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NUCLEAR
US plutonium reaches French plant
DIANA versus HAARP
US Bomb-Grade Plutonium Convoy to Cross France
India, the US and nuclear proliferation
U.S. Says Iraq Sought Russian Defense Systems
Hussein's Aims, Capabilities Often Differed
Former U.N. Inspectors Cite New Report as Validation
Japan Kansai Elec ready to restart 3 nuclear units
Opposition to grill gov't over U.S. report of no WMD proof in Iraq
Military Begins Missile-Defense Exercises
Russia's Gazprom to acquire key nuclear firm-paper
DOE Commends Defense Authorization Conference Committee Action
Compensation Overhauled for Nuke Workers
The big choice on waste at SRS
MILITARY
Rumsfeld Comes to Macedonia: Give US More Soldiers for Iraq
Afghan Vote Is a Referendum on Karzai
U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
Many Helped Iraq Evade U.N. Sanctions On Weapons
Ministers 'sorry' for Iraq error
As head of Halliburton, Cheney sought to do business with Iran
Deal Would Bar Lease of Boeing 767s
Boeing loses $23.5bn US Air Force contract
Beheadings Mark Haiti's Latest Misery
UN oil-for-food:
Inspector's Report Says Hussein Expected Guerrilla War
U.S. Releases Senior Aide to Sadr
British Hostage Is Beheaded by Militants in Iraq
Pentagon Sets Steps to Retake Iraq Rebel Sites
An Ominous Drone in the Gaza Sky
Rescue Workers Pick Through Wreckage at Egyptian Resort
Death Toll Is Uncertain After 3 Explosions Strike Resort Towns
NATO agrees plans for Iraq training mission
Vieques Supporters Ask Superfund Cleanup of Weapons Area
US spy vs Indian spy
Many Helped Iraq Evade U.N. Sanctions On Weapons
U.S. Delaying Action on Violators of Iraq Sanctions
Pentagon Leaders Tell Ranks to Get Ballots and Use Them
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Supreme Court Debates Pollution Cleanup Lawsuits
Judge challenged about visit to CIA
Journalist Cited for Contempt in Leak Probe
GOP Backs Alternative to Terrorist Deportation
Senate Rejects Plan Endorsed by 9/11 Panel
Lawmakers Fight to Strip Bill of Its Immigration Measures
House Approves Spyware Bills
POLITICS
THE BUSH RECORD : Mounting Debt
House Passes Corporate Tax Bill
Democratic Leaders Call for DeLay's Ouster
After Ethics Rebukes, DeLay's Fortunes May Lie With His Party's
Links Between Lobbying, Fundraising, Legislation Laid Out
Ex-Postal Official Admits Taking Nearly $800,000 in Bribes
Anthrax Inquiry Draws Criticism From Federal Judge
Bush's Isolation From Reporters Could Be a Hindrance
In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts
What I Really Said About Iraq
Reporter for Times Is Facing Jail Time
Full Transcript: Second Presidential Debate
Kerry's 'global' test
Candidates Use Arms Report to Make Case
Arms Report Spurs Bitter Bush-Kerry Exchange
OTHER
Green and greener: Nobel prize highlights rise of environmentalism
Scientists Find New Way Stem Cells Repair Organs
Push Against Polio Launched in Africa
ACTIVISTS
Lawyers' Group Sues City Over Arrests of Protesters
Bennington war protester to be sentenced by board
Japan: Peace group coalition calls for troop withdrawal from Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
US plutonium reaches French plant Police guarded bridges along the route south
Friday, 8 October, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3726002.stm
A controversial shipment of US weapons-grade plutonium has reached a processing plant in southern France.
Several dozen anti-nuclear protesters met the convoy on arrival at the plant in Cadarache. They said the plutonium was vulnerable to terrorist attack.
The 125kg consignment was heavily guarded on its journey across France.
The state-owned firm which will reprocess it - Areva - insists it is safe and will be converted into fuel to generate electricity commercially.
The treatment is part of a post-Cold War agreement between the United States and Russia to get rid of plutonium from excess nuclear warheads.
Tight security
The plutonium has been in transit since two British-registered ships left South Carolina last month and delivered it to Cherbourg in northern France. It was then loaded onto lorries and driven to the plant in nearby La Hague for overnight storage before being taken to Cadarache.
Police guarded all the bridges along the route, while armed guards accompanied the convoy and helicopters hovered overhead.
"This is a high-risk strategy being played by the nuclear industry with the lives of millions of people," said Shaun Burnie, of Greenpeace International.
A French court has ruled that any protester who goes within 100 metres of the shipment faces a 75,000 euro fine.
"The plutonium... is shipped in casks that comply with the regulation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," Areva said in a statement. "Its transport is the object of the strongest safety and security measures."
Cogema will process the material and convert it into mixed oxide nuclear fuel (MOX), which will then be shipped back to the US for civilian use.
The US Department of Energy says the plutonium has to be shipped overseas because there is no plant capable of carrying out the conversion process in the US.
-------- depleted uranium
DIANA versus HAARP
vheadline.com
Franz J. T. Lee
October 08, 2004
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23055
University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: Over the last years, we have continually informed our readers about the USA's gigantic war projects and other metropolitan powers against humanity, about their bellicose production of arms of mass destruction (WMD'S), of their ABCDE ... weapons.
For example, we explained the arrogant attitude of the USA, which itself amasses a galaxy of WMD'S ... piling them up in Israel, and elsewhere.
Then the UN sends inspectors to Arab countries; find nothing substantial, and shortly thereafter, the USA bombs countries like Iraq to pieces with the very same WMD's that they're looking for ... using low intensity atomic warfare, all over the show, dropping depleted uranium and the mother of all bombs, destroying nature and society for generations to come in these regions at the whim and caprice of their leaders.
We also informed the public about the Philadelphia Experiments, Mkultra, Operation Paper-Clip, the Manchurian Candidate, HAARP, Pentagon Aliens, Tesla's free energy technology, Wilhelm Reich's orgone, US scramjets, scalar waves, ELF waves and about the current, invisible, stealth war submarines of Germany and France, etc.
Obviously, in spite of our extreme radicality ... our grasping of the global problems at their very root ... it seems that even we have not touched the tip of the iceberg; current global reality is worse.
We also underestimated the brutality of homo homini lupus, of ruling class man. He does not amass these WMD'S for video-games, War of the Galaxies, but eventually to eliminate six billion obsolete physical labor forces. As we all know, long ago, as a result of the introduction of intellectual labor that now accounts for the lion's share of world production, the USA (via the UN) planned programs for the reduction of the world population, of world poverty by progressively simply eliminating the poor themselves.
Concerning the coming world wars, and the corresponding deadly weapons, two years ago, Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, warned that "in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated 'non-lethal weapons.'"
In fact, long ago already, the Pentagon and the Kremlin had developed weapons to manipulate the world's climate. For example, already in the Vietnam War, the USA had used them against the Vietcong. In the USA, this kind of war technology is being used in the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) as part of the (Star Wars) Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), which till this day is being propagated as part of the Project for a New American Century.
The world renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirmed that "US military scientists ... are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods." (The Times, London, 23 November 2000)
HAARP, situated in Gokoma (Alaska) is a jointly managed project of the US Air Force and the US Navy ... other similar projects exist in Europe and Russia ... as a global war instrument is currently fully operational. It is experimenting on triggering earthquakes, droughts, floods and hurricanes; in fact, according to Thomas Bearden, ever since 1970, in the very USA no normal, natural, weather conditions exist anymore ... soon the weather of the whole planet will be in chaos.
In the past, it was very difficult to detect where and when these weapons of mass destruction have been tested or used; furthermore, many extreme weather phenomena, like the well known climate disaster over Vargas (Venezuela) ... appearing miraculously on days of decisive political events in December 1999 ... could easily have been the indirect results, ... perhaps caused unintentionally ... the "collateral damage" of dangerous global experiments in the region, within the context of full spectrum dominance.
In the article mentioned above, the scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich described HAARP as follows: "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead."
Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicted HAARP as: "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet."
HAARP can easily be used as a bellicose instrument of imperialist conquest within the "axis of evil", and it is capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions anywhere on earth. In a previous commentary we have already elaborated the other evil functions of this weapon of "environmental warfare." We also spotlighted the US "Spanish Flu" arm of biological warfare, as revealed by the "Sunshine Project."
However, the global situation is worse, we should not forget that a while ago, according to the international press, President Bush of the USA had ordered the Pentagon to target seven nations for attack -- of course, Venezuela was not included in this list of the "axis of evil," yet, as oil-producing country, she is permanently under attack.
Also, the USA made it very clear that they planned widespread use of nuclear weapons in war, including "low intensity nuclear warfare," that includes the use of lethal weapons of depleted uranium, as were and are being used in Iraq.
In reality, the Bush administration's policies, the new Pentagon doctrine, the ferocious Economic World War between the Great Powers, all bring the world far closer to the actual use of nuclear weapons of war, with incalculable consequences for humanity. Indeed, as things develop currently, such a war is all but inevitable...
Really, the global situation is critical, not even the weather is fine anymore. However, the truth is the only thing that can free, can emancipate us. Hence, to be fully conscious about our precarious existence, is the revolutionary conditio sine qua non to inspire us daily, every hour, to be on the alert, to dedicate our whole life in the service of revolutionary emancipation, of human survival.
In spite of the global, fascist Sword of Damocles over our heads, as comradely inspiration for all our young Latin American Bolivarians, in conclusion, I will cite the first paragraph of one of the very first articles that I ever wrote, published more than forty years ago. Already then I spoke about "securing universal peace and equal relations for Latin America," and elsewhere.
Then already you could hear my "Diana," see my "Battle of Santa Ines" against all possible HAARPs of global fascism ... this is a trans-historic example of tenacious, adamant, permanent, revolutionary practice and theory on a global scale.
"In the twenty years after World War II there emerged what French geographers and social scientists call the Third World -- Tiers Monde. It stretches from Latin America, across Africa and the Middle East, to Indonesia and the tropical Pacific Islands. It is populated by almost two thousand million people -- two-thirds of the world population. These 'native' peoples share a common past: a past of humiliation, exploitation and poverty. This legacy binds them together in a vast 'Commonwealth of Poverty.' Angola -- Portuguese West Africa -- is one of these emergent states, trying to shake off the shackles of colonialism, and aiming at securing universal peace and equal relations throughout the world."
"The Roots of the Ultra-Colonial War in Angola"; Article in "Review of International Affairs", Vol. XIV, No. 329, Belgrade, December 20, 1963
Franz J. T. Lee franzjutta@cantv.net
-------- europe
US Bomb-Grade Plutonium Convoy to Cross France
by Jacky Naegelen
REUTERS FRANCE:
October 8, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27593/story.htm
CHERBOURG, France - A heavily guarded convoy of vehicles believed to be transporting U.S. weapons-grade plutonium left a plant in northern France yesterday for a recycling factory 660 miles southeast.
French state-owned nuclear energy firm Areva, whose Cogema unit will recycle the plutonium into nuclear fuel, declined to confirm the content of the convoy that witnesses saw leave the La Hague plant in the early hours of the morning.
Environmental activists are worried about the safety of the shipment which arrived in the port of Cherbourg Wednesday after a more than two-week journey from Charleston in the United States. They fear it is vulnerable to terrorist attack.
"This is a high-risk strategy being played by the nuclear industry with the lives of millions of people," said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International.
A Reuters photographer said that a convoy of several dozen trucks, cars and buses left the La Hague plant at around 4:30 a.m.
Police were guarding all bridges on the convoy's route to the Cadarache plant in southeastern France, where the plutonium will be recycled into nuclear fuel.
This will then be shipped back to the United States for use in an electricity-generating reactor.
It is part of the U.S. Department of Energy's program to turn plutonium from "excess" nuclear warheads into mixed-oxide (MOX) plutonium-uranium enriched fuel. Greenpeace says the shipment is of 308 pounds of plutonium. A spokesman for the U.S. Security Administration said the amount being transported is 125 kg.
The delivery is part of a post-Cold War agreement between the United States and Russia to get rid of plutonium from excess nuclear warheads.
French state-owned nuclear energy firm Areva, whose Cogema unit will recycle the plutonium into nuclear fuel, says the shipment is safe.
"The plutonium ... is shipped in casks that comply with the regulation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Its transport is the object of the strongest safety and security measures," Areva said in a statement.
But activists, who expect the cargo to reach Cadarache during the night or Friday, say the transport is irresponsible and they have called for a rally close to the southeastern factory later Thursday. "Independent expert analysis presented by Greenpeace to the French government earlier this year exposed the potential scale and severity of an accident or terrorist attack on plutonium transports," Greenpeace's Burnie said.
Wednesday, protesters watched as the boat docked but did not interfere when the plutonium was loaded into a truck to be transported to the La Hague peninsula. A French court ruling has barred protesters from going within 100 meters of the shipment.
Activists Tuesday bolted a heavy truck to the road leading to La Hague and chained themselves to the vehicle to try to stop the delivery. Police used chain cutters to cut free the protesters and later removed the truck.
Under Tuesday's court ruling, any protester who goes within 100 meters of the shipment faces a 75,000 euro ($92,230) fine.
-------- india / pakistan
India, the US and nuclear proliferation
Asia Times By Sultan Shahin Oct 8, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FJ08Df05.html
NEW DELHI - Deeply perturbed over the development, India has asked the United States to withdraw sanctions it has imposed against two Indian nuclear scientists accused by Washington of transferring technology for weapons of mass destruction and missile secrets to Iran.
New Delhi is particularly worried about the timing. This has happened soon after President George W Bush's Democratic challenger Senator John F Kerry and then he himself named nuclear proliferation as "the single most serious threat to the national security of the United States". The fear is that this may turn out to be a precursor to a wider sanctions regime on the unsubstantiated excuse of Indian nuclear proliferation based on US intelligence reports - some of which have proved to be laughably outlandish in Iraq.
It is possible, high-level Indian officials feel, that this is merely a case of some officials in the US administration trying to score points by showing their alacrity in fighting nuclear proliferation at this late stage in their four-year term, even though this has clearly not been their priority in recent years, as is illustrated by the long rope given to Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program and the apparent mastermind of a global nuclear smuggling network. Khan has not even been interviewed by any non-Pakistani investigator, much less been interrogated by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as should have happened immediately after his activities came to light.
To rub salt into Indian wounds, as it were, US companies have turned out in force - Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, United Defense and several smaller companies - to exhibit their wares at the same venue in Pakistan where for years Khan's company, Khan Research Laboratories, used to hand out glossy brochures advertising specialized equipment for making a nuclear bomb - IDEAS 2004 in Karachi. In what appeared to one observer, analyst Joshua Kucera, to be an oblique reference to the most notorious past IDEAS exhibitor - Khan - Pakistan's missiles, including the nuclear-capable Shaheen II, are displayed outside, behind a sign reading "Technological Demonstration - not for sale". Interestingly, in a display of Orwellian black humor, the slogan for this year's version of Pakistan's biggest arms show is "Arms for Peace".
The US imposed weapons sanctions against Pakistan in the 1990s after it found out about that country's secret nuclear-bomb program. But then came September 11, 2001, and the war in Afghanistan, where Pakistani support was required to fight their proteges, the Taliban. Pakistan once again became America's new best friend, a frontline sate in the "war on terror", and the sanctions were lifted.
Although Pakistan is still a state spawning Islamic fundamentalists and obscurantists from its madrassas (religious seminaries), Washington has opened up its pocketbooks again. Over the next five years, Pakistan will get at least US$1.5 billion in defense aid from the US as part of a $3 billion aid package. An announcement made at IDEAS 2004 suggests where some of that money is going to be spent: Pakistani officials revealed that the US is ready to reverse its longtime opposition to selling new F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. The chief of the Pakistani air force told a journalist that Washington wants to provide the F-16s, in part, to help Pakistan fight Islamist extremists in the tribal areas in the northwestern part of the country, though anyone in strategic business should know that if ever these aircraft were used in combat they would be used against India.
To clarify matters on its part, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters that the two Indian scientists had sold neither materials, equipment nor technology. "No transfer of sensitive technology has taken place," he said. "Our track record in this is well known. The US government has been asked to review the issue and withdraw the sanctions."
Last week, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a press briefing in Washington that two Indian scientists were among "14 entities" against which the US has imposed sanctions. He did not specify which entities were individuals or firms. But he said there were seven from China, two from India and one each in Belarus, North Korea, Russia, Spain and Ukraine. "The penalties apply to the entities themselves and not to countries or governments," Boucher said. The penalties prohibit those named under the sanctions from visiting the US or doing business with any US-based companies.
Explaining the innocence of the Indian scientists, Sarna said one of them has never been to Iran and the other one had not visited the country since mid-2003. "It has been conveyed that we don't share the US views," he added.
India is worried over the impact this controversy may have on the efforts India is making for the transfer of sensitive technology from the United States. India and the US have deepened technology cooperation over the past few months. Last month, Washington announced it had agreed to lift export controls on equipment for nuclear facilities in India after New Delhi assured the US it would address that country's non-proliferation concerns. The deal was the first phase under the "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership With India" (NSSP) agreed in January between Bush and former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The State Department did not detail the specific offenses by the two scientists, but officials said it involved alleged assistance to Iran's nuclear program during the first half of 2003. Analyst Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, was quoted by news agencies as having speculated that the sanctions may relate to India's breakthrough development of an economic way to produce tritium, a radioactive isotope used in nuclear bombs. The US and other Western countries accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear energy program as a cover to develop atomic weapons, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
It is a measure of the close defense ties developing between the two countries that US forces are seeking to benefit from the vast experience the Indian military has had in fighting wars in high-altitude mountains, glaciers and deserts, and even in urban warfare, in quelling local disturbances as India has been fighting insurgencies in its northeast for more than half a century.
Only this week, beginning Monday, the Indian navy for the first time displayed its capability with the long-range maritime and submarine hunter aircraft P3C Orions in what are euphemistically called joint exercises with the US Navy off the Goa coast. In the sixth of the Indo-US series of "Malabar Exercises", the frontline Indian anti-submarine warfare ships matched their skills with the US Pacific Fleet's Los Angeles class nuclear submarine as well as a Ticonderoga missile cruiser and an Oliver Hazard Perry class guided-missile frigate. New Delhi and Washington are negotiating for the Indian navy acquiring 10 P3C Orions on a government-to-government sale to augment its depleted maritime capabilities.
On its part, the Indian navy is in the process of attaining higher skills in intercepting unknown vessels, carrying out search and seizure on the high seas to tackle terrorism-related activities as well as protecting the country from external aggression. Intercepting vessels on the high seas, called Visual Boarding Search and Seize (VBSS), is being carried out extensively by the US Navy, and India is right now engaged in learning more about the technicalities of the operation, said C S Patham, commanding officer of INS Mysore. The ship is docked at Mormugao Port in Goa to take part in the India-US joint naval exercises - Malabar 2004.
Only last month, the US administration lifted decades-old US export restrictions on equipment for New Delhi's commercial space program and nuclear power facilities. "It's an odd time to be lifting those restrictions" when the administration is concerned enough about India's cooperation with Iran to impose new sanctions, said Sokolski. The new sanctions are consistent with Under Secretary of State John Bolton's determination, officials claimed, to enforce non-proliferation laws, even if it upsets countries where the US is pursuing better ties. Bolton oversees non-proliferation policy.
US officials also claimed that the Indian scientists' so-called proliferation activities were discussed with the government in New Delhi in advance and sanctions imposed only after New Delhi failed to take action. The administration waived sanctions on Indian companies "four or five times in the last couple of years", but if the government did not take concrete action to redress the situation sanctions could not be waived, one official said.
Another official stressed that the two scientists, not the Indian government, were sanctioned, and New Delhi "needs to do some punishing of people like this itself and prevent these things from happening". Sokolski sees India competing for influence in Iran against nuclear rival Pakistan, whose top scientist Khan ran a black market that sold atomic technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea before being stopped by Islamabad at US prodding.
Pakistani intelligence had earlier accused India of helping Iran when the latter admitted last year that it had received foreign help, and media reports had named Pakistan as one of countries whose nuclear technology Iran was believed to be using. Editors of the Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times of Lahore, who have for long been passionately advocating normalization of ties with India, had surprisingly concluded, even from their own analysis, that India was involved (see Iran nukes and the South Asian puzzle , August 30, 2003).
India had not bothered then to respond vigorously to the Pakistani allegations, probably believing that the charge was too outlandish to be given credence. The Indian record on nuclear non-proliferation has been excellent. It has had very close relations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, both leaders perpetually on the lookout for nuclear technology in the 1970s and 1980s and in a position to pay very well in cash and kind (oil), but despite its weak economy, always in need of foreign exchange, particularly to import oil, India never gave a thought to the many blandishments offered.
One of the reasons the US and other nuclear powers are wary of India on the nuclear front, however, is that it was not party to any aspect of the international non-proliferation regime until 1997, when it signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. Among the significant treaties it has not signed are the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Thus India has a very limited safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which does not cover any of its nuclear research facilities. That is why after its tests in 1998 the US was hard put to find any multilateral mechanism through which to sanction India.
India's biggest regret, in the present controversy, however, is the awkward timing of the accusation, which virtually seeks to put Indian scientists at par with Pakistan's rogue scientists. India is going all out to ensure that the NSSP initiative is invested with some real substance and at least the US Department of Commerce has claimed that things are going very well in bilateral relations. When an Indian journalist wrote an editorial last week claiming that the NSSP was devoid of any real substance, Matthew S Borman, deputy assistant secretary for export administration, US Department of Commerce, wrote a lengthy rejoinder to counter the claim.
On its part, India is determined to persuade the US that its project of spreading democracy requires that it develop special ties with democratic countries and shuns dictatorships such as Pakistan, even if it needs to use them for a while in some project. The US, in according "major non-NATO ally" status to Pakistan recently, has drawn criticism in India.
The recent and the first meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush had also appeared to have gone well. The new United Progressive Alliance government is in any case keen to demonstrate that it has been able to maintain the forward momentum created by the previous government in developing close strategic ties with the US, despite the sanctions imposed after the 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests.
Indian worries were best expressed in an editorial in the Indian Express (October 4):
As happened in the Iraq case, it is possible that interested parties have got together to slap the charge on retired individuals trying to make it generically somewhat similar to the proliferation undertaken by Dr A Q Khan. These sanctions have the potential of slowing down, if not actually derailing, the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership between the two countries. It is not enough for the Indian government to ask the US to review its assessment since no such transfer has taken place. The issue goes well beyond sanctions on two retired individuals who are unlikely to be affected beyond their prospects for travel to the US. This case is far more likely to be used by the non-proliferation hardliners in the US as an example of poor Indian commitment to non-proliferation, strategic literature is going to be recycling half-truths to paint India as a new source of proliferation. What is needed is greater transparency on the issues involved. If, however, there is any substance at all in US claim, then we owe it ourselves to find ways to ensuring such cases do not recur.
New Delhi is hoping that the present controversy will soon blow away and the countries will be able to get down to business as usual in the shortest possible time. But there is also apprehension that the inexplicable and totally unfounded accusation may be a precursor to reimposition or further tightening of the sanctions regime promulgated after the nuclear tests of 1998. These sanctions had been removed primarily because they had to be removed in the case of Pakistan, which became a close US ally after September 11 and the US could not be seen to be treating the two newly-proclaimed nuclear weapon states differently. In any case, the US has persisted with treating India and Pakistan at par with each other, a hyphen that India has long resented, but to no avail.
Sultan Shahin is a New Delhi-based writer.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. Says Iraq Sought Russian Defense Systems
The Moscow Times
By Simon Saradzhyan
October 8, 2004
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/10/08/010.html
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime actively sought and in some instances acquired missile expertise and other defense know-how from Russian entities and individual specialists, but the Russian government neither sanctioned nor was apparently aware of these transfers, the CIA said in a report.
The report, compiled by U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, says that Russian missile engineers traveled to Iraq from 1999 to 2003 to assist Iraqi companies and organizations in developing or improving systems, ranging from ballistic missiles to air defense systems.
-----
Hussein's Aims, Capabilities Often Differed
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16309-2004Oct7?language=printer
The administration's argument that Iraq was a grave threat even without stocks of illicit weapons and warranted a preemptive military attack centers on the answer to this question: Did Saddam Hussein intend to restart his weapons programs if the crippling U.N. sanctions were lifted? Or, as President Bush put it yesterday, "once the world looked away."
Charles A. Duelfer, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, found no plans and no existing capability to restart these programs, and he said in his report released Wednesday that divining Hussein's intention "is like having the picture box cover of a jigsaw puzzle to guide the assembly of the component puzzle pieces."
But, Duelfer concluded: "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capacity."
Duelfer based his conclusion about Hussein's intentions on the Iraqi leader's past actions; on post-invasion interviews with Hussein, his inner circle and weapons scientists; and on the type of industrial equipment the Iraqi government imported and maintained.
"Most senior members of the regime and scientists assumed that the programs would begin in earnest when sanctions ended," Duelfer said. "And sanctions were eroding." Others counter that sanctions had disrupted Iraq's weapons efforts and that there was no consensus at the United Nations for lifting them before the March 2003 invasion.
Referring to Hussein's view of himself, weapons of mass destruction and his country, Duelfer said: "What seems clear is that WMD was a tool of power or leverage that varied in its utility in advancing toward his goals for himself and Iraq."
Hussein's top goal was to defend Iraq against Iran. The neighbors had fought an eight-year war, and Iraq had used tens of thousands of chemical weapons to repel Iranian fighters.
"Saddam argued Iraqi WMD development, while driven in part by the growth of Iranian capabilities, was also intended to provide Iraq with a winning edge against Iran," the report noted.
Nuclear weapons were no longer Hussein's top priority, although he still aspired to have a nuclear capability, Duelfer said. Hussein was more keen on developing ballistic missiles and tactical chemical weapons suited for a battle with Iran.
Duelfer drew many of his conclusions from interviews with Hussein's top advisers and military leaders conducted while they were detained after the invasion.
"Many former Iraqi officials close to Saddam either heard him say or inferred that he intended to resume WMD programs when sanctions were lifted," the report noted. "Those around him at the time do not believe that he made a decision to permanently abandon WMD programs."
For example, former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz told interrogators that "Saddam never formally stated this intention," but that Hussein "did not believe other countries in the region should be able to have WMD when Iraq could not."
Abd Tawab Mullah Huwaysh, director of the Military Industrial Organization, which was the primary agency responsible for developing weapons of mass destruction, "speculated" to investigators that Hussein had increased funding to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, and took an interest in its achievement because he wanted to restart the nuclear program and would need the commission's scientists and staff.
Since 1991, the report noted, Hussein had ordered advisers to keep Iraq's nuclear scientists fully employed, and they made arrangements to do so.
In interviews, Hussein "made clear his view that nuclear weapons were the right of any country that could build them," the report noted. "He was very attentive to the growing Iranian threat, especially its potential nuclear component, and he stated that he would do whatever it took to offset the Iranian threat, clearly implying matching Tehran's nuclear capabilities.
"Saddam observed that India and Pakistan had slipped across the nuclear weapons boundary quite successfully," it added.
But Huwaysh also quoted Hussein as saying: "We do not intend or aspire to return to our previous programs to produce WMD, if the Security Council abides by its obligations. . . ." Huwaysh did not specify whether that meant the lifting of U.N. sanctions.
At the time of the U.S.-led invasion, Duelfer said, Iraq had no active programs for chemical or biological weapons, but had industrial equipment that could have been used to help restart the efforts.
On chemical weapons, Duelfer said, "Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agents in the period of months, and nerve agent in less than a year or two" using the existing chemical infrastructure. The report, however, found "no explicit guidance from Saddam on this point" and no other plans to do that.
On biological weapons, Hussein abandoned his program in 1995 but retained the scientists and other technicians "needed to restart a potential biological weapons program," the report noted. Although there was no proof of efforts to rebuild his anthrax programs, "given the developing infrastructure in Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000, such a reconstitution could be accomplished quite quickly."
On missiles, "Iraq's investments in technology and infrastructure improvements, an effective procurement network, skilled scientists, and designs already on the books for longer range missiles" clearly indicated that Hussein "intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems and that the systems potentially were for WMD."
Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.
--------
Former U.N. Inspectors Cite New Report as Validation
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16221-2004Oct7.html
Two former chief United Nations weapons inspectors said yesterday that the latest report on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs proved that U.N. sanctions, inspections and monitoring had succeeded in keeping the Iraqi leader's illicit arms programs in check from 1991 until the invasion of March 2003.
The report released Wednesday by U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer confirmed that the Iraqi leader had destroyed his chemical and biological weapons stockpiles in the 1990s and had effectively ended his elementary efforts to pursue nuclear weapons.
"We can see today that the inspections worked," said Rolf Ekeus, the director of the first United Nations Special Commission and former Swedish ambassador to the United States, who led the first inspectors into Iraq in 1991. Ekeus said the report documented that most all of Hussein's weapons and prohibited production equipment and facilities had by 1995 either been destroyed or placed in non-weapons activities.
Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector from 2000 to 2003, said in a telephone interview from Sweden that Duelfer's report showed that "international inspection is another means of war without fighting."
Blix said that if his inspectors had been allowed to remain in Iraq and continue their work -- instead of having to leave on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion -- Hussein would have been effectively contained. If several more months of inspections had shown there were no weapons stockpiles, monitoring of Iraq's production facilities would have continued along with import controls and spot inspections.
"Saddam would have remained," Blix said, "but he would have become like [Fidel] Castro or [Moammar] Gaddafi, in power but not a threat to his neighbors."
While the U.N. inspections and sanctions had been sharply criticized as ineffective by the Bush administration before the war, U.S. officials are discussing going to the United Nations to seek broader sanctions against Iran. U.S. and European officials are concerned that Iran's nuclear program could be used for weapons, although Iran insists the program is peaceful.
Duelfer's report concludes that U.N. inspections and sanctions beginning in 1991 forced constraints on Hussein's weapons programs. This in turn forced the Iraqi leader to cut back on weapons programs and make his strategic goal the removing of the sanctions.
Ekeus said most people did not realize that the original U.N. resolutions on Iraq, which were part of the settlement of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, put a tight economic noose around Iraq. They allowed inspectors to limit what goods could be imported and destroy items with potential military use that came into the country to be tracked and destroyed if not used for civilian purposes.
He recalled that Russian gyroscopes were smuggled into the country and his U.N. inspectors got divers to go into the Tigris River to find them where the Iraqis had attempted to hide them.
Ekeus said senior officials in the administration of President George H.W. Bush considered the sanctions and inspections "their main legacy from the Gulf War," because it would disarm Hussein without sending U.S. troops into Baghdad.
By the late 1990s, however, Hussein began a campaign to end the sanctions. He used favorable contracts and bribes to undermine Security Council support and a public relations campaign to show the economic harm being done to the Iraqi people.
When the Bush administration came to office, newly named Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made one of his first goals the creation of "smart sanctions," limiting prohibited imports to items directly related to weapons. He said that the 10 years of sanctions worked.
"He [Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction," Powell said in February 2001. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place."
Powell's new list of sanctioned materials was approved by the United Nations in the summer of 2001.
By that time, Duelfer told a congressional committee Wednesday, "My personal view is that the sanctions were in free fall. They were eroding. There was a lot of corruption. Were it not for 9/11, I don't know that they would exist today."
Hussein's apparent support for Osama bin Laden's attacks on the United States lost him support, not just within the United Nations but from many in the Arab world. Suddenly, as Duelfer put it, Hussein "saw U.N. sanctions, he saw forces around him, he saw diplomatic isolation, he saw his revenue streams dropping -- he chose at that point in time to allow U.N. inspectors in."
Duelfer said he believed when Hussein began discussions with the United Nations in late 2000 about readmitting inspectors, "to me that was a very key indicator that there probably wasn't large stocks there to be found." When the U.S. troop buildup began in the Gulf, it became "clear that Saddam chose not to have weapons at a point in time before the war," he added.
-------- japan
Japan Kansai Elec ready to restart 3 nuclear units
Fri Oct 8, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6450999
TOKYO, Oct 8 - Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. (9503.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it was ready to restart three nuclear power generation units in Fukui prefecture, northern Japan, after replacing pipes.
A company spokesman said it informed the Fukui local government on Friday that it had replaced pipes in the Nos.1 and 2 units at its Mihama plant and in the No.1 unit at Ohi.
It plans to restart the units after receiving approval from the local and central government, the spokesman said.
He did not specify a date for the restarts.
The three units were shut for inspections after an accident at the No.3 Mihama unit on Aug. 9 in which steam leaking form a pipe killed four workers.
Currently, four of Kansai Electric's 11 nuclear units are generating electricity.
----
Opposition to grill gov't over U.S. report of no WMD proof in Iraq
Kyodo News
October 8, 2004
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041007/kyodo/d85imh000.html
Opposition parties said Thursday they plan to grill Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi over his political responsibility for throwing Japan's support behind the United States in its launching of a war in Iraq, after the revelation of a U.S. report suggesting there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time.
The opposition parties are also expected to step up calls on the government to withdraw Japan's Self-Defense Forces troops from Iraq given that the WMD issue has now allegedly been settled.
Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, meanwhile, has defended the premier's decision while its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, expressed concern at the opposition parties' expected moves in the extraordinary Diet session set to convene Tuesday.
In Hanoi, where he is attending the Asia-Europe Meeting, Koizumi said Japan's support for the U.S.-led war on Iraq last year remains unchanged despite the report, and that Japan's support is based on related U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Koizumi's comments were in response to Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, who told Congress on Wednesday the group had found no evidence of WMD and that 12 years of U.N. sanctions had diminished former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ability to develop weapons.
Koizumi backed U.S. President George W. Bush, his closest ally on the international stage, over the war, citing as one of his reasons the WMD allegations.
Yukio Hatoyama, the shadow foreign minister in the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, criticized Koizumi for "easily supporting the U.S. attack based on inaccurate information."
He said the premier's reference now to the Iraqi violations of the U.N. resolutions as a pretext of the war was merely a "quibble."
"The grounds for waging war have been shaken at its roots, and suspicions have become stronger that the Bush administration used the WMD issue as a pretext for waging a preemptive attack," Hatoyama said.
Japanese Communist Party Chairman Kazuo Shii said Koizumi's "huge political responsibility in supporting an illegitimate war of invasion based on false reasons must be called into question."
Seiji Mataichi, secretary general of the Social Democratic Party, said, "The premier has a duty to show the criteria on which he based his decision to support the war."
Senior members of the LDP, however, played down the latest development, saying the report is within the range of what the government envisioned and that they do not believe the government's responsibility in supporting the war will "immediately become an issue."
Tsutomu Takebe, who holds the LDP's No. 2 post as secretary general, said, "The U.S. and British use of force (in Iraq) is based on U.N. resolutions and, as such, naturally holds legitimacy. There was no mistake in the government's handling (of the situation)."
But senior members of the New Komeito expressed some alarm at the planned moves by the opposition parties, believing they now have more ammunition with which to attack the government and ruling parties, especially given the fact of a recent donation scandal.
The LDP is under fire over a donation scandal involving its largest faction, led until recently by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, and a dentists' organization.
There are also concerns within the LDP that the Koizumi administration will be greatly shaken if Bush is defeated in his reelection bid in the November presidential election, according to one LDP member.
-------- missile defense
Military Begins Missile-Defense Exercises
Fri Oct 8, 2004
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&u=/ap/20041008/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/missile_defense_1&printer=1
WASHINGTON - The military has begun a series of exercises with its national missile defense system to move it a step closer to activation. The exercises involve testing crews and activating the network of sensors and command centers to ensure they transfer information properly, Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said Friday.
"No problems have cropped up," he said.
Although five ballistic missile interceptors are in their silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, they are not yet operational because their arming pins have not been removed, so the system is not considered "on alert" yet, Lehner said.
The exercises, each of which can last several hours, have been under way for about a week, Lehner said. They will continue for several more weeks.
The military does has no date set to put the missile defenses on alert but still expects to by the end of the year. Once the system is fully activated, the interceptors will be capable of launching during an ICBM attack from eastern Asia.
The system includes a tracking radar on the Aleutian island of Shemya in Alaska, an early-warning radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., and command centers at Colorado Springs, Colo., and at Fort Greely. It also will rely on early-warning satellites to detect missile launches.
Additional interceptor missiles will be placed at Greely and at Vandenburg Air Force Base, Calif.
A Navy destroyer has begun patrolling the Sea of Japan with an upgraded Aegis radar capable of tracking North Korean missile launches and feeding information into the missile defense network.
Critics say the system has not been tested properly and has yet to prove it would work in a crisis. Military officials describe the system as still experimental but insist it would be capable of firing in a crisis.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency: http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/
-------- russia
Russia's Gazprom to acquire key nuclear firm-paper
Fri Oct 8, 2004
(Reuters)
By Maria Golovnina
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6449669
MOSCOW, Oct 8 - Russia wants gas monopoly Gazprom to extend its reach into nuclear power by taking over a company that builds atomic power stations outside Russia, Vedomosti daily said on Friday.
The move comes as the Kremlin seeks to create a web of control over the strategic energy sector through Gazprom, the world's biggest gas company.
The nuclear company, Atomstroieksport, is one of the pillars of the Russian nuclear industry. It builds reactors only outside Russia and has an order book of $3 billion. It is constructing a nuclear reactor in Iran -- a project the United States says Tehran can use to acquire atomic arms.
Gazprom is due to take over state oil firm Rosneft soon in a stock-funded deal, which will enable the state to regain control over the gas company lost in the 1990s.
Chief Executive Alexei Miller, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, also said this week Gazprom had built strategic stakes in national power group UES and in Moscow's regional utility in its bid to become a fully integrated energy group.
Vedomosti quoted a source close to Atomstroieksport as saying Gazprom subsidiary Gazprombank would soon take over the company by buying 54 percent of its shares from firms linked to Russian machinery giant OMZ (OMZZ.RTS: Quote, Profile, Research) .
The remainder belongs to state companies controlled by Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, or RosAtom. Vedomosti said the transaction had been completed and that Gazprombank may sell the shares to firms linked to RosAtom in the future.
IRAN
A source in RosAtom could not confirm the deal but said the government had been trying to regain OMZ's shares.
"Our position is that a strategic company like that should belong to the government, and I can confirm that we've been working on that for some time," the source told Reuters.
"This is an area where the government has to make strategic and political decisions.
"Atomstroieksport is Russia's key builder of nuclear reactors, and that is of course being done within the framework of international agreements, and the government is responsible for that," the source added.
Atomstroieksport's contruction of the Bushehr nuclear station in Iran is a major irritant in Russia-U.S. relations. Moscow has defied U.S. pressure to ditch the project in Iran, a country Washington believes wants weapons of mass destruction.
A Gazprom spokesman declined to comment.
Officials from OMZ, whose general director Kakha Bendukidze is also Georgia's economy minister, were not available for comment.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
DOE Commends Defense Authorization Conference Committee Action Allowing Continuation of Tank Cleanup Projects in South Carolina and Idaho
October 8, 2004
U.S. D.O.E.
http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=16744&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham released the following statement today commending the Congressional Defense Authorization Conference's approval of language allowing the Department of Energy (DOE) to proceed with tank waste cleanup projects in South Carolina and Idaho:
"We are pleased that the conferees have adopted language that will allow the Department of Energy to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks in South Carolina and Idaho. Under this law, we will be required to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission performance criteria and continue our work with state authorities to ensure that our tank cleanup plans meet cleanup standards. We look forward to completing our work to ensure environmentally sound cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks.
"I want to thank Senator Lindsey Graham and the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate and House conference committee for their leadership on this important issue. I also want to thank Governor Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina for their steadfast commitment to protecting their states' environmental interests. In addition I want to thank Idaho Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Congressmen Mike Simpson and Butch Otter, along with Congressmen Gresham Barrett and John Spratt of South Carolina for their contributions and commitment to resolve this important issue."
Media contact: Joe Davis, 202/586-4940
----
Compensation Overhauled for Nuke Workers
October 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Workers.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional lawmakers have agreed to dramatically reform a compensation program for sick nuclear weapons workers and take it out of the hands of the Energy Department, which has been criticized for taking too long to pay the workers.
The program is for tens of thousands of people nationwide who helped build Cold War-era bombs or cleaned up waste left behind. Many got sick from harsh toxins and are seeking compensation for disabling illnesses and time off the job.
House and Senate negotiators finalized a defense authorization bill Friday that included an overhaul of the program, which was created by Congress four years ago.
The changes include moving it to the Labor Department and requiring the government -- not contractors who ran the nuclear sites -- to pay the bills.
Worker advocates say that's necessary because some people deemed eligible for compensation were not getting paid because the contractors are long gone. In other cases, the government could not compel contractors to pay because they are privately insured.
``It guarantees a willing payer and will ensure that these claims are processed in a timely manner,'' Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., said of the changes, which he helped write. ``Since the program was created four years ago, not one Kentuckian has been paid the benefits they are owed.''
Most of those who filed claims worked for contractors at Energy Department facilities in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.
The Labor Department will rely on a national formula, rather than state worker compensation laws, in deciding how much to pay workers for their disabilities and lost wages. The most any worker can receive is $250,000.
But the workers can apply for additional help under a separate Labor Department program if they have radiation-related cancer or diseases linked to lung-clogging beryllium and silica. That pays a lump sum of $150,000.
Worker advocates say it's only fair for people to have access to both programs. They say the existing Labor Department effort is an ``apology payment'' for putting workers in harm's way, similar to a tort settlement, while the newly reformed effort resembles a worker compensation program that replaces lost wages.
The government previously kept quiet about the toxins workers were exposed to at the nuclear sites. Four years ago, after the Clinton administration apologized, Congress passed the dual compensation programs.
``The loyal men and women who did so much to build the nation's defenses were often unknowingly exposed to radiation and other toxic substances that led to serious long-term illnesses and early death,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
The overhauled program helps not only the workers but their dependent survivors. Each dependent survivor could get $125,000, and in some cases a little more, if the spouse or parent died from a job-related illness.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who grew up 30 miles from one of the government's major nuclear facilities, says it makes sense to help the workers' families.
``These are families, many of whom I lived with and grew up with, who put their faith in the government,'' Alexander said.
The program's estimated cost is about $1 billion over 10 years. Lawmakers say they did not have a good estimate of what the cost would be if the program remained unchanged.
Lawmakers made the program an entitlement, ensuring it will have money to pay out benefits without any further action by Congress.
On the Net:
Labor Department: http://www.labor.gov/
Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov/engine/content.do
-------- south carolina
The big choice on waste at SRS
The State
Fri, Oct. 08, 2004
By ROBERT ALVAREZ AND MICHAEL BERG Guest columnists,
http://www.thestate.com/mld/state/news/opinion/9864866.htm
As Election Day approaches, America is on the edge of a momentous decision that could profoundly affect its future for generations. Hint: It is not the presidential election, though that is important, too. It is the decision, now percolating quietly through Congress with little or no public debate, about whether to clean up or abandon millions of gallons of nuclear weapons wastes - some of the most dangerous materials on earth. Much of it is currently sitting at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site.
During the last half of the 20th century, the United States produced about 100 metric tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons, leaving behind as a byproduct some 220,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste. This enormous radioactive brew is stored in hundreds of underground tanks at Department of Energy sites around the country, each of which individually could hold a basketball court. More than a third of these aging tanks already have leaked.
In addition to remaining dangerous for hundreds of centuries, these wastes are potentially explosive and give off lethal penetrating radiation, even in very small amounts. Everything they touch becomes radioactive and dangerous.
In a rush to end cleanup at several profoundly contaminated weapons sites, the Energy Department is now, in an Orwellian move, attempting to redefine these lethal materials by simply renaming them as "incidental" wastes. This sets the stage for the Energy Department to abandon as much as 90 percent of its most dangerous nuclear wastes near major regional water supplies, including the Columbia River, the Savannah River, the Snake River Aquifer and the Tuscaloosa Aquifer, the primary fresh groundwater supply for the Southeastern United States.
In 1982, the United States government clearly recognized high-level waste hazards by passing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The law requires these materials to be placed in permanent, deep, geologically stable vaults so as to protect humans for at least 10,000 years. But now the Energy Department wants to end-run around the law and a federal court ruling upholding it, citing excessive costs and delays if it complies.
Embedded in the Senate version of the Defense authorization bill is a hotly contested provision to allow the Energy Department to "reclassify" its high-level wastes as "incidental" at the Savannah River Site. So far other states with nuclear weapons sites such as Washington and Idaho remain opposed, despite DOE's repeated efforts to withhold funding unless they support the reclassification scheme.
"There's nothing going to be left behind... that will not be secured... to protect South Carolina," claims Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., author of the provision. But the National Academy of Sciences is not so sanguine, warning last year that defense high-level waste hazards "will persist for centuries... millennia... or essentially forever."
Why would Congress allow this preposterous name-change to go through? It comes down to money. Estimated at $100 billion, geologic disposal of defense high-level wastes is the Energy Department's most expensive cleanup endeavor.
Originally DOE was supposed to remove 99 percent of the radioactivity from the high-level waste, then mix it with molten glass in a process called vitrification, for disposal at a licensed high-level radioactive waste repository. However in 2002, the Energy Department announced geologic disposal of these wastes will be curtailed by 60 percent. This means much greater amounts of radioactivity will be disposed permanently on site.
The Energy Department concedes it could geologically dispose of all its projected defense waste containers, but this will cost money that the Bush administration would rather spend on items such as a new generation of nuclear weapons. And so, DOE is rushing to abandon the majority of its most dangerous wastes - just as was done, with tragic consequences, in the former Soviet Union.
To put things into perspective, the geologic disposal of these wastes cost less than one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the $4 trillion spent to amass the U.S. nuclear arsenal. High-level wastes by any other name are still just that: the largest, most dangerous legacy of the nuclear arms race. They must be treated as such. Otherwise, the price of a name change could well prove incalculable.
Mr. Alvarez is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and served as senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy from 1993 to 1999. Mr. Berg is the co-director of the Carolina Peace Resource Center.
-------- MILITARY
Rumsfeld Comes to Macedonia: Give US More Soldiers for Iraq
By Irina Gelevska
October 08, 2004
Reality Macedonia
http://www.realitymacedonia.org.mk/web/news_page.asp?nid=3736
Skopje-The US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will arrive in Macedonia on Sunday evening as a part of his tour throughout the countries which have soldiers in Iraq.
As expected, the security in the Macedonian Capitol Skopje on Sunday and Monday will be doubled. Last time such measures were undertaken-with over 3000 policemen were on the streets-during the funeral of late President Boris Trajkovski in March 2004.
According to Macedonian Government sources, the US Secretary of Defense will have meetings with the President Branko Crvenkovski at 10:30 on Monday, and at 11:00 with the Prime Minister Hari Kostov and his deputies Radmila Shekerinska and Musa Xhaferi in the Government building. The Macedonian Minister of Defiance Vlado Buchkovski will attend this meeting, also.
The first topic of the talks will be the support of the antiterrorist coalition in Iraq. Macedonia will stay in Iraq and in February 2005 will increase the number of soldiers there. Donald Rumsfeld will not ask directly for more Macedonian soldiers in Iraq, but he will say that the Macedonian soldiers are well trained and needed. The Macedonian Minister of Defense will announce the plan to send 210 Macedonian soldiers in peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2005. According to sources from the MOD, Macedonia can send about 100 soldiers to Iraq after 3-4 months of training at home.
The second topics of the talks will be the Bilateral Agreement for not spreading technology that can be used for making weapons of mass destruction. The Agreement will be signed soon under names United States of America and Macedonia instead of Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonian Government considers this a positive step towards resolving the name dispute with Greece which opposes any use of the word Macedonia.
Donald Rumsfeld is expected to give support for the Macedonian Government who is facing the Referendum against the law for territorial organization in Macedonia on 7-th of November 2004.
The Macedonian President Crvenkovski will ask help from the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for finding information about the three kidnapped Macedonian workers in Iraq a month and a half ago. They were employed by the US Company Soufan Engineering as construction workers.
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Vote Is a Referendum on Karzai
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/international/asia/08karzai.html?pagewanted=all
HAZNI, Afghanistan, Oct. 5 - "Don't be harsh to the people!" President Hamid Karzai beseeched his security detail, which was bearing down on an overly eager crowd with sticks and automatic weapons. "They will calm themselves!"
Below the stage, white pigeons meant to symbolize peace were tentatively stepping out of their coop. Soon Afghanistan's president tried to do the same.
"If you sit in your place, I will come say hello to each one of you," Mr. Karzai told the surging crowd, and then he marched off the stage toward the throng. He did not get far before his guards intervened.
"I came to say hello to each of you, but the security people turned me back," he said. "So what should I do?"
The American-driven security that separates him from the populace has come to define Mr. Karzai, the front-runner this Saturday in Afghanistan's first presidential election.
He spends most of his time confined in the palace compound in Kabul, where he takes nightly loops for exercise. When he leaves, he is accompanied by an armada of DynCorp Inc. guards - one of whom slapped a government minister who got too close in a recent trip to the north - and, at this rally, American attack helicopters.
Mr. Karzai was so frustrated after a trip to Gardez was aborted because of a rocket attack that he sneaked out with two guards to a neighborhood in Kabul, evoking a fablelike image of a king so eager to be among his people that he disguises himself as a commoner.
For many Afghans, as a result, Mr. Karzai has become an insubstantial figure, clearer for what he stands for than for who he is or what he has done. To supporters who will vote for him on Saturday, he represents three years of relative peace and national unity, as well as the leader of an important Afghan tribe. Opponents see him as weak, beholden to the West or incapable of fulfilling the expectations they had for reconstruction.
Given how little-known most of his 15 rivals are, the election is largely a referendum on the perception of Mr. Karzai himself, and the record of the international community - that has backed him.
Supporters and opponents say that if, as expected, Mr. Karzai wins Saturday or in a second round of voting that would follow if no candidate secures a majority, it may represent his last chance to assert himself as a leader rather than a figurehead.
He will have to use his electoral mandate to deliver the changes most Afghans still await, or face their disappointment or worse.
"I hope, with newfound legitimacy, he feels his power and is supported by the international community to provide more visionary leadership than we've seen to date," said Andrew Wilder of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research group based in Kabul.
Mr. Karzai was chosen as interim leader at a conference in Bonn in November 2001, as Afghanistan's Taliban rulers were falling before the American-led invasion. Out of the same conference came a coalition government of the country's rival factions and ethnic groups that has come to define his rule.
Mr. Karzai's selection was backed by the United States in part because he was a member of the Pashtun ethnic majority, which has ruled Afghanistan for most of its history. He is the chief of the Popolzai tribe, and had remained active in Afghan politics from exile in Pakistan.
From 1992 to 1994, he was deputy foreign minister in the Afghan government formed by the mujahedeen after the fall of the Communist government. He initially supported the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic militia that took over in the late 1990's, believing they could restore order, before eventually turning against them. He blames the Taliban for assassinating his father in Quetta, Pakistan, in 1999.
Mr. Karzai brought innate advantages that continue to bolster him. He has no reputation for "blood on his hands," noted Mr. Wilder, and he is not seen as personally corrupt. But Mr. Karzai came out of what Mr. Wilder calls a "deal-making culture," a tradition of tribal politics that aims more for conciliation than confrontation. "I think at times he doesn't recognize his own power," Mr. Wilder said. "I think for the last two and a half years he's been unnecessarily risk-averse." The result was what Mr. Wilder called a "business as usual" agenda in which corruption took root and entrenched powers held sway.
In a sense, Mr. Karzai's record is that of the United States, and the international community as a whole. During his tenure, Afghanistan has made strides in some areas. Five million children are in school, 40 percent of them girls, and about three million refugees have returned.
The Kabul-Kandahar road has been rebuilt, cutting travel time between the cities to less than a day, and work has started on other roads. A Unicef study shows that some indicators of child health, such as infant mortality, have marginally improved in the last four years. Factional fighting has flared, government ministers have been killed, a Taliban insurgency has taken hundreds of lives, but the country as a whole has remained at peace. After 23 years of war, Afghans say that cannot be taken for granted.
But many parts of the country, particularly in the south and southeast, have seen few benefits. Mr. Karzai has failed to rein in blatant corruption among members of his cabinet or below, and has been slow to disarm the many armed militias and defend average Afghans against their abuses.
He made his first tough decisions this year, dropping Muhammad Fahim, the defense minister, as his running mate and removing Ismail Khan as governor of Herat. On both cases he was prodded, some say steeled, by foreign diplomats.
Even the Bush administration says that Mr. Karzai's government has failed to check the country's opium production. The illicit drug trade is enriching many commanders Mr. Karzai says he opposes, creating security threats, and probably financing the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Mr. Karzai's close relationship with his American overseers has also proved tricky. To those Afghans who believe the international community's continued presence is essential to rebuilding their country, it is an asset. To others, concerned about foreign interference in Afghan affairs or about the behavior of American forces hunting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, it is a liability.
Haji Nazim, a leader of the Zadran tribe in the southeast, said his tribe would vote for Mr. Karzai because the patriarch of a respected religious family had told them to. "Otherwise we would never vote for Karzai," he said, citing the lack of reconstruction and transgressions by American soldiers in his area.
The campaign period has only strengthened the perception that it is the Afghan-born American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, and not Mr. Karzai, who is the real power here. Mr. Khalilzad has met with candidates - they say to persuade them to withdraw, a charge he denies - and orchestrated road openings that appear designed to strengthen Mr. Karzai's support.
The ambassador did little to hide his role in removing Mr. Khan from Herat. This week, while Mr. Karzai went to Germany to accept a human rights award, Mr. Khalilzad flew to Herat and announced that Mr. Khan had agreed to join the government in Kabul.
A recent cartoon in an Afghan newspaper showed a trembling Mr. Karzai in Mr. Khalilzad's arms as his campaign rivals pranced in a boxing ring. "Don't worry," the caption had Mr. Khalilzad saying, "I'm the referee for this match."
-------- arms
THE SANCTIONS
U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08sanctions.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Enriched with billions of dollars raised by exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American arms inspector for Iraq has found.
The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released Wednesday.
But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons - working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.
"Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem," the report says. "Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available."
The report suggests that Mr. Hussein was justified when, speaking at a gathering of leaders of the Iraqi armed forces in January 2000, he boasted that despite efforts by the United States and the United Nations to isolate Iraq, he would still be able to buy just about whatever he wanted. "We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself," Mr. Hussein said in the speech, a remark that is quoted on the cover of the chapter in Mr. Duelfer's report that details the ineffectiveness of the embargo.
The report is replete with names, dates and documents detailing negotiations over arms purchases and technical advice, which continued until just days before the United States-led invasion in March 2003. An Iraqi memo from 2000 tells military officials in Baghdad that the deputy general manager of the French company Sofema, a military-component marketer, will be bringing a company catalog so that they can "discuss your needs with him."
President Bush, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, said the report demonstrated that Iraq was determined to illegally rebuild its military. "Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the United Nations oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," he said.
While the scope of the inquiry did not extend beyond Iraq, the report raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of sanctions, a tool the United States has frequently used as a foreign policy tool short of military action. Offered lucrative contracts by Mr. Hussein, both arms suppliers and government officials seem not to have hesitated to ignore United Nations trade restrictions, going so far as to disguise tank engines as agricultural parts.
What actions, if any, the United States will take toward sanctions violators is unclear, as are the implications for current United States standoffs with nations like Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons programs. But sanctions remain one of the few options in many complex international disputes.
"They're often better than nothing," said Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is writing a book on the United Nations.
The illicit trade accelerated as the years passed and the threats of possible military action by the United States increased, with the number of deals among the top suppliers climbing from about 5 transactions in 1998 to more than 15 in 2000 and more than 35 in 2002, the report says.
North Korea and Belarus made perhaps the most aggressive effort to sell advanced military equipment to Iraq, the report says, delivering items that included radar technology that was ultimately used against American attack planes.
President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus was involved in the deals, the report says, noting that he "was anxious that illicit trade should continue on a regular basis and requested that a firm called Belarus Afta be established in Baghdad as a clearinghouse for illicit military trade."
A spokesman from the Belarus Embassy in Washington said that any items sold to Iraq complied with United Nations' rules. "We have always maintained and we continue to maintain that all these accusations are preposterous," said the spokesman, Valentin Rybakov.
Among European allies, France's military industry had extensive contacts with Iraqi officials. The report describes, for example, repeated trips by an executive from the French company Lura, which sold Iraq a tank carrier.
Other private companies from Jordan, China, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Italy and Turkey offered or sold items that supported Iraq's conventional arms programs or could have been used by Mr. Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction, the report says.
No American individuals or companies were named in the report as supplying Iraq with military goods or other prohibited items. But a number of United States companies and at least two American citizens are listed as having received oil vouchers that permitted them to profit from the oil-for-food program.
Unlike hundreds of voucher recipients from other countries, the American recipients are not named in the report but only listed as "United States company" or "United States person," an omission that a government official said was required by American privacy laws.
In January, an Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, ran a list of 270 recipients of oil vouchers that appears to closely parallel the list in the Duelfer report. That list included two Americans, Shaker al-Khafaji and Samir Vincent, neither of whom could be reached for comment on Thursday.
Iraq went to great lengths to build a missile system with a range longer than the limits imposed by the United Nations, a major technological challenge that required the import of an array of banned parts. Companies from China and Russia sold, or negotiated to sell, missile guidance systems, the report says. A Polish company supplied a propulsion system. An Indian company built and sold Iraq a missile-fuel processing plant.
In some cases, governments moved to stop the illicit trade. In 2002, for example, Indian authorities arrested executives at NEC Engineering, which the report says imported solid propellant ingredients for Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles.
The report describes in detail the extraordinary measures taken to move illicit goods into Iraq and to cover the tracks of violators. Iraqi diplomats smuggled radar-jamming devices in diplomatic pouches. An airline created by Iraq and Belarus used four Boeing 747's to move goods from Minsk, the Belarussian capital, to Baghdad "under cover of humanitarian aid missions."
"During the sanction years, traders used a pool of private dhows, barges, and tankers to smuggle oil out and commodities into and out of Iraq's southern ports with relative ease," the report says.
The report also cites evidence that the Jordanian government closely monitored illegal shipments and canceled an inspection arrangement with Lloyd's Register Group of London, an independent monitor of trade, to make smuggling easier.
----
Many Helped Iraq Evade U.N. Sanctions On Weapons
Fri, Oct 08, 2004
By Craig Whitlock and Glenn Frankel,
Washington Post Foreign Service
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=1802&e=2&u=/washpost/20041008/ts_washpost/a16142_2004oct7
BERLIN, Oct. 7 -- As part of its stealth effort to evade U.N. sanctions and rebuild its military, the Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein found that it had no shortage of people around the world who were willing to help. Among them: a French arms dealer known only as "Mr. Claude," who made a surreptitious visit to Iraq four years ago to provide technical expertise and training.
Mr. Claude worked for Lura, a French company that sold tank carriers to Iraq, according to documents recovered by the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The mysterious Frenchman may have also helped the Iraqis attempt to acquire military-related radar and microwave technology, despite a U.N. ban on such trade with Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Other French military contractors came to Baghdad with offers to supply the Iraqi government with helicopters, spare parts for fighter aircraft and air defense systems after 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors withdrew under pressure, according to a report issued this week by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector. The report cites evidence that contacts between the French suppliers and Hussein's government continued until last year, less than one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
While not denying that the transfers took place, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Herve Ladsous, said the accusations "were not verified either with the people themselves or with the authorities of the countries concerned," according to the Associated Press.
The French were hardly alone in helping Hussein to reinvigorate his military forces during the 12 years that Iraq was under strict U.N. sanctions. Arm dealers and military suppliers from the former Eastern Bloc -- Russia, Poland, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine -- provided critical assistance to Iraq as it tried to build a long-range missile program and other systems that weapons inspectors feared could have been used someday to launch chemical, biological or even nuclear attacks.
"It was well known within the U.S. government that individuals and companies were selling Iraq various kinds of prohibited items," said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation specialist in the Clinton administration who now works as an analyst for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
While the United States sought to shut down suppliers through diplomatic and other means, Samore said, it was common knowledge that Iraq was able to bypass sanctions by buying in small quantities and paying high prices, using a network of front companies in Jordan, Syria and other countries in the Middle East.
"The world is awash in conventional arms, and every time there's been an arms embargo on a country they've been able to circumvent it," he said. "It's much more difficult to buy more exotic technologies like nuclear weapons, but there are so many private dealers and corrupt state entities, especially in the former Soviet Union. The best you can do is slow down sales, obstruct them or make it more expensive."
Numerous other nations bought and sold on the Iraqi military shopping network, including such dictatorships as North Korea and the former Yugoslavia before the downfall of President Slobodan Milosevic. While some of the countries were politically friendly with or sympathetic to Iraq, the biggest motivation was usually money, according to Duelfer's report to the CIA.
"As long as the regime had enough cash to pay for these items, it really wouldn't have been too much of a problem to obtain these things and smuggle them in," said Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor for Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments, a London-based magazine. "It just takes people with enough money and the ability to find the right contacts to get their hands on this stuff."
The Iraqi pipeline extended to four countries -- Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine -- that later sent troops to Iraq to join the U.S.-led military coalition.
In Poland, Iraqi intelligence officers helped set up a front company called Ewex, which obtained engines and guidance components for surface-to-air missiles from Polish scrap dealers and middlemen who scoured military surplus stockpiles for the parts, the report said.
U.S. inspectors estimated that Iraq bought about 280 engines from Poland from 2001 to 2003 with the intent of using them to equip a new missile that violated U.N. range limits. The engines had been removed from Polish missiles decommissioned after the Cold War.
Polish authorities arrested some Ewex executives in 2003 on charges of making illegal arms deliveries to Iraq. Purchasing documents confiscated later showed that many of the engines were funneled through Syria.
In Bulgaria, a firm called the JEFF Co. exported more than $7 million worth of warheads, missiles and launcher units to Baghdad in 2002 in violation of U.N. sanctions, the report found. Other Bulgarian traders sold chemicals and machine tools to Iraq that could be used for civilian purposes but were really intended for missile components and other military purposes.
In Romania, Iraqi intelligence agents used diplomatic pouches to send photos of tanks and other military equipment available for sale in that nation back to Baghdad. Although weapons inspectors said it was unclear how much equipment was purchased by the Iraqi government, they did uncover documents after the war showing that a Romanian firm, Uzinexport SA, signed a contract in October 2001 to sell magnets to Iraq that "could have been suitable" for a uranium enrichment program.
In most cases, U.S. weapons inspectors found no clear evidence that officials in those countries were involved in the arms deals. One exception was Ukraine, where leaders gave their blessing to military sales to Iraq.
The Duelfer report calls Ukraine "one of the countries involved in illicit military-related procurement with Iraq" after the 1991 Gulf War, noting that President Leonid Kuchma personally approved the sale of a $100 million antiaircraft radar system to Iraq via a Jordanian intermediary in 2000. Ukrainian officials have since said the sale was never completed, and weapons inspectors said they had not found any evidence that the radar system was shipped to Iraq.
In 2001, Iraqi intelligence agents also bought five motors from a Ukrainian company as part of a project to develop unmanned spy planes. The motors were shipped to Iraq from Ukraine in diplomatic pouches to avoid the attention of international inspectors, the report said.
A Ukrainian electronics professor whose private firm transferred missile engines and motors to Iraqi companies was rewarded with vouchers and credits for more than 7.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil from 1998 to 2000, the report found. The professor, identified as Yuri Orshansky, made about $1.85 million in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was designed to generate revenue for the Iraqi people under economic sanctions.
Some of the clearest evidence of government corruption, according to the report, involved Russia, a country that has vast storehouses of military technology.
Although the Russian government has denied past accusations that it played a role in supplying arms and military equipment to Hussein's government, U.S. weapons inspectors reported finding "a significant amount of captured documentation showing contracts between Iraq and Russian companies."
In one case, a Russian general, Anatoly Makros, formed a joint company with Iraqi partners in 1998 "just to handle the large volume of Russian business," according to the report, which also cited a former Iraqi diplomat as saying that Russian customs officials ignored the illegal commerce in exchange for bribes.
Trade with Russia was so brisk that Iraqi Embassy officials smuggled military supplies on weekly charter flights from Moscow to Baghdad, according to the former Iraqi diplomat, who was not named in the report. The equipment included radar jammers, night-vision goggles and small missile components.
One Russian company signed contracts valued at about $20 million to provide material for Iraq's missile systems. Another Russian firm, Uliss, negotiated a deal to support a tank project dubbed "Saddam the Lion," according to the report.
Frankel reported from London.
-------- britain
Ministers 'sorry' for Iraq error
Ms Hewitt stood by the decision to go into Iraq
(BBC)
Friday, 8 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3725380.stm
Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt has made the government's first direct apology for using inaccurate intelligence to justify the Iraq war.
Appearing on BBC One's Question Time, Ms Hewitt said she was speaking on behalf of the entire Cabinet.
"All of us who were involved in making an incredibly difficult decision are very sorry and do apologise for the fact that that information was wrong."
But she added: "I don't think we were wrong to go in."
Ms Hewitt was responding to members of the audience who challenged her comment that Prime Minister Tony Blair had already apologised for the inaccuracy of the intelligence.
At Labour's annual conference last week, Mr Blair said: "I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam."
Ms Hewitt told Question Time: "What we said at the time and in the dossier about the stockpiles of weapons was wrong and we've apologised for that."
But one audience member shouted out: "You haven't".
Another woman said of Mr Blair's conference comment: "That is saying 'I'm able to apologise but I'm not actually apologising'."
Conservative policy co-ordinator David Cameron, who was on the Question Time panel, said it was "seriously refreshing" that Ms Hewitt used "the S- word".
"They are apologising for the wrong thing," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"Yes, the information about WMDs was wrong... What the apology is required for is the way in which the information was presented to Parliament."
'Whole truth'
Mr Blair had told MPs the information was "extensive, detailed and authoritative", said Mr Cameron, but the Butler report into the intelligence suggested it was "sporadic and patchy".
What had been needed in such a serious situation was "the whole truth and nothing but the truth," Mr Cameron added.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell echoed Mr Cameron's comments.
"It is not the intelligence for which we need an apology but the way in which it was used," he said.
"Patricia Hewitt may have said 'sorry' but the only apology that would count would be from the prime minister acknowledging that the government took us to war on a flawed prospectus."
'False premise'
On Thursday, the Iraq Survey Group released a report saying it had found no evidence Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when Iraq was invaded.
But Mr Blair highlighted its finding that Saddam hoped to revive a WMD programme once sanctions were lifted.
BBC political correspondent James Hardy said the prime minister's conference statement had annoyed many Labour activists.
He said: "Ms Hewitt's unexpected intervention might appease some critics, others will say it's not an apology for the intelligence that they want, but an apology for the war."
A Downing Street spokesman denied that Ms Hewitt had gone further in her apology than Mr Blair.
Commons statement
Speaking during a trip to Ethiopia, he said the report showed Saddam "never had any intention of complying with UN resolutions" and was "doing his best" to get around UN sanctions.
He added: "And just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren't working."
The Liberal Democrats have called on Mr Blair to make a Commons statement on the ISG report, while the Tories say it shows the prime minister has not been honest.
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said: "The prime minister must come to the House of Commons and make a full statement as a matter of urgency to explain why this country went to war on a false premise."
Conservative leader Michael Howard said: "I don't think he [Mr Blair] told the truth about the intelligence he received."
-------- business
As head of Halliburton, Cheney sought to do business with Iran
By MATT KELLEY
Oct 8, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5428.shtml
Vice President Dick Cheney, who has called Iran "the world's leading exporter of terror," pushed to lift U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran while chairman of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s. And his company's offshore subsidiaries also expanded business in Iran.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards criticized Cheney in Tuesday night's debate for his position on Iran during the 1990s, and Edwards said he supports expanding the sanctions against Iran.
Cheney countered that he now supports sanctions against Iran but sidestepped the issue of Halliburton's involvement, saying it was being raised by Democrats "to try to confuse the voters."
Halliburton's foreign subsidiaries did about $65 million in business with Iran last year, company documents say. A federal grand jury is investigating whether Halliburton or its executives deliberately violated the U.S. ban on trade with Iran.
Foreign subsidiaries of American companies can do business with Iran as long as no Americans participate in or direct that business. Halliburton says it did not break that law.
While he headed the Houston-based oil services and construction company, Cheney strongly criticized sanctions against countries like Iran and Libya. President Clinton cut off all U.S. trade with Iran in 1995 because of Tehran's support for terrorism.
Cheney argued then that sanctions did not work and punished American companies. The former defense secretary complained in a 1998 speech that U.S. companies were "cut out of the action" in Iran because of the sanctions.
At an energy industry conference in 1996, Cheney said sanctions were the greatest threat to Halliburton and other American oil-related companies trying to expand overseas.
"We seem to be sanction-happy as a government," Cheney said. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments."
Although Cheney maintained his opposition to unilateral U.S. sanctions during his first months as vice president, the Bush administration renewed the trade ban with Iran in March 2001.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush grouped Iran with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea as members of an "axis of evil" nations with ties to both terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney now sounds a harder line against Iran.
"The government of Iran is the world's leading exporter of terror," Cheney said less than a month after Bush's January 2002 "axis of evil" speech.
On the campaign trail, Cheney has often boasted of how the Bush administration helped shut down an underground network supplying nuclear technology to Iran, which he called one of "the world's most dangerous regimes" in an August campaign speech in Davenport, Iowa.
Halliburton, meanwhile, has defended the business deals with Iran that intensified under Cheney.
"It is neither prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own country-by-country foreign policy," Halliburton said in a January statement amid criticism of its Iran deals.
Much of Halliburton's business with Iran comes through Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in the United Arab Emirates. Halliburton Products & Services opened a Tehran office in early 2000, before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate.
Halliburton Products & Services Ltd. does between $30 million and $40 million in business each year with Iran, Halliburton said in response to a challenge by New York City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. Other foreign subsidiaries did about $25 million in business with Iran in 2003, the company said.
Halliburton also has kept alive a U.S.-based subsidiary called Kellogg Iran, Inc. Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Gist said that company has not done anything since 1977, before Cheney acquired Kellogg Iran's former parent company for Halliburton.
Thompson, whose office oversees pension funds for New York City police and firefighters, has criticized Halliburton and other companies for doing business with Iran and other nations that sponsor terrorism.
"Halliburton is saying they adhere to the letter of the law, when it poses risks to the company but also to the United States and the world. I don't think it's excusable," Thompson said. "This began in February 2000, and Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton then. Yes, he obviously bears some responsibility." AP Researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Halliburton: http://www.halliburton.com
New York City Comptroller: http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov
----
Deal Would Bar Lease of Boeing 767s
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16647-2004Oct7.html
Members of a House-Senate conference committee have reached a preliminary agreement that would prohibit the Air Force from leasing refueling aircraft from Boeing Co., congressional sources familiar with the deal said yesterday.
The deal will not be final until the committee completes its work, which stretched into last night. But language agreed on during its deliberations on the 2005 defense authorization bill would prohibit the lease and subsequent purchase of Boeing 767 tankers and allow the Air Force to buy up to 100 tankers, the sources said. It was not clear last night whether the Air Force would be required to hold a competition before buying the aircraft.
Sources familiar with the committee's work described the agreement, speaking on condition of anonymity because the committee was still working. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed late yesterday that a deal had been reached.
John Ullyot, spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was not possible to predict the outcome of the conference until the conferees finished their work. A House Armed Services Committee spokeswoman said the bill was expected to be filed early today and then voted on by the House and Senate.
The Air Force originally wanted to lease, then buy the planes from Boeing in a $23 billion deal, but critics said the program was expensive and unnecessary. The program was derailed last December when Chicago-based Boeing fired former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun for negotiating employment with the company while overseeing Boeing's work at the Air Force, including negotiating the tanker contract.
Last week, Druyun was sentenced to nine months in prison after admitting she inflated the price of the deal as a "parting gift" before her Pentagon retirement to ingratiate herself with Boeing.
The Pentagon has said a decision on how to move forward on the tanker program would not be made until after the election, pending studies of alternatives. The authorization bill agreement, if passed by the House and Senate, would prevent the department from reverting to the original program, congressional sources said.
The Air Force has not reviewed the authorization bill, said spokesman Col. Dewey Ford. Boeing declined to comment.
----
Boeing loses $23.5bn US Air Force contract
By Caroline Daniel in Chicago
October 8 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d90cef62-18cf-11d9-8963-00000e2511c8.html
After months of controversy, Boeing's deal to provide $23.5bn aircraft refuelling tankers to the US Air Force using a complex leasing mechanism was finally declared dead on Friday.
The new provisions, which form part of a more than $420bn defence authorisation bill for fiscal 2005, still authorise the Air Force to buy 100 re-fuelling aircraft, but require that they fund the acquisitions up front. The bill set aside just $15m towards procurement in 2005 and $80m towards R&D costs.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Friday the conferees had authorised "a multiyear procurement for 100 new aerial refueling aircraft, while prohibiting the lease of KC-767A tanker aircraft by the Air Force. They also agreed to require that any contract for the maintenance and logistics support for new aerial refuelling aircraft be competitively awarded."
"The Boeing lease is dead. They will have to get budget authority upfront for the entire acquisition. Practically, it could be one, or six or 20 aircraft," said one congressional source, "In addition a separate $5.7bn sole source contract [for Boeing] to provide maintenance for the tankers will have to be competed out."
Manfred Bischoff, chairman of the European aerospace giant EADS, says the idea of "national fights over national products in our industry is outdated". Go there
The announcement is a blow to Boeing as there are considerable doubts about how much money will eventually be found to fund the purchase of the refuelling tankers, as it will now have to compete for funds with other Air Force projects.
Morgan Stanley also warned that the "killing of the current tanker deal," could force Boeing to take a $201m write down for inventory and will also now face added pressure to close its production line for its 767 aircraft, which was to have been converted into the refuelling tanker, sometime in 2005.
The new provisions have has been prompted by the ethics scandal concerning Darleen Druyun, the Pentagon official who helped negotiate the contract for the Air Force before taking a job at Boeing. Last week Ms Druyun was sentenced to nine months in prison after admitting that she steered contracts to Boeing over a period of four years, including boosting the price of the Boeing tanker contract.
Her admission shocked the defence community as it casts doubt on the credibility of a much wider range of contracts than were initially believed to be tainted.
Referring explicitly to those ethics concerns, the House Committee in Armed Services, said: "Since last year, evidence of impropriety in the lease of aerial refueling tankers has been uncovered and, as a result, the conferees recommend the.... programme be restarted as a 100-aircraft procurement programme."
The changes mark need a significant victory for Senator John McCain who has led opposition to the initial contract and has also been instrumental in highlighting concerns about how the contract was negotiated. His actions have helped trigger the resignation of Phil Condit, chief executive of Boeing, the ongoing investigations into Mike Sears, the former finance director of Boeing, as well as blocking various nominations of Air Force officials who were involved with the tanker negotiations.
However, it was unclear whether the entire 100 aircraft contract would now be opened to a new competition such as from EADS, its European rival. EADS has argued that concern that it could be asked to re-compete for the tanker contract may have influenced the decision by Boeing to press the US government to launch their WTO case against the EU concerning illegal subsidies to Airbus, the commercial aviation company.
Manfred Bischoff, chairman of EADS, told the FT in an interview in Washington: "One of the obvious intentions of our competitors is to make it look like unfair competition. It is a funny coincidence that we are just competing, or would like to compete, for the tanker aircraft in the US. We have not yet been asked to offer a proposal, but they seem very eager to keep us out of that," he said.
He added: "There must be a reason for why now? And we look at what is on the market, and there is a potential competition coming up for a market that Boeing thought would be a monopoly. Their first lease offer was so outrageous that only when we sent in an unsolicited proposal [the cost] went down by billions."
Morgan Stanley added: "When a full review and/or competition arises, we expect Boeing will battle fully for a lead role and Airbus may secure a meaningful percentage but we'd be surprised and impressed if Airbus commanded the lion's share of any future deal."
-------- haiti
Beheadings Mark Haiti's Latest Misery
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16234-2004Oct7.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Oct. 7 -- At first it looked like an old glove, black and rubbery and flattened in traffic. But a closer look revealed toenails.
The human foot was the last recognizable bit of a headless and burned body still smoldering Thursday in the middle of a busy road in this capital city, which has been convulsed for a week by demonstrations that have left at least 19 people dead. Officials here said at least four people, including three police officers, have been beheaded in violence committed by supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Sentilus Sherulist, 33, stood near the smoking remains, his shoeshine kit in one hand and a little bell to call customers in the other. He said he was finally back at work here in the sprawling slum known as La Saline after the violence kept him at home for days. Asked what had caused the rioting, Sherulist said: "Things are hard. Life is not easy. A lot of people are hungry. A lot of people want Aristide to come back."
The violence has been portrayed by officials here as a harsh expression of popular support for Aristide, who left the country in February in the face of an armed uprising. Government officials have said Aristide's supporters, especially in the vast slums of the capital of the hemisphere's poorest country, are mimicking the savage practices of some Iraqi insurgents with a beheading campaign in their quest to return a president they believe was forced to leave under U.S. pressure.
The violence also interrupted deliveries of relief supplies to the northern city of Gonaives, which suffered massive death and destruction when Tropical Storm Jeanne hit on Sept. 18. More than 3,000 people were killed or are missing, and most of the city's 200,000 residents were left homeless by ravaging floods. The country's main commercial port sits adjacent to La Saline -- the main gate is just a few yards from where the charred body lay in the street Thursday -- and tons of food supplies were stranded there during the violence, relief officials said.
"The situation is volatile," said Anne Poulsen, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program. She said 135 containers with about 2,500 tons of emergency food had been stuck at the port for more than a week. The violence made it impossible to enter the port, she said, and customs officials and other port workers had refused to come to work for days. "You can't blame people for not wanting to risk their lives," Poulsen said.
Poulsen said relief agency trucks, escorted by U.N. peacekeeping troops and Haitian police, were finally able to move nine containers with about 180 tons of food out of the port on Thursday. She said that food would be trucked to Gonaives, where thousands of homeless people are still living almost exclusively on donated goods.
Police and members of the 3,000-member peacekeeping force, which is led by Brazil and has been in Haiti since Aristide left, cracked down on the violence in the past two days and arrested scores of people.
Gerard Latortue, the U.S.-backed interim prime minister, has blamed the violence on street gangs roaming the city with machetes and guns and shouting for Aristide's return.
Leslie Voltaire, who had been in Aristide's cabinet, denied Thursday that Aristide's supporters, or members of his Lavalas political party, were behind the beheadings. Voltaire, in an interview, accused the Latortue government or its supporters among former members of the armed forces of committing the violence as an excuse to crack down on Aristide's followers.
Former members of the military, disbanded by Aristide a decade ago, led the uprising that ousted Aristide, now in exile in South Africa. While not part of the interim government, they are still a powerful presence in many parts of Haiti.
The beheadings are "not a Lavalas thing," Voltaire said. "This is not the practice of Lavalas, and Lavalas is not benefiting. Who is benefiting is the ex-militaries who need to crush the popular support for Aristide."
The violence erupted on Sept. 30, during a Lavalas march through the center of this sweltering city. Voltaire said thousands of Aristide loyalists were marching peacefully, their ninth such demonstration in recent months, when police shot into the crowd. Then the demonstrators "began acting like hooligans because they were furious" about being fired upon, he said. Police said they fired only after the demonstrators turned violent.
The result was more than a week of violence that caused businesses to close and stopped downtown traffic, as barricades of tires burned at major intersections. Late Thursday afternoon, the streets of La Saline and Bel Air, another downtown neighborhood, were black with soot and the remains of burned tires. More fires could be seen deep inside Bel Air, which was inaccessible to traffic because of makeshift roadblocks. Most stores remained closed because of fear of more violence.
"If Aristide would come back, I would love it," said Granol Pelon Altidor, 42, a mother of nine standing a few feet from the charred corpse. "My life is much worse now. People are dumping bodies here and there is lots of insecurity. And the prices of food and everything else is three times higher than it used to be."
Voltaire said those sentiments are widely held among Haiti's poor, who overwhelmingly supported Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who emerged from a poor parish of this city to win the first truly democratic elections in Haiti in 1990. Aristide was ousted by a military coup just months after he took office, then restored to power by the U.S. military in 1994. He was reelected in 2000 but left office when confronted with the rebel uprising, allegations that his government was corrupt and employed armed gangs to control the population, and a loss of confidence in him by his former allies in Washington.
"After seven months of governing, nothing is happening in the slums," Voltaire said. "There is no work, no nothing. Aristide spoke to the people, but this government is not. If we want to have peace, we need to have a national dialogue and a sharing of responsibilities that includes Lavalas. This government is not doing that."
-------- iraq
UN oil-for-food:
Hussein's 'piggy bank' Report indicates no WMD, but uncovers more of UN scandal
by Jim Bencivenga
csmonitor.com
October 8, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1008/dailyUpdate.html
The detailed study by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) that garnered worldwide headlines on Wednesday found Saddam Hussein's government had no weapons of mass destruction at the time the US led coalition militarily invaded Iraq.
But on Friday, as if echoing the refrain of radio commentator Paul Harvey, there's "The rest of the story."
The ISG study also closely examined the UN oil-for-food program for Iraq.
What went largely overlooked in the release of the report on Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, head of ISG, was its description of "how Saddam Hussein created a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue in the decade before the US-led invasion last year," reports The New York Times.
Through secret government-to-government trade agreements, Saddam Hussein's government earned more than $7.5 billion, the report says. At the same time, by demanding kickbacks from foreign companies that received oil or that supplied consumer goods, Iraq received at least $2 billion more to spend on weapons or on Saddam's extravagant palaces.
The oil-for-food program ran from 1996 until the outbreak of war in Iraq last year. It was designed to alleviate the effects sanctions had on ordinary Iraqis by allowing limited quantities of oil to be sold to buy food and medicines. The program was under UN supervision.
Media coverage is now zeroing on this aspect of the report which is certain to receive continued coverage as the US presidential election - with the Iraq war as the central issue - enters its final weeks.
Conservatives leaped on the ISG findings about misdirected funding as vindication for US policies in Iraq, citing such practices as proof of the obstructionist role played by "supposed" allies like France and Russia.
Mr. Duelfer "found information enough to blow the lid off the simmering scandal of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program," writes Claudia Rosett in National Review. "As it turns out, Oil-for-Food pretty much was Saddam Hussein's weapons program." She continues:
Indeed, there is so much here, involving so many businesses and officials and illicit networks worldwide, that it may take a while for many of the disclosures to be winnowed out, and sink in. But what it boils down to is that the U.N. provided cover for Saddam to steal, smuggle, deal, and bribe his way back toward becoming precisely the kind of entrenched menace that all of the UN's erstwhile integrity and well-paid activity was supposed to prevent - equipped with weapons that may even now be killing both civilians and Coalition troops in Iraq.
Columnist Jehl Break writing in The Weekly Standard pokes a clear jab at liberal bias in the media, when he questions why many mainstream newspapers failed to cite on Wednesday what the report states: "Hussein's government retained data and personnel knowledgeable about weapons, and used funds from the Oil for Food relief program to upgrade his chemical industry so that weapons materials could be produced once sanctions ended."
He continues his critique by quoting from the report:
A threat remains that chemical weapons could be used against US and coalition forces, noting information from earlier this year that Iraqi scientists had linked up with foreign terrorists in Iraq. A series of raids beginning last March, Duelfer said, prevented the problem from 'becoming a major threat.'
Duelfer told Congress in releasing the report on Wednesday, "It's pretty clear that the Iraqi strategy and tactics of dividing the Security Council were having a fair amount of success," reports The Washington Times.
'I think that's clear in the report when you see that the amount of conventional military equipment that was being sold to Iraq, being transported into Iraq ... with the help of some Security Council members, there is, in my mind, little doubt that the ... constraints that the UN was able to put around Iraq were collapsing.'
Charges against the UN on the oil-for-food program in the ISG report are already under investigation by a UN appointed panel headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Paul Volcker. This panel will issue its own report, but it has "fueled impatience on Capitol Hill over the slow pace of the Volcker investigation and the UN refusal to make documents available to Congress," reports the Times.
"The world cannot wait years for answers to the growing body of evidence implicating senior UN officials in outright corruption,' said Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
He called for 'immediate public access' to internal UN documents.
UN officials privately told the Times that they hoped Mr. Volcker could "work a little faster, at least to investigate the apparent complicity of their own personnel."
On Thursday France urged "caution in dealing with a US inspector's allegations that it was involved in corruption concerning the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, while others singled out in the report rejected the charges as far-fetched," reported The Associated Press
A French foreign ministry spokeswoman refused to comment on the allegations until the report had been studied, reports The Guardian. "France was fully cooperating with a UN investigation into the running of the oil for food program," she was quoted as saying.
Russia, "pledged to cooperate with investigations into allegations of Iraq-related corruption following the release of a US weapons inspectors' report charging that Saddam Hussein tried to bribe Russian and French officials and firms to win support for Iraq in the UN Security Council," reports CNS.
Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed support for the investigation into the alleged bribes reports AP, citing the Russian news agency Interfax.
'The investigation that is being conducted should result in an objective picture of possible irregularities that could have been committed under the oil-for-food program,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said.
'Russia, like all countries, is interested in the results of this investigation being objective.'
The ISG report comes "at a time when Moscow already is feeling US pressure over Iraq," reports CNS News. A recent US congressional report accused Russia, France and China of blocking US and British efforts to "maintain the integrity" of the UN's oil-for-food program, reports CNS News.
----
INTELLIGENCE
Inspector's Report Says Hussein Expected Guerrilla War
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08intel.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - On the eve of the American invasion in March 2003, Saddam Hussein instructed top Iraqi ministers to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.'' To his generals, Mr. Hussein's order was similar - to hold the American-led invaders for eight days, and leave the rest to him.
Some of those who have recounted those words to interrogators believed at the time that Mr. Hussein was signaling that he had a secret weapon, according to an account spelled out in the new report by the top American arms inspector in Iraq. But what now appears most likely, the report said, is that "what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition.''
American intelligence agencies have reported since last fall that the broad outlines of the guerrilla campaign being waged against American forces in Iraq were laid down before the war by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. But the intimate picture spelled out in the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, provides an extraordinary glimpse of Mr. Hussein and his advisers on the eve of war, just three months after the Iraqi leader had finally told his aides that Iraq no longer possessed chemical weapons.
As described by Mr. Duelfer, a deep apprehension among senior Iraqis over having to face the Americans with conventional arms alone competed with a conviction, at least on the part of Mr. Hussein, that the American advance could be slowed with the help of a popular uprising, and that those Iraqis who fled would be free to fight again.
The report is drawn from extended interrogations not just of Mr. Hussein, but of many of his top deputies, including former Iraqi officials like Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister. From their prison cells, some of them, including Mr. Aziz, even responded in writing to the Americans' questions, in a process that Mr. Duelfer describes as completing homework assignments. The Duelfer report suggests that the American failure to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency was just one of several major misreadings of Mr. Hussein and his deputies.
Among the disconnects cited in the report are some that portray the United States and Iraq as if they were in parallel universes. As late as March 16, 2003, the report says, three days before the war began, American intelligence services continued to receive reports from foreign services and other sources they regarded as credible saying that Mr. Hussein had decided to use chemical weapons against American troops in the event of war.
In fact, Mr. Duelfer concludes, on the basis of the interviews with Iraqis, chemical weapons were never part of the Iraqi defense strategy because Mr. Hussein had conceded in December 2002 that he had none. What the United States believed to be an Iraqi "red line,'' beyond which an American advance would set off an Iraqi chemical-weapons reprisal, was instead merely part of a standard tactical doctrine, taught to all Iraqi officers, that included the concept of a last line of defense, the report says.
The report does not offer a clear verdict on the extent to which the Iraqi insurgency that has raged for 18 months was planned. But it says that from August 2002 to January 2003, Army leaders at bases throughout Iraq were ordered to move and hide weapons and other military equipment at off-base locations, including farms and homes.
A single sentence in an annex also confirms that a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives. A Pentagon intelligence report described by The New York Times in April detailed an operation in which Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers scattered, as American-led forces approached Baghdad, to lead the guerrilla insurgency and plan bombings and other attacks.
The report by Mr. Duelfer describes the M14 unit as having trained Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives, marksmanship and foreign operations at its facilities at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. But on the Challenge Project in particular, Mr. Duelfer's report says only that "sources have not been able to provide sufficient details'' about that enterprise. The report includes recent debriefings of senior Iraqi officials, including one on June 23 with Mr. Aziz, who was reminded by an American interviewer that "you appeared confident'' on the eve of the American invasion, when Mr. Aziz had said that Iraq was prepared to defeat any American invasion.
"Of course I said these things,'' Mr. Aziz is said to have responded. "How could I say, 'I think we are making a mistake; we are not prepared for an attack?' "
The report describes intelligence analysts from the Iraq Survey Group as having "unprecedented access to detainees'' held in American custody, including such high-level deputies as Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, and Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, the former minister of industry, and Sabir Abdelaziz al-Duri, a former lieutenant general who served in both the Directorate of General Military Intelligence and the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The report names Mr. Majid as among those who spoke colorfully and at length but never revealed any substantial information. But it says that others, including General Duri, had been forthcoming on subjects including Iraq's management of Kuwaiti prisoners after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the organization of assassinations abroad by the intelligence services and the torture of political prisoners.
The report portrays Mr. Hussein as preoccupied with his own security, to the point that he rarely picked up a telephone after 1990, for fear that it might give away his location and prompt an attack by the United States. It also describes him as isolated, both from his advisers and from real-world realities, to the extent that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he resisted his advisers' recommendations that Iraq issue a statement of condolence to the United States.
That stance, which the report said was based on Mr. Hussein's anger over American attacks on Iraq, left Iraq's media unique among Middle Eastern services in praising the Sept. 11 attackers.
It was in December 2002, the report said, that Mr. Hussein assembled senior officials to tell that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons, and that they should "cooperate completely'' with the United Nations inspectors who had returned to Iraq as part of a last-ditch effort by the Security Council to stave off an American-led war.
By January 2003, the report says, Mr. Hussein finally accepted that American military action was inevitable. But he also believed that Iraqi forces could hold off the invaders for at least a month, even without chemical weapons, and that American forces would not penetrate as far as Baghdad. "He failed to consult advisers who believed otherwise, and his inner circle reinforced his misperceptions,'' the report said. "Consequently, when Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the Iraqi armed forces had no effective military response.''
By March 2003, the report says, quoting "a former field-grade Republican Guard officer,'' Iraq had collected reliable tactical intelligence against American forces in Kuwait and even knew when Operation Iraqi Freedom would start. Just before the war began, on March 19, Mr. Hussein met with his generals and convened a final meeting with his ministers, the Duelfer report says. "At least three times,'' the report says, Mr. Hussein repeated to the ministers the explicit instruction to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.''
In practice, Mr. Hussein did not disappear from sight until early April 2003, when American forces had reached the outskirts of Baghdad. But it would be more than eight months before he was captured by United States troops. During his time at large, he exhorted Iraqis to continue their insurgency, and he and other former Iraqi leaders, some of whom have still not been captured, are believed to have played prominent roles as leaders of the resistance.
"Saddam believed that the Iraqi people would not stand to be occupied or conquered by the United States and would resist - leading to an insurgency,'' the Duelfer report says. "Saddam said he expected the war to evolve from traditional warfare to insurgency.''
--------
U.S. Releases Senior Aide to Sadr
Move Seen as Good-Faith Gesture in Negotiations to Disband Cleric's Militia
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16200-2004Oct7.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 7 -- The U.S. military released a senior aide to the rebellious Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr on Thursday, and Sadr aides said momentum was growing toward an agreement to disband the cleric's militia, which would halt a major element of the insurgency in Iraq.
Moayed Khazraji, a fiery Baghdad cleric whose arrest a year ago signaled the start of a U.S. crackdown on Sadr's movement, walked out of Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad on Thursday morning. No explanation for the release was offered by the U.S. military or Iraq's interim government.
But Khazraji's freedom was taken as a gesture of good faith in talks aimed at transforming Sadr's following into a political movement before nationwide elections promised for January. The release of imprisoned senior aides has been a primary demand of the Sadr camp, which said it was encouraged.
"It would appear to be a softening of the Americans' position," Mahmoud Sudani, another Sadr adviser, told the Reuters news agency.
The disbanding and disarming of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia would be a major accomplishment for the interim government, which is struggling in large tracts of the country to establish the security needed to hold free elections.
Sadr's following draws heavily on young Shiite Muslims neglected or abused by the former government of Saddam Hussein. It is the only insurgent movement to take hold among Shiites, who account for an estimated 60 percent of the country's population of 25 million. A peace deal could calm much of southern Iraq and the Sadr City slum in eastern Baghdad, where the Army's 1st Cavalry Division has battled the militia for weeks.
Another Sadr spokesman told an Arabic-language television news channel that under the deal, the fighters would turn in heavy and medium weapons, such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The remarks by Ali Smeisim to al-Arabiya echoed the terms detailed a day earlier by the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Allawi has authorized the U.S. military to keep the pressure on the militia in Sadr City, which is named for the cleric's slain father. He said Sadr's side also promised to respect the authority of Iraqi police, who will replace U.S. troops in the area.
Parallel negotiations are underway for control of Fallujah, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been under the control of Sunni Muslim insurgents since April. Talks are set to resume on Saturday, according to participants.
"We told the government that we don't want peace like the one they provided in Najaf. We don't want a peace like the one they restored in Samarra," said Khaldi Jumaili, an insurgent leader who took part in several days of negotiations with leaders of the interim government. He referred to overwhelming U.S. military offensives that resulted in the ejection of Sadr's forces from the holy city of Najaf in the south in August and the north-central city of Samarra this week.
"With Fallujah, the situation differs," he said. "We have an agreement that will be signed by the president, the prime minister, the minister of defense, the minister of interior, the deputy prime minister and the people of Fallujah."
[Early Friday, U.S. aircraft attacked what the U.S. command said was a hideout of Jordanian-born insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Fallujah, the Associated Press reported. The military said "credible intelligence sources" reported terrorist leaders were meeting there. A Fallujah doctor said a wedding groom was among 10 people killed in the attack, which he said wounded the bride and 16 others.]
The apparent progress came during continued lethal ambushes of U.S. forces and new attacks targeting Westerners in Baghdad.
A soldier with the 13th Corps Support Command was killed and two others wounded, one seriously, by an explosive device Wednesday night near Fallujah. A roadside bomb killed a 1st Infantry Division soldier and wounded a civilian interpreter near Baiji, north of Baghdad, around midnight Wednesday.
One of the crude bombs known as improvised explosive devices was also discovered in front of a restaurant frequented by U.S. civilians and military in the heavily fortified Baghdad compound now known as the International Zone. The discovery of the bomb, which was disposed of without injury, elevated security warnings in the area.
A hotel housing many U.S. contractors and journalists, including the offices of The Washington Post, was also targeted. Insurgents fired 155mm artillery shells toward the Ishtar Sheraton in early evening from what witnesses described as homemade tubes on a van. One shell landed on a wall between two rooms on the first floor, setting fire to both. There were no injuries.
The U.S. military keeps a small security contingent at the hotel, and during the attack, several of its members were having dinner in a penthouse restaurant. The soldiers scrambled to windows and returned fire. It was at least the third such direct attack on the hotel; none has caused injury.
Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
British Hostage Is Beheaded by Militants in Iraq
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 8 - A militant group released a video today showing insurgents slicing off the head of a British engineer who was kidnapped in a brazen daylight raid last month and later pleaded with the British government to negotiate with his captors.
The engineer, Kenneth Bigley, is the first Briton to be beheaded in a series of gruesome slayings of foreign hostages that began last spring.
The group, One God and Jihad, released a pair of Internet videos last month showing the decapitations of two American engineers who were kidnapped with Mr. Bigley from their home in central Baghdad.
Since then, two videos of Mr. Bigley, 62, were released in which the engineer pleaded with Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the demands of his captors by releasing all women from Iraqi prisons.
Mr. Bigley's predicament raised a furor in England, where many residents of his hometown of Liverpool and antiwar advocates urged the government to negotiate. Mr. Blair refused, and little was heard of Mr. Bigley until tonight, when Abu Dhabi Television and Reuters both reported that they had received a video showing the murder of Mr. Bigley.
Mr. Bigley is shown sitting in an orange jumpsuit in front of six black-clad men and a wall with the black banner of One God and Jihad, which is led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Mr. Bigley pleads for his life, saying, "I'm a simple man, I want to live, I want my government's help," according to one person who has seen the tape. One of the masked men then reads a statement in Arabic accusing Mr. Blair of failing to free the female prisoners before pulling out a large knife and cutting off Mr. Bigley's head.
The killer then holds the bloody head up in front of the camera.
One God and Jihad also claimed responsibility for the beheading last May of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, and the decapitation in June of Kim Sun Il, a South Korean translator.
But none of the previous hostage incidents played out with so much national anguish and over such a protracted time. The militants cannily hit emotional chords in the collective consciousness of Britain, which has about 8,000 troops here, by first releasing a 11-minute video of Mr. Bigley beseeching Mr. Blair, then one of him sitting inside a cage of chicken wire, looking weary and gaunt.
Philip Bigley, one of the victim's two brothers, read a statement on national television in England defending Mr. Blair.
"We can confirm that the family has now received absolute proof that Ken Bigley was executed by his captors," he said. "The family here in Liverpool believe that our government did everything it possibly could to secure the release of Ken in this impossible situation."
But the other brother, Paul, sent a statement to Stop the War Coalition, a British antiwar group, that said Mr. Blair has "blood on his hands."
Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, said in London that "this is a barbaric murder following three weeks of terrible suffering for the family."
---------
COMBATING INSURGENTS
Pentagon Sets Steps to Retake Iraq Rebel Sites
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08strategy.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before nationwide elections can be held in January, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to senior administration and military officials.
Recent military operations to quell the Iraqi insurgency in Tal Afar, Samarra and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of the new, six-pronged strategy for Iraq, approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the officials said. While elements of the plan have been discussed in generalities recently, the officials described it in much more detail, calling it a comprehensive guideline to their actions in the next few months.
As American military deaths have increased in Iraq and commanders struggle to combat a tenacious insurgency and a deadly spate of bombings, even administration officials involved in creating the plan acknowledge that American forces face an extraordinarily difficult task and that success is far from guaranteed.
Both the overall strategy and the specific military component were described by senior administration, Pentagon and military officials in interviews over the last two weeks in response to requests from The New York Times for an answer to the question, "Is there a plan for Iraq?"
The three military officers who discussed the plan have seen the briefing charts for the new strategy, and the three civilian officials who discussed it were involved in deliberations that resulted in the strategy. The civilians, in particular, agreed to discuss the newest thinking in part to rebut criticism from campaign of Senator John Kerry that the administration has no plan for Iraq.
The new strategy was written this summer and laid down in a series of classified directives to the new American Embassy in Baghdad and to the United States military headquarters there. The instructions are an acknowledgment that the insurgency had seized the initiative in Sunni strongholds north and west of Baghdad and in the southern city of Najaf, considered holy by Shiites.
For each of the cities identified as guerrilla strongholds or vulnerable to falling into insurgent hands, a set of measurements was created to track whether the rebels' grip was being loosened by initiatives of the new Iraqi government, using such criteria as the numbers of Iraqi security personnel on patrol, voter registration, economic development and health care.
And for each city, a timeline was established for military action to establish Iraqi local control if purely political steps by the central government proved insufficient.
"We're working on them by population size, by importance to the election," said one senior administration official, who added that the ultimate objective was to make sure that the main Sunni Muslim cities were able to take part in free elections. "That's where the bad security situations are, and that's where we really need to make some major political and economic changes in the next several months if we're going to have a successful nationwide election," he said.
The military plan also contains options to reduce the approximately 138,000 American forces in Iraq by brigade-size increments of roughly 5,000 troops beginning next year, if the security situation improves and Iraqi forces show they can maintain order. "Depending how the security looks, the force levels could be reduced," one Pentagon official said.
Their efforts are made more difficult by the mixed performance of new Iraqi security forces, the slow pace of reconstruction projects hobbled by contract problems and guerrilla attacks and a large segment of the Iraqi population that still seems unprepared to cast its lot with the new government in Iraq.
One administration official, in assessing the plan's chances for success, stressed the difficulty of guaranteeing the safety of Iraqis who choose to support the new government by signing up for jobs in local police departments and municipal administrations. "If we can eliminate the armed threat that assassinates and intimidates and blows up local officials, there's at least a reasonable chance it can work," the official said.
The overall political, military and economic strategy is contained in a classified guidance document titled "U.S. National Strategy for Supporting Iraq." The plan, which is being coordinated by the National Security Council, sets six basic priorities, which President Bush has been briefed on, administration officials said.
The priorities are to neutralize insurgents, ensure legitimate elections, create jobs and provide essential services, establish foundations for a strong economy, develop good governance and the rule of law and increase international support for the effort.
While the broad themes are not new, senior officials now make no secret that those missions have not been carried out successfully during the first year following the end of major combat operations. Many in the administration and the military now view the past working relationship of L. Paul Bremer III, the former chief of the provisional authority in Baghdad, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who recently departed Iraq as military commander there, as ineffective.
These officials say they hope that the recent transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis from the American-led provisional authority, the arrival of a new American ambassador and the creation of a new four-star military position to command security missions in Iraq offer a second chance.
"What's new, I think, is the fact that we're putting our weight behind them in a coordinated manner," a senior administration official said. "It's not like Sanchez is going in one direction, and Bremer's going in another direction, and the Iraqis are going in a third direction. There is an integrated plan."
The new strategy is to assure that "there's no longer any divide between our military-security strategy and our economic and political strategy," the official said.
American diplomats and commanders in Iraq also stress that they are looking to the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi as a full partner, expecting him to take the lead in political decisions regarding his nation and to assume security responsibilities in former insurgent strongholds once they are cleared by joint operations of American and Iraqi forces.
One senior administration official summarized its broad thrust as: "Use the economic tools and the governance tools to separate out hard-core insurgents you have to deal with by force from those people who are shooting at us because somebody's paying them $100 a week."
The military component of the effort is described in a separate, classified document, written over the summer.
This "Campaign Strategy" or "Campaign Plan" was written after Gen. George W. Casey Jr. took command of allied forces in Iraq at the beginning of July, in consultation with the military's Joint Staff, the office of the secretary of defense and the United States Central Command, which is responsible for operations across the Middle East.
The administration had already said that it would shift $1.8 billion from reconstruction projects to law enforcement and security, principally to train and equip an additional 80,000 Iraqi police officers, border guards and soldiers, and build facilities for them. A comparable amount was shifted into projects to increase employment.
"With the Iraqi forces moving into these places that have been contested by the anti-Iraqi forces, as things settle down, they bring the other Iraqi institutions of the new government in there," said Lt. Gen. Wallace C. Gregson, the commander of Marine forces in the Middle East, who visited Iraq last month. "We can start demonstrating that the course that Prime Minister Allawi's government is on, is the one that will bring peace, stability and prosperity to Iraq."
Defense Department and other administration officials say the recent offensives in Samarra and northern Babil Province, as well as airstrikes against the network of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are all part of a new strategy for American and Iraqi forces to pick the time and place of their offensives, instead of responding to insurgent uprisings, as happened in Najaf in April and August.
"What you have here is a new approach," one senior administration official said. "Najaf was not planned. We didn't plan to go in and have to do that. But we know, once we got that behind us, where do we have to work? We have to work Samarra. We have to work Ramadi. We've done our bit in Samarra. Now we're consolidating and cleaning up. We're doing kinetic strikes in Falluja."
The military campaign relies heavily on preparing Iraqi forces to hold the cities after American and Iraqi troops retake insurgent strongholds like Samarra. After the Iraqi forces' dismal showing in the uprisings in April, the training program was revamped. One of the Army's top officers, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, was brought in to oversee a training mission that in many ways was starting from scratch.
Commanders report that only now is badly needed equipment flowing to Iraqi units, and as of Wednesday the Pentagon reported that only about one-third of the required 270,000 security forces had received some training. Many of them still lack equipment.
General Petraeus and Dr. Allawi have disagreed on the pace of fielding Iraqi forces, military officials say, with the Iraqi leader wanting more troops, faster, and General Petraeus wary of pushing the Iraqis too quickly into what one American official called "a rush to failure."
The recent military operations have included a mix of American soldiers and marines, with Iraqis trained in counterterrorism, urban combat and emergency response situations.
But American commanders say it is still an open question whether the newly trained Iraqi forces can stand up over the long run to insurgent attacks, bribes and threats against their families.
-------- israel / palestine
An Ominous Drone in the Gaza Sky
Israeli Incursion Employs High-Tech Power to Lethal Effect
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16184-2004Oct7?language=printer
JABALYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, Oct. 7 -- By day, the streets of this densely populated Palestinian labyrinth are jammed with seething funeral processions and solemn mourning tents. But gradually, long before dusk, the camp is transformed into a ghost town, with civilians cowering in their apartments and masked gunmen darting through the shadows carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and homemade bombs.
"We just hug the children and cover them with clothes and blankets to protect them from the bullets," said Ama Motawaq, 59, a resident of the camp whose windows have been shattered and walls pockmarked by bullets.
On Thursday evening, the boom of Israeli Merkava tank cannons and the staccato crackle of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire ricocheted through the concrete alleyways, heralding the 10th night of Israel's most lethal incursion into the Palestinian territories in nearly 2 1/2 years.
Ninety-four Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed, according to statistics provided by each side in the conflict, since Israeli forces entered the northern Gaza Strip in an operation aimed at preventing Palestinian guerrillas from firing rockets and mortars at Jewish settlements and Israeli towns over the border. The fighting has pitted a sophisticated, high-tech military force against guerrillas using assault rifles, grenade launchers and weapons crafted from common explosives, construction site scraps and party balloons.
On Thursday morning, Israeli intelligence officers watching video beamed from an unmanned surveillance aircraft saw two militants trying to launch a rocket into Israel, according to a military spokeswoman. Palestinian doctors and nurses peering out a window at the same two figures said they saw something very different: two boys playing with pipes and sticks in a sandy lot next to a school.
Seconds later, a missile tore Suleiman Abu Foul, 12, and Raed Abu Zeid, 15, to shreds.
Manar Farra, director of the Al Awda Hospital on the northern edge of the Jabalya camp and one of the witnesses to the incident, said the younger boy was brought to the hospital "without a head. Even his family could not recognize him. It made us hate our profession. We could do nothing."
At almost the same moment, just after 8:30 a.m., Palestinians fired two crude Qassam rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, about two miles from the Gaza border. No one was killed, but it was the kind of attack that had spurred Israel's leaders to send an estimated 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers and 2,000 soldiers into the Gaza Strip.
To people in the line of fire, low-tech and high-tech weapons are equally terrifying.
On the streets of Sderot, residents interviewed this week said they lived in fear of the whistle that the Qassam rockets make. The missiles have killed four of the town's residents -- including three children -- in the past 3 1/2 months.
In the dusty alleyways and potholed streets of the Jabalya camp, which has more than 100,000 residents, the sound that sows fear is the omnipresent whine of the unmanned surveillance aircraft. On Thursday, no one walked the streets without keeping a wary eye on the cloudless sky in search of the brilliant white drone. Even grimy-faced toddlers playing in the dust of the grassless camp gazed skyward when the buzz grew louder.
"You're afraid when you go out, you're afraid when you're home," said Khalid Kahlot, 40, a father of six whose clothing shop on the northeastern edge of the camp was bulldozed by Israeli armored vehicles a few days ago. "Whenever you're out, you look to the sky to see if there are planes or the drone. Everyone is scared."
When the remote-piloted aircraft fires a missile, "there's no noise, no light, just a 'sphew.' A second later, it hits," said Khaled Abu Habel, 38, who said he heard one of the missiles strike just yards from his home last Friday. He said the missile killed two of his cousins, both members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas.
As part of a mission to create a five-mile buffer zone to prevent rockets from reaching into Israel, the Israeli military has positioned tanks and armored personnel carriers along the northern and eastern sides of the Jabalya camp and the adjoining concrete-block town of Beit Lahiya. Beit Lahiya is about a 10-minute drive from the Israeli border over roads chewed into sand pits by the treads of 60-ton tanks -- or a 20-second flight for a Qassam rocket.
Though tanks and bulldozers thrust into Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya camp in the first two days of the incursion, they have now taken up positions at the entrances to the enclaves, creating a surreal division inside them.
The eastern halves of the two communities -- the streets within tank range -- are deserted day and night. Residents say they are afraid to step outside their homes. But farther west, just out of range of the tank cannons and machine guns, the residents nervously scuttle through streets and alleys to shop in the handful of stores that open for a few hours each day. Schoolgirls with white scarves and neon-hued backpacks walk to classes, and neighbors gather at each other's homes to keep an eye on the feared drone overhead.
By midafternoon, the bustle subsides and the transformation begins. Children and young men start stretching huge cloth sheets across the narrow alleyways to provide cover from prying camera lenses above. As the afternoon shadows grow longer, even the streets on the relatively protected side of town are empty.
The entrances to some alleyways are barricaded with sandbags. Across some of the main streets, residents and militants have piled sand as high as a one-story building in an effort to block Israeli armor.
On Wednesday night, masked fighters from Hamas's armed wing held a news conference in the Jabalya camp to announce their determination to continue battling the Israeli tanks and to keep firing Qassam rockets. They also displayed samples of their arsenal: three shiny new Qassams, hand grenades and homemade bombs.
The Qassams, which have a maximum range of about five miles, are fashioned from four-inch pipes commonly used in construction projects, fitted with fins and a needle nose. The shortest version is about three feet long and is packed with about nine pounds of explosives. The longest measures more than six feet and carries a payload of more than 20 pounds.
On Thursday, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, unveiled its latest weapon, the Aba Bel -- a fat, squat rocket about 20 inches long that contains about 20 pounds of explosives. It is launched by being flung out of a net and kept aloft with about 40 balloons of the type commonly sold for children's parties, an al-Aqsa spokesman said.
The spokesman said the first of the rockets had been lobbed at Sderot on Wednesday. No damage was reported by the Israelis.
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim contributed to this report.
-------- mideast
Rescue Workers Pick Through Wreckage at Egyptian Resort
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By MONA EL-NAGGAR and STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.html
TABA, Egypt, Oct. 8 - Egyptian and Israeli rescue workers picked through the ruins of a luxury Sinai hotel today after at least 27 people were killed in bomb attacks on Thursday night that shook the hotel and two others popular with vacationing Israelis.
Israeli officials said they believed the blasts, in which more than 100 were wounded, were caused by terrorist bombs.
The workers from the two countries labored side by side at the ruins of the the hotel, the Taba Hilton, using heavy earthmoving equipment, their bare hands, and rope to pull apart the rubble, and enlisting sniffer dogs in a retrieval effort or to search for any remaining victims.
The two other blasts took place to the southwest, in the resort villages of Ras al-Sultan and Nuweiba.
A coordinator of the Israeli rescue efforts, Col. Gidon Baron, said that the bodies of some of the 27 people he confirmed were killed had been retrieved from the rubble of the hotel today. An Egyptian doctor at the Taba hospital, Wael Nahran, said 22 bodies had been taken to the hospital's morgue.
A previously unknown pro-Al Qaeda Islamist group called Islamic Tawhid Brigades claimed responsibility for the blast on a Web site, a Reuters report said. The claim, along with one from another unknown group calling itself the World Islamist Group, could not be verified.
Agence France-Presse reported that someone claiming to be from World Islamist Group had taken responsibility for the Hilton blast in a telephone call to its bureau in Jerusalem. The caller said the attack was "in revenge for the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq," the agency reported.
Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim, told reporters the attack appeared to be the work of "international terror groups like Al Qaeda or branches of it," according to Reuters.
The largest explosion was at the Taba Hilton, where early reports suggested that a truck bomb was driven into the hotel, located in a village just across the border and near the Israeli town of Eilat.
Israel Radio said this morning that officials thought there was also a suicide bomber in the Hilton.
The hotel was badly damaged by the blast and an ensuing fire, and 10 floors in the complex collapsed.
Part of the Hilton apparently crumbled immediately after the blast.
"I heard a huge explosion," said Yigal Vakni, an Israeli at the Hilton who spoke to Israeli Army Radio. "The wall near me collapsed and people began to run."
The blast was outside, he said. "When we went out we saw the shops and the internal wall of the hotel had collapsed."
Many people were lying on the ground, he said, "There is a lot of blood, a lot of screaming." An unnamed Israeli woman told Israeli television: "We immediately ran toward the beach, everyone running at once, and windows continue to shatter as we ran away. Entire families were wounded; they ran to the beach and were covered with blood."
An Israeli tourist, Gal Keshet, who said he took part in the rescue at Ras al-Sultan, said that one vehicle exploded after it breached the resort, while another car did not manage to get in but blew up anyway, without causing casualties.
Last month, Israeli intelligence warned Israelis to keep out of the Sinai desert, citing vague but solid information about possible attacks.
Panicked Israelis rushed the border post, trying to flee Egypt, yelling at the border guards in Arabic that their belongings and documents were still in the burning hotel. Guards fired shots into the air to try to disperse them, before finally shutting the terminal temporarily. Roads were blocked, leaving vacationing Israelis at other hotels trapped.
Hadas Manor, an Israeli journalist staying at another Taba hotel, told Israeli television: "Most of the people here haven't come with their cars, so they depend on Egyptian taxis that are not operating now."
Television broadcasts of the border showed an Arab Israeli woman being carried by her husband. As he put her down, she collapsed, and medics rushed to her.
Israeli television also showed scenes of ambulances arriving at Eilat hospitals and unloading the wounded, many of them bandaged and bloody. Others, apparently in shock, were wheeled in on stretchers.
Israeli television interviewed a man, identified as Yaniv, who described the blast near Ras al-Sultan.
"We were sitting in a restaurant and suddenly heard a very powerful blast," the man said. "The electricity went out and rocks were jolted by the blast," he added. "We then saw a second explosion not far from the first blast; it was a ball of fire higher on the mountain. We immediately drove over to the site and found wounded people on the ground, there were Israelis among them, they were bleeding in the sand and there was no one there to help them." The warning about possible attacks came in an unusual public alert from Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, not to go to Sinai resorts during the harvest festival season of Sukkot, which began last week. He said there was intelligence about a possible attack against Israeli tourists in Egypt's Sinai, where as many as 12,000 Israelis were traveling for the holidays, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Since his warning, Israel has moved in force into the Gaza Strip that borders Egypt, trying to stop militant Palestinians like Hamas and Islamic Jihad from firing rockets into Israel.
But Israeli officials suggested that an attack of this magnitude would have been planned carefully from within Egypt and was not tied to the Gaza operation. Hamas, which has improving relations with Cairo, may not want to embarrass Egypt in this way, said Oded Granot, an Israeli commentator on Arab affairs. He suggested that Al Qaeda, an offshoot of the group or an Egyptian radical group might be responsible. In November 2002, attackers drove a car bomb into a hotel popular with Israelis in Mombasa, Kenya, killing 13, and fired missiles at an Israeli charter jet, which missed the target. Israeli officials speculated Thursday night that militants, finding it increasingly hard to attack Israelis in Israel, are choosing to attack them abroad. They may also be trying to cause strains between Israel and Egypt, which are trying to cooperate on the Israeli government plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Israel also regularly complains that Egypt should do more to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza and that Cairo does not take its security responsibilities seriously enough.
The Egyptians say that Israel would best protect itself by making serious progress toward peace with the Palestinians, rather than by accelerating the cycle of violence. But Egypt will not want the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to spill across the border and is expected by Israeli officials to move quickly to try to track down those responsible.
The attacks may also be intended to damage Egypt's tourism industry, on which it depends heavily. In 1997, after militants attacked tourists in Luxor and killed nearly 70 people, Egypt cracked down hard on Islamic Jihad.
The Egyptian government at first suggested the Hilton explosion was caused by gas canisters and initially prevented Israeli rescue workers without passports from crossing the border to the hotel. The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, spoke with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and persuaded him to allow Israeli rescue workers to the scene without delay.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of Parliament's foreign and defense committee, said: "What is sad is the fact that over recent months we have received incessant warnings concerning a possible attack in Sinai, and these warnings grew more and more clear, but the public failed to listen."
Taba is a small village dominated by the Hilton, originally built by the Israelis. Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982 but claimed that Taba was inside Israel according to the international border. International arbitrators disagreed, and Israel returned Taba, along with the expensive hotel, to Egypt in March 1989. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have met numerous times at the hotel for peace talks.
Witnesses told similar stories of the attacks.
Hassan Elkhin told Israeli Channel 10: "After the blast, parts of the wall and ceiling began to crumble. I ran to look for my friends and found them downstairs in the casino. I pulled them out and we managed to leave the hotel. The walls around us collapsed, and there was fire around." Standing outside the hotel, he said, '`we watched as the rooms disappeared, they collapsed one after the other."
When asked if he wasn't afraid to travel to Sinai, Mr. Elkhin said: "I heard the alerts and warnings, but I never believed anything could ever happen there, because, after all, every one there is Israeli.
"Still," he said, "it happened."
Mona el-Naggar reported from Taba for this article and Steven Erlanger reported from Eilat.
--------
Death Toll Is Uncertain After 3 Explosions Strike Resort Towns
October 8, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/international/middleeast/08mideast.html?pagewanted=all
EILAT, Israel, Friday, Oct. 8 - Three explosions shook three Egyptian Sinai resorts popular with vacationing Israelis on Thursday night. Israeli officials said they believed the blasts were caused by terrorist bombs.
There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties. Egypt said at least 30 people were killed, including 12 Egyptians, The Associated Press reported Friday. But an Israeli official later said he could confirm only 14 or 15 dead, including five or six Israelis. Earlier, Israel Radio had reported that at least 35 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
Israeli officials confirmed 22 deaths and thought at least four more victims were buried under the hotel ruins, the Associated Press later reported. The Egyptian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the death toll had reached 22.
In the largest explosion, early reports suggested that a truck bomb was driven into the Taba Hilton, a large hotel in a village just across the border and near the Israeli town of Eilat. Israel Radio said Friday morning that officials thought there was also a suicide bomber in the Hilton. The hotel was badly damaged by the blast and an ensuing fire, and 10 floors in the complex collapsed. There were reports of people buried in the rubble.
The two other explosions took place to the southwest, in the resort villages of Ras al-Sultan and Nuweiba. At least seven people died at Ras al-Sultan, most of them Egyptian workers, according to the Egyptian news media.
Last month, Israeli intelligence warned Israelis to keep out of the Sinai desert, citing vague but solid information about possible attacks.
No definitive claims of responsibility were publicized, though Agence France-Presse reported that someone claiming to be from a previously unknown group, Jamaa al-Islamiya al-Alamiya, or World Islamist Group, had taken responsibility for the Hilton blast in a telephone call to its bureau in Jerusalem. The caller said the attack was "in revenge for the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq," the agency reported.
Part of the Hilton apparently crumbled immediately after the blast. "I heard a huge explosion," said Yigal Vakni, an Israeli at the Hilton who spoke to Israeli Army Radio. "The wall near me collapsed and people began to run." The blast was outside, he said. "When we went out we saw the shops and the internal wall of the hotel had collapsed."
Many people were lying on the ground, he said, "There is a lot of blood, a lot of screaming." An unnamed Israeli woman told Israeli television: "We immediately ran toward the beach, everyone running at once, and windows continue to shatter as we ran away. Entire families were wounded; they ran to the beach and were covered with blood."
Panicked Israelis rushed the border post, trying to flee Egypt, yelling at the border guards in Arabic that their belongings and documents were still in the burning hotel. Guards fired shots into the air to try to disperse them, before finally shutting the terminal temporarily. Roads were blocked, leaving vacationing Israelis at other hotels trapped.
Hadas Manor, an Israeli journalist staying at another Taba hotel, told Israeli television: "Most of the people here haven't come with their cars, so they depend on Egyptian taxis that are not operating now."
Television broadcasts of the border showed an Arab Israeli woman being carried by her husband. As he put her down, she collapsed, and medics rushed to her.
Israeli television also showed scenes of ambulances arriving at Eilat hospitals and unloading the wounded, many of them bandaged and bloody. Others, apparently in shock, were wheeled in on stretchers.
Israeli television interviewed a man, identified as Yaniv, who described the blast near Ras al-Sultan.
"We were sitting in a restaurant and suddenly heard a very powerful blast," the man said. "The electricity went out and rocks were jolted by the blast," he added. "We then saw a second explosion not far from the first blast; it was a ball of fire higher on the mountain. We immediately drove over to the site and found wounded people on the ground, there were Israelis among them, they were bleeding in the sand and there was no one there to help them."
The warning about possible attacks came in an unusual public alert from Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, not to go to Sinai resorts during the harvest festival season of Sukkot, which began last week. He said there was intelligence about a possible attack against Israeli tourists in Egypt's Sinai, where as many as 12,000 Israelis were traveling for the holidays, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Since his warning, Israel has moved in force into the Gaza Strip that borders Egypt, trying to stop militant Palestinians like Hamas and Islamic Jihad from firing rockets into Israel.
But Israeli officials suggested that an attack of this magnitude would have been planned carefully from within Egypt and was not tied to the Gaza operation. Hamas, which has improving relations with Cairo, may not want to embarrass Egypt in this way, said Oded Granot, an Israeli commentator on Arab affairs. He suggested that Al Qaeda, an offshoot of the group or an Egyptian radical group might be responsible. In November 2002, attackers drove a car bomb into a hotel popular with Israelis in Mombasa, Kenya, killing 13, and fired missiles at an Israeli charter jet, which missed the target. Israeli officials speculated Thursday night that militants, finding it increasingly hard to attack Israelis in Israel, are choosing to attack them abroad. They may also be trying to cause strains between Israel and Egypt, which are trying to cooperate on the Israeli government plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Israel also regularly complains that Egypt should do more to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza and that Cairo does not take its security responsibilities seriously enough.
The Egyptians say that Israel would best protect itself by making serious progress toward peace with the Palestinians, rather than by accelerating the cycle of violence. But Egypt will not want the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to spill across the border and is expected by Israeli officials to move quickly to try to track down those responsible.
The attacks may also be intended to damage Egypt's tourism industry, on which it depends heavily. In 1997, after militants attacked tourists in Luxor and killed nearly 70 people, Egypt cracked down hard on Islamic Jihad.
The Egyptian government at first suggested the Hilton explosion was caused by gas canisters and initially prevented Israeli rescue workers without passports from crossing the border to the hotel. The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, spoke with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and persuaded him to allow Israeli rescue workers to the scene without delay.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of Parliament's foreign and defense committee, said: "What is sad is the fact that over recent months we have received incessant warnings concerning a possible attack in Sinai, and these warnings grew more and more clear, but the public failed to listen."
Taba is a small village dominated by the Hilton, originally built by the Israelis. Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982 but claimed that Taba was inside Israel according to the international border. International arbitrators disagreed, and Israel returned Taba, along with the expensive hotel, to Egypt in March 1989. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have met numerous times at the hotel for peace talks.
Witnesses told similar stories of the attacks.
Hassan Elkhin told Israeli Channel 10: "After the blast, parts of the wall and ceiling began to crumble. I ran to look for my friends and found them downstairs in the casino. I pulled them out and we managed to leave the hotel. The walls around us collapsed, and there was fire around." Standing outside the hotel, he said, "we watched as the rooms disappeared, they collapsed one after the other."
When asked if he wasn't afraid to travel to Sinai, Mr. Elkhin said: "I heard the alerts and warnings, but I never believed anything could ever happen there, because, after all, every one there is Israeli.
"Still," he said, "it happened."
-------- nato
NATO agrees plans for Iraq training mission
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Oct 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041008135123.6aprsupt.html
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed Friday detailed plans for its mission to train Iraqi security forces, involving up to 300 instructors and commanded by a senior US officer, officials said.
NATO's top decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council (NAC), adopted a "concept of operations" for the mission, agreed after prolonged negotiations which notably pitted the United States against France and other countries.
The plans were aimed at "substantially enhancing NATO's assistance to the Iraqi interim government with the training of its security forces, as well as the coordination of offers of training and equipment, said a NATO statement.
The mission will be led by US Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who was at the meeting of NATO ambassadors which agreed his appointment and the terms of mission.
Speaking to reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Petraeus said that Iraq was "in a race to develop its security forces in time for the elections" due early next year.
"It's important that this capability be provided to them as quickly as possible," he added.
Asked to describe this task, he said: "It's like trying to repair an aircraft while it's in flight but also while it's being shot at".
He refused to be drawn into numbers, but said the mission would comprise "several hundred trainers".
The NATO mission would be complementary with the Multinational Force. "It's like the software to go with the hardware that the multinational force is already putting in place," he said.
Petraeus is currently commander of the Multinational Force training effort, and will become "dual-hatted" in taking on the running of the NATO mission as well.
Under the plans senior Iraqi officers will be trained in a military academy in the Baghdad region. In all between 200-300 NATO trainers will be deployed, although the number of troops needed to protect the mission has not been set.
NATO has agreed to provide protection for the military academy itself, while the multi-national force in Iraq is to ensure a wider secure environment for the mission.
NATO leaders agreed in principle on the Iraqi training mission at a summit in Istanbul in June, but the alliance has struggled to hammer out the details.
Belgium, France and Germany -- the key opponents of the Iraq conflict, whose resistance plunged NATO into an unprecedented crisis last year -- have notably refused to deploy any troops inside Iraq as part of the training mission.
General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander, said last week as many as 3,000 NATO troops could be deployed to Iraq to help train Iraqi security forces.
But NATO officials have since sought to downplay that figure, saying it is far too premature to say exactly how many troops will be needed to protect the training mission.
And a US defense official admitted this week that the mission is not likely to get there until next year -- too late to have an impact on the training of security forces ahead of Iraq's January elections.
"We'd like to see it happen sooner," the official said.
-------- puerto rico
Vieques Supporters Ask Superfund Cleanup of Weapons Area
October 8, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-08-09.asp#anchor8
The Fellowship of Reconciliation today will hand deliver to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hundreds of letters from members of the public asking that the lands and waters used by the U.S. Navy for weapons training on the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra, be placed on the Superfund List.
The area, known as the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area (AFWTA) has been proposed for inclusion on the Superfund List, which would potentially release federal funds to clean up the mess left behind by 100 years of weapons training - amphibious landings, bombing and gunnery ranges, and aircraft strafing. Public comments on the proposed listing must be postmarked on or before October 12, 2004.
The comments to be handed to the EPA today come from individuals in Canada, Virgin Islands, Sweden and other countries in addition to almost all the states in the United States.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation says that though the bombing ended last year, the island's soil and food chain are still contaminated with heavy metals, unexploded ordnance, depleted uranium, and many other toxic components.
Island residents continue to suffer high rates of cancer and other diseases, the group says. "As at other former firing ranges and military bases, the military has left behind a lethal legacy, the lands are still controlled by the federal government, and programs to clean them up are slow-moving and lack funding."
In its proposal for Superfund listing, the EPA lists the environmental problems left in the area that need remediation. "Extensive amounts of unexploded ordnance and remnants of exploded ordnance has been identified at the range areas on Vieques, Culebra, the keys of Culebra, and in the surrounding water areas."
"Hazardous substances, pollutants and contaminants associated with ordnance use may include mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium, perchlorate, TNT, napalm, and depleted uranium among others," the EPA states.
"At the base/camp areas, the hazardous substances present likely include a range of chemicals such as PCBs, solvents, and pesticides. Documentation also indicates the presence of sunken ships and other items either originally placed as targets, abandoned, or placed in disposal areas."
"An Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registryreview of available analytical data observed past ground water contamination on the Vieques portion of the AFWTA including reports of low levels of explosive related contamination."
The surrounding waters "are known to be contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) and likely associated hazardous substances," the EPA said.
Vieques is home to about 9,300 residents. In addition, there are some 3,000 residents on Culebra.
Vast areas of this facility have been set aside as wilderness area of wildlife refuge, says the EPA. The national wildlife refuges located on the Culebra Archipelago and Vieques provide habitat for at least 25 federally and Puerto Rican endangered species and other sensitive environmental areas, including bioluminescent bays, as well as important archeological sites.
-------- spies
US spy vs Indian spy
Asia Times
By B Raman
Oct 8, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FJ08Df04.html
The current controversy over the action of the US ambassador to India, David Mulford, in allegedly writing directly to the chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, offering the assistance of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation of the recent bomb blasts in the state reveals the extent of the lack of knowledge in the public in general, including political parties, and in the media in particular about matters connected with the intelligence trade. As a result, many journalists and political leaders have tended to go off at a tangent.
Two issues are involved in the debate: should India accept the assistance of the FBI, and was the ambassador's action in directly offering assistance to the Assam government over the head of the government of India the right way of doing it?
Should India accept the assistance of the FBI? Why not, if the government of India, after careful examination, feels it would be beneficial to the investigation. If they do, this would not be the first time that India has accepted the assistance of the intelligence and investigative agencies of foreign countries in investigating crimes involving transnational networking and the use of sophisticated explosive devices and other gadgetry.
It has done so dozens of times ever since it became independent in 1947. The more recent and the more important cases coming to mind are those relating to the origin of a pistol recovered by the Indian police from Sikh hijackers in 1983, in which the then West German forensic experts determined that it came from a stock sold by a West German company to Pakistan; the Mumbai blasts of March 1993, in which, with the permission of Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, Indian agencies sought the assistance of not only the US Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, Britain's MI-5 and MI-6 and Austrian experts, but also of Chinese agencies; and the Purulia arms drop case of 1995 in which the initial tip-off came from the British, who cooperated in the subsequent investigation, without Jyoti Basu, the then chief minister of West Bengal, uttering a single word of protest.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge the assistance Indian agencies have received from their Western counterparts in dealing with terrorism in Punjab. Very often, it was the government of India that sought the assistance. In some cases, it was Western governments that offered the assistance, and India accepted after satisfying itself that there was no catch in it.
However, one has to note at the same time that Western agencies had in the past shown a reluctance to assist their Indian counterparts in the investigation of terrorist acts committed by Kashmiri and Pakistani jihadi terrorist organizations in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and by the terrorist and insurgent organizations of the northeast. The reasons were simple: They did not want to embarrass Pakistan in J&K and they were afraid of protests from their Christian leaders, particularly Baptist missionaries, who take a keen interest in the northeast and whose sympathies have been with the tribals in their confrontation with the government of India.
The alacrity with which the US ambassador offered the FBI's assistance in the investigation of the blasts in northeastern India should, therefore, be puzzling. There is an old Tamil saying, "Chozhiyan kudumi summa aadathu." It means that if you find the tiny tuft at the back of a Brahmin's head moving, you should not presume that it must be due to the breeze. You must examine it further to see whether there could be other reasons.
There is absolutely no reason at present to doubt the bona fides of the ambassador in making the offer. But one has to ask oneself many questions. Has there been any evidence that the US agencies continue to maintain contacts with the tribal insurgents and terrorists, either directly or through American Baptist missionaries? Have any of the organizations suspected in connection with the recent blasts been in touch with the US diplomatic missions in Bangladesh? Can the Americans be worried that the investigation by the local police might bring to light these contacts? Is there an attempt to divert suspicion away from these organizations and their possible contacts with the US by misleading the local police under the pretext of assisting them?
It is only by posing such questions and seeking answers that one protects national security. Diversionary tactics to mislead the police and divert suspicion from them is a copybook technique followed not only by intelligence agencies, but also by many criminals. Experienced police officers will narrate to you innumerable instances in which a suspect tried to divert suspicion from himself by volunteering to help the police in the investigation.
The objection to the US ambassador's letter to the chief minister is not because he offered the FBI's assistance, but because by writing directly to the chief minister of a state in a serious matter relating to national security, he blatantly violated the ground rules regarding intelligence cooperation followed by intelligence agencies all over the world, except the US. In a recent article, I had pointed out that the US and its agencies do not hesitate to violate these rules if they consider it to be in their national interest.
These ground rules lay down that each country entering into intelligence cooperation with another country would designate nodal agencies through which all requests for intelligence and all requests/offers for assistance in investigation would be routed. Before the formation of the RAW (Research & Analysis Wing - India's external intelligence agency) in September 1968, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) of the government of India was the nodal agency. After the formation of the RAW, Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, designated it as the nodal agency. One does not know what the position is now, but one understands that the IB and possibly the Central Bureau of Investigation also act sometimes as the nodal agencies, at least de facto, if not de jure.
The US offer of assistance should have been routed through one of these organizations. The US ambassador has only himself to blame if he has stirred a hornets' nest by going over the head of the government of India and offering the assistance directly to the state government. Delhi should not hesitate to protest strongly.
B Raman is additional secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com.
-------- un
Many Helped Iraq Evade U.N. Sanctions On Weapons
By Craig Whitlock and Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16142-2004Oct7?language=printer
BERLIN, Oct. 7 -- As part of its stealth effort to evade U.N. sanctions and rebuild its military, the Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein found that it had no shortage of people around the world who were willing to help. Among them: a French arms dealer known only as "Mr. Claude," who made a surreptitious visit to Iraq four years ago to provide technical expertise and training.
Mr. Claude worked for Lura, a French company that sold tank carriers to Iraq, according to documents recovered by the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The mysterious Frenchman may have also helped the Iraqis attempt to acquire military-related radar and microwave technology, despite a U.N. ban on such trade with Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Other French military contractors came to Baghdad with offers to supply the Iraqi government with helicopters, spare parts for fighter aircraft and air defense systems after 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors withdrew under pressure, according to a report issued this week by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector. The report cites evidence that contacts between the French suppliers and Hussein's government continued until last year, less than one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
While not denying that the transfers took place, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Herve Ladsous, said the accusations "were not verified either with the people themselves or with the authorities of the countries concerned," according to the Associated Press.
The French were hardly alone in helping Hussein to reinvigorate his military forces during the 12 years that Iraq was under strict U.N. sanctions. Arm dealers and military suppliers from the former Eastern Bloc -- Russia, Poland, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine -- provided critical assistance to Iraq as it tried to build a long-range missile program and other systems that weapons inspectors feared could have been used someday to launch chemical, biological or even nuclear attacks.
"It was well known within the U.S. government that individuals and companies were selling Iraq various kinds of prohibited items," said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation specialist in the Clinton administration who now works as an analyst for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
While the United States sought to shut down suppliers through diplomatic and other means, Samore said, it was common knowledge that Iraq was able to bypass sanctions by buying in small quantities and paying high prices, using a network of front companies in Jordan, Syria and other countries in the Middle East.
"The world is awash in conventional arms, and every time there's been an arms embargo on a country they've been able to circumvent it," he said. "It's much more difficult to buy more exotic technologies like nuclear weapons, but there are so many private dealers and corrupt state entities, especially in the former Soviet Union. The best you can do is slow down sales, obstruct them or make it more expensive."
Numerous other nations bought and sold on the Iraqi military shopping network, including such dictatorships as North Korea and the former Yugoslavia before the downfall of President Slobodan Milosevic. While some of the countries were politically friendly with or sympathetic to Iraq, the biggest motivation was usually money, according to Duelfer's report to the CIA.
"As long as the regime had enough cash to pay for these items, it really wouldn't have been too much of a problem to obtain these things and smuggle them in," said Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor for Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments, a London-based magazine. "It just takes people with enough money and the ability to find the right contacts to get their hands on this stuff."
The Iraqi pipeline extended to four countries -- Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine -- that later sent troops to Iraq to join the U.S.-led military coalition.
In Poland, Iraqi intelligence officers helped set up a front company called Ewex, which obtained engines and guidance components for surface-to-air missiles from Polish scrap dealers and middlemen who scoured military surplus stockpiles for the parts, the report said.
U.S. inspectors estimated that Iraq bought about 280 engines from Poland from 2001 to 2003 with the intent of using them to equip a new missile that violated U.N. range limits. The engines had been removed from Polish missiles decommissioned after the Cold War.
Polish authorities arrested some Ewex executives in 2003 on charges of making illegal arms deliveries to Iraq. Purchasing documents confiscated later showed that many of the engines were funneled through Syria.
In Bulgaria, a firm called the JEFF Co. exported more than $7 million worth of warheads, missiles and launcher units to Baghdad in 2002 in violation of U.N. sanctions, the report found. Other Bulgarian traders sold chemicals and machine tools to Iraq that could be used for civilian purposes but were really intended for missile components and other military purposes.
In Romania, Iraqi intelligence agents used diplomatic pouches to send photos of tanks and other military equipment available for sale in that nation back to Baghdad. Although weapons inspectors said it was unclear how much equipment was purchased by the Iraqi government, they did uncover documents after the war showing that a Romanian firm, Uzinexport SA, signed a contract in October 2001 to sell magnets to Iraq that "could have been suitable" for a uranium enrichment program.
In most cases, U.S. weapons inspectors found no clear evidence that officials in those countries were involved in the arms deals. One exception was Ukraine, where leaders gave their blessing to military sales to Iraq.
The Duelfer report calls Ukraine "one of the countries involved in illicit military-related procurement with Iraq" after the 1991 Gulf War, noting that President Leonid Kuchma personally approved the sale of a $100 million antiaircraft radar system to Iraq via a Jordanian intermediary in 2000. Ukrainian officials have since said the sale was never completed, and weapons inspectors said they had not found any evidence that the radar system was shipped to Iraq.
In 2001, Iraqi intelligence agents also bought five motors from a Ukrainian company as part of a project to develop unmanned spy planes. The motors were shipped to Iraq from Ukraine in diplomatic pouches to avoid the attention of international inspectors, the report said.
A Ukrainian electronics professor whose private firm transferred missile engines and motors to Iraqi companies was rewarded with vouchers and credits for more than 7.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil from 1998 to 2000, the report found. The professor, identified as Yuri Orshansky, made about $1.85 million in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was designed to generate revenue for the Iraqi people under economic sanctions.
Some of the clearest evidence of government corruption, according to the report, involved Russia, a country that has vast storehouses of military technology.
Although the Russian government has denied past accusations that it played a role in supplying arms and military equipment to Hussein's government, U.S. weapons inspectors reported finding "a significant amount of captured documentation showing contracts between Iraq and Russian companies."
In one case, a Russian general, Anatoly Makros, formed a joint company with Iraqi partners in 1998 "just to handle the large volume of Russian business," according to the report, which also cited a former Iraqi diplomat as saying that Russian customs officials ignored the illegal commerce in exchange for bribes.
Trade with Russia was so brisk that Iraqi Embassy officials smuggled military supplies on weekly charter flights from Moscow to Baghdad, according to the former Iraqi diplomat, who was not named in the report. The equipment included radar jammers, night-vision goggles and small missile components.
One Russian company signed contracts valued at about $20 million to provide material for Iraq's missile systems. Another Russian firm, Uliss, negotiated a deal to support a tank project dubbed "Saddam the Lion," according to the report.
Frankel reported from London.
--------
U.S. Delaying Action on Violators of Iraq Sanctions
Fear of Alienating Allies Close to Election Is Cited
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16236-2004Oct7.html
The Bush administration does not plan to take immediate action or pressure foreign governments to act against individuals or companies that may have violated U.N. sanctions against Saddam Hussein because it fears igniting new tensions with allies -- and undermining the president's message that he is working closely with the international community, according to U.S. officials.
With only 26 days until the election, America's position in the world has emerged as a key issue in the presidential campaign. Democratic candidate John F. Kerry has charged that the Iraq war and the administration's decision not to support international treaties on climate control, land mines and an international criminal court are hurting America's international standing and alliances.
"What's next is subject to the election campaign. . . . We're interested in tracking down the [illegal] trade but not interested in doing it before the elections for fear of opening up new fronts and further alienating European allies," said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy. "The inducement is to make no news."
The White House is "taking its time" to go through the voluminous report by U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer and is exploring options, said James R. Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser for communications. The report lists 44 countries in which people or firms conducted oil business with Iraq when sanctions were in effect.
"We're still studying the report, but it paints a disturbing picture of individuals, companies and others with curious relationships working secretly to help Saddam. At this point, I wouldn't rule out future options," Wilkinson said.
Yesterday, a backlash built among countries that were listed in the report. European allies and individuals expressed outrage at being named, with the unstated implication that they may have engaged in illicit activity in violation of a U.N. resolution.
The atmosphere at a State Department briefing Tuesday for diplomats from countries in the report was "extremely bad" and some participants were "totally outraged," said a foreign diplomat who attended the meeting. "The line of questioning was hostile. People wanted to know why they weren't given further advance notice, why there was no specific information about what the report would say and why American companies were not named."
Another envoy said the group, briefed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John F. Tefft, was fuming because the report concluded that Hussein did not seek new weapons of mass destruction after 1991, and yet implied some countries were helping such an effort. The diplomats were also angry because they were not given the report and were instead told to download it from the CIA Web site. But the site became so overwhelmed that some envoys said yesterday they had to try other Web sites, including washingtonpost.com.
A State Department official who attended the meeting described the atmosphere as "fine" but acknowledged that some participants asked "pointed questions" and were unhappy that the report was not available. "The choice was to give them a heads-up or not say anything at all," he said.
Among the most sensitive items to emerge from Duelfer's report are the lists of countries, companies or individuals allegedly dealing with Iraq -- without any indication of whether they had violated sanctions.
In one section, the report lists the Indonesian president, the Russian foreign ministry, a former French cabinet official and the governments of two African countries as having cashed in on lucrative "vouchers" for millions of barrels of oil from Iraq, potentially for profit.
In Indonesia, foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said yesterday that there is "no credence" to allegations that President Megawati Sukarnoputri made illegal use of Iraqi vouchers to cash in on 3.7 million barrels of oil. "It's a fact that we took part in the oil-for-food program, but this notion of vouchers is far-fetched."
In Washington, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte "expressed anger at the process and said he was not happy that names of individuals and companies are being made public on the basis of allegations that have not been verified," French Embassy spokeswoman Nathalie Loiseau said. Levitte also protested that the parties listed in the report were not given any opportunity to provide their side of the story, while the names of U.S. companies that conducted the same business were left out. Those companies were not identified because of U.S. privacy laws, U.S. officials said.
The Namibian government said it had never received vouchers for 7 million barrels of oil, as cited in the report, or bought oil from Iraq. In a statement, former Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky said he never took oil or money from Iraq; the U.S. report, based on Iraqi documents, says he cashed in on almost 80 million barrels of oil.
Instead of taking immediate action, the administration will mainly rely on the U.N. inquiry led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker and congressional investigations into the oil-for-food program, which Hussein manipulated to generate income that was not controlled by the United Nations. By subverting that program as well as by smuggling, kickbacks and bribery, the former Iraqi leader made $11 billion during 12 years of sanctions, Duelfer's report said.
"It seems the sensible thing to do is to let these investigations play out," a senior administration official said. "The information is only going to get better as time goes on."
Washington is also "confident" that U.S. allies are studying the report "as closely as we are and there may be potential actions by those nations internally," Wilkinson said.
-------- us
Pentagon Leaders Tell Ranks to Get Ballots and Use Them
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/campaign/08vote.html
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan - Capt. Scott D. Stewart, a 20-year veteran of the Air Force, remembers that voting on American military bases was always a low priority, with registration seen as "a free-for-all, every man for himself."
But this time, Captain Stewart, a 40-year-old Floridian, dropped his presidential ballot in the mail in late September. This time, the Pentagon wants 100 percent voter participation here and at many American bases around the world.
The target may be impossible, but the advocates command attention: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Through e-mail messages, spots on military radio and television and orders down the chain of command, the message has reached bases like this one, a conglomeration of 1960's beige and brown government buildings surrounding a military air strip 30 miles west of Tokyo.
"It's very rare that you see a four-star general getting on television, telling soldiers to register and vote," said Captain Stewart, a base security officer assigned to help run the voter registration campaign, referring to General Myers. "It's been a huge, huge push to get everyone registered. It was coming straight down from the secretary of defense."
In recent visits to three American bases in Japan - of the Army, Air Force and Marines - the message was the same. Voter registration of soldiers, traditionally a low-priority duty assigned to junior officers, was suddenly a demanding high-profile job. "Vote, wherever you are," commanded a pamphlet distributed at the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa.
"When you had a three-star general starting to ask for weekly reports by August, people started to take it seriously," said Maj. Wendy Lee, supervisor of the campaign to register the roughly 7,000 eligible voters at Yokota: soldiers, spouses, adult children and civilian employees.
The policy, which was drawn up more than a year ago, comes in response to the problems in 2000 with military ballots, which in many cases arrived too late to be counted.
"The Florida fiasco really educated everyone," said Douglas L. Hardy, chairman of Republicans Abroad Japan, referring to President Bush's narrow victory four years ago - a win helped in part by absentee ballots mailed by soldiers. This time, Mr. Hardy said, "The military is doing a fantastic job, to be honest."
Recently, Republicans Abroad started an advertising campaign in Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that serves the bases.
But Democrats here say that the Republicans may be deluding themselves if they think the program will favor Republicans.
"We have had quite a number of angry service people, people who have personal knowledge of the Iraq situation and are feeling betrayed," said Ruth McCreery, voting assistance chairwoman for Democrats Abroad Japan. "One enlisted guy checked with his military legal officer to see if it was legal to attend a Democrats Abroad event, which it was because the legal guy was attending."
Outright political campaigning on bases is not permitted. Around Yokota on a recent afternoon, the only visible signs of partisanship were the occasional bumper sticker in the long rows of cars in the parking lots.
"You can't have a 'Vote for Bush' poster in your office," said Kim Veil, a 31-year-old staff sergeant from Louisiana who runs one of the 81 registration units on the base.
Yokota has followed a typical campaign. For every 100 soldiers, there is now a voting representative. Armed with absentee-ballot information for every state, the "voting rep" must make two "personal contacts" with each soldier.
Major Lee said she started to devise the register-and-vote campaign a year ago. Planning for problems with local ballots mailed from the United States to Japan, she arranged for a fallback: a stock of 1,000 federal absentee ballots, which allow a voter to write in the choices for president, senator and representative.
To promote awareness, civics classes at base high schools have incorporated voter education into lessons, base movie theaters show public service announcements and voter-drive organizers have posted banners at commissary and post exchange stores. Across the American military world, the week of Labor Day was officially designated Armed Forces Voter Week. Oct. 11 to 15 will be Absentee Voting Week.
"Everyone of every type," said Captain Stewart, "has been beating on us about this: 'Your vote counts.' "
In the United States and overseas, there are 1.4 million men and women in the military and 1.3 million family members of voting age, Charles Abell, deputy under secretary of defense for personnel, said in a Washington briefing in September.
Alan Morton, a 42-year-old Marine veteran who is now a schoolteacher on the Yokota base, believes that today's military effort is necessary to counter widespread voter disillusionment over the 2000 presidential race.
"All that hanky-panky going on with the ballots could discourage people from voting," he said. "Today's heightened sense of awareness should counteract that."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
U.S. Supreme Court Debates Pollution Cleanup Lawsuits
October 08, 2004
By Gina Holland,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=151
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court considered this week whether companies that voluntarily seek to clean up their polluted land can sue former owners to get help with the costs. The case could have important ramifications for communities with abandoned toxic plants, landfills, and mines.
Federal law allows the Environmental Protection Agency to designate as Superfund sites areas that are highly polluted. Officials can seek money from current and former owners for the cleanup costs.
The case before the justices asks whether the Superfund law can be used by the owners of the many thousands of properties in which the government has not gotten involved and demanded cleanup.
During the argument, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only court member who appeared troubled about preventing such lawsuits.
"You might be sitting around waiting forever until EPA comes after you," she said. "It seems like EPA has higher priorities."
The case has pitted the Bush administration against 23 states that argue the Superfund law, passed in 1980, allows lawsuits when companies on their own initiative seek to clean their properties. Those efforts often are very expensive and can involve multiple former owners.
Bush administration lawyer Jeffrey Minear said that companies can still purge land, but they have to work with the government in advance to make sure it's done properly.
Companies are closely watching the case.
"In today's business climate, corporations do want to be the responsible corporate citizens and clean up their properties," said Jane Kozinski, an environmental law lawyer in Princeton, New Jersey.
Many communities have sites that have been designated as polluted or potentially contaminated by the government. Jonathan Cannon, the former top lawyer at the Environmental Protection Agency who now teaches law at the University of Virginia, said many such locations in the middle of cities could benefit from new economic development.
"The vast majority of those tens of thousands of sites never get much attention from the EPA," he said.
At issue for the court is a dispute over property in Dallas that had been home to four aircraft engine maintenance businesses.
Aviall Services Inc. bought the land in 1981 and spent about $5 million cleaning pollution it caused and that the former owner was responsible for. The work was done at the prodding of a state conservation agency, and Aviall went to court to recover some of the money from the past owner, electrical product maker Cooper Industries.
Aviall attorney Richard Faulk of Houston said this week that "standing in line" waiting for federal regulators to get around to the project wasn't an option because of concerns about a nearby lake and groundwater.
Cooper Industries lawyer William Reynolds of Washington said government involvement is needed to ensure a thorough cleanup.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that Aviall could sue, though the court said that "reasonable minds can differ over" the Superfund law because of its inexact grammar.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, echoing other justices, said that the part of the law at issue in the case didn't seem to allow such lawsuits. "Perhaps Congress should have used different language. That's our problem. We can't make it up."
She indicated that the fight might be far from over, because another part of the Superfund law could be interpreted to allow lawsuits.
The states that asked the high court to uphold the lower court decision were Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The case is Cooper Industries Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc., 02-1192.
----
Judge challenged about visit to CIA
October 08, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041008-123156-8615r.htm
The judge who presided over the biggest terrorism trial since September 11 left his Detroit courtroom, traveled to CIA headquarters, and helped interview a witness whose testimony later became key to the judge's reversal of convictions in the case.
Government officials familiar with the interview told the Associated Press that the judge and Justice Department officials worked together outside the presence of defense lawyers to conduct the interview because of concerns about protecting secret information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.
But legal experts said U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen's actions were highly unusual and could provide grounds for lawyers to challenge his impartiality because he assumed the role of investigator in a case over which he continued to preside.
"Based on those facts, is it proper? The answer is no," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University who has followed closely the unraveling of the Detroit terror case. "A judge is not supposed to engage in investigation off the [official court] record and with people who are aligned with one of the parties."
Experts said CIPA doesn't exempt judges from ethics rules and the judge should have formally notified both sides and held a closed-door hearing for those with security clearances if he wanted to hear from the witness. The hearing should have been held at the courthouse.
"CIPA doesn't really contemplate a judge doing his own national-security investigative work," said John Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University. "This is a novel situation."
Judge Rosen flew to CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia last spring to review classified documents and join Justice prosecutors in interviewing retired CIA officer William McNair.
Mr. McNair then filed an affidavit in the case that accused prosecutors of ignoring his pretrial warnings that some evidence they used to convict members of an accused Detroit terror cell was flawed.
Mr. McNair's affidavit accused lead trial prosecutor Richard Convertino of "shopping for an opinion" and ignoring his warnings about a sketch found in the Detroit defendants' apartment that prosecutors portrayed as a key piece of evidence during the trial.
The CIA officer said he warned Mr. Convertino repeatedly that CIA experts "did not believe the sketch conveyed any useful information" and was probably created by "someone who was not very well trained."
The Justice Department cited Mr. McNair's affidavit in a dramatic report in August that acknowledged that prosecutors withheld or miscast evidence. Judge Rosen then cited the Justice Department's admission as grounds for dismissing the convictions last month.
That August report, however, made no mention of Judge Rosen's role in the McNair interview. It also omitted the fact that numerous top Justice officials, before the 2003 trial, tried to get an FBI agent to testify for the prosecution, instead of Mr. McNair, because they had concerns about Mr. McNair's credentials.
----
Journalist Cited for Contempt in Leak Probe
Reporter Refused To Discuss Sources
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14777-2004Oct7.html
A federal judge found New York Times reporter Judith Miller in contempt of court yesterday and ordered her jailed for as long as 18 months for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity to the news media.
Miller told U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan at a hearing yesterday that she would not answer questions from special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald about her conversations with confidential sources. Hogan said Miller had no special right as a reporter to defy a subpoena in a criminal investigation, but agreed she could remain free on bond while the Times appealed his decision.
In an impromptu news conference after the hearing, Miller said Hogan's ruling -- and several other similar decisions in his court in recent months -- will weaken reporters' ability to obtain crucial information for the public about their government.
"It's really frightening when journalists can be put in jail for doing their job effectively," Miller said. "This is about all journalists and about all government officials who provide information on the promise of confidentiality. Without that, they won't come forward, and the public won't be informed."
Miller is the latest in a series of reporters to be subpoenaed to testify by Fitzgerald about whether they had conversations with senior administration officials in 2003 about former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's trip to the African nation of Niger. Wilson was sent there by the CIA to determine whether Iraq had tried to obtain uranium to use to make weapons of mass destruction.
Fitzgerald's investigation centers on whether a government official knowingly revealed the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak. Intentional disclosure of such information by an official authorized to have it could be a felony.
The investigation began after Novak raised doubts in a July 14, 2003, column about Wilson's accusations that the administration was "twisting" intelligence, including his report that he found no proof of Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, to build a case for going to war in Iraq. Novak wrote that two officials had explained that Wilson was recommended for the mission by his wife.
Miller did reporting on the Plame story but never wrote about it.
Hogan said he was satisfied that Fitzgerald had exhausted other avenues of determining important information and that questioning journalists was a last resort rather than a "fishing expedition." He said journalists' promise to protect their sources is outweighed by the government's duty to investigate a serious crime. In a 1972 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect reporters called before a criminal grand jury.
"We have a classic confrontation between conflicting interests," Hogan said.
Hogan issued a contempt and confinement order to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in early August. Cooper subsequently gave a deposition to prosecutors about his conversation with a single anonymous source -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- after Libby waived Cooper's obligation to keep their conversations on the topic confidential. But Fitzgerald later issued another subpoena to Cooper about information from other sources.
Libby has also freed Miller to talk with prosecutors, according to a representative of the Times, but the newspaper is refusing to try to avoid a repeat of Cooper's circumstances, said Times attorney Floyd Abrams.
Fitzgerald has also questioned NBC's Tim Russert and two reporters at The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus. Novak and his attorney have declined to comment on whether he has been questioned or subpoenaed.
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, who accompanied Miller to court, said he was disturbed that administration officials had been asked by their superiors in this case to sign waivers of confidentiality agreements with reporters.
"This is going to become all the rage in corporate and government circles," he said. "It's really spooky."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
GOP Backs Alternative to Terrorist Deportation
Congress Works On 2 Versions of Intelligence Bill
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16548-2004Oct7.html
House Republican leaders yesterday backed off a controversial proposal to allow deportation of foreign terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture, as lawmakers struggled to complete legislation to restructure the nation's intelligence operations.
Instead of the deportation proposal, GOP aides said the leadership was supporting an alternative to allow indefinite detention of such suspects in this country, without recourse to federal courts, at the discretion of the secretary of homeland security. The idea, the aides said, was to keep potentially dangerous noncitizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist groups from returning to American society at large just because they could not be deported as a result of torture practices in their home countries.
The deportation proposal had drawn complaints from senior Republicans as well as many Democrats and drew a strong objection yesterday from the Bush administration, which pledged in a policy statement to work with Congress on other ways to deal with terror suspects who cannot be deported because of torture concerns.
The Bush administration "remains committed to upholding the United States' obligations" under an international convention against torture and "does not expel, return or extradite individuals to countries where the United States believes it is more likely than not they will be tortured," the White House said in a policy statement.
The House planned to vote on the detention alternative, sponsored by Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.), before completing action on its version of the intelligence legislation, probably today.
The bill on track for passage in the House differs significantly from a separate version approved overwhelmingly by the Senate on Wednesday, setting the stage for potentially difficult negotiations to reach a compromise that House and Senate leaders hope to enact before the Nov. 2 elections. Both chambers hope to recess today for the elections but may return for a final vote on the intelligence legislation before the elections if a House-Senate agreement is reached by then.
Both measures would create a powerful new national intelligence director and a counterterrorism center to coordinate anti-terrorism efforts. But there are also substantial differences, including controversial law enforcement and immigration provisions included in the House bill but not the Senate version.
The administration has spoken favorably of key elements of both bills, with some reservations, and has not indicated a preference. It pledged again yesterday to work with the House and Senate negotiators to reach a compromise, an involvement that some leadership sources have said is essential to reaching a pre-election deal.
The Sept. 11 commission, whose findings gave rise to the legislative drive for intelligence reforms, has indicated it favors the Senate version.
As the House debated its version of the intelligence bill, the Senate took up rules changes aimed at meeting another goal of the 9/11 panel: streamlining and strengthening Congress's own intelligence and homeland security oversight operations, which the commission described as "dysfunctional."
Key Republican and Democratic senators proposed several changes, including beefing up the Select Committee on Intelligence, expanding the Governmental Affairs Committee to include all homeland security operations and creation of an appropriations subcommittee to consider all intelligence funding.
But this was a step back from the commission's recommendation that the intelligence panel be given authority over spending as well as policy, effectively removing intelligence funding from control of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attempted yesterday -- without success -- to carry out the commission's recommendation and give the intelligence committee control over intelligence spending. The Senate rejected his proposal, 74 to 23.
During debate, McCain argued that congressional oversight would remain "dysfunctional" unless the intelligence committee is given appropriating authority.
"Power resides in the purse," he said.
But Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said consolidating all power in one committee will not improve oversight and cautioned that funding for intelligence is likely to be decreased rather than increased if funding authority is taken away from the appropriations panel.
The House has not yet come up with a plan for reorganizing its intelligence and security oversight operations but plans to do so before Congress convenes next year, according to senior GOP aides.
--------
Senate Rejects Plan Endorsed by 9/11 Panel
October 8, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08panel.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - The House voted Thursday night to reject a sweeping bill that would have enacted most of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission and was similar to a bipartisan Senate bill that has the endorsement of the White House, the commission's leaders and many of the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The vote, 203 to 213, appeared to clear the way for passage on Friday of a related bill being offered by House Republican leaders that includes many contentious law-enforcement provisions that were not recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and have been strongly criticized by Democrats and civil liberties groups.
The Republican bill would create the post of national intelligence director, in keeping with the commission's central recommendation, but would provide the intelligence director with significantly less budgetary and personnel authority than the commission recommended and than is offered in the Senate bill.
Commission members and Congressional Democrats have warned that by pursuing a bill so different from its popular Senate counterpart, House Republicans may have made it impossible for Congress to agree on a final bill this year, perhaps ending any hope for the intelligence overhaul recommended by the bipartisan commission.
"The Republican leadership insists on pursuing a highly partisan process," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "The American people want us to defend our country, not our turf.''
House Republican leaders acknowledged that their bill did not incorporate some of the major recommendations of the commission. But they said the bill overcame flaws both in the commission's findings and in the Senate bill.
"Forget the spin for a moment and look at the policies," said the House majority leader, Tom DeLay of Texas. "Every provision, every word of this bill will make Americans safer."
The defeated bill, which was offered by Representative Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, incorporated many of the central provisions of the bipartisan bill adopted Wednesday in the Senate, 96 to 2, including creation of the job of a powerful national intelligence director to direct the work of all of the government's spy agencies.
The supporters of the defeated bill said that, because of its many similarities with the Senate version, a House-Senate conference committee could have quickly agreed on a compromise bill for President Bush's signature. They predict there will be no easy compromise between the Senate bill and the legislation being championed by House Republicans.
"Why would the House want to adopt a bill which falls so short of the reforms identified as urgently necessary and adopted unanimously by the bipartisan commission and by the Senate?" asked the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, asking her colleagues to support Mr. Menendez's bill.
The House vote was a second disappointment Thursday for members of the Sept. 11 commission. The other came in the Senate, which voted 74 to 23 to reject the most important of the recommendations made by the panel for overhauling how Congress conducts oversight of intelligence issues. The commission described Congressional intelligence oversight as "dysfunctional."
The defeated Senate proposal would have restructured the Senate by providing the Senate Intelligence Committee with power to appropriate the billions of dollars in the government's intelligence budget, authority that is now with the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The bipartisan commission had urged that appropriations power be placed in House and Senate intelligence committees, providing them with the stature that comes from having direct authority to determine how the intelligence community's budget is spent.
In arguing for the proposal for a Senate overhaul, its sponsor, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was instrumental in creating the Sept. 11 commission, cited the "golden rule" of governmental power - "the power resides in the purse, the golden rule prevails around here."
He added: "If we're going to have a truly effective intelligence committee oversight that can function with strength and power, then we're going to have to give them appropriation authority."
But he failed to win over most of his colleagues, especially members of the powerful Appropriations Committee, who made clear that they felt slighted by the implication of the commission that they were unable to deal effectively with oversight of the government's estimated $40 billion annual intelligence budget.
"I'm not interested in turf," insisted Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the appropriations panel. "Consolidating appropriations authority for intelligence would undermine 140 years of Congressional tradition and ignore our years of experience on such matters."
The Senate is considering other plans to restructure itself in response to criticism of the Sept. 11 commission, including a bipartisan proposal from Senate leaders to create a new appropriations subcommittee for intelligence and convert the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee into the Homeland Security Committee, with new powers.
Those plans appeared to have been damned with faint praise from leaders of the Sept. 11 commission. In a statement issued before the Thursday vote, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, threw their support behind Mr. McCain's actions. They described the other, bipartisan proposals as "constructive" and "useful" but also "modest" and "not as far-reaching as those recommended by the commission."
-------- immigration / refugees
Lawmakers Fight to Strip Bill of Its Immigration Measures
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08immig.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the House scrambled on Thursday to try to strip a series of bitterly contested immigration provisions from legislation intended to reorganize the nation's intelligence services in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The provisions - which were not endorsed by the independent commission that investigated the attacks - would make it harder for migrants to gain political asylum, would expand speedy deportations without judicial review and would allow criminals and suspected terrorists to be sent back to countries that condone torture. Supporters of the provisions said they would make it harder for suspected terrorists to abuse the immigration system.
But Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, criticized the measures as "unnecessary and excessive" and said he supported two amendments proposed by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey. The amendments would remove the provisions making it harder for asylum seekers to prove their claims and expanding speedy deportations.
House Democrats and immigrant advocacy groups also lent their support to Mr. Smith and to Representative Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who proposed an intelligence bill similar to the one passed by the Senate on Wednesday, which did not include the tough immigration provisions. They said the House legislation would unnecessarily alienate immigrant communities and threaten immigrants fleeing persecution while doing little to protect the country from terrorism.
Last week, members of the Sept. 11 commission also called on the House Republican leadership to jettison provisions tacked onto the legislation, saying such add-ons threatened its enactment. On Wednesday, the two commission chairmen endorsed the legislation passed by the Senate.
On Thursday night, the Bush administration, which had already expressed opposition to the deportation of suspected terrorists to countries that condone torture, said in a statement that it also "strongly opposes" the provision to expand speedy deportations without judicial review.
"I don't think we should be legislating immigration policy in the context of the terrorism legislation," Mr. Diaz-Balart said in an interview. "If these amendments pass, this bill will have been stripped of negative parts.''
But the Menendez amendment was defeated in a vote late Thursday. A vote on the Smith amendments and one proposed by Representative John Hostettler, Republican of Indiana, was expected on Friday. Some Republicans argued that concerns about the tough immigration provisions could be addressed without eliminating the measures, which they said were critical to ensuring that suspected terrorists cannot slip into the country and stay.
Mr. Hostettler proposed amending the provision that would allow speedy deportation without judicial review of immigrants in the United States for less than five years. The provision as written would allow immigrants to apply for asylum only if they have been in the country for a year or less. Current law allows officials to speedily deport illegal immigrants without judicial review if they have been here less than two years and grants exceptions to the rule that requires immigrants to seek asylum within their first year here. Mr. Hostettler would lift the one-year bar on seeking asylum.
-------- internet
House Approves Spyware Bills
2 Measures Establishing Penalties Await Senate Action
By David McGuire
The Washington Post
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16600-2004Oct7.html
Two bills designed to curb the proliferation of Internet spyware won overwhelming approval from the House of Representatives this week, but supporters said the measures face a tough race against the clock to get Senate approval before Congress disperses for the November elections.
The House yesterday voted 415 to 0 on a bill that would send some spyware users to jail for up to five years. On Tuesday, the House approved another bill in a 399 to 1 vote that would fine people and companies every time they install spyware on computers without permission.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who sponsored the latter bill, said he will call on senators for their support.
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the senior minority member on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said lawmakers are eager to get a bill to the White House. "Spyware is a growing problem and has become more than just a nuisance," Dingell said. "This type of activity threatens not only consumer privacy, but it threatens legitimate electronic commerce as well."
Spyware is the general term for hundreds of computer programs designed to surreptitiously install themselves on computers. Some of the more benign programs, often called "adware," track a user's online travels to decide which advertising should be served up on certain Web pages. Other more dangerous programs can secretly record what computer users type, allowing others to obtain credit card numbers, user names, passwords and other private information.
Some spyware programs already violate existing laws, such as those governing identity theft and fraud, but Barton said many practices will remain legal until legislation banning them is passed.
One obstacle facing the bills is competing legislation sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on communications. Burns's bill also would forbid people from installing programs on others' computers without knowledge and consent, but it contains other details.
The main obstacle to reconciling the differences is time. Lawmakers are scheduled to go home today so they can focus on campaigning for the November elections. They are expected to come back for a brief session after Election Day.
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, has expressed concern that a poorly written bill could inadvertently target legitimate technology used to remotely update common software, such as Windows XP and many security programs.
"This still isn't ready for prime time yet," he said. "You don't just pass something because Congress has an artificial deadline of going home this Friday or Saturday."
The Business Software Alliance, which represents Microsoft and many other large software makers, had raised similar concerns about the legislation but dropped its opposition after House supporters added language designed to protect legitimate software makers.
McGuire is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
THE BUSH RECORD : Mounting Debt
The Tax-Cut Pendulum and the Pit
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16134-2004Oct7.html
In 2002, with midterm elections approaching and the nation edging toward war in Iraq, President Bush's economic team divided into opposing camps, with one side worried about rising budget deficits and the other pressing for tax cuts to stimulate a stagnant economy.
One group, led by Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., watched anxiously as the government's 2002 balance sheet swung from a record $313 billion surplus projected when Bush took office to a $157 billion deficit projected that August. How could the president demand fiscal discipline from Congress, they argued, then push expensive reforms of Social Security and the tax code if he continued cutting taxes?
The other side, led by White House economists Lawrence B. Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard, focused on economic growth, which had slipped from a 5 percent surge in the first three months of 2002 to 1.3 percent in the next quarter. Employment had slid by 235,000 jobs between January and September. Deficits would have little if any effect on the economy, they assured Bush, but if the president wanted to halt the stock market's slide and prop up incomes, he had to cut taxes more.
After weeks of debate, Bush made his choice clear, unveiling a $674 billion tax-reduction package on Jan. 6, 2003, that was larger and bolder than even Hubbard and Lindsey had expected. The proposal locked in Bush's record as a tax cutter. But it also contributed to mounting budget deficits and debt that may prove to be one of Bush's most enduring legacies.
When Bush took office in January 2001, the government was forecasting a $5.6 trillion budget surplus between then and 2011. Instead, it is now expecting to accumulate an extra $3 trillion in debt -- including a record $415 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The government has to borrow an average of more than $1.1 billion a day to pay its bills, and it spends more on interest payments on the federal debt each year -- about $159 billion -- than it does on education, homeland security, justice and law enforcement, veterans, international aid, and space exploration combined.
Without doubt, the fiscal turnaround started with the bursting of the stock market bubble and was pushed forward by recession, terrorist attacks and corporate scandals not of the president's making. But conservative and liberal budget analysts agree that deficits were increased by the administration's policy choices: tax cuts amid swelling red ink and the costly invasion of Iraq.
The consequences are just coming into view. The White House has ordered draft budgets for 2006 that would cut spending on homeland security, veterans affairs and education, according to White House documents. Some economists -- although by no means most -- see a reckoning on the horizon, when foreign lenders reject U.S. debt, interest rates rise, and the value of the dollar crashes.
"The [deficit] pressures going forward are too great to allow us to borrow these kinds of moneys on the international market on a sustained basis," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former White House economist who heads the Congressional Budget Office.
Through it all Bush has stood his ground, pushing through four tax cuts in four years totaling $1.9 trillion over a decade, and opposing repeated efforts to roll back any of them.
"We have a deficit challenge in the short and medium term," said Joshua B. Bolten, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. But, he added, "the most important economic responsibility of a president is to make sure the economy is growing and people are working. Imposing a surtax or any kind of tax increase would be exactly the wrong thing to do at this time or going into the future."
Anatomy of a Deficit
Four years ago, the outlook was very different. During a campaign debate in Boston, presidential candidate Bush surveyed the economic landscape and forecast that "over the next 10 years, there's going to be $25 trillion of revenue that comes into our Treasury, and we anticipate spending $21 trillion." He urged taking advantage of that surplus to cut taxes for "the hard-working people who pay the bills."
In retrospect, Bolten now says, that vision was a mirage. "Those surpluses never existed; that's the important part," he said. "It's not that there was some change in reality. It's that the projections were simply wrong."
But other conservative and liberal analysts believe Bush helped change reality. As of 2001, the White House expected surpluses of nearly $1.3 trillion through 2004. Instead, the government fell into debt by roughly $850 billion. According to the White House budget office, about half of the change can be attributed to factors largely outside the president's control: recession, a weak recovery, the bursting of the stock market bubble and the unanticipated costs of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
But the other 50 percent is attributable to policy choices.
The four tax cuts account for about 30 percent of the change. The remaining 20 percent was spending, including the cost of the war in Afghanistan and the preemptive invasion of Iraq. Since 2001, government spending has risen 23 percent, from $1.86 trillion to $2.29 trillion this year. Defense spending increased 48 percent, while non-defense spending went from $343 billion in 2001 to $436 billion, a 27 percent increase.
Congress has allocated $174 billion so far for the Iraq war alone, with another emergency spending request expected early next year. Among the larger non-defense items Bush signed were a multiyear extension of agriculture subsidies and a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, the largest expansion of an entitlement program since the 1960s.
"The Bush administration didn't just sit there and watch the deficit get wider. They actually exacerbated it," said Larry Kantor, global head of economics and market strategy at the British financial giant Barclays Capital.
The president's first tax cut, at a cost of $1.35 trillion, was passed in June 2001 by a Congress still convinced the government would run a large surplus even without those tax revenues.
But by 2002, a "dramatic reversal of revenues" was becoming clear, Bolten said. Policy decisions going forward would be a choice, White House economic advisers believed, between the government's long-term fiscal health and the nation's short-run economic well-being.
Although some members of Bush's economic team advised fiscal restraint that crucial year, their influence waned as the economy staggered. In March 2002, Bush signed further tax reductions worth $42 billion over 10 years. Three months later, Lindsey was counseling Bush to cut taxes again. "Early on I was the most radical advocate," he said.
O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans -- the more deficit-conscious members of the economic team -- pushed Lindsey back, arguing the economy was on the mend.
But on Aug. 13, at an economic summit in Waco, Tex., business executives and affluent GOP donors warned that the economy remained in trouble and pushed their own tax-cut ideas.
The political winds shifted decisively against O'Neill and the deficit hawks.
In an Aug. 23 memo detailed by a former economic aide, Bush's economic advisers laid out a menu of tax-cut options, outlining policies of intentionally modest cost.
Four days later, in a conference call with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., budget director Daniels joined O'Neill in expressing concern that another tax cut would undermine efforts to demand fiscal restraint from Congress, according to staff notes from the time. Daniels, a Republican who is running for Indiana governor, declined to be interviewed.
Amid those divisions, the economic team gathered in the Oval Office on Oct. 4. Lindsey pushed a 50 percent reduction in the taxation of capital gains and dividends and an expansion of savings limits on 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts, at a cost of $27.3 billion a year. The Congressional Budget Office had just increased its deficit forecast to $157 billion, but Hubbard assured the president that a shortfall that size would not significantly raise interest rates.
"The president's body language was 'Is this enough?' " said one participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering other members of the team.
The package languished until after the 2002 midterm election, with Bush convinced it could not pass unless Republicans gained control of the Senate. When they did, the policymakers swung into high gear. At a meeting Nov. 12, a consensus formed on accelerating income tax rate cuts, eliminating taxes on half of all dividends, and passing a one-year tax write-off for new business investment. Kathleen B. Cooper, the Commerce Department's chief economist, protested that rising deficits would boost interest rates and mitigate the economic benefit; Holtz-Eakin countered that any interest rate rise would be tiny.
Days later, at a meeting with the vice president, O'Neill "tipped his hand," said an administration participant in the session, and warned that the government was careening "toward a fiscal crisis." But by then, the Treasury secretary was virtually alone. On Dec. 6, he was fired.
A Dec. 28 memo from Lindsey's deputy, Keith Hennessey, cautioned Bush that his advisers were divided over whether he should cut the top two income tax rates or limit the cuts to lower-income and middle-class taxpayers. Daniels warned that cuts to the top tax rate would prompt a new round of accusations that the administration favors the rich.
But on Jan. 6, when Bush unveiled the package, he held nothing back, calling for even steeper dividend tax cuts than his staff envisioned, and income tax rate cuts for all income levels. Economic aides said the president made the decision himself, subordinating fiscal concerns to philosophy: If it was wrong to "double-tax" dividends, then that tax should be eliminated, not merely reduced. If some taxpayers deserved lower income tax rates, all of them did.
Congress gave Bush his income tax cuts and slashed dividends and capital gains taxes. Lawmakers trimmed the cost of the proposal to $350 billion, but only by declaring that its most politically popular provisions would expire in 2005. As expected, Congress overwhelmingly voted to extend those expiring provisions, at an additional cost of $146 billion.
Staying Afloat
To finance its deficits, the Treasury has increasingly looked to investors overseas, especially foreign governments, to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. But recent economic data suggest foreign buyers may be losing interest, afraid that a sudden drop in the value of the dollar will upend portfolios swollen with U.S. currency.
According to a Treasury Department report released this month, net foreign purchases of U.S. bonds fell 45 percent in July, to $22.4 billion, while purchases by foreign central banks plummeted 76 percent, to $4 billion -- the lowest levels in a about a year. Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo Bank, warned clients recently that foreign governments are already cutting back, leaving the Treasury dependent on unreliable bond traders.
"The U.S. will rely increasingly on less stable sources of funding and pay higher interest rates," he said. "It is a fait accompli that the dollar will depreciate further. The dollar depreciation will lead to higher inflation and interest rates, hurting the economy."
That downturn follows a record influx of foreign lending to the United States that accelerated under the Bush administration from $19.2 billion in 2001 to $118 billion in 2002 to $279 billion in 2003.
Foreign governments lent the Treasury $3.5 billion in 2001 and $7.1 billion in 2002. Last year, the figure soared fifteenfold, to $109 billion. Japanese reserves of U.S. Treasuries climbed from $317 billion when Bush came to office to $695 billion in July. During the president's term, China surpassed Britain as the United States' second largest foreign lender, with its holdings more than tripling from $50 billion in December 2000 to $166 billion in July.
The situation may put Washington in a bind.
If foreign investors stop buying Treasury bonds and turn away in a herd-minded rush, interest rates would shoot up to try to attract those buyers back so the government can pay its bills. The value of the dollar will drop -- perhaps sharply. Heavily indebted U.S. consumers, facing rising interest rates and soaring prices for imports, will cut spending. Moribund economies in Europe and Japan will not be able to pick up the slack.
The result? "Global recession," predicted John Williamson, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics.
If the lending splurge continues, however -- and some feel it is bound to, if only because China and Japan now have an interest in propping up the dollar to keep their exports cheap -- some fear U.S. policymaking will be constrained by the reliance on foreign capital. "What does this mean to our bargaining power as a nation?" asked Michael D. Granoff, president of Pomona Capital, an investment firm. "If China is financing our debt, how tough can we be the next time there's a Tiananmen Square?"
Treasury economists say such concerns are exaggerated, arguing that the U.S. economy is large enough to absorb much more borrowing. Compared with the overall economy, total outstanding U.S. debt is about 35 percent of gross domestic product, said Randy Quarles, assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs. Japan's debt, by comparison, is roughly 100 percent of GDP.
"We're not going to tell you that we don't want to see smaller deficits," said Timothy S. Bitsberger, acting assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets. "But we see nothing in the market to suggest we're having trouble funding our deficit."
Bush has shown no sign of worry either. Since the 2003 tax cut passed, he has beaten back repeated Democratic efforts to roll back some tax cuts to pay for the war in Iraq. Earlier this year, he rebuffed demands by some moderate Republicans to offset the cost of future tax cuts with spending reductions or tax loophole closures. His 2005 budget proposal included $1.4 trillion in additional tax-cut costs, including expansive new savings accounts that would eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest for virtually every American.
In July, when GOP leaders moved to extend expiring tax cuts for just two years to hold down the cost, the president quashed the deal, demanding a five-year extension at a cost of $146 billion. He signed the bill this week.
"You can pull any economic textbook off the shelf to see we did exactly the right thing," Lindsey said. "It has been an unqualified success."
--------
House Passes Corporate Tax Bill
Measure Would Provide Breaks to Businesses, Tobacco Quota Buyouts
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16139-2004Oct7?language=printer
The House, by a vote of 280 to 141, gave final approval last night to a far-reaching tax bill that would provide a rich array of breaks to manufacturing companies, energy producers and small businesses and would underwrite a $10 billion buyout of American tobacco farmers over the next decade.
The bill is aimed at ending a transatlantic trade war by scrapping certain tax subsidies for U.S. exporters that have brought on retaliatory action by Europe. But in the version approved last night by the House, that modest goal is largely overwhelmed in a preelection package of benefits for dozens of constituencies, including NASCAR track owners and mall builders.
The measure, which would provide nearly $150 billion in concessions but claims to offset nearly half that amount with new revenue, goes to the Senate. Speedy approval there is considered likely.
The bipartisan momentum, however, masked the bitter disappointment of health advocates and labor organizations, which saw their hopes for major legislative gains evaporate during final House-Senate negotiations in which pro-business House Republicans were able to assert their will.
The compromise measure approved last night does not include a Senate-approved plan that, for the first time, would have given the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the cigarette industry. Also deleted was a provision in the Senate-passed version of the tax bill that would have blocked a portion of the Bush administration's controversial new overtime pay eligibility rules.
Democrats charged that the bill would do little to create jobs or enhance the competitiveness of U.S. industry, as Republicans claim.
Senate backers of the FDA regulation of cigarettes indicated last night that they had not abandoned hope of defeating the gigantic tax bill.
Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said earlier this week that a bill without the FDA regulation of cigarettes would pass "over my dead body." A spokesman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), another strong supporter of FDA regulation, said last night that the senator was "considering all the parliamentary tools available to him to defeat the bill."
But the sheer diversity of the bill's benefits -- which would go to economically strapped manufacturing companies, timber operations, oil and gas wildcatters, and new industries that make diesel fuel from soybeans -- will make it difficult for opponents to muster the 60 votes in the Senate needed to block action.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who is in a tight race to retain his seat in November, has indicated that he supports the compromise bill. Daschle lobbied for new tax breaks for small producers of ethanol fuel, a budding business in his state.
Both parties are hoping to exploit the tobacco buyout provisions.
On Wednesday, Democrat Erskine B. Bowles, who is in a fierce battle for one of North Carolina's Senate seats, canceled his campaigning and rushed to Washington to urge senators to vote for the tax bill even without the FDA regulation of tobacco.
The bill would channel about $4 billion to North Carolina tobacco farmers over 10 years. It would phase out the New Deal-era system of government quotas that is threatening to bankrupt tobacco farmers faced with slackening demand and falling prices.
Under the buyout provisions, farmers would get a transitional payment, enabling them to retire, switch to new crops or modernize their tobacco production to meet the demands of a competitive market.
On the House floor last night, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) described Bowles's Republican opponent, Rep. Richard Burr (N.C.), as one of the chief architects of the tobacco buyout provisions.
Taking the floor, Burr then called it "a special night" for tobacco farmers and said: "This piece of legislation will probably enable 10,000 individuals in North Carolina alone" to avoid having "to file for bankruptcy this year."
Other parts of the bill were clearly crafted with an eye to the coming election. Republicans, for example, would like to take credit for helping middle-class voters in seven states that do not have a state income tax. The bill would restore a provision of the tax code that allows the deduction of state sales taxes in lieu of deducting state income taxes.
Meanwhile, Democrats charged that the bill is far too generous to big companies. "It's Christmas in October for multinational companies and lobbyists with friends in high places," said Charles B. Rangel (N.Y.), ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said the bill "only serves to complicate and carve up the tax code. . . . It continues [on] the path of extraordinary fiscal irresponsibility."
From modest beginnings, the tax bill grew steadily.
The original impetus was a World Trade Organization ruling nearly two years ago that declared $5 billion in annual U.S. export subsidies to U.S. manufacturers to be illegal.
That ruling prompted the European Union to impose retaliatory tariffs on 1,600 U.S. manufactured products and farm goods. The tariffs, now at 12 percent, rise each month the illegal export subsidies continue.
The bill would phase out the export subsidies deemed illegal by the WTO. But it is still unclear whether this would take place fast enough to satisfy the Europeans and result in the lifting of the tariffs.
-------- corruption
Democratic Leaders Call for DeLay's Ouster
By Charles Babington and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16136-2004Oct7.html
House Democratic leaders and several outside groups called for Majority Leader Tom DeLay to resign his post yesterday, saying that three admonishments by the House ethics committee in one week disqualify him for the chamber's second-highest leadership job. Fellow Republicans staunchly defended the Texas lawmaker, even as some said the consecutive rebukes may complicate his prospects of ever becoming speaker.
"Mr. DeLay has proven himself to be ethically unfit to lead his party," Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters. "The burden now falls upon his fellow House Republicans" to oust him.
Facing perhaps the biggest challenge of his combative career, DeLay began summoning colleagues within minutes of the Wednesday night release of the committee's latest report, distributing talking points that GOP members recited throughout the day yesterday. He fought back furiously on other fronts, saying vengeful Democrats wanted to smear him and calling on the House Rules Committee to condemn the lawmaker who filed the latest complaint.
While Democrats railed, Republicans rallied, hailing the man that many credit for boosting the GOP's grip on the House through aggressive campaign and redistricting strategies that often draw fire. "People are grateful for what he's done to build the majority," said Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), including the Texas redistricting fight at the center of some of the ethics complaints.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the charges against DeLay "gutter politics at its worst" and said: "You're going to see a big rallying around Tom. It will do nothing but bolster support for Tom DeLay."
Still, some Republicans said the ethics rebukes could haunt DeLay if he tries to become speaker. Some lawmakers expect Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to retire in 2006 or perhaps step down from the speakership next year if President Bush, his ally and friend, should lose the Nov. 2 election.
As the second-ranking leader, DeLay would automatically be considered a potential successor. But Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) said the Texan "will have a tough battle for speaker" because of his unyielding conservatism and the attacks on his ethics record. Souder, who calls himself a DeLay ally, said the majority leader may be able to prevail because so many House Republicans feel loyal to him.
DeLay can afford little erosion in support, one lawmaker noted, because the entire House votes for a speaker. Were an election held today, as few as a dozen GOP rebels could deny DeLay the speakership by siding with Democrats, who are virtually certain to vote unanimously against their adversary.
Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) said a colleague asked him yesterday whether he would be interested in seeking a leadership post, a question that inevitably raises the matter of DeLay's viability. "The question is: Is the aggregate weight of the [ethics] charges too much?" Wamp said in reference to DeLay. "I'm definitely interested in getting more involved in leadership and setting the direction of the party."
DeLay's claim yesterday that the ethics committee had "dismissed" the charges against him bore little resemblance to key portions of the ethics panel's 44-page memo, seven-page letter and thick stack of documents, Democrats noted. The committee's five Republicans and five Democrats voted unanimously to admonish the majority leader on two separate matters this week, sometimes in scolding tones. It deferred action on a third matter under grand jury investigation in Texas.
The committee noted that it also had chastised DeLay last week and in 1999. "It is clearly necessary for you to temper your future actions," the panel wrote DeLay, to comply with "House rules and standards of conduct."
House Democrats seized on such language to attack the politician they view as their most bitter foe in terms of fundraising, congressional redistricting and hardball parliamentary tactics. Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said DeLay's "defiant and deliberately misleading statements . . . show nothing but contempt for the ethics process," and he should lose his leadership post. Common Cause began a "nationwide petition drive to collect thousands of signatures" calling for his ouster.
Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), the House ethics committee chairman, said that Democrats were accusing his colleagues and him of being too soft on DeLay, and that Republicans were saying the panel was duped into being too severe. He said of the committee: "It's a unanimous vote, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. . . . I think that speaks for itself."
The ethics committee on Wednesday faulted DeLay's actions in involving a federal agency in a Texas partisan dispute. It also admonished him for his dealings with officers of a Kansas energy company who gave his political committees $25,000 and claimed they received legislative help in return. Last week, the ethics panel publicly admonished DeLay for offering to endorse the political campaign of a Michigan lawmaker's son if the legislator would give a crucially needed vote on the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. And in 1999, the committee privately chastised him for threatening to retaliate against a Washington trade group for hiring a Democrat as its president.
"This is a case of a recidivist, and it needs to be treated as one," said Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Democracy 21, which urged Republicans to remove DeLay from his post.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee tried to capitalize on the ethics reports yesterday. It criticized Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) -- a moderate Republican in a district Democrats believe they can win -- for defending DeLay as "a great majority leader."
"Only a rubber stamp for DeLay and his right-wing Republican agenda would call him a great leader on the same day he's sanctioned for the third time by the House ethics committee," said DCCC Chairman Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.).
But Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), finance chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Democrats are wasting their time. "When we're campaigning, we're not talking about Tom DeLay, we're talking about what we've accomplished for the American people," he said.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said DeLay's name came up at a recent candidates' debate "and people said, 'Who is he?' "
--------
After Ethics Rebukes, DeLay's Fortunes May Lie With His Party's
October 8, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08delay.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - While Republicans vigorously defended Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, in the wake of a series of ethics rebukes, members of both parties said on Thursday that Mr. DeLay, a tough-talking Texan who holds a tight rein over the House, could have difficulty retaining his leadership job if his party loses seats in next month's elections.
Democrats and independent watchdog groups, reacting to the House ethics committee's decision Wednesday night to admonish Mr. DeLay for the second time in less than a week, called on him Thursday to resign the majority leader job. But the real test for Mr. DeLay will come next month, when lawmakers return to Washington after the elections to choose their leaders for the next Congress.
The extraordinary back-to-back admonishments, coming little more than three weeks before Election Day, provoked intense partisan recriminations on Capitol Hill, where Democrats regard Mr. DeLay as the symbol of the Republicans' bare-knuckles leadership style and Republicans believe Democrats are gunning for their leader.
A lawyer for Mr. DeLay wrote a 33-page letter to the chairman of the House Rules Committee accusing Representative Chris Bell, the Texas Democrat who filed the second ethics complaint against the leader, of libel. The lawyer, Ed Bethune, who is a former representative, suggested that Mr. Bell be held in contempt of the House for filing a "disingenuous ethics complaint."
Mr. Bell, in turn, accused Republicans of engaging in a "shoot-the-messenger strategy."
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, pronounced Mr. DeLay "ethically unfit," and Democratic leaders vowed to make him a campaign issue. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly attacked Representative Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican from Connecticut, for a statement praising Mr. DeLay.
"Our candidates are going to talk all over the country about an ethical Congress," Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic whip, told reporters. Of Republicans, Mr. Hoyer said: "They're afraid that this is going to resonate. I think that's a proper fear."
But he acknowledged that it would take Republican disenchantment for Mr. DeLay to lose his leadership post, as was the case with Newt Gingrich, who faced an ethics inquiry in 1998 but stepped down as speaker only after his party lost seats in the midterm elections. One prominent Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, echoed Mr. Hoyer's assessment, saying the elections - and not the ethics rebukes alone - would determine Mr. DeLay's fate.
Mr. DeLay has been an extremely effective Republican leader, and though he is not personally close with President Bush, the White House relies on him to push its agenda through Congress. So Mr. Bush is not likely to distance himself from Mr. DeLay, as he did with Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader, when Mr. Lott faced political trouble over racially charged remarks.
"Without Tom DeLay it would be complete and total chaos," said one Republican strategist with close ties to the White House. "The House would descend into 'Lord of the Flies.' "
In the Capitol, though, Republicans are keeping a close eye on events in Texas, where three of Mr. DeLay's aides have been indicted in an investigation of fund-raising by one of his political action committees. Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican, said that only an indictment would cost Mr. DeLay his leader's job. "I think he'll be elected majority leader unless something happens in Texas," Mr. LaHood said, adding, "Nobody in our conference has even suggested that he resign or step down."
Mr. DeLay himself faced reporters only briefly Wednesday afternoon. He said he was "very pleased" that "these honorable people that served on that ethics committee have dismissed those frivolous charges brought against me"- a reference to the panel's decision to dismiss the most serious charges of bribery and special favors.
Other Republicans, meanwhile, complained that the ethics committee, which reached its decision on Mr. DeLay unanimously and is composed of five Republicans and five Democrats, had been tainted by politics and pressured by outside watchdog groups that helped Mr. Bell file his complaint.
"I don't know why the Republicans went along with this political hatchet job," said Representative Tom Feeney, Republican of Florida.
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert called Mr. DeLay "a good man" and said he was "troubled by the intimidation tactics of outside groups and organizations who have tried to influence the decision of those upstanding members of the Ethics Committee."
The remark brought sharp criticism from Representative George Miller, a California Democrat.
"You now have the speaker of the House of Representative becoming an enabler of abusive behavior," Mr. Miller said angrily, adding, "I think this is a very dangerous situation in this country."
Mr. DeLay's brushes with the ethics panel began in 1999, when he was privately rebuked by the committee for threatening to retaliate against a trade group that hired a Democrat as its top lobbyist. Then, last week, the committee admonished Mr. DeLay for pressuring a Michigan Republican, Representative Nick Smith, to change his vote on an important health care bill.
Wednesday's admonishments stem from a complaint filed in June by Mr. Bell, who is leaving Congress because he lost a primary election after a controversial redistricting engineered by Mr. DeLay.
The committee faulted Mr. DeLay for appearing to link political contributions to support for legislation and also for sending federal officials to look for Texas state legislators when they fled to Oklahoma to avoid a contentious vote on the redistricting plan. The panel warned him to "temper your future actions.''
On Thursday, several watchdog groups held a conference call with reporters to urge Mr. DeLay to resign; one, Common Cause, said it would begin a nationwide petition drive calling for his ouster.
"Americans will not tolerate his blatant and repeated disregard for Congressional ethics rules," said Chellie Pingree, the group's president.
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Links Between Lobbying, Fundraising, Legislation Laid Out
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16138-2004Oct7.html
On April 23, 2002, lobbyist Richard Bornemann wrote a memo laying out a long-term plan by which Kansas-based Westar Energy Inc. could gain influence in Washington by "joining the fold, so to speak," of then House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Over the next several months, Westar contributed $25,000 to a Texas political fund affiliated with DeLay, and Westar employees donated $33,200 to various congressional campaign committees, including those of DeLay and senior House GOP members in charge of energy legislation.
Westar executives then used their newfound access -- which included an invitation to a golfing and fundraising event at a West Virginia resort -- to press DeLay and his aides to add to a pending energy bill a provision that Westar considered vital to a corporate restructuring plan. The provision was included, despite the objections of officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Eventually, however, it was jettisoned, and the broader energy legislation was never enacted.
This chronology, laid out in Wednesday's report by the House ethics committee on DeLay's relationship with Westar, provides a close-up glimpse of the close links between lobbying, fundraising and legislation in the office of the man who is now the No. 2 Republican in the House.
While admonishing DeLay and concluding that he had created at least the "appearance" that donors were being provided special access, the committee's five Republicans and five Democrats found that neither the majority leader nor his aides had improperly solicited contributions or "taken action with regard to Westar that would constitute an impermissible special favor."
But the 38-page report clearly establishes that executives and lobbyists for Westar -- an obscure Kansas electricity company when it set out to build a "long-term presence" on Capitol Hill -- were able to make their case directly to DeLay and his top aides after anteing up substantial sums for GOP political causes.
For example, a May 14, 2002, corporate contribution of $25,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority, a state entity affiliated with DeLay, was the price of admission for two Westar executives to attend a DeLay retreat with other electricity executives at the Homestead in West Virginia, according to the report.
The June 2002 event was organized by lobbyist Drew Maloney, who had been DeLay's energy specialist until that March. Maloney told the committee: "I was seeking $25-50K per participant."
A Westar executive shared a cart with a DeLay aide for a round of golf on June 3, then attended a luncheon at which he "restated [to DeLay] Westar's position" regarding the need for a provision in the energy bill, according to a statement provided to the committee by company lawyers.
On June 25, Westar Vice President Doug Lawrence asked 13 company officials to provide $5,000 for a fundraiser for Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), then chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. His memo noted that "right now we have made significant progress" with DeLay and with Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the energy subcommittee of Tauzin's panel.
"The contributions made in the first round were successful in opening the appropriate dialogue," Lawrence said in the memo.
At the time, Westar was trying to split into two companies and was concerned that one of the newly created entities could face an onerous new regulatory environment if Congress went ahead with a major restructuring of the nation's electricity industry. The solution it sought was a "grandfather" provision that would shelter Westar from new regulations.
Between June and the end of September 2002, the ethics committee's report recounts, Westar officials met privately at least once with DeLay and Barton, and twice with DeLay's energy specialist.
Barton had included a version of the Westar provision in electricity legislation beginning in 2001. On Sept. 19, 2002, Barton and DeLay opposed a Democratic move to delete it from a House-Senate compromise version of major energy legislation.
But soon after that the provision was dropped from the legislation.
"Things are grim in D.C.," Lawrence wrote to Westar chief executive David Wittig on Sept. 30, 2002. Reports had started to circulate that prosecutors had begun a federal fraud investigation of Westar.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission had announced that he was opposed to the Westar provision. "The DeLay staff has asked us to release people from their commitment to support our provision," Lawrence wrote.
But in response to the ethics panel's questions about this e-mail, DeLay said he was not aware that he or his staff had made any such commitments to Westar. DeLay further told the ethics committee that "to my knowledge neither I nor anyone in my office took any affirmative action to assist Westar in having this legislation included" in the final version of the energy bill.
In the end, House and Senate negotiators were unable to resolve their differences over the bill, and the legislation died at the end of 2002.
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Ex-Postal Official Admits Taking Nearly $800,000 in Bribes
By Nicole Fuller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16591-2004Oct7.html
A former purchasing specialist for the U.S. Postal Service pleaded guilty yesterday to accepting nearly $800,000 in bribes from businesses that received preferential treatment on printing contracts.
Daniel J. Williams Jr., 62, of Accokeek took the payments over 12 years and used the money to buy a Prince George's County home and such luxuries as a Corvette and a diamond-studded Rolex watch, prosecutors said.
"This case demonstrates how one corrupt public official can have a malignant effect on the integrity of our public contracting system and the private businesses that provide services to the government," U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein said after Williams pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Federal authorities conducted a year-long investigation into Williams's dealings with eight companies after receiving an anonymous tip through a Postal Service hotline, according to charging documents. Owners of four companies have pleaded guilty to charges that they paid Williams to obtain contracts. The other four are under investigation.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Williams faces up to 78 months in prison on charges of receiving bribes and conspiracy to commit money laundering. His sentencing is set for early next year.
Williams admitted taking bribes from the printing companies and, in turn, providing them with confidential bid information and contract awards, according to charging documents. Prosecutors said Williams punished companies that refused to pay him.
At least one company owner who pleaded guilty in the case aided investigators by secretly tape-recording conversations with Williams, prosecutors said. The probe was conducted by the Postal Inspection Service, the Postal Service's inspector general and the FBI.
Williams, a 32-year employee of the Postal Service, worked at its headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza until his retirement in September 2003. He was accused of concocting an elaborate scheme to thwart authorities that included depositing bribe money into several bank accounts so it could not be traced to him.
Most of the payments were made in cash, prosecutors said. But others were given in a more roundabout way. One vendor paid attorney's fees stemming from Williams's divorce from his first wife, prosecutors said. Another purchased the invitations for Williams's wedding to his second wife, they said.
Vendors also regularly gave Williams tickets to Washington Redskins and Wizards games and Baltimore Orioles games.
Reached at his home yesterday afternoon, Williams declined to comment. His attorney, Monte D. Montgomery Jr., did not respond to several requests for comment.
As part of the plea agreement, authorities will confiscate Williams's house, Corvette and Rolex.
-------- investigations
Anthrax Inquiry Draws Criticism From Federal Judge
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08anthrax.html?oref=login
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A federal judge who reviewed a classified update on the F.B.I. investigation of anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001 said on Thursday that he saw little chance of the case's being solved in the next six months.
"Candidly, from my review of the classified information, it doesn't seem to me that anything is going to happen in the near future that's going to change the status quo," said Judge Reggie B. Walton of United States District Court. The judge is handling a lawsuit filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department by a former Army bioweapons expert, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill.
Elizabeth J. Shapiro, a lawyer in the civil division of the Justice Department, did not dispute the judge's conclusion but emphasized the difficulty in finding the anthrax attacker.
"This is perhaps the most extraordinary investigation the F.B.I. has ever engaged in, and the most complex," Ms. Shapiro said.
The exchange took place at a hearing on the government's effort to postpone Dr. Hatfill's lawsuit, which claims that illegal leaks from F.B.I. and Justice officials destroyed his reputation and left him unemployable. He has been named as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case.
Raising his voice, Judge Walton said: "If you don't have enough information to indict this man, it's wrong to drag his name again and again through the mud. That's not a government I want to be part of."
Dr. Hatfill filed a defamation lawsuit in July against The New York Times and its columnist Nicholas D. Kristof for columns about him. A spokesman for The Times said when the suit was filed that it lacked merit and would be defended vigorously.
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Bush's Isolation From Reporters Could Be a Hindrance
Some Presidential Advisers Worry That He Could Pay Price During Debates for Being Overprotected
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16131-2004Oct7.html
During a campaign forum in the Cleveland suburbs last month, President Bush was asked whether he likes broccoli, to disclose his "most important legacy to the American people" and to reveal what supporters can do "to make sure that you win Ohio and get reelected."
The "Ask President Bush" forums, which on television look like freewheeling sessions with the commander in chief, are tightly managed by the Bush-Cheney campaign, with the president calling mainly on people sitting in sections filled with his most loyal supporters. At one such event, a veteran's question was whether Bush would permit him "the honor of giving our commander in chief a real Navy salute, and not a flip-flop."
Several Bush advisers said the president may well pay a price for his decision to remain isolated from tough or unexpected questions when he faces Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), whose events are notably less scripted, in a town-hall-style debate tonight at Washington University in St. Louis. The questions are likely to be tougher than those he faced when he taped an interview about parenting for the "Dr. Phil" show this summer.
The debates, which will conclude Wednesday in Arizona, have brought new scrutiny to Bush by tens of millions of people who are accustomed to seeing him only in brief clips or formal settings. Bush received poor ratings in polls after television shots from the first debate showed him fidgeting and grimacing under challenges by Kerry, and his remarks became repetitious and at times peevish.
Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University, said the first debate showed Bush had been overprotected. "If you don't talk to the press and deal with audiences with some degree of skepticism, you can't build understanding so people have confidence in you in hard times," Fields said. "His handlers think they're doing him a favor, but they're not."
Bush has granted three interviews in the past five weeks, to conservative Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader and WMUR-TV in New Hampshire. Several national news organizations were being considered for interviews after the Republican National Convention, but the interviews did not occur after Bush took a temporary lead over Kerry in polls. Other interviews are still being considered, his staff said.
The president has stopped taking questions from the small pool of reporters who cover his photo opportunities, and he has answered questions from the White House press corps twice since Aug. 23, both times with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side. His last prime-time news conference was April 13.
The tradition of the White House news corps shouting questions at the president has largely faded during this term because Bush reacts testily and does not answer, and his staff typically sets up events so he does not have to walk near reporters.
Tonight's town-hall audience of about 100 will ask 15 to 20 questions and will consist of an equal number of voters who say they lean toward Bush or Kerry but could change their minds, plus a few who say they are undecided. Bush's debate negotiators had sought to eliminate the event from the debate schedule because they were concerned that partisans could pose as uncommitted voters and slip in with tough or argumentative questions.
Although all presidents are kept somewhat removed from reality because of security concerns and their staffs' impulse for burnishing their image, Bush's campaign has taken unprecedented steps to shield him from dissenters and even from curious, undecided voters. On the way to the forum outside Cleveland, the media buses that went ahead of Bush were temporarily marooned in a church parking lot because police had been told to divert all buses since they could contain demonstrators.
Bush's handlers have pulled the presidential bubble especially tight during the campaign, but he often has kept his distance from the public and the media throughout his term. He rarely plays tourist on trips, and has held the fewest solo news conferences of any president since records were kept.
Bush has held 15 solo news conferences since taking office. At the same point in their presidencies, according to research by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University in Maryland, Bill Clinton had held 42; George H.W. Bush, 83; Ronald Reagan, 26; Jimmy Carter, 59; Gerald R. Ford, 39; Richard M. Nixon, 29; Lyndon B. Johnson, 88; John F. Kennedy, 65; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, 94.
When reporters asked in mid-September about a chance to question the president about his National Guard records, White House press secretary Scott McClellan replied that Bush "takes questions on a regular basis," adding, "We always take your concerns under consideration."
Mike McCurry, who was Clinton's press secretary and is a senior adviser to Kerry, said Bush was hurt in the first debate because his aides do not appear to recognize the benefits of having reporters "regularly ask the hard questions that are on the mind of the public."
"They have been very effective and disciplined at managing a message and getting through," McCurry said. "Until now, they have not paid any real price in their press coverage. They have mostly been getting out of the news every day what they wanted to."
Bush used to frequently talk to small groups of local reporters as his campaign bus rolled through their state, although such roundtables have tailed off.
For the extraordinary state of Ohio, Bush made an extraordinary effort. On Sept. 1, two executives and a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch were ushered up the front steps of Air Force One -- a treatment unheard of for journalists.
The White House suggested the venue after the newspaper asked Bush to meet with its editorial board. The front-page headline that emerged from the 45-minute interview was a quote from the president: "The Country's Getting Better."
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POLITICAL MEMO
In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts
October 8, 2004
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/campaign/08campaign.html?ei=5094&en=306d806d2975a3aa&hp=&ex=1097294400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - From the beginning of the year, the White House has charted new ground with the sweep of its negative campaigning, starting with an $80 million wave of attack advertisements directed at Senator John Kerry that began the moment he effectively won his party's nomination last spring.
But the scathing indictment that Mr. Bush offered of Mr. Kerry over the past two days - on the eve of the second presidential debate and with polls showing the race tightening - took these attacks to a blistering new level. In the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy.
To cheers in Michigan, Mr. Bush asserted that under Mr. Kerry, the nation would have to "wait for a grade from other nations and leaders'' before acting to protect itself. Mr. Kerry has repeatedly said that he would not give up the right to act pre-emptively "in any way necessary to protect the United States,'' but has suggested that any president would need to demonstrate legitimate reasons for such an action.
To laughter, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Kerry would impose "Hillary care'' on America, a huge national health care program that would impose increased federal control over the health care decisions of citizens. Mr. Kerry's health care plan is significantly larger than the one Mr. Bush has offered, and it includes increased reliance on Medicaid and state health insurance programs for the poor. But unlike what Mrs. Clinton proposed in 1993, it would not create any big new federal bureaucracy and would retain the current employer-based system, and Mr. Kerry said he was averse to any kind of national health care plan.
To boos, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Kerry had set "artificial timetables'' for pulling troops out of Iraq, which the president warned would embolden the enemy and endanger the troops. In fact, Mr. Kerry said that he could envision beginning to withdraw troops in as little as six months, but only if he succeeded in moving Iraq toward stability, and has decline repeatedly to set a timeline.
Mr. Bush's aides defended Mr. Bush's statements, saying that the president had fairly spotlighted positions Mr. Kerry has taken over the years. "The campaign's criticisms of John Kerry are meticulous and precise and most of the criticisms involve reading back John Kerry's own words,'' said Steve Schmidt, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Bush.
But other analysts, including some Republicans, said Mr. Bush was repeatedly taking phrases and sentences out of context, or cherry-picking votes, to provide an unfavorable case against Mr. Kerry.
"So much of what they are indicting is taken out of context," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of a book on negative campaigning. "It's a matter of taking sentences out of context or parts of sentences out of context. And it's hard for journalists to write the context back in because it takes time.''
Scott Reed, who served as manager of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign for president, said, "They are going right up to the line and they are pushing it hard.''
Mr. Reed said that Mr. Bush had not yet gone too far and praised the high-spirited attacks on Mr. Kerry as a tactical move, saying they would energize Republican base voters who had been dispirited by Mr. Bush's performance last week. But asked whether he agreed with Mr. Bush's characterization of Mr. Kerry's view on pre-emptive war, Mr. Reed responded, "No.''
The latest line of attacks by Mr. Bush comes during what has been a tumultuous week for him, amid signs that a once swaggering White House was getting worried.
Mr. Bush's aides said that he would raise many of the same criticisms of Mr. Kerry to his face in Friday night's debate. Still, the format might make that complicated. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush will be answering questions from an audience of voters and several analysts said that Mr. Bush would have to find a way to pivot into the kind of harsh attacks his aides have clearly concluded are necessary to defeat Mr. Kerry.
This muscular new speech was in many ways in keeping with what has been the tone of a campaign that has been unusually negative for an incumbent from the start and, some analysts said, reminiscent of the one Mr. Bush's father ran in 1988 against Michael S. Dukakis. The chief strategist in that campaign, the late Lee Atwater, worked over the years with key figures in this campaign, including Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief strategist, and Ralph Reed, a campaign adviser.
"Rove and Reed were schooled by Lee and he told them that what you do is you rip the bark off liberals.'' said Marshall Wittman, a former senior aide to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and is registered as an independent. "Even if they're not liberals you rip the bark off them. That's what they are doing. "
Mr. Bush said that Mr. Kerry had voted for a tax hike "98 times'' and that he is "is one of the few candidates in history to campaign on a pledge to raise taxes.'' Mr. Kerry had said he wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy, but said he would not roll back the tax cut Mr. Bush gave the middle class, insisting to some skepticism, even among Democrats, that that would be enough to finance his own ambitious spending plans.
In his critique of Mr. Kerry's record, Mr. Bush has often left out facts that might make some of the Democrat's positions look different.
In one speech, Mr. Bush said in quick succession that Mr. Kerry had voted for higher taxes on Social Security benefits and voted for a formula that "helped cause the increase in Medicare premiums."
Mr. Bush's statements were technically correct. But the tax on Social Security benefits, adopted in 1993 over Republican opposition, helps to pay for Medicare, and without it the government would have to raise other taxes or add to the budget deficit. In voting for the Medicare formula in 1997, Mr. Kerry was joined by 43 Republicans.
Mr. Bush's statements criticizing Mr. Kerry's votes, said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a group that advocates fiscal responsibility, suggest that the president opposes the legislation in question, a stance that would leave Mr. Bush facing some very difficult political tradeoffs himself.
For example, Mr. Bixby said, "The increase in the Social Security benefits is dedicated to go to the Medicare Part A trust fund, and if you repeal that, you open up a giant hole in Medicare's finances, which are already badly underfunded."
On other statements, Mr. Bixby said, Mr. Bush was "flat out wrong," including the president's assertion that Mr. Kerry was "against all of our middle-class tax relief." Mr. Kerry has said he supported the extension of a number of tax-cut provisions aimed at the middle class that Mr. Bush signed into law this week.
On foreign policy, analysts said, many of Mr. Bush's assertions fall into a gray area between opinion and distortion.
By and large, said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Bush was using "rhetorically aggressive formulations" but ones that got at "real questions about differences of policy between the two camps."
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What I Really Said About Iraq
By L. PAUL BREMER III
The New York Times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
October 8, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08bremer.html?oref=login
In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I've made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it's important to put my remarks in the correct context.
In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush's Iraq policy.
This effort won't succeed. Let me explain why.
It's no secret that during my time in Iraq I had tactical disagreements with others, including military commanders on the ground. Such disagreements among individuals of good will happen all the time, particularly in war and postwar situations. I believe it would have been helpful to have had more troops early on to stop the looting that did so much damage to Iraq's already decrepit infrastructure. The military commanders believed we had enough American troops in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.
But during the 14 months I was in Iraq, the administration, the military and I all agreed that the coalition's top priority was a broad, sustained effort to train Iraqis to take more responsibility for their own security. This effort, financed in large measure by the emergency supplemental budget approved by Congress last year, continues today. In the end, Iraq's security must depend on Iraqis.
Our troops continue to work closely with Iraqis to isolate and destroy terrorist strongholds. And the United States is supporting Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in his determined effort to bring security and democracy to Iraq. Elections will be held in January and, though there will be challenges and hardships, progress is being made. For the task before us now, I believe we have enough troops in Iraq.
The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.
The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda, and certainly not just to Osama bin Laden, who is probably trapped in his hide-out in Afghanistan. As the bipartisan 9/11 commission reported, there were contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back a decade. We will win the war against global terror only by staying on the offensive and confronting terrorists and state sponsors of terror - wherever they are. Right now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Qaeda ally, is a dangerous threat. He is in Iraq.
President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right. Mr. Zarqawi's stated goal is to kill Americans, set off a sectarian war in Iraq and defeat democracy there. He is our enemy.
Our victory also depends on devoting the resources necessary to win this war. So last year, President Bush asked the American people to make available $87 billion for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military commanders and I strongly agreed on the importance of these funds, which is why we stood together before Congress to make the case for their approval. The overwhelming majority of Congress understood and provided the funds needed to fight the war and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were vital resources that Senator John Kerry voted to deny our troops.
Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.
A year and a half ago, President Bush asked me to come to the Oval Office to discuss my going to Iraq to head the coalition authority. He asked me bluntly, "Why would you want to leave private life and take on such a difficult, dangerous and probably thankless job?" Without hesitation, I answered, "Because I believe in your vision for Iraq and would be honored to help you make it a reality." Today America and the coalition are making steady progress toward that vision.
L. Paul Bremer III, former chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, was the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004.
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Reporter for Times Is Facing Jail Time
October 8, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08leak.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1097266849-DBS1lYz8m6a7E8p2vuMwcg&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A federal judge held a reporter for The New York Times in contempt of court on Thursday for refusing to name her sources to prosecutors investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent.
The reporter, Judith Miller, published no articles about the agent, Valerie Plame. Even so, the judge, Thomas F. Hogan, of United States District Court in Washington, ordered her jailed for as long as 18 months, noting that she had contemplated writing such an article and had conducted interviews for it.
Judge Hogan suspended the sanction until a planned appeal is concluded, and he released Ms. Miller on her own recognizance.
"We have a classic confrontation between competing interests," Judge Hogan said, speaking from the bench. "Miss Miller is acting in good faith, doing her duty as a respected and established reporter who believes reporters have a First Amendment privilege that trumps the right of the government to inquire into her sources."
But Ms. Miller was mistaken, Judge Hogan ruled. "Miss Miller has no right to decline to answer these questions," he said.
The investigation seeks to determine who told the syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists that Ms. Plame was a C.I.A. official. A 1982 law makes it a crime to disclose the identities of undercover agents in some circumstances.
Ms. Miller spoke briefly at the hearing, affirming that she would indeed refuse to answer questions about confidential communications.
Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse afterward, she said: "I'm very disappointed that I've been found in contempt of court for an article I never wrote and The Times never published. I find it truly frightening that journalists can be put in jail for doing their jobs."
According to an earlier decision in the case, Ms. Miller conducted reporting about Ms. Plame and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat. She contemplated writing an article, Judge Hogan wrote, but she never did.
The investigation has its roots in an Op-Ed article Mr. Wilson wrote for The Times in July 2003. It was critical of a justification offered by the Bush administration for the war in Iraq.
Ms. Plame's identity was disclosed by Mr. Novak in his column eight days later. "Two senior administration officials," Mr. Novak wrote, identified Ms. Plame as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." They spoke, he suggested in the column, in reaction to "the fire storm" that Mr. Wilson ignited.
The federal appeals court here is likely to hear arguments in Ms. Miller's case in November, her lawyers said. The case has been put on a fast track, and a decision could come by the end of the year or in January.
At the hearing Thursday, a prosecutor, Jim Fleissner, cited Branzburg v. Hayes, a 1972 Supreme Court case that, he said, required reporters to answer questions from grand juries about their confidential sources. The special counsel in the Plame investigation, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had moved methodically and deferentially, Mr. Fleissner added, turning to journalists as a last resort.
"She was obligated to give evidence in relation to an investigation of matters concerning national security," Mr. Fleissner said of Ms. Miller. "We think confinement is the only sanction which has any hope of achieving what civil contempt means to achieve, which is a coercive influence."
Prosecutors have relied on secret filings in the case to explain to the judge why Ms. Miller's testimony is required. They have not disclosed the filings to Ms. Miller and her lawyers.
One of her lawyers, Floyd Abrams, asked Judge Hogan to release at least a summary of those filings to allow Ms. Miller to rebut them. "We haven't the faintest idea what their submission said," Mr. Abrams told Judge Hogan. The judge rejected the request, saying that grand jury rules require secrecy.
If Ms. Miller loses her appeal and the Supreme Court does not intercede, she could be jailed until the investigation is concluded, until she names her sources or for 18 months, whichever is soonest.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, said he was dismayed by Judge Hogan's decision.
"The pending imprisonment of Judy Miller is an attack on the ability of all journalists to report on the actions of governments, corporations and others," he said in a statement. "The protection of confidential sources was critically important to many groundbreaking stories, such as Watergate, the health-threatening practices of the tobacco industry and police corruption."
In August, Judge Hogan ordered a reporter for Time magazine, Matthew Cooper, to be jailed in the Plame investigation, suspending the sanction pending appeal. Mr. Cooper then negotiated an agreement with the special prosecutor and testified about his conversations with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. He said that Mr. Libby had authorized him to testify.
Mr. Cooper received a second subpoena last month, this one seeking information about conversations with other government officials. He has refused to cooperate and will appear before Judge Hogan next week for a second contempt hearing.
Mr. Novak, who first published Ms. Plame's name, has declined to discuss what, if anything, he has done in the investigation.
Prosecutors in the Plame matter have asked people suspected of disclosing her identity to sign waivers that instruct journalists to reveal confidential conversations. Tim Russert of NBC and Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post also testified. They and Mr. Cooper said they relied on direct assurances from their sources or the sources' lawyers that they were free to do so rather than on the waivers.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, said Ms. Miller would also not take waivers at face value. The officials who signed them, he said, may have done so because they feared that refusing would cast suspicion on them or endanger their jobs.
"This business of sources' signing waivers deserves a lot more attention," Mr. Keller said, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse. "This is going to be all the rage in both government and corporate circles as a way to intimidate employees into not letting reporters know when they see something amiss."
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The weapons report and the election
How weapoms of mass destruction (or a lack thereof) can affect the battle for the White House
MSNBC
Oct. 8, 2004
By David Shuster,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6207833/
The last thing the administration probably wanted weeks before the election is the release of a new U.S. weapons report. Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, told Congress Wednesday that the report established that Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing.
advertisement It's an issue the White House has been trying to avoid for months:
In June 10, 2004, when President Bush was asked about Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction, he said it was too early to comment.
This week, Duelfer gave his report to Congress. It concluded Saddam:
- destroyed chemical/biological weapons in 1991
- ended nuclear weapons program in 1991 and never restarted it and
- abandoned biological research in 1996 because of U.N. sanctions
Duelfer testified that based on CIA interrogations with Saddam, the Iraqi leader deliberately mislead the world to scare Iraq's real enemy, Iran.
"He wanted to create the impression he had more than he did," said Dulfeur. He added that Saddam retained the intent to restart his weapons programs and had the capability to do so.
This is the part of the statement the president jumped Thursday.
Still, intent to restart a program on the possibility that knowledge could get passed along is far different from the imminent threat the president suggested before the war.
The harshly critical report is just the latest in a series of blows to the administration. This week, the president's former administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said too few troops had been sent "to Iraq to keep control."
Last week, the CIA said it doubted Saddam Hussein had helped terrorists, as the administration had charged.
Over the summer, CIA analysts said Iraq could be expected, in the next 18 months to achieve a "tenuous stability" in the best case scenario, and in the worst case, "to dissolve into civil war."
Meanwhile, John Kerry continues to pound away on the growing evidence that the Bush team had its facts, and its planning was lethally incomplete.
Even top Republicans acknowledge that the terrain in this election has now shifted... and that instead of focusing on John Kerry down the stretch, the Bush campaign is having to play defense on Iraq and on the president's reasons for going in.
-------- us politics
Full Transcript: Second Presidential Debate
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
October 8, 2004
Text From FDCH E-Media, Inc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1008.html
Following is a transcript of the second presidential debate between between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D). The moderator of the nationally televised debate is Charles Gibson of ABC News. The questions came from an audience of "soft" voters selected by the Gallup polling organization.
Staff writers from The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com examine the candidates' claims and charges. The "referee" icon marks the spots of our calls and where you can make your call as well.
• No Child Left Behind • Unemployment Claims • Kerry on Hussein • Shinseki's Warnings & Fate • Enough Troops • Homeland Security Funding • Drug Reimportation • Budget Deficits • 'Most Liberal' • Medical Malpractice Costs • Kerry's Health Plans • Kerry's Spending Plans • Kerry's Tax Votes • Wetlands Preservation • Taxing Small Businesses • Bush's Timber Income • Stem Cells
GIBSON: Good evening from the Field House at Washington University in St. Louis. I'm Charles Gibson of ABC News and "Good Morning America."
I welcome you to the second of the 2004 presidential debates between President George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, and Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.
The debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Tonight's format is going to be a bit different. We have assembled a town-hall meeting. We're in the Show-Me State, as everyone knows Missouri to be, so Missouri residents will ask the questions.
These 140 citizens were identified by the Gallup Organization as not yet committed in this election.
Now, earlier today, each audience member gave me two questions on cards like this, one they'd like to ask the president, the other they'd like to ask the senator.
I have selected the questions to be asked and the order. No one has seen the final list of questions but me, certainly not the candidates.
GIBSON: No audience member knows if he or she will be called upon. Audience microphones will be turned off after a question is asked.
Audience members will address their question to a specific candidate. He'll have two minutes to answer. The other candidate will have a minute and a half for rebuttal. And I have the option of extending discussion for one minute, to be divided equally between the two men.
All subjects are open for discussion.
And you probably know the light system by now. Green light at 30 seconds, yellow at 15, red at five, and flashing red means you're done.
Those are the candidates' rules. I will hold the candidates to the time limits forcefully but politely, I hope.
And now, please join me in welcoming with great respect, President Bush and Senator Kerry.
(APPLAUSE)
GIBSON: Gentlemen, to the business at hand.
The first question is for Senator Kerry, and it will come from Cheryl Otis, who is right behind me.
OTIS: Senator Kerry, after talking with several co-workers and family and friends, I asked the ones who said they were not voting for you, "Why?" They said that you were too wishy-washy.
Do you have a reply for them?
KERRY: Yes, I certainly do.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: But let me just first, Cheryl, if you will, I want to thank Charlie for moderating. I want to thank Washington University for hosting us here this evening.
Mr. President, it's good to be with you again this evening, sir.
Cheryl, the president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception. And the result is that you've been bombarded with advertisements suggesting that I've changed a position on this or that or the other.
Now, the three things they try to say I've changed position on are the Patriot Act; I haven't. I support it. I just don't like the way John Ashcroft has applied it, and we're going to change a few things. The chairman of the Republican Party thinks we ought to change a few things.
KERRY: No Child Left Behind Act, I voted for it. I support it. I support the goals.
But the president has underfunded it by $28 billion.
Right here in St. Louis, you've laid off 350 teachers. You're 150 -- excuse me, I think it's a little more, about $100 million shy of what you ought to be under the No Child Left Behind Act to help your education system here.
So I complain about that. I've argued that we should fully funded it. The president says I've changed my mind. I haven't changed my mind: I'm going to fully fund it.
So these are the differences.
Now, the president has presided over an economy where we've lost 1.6 million jobs. The first president in 72 years to lose jobs.
I have a plan to put people back to work. That's not wishy- washy.
I'm going to close the loopholes that actually encourage companies to go overseas. The president wants to keep them open. I think I'm right. I think he's wrong.
KERRY: I'm going to give you a tax cut. The president gave the top 1 percent of income-earners in America, got $89 billion last year, more than the 80 percent of people who earn $100,000 or less all put together. I think that's wrong. That's not wishy-washy, and that's what I'm fighting for, you.
GIBSON: Mr. President, a minute and a half.
BUSH: Charlie, thank you, and thank our panelists.
And, Senator, thank you.
I can -- and thanks, Washington U. as well.
I can see why people at your workplace think he changes positions a lot, because he does. He said he voted for the $87 billion, and voted against it right before he voted for it. And that sends a confusing signal to people.
He said he thought Saddam Hussein was a grave threat, and now he said it was a mistake to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
BUSH: No, I can see why people think that he changes position quite often, because he does.
You know, for a while he was a strong supporter of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He saw the wisdom -- until the Democrat primary came along and Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate, began to gain on him, and he changed positions.
I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics.
He just brought up the tax cut. You remember we increased that child credit by $1,000, reduced the marriage penalty, created a 10 percent tax bracket for the lower-income Americans. That's right at the middle class.
BUSH: He voted against it. And yet he tells you he's for a middle-class tax cut. It's -- you've got to be consistent when you're the president. There's a lot of pressures. And you've got to be firm and consistent.
GIBSON: Mr. President, I would follow up, but we have a series of questions on Iraq, and so I will turn to the next questioner.
The question is for President Bush, and the questioner is Robin Dahle.
DAHLE: Mr. President, yesterday in a statement you admitted that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but justified the invasion by stating, I quote, "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies."
Do you sincerely believe this to be a reasonable justification for invasion when this statement applies to so many other countries, including North Korea?
BUSH: Each situation is different, Robin.
And obviously we hope that diplomacy works before you ever use force. The hardest decision a president makes is ever to use force.
After 9/11, we had to look at the world differently. After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes to hurt us.
In the old days we'd see a threat, and we could deal with it if we felt like it or not. But 9/11 changed it all.
I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why we're bringing Al Qaida to justice. Seventy five percent of them have been brought to justice.
That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. And the Taliban is no longer in power, and Al Qaida no longer has a place to plan.
BUSH: And I saw a unique threat in Saddam Hussein, as did my opponent, because we thought he had weapons of mass destruction.
And the unique threat was that he could give weapons of mass destruction to an organization like Al Qaida, and the harm they inflicted on us with airplanes would be multiplied greatly by weapons of mass destruction. And that was the serious, serious threat.
So I tried diplomacy, went to the United Nations. But as we learned in the same report I quoted, Saddam Hussein was gaming the oil-for-food program to get rid of sanctions. He was trying to get rid of sanctions for a reason: He wanted to restart his weapons programs.
We all thought there was weapons there, Robin. My opponent thought there was weapons there. That's why he called him a grave threat.
I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why.
But Saddam Hussein was a unique threat. And the world is better off without him in power.
And my opponent's plans lead me to conclude that Saddam Hussein would still be in power, and the world would be more dangerous.
BUSH: Thank you, sir.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Robin, I'm going to answer your question.
I'm also going to talk -- respond to what you asked, Cheryl, at the same time.
The world is more dangerous today. The world is more dangerous today because the president didn't make the right judgments.
Now, the president wishes that I had changed my mind. He wants you to believe that because he can't come here and tell you that he's created new jobs for America. He's lost jobs.
He can't come here and tell you that he's created health care for Americans because, what, we've got 5 million Americans who have lost their health care, 96,000 of them right here in Missouri.
He can't come here and tell you that he's left no child behind because he didn't fund no child left behind.
So what does he do? He's trying to attack me. He wants you to believe that I can't be president. And he's trying to make you believe it because he wants you to think I change my mind.
KERRY: Well, let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat. Believed it in 1998 when Clinton was president. I wanted to give Clinton the power to use force if necessary.
But I would have used that force wisely, I would have used that authority wisely, not rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.
I would have brought our allies to our side. I would have fought to make certain our troops had everybody possible to help them win the mission.
This president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside. And Iran now is more dangerous, and so is North Korea, with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball, off of Osama bin Laden.
GIBSON: Mr. President, I do want to follow up on this one, because there were several questions from the audience along this line.
BUSH: (OFF-MIKE)
GIBSON: Go ahead. Go ahead.
(CROSSTALK)
GIBSON: Well, I was going to have you do the rebuttal on it, but you go ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
You're up.
BUSH: You remember the last debate?
BUSH: My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves. That's the kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, "Let's keep it at the United Nations and hope things go well."
Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies. Sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein.
GIBSON: Senator?
KERRY: The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein, it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction. And, Mr. President, just yesterday the Duelfer report told you and the whole world they worked. He didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Mr. President. That was the objective.
And if we'd used smart diplomacy, we could have saved $200 billion and an invasion of Iraq. And right now, Osama bin Laden might be in jail or dead. That's the war against terror.
GIBSON: We're going to have another question now on the subject of Iraq.
GIBSON: And I'm going to turn to Anthony Baldi with a question for Senator Kerry.
Mr. Baldi?
BALDI: Senator Kerry, the U.S. is preparing a new Iraq government and will proceed to withdraw U.S. troops.
Would you proceed with the same plans as President Bush?
KERRY: Anthony, I would not. I have laid out a different plan, because the president's plan is not working. You see that every night on television.
There's chaos in Iraq. King Abdullah of Jordan said just yesterday or the day before you can't hold elections in Iraq with the chaos that's going on today.
Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the handling of the reconstruction aid in Iraq by this administration has been incompetent. Those are the Republican chairman's words.
KERRY: Senator Hagel of Nebraska said that the handling of Iraq is beyond pitiful, beyond embarrassing; it's in the zone of dangerous.
Those are the words of two Republicans, respected, both on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Now, I have to tell you, I would do something different. I would reach out to our allies in a way that this president hasn't. He pushed them away time and again, pushed them away at the U.N., pushed them away individually.
Two weeks ago, there was a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, which is the political arm of NATO. They discussed the possibility of a small training unit or having a total takeover of the training in Iraq.
Did our administration push for the total training of Iraq? No. Were they silent? Yes.
Was there an effort to bring all the allies together around that? No, because they've always wanted this to be an American effort.
You know, they even had the Defense Department issue a memorandum saying, "Don't bother applying for assistance or for being part of the reconstruction if you weren't part of our original coalition."
KERRY: Now, that's not a good way to build support and reduce the risk for our troops and make America safer.
I'm going to get the training done for our troops. I'm going to get the training of Iraqis done faster. And I'm going to get our allies back to the table.
BUSH: Two days ago in the Oval Office, I met with the finance minister from Iraq. He came to see me. And he talked about how optimistic he was and the country was about heading toward elections.
Think about it: They're going from tyranny to elections.
He talked about the reconstruction efforts that are beginning to take hold. He talked about the fact that Iraqis love to be free.
He said he was optimistic when he came here, then he turned on the TV and listened to the political rhetoric and all of a sudden he was pessimistic.
Now, this is guy a who, along with others, has taken great risk for great freedom. And we need to stand with him.
My opponent says he has a plan; it sounds familiar, because it's called the Bush plan. We're going to train troops, and we are. We'll have 125,000 trained by the end of December. We're spending about $7 billion.
BUSH: He talks about a grand idea: Let's have a summit; we're going to solve the problem in Iraq by holding a summit.
And what is he going to say to those people that show up at the summit? Join me in the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place. Risk your troops in a war you've called a mistake.
Nobody is going to follow somebody who doesn't believe we can succeed and with somebody who says that war where we are is a mistake.
I know how these people think. I meet with them all the time. I talk to Tony Blair all the time. I talk to Silvio Berlusconi. They're not going to follow an American president who says follow me into a mistake. Our plan is working. We're going to make elections. And Iraq is going to be free, and America will be better off for it.
GIBSON: Do you want to follow up, Senator?
KERRY: Yes, sir, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, the right war was Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan. That was the right place. And the right time was Tora Bora, when we had him cornered in the mountains.
Now, everyone in the world knows that there were no weapons of mass destruction. That was the reason Congress gave him the authority to use force, not after excuse to get rid of the regime.
Now we have to succeed. I've always said that. I have been consistent. Yes, we have to succeed, and I have a better plan to help us do it.
BUSH: First of all, we didn't find out he didn't have weapons until we got there, and my opponent thought he had weapons and told everybody he thought he had weapons.
And secondly, it's a fundamental misunderstanding to say that the war on terror is only Osama bin Laden. The war on terror is to make sure that these terrorist organizations do not end up with weapons of mass destruction. That's what the war on terror is about.
Of course, we're going to find Osama bin Laden. We've already 75 percent of his people. And we're on the hunt for him.
But this is a global conflict that requires firm resolve.
GIBSON: The next question is for President Bush, and it comes from Nikki Washington.
WASHINGTON: Thank you.
Mr. President, my mother and sister traveled abroad this summer, and when they got back they talked to us about how shocked they were at the intensity of aggravation that other countries had with how we handled the Iraq situation.
Diplomacy is obviously something that we really have to really work on.
What is your plan to repair relations with other countries given the current situation?
BUSH: No, I appreciate that. I -- listen, I -- we've got a great country. I love our values. And I recognize I've made some decisions that have caused people to not understand the great values of our country.
I remember when Ronald Reagan was the president; he stood on principle. Somebody called that stubborn. He stood on principle standing up to the Soviet Union, and we won that conflict. Yet at the same time, he was very -- we were very unpopular in Europe because of the decisions he made.
BUSH: I recognize that taking Saddam Hussein out was unpopular. But I made the decision because I thought it was in the right interests of our security.
You know, I've made some decisions on Israel that's unpopular. I wouldn't deal with Arafat, because I felt like he had let the former president down, and I don't think he's the kind of person that can lead toward a Palestinian state.
And people in Europe didn't like that decision. And that was unpopular, but it was the right thing to do.
I believe Palestinians ought to have a state, but I know they need leadership that's committed to a democracy and freedom, leadership that would be willing to reject terrorism.
I made a decision not to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is where our troops could be brought to -- brought in front of a judge, an unaccounted judge.
BUSH: I don't think we ought to join that. That was unpopular.
And so, what I'm telling you is, is that sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they're right.
We'll continue to reach out.
Listen, there is 30 nations involved in Iraq, some 40 nations involved in Afghanistan.
People love America. Sometimes they don't like the decisions made by America, but I don't think you want a president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing.
You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Nikki, that's a question that's been raised by a lot of people around the country.
Let me address it but also talk about the weapons the president just talked about, because every part of the president's answer just now promises you more of the same over the next four years.
The president stood right here in this hall four years ago, and he was asked a question by somebody just like you, "Under what circumstances would you send people to war?"
KERRY: And his answer was, "With a viable exit strategy and only with enough forces to get the job done."
He didn't do that. He broke that promise. We didn't have enough forces.
General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand. And guess what? They retired General Shinseki for telling him that. This president hasn't listened.
I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.
I came away convinced that, if we worked at it, if we were ready to work and letting Hans Blix do his job and thoroughly go through the inspections, that if push came to shove, they'd be there with us.
But the president just arbitrarily brought the hammer down and said, "Nope. Sorry, time for diplomacy is over. We're going."
He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.
Ladies and gentleman, he gave you a speech and told you he'd plan carefully, take every precaution, take our allies with us. He didn't. He broke his word.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"
I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"
And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.
GIBSON: Senator?
KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component.
General Shinseki had the wisdom to say, "You're going to need several hundred thousand troops to win the peace." The military's job is to win the war.
KERRY: A president's job is to win the peace.
The president did not do what was necessary. Didn't bring in enough nation. Didn't deliver the help. Didn't close off the borders. Didn't even guard the ammo dumps. And now our kids are being killed with ammos right out of that dump.
GIBSON: The next question is for Senator Kerry, and it comes from over here, from Randee Jacobs.
You'll need a microphone.
KERRY: Is it Randee?
JACOBS: Yes, Randee.
Iran sponsors terrorism and has missiles capable of hitting Israel and southern Europe. Iran will have nuclear weapons in two to three years time.
In the event that U.N. sanctions don't stop this threat, what will you do as president?
KERRY: I don't think you can just rely on U.N. sanctions, Randee. But you're absolutely correct, it is a threat, it's a huge threat.
And what's interesting is, it's a threat that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn't a threat.
KERRY: If he'd let the inspectors do their job and go on, we wouldn't have 10 times the numbers of forces in Iraq that we have in Afghanistan chasing Osama bin Laden.
Meanwhile, while Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons, some 37 tons of what they called yellow cake, the stuff they use to make enriched uranium, while they're doing that, North Korea has moved from one bomb maybe, maybe, to four to seven bombs.
For two years, the president didn't even engage with North Korea, did nothing at all, while it was growing more dangerous, despite the warnings of former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who negotiated getting television cameras and inspectors into that reactor.
We were safer before President Bush came to office. Now they have the bombs and we're less safe.
So what do we do? We've got to join with the British and the French, with the Germans, who've been involved, in their initiative. We've got to lead the world now to crack down on proliferation as a whole.
KERRY: But the president's been slow to do that, even in Russia.
At his pace, it's going to take 13 years to reduce and get ahold of all the loose nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. I've proposed a plan that can capture it and contain it and clean it within four years.
And the president is moving to the creation of our own bunker- busting nuclear weapon. It's very hard to get other countries to give up their weapons when you're busy developing a new one.
I'm going to lead the world in the greatest counterproliferation effort. And if we have to get tough with Iran, believe me, we will get tough.
GIBSON: Mr. President, a minute and a half.
BUSH: That answer almost made me want to scowl.
He keeps talking about, "Let the inspectors do their job." It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's what the Duelfer report showed. He was deceiving the inspectors.
Secondly, of course we've been involved with Iran.
BUSH: I fully understand the threat. And that's why we're doing what he suggested we do: Get the Brits, the Germans and the French to go make it very clear to the Iranians that if they expect to be a party to the world to give up their nuclear ambitions. We've been doing that.
Let me talk about North Korea.
It is naive and dangerous to take a policy that he suggested the other day, which is to have bilateral relations with North Korea. Remember, he's the person who's accusing me of not acting multilaterally. He now wants to take the six-party talks we have -- China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States -- and undermine them by having bilateral talks.
That's what President Clinton did. He had bilateral talks with the North Koreans. And guess what happened?
BUSH: He didn't honor the agreement. He was enriching uranium. That is a bad policy.
Of course, we're paying attention to these. It's a great question about Iran. That's why in my speech to the Congress I said: There's an "Axis of Evil," Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and we're paying attention to it. And we're making progress.
GIBSON: We're going to move on, Mr. President, with a question for you. And it comes from Daniel Farley.
Mr. Farley?
FARLEY: Mr. President, since we continue to police the world, how do you intend to maintain our military presence without reinstituting a draft?
BUSH: Yes, that's a great question. Thanks.
I hear there's rumors on the Internets (sic) that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period. The all- volunteer army works. It works particularly when we pay our troops well. It works when we make sure they've got housing, like we have done in the last military budgets.
An all-volunteer army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century, which is to be specialized and to find these people as they hide around the world.
BUSH: We don't need mass armies anymore. One of the things we've done is we've taken the -- we're beginning to transform our military.
And by that I mean we're moving troops out of Korea and replacing them with more effective weapons. We don't need as much manpower on the Korean Peninsula to keep a deterrent.
In Europe, we have massed troops as if the Soviet Union existed and was going to invade into Europe, but those days are over with. And so we're moving troops out of Europe and replacing it with more effective equipment.
So to answer your question is, we're withdrawing, not from the world, we're withdrawing manpower so they can be stationed here in America, so there's less rotation, so life is easier on their families and therefore more likely to be -- we'll be more likely to be able to keep people in the all-volunteer army.
One of the more important things we're doing in this administration is transformation. There are some really interesting technologies.
BUSH: For instance, we're flying unmanned vehicles that can send real-time messages back to stations in the United States. That saves manpower, and it saves equipment.
It also means that we can target things easier and move more quickly, which means we need to be lighter and quicker and more facile and highly trained.
Now, forget all this talk about a draft. We're not going to have a draft so long as I am the president.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Daniel, I don't support a draft.
But let me tell you where the president's policies have put us.
The president -- and this is one of the reasons why I am very proud in this race to have the support of General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral William Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Tony McPeak, who ran the air war for the president's father and did a brilliant job, supporting me; General Wes Clark, who won the war in Kosovo, supporting me; because they all -- and General Baca, who was the head of the National Guard, supporting me.
KERRY: Why? Because they understand that our military is overextended under the president.
Our Guard and reserves have been turned into almost active duty. You've got people doing two and three rotations. You've got stop-loss policies, so people can't get out when they were supposed to. You've got a back-door draft right now.
And a lot of our military are underpaid. These are families that get hurt. It hurts the middle class. It hurts communities, because these are our first responders. And they're called up. And they're over there, not over here.
Now, I'm going to add 40,000 active duty forces to the military, and I'm going to make people feel good about being safe in our military, and not overextended, because I'm going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did, President Eisenhower did, and others.
We're going to build alliances. We're not going to go unilaterally. We're not going to go alone like this president did.
GIBSON: Mr. President, let's extend for a minute...
BUSH: Let me just -- I've got to answer this.
GIBSON: Exactly. And with Reservists being held on duty...
(CROSSTALK)
BUSH: Let me answer what he just said, about around the world.
GIBSON: Well, I want to get into the issue of the back-door draft...
BUSH: You tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Silvio Berlusconi we're going alone. Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we're going alone.
There are 30 countries there. It denigrates an alliance to say we're going alone, to discount their sacrifices. You cannot lead an alliance if you say, you know, you're going alone. And people listen. They're sacrificing with us.
GIBSON: Senator?
KERRY: Mr. President, countries are leaving the coalition, not joining. Eight countries have left it.
If Missouri, just given the number of people from Missouri who are in the military over there today, were a country, it would be the third largest country in the coalition, behind Great Britain and the United States.
KERRY: That's not a grand coalition.
Ninety percent of the casualties are American. Ninety percent of the costs are coming out of your pockets.
I could do a better job. My plan does a better job. And that's why I'll be a better commander in chief.
GIBSON: The next question, Senator Kerry, is for you, and it comes from Ann Bronsing, who I believe is over in this area.
BRONSING: Senator Kerry, we have been fortunate that there have been no further terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Why do you think this is?
And if elected, what will you do to assure our safety?
KERRY: Thank you very much, Ann.
I've asked in my security briefings why that is, and I can't go into all the answers, et cetera, but let me say this to you.
This president and his administration have told you and all of us it's not a question of when, it's a question of -- excuse me -- not a question of if, it's a question of when. We've been told that.
KERRY: The when I can't tell you. Between the World Trade Center bombing in, what was it, 1993 or so, and the next time was five years, seven years. These people wait. They'll plan. They plot.
I agree with the president that we have to go after them and get them wherever they are. I just think I can do that far more effectively, because the most important weapon in doing that is intelligence. You've got to have the best intelligence in the world.
And in order to have the best intelligence in the world to know who the terrorists are and where they are and what they're plotting, you've got to have the best cooperation you've ever had in the world.
Now, to go back to your question, Nikki, we're not getting the best cooperation in the world today. We've got a whole bunch of countries that pay a price for dealing with the United States of America now. I'm going to change that.
And I'm going to put in place a better homeland security effort.
Look, 95 percent of our containers coming into this country are not inspected today. When you get on an airplane, your bag is X- rayed, but the cargo hold isn't X-rayed. Do you feel safer?
KERRY: This president in the last debate said, "Well, that would be a big tax gap if we did that."
Ladies and gentlemen, it's his tax plan. He chose a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans over getting that equipment out into the homeland as fast as possible.
We have bridges and tunnels that aren't being secured, chemical plants, nuclear plants that aren't secured, hospitals that are overcrowded with their emergency rooms.
If we had a disaster today, could they handle it?
This president chose a tax cut over homeland security. Wrong choice.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: That's an odd thing to say, since we've tripled the homeland security budget from $10 billion to $30 billion.
Listen, we'll do everything we can to protect the homeland.
My opponent's right, we need good intelligence. It's also a curious thing for him to say since right after 1993 he voted to cut the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion.
The best way to defend America in this world we live in is to stay on the offense. We got to be right 100 percent of the time here at home, and they got to be right once. And that's the reality.
And there's a lot of good people working hard. We're doing the best we possibly can to share information. That's why the Patriot Act was important.
BUSH: The Patriot Act is vital, by the way. It's a tool that law enforcement now uses to be able to talk between each other. My opponent says he hadn't changed his position on it. No, but he's for weakening it.
I don't think my opponent has got the right view about the world to make us safe; I really don't.
First of all, I don't think he can succeed in Iraq. And if Iraq were to fail, it'd be a haven for terrorists, and there would be money and the world would be much more dangerous.
I don't see how you can win in Iraq if you don't believe we should be there in the first place. I don't see how you can lead troops if you say it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I don't see how the Iraqis are going to have confidence in the American president if all they hear is that it was a mistake to be there in the first place.
This war is a long, long war, and it requires steadfast determination and it requires a complete understanding that we not only chase down Al Qaida but we disrupt terrorist safe havens as well as people who could provide the terrorists with support.
GIBSON: I want to extend for a minute, Senator. And I'm curious about something you said. You said, "It's not when, but if." You think it's inevitable because the sense of security is a very basic thing with everybody in this country worried about their kids.
KERRY: Well, the president and his experts have told America that it's not a question of if; it's a question of when. And I accept what the president has said. These terrorists are serious, they're deadly, and they know nothing except trying to kill.
I understand that. That's why I will never stop at anything to hunt down and kill the terrorists.
But you heard the president just say to you that we've added money.
Folks, the test is not if you've added money; the test is that you've done everything possible to make America secure. He chose a tax cut for wealthy Americans over the things that I listed to you.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: Well, we'll talk about the tax cut for middle class here in a minute. But yes, I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried about our country. And all I can tell you is every day I know that there's people working overtime, doing the very best they can. And the reason I'm worried is because there's a vicious enemy that has an ideology of hate.
And the way to defeat them long-term, by the way, is to spread freedom.
BUSH: Liberty can change habits. And that's what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.
GIBSON: Mr. President, we're going to turn to questions now on domestic policy. And we're going to start with health issues.
And the first question is for President Bush and it's from John Horstman.
HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?
BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you.
And that's why the FDA and that's why the surgeon general are looking very carefully to make sure it can be done in a safe way. I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you.
And what my worry is is that, you know, it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world.
BUSH: And we've just got to make sure, before somebody thinks they're buying a product, that it works. And that's why we're doing what we're doing.
Now, it may very well be here in December you'll hear me say, I think there's a safe way to do it.
There are other ways to make sure drugs are cheaper. One is to speed up generic drugs to the marketplace, quicker. Pharmaceuticals were using loopholes to keep brand -- brand drugs in place, and generics are much less expensive than brand drugs. And we're doing just that.
Another is to pass -- to get our seniors to sign up to these drug discount cards, and they're working.
Wanda Blackmore I met here from Missouri, the first time she bought drugs with her drug discount card, she paid $1.14, I think it was, for about $10 worth of drugs.
These cards make sense.
BUSH: And, you know, in 2006 seniors are going to get prescription drug coverage for the first time in Medicare. Because I went to Washington to fix problems.
Medicare -- the issue of Medicare used to be called "Mediscare." People didn't want to touch it for fear of getting hurt politically.
I wanted to get something done. I think our seniors deserve a modern medical system. And in 2006, our seniors will get prescription drug coverage.
Thank you for asking.
GIBSON: Senator, a minute and a half.
KERRY: John, you heard the president just say that he thought he might try to be for it.
Four years ago, right here in this forum, he was asked the same question: Can't people be able to import drugs from Canada? You know what he said? "I think that makes sense. I think that's a good idea" -- four years ago.
Now, the president said, "I'm not blocking that." Ladies and gentlemen, the president just didn't level with you right now again.
KERRY: He did block it, because we passed it in the United States Senate. We sent it over to the House, that you could import drugs. We took care of the safety issues.
We're not talking about third-world drugs. We're talking about drugs made right here in the United States of America that have American brand names on them and American bottles. And we're asking to be able to allow you to get them.
The president blocked it. The president also took Medicare, which belongs to you. And he could have lowered the cost of Medicare and lowered your taxes and lowered the costs to seniors.
You know what he did? He made it illegal, illegal for Medicare to do what the V.A. does, which is bulk purchase drugs so that you can lower the price and get them out to you lower.
He put $139 billion of windfall profit into the pockets of the drug companies right out of your pockets. That's the difference between us. The president sides with the power companies, the oil companies, the drug companies. And I'm fighting to let you get those drugs from Canada, and I'm fighting to let Medicare survive.
I'm fighting for the middle class. That is the difference.
BUSH: If they're safe, they're coming. I want to remind you that it wasn't just my administration that made the decision on safety. President Clinton did the same thing, because we have an obligation to protect you.
Now, he talks about Medicare. He's been in the United States Senate 20 years. Show me one accomplishment toward Medicare that he accomplished.
I've been in Washington, D.C., three and a half years and led the Congress to reform Medicare so our seniors have got a modern health care system. That's what leadership is all about.
KERRY: Actually, Mr. President, in 1997 we fixed Medicare, and I was one of the people involved in it.
We not only fixed Medicare and took it way out into the future, we did something that you don't know how to do: We balanced the budget. And we paid down the debt of our nation for two years in a row, and we created 23 million new jobs at the same time.
And it's the president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together. Go figure.
GIBSON: The next question is for Senator Kerry. And this comes from Norma-Jean Laurent.
LAURENT: Senator Kerry, you've stated your concern for the rising cost of health care, yet you chose a vice presidential candidate who has made millions of dollars successfully suing medical professionals. How do you reconcile this with the voters?
KERRY: Very easily. John Edwards is the author of the Patients' Bill of Rights. He wanted to give people rights. John Edwards and I support tort reform. We both believe that, as lawyers -- I'm a lawyer, too. And I believe that we will be able to get a fix that has alluded everybody else because we know how to do it.
KERRY: It's in my health-care proposal. Go to johnkerry.com. You can pull it off of the Internet. And you'll find a tort reform plan.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, important to understand, the president and his friends try to make a big deal out of it. Is it a problem? Yes, it's a problem. Do we need to fix it, particularly for OGBYNs (sic) and for brain surgeons and others? Yes.
But it's less than 1 percent of the total cost of health care.
Your premiums are going up. You've gone up, in Missouri, about $3,500. You've gone up 64 percent. You've seen co-pays go up, deductibles go up. Everything's gone up.
Five million people have lost their health insurance under this president. He's done nothing about it.
I have a plan. I have a plan to lower the cost of health care for you. I have a plan to cover all children. I have a plan to let you buy into the same health care senators and congressmen give themselves.
I have a plan that's going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early.
KERRY: And I have a plan that will take the catastrophic cases out of the system, off your backs, pay for it out of a federal fund, which lowers the premiums for everybody in America, makes American business more competitive and makes health care more affordable.
Now, all of that can happen, but I have to ask you to do one thing: Join me in rolling back the president's unaffordable tax cut for people earning more than $200,000 a year. That's all.
Ninety-eight percent of America, I'm giving you a tax cut and I'm giving you health care.
GIBSON: Mr. President, a minute and a half.
BUSH: Let me see where to start here.
First, the National Journal named Senator Kennedy the most liberal senator of all. And that's saying something in that bunch. You might say that took a lot of hard work.
The reason I bring that up is because he's proposed $2.2 trillion in new spending, and he says he going to tax the rich to close the tax gap.
He can't. He's going to tax everybody here to fund his programs. That's just reality.
BUSH: And what are his health programs? First, he says he's for medical liability reform, particularly for OB/GYNs. There's a bill on the floor of the United States Senate that he could have showed up and voted for if he's so much for it.
Secondly, he says that medical liability costs only cause a 1 percent increase. That shows a lack of understanding. Doctors practice defensive medicine because of all the frivolous lawsuits that cost our government $28 billion a year.
And finally, he said he's going to have a novel health care plan. You know what it is? The federal government is going to run it.
It's the largest increase in federal government health care ever. And it fits with his philosophy. That's why I told you about the award he won from the National Journal.
That's what liberals do. They create government-sponsored health care. Maybe you think that makes sense. I don't.
Government-sponsored health care would lead to rationing. It would ruin the quality of health care in America.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, we got several questions along this line, and I'm just curious if you'd go further on what you talked about with tort reform. Would you be favoring capping awards on pain and suffering? Would you limit attorney's fees?
KERRY: A follow-up...
GIBSON: Yes. A follow-up on this for...
KERRY: Yes, I think we should look at the punitive and we should have some limitations.
But look, what's really important, Charlie, is the president is just trying to scare everybody here with throwing labels around. I mean, "compassionate conservative," what does that mean? Cutting 500,000 kids from after-school programs, cutting 365,000 kids from health care, running up the biggest deficits in American history.
Mr. President, you're batting 0 for 2.
I mean, seriously -- labels don't mean anything. What means something is: Do you have a plan? And I want to talk about my plan some more -- I hope we can.
GIBSON: We'll get to that in just a minute.
Thirty seconds, President Bush.
BUSH: You're right, what does matter is a plan. He said he's for -- you're now for capping punitive damages?
BUSH: That's odd. You should have shown up on the floor in the Senate and voted for it then.
Medical liability issues are a problem, a significant problem. He's been in the United States Senate for 20 years and he hasn't addressed it.
We passed it out of the House of Representatives. Guess where it's stuck? It's stuck in the Senate, because the trial lawyers won't act on it. And he put a trial lawyer on the ticket.
GIBSON: The next question is for President Bush, and it comes from Matthew O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: Mr. President, you have enjoyed a Republican majority in the House and Senate for most of your presidency. In that time, you've not vetoed a single spending bill. Excluding $120 billion spent in Iran and -- I'm sorry, Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been $700 billion spent and not paid for by taxes.
Please explain how the spending you have approved and not paid for is better for the American people than the spending proposed by your opponent.
BUSH: Right, thank you for that.
We have a deficit. We have a deficit because this country went into a recession. You might remember the stock market started to decline dramatically six months before I came to office, and then the bubble of the 1990s popped. And that cost us revenue. That cost us revenue.
Secondly, we're at war. And I'm going to spend what it takes to win the war, more than just $120 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. We've got to pay our troops more. We have. We've increased money for ammunition and weapons and pay and homeland security.
I just told this lady over here we spent -- went from $10 billion to $30 billion to protect the homeland. I think we have an obligation to spend that kind of money.
And plus, we cut taxes for everybody. Everybody got tax relief, so that they get out of the recession.
I think if you raise taxes during a recession, you head to depression. I come from the school of thought that says when people have more money in their pocket during economic times, it increases demand or investment. Small businesses begin to grow, and jobs are added.
BUSH: We found out today that over the past 13 months, we've added 1.9 million new jobs in the last 13 months.
I proposed a plan, detailed budget, that shows us cutting the deficit in half by five years.
And you're right, I haven't vetoed any spending bills, because we work together.
Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control.
Like you, I'm concerned about the deficit. But I am not going to shortchange our troops in harm's way. And I'm not going to run up taxes, which will cost this economy jobs.
Thank you for your question.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Let me begin by saying that my health-care plan is not what the president described. It is not a government takeover.
You have choice. Choose your doctor, choose your plan. The government has nothing to do with it.
KERRY: In fact, it doesn't ask you to do anything -- if you don't want to take it, you don't have to. If you like your high premiums, you keep them. That's the way we leave it.
Now with respect to the deficit, the president was handed a $5.6 trillion surplus, ladies and gentlemen. That's where he was when he came into office.
We now have a $2.6 trillion deficit. This is the biggest turnaround in the history of the country. He's the first president in 72 years to lose jobs.
He talked about war. This is the first time the United States of America has ever had a tax cut when we're at war.
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.
One percent of America, the highest one percent of income earners in America, got $89 billion of tax cut last year. One percent of America got more than the 80 percent of America that earned from $100,000 down.
KERRY: The president thinks it's more important to fight for that top 1 percent than to fight for fiscal responsibility and to fight for you.
I want to put money in your pocket. I am -- I have a proposal for a tax cut for all people earning less than the $200,000. The only people affected by my plan are the top income earners of America.
GIBSON: I both -- I heard you both say -- I have heard you both say during the campaign, I just heard you say it, that you're going to cut the deficit by a half in four years. But I didn't hear one thing in the last three and a half minutes that would indicate how either one of you do that.
BUSH: Well, look at the budget. One is make sure Congress doesn't overspend.
But let me talk back about where we've been. The stock market was declining six months prior to my arrival.
BUSH: It was the largest stock market correction -- one of the largest in history, which foretold a recession.
Because we cut taxes on everybody -- remember, we ran up the child credit by $1,000, we reduced the marriage penalty, we created a 10 percent bracket, everybody who pays taxes got relief -- the recession was one of the shortest in our nation's history.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, 30 seconds.
KERRY: After 9/11, after the recession had ended, the president asked for another tax cut and promised 5.6 million jobs would be created. He lost 1.6 million, ladies and gentlemen. And most of that tax cut went to the wealthiest people in the country.
He came and asked for a tax cut -- we wanted a tax cut to kick the economy into gear. Do you know what he presented us with? A $25 billion giveaway to the biggest corporations in America, including a $254 million refund check to Enron.
Wrong priorities. You are my priority.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, the next question will be for you, and it comes from James Varner, who I believe is in this section.
Mr. Varner? You need a microphone.
VARNER: Thank you.
Senator Kerry, would you be willing to look directly into the camera and, using simple and unequivocal language, give the American people your solemn pledge not to sign any legislation that will increase the tax burden on families earning less than $200,000 a year during your first term?
KERRY: Absolutely. Yes. Right into the camera. Yes. I am not going to raise taxes.
I have a tax cut. And here's my tax cut.
I raise the child-care credit by $1,000 for families to help them be able to take care of their kids.
I have a $4,000 tuition tax credit that goes to parents -- and kids, if they're earning for themselves -- to be able to pay for college.
And I lower the cost of health care in the way that I described to you.
Every part of my program I've shown how I'm going to pay for it.
And I've gotten good people, like former Secretary of the Treasury Bob Rubin, for instance, who showed how to balance budgets and give you a good economy, to help me crunch these numbers and make them work.
KERRY: I've even scaled back some of my favorite programs already, like the child-care program I wanted to fund and the national service program, because the president's deficit keeps growing and I've said as a pledge, "I'm going to cut the deficit in half in four years."
Now, I'm going to restore what we did in the 1990s, ladies and gentlemen: pay as you go. We're going to do it like you do it. The president broke the pay-as-you-go rule.
Somebody here asked the question about, "Why haven't you vetoed something?" It's a good question. If you care about it, why don't you veto it?
I think John McCain called the energy bill the "No Lobbyist Left Behind" bill.
I mean, you've got to stand up and fight somewhere, folks.
I'm pledging I will not raise taxes; I'm giving a tax cut to the people earning less than $200,000 a year.
Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you're going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.
KERRY: And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too.
(LAUGHTER)
GIBSON: Mr. President, 90 seconds.
BUSH: He's just not credible when he talks about being fiscally conservative. He's just not credible. If you look at his record in the Senate, he voted to break the caps -- the spending caps -- over 200 times.
And here he says he's going to be a fiscal conservative, all of a sudden. It's just not credible. You cannot believe it.
And of course he's going to raise your taxes. You see, he's proposed $2.2 trillion of new spending. And you say: Well, how are you going to pay for it? He says, well, he's going to raise the taxes on the rich -- that's what he said -- the top two brackets. That raises, he says $800 billion; we say $600 billion.
BUSH: We've got battling green eye shades.
Somewhere in between those numbers -- and so there's a difference, what he's promised and what he can raise.
Now, either he's going to break all these wonderful promises he's told you about or he's going to raise taxes. And I suspect, given his record, he's going to raise taxes.
Is my time up yet?
GIBSON: No, you can keep going.
(LAUGHTER)
BUSH: Good. You looked at me like my clock was up.
I think that the way to grow this economy is to keep taxes low, is have an energy plan, is to have litigation reform. As I told you, we've just got a report that said over the past 13 months, we've created 1.9 million new jobs.
And so the fundamental question of this campaign is: Who's going to keep the economy growing so people can work? That's the fundamental question.
GIBSON: I'm going to come back one more time to how these numbers add up and how you can cut that deficit in half in four years, given what you've both said.
KERRY: Well, first of all, the president's figures of $2.2 trillion just aren't accurate. Those are the fuzzy math figures put together by some group that works for the campaign. That's not the number.
Number two, John McCain and I have a proposal, jointly, for a commission that closes corporate giveaway loopholes. We've got $40 billion going to Bermuda. We've got all kinds of giveaways. We ought to be shutting those down.
And third, credible: Ladies and gentlemen, in 1985, I was one of the first Democrats to move to balance the budget. I voted for the balanced budget in '93 and '97. We did it. We did it. And I was there.
GIBSON: Thirty seconds. I'm sorry, thirty seconds, Mr. President. Our Call Analysis and video excerpt Your Call Reader's forum
BUSH: Yes, I mean, he's got a record. It's been there for 20 years. You can run, but you can't hide. He voted 98 times to raise taxes. I mean, these aren't make-up figures.
And so people are going to have to look at the record. Look at the record of the man running for the president.
BUSH: They don't name him the most liberal in the United States Senate because he hasn't shown up to many meetings. They named him because of his votes. And it's reality.
It's just not credible to say he's going to keep taxes down and balance budgets.
GIBSON: Mr. President, the next question is for you, and it comes from James Hubb over here.
HUBB: Mr. President, how would you rate yourself as an environmentalist? What specifically has your administration done to improve the condition of our nation's air and water supply?
BUSH: Off-road diesel engines -- we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines by 90 percent.
I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million. We've got an aggressive brown field program to refurbish inner-city sore spots to useful pieces of property.
I proposed to the United States Congress a Clear Skies Initiative to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by 70 percent.
I have -- was fought for a very strong title in the farm bill for the conservation reserve program to set aside millions of acres of land to help improve wildlife and the habitat.
We proposed and passed a healthy forest bill which was essential to working with -- particularly in Western states -- to make sure that our forests were protected.
BUSH: What happens in those forests, because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be -- they are not -- they're not harvested. They're not taken care of. And as a result, they're like tinderboxes.
And over the last summers I've flown over there. And so, this is a reasonable policy to protect old stands of trees and at the same time make sure our forests aren't vulnerable to the forest fires that have destroyed acres after acres in the West.
We've got a good, common-sense policy.
Now, I'm going to tell you what I really think is going to happen over time is technology is going to change the way we live for the good for the environment.
That's why I proposed a hydrogen automobile -- hydrogen-generated automobile. We're spending $1 billion to come up with the technologies to do that.
That's why I'm a big proponent of clean coal technology, to make sure we can use coal but in a clean way.
I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land.
BUSH: The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been the president. Fewer water complaints since I've been the president. More land being restored since I've been the president.
Thank you for your question.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, minute and a half.
KERRY: Boy, to listen to that -- the president, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment.
Now, if you're a Red Sox fan, that's OK. But if you're a president, it's not.
Let me just say to you, number one, don't throw the labels around. Labels don't mean anything.
I supported welfare reform. I led the fight to put 100,000 cops on the streets of America. I've been for faith-based initiatives helping to intervene in the lives of young children for years. I was -- broke with my party in 1985, one of the first three Democrats to fight for a balanced budget when it was heresy.
Labels don't fit, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, when it comes to the issue of the environment, this is one of the worst administrations in modern history.
KERRY: The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like "No Child Left Behind" but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind.
If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner that it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We're going backwards.
In fact, his environmental enforcement chief air-quality person at the EPA resigned in protest over what they're doing to what are calling the new source performance standards for air quality.
They're going backwards on the definition for wetlands. They're going backwards on the water quality.
They pulled out of the global warming, declared it dead, didn't even accept the science.
I'm going to be a president who believes in science.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: Well, had we joined the Kyoto treaty, which I guess he's referring to, it would have cost America a lot of jobs.
It's one of these deals where, in order to be popular in the halls of Europe, you sign a treaty. But I thought it would cost a lot -- I think there's a better way to do it.
BUSH: And I just told you the facts, sir. The quality of the air is cleaner since I've been the president of the United States. And we'll continue to spend money on research and development, because I truly believe that's the way to get from how we live today to being able to live a standard of living that we're accustomed to and being able to protect our environment better, the use of technologies.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, 30 seconds.
KERRY: The fact is that the Kyoto treaty was flawed. I was in Kyoto, and I was part of that. I know what happened. But this president didn't try to fix it. He just declared it dead, ladies and gentlemen, and we walked away from the work of 160 nations over 10 years. You wonder, Nikki, why it is that people don't like us in some parts of the world. You just say: Hey, we don't agree with you. Goodbye.
The president's done nothing to try to fix it. I will.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, the next question is for you. It involves jobs, which is a topic of the news today.
GIBSON: And for the question, we're going to turn to Jane Barrow.
BARROW: Senator Kerry, how can the U.S. be competitive in manufacturing given -- in manufacturing, excuse me -- given the wage necessary and comfortably accepted for American workers to maintain the standard of living that they expect?
KERRY: Jane, there are a lot of ways to be competitive. And unfortunately again I regret this administration has not seized them and embraced them. Let me give you an example.
There is a tax loophole right now. If you're a company in St. Louis working, trying to make jobs here, there is actually an incentive for you to go away. You get more money, you keep more of your taxes by going abroad.
I'm going to shut that loophole, and I'm going to give the tax benefit to the companies that stay here in America to help make them more competitive.
Secondly, we're going to create a manufacturing jobs credit and a new jobs credit for people to be able to help hire and be more competitive here in America.
Third, what's really hurting American business more than anything else is the cost of health care.
Now, you didn't hear any plan from the president, because he doesn't have a plan to lower the cost of health care.
KERRY: Five million Americans have lost their health care; 620,000 Missourians have no health care at all; 96,000 Missourians have lost their health care under President Bush.
I have a plan to cover those folks. And it's a plan that lowers cost for everybody, covers all children. And the way I pay for it -- I'm not fiscally irresponsible -- is I roll back the tax cut this president so fiercely wants to defend, the one for him and me and Charlie.
I think you ought to get the break. I want to lower your cost to health care. I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that's how we're going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.
China and India are graduating more graduates in technology and science than we are.
KERRY: We've got to create the products of the future. That's why I have a plan for energy independence within 10 years.
And we're going to put our laboratories and our colleges and our universities to work. And we're going to get the great entrepreneurial spirit of this country, and we're going to free ourselves from this dependency on Mideast oil.
That's how you create jobs and become competitive.
GIBSON: Mr. President, minute and a half.
BUSH: Let me start with how to control the cost of health care: medical liability reform, for starters, which he's opposed.
Secondly, allow small businesses to pool together so they can share risk and buy insurance at the same discounts big businesses get to do.
Thirdly, spread what's called health savings accounts. It's good for small businesses, good for owners. You own your own account. You can save tax-free. You get a catastrophic plan to help you on it.
This is different from saying, "OK, let me incent you to go on the government."
He's talking about his plan to keep jobs here. You know he calls it an outsourcing to keep -- stop outsourcing. Robert Rubin looked at his plan and said it won't work.
BUSH: The best way to keep jobs here in America is, one, have an energy plan. I proposed one to the Congress two years ago, encourages conservation, encourages technology to explore for environmentally friendly ways for coal -- to use coal and gas. It encourages the use of renewables like ethanol and biodiesel.
It's stuck in the Senate. He and his running-mate didn't show up to vote when they could have got it going in the Senate.
Less regulations if we want jobs here; legal reform if we want jobs here; and we've got to keep taxes low.
Now, he says he's only going to tax the rich. Do you realize, 900,000 small businesses will be taxed under his plan because most small businesses are Subchapter S corps or limited partnerships, and they pay tax at the individual income tax level.
And so when you're running up the taxes like that, you're taxing job creators, and that's not how you keep jobs here.
GIBSON: Senator, I want to extend for a minute, you talk about tax cuts to stop outsourcing. But when you have IBM documents that I saw recently where you can hire a programmer for $12 in China, $56 an hour here, tax credits won't cut it.
KERRY: You can't stop all outsourcing, Charlie. I've never promised that. I'm not going to, because that would be pandering. You can't.
But what you can do is create a fair playing field, and that's what I'm talking about.
But let me just address what the president just said.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's just not true what he said. The Wall Street Journal said 96 percent of small businesses are not affected at all by my plan.
And you know why he gets that count? The president got $84 from a timber company that owns, and he's counted as a small business. Dick Cheney's counted as a small business. That's how they do things. That's just not right.
BUSH: I own a timber company?
(LAUGHTER)
That's news to me.
(LAUGHTER)
Need some wood?
(LAUGHTER)
Most small businesses are Subchapter S corps. They just are.
BUSH: I met Grant Milliron, Mansfield, Ohio. He's creating jobs. Most small businesses -- 70 percent of the new jobs in America are created by small businesses.
Taxes are going up when you run up the top two brackets. It's a fact.
GIBSON: President Bush, the next question is for you, and it comes from Rob Fowler, who I believe is over in this area.
FOWLER: President Bush, 45 days after 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which takes away checks on law enforcement and weakens American citizens' rights and freedoms, especially Fourth Amendment rights.
With expansions to the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II, my question to you is, why are my rights being watered down and my citizens' around me? And what are the specific justifications for these reforms?
BUSH: I appreciate that.
I really don't think your rights are being watered down. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I thought that.
Every action being taken against terrorists requires court order, requires scrutiny.
BUSH: As a matter of fact, the tools now given to the terrorist fighters are the same tools that we've been using against drug dealers and white-collar criminals.
So I really don't think so. I hope you don't think that. I mean, I -- because I think whoever is the president must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.
The Patriot Act is necessary, for example, because parts of the FBI couldn't talk to each other. The intelligence-gathering and the law-enforcement arms of the FBI just couldn't share intelligence under the old law. And that didn't make any sense.
Our law enforcement must have every tool necessary to find and disrupt terrorists at home and abroad before they hurt us again. That's the task of the 21st century.
And so, I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.
BUSH: And I know it's necessary. I can remember being in upstate New York talking to FBI agents that helped bust a Lackawanna cell up there. And they told me they could not have performed their duty, the duty we all expect of them, if they did not have the ability to communicate with each other under the Patriot Act.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Former Governor Racicot, as chairman of the Republican Party, said he thought that the Patriot Act has to be changed and fixed.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, he is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said over his dead body before it gets renewed without being thoroughly rechecked.
A whole bunch of folks in America are concerned about the way the Patriot Act has been applied. In fact, the inspector general of the Justice Department found that John Ashcroft had twice applied it in ways that were inappropriate.
KERRY: People's rights have been abused.
I met a man who spent eight months in prison, wasn't even allowed to call his lawyer, wasn't allowed to get -- finally, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois intervened and was able to get him out.
This is in our country, folks, the United States of America.
They've got sneak-and-peek searches that are allowed. They've got people allowed to go into churches now and political meetings without any showing of potential criminal activity or otherwise.
Now, I voted for the Patriot Act. Ninety-nine United States senators voted for it. And the president's been very busy running around the country using what I just described to you as a reason to say I'm wishy-washy, that I'm a flip-flopper.
Now that's not a flip-flop. I believe in the Patriot Act. We need the things in it that coordinate the FBI and the CIA. We need to be stronger on terrorism.
But you know what we also need to do as Americans is never let the terrorists change the Constitution of the United States in a way that disadvantages our rights.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, the next question is for you, and it comes from Elizabeth Long.
LONG: Senator Kerry, thousands of people have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem cells.
Wouldn't it be wide to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?
KERRY: You know, Elizabeth, I really respect your -- the feeling that's in your question. I understand it. I know the morality that's prompting that question, and I respect it enormously.
But like Nancy Reagan, and so many other people -- you know, I was at a forum with Michael J. Fox the other day in New Hampshire, who's suffering from Parkinson's, and he wants us to do stem cell, embryonic stem cell.
And this fellow stood up, and he was quivering. His whole body was shaking from the nerve disease, the muscular disease that he had.
KERRY: And he said to me and to the whole hall, he said, "You know, don't take away my hope, because my hope is what keeps me going."
Chris Reeve is a friend of mine. Chris Reeve exercises every single day to keep those muscles alive for the day when he believes he can walk again, and I want him to walk again.
I think we can save lives.
Now, I think we can do ethically guided embryonic stem-cell research.
We have 100,000 to 200,000 embryos that are frozen in nitrogen today from fertility clinics. These weren't taken from abortion or something like that. They're from a fertility clinic. And they're either going to be destroyed or left frozen.
And I believe if we have the option, which scientists tell us we do, of curing Parkinson's, curing diabetes, curing, you know, some kind of a, you know, paraplegic or quadriplegic or, you know, a spinal cord injury, anything, that's the nature of the human spirit.
KERRY: I think it is respecting life to reach for that cure. I think it is respecting life to do it in an ethical way.
And the president has chosen a policy that makes it impossible for our scientists to do that. I want the future, and I think we have to grab it.
GIBSON: Mr. President, a minute and a half.
BUSH: Embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. I'm the first president ever to allow funding -- federal funding -- for embryonic stem-cell research. I did to because I too hope that we'll discover cures from the stem cells and from the research derived. But I think we've got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science.
BUSH: And so I made the decision we wouldn't spend any more money beyond the 70 lines, 22 of which are now in action, because science is important, but so is ethics, so is balancing life. To destroy life to save life is -- it's one of the real ethical dilemmas that we face.
There is going to be hundreds of experiments off the 22 lines that now exist that are active, and hopefully we find a cure. But as well, we need to continue to pursue adult stem-cell research.
I helped double the NIH budget to $28 billion a year to find cures. And the approach I took is one that I think is a balanced and necessary approach, to balance science and the concerns for life.
GIBSON: Senator, 30 seconds, less extent.
KERRY: Well, you talk about walking a waffle line -- he says he's allowed it, which means he's going to allow the destruction of life up to a certain amount and then he isn't going to allow it.
KERRY: I don't know how you draw that line.
But let me tell you, point blank, the lines of stem cells that he's made available, every scientist in the country will tell you, "Not adequate," because they're contaminated by mouse cells, and because there aren't 60 or 70 -- they're are only about 11 to 20 now -- and there aren't enough to be able to do the research because they're contaminated.
We've got to open up the possibilities of this research. And when I am president, I'm going to do it because we have to.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: Let me make sure you understand my decision. Those stem- cells lines already existed. The embryo had already been destroyed prior to my decision.
I had to make the decision to destroy more life, so we continue to destroy life -- I made the decision to balance science and ethics.
GIBSON: Mr. President, the next question is for you, and it comes from Jonathan Michaelson, over here.
MICHAELSON: Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you choose and why?
BUSH: I'm not telling.
(LAUGHTER)
I really don't have -- haven't picked anybody yet. Plus, I want them all voting for me.
(LAUGHTER)
I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.
Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick.
I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
BUSH: Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.
That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.
And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've got plenty of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution.
And I suspect one of us will have a pick at the end of next year -- the next four years. And that's the kind of judge I'm going to put on there. No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution.
Thank you.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: Thank you, Charlie.
A few years ago when he came to office, the president said -- these are his words -- "What we need are some good conservative judges on the courts."
And he said also that his two favorite justices are Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas.
So you get a pretty good sense of where he's heading if he were to appoint somebody.
Now, here's what I believe. I don't believe we need a good conservative judge, and I don't believe we need a good liberal judge. I don't believe we need a good judge of that kind of definition on either side.
I subscribe to the Justice Potter Stewart standard. He was a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. And he said the mark of a good judge, good justice, is that when you're reading their decision, their opinion, you can't tell if it's written by a man or woman, a liberal or a conservative, a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. You just know you're reading a good judicial decision.
KERRY: What I want to find, if I am privileged to have the opportunity to do it -- and the Supreme Court of the United States is at stake in this race, ladies and gentlemen.
The future of things that matter to you -- in terms of civil rights, what kind of Justice Department you'll have, whether we'll enforce the law. Will we have equal opportunity? Will women's rights be protected? Will we have equal pay for women, which is going backwards? Will a woman's right to choose be protected?
These are constitutional rights, and I want to make sure we have judges who interpret the Constitution of the United States according to the law.
GIBSON: Going to go to the final two questions now, and the first one will be for Senator Kerry. And this comes from Sarah Degenhart.
DEGENHART: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?
KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.
First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.
But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.
But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.
KERRY: But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.
Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.
That's why I think it's important. That's why I think it's important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning.
You'll help prevent AIDS.
KERRY: You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.
You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it.
GIBSON: Mr. President, minute and a half.
BUSH: I'm trying to decipher that.
My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion.
This is an issue that divides America, but certainly reasonable people can agree on how to reduce abortions in America.
I signed the partial-birth -- the ban on partial-birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. It's one way to help reduce abortions. My opponent voted against the ban.
I think there ought to be parental notification laws. He's against them.
I signed a bill called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
BUSH: In other words, if you're a mom and you're pregnant and you get killed, the murderer gets tried for two cases, not just one. My opponent was against that.
These are reasonable ways to help promote a culture of life in America. I think it is a worthy goal in America to have every child protected by law and welcomed in life.
I also think we ought to continue to have good adoption law as an alternative to abortion.
And we need to promote maternity group homes, which my administration has done.
Culture of life is really important for a country to have if it's going to be a hospitable society.
Thank you.
GIBSON: Senator, do you want to follow up? Thirty seconds.
KERRY: Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it's just not that simple. No, I'm not.
I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.
KERRY: Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And because they didn't have a judicial intervention where she could go somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It's never quite as simple as the president wants you to believe.
GIBSON: And 30 seconds, Mr. President.
KERRY: Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no?
And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that's just the way it is. That's a vote. It came right up. It's clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can't hide the reality.
GIBSON: And the final question of the evening will be addressed to President Bush and it will come from Linda Grabel. Linda Grabel's over here.
GIBSON: Linda Grabel's over here.
BUSH: Put a head fake on us.
(LAUGHTER)
GIBSON: I got faked out myself.
BUSH: Hi, Linda.
GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.
BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.
And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.
BUSH: That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision.
The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
We knew he hated us. We knew he'd been -- invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.
On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.
Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.
(LAUGHTER)
BUSH: But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.
KERRY: I believe the president made a huge mistake, a catastrophic mistake, not to live up to his own standard, which was: build a true global coalition, give the inspectors time to finish their job and go through the U.N. process to its end and go to war as a last resort.
I ask each of you just to look into your hearts, look into your guts. Gut-check time. Was this really going to war as a last resort?
The president rushed our nation to war without a plan to win the peace. And simple things weren't done.
KERRY: That's why Senator Lugar says: incompetent in the delivery of services. That's why Senator Hagel, Republican, says, you know: beyond pitiful, beyond embarrassing, in the zone of dangerous.
We didn't guard 850,000 tons of ammo. That ammo is now being used against our kids. Ten thousand out of 12,000 Humvees aren't armored. I visited some of those kids with no limbs today, because they didn't have the armor on those vehicles. They didn't have the right body armor.
I've met parents who've on the Internet gotten the armor to send their kids. There is no bigger judgment for a president of the United states than how you take a nation to war. And you can't say, because Saddam might have done it 10 years from now, that's a reason; that's an excuse.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political history: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a risk to our country, ma'am. And he was a risk that -- and this is where we just have a difference of opinion.
The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, "And the world would be a lot better off."
GIBSON: And, Senator Kerry, 30 seconds.
KERRY: Not necessarily be in power, but here's what I'll say about the $87 billion.
I made a mistake in the way I talk about it. He made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is a worse decision?
Now, I voted the way I voted because I saw that he had the policy wrong and I wanted accountability. I didn't want to give a slush fund to Halliburton. I also thought the wealthiest people in America ought to pay for it, ladies and gentlemen. He wants your kids to pay for it. I wanted us to pay for it, since we're at war. I don't think that's a bad decision.
GIBSON: That's going to conclude the questioning. We're going to go now to closing statements, two minutes from each candidate.
And the first closing statement goes to Senator Kerry. I believe that was the agreement.
KERRY: Do you want to go first?
BUSH: Either way.
KERRY: Thank you.
Charlie, thank you.
And thank you all.
KERRY: Thank you, all of you, for taking part.
Thanks for your questions tonight, very, very much.
Obviously the president and I both have very strong convictions. I respect him for that. But we have a very different view about how to make America stronger and safer.
I will never cede the authority of our country or our security to any other nation. I'll never give a veto over American security to any other entity -- not a nation, not a country, not an institution.
But I know, as I think you do, that our country is strongest when we lead the world, when we lead strong alliances. And that's the way Eisenhower and Reagan and Kennedy and others did it.
We are not doing that today. We need to.
I have a plan that will help us go out and kill and find the terrorists.
KERRY: And I will not stop in our efforts to hunt down and kill the terrorists.
But I'll also have a better plan of how we're going to deal with Iraq: training the Iraqi forces more rapidly, getting our allies back to the table with a fresh start, with new credibility, with a president whose judgment the rest of the world trusts.
In addition to that, I believe we have a crisis here at home, a crisis of the middle class that is increasingly squeezed, health-care costs going up.
I have a plan to provide health care to all Americans.
I have a plan to provide for our schools so we keep the standards but we help our teachers teach and elevate our schools by funding No Child Left Behind.
I have a plan to protect the environment so that we leave this place in better shape to our children than we were handed it by our parents. That's the test.
I believe America's best days are ahead of us. I'm an optimist, but we have to make the right choices, to be fiscally responsible and to create the new jobs of the future. We can do this.
And I ask you for the privilege of leading our nation to be stronger at home and respected again in the world.
KERRY: Thank you.
GIBSON: Senator.
And a closing statement from President Bush.
BUSH: Charlie, thanks.
Thank you all very much. It's been enjoyable.
The great contest for the presidency is about the future, who can lead, who can get things done.
We've been through a lot together as a country -- been through a recession, corporate scandals, war.
And yet think about where we are: Added 1.9 million new jobs over the past 13 months. The farm income in America is high. Small businesses are flourishing. Homeownership rate is at an all-time high in America.
We're on the move.
BUSH: Tonight I had a chance to discuss with you what to do to keep this economy going: keep the taxes low, don't increase the scope of the federal government, keep regulations down, legal reform, a health-care policy that does not empower the federal government but empowers individuals, and an energy plan that will help us become less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
And abroad, we're at war. And it requires a president who is steadfast and strong and determined. I vowed to the American people after that fateful day of September the 11th that we would not rest nor tire until we're safe.
The 9/11 Commission put out a report that said America is safer but not yet safe. There is more work to be done.
We'll stay on the hunt on Al Qaida. We'll deny sanctuary to these terrorists. We'll make sure they do not end up with weapons of mass destruction. It's the great nexus. The great threat to our country is that these haters end up with weapons of mass destruction.
But our long-term security depends on our deep faith in liberty. And we'll continue to promote freedom around the world.
Freedom is on the march. Tomorrow, Afghanistan will be voting for a president. In Iraq, we'll be having free elections, and a free society will make this world more peaceful.
God bless.
GIBSON: Mr. President, Senator Kerry, that concludes tonight's debate.
I want to give you a reminder that the third and final debate on issues of domestic policy will be held next Wednesday, October 13th, at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, hosted by Bob Schieffer of CBS News.
I want to thank President Bush and Senator Kerry for tonight. I want to thank these citizens of the St. Louis area who asked the questions, who gave so willingly of their time, and who took their responsibility very seriously.
Thank you also to everyone at Washington...
(APPLAUSE)
I want to thank everyone at Washington University in St. Louis for being so such gracious hosts.
I'm Charles Gibson from ABC News. From St. Louis, good night.
END
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Kerry's 'global' test
October 08, 2004
Washington Times
By Lee A. Casey and David B. Rivkin, Jr.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041007-092532-8329r.htm
Much has been made of John Kerry's statement, offered during his first debate with President Bush, that he would apply a "global" test when determining the legitimacy of U.S. military action. The test's meaning is not entirely clear, but voters may justly ask when, if ever, would Mr. Kerry be prepared to use military force to vindicate American national interests. Indeed, over the past 30 years, it is difficult to find a single use of the U.S. military, humanitarian missions aside, that Mr. Kerry genuinely supported.
This is especially true of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Mr. Kerry, who at the time was not running for higher office and essentially came as close to voting his conscience as any politician can, opposed authorizing the use of American forces to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. If ever there was a case that met a "global" test, here it was. Without provocation, Saddam invaded and annexed a neighboring country. It was, perhaps, the most naked act of aggression since Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939. Far from rushing to war, President George H.W. Bush assembled a broad international coalition, including Mr. Kerry's current loadstar of legitimacy, France, and obtained one of the strongest resolutions ever adopted by the United Nations Security Council.
At the time, Mr. Kerry claimed that diplomacy should be given a chance. Seeking a diplomatic solution does not, of course, suggest weakness, but it does presuppose something to negotiate. Unfortunately, from 1990 to 1991, there was nothing to discuss. Saddam had no just claim to Kuwait. In the months before Desert Storm began, demands for his withdrawal had been made, and "sanctions" had been imposed. He didn't budge - even as the allied armies assembled against him. Waiting would only have made Saddam stronger and his occupation of Kuwait seem more permanent. Moreover, key U.S. allies in the area, especially Saudi Arabia, would have likely viewed further procrastination as a U.S. failure of nerve - perhaps prompting them to seek some accommodation with Saddam.
If, in these circumstances, Mr. Kerry could not bring himself to support the use of force, it is difficult to conceive of any situation where, freed from political pressures, he would. It is true, of course, that he supported the congressional authorization for the use of force against those responsible for September 11, and against Saddam before the most recent Iraq war. In each case, however, the senator's position coincided with then-existing political imperatives, and his resolve evaporated in short order.
Mr. Kerry has stated plainly that, in his view, the "war on terror" should be treated as a law-enforcement matter, rather than an armed conflict. This, of course, was America's approach to al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, and it did not work. With respect to the Iraq war, Mr. Kerry's position has been nothing short of schizophrenic. He agreed that Saddam presented a deadly threat to the United States and voted to authorize the war, but then voted against the funding necessary for its successful completion. He now believes that this was the "wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time," and has pointedly refused to disavow Kofi Annan's recent statement that the war was illegal. Nevertheless, he claims that he will stay the course if elected president.
Given the senator's record, it could well be argued that he is simply a pacifist - perhaps as a result of his Vietnam experience. More likely, however, the problem is ideological. Mr. Kerry entered politics as part of Democrat Party's anti-war wing, which has consistently viewed the United States as the "problem" in international affairs, rather than the solution. Significantly, this opinion is widely shared among the very elite intellectual circles - on both sides of the Atlantic- in which Mr. Kerry has circulated throughout most of his adult life.
This group includes writers and artists, business tycoons, policy wonks and more than a few public officials, especially in Europe. As has been aptly stated with respect to the "mainstream" media, it represents not so much a conspiracy as a consensus. The goal, both during the Cold War and after, has been to constrain American power - whether through the nuclearfreeze movement during the 1980s, the creation of a permanent international criminal court in the 1990s or the current insistence that only the United Nations can authorize a lawful use of force. This is because, they believe, the independent nation-state, and the sovereign form of popular self-government it represents, is outmoded - and even dangerous.
In truth, this is what Mr. Kerry meant when he suggested a "global" test for the use of American military power, and he should be applauded for his candor. On Election Day, however, the American people will have to decide whether, after 200 years of asserting their right to govern themselves, they agree that the cause of popular sovereignty is lost.
Messrs. Casey & Rivkin are Washington attorneys. They served in the Justice Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
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Candidates Use Arms Report to Make Case
Bush, Kerry Gear Up For Tonight's Debate
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16133-2004Oct7?language=printer
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Oct. 7 -- The latest report on Iraq's prewar weapons capacity produced a fiery exchange between President Bush and John F. Kerry on Thursday, with Bush asserting the report showed that Saddam Hussein was a danger even in the absence of weapons of mass destruction and Kerry charging that Bush had inflated the threat and was blind to evidence proving the war was a mistake.
In a preview of what Americans are likely to see in Friday's second presidential debate, Bush said the report by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, while concluding that Hussein possessed no such weapons at the time of the war, revealed that the former Iraqi leader hoped to manipulate the international community into ending sanctions with the intent of restarting his weapons programs.
"He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. "And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies. . . . In a world after September the 11th, he was a threat we had to confront. And America and the world are safer for our actions."
Kerry responded two hours later with some of the most contemptuous language he has used against the president and Vice President Cheney during their bitter campaign. He said the administration had "aggrandized and fictionalized" the threat posed by Hussein in the run-up to the war, was unprepared for the war's aftermath and remained intransigent now that prewar intelligence has been undermined by a series of inspection reports.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said here, "the president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."
The Duelfer report transformed what might otherwise have been a relatively quiet day on the campaign trail in which Bush and Kerry were preparing to fly to St. Louis for their debate, which will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The report's reverberations were felt well beyond the campaign trail, triggering a renewed debate about whether Hussein was being adequately contained by means other than war or whether removing him and his regime by force was necessary to defuse a potentially serious threat.
David Kay, who preceded Duelfer as the chief U.S. weapons inspector, said the latest report clearly shows that Hussein was not a threat to the United States. "Look, Saddam was delusional," Kay said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday. "He had a lot of intent. He didn't have capabilities. Intent without capabilities is not an imminent threat."
But Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) agreed with Bush's assessment of the report, telling CNN that it "says that there's no question that Saddam Hussein was going to try to get rid of the sanctions so he could resuscitate his program of weapons of mass destruction. I think the president has done exactly what he should have done."
With newspaper headlines and television news programs highlighting the report's conclusion that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent inspections by the United Nations had eliminated Hussein's illicit weapons programs, a finding that undercut Bush's principal rationale for going to war, the president and Cheney went on the offensive early Thursday.
Cheney was first to speak, saying at a campaign event in Miami that the Duelfer report, far from undermining the administration's rationale for going to war, actually bolstered its case. He said it showed that Hussein had tried to corrupt the United Nations oil-for-food program in an effort to buy off foreign governments to win an end to the sanctions that were imposed after the Gulf War ended. Hussein's goal, Cheney said, was to start producing weapons of mass destruction.
"Delay, defer, wait wasn't an option," he said.
Bush then went before the cameras outside the White House before leaving Washington for a campaign event in Wisconsin. He acknowledged the breakdown in U.S. and other intelligence, which had overstated Hussein's weapons capacity, but held firm to his argument that the former Iraqi leader remained a menace who would have aided and abetted terrorists, if given the chance.
"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program, once the world looked away."
Kerry, speaking outside the suburban Denver hotel where he has been preparing for Friday's debate, then unloaded on the administration, throwing the Duelfer report and the words of L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq after the invasion, back at the president to argue that he has systematically misled the country and should be replaced.
"Ambassador Bremer finally said what John Edwards and I have been saying for months: President Bush's decision to send in too few troops, without thinking about what would happen after the initial fighting was over, has left our troops more vulnerable, left the situation on the ground in chaos and made the mission in Iraq much more difficult to accomplish," he said. "That is the truth."
Kerry lambasted national security adviser Condoleezza Rice for suggesting that the president would have sent in more troops if commanders in Iraq had asked, calling that an abdication of "the buck stops here" responsibility of the commander in chief. "For President Bush, it's always someone else's fault -- denial, and blaming someone else," he said.
Saying Bush was in "absolute full-spin mode," Kerry accused the administration of earlier using discredited pieces of evidence, "like aluminum tubes and Niger yellowcake uranium" to inflate the threat from Hussein and shift the focus from what he called the real enemy, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and of changing rationales now. "My fellow Americans, you don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact," he said.
Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), ridiculed the administration's arguments during a campaign rally in Bayonne, N.J., accusing Cheney of convoluted logic and asserting: "Here's the truth: The vice president, Dick Cheney, and the president, George W. Bush, need to recognize that the Earth is actually round. That the sun rises in the east. . . . They need to level with the American people."
The sparring continued throughout the day. Campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush fired back at Kerry, quoting the Massachusetts senator as saying earlier that Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that he might develop a nuclear weapon, reinvade Kuwait, threaten Israel or pass weapons to terrorists.
Kerry made those statements in 2002 in explaining why he supported the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war, the president said, adding: "Now today, my opponent tries to say that I made up reasons to go to war. Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people?"
But Kerry advisers said Bush had left out part of what Kerry said in that statement, including the assertion that regime change by itself was not a justification for war, particularly unilaterally, unless there was no other way to disarm Hussein.
Kerry was asked at his news conference how he could accuse Bush of "aggrandizing" the threat Hussein posed when he also had claimed the Iraqi leader was dangerous and needed to be confronted. Kerry said that effective diplomacy could have kept sanctions in place and Hussein contained. "The point is, there are all kinds of options available to a president to deal with threats," he said. "And I consistently laid out to the president how to deal with Saddam Hussein, who was a threat."
Staff writers Ovetta Wiggins, traveling with Cheney; Paul Farhi, traveling with Bush; and Chris L. Jenkins, traveling with Edwards, contributed to this report.
--------
ON THE TRAIL
Arms Report Spurs Bitter Bush-Kerry Exchange
October 8, 2004
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and JODI WILGOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/campaign/08trail.html?pagewanted=all&position=
NAUSAU, Wis., Oct. 7 - President Bush and Senator John Kerry engaged in a bitter long-distance debate on Thursday about a report by the C.I.A.'s top weapons inspector, with Mr. Bush arguing that it demonstrated he was "right to take action" in Iraq despite its findings that Saddam Hussein had eliminated stockpiles of illicit weapons years before the invasion.
Mr. Kerry, emboldened by the report's unraveling of the administration's main rationale for going to war, shot back with his sharpest indictment yet, telling reporters that Mr. Bush and his vice president "may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."
Mr. Bush's statement in Washington, and a more impassioned case he made here late Thursday afternoon, were his first responses to the 918-page report by Charles A. Duelfer. Both Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney focused on sections of the report saying that Mr. Hussein had wanted to reconstitute his weapons programs at some point and that he had found his way around economic sanctions.
Unbowed and defiant in an appearance on the South Lawn of the White House, Mr. Bush said of the Iraqi dictator, "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction." And, he added, "he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies."
Speaking to reporters in Englewood, Colo., Mr. Kerry said that "this week has provided definitive evidence" for why Mr. Bush should not be re-elected. The president, Mr. Kerry said, was "not being straight with Americans."
Both the speed and the heat of the exchanges paved the way for the second presidential debate, to be held Friday night in St. Louis. Perhaps more important, they underscored how both candidates have staked their electoral fates to how voters judge them on Iraq, even as the debates nominally turn to questions of the economy and domestic policy.
Talking to a cheering partisan crowd here in the afternoon, the president quoted at length from a statement the Massachusetts senator made on the floor of the Senate almost exactly two years ago, warning of the danger that Mr. Hussein might spread nuclear technology around the world.
After reading from Mr. Kerry's statement, the president looked up at his crowd in a park here and asked, "Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people?"
The Kerry campaign said Mr. Bush had yanked its candidate's words out of context, and noted that in the same speech, Mr. Kerry had said: "Regime change in and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to war, particularly unilaterally, unless regime change is the only way to disarm Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction pursuant to the United Nations resolution. As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war."
On Iraq, Mr. Bush has chosen to give no ground, even after a week that his own aides concede has brought nothing but bad news, from the C.I.A. report to a declaration by the former American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, that the administration committed too few troops to secure Iraq after the invasion was over.
For Mr. Kerry, who has struggled throughout his two-year quest for the presidency to defend himself against charges that his voting record on the war was one of vacillation, the Duelfer report and Mr. Bremer's comments have provided the opportunity to attempt to refocus the debate on Mr. Bush's rationale for going to war, and his competence in executing the occupation.
On Thursday Mr. Kerry described Saddam Hussein as an enemy the Bush administration had "aggrandized and fictionalized," and he warned that if Mr. Bush does not recognize the severity of problems in Iraq, the violence in the Middle East will escalate. "If the president just does more of the same every day and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking," Mr. Kerry said, a reference to the civil wars that racked that country for many years.
Standing on a grassy lawn with the snow-topped Rockies in the distance, he said, "My fellow Americans, you don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."
"Ambassador Bremer finally said what John Edwards and I have been saying for months," Mr. Kerry continued, referring to an acknowledgment this week by the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority about shortcomings of the American military operation in Iraq. "President Bush's decision to send in too few troops, without thinking about what would happen after the initial fighting was over, has left our troops more vulnerable, left the situation on the ground in chaos and made the mission in Iraq much more difficult to accomplish."
Mr. Bush was clearly ready for the senator's attack, and he arrived in Wisconsin armed with statements made by Mr. Kerry before the 1991 Persian Gulf war and in the debate that led up to last year's war in Iraq.
"Just a short time ago, my opponent held a little press conference and continued his pattern of overheated rhetoric," Mr. Bush said within minutes of arriving here. "He accused me of deception. He's claiming I misled American about weapons, when he himself cited the very same intelligence" in voting to authorize Mr. Bush to threaten war.
Then he quoted Mr. Kerry's statement in the Senate, where he asked, rhetorically, "Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction, even greater, a nuclear weapon, then reinvade Kuwait or push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions," or "allow those weapons to slide off to one group or another."
The heart of the difference between the two candidates is how they dealt with that assessment.
Mr. Bush says he saw such intelligence as a justification for pre-emptive war - a long-established international practice that permits a nation to strike just prior to being struck itself. The Duelfer report now indicates that the intelligence was wrong in major respects.
Mr. Kerry says that the pre-war intelligence was a reason to press for further inspections and pressure on Mr. Hussein, and that the vote to authorize war was part of that pressure. But he faults Mr. Bush for acting before that process had a chance to work.
Mr. Kerry also responded Thursday to a statement by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, that the Pentagon, not the White House, was responsible for determining troop deployment. He noted that Ms. Rice works in the White House, "the place that used to have a sign that said 'The Buck Stops Here.' "
"For President Bush, it's always someone else's fault - denial, and blaming someone else," he declared. "It is wrong for this administration to blame our military leaders, particularly when our military leaders gave him the advice that he didn't follow. The truth is, the responsibility lies with the commander in chief."
Mr. Kerry had spent Wednesday in seclusion, drilling with a large team of aides in a nondescript hotel ballroom transformed to resemble Friday night's debate set, leaving the response to the C.I.A. report and to a biting speech by Mr. Bush to his running mate, Senator John Edwards.
But on Thursday he did not resist the opportunity to frame the Iraq issue in advance of Friday's debate.
To underscore the broader case he is trying to make against Mr. Bush's credibility, Mr. Kerry used the word "truth" eight times in as many minutes. "You'll always get the truth from me," he vowed, "in good times and in bad."
Asked about the section of the Duelfer report that suggested Mr. Hussein would have rebuilt his weapons if sanctions waned, Mr. Kerry said it "underscores the failures of this administration's diplomacy."
Vice President Cheney, appearing in Miami, had the opposite interpretation, saying the report showed that "as soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going right back" to resuming his illicit weapons program. "To delay, defer, wait wasn't an option,'' he said. "The president did exactly the right thing.''
Mr. Edwards similarly echoed his running mate, charging of the Bush administration in an appearance in Bayonne, N.J., that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney "are willing to say left is right, up is down."
David E. Sanger reported from Wausau, Wis., for this article, and Jodi Wilgoren from Englewood, Colo. Raymond Hernandez contributed reporting from Miami and Randal C. Archibold from Bayonne, N.J.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Green and greener: Nobel prize highlights rise of environmentalism
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041008124954.4jjxe1hu.html
The awarding of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to African ecologist Wangari Maathai reflects environmentalism's extraordinary rise from the wings to the centre stage of politics in less than three decades.
In the early 1970s, the term "environmentalism" had yet to be coined. Public awareness about green issues was generally limited to smoke problems from local factories, chemical pollution of rivers or traffic noise.
The few who made a noise about the environment were courageous scientists or hippies in kaftans.
It was easy for governments, corporations and conservatives to scoff at them as a silly, tree-hugging fringe or dismiss their demands for cleanups and habitat protection as absurdly costly.
That latter argument remains the cornerstone of anti-green sentiment today, as shown for instance by the oil, forestry and power lobbies in Washington.
The difference, though, is that nobody these days dismisses environmentalists as marginal.
The reason? A string of major scares between then and now, which has helped focus minds everywhere on the health of our planet and given the green movement a place at the top table.
The series began with rising concern about the danger from the insecticide DDT and other persistent chemical pollutants.
Alarm bells were triggered by two traumatic scientific discoveries: the destruction of the Earth's protective ozone layer by aerosols, and global warming, driven by the reckless burning of fossil fuels like oil.
In 1986 came the Chernobyl disaster, which gave a crippling blow to the nuclear industry's image, spurred interest in renewable energy and sparked the rise of Greenpeace and the Greens in Europe.
Added to that has the mounting, depressing evidence about deforestation, overfishing and species decline.
To many people, the way we look at the planet today has changed immensely from 30 years ago.
Earth is no longer perceived as a boundless, sunny place of infinite resources, but a small and vulnerable home that has been abused by its fast-growing human population.
That awareness has translated in many countries into grass-roots contributions, such as recycling one's rubbish and using a bicycle or public transport, but also into potent political activism.
Green parties are often partners in government in Europe and in the upcoming United States and Australian elections, the environmental vote may well sway the outcome.
Environmentalism is also a growing phenomenon in China, where some analysts perceive it as a form of political activism that is acceptable to the Communist authorities.
Countries that either never had an environment minister or only named a second-stringer to the post have changed their ways.
These days, the minister is a heavyweight or accompanied by one when it comes international negotiations, for so many non-environmental questions are involved.
The big illustration of this was the UN's 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg, which put the ugly-sounding notion of "sustainable development" on the map.
Put simply, this idea says that poverty, stability and environmental degradation are all interlinked. You cannot deal with one without also tackling the other.
"We are clearly delighted that the influential Nobel Committee has put the green (issue) into peace," Greenpeace International spokesman Michael Townsley told AFP.
"For the Nobel committee to recognise the twin threat of environmental destruction and global security is a very significant statement to the world."
The 2004 Nobel decision "is a breakthrough," Jennifer Morgan, WWF's climate change director, said.
"It's extremely significant, a tipping point in a way, because it is a recognition of how fundamental environment issues are in today's world, because they are interwoven with security, peace, prosperity and stability."
An example of this, said Morgan, was Russia's belated moves this month towards ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the UN's climate-change pact.
Kyoto had been championed by Europe after the treaty was abandoned by the United States. In exchange for getting Russia's backing for ratification, Europe reportedly backed its bid to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
"The climate-change issue was played out at heads-of-state level, because is is something that is linked to foreign policy, security and the economy. It is not something that you can put in a box and put in a corner," said Morgan.
-------- genetics
Scientists Find New Way Stem Cells Repair Organs
Chemicals They Make Help Rejuvenate Tissue
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16132-2004Oct7.html
Embryonic stem cells, valued by researchers for their ability to become any kind of tissue that a body might need, also produce druglike compounds that can help ailing organs repair themselves, scientists are reporting today.
The new work offers the most definitive evidence yet that the versatile cells, derived from embryos, can help repair organs two ways: by filling in damaged areas -- the primary focus of stem cell research to date -- and also by secreting potent chemicals that can make tissues rejuvenate themselves.
In the new study, mice treated with chemicals derived from stem cells survived an inherited heart deformity that is usually 100 percent fatal. Tests indicated that the chemicals prompted the animals' defective heart muscles to rebuild themselves -- literally refashioning their mutated hearts into healthy pumps that now appear to be working perfectly.
"I think these [stem] cells are more powerful than people had originally imagined," said Robert Benezra, a molecular biologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who led the study with Diego Fraidenraich.
Researchers emphasized that the technique is a long way from being tested in people. For one thing, the ailing mice were dosed with stem cell chemicals before they were born. That gave their mutated hearts a chance to remodel themselves before birth -- an approach unlikely to be tried in humans anytime soon because of technical and ethical concerns.
But scientists speculated that stem cell-derived compounds could help diseases of adulthood, too. Many conditions, including chronic heart disease, involve patterns of abnormal gene activity, scientists said, which the stem cell compounds may be able to correct.
The goal is to harness the chemical signals by which stem cells coordinate the development of fetal organs in the womb, then recapitulate the process in adulthood to resculpt degenerating organs into a more youthful condition.
"Most of the work on stem cells to date has focused on how to get these cells to turn into a heart cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell or whatever it is you need," said Craig Basson, director of cardiovascular research at Cornell University's Weill Medical College in New York, who was involved in the mouse study. "The key scientific finding here is that stem cells can also modify the cells that are already there, to repair, in this case, injured hearts."
Previous experiments had hinted at this potential. In research described last summer in the Journal of Neuroscience, Jeffrey Rothstein, John Gearhart, Douglas Kerr and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine injected a kind of embryonic stem cell into the spinal fluid of rats that had paralyzing motor neuron injuries. Weeks later, the rats that got the cells had largely recovered while those untreated remained paralyzed. Tests indicated their recovery was not a result of the stem cells turning into replacement neurons but was the result mostly of chemicals secreted by the stem cells, which restored the damaged neurons' ability to work.
In the new work, described in today's issue of the journal Science, the New Yorkers injected a few embryonic stem cells from healthy mice into the embryos of mice with a genetic defect that blocks normal heart development. A few of the injected cells did become heart cells, but tests showed it was two substances the cells produced -- gene-regulating compounds known as IGF-1 and WNT5a -- that really saved the mice.
Stem cells were placed not into the embryos themselves but into the bodies of the pregnant mother mice. The cells could not cross the placenta into the developing fetuses, but the compounds the cells secreted did, and those compounds corrected the fetal heart defects.
"It's a first," said Michael F. Clarke, a developmental biologist and professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. He said the work had "huge significance" for showing that stem cells can overcome genetic errors -- not by fixing aberrant genes by "gene therapy," an approach that has failed repeatedly over the years, but by providing embryonic chemicals that can directly control organ development, making the defective gene irrelevant.
He and others said they doubted that stem cells from adults -- which opponents of embryo research favor for research -- can make the same regenerative compounds.
Brigid Hogan, chairwoman of cell biology at Duke University Medical Center, applauded the study but cautioned that it could take many years to identify the many potentially therapeutic compounds secreted by stem cells; purify them or make synthetic versions of them; and find the best way to get them where they are needed in the body.
-------- health
Push Against Polio Launched in Africa
Workers Hope to Vaccinate 80 Million
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 8, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16330-2004Oct7.html
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 7 -- Teams were to spread out across 23 countries in sub-Saharan Africa on Friday to begin what global health officials hope is the final push against the crippling polio virus, with the goal of vaccinating 80 million children, including those in northern Nigeria, where opposition had derailed the eradication effort.
One million health workers and volunteers are to travel over five days by riverboat, motorbike, horseback and four-wheel-drive truck as they seek to deliver the vaccine to the most remote jungle villages and the densest urban slums. Officials say it will be the largest coordinated public health effort in Africa's history.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has backed the vaccination effort.
The urgency of reaching nearly all children under 5 years old in every vulnerable region became clear over the past two years as opposition in northern Nigeria, where vaccination efforts were temporarily halted, allowed the virus to spread there and to 12 countries where it had been eliminated.
In northern Nigeria, which is predominantly Muslim, rumors circulated that the vaccine caused sterility and spread HIV, the AIDS virus. But the concerns have been eased by purity tests and fact-finding trips to factories in Muslim countries that make the vaccine, health officials said.
In a series of public events, Nigerian political and religious leaders personally placed drops of the vaccine on the tongues of their children. Last week, President Olusegun Obasanjo administered it to the year-old daughter of the governor of Kano, the northern state where opposition to the vaccine has been strongest.
"To ensure a vital future for our country, we have to strive for a polio-free Nigeria through effective mass mobilization and community participation," Obasanjo said, according to news reports.
Problems in Nigeria have forced health officials to push back their deadline for eradicating polio, once set for 2000, to December 2005. But they said mass immunizations this weekend and a series of follow-ups in November and next year could complete an effort that already has involved decades of work and billions of dollars.
"It is absolutely do-able," said Mohammed Belhocine, the World Health Organization's top official in Nigeria. "I feel much more hopeful now than even two months ago."
WHO is leading the eradication effort, along with UNICEF, Rotary International and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One of the foremost critics of the vaccination effort, Datti Ahmed, a physician in Kano, has said little publicly for months. Reached by telephone, he acknowledged that he had withdrawn from the debate.
"I'm not going to talk to you about polio. . . . It's up to the people to decide what they want to do," he said before abruptly hanging up.
Polio enters the body through the mouth and reproduces in the intestines of its hosts. It cripples about one of every 200 people who contract the disease but is easily and rapidly transmitted by those infected, particularly in places with poor sanitation.
The virus was long a global scourge but has been eliminated from developed countries since Jonas Salk created the first polio vaccine in the early 1950s. Most developing countries still struggled with the disease until recent years. In 1988, when the global eradication effort formally began, there were 350,000 cases in 125 countries worldwide.
Last year, the total was down to 784 reported cases, and polio was endemic in only Nigeria, Niger, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. All six have active eradication campaigns, with the goal of eliminating polio by the end of next year.
When the Nigerian strain revived last year, it hopscotched thousands of miles across the continent, appearing this year in such far-flung places as Botswana in southern Africa, Ivory Coast in West Africa and Sudan in eastern Africa.
The epicenter remains Nigeria, which has experienced three-quarters of the world's 786 polio cases so far this year, according to WHO figures. Neighboring Niger, the only other sub-Saharan country where the virus is regarded as endemic, has had 20 cases.
After Nigerian officials made their fact-finding trip to vaccination factories, the effort resumed in Kano. The initial round in July and August was partially successful, with a vaccination rate of 58 percent. Scientists say 80 percent of a population must be vaccinated repeatedly to halt transmission.
Health workers reported being taunted by children and chased away from some homes, according to news accounts. Other parents refused the vaccine, or hid their children.
"A lot of damage was done," said Samaila Muhammad Mera, a traditional ruler in northern Nigeria and a spokesman for the sultan of Sakoto, a senior Muslim leader who has backed the vaccination effort. "It will take time to build confidence again. But I believe it is beginning."
Health officials have 100 million doses of the vaccine, which consists of weakened but still living virus, on hand for the push. The vaccination teams will carry the doses in ice-cooled containers across countries where daytime temperatures often exceed 100 degrees.
If the effort is successful, polio would be the second disease ever eradicated. The first was smallpox.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Lawyers' Group Sues City Over Arrests of Protesters
October 8, 2004
New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/nyregion/08protest.html
Civil liberties lawyers sued the Bloomberg administration in federal court yesterday, charging that the Police Department had subjected protesters during the Republican National Convention to wrongful arrest, improper fingerprinting and lengthy, harrowing detention.
Two complaints, filed in Manhattan, describe marchers suddenly swept into orange nets, languishing on buses in tight handcuffs without medical attention, and one woman, panicked, in convulsions after being corralled into a mass arrest as she walked to work. Advertisement
The suits seek unspecified damages and ask the court to declare the arrest and detention tactics illegal to prevent the city from using them again. The two suits, filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of several plaintiffs, charge that in addition to being held too long, protesters were detained in filthy, potentially hazardous conditions. The lawyers also expressed concern that the police were improperly building a fingerprint database of people charged with minor offenses.
But city officials called those accusations false, and they continued to maintain yesterday that they did nothing wrong in policing the protesters or in detaining them at Pier 57. They argued that the arrests were a justifiable response to disruptive protests that contrasted sharply with an earlier mass demonstration that was largely peaceful and resulted in few complaints of police misconduct.
"One of the largest demonstrations in the history of American political conventions was overwhelmingly peaceful and orderly with exemplary conduct by both participants and police alike," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement. "Those who insisted on breaking the law a few days later now complain because they faced the normal consequences of unlawful conduct. The N.Y.C.L.U. continues to distort the facts. Its characterization of conditions at Pier 57 are false, and it lied when it said today that the N.Y.P.D. used arrests 'as an excuse to fingerprint political activists.' "
The suits, which stem from mass arrests near ground zero and Union Square on Aug. 31, come as the city is already grappling in State Supreme Court over a contempt ruling for overlong detentions. And the city faces the likelihood of further legal action.
In one of the cases filed yesterday, the plaintiffs were arrested on a Fulton Street sidewalk while either observing or taking part in a War Resisters League demonstration. On Wednesday, the Manhattan district attorney began procedures to dismiss the charges against the 227 people arrested.
According to the federal complaint filed yesterday, one of the plaintiffs, Michael Schiller, was filming the demonstration for a documentary he is making for HBO. The others were Francesca Fiorentini, a student at New York University and a frequent protester, and Robert and Neal Curley, a lawyer and his son, who were visiting from Philadelphia and planned to follow the march to Union Square.
In the other suit, the plaintiffs say they were directed by the police onto a block of East 16th Street off Union Square and then trapped and arrested along with hundreds of others. Ann Maurer, a legal assistant at the Civil Liberties Union, and a group of her friends were taking part in the A31 Street Party, an anarchist event, while another of the plaintiffs, Ashley Waters, a Harvard Law School student, was observing it.
The third plaintiff, Hacer Dinler, a fitness and dance instructor, was on her way from one job to another when she found herself caught on the block, the suit contends. After about two hours of confinement, during which police ignored her repeated cries for help, the complaint says, she fainted and went into convulsions. She was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where she was tested and treated. Traumatized, she missed a full day of scheduled private training sessions, and without health insurance she has been worried about how she will pay her hospital bill, according to the complaint.
Ms. Dinler was not charged, but the other plaintiffs were kept in custody for as long as 35 hours and fingerprinted on minor charges.
"We must right these wrongs," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suits on behalf of several plaintiffs. "If someone is wrongfully arrested, it leaves a scar. It leaves a scar on that individual. But when hundreds of people are wrongfully arrested for exercising their right to protest, or documenting it for the public, or being on that street doing their own thing, it does untold damage to our democracy."
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Bennington war protester to be sentenced by board
By Zach Church, Bennington Banner staff
Friday, October 08, 2004
http://www.thetranscript.com/Stories/0,1413,103~9054~2454722,00.html
BENNINGTON, Vt. -- Rose Marie Jackowski, the Bennington war protester convicted of disorderly conduct last month, said in court Thursday what she has always wanted to say, just before being sentenced to appear before a board that could instruct her to perform community service.
"I, and many other protesters that I know, would gladly spend the rest of our lives in jail, if only the United States would stop bombing children," she told the court.
Friends, a relative and Jackowski herself appeared in Bennington District Court to offer emotional testimony both on Jackowski's character and the 13,000-plus civilians killed so far in the Iraq war, the latter a point that was not shared as liberally with the jury last month.
But most surprising was an address by Jackowski's lawyer, Stephen Saltonstall, in which he told of her hard existence, including rape, a husband who abandoned her, poverty and harrowing court experiences related to all of the above.
Judge David Suntag sentenced Jackowski to a short, suspended jail sentence and probation. He also directed her to appear before a reparative board of community members, which could instruct her to perform community service or write a letter of apology, among other things.
"I encourage you to at least sit down with these people and talk to them," Suntag said. "They deserve that and so do you."
Jackowski was sentenced on a conviction stemming from a March 20, 2003 protest. She and 11 others were arrested for blocking traffic while protesting the Iraq war in the center of Bennington.
Because Jackowski's crime so directly affected the town of Bennington, Suntag said appearing before the board would be an appropriate punishment.
"In this instance, the community itself was offended to some degree," he said.
But Jackowski, whose sentence will not be executed until an appeal is carried out, expressed doubt that she would actually appear before the reparative board. Her conscience, she said, precludes her from it.
"It's kind of a little subtle way of humiliation," she said after the sentencing.
"Personally, I find the word 'reparative' very insulting," she told Suntag.
There is a strong difference between the court making her do something and telling her to do something, she said, noting that she would have accepted a jail sentence.
In fact, Saltonstall asked Suntag to impose just that - time served for being detained on the day of her protest, and if not, a few days in jail. Deputy State's Attorney Daniel McManus suggested 200 hours of community service.
Jackowski, who said she helps the community on her own time, said it would be against her conscience to serve at the direction of the court.
She spent most of her time in court talking not about herself, but about children killed in U.S. bombing campaigns on Iraq. It is an issue she has made efforts to push to the forefront of her legal battle, often unsuccessfully.
Calling members of the Bush administration war criminals and holding a photo of the president, Jackowski reiterated that her conscience was the one thing she would not compromise.
She spoke strongly and loudly throughout, not once wavering or losing her train of thought.
"I pray for the day when factory workers join with farmers and police officers join with poets and judges join with veterans in protesting the illegal acts of our government," she said. "Now is a time in history when silence is the greatest of all crimes."
Suntag listened, at times smiling, but said afterwards that the course of international events would not affect Jackowski's fate.
"I am not foolish enough to try to engage in a debate with you," he told her before reading her sentence. What was at issue in court, he said, was the law, not the war in Iraq.
McManus called the sentence "totally" appropriate.
"She's not a bad woman. She wanted to make a message, but she chose the wrong way to do it," he said, noting that he, also, does not support the war.
Two combat veterans now involved with the group Veterans for Peace testified that Jackowski, who served in the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s, was a patriot, standing up for her beliefs in the face of the law.
"We know that serving our country demands more than saluting the flag," said Elliot Adams, a paratrooper who served in Vietnam and Korea. "It demands a hard look."
"I ask that you recognize that my friend and fellow veteran acted, unlike most of us would, as a true patriot."
When not testifying, Adams sat with his face pointed toward the floor, resting his forehead on his hands, struggling with the proceedings before him.
Told later that her sentence would be on hold pending appeal, Jackowski smiled, telling Saltonstall "I love you." Supporters, about a dozen of whom attended the trial, broke into applause. Saltonstall represented Jackowski pro bono, meaning he did the work for free.
The two lawyers came into conflict while making their sentencing requests to Suntag. Jackowski, McManus said, used her trial as a launching board for media coverage. He mentioned white supremacists as a group who also, under fairness of the law, should be tried not on what they believe, but on what they do.
Saltonstall called the comparison "inappropriate" and accused McManus of playing up media coverage.
"I didn't see him running away from the news cameras after the trial," he said.
Later, McManus called Saltonstall's interpretation of his comments "troubling."
Jackowski's daughter, Christine Jackowski, also testified, choking up, and eventually crying, before finishing a short statement to the court. Asking for a sentence of time served, Christine Jackowski spoke of her mother's "unwavering commitment to children," as well as her care to raise her daughter to understand the value of peace. "She is an example of bravery to us all," she said, breaking into tears.
Jackowski is planning to take part at an anti-war protest in Manchester Sunday. The protest is organized by Veterans for Peace.
"I do not have any illegal acts planned at the moment," she said, eliciting laughter from her supporters.
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Japan: Peace group coalition calls for troop withdrawal from Iraq
Friday October 8, 2004
Kyodo News
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041008/kyodo/d85j8j0g0.html
World Peace Now, a coalition of peace groups in Japan, on Friday demanded that Japanese and U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq and protested against an international meeting on Iraq's reconstruction to be held in Tokyo from Wednesday.
"It is the U.S.-led coalition's military occupation that brought Iraq into chaos," the group said in a statement.
"Reconstruction will only become possible after the military forces of the United States, Britain and their allies retreat."
Several hundred Japanese troops are also deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah for reconstruction assistance, such as providing clean water and medical relief.
The International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, which was set up last year, is scheduled to hold a two-day donor conference in Tokyo from Wednesday.
World Peace Now criticized the conference for "using large amounts of money to try to legalize the invasion."
More than $1 billion has been provided or pledged to the fund, including more than $10 million each from Japan and 13 other countries and organizations.
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