.N. nuclear watchdog's demand that it halt all activities linked to uranium enrichment, after Tehran rejected the call.
But Iran stood by its position, making clear it would not allow any outside interference in its nuclear activities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) unanimously adopted a resolution Saturday calling on Iran to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to build an atom bomb.
But Sunday, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani rejected the demand in the resolution, sponsored by Britain, France and Germany, and threatened to end snap checks of atomic facilities if the case was sent to the U.N. Security Council.
Uranium enrichment, which at a low level can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a meeting of IAEA members that Iran has been violating its obligations under the NPT for almost two decades by concealing its enrichment program.
It had been ``secretly building sensitive nuclear fuel cycle facilities and doing so for weapons purposes,'' he said. ``It is essential that Iran now cooperate fully and immediately with the IAEA's requests.''
The Dutch delegation chief told the meeting on behalf of the EU that the bloc ``calls on Iran to heed the content of the resolution adopted by last week's (IAEA) board of governors, in particular with regard to the necessity to suspend fully all its enrichment-related activities.''
The EU's ``big three'' powers have been trying since last year to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment program, which the United States and some other countries believe Tehran intends to use to make fissile material for weapons.
Iran denies that and says its nuclear program is for the peaceful generation of electricity.
Dutch ambassador Justus de Visser said of the IAEA's investigation of Iran's nuclear program: ``It is a matter of serious concern that a number of issues after two years still await clarification.''
RUSSIAN CALL
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a similar statement. ``Tehran has been urged to re-impose a moratorium on all uranium enrichment activities. We back this call,'' it said.
Russia, which normally steers clear of political debate over Iran, is helping Tehran build a nuclear reactor at the port of Bushehr despite strong pressure from the United States.
Iran remained defiant, however.
``Our great nation will not permit any interference and/or interruption in our purely peaceful and indigenous nuclear program and it will not give (it) up at any price,'' Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and a vice president of his country, told the meeting.
The IAEA, which has been probing Iran's nuclear program for two years, has found many previously concealed activities that could be used in a weapons program, but no ``smoking gun'' that would confirm U.S. suspicions.
Washington believes Saturday's resolution opened the door to tough action by the IAEA board when it meets again in November -- namely, a referral of Iran's case to the Security Council and possibly economic sanctions.
Libya, which last year gave up its nuclear weapons program, also urged Iran to comply with IAEA demands, saying its own disarmament could be seen as an example to others.
``The Iranians have to meet these obligations,'' Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Matouq M. Matouq told reporters.
----
Iran May Soon Resume Uranium Enrichment
September 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran may resume uranium enrichment ``any moment,'' the nation's intelligence minister said on state television Monday, two days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency demanded that Tehran halt all such activity.
Ali Yunesi reiterated that Iran rejected the thrust of Saturday's motion by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which demanded that it stop all uranium enrichment activity, including the production and testing of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
``We suspended (enrichment) voluntarily and we may continue it voluntarily,'' Yunesi said. ``And we may resume (enrichment) any moment.''
``The resolution is illegal,'' he said. ``The Islamic Republic of Iran ... will ignore the provisions of the resolution because it is beyond the responsibilities of the IAEA.''
The U.N. agency said it would assess Iran's compliance in two months.
On Sunday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, also said the IAEA's demand for a halt to enrichment was ``illegal,'' but he stopped short of outright rejection of the U.N. agency's resolution and held out the possibility of negotiations on the issue.
``We are committed to the suspension of actual enrichment, but we have no decision to expand the suspension,'' Rowhani said.
``No resolution can impose an obligation on Iran to suspend activities. If there is a way, it will be the way of dialogue,'' Rowhani said.
-------- israel
Israel on agenda for UN nuclear watchdog general conference
VIENNA (AFP)
Monday September 20, 2004
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040920/323/f2x4z.html
The UN nuclear watchdog opens its annual general conference that sets overall goals for the atomic monitoring body but is also a setting for Arab countries to attack Israel for allegedly possessing nuclear weapons. Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said the week-long conference mainly endorses decisions made by the IAEA's executive arm, the 35-nation board of governors, which last week called on Iran to fully suspend uranium enrichment and submit to a review in November of its alleged nuclear weapons program.
Still, the discussion on Israel should be heated.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said Middle Eastern states have in the past used the conference as a forum to vent their frustration over Iran being attacked for alleged nuclear capabilities while the IAEA does not act against Israel, which is believed to have developed nuclear weapons and has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The 137-country IAEA is at its conference to consider "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat," according to the agenda.
A resolution may be introduced but the Western diplomat said this would be then withdrawn in a "procedural game where Arabic countries raise yet again the question" of why Israel has not signed the NPT, the safeguards agreement the IAEA verifies.
He said such resolutions have in the past been "obscure and hard to decipher but make a point by having the word Israel in them."
Gwozdecky said the conference would review the full range of IAEA activities and "lay out a work plan for the agency for the year to come."
The IAEA wants its inspectors to return to North Korea, from where they were expelled in January 2003 as it angrily withdrew from the NPT amid US charges it is developing nuclear weapons.
Gwozdecky said he did not expect recent revelations that South Korea performed undeclared uranium enrichment, which the IAEA is investigating, to impact greatly on the North Korea debate at the conference.
Besides these verification activities, the IAEA carries out cooperation programs to help people use nuclear technology, such as getting radiation therapy machines to developing countries to make cancer treatments easier.
The third pillar of its activity is promoting nuclear safety. As part of this, it has focused since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 on "helping countries identify their vulnerabilities" in nuclear security, Gwozdecky said.
This includes protecting against terrorists getting radioactive materials to use in so-called dirty bombs. These are conventional bombs laced with radioactive materials and designed to contaminate wide areas.
The IAEA helped put on a conference over the weekend in Vienna co-hosted by US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Russian atomic chief Alexander Rumyantsev on a global initiative to keep highly radioactive materials out of the reach of terrorists.
In May, Abraham had announced that the United States was giving 450 million dollars (370 million euros) to the initiative, which tries to prevent nuclear materials stored around the world from getting to terrorists who could use them to make a dirty bomb or even a full atomic device.
-------- japan
Kansai Elec may delay reactor restart due to leak
REUTERS JAPAN:
September 20, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27213/story.htm
TOKYO - Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. (9503.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said last week it was likely to delay the restart of a nuclear power generation unit at its Mihama plant in Fukui prefecture, western Japan, because of a coolant leak.
Kansai Electric found late on Thursday that the coolant boracic, containing a very small amount of radiation, had leaked from the Mihama No. 1 unit, a company spokesman said.
The leak has been stopped and the radiation did not have an impact on the outside environment, the spokesman said.
Kansai Electric shut the 340,000-kilowatt No. 1 unit on Sept. 5 for inspections, which had been scheduled to last two weeks, following a fatal accident at the Mihama No. 3 unit on Aug. 9.
"We need some more time to fix the part (that caused the leak)," the spokesman said.
All 11 of Kansai Electric's nuclear units are located at three plants in Mihama, Takahama and Ohi in Fukui prefecture. Of those, only three units are currently generating power.
-------- korea
N.Korea Seen Using South Atomic Issue to Stall Talks
September 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea Monday shrugged off North Korean criticism of the South's experiments with nuclear materials as familiar posturing that would not rule out the mercurial communist North's return to atomic arms talks.
North Korea's state news agency said Saturday the North would never dismantle its nuclear arsenal and would not resume talks on its atomic programs unless the United States dropped its ``hostile'' policy.
The North's official KCNA news agency said recent disclosures about unsanctioned South Korean nuclear experiments in 2000 and 1982 showed that the United States applied double standards, criticizing the North but understanding the South.
``They think of it as excuse or pretext for not coming to the six-party talks,'' Lee Sun-jin, a South Korean deputy foreign minister, told a panel of foreign journalists.
``But North Korea's real intention is yet to be seen,'' he said.
A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy agency (IAEA) arrived in Seoul Sunday to conduct a second inspection of South Korea's nuclear experiments, a day after the South said it had no plans to develop or possess nuclear weapons.
Lee said South Korea's openness with the IAEA stood in contrast to North Korean secrecy about its facilities. The United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have been seeking at so far fruitless talks to persuade North Korea to give up its atomic ambitions completely in exchange for security guarantees and energy aid.
The sharply worded KCNA commentary extended the North's policy of trying to milk South Korea's embarrassing nuclear revelations and exploit differences between Seoul and Washington.
``It is self-evident that the resumption of the talks can no longer be discussed unless the U.S. drops its hostile policy based on double standards toward the DPRK and that the latter can never dismantle its nuclear deterrent force,'' the North's news agency said.
The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
NO BASIS FOR FORECAST
South Korea recently said scientists enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000 and separated plutonium in 1982 without government knowledge or approval. Diplomats have said some of the uranium was close to the purity needed for an atom bomb. Plutonium can also be used in a bomb.
KCNA said the South's tests underscored U.S. double standards.
``The U.S. transfers nuclear technology to its allies and connives at their development and access to nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, it makes far-fetched assertion without any convincing evidence that the DPRK has pursued clandestine uranium enrichment,'' it said.
The North Korea nuclear crisis began in October 2002 when the United States said the North had said it had an enrichment program. North Korea subsequently denied saying this and rejected testimony from Pakistan's top nuclear scientist that he sold the North uranium enrichment technology.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee said: ``As repeatedly pointed out by our government, we have no intention to develop and will not do so in the future.''
He stressed that South Korea was cooperating with the IAEA, while North Korea was estranged from the U.N. nuclear watchdog since expelling inspectors in 2002.
``We've provided all information and material to the IAEA, and it has full access to any facilities,'' he said. ``North Korea, on the other hand, they have not opened facilities to anybody.''
Yu Suk-ryul, an analysts at the government-linked Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said the latest North Korean rhetoric broke little new ground.
``North Korea will make use of any source to criticize the U.S., therefore, no forecast can be made on their next step based only on their harsh statements,'' he said.
----
N. Korea Won't Give Up Nuke Development
September 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)-- North Korea said Monday that it will not give up nuclear development in light of unauthorized nuclear experiments by South Korea, where U.N. inspectors nuclear inspectors were conducting an investigation.
Rodong Sinmun, an official North Korean newspaper, said in an editorial that the secret nuclear activities in South Korea in 1982 and 2000 were an ``inevitable result of double standards'' applied by the United States, the South's chief ally.
The comments, which echoed other North Korean statements in recent days, were another blow to troubled efforts to hold another round of talks aimed at persuading North Korea to end its nuclear weapons development. Last Thursday, North Korea said it would not attend planned six-party talks on its nuclear activities until South Korea fully discloses the details of its secret atomic experiments.
``South Korea's uranium experiment is evidence that the United States is trying to take advantage of the six-party talks to disarm North Korea rather than keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons,'' said Rodong Sinmun. The editorial was reported by South Korea's national news agency Yonhap.
Three rounds of six-party talks have been held in Beijing, but negotiators have made little progress. The participants are the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.
South Korea acknowledged this month that it extracted a small amount of plutonium in an experiment more than 20 years ago. That admission came shortly after it said it conducted a uranium-enrichment experiment four years ago. Plutonium and enriched uranium are two key ingredients of nuclear weapons.
Seoul said the experiments were purely research, and not intended as preparation to make nuclear weapons. But it acknowledged it should have revealed details to the U.N. nuclear agency in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
``It is apparent that we cannot give up our nuclear program as the United States is trying to cover up the South's secret nuclear activities,'' Rodong Sinmun said.
``Our stance that we cannot give up nuclear development is definitely justifiable,'' the newspaper said. North Korea says it has a nuclear ``deterrent,'' and international experts suspect it already has several nuclear weapons.
On Sunday, a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in South Korea for a follow-up probe into the country's secret nuclear experiments. On Monday, the five-member team visited the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Daejeon, 125 miles south of Seoul.
-------- mideast
Libya Tells Iran: Be Like us and Comply with IAEA
Reuters
Sep 20, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=3&u=/nm/20040920/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_libya_dc
VIENNA (Reuters) - Libya, which last year renounced its nuclear weapons program, Monday urged Iran to follow suit and comply with the demands of the U.N. nuclear watchdog to stop enriching uranium which can be used to make atomic bombs.
"As (IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei) said today, some things have to be fulfilled by Iran," Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Matouq M. Matouq told reporters after meeting U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) at the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) annual general conference.
"The Iranians have to meet these obligations because of the agreement with the IAEA, and we hope that we can have another example (of) Iran of fulfilling the obligations and following the IAEA agreements," he said.
Saturday the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to end uranium enrichment. Tehran rejected the resolution, calling the demand illegal.
Matouq also said Tripoli's December 2003 decision to abandon all weapons of mass destruction could be seen as an example for Iran and all other countries.
"Libya has set an example for everybody," he said.
Washington accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists its atomic ambitions are peaceful.
-------- terrorism / transportation
U.S. Government Ships Plutonium to France
September 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Shipments.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- A shipment of weapons-grade plutonium has left the United States for a nuclear reactor in France, drawing protests from activists who believe the shipment poses both an environmental and terrorist threat.
Government officials confirmed the plutonium had left the United States aboard an armored ship escorted by second ship, but they would not say when the shipment departed, citing security concerns.
However, about 20 activists waved signs and banners along the Charleston waterfront Monday to protest what they said was the departing plutonium.
``This is really the wrong signal to be sending to countries around the world,'' said protester Tom Clements of Greenpeace International, calling the transport and use of nuclear weapons material ``just the wrong thing given the security climate in the world right now.''
Once in France, the material is to be converted into nuclear fuel and returned next year for a test run in a commercial reactor. The U.S. Energy Department must ship the material overseas for conversion because there isn't a plant in the United States that can do it.
Officials want to build a facility near Aiken, S.C., but construction has been delayed. The facility is part of an agreement between the United States and Russia to dispose of 68 metric tons of plutonium.
``We're trying to get rid of this material that you could use once again in a nuclear weapon or for other types of purposes that terrorists could probably come up with,'' said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
He expressed confidence that the shipment will be safe.
``We're confident this material will be fully protected every step of the way. Each one is equipped with heavy weaponry ... and a specialized guard force. The people that are doing this have a lot of experience doing this. They're not shipping oranges.''
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Study says nuke power more competitive
(UPI)
September 20, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040920-123227-3629r.htm
Washington, DC, Sep. 20 -- Nuclear power's future might be a little brighter following Monday's release of a U.S. study showing it can compete economically with coal and natural gas.
The University of Chicago study found once initial construction costs are paid off, nuclear power plants generate electricity slightly cheaper than coal and gas-fired plants.
Using a standard called the "levelized cost of electricity" for a modern nuclear plant is $31 to $46 per megawatt hour compared to $33 to $41 MWh for coal and $35 to $45 MWh for natural gas.
The Department of Energy said in a statement the report proves nuclear power could be a competitive energy source in coming years. The report, however, warns the costs of designing and building test plants for the new technology could be a significant hurdle.
No nuclear plants have been built since the 1970s. However, nuclear power is still the second-largest source of electricity in the United States behind coal.
-------- new mexico
EPA Seeking New Yucca Radiation Standard
September 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Trying to overcome a possibly crippling court decision, the Environmental Protection Agency hopes to have a proposal by early next year on new radiation exposure limits at a proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada.
Jeffrey Holmstead, chief of EPA's air and radiation programs, told a panel of scientists Monday that a wide range of options is being considered that would not require Congress to intervene in the politically charged issue.
The future of the waste project at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert was put into jeopardy when a federal appeals court rejected an EPA radiation exposure standard in July that was tied to 10,000 years into the future, even though some of the waste will be at its most dangerous thousands of years later.
The court said EPA failed to take into account a 1995 National Academy of Sciences recommendation that the standard be set at periods of peak-radiation, although Congress required that the recommendations be followed. Opponents of the project have argued that the design of the waste site as it is now contemplated cannot meet a standard set that far into the future.
Members of the Board of Radioactive Waste Management, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, examined at a meeting Monday the implications of the court case and possible options for future action. The board frequently offers a forum to examine waste management issues.
Robert Fri, chairman of the National Academy panel that wrote the 1995 report cited by the court, suggested the EPA satisfy the court's objections only by significantly altering its standard more in line with what his group had recommended.
That would involve going well beyond 10,000 years, but not necessarily so far into the future that risk modeling, or even the proposed Yucca design, might be useless, Fri suggested.
EPA would have to adopt a less conservative approach to determining public risks from exposure, said Fri, a scholar at the environmental think tank Resources for the Future.
Holmstead said the EPA is ``at the beginning of the process of determining what options might be'' available but would not discuss specific proposals. Going beyond 10,000 years for a radiation standard ``is a real challenge,'' he conceded.
A panel member, Norine Noonan, dean of the School of Science and Mathematics at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, asked whether EPA might assume a standard based on risk that was envisioned in the 1995 National Academy study. Holmstead said it was an option on the table with others.
After the session, Holmstead told reporters that the agency is working as quickly as it can to develop a standard to meet the court's misgivings, and it would be possible to have a standard ready by early next year.
Congress also could intervene by passing legislation to free the EPA from having to take into consideration the 1995 National Academy recommendations.
Sam Fowler, the senior Democratic staff member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told the scientists such a move could appear to the public as Congress ``trying to dumb down the standard'' for political reasons. Strong opposition to the Yucca project by Nevada's senators, a Democrat and a Republican, also would make it difficult to pass such legislation.
Whether the impasse over an acceptable radiation standard eventually could scuttle the Yucca Mountain project remains to be seen. Nevertheless, supporters acknowledge it casts serious doubt on the Energy Department's plan to open the waste site by 2010.
Trying to establish public risks tens of thousands of years into the future is a staggering undertaking, scientists acknowledged at Monday's meeting.
More than 45,000 tons of used reactor fuel already are in temporary storage at commercial power plants and defense facilities in 34 states awaiting shipment to a central repository.
``What do you do if the very best solution you can think of doesn't meet the (radiation) standard?'' environmental scholar Fri asked. ``The stuff is not going to go away.''
On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/index.shtml
-------- us nuc waste
Yucca, cont.
September 20, 2004
Letters to the Editor,
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040919-101715-6170r.htm
Wenonah Hauter ("Nuclear waste at Yucca," Letters, Friday) is only partly right. Spent reactor fuel, often mislabeled as nuclear "waste," can be stored safely at the reactor site - not just for five years, but much longer - until the economics are right for recycling into new reactor fuel. Isn't that what conservation is all about?
The problem is that she and her Public Citizen group have been campaigning against Yucca while claiming at the same time that there is no safe way to deal with spent fuel. Of course, Yucca is safe, but it may not be needed. Their motive is clear: They want to do away with nuclear power altogether.
S. FRED SINGER
Science & Environmental Policy Project Arlington
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Sudanese Decry U.N. Threat of Sanctions
'Resentful' Reaction Predicted in Capital
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34117-2004Sep19.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sept. 19 -- Sudan said Sunday that the U.N. Security Council's resolution threatening oil sanctions if it failed to end violence in the country's western region of Darfur was unfair and would make it harder to resolve the crisis.
The council's decision would only make the country "resentful" of the United Nations, said Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, head of the ruling National Congress party. He said the international community had not recognized the government's efforts to ease the situation in Darfur, where more than 1.2 million civilians from African tribes have been driven from their homes by a government-backed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Thousands of people have died in the crisis, aid workers say.
Omar said the government would try to reestablish security in the region by dispatching more police forces. He also said the government would try to arrest the militiamen but emphasized that they were outside its control.
"This is unfair and unjust," Omar told reporters after meeting with the president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, in Khartoum, the capital. "Of course, the Sudanese government is part of the international community and part of the U.N., and it will make do with the resolution. But people should know one feels disappointed. We are going to be resentful."
Other officials said the resolution also failed to credit the government for allowing humanitarian aid workers greater access to more than 150 camps to deliver food and medical treatment and for issuing visas more quickly.
"We don't need sanctions. We need a political solution," Hago Issa, a member of the National Assembly, told a U.S. delegation led by Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) that was touring Darfur.
The Security Council adopted the resolution Saturday in a vote of 11 to 0, with four abstentions -- China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria -- and said it would meet again soon to consider the sanctions against Sudan's petroleum sector. No date was set for that session.
The U.N. resolution also calls for establishing a commission to investigate whether the atrocities committed in Darfur meet the legal definitions of genocide. Sudanese officials said they would welcome the commission because they said they did not believe genocide had occurred. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently that the militia and the Sudanese government had committed genocide. On Saturday, the German defense minister, Peter Struck, also said that the atrocities in Darfur amounted to genocide.
"I think the Security Council slept during Rwanda," Issa said, referring to the slaughter of 800,000 people in that country a decade ago. "Now they want to make up for this by pressuring Sudan. They won't find genocide. They will find a war. These sanctions will put Sudan in a corner."
The resolution demands that Sudan accept an enlarged African Union monitoring force. Sudan had initially said it was against a bigger mission, but some officials said Sunday they were reviewing the idea.
Jackson, whose father, Jesse L. Jackson, visited the region last month, said Sudan's claim that politics and oil were driving the sanctions was "a distraction." Rep. Jackson urged the Sudanese to accept a more robust African Union force, including the addition of more than 3,000 peacekeepers. Currently, about 80 monitors and their 305-member protective force are on the ground in Darfur, an area the size of France.
"This is an opportunity for Sudan to go on the offensive and show the world its public commitment to ending the conflict," the congressman said. "The government should throw down the welcome mat. It's not a today issue or a tomorrow issue. It's an as-soon-as-possible issue. Every day that goes by only exacerbates the problem."
The U.S. delegation met with recent arrivals at the Kalma refugee camp in the southern part of Darfur who said their villages had been attacked by Janjaweed just 10 days ago. The camp has ballooned from 5,000 refugees six months ago to more than 80,000 today, aid workers said, with 3,000 arriving in the last 10 days.
-------- arms
Woman killed in Vienna as arms linked to Balkans wars explodes
VIENNA (AFP)
Sep 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040920132118.l86a6d7c.html
An Austrian woman was killed in an explosion in Vienna on Monday as she was about to unveil an arms cache linked to the Balkans war, the interior ministry said.
The woman's body was discovered in a car park in the city's 19th district by a local journalist who had been summoned to the scene by an anonymous caller shortly before, interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia told AFP.
"It looks like she was killed by a hand grenade. There were other weapons in the car next to which she had been found. They appear to have been made in Yugoslavia," he said.
The local news agency APA said it appeared the woman was killed while trying to unload the weapons from the car, which was damaged by the explosion.
Gollia said the government believed that the incident was linked to the discovery last week of a large cache of arms in the Wienerwald, a forest on the outskirts of Vienna.
"The same reporter was alerted, and secondly the arms were also made Yugoslavia," he said.
The initial find included more than 20 AK47 rifles, some 30 hand grenades, dynamite and ammunition that were stashed in garbage bags and buried under branches and foliage on the edge of the Wienerwald.
The caller who alerted the journalist from the local magazine News, reportedly said that the weapons were stockpiled at the height of the Balkans wars in the early 1990s, because there were fears that the conflict could spread to Austria.
Gollia said that on Monday morning, the reporter took police to the scene.
The police have said it is possible that there are several such arms caches in Austria.
-----
Arms smuggling in Gaza at record high
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Abraham Rabinovich
September 20, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040919-110647-1938r.htm
JERUSALEM - Palestinian efforts to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip from Egypt have reached record levels, according to Israeli defense sources, as armed groups prepare for the possibility of internal clashes after Israel's planned withdrawal next year.
In a surprisingly detailed assessment, the Israeli sources said that in the 18 months ending in July, arms smuggled into Gaza included 4,900 assault rifles, 330 anti-tank weapons, two tons of explosives and 380,000 rounds of ammunition.
Although Egypt has stepped up its efforts to stop the flow, smuggling continues at a rapid pace, mainly through tunnels under the Philadelphi Road, which marks the border between Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the southern end of the Gaza Strip.
The soft earth and the increasingly sophisticated excavation methods used by the smugglers have made it difficult for both the Egyptians and Israelis, on their respective sides of the border, to keep pace. The tunnel heads are located inside houses and, thus, not easily detected.
While some organizations control tunnels of their own, most of the digging is carried out by professional smugglers who sell the weapons to the highest bidders.
So far, the Palestinians have failed in their efforts to smuggle in strategic weapons, such as Katyusha rockets whose 12-mile range would put sizeable Israeli cities like Ashkelon within reach.
Ground-to-air missiles capable of downing Israeli helicopters, which play a key role in Israel's battle with militants, have also been kept out.
In meetings with Egyptian counterparts, Israeli officials have said that if such weapons reached Gaza and were employed by the Palestinians, Israel would have to reply with massive force, inevitably leading to civilian casualties.
Egyptian security forces last week arrested eight persons who had planned to infiltrate the Gaza Strip, perhaps through a tunnel, with weapons, including an explosives belt to be used by a suicide bomber.
Egypt, which is interested in seeing a peaceful Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and in preventing fundamentalist Islamic forces from taking control there, has been pressuring Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to disband the military wing of his Fatah organization, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
The brigade has developed close ties with the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, a radical Shi'ite organization. The Egyptian government, which, in the past, has put down violent uprisings by its own fundamentalists, wants to discourage Palestinian ties with Hezbollah, which, in turn, has close links with fundamentalist Iran.
Egyptian officials also have held talks with Hamas, perhaps the strongest force in the Gaza Strip, hoping to persuade it to suspend attacks on Israel once Israeli settlements and security forces are withdrawn from Gaza.
-------- britain
Lib Dems attack Blair's Iraq wars
bbc
By Hannah Goff
20 September, 2004
http://news..co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3673322.stm
Campbell: Coalition stained The prime minister should apologise for the first Iraq war before beginning a second, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Sir Menzies Campbell has said.
His words follow Tony Blair's claim a second war was now being fought with Iraq insurgents and terrorists after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
He was reflecting party leader Charles Kennedy's call for Tony Blair to say sorry for his mistakes over Iraq.
Britain's influence had been diminished by the war, Sir Menzies told delegates.
At the very least prime minister just say sorry Charles Kennedy
"The coalition has been stained by the debauchery of Abu Ghraib and its British citizens languish in Guantanamo, shorn of legal rights and denied justice," he said in his speech to delegates on Monday.
Sir Menzies also criticised the Tories - calling them the "wobblers of Westminster" for "their conversion from cheer-leaders to critics" of the war.
Addressing a rally in Bournemouth on Sunday, Mr Kennedy called the war a "tragic folly" and the "biggest foreign policy error" since the Suez crisis.
It had left the UK's foreign policy reputation "in tatters" and eroded trust in politics in general, he said.
'Mistaken war'
"At the very least prime minister just say sorry," Mr Kennedy told delegates.
Mr Kennedy said: "Our reputation as a steady and stable force in international affairs is in tatters.
"We are no longer sure we can trust our intelligence services.
"We recoil from the loss of trust in government lawyers, former judges, senior civil servants - who have been sullied by entanglement with this mistaken war."
He said it was "too late to turn back the clock," on much of the damage, but the prime minister could at least apologise for his mistakes.
"Prime minister, why not just, even now, admit you got it wrong? Apologise? Say sorry for the damage you have done, the anguish you have caused, the wrongs that you can never now right?," Mr Kennedy said.
Earlier, at a press conference, Mr Kennedy said Mr Blair had "one opportunity left, when Parliament reassembles, to make a full and frank disclosure" of the run up to war.
In particular, the prime minister still had not answered the question of whether he had told US President George W Bush that Britain would be with the US in an Iraq war "come what may" before Parliament voted on the issue, Mr Kennedy said.
Suez
In her last speech to the conference as the party's leader in the Lords on Monday morning, Baroness Shirley Williams said the Iraq war was the "greatest blunder since Suez."
"The government cannot move on until it admits this.
"The government neglected the war on terror for a war on Iraq - a war of its choosing," she said.
The consequences of that war was a lawless Iraq that is slipping into chaos, she said adding the "terrorist menace" had grown not declined.
Mr Kennedy denied that by focusing on Iraq, he was in danger of turning his party into a "one-trick pony".
Iraq symbolised a wider breakdown in trust in Labour and politics in general, Mr Kennedy said.
Conservative defence spokesman Nicholas Soames insisted it was right to topple Saddam and to "liberate" Iraq but he was critical of post-war planning which he branded "chaotic".
-------- business
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology
Washington Post
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34355-2004Sep19?language=printer
Future Technologies Inc. of Fairfax won a $1.9 million contract to help the Department of Housing and Urban Development determine the allocation of more than $3 billion in public-housing operating subsidies that support more than 3,100 public-housing agencies.
General Dynamics Network Systems, a division of General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church, won a $3.6 million contract to install a voice, video and data network infrastructure for the Army at Camp Victory in Baghdad.
General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church won the prime contractor spot on the $10 billion Warfighter Information Network-Tactical program to build a battlefield information network. Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda competed against General Dynamics and was picked to play a major subcontracting role.
Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif., won a 10-year, $290 million contract from the Defense Logistics Agency to provide data center consolidation services for the agency's Enterprise Data Center program.
M/A-Com Inc. of Lowell, Mass., won an $8.4 million contract from Cecil County, Md., to provide an interoperable communications system for the county's public safety agencies.
Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems of Reston won a $6.5 million contract from the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center to provide for the Global Broadcast Service program, the Defense Department's satellite-based system for distributing video, imagery and other large data files to users around the world. This contract modification provides for two Army Internet Protocol Theater Satellite Broadcast Manager terminals that will give theater commanders the ability to broadcast command and control information in a timely manner.
J.K. Hill and Associates Inc. of Norfolk won a $5.7 million contract from the 98th Air Base Wing to provide for base supply, fuels and logistic material control services for the Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
Eagan, McAllister Associates Inc. of Lexington Park won a $36.6 million contract from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center to provide engineering and technical support services to Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs.
Lockheed Martin, Maritime Systems and Sensors of Manassas won a $21 million contract from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command to provide the Advanced Deployable System program office with the design and system engineering required to establish a preliminary design and an integrated baseline for the ADS variant that is to be deployed by the Littoral Combat Ship. ADS is a ship-deployable undersea surveillance system employing distributed passive acoustic arrays linked to a receiving platform for data processing.
Resource Consultants Inc. of Vienna won a $20.6 million contract from the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center Norfolk for services in support of the Naval Supply Systems Command's Hazardous Material Control and Management program.
Anteon Corp. of Fairfax won an $11.6 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to exercise an option for approximately 249,600 hours of maintenance planning and design interface technical/management support services for the Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Air Depot, Jacksonville, Fla.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $2.74 million contract from the Army Materiel Command for Terahertz Imaging Focal Plane Array technologies.
Westat Inc. of Rockville won a $6.1 million contract from the Centers for Disease Control for research and development.
BBI Biotech Research Laboratories of Gaithersburg won a $2.2 million contract from the Centers for Disease Control for research and development.
Synthesis Professional Services Inc. of Rockville won a $3 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
ManTech Systems Engineering Corp. of Fairfax won a $20.5 million contract from the Navy for engineering and technical services for submarine and surface ship acoustical trials.
Collins & Co. of Arlington won a $2 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Manila Consulting Group Inc. of McLean won a $2.1 million contract from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services for a national registry of effective programs and practices.
Alliance Contractor Team of Sterling, comprising a number of air carriers, won a $998.1 million contract from the Air Force's Air Mobility Command for international airlift services (Civil Reserve Air Fleet-CRAF.)
Delta Chemical Corp. of Baltimore won a $1.5 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to supply liquid aluminum sulfate to the Washington Aqueduct Division in the District.
Hawkins Glass of Springfield won a $2 million contract from the Army Materiel Command to provide glass for armored doors.
Garrett Container Systems Inc. of Accident won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for law enforcement, security, marine craft, fire/rescue and special purpose clothing.
Universe Tech of Frederick, Engineering & Environment of Virginia Beach, JM Waller of Burke, Versar Inc. of Springfield and ICI LLC of Dumfries each won a $3 million contract from Army Corps of Engineers for a broad range of civil and military environmental and planning activities inside and outside the continental United States.
Court One Corp. of Norfolk won a $30 million contract from the Air Force Space Command for simplified acquisition of base engineering requirements.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
-------- china
Analysis
With Transition, New Uncertainty for China's Authoritarian System
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34134-2004Sep19.html
The surprise decision by China's former president, Jiang Zemin, to retire early from his last post as chief of the nation's military marks the end of a remarkable 15-year reign in which the Chinese Communist Party enjoyed unprecedented stability, and the beginning of a new period of uncertainty for the world's largest authoritarian political system.
Jiang came to power in the aftermath of the violent 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and at the time, many experts predicted neither he nor the party he had been tapped to lead would survive for long. The rotund Shanghai engineer with thick glasses was dismissed as a transitional leader, and his party appeared on the verge of collapse, crippled by corruption, economic stagnation and popular anger.
Jiang succeeded not only in holding onto power but also in revitalizing the party, leading China into a period of historic prosperity and defying the wave of democratization that swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Now, by surrendering control of the People's Liberation Army instead of prolonging a contentious leadership competition, Jiang, 78, may have given the party yet another lease on life.
Leadership succession has always been a problem for the Chinese Communist Party, as it is for most authoritarian governments. The party's founding father, Mao Zedong, purged several of his designated heirs and launched the destructive Cultural Revolution to crush his enemies before he died in 1976. Its next patriarch, Deng Xiaoping, ousted two would-be successors, and a leadership split in 1989 allowed the student-led protests in Tiananmen Square to nearly overwhelm the government.
For the past two years, it appeared that the party might be destabilized by another leadership battle -- between Jiang's allies and those who supported his successor, President Hu Jintao. But by bowing out and allowing Hu to complete his rise to the top of China's ruling institutions, Jiang has made it far less likely that the rivalry will degenerate into an open power struggle that might break or paralyze the party at a critical moment.
"The most important thing for this political system has always been forming a core for the leadership," said one Chinese scholar of politics who writes reports for party leaders and spoke on condition of anonymity. "When there is a core, when there is one person at the top, the party can get by. But when there is no core, the system can break down."
Jiang is expected to continue exercising power from behind the scenes, but party officials and political analysts say his influence will be greatly diminished without any formal office. Deng remained China's paramount leader even when his only official title was head of a national association of bridge players, but he had been a famed military chief during the 1949 Communist revolution and Jiang lacks the popular respect and personal clout his predecessor enjoyed.
In many respects, Hu, 61, takes over in a far stronger position than Jiang did in 1989. The cautious technocrat enjoys deep support in the party developed over a career that has spanned nearly four decades, including a key post as the head of the influential Communist Youth League. He became general secretary of the party two years ago, then president, or the head of government, early last year. By assuming the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, he now controls the world's largest army as well.
But Hu remains surrounded by Jiang's allies both in the military and on the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, and in a sign that he has not yet won a full victory, China's official state media have not described him as the "core of the collective leadership," a key phrase that was applied to Mao, Deng and Jiang.
Even if Hu succeeds in consolidating his hold on power, he is unlikely to ever amass the individual authority that his three predecessors enjoyed, said Wu Guoguang, a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and a former aide to Zhao Ziyang, a Communist Party chief who was purged in 1989. In effect, he said, Jiang may have been the party's last strongman.
"The party has always been fragmented, but it is even more fragmented now because economic reforms have left Chinese society more pluralized," Wu said. "As a result, no one can be in a position like Mao or Deng or maybe even Jiang."
Cheng Li, a political scientist at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. who studies the new generation of Chinese leadership, said the rivalry between Hu's allies and a camp that supports Jiang will probably continue. As Jiang fades from the scene, his top lieutenant, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, is expected to replace him as the leader of that camp, and the group will serve as a check on Hu's power, Li said.
"Neither faction can defeat the other one. . . . Instead, decisions result from negotiation and compromise," he said. "In a way, Chinese politics has changed from strongman politics into a system with two competing camps. . . . For the near future, that makes the system more stable, because it limits the power of any one individual."
Li said the two camps represented only slightly different policy programs, with the Jiang camp advocating a bolder economic development strategy that emphasizes the booming coastal cities and the Hu camp supporting a more balanced development strategy that focuses on poorer regions. Both camps have rejected democratic reforms that might shake the party's monopoly on power.
Li said the two groups might evolve over the next decade into formal factions that openly compete against each other within the framework of the one-party system, sowing the seeds of democratic reform in China.
In the short term, though, Hu inherits a party burdened by many of the same problems Jiang confronted in 1989: widespread corruption in an organization that remains above the law, rising popular discontent aggravated by the painful transition from socialism to capitalism, and a debt-ridden, inefficient banking system that could sink the economy. Hu also faces the risk of a foreign policy crisis, perhaps involving Hong Kong or Taiwan, before he has won the full confidence of the military.
In addition, Jiang's departure might prompt new demands for political liberalization from a society that already enjoys the fruits of economic freedom. The banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, crushed by Jiang, might try to test his successors with a comeback, and there will almost certainly be fresh calls for the party to admit it erred by ordering the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which Jiang has steadfastly defended.
Over the past 15 years, Jiang and the party stayed in power by pursuing capitalist-style reforms that generated record growth while crushing any potential challengers. But just as important, Jiang succeeded in minimizing political strife inside the party and keeping the leadership united, often by playing liberal and conservative factions against each other.
Even some of Jiang's sharpest critics allowed some grudging words of respect for his last act in the name of the party on Sunday. Whether he was pushed out or stepped down voluntarily, Jiang's retirement completes the most orderly and peaceful leadership transition in more than a century of Chinese history, said one longtime Jiang critic with ties to the leadership.
"In the end, Jiang must have understood that party stability depends on Hu emerging as a strong leader with real power," said the critic, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He bought some time for the party. But how much is still hard to say."
--------
China's Ex-Leader Quits Post In Military
Jiang Completes Transfer of Power To Younger Rulers
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32797-2004Sep19?language=printer
BEIJING, Sept. 19 -- Former president Jiang Zemin resigned Sunday as the head of China's military, turning the job over to his successor as president and Communist Party leader, Hu Jintao, and completing the orderly transfer of power to a younger generation.
The resignation of Jiang, 78, announced at the close of a four-day meeting of the party's Central Committee, for the first time put Hu, 61, formally in command of all the vast party, government and military bureaucracies that rule China and its 1.3 billion people.
The shift, although important for the smooth working of the Chinese government, was unlikely to produce swift or radical changes in the way the government approaches its relations with the United States, its resolve to reincorporate Taiwan into mainland China or its effort to continue moving the nation toward a market economy while maintaining growth and social stability.
A party source said Jiang and Hu, although they do not always see eye to eye, shared basic views on the course China should follow at home and abroad. Reports of differences that have surfaced with increasing intensity in recent months had more to do with competing power bases and jockeying by proteges within the party than fundamental policy differences, he said.
As an elder statesman, moreover, Jiang remains an influential behind-the-scenes figure for key policy decisions, particularly those involving overriding national interests such as the dispute over Taiwan. But his formal departure from the leadership, giving Hu authority as military chief as well as president and party leader, removes a sometimes awkward situation in which senior officers had complained of having two lines of command.
Taiwan hailed the change as a positive development for China's foreign relations in general and its relations with Taiwan in particular. Chiu Tai-san, vice chairman of the Taiwan government's Mainland Affairs Council, told the Reuters news agency in Taipei that, in his view, Hu is more likely to pursue a pragmatic Taiwan policy that grows from consensus within the Chinese leadership.
"That will be good for the international community and for Taiwan as well," he said.
Hu took over from Jiang as party leader in 2002 and replaced him as president the following year, moving into what the Communist Party calls the fourth generation of leadership after Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang. But Jiang, a former electrical engineer and mayor of Shanghai who is said to relish the limelight, had clung to his position as chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, giving him command over China's 2.2 million-member military establishment and making him a second power center. His term would have run for another three years had he not resigned.
Despite the broad accord on fundamental issues, reports had circulated in Beijing that Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao were more worried than Jiang about those left behind in China's economic boom, particularly farmers and unemployed workers. In addition, the reports said, Jiang's language when discussing Taiwan sometimes reflected the impatience of Chinese military officers with what appears to be a stagnant situation, while Hu and Wen tended to cast their remarks in a longer-term context that some analysts regarded as more flexible.
In the secrecy that marks China's leadership, the accuracy of these reports was difficult to assess. But with Jiang still in a position of authority over the military that created ambiguity about his and Hu's relative power, they were followed carefully.
China's state-run television, which devoted its entire Sunday evening newscast to the resignation, showed Jiang and Hu walking together in the Great Hall of the People, applauded by the 198-member Central Committee to mark the moment when the ambiguity ended. A newscaster said that in his resignation letter, dated Sept. 1, Jiang expressed confidence in Hu's ability to direct the military and said he had long looked forward to full retirement "for the good of the long-term development of the cause of the party and the people."
The resignation letter and a communique issued by the committee made no mention of health problems as a reason for the resignation. Family members and acquaintances had mentioned various ailments in recent weeks as speculation mounted that Jiang planned to step down.
"I just want to say three sentences," Jiang told the committee members in a televised farewell speech. "One, I want to show my sincere thanks to the Central Committee for accepting my resignation letter. Two, I want to show my sincere thanks to the comrades for your longtime help and support. Three, I hope that you work hard and keep moving forward under the Central Committee, whose secretary is Hu Jintao, and I truly believe that our party's work will achieve even greater victories."
The communique also lavished praise on Jiang's work as head of the commission and, before that, as president and party leader after being recruited from relative obscurity in Shanghai to take over following the Tiananmen Squre crackdown in 1989. It said committee members credited him with following the ideas of Mao and Deng and, in addition, "founding the Jiang Zemin theory of defense and army building."
"Under his leadership, the national defense and army modernization process has been a tremendous success," it said.
Jiang presided over a military modernization designed primarily to enable Beijing to back up its threat to use force to reunite Taiwan with the mainland if all else failed. The modernization, focusing on such things as electronics, naval power and training, has a long way to go, however, and is likely to continue at a similar pace under Hu.
The statement also paid tribute to what party officials call the Important Thought of Three Represents, Jiang's idea that the Communist Party should represent free-market business leaders and the vanguard of new thinking as well as peasants and workers who traditionally have been its base.
"The Important Thought of Three Represents is the latest outcome of the localization of Marxism in China, as well as a fundamental guideline for the realization of the magnificent goal of a relatively affluent society in an all-round way," it added. "It must be implemented in all areas of China's socialist modernization drive and be reflected in all aspects of party building."
An Internet commentator said Sunday night that "the mass of the people are now hopeful," while suggesting that Jiang's stepping down could ease efforts by Hu and Wen to improve the lot of Chinese pushed aside by free-market reforms. Many Chinese have expressed support for Wen's gestures in that regard -- for instance, ordering that migrant workers receive back pay sometimes held by employers.
"What good news," the commentator wrote. "Dear Hu, dear Wen, our people trust you. Just do your job as you will."
Jiang's departure from the military commission and Hu's increase in authority were made more complete by the failure of Jiang's close ally, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, to be named as a commission vice chairman under Hu, or even to gain a seat. Some analysts had suggested that Jiang would seek to place Zeng as a vice chairman to perpetuate his influence.
Instead, Xu Caihou, 61, an army general, was promoted from member to vice chairman, and total membership was expanded from eight to 11. Newcomers included Vice Adm. Zhang Dingfa, the navy commander, and Qiao Qingchen, the air force commander. Both branches have received higher priority within the Chinese military under modernization efforts set in motion by Jiang in recent years.
Correspondent Philip P. Pan contributed to this report.
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Hu Takes Military Reins, Completing Shift in China
September 20, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/international/asia/20china.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BEIJING, Sept. 19 - China's president, Hu Jintao, replaced Jiang Zemin as the country's military chief and de facto top leader on Sunday, state media announced, completing the first orderly transfer of power in the history of China's Communist Party.
Mr. Hu, who became Communist Party chief in 2002 and president in 2003, now commands the state, the military and the ruling party. He will set both foreign and domestic policy in the world's most populous country, which now has the world's seventh-largest economy and is rapidly emerging as a great power.
The transition is a significant victory for Mr. Hu, a relatively unknown product of the Communist Party machine. He has solidified control of China's most powerful posts at a younger age - he is 61 - than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, and is now likely to be able govern relatively unimpeded by powerful elders.
Mr. Jiang's resignation, which surprised many party officials who expected the tenacious elder leader to cling to power for several more years, came after tensions between Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu began to affect policy making in the one-party state, some officials and political analysts said.
Mr. Jiang, 78, may be suffering from health problems, several people informed about leadership debates said. But he appeared robust in recent public appearances and was widely described as determined to keep his job - and even expand his authority - until he submitted a letter of resignation this month.
The leadership transition was announced Sunday in a terse dispatch by the New China News Agency, followed by a 45-minute broadcast on China Central Television. Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu appeared side by side, smiling, shaking hands and praising each other profusely in front of applauding members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which formally accepted Mr. Jiang's resignation and Mr. Hu's promotion at the conclusion of its four-day annual session.
Mr. Jiang's offer to retire, which was first reported by The New York Times earlier this month, was given no advance publicity in state media. China Central Television read the text of Mr. Jiang's resignation letter on its evening broadcast, emphasizing that his resignation was voluntary. The letter was dated Sept. 1.
"In consideration of the long-term development of the party's and people's collective endeavors, I have always looked forward to fully retiring from all leadership posts," Mr. Jiang wrote, according to an official transcript of his letter. He said Mr. Hu "is fully qualified to take up this position."
Even by the strict standards of secrecy within the party, the decision about Mr. Jiang's fate was closely held. For a vast majority of the 70 million party members, not to mention the general public, there had been no indication that he was planning to retire, and his abrupt departure seems likely to increase the sense that the most important personnel decisions are made without broad consultation. Since the Communists defeated the Nationalists in a civil war and took control of China in 1949, the party has repeatedly failed to execute orderly successions. All three of the men chosen by Mao Zedong to succeed him were purged before they could consolidate power, two of them by Mao himself and the third by Deng Xiaoping after Mao's death in 1976.
Deng also anointed and then cashiered two successors. In the aftermath of the bloody crackdown on dissent in 1989, he elevated Mr. Jiang from the middling rank of Shanghai party chief to China's highest posts.
The most recent transition looked similarly compromised when Mr. Jiang maneuvered to keep control of the military in 2002. Party officials said Mr. Hu had been slated to inherit full power at that time and that his failure to control the military forced him to operate in Mr. Jiang's shadow.
But Mr. Jiang's retirement suggests that the party now operates more according to the consensus of its elite members rather than the whims of its most senior leader.
Moreover, Mr. Jiang did not appear to have extracted any special concessions as the price of his retirement. Notably, he failed to arrange for Vice President Zeng Qinghong to be elevated to the Central Military Commission. Party officials had said they expected Mr. Zeng, a longtime protégé and ally of Mr. Jiang's, to become either a regular member or a vice chairman of the commission.
On Sunday, Xu Caihou, a military officer in charge of propaganda work, was promoted to replace Mr. Hu as a vice chairman of the commission. He will serve with Cao Gangchuan, the defense minister, and Gen. Guo Boxiong.
The number of regular members of the commission was expanded to seven from four, adding representatives from the navy, air force and the unit in charge of China's nuclear arsenal.
Mr. Hu, a poker-faced bureaucrat who served most of his career in inland provinces and rarely if ever traveled outside China before he rose to the most senior ranks in the late 1990's, has sent mixed signals about how he intends to rule. He deftly handled the first big crisis of his leadership in the spring of 2003, when China faced the SARS epidemic that top health officials had initially covered up. Mr. Hu sacked two senior officials and ordered a broad mobilization to combat the disease, which was controlled within weeks.
He has sought to draw a contrast with Mr. Jiang's aristocratic image, making trips to China's poorest areas and shunning some conspicuous perks. He pledged to raise the incomes of workers and peasants and redirect more state spending to areas left behind in China's long economic boom.
"Use power for the people, show concern for the people and seek benefit for the people," Mr. Hu said in remarks early in his term as party chief. He has allowed state media to refer to him as a populist, though his rise through the ranks has not depended on popular support.
Little is known about Mr. Hu personally beyond a few random facts offered by the propaganda machine, including his enthusiasm for Ping-Pong and what is described as a photographic memory. In official settings, he is a much less colorful figure than Mr. Jiang, who crooned "Love Me Tender" at an Asian diplomatic gathering and was fond of quoting Jefferson and reciting the Gettysburg Address to visiting Americans.
It seems highly unlikely that Mr. Hu is a closet liberal. Editors and other journalists say he has tightened media controls. He has presided over a crackdown on online discussion by jailing people who express antigovernment views on the Internet.
"My general impression is that Hu is a Communist of the old mode," said Alfred Chan, professor of politics at Huron College in Canada, who is conducting a study of the new leadership. "His career has been totally shaped by the Communist system. I think many expectations of him are exaggerated because he works under the constraints of party discipline."
In a speech delivered last week, he referred to Western-style democracy as a "blind alley" for China. He has a plan for political change, but it mostly involves injecting some transparency and competitiveness within the single-party system to make officials police themselves better.
In foreign affairs, Mr. Hu deferred largely to Mr. Jiang. Mr. Jiang relished his role as a statesman and was proud of having built a nonconfrontational, sometimes even cordial relationship with the United States.
Mr. Hu is not expected to alter course substantially. But party officials say that he has tended to emphasize relations with China's neighbors and with Europe over ties with the United States and Japan.
He faces two major foreign policy tests that Mr. Jiang leaves unresolved. One involves North Korea, China's longtime ally, which American officials say is on the verge of becoming a full-scale nuclear power. Chinese officials worry that if Pyongyang formally goes nuclear, other Asian countries, notably Japan, could follow.
China is also deeply worried about how to deal with Taiwan under President Chen Shui-bian, who many here believe intends to move the island, which China claims as its sovereign territory, toward independence.
Mr. Jiang steered China toward a tougher rhetorical and military posture toward Taiwan, even as the Bush administration expanded military aid to the island. Mr. Hu has not shown any signs of changing course, but some analysts say he may experiment with a more flexible approach if he does not have to worry about having his nationalist credentials second-guessed by Mr. Jiang.
Mr. Hu and Mr. Jiang did not publicly spar. But there were signs that their relationship had become strained. Mr. Jiang rejected a framework for China's emergence as a great power that Mr. Hu supported. The policy framework, known by the slogan "peaceful rise," was dismissed by Mr. Jiang as too soft when China was threatening Taiwan with military force.
Mr. Hu and his prime minister, Wen Jiabao, have also had to battle internally to curtail wasteful state spending and cool the overheated economy. Some regional leaders are thought to have looked to Mr. Jiang as a counterweight to Mr. Hu because they see the elder leader as a champion of fast economic growth supported by heavy state investment.
"It may be that Hu will no longer have to worry that Jiang will contest his decisions, and that could make decision-making smoother," said Frederick Teiwes, an expert on elite politics at the University of Sydney.
Some people who have visited Mr. Jiang or spoken with his relatives say he has suffered health problems lately, offering one possible explanation for his unexpected retirement.
But Mr. Jiang is also thought to have come under heavy pressure within the party, and even within the military, to follow the example of Deng and withdraw from public life before health problems force him to do so. Mr. Hu also made a veiled call for Mr. Jiang to step aside when he lavished praise on Mr. Deng's decision to retire early during ceremonies to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the late leader's birth in August.
Chris Buckley contributed reporting for this article.
-------- iran
NEIGHBORS
Iran Is Helping Insurgents in Iraq, U.S. Officials Say
September 20, 2004
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/20iran.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have raised sharp complaints in recent days that Iran is providing support for the insurgency in Iraq, expressing concerns over what they say are Iran's attempt to shape Iraq's future.
Pentagon, State Department and military officials, describing intelligence reports that are fueling those concerns, say money, weapons and even a small number of fighters are flowing over the border from Iran to assist Shiite insurgents commanded by Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel cleric. But there is no consensus on the exact scale of Iranian activities.
Mr. Powell, in an interview with the editors of The Washington Times released by the State Department on Friday, said that Iran was "providing support" for the insurgency but that the extent of its influence was not clear. Most of the insurgency, he added, was "self-generating" and drawing support from indigenous sources.
Mr. Rumsfeld, speaking Tuesday during a visit to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said, "We have no doubt that the money comes in from Syria and Iran and undoubtedly other countries as well." He also cited reports that a shoulder-launched, antiaircraft missile had been smuggled into Iraq from Iran.
Bush administration officials, in addition to their charge that Iran is supporting the insurgency, described new concerns that Iran is financing medical clinics, hospitals and social welfare centers in Iraq, especially in areas where the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and American forces are not in control.
"Now that these folks are starting to provide services that should be provided by the Iraqi government, their purpose is to provide a political base to extend Iran's influence in Iraq," one administration official said.
Such support is seen in Washington as akin to Iran's support for Hezbollah, the organization in Lebanon that runs social welfare centers and carries out attacks on Israel.
The extent of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents has been debated within the administration since last spring, American officials said. While blaming outside support could be viewed as a convenient explanation for a tenacious insurgency, officials who spoke of the intelligence from Iraq made clear that the most serious threats to security there remained home-grown: Iraqis still loyal to Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Shiite militants and criminals, although the effects of foreign influence and foreign terrorists remain significant.
Administration and military officials say financial support from Iran is especially vital in allowing Mr. Sadr to challenge the new Iraqi leadership and the American military.
Mr. Sadr still can attract fighters from among the tens of thousands of disenfranchised, poor Shiite youths. But Pentagon and military officials say he has alienated the business class of Shiite moderates in southern Iraq, where the economy was disrupted by the fighting to dislodge his forces.
"He is not popular in Karbala and Najaf," said one senior military officer. So the money from Iran is critical in keeping Mr. Sadr's movement alive, officials say.
Weapons smuggled into Iraq from Iran are also a concern, but officials note that Iraq remains awash anyway in Baathist-era automatic rifles and domestic military ordnance.
In a new assessment of the changing face of the Iraqi insurgency, Pentagon and military officials now speak of what appears to be a small but worrisome alliance with Iraq's Sunni insurgents - mostly loyalists to Mr. Hussein's ousted government and Hussein-era military officers - who may be offering tactical combat training to the Sadr militia.
Senior military officers cite reports that a small number of Sunni insurgents have assisted Mr. Sadr's militia with explosives and sniper training.
Although the Sunni minority fears Shiite majority control of a unified Iraq, the new reports of cooperation indicate that the Sunni insurgency in a triangle of central and north-central Iraq is aided by Shiite fighters tying down thousands of American soldiers in the Najaf region.
"There are alliances of convenience," a partment official said.
Iraqi leaders, including Dr. Allawi and Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan, have contended in past public statements that Iran is providing weapons and material support to Mr. Sadr. Shiite clerics run Iran, and Shiites make up most of Iraq's population. But Dr. Allawi, asked in an interview with ABC News whether Iranians were causing trouble in Iraq, responded in a more tepid fashion.
"Well, we don't know," Dr. Allawi said, according to a transcript of the full interview provided by the ABC News program "This Week." "There are some people, some elements, who are coming and still are coming from Iran into Iraq." Dr. Allawi, who will travel to the United States this week in his first visit as acting prime minister, said the issue was of sufficient concern that he sent a deputy to meet with Iran's president and foreign minister.
For its part, Iran has denied accusations of interference in Iraq's affairs, repeatedly called for the withdrawal of all American-led forces from Iraq and officially invited Dr. Allawi to visit. Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency, reporting Saturday on the arrival of Iraq's first ambassador to Iran since 1980, when the two countries began an eight-year war, said Dr. Allawi's visit would be a "positive step."
Some Bush administration officials remain skeptical of the extent of Iranian actions. Even Mr. Powell has noted that, while some limited support for Mr. Sadr is likely, Iran would not necessarily want to support a group like Mr. Sadr's, which also sees itself as a rival to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq. Mr. Sistani was born in Iran and has strong links to its clerical leaders.
"There are reasons for them to cooperate with one another and there are strong reasons why there is a limit to that cooperation," Mr. Powell said in the Washington Times interview.
Mr. Powell also said the administration was concerned about support for Iraqi insurgents from Syria. That concern was raised with Syrian leaders on a recent trip to Damascus by two administration officials, William J. Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Peter W. Rodman, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs.
-------- iraq
Why We Cannot Win
by Al Lorentz
September 20, 2004
LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/lorentz1.html
Before I begin, let me state that I am a soldier currently deployed in Iraq, I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naïve young soldier, I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt. Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.
I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality.
When we were preparing to deploy, I told my young soldiers to beware of the "political solution." Just when you think you have the situation on the ground in hand, someone will come along with a political directive that throws you off the tracks.
I believe that we could have won this un-Constitutional invasion of Iraq and possibly pulled off the even more un-Constitutional occupation and subjugation of this sovereign nation. It might have even been possible to foist democracy on these people who seem to have no desire, understanding or respect for such an institution. True the possibility of pulling all this off was a long shot and would have required several hundred billion dollars and even more casualties than we've seen to date but again it would have been possible, not realistic or necessary but possible.
Here are the specific reasons why we cannot win in Iraq.
First, we refuse to deal in reality. We are in a guerilla war, but because of politics, we are not allowed to declare it a guerilla war and must label the increasingly effective guerilla forces arrayed against us as "terrorists, criminals and dead-enders."
This implies that there is a zero sum game at work, i.e. we can simply kill X number of the enemy and then the fight is over, mission accomplished, everybody wins. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have few tools at our disposal and those are proving to be wholly ineffective at fighting the guerillas.
The idea behind fighting a guerilla army is not to destroy its every man (an impossibility since he hides himself by day amongst the populace). Rather the idea in guerilla warfare is to erode or destroy his base of support.
So long as there is support for the guerilla, for every one you kill two more rise up to take his place. More importantly, when your tools for killing him are precision guided munitions, raids and other acts that create casualties among the innocent populace, you raise the support for the guerillas and undermine the support for yourself. (A 500-pound precision bomb has a casualty-producing radius of 400 meters minimum; do the math.)
Second, our assessment of what motivates the average Iraqi was skewed, again by politically motivated "experts." We came here with some fantasy idea that the natives were all ignorant, mud-hut dwelling camel riders who would line the streets and pelt us with rose petals, lay palm fronds in the street and be eternally grateful. While at one time there may have actually been support and respect from the locals, months of occupation by our regular military forces have turned the formerly friendly into the recently hostile.
Attempts to correct the thinking in this regard are in vain; it is not politically correct to point out the fact that the locals are not only disliking us more and more, they are growing increasingly upset and often overtly hostile. Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality.
We are told that the locals are not upset because we have a hostile, aggressive and angry Army occupying their nation. We are told that they are not upset at the police state we have created, or at the manner of picking their representatives for them. Rather we are told, they are upset because of a handful of terrorists, criminals and dead enders in their midst have made them upset, that and of course the ever convenient straw man of "left wing media bias."
Third, the guerillas are filling their losses faster than we can create them. This is almost always the case in guerilla warfare, especially when your tactics for battling the guerillas are aimed at killing guerillas instead of eroding their support. For every guerilla we kill with a "smart bomb" we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us.
We have fallen victim to the body count mentality all over again. We have shown a willingness to inflict civilian casualties as a necessity of war without realizing that these same casualties create waves of hatred against us. These angry Iraqi citizens translate not only into more recruits for the guerilla army but also into more support of the guerilla army.
Fourth, their lines of supply and communication are much shorter than ours and much less vulnerable. We must import everything we need into this place; this costs money and is dangerous. Whether we fly the supplies in or bring them by truck, they are vulnerable to attack, most especially those brought by truck. This not only increases the likelihood of the supplies being interrupted. Every bean, every bullet and every bandage becomes infinitely more expensive.
Conversely, the guerillas live on top of their supplies and are showing every indication of developing a very sophisticated network for obtaining them. Further, they have the advantage of the close support of family and friends and traditional religious networks.
Fifth, we consistently underestimate the enemy and his capabilities. Many military commanders have prepared to fight exactly the wrong war here.
Our tactics have not adjusted to the battlefield and we are falling behind.
Meanwhile the enemy updates his tactics and has shown a remarkable resiliency and adaptability.
Because the current administration is more concerned with its image than it is with reality, it prefers symbolism to substance: soldiers are dying here and being maimed and crippled for life. It is tragic, indeed criminal that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional.
It is all the more ironic that this un-Constitutional mission is being performed by citizen soldiers such as myself who swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, the same oath that the commander in chief himself has sworn.
September 20, 2004
Al Lorentz [send him mail] is former state chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas and is a reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq.
----
2 Senior Clerics Are Killed in Iraq; Hostage Deadline Passes
September 20, 2004
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/international/middleeast/20CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 - A prominent group of anti-American Sunni clerics said today that two senior members had been murdered in Baghdad in the previous 24 hours, raising questions about whether violence between Shiite and Sunni Arabs was on the rise.
The group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said one of the slain, Hazem Muhammad al-Zeidi, was kidnapped from the Sajjad mosque by gunmen after prayers on Sunday night. The mosque is in the middle of Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite neighborhood. Two bodyguards were also taken with Mr. Zeidi, said Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, deputy spokesman for the association.
Mr. Zeidi's body was found near his mosque today, and his two bodyguards were released, Sheikh Abdul-Jabbar said.
The other victim, Sheikh Muhammad Jadoa al-Janabi, was shot dead today as he entered a mosque for noon prayers, the sheikh added. The mosque was in the middle of the Baya neighborhood, a mostly Shiite area.
"We're not accusing anyone, but we want to address the criminals and tell them that you will not break our unity," the sheikh said in a prepared statement. "If you have killed Hazem, you will find thousands of Hazems."
One of two American engineers being held hostage was beheaded today by his kidnappers after a deadline came and went, according to news services and CNN. News reports said a videotape of the beheading was posted on the Internet.
The victim was identified by Reuters, The Associated Press and CNN as Eugene Armstrong.
On Saturday, a group called One God and Holy War, led by a Jordanian militant named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, released a video of the two Americans and a Briton, all blindfolded, and said the three hostages would be killed within 48 hours if the occupation forces did not release women held in prisons at Abu Ghraib and Um Qasr.
American military officials have said they are holding two Iraqi women suspected of working on weapons programs for Saddam Hussein, but that the two women are not at either prison.
On Sunday, a group identified as the Army of Ansar al-Sunna posted a grisly Internet video showing the beheadings of three Kurdish truck drivers. In a written statement, the group accused the leaders of the two main Kurdish parties of working for Jews and Christians and said it was teaching them a lesson.
More than 135 foreign workers have been kidnapped since the uprising in April. Most have been freed, but several have been killed. Among those murdered are Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean translator, both supposedly beheaded by One God and Holy War.
The whereabouts and conditions of two Italian humanitarian workers and two French journalists, taken hostage in separate incidents and by different groups, remain unknown.
Al Jazeera reported this evening that a militant group had released 18 members of the Iraqi National Guard. The group, the Brigades of Muhammad bin Abdullah, had demanded the release by the Iraqi government of Hazem al-Aaraji, a prominent aide to the firebrand anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Aides to Mr. Sadr asked the group today to release the national guardsmen, but also warned the captive Iraqi soldiers against working with the occupation.
The group to which the two slain Iraqi clerics belong, the Muslim Scholars Association, is the most organized political Sunni Arab organization in the country and has been outspoken in denouncing the American-led occupation and the interim Iraqi government. In April, during an uprising across western and southern Iraq, the group organized aid for the besieged insurgent-controlled city of Falluja and acted as a mediator to free foreign hostages kidnapped by various groups.
The association says it knows the military wing of the resistance but has no direct ties to fighters, though others contend it actually has enormous control over parts of the insurgency.
"We want to implement security procedures to safeguard mosques and clerics, but the Americans and the Iraqi government won't allow us to do that," Sheikh Abdul-Jabbar said. "They won't give us permits to carry weapons."
The American military said a soldier from the First Infantry Division was killed in an ambush near the town of Ash Sharqat while on patrol this afternoon. At least 1,033 American soldiers have died since the start of the war.
The military said today that it carried out an airstrike at 2 p.m. against "heavy construction equipment" being used by insurgents to build "fortified fighting positions" on the outskirts of Falluja. American officials did not give a casualty count, but The Associated Press quoted doctors in the city as saying two people were killed and three wounded. Those killed were municipal workers using a bulldozer, the doctors said.
Wire reports said a car bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing two people inside the car and a bystander.
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THE MILITARY
Effort to Train New Iraqi Army Is Facing Delays
September 20, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/20army.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - Three months into its new mission, the military command in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces has fewer than half of its permanent headquarters personnel in place, despite having one of the highest-priority roles in Iraq.
Only about 230 of the nearly 600 military personnel required by the headquarters, from lawyers to procurement experts, have been assigned jobs with the group, the Multinational Security Transition Command, military officials in Washington and Iraq said. One officer said the military's Joint Staff had given the armed services until Oct. 15 to fill the remaining jobs, but other officials said those people might not actually be in place until weeks later.
The effect of the headquarters' shortages on the actual training of Iraqi forces is hard to measure, military officials and reconstruction specialists say. But at the least, the gaps mean fewer people to lobby Washington for resources, coordinate with Iraqi officials and get money and equipment into the hands of trainers around the country. Despite recent attacks on Iraqi security forces and their facilities, American officials say Iraqis in search of work are still signing up in large numbers.
Senior military officials in Washington and in the Persian Gulf region say the delay in filling the headquarters jobs stems from the Pentagon's methodical - critics say plodding - approach to establishing a new organization with the extremely complex mission of preparing more than 250,000 members of the Iraqi police, border patrol, national guard and army units for duty.
"It takes time to build these new organizations and to man them," said one military official who has been briefed on the personnel requirements of the group's commander, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus. "The bureaucracy of the process is necessary but time consuming."
Frederick D. Barton, a senior adviser at the Center of Strategic and International Studies here and one of the authors of a new report that assesses Iraqi security and reconstruction measures, said, "The fact that Petraeus, who is really the poster boy for doing things quite well over there, is still building his team shows that this doesn't have that urgency that you've got to have."
Mr. Barton, a former senior United Nations official overseeing refugee affairs, disclosed the shortfalls at a seminar here on Iraq last week, citing an American official in Iraq as the source of the information. Military officials in Washington and Iraq later confirmed the statistics.
Chronic personnel shortages in the headquarters of L. Paul Bremer III, the former senior American administrator of Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former American ground commander in the country, hampered their ability to oversee reconstruction and security missions, military officials said.
To ensure that training and equipping Iraqi forces continues apace, General Petraeus, one the Army's most highly regarded officers, has gone to extraordinary lengths to borrow top lawyers, training experts and other specialists from the Pentagon, West Point, American commands worldwide and even from British forces in Iraq, to tide him over until his permanent staff arrives. He is also relying on civilian contractors, officials said.
General Petraeus's efforts are deemed so important that Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, are personally monitoring the command's staffing levels, and ensuring that it gets first-rate temporary help until permanent staff members arrive, military and Pentagon officials said. For example, one of General Myers's top military lawyers is on loan to General Petraeus for six months.
But some lawmakers and reconstruction specialists have criticized the Pentagon's approach, arguing that the train-and-equip mission in Iraq is too important and too urgent to be left to wend its way through the cumbersome military bureaucracy. Those officials say the Pentagon's handling of the headquarters staffing matter reflects serious flaws in how the administration is tackling the increasingly difficult problem of providing security and stability in Iraq.
"This is a damn joke," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee who met with American commanders in Iraq in late June, said in a telephone interview. "Petraeus and the military guys aren't the problem. They know what they need. But there's no sense of urgency in this administration."
Pentagon and State Department officials deny that accusation and insist that training and equipping Iraqi forces to assume more and more responsibility for their country's security is a top priority for the administration and necessary before the 140,000 American forces in Iraq can begin withdrawing.
These officials say the training of Iraqi forces is moving ahead well. "We're making good progress," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told soldiers last week at Fort Campbell, Ky. "They've had some bad setbacks when they weren't fully trained or fully equipped. But for the most part, they are doing a darned good job as their chain of command system is developed."
But on Sunday, four Senate Republicans - Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; John McCain of Arizona; and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - criticized the administration for the problems facing American troops in Iraq.
"We're in trouble, we're in deep trouble in Iraq," Mr. Hagel said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."
The training of Iraqi security forces has become a central issue ahead of the Iraqi election, scheduled for January, and the American election in November. Mr. Rumsfeld and General Myers said earlier this month that the American strategy to retake rebel-held strongholds in Iraq, especially in the so-called Sunni triangle north and west of Baghdad, would rely on training and equipping enough Iraqis to take a lead role.
But General Myers said the Iraqis would not be ready until the end of the year to join American forces in any assault against the rebel havens and then keep the peace afterward. Some administration officials express concern that if significant parts of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be impossible to hold a nationwide election that would be seen as legitimate.
The administration said last week that it would shift $1.8 billion from reconstruction projects to law enforcement and security, principally to train and equip an additional 80,000 police officers, border guards and soldiers, and build facilities for them.
As violence increases across Iraq, military officials here report growing tensions between Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and General Petraeus.
Dr. Allawi wants more Iraqi security forces and wants them more quickly, but General Petraeus, mindful of the Iraqis' woeful performance in April against an insurgents in Falluja and Najaf, wants to give them more training before they hit the streets. So far, General Petraeus's view has prevailed, officials said.
Dr. Allawi is said to be eager to get Iraqi troops into battle, and at a recent tour of the American-sponsored training facilities near Baghdad International Airport, he watched as Iraqi recruits drilled.
Evidently pleased, Dr. Allawi told the recruits that their work was just beginning. "There will be battles coming, and we will destroy the enemy," he told the Iraqi soldiers standing before him. "Whatever you need, let me know."
General Petraeus, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, assumed his new job in June. He works closely with the Iraqi Defense and Interior Ministries, as well as with the American commanders whose troops are conducting much of the training.
Last week, the Army Reserve announced that 800 soldiers from the 98th Division, based in Rochester, N.Y., would be sent to Iraq during the next nine weeks to assume a lead training role. It will be the unit's first overseas deployment since World War II.
General Petraeus inherited a smaller organization when he took over, and he has had to build a broader headquarters largely from scratch. Troops with particular specialties were identified for yearlong tours, and in some cases activated from the Reserve or National Guard.
Commanders in Iraq say General Petraeus's headquarters has provided crucial help in cutting through bureaucratic delays. "They were very helpful in getting us a battalion set of equipment that in the past would have taken much longer to get," Col. Michael Rounds, who commands the Army's Stryker brigade in northern Iraq, said in a telephone interview from Mosul.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi security forces are growing steadily. As late as this summer, Mr. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials frequently boasted that the Iraqi ranks had swelled to more than 200,000. Since early August, however, Mr. Rumsfeld has been careful to note that only about half of those forces are sufficiently trained and equipped.
American officials and commanders praised the performance of the Iraqi commando battalion, counterterrorist force and two so-called interventional battalions that fought last month in Najaf against loyalists to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
"Their capabilities are still uneven, but they're improving as we arm and equip them better, improve their infrastructure, give them additional training, and help them weed out the weak leaders," one American general said. "Nothing's quick in Iraq and nothing's easy."
Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Launches Airstrike in Gaza City
September 20, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/international/middleeast/20CND-MIDEAS.html
JERUSALEM, Sept. 20 - An Israeli airstrike tonight in Gaza City, the second in as many days, killed two militants in the Islamic faction Hamas and wounded at least six bystanders, Palestinians said.
The Israeli military said the attack was made on "a vehicle carrying two Hamas terrorists who were on their way to launch a rocket attack."
Israel has carried out frequent raids against Palestinian factions in Gaza, and has targeted Hamas in particular. Hamas is responsible for most of the rocket fire directed at Israeli communities just outside Gaza's perimeter fence.
The wounded included a father and three of his children who were near the street when the missile slammed into the jeep carrying the two men in the southern part of the city, Palestinian witnesses reported.
Palestinian security officials removed two automatic rifles from the mangled vehicle, The Associated Press reported, citing Palestinian security officials.
A day earlier, Israel killed killed another Hamas man, Khaled Abu Selmiya, in a similar airstrike in another part of Gaza City. Israel said Mr. Selmiya was instrumental in building Hamas' homemade Qassam rockets.
Hamas said it would respond to Mr. Selmiya's killing, and two rockets were fired today from Gaza toward Israeli towns just outside Gaza's fence. However, the rockets did not cause any casualties, Israeli authorities said.
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, told his cabinet on Sunday that the security forces would continue to hit at the Palestinian factions in the period before his planned withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza.
"We see the preparations, we see the organizing" by the Palestinians, Mr. Sharon told his ministers, according to a statement released by his office.
In the West Bank, Palestinian gunmen carried out the execution-style killings of two fellow Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israeli security forces.
One of the men, Fadel Odeh, was driven to a public square in the town of Tulkarm. Masked men placed him in the square and shot him repeatedly with automatic rifles in a killing witnessed by hundreds of people, including schoolchildren, according to Palestinian journalists in the town.
The bullet-riddled body of the second man, Amjad Ajaj, was found outside Tulkarm, the journalists said.
The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a faction loyal to Yasir Arafat, claimed responsibility for the killings in a leaflet. The statement alleged that the two men provided information to the Israelis that led to the killings of Palestinian militants in recent years.
The two men, both in their 20's, were seized about two weeks ago in their village of Saida, outside Tulkarm, residents said.
Palestinian militants have killed dozens of suspected collaborators during the past four years of Mideast fighting. Israel has a large network of informants and uses them to help track down Palestinian militants.
In another development, a senior Palestinian security official, Maj. Gen. Abdel-Razek al-Majaida, said the Palestinians would be sending 45 security officers to Egypt this week to receive training in preparation for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Egypt has offered to help train the Palestinian security forces, which are in disarray and have been unable to maintain order in Gaza. The plan initially called for the Egyptian trainers to come to Gaza, but with the ongoing violence in the territory, the Palestinians will be going to Egypt, at least for now.
--------
Palestinian police carrying weapons despite Israel's ban
haaretz.com
By Amos Harel
September 20, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479149.html
Senior Palestinian security officials informed Israel Defense Forces officers recently that they have authorized some of their men to carry guns, despite an Israeli prohibition on this. The Palestinian officials apparently fear the response of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah's military wing, more than they fear Israel's reaction to noncompliance with the ban.
About a month ago, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz agreed to the army's recommendation to enable a limited number of Palestinian policemen to carry revolvers in city centers, as part of an effort to enforce law and order there. However, the plan was suspended following strong objections from right-wing elements in Israel.
The IDF has continued to enforce the ban on bearing arms, and soldiers have been arresting Palestinians with weapons. Two policemen were arrested over the weekend for carrying Kalashnikov rifles, and several other similar incidents have occurred in recent weeks. In these cases, the policemen risked arrest and injury, because even soldiers who are not being shot at by armed Palestinian police are allowed to shoot at them. The policemen said they were willing to take the risk because without arms they would be helpless in dealing with militants.
The Palestinian security forces' desire to arm themselves in the West Bank strengthened during events during the last two months in Gaza, including the abduction of senior security officials at gunpoint by Fatah activists.
A senior military source told Haaretz that the IDF was trying to avoid clashes with Palestinian Authority officials when armed policemen are discovered. For example, the army refrains from reacting to the presence of policemen bearing weapons near the Muqata, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters.
Dahlan bodyguards
A few weeks ago the IDF learned that 17 armed men were seen in a neighborhood in north Ramallah. It transpired that they were the bodyguards of former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan, who had come to meet his one-time political partner, former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. The IDF did not intervene.
Last week the Al-Aqsa Brigades disrupted studies at the American University near Jenin, protesting the arrest of a senior university official by the PA's intelligence forces. They prevented thousands of students from entering the campus.
The clash was a manifestation of the power struggle that is going on between the Brigades and the PA over control of the university. The university's employees published large ads in the Palestinian media calling on Arafat to step in and solve the dispute.
Meanwhile, the IDF and Shin Bet security services are concentrating their efforts on fighting the terror networks in Hebron, Jenin and Nablus. Despite the recent arrests of more than 100 Hamas activists near Hebron, the organization's activity has not been stopped.
Due to the Hamas network's high level of compartmentalization, Shin Bet interrogators have extracted very little information from the men it has caught. The organization's leaders, among them Imad Kawasmeh, in Hebron, have not been arrested yet. The IDF suspects that the group is preparing another suicide bombing, following the double suicide attack in Be'er Sheva at the end of August.
The IDF intends to post a regular reserve brigade on the southern seam line, in an attempt to block the open areas that enabled the terrorists' passage to Be'er Sheva, in the absence of a fence.
Yesterday the Palestinians organized large demonstrations against the construction of the separation barrier in the Shekef area, west of Hebron. Four Border Police and two demonstrated were slightly injured.
So far the IDF and Shin Bet's efforts in the northern West Bank have shown some success. The head of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Jenin, Zakaria Zubeidi, announced last week that he intends to send a few suicide bombers to Israel, to avenge the killings of a number of militants.
The IDF deployed three more brigades in the West Bank during the Rosh Hashanah holiday in an attempt to thwart any potential terror attacks. This led to the arrest of a few men suspected of being involved in planning suicide bombings in recent days. However, warnings of terror attacks are still in effect, and it appears that the army will be expanding its activity in Jenin in the near future.
-------- mideast
U.S. Pressing Syria on Iraqi Border Security
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34119-2004Sep19.html
DAMASCUS, Syria, Sept. 19 -- The dire security conditions in Iraq have overshadowed many of the Bush administration's diplomatic priorities in Syria, prompting U.S. officials to focus their efforts here on enlisting the government's help in stabilizing the country's eastern border with Iraq.
The new appeal for greater Syrian cooperation on Iraq comes as the Bush administration is pressuring the four-year-old government of President Bashar Assad to end Syria's long-standing military presence in Lebanon, evict terrorist organizations from Syria and more closely monitor its banking system so militant groups cannot use it to launder money.
But in a meeting Sept. 11, Assad and a U.S. delegation led by William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, discussed those issues only briefly during more than two hours of talks, according to participants on both sides. Instead, according to participants, the meeting was dominated by U.S. concerns over Syria's desolate 450-mile border with Iraq, which Arab fighters easily cross on their way to fight American soldiers.
"This visit was driven by one thing and one thing only: Iraq," Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, who attended the meeting, said in an interview here. "They brought up their well-known list, and that took 10 minutes, then we brought up our list. But they came to discuss Iraq."
The meeting ended 15 months of near silence between the United States and the Assad government, a primary target of the Bush administration's push to encourage democratic reforms throughout the autocratic Middle East.
The administration accuses Syria of being a haven for terrorists, particularly militants battling Israel over its occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, and of having one of the most advanced chemical weapons programs in the region. Syria, for its part, considers the Bush administration beholden to the Israeli lobby in Washington and set on destabilizing the government in Damascus.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has accused Syria of failing to control its border with Iraq and of not ending its support for Hezbollah, as well as the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The United States classifies all three as terrorist organizations, but the Syrian government has backed them and some have offices in Damascus.
Relations worsened in recent weeks when Assad pressured Lebanon's cabinet to extend the term of President Emile Lahoud. Syria, which has had roughly 20,000 troops in Lebanon since 1976, handpicked Lahoud for the presidency. His term was to expire in November.
This month, the United States joined with France to push a resolution through the U.N. Security Council calling for all "foreign forces" to leave Lebanon, but that did not prevent the Lebanese parliament from voting to extend Lahoud's term for three years. Several Western diplomats here expressed dismay over the heavy-handed approach taken by Assad, who several weeks earlier had told a delegation of U.S. members of Congress that several other candidates would be acceptable to Syria.
"It became a matter of arm-wrestling over who was calling the shots in Lebanon: Syria or the United States," said Peter Ford, the British ambassador here. "Once it became that issue, Syria couldn't back down, even if it wanted to."
In May, President Bush imposed economic sanctions on Syria designed to limit trade and U.S. investment. Their impact so far has been minimal, according to Syrian officials and Western diplomats, because the two countries have developed few economic links. Almost all of the $500 million in direct U.S. investment in Syria is in the oil sector, booming now because of high prices on world markets.
"They will not likely hurt the Syrian economy," said Nabil Sukkar, managing director of the Syrian Consulting Bureau for Development and Investment, a private firm that advises foreign investors in the country. "If anything, unfortunately, they will likely hurt the process of economic reform by strengthening the hard-liners in the government opposed to them."
One of the most serious sanctions involves the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria, the country's largest financial institution. Bush accused the bank of laundering money for terrorist organizations and of holding $200 million in accounts belonging to former members of Saddam Hussein's government, funds that the United States wants returned to Iraq. The sanction requires U.S. financial institutions to sever all relationships with the Syrian bank, effectively ending its ability to perform most international transactions.
The measure, characterized by Syrian officials and Western diplomats here as the most severe, is beginning to limit the bank's operations. Abdul Rahman Attar, secretary general of the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce, said Western Union recently ended ties to the Commercial Bank of Syria. Several European banks have followed suit, shifting business to three newly licensed private banks that Assad allowed to open over the past year.
Later this month, a technical team from the U.S. Treasury Department is scheduled to arrive in Damascus to examine Syrian banking practices at the invitation of the government. Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador, said he believed the visit would dispel Washington's concerns. If so, he said, the sanction could be waived. But he added, "I don't want to be too optimistic."
"I'm not saying there was any actual progress between us" during the recent meetings with U.S. officials, Moustapha said. "They told us they do not believe we have the political will to cooperate; we told them we believe the same thing about them. But there is a political will to engage."
In an unusual move, the U.S. delegation included high-ranking Defense Department officials, including Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the former U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Participants in the meeting said their presence reflected the U.S. desire to broaden military cooperation along the Iraqi border, perhaps with new monitoring equipment or joint patrols involving Syrian, Iraqi and U.S. troops.
-------- nato
NATO Fails to Finalize Agreement on Iraq
Associated Press
By PAUL AMES
Sep 20, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=10&u=/ap/20040920/ap_on_re_eu/nato_iraq
BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO (news - web sites) envoys again failed Monday to finalize an agreement to expand the alliance's military training mission in Iraq (news - web sites), but officials said they expected a deal in the next two days.
"Some remaining details need to be ironed out," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. "We are very close now to consensus."
Ambassadors from the 26 allied nations met in a special session Monday to overcome objections from France and Belgium that blocked an agreement last week on widening the mission to set up a military academy for Iraq's fledgling armed forces.
Their concerns focused on how to share out the costs of the mission, details of command arrangements and how to protect the about 300 NATO instructors expected to deploy.
Appathurai insisted there was broad political support for getting the mission up and running soon.
"What remains is clarification," he told reporters. "Everyone is singing from the same songbook."
Officials at NATO headquarters said they expected an agreement by Wednesday, when the ambassadors hold their regular weekly meeting.
Both opponents of last year's U.S.-led war to unseat Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), France and Belgium want to ensure the bulk of funding for the training mission is covered by participating nations.
The French and Belgians - along with Germany and Spain - have said they won't send soldiers to join the NATO mission.
They also want to define the training mission's relationship with the much wider U.S. mission to rebuild a new 260,000-strong Iraqi army, and clarify how the U.S.-led coalition force in Iraq will protect the NATO instructors.
Ambassadors from the 26 allies moved close to an agreement on the training mission last Wednesday, after France and the United States narrowed differences. But the French and Belgian governments raised objections when a draft plan was sent to capitals for final approval ahead of a deadline on Friday.
Officials played down the significance of the delay, stressing that all sides were eager to avoid a repeat of the crisis in the alliance in early 2003 when France - backed at first by Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg - held up alliance support to Turkey for several weeks in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi repeated his appeal for the alliance to help build up the new Iraqi armed forces.
"Iraq is ... in need of help in expertise, training, and equipment, and we call upon NATO and the European Union (news - web sites) to do their utmost to assist," he wrote in Monday editions of the London daily The Independent.
NATO sent about 40 soldiers to Iraq last month to set up the training mission after France dropped earlier objections to sending any instructors.
However, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie last week repeated Paris' concerns about the mission, saying it would be better to carry out the training of Iraqi officers outside the country and insisting any training in Iraq should be "as low profile as possible."
Although several NATO allies have individually sent troops to join the U.S.-led coalition, objections from France and Germany had previously prevented the alliance from taking a collective role in Iraq, apart from offering logistical support to a Polish-led multinational force of 6,000 troops operating in the center of the country.
-------- pakistan / india
Toll Rising on Pakistani Frontier
Backlash Builds as Musharraf Confronts Foreign Militants and Local Tribesmen
By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34160-2004Sep19?language=printer
WANA, Pakistan -- In the hidden ravines and forbidding, dust-colored mountains of a remote border region near Afghanistan, about 25,000 Pakistani troops are battling hundreds of well-armed foreign militants and Pakistani tribesmen in an increasingly violent confrontation that is imposing growing costs on civilians and prompting warnings of wider unrest.
The government has stepped up the intensity of its attacks in the tribal zone of South Waziristan after a series of failed attempts this year to negotiate the surrender of the foreigners, identified by U.S. and Pakistani officials as being allied with al Qaeda, most of them from Chechnya and Uzbekistan. The ethnic Pashtun population of the region has traditionally paid little heed to dictates from Islamabad.
On Sept. 9, for example, an airstrike and subsequent assault by helicopter gunships on a fortified compound in the Dila Khula district of South Waziristan killed as many as 100 people, including foreign militants and some noncombatants, according to foreign diplomats and reports by Pakistani journalists based in the region.
The militants and their local supporters have struck back with a vengeance, staging daily ambushes and rocket attacks on Pakistani paramilitary and army forces, according to the same sources, who said scores of soldiers and officers have been killed since the army began its offensive in March.
This month, a small force led by a local tribesman -- said by local news reports to have been recently released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- cut a major road between South and North Waziristan. The army reopened the route several days ago, according to Maj. Gen. Niaz Khattak, the division commander in the region.
Although the army does not disclose official casualty figures, it is clear that the costs to the government are mounting: On Saturday, foreign and Pakistani journalists who were flown by helicopter to the army's main base in Wana, the commercial and administrative center of South Waziristan, saw wounded, heavily bandaged soldiers being carried off an ambulance and loaded aboard another helicopter for evacuation.
"When you're operating against such a force -- a well-trained force, well-equipped, technologically capable, with resources, in treacherous areas, mountainous areas, one must expect casualties," Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president and army chief of staff, said in an interview last week. But he added, "Until we meet success, the operation will go on."
The army's newly aggressive posture has been welcomed by the U.S. and Afghan governments, both of which have been urging Pakistan to act more forcefully against foreign militants, some of whom are Arab members of al Qaeda, as well as Taliban fighters who use the border area as a refuge and base for attacks against U.S. and Afghan troops.
But the offensive has sparked a political backlash in the tribal region as well as among religious parties that wield considerable influence in the government. Critics of the operation accuse Musharraf of subordinating national interests to those of the United States, warning of a potential insurrection in a traditionally lawless realm where no household is complete without a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an ample supply of bullets.
Several months ago, a group of clerics associated with the religious parties issued a fatwa, or religious edict, asserting that government troops killed in the Waziristan operation should not be accorded Muslim burial rites. "People in Waziristan have now taken up arms against this senseless operation," said Maulana Mairajuddin Khan, a member of parliament from South Waziristan, disputing government charges that local tribesmen are aiding the foreigners. "It has nothing to do with the propaganda that the locals want to protect the foreigners. Why the hell would we protect foreigners at the cost of our lives and livelihood?"
Nisar Wazir, a school principal in Wana, said in a telephone interview that he has "documented nine cases of indiscriminate shooting and aerial bombings against the targets where only locals were present." He also criticized government economic sanctions against local tribes that he said have led to food shortages in the region.
Khattak and army officials say the government has acted with restraint, recalling its offers of an amnesty for foreign militants who turn themselves in and register with authorities. "What bigger concession can there be?" Khattak said. But he said the militants and their Pashtun supporters gave the army no choice but to toughen its approach after they spurned the amnesty deal and murdered local officials; the bodies of two of them were mutilated and dumped in a well last spring.
Khattak said the army takes extreme care to avoid civilian casualties, although he acknowledged that "we also have problems of differentiating between miscreants and peace-loving citizens."
Assessing the truth of the situation in South Waziristan is extremely difficult because of its remoteness and inaccessibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid groups have been denied entry to the region, on the grounds that the army is engaged in a law enforcement operation and not armed conflict as defined by the Geneva Conventions, according to an official from an aid agency who spoke on condition of anonymity. Foreign journalists also have been barred from traveling independently to the tribal areas, although the army occasionally escorts them there on tours, as it did on Saturday.
Such visits are carefully controlled. After a briefing by Khattak at the army's heavily fortified compound in Wana, army officials accompanied the journalists on a short helicopter ride to the Shakkai valley, about 15 miles north of Wana, to inspect the ruins of a compound that was said to have been used by foreign militants before it was destroyed by a precision airstrike in June.
Local army commanders then introduced a handful of Pashtun residents of the valley, who confirmed that the compound had indeed been used by foreign militants under the protection of two local tribesmen. Once the army officials were out of earshot, however, one of the tribesmen, Noor Murad Aidi, expressed anger over the army's tactics in an interview with a Pakistani journalist from the private Geo television network.
"This is an oppressor army," Aidi complained, adding that the June attack had "killed innocent people."
Pakistani authorities have estimated that as many as 600 foreign militants are hiding in the border area, mostly in South Waziristan, although military officials said Saturday that the number could have been whittled down by as much as half. Most are said to have sought refuge in the area after the collapse of the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan in late 2001. Khattak said the militants range in age from 18 to 35 and described them as well-trained, well-educated and highly motivated. Many are equipped with sophisticated arms as well as binoculars, Thuraya satellite phones and hand-held satellite navigation devices, he said.
After Khattak's briefing, army officials displayed equipment and supplies -- including heavy-caliber ammunition, Arabic-language explosives manuals and desktop computers -- recovered from a basement discovered this month under one of the compounds destroyed in June in the Shakkai valley.
Pakistani officials said that they moved troops into South Waziristan earlier this year after the United States provided Musharraf with irrefutable evidence that the region was serving as a base for launching terrorist operations in Afghanistan and the major cities of Pakistan. "There was no way we could have disputed the intelligence provided by the U.S. in form of satellite imagery and other material," said an intelligence official in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes South Waziristan. "In every case, we made our own independent confirmation, and each time, the precision of the American information shocked us."
Khan reported from Karachi.
-------- space
Soviet Scientists Planned "Invulnerable" Military HQ on the Moon - Paper
MosNews
20.09.2004
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/09/20/moonbase.shtml
In the days of the Cold War Soviet commanders and their best scientists were working on a project to build military headquarters on the Moon, the Novaya Gazeta weekly reports. The paper writes that the lunar base project was developed thirty years ago and was only abolished because of its enormous cost.
The newspaper cited Aleksandr Yegorov, deputy general designer of the General Machine Building Design Bureau (the name of the bureau suggests that it deals with top secret military projects - MosNews) as saying that he personally took part in the development of the lunar base project.
Soviet scientists considered the Moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it.
The designer also said that the USA had also developed a lunar base project and the Soviet scientists had been aware of these plans.
Yegorov said that the Soviet Union had planned to put two spaceships into orbit and assemble them into a single station that would fly to the Moon. At first the lunar settlers were to live in moving shelters and later a stationary base was to be built.
Crews of four cosmonauts were to spend up to one year on the moon. To make the base habitable it would have had been furnished with water and air purification systems and even a special space greenhouse.
The project was abolished only due to its enormous cost, Yegorov said. According to him, the Soviet project was "tens of times" more expensive than the Apollo project of the United States which cost $34 billion.
-----
America Must Reach For Space Dominance: Teets
"Even though we have superiority in many aspects of space capability, we don't have space dominance, and we don't have space supremacy. The fact is, we need to reach for that goal. It is the ultimate high ground." - Mr Teets
by Master Sgt. Scott Elliott
Air Force News Washington DC (SPX)
Sep 20, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04z.html
On the anniversary of the first man-made object reaching the moon, the Department of Defense's executive agent for space urged America to strive for dominance in space.
Undersecretary of the Air Force Peter B. Teets, who also serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, used the occasion of a Soviet Union mission to highlight what he believes to be the three keys for the United States to achieve space dominance.
"I believe that, today, it is fair to say the United States is the leading space nation in the world, but it certainly hasn't always been that way," he said Sept. 14 at the Air Force Association's 2004 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition here.
"Forty-five years ago today, the Soviet probe Luna 2 reached the moon. It didn't land on the moon; it (crashed). But, it was still the first man-made object to touch the surface of another world," Mr. Teets said.
That probe, launched Sept. 12, 1959, hit the moon near the Sea of Serenity, where Apollo 15 touched down 15 years later. The relation between that Soviet probe and current U.S. space supremacy lies in America's approach to space research and technology, Mr. Teets said.
"At the time, the United States and the Soviet Union were taking their first faltering steps on the road to space," he said. "We called it the 'Space Race,' and it was not a foregone conclusion that we would win."
The Soviets chose to "take the low road," in terms of technology, while the Americans opted for the "high road," Mr. Teets said. The United States used finely tuned, one-of-a-kind spacecraft and rockets that performed very well, but were extremely delicate, he said.
"(The Soviets) took a lower-tech road ... in some ways it was like a brute-force road, with mass-produced spacecraft and rockets that were less sophisticated but were very much more operationally responsive," he said.
Mr. Teets said it is a mistake to assume that one approach is always better than the other.
"Even though we have superiority in many aspects of space capability, we don't have space dominance, and we don't have space supremacy," he said. "The fact is, we need to reach for that goal. It is the ultimate high ground."
Mr. Teets said the United States needs strong and enduring commitments in three areas to meet that goal: developing a professional space cadre, having a strong and well-funded industrial base, and maintaining a position at the leading edge of space technology.
"The first, and unquestionably the most important, is the development and maintenance of a strong professional cadre of military and civilian government personnel," he said.
"If we do that right, I believe the rest will fall into place," he said. "If we do that, we'll have professional acquirers, people who have experience in the development of leading-edge high-tech systems, extremely well-qualified and trained military officers who can operate the systems that give us such an edge in our warfighting capabilities.
"There can be no doubt that we enjoy the benefits today, in major ways, of our national security space systems," Mr. Teets said.
The second area of attention is the space technology industrial base, he said.
"We need a strong and consistently funded industrial base able to produce quality space systems and products," Mr. Teets said.
"We can't have a rollercoaster effect where we're asking our industrial partners to build up one year only to crater the next year. We can't have them developing the talented work force necessary for production of high-tech space systems, and ... the following year ask them to lay those same people off.
"It's important for us to have a certain amount of consistency and constancy in our investments in important space systems," he said.
Mr. Teets referred to recent problems with the acquisition system to illustrate his point:
"There was a period of time ... when we let some of the industrial base start to wither. At the same [time]," he said, "people who had been involved in the space system for many years started to take retirement, so it kind of [had] a double whammy effect."
The final piece needed to achieve space dominance, Mr. Teets said, is continued governmental investment in leading-edge space-system research in technology.
"We are at the forefront of space technology. We need to remain there," he said.
"I know certain European countries have picked up the challenge and started to invest more heavily in leading-edge technology; certainly China has shown some of the same inclinations. We need to maintain a strong and vital space system research and technology endeavor going forward. That's what will keep us on the leading edge."
-------- spies
C.I.A. Nominee Says Iraq-Al Qaeda Link Was Overstated
September 20, 2004
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/20CND-INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican nominated to be director of central intelligence, said today that some prewar statements by senior Bush administration officials may well have overstated available intelligence about the threat posed by Iraq.
Under pointed questioning from a Senate Democrat, Mr. Goss said he agreed that statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, to Al Qaeda and to an active nuclear weapons program appeared to have gone beyond what was spelled out in intelligence reports at the time.
Mr. Goss said he did not believe anyone in the Bush administration had "deliberately mischaracterized or misused intelligence" in the prelude to war in Iraq. But he said that if confirmed, he would feel an obligation to correct misstatements or misinformation - though he said might not do so publicly.
At a minimum in such situations, Mr. Goss said he would feel obliged to ask a policymaker "what is, in fact, the basis for that statement."
Each of the examples on which Mr. Goss commented were raised by Senator Carl M. Levin, the Michigan Democrat. They included a December 2001 statement in which Mr. Cheney said that a meeting in Prague between one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi official had been "pretty well confirmed." Also, statements by Ms. Rice in September 2002 saying that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs" and that "we know" that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.
All three of those assertions have since been discredited, and recent reports by the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee have suggested that all three exceeded the intelligence available at the time.
In each of the three cases, Mr. Goss cautioned that he did not know what information Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice had used as the basis for their statements. He said that he himself still believed that Iraq had provided some unspecified training to Al Qaeda, though he declined to elaborate in the public hearing.
But he said of Mr. Cheney's public assertion about Mr. Atta and the meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague, for example: "I do believe that's a case that would put me into action if confirmed."
By law, a director of central intelligence is required to submit independent judgments to the president. The idea, therefore, that an intelligence chief would correct policymakers has a long precedent.
Earlier this year, George J. Tenet, then still serving as intelligence chief, told Congress that he had corrected Bush administration officials, including Mr. Cheney, about several statements - including those linking Mr. Atta and the meeting in Prague.
But coming just six weeks before Election Day, Mr. Goss's statements could offer a new foundation for Democratic criticism that Mr. Bush and his advisers overstated the threat posed by Iraq before the war. Democrats failed this year to persuade Republicans to include questions related to the administration's use of intelligence in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq that was completed in July.
Having spent nearly 16 years in Congress, Mr. Goss is an astute politician, and he steered clear of any overt criticism of Mr. Bush or his senior aides.
At the same time, however, he seemed determined to reassure Democrats that he would put partisan politics behind him if confirmed, and he vowed to be an objective, independent and nonpartisan intelligence chief.
The Senate panel scheduled a vote on Mr. Goss's nomination for Tuesday morning. Among Democrats on the panel, only Senator John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, the vice chairman, and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, in addition to Mr. Levin, attended today's morning-long session.
That alone suggested that Mr. Goss' nomination was facing little real opposition. Congressional officials from both parties said they expected that Mr. Goss would win an overwhelming majority from the panel, clearing the way for him to win confirmation from the full Senate, possibly later this week.
--------
US capital a magnet for foreign spies
Alleged spying by Taiwan and Israel indicates a broader trend, experts say: Espionage, even by 'friends,' is rising.
By Faye Bowers
September 20, 2004
The Christian Science Monitor
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0920/p03s02-usfp.html
WASHINGTON - A highly respected US State Department official was arrested last week, suspected of passing secret government documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents. And earlier this month, word leaked that the FBI is investigating a Pentagon official for possibly providing classified information to Israel.
The cases are alarming enough, in that two men in sensitive positions may be betraying their country. But together they also highlight one less well-known fact: Espionage against the US is increasing, rather than decreasing,in the post-cold-war era, experts say. Because the US has become the sole dominant military and economic power in the world, friends and foes alike want access to more information than the US readily shares with them. "There is an ever-present threat of foreign intelligence collection against the US," says a US law enforcement official. "And it's not only the traditional, like military capabilities. It's foreign policy planning, and there is a vast interest in patent materials, not only for machines, but for research."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly updates a closely held list of the countries that threaten national security due to espionage operations. "The top five countries on that list are China, Israel, Russia, France, and North Korea. Others include Cuba, Pakistan, and India," says an official close to the FBI.
The latest unclassified information - a 2000 report prepared for Congress by the National Counterintelligence Center - lists the "most active collectors" against the US as China, Japan, Israel, France, Korea, Taiwan, and India. And, experts say, Al Qaeda conducts espionage here as well.
Of course, the US isn't above snooping on its friends and foes either. Just a couple of years ago, France deported two Americans accused of conducting espionage there.
Arthur Hulnick, a professor of international relations at Boston University, former CIA official, and author of a new book, "Keeping us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security," says a student recently asked him, "Do we ever spy on our friends?"
"Only when we have to," Professor Hulnick responded, tongue in cheek. "Of course we do," he adds. "Why wouldn't we do it, if they don't give us what we want? And why wouldn't they do it to us?"
Government officials and outside experts say foreign agents focus on four primary areas: US military capabilities, foreign policy strategy, technological expertise, and business plans. The first two are the most common, according to the US law-enforcement official. But he says that foreign intelligence agents don't target just people who work at the Pentagon. They try to make inroads with contractors - those responsible for, say, a ship or airplane. Or subcontractors - those responsible for small parts that make up the larger ships, airplanes, and tanks.
The FBI carries out a number of sting operations in these areas. But many of them never become public. "They're just not prosecutable," the law enforcement agent says. "The persons involved are usually outside the jurisdiction of the court because they have diplomatic immunity."
In these cases, they are asked to leave the US and are prevented from reentering. Another problem, according to the law-enforcement official, is that when the cases involve highly classified military activity or industrial espionage, the government and private sector choose not to prosecute. "They don't want to exacerbate the situation by publicizing it, revealing trade secrets in litigation" he says.
The FBI says it has a large counterintelligence unit, but the numbers of agents involved and numbers of ongoing cases are classified. And FBI counterintelligence teams routinely watch employees of foreign embassies.
Still the recent arrest and leak of another possible infraction indicate progress is being made.
Donald Keyser, a career State Department employee and expert on US-Chinese-Taiwanese relations, was released on a $500,000 bond last week after he was officially charged with lying about an unsanctioned trip to Taiwan.
According to an affidavit filed in the US District Court in Alexandria, Va., FBI agents followed Mr. Keyser this summer and saw him pass documents to two Taiwanese agents. The court documents also said Mr. Keyser made an unsanctioned trip to Taiwan after official visits to China and Japan. He never reported the trip to Taiwan to his superiors, and allegedly later lied about it.
"If it indeed turns out to be true, it's a classic approach," says Hulnick. "The way you entice someone is to ask for documents. First you ask for something simple, like a phone book. It doesn't have to be secret. And little by little, you begin asking for the good stuff."
Hulnick goes on to say that it's totally understandable that Taiwan would want to know US aims toward China and Taiwan.
"We don't have relations with Taiwanese technically, so they want to make sure we're not selling them out to the People's Republic of China," he says. "The best way to do that is to get somebody on the inside who is willing to cooperate."
The other FBI investigation apparently resulted from a FBI routine surveillance of a senior Israeli diplomat. The bureau is now investigating a Pentagon employee and officials from an Israeli lobby for possibly handing a highly classified foreign-policy document about Iran to Israeli officials. That investigation has not yet resulted in charges, but officials say the scope of that probe has broadened.
--------
CIA nominee Goss says he regrets partisan statements
Knight Ridder Newspapers
By Frank Davies
Sep. 20, 2004
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9715520.htm
WASHINGTON - Rep. Porter Goss moved closer Monday to confirmation as CIA director after he apologized for past partisanship and promised to protect intelligence from political pressures from the Bush administration.
Goss, a Florida Republican who's chaired the House Intelligence Committee for seven years, finished his second day of testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Several Democrats questioned Goss sharply again about his ability to be independent, objective and nonpartisan.
Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee would vote Tuesday on Goss' confirmation, and it appeared that some Democrats may oppose him. But Roberts said he expects the committee, and later the full Senate, to confirm easily the 65-year-old one-time CIA agent.
President Bush nominated Goss in August to replace George Tenet, who resigned in June shortly before several in-depth reports criticized the CIA for intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq.
Roberts, who served with Goss in the House of Representatives, said he worked with many House members who were very partisan - and Goss wasn't one of them.
"This man is not part of that posse," Roberts told the committee. "He doesn't ride with the partisan posse."
But Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia recounted how Goss attacked Democrats, including Sen. John Kerry, for undercutting the intelligence budget and national security.
"I'm guilty of slipping into some partisan comment in areas of national security, and I'm sorry that I have," Goss said at the end of his testimony. "I've been wrong, and certainly I regret sometimes being sucked into those things."
Two other Senate Democrats, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Carl Levin of Michigan, said they doubted whether Goss could be independent and push for reform of the intelligence community.
Goss said he wouldn't hesitate to correct the misuse of intelligence, though not necessarily in public. And he pledged to insulate CIA analysts from political pressure.
"Undue outside influence has got to be kept out of it, there's no question about it," Goss said.
He added that he would even consider putting "a sign on the door" for CIA analysts: "If you think you're being pressured or somebody's interfering with your product unduly, you are invited to call your friendly director."
Republicans on the committee uniformly praised Goss' record, and Roberts suggested that Democratic senators were engaging in partisanship with some of their criticisms.
"If people don't understand that this is a partisan outfit in Congress, they're either very naive or very disingenuous or have their head lodged firmly where there is no sun or light," Roberts said.
-------- un
Russia opposes sanctions on Sudan, eyes arms sales
(Reuters)
20 Sep 2004
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20133408.htm
MOSCOW, Sept 20 - Russia defended on Monday its decision not to back a U.N. resolution that threatens Sudan with sanctions if it does not halt violence in the Darfur region, and said it hoped to increase arms exports to the African state.
The Foreign Ministry said Russia had abstained in Saturday's U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution on Sudan because the threat of oil sanctions was not the best way to ensure peace in Darfur, in southwestern Sudan.
The Council adopted the resolution, which also called for an international probe into abuses including genocide, although China, Pakistan and Algeria joined Russia in abstaining.
"We think that the threat of sanctions contained in the resolution with regard to Sudan is not the best way at all to motivate Khartoum to fulfil its obligations to the U.N.," a ministry statement said.
"In order to solve complex crises, the international community has at its disposal diplomatic instruments that have demonstrated their effectiveness."
Russia has been criticised for supplying warplanes to Sudan, where Arab militias are attacking African villagers in the Darfur region and displaced villagers say government aircraft have bombed their homes.
Russia's arms export agency said it wanted to do more business with Sudan and other African nations.
"One of the key points of the Rosoboronexport Corporation marketing strategy is the extension of the volumes, diversity and geography in defence sales to African nations," the agency said in a statement.
It added it was seeking contracts to refit outdated Soviet-era equipment sold to countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda.
"As Russian aviation equipment delivered to African nations requires repair, overhaul and modification, Rosoboronexport has been offering various upgrade packages," the agency said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Ohio Imam Gets Two Months in Prison
Associated Press
September 20, 2004
http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&aid=920020557_5302_lead_story
AKRON, Ohio - The leader of Ohio's largest mosque was sentenced Monday to two months in federal prison and four months of house arrest for lying about his connections to terrorist groups when he applied for U.S. citizenship.
Palestinian-born Fawaz Damra, imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, could have received up to five years in prison on the charge of obtaining U.S. citizenship in 1994 by providing false information.
Prosecutors had requested the maximum sentence, but U.S. District Judge James S. Gwin said he did not view the citizenship application offense as a terrorism issue the way prosecutors had tried to suggest.
Sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders called for probation to six months in prison.
Prosecutors also urged Gwin to immediately revoke Damra's citizenship, but Damra's attorneys asked him Gwin not to take such a step until after the appeal, which could take years. Gwin did not immediately rule on the matter.
Prosecutors say the law requires deportation for such a crime, but said they would not seek it until after Damra has finished with appeals.
Gwin allowed Damra to remain free on bond. He said the imam could start serving his sentence after the Muslim holiday of Ramadan ends in November.
Damra, 41, who also was fined $5,000, stood upright with his hands folded in front on him, wiping his face with a handkerchief while the sentence was announced.
Damra was convicted June 17. The government said that when Damra applied for citizenship, he concealed ties to Afghan Refugee Services, the Islamic Committee for Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, groups the U.S. government classifies as terrorist organizations.
The defense, which called no witnesses, said Damra may have supported certain groups, but he did not consider himself a member or affiliate of them.
At the trial in June, prosecutors showed video footage of Damra and other Islamic leaders raising money for an arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has been listed as a major terrorist group by the State Department since 1989.
Jurors also were shown footage in which Damra called Jews "the sons of monkeys and pigs" during a 1991 speech and said "terrorism and terrorism alone is the path to liberation" in a 1989 speech.
Gwin earlier rejected Damra's request for acquittal based on what the defense called insufficient evidence.
Throughout the trial and afterward, Damra has continued to lead the mosque in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, where about 800 or 900 people attend Friday prayer services and up to 5,000 come on holidays.
Some mosque members unsuccessfully tried to oust him. Dozens of other members have supported the imam during his legal woes, including some who wrote Gwin asking for a lenient sentence.
--------
Judge Declines to Dismiss U.S. Airman Spy Case
Reuters
Sep 20, 2004
By Adam Tanner
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040920/us_nm/security_usa_halabi_dc_3
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) - A military judge denied a motion to dismiss spy charges against a Syrian-American airman on Monday despite defense arguments the government had failed to make a case over the past year.
Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi, 25, is accused of carrying letters, jail maps and other documents from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are held.
Halabi, now confined to Travis Air Force Base north of San Francisco, had spent 10 months in prison pending trial. Fourteen of the 30 original charges against him have already been dropped, as has the threat of the death penalty for aiding and abetting the enemy.
There were indications later that the case against him may change again after the military announced the general overseeing the proceedings was to hold an unscheduled meeting on the issue late on Monday.
"They're discussing a number of administrative issues that could result in the withdrawal of charges," defense attorney Donald Rehkopf told reporters.
A military official said the purpose of the meeting was not to drop charges, although it was not clear whether some espionage charges at the core of the case would be amended or altered when court resumes on Tuesday.
Last week, the U.S. Army said it had dropped all charges against Army Reserve Col. Jackie Duane Farr, who served as an intelligence officer at Guantanamo and had been accused of trying to take classified material from the base.
Charges against a third U.S. service member in connection with suspected security breaches at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain, have also been dropped.
Since arresting Halabi in July 2003, the government has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks in the case, including most recently the admission that the detainee letters that Halabi handled were not classified after all. His lawyers argue the government has dragged its feet on reviewing the classification of key documents to delay the case.
PROSECUTION 'FAILED MISERABLY'
Defense attorney Kim London made an impassioned plea for the military judge to drop charges. "They have failed miserably," she said. "Fraud was perpetuated by the government when they said they were prepared to proceed to trial."
"The government stubbornly resists the truth."
Judge Barbara Brand ruled at the pretrial hearing that Halabi had not been denied a speedy trial, the latest in a series of rulings this year against dismissing the high-profile case. "There is no undue prejudice to the accused," she said.
The ruling came after the case was delayed several times last week as lawyers and the judge held a series of meetings behind closed doors.
Halabi, 25, a supply clerk, worked as an Arabic language translator at Guantanamo, where suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are held, between November 2002 and July 2003. Although not a trained linguist, the military needed fluent Arabic speakers to help run the prison camp.
Halabi's father, Ibrahim, 73, a U.S. citizen who lives in Michigan, appeared in court for the first time on Monday dressed in a white Muslim cap and carrying a metal cane.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Pentagon Sets Up HQ to Defend Capital
September 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Capital-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has established a new military headquarters whose mission is to defend the nation's capital and to assist civil authorities in responding to a terrorist attack here.
The Joint Forces Headquarters for the National Capital Region is based at Fort McNair, a small Army post in Washington on the banks of the Anacostia River whose fortifications did not stop the British from invading in 1814 and burning the White House and Capitol.
The idea of the new Joint Forces Headquarters is not to fend off foreign armies but to prevent if possible -- and respond to, if not -- surprise attack by terrorists using nuclear, chemical, biological or other unconventional means, Army Maj. Gen. Galen B. Jackman said Monday.
``There are vulnerabilities in the nation's capital,'' he said without being specific.
One of those vulnerabilities is the proximity of the White House, the Capitol and other government buildings to commercial air traffic, as shown by the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.
Jackman is commander of the new headquarters. The deputy commander is Rear Adm. Jan Gaudio, who also is commandant of the Naval District of Washington, which provides support services to naval installations within a 100 mile radius of the Pentagon.
Jackman and Gaudio briefed reporters Monday about the arrangement and the new operations center, where they can monitor a broad range of information from the FBI and other government agencies.
The new outfit also has a mobile command center, a $3.2 million truck chocked full of computer, telephone, TV and other communications to enable Jackman or others to travel to the scene of an emergency and remain in touch with the secretary of defense as well as other agencies.
The idea is to improve the military's ability to coordinate a post-attack response, as well as complicate a potential attacker's planning by varying the placement and visibility of security measures, Jackman said.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, the military organizations in Washington focused largely on ceremonial activities like a presidential inauguration, as well as installation management.
Now they are being asked to focus also on homeland defense. Even the U.S. Army Band, for example, is now trained to provide administrative medical support in the event of an attack.
There is a wide range of military forces based in the Washington area, but none in large numbers. The Army has its 3rd Infantry Regiment, the famed ``Old Guard'' best known for sentry duty at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as the Army's 12th Aviation Battalion, which has 18 Black Hawk helicopters based at Fort Belvoir, Va., south of the capital.
Also in the area is an Army engineer company with special training in rescuing people from collapsed buildings, as well as a bomb disposal unit at McNair that is trained to respond to nuclear, chemical, conventional and improvised explosive incidents anywhere in the capital region.
Jackman's organization is subordinate to U.S. Northern Command, a military headquarters in Colorado set up after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate land defense of the United States. Air defense is the responsibility of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The only area of the country with a joint force headquarters devoted specifically to its defense is Washington.
A ceremony Wednesday will mark the official activation of Joint Forces Headquarters for the National Capital Region, but it already has been put to work several times in recent months. It set up a joint task force to respond to the discovery of the deadly poison ricin last February on Capitol Hill, for example.
On the Net:
Fort McNair: http://www.dcmilitary.com/baseguides/army/mdw/fmmc--ftmcnair.html
----
TSA Readies Secure Flight for Testing;
Latest Moves Include Posting of Privacy Assessment and Draft Order to Airlines
Tue Sep 21, 2004
U.S. Newswire Press Releases
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usnw/20040921/pl_usnw/tsa_readies_secure_flight_for_testing__latest_moves_include_posting_of_privacy_assessment_and_draft_order_to_airlines137_xml
To: National Desk
Contact: Transportation Security Administration, 571-227-2829
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) today announced the release of the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for the testing phase of the Secure Flight program along with a proposed order to airlines to provide one month's worth of Passenger Name Records (PNR) data to be used for program testing. The PIA includes details of TSA's privacy policy for the testing phase of the program and the system methodology for Secure Flight.
"This is an important moment in aviation security; we are advancing a vital tool to combat terrorism and checking off another recommendation from the 9-11 Commission," said Rear Admiral David M. Stone, USN (Ret.), Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for TSA.
"Although not required by law, the posting of the proposed order to domestic airlines and the solicitation of public comment is evidence of TSA's commitment to maintaining an open and transparent environment for the development of this important security tool," said Admiral Stone.
The proposed order directs domestic airlines to provide historic PNR data that they collected from passengers who flew in the month of June 2004. This 30-day pool of records will be used to test the Secure Flight computer platform at full load and full speed. The comment period will remain open for 30 days and following TSA's review and incorporation of changes the final order will be issued in late October.
The PIA explains in detail the handling and flow of personal information and the protocols and privacy protections built into Secure Flight to protect passengers. The system is designed around a core of privacy statutes, regulations and DHS policy.
With today's significant steps, domestic airlines should begin the transfer of data in late October, allowing testing of Secure Flight to begin in November of this year. The testing phase is important to determine system capabilities, capacity and selection rates.
Also, released today are the System of Records Notice and public notice of the Information Collection Request. These documents cover TSA statutory authority for activities during testing phase only.
http://www.usnewswire.com/
U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/
-------- human rights
Rumsfeld Warns Military, Contractors on Trafficking
September 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-rights-usa-trafficking.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has issued a strong memo to military commanders and Pentagon contractors warning against support for prostitution and human trafficking, amid concerns that a previous directive has not solved the problem.
Rumsfeld put his personal stamp on the anti-trafficking campaign after allegations of problems in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo and the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
The memo came to light on Monday, one day before the U.S. Congress' Helsinki Commission holds a hearing to examine the Bush administration's record in implementing a ``zero tolerance'' policy on trafficking involving the military.
``No leader in this department should turn a blind eye to this issue,'' Rumsfeld said in the memo, obtained by Reuters.
``Trafficking includes involuntary servitude and debt bondage. These trafficking practices will not be tolerated in DOD (Department of Defense) contractor organizations or their subcontractors in supporting DOD operations.''
Rumsfeld said he was especially concerned with sex exploitation and labor trafficking practices in areas near U.S. bases overseas.
Some foreign workers have complained they were tricked into going to work in Iraq for Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., and were mistreated, according to the Washington Post.
Congressional researchers said that in South Korea, U.S. military patrols were assigned to ensure servicemen who frequented bars and brothels returned to base safely, which risked creating an ``overly friendly'' relationship between the U.S. military and traffickers.
And in Bosnia, some Americans with the international police task force have been known to purchase the passports of trafficked women, the researchers said.
Pentagon contractors are included in the warning, which experts said was an apparent attempt to deal with problems identified in news reports several months ago.
But now, ``the word has gone out to contractors with any government agency. If there is complicity (in trafficking), the contractors can lose (their U.S. contract),'' said Rep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican who co-chairs the Helsinki Commission. ``Money sharpens the focus of CEOs.''
The United States has 1.6 million troops under arms, including more than 600,000 serving overseas.
In December 2002 Bush declared a ``zero tolerance'' policy for U.S. employees and contractors who engage in trafficking abroad and in January 2004, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz laid out the policy in a memo to Pentagon employees.
Smith said Rumsfeld's warning reflected a sharpened Pentagon focus ahead of Tuesday's hearing and there has been a ``serious, professional and aggressive'' U.S. approach to the problem, especially in South Korea where 37,000 American troops are stationed. But he said more must be done.
There is a ``whole group of officers and enlisted people who needs to be sensitized and made aware of this horrible cruelty against women ... Wherever there are peacekeepers and peacemaking forces, the traffickers will look to bring in and exploit women,'' Smith told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Prostitution and trafficking not only harm victims but also U.S. national security by impairing the readiness of troops who develop AIDS and other diseases and by fueling criminal elements that undermine democracy and rule of law, he said.
NATO has also acted to outlaw trafficking and the United Nations is moving in that direction, Smith said.
The Bush administration has also sanctioned Venezuela for failing to effectively combat trafficking and stop supporting international loan requests for that country.
-------- internet
French Internet provider confirms US block on government sites
PARIS (AFP)
Sep 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040920165704.qbmkbhz3.html
Wanadoo, France's biggest Internet provider, confirmed Monday that it was on a US blacklist of companies around the world that have been blocked from accessing US government and military websites.
"We've been blacklisted for two years on government and military sites, and it looks like it's a decision by the Pentagon to avoid hacker attempts," a spokesman for Wanadoo told AFP.
The situation was highlighted by an article in Monday's edition of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which said Internet service providers (ISP) in 25 countries could not access the US Federal Voting Assistance Program website (www.fvap.gov) which helps overseas US voters cast their absentee ballots in the November presidential election.
The ISPs affected were Wanadoo, Yahoo in Britain and in Japan, and Telefonica in Spain -- all major players with millions of subscribers.
A website supporting John Kerry, the Democratic challenger to US President George W. Bush in the elections, criticised the measure by posting the article and headlining it "Pentagon Surrenders to Hackers".
A visitor to the site (www.aokerry.com) who gave her name as Sinead Westlough posted a message alleging that "the Republican political appointees who run the Pentagon" were trying to disenfranchise overseas Americans because they were likely to vote against Bush.
"Keep in mind that most Americans overseas speak only English and have no other broadcast media that they can understand," she wrote.
"Under these circumstances, it's hardly surprising that these people (Bush administration officials)... are trying to brainwash and block the registration of other Americans overseas who have better access to media and are more likely to vote against Bush and co.," she wrote.
The IHT quoted an e-mail from the FVAP's web manager, Susan Leader, saying: "We are sorry you cannot access www.fvap.gov. Unfortunately, Wanadoo France has had its access blocked to US government Web sites due to Wanadoo users constantly attempting to hack these sites. We do not expect the block to be lifted."
It gave an alternative website (www.overseasvote2004.com) to help US voters abroad.
A check by AFP showed that other popular ISPs in France, such as Free and Neuf Telecom allowed access to the US state-run websites.
-------- police
Arrests at GOP Convention Are Criticized
Many in N.Y. Released Without Facing Charges
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34245-2004Sep19?language=printer
NEW YORK -- One late August evening, Alexander Pincus pedaled his bicycle to the Second Avenue Deli to buy matzo ball soup, a pastrami-on-rye and potato latkes for his sweetheart, who was sick with a cold.
He would not return for 28 hours. As Pincus and a friend left the deli, they inadvertently walked into a police blockade and sweep of bicycle-riding protesters two days before the Republican National Convention began. "I asked an officer how I could get home," Pincus recalled. "He said, 'Follow me,' and we went a few feet and cops grabbed us. They handcuffed us and made us kneel for an hour."
Police carted Pincus to a holding cell topped with razor wire and held him for 25 hours without access to a lawyer. The floor was a soup of oil and soot, he said, and the cell had so few portable toilets that some people relieved themselves in the corner. Pincus said a shoulder was dislocated as police pulled back his arms to handcuff him. "Cops kept saying to us, 'This is what you get for protesting,' " said Pincus, whose account of his arrest is supported in part by deli workers and a time-stamped food receipt.
Pincus was one of 1,821 people arrested in police sweeps before and during the Republican convention, the largest number of arrests associated with any American major-party convention. At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, which unlike New York's was marked by widespread police brutality, cops made fewer than 700 arrests.
In the days after the convention, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stated that "every NYPD officer did a great job." But interviews with state court officials, City Council representatives, prosecutors, protesters and civil libertarians -- and a review of videos of demonstrations -- point to many problems with the police performance. Officers often sealed off streets with orange netting and used motor scooters and horses to sweep up hundreds of protesters at a time, including many who appear to have broken no laws. In two cases, police commanders appeared to allow marches to proceed, only to order many arrests minutes later.
Most of those arrested were held for more than two days without being arraigned, which a state Supreme Court judge ruled was a violation of legal guidelines. Defense attorneys predict a flood of civil lawsuits once protesters have settled the misdemeanor charges lodged against them.
"The overriding problem during the convention was the indiscriminate arrests . . . of people who did nothing wrong," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said at a City Council hearing last week. "They were arrested because they were . . . participating in a lawful demonstration."
Police officials declined to talk about these problems last week, citing a pending court case. But the city's criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said in an interview that city lawyers tried to weed out the unjustly arrested and that the volume of arrests -- more than 1,100 on one day -- overwhelmed the police department. More broadly, Bloomberg and Kelly defended the vast majority of the arrests as justified and described holding cells as clean and humane.
Bloomberg, in interviews during convention week, said that protesters expected prisons to look like "Club Med." Kelly said police encountered other delays as they tried to find separate cells for a large number of female detainees.
The first mass arrests came three days before the Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 convention, when police swooped down on Critical Mass, a loosely knit collective of bicyclists who periodically flood city streets and slow traffic. Police usually tolerate the disruption, but that night officers arrested more than 200. Kelly told New York magazine that he wanted to send protesters a message.
The next few days were quiet, and a quarter-million-strong march went forward Aug. 29 without incident.
But the mood changed Aug. 31, when police made 1,128 arrests. Anarchists had pledged a day of resistance, blocking traffic. Police arrested hundreds, and civil liberties lawyers on the scene described most arrests as lawful.
But farther downtown on the same day, the War Resisters League, a decades-old pacifist group, was readying a peaceful march from Ground Zero to Madison Square Garden, where it intended to conduct a civil disobedience "die in."
A video provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union shows police commanders laying out the ground rules: As long as protesters did not block traffic, they would not get arrested during the walk north. (No permit is required for a march on a sidewalk as long as protesters leave space for other pedestrians to pass.) Within a block or two, however, the video shows marchers lined up on the sidewalk, far from an intersection, as a police officer announces on a bullhorn: "You're under arrest."
"They came with batons, bicycles, they came with netting," said the Rev. G. Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest. "The kind of forces you expect to be turned on terrorists was unleashed on us."
Police arrested 200 people, saying they had blocked the sidewalk.
About the same time Tuesday, several other groups of protesters started walking two abreast from Union Square, the city's historic protest soapbox, to Madison Square Garden. However, several demonstrators say -- and photographs show -- that police soon stopped them, asked them to raise their hands and arrested them.
Throughout the week, police also picked up dozens of people who appeared to have nothing to do with demonstrations, the New York Civil Liberties Union said. Among those swept up by police were several newspaper reporters, two women shopping at the Gap, a feeder company executive out for dinner with a friend, and Wendy Stefanelli, a costume designer with the TV show "Sex and the City," who was walking to get a drink with a friend.
She saw a police officer pushing a demonstrator against a wall and asked him to lay off. Police flooded the street, and she was arrested. "I don't know how this could happen," Stefanelli, 35, told the City Council last week. "I was coming from work."
Bloomberg has acknowledged that police may have arrested some innocent bystanders, but he suggested that it was partly their fault.
"If you go to where people are protesting and don't want to be part of the protest, you're always going to run the risk that maybe you'll get tied up with it," he said on a weekly radio show on WABC.
Police hauled those arrested to newly built holding cells in a former bus depot on the Hudson River. In interviews, two dozen protesters from six states described floors covered in oil and officers who denied access to family and lawyers.
During this time, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne twice stated to The Washington Post that most protesters had been released after six or seven hours. Only on Thursday, the last day of the convention, did he acknowledge the much longer delays.
Last Friday, Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, attributed the problems to a glut of arrests. Other city officials have spoken of state delays in processing fingerprints.
But senior police officials had said for months that they anticipated 1,000 arrests a day during the convention. Citing such warnings, state court officials, prosecutors and Legal Aid lawyers doubled staffing and opened extra courtrooms during convention week.
"What happened for several days is that we had resources available and we simply were not getting the bodies produced, the defendants in the courtroom," said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the state office of court administration.
State officials also released figures showing that they had processed 94 percent of all fingerprints within one hour.
The backlog created a legal crisis for the city. State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo held officials in contempt of court. "These people," Cataldo said of those arrested, "have already been victims of the process."
His order resulted in the release of almost 500 people. Tricia Schriefer of Milwaukee had spent two days trying to find her daughter, Claire, 19, a college student who had been arrested Aug. 31. Tricia Schriefer called the police and city offices, only to be told that her daughter was in a legal twilight.
Her daughter was finally released -- without charges -- after Cataldo issued his ruling. "To be held for 50 hours and not be charged . . . it's pretty outrageous," Schriefer said. "It's just counter to everything I had understood about our legal process."
Since the convention ended, protesters have flocked daily into Manhattan Criminal Court, where most of them are accepting misdemeanors and violations -- charges that would typically carry no jail term. The difference between them and someone caught double-parking is that the protesters already had spent two days in jail.
"Too many New Yorkers were willing to look away," said Norman Siegal, a civil liberties lawyer who is representing Pincus. "We don't lose our rights overnight with a big bang; we lose them incrementally over time."
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Cheney may have 'stretched Iraq intelligence'
By Thomas Catan in Washington
September 20 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/276dc9cc-0b44-11d9-b403-00000e2511c8.html
President George W. Bush's choice for intelligence chief on Monday said the administration had, on at least one occasion, overstated information it had tying Iraq to al-Qaeda and the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In the second of two hearings before the Senate intelligence committee, Porter Goss promised that, if confirmed, he would privately approach any government official who mischaracterised the intelligence they had been given.
"I am going to defendthat the product is pureand that the understanding is absolutely clear about that," said Mr Goss, a Republican congressman. "And if there is a misunderstanding or if there's a question about that, I would be very quick to point it out."
Asked to comment on Vice-President Dick Cheney's statement in December 2001 that the leader of the September 11 hijackers had met Iraqi agents in Prague, Mr Goss said: "I don't think [the meeting] was as well confirmed perhaps as the vice-president thought."
As chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence oversight committee, Mr Goss had access to the same classified information seen by the White House.
In a previous hearing, Democrats on the panel had questioned whether Mr Goss was too partisan to provide independent advice to government. Prior to his nomination for the post, Mr Goss had criticised plans by John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, to reform the 15-agency "intelligence community".
On Monday, in a conciliatory gesture to Democrats, Mr Goss apologised for occasionally venturing "into some partisan comment in areas of national security". He vowed that, if confirmed, he would keep politics out of the intelligence business. This summer, a 500-page Senate intelligence committee report lambasted the intelligence community for its incorrect assessments of Iraq's weapons programmes. But committee Republicans delayed until after the election a discussion on whether the Bush administration had misused intelligence to advance its case for war.
On Monday, Democrats indicated that they would continue to press the issue ahead of the election. Senator Carl Levin referred to documents, uncovered by committee investigators, that cast fresh doubt on the role of Douglas Feith, a US under-secretary of defence.
----
CBS to Say It Was Misled on Bush Guard Memos
Network Plans to Issue Statement on Disputed Documents Used on '60 Minutes' Broadcast
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34151-2004Sep19.html
CBS News plans to issue a statement, perhaps as early as today, saying that it was misled on the purported National Guard memos the network used to charge that President Bush received favored treatment 30 years ago.
The statement would represent a huge embarrassment for the network, which insisted for days that the documents reported by Dan Rather on "60 Minutes" are authentic. But the statement could help defuse a crisis that has torn at the network's credibility.
It is not clear whether the statement will include an apology for a story now believed to be based on forged documents, although that is under consideration, sources familiar with the matter said. The sources said they could not be identified because CBS is making no official statement.
CBS has stood by the story, even as numerous document experts have called the memos forgeries and a former secretary in Bush's Guard unit told reporters, including Rather, that the memos were fake -- although she said they reflected the feelings of Bush's former squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard.
The statement was being hammered out last night after Rather went to Texas to tape an interview with Bill Burkett, the retired Guard official widely believed to have helped provide "60 Minutes" with the memos. Burkett, who has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks," would not comment in an e-mail to The Washington Post on whether he had been CBS's confidential source.
CBS News President Andrew Heyward, while declining to comment on what interviews the network may be conducting, said yesterday: "We've said we are trying very hard to get to the bottom of these questions."
Burkett, who retired from the Austin headquarters of the Guard in 1998, has said he once saw some of Bush's military records in a trash can. He also says he overheard a conversation among Guard officials about sanitizing the president's military records, which Guard officials strongly deny.
Burkett's motivation could be suspect because he said in a Web posting last month that he tried to contact John F. Kerry's presidential campaign with information for a "counteratack."
Over the weekend, Bush told the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader that "there are a lot of questions" about the CBS documents "and they need to be answered."
Asked about Bush's remarks, Heyward said: "I don't feel any more pressure than before. I agree with President Bush that the sooner we can resolve these questions, the better."
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CBS Asserts It Was Misled by Ex-Officer on Bush Documents
September 20, 2004
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and MARK J. PRENDERGAST
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20CND-GUAR.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
CBS News said today that a former Texas National Guard officer had "deliberately misled" the network in its inquiry into President Bush's National Guard service by providing "a false account" of the origins of documents used to reinforce questions raised about Mr. Bush's activities three decades ago.
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," the president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, said in a statement issued by the network. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."
"Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting," Mr. Heyward continued. "We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."
The network said the former Army National Guard officer, Bill Burkett, had "acknowledged that he provided the now disputed documents" and that he "admits he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."
"Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman," the CBS statement said. "Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point."
A new interview with Mr. Burkett will be shown tonight on the "CBS Evening News," the network said.
CBS also announced that it was "commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast," adding that the "findings will be made public."
In a separate statement today, Dan Rather, the CBS anchor who presented the original report on "60 Minutes" on Sept. 8, said that "we made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry."
President Bush's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, said today that the White House appreciated CBS's statement of regret, "but there are still serious questions that we believe need to be answered, and we think they should be fully investigated."
When asked if the Bush campaign thought the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry might have had a hand in the episode, Mr. McClellan said the source of the papers was something that needed to be investigated, along with whatever contacts Mr. Burkett might have had with Democratic operatives.
"The one thing that is not in question is the timing of these recent attacks on the president," Mr. McClellan said in Derry, N.H., where Mr. Bush campaigned today. "It is clear that there has been an orchestrated effort by Democrats in the Kerry campaign to try to tear down the president and use old recycled attacks, and that's what this is."
"Why did CBS rely on Burkett, a previously discredited source, for this information?" Mr. McClellan added. "CBS said that he was an unimpeachable source. The fact is, he is not an unimpeachable source - he is a discredited source from the past and someone who has been very involved with Democrats."
The statements by the network, Mr. Heyward and Mr. Rather ended days of expressions of confidence in the documents' authenticity by CBS executives and the anchor himself.
Signs of serious misgivings within CBS appeared on Sunday, when network officials, who asked not to be identified, said the network had been deceived about the documents' origins and had begun intensive reporting on their provenance. Executives also said that they were coming to the conclusion that the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.
Officials met Sunday night with Mr. Rather for a final review of the information the network had collected about the documents before making a decision on whether to issue a new statement.
Mr. Rather's original report had relied in large part on four memorandums seeming to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's Air National Guard squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat" the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.
Mr. Rather and others at the network were said to still believe on Sunday night that the sentiments in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings.
Neither Mr. Heyward nor Mr. Rather addressed that particular issue today. But in his statement, Mr. Rather said that "if I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."
The developments on Sunday and today marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its original report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.
The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed had come from the personal file of Colonel Killian.
Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents."
But CBS executives decided on Sunday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with Mr. Burkett, who had helped the news division obtain the memos.
Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and CBS said today that his answers to Mr. Rather's questions had led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. Those people indicated that Mr. Burkett, a retired Guard lieutenant colonel, had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.
In an e-mail message on Sunday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents posed by The New York Times.
Mr. Burkett, 55, whom colleagues call a stickler for rules, fell out with senior commanders in the late 1990's and ended up suing the Guard and its leaders. He also became disillusioned with Mr. Bush, who he said was not supporting needed reforms in the Guard.
The bitterness, he later said, moved him to go public with what he said he witnessed one night in Austin in 1997, while Mr. Bush was still governor of Texas. Mr. Burkett said that commanders, who were in touch with Mr. Bush's political advisers, had left documents in the trash while sanitizing the governor's service records.
An officer who served with Mr. Burkett, Dennis Adams, recently said that Mr. Burkett had told him of the incident "and that some of the things in the trash were pulled out."
"He never did say by whom," Mr. Adams added. "I don't have the foggiest idea what documents of any kind he ever had."
On Sunday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents said they had been obtained anonymously and through the mail.
In an interview on Sunday night she declined to name the producer who told her this, but said the producer was in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial `60 Minutes" report that it would face questions from documents experts.
In the coming days, CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine.
Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had vouched only for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures had been cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian.
In examining where the network had gone wrong, officials at CBS News turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network.
In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes" Wednesday edition, said that he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt it. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report.
"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day," he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility."
He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis."
Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented to them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake" of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents being presented by a credible news organization.
Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.
One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?"
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Voters worry another war is in store
KATHLEEN DURAND
09/20/2004
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12959656&BRD=1710&PAG=461&dept_id=99784&rfi=6
WASHINGTON -- Playing on the fear factor, Vice President Dick Cheney suggested in a recent campaign speech there might be another terrorist attack on the United States if John Kerry were in the White House.
President Bush's opponents' are raising their own worst fears, including the potential for more wars during a second Bush term.
"That's fear-mongering," said Joseph Carafano, a 25-year Army veteran and former West Point professor who now is an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The rhetoric continued during the weekend. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., speaking at a Saturday night fund-raiser in DeKalb, Ill., said his opinion is that the al-Qaida terror network could operate better with Kerry in the White House instead of Bush. Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, issued a statement Sunday accusing Hastert of using the "politics of fear," which Edwards said is a "clear sign of weakness and failed leadership."
With fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq far from over, a Pew Research Center Poll found that 51 percent of voters surveyed said they do worry that Bush, if re-elected, would lead the country into another war.
"The Bush administration is on a crusade to make the world safe for democracy and part of that ... is eliminating countries of anti-Western aggression," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute think tank in Washington.
"They may not like me to say that on the eve of the election, but that's a fact," Thompson said. "It's less likely to happen with a Kerry administration."
Both Bush and Democrat Kerry have said they prefer diplomacy to deal with Iran and North Korea, which joined Iraq in what the president described as an "axis of evil."
Under Bush, there is "reason for apprehension" because of his administration's "actions and rhetoric" over the past four years, said Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute.
Carpenter also cited among Bush's conservative supporters a "deep concern ... and fairly militant attitude" that the United States needs to "do something" about Iran, North Korea, Syria and perhaps other governments.
"In some extreme neoconservative circles," there have also been calls for "coercive measures against Saudi Arabia," Carpenter noted.
Those who think more wars in a second Bush administration are unlikely point out that there are not enough U.S. troops, given that the Pentagon already is struggling to keep up with violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Others say the administration has no taste for another war after the unexpected difficulties of Iraq, and the bar has been raised for Congress and the American public as well. They say Americans will not so easily support another war after learning that prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was false.
"I really don't think, absent something like an invasion of South Korea (by communist rival North Korea), that we could sustain another one," Carafano said.
If forced into it by such a provocation, the Pentagon could most certainly do it by mobilizing more National Guard and Reserve troops and calling on allies, Carafano said.
But that would take the armed forces "to the edge," said Carafano, and would mean years to reconstitute the military in terms of troops readiness and resupplying equipment.
Others note that while the Army is stretched extremely thin now, the Air Force and Navy are not.
"So the talk that you hear within the conservative community about perhaps taking strong measures against Iran or North Korea would be feasible if it were confined to air strikes," Carpenter said. "Those who are concerned that a second Bush presidency might go down that path might have some foundation for their concerns."
Some fear the United States could provoke a war -- even if it did not fire the first shot -- by focusing on tough talk and actions, rather than negotiations.
"It's this process of bluster and threat and escalation that could lead to war," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute. "I don't want to say that the chance of war is particularly high, but I think it would be higher under Bush than under Kerry."
-------- us politics
Three GOP Senators Urge Refocusing of Iraq Policy
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34111-2004Sep19.html
Republican senators lobbed criticisms of President Bush's Iraq war policies during yesterday's news talk shows, arguing that the U.S. military needs more troops on the ground and should move without haste to turn the tide against a deadly and persistent insurgency.
Following a recent spate of attacks that have killed scores of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens, some senators said yesterday that U.S. policy has been misdirected and needs to be refocused. As the presidential election nears, the Republicans blasted what they called a sometimes stubborn administration and called on military leaders to launch attacks on insurgent strongholds sooner rather than later.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that he never would have allowed sanctuaries for anti-coalition fighters in cities such as Fallujah, where officials believe the insurgency has been strengthening.
"Allowing those sanctuaries has contributed significantly to the difficulties that we're facing, which are very, very significant," McCain said. "We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders. There was a number of things that we did. Most of it can be traced back to not having sufficient numbers of troops there."
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), said he believes the situation in Iraq is going to get worse before it gets better, adding that he believes the administration has done a "poor job of implementing and adjusting at times." Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," he called for more troops in Iraq.
"The administration has been stubborn about troops," Graham said, referring to repeated administration contentions that the U.S. military does not need to be expanded to handle the global war on terror. "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people. We need to let the American people know this is just like World War II; we're in it for the duration."
On CBS's "Face the Nation," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) announced that he is going to make nearly two dozen policy suggestions to the State Department and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to improve the situation in Iraq. In particular, he suggested starting training camps for security forces in the region surrounding Iraq and offering economic development initiatives throughout the region.
"The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq," Hagel said. "And I think we're going to have to look at some recalibration of policy."
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Edwards Calls Hastert's Remarks 'Politics of Fear'
Associated Press
Monday, September 20, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33696-2004Sep19.html
PHOENIXVILLE, Pa., Sept. 19 -- Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Sunday accused House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) of stooping "to the politics of fear" when he said al Qaeda terrorists may launch another terrorist attack to swing the Nov. 2 election in Democrat John F. Kerry's favor.
Hastert's comments, at a fundraiser Saturday night in his home state of Illinois, were reminiscent of recent remarks by Vice President Cheney that Edwards has called "un-American."
Cheney, campaigning for President Bush's reelection, recently told supporters that terrorists will strike again "if we make the wrong choice" on Election Day. He clarified the remarks in an interview two days later.
Edwards said Hastert had joined the "fear-mongering choir."
"One clear sign of weakness and failed leadership is when a politician stoops to the politics of fear," he said, campaigning near Philadelphia. "Last night, he said something to the effect that al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be president of the United States.
"Let me say this in the simplest possible terms: When John Kerry is president of the United States, we will find al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people," Edwards said.
Hastert's remarks about the terrorist network that is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came just before a $150-a-plate GOP fundraiser in DeKalb, Ill., that featured Cheney.
"I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops," Hastert said of Kerry.
Asked by reporters whether he believes al Qaeda could operate better with Kerry in the White House, Hastert replied: "That's my opinion, yes."
"Instead of attacking Republicans, John Edwards should help John Kerry explain to the American people his inconsistent and contradictory positions on national security, intelligence and other defense issues," Hastert spokesman John McGovern said Sunday.
Edwards said Bush and his allies are continuing to play politics with the Sept. 11 attacks.
"They want to scare the American people, but they will pay a price in November," he said. "None of us should be surprised by this, because just two or three weeks ago we heard what Dick Cheney said about this."
Cheney was in Des Moines on Sept. 7 when he told supporters: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."
Two days later, he told the Cincinnati Enquirer he was trying to say that the next president has to anticipate more terrorist attacks.
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Edwards Is No Cheney -- And That's the Plan
By Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34247-2004Sep19.html
Democrats welcomed John Edwards in July as a much-needed jolt of energy to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign and dispatched the North Carolina senator to small towns and rural communities in battleground states, hoping he would connect with voters by sharing his success story of growing up in a working-class family.
But as Kerry's poll numbers waned along with the sunny days of summer, some party leaders began to grumble that Edwards was not doing his part. While President Bush and Vice President Cheney bombarded the Democratic ticket with damaging attacks, critics said that Edwards was not aggressive enough in defending Kerry and roughing up the Republicans.
Edwards and campaign aides argue that he is playing the role for which he was cast -- to build up Kerry's image as a leader and to tear down Bush's record, especially to independent and swing voters.
"People are overreacting," Edwards said in a telephone interview last week. "The Republicans overreacted when we went up a few points in August and now the people on our side are overreacting to the polls swinging the other way.
"I think that I have two responsibilities," he continued. "To make the case for why John Kerry should be president and the second is to make the case as powerfully as possible about what this administration has done to America and the American people -- and that's what I'm out there doing. . . . That's why it is important for me to be strong and to fight back whenever they say outrageous things."
During two months of campaigning, Edwards has responded to verbal bombs lobbed by the Bush campaign, including Cheney's suggestion two weeks ago that a Kerry victory would make the country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. He said Cheney's comments were "meant to scare voters, period. . . . It was way over the top, and I think un-American"
What he doesn't do is go for the jugular, and mirror Cheney's role in the GOP campaign. The vice president energizes the base, talking about war, guns and abortion and making tough and often personal attacks against the Democrats. Edwards presents the friendly, empathetic face to voters on the fence. It is Kerry who uses the tough rhetoric to criticize Bush's leadership and integrity.
"I would dispute assertions some people have made that [Edwards] should adopt the persona and tactics of Dick Cheney," said Tad Devine, a top campaign adviser. He argued that Edwards's down-home, upbeat style has generated attention and excitement on the campaign trail "not by slashing and burning, which is Cheney's trademark. His campaign style is incredibly powerful and connects with people with a message of moving the nation in a new direction."
Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford University professor who specializes in political communication, agrees that Edwards would not be a credible hatchet man because of his studied effort all through the Democratic primaries to hew to the high road. Still, Iyengar said the campaign is not making the best use of Edwards's skills.
"I think the real problem is not that Edwards is not going enough negative, it's not seeing enough Edwards," Iyengar said. "He does really well articulating this idea of economic insecurity, and that seems to have slipped off the table in recent weeks" as the Bush campaign has kept the focus on Iraq and terrorism. Iyengar said the Kerry campaign should send Edwards to major media markets to get more attention for the campaign's argument that Bush has neglected working- and middle-class families.
Edwards has drawn large, enthusiastic crowds to rallies in West Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In recent weeks, some Democratic voters at the rallies have called on the candidates to fight back, including one woman in suburban Milwaukee who told Edwards that he and Kerry were letting the Republicans "run you over and make you look like idiots."
Campaign strategists say Edwards's mandate is to reach beyond the sign-waving partisans who show up at the rallies. They want him to garner the kind of favorable media that will reach independent and swing voters watching television in their living rooms or reading the morning paper over breakfast. And that, they say, is happening, pointing to the widespread local coverage of his visits.
Political scientists say negative attacks don't work with such voters. "Attacks charge up the batteries of strong Democrats and strong Republicans, but they're already counted," Iyengar said.
Edwards agrees. In an interview aboard his plane recently, he said he did not believe personally attacking Bush and Cheney was a winning strategy. "What drives me every day is not George Bush and Dick Cheney," he said. "What drives me every day is what they're doing to the kind of people I grew up with. . . . They're making their lives impossible, and they're doing it to help take care of their friends at Halliburton and people like that, and it's wrong. . . . I think the most effective way to do that is to focus on the facts because the facts are overwhelming."
He lays out the facts as he sees them in a stump speech that suggests Bush has done nothing right during four years in office. He declares that Bush has made "a mess" of the war in Iraq and blasts the administration for awarding a "multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton, Dick Cheney's company," to rebuild Iraq. He tells voters that Bush has betrayed them on economics issues: "Five million people have lost their health care, 4 million more people have fallen into poverty, more than 1 1/2 million private-sector jobs have been lost." This past week, in criticizing the ballooning federal deficit, Edwards accused Bush of acting "like he's Ken Lay and America is his Enron. . . . What happens when CEOs run a company the way George Bush has run America is they get fired."
But Edwards does not scowl or shout, and he chooses his words carefully. Last week, the campaign issued a statement attributed to Edwards, criticizing Bush's management of the economy. When Edwards delivered his remarks in Oregon, he left out some of the statement. Asked why, he said, "I said what I thought was the strongest thing to say. . . . I make my own judgments; people don't put words in my mouth."
Edwards fans, such as Lou D'Allesandro, a New Hampshire state senator who chaired Edwards's primary bid in that state, said the campaign should give the vice presidential nominee a more prominent role.
"The Republicans aren't fools. They use Cheney . . . for exactly what he's good at being -- mean and nasty," D'Allesandro said. "And we got a guy who can counter that with beautiful rhetoric and a great message and someone who is as likable and connectable as anyone in the business. People leave the venue wanting more of John Edwards, so we should give them more John Edwards."{grv}
Staff writer David Snyder contributed to this report.
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Kerry Says Iraq War Raises Questions on Bush's Judgment
September 20, 2004
By MARIA NEWMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20CND-KERR.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
Senator John Kerry said today that the war in Iraq was a "profound diversion" from the war on terror and the fight against Osama bin Laden, and he asserted that President Bush's approach to the conflict had weakened national security instead of strengthening it.
"Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight," Mr. Kerry told an audience at New York University.
With Americans saying that terrorism and the war in Iraq are two of their most important concerns, Mr. Kerry tried to lay out the differences between his approach on Iraq and that of Mr. Bush. "At every critical juncture in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism, the president has made the wrong choice," Mr. Kerry said. "I have a plan to make America stronger."
He laid out a four-point plan to deal with the turmoil Iraq, details of which he has discussed in other speeches in the last few days.
Mr. Kerry argued that Mr. Bush had put the country in peril by confusing the war on terror with the war on Iraq, and he vowed not to make the same mistake.
"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," Mr. Kerry said. "But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
Mr. Bush, in a campaign appearance in Derry, N.H., later in the day, directly responded to Mr. Kerry's contentions that he was misleading people on Iraq, saying that criticism of the administration's policies was undermining the efforts of American troops in battle.
"Mixed signals are the wrong signal to send to the enemy, the wrong signals to send to the people of Iraq, the wrong signals to send our allies and the wrong signals to send our troops in combat," the president said.
"Anytime we put our toops in harm's way, they need to have the full support of the U.S. government - the full support," Mr. Bush said.
He also said that Mr. Kerry's four-point plan sounded similar to his administration's plans for Iraq.
"Forty-three days before the election, my opponent has now settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it's exactly what we're currently doing," Mr. Bush said.
In one of their most effective criticism of the Democratic candidate, Republicans have accused Mr. Kerry of waffling on his stance on Iraq. In his remarks in New Hampshire, Mr. Bush repeated that criticism, saying Mr. Kerry was continuing his "pattern of twisting in the wind."
But in the last few days, Mr. Kerry has tried to turn the tables on the president by sharply criticizing the president's resoluteness in the face of what he said was mounting evidence that the war is not going well. He has accused the president of lying and of "living in a fantasy world of spin" when Mr. Bush provides about the progress of the war.
Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush's two main rationales for going to war, - weapons of mass destruction and a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - had been proven false by weapons inspectors and the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks.
"Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts," the senator said. "Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat."
Mr. Kerry said the president chose not to listen to those who warned caution, but instead, "he hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences."
Speaking to an audience that included several widows of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Kerry argued today that the president's sunny assessments of the war in Iraq were an attempt to mislead people about the growing cost of the conflict.
"Today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way," Mr. Kerry continued. "How can he possibly be serious?"
In March, he said, "insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times - a 400 percent increase."
He pointed out that a growing number of cities and regions in Iraq have been classified as "no-go zones" for American troops because they are being controlled by insurgents.
Last week, in talking about Iraq, Mr. Bush told supporters at a campaign appearance in Minnesota that "this country is headed toward democracy.
"There's a strong prime minister in place," the president told supporters. "They have a national council, and national elections are scheduled for January. It wasn't all that long ago that Saddam Hussein was in power with his torture chambers and mass graves."
Mr. Kerry said today that the reality is much different than Mr. Bush presents: "The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who's accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad than the prime minister."
He also said that the president's assessment of a better standard of life for Iraqis was overly optimistic.
"Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees," Mr. Kerry said. "Children wade through garbage on their way to school. Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys."
Mr. Kerry also noted that Mr. Bush said recently that he had made "miscalculations" in Iraq.
"Miscalculations," Mr. Kerry said, with exaggerated surprise. "That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment and judgment is what we look for in a president."
Mr. Kerry said he could not predict what he would find in Iraq come January, if he is elected president over Mr. Bush. Nevertheless, he offered a four-point plan for how he would deal with the conflict to lessen tensions.
First, he said, he would work towards more international support. Mr. Kerry noted that the president is scheduled to visit New York on Tuesday to speak to the United Nations about Iraq.
"The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly," Mr. Kerry said.
But, he said, it may prove a difficult task. "After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq," he said.
Secondly, Mr. Kerry said, he would work harder to train Iraqi security forces.
He pointed out that in February Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. But Mr. Kerry asserted that in reality only 5,000 Iraqi soldiers had been trained "by the administration's own minimal standards."
"Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order," he said.
Third, he said he would devise a better plan for the reconstruction of a devastated Iraq.
"Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq." Mr. Kerry said. " It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers."
And lastly, he said he would make sure elections would take place in the country.
"Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role," Mr. Kerry said. "Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt."
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
Californians to Vote on Stem Cell Research Funds
September 20, 2004
By JOHN M. BRODER and ANDREW POLLACK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/national/20stem.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 - The federal government spent $25 million last year on studies involving human embryonic stem cells. But California, in an act of political and scientific rebellion against limits on stem cell research imposed by the Bush White House, may be on the verge of spending $300 million a year in each of the next 10 years on such research.
A coalition of Hollywood producers and actors, technology billionaires, scientists, patient advocates and business organizations - including Michael J. Fox and Bill Gates - has marshaled emotion, scientific argument and money to underwrite a state ballot proposal that would let Californians make the decision. The initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot, known as Proposition 71, would authorize the state to issue $3 billion in bonds to pay for a range of stem cell research. This promising but ethically controversial field of biomedical research is now severely limited by the Bush administration's policy restricting public money for research on embryonic stem cells.
Others are also moving to facilitate more stem cell research. Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey signed legislation in May to establish a state-supported stem cell research facility, and researchers at Harvard are raising millions of dollars for a stem cell institute.
But the California initiative would create by far the largest state-run scientific research effort in the country and make California a global center of stem cell research, on par with Singapore, Israel, South Korea and the United Kingdom, which have moved aggressively in the field since the late 1990's.
Critics say the initiative would be a publicly financed windfall for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, while repaying little to the taxpayers. They expect to be outspent by at least 20 to 1 by supporters of the initiative and add that the state cannot afford $3 billion in new debt when it is reducing spending on education, health care and public safety.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he supports stem cell research in principle but has not announced a position on the initiative.
The public appears to be about evenly split, though it has not yet been exposed to an expected barrage of television advertising featuring testimonials from scientists, celebrities and those suffering from diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, that might be treated by therapies derived from stem cells.
Backers of the measure include celebrities like Mr. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, and Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a riding accident. It is also supported by dozens of elected officials, 22 Nobel laureates, 50 patient advocacy groups and several business organizations.
George P. Shultz, a Republican and a former secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, and the California Chamber of Commerce support it, as do California's senators and more than half of its Congressional delegation. Mr. Reagan died in June after a long battle with Alzheimer's, but his widow, Nancy, and their son, Ron Reagan, have not taken a stand on the measure, though they have made clear their support for stem cell research in the past.
Supporters have already raised nearly $15 million, with some donors giving more than $1 million.
Among the major contributors are Pierre M. Omidyar, the founder of eBay, who with his wife, Pamela, has given more than $2 million; Mr. Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who gave $400,000; William K. Bowes Jr., a founder of Amgen, who contributed $1.3 million in company stock; Senator Jon S. Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, who gave $100,000; and John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who contributed $974,000. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has contributed $1 million to the committee sponsoring the initiative.
Robert N. Klein, a Palo Alto real estate developer, is leading the effort to pass the measure and has contributed more than $2 million. Mr. Klein's 14-year-old son has juvenile diabetes, and his mother has Alzheimer's.
"We are on the edge of one of the great watershed medical discoveries in history," Mr. Klein said. Half of California's families are affected by one or more of the 70 diseases or conditions that could respond to stem cell therapies, he said, and the research could significantly reduce the $110 billion spent on health care in the state each year. In his view, California has the research infrastructure and the financial ability to support this venture.
"We have more than 50 percent of the biotech capacity in the United States and more than most other countries," he said. "We can run a substitute national program."
Opponents have raised about $150,000, much of it from the state and national Catholic Church and from Howard Ahmanson Jr., a conservative businessman from Orange County. They oppose the research because it destroys embryos and because some believe it leads down a slippery slope to human cloning.
"I'd say we were David going up against Goliath," said Wayne C. Johnson, a Republican consultant in Sacramento who is coordinator of the effort opposing the proposal, "but David had five smooth stones, and we don't have that yet."
The debate over embryonic stem cell research is among the most difficult in politics and science. Many scientists and patient advocacy groups believe these cells, which are the basic building blocks of the body from which the organs and other cells develop, can yield therapies and cures for diseases that affect as many as 125 million Americans. But to develop the self-perpetuating colonies of stem cells, researchers must destroy human embryos, an act that is abhorrent to some religious conservatives and opponents of abortion, an important part of the Republican Party's base.
The California initiative emphasizes financing for embryonic stem cell research, but also provides money for adult stem cell research and specifically prohibits spending on human cloning.
Despite the proponents' advantages in money and endorsements, the public remains skeptical and, at this point, divided along partisan lines, according to a Field Poll published in August. The survey showed 45 percent of California voters favoring the stem cell initiative and 42 percent against it. Democrats favor it by 2 to 1, while Republicans oppose it by a comparable margin. However, only 40 percent of the respondents said they knew much about the proposal.
Mr. Johnson said there were numerous arguments against the proposition, beyond the moral objections. California is already heavily indebted and is having trouble meeting its day-to-day expenses. He also said that the measure contained insufficient ethical safeguards and could lead to profiteering by venture capitalists and biotechnology interests.
The measure would give the governor and the Legislature virtually no power to direct or oversee spending. "There's no guarantee that one dime goes to the public," Mr. Johnson said. "It's an absolutely no-strings-attached gift of $3 billion."
He also said that the measure devoted a lot of money to a scientific field that was still in its infancy, while giving nothing to other, more mature medical technologies. The National Institutes of Health spent $24.8 million on research involving human embryonic stem cells and $190.7 million on human adult stem cell research in fiscal year 2003, a spokeswoman said. The institutes' entire budget that year was about $27 billion.
Backers of the plan dismissed all these points, saying there were stringent rules in the proposal to ensure that the research was conducted under federal ethics guidelines and that royalties were paid to the state. The plan also calls for a 29-member commission to review grants and report annually to the Legislature.
The committee promoting the plan released a study last week that said the measure would pay for itself in lower health care costs and higher income and sales tax revenues. The study, financed by the initiative's proponents, also predicted that the research would generate $537 million to $1.1 billion in royalties to the state over the next 35 years.
Some scientists said they hoped the initiative would set off a chain reaction in other states and, at the least, make embryonic stem cell research more acceptable.
"It changes the community's perception of the value of the work," said Dr. Steven A. Goldman, chief of cell and gene therapy at the University of Rochester Medical Center, of the prospect of the plan's passage.
Backers of Proposition 71 say that the stem cell research could also spawn a big industry in California because new discoveries will lead to new companies.
Some point to genetic engineering, which was developed in the 1970's by scientists at Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco. One of those scientists helped found Genentech, the first company to exploit that technology. Genentech is now one of the world's biggest biotechnology companies, and hundreds of other biotechnology companies are based in California.
Still, whether this happens with stem cells depends to some extent on whether the technology proves commercially useful. Venture capitalists have been reluctant to invest much in the field directly because the potential payoff is years away.
Yet venture capitalists are among the biggest donors to the Proposition 71 campaign. Critics contend that private investors are supporting the initiative in the hopes of getting the public to pay for the research until it is ready for commercial application.
Joseph S. Lacob, a partner at the Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, gave $500,000, even though he said he did not expect any immediate commercial profit from the work. Mr. Lacob said he was a Republican who voted for President Bush in 2000, but he said he was angry that the president had shut down what he considered a promising avenue of research.
"This country is falling behind because of an administration directive that I think is totally in error," Mr. Lacob said. "I felt something had to be done to send a message to the Bush administration and the world that the United States and particularly California is going to take a leadership role."
-------- ACTIVISTS
War protest elicits emotion on both sides
9/20/2004
Daily Herald
By Joseph Ryan
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=3825085
Neighborhood friends Noreen Lavine and Dorothy Pietsch rested on the cement steps of Barrington's historic Masonic lodge and scanned the shaded street.
"Oh, my gosh," they both exclaimed as hundreds of men and women, some pushing strollers and others leaning on canes, filed down Station Street carrying white lilies and placards each bearing the name of an American soldier killed in the Iraq war.
"Now look," Lavine said, tapping Pietsch on the arm. "They just keep coming. This is something else, unbelievable."
Lavine and Pietsch and dozens of other onlookers, some wearing fresh Little League uniforms, stared in silence at the mock funeral procession, the middle of a two-hour antiwar rally Sunday afternoon.
The elaborate event began in front of Paul Vogel's business on Main Street, where two local ministers and an Islamic leader prayed for the 1,032 dead American soldiers and civilian personnel while denouncing the war and terrorists.
Throngs of war protesters spilled into the blocked-off street next to Vogel's business. Most stood silent. Some chatted about President Bush and the war, a relative in the military or their son's last baseball game.
A few exchanged harsh tones with a handful of war supporters who mingled in the crowd with signs declaring the event "demoralizing" to the troops.
After the speeches, the crowd quietly followed a flag-draped casket carted on a horse-drawn hearse down Main Street. The rhythmic clatter of hooves on asphalt joined the clang of bells from four churches. At Memorial Park, about five blocks from the rally's starting point, the casket was set before a makeshift stage and podium by stoic Iraq and Vietnam War veterans.
Three speakers, one a Marine who recently returned from Iraq, spoke against President Bush and the war, saying "There is no end in sight" and "Patriotism is love of country, not love of war."
The crowd cheered, clapped and often stood silent holding their lilies and placards above their heads until their arms shook.
Barrington police said they counted about 500 attendees. However, Vogel disagreed, saying he handed out 1,032 placards, one for each dead soldier, and each attendee received one.
No serious problems arose from either war protesters or war supporters, police said.
Still, the two sides occasionally clashed.
"You guys should go home," Korean War and Vietnam War veteran Robert Harrison, who opposes the war in Iraq, said to war advocate John Weber, who was wearing a newly pressed Marine Corps uniform adorned with medals earned in Vietnam.
Weber carried a pro-war poster and held an American flag. Harrison gripped a cane and wore a starched Marine baseball-type cap. Their faces were red, and their voices shook with anger.
"You guys really don't get it. We are getting nothing out of this, and these are young boys dying over there," said Harrison, of Arlington Heights.
"This cannot turn into another Vietnam, we have to support our boys over there," countered Weber, of Inverness.
Vogel said he hoped the symbolic elements of the rally would remind people of the cost of the Iraq war. He also hoped the somber overtones would encourage those to step forward who are cautious about appearing like dissenters or "smelly hippies."
The eulogy elements confused Bob Stratton of Lombard, a Vietnam veteran whose namesake son is now serving in Iraq.
"I thought this was just to honor the dead, I'm a little disappointed. Your politics shouldn't matter," he said, declining to offer up his own opinions.
Regardless, he thanked Vogel and gripped his hand tightly as his voice quivered while talking about his son's military status.
Beyond earshot of Sunday's passionate speeches and debates, some locals reveled in the rare event, all politics aside.
On the grassy corner of North Avenue and Franklin Street, about a block from the rally's starting point, four young children wheeled out a red wagon, and placed a sign of their own on a nearby fire hydrant.
"Lemonade 25 cents," it read.
"We made a lot," said one of the boys. "There were a lot of people around here for that thing."
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