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NUCLEAR
Plutonium: Is it really in safe hands?
Nuclear War
Russian FM visits Iran, nuclear stand-off on agenda
Khamenei hails Iranian military exercises as success
Hans Blix: If you had seen what I have seen
Scott Ritter: If you had seen what I have seen
Former UN arms inspectors slam Bush, Blair after weapons report
Israel Trades One Nightmare for Another
Terror and the nuclear threat
Truth Stranger Than 'Strangelove'
Nuclear waste also wastes funding
Bill Allows Atomic Waste to Remain in Tanks
MILITARY
Afghan Election Disputed
Questions About Afghan Vote Appear to Fade a Day Later
Afghan Poll Is Mostly Calm, but Challengers Cry Foul
Afghan Irregularities Prompt Candidates' Protests
Politics Puts Hold on Taiwan Arms Purchase
Boeing Loses Out on Air Force Tanker Deal
Militia to Give Up Arms Under Sadr City Plan
Iraqi Cleric's Militia in Sadr City Promises to Hand Over Arms
Two Car Bombs Kill at Least 11 as Rumsfeld Visits Iraq
At Least 8 Killed in Explosion in Baghdad
Rumsfeld: Pullout Not Likely Before Vote
The High Cost of Israel's Gaza Mission: Innocent Victims
Lost boys of Gaza
The CIA 'old guard' goes to war with Bush
For Marines, a Frustrating Fight
Bliss gets $19.4 million for upgrades
Ex-DAFB commander says troops used as guinea pigs
Rumsfeld Updates Counterparts on Wars
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Little-Tested Law Is Used Against Journalists in Leak
A Father Waits as the U.S. and the Saudis Discuss His Son's Release
POLITICS
DeLay's Ethics Troubles Refocus House Races
Bush's Civil Rights Record Is Criticized, Silently
Saudi Urges Arab Media to Combat 'Improper Ideas'
Get Me Rewrite. Now. Bullets Are Flying.
Nuclear Fiction
Behind the Scenes, Officials Wrestle Over Voting Rules
Bush Recasts Rationale For War After Report
Rumor of a Draft Touches a Nerve
President's lies feed terrorism
OTHER
E.P.A. Cuts Pollution Levels With Refinery Settlements
ACTIVISTS
Wis. Peace Activists Shy From Nader
In Wartime, Critics Question Peace Prize for Environmentalism
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Plutonium: Is it really in safe hands?
By Mark Clayton
The Christian Science Monitor
Sunday, October 10, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002058834_plutonium10.html
The biggest threat facing the United States - and the world - is the spread of nuclear material to rogue states and terrorists. So say terrorism experts. Both major American presidential candidates concurred in their first televised debate.
So why is the United States moving plutonium from military to less secure civilian control? And why, critics ask, is it embarking on research programs that teach other nations how to use plutonium in nuclear-power plants after a quarter-century of opposing such moves? Knowing terrorists are seeking nuclear material, nations have made strides to secure bomb-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). But they have paid far less attention to an alternative: plutonium.
Last week, about 300 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium oxide was shipped from the United States to France for use in nuclear plants. The U.S. shipment, its first overseas, is not only a security threat but also clouds America's nonproliferation message, critics say.
Moreover, it focuses attention on plutonium from another source: nuclear-power plants. This "separated" plutonium can be converted into a weapon and poses a threat comparable to HEU, experts say.
"The big risk we face with separated plutonium is from theft by terrorists at a factory making reactor fuel - maybe an inside job," said David Albright, a researcher at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington think tank. "You always have to worry about the physical protection of plutonium. Nations always tell you their protection is good. But it may not be enough."
Consider:
• The world is swimming in plutonium. Although military stockpiles have stabilized, the amount of civilian-held plutonium has doubled in the past 13 years, said a new ISIS report. At the end of 2003, 14 nations' civilian reactors held 235 metric tons of the most dangerous variety in terms of a terrorist threat - separated plutonium. That's enough material to fashion some 40,000 Nagasaki-sized weapons; the amount is growing by five to 10 tons a year.
• France annually converts tons of this plutonium to a mixed-oxide or MOX fuel, which is trucked to its nuclear-power plants. Despite its "reactor grade" label, MOX could make an effective bomb - as a U.S. test in 1962 revealed. Even if a weapon "fizzled" because its plutonium was only reactor-grade, it would still yield a one-kiloton explosion that would "rip the heart out of a city," said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
• While it's far simpler to make a bomb from HEU, it's conceivable that terrorists could build a plutonium-based device with expert help, observers say. Just 15 pounds of the material, a baseball-sized chunk, would be enough to wipe out a large portion of a major city. Last month, Kyrgyz security agents arrested a man trying to sell 60 small containers of plutonium.
Precautions stressed
The United States has carefully protected this onetime shipment of plutonium to France, countered Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy. "There are efforts and procedures in place we're not going to discuss publicly."
By developing new technology to reprocess the plutonium in nuclear fuel, the United States can boost its energy independence and reduce the volume of nuclear waste, the Bush administration argues. It contends this could make unnecessary a second nuclear-waste repository beyond Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
"It is our hope that this technology will ... provide the benefits of recycling spent fuel without increasing proliferation risks," Kyle McSlarrow, deputy secretary of Energy, told Congress in July.
Plutonium is created when uranium fuel is irradiated within a nuclear reactor. Reprocessing extracts the plutonium from spent fuel, which may then be fabricated into more fuel for reactors. Civilian plutonium comes in two basic varieties: the separated plutonium and irradiated plutonium, which is embedded within spent nuclear fuel rods.
Ironically, irradiated plutonium is less worrisome because it is so radioactive. Terrorists typically wouldn't be able to handle spent rods without fatal consequences, though it could be used in a dirty bomb. But separated plutonium could be diverted within a plant or stolen en route and readily transformed back into metal plutonium suitable for bombs, nonproliferation experts say.
Earlier efforts
The arrival in France on Wednesday of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium - destined for fabrication into commercial reactor fuel - highlights these concerns.
During the 1960s, it was thought that future shortages of uranium would make it economical to extract plutonium from reactor waste and use it for fuel. Some nations forged ahead - Britain, France, Japan and the Soviet Union among them - despite the higher cost of reprocessing. So did the United States - until India in 1974 conducted a "peaceful nuclear explosion" using a device created with plutonium culled from a research reactor.
Recognizing the danger of nuclear proliferation, Presidents Ford and Carter discouraged the use of plutonium as a fuel in civilian reactors. The U.S. government withdrew its support for a "plutonium economy," throttling back America's use of plutonium as reactor fuel.
So while the U.S. military has plenty of weapons-grade plutonium, America has refused to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium for civilian use. Therefore, the United States does not have a growing stockpile of civilian plutonium - which some would say is a huge blessing, given the costs involved in disposing of it.
Even so, the idea of plutonium for civilian use gained a toehold during the Clinton administration. The United States and Russia in 2000 signed a disarmament treaty to dispose of "excess" military plutonium by following a dual-track approach. Some of the 34 metric tons of military plutonium from each country would be mixed with nuclear waste and put into canisters for burial - while the rest would be made into MOX for use in the United States and Russia.
Russia had resisted the burial option, declaring plutonium a valuable resource. In January 2002, the Bush administration dropped the idea, too. Instead, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced all 34 tons of excess U.S. weapons plutonium would be made into MOX for power plants.
"The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dispose of 34 tons each of weapons plutonium through the Russians' preferred method of conversion to MOX," said Wilkes, whose agency oversees the joint weapons-to-MOX program. "We need the Russians on board."
The U.S. plan calls for France to create a limited amount of reactor fuel from the weapons-grade plutonium and then ship it back to South Carolina's Catawba nuclear plant for a test next spring. After that, the plan is for MOX to be made on U.S. soil at a new $2.2 billion fabrication plant in South Carolina. The facility is to be completed by 2008 by a U.S. subsidiary of Areva, the French company that's supplying the MOX to Catawba.
The plan faces some obstacles. Environmentalists have filed suit in a bid to block the use of MOX fuel in the Catawba plant. A bigger obstacle is a dispute between Russia and the United States over who would be liable in case of an accident or terrorist act involving U.S. contractors working in Russia on the new MOX plant there. Absent an agreement, the whole plan will grind to a halt, analysts say.
Officially, the United States still discourages other nations from using plutonium-based fuels in civilian reactors. But shipping plutonium to France to make MOX undercuts any U.S. efforts to discourage the likes of Iran and North Korea from reprocessing spent reactor fuel, several experts say.
Bad example?
Even for disarmament purposes, the use of MOX in U.S. power plants "sets a terrible example for the world" when burying the material is still an alternative, said Paul Leventhal, head of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. "You don't want to in any way legitimate the use of bomb-grade fuels to generate electricity - because you can do that with low-grade fuels. So why allow it?"
In May 2001, the Bush administration's new National Energy Policy emphasized the use of nuclear power to meet energy needs. At the same time, it also endorsed and promoted reconsideration of "advanced reprocessing" of spent reactor fuel. Despite the administration's hopes, such material would not significantly decrease terrorists' ability to use it to make a bomb, critics say.
The United States has spearheaded the Generation IV International Forum with some 10 nations to develop new generation nuclear power plants. At least three of the five reactor designs under consideration would use recycled plutonium, said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in the global-security program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The United States has also contracted with South Korea and other nations to work on the International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, which includes new technologies for recycling plutonium. South Korea revealed last month that in 1982 some of its civilian researchers, without permission, had separated plutonium.
The revelation caused an uproar among nonproliferation experts, who worry about civilian programs developing reprocessing expertise that can lead to weapons development. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the experiments were "of serious concern."
Meanwhile, Japan has a new reprocessing plant seeking certification. India wants to expand its reprocessing capacity. China has said it, too, wants to reprocess for civilian purposes.
Hard to track
The spread of reprocessing technology, combined with the move to use MOX fuel in U.S. reactors, comes at a time when the world is desperate to corral loose nuclear material before terrorists can get it.
Plutonium is especially hard to track. When it's being reprocessed or fabricated, it sticks to nearly everything it comes in contact with.
Last year, for example, international nuclear inspectors reported that the Tokaimura nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant north of Tokyo could not account for some of its plutonium - enough to make 25 nuclear weapons.
Similarly, France's COGEMA Cadarache plant where the United States shipped its excess military plutonium, was found by EURATOM in 2002 to have "an unacceptable amount of material unaccounted for," according to a recent report in Nuclear Fuel, a trade publication.
-------- europe
Nuclear War
10.10.2004
german-foreign-policy.com
http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/news/article/1097359200.php?PHPSESSID=c0b82e68e63bcde315fa6437c5dfbd17
PARIS (Own report) - Military strategists of the European Union define the EU defense strategy initiated by Berlin and are considering a preemptive nuclear first strike. The EU military doctrine initiated by Berlin - the first one in the history of the EU - specifically envisions the possibility of conducting preventive wars. A recently presented "European Defense Paper", written with the participation of a former German minister of state, included nuclear arms in the first strike strategy of the EU. It states that British and French nuclear powers could be included "explicitly or implicitly" in this preventive military option.
Ultimatum
The "European Defense Paper," commissioned by the EU governments, is a conceptual document concerning European military policy. Its purpose is to define the application of "European security strategy"1) agreed upon in 2003. The authors of the study, a group of high ranking military advisors, demand energetic, prompt and inclusive armament by the EU. The goal is to be to reach the status of a world power able to conduct preventive wars: "Sharing more global responsibilities (...), and taking on a preventive engagement strategy are ambitious goals that will stay unfulfilled if the current gap between ends and means persists."2) The foreign ministers of the EU will shortly consider the document and will make firm decisions concerning the state and perspectives of the military options.
Central
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS), which worked for the European military pact of the western European Union (WEU) until 2001, is responsible for the paper. Since the transfer of the operative functions of the WEU to the EU it functions as an autonomous EU institute. It is dominated by the German-French power cartel: Established in Paris, the ISS is under the leadership of Nicole Gnesotto since October 1999. Previously, she had worked for the semi-official French think tank "Institut français des Relations internationales". Burkard Schmitt, former SPD-colleague in the social democratic Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (foundation), is acting director. EU's strategies for armaments, including "nuclear issues," are in Schmitt's area of responsibility. In his publications, the German "senior research fellow" demanded that those industries among the EU member states which produce armaments "should be subject to a specific defence procurement directive."3) In the meantime, this has become a foregone conclusion with the agreement for "European defense."4)
Unavoidable
Due to the resistance of several states, especially regarding weapons of mass destruction, armaments centralization is still limited.5) For this reason the German weapons expert, Schmitt, considers a discussion of these limitations as unavoidable.6) Berlin's military and government advisors have been examining nuclear options for some time, and now demand a plan for surmounting the existing resistance against the intended "nuclear power Europe" from the federal government. Thus, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS foundation), which is close to the CDU, demanded at the beginning of 2004 a "new direction of the partially conventional understanding of international law ." According to KAS, the "admissibility of preventive strikes" must be determined and a preventive war with nuclear arms must be legitimized: "Even nuclear preemption is, at least theoretically, a conceivable option."7) The German-French strategy paper presented concrete suggestions for the joint deployment of nuclear arms. The paper proposes the tactical bypassing of resistance to, nevertheless, "recall all steps of the escalation ladder (...) up to threatening deployment of nuclear weapons." The author of the paper was the "German society for foreign policy", with the re-emerged "Institut françaisdes relations internationales" as co-author.8)
Explicit or Implicit
Thus, the concept of a nuclear pre-emptive war has now become anchored in European politics. Lothar Ruehl, former minister of state in the German defense ministry and co-author of the "European Defense Paper" noted with satisfaction that the topic "preemption/prevention" in the document is primarily considered from the point of view of military deployments with conventional armed forces and operative special forces. "Nevertheless", the possibility to include British and French nuclear armed forces "explicitly or implicitly", is mentioned.9) Concerning the war scenarios of the future EU military, in fact, the strategy paper mentions: "[W]e have not avoided presenting scenarios in which the national nuclear forces of EU member states (France and the United Kingdom) may enter into the equation either explicitly or implicitly."10)
1) see also EU Strategy: ,,Preemptive Wars", worldwide and Plans for action
2) Institute for Security Studies, European Union: European defence. A proposal for a White Paper; Paris, May 2004, ISBN 92-9198-056-0 (www.iss-eu.org), p. 13. "These goals call for rapidly deployable and long-term sustainable forces, they imply a better integration of civilian and military missions; they are based on the assumption of a more autonomous Union in defence matters (...). The credibility of Europe's strategy will ultimately be based on its capacity to fulfil these ambitions."
3) Burkard Schmitt: The European Union and armaments. Getting a bigger bang for the Euro; Chaillot Paper 63 - August 2003 (www.iss-eu.org), p. 55
4) see also The End of "Civilian Power"
5) "Nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical products should continue to be excluded from European rules". Burkard Schmitt: The European Union and armaments. Getting a bigger bang for the Euro; Chaillot Paper 63 - August 2003 (www.iss-eu.org), p. 55
6) Nuclear weapons: A new Great Debate (Edited by Burkard Schmitt); Chaillot Paper 48 - July 2001 (www.iss-eu.org), p. 168
7) see also War is Peace
8) see also Bright Abyss
9) Lothar Ruehl: Luecke zwischen Mittel und Zweck. Das "European Defence Paper"; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01.10.2004
10) Institute for Security Studies, European Union: European defence. A proposal for a White Paper; Paris, May 2004, ISBN 92-9198-056-0 (www.iss-eu.org), p. 68
-------- iran
Russian FM visits Iran, nuclear stand-off on agenda
TEHRAN (AFP)
Oct 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041010120300.2hvzgfd0.html
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Tehran Sunday for talks expected to focus on Iran's stand-off with the UN's nuclear watchdog and possible preparations for a visit here by the Russian president.
Lavrov, who will be in Tehran for two days, is lined up for talks with his counterpart Kamal Kharazi as well as Iran's top national security official and nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, officials here said.
Russia is currently helping Iran build its first nuclear power station in the southern city of Bushehr and is under almost daily diplomatic pressure from the United States to abandon the 800-million-dollar deal.
But Moscow is also eager to see Iran cooperate with demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has called on the Islamic republic to suspend certain sensitive aspects of its nuclear programme.
On September 18, the IAEA board called on Iran to "immediately" widen a suspension of enrichment to include all uranium enrichment-related activities -- such as making centrifuges, converting yellowcake into UF6 feed gas, and constructing a heavy water reactor.
Iran, facing a November 25 deadline, risks being referred to the UN Security Council if it fails to comply.
In addition, the so-called Big Three -- Britain, France and Germany -- would like Iran to give up its work on the nuclear fuel cycle, a process that can be used to make fuel for atomic energy or nuclear weapons.
Fuel cycle work is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory, if for peaceful purposes. Iran insists it only wants to generate nuclear power to meet growing domestic energy demands and free up its huge oil and gas resources for export.
Russia has said on several occasions that it will continue its nuclear cooperation with Iran as long as the nation complies with the IAEA.
"Iran must comply with all IAEA demands," Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month.
Putin said Russia had sent a message to this effect to Tehran, and added that he believed Iran's assurances that it was not trying to develop nuclear weapons.
But also last month Igor Ivanov, chief of Russia's Security Council, said Russia was against bringing up Iran's nuclear program at the UN Security Council and believes the issue should stay with the IAEA.
"Iran has shown in a justifiable matter that it must have access, like other countries, to new technologies, including nuclear technology used for peaceful means," Ivanov said.
The US alleges Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies, and wants Iran referred to the security council in November.
Officials in Moscow said last week that Lavrov's visit could also finalise a visit to Iran by Putin "in the foreseeable future".
During his visit, Lavrov is also due to discuss a series of economic projects with Iran as well as possible ways of cooperating to fight international terrorism.
----
Khamenei hails Iranian military exercises as success
TEHRAN (AFP)
Oct 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041010134846.5rvgd54t.html
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said the military exercises held last month by the Revolutionary Guards Corps were a success, state television reported Sunday.
"The success of Ashura-5 manoeuvres obliges me to thank you and other senior commanders," the all-powerful leader was quoted as writing to Guards commander Rahim Safavi.
"Abilities in planning, command and logistics could be perfectly seen in this big collective operation," Khamenei wrote of the exercises, held in the northwest of the country.
The week-long exercises kicked off on September 12, and were reportedly aimed at testing out new equipment and maintaining the Revolutionary Guards' "spirit of Jihad (holy war) and defence" and its status of being the "biggest deterrent power in the region".
The Revolutionary Guards, one of Iran's most powerful institutions, were set up in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution and have a separate command structure to the regular armed forces.
-------- iraq / inspections
Hans Blix: If you had seen what I have seen
Hans Blix Will President Bush apply the lessons from Iraq to Iran, Libya and North Korea?
10 October 2004
UK Independent
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=570476
With their report last week, the inspectors appointed by the Bush administration to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun.
Both Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, and David Kay, his predecessor, were hawks who favoured the Iraq war. But while they try to give the administration some straws to cling to, they are professionals. After inspecting many sites, examining the voluminous documentation that has become available and interviewing many individuals, including Saddam Hussein and others in detention, they admit that the spin, to which they themselves had gladly contributed, was wrong.
Duelfer seems to contradict some points made by Kay in his interim report, which were seized upon by governments. For example, Kay said his group had discovered dozens of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities". He pointed to a vial of botulinum found in a scientist's refrigerator, and said his group had found a number of secret underground labs that would have been suitable for chemical and biological programmes. Duelfer does not see anything significant in these finds.
More important, Duelfer believes that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the summer of 1991, and finds nothing to document any programmes after that time. Far from confirming Tony Blair's reported reading that Saddam "had every intention of reviving his WMD programmes", the report suggests Saddam gave his officials the impression that he was interested in resuming programmes "if sanctions were lifted". This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling.
When might the sanctions have been lifted? Duelfer does not tell us, but in support of his view that the war was justified, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he doubted sanctions were "sustainable". He implied that they might lapse some time in the future - after which Saddam could revive his WMD programmes with impunity. Asked whether sanctions were not at least sustainable during some more months of inspection, Duelfer - evidently fearing damage to the administration that appointed him - said he could not answer.
He might have added that even if economic sanctions were lifted or watered down in the future, nothing suggests that the Security Council would relax its ban on Iraq acquiring WMD. Indeed, binding resolutions foresaw a "reinforced system of monitoring and verification" without any fixed end. Even if economic sanctions were to have been lifted, any "breakout" by Saddam would have caused loud alarm bells to ring.
Duelfer's report confirms that the combination of UN sanctions and inspection, plus external pressures - including the "no-fly zones" - had kept Saddam contained. As I wrote in my book Disarming Iraq, the world succeeded in disarming Saddam without knowing it.
Saddam's first political aim, according to the report, was to get rid of the sanctions. That is why, we are told, he eliminated the WMD and WMD programmes, probably in 1991. Duelfer concludes, as I have done, that Saddam deliberately allowed the impression to exist that WMD were still there - to look bigger and more dangerous than he was.
Like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Duelfer's group sees not a trace of revival of a nuclear programme. On the contrary, he says Iraq was further away from a nuclear weapon in 2003 than it was in 1991. It had not used the period between 1999 and 2002, when there were no inspections, for any revival. Thus, while George Bush has been maintaining that Saddam was a "growing threat" he was a diminishing danger to his neighbours and the world.
Bush has been stressing that Saddam hated the US. However, Duelfer says that Saddam's interest in WMD seems to have been driven by concerns about Iran and Israel.
Duelfer underlines the vital importance of having inspectors on the ground - hardly surprising, considering that most of the correct information available to US and British intelligence came from UN and IAEA inspectors, and that most of the things they got wrong were the results of their own work and contacts with Iraqis in exile. Can one hope that this will be remembered in future cases when supervision and verification will be needed, for example, in Iran, Libya and North Korea?
I am not against intelligence. It is indispensable, not least in face of terrorist groups. When it comes to identifying the production or existence of WMD, assistance from intelligence to international inspection authorities can be helpful. Intelligence has sources that the inspectors do not have, but the inspectors have the right to be on the ground and to request information. Moreover, they are independent of governments. In foreign affairs, as in medicine, successful operations require correct diagnoses.
Hans Blix is chairman of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction and former head of the UN weapons inspectors
----
Scott Ritter: If you had seen what I have seen
The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty over WMD to bolster the US and UK's case for war
10 October 2004
UK Independent
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=570477
It appears that the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of President George Bush and Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated with the release this week of the Iraq Survey Group's final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The report's author, Charles Duelfer, underscored the finality of what the world had come to accept in the 18 months since the invasion of Iraq - that there were no stockpiles of WMD, or programmes to produce WMD. Despite public statements made before the war by Bush, Blair and officials and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic to the contrary, the ISG report concludes that all of Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed in 1991, and WMD programmes and facilities dismantled by 1996.
Duelfer's report does speak of Saddam Hussein's "intent" to acquire WMD once economic sanctions were lifted and UN inspections ended (although this conclusion is acknowledged to be derived from fragmentary and speculative sources). This judgement has been seized by Bush and Blair as they scramble to re-justify their respective decisions to wage war. "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil-for-food programme 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 programme once the world looked away." Blair, for his part, has apologised for relying on faulty intelligence, but not for his decision to go to war. The mantra from both camps remains that the world is a safer place with Saddam behind bars.
But is it? When one examines the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq today, it seems hard to draw any conclusion that postulates a scenario built around the notion of an improved environment of stability and security. Indeed, many Iraqis hold that life under Saddam was a better option than the life they are facing under an increasingly violent and destabilising US-led occupation. The ultimate condemnation of the failure and futility of the US-UK effort in Iraq is that if Saddam were released from his prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next January, there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular choice. But while democratic freedom of expression was a desired outcome of the decision to remove Saddam from power, the crux of the pre-war arguments and the ones being reconfigured by those in favour of the invasion centre on the need to improve international peace and security. Has Saddam's removal accomplished this?
To answer this question, you have to postulate a world today that includes an Iraq led by Saddam. How this world would deal with him would be determined by decisions made by the US, Britain and the international community in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the key historical questions being asked is what if Hans Blix (who gives his own view, right) had been given the three additional months he had requested in order to complete his programme of inspection? Two issues arise from this scenario: would Blix have been able to assemble enough data to ascertain conclusively, in as definitive a fashion as the Duelfer ISG report, a finding that Saddam's Iraq was free of WMD, and thus posed no immediate threat; and would the main supporters of military engagement with Iraq, the US and Britain, have been willing to accept such a finding?
The answer to the first point is that Blix and his team of inspectors were saddled with a complicated list of "cluster issues", ironically assembled by Duelfer during his tenure as head of the UN weapons inspectors, that would have needed to be rectified for any finding of compliance to be made. These "clusters" postulated the need for Iraq to prove the negative, something that is virtually impossible to do. We now know that Iraq's WMD were destroyed in 1991. The problem wasn't the weapons, but verification of Iraq's declarations. The standards of verification set by Duelfer-Blix were impossible for Iraq to meet, thus making closure on the "cluster" issues also an unattainable goal. This situation answers the second point as well. Since the inspection process was pre-programmed to fail, there would be no way the US or the UK would accept any finding of compliance from the UN weapons inspectors. The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty regarding Iraq's WMD, which was used by the US and the UK to bolster their case for war.
It appears that there was no way short of war to create an environment where a finding of Iraq's compliance with its obligation to disarm could be embraced by the US and British governments. The main reason for this was that the issue wasn't WMD per se, but Saddam. The true goal wasn't disarmament, but regime change. This, of course, clashed with the principles of international law set forth in the Security Council resolutions, voted on by the US and UK, and to which Saddam was ostensibly held to account. Economic sanctions, put in place by the UN in 1990 after Saddam's invasion of Iraq and continued in 1991, linked to Saddam's obligation to disarm, were designed to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's requirements. Saddam did disarm, but since two members of that Security Council - the US and the UK - were implementing unilateral policies of regime change as opposed to disarmament, this compliance could never be recognised. Sadly, when one speaks of threats to international peace and security, history will show that it was the US and Britain that consistently operated outside the spirit and letter of international law in their approach towards dealing with Saddam.
This blatant disregard for international law on the part of the world's two greatest democracies serves as the foundation of any analysis of the question: would the world be better off with or without Saddam in power? To buy into the notion that the world is better off without Saddam, one would have to conclude that the framework of international law that held the world together since the end of the Second World War - the UN Charter - is antiquated and no longer viable in a post-9/11 world. Tragically, we can see the fallacy of that argument unfold on a daily basis, as the horrific ramifications of American and British unilateralism unfold across the globe. If there ever was a case to be made for a unified standard of law governing the interaction of nations, it is in how we as a global community prosecute the war on terror. Those who embrace unilateral pre-emptive strikes in the name of democracy and freedom have produced results that pervert the concept of democracy while bringing about the horrific tyranny of fear and oppression at the hands of those who posture as liberators.
If Saddam were in power today, it would only have been because the US and Britain had altered course and joined the global community in recognising the pre-eminence of international law, and the necessity of all nations to operate in accordance with that law. The irony is that had the US and Britain taken this path, and an unrepentant Saddam chosen to defy the international community by acting on the intent he is alleged to have harboured, then he would have been removed from power by a true international coalition united in its legitimate defence of international law. But this is not the case. Saddam is gone, and the world is far worse for it - not because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison.
Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998) and the author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America', published by Context Books
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Former UN arms inspectors slam Bush, Blair after weapons report
(AFP)
Oct 10, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041010/wl_uk_afp/iraq_weapons_us_britain_041010093300
LONDON - Two former senior UN weapons inspectors in Iraq criticized US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for clinging to ever-weaker arguments to justify their war on Iraq.
In separate comments in The Independent on Sunday, Hans Blix, the former UN chief arms inspector until the US-British invasion in March 2003, and Scott Ritter, a senior inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, backed a US official report concluding Iraq had no banned weapons before the war.
The authors of that report, although Bush appointees, "have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun", Blix wrote.
Charles Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group, said in the 1,000-page report released Wednesday that Saddam had destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had "progressively decayed".
Duelfer said the Iraqi leader had however hoped to renew his weapons quest if sanctions were lifted -- and both Blair and Bush have rushed to use that to argue their pre-emptive strike was necessary.
"This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling", Blix wrote.
A former Swedish foreign minister who led the UN hunt for banned chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, Blix said that in fact "the world succeeded in disarming Saddam (Hussein) without knowing it".
He questioned whether, as the Duelfer report recommends, UN inspectors would be allowed to carry out their work "in future cases, when supervision and verification will be needed, for example, in Iran, Libya and North Korea (news - web sites)".
Ritter, too, said Bush and Blair were "scrambling to re-justify" the war now that the banned weapons argument no longer held water, with claims they have made the world safer.
But Ritter charged that history would judge the leaders harshly for making the world a worse place by flouting international law and creating chaos in Iraq.
He said "the world's two greatest democracies" had undermined the legal framework of the United Nations (news - web sites) set up after World War II at exactly the time when the world needed multilateralism most, to fight a global war on terror.
"Saddam is gone, and the world is far worse for it -- not because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison," he wrote.
Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US Marines, was an inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, when he resigned, citing a lack of UN and US support for his tough disarmament methods.
Both men have been outspoken critics of Bush and Blair, and authors of books on the hunt for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
-------- israel
Israel Trades One Nightmare for Another
October 10, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/weekinreview/10erla.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM - One of the major winners of America's war on terrorism has been nuclear-bound, terrorism-supporting Iran, and it is giving the Israelis nightmares.
Israelis have been targets of terrorists since long before American cities were struck three years ago - a fact driven home last week by bombings that killed dozens of vacationing Israelis at three resorts in Egypt. But the nightmares about Iran are of another dimension.
Iran - large, ambitious and run by radical clerics committed to the destruction of the Jewish state - is seen by Israelis as the most obvious and urgent threat today to Israel's very existence.
The overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan eliminated one of Iran's main fundamentalist rivals to its east, while the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to its west eliminated Iran's main military rival in the Persian Gulf. Not only is Mr. Hussein gone, but much of Iraq is in disorder, presenting opportunities for Iran to meddle in Iraq's heavily Shiite south, even to create a kind of Iranistan there.
So the Israelis who plan for this country's security confront a paradox: While they are relieved that the American invasion of Iraq removed a sworn enemy, they are increasingly nervous about the opportunities that the same invasion has opened for another. And they see the Middle East moving from conventional military rivalries to far more dangerous nuclear rivalries.
That is why Israeli officials have been threatening for months to take "the necessary steps,'' as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz puts it, to prevent Iran, his birthplace, from developing nuclear weapons.
Behind that threat is a hope that the rest of the world can persuade Iran, with threats and diplomacy, to drop the parts of its nuclear program that could be used for armaments. But Israeli officials say they have not had great success so far in encouraging a preoccupied Washington, a conflicted Russia and a divided Europe to do much about Iran except talk anxiously about it.
Iran's program - which its leaders maintain is for peaceful purposes - is far more sophisticated and widespread than the single Iraqi nuclear reactor Israel bombed in 1981, and Israeli officials make clear that they do not want to act alone against Iran.
Iran, however, has an increasing number of cards to play in the region. According to the Israeli military, it has strong influence over the radical Palestinian group Hamas and over the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which has been financing and organizing most of the attacks against Israelis from the Palestinian West Bank. Iran is gaining influence with the Shia factions jockeying for power in southern Iraq. Officials in Washington have said Iran is helping to foment anti-American resistance there. Most important, perhaps, Iran has increasingly sophisticated Shahab missiles that could hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Iran's leaders do not acknowledge ambitions for nuclear arms, but they are building reactors and there is logic for them wanting a bomb: their neighbors India and Pakistan have nuclear arms, Israel is presumed to have them, and American troops are on their borders.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli Parliament's foreign and defense committee, argues that Iran is a clear danger for the entire West, since it is working on an intercontinental missile that could threaten Europe and NATO. "The Iran nuclear program is so ambitious that after producing a first bomb, they could produce 20 bombs a year," he said. "It's up to the Americans and Europeans to solve Iran," he added, "not little Israel."
Mr. Steinitz's concerns are expressed as well by senior Israeli political, military and intelligence officials who spoke on the condition that they not be quoted by name. Israel has been pushing Washington to deal with Iran's nuclear program since the mid-1990's.
"If Iran develops nuclear weapons, there will be a new Middle East,'' said Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "It would lead to a lot more brinkmanship and tension, with higher stakes for Israel's survival and pressure on other countries, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, to develop nuclear weapons of their own.''
Amatzia Baram, a scholar of Iraq, thinks Israel and the region are safer for now with Mr. Hussein gone. But the euphoria Israelis felt following his quick defeat has dissipated, Mr. Baram says, and has been replaced by anxiety over the possibility of American failure in Iraq.
"So far, with the American Army in Iraq, things are O.K., if not very stable, and in the best case, Iraq will settle down, a net gain for Israel,'' said Mr. Baram, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Haifa University. "But worst case, the Americans decide to go," he said, and that would mean: "There's no central control, growing anarchy, western Iraq becomes a no man's land, like a little Afghanistan. Iran will be a power broker in southern Iraq, and then Jordan is under threat and there's more terrorism in the world."
"The jury's still out" on what will happen, he said, "and the stakes are very high.''
Iran's nuclear ambitions began under Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1970's, a time when the United States, France and Germany competed to build reactors there and Iran and Israel were proto-allies against a hostile Arab world. But the shah's overthrow in an Islamic revolution in 1979 changed the Middle East.
Israel later watched with some relief as Mr. Hussein's Iraq fought a war with Iran at such a bloody cost that both countries were weakened for years. But both regimes survived, with their animosity intact.
In the short run, Israel has gained enormously from the ouster of Mr. Hussein, said Michael B. Oren, a historian and senior fellow at Jerusalem's Shalem Center.
Not only did Mr. Hussein sent $25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers and promise to wipe Israel off the map, but his huge if indifferent army was the focus of the old Israeli specter of a massed invasion by Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi armies moving together against Israel's narrow waist. "That was our nightmare, and it's over, buried,'' Mr. Oren said.
But in the long run, the situation in Iraq "is very uncertain, hazardous and possibly catastrophic,'' he said. Even an American success in democratizing Iraq "will almost definitely entail majority Shia rule, linked to a rapidly nuclearizing Iran, causing upheaval and increased expectations among Shias throughout the Gulf.'' He imagines a Shiite belt from the Persian Gulf through southern Lebanon, organized against America and Israel. "That's scary, because the raison d'être of the Iranian regime is to export holy war,'' he said. Also, Mr. Oren said, "there's a genuine fear here that if America withdraws precipitously from Iraq, the initial message, that the West will stand up to terror, is not only lost, but supplanted by: 'You shoot at Americans and Westerners long enough and they'll retreat, so don't stop shooting.' ''
For Dan Schueftan, a senior fellow at the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University and at the Shalem Center, the situation is deeply worrisome, but not yet a crisis. Mr. Hussein's fall, he said, has been a clear benefit to Israel, which would have had Iran as an enemy in any case. The improbability of a big land war means that Israel's army can start renovating itself in earnest - mothballing armor, cutting its size and acquiring high technology like precision weapons, drones and anti-missile defenses that will help deter Iran.
Iran presents a global problem "already recognized by the United States and Europe, which is within missile range,'' Mr. Schueftan said. "So we feel less lonely vis-à-vis Iran than we did with Iraq in the 80's.''
But, he said, he worries about what Iran could do with nuclear weapons, and their impact on the region.
A nuclear Iran would embolden Syria and Hezbollah to feel protected by an Iranian nuclear umbrella, he suggested. Egypt and other Arab countries would feel pressure to develop nuclear weapons, and other radical regimes could come into being. Egypt is under pressure from Islamic radicals. A change there, he said, "would change the region completely.''
Mr. Baram also makes the point that Iran's regime is less secure internally and more unpredictable than the Soviet regime that the United States faced in the cold war. "In Iran, I can imagine some commander, acting out of ideology, like some Dr. Strangelove, shooting off a nuclear bomb against Israel,'' he said.
There would be deterrence of a kind between Iran and Israel, he conceded, based on the old theory of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. "But then everything hangs on MAD, and MAD in an area that is mad enough is a big problem,'' he said. "And an existential one.''
-------- terrorism
Terror and the nuclear threat
U.S. UNDERESTIMATES THE GROWING THREAT OF CRUDE BOMBS
Oct. 10, 2004
The Mercury News
By Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/9883581.htm?1c
Is America missing the growing threat of nuclear terrorism?
While Washington focuses largely on the traditional proliferation threat -- of nations in search of highly engineered nuclear weapons -- it has moved slowly to combat a new and more worrisome challenge, of nation-less terrorists who want to acquire and use crude nuclear bombs, and who would settle for a delivery system as common as an ocean freighter.
The chance that a terrorist group could obtain the key ingredient of a nuclear bomb and then produce a less-than-perfect, but usable, explosive is not as far-fetched as many analysts believed even a few years ago. Indeed, if there was one thing the presidential candidates could agree on in their first debate, it was that the No. 1 threat to America's security is nuclear weapons in terrorists' hands. Yet misconceptions, inattention and politics have kept Washington from responding strongly enough, and in a timely fashion.
Traditional thinking about terrorists was that very few would want to carry out an attack using nuclear weapons even if they had the capability to do so. As Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism specialist at the Rand think tank, observed in 1975, ``Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.''
This assessment probably was correct in the past and remains true for most terrorist organizations with clear political objectives. However, it no longer applies to a new breed intent upon inflicting massive violence unrelated to specific political goals.
In March 1995, for example, the apocalyptic terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo launched a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway with the goal of killing thousands. Although the chemical attack produced only a dozen fatalities, Aum also sought nuclear weapons. Aum's leader believed using nuclear weapons would usher in an apocalypse.
Since 1994, Al-Qaida operatives have reportedly tried to buy enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. In late 1998, Osama bin Laden maintained that acquiring such weapons ``to counter those of the infidels is a religious duty.''
Regrettably, misconceptions held by many U.S. (and Russian) policy-makers have impeded timely government responses. These officials have exaggerated the difficulty of terrorists making crude but devastating nuclear bombs.
Policy-makers have, in particular, mistakenly believed that terrorists would seek to design a nuclear bomb that meets the same rigorous military specifications that a nation would require. In fact, the new breed of terrorists primarily wants a powerful weapon regardless of whether it has a predictable explosive yield, is compatible with military delivery systems (such as missiles) or meets stringent safety and reliability standards.
The secrets of nuclear weapon design were revealed long ago. The only significant barrier remains access to fissile material: highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. If terrorists obtain this material, they can try to build two types of first-generation nuclear bombs.
The simpler type can use only HEU. This gun-type weapon slams one piece of HEU into another to ignite a nuclear explosion. A terrorist organization like Al-Qaida could probably build such a weapon if it had access to less than 100 pounds of weapons-grade HEU. And it wouldn't need sophisticated ballistic missiles; it could deliver the weapon to its target by hiding it in a cargo container on a ship.
The more sophisticated implosion-type bomb can employ either HEU or plutonium. But making this weapon would challenge the abilities of terrorist groups, leading most independent analysts to conclude that HEU presents a much greater risk for terrorist use than plutonium.
Unfortunately, stockpiles of HEU are immense. There are several hundred tons of HEU in Russia alone, and additional tons are scattered throughout dozens of countries -- enough material to make thousands of crude nuclear bombs. And yet the United States has not made securing, consolidating and eliminating HEU an urgent priority.
Although the Department of Energy recently launched an important initiative to address the problem of HEU, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense still appear more intent upon eliminating terrorists than HEU. And even the Department of Energy has yet to develop a realistic plan with adequate financing to accomplish its objectives. Efforts by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to accelerate the pace and expand the scope of related U.S. non-proliferation efforts also have met with resistance by Congress and have not been championed by the White House.
Could terrorists tap these stockpiles?
To date, treaties and international agreements have concentrated almost exclusively on stopping nations from getting the bomb. But nuclear black-marketeers have increasingly operated outside the bounds of nations, supplying nuclear technology and weapons designs to the highest bidder.
While conclusive evidence that terrorists have exploited the nuclear black market has not emerged, the longer this market continues to operate, the greater the chance that terrorists will employ this clandestine network to acquire HEU or components for building nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has made matters worse by narrowly defining the principal nuclear proliferation problems in terms of the ``axis of evil'' nations: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. This overly simplistic characterization of the threat and the proposed solution -- ``regime change'' -- not only politicized the proliferation debate at home and abroad, but redirected U.S. intelligence resources away from more pressing nuclear terrorism challenges. For a small fraction of the price tag of the Iraq war, the United States could have secured, consolidated and eliminated many more tons of weapons-usable HEU.
Today, it is likely that the only parties seeking to inflict nuclear punishment on the United States are terrorist organizations. The major obstacle in their path is access to fissile material -- especially HEU.
Unless U.S. government organizations adapt more quickly to the new security environment and treat HEU consolidation and elimination as the highest priority, the next failure of intelligence involving nuclear weapons could be something we all should fear -- terrorists using a crude nuclear bomb.
CHARLES D. FERGUSON (cferguson@cfr.org) is science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. WILLIAM C. POTTER (wpotter@miis.edu) is director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies. They are the lead authors of the new book ``The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism.'' They wrote this article for Perspective.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Truth Stranger Than 'Strangelove'
October 10, 2004
NEW YORK TIMES
By FRED KAPLAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/movies/10kapl.html
Dr. Strangelove," Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film about nuclear-war plans run amok, is widely heralded as one of the greatest satires in American political or movie history. For its 40th anniversary, Film Forum is screening a new 35 millimeter print for one week, starting on Friday, and Columbia TriStar is releasing a two-disc special-edition DVD next month. One essential point should emerge from all the hoopla: "Strangelove" is far more than a satire. In its own loopy way, the movie is a remarkably fact-based and specific guide to some of the oddest, most secretive chapters of the Cold War.
As countless histories relate, Mr. Kubrick set out to make a serious film based on a grim novel, "Red Alert," by Peter George, a Royal Air Force officer. But the more research he did (reading more than 50 books, talking with a dozen experts), the more lunatic he found the whole subject, so he made a dark comedy instead. The result was wildly iconoclastic: released at the height of the cold war, not long after the Cuban missile crisis, before the escalation in Vietnam, "Dr. Strangelove" dared to suggest - with yucks! - that our top generals might be bonkers and that our well-designed system for preserving the peace was in fact a doomsday machine.
What few people knew, at the time and since, was just how accurate this film was. Its premise, plotline, some of the dialogue, even its wildest characters eerily resembled the policies, debates and military leaders of the day. The audience had almost no way of detecting these similiarities:Nearly everything about the bomb was shrouded in secrecy back then. There was no Freedom of Information Act and little investigative reporting on the subject. It was easy to laugh off "Dr. Strangelove" as a comic book.
But film's weird accuracy is evident in its very first scene, in which a deranged base commander, preposterously named Gen. Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden), orders his wing of B-52 bombers - which are on routine airborne alert, circling a "fail-safe point" just outside the Soviet border - to attack their targets inside the U.S.S.R. with multimegaton bombs. Once the pilots receive the order, they can't be diverted unless they receive a coded recall message. And 0nly General Ripper has the code.
The remarkable thing is, the fail-safe system that General Ripper exploits was the real, top-secret fail-safe system at the time. According to declassified Strategic Air Command histories, 12 B-52's - fully loaded with nuclear bombs - were kept on constant airborne alert. If they received a Go code, they went to war. This alert system, known as Chrome Dome, began in 1961. It ended in 1968, after a B-52 crashed in Greenland, spreading small amounts of radioactive fallout.
But until then, could some loony general have sent bombers to attack Russia without a presidential order? Yes.
In a scene in the "war room" (a room that didn't really exist, by the way), Air Force Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott) explains to an incredulous President Merkin Muffley (one of three roles played by Peter Sellers) that policies - approved by the president - allowed war powers to be transferred, in case the president was killed in a surprise nuclear attack on Washington.
Historical documents indicate that such procedures did exist, and that, though tightened later, they were startlingly loose at the time. But were there generals who might really have taken such power in their own hands? It was no secret - it would have been obvious to many viewers in 1964 - that General Ripper looked a lot like Curtis LeMay, the cigar-chomping, gruff-talking general who headed the Strategic Air Command through the 1950's and who served as the Pentagon's Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 60's.
In 1957 Robert Sprague, the director of a top-secret panel, warned General LeMay that the entire fleet of B-52 bombers was vulnerable to attack. General LeMay was unfazed. "If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack,'' he said, "I'm going to knock the [expletive] out of them before they take off the ground."
"But General LeMay," Mr. Sprague replied, "that's not national policy." "I don't care," General LeMay said. "It's my policy. That's what I'm going to do."
Mr. Kubrick probably was unaware of this exchange. (Mr. Sprague told me about it in 1981, when I interviewed him for a book on nuclear history.) But General LeMay's distrust of civilian authorities, including presidents, was well known among insiders, several of whom Mr. Kubrick interviewed.
The most popular guessing game about the movie is whether there a real-life counterpart to the character of Dr. Strangelove (another Sellers part), the wheelchaired ex-Nazi who directs the Pentagon's weapons research and proposes sheltering political leaders in well-stocked mineshafts, where they can survive the coming nuclear war and breed with beautiful women. Over the years, some have speculated that Strangelove was inspired by Edward Teller, Henry Kissinger or Werner Von Braun.
But the real model was almost certainly Herman Kahn, an eccentric, voluble nuclear strategist at the RAND Corporation, a prominent Air Force think tank. In 1960, Mr. Kahn published a 652-page tome called "On Thermonuclear War," which sold 30,000 copies in hardcover.
According to a special-feature documentary on the new DVD, Mr. Kubrick read "On Thermonuclear War" several times. But what the documentary doesn't note is that the final scenes of "Dr. Strangelove" come straight out of its pages.
Toward the end of the film, officials uncover General Ripper's code and call back the B-52's, but they notice that one bomber keeps flying toward its target. A B-52 is about to attack the Russians with a few H-bombs; General Turgidson recommends that we should "catch 'em with their pants down,'' and launch an all-out, disarming first-strike.
Such a strike would destroy 90 percent of the U.S.S.R.'s nuclear arsenal. "Mr. President," he exclaims, "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10-20 million killed, tops!" If we don't go all-out, the general warns, the Soviets will fire back with all their nuclear weapons. The choice, he screams, is "between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments - one where you get 20 million people killed and the other where you get 150 million people killed!" Mr. Kahn made precisely this point in his book, even producing a chart labeled, "Tragic but Distinguishable Postwar States."
When Dr. Strangelove talks of sheltering people in mineshafts, President Muffley asks him, "Wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead?" Strangelove exclaims that, to the contrary, many would feel "a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead."
Mr. Kahn's book contains a long chapter on mineshafts. Its title: "Will the Survivors Envy the Dead?" One sentence reads: "We can imagine a renewed vigor among the population with a zealous, almost religious dedication to reconstruction."
In 1981, two years before he died, I asked Mr. Kahn what he thought of "Dr. Strangelove." Thinking I meant the character, he replied, with a straight face, "Strangelove wouldn't have lasted three weeks in the Pentagon. He was too creative."
Those in the know watched "Dr. Strangelove" amused, like everyone else, but also stunned. Daniel Ellsberg, who later leaked the Pentagon Papers, was a RAND analyst and a consultant at the Defense Department when he and a mid-level official took off work one afternoon in 1964 to see the film. Mr. Ellsberg recently recalled that as they left the theater, he turned to his colleague and said, "That was a documentary!"
Fred Kaplan is a columnist for Slate and the author of "The Wizards of Armageddon," a history of the nuclear strategists.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear waste also wastes funding
10-10-2004
Journal and Courier
By Phillip Fiorini, Journal and Courier
http://www.lafayettejc.com/columns/200410100local_business1097384493.shtml
This could be a story about gasoline or natural gas prices.
Or how the U.S. remains so vulnerable to oil price shocks around the world or unrest in the Middle East that, coupled with surging demand for energy, we're now dealing with the price of a barrel of oil above $50 and natural gas prices topping near historic highs of $7 per thousand cubic feet.
Or even why the U.S. government hasn't approved the construction of a nuclear reactor since the 1970s.
It's all about waste -- be it of the nuclear variety as well as the way the government seems to abuse its fiduciary responsibility when it decides how to handle the money that we as taxpayers entrust to it.
For nearly a quarter-century and already with costs of as much as $7 billion, major utilities as well as the U.S. government's Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been wrangling over what will be done with all the nuclear waste being stockpiled at 131 sites around the country.
Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, mandating that the DOE begin taking all the spent nuclear fuel generated by U.S. nuclear power plants and store it at an individual site by January 1998. Yet here we are, year 2004, and at least 40,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste remains scattered around the country, even though the U.S. government was contractually obligated to take this stuff off the hands of major utilities.
My first interaction with this story was in 1984 when, while reporting for the Amarillo Daily News in the Texas Panhandle, we covered several stories of the DOE's plans at that time to consider two underground sites in Texas for storing the nuclear waste -- in Deaf Smith and Swisher counties. The other two sites were proposed at Hanford, Wash., and Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Of course, the many farmers and other agriculturally driven businesses in that part of Texas couldn't comprehend why the federal government wanted to store this dangerous stuff under all this prime farmland as well as beneath a major aquifer that stretched from Nebraska to Texas.
In covering this story, I also visited the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., where Sandia National Laboratories was working with prime contractor Westinghouse Government Services Group in building the world's first underground repository for storing low-level nuclear waste -- things such as gloves, hats, shirts and pants worn by nuclear industry workers that had been exposed to radioactive materials.
There, Sandia physicist Wendell Weart stressed that the mile-deep storage facility was technically sound for storing the low-level waste and that the technology had existed for at least a decade in dealing with this toxic stuff. Yet it wasn't until March 26, 1999 -- or 15 years later -- that the first load of nuclear waste for disposal arrived at the 1,000-employee facility in the southeastern deserts of New Mexico.
At the high-level waste level, the DOE settled a lawsuit in August by major nuclear power plant operator Exelon Corp. for $80 million in past costs of nuclear fuel storage, basically because the federal government has yet to take over waste storage even though it was contractually obligated to do so by 1998.
And if it remains status quo in the world of nuclear waste, Exelon will get $300 million through 2010 and $600 million through 2015. Total liability for taxpayers in this game is estimated at more than $60 billion -- if the DOE misses its next deadline, now set at 2010, to officially assume storage responsibilities, lobby group Citizens Against Government Waste reports.
This all runs full circle in light of huge pressures on fossil fuels that has the U.S. fighting a war in oil-rich Iraq and remaining a net importer of oil. Meanwhile, winter heating bills are looking scarier every day with the price of natural gas -- which has fueled about 90 percent of all new electricity generation the last dozen years -- continuing to rise.
Nuclear energy long ago replaced oil-fired power plants as a producer of electricity, the Nuclear Energy Institute reports. By comparison, oil-fired power plants supplied nearly one-fifth of the U.S. electricity supplies during the early 1970s, while nuclear power plants accounted only the 4 percent of suppliesthen that oil-fired power plants now do.
"Natural gas and other fossil fuels should be limited in their use in production of electricity where there is an alternative like nuclear energy," Angie Howard, executive vice president of the NEI, says in a current interview for Sky Radio.
Rising natural gas and oil prices, along with growing supply concerns, also are sparking talk about whether the costs of building a nuclear power plant once again might be competitive with the price tag on a natural gas-fired power plant.
"Gas suppliers can anticipate a major backlash from consumers accustomed to a plentiful, relatively inexpensive fuel to one marked by uncertainty, volatility and record price levels," said Ross Tokmakian, a partner in Accenture's North American Utilities industry group.
At least something to think about as you drive by your corner service station and see gasoline prices closing in on $2.25 a gallon or wonder why your gas heating bill cracks the $150 mark this December.
Fiorini is the local editor. He can be reached via e-mail at pfiorini@journalandcourier.com or by calling (765) 420-5231.
--------
Bill Allows Atomic Waste to Remain in Tanks
October 10, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/politics/10nukes.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - House and Senate conferees have agreed to let the Energy Department leave some highly radioactive waste in tanks in South Carolina and Idaho, instead of pumping it out and preparing it for deep burial, effectively reversing a court ruling in a case brought by environmentalists last year.
The agreement is spelled out in an amendment, introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and attached to a military appropriations bill. Once conferees reach agreement, approval of such bills is usually routine.
The Energy Department has defined some of the salts and sludges in the tanks, left over from the production of plutonium for bombs, as "waste incidental to reprocessing;" that means it is not high-level waste, which is covered by laws requiring that it be solidified and put in a "deep geologic repository," presumably Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
A Federal District Court judge in Idaho ruled in July, in a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, that the department did not have the authority to redefine the waste, and the department went to Congress to get that authority. The suit was supported by South Carolina, Idaho and Washington.
The environmental group said that leaving the waste in place would arbitrarily create "national sacrifice zones." Geoffrey Fettus, who brought the suit, said: "Congress is trying to throw out more than two decades of nuclear waste cleanup law, in flagrant disregard of public health. Congress did this behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, attaching it to an unrelated bill, one designed to support our troops."
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement that the new provision "will allow the Department of Energy to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks." The department will be required to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the states to set appropriate standards, Mr. Abraham said.
The department said no one ever contemplated that it would be able to get all of the waste out of the tanks, and that the issue was its ability to set standards. It plans to put grout over the remaining wastes to stabilize them.
But at another environmental group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Brice Smith, a physicist, said government agencies have raised questions since 1991 about the stability of the grout. Among the problems, he said, is that the waste generates heat, and that the temperature in the environment around the tanks varies greatly by season. The resulting temperature differences could create cracks in the grout, he said. The group had previously calculated that if as little as one part in 1,000 of the radioactive cesium in the tanks were allowed to escape in the first 100 years, local drinking water supplies would be polluted above allowable standards.
The tanks with the largest volume of waste are in the government's Hanford nuclear reservation, in Washington. Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, said in a statement, "This deal allows D.O.E. to establish a dangerous precedent for Hanford on reclassifying high-level nuclear waste because it suggests that less cleanup is needed if the name of the waste is arbitrarily changed."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Election Disputed
Fifteen Candidates Allege Fraud in Presidential Vote
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20091-2004Oct9?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 9 -- After a relatively peaceful and orderly start, Afghanistan's first presidential election was thrown into chaos Saturday after 15 candidates opposing President Hamid Karzai declared the results invalid, complaining of fraud and improper procedures.
The contretemps threatened to ruin the credibility of a historic election that has cost foreign donors almost $200 million, seen more than 10 million Afghans register to vote and been viewed as a milestone in the country's transformation into a stable, modernizing country after 25 years of war and turmoil.
The candidates' complaints stood in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic spirit of hundreds of thousands of Afghans who lined up outside village schools and mosques on a chilly, wind-swept morning to cast the first votes of their lives. Whoever won, they told visitors over and over, they hoped the election would bring peace and security.
The national election commission, composed of members from Afghanistan and the United Nations, said Saturday afternoon that it would allow the election to proceed despite the candidates' protests but that it would investigate complaints of irregularities. The polls closed at 6:30 p.m., and ballot-counting was expected to take days because of the remote locations of many polling stations.
"Given the complexities of this electoral process, there have inevitably been some technical problems," said J. Ray Kennedy, an election commission official. But given the large turnout and "peaceful environment" of the vote -- for which the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other international groups supplied monitors -- it would be "unjustified" to halt the election and deny many Afghans their fundamental rights, he said.
Since responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States with a military offensive that toppled Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, the Bush administration had eagerly sought elections that would give Afghans a chance to pick their leaders and would be seen as a major U.S. foreign policy success. With U.S. backing, Karzai was named interim president in late 2001 under a U.N.-sponsored democratization process that has already advanced through two national assemblies, a new constitution and voter registration.
Karzai, who has been heavily favored to win a majority of votes, insisted Saturday evening that the election had been "free and fair." He urged all candidates to accept the results and to "respect our people, because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited hours and hours to vote."
But his opponents, a range of ethnic politicians, former officials, tribal leaders and professionals, declared repeatedly during the day that the election should be nullified, suspended and held again, largely because of a widespread mix-up over indelible ink that was supposed to mark voters' thumbs to prevent them from voting more than once.
During a day-long tour of polling sites in three provinces, a Washington Post reporter saw many instances in which poll workers mistakenly inked voters' thumbs with black marking pens intended to be used on ballots instead of the purple indelible ink supplied to prevent fraud.
Voters expressed concern at the ease with which the black ink rubbed off, but no one at a dozen polling stations, including designated agents for various candidates, complained of deliberate fraud.
But in Kabul, opposition candidates met for much of the afternoon at the home of Abdul Sattar Sirat, a former cabinet minister and one of Karzai's challengers. "Any government that comes to power as a result of today's election has no credibility and no validity," Sirat said after the meeting.
The controversy came as a shock to Afghan and international election officials, who had warned of possible attacks at the polls by Taliban guerrillas and other anti-democratic forces, but who never expected the candidates to cast doubt on the process.
There were numerous scattered incidents of violence and anti-election plots reported during the day, but most were in remote provinces. An unprecedented deployment of nearly 100,000 Afghan and foreign security forces sealed off all major roads and guarded most polling centers.
Police said they discovered a fuel tanker truck carrying land mines and explosives in the southern city of Kandahar and arrested three Pakistanis who were in the vehicle. They said the volatile cargo could have been detonated in the city. Interior Ministry officials said they found explosives and other dangerous items in cars throughout Kabul and arrested a group of Taliban members who were holding a clandestine meeting.
Most voters cast their ballots without difficulty and went home, unaware of the candidates' protest until long afterward. Many voters appeared to find the first-time experience confusing and a little intimidating, but election workers carefully and repeatedly explained the procedure, and Afghans of all ages seemed eager and proud to be taking part.
"This is something Afghans have wished for deeply, and for a long time," said Gulab Niakzai, 47, a colonel in the new national army who had just voted at a high school in Kargah, a district west of Kabul. His wife Shirin, dressed in tailored black, smiled at his side.
"We want a clean government and an honest, patriotic president," Niakzai said. "Every Afghan should think very carefully about this decision, because we are building a future for our children."
On a windy highway in Wardak province, south of the capital, a cluster of men and women in billowing blue veils trudged along with their children, heading toward a distant polling station. Rassool Dad, 25, a mason who recently brought his family back from a long exile in Iran, carried his 9-month-old son in his arms.
"We are going to elect our president," Dad said proudly. "We want to stop the warlords and the bloodshed. We heard that the Taliban might attack polling stations, but if we were afraid, we wouldn't come out of our houses."
Occasional problems with logistics and staffing at polling places, especially the complicated arrangements allowing women to vote separately, also seemed to be handled good-naturedly. In De Afghanan, a village in Wardak, a local Muslim cleric had offered his front parlor as a women's voting site, but several hours after the men's polling station opened, no female election workers had arrived from Kabul.
"We called the U.N. several times, but no one has come," said Mahmad Aziz, 60, the local election supervisor. Finally he designated a group of male elders to act as go-betweens so local women could vote without being seen.
"We want everyone to be able to vote freely," he said. "We took an oath that none of us would put pressure on anyone."
Around him, a long line of men squeezed into a dark stone classroom, clutching their voter registration cards. One election worker inked their thumbs and punched a hole in their cards. Another showed them the long ballot with 18 names and tiny photographs. After the voter emerged from a small booth covered in gingham cloth, another worker took each ballot and stuffed it into a white plastic box.
Most voters said they understood that their ballot was secret, and many were shy or cagey about expressing their preference after voting. But in many places, people said they planned to vote for Karzai, saying he was an honest man and had worked hard for the country.
Despite the careful procedures, opposition candidates said there was ample room for fraud, especially because so many voters' thumbs were not marked with indelible ink. They alleged that large numbers of people had voted several times and that government officials had pressured some to vote for Karzai.
"We have received reports of people voting 10 and 15 times," said Homayoun Shah Assefy, a lawyer and presidential candidate. "Under these conditions, elections have no meaning. We do not want a boycott, we want a postponement, and we want better supervision."
To some extent, the suspicion of multiple voting was exacerbated by the success of the voter registration drive. Initially, experts predicted 7 million to 8 million people would register, but the final number was more than 10.5 million. Critics said many people had registered several times, but international and Afghan officials said there was little that could be done about it.
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Questions About Afghan Vote Appear to Fade a Day Later
October 10, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/asia/10CND-AFGH.html?hp&ex=1097467200&en=904eb009f26b8ed2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 10 - The quest by opposition candidates to have Afghanistan's first presidential election nullified appeared to fade today, as some candidates moderated their stance in light of a consensus proclaiming the election, while not problem-free, a success because of the high turnout and low level of violence.
Two of 15 candidates who had said they wanted the election redone because of alleged irregularities, most notably problems with indelible ink that had been meant to prevent multiple votes, indicated they would accept the results of an independent investigation that officials announced today. Behind-the-scenes negotiations were being held with others to ensure a similar compromise.
While reports trickled in about improper interventions in voting by both poll workers and political party representatives loyal to a range of candidates, observers again pronounced the election largely positive. The international community, which spent some $200 million to mount the election, indicated it had little patience for would-be spoilers trying to call its validity into question.
"The candidates' demand to nullify the election is unjustified," said a statement from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which had sent 40 electoral experts to Afghanistan. Such action would call into question the "expressed will of millions of Afghan citizens who came out to vote, carried out voter registration and manned the polling stations despite great personal risk."
The organization said a thorough and transparent investigation was the way to resolve candidates' complaints.
"October 9 was a historic day in Afghanistan, and the millions who came to the polls clearly wanted to turn from the rule of the gun to the rule of law," the statement said. "If their aspirations are to be met, disputes about the validity of election results should be dealt with as the law provides."
Foreign diplomats and United Nations officials were also carrying that message to the discontented candidates, among them Yunus Qanooni, the strongest rival to President Hamid Karzai. A western official said that the Afghan-born American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had met with Mr. Qanooni, among other candidates, and conveyed the sense that his own political future would most benefit from not appearing to thwart the will of the Afghans who voted in unexpectedly large numbers.
There were still no figures on turnout, and counting had yet to begin today. Ballots were still being brought to eight regional counting centers and tallied to determine turnout. Officials expect a final result to take two or three weeks.
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Afghan Poll Is Mostly Calm, but Challengers Cry Foul
October 10, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/asia/10afghan.html?ei=5094&en=5ac6fcc418dbcb80&hp=&ex=1097467200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 9 - Afghans turned out to vote in large numbers Saturday in their first presidential election, an event that was unexpectedly peaceful but soon marred by 15 candidates' declaring the election illegitimate because of what they said was widespread cheating and fraud.
Those candidates asked for a new vote. But United Nations and Afghan officials overseeing the voting largely dismissed their concerns, saying they believed any problems had been corrected during the day. They said they would investigate all complaints. The criticism cast a shadow on what was otherwise a historic success for Afghans who have endured more than two decades of war and turmoil.
From villages in remote parts of the country to the poorest districts in Kabul, Afghans lined up patiently to cast their votes. Although precise numbers were not yet available, election officials praised the turnout.
Officials said the results could take two to three weeks to be tallied, because retrieving and counting ballots would be a drawn-out process.
The expected threat to the elections - attacks by Taliban insurgents who vowed to disrupt the voting - generally failed to materialize, although 11 people died in mine blasts in the south.
Campaigning in St. Louis on Saturday, President Bush celebrated the arrival of elections in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban government in 2001. He said, "Just three years ago, women were being executed in the sports stadium. Today they're voting for a leader of a free country.''
He added: "Today is an appropriate day for Americans to remember and thank the men and women of our armed forces who liberated Afghanistan.''
But the election did encounter trouble from an unexpected source: the ink placed on each voter's thumb to prevent multiple votes.
The ink was meant to be "the last line of defense against fraud," in the words of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research group. That was needed because many voters had multiple registration cards.
But whether because the ink was deficient or, as United Nations officials argued, incorrectly applied, many voters found they could erase it minutes after voting simply with water, and, if they had an extra card, vote again.
United Nations and Afghan officials briefly considered suspending the voting in the morning, then decided against it. But representatives of 15 rivals to President Hamid Karzai, who was expected to win not least because of his close relationship to the international community, quickly seized on the problems and proclaimed the election illegitimate.
"Today, our nation wanted to be proud," said Abdul Satar Sirat, one of the candidates. "Instead, this is a black and painful day in the history of Afghanistan.
"Today's election is not a legitimate election," he said, with Yunus Qanooni, Mr. Karzai's main rival, at his side. "We are not a part of today's election."
Mr. Karzai disagreed at an afternoon news conference, saying the election was legitimate and that the will of the Afghan people should be respected. "The ink is important, but we shouldn't put the election under question because of the ink," he said.
The election brings to a close - barring parliamentary elections to be held next year - a process that began in November 2001, after the Taliban government was ousted. At a conference in Bonn, Karzai was named the country's interim leader, and a series of steps laid out to bring the country toward its first true national election.
At an assembly in Afghanistan in June 2002, Mr. Karzai was selected to lead a transitional government until democratic elections could be held, but his incumbent status and his close links to the international community and the United States in particular had long prompted complaints from his opponents that the election was rigged in his favor. They had repeatedly threatened to boycott the election unless he stepped down to campaign.
So when improprieties, particularly connected to the ink, began emerging early on Saturday morning, Mr. Karzai's rivals were quick to seize on them as evidence that the process was unfair, creating a potentially dangerous crisis of legitimacy for the next government.
Robert Kluyver, an international adviser to the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said the problem with ink was only one of many problems that surfaced during the day, but that it was hard to gauge how significant they were. Many of the problems, he said, stemmed from inadequate training of poll workers - a situation likely to buttress the case of critics who say the election was rushed to provide a foreign policy success to the Bush administration in advance of November's elections.
"There was a widespread lack of knowledge of procedures by JEMB staff," he said, referring to the Joint Electoral Management Board, "and logistical problems," like a lack of ballot boxes in some stations.
"The great thing was the enormous participation," he said. And so far, he said, it did not appear that fears of widespread intimidation by commanders or other power brokers had materialized.
He said the denunciation by Mr. Karzai's rivals was lamentable, since it seemed to set off problems in different regions of the country.
In Kunduz in the north, supporters of Mr. Qanooni demonstrated and temporarily shut some polling stations, JEMB said. In Herat, in the west, they told electoral workers at one center to go home, although the center subsequently reopened.
In Kabul, glitches were also apparent. Muhammad Noor, 67, arrived at one center insisting that he be allowed to vote for his wife, who was sick. He was not allowed to.
Some rooms lacked ink altogether. Others did not have, or quickly lost, the pens to mark the ballot papers with.
There were clearly ample numbers of underage voters who had obtained registration cards, to judge by both their faces and in some cases their confessions, although one could argue that moving from child soldiers to child voters marked some form of progress.
The lack of voter education - only about one-fifth of registered voters received some sort of instruction on how to vote - was also evident, particularly among women. At the Jafariya Mosque in the Chindawal neighborhood of Kabul, poor, illiterate women, many with deeply damaged eyesight, struggled to understand how to mark their ballots, or even to discern among the candidate photos.
"I cannot see the pictures very well," said Begum, 40. She could not read or write, she said, and had simply put a mark on the back of the ballot paper to indicate she wanted a person who could bring security. Her hands were stained with henna, her thumb with the ink from voting.
"There are some problems because it is the first experience for our people, especially for illiterate women," said Humayra Nemati, an observer from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Doranai, 25, the female poll supervisor, struggled to help the women while fending off accusations from observers linked to Mr. Karzai that she was guiding them to vote for one particular candidate. Barely submerged ethnic tension flickered, as the observers implied that electoral workers from the Hazara ethnic group were helping Hazara voters to choose Muhammad Mohaqeq, a powerful Hazara leader.
Ms. Nemati said she thought poll workers should not have been placed among their own ethnic group, to avoid the appearance of partiality. "They have not put people in the right place," she said.
Voting in southern and eastern Afghanistan, locked down under heavy security, experienced sporadic violence, though far less than feared.
United Nations and election officials reported several serious attacks by insurgents on or near polling stations by suspected Taliban supporters. Yet quick and determined action by United States and Afghan forces meant that little voting was disrupted, they said.
Eleven people were killed in three separate mine blasts set by insurgents, including eight soldiers in one incident in the north of Kandahar Province, a known Taliban area. Two voters returning from the polls were killed when their tractor hit a mine and a security commander was injured and his driver killed in a mine blast elsewhere in the province.
In the most serious assault, eight or more SUV's of the Taliban mounted an attack on a police station where polling was going on in Dishu district of southern Helmand Province, near the Pakistani border, on Friday afternoon. "The police stood firm and fought off the attack," Joseph Brewin, the head of the Joint Election Management Board in southern Afghanistan. Coalition jets flew over shortly afterward without firing and the attackers fled back across the border to Pakistan, he said.
The problem with multiple registrations would seem to work to the benefit of all candidates. But Mr. Karzai's rivals insisted that only his supporters were engaged in multiple voting. That belief appeared to filter down to voters.
At the Mariam High School in Kabul, the start of voting was delayed because of problems with the ink, and many men left in protest.
The ink did not work as promised, said Ahmad Zia Salimi, 25, a supporter of Mr. Qanooni, "which means that our president is already elected" - a reference to the belief that Mr. Karzai had been selected before the voting. "I feel pity for all the time Afghans spent in this process," he said.
Some Qanooni supporters said they had simply decided not to vote after hearing him denounce the election's validity. "This election is just for show," said Shabir, 20.
But for the majority of Afghans, the act of voting was filled with hope and pride. In Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, thousands lined up to vote despite snowfall.
In Kabul, the day was unseasonably cold and the air clouded with dust, seen by many as a bad omen, yet men in particular began lining up early, and women soon joined them in significant numbers.
At 7:25 a.m., Rita, 18, and her mother, Farida, 40, who like many Afghans use one name, waited outside the Amir Dost Muhammad Khan High School. Inside, a poll worker punched Rita's card, and said "Mubarak!" - congratulations - to the first female voter of the day at the school.
Many voters resolutely refused to say for whom they had cast their ballot, reveling in their right to secrecy.
"In the whole history of Afghanistan this is the first time we come and choose our leader in democratic process and free condition. I feel very proud and I feel very happy," said Muhammad Amin Aslami. He was a Tajik, he said, and had voted for Mr. Karzai, who is Pashtun.
Polling was extended by two hours, to 6 p.m., to account for what officials said was a late influx of female voters in particular.
At his news conference, Mr. Karzai spoke of his relief that the election went relatively peacefully, and said of the ink dispute, "who is the right person here - 15 persons or millions of Afghans?''
Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kandahar Province for this article.
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Afghan Irregularities Prompt Candidates' Protests
October 10, 2004
Inter Press Service/Pajhwok News,
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=3758
KABUL - Voter turnout was heavy in Afghanistan's first direct presidential election in recent history, but irregularities in the voting process prompted calls for the results to be nullified.
Due to a heavy turnout, and despite rain and snow in some mountain areas, polls stayed open an additional two hours in some provinces.
Millions of ethnically diverse Afghan voters crammed polling stations for an election aimed at bringing peace and prosperity to a country nearly ruined by more than two decades of war. Men and women voted at separate booths in keeping with this nation's conservative Islamic leanings.
In order to prevent multiple voting, voters' thumbs were marked with indelible ink. However, in many polling stations washable ink was used, election officials admitted today, and attributed the problem to human error.
"In some places the poll workers didn't understand, and in others, it may have been sabotage by stealing the original markers," said Farouk Wardak, head of the Afghan election board.
Others from the election board said that the ink problem was solved on election day, and caused some polling stations to be closed for only a short time. They rejected claims that election was invalid.
Election workers in Kabul said they used the markers that were provided by the United Nations election organizers. The problem closed at least one polling station in Kabul for an hour, but it reopened when the indelible ink markers were obtained and used.
Due to the voting problems, however, 15 candidates running against interim President Hamid Karzai, asked for the election results to be canceled.
"We have decided to ask that the election should be stopped immediately and the results of today's election are not legal or valid," said Abdul Satar Sirat, a presidential candidate, speaking of behalf of the other candidates.
But the joint UN-Afghan electoral commission ordered the voting to continue and said it would review the protest at a later date.
Karzai said the fate of the vote was in the hands of the electoral body, but added that in his view "the election was free and fair . . . it is very legitimate."
"Who is more important, these 15 candidates, or the millions of people who turned out today to vote?" Karzai said at a news conference. "Both myself and all these 15 candidates should respect our people - because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited for hours and hours to vote."
The ink used on the thumbs was a major problem, said Yunous Qanooni, one of the leading opponents of the Karzai. Qanooni said he appealed to U.S. Ambassador Zalmai Khalilzad to cancel the election because of the problem.
But incidents of multiple voting because of the ink problem were widely reported.
In the Hair Khana district of Kabul, a 25-year-old man who did not give his name said he was able to vote five times, because he was able to wash the ink from his finger.
Although individual voting cards were punched at the voting stations when people voted, as a way to prevent multiple voting in addition to inking fingers, many people reported having more than one voting card.
In Paktia province, reporters for Pajhwok Afghan News saw people wash the ink off their fingers, despite denials from public officials that the ink could be removed.
In the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, a voter who asked not to be identified said that he had voted twice after washing the ink off his fingers.
People in various parts of the country complained that the ink problem was reported in five separate provinces, including Kabul, Konduz, Baghlan, Nangahar and Daikundi.
Officials confirmed that independent election monitors were not allowed to observe in four provinces. Wardak, the head of the election board, said that decision was made to prevent overcrowding in the polling stations.
In Zabul province, the location of frequent pre-election violence, no incidents occurred, officials said. Rather, officials said Mullah Abdul Salam Rakiti, a top Taliban commander, as well as other known Taliban, cast their votes in the election.
One 37-year-old voter in the southern city of Kandahar, Saifudin, said he was very happy to have voted for the first time in his life. "I want the authorities to recognize this day as national holiday," he said. "It to be celebrated."
Initial results are expected in the coming days, but it may take a couple of weeks for all the votes to be counted.
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Politics Puts Hold on Taiwan Arms Purchase
$18.2 Billion Deal for U.S. Weapons Stalled Despite American Warning of China Threat
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20889-2004Oct9?language=printer
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Oct. 10 -- A proposed $18.2 billion purchase of U.S. weapons by Taiwan has bogged down in the island's hard-fought electoral politics despite repeated warnings from the Bush administration that the new arms are imperative to bolster defenses against China.
For some Taiwanese, controversy over the arms package has demonstrated the vitality of Taiwan's democracy, a noisy close to the era when generals could make such decisions behind closed doors. But in the view of Pentagon officials, the objections and politicking have sent the wrong message to Chinese leaders, who have vowed to use force if necessary to regain Taiwan and have arrayed 600 short-range ballistic missiles across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait to reinforce their threat.
Richard Lawless, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for Asian and Pacific affairs, told a Taiwan television network Tuesday that if the purchase of planes, missiles and submarines is not approved before the end of this year, there will be "serious repercussions" for the United States and Taiwan.
"It will be regarded as a signal, if you will, as the attitude of the legislature toward the national defense of Taiwan," Lawless said.
But government and opposition officials said resistance to the arms deal has swelled to the point where there is little chance it can be approved in the legislature, as required, before Taiwan's parliamentary elections, scheduled for Dec. 11. Moreover, the outcome of the vote will help determine whether President Chen Shui-bian's government can ever win approval for such a large purchase, they said.
Retired Adm. Nelson Ku, a leading figure in the opposition People First Party, said the arms package would have to be separated into its various components and renegotiated in order to be approved this year or next year. The Defense Ministry and other parts of Chen's administration have quietly started to scout for cheaper alternatives to U.S. submarines that, at about $12 billion, are the costliest part of the proposed sale, Ku and other officials said.
"If worse comes to worse, maybe there is another way," Foreign Minister Mark Chen said in an interview.
The delay and uncertainty have become a sore point for the Bush administration, which first approved $20 billion to $30 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in 2001. Since then, with growing frustration, Pentagon officials have been urging the island to come up with the money to make a purchase.
The Taiwan Relations Act, adopted in 1979 after Washington accorded diplomatic recognition to the government in Beijing, commits the United States to help Taiwan defend itself and to provide the self-governing island with adequate weaponry. In that context, the readiness of the government here to budget for military equipment -- enough to hold out against a Chinese attack until U.S. help could arrive -- has become a litmus test in Washington for U.S.-Taiwan military ties.
"How can we expect the Americans to support us if we are not willing to come to our own defense?" said Bikhim Hsiao, a legislator in President Chen's Democratic Progressive Party.
Chen, in a National Day message Sunday, portrayed the deal as a vital step toward maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait that should rise above differences among the island's parties. "We should not allow interim political strife to compromise our nation's long-term security," he declared.
Chen's government, after the appointment of a new defense minister, decided in May to buy 12 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft, eight diesel-electric submarines and six PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) missile batteries with a complement of 350-plus missiles. Since then, it has lobbied hard to win support for the purchase, buying billboard space on Taipei buses, sending generals onto television talk shows and dispatching military song-and-dance troupes to provincial towns for national security musicals.
In a display of zeal that produced smiles around the island, Defense Ministry officials recently suggested the price could be borne if Taiwanese would, for a time, forgo drinking pearl milk tea, a local favorite in which flour is mixed into tea and milk, forming tapioca-like bubbles.
"It's expensive, but if we want to maintain peace, we have to make the other side understand we are not going to give up our security," Mark Chen, the foreign minister, said.
Zhang Ya Chung, a former diplomat who teaches at National Taiwan University, has organized a group called Democracy Action Alliance to promote opposing views. His followers staged a rally that drew more than 10,000 people in Taipei two weeks ago, and they have scheduled similar gatherings in other Taiwan cities to fight the sale.
"We think this big amount of weapons cannot protect Taiwan," Zhang said. "China is such a big country. How can Taiwan win an arms race with China?"
Public opinion polls have portrayed a divided picture, with government surveys showing a majority approving the purchase and opposition surveys showing a majority against it. Zhang and other opponents said the public had spoken by defeating a government-sponsored ballot initiative last March asking whether Taiwan should acquire more advanced weapons.
Few in Taiwan have suggested the island does not need at least some of the new arms. Its submarine fleet consists of two World War II Guppies and a pair of Dutch-made Zwaardvis-class craft acquired 16 years ago. By contrast, China could field more than 40 submarines around this 13,800-square-mile island, including quiet Kilo-class craft purchased from Russia and China's own Ming- and Song-class subs.
With the deployment of short-range ballistic missiles in southern China growing by about 75 a year, U.S. and Taiwanese officials here have argued, the need for PAC-3 antimissile systems is obvious. And they said the Orion submarine hunters would be necessary in any conflict to defend against China's growing underwater fleet.
"We are losing our qualitative edge," said Joseph Wu, who heads Chen's key Mainland Affairs Council. But the issue at hand is whether the deal pushed by the Bush administration and adopted by the Chen government is a wise balance of Taiwan's defense needs and its economic resources, opponents said.
"We are not against the military sale, but we have to think about whether we can afford it," said James Song, who heads the People First Party, which is allied with the main opposition group, the Nationalist Party. In an interview, he added: "We must do good shopping. We must get what is best for us."
The Nationalists, who were in power when discussions began on the arms sales during the Clinton administration, so far have maintained an ambiguous position, criticizing Chen's deal but not saying clearly how the party will vote. Political figures said the outcome of voting in December would help shape the Nationalists' stand.
The current legislature will return in late December for a final sitting. By then, the makeup of the newly elected Taiwanese legislature will be known. If Chen's party has a majority in the next legislature, which begins in March, the new atmosphere could favor the government, Bikhim and other politicians suggested. "We are not going to just give up if this doesn't pass now," Bikhim said in an interview.
But the post-election situation is far from clear, other analysts cautioned, and passage of the arms budget as it now stands is not guaranteed even if Chen's party is victorious in December.
Special correspondent Tim Culpan contributed to this report.
-------- business
Boeing Loses Out on Air Force Tanker Deal
Congress Approves Measure to Ban Program Reconfiguring Jets as Refueling Planes
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21044-2004Oct9?language=printer
Congress yesterday barred the Air Force from pursuing a $23 billion deal to lease and then buy tankers from Boeing Co. and raised the possibility that European rival Airbus SAS could compete to build the refueling planes.
The action ends a three-year-old defense program that spurred a federal investigation, the resignation of Boeing's chief executive and a nine-month prison sentence for a former Air Force official who admitted inflating the contract's price to help her job prospects at Boeing.
Under the 2005 defense authorization bill that won final House and Senate approval yesterday, the Air Force can buy as many as 100 of the refueling aircraft through a traditional purchase but not lease them initially, as had been planned. The measure sets aside $100 million to start the program and requires the Air Force to hold a competition for a $5 billion contract to maintain the aircraft. Boeing had been awarded the maintenance work without competition.
Even as they approved the conference report on the $422 billion defense bill, House and Senate members remained split on the outcome for Boeing. Senate members argued that the Air Force is now required to hold a competition to build the refueling planes, which would allow Airbus to compete for the work.
"Any program to acquire tankers must start from the beginning . . . on a traditional budget, procurement, and authorization track," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chief critic of the lease-buy strategy, said in an exchange on the Senate floor with Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Warner said he agreed.
But House members, including Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, disagreed.
"The most important point is we don't have to go back and have another procurement, because if we did that it would take years and years before we would start getting the tankers," said Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), whose district includes thousands of Boeing workers. "And I believe it's the position of the Congress that this is going to be built by an American company."
The Air Force began pushing the program to modernize its fleet of more than 500 aging refueling planes in 2001, arguing had the 40-year-old aircraft were being used heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan and had corrosion problems. Leasing reconfigured 767 passenger planes from Boeing and then buying them at the end of the lease contracts would be more expensive overall but would cost less in the early years, Air Force officials said, and would allow the planes to be delivered quickly.
Critics have complained that the program was an expensive bailout for Boeing's 767 production line. And the merits of the program were overshadowed last year by controversy over improprieties.
Boeing fired former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun for negotiating her job with the company while overseeing Boeing's work at the Air Force, including negotiating the tanker deal. Chief executive and chairman Philip M. Condit resigned after Druyun's dismissal.
On Oct. 1, Druyun was sentenced to nine months in prison after admitting that she inflated the price of the deal as a "parting gift" before her Pentagon retirement to ingratiate herself with Boeing.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is not expected to decide how to modernize the tanker fleet until after the November election, when he is to receive several studies on whether the department should consider alternatives to the 767 tanker. "The Air Force will follow the direction of Congress when the FY 2005 Defense Authorization Bill becomes law," the Air Force said in a statement.
Doug Kennett, a spokesman for Boeing, said: "The need for new aerial refueling tankers is clear and the path forward is clear."
Boeing has been counting on the tanker deal to help sustain its 767 production line, which has faced slumping sales to airlines. Boeing has said it needs to decide whether to close the line by May 2005. If the Air Force decides not to buy the aircraft, the company has said it would take a $300 million charge.
Boeing's stock price fell 2 percent, or $1.22 a share, Friday to close at $50.10. Standard & Poor's lowered Boeing's debt rating to "stable" from "positive" Friday, citing the potential loss of the $5 billion contract to maintain the tanker fleet and the widening investigation after Druyun admitted favoring the company.
The tanker-leasing plan may have died, but the criticism and investigations it spurred are continuing. The Senate Armed Services Committee is still awaiting White House documents related to the deal, which some members have said could shed light on whether the Air Force acted improperly.
The contracting dispute counted another casualty last week. Air Force Gen. Gregory S. Martin withdrew his nomination as U.S. commander for the Pacific and East Asia after McCain indicated that he would bottle up his confirmation because of the contracting scandal.
The House approved the defense authorization measure, 359 to 14. The Senate approved the measure by voice vote.
-------- iraq
Militia to Give Up Arms Under Sadr City Plan
Deal Doesn't Apply to Entire Mahdi Army
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20890-2004Oct9.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 -- Militia fighters in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City are to begin surrendering their mortars, grenades, machine guns and other weapons Monday under an accord with the interim Iraqi government, both sides announced Saturday.
The plan, if it goes forward as mutually agreed by community leaders, Iraqi officials, U.S. commanders and militia leaders, would bring peace to an east Baghdad district that, for weeks, has been a battleground for armored U.S. forces and the mostly poor, young men who make up the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Calm in Sadr City, home to perhaps 2 million people, would significantly boost the prospects for promised January elections, which have been called into question by violence and insecurity in much of the country.
Sadr's militia, which has fought U.S. forces since April, has been the only significant insurgent force from among Iraq's Shiites, who make up a majority of the population and would stand to gain the most from free elections after 30 years of disenfranchisement under Baath Party governments dominated by Sunni Muslims.
"The main point in the agreement is to surrender our weapons, the heavy and medium weapons, which we will open special centers for," said Abdul Hadi Daraji, a Sadr aide.
Mahdi Army fighters -- many of whom sold household appliances and furnishings to buy weapons -- will receive a cash payment for each weapon delivered. Iraq's interim government has also promised to bring hundreds of millions in reconstruction money into Sadr City, where wet garbage and open sewers clog streets and unemployment exceeds 50 percent.
The peace initiative began to take shape last month when Prime Minister Ayad Allawi met with several hundred Sadr City tribal leaders, bidding them to choose development over continued war.
"The objective of this game is to bring these things together so we can have a political process that matters to people," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity in deference to the interim government, which formulated the initiative in cooperation with the U.S. military and the embassy. "We want people to deal with the political process rather than feel they have to pick up a gun."
The plan applies only to Sadr City, stopping well short of the total demobilization of the Mahdi Army that the government has repeatedly demanded. It also follows peace bargains that have been broken by Sadr's forces.
But after weeks of almost nightly bombing raids and relentless pressure by the U.S. armor that killed hundreds of Sadr's militiamen in the southern city of Najaf two months ago, officials calculated that Sadr's camp might finally be ready to renounce armed struggle in its base. Sadr's personal approval of the initiative was announced by an aide Thursday night.
"Obviously, the implications here are bigger than just one city," said Lt. Col. James Hutton of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division. "Moqtada's people are in more than just Baghdad."
In early April and again in August, militiamen took control of several cities in Iraq's south. But the engine of the Mahdi Army has always been the Baghdad slum named for Sadr's late father, a revered grand ayatollah whose memory is frequently invoked by his son.
American forces will remain in Sadr City, U.S. officials emphasized. But as in Najaf and Samarra, a north-central city reclaimed from insurgents last week, Iraqi security forces will take the lead in establishing authority.
Meanwhile, negotiations continued on a plan to restore governmental authority in Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been in the hands of Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters since April.
A delegation from Fallujah met with government officials on Saturday in an attempt to cement a deal that would allow Iraqi National Guard troops into the city of 200,000 in exchange for an end to weeks of daily U.S. airstrikes.
In Garma, a town just northeast of Fallujah, a bearded man in a car rigged with a bomb sped into a convoy of U.S. military Humvees as dusk approached on Saturday.
"There was a Brazilian Passat parked in the street close to the police station, and its owner was standing near the car drinking Pepsi, which he bought from the nearby shop," said Hamoud Gawwan Jumaili, a welder. "He stayed four hours waiting. When he saw the convoy arrive, he went immediately to his car and drove at a crazy speed toward them."
An Iraqi police official said two officers were killed. There was no immediate report of U.S. casualties. Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.
--------
Iraqi Cleric's Militia in Sadr City Promises to Hand Over Arms
October 10, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/middleeast/10iraq.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 9 - Fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, will begin handing over their heavy weapons to the Iraqi police next week from their stronghold in Sadr City, as part of an agreement to disband the militia and end weeks of fighting with American forces, Iraqi and American officials and aides to Mr. Sadr said Saturday.
As part of the deal, American forces have agreed to cease offensive operations in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that forms the core of Mr. Sadr's support.
Iraqi and American officials expressed some caution over the agreement, pointing out the many times that Mr. Sadr, who led two armed uprisings this year that claimed hundreds of Iraqi and American lives, had broken promises to disarm.
And while Mr. Sadr commands intense loyalty among the fighters in his militia, who often boast they will lay down their lives for him, some leaders inside the movement have expressed doubts about whether the fighters would actually obey an order to give up their large weapons. Policing the agreement would be extremely difficult.
The officials said Iraqi police and national guard units would move into the area and begin searching homes for weapons if necessary. Under the agreement, American commanders said they would continue to patrol the neighborhood, but would not attack Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, except in retaliation.
Under the deal, reached at a meeting attended by American officials, Mr. Sadr's fighters will begin surrendering heavy weapons like mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at a agreed sites on Monday. They will have until Friday to complete the surrender.
Any deal that neutralized the Mahdi Army would allow the American military and the Iraqi government to turn their energies toward the insurgency's core, in the Sunni Arab lands north and west of Baghdad.
The accord on Sadr City came on the heels of a joint American and Iraqi military operation in Samarra last week that re-established the formal control of the Iraqi government there. American and Iraqi officials have said they intend to bring large areas of the country under control before national elections set for January. As of Saturday evening, Mr. Sadr had issued no public statement endorsing the agreement. Iraqi and American officials said they would hold off judging the accord until they actually saw Mr. Sadr's fighters turning in their weapons.
Still, American and Iraqi officials expressed optimism about the agreement, and noted that Mr. Sadr has been greatly weakened in recent weeks. It comes after the Mahdi Army's surrender of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf in late August, when Mr. Sadr was upstaged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader.
The deal reached Saturday followed weeks of relentless American military pressure in Sadr City, where American planes have been pounding Mr. Sadr's militiamen from the air nearly every night.
Under terms of the agreement, fighters for the Mahdi Army will receive cash payments for each weapon they surrender. The fighters also will be allowed to keep their automatic weapons, a type held by many Iraqi households. American commanders also said they would restart million of dollars worth of reconstruction projects in Sadr City that the fighting had halted in recent weeks. "God willing, we hope that by the middle of the month, you will see reconstruction projects being carried out for the benefit of the people in Sadr City," said Aqil Abdul Karm al-Saffar, under secretary for national security for the Iraqi government.
If it holds, the agreement would appear to clear the way for Mr. Sadr to take his popular movement into the democratic political arena, something he and his aides have been telling Iraqi leaders for weeks they are intending to do.
For now, officials said the agreement applies only to Sadr City, a large impoverished area with a population of about two million people that is named for Mr. Sadr's father.
The Mahdi Army is believed to have hundreds of fighters in several other cities across southern Iraq like Basra and Amarra. Iraqi and American officials expressed hope that the agreement in Sadr City could be extended to those cities as well.
The agreement reached Saturday followed an offer by Mr. Sadr earlier this week to disband his army, and the release by the Americans of Moayid al-Khazraji, one of his senior aides. For weeks, American military commanders have been hoping that Mr. Sadr's popularity was overblown in Sadr City, and that they could move against his fighters without alienating the local population.
On the streets of Sadr City, locals almost expressed relief at the word that a deal had been struck to end the fighting. Mr. Sadr occupies an odd position here; he has a large following but is not universally loved, and while many Iraqis admire him for standing up to the Americans, many others blame him for bringing the fight to their neighborhood.
"The fight against the Americans and the Iraqi government started because of the poverty and the lack of jobs," said Abas Adbullah, a 55-year-old dealer in spare car parts. "If we could get those things here, there would be no more problems."
Iraqi officials promised they would be watching carefully in the coming days to see whether the Mahdi Army was really giving up its heavy weapons. "The government and our brothers in Sadr City will monitor any breach of this agreement," said Mr. Saffar, the Iraqi national security official.
Negotiations also continued Saturday between the Iraqi government and leaders in Falluja, the western Iraqi city that has fallen under the control of the insurgents. One of the Iraqi negotiators, Khaled al-Jumaili, said the two sides had agreed to meet again in Baghdad on Sunday.
Mr. Jumaili has expressed optimism that the negotiations over Falluja could succeed, and that they could lead to a disarming of the insurgents there and the re-introduction of Iraqi security forces into the city. But Mr. Jumaili and his like-minded leaders in Falluja have run into opposition from the militant leaders on the mujahedeen shura, the group of insurgents that has controlled the city since April.
In Baghdad, an American contractor for the Department of Defense was kidnapped from the Karada neighborhood by a group of armed men, according to private security advisers here. The man's identity was not immediately announced.
A rocket attack on Sunday killed at least four people near the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, Reuters reported. A Reuters cameraman said he saw four bodies in the street near the ministry and the remains of a rocket. It was not immediately clear if there had been any other casualties in the attack.
--------
Two Car Bombs Kill at Least 11 as Rumsfeld Visits Iraq
October 10, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/middleeast/10CND-IRAQ.html?ei=5094&en=6cb7553f1181b99f&hp=&ex=1097467200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 - Two suicide car bombs exploded within 15 minutes of each other today in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 10 Iraqis and one American soldier and injuring at least 15 others, Iraqi and American officials said.
And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in Iraq on an unannounced visit to meet with American and Iraqi forces and military officials.
The first bomb exploded at about 7:15 a.m. next to an American military convoy and initially injured a soldier, military officials said. The soldier later died of his injuries.
The second bombing took place near a police academy on Palestine Street, apparently aimed at a line of recruits standing outside the station. A minibus packed with explosives began speeding up toward the building, across the street from an American base, and appeared to detonate prematurely, witnesses said.
One hospital reported receiving at least 10 bodies and treating the wounds of five people, according to The Associated Press. The police said a total of 15 people were injured in that explosion.
The blast left a crater four feet deep and six feet wide. Iraqi medics scoured the debris-strewn area, picking up a severed arm and other unidentifiable body parts and throwing them into a translucent body bag. Police officers tried holding back a growing and occasionally unruly crowd of bystanders and journalists.
Medics loaded a body wrapped in plastic into an ambulance with wailing sirens and began driving away. But as soon as the ambulance left the perimeter, it hit a horrendous traffic jam. The driver's assistant got out to direct traffic, waving hands sheathed in blood-soaked gloves, but failed to get the ambulance moving for at least an hour.
Nearby, an American medic leaned over an injured Iraqi man lying on a stretcher next to a Humvee that had been peppered with shrapnel. "I'm only going to cut you lightly to get the shrapnel out," the medic said. He cut into the patient and then began stitching him up while Iraqi police officers fanned the man's face with their hats.
The American military said a marine was killed in combat on Saturday in restive Anbar province. At least 1,062 American soldiers have died in the war. The first day of a declared cease-fire between American troops and the militia of the firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr unfolded in Sadr City, a vast slum of 2.2 million people in northeastern Baghdad that is home to Mr. Sadr's most zealous supporters.
Kassim Daoud, the national security adviser, said at a news conference that members of the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr's Shiite militia, will be asked to turn in heavy weapons such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at three police stations in Sadr City. The militia members will be given cash for such weapons, but can keep handguns and AK-47's. The weapons purchase program will start on Monday and continue until Friday.
Mr. Sadr's aides said the cleric is still seeking assurances from the interim Iraqi government that neither its security forces nor American troops will arrest or prosecute people in his organization. Last Thursday, authorities released a senior Sadr cleric, Moayad al-Khazraji, from an American prison, presumably as a sign of goodwill in the negotiations.
Mr. Sadr's aides have said that Mr. Sadr is very interested in getting involved in legitimate politics, especially given the possibility of elections in January, and that this cease-fire could open the way for dissolution of the Mahdi Army.
Since last April, when Mr. Sadr ignited an uprising against the American occupation, it has been difficult to force the cleric into a binding peace agreement. He and his militia have broken several truces, and fighting raged for much of the summer in cities across the south and in Sadr City.
In August, marines engaged in pitched battles with the Mahdi Army in the holy city of Najaf, where Mr. Sadr has his home and office, and wrested control of the central shrine from the militia.
For weeks, the First Cavalry Division has been pounding Sadr City with almost nightly airstrikes, using an AC-130 gunship and fighter jets to attack suspected militia hideouts. Doctors and Sadr officials say civilians have been killed and wounded in the strikes, though the American military insists it does not aim at civilians. In any case, the attacks seem to have helped push Mr. Sadr toward the bargaining table.
"It is a great day for me and for all the people of the city that the fighting has stopped," Ahmad Murad, 32, a shoe salesman, said as he tended to his shop. "Our city needs a lot of work to rebuild it. We suffered a lot under the old regime, and we don't want to suffer now."
Tahseen Majeed, a 28-year-old primary school teacher, expressed surprise about the cease-fire as he stood in a dusty roadway drinking a soda.
"I didn't think this agreement between the Iraqi government and Moktada's group would see fruition because the Americans look for any reason to enter the city, along with the Iraqi Army and police," he said. "The people of the city will hand over their weapons. The city is badly damaged."
A hairdresser named Mosa Esa Meer Hussain voiced a common sentiment in this Shiite slum - that elections take place as scheduled. "The election will give Iraq and Iraqis more strength," he said.
A delegation of tribal sheiks from the insurgent stronghold of Falluja continued meeting today with officials from the Iraqi government to try to hammer out a peace agreement. The American military has been launching virtually daily airstrikes against Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad. As in Sadr City, local residents say the strikes kill civilians.
The talks have been going on for weeks now and have accelerated in the last several days, but Iraqi and American officials have expressed doubts about whether the sheiks with whom they are negotiating actually have the power to tell jihadist groups in Falluja to lay down their arms.
Falluja has become a cauldron of loosely knit insurgent cells, including ones made up of foreign fighters, with many of the groups united under an Islamist banner. The most prominent group is the ruthless One God and Jihad, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Mr. Rumsfeld spent about 12 hours today hopscotching across Iraq visiting American troops in Al-Anbar province, meeting with top military commanders in Baghdad and meeting Iraq's prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
In Kirkuk, he met with Iraqi security officials and reviewed Iraqi troops. He told the chief of police, national guard commander and other security officials that the United States supported training of Iraqi forces but long-term solutions were up to Iraq.
"We can help but we can't do it," he said. "You have to do it."
Mr. Rumsfeld told American marines that as Iraqi forces are built up "we will be able to relieve the stress on our forces and see a reduction in coalition forces over some period of time, probably post-Iraqi election," according to The A.P. "But again, it will depend entirely on the security situation here in this country."
Eric Schmitt, Ashley Gilbertson and Fouad al-Sheikhly contributed reporting for this article.
--------
At Least 8 Killed in Explosion in Baghdad
October 10, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Explosions.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two car bombs shook the capital in quick succession Sunday, killing at least 10 Iraqis and wounding 16, police and hospital officials said. One American soldier was hurt.
A suicide attacker detonated a minibus packed with explosives near an eastern Baghdad police academy, police Cap. Ali Ayez said at the scene.
At least four mangled bodies lay in the street amid scattered shoes, papers and a handbag. Police collected body parts on stretchers.
The dead included three police academy students and a female officer, Ayez said.
U.S. forces helped the wounded, including a police recruit who received stitches in his abdomen.
The nearby Kindi Hospital received 10 bodies and treated five wounded from the blast, said Dr. Ali Ghazi. Police said 15 people were wounded in all.
At least eight cars were damaged and shards of glass covered the street.
Another car bomb exploded near a small market in the area of the Culture Ministry, police Lt. Ahmed Hussain said at the scene. The blast wounded at least one bystander and left a gaping crater in the road.
The bomb may have been aimed at a passing American convoy, Hussain said.
Capt. Mitchell Zornes, of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, confirmed that a convoy was targeted in one of the blasts but wasn't immediately sure which one. One American soldier was wounded and evacuated to a medical facility, he said.
Improvised bombs -- some left by the side of the road, others rigged in vehicles -- have become insurgents' weapon of choice in turbulent Iraq. Police and potential recruits are frequently targeted as insurgents try to thwart U.S. efforts to build a strong Iraqi force capable of taking over security from American troops.
Associated Press Writer Sabah Jerges contributed to this report.
--------
Rumsfeld: Pullout Not Likely Before Vote
October 10, 2004
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RUMSFELD_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) -- The United States may be able to reduce its troop levels in Iraq after the January elections if security improves and Iraqi government forces continue to expand and improve, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.
In a question-and-answer session with hundreds of Marines assembled in a concrete-line aircraft hangar at this desert air base in western Iraq, Rumsfeld was asked what the future holds for the length and frequency of troop deployments in the country.
Rumsfeld, on his first visit to Iraq since its interim government was installed in June, said the insurgent violence is likely to get worse in the weeks ahead, so troop reductions are almost out of the question. The United States now has about 135,000 troops in Iraq.
"Our hope is that as we build up Iraqi forces, we will be able to relieve the stress on our forces and see a reduction in coalition forces over some period of time, probably post-Iraqi elections," the Pentagon chief said. "But again, it will depend entirely on the security situation here in this country."
Before Rumsfeld appeared at the main operating base of the 3rd Marine Air Wing, the approximately 1,500 Marines in his audience were give instructions by Sgt. Maj. Dennis Reed on what not to ask. "Don't ask when you're going home. We'll tell you when you're going home," Reed said.
Rumsfeld then gave a pep talk and fielded questions at a town hall style meeting. "We're so fortunate to be able to count on you in this time of peril," Rumsfeld said to applause.
The secretary later flew to Baghdad and met with U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces.
Accompanying Rumsfeld on the flight in a Black Hawk helicopter was Hazem Shaalan, Iraq's interim defense minister. As a remind of the tenuous security situation in the Iraq capital, the fleet of Black Hawks carrying Rumsfeld and his entourage flew at high speed, just above rooftop level, occasionally zigzagging en route to the International Zone where the U.S. Embassy is located.
In a brief exchange with reporters after the Baghdad meeting, Rumsfeld grew agitated by questions about the possibility of needing to bring in extra American troops before Iraq's scheduled elections.
"There's a fixation on that subject!" he said with exasperation. "It's fascinating how everyone is locked on that."
He asserted that the news media and others are ignoring the fact that the number of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces is growing - standing now at about 100,000 - and that they are fighting and dying.
"They do exist. Over 700 of them have been killed," Rumsfeld said.
Casey told reporters that he and Rumsfeld did not discuss U.S. troops levels in their meeting.
"If I need more troops, as the secretary said, I will ask for them." He added that the number of trained Iraqi forces is going to increase by 45,000 by election time.
Rumsfeld also met with Ayad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, at the government's headquarters not far from the U.S. Embassy. The two sat side by side in large chairs; an Iraqi flag was behind them.
Allawi, referring twice to Rumsfeld as the secretary of state, thanked him for the United States' help in giving Iraqis their freedom.
Rumsfeld replied that it was important for him to meet with Iraqi leaders to talk about preparations for elections and "to make sure they happen and this country continues on a path toward democracy."
The trip was Rumsfeld's sixth to Iraq but his first to Anbar province, which includes portions of the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad. The region had been the heart of tribal support for deposed President Saddam Hussein.
Anbar is an insurgent stronghold, including the provincial capital of Ramadi, and the city of Fallujah, where Marines fought fierce battles in the spring. In recent months, Marines have taken a large share of U.S. causalities.
In light of the violence in Iraq, Rumsfeld's visit was not announced in advance. Reporters traveling with the secretary were instructed not to disclose his plans until he arrived in Iraq from Bahrain aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane.
Later this week, Rumsfeld is attending a meeting of NATO defense ministers Romania. Expected to be on the agenda Wednesday and Thursday are issues such as the alliance's role in Afghanistan, where it commands the International Security Assistance Force, and Iraq, where it has agreed to help train Iraqi security forces.
Another expected topic is the work under way to terminate the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia by the end of this year, when it is scheduled to be turned into a European Union security mission. The United States now has about 700 troops in Bosnia and 1,800 in Kosovo.
On Saturday, Rumsfeld was aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf for a meeting with 18 of his counterparts from U.S. allies in the terrorism fight. The ministers discussed the way ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
-------- israel / palestine
The High Cost of Israel's Gaza Mission: Innocent Victims
October 10, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/middleeast/10mideast.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, Oct. 9 - With helicopters circling overhead and tanks parked on the fringes of the largest Palestinian refugee camp, Israeli forces are trying to pick off masked militants who are shooting at the soldiers and launching rockets into Israel.
The mission is difficult. The militants are elusive, darting through the camp's narrow alleys, and civilians are everywhere, with children filling the streets. The result is that many of the casualties are innocents.
In 11 days of fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have killed at least 90 Palestinians, including about 55 militants and 35 civilians, according to Palestinian hospital officials.
The dead include 18 Palestinians who were 16 or younger, according to a count by The Associated Press. In addition, most of the wounded, numbering at least 300, have been noncombatants, hospital officials say.
The Israeli offensive in northern Gaza has claimed more Palestinian lives than any operation since the military swept through Palestinian cities in the West Bank in the spring of 2002 in response to a wave of suicide bombings. Over all, several hundred Palestinians were killed.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops went door-to-door in Palestinian cities, and the military also suffered substantial casualties. Now, in Gaza, the Israelis are sticking to the relative safety of their tanks and armored vehicles, and just two soldiers have been killed. But this also means the troops tend to be firing powerful weapons into congested areas from a distance.
In many instances, Israel has singled out militants among large groups of civilians. In an airstrike Tuesday evening, the Israelis fired on a busy street in downtown Gaza City. One missile missed, but the second destroyed the intended target, a white sedan, killing a leading figure in the Islamic Jihad faction, Bashir al-Dabash, and a bodyguard. Three passers-by were lightly wounded.
Several hours later, at about 1 a.m. Wednesday, an Israeli tank came under fire in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya. Israeli forces responded by shelling a house that they believed was the source of the attack, according to the military.
However, Palestinian ambulance drivers and survivors said three houses were hit by three separate shells. In one, a father and son were killed. In another, a teenage boy was killed in his bed. And in the Filfil family home, a five-story building, a shell crashed through a top-floor window and slammed into the living room where the parents and nine children had gathered in an effort to stay safe.
"We were awake from fear, and I was making tea for the family," said Sumaya Filfil, 36, the mother of the children, who range from 7 months to 13 years old. "Suddenly we heard an explosion and were thrown to the floor."
The entire family was sprayed with shrapnel, and they are now recovering in three separate hospitals. Mrs. Filfil and several of her children share a single room. All have faces reddened from cuts.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he is determined to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza next year. But he also says he will not allow Palestinians to fire rockets at Israeli communities without a response.
Still, Israel was wary of waging a large-scale campaign in northern Gaza out of concern that its troops would get bogged down in urban fighting. The military has acknowledged Palestinian civilian casualties, and it says they are unintentional.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Mr. Sharon, said: "Israel carefully weighs the dangers to civilians. But we feel the terrorists were using civilian areas as their shields. Remember, they are deliberately targeting our civilians. Their rockets forced us into this."
Palestinians have fired about 450 rockets in the past three years, most launched from northern Gaza and directed at the Israeli town of Sederot. Four Israelis have been killed, including two children, ages 2 and 4, who were struck on Sept. 29.
Despite the large Israeli military presence, estimated at 200 armored vehicles, the vast majority of Palestinian families have defiantly remained in their homes, even those on the front lines, like the Filfils.
The Filfil family is prosperous and can afford to move from the Beit Lahiya area until the danger passes. Gaza City is just a few miles away and has been largely unaffected.
"Why should I run? This is our house," Mrs. Filfil said.
And when the family members recover, where will they go if Israeli tanks are still parked outside?
"I would go straight home, and take my kids," she said.
Palestinians cite several reasons for staying in the face of such danger. Many have large families and are extremely poor, saying they have no money to move out and no place to go. Others want to express solidarity with the Palestinian militants.
Older Palestinians recall the 1948-9 war at Israel's independence, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes, and say they fear the same thing could happen again.
"The catastrophe of 1948 will not be repeated," said Dr. Mahmoud al-Asali, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, which has treated most of the casualties. "We say, 'We will die here, but we will not leave here.' "
On Saturday, Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinian militants in northern Gaza, the military said. Also, a helicopter missile strike killed two armed Palestinians in the southern town of Khan Yunis, the military said. Palestinians said the two were policemen.
While Israeli armored vehicles are parked along the eastern and southern edges of the Jabaliya camp, a warren of cinderblock buildings housing more than 100,000 Palestinians, life inside the camp goes on.
Pedestrians clog the streets, making it difficult to maneuver a car. Policemen casually watch over some corners, and men sit on the front steps of shops, sipping tea.
The deceptive normality is frequently interrupted by Israeli drones, buzzing overhead like lawnmowers in the sky, though they are difficult to spot even on a cloudless day.
In such a congested place, children play in the streets, and teenagers gravitate toward the tanks to throw stones or Molotov cocktails.
On Thursday, Sliman Abu Ful, and one of his relatives, Raed Abu Zeid, both 15, were killed by a helicopter missile as they approached to within a couple hundred yards of Israeli tanks, witnesses said.
Family members said the youths were using an empty plastic tube to simulate the firing of a rocket. The Israeli military said the helicopter fired after two Palestinians were seen trying to launch a rocket.
Mrs. Ful said she and her elderly husband tried to keep their son away from the Israeli tanks, to no avail.
"I told him to stay at home or go to school," she said as she wept. "But every day the Israelis were there, he would go. He always told me, 'Forgive me, but I want to be a martyr.' "
As Sliman's body was carried from his house into the street, another noisy funeral procession was in progress just a block away, this one for a teenager who died of wounds suffered last week.
"We won't bow to the Israelis or Americans," said a Palestinian man over a loudspeaker. Then he continued, "Raise your hand if you want to be a martyr." Dozens of young hands shot up in unison.
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Lost boys of Gaza
Oct. 10, 2004
Toronto Star
by MITCH POTTER
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1097358613608&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
JABALYA, Gaza Strip-One side accuses Palestinian gunmen of using children as human shields, a cruelty so callous as to have no equal.
And one side accuses Israeli soldiers of trigger-happy indifference, methodically felling the very young with deadeye abandon.
But there is a third truth here on the unspeakably mean streets of the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
It speaks not so much to the sickening concepts of Israelis or Palestinians spending children as if they were mere shekels, but rather to a notion even more horrifying - that the social order here has broken down so completely that the children are simply spending themselves.
As of yesterday, there were 18 children among the confirmed toll of 94 Palestinians killed since Sept. 28, when Israel's tanks rolled into northern Gaza in a massive invasion to staunch the flow of rockets flying toward the civilians of Israel proper.
Whether by helicopter gunship fire, the missiles of unmanned military drones or the periodic tank shells that pierce the eastern side of this compressed cinderblock city of 106,000, Israel is not only getting its man, it is getting a boy hovering fatally close to the action.
Last Sunday morning, 12-year-old Mohammed al-Najar was one such boy.
He went missing from home around 7:30, slipping out silently after his morning shower and making his way against his father's orders to Prep A, the U.N. school where the vanguard of Israeli tanks had taken up positions.
The family's search began soon after.
At noon, Mohammed was found - just another in a row of unidentified bodies at nearby Gaza City's Shifa Hospital.
His face was gone, shorn by a tank shell. But there was a telltale burn on his left arm from a kitchen fire two weeks ago. That is how the family knew it was Mohammed.
On Tuesday, the boy's father, Diab al-Najar, 32, welcomed the Star to the family mourning tent with the familiar look of the newly haunted.
But there was something else in his crumpled face - humiliation.
"I didn't know. He just went out. Alone. Nobody saw it. And now he is gone," said al-Najar, who rose abruptly, unable to continue.
His cousin, Ismail, picked up the story, filling in details.
"Mohammed wanted to go to the school, every day - just to see what was happening," Ismail said. "We are frightened, but kids like Mohammed think it's a game. That's the problem."
He said Mohammed's parents "knew what he wanted, so they tried locking him up.
"But nobody has had any sleep in a week because of the fighting, and under so much tension and uncertainty, it's like a brain cancer.
"The camp is so small, the houses are so crowded. People have to go outside just to breathe."
But what relatives cannot say, the other children of the neighbourhood can and will.
In separate interviews, Mohammed's playmates spoke of how he emerged as a ringleader in recent days, urging a gang of boys toward the firing lines, as near as possible to the gunmen of Hamas, Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Islamic Jihad.
"Sometimes, we throw stones at the Israelis. But mostly we just want to watch," said Ali Abu Nadah, 15.
"It is like a game, where you are afraid and not afraid at the same time."
And it seems that Mohammed was especially drawn to this dangerous game.
"He wanted to be seen as a strong person. Every time there is an incursion, he was there," explained Hamzi Khalib, 14, who says he declined Mohammed's exhortations.
"When we told him, `No, we won't go,' he said, `You are weak. You are nothing.'"
Samir Qouta, a clinical psychologist with the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre, has seen a lot of Mohammeds come and go.
The pattern he sees emerging, at the start of the fifth bloody year of intifada, is a generation of Gazawi boys so traumatized by multiple layers of political violence that they no longer view their father as a figure of power.
That speaks volumes in an Arab world where patriarchy, as the overriding social order, remains so entrenched and compelling that even grown men seldom disobey the commands of their elderly fathers.
"In Gaza, the entire psyche has changed," says Qouta. "The days when a boy looked to his father for security and safety have collapsed.
"The role of hamula - the tribe - is breaking down; the social structure is tearing apart. And so there is a certain kind of disobedience that takes hold."
Taysir Diab, a field psychiatrist with the Gaza centre, says that by the time Palestinian boys reach adolescence, the need for a powerful male role model in their life draws them into the streets, "where they see fighters with guns as their new father figures."
In the case of Mohammed al-Najar, the exact circumstances of death may never be known.
Perhaps he had more motivation than most to confront the Israeli onslaught of the past 10 days, if only because his refugee family comes from the outskirts of what is now Sderot - just over the fence on the Israeli side - the very town whose civilian casualties from homemade Palestinian Qassam rockets prompted the Israeli invasion in the first place.
His Uncle Ismail doubts it because, in an admission rare among Palestinians, he says the family doesn't expect to ever move back.
"The place we lived before the war of 1948 is now (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's private ranch," he says. "But now Gaza is our home. Just because Sderot is our original home doesn't mean we agree with the missiles."
Whatever the reason for Mohammed's demise, it came in the context of a downward social spiral throughout Gaza that has many experts worried.
The dimensions of decline are sobering, they say, even for a region as chronically depressed as Gaza.
The severity of the social crisis was underscored Wednesday by an extraordinary warning from 12 separate U.N. agencies, convened under the auspices of the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The U.N. says that 66 per cent of Gazawis now live in poverty, defined as an income of less than $2 a day.
That figure is projected to climb above 72 per cent by 2006, as Israeli security concerns result in an ever-tightening matrix of travel restrictions, roadblocks and house demolitions.
The U.N. data estimates that 24,547 Palestinians in Gaza have had their homes knocked down by armoured Israeli bulldozers since fighting broke out four years ago, with a monthly average of 120 residential buildings levelled each month in 2004, as the army peels back buildings it says are used for cover by gunmen.
If anecdotal evidence counts for anything, Gaza's alarming social disintegration is instantly evident on the streets of refugee camps such as Jabalya, where the increasingly aggressive shebab - the seemingly endless wave of young, edgy boys - routinely swarms the few foreigners who enter.
They mimic, they mock, they tug on sleeves and they reach into pockets, often demanding money, pens, paper or anything else that catches their eye.
A casual observer might reach for the wrong words to describe the brazen harassment. Baby velociraptors whose claws have not yet grown - that is the bleak image that first sprang to my mind.
At each stop, journalists have but a few minutes to work before the crowd swells beyond the point of safety.
A fast exit to the next location is made, and you drive away thinking: If this is the third intifada in waiting, Israelis are in more trouble than they know.
Psychiatrist Diab says there is acute irony in the fact that a child who thrusts himself into such a dangerous scenario is actually acting on a subconscious impulse for control.
"Another reason they play this game is that it is a way of coping with their fear of life under continuous trauma. It stems from a hunger for control in a situation where they have no control."
Mohammad Mukhaimer, a field psychologist with the Gaza centre, says the final factor driving children toward the front lines is an unprocessed desire to play "martyr."
Lacking in maturity, yet inculcated in an environment where the only social elements growing in stature are the militant movements, the children of Gaza seem not to know the difference between play-acting and the real thing.
Says Mukhaimer: "It is the fantasy of the child, this notion that sticks and stones can destroy tanks. We see this risk-taking behaviour, especially among 12- to 17-year-olds, where they imitate the idea of becoming a martyr without making any calculation of what it really means."
The circumstances surrounding the deaths of two of Gaza's most recent victims underscore his point.
On Thursday morning, two Gazawi boys, ages 14 and 15, were play-acting on the fringes of Beit Lahiya, which lies in the heart of the 9.5-kilometre "buffer zone" claimed under the current Israeli army operation.
Using a plastic tube and a bottle filled with gasoline, according to witnesses, the duo imitated the work of Hamas squads whose homemade Qassam rockets aimed at Sderot have so vexed the Israeli border town over the course of the Palestinian intifada.
But imitation, in this case, cost the boys their lives when an unmanned Israeli surveillance drone flying overhead mistook them for attackers.
The Israeli army unit that flew the drone by remote control spotted what looked like preparations for a rocket attack on its monitors and immediately dispatched a missile, killing the boys instantly.
Even when they are not deadly, the games these children play says much about the nature of the conflict.
For example, some therapists studying the children of Rafah - the southernmost Gazan city and a hotbed of anti-Israel militancy - have observed young Palestinians play-acting both sides of this war.
The most sought-after role is that of the Israeli soldier, which, from the vantage of southern Gaza, remains far and away the strongest presence around.
But what is rarely picked up by the television cameras here is that no matter how brazen they may seem, at the end of the day, the children of Gaza shrink back to their traumatized selves.
Says Mukhaimer: "The mothers have a saying: `Big heroes by day, little babies by night.' They become terrified, they have bad dreams, there is bed-wetting. All the classic symptoms come out in the end."
However hopeless it sounds, clinical psychologist Samir Qouta is not yet ready to declare psychological defeat for the Palestinian future.
His most recent research, a survey of 944 children ages 10 to 19 selected randomly from all parts of Gaza, showed that - more than anything else - these kids just want to get on with their lives.
"For one dimension of the survey, we showed each child a photograph of a girl called `Fatima' staring out into empty space," explains Qouta. "We asked children to imagine what her problems might be, and how they, the children, might solve them.
"We found that 66 per cent of the children wanted her to concentrate on school, while 9 per cent thought she could be a martyr. Another 9 per cent spoke of encouraging the peace process.
"It tells us that, despite all the trauma, the great majority can still imagine a better life one day."
And, he adds: "I can see the hope in the faces of the kids. I think for many of them, there is a resilience. It is almost as if they have drawn on all they have been through, as if to vaccinate themselves against further trauma."
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The CIA 'old guard' goes to war with Bush
By Phillip Sherwell in Washington
10/10/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/10/wbush10.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/10/ixnewstop.html
A powerful "old guard" faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.
The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush. Head to head: Bush and Kerry
Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such "viciousness and vindictiveness" in a battle between the White House and the agency.
John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: "When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences."
Relations between the White House and the agency are widely regarded as being at their lowest ebb since the hopelessly botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored exiles under President John F Kennedy in 1961.
There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.
Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings.
The leaks are also a shot across the bows of Porter Goss, the agency's new director and a former Republican congressman. He takes over with orders from the White House to end the in-fighting and revamp the troubled spy agency as part of a radical overhaul of the American intelligence world.
Bill Harlow, the former CIA spokesman who left with the former director George Tenet in July, acknowledged that there had been leaks from within the agency. "The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for all the failings over Iraq," he said. "It deserves some of the blame, but not all of it. People are chafing at that, and that's the background to these leaks."
Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages.
In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney "blew up" when a report into links between the Saddam regime and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist behind the kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq, including the Briton Kenneth Bigley, proved inconclusive.
Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war.
Critics of the White House include officials who have served in previous Republican administrations such as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism and member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan.
"These have been an extraordinary four years for the CIA and the political pressure to come up with the right results has been enormous, particularly from Vice-President Cheney.
"I'm afraid that the agency is guilty of bending over backwards to please the administration. George Tenet was desperate to give them what they wanted and that was a complete disaster."
With the simmering rows breaking out in public, the Wall Street Journal declared in an editorial that the administration was now fighting two insurgencies: one in Iraq and one at the CIA.
In a difficult week for President Bush leading up to Friday's presidential debate, the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group confirmed that Saddam had had no weapons of mass destruction, while Mr Rumsfeld distanced himself from the administration's long-held assertion of ties between Saddam and the al-Qaeda terror network.
Earlier, unguarded comments by Paul Bremer, the former American administrator of Iraq who said that America "never had enough troops on the ground", had given the row about post-war strategy on the ground fresh impetus.
With just 23 days before the country votes for its next president, both sides are braced for further bruising encounters.
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For Marines, a Frustrating Fight
Some in Iraq Question How and Why War Is Being Waged
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20794-2004Oct9?language=printer
ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- Scrawled on the helmet of Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez are the letters FDNY. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
"To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20.
Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy.
"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."
Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the "81s" expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The Marines offered their opinions openly to a reporter traveling with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines during operations last week in Babil province, then expanded upon them during interviews over three days in their barracks at Camp Iskandariyah, their forward operating base.
The Marines' opinions have been shaped by their participation in hundreds of hours of operations over the past two months. Their assessments differ sharply from those of the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration, which have said that Iraq is on a certain -- if bumpy -- course toward peaceful democracy.
"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years," said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. "I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."
The views of the mortar platoon of some 50 young Marines, several of whom fought during the first phase of the war last year, are not necessarily reflective of all or even most U.S troops fighting in Iraq. Rather, they offer a snapshot of the frustrations engendered by a grinding conflict that has killed 1,064 Americans, wounded 7,730 and spread to many areas of the country.
Although not as highly publicized as attacks in such hot spots as Fallujah, Samarra and Baghdad's Sadr City, the violence in Babil province, south of the capital, is also intense. Since July 28, when the Marines took over operational responsibility for the region, 102 of the unit's 1,100 troops have been wounded, 85 in combat, according to battalion records. Four have been killed, two in combat.
Senior officers attribute the vast difference between the number of killed and wounded to the effectiveness of armor -- bullet-proof vests, helmets and reinforced armored vehicles, primarily Humvees -- in the face of persistent attacks. As of last week, the Marines had come upon 61 roadside bombs, nearly one a day. Forty-nine had detonated. Camp Iskandariyah was hit by mortar shells or rockets on 12 occasions; 21 other times, insurgents tried to hit the base and missed.
Realities on the Ground
Several members of the platoon said they were struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the United States and the reality of their daily lives.
"Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh, it's getting better and better,' " said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa. "But when you're here, you know it's worse every day."
Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the upcoming U.S. elections. "Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out say it," he said. "They can't get into it."
Maio said that when he arrived in Iraq, "I didn't think I was going to live this long, in all honesty." He added, "it ain't that bad. It's just part of the job, I guess."
As a reporter began to ask Maio another question, the interview was interrupted by the scream of an incoming rocket and then a deafening explosion outside the platoon's barracks. Pandemonium ensued.
"Get down! Get down!" yelled the platoon's radio operator, Cpl. Brandon Autin, 21, of New Iberia, La., his orders laced with profanity. "Get in the bunker! Get in the bunker now!"
Members of the platoon raced out of their rooms to a 5-by-15-foot bunker, located outside at the end of the one-story building. The dirt-floor room was protected by a low ceiling and walls built out of four-foot-thick sandbags. Once in the bunker, several Marines lit cigarettes, filling the already-congested room with smoke.
"The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman," said Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga., agreed: "We're basically proving out that the government is wrong," he said. "We're catching them in a lie."
Senior officers said they shared many of the platoon's frustrations but added that it was difficult for low-level Marines to see the larger progress being made across Iraq. Maj. Douglas Bell, the battalion's executive officer, said "one of the most difficult things about the insurgency is identifying the enemy."
Bell said it was frustrating for "every Marine in the battalion" to search for insurgents on a daily basis, only to be attacked repeatedly with bombs and mortars detonated or launched by an invisible enemy. "You want to get your hand around his frigging collar and kick his ass," Bell said. "But they slip away."
Bell said Marines offering dire predictions for Iraq were not taking into account the training of the new Iraqi security forces. He said the installation of the new Iraqi army, Iraqi National Guard and police across the country would lay the foundation for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
"That's how we're going to get out of Iraq," Bell said. "That's how America is going to get out of Iraq."
The Marines acknowledged that the elusiveness of the insurgents was frustrating. "You don't really know who you're fighting. You're more or less fighting objects," said Elston, the lance corporal from New Jersey. "You see something on the side of the road. It blows up."
But the Marines said their frustrations run deeper. Several said the Iraqi security forces who are supposed to ultimately replace them were nowhere near ready and may never be.
"They can't take care of themselves," said Lance Cpl. Matthew Combs, 19, of Cincinnati, who added that he didn't think the National Guardsmen "can do anything. They just do what we tell them to do."
The Price of Precaution
The Marines also expressed frustration that they were unable to fight more aggressively because of restraints in the rules of engagement imposed by senior commanders.
The rules, which require Marines to positively identify their target as hostile before shooting, are cumbersome in the face of urban guerrilla warfare, several of them said.
"When we get called out, we'll sit there staging there for an hour," Maio said. "By the time we're ready to move, they're up and gone. A few weeks ago, the Iskandariyah police station was under attack. We staged for damn near an hour before we went out. It's stupid. You have to wait to get approval and all this other stuff."
Kelly, the lance corporal from Alaska, said he understood the need to protect civilians but that the restraints were jeopardizing American lives. "It seems as if they place more value on obeying the letter of the law and sacrificing our lives than following the spirit of the law and getting the job done," he said of his commanders.
Bell said the Marines' frustration was understandable but that it was extremely difficult to make a determination of hostile intent following a roadside bombing that might have been detonated by anything from a remote-controlled toy car to a cell phone. "That's a pretty difficult decision to make for a 19-year-old kid," he said.
Lance Cpl. Jeremy Kyrk, 21, of Chicago, said the insurgents took advantage of the limitations imposed on U.S. troops. "They don't give us any leeway, they don't give us any quarter," he said. "They catch people and cut their heads off. They know our limits, but they have no limits. We can't compete with that."
A Decision to Serve
Perez said the frustrations inherent in the war became apparent almost immediately after he arrived in Iraq in late July. A Colombian immigrant, he said he decided to join the Marine Corps after attending the funeral of a friend who had died in the Sept. 11 attacks. The friend, Thomas Hetzel, was a volunteer firefighter at the Franklin Square & Munson Fire Department on Long Island, where Perez also volunteered.
At the time, Perez was studying criminal justice at Nassau Community College. "While I was at the funeral I was looking at his little daughter cry," he said. "He had a pregnant wife and two kids. I just said, 'All right, this is what I want to do.' "
But Perez said he came to think that war in Iraq was unrelated to his anger. "How do I put this?" he said. "First of all, this is a whole different thing. We're supposed to be looking for al Qaeda. They're the ones who are supposedly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. This has no connection at all to Sept. 11 because this war started just by telling us about all the nuclear warheads over here."
Snyder, who was listening, added: "Pretty much I think they just diverted the war on terrorism. I agree with the Afghanistan war and all the Sept. 11 stuff, but it feels like they left the bigger war over there to come here. And now, while we're on the ground over here, it seems like we're not even close to catching frigging bin Laden."
Perez said he thought that in some ways he was still fighting terrorists "and I can see how they might attack the United States in the future. It's a link, but it's not really based in the same thing."
Perez added that he now believes the primary reason for the U.S. presence is to help the Iraqis. "But they don't seem like they want to be helped," he said. "I've only been here two months, but every time you go out, people give you bad looks and it just seems like everybody wants to shoot you."
Questioning Orders
The frustration of the Marines was evident one afternoon last week as members of the platoon traveled from Forward Operating Base Kalsu back to Camp Iskandariyah. An attack had reportedly taken place in the area, and members of the platoon were asked to leave their Humvees and walk up a road to look for suspicious activity.
Traffic quickly began to pile up: cars packed with families, trucks loaded with animals and vegetables. The line of vehicles would have taken hours to search. An order was suddenly passed for the Marines to search all buses for insurgents or weapons.
"This is what we call a dog-and-pony show," said Kelly, the heavyset, sharp-tongued lance corporal from Fairbanks. He said the operation was essentially a performance for American reporters who were traveling with the Marines. "This is so you can write in your paper how great our response is," he said.
Combs and another Marine boarded a small bus packed mostly with women and children. He walked up the center aisle carrying his M-16 assault rifle, then got off, disgusted.
"We just scared the living [expletive] out of a bunch of people," he said. "That's all we did."
When the Marines returned to their truck, Autin and Kelly began to debate the merits of the American presence in Iraq.
"And, by the way, why are we here?" Autin said.
"I'll tell you why we're here," Kelly replied. "We're here to help these people."
Autin agreed and said he supported the mission.
He added later that it was difficult to wage the battle when American commanders were holding them back.
"We feel they care more about Iraqi civilians than they do American soldiers," he said.
Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, Autin responded: "We don't give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?"
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Bliss gets $19.4 million for upgrades
El Paso Times
Diana Washington Valdez
Sunday, October 10, 2004
http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20041010-179090.shtml
The U.S. House of Representatives Saturday approved $19.4 million for training and operation facilities at Fort Bliss. The legislation is expected to pass the Senate by Monday and go to the White House this week for President Bush's signature.
"This bill will provide the soldiers of Fort Bliss with greater resources to carry out their mission," said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who has helped push the funding legislation for the project through the Senate.
As part of the legislation, $16.5 million was approved for Fort Bliss to construct a missile defense instruction facility and $2.9 million to build a tactical equipment shop.
Originally, the act also contained $3.6 million for a new Criminal Investigation Division field operations building, but as of Friday, "it looks like that didn't make it for this funding cycle. The senator plans to include it again in the following year's budget," said Kevin Schweers, Hutchison's spokesman in Washington, D.C.
Fort Bliss is home of the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy and other units.
Fort Bliss plans to construct the new missile instruction building at J.E.B. Stuart and Pershing streets, said Jean Offutt, spokeswoman for the post. "The project will take about two years to complete once construction begins," she said.
When it is eventually funded, the Criminal Investigation Division field operations building will house an administration area, a polygraph suite, an arms room, a secure evidence depository, suspect isolation areas, observation and interview areas, and a photo ID and fingerprinting room.
"Right now, the CID unit is spread out over several buildings at the post," Offutt said. "Having all their missions in one place will provide them with a major advantage."
The CID unit at Fort Bliss is part of the 11th Military Police Battalion. Army detectives investigate felonies, including violent crimes, fraud, thefts and robberies.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.
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Ex-DAFB commander says troops used as guinea pigs
Military denies that illness of pilots, crew caused by squalene
10/10/2004
The News Journal
By LEE WILLIAMS and HIRAN RATNAYAKE
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/10/10exdafbcommander.html
A former Dover Air Force Base commander says military officials used his troops as guinea pigs in illegal medical experiments under the government's controversial anthrax vaccination program.
After some of his troops in their 20s and 30s began developing arthritis, neurological problems, memory loss and incapacitating migraine headaches, Col. Felix Grieder took a drastic step. In 1999, he halted the vaccination program in Dover, a move he said ended his military career. The decorated Air Force colonel has spent the past five years trying to discover the truth about the vaccine program in Dover, where he commanded 4,000 troops.
"In my opinion, there was illegal medical experimentation going on," says Grieder, who lives in Texas.
Grieder has interviewed scores of his former pilots and crew who say they have had life-altering reactions to the vaccine.
"They would have no reason to lie. I believed them," he recalls. "I wanted to talk to them face to face."
Dover is now ground zero in the controversy because troops there were injected with anthrax vaccine containing squalene, a fat-like substance that occurs naturally in the body. Squalene boosts a vaccine's effect, but some scientists say injecting even trace amounts of it into the body can cause serious illness.
Government officials have acknowledged that the Department of Defense secretly tested squalene on human beings in Thailand. Grieder believes they did the same in Dover.
In a March 1999 report, the General Accounting Office accused the Defense Department of a "pattern of deception" and said the military confirmed human tests involving squalene only after investigators found out about them.
The Department of Defense says vaccine sent to Dover was accidentally contaminated with squalene. Grieder and other officers believe, however, that it was intentionally introduced to test pilots and crew in Dover.
The Defense Department made anthrax inoculations mandatory for all active-duty military personnel in 1998. The immunization order, which remains in effect today, calls for six shots over an 18-month period. Defense officials deny that military personnel were illegally used as guinea pigs to test a vaccine containing squalene.
But a News Journal investigation raises significant questions about the military's denials and the safety of the vaccine:
• Of the first 50 batches of vaccine distributed worldwide for the mandatory inoculations, only five contained squalene - and those were all shipped to Dover. After denying for more than a year that there was squalene in the vaccinations given at Dover, the Air Force admitted in 2000 that it had been wrong.
• The five batches of vaccine sent to Dover contained increasing concentrations of squalene, Food and Drug Administration tests show. Some scientists say the pattern of squalene concentration could indicate that the military was measuring the troops' response to different dosages. Professor Dave Smith, a microbiologist at the University of Delaware, is one: "I'm certainly not saying they did or didn't do it. But you have to ask yourself, if you have five data points like that, what are the odds of that happening?"
• The Defense Department has rejected the evidence that the vaccine ever contained squalene. It has steadfastly contended that FDA technicians introduced squalene into the vaccine test via a "dirty fingerprint." The FDA has refused to explain its laboratory procedures for the tests. The military has never retested its stockpile of vaccine for squalene, claiming that, even if the amounts of squalene detected by the FDA were accurate, the concentrations were too low to affect human health. The department continues to require the vaccination for all military personnel - active duty, reserve and National Guard.
• Tulane University professor Robert Garry testified before Congress that even trace amounts of squalene injected into the human body suppress the immune system. In an interview with The News Journal, he said the body's response can cause some young and middle-age people to get illnesses normally associated with aging.
• Tulane University professor Pamela Asa and Baylor College of Medicine professor Dorothy Lewis have concluded that squalene's possible links to serious human illnesses should be studied further. The military has dismissed Asa's studies as inconclusive, although it has conducted no follow-up research on the health effects of squalene.
Troops' consent required
Military and international law expressly forbid experiments on troops without their informed consent. Federal law prohibits the testing of any drugs on human beings without approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
An estimated 1.9 million service members have received anthrax vaccine. Experts disagree widely over how many of them have experienced ill effects from the vaccine. Estimates range from 0.007 percent, or 13,000 people, by the Air Force to 84 percent, or 1.6 million people, by the GAO.
The military has generally refused to discuss details about the Dover vaccine that contained squalene. Air Force officials in Dover recently directed troops not to discuss their experiences with reporters. The News Journal spoke to dozens of Air Force pilots and crew members, but only a handful were willing to come forward publicly.
Military personnel said they were afraid they could face a court-martial for speaking publicly because it would violate an order to keep silent. Former military personnel, many of whom have taken jobs with commercial airlines, said they could lose their jobs if the extent of their illnesses became known.
Military spokespeople refer all inquiries to a Web site - called the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program or AVIP - that contains unsigned articles and information from unidentified sources. Civilian scientists such as Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Web site lacks scientific credibility.
The military says there is no link between squalene, the vaccine and the illnesses reported by servicemen and servicewomen. But military medical records of two Dover servicemen reviewed by The News Journal link all three, and some troops have received medical waivers from receiving future shots.
In February 2003, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center wrote in a medical assessment of Senior Airman Daniel Tam of Dover: "We have recently encountered numerous service members who have precipitation and exacerbation of headache syndromes with concomitant receipt of the anthrax vaccine. The immunopathogenic mechanism has yet to be established."
Tam suffers from severe migraine headaches and has been placed on 100 percent military disability.
Some civilian experts say squalene suppresses the immune system so that people predisposed to specific illnesses can get sick years earlier than normal. Some young troops have reported illnesses usually seen by people in their 60s and 70s.
One Dover pilot, who received at least one injection with squalene, said he is able to function only by taking painkillers every day.
"Without my meds, I can't shower or feed myself. I'm non-functional," he said. "Without my meds, I curl up into a fetal ball."
Evidence of squalene
The FDA gave limited approval for the Defense Department to test vaccines boosted with squalene during the 1990s. The results of those tests are confidential. But the FDA has not given final approval for human use in the United States.
Asa voiced concerns about the possibility of squalene in anthrax vaccine as early as 1994. In August 1997, retired Vice Adm. Harold M. Koenig, then surgeon general of the Navy, said his office began receiving inquiries about the danger of the anthrax vaccine.
"I sent a request to the Army to ask for information, and they said there had been squalene in trace amounts in vaccines for a long, long time," Koenig said.
That same year, Asa and Tulane University researchers Yan Cao and Garry tested the blood of 56 patients, most suffering with symptoms, and found that most of the samples had antibodies - proteins produced by the immune system to fight harmful foreign substances - to squalene. Their research, published in February 2000 in the journal Experimental and Molecular Pathology, concluded that even trace amounts of squalene could cause autoimmune disorders.
Dover is ground zero
In April 1999, as word of Asa's work spread, Grieder asked the Pentagon to brief him and his pilots. The Air Force sent a lieutenant colonel to Dover, but the briefing wasn't well received.
"The guy made just ridiculous comments," Grieder said.
Retired Lt. Col. Jay Lacklen, one of Grieder's former pilots who attended the briefing, said, "At one point, responding to a question about the vaccine, this lieutenant colonel from the Pentagon told all of us, 'I don't know and I don't care.' "
Midway through the briefing, Grieder stood up, interrupted the Pentagon staffer and announced that he had decided to halt the anthrax vaccination program for all personnel under his command.
Grieder called his boss at the Pentagon to tell him what he had done. Grieder was called to Washington the next day to discuss his actions before a group of generals.
After hearing him out, the Air Force assembled a blue-ribbon panel of briefers, headed by Lt. Gen. Charles Roadman, then the surgeon general of the Air Force.
In May 1999, Roadman brought a team of civilian and military medical experts to Dover, including experts from the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the military's bio-weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md.
Roadman began his briefing encouraging those packed into the room to trust the Air Force.
He then turned to the issue of squalene, the real reason for the packed room.
"Let me say this as succinctly as I can: There is not, there never has been squalene as an adjuvant in the anthrax immunization - period," said Roadman. He said two of the five batches sent to Dover had been tested and no squalene was detected.
Ten months after the briefing, the Army applied for a patent for a new way to make anthrax vaccine with squalene as an ingredient. The patent was granted two years later.
Smith, the UD microbiologist, reviewed the patent application for The News Journal and noted that squalene was a component. The purpose of the squalene was not explained in the patent.
"I guess I would be curious why they put squalene in there," Smith said.
The Army has refused to discuss the patent.
Vaccinations resume
After that presentation, Grieder allowed the anthrax vaccinations at the base to resume. Two months later he was transferred to an administrative job in Washington.
After Grieder's decision to allow the vaccinations to resume, 55 of the 120 pilots assigned to the reserve air wing at Dover quit rather than submit to the shots.
In October 2000, the FDA announced it had found squalene in all five batches of vaccine sent to Dover - the lots Roadman said were safe.
Grieder, who was already in a new job at the Pentagon and realizing that his Air Force career was over, said he knew then that he and his troops had been deceived. After retiring the following year, he has devoted himself to finding out why.
Now Grieder says he knows: "It appears illegal medical experiments were foisted upon us."
Experiments denied
Defense officials deny that personnel at Dover were subjected to illegal experiments.
"That's just wrong," said Roadman, who is now retired. "Unfortunately, you can have a disagreement where neither party is lying."
When pressed about Grieder's allegations, official spokespersons up and down the chain of command referred questions to others, refused to comment or issued blanket denials.
Maj. Cheryl Law, the public affairs chief at Dover Air Force Base, referred questions to the Defense Department. Law also sent an e-mail to every first-sergeant, group commander, squadron commander, public affairs officer and division chief on the base, warning them not to talk with a News Journal reporter.
Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, public affairs chief for the secretary of the Air Force, said the vaccine was safe and that he did not know whether experiments on troops took place. He referred further questions to the Air Force surgeon general.
Bettyann Mauger, the public affairs chief for the surgeon general, said no experiments occurred in Dover. She referred reporters to the Defense Department and the government's anthrax vaccination Web site.
Jim Turner, a civilian public affairs officer at the Defense Department, declined to comment. He also referred reporters to the government's anthrax vaccination Web site.
Col. John Grabenstein, deputy director of the Military Vaccine Agency, said of Grieder's allegations: "It is completely false. There were no medical experiments involving anthrax at Dover or anywhere else."
Contamination blamed
Aside from denying that an illegal experiment took place, military officials focus mainly on explanations of how squalene got into the vaccine shipped to Dover. Several blamed a dirty fingerprint they said somehow came in contact with the vaccine.
"The supposition is, squalene in the oil from a fingerprint was added through contaminated lab work," Grabenstein said. "I think that's the most logical explanation."
Dr. Tom Waytes, chief medical officer for the company that made the vaccine, said the minute levels of squalene found do not suggest that it was added to boost the effect of the vaccine.
"I believe it's more likely caused by contamination," said Waytes, who works for Michigan-based BioPort.
BioPort is the only firm that manufactures the anthrax vaccine for the U.S. government.
Waytes blamed the FDA for adding squalene to the vaccine during its testing process.
"BioPort never put squalene in the anthrax vaccine, and I'm not convinced there ever was squalene in the vaccine," Waytes said. "It's most likely caused by the testing process."
Several batches of vaccine produced by BioPort were first tested by Stanford Research Institute, a private firm not affiliated with Stanford University.
This testing did not detect squalene, but FDA tests did.
"The FDA came back using more sensitive tests, and found very minute amounts in the five different lots," Waytes said. "The fact that it could have been due to contamination has never been ruled out."
Lenore Gelb, a Washington D.C.-based spokeswoman for the FDA, declined to comment on BioPort's allegations. She referred reporters to the government's anthrax vaccination Web site, which blames the vaccine contamination on a fingerprint.
"The FDA notes that these minute quantities could have come from processing during FDA tests [squalene is present in the oil in fingerprints]," the Web site states.
Experts, including several civilian immunologists, scoffed at the fingerprint theory.
"It doesn't make sense," Caplan said. "I don't think the FDA is that sloppy."
Roadman, the former Air Force surgeon general, has said any squalene detected occurred naturally.
"As you know I haven't tried to explain this, but squalene is a naturally occurring chemical compound," Roadman said.
Roadman could not say how the squalene ended up in the vaccine sent to Dover.
"I can't tell you that," he said. "I don't know."
In fact, the military never launched an investigation of how squalene got into the vaccine.
Lacklen, a retired senior pilot who received the full program of anthrax inoculations in Dover, has spearheaded a drive to rebut the military's versions of events. He harbors no doubt that senior military officers experimented on him, his fellow pilots and his crews.
"They have squandered generations of trust and goodwill for a program that violated U.S. law and the Geneva conventions," Lacklen said. "They have jeopardized America's front-line troops, and therefore, the safety of the nation."
Health effects disputed
Regardless of how squalene may have gotten into the vaccine, military officials deny that it occurs in amounts that could cause harm.
The research of Asa, Cao and Garry - published four years ago, suggesting that even trace amounts of squalene could cause harm to humans - led Congress and other researchers to call for further study.
In a September 2000 letter to former U.S. Rep. Jack Metcalf, a Republican from Washington state who led a one-man investigation into the anthrax vaccination program, an immunologist said squalene should be studied as a possible factor in serious illnesses.
"The real question is whether squalene in parts per billion was added to the vaccine preparations given to the military, as well as whether this concentration of squalene could alter the immune response," wrote Dr. Dorothy Lewis, associate professor of immunology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. "More research needs to be done to answer these questions, but it is possible that very small amounts of a biologically active product could induce an immune response, either to the molecule itself or it could boost immune responses to other agents in the mixture."
Lewis declined to comment about her letter.
Numerous studies on the effect of squalene on laboratory rodents suggest that the substance suppresses the immune system. The Defense Department has refused to release the results of human tests of vaccines boosted by squalene conducted in the 1990s.
Despite the official denials, some military physicians have concluded that the Dover vaccine harmed some servicemen and servicewomen.
The medical records of a Dover pilot, who feared for his career if his name was used in this story, show that several military physicians linked his advanced arthritis to the vaccine.
"The symptoms began after anthrax immunization, and are in line of duty," the records say. The pilot's records also reveal the presence of an antigen associated with autoimmune disorders.
Several members of the military brought their concerns to Congress in July 1999, during testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations.
Capt. Michelle Piel was a C-5 Galaxy pilot stationed at Dover.
"All my life I've wanted to fly and serve my country to the best of my ability," she told the subcommittee.
Piel became ill after her first two injections with the vaccine. Her arm grew numb, the right side of her head filled with fluid, and she was grounded because of dizziness.
She testified the dizziness progressed to the point where she was unable to drive, read or concentrate. She was so tired she slept most of the day, and was unable to keep food down.
A total of 12 military and civilian physicians were unable to diagnose her illness. Months later, when a lump was removed from her breast, her symptoms worsened.
"There is no way that I know of to prove that the anthrax vaccine caused any of this," she told the subcommittee. "All I can say is that I became uncharacteristically ill after I started taking the anthrax shots."
Lt. Richard Rovet worked at Dover's Flight Medicine Clinic, where his duties included nursing, case management and patient advocacy.
Rovet described to the subcommittee the adverse reactions to the vaccine he had seen in patients at the clinic.
The symptoms included memory impairment, dizziness, ringing in the ears, joint pain, muscle pain, numbness in various parts of the body, miscarriage, cardiac problems, swollen testicles, hypothyroidism, chills, fever, rashes, photosensitivity and constant fatigue.
"We have been told time after time that the vaccine is entirely safe, yet there is a disparity between what we are told and what we are seeing," Rovet said.
The military's anthrax Web site claims the vaccine is safe, because "The Food and Drug Administration individually approves each lot before release."
But FDA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FDA no longer tests the lots for squalene.
Grabenstein said testing for squalene is not necessary.
"We have looked at 30 some lots, and found it at levels below the level in the human bloodstream," he said. (A lot includes 1.8 million doses of vaccine.) "It would achieve nothing in science to go looking for this chemical already in your bloodstream."
Calls for change ignored
That opinion was not shared by Rep. Metcalf, who conducted a three-year investigation into the anthrax vaccine.
Metcalf's investigation revealed "that squalene, a substance in unapproved adjuvant formulations, was found in the anthrax vaccine in amounts that could boost immune response - raising the possibility that squalene was used in inoculations given to Gulf War-era vets. GAO science investigators have documented concerns regarding the use of novel adjuvant formulations in vaccines, including squalene."
Metcalf, who is in ill health, was unable to comment.
Sens. Joe Biden and Tom Carper and Rep. Mike Castle, all of Delaware, would not comment about Col. Grieder's allegations. Through their respective spokespersons, they said they didn't know enough about Grieder's claims.
Metcalf's report cites Defense Department "stonewalling" and characterizations from GAO investigators that accused the Defense Department of instituting "a pattern of deception."
The GAO investigators reported a reluctance by the Defense Department to admit it had conducted five clinical trials with squalene, and had plans for one more.
"In fact, in most cases they only admitted to conducting research after we had discovered it in public records," Metcalf's report states. "On three occasions people attending the conference did not report their own research with squalene adjuvants."
Metcalf and the GAO found that the Defense Department experimented with adjuvants "to use fewer inoculations, get a better response and to check unconquered antigens."
In March 1999, the GAO presented its report and called on the Defense Department to conduct research that would reveal whether Gulf War veterans had squalene in their blood.
The department accused the GAO of being "scientifically and fiscally irresponsible."
Six months later, Metcalf sent a letter to then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen, calling on him to comply with the GAO recommendations. Metcalf also called on the Defense Department to track down the source of squalene in the vaccine.
The Defense Department never complied.
No legal option
The Uniform Code of Military Justice specifies that military personnel have no right to refuse a lawful order. Military judges have ruled that the order requiring service members to take the anthrax vaccine is lawful.
Phil Cave, a Virginia-based defense attorney, has represented three service members who have refused to take the anthrax vaccine.
"The issue of whether the Defense Department can do this is pretty well resolved by the courts," Cave said. "I have to tell them the law considers it a lawful order. If they refuse, they risk prosecution, discharge and jail."
Cave was successful at lessening the punishment in his three cases. Two received minor admonishments. One lost rank and pay.
Other personnel haven't been as lucky. Several anthrax refusers have received dishonorable discharges coupled with several months of confinement.
Many of the military personnel interviewed for this story said they were forced to choose between their health and their career. Cave said the likelihood of military punishment is significant for those who refuse vaccination. "I have to advise them it's in their best interests to take it."
Contact investigative reporter Lee Williams at 324-2362 or lwilliams@delawareonline.com. Contact Hiran Ratnayake at 324-2547 or hratnayake@delawareonline.com.
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Rumsfeld Updates Counterparts on Wars
Ministers Meet in Gulf Minus Major Allies
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20122-2004Oct9.html
MANAMA, Bahrain, Oct. 9 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met Saturday with his counterparts from 18 nations that belong to the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, flying with the group to an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to observe training flights and speak by secure videoconference with the top U.S. general in Iraq.
Aboard the USS John F. Kennedy, about 150 miles north of this gulf kingdom, Rumsfeld and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, spoke to the defense officials about progress in Iraq and plans for holding elections there in coming months, one defense official said. The ministers were also briefed on the security situation in Afghanistan, where a presidential election was held Saturday but was marred by fraud allegations and a candidates' boycott.
Defense ministers said they were encouraged by the updates but that they believed far more needed to be done in Iraq to establish security and make fair elections possible. And while 18 nations were represented, many were countries that have made small, largely symbolic contributions in the form of troops or political support. Nine NATO nations attended, but major U.S. allies such as Britain, France and Germany were not among them.
Pentagon officials have said in recent weeks that they might have to ask coalition partners to contribute more troops to help secure Iraq's elections, which are planned for January. Rumsfeld and his top generals, however, have said they hope to train enough Iraqi security forces to handle that task.
A defense official said after the meeting that Casey hopes to have 145,000 Iraqi security troops equipped and trained by January. Some of the discussion Saturday was about getting equipment and money into Iraq to help with the effort.
Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the Polish defense minister, said the meeting was worthwhile for the coalition members but also highlighted the need for Iraqis to take control of the security situation. Szmajdzinski, speaking through an interpreter in the carrier's hangar and raising his voice to compete with the frequent booms of fighter jets, said he believed it would send the wrong message if foreign troops were guarding Iraqi polling sites.
"That would be a signal that would be very damaging for Iraqis," Szmajdzinski said. He called on NATO to send in more trainers to build up Iraq's forces.
Rumsfeld is scheduled to attend an informal NATO meeting next week in Romania, where the topics of discussion are expected to include the NATO training mission in Afghanistan and training assistance in Iraq.
Szmajdzinski said Poland, which has been cited by President Bush in his two debates with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as one of the United States' strongest allies in the Iraq war, cannot send more troops to Iraq, for both political and financial reasons.
Similar comments have come from other coalition partners in recent days, along with announcements of pending troop reductions. Even such countries as Slovakia, which has about 100 soldiers in Iraq, say they cannot send more troops because their domestic political situations are too delicate. Defense Minister Juraj Liska said in a recent interview that Slovakia's parliament had tried several times to bring all Slovak troops home, even as government leaders strongly endorsed involvement in Iraq and the war on terrorism.
Lawrence T. DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman who attended the meeting, said many of the coalition partners wanted to know what they could do to help.
"There needs to be more negotiation with the people in Iraq, so that they will take control of their own country and have their own elections," said Hamad Bin Hamad Attiyah, the defense minister of Qatar, which has allowed the United States to launch missions from its bases. "Maybe we need more countries to help in Iraq. They need democracy, that much is sure."
Rumsfeld toured the John F. Kennedy, which runs dozens of missions each day related to the war, including surveillance and strategic bombing.
Rumsfeld presided over a reenlistment ceremony for 80 shipmates who assembled in the carrier's hangar. He praised them for volunteering to help fight terrorism and then awarded the ship the new global war on terror medal, which drew a roar of applause.
Petty Officer 1st Class Ruben Layug said he was proud of what his ship is accomplishing, even if its remote location keeps it from receiving much attention.
"We're working very hard," Layug, 37, of Fresno, Calif., said. "It's a very, very hard war. If it was an easy war, it would be all over by now."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Little-Tested Law Is Used Against Journalists in Leak
October 10, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/politics/10leak.html
In 1974, a magazine called Counter Spy identified Richard Welch as the C.I.A. station chief in Athens. Eighteen months later, he was shot to death outside his home there.
Whether the magazine helped set the stage for Mr. Welch's murder, by a terrorist group called November 17, has never been established. But the practice of exposing covert intelligence agents, which became something of a cottage industry in the 1970's, certainly led to enactment of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982.
That law, all but unused in the intervening decades, is today the basis for a grand jury investigation into the disclosure last year of the identity of Valerie Plame as a covert agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the subject of intense debate in the early 1980's, with many arguing that it would damage the ability of journalists to report the news.
In the end, most legislators were convinced that the law was carefully drafted to protect the mainstream press. Yet now, like a time bomb set to go off two decades later, it has swept six journalists into the center of the Plame investigation.
One of them, Judith Miller of The New York Times, was ordered jailed Thursday for refusing to name her confidential sources, although she has written no articles about Ms. Plame. Another journalist, the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was the first to publish Ms. Plame's name, refuses to say whether he has testified before the grand jury.
The trust legislators placed in the law not to turn mainstream reporters into criminals remains valid: neither Ms. Miller nor Mr. Novak faces any serious threat of criminal prosecution. But it seems they can be jailed nonetheless for contempt.
What trouble the journalists face arises from what they know, not what they have published. That explains why Ms. Miller, who conducted interviews for an article but did not write one, may be jailed if her appeal fails.
The law has two main parts. One makes it a crime for people with authorized access to classified information - government officials, not journalists - to identify covert agents. The other part applies to people without such authorized access, like journalists. People in that second group can be punished only if they engage in a "pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents" knowing "that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States."
The law was thus meant to apply only to publications like Counter Spy and the books of Philip Agee, a former C.I.A. agent who printed what he said were the names of more than 1,000 other agents.
Still, every disclosure by someone who was authorized to know Ms. Plame's identity to someone who was not is potentially a separate crime, at least until Mr. Novak made her identity common knowledge in his July 14, 2003, column.
Reporters for Time and The Washington Post later published articles saying they were also given information about Ms. Plame around that time. They have given limited testimony with what they say were their sources' blessings. The Time reporter, Matthew Cooper, has since received a second subpoena, which he is fighting.
The disclosures followed the July, 6, 2003, publication of an Op-Ed article in The Times by Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat, which was critical of the Bush administration.
In his column, Mr. Novak wrote that "two senior administration officials" identified Ms. Plame to him as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." In an interview on CNN in October 2003, he acknowledged he had been asked by a C.I.A. official not to identify Ms. Plame.
"It was what I call a weak request," he said. "He did not, at any point, say her life was in danger."
If the "senior administration officials" who spoke to Mr. Novak were legally authorized to know Ms. Plame's identity, they probably committed a crime. And if the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has exhausted other avenues for determining who those officials were, many court decisions, including the Supreme Court's only direct pronouncement on the subject, appear to say that he is entitled to force Mr. Novak and other journalists to tell him who their sources were.
Mr. Novak's role in the investigation has been a continuing mystery. Unlike the other five journalists involved in the case, Mr. Novak and his lawyer have declined to say a word about whether he is cooperating.
He has almost certainly been subpoenaed, and the available facts suggest he may have testified. Had he refused, his defiance would most likely have been followed by a public hearing for contempt of court like those held for other journalists.
Assuming he testified, though, why would his answers not have given Mr. Fitzgerald everything he needed? The answer may be that the officials who talked to Mr. Novak did not themselves have authorized access to information about Ms. Plame. In that case, the officials would not have committed a crime in talking to him.
In this situation, Mr. Fitzgerald would be seeking additional testimony from other journalists to determine whether their sources were authorized to know Ms. Plame's identity in the first place or to try to connect the dots between Mr. Novak's sources and whoever told them about Ms. Plame.
The 1982 law itself had been all but dormant for 22 years. It has never been the subject of a published judicial decision, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service last year and recent database searches. It has apparently been the basis of a single prosecution, against Sharon M. Scranage, a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana who pleaded guilty in 1985 to identifying two C.I.A. agents to a boyfriend there.
In a sense, though, the law has now finally lived up to its critics' fears.
"It is my firm belief, which is supported by many constitutional experts," Representative Don Edwards, Democrat of California, said on the House floor in 1981, "that no amount of tinkering can rehabilitate a law which criminalizes constitutionally protected freedoms of speech, press and political expression."
-------- prisons / prisoners
DETAINEE
A Father Waits as the U.S. and the Saudis Discuss His Son's Release
October 10, 2004
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/middleeast/10hamdi.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 8 - Yaser E. Hamdi's family had grand plans to welcome him back home after three years in American prisons, where he was held as an "enemy combatant." But now, more than a week after he was to be released, family members are growing frustrated, even a bit angry.
As negotiations between the Saudi and United States governments drag on, Mr. Hamdi's father said, "I don't know why they can't just release him now, send him home, and then work out the details later."
Mr. Hamdi, 24, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, and the United States has held him since. Although an American citizen, he was kept in solitary confinement and given no access to the legal system until the Supreme Court ruled in June that he had to have his day in court.
Instead, the Bush administration began negotiating with Mr. Hamdi's lawyer for his release. That culminated in a complex agreement that would require Mr. Hamdi to renounce his American citizenship, return to Saudi Arabia and not leave the kingdom for five years, among other restrictions.
Under that agreement, which Mr. Hamdi signed last month, he would be released and flown here no later than Sept. 30.
"We had lots of plans," his father, Esam, said in a telephone interview from his home in Al Jubayl.
But when Saudi government officials saw the release agreement, they balked, saying that Mr. Hamdi had not been charged with any crime, so it was improper to place restrictions on him after he was freed. Now his release has been delayed.
At a news briefing on Friday in Washington, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said, "At this point, we're still working on it and are in touch with the Saudis and the court, and we still believe it can be worked out." He said Mr. Hamdi "made commitments in this agreement, and those are commitments we expect him to carry out."
Mr. Hamdi's father said he met with a Saudi Foreign Ministry official a few days ago and that he was told that the Saudi government "is unhappy with the restrictions, and they had to iron out some details."
Mr. Hamdi's father spells the family's surname Himdy, which, he insisted, is the correct English spelling. Improper transliteration from Arabic to English on his Saudi passport, then onto Mr. Hamdi's American birth certificate, made his son known as Yaser Hamdi in the United States. He was born in Baton Rouge, La., where his father, a chemical engineer, was stationed for several years, working for a Saudi company.
"I tried for a long time to get that straightened out and never could," Mr. Himdy said. The family moved back to Saudi Arabia when Yaser was 3.
Throughout Mr. Hamdi's ordeal, his father has been working hard to bring him home. He says he believes none of the American allegations about his son.
Mr. Hamdi, the eldest of five children, was a university student in Saudi Arabia in 2001, studying marketing. But in July of that year, he left without telling anyone, sending word later that he was in Pakistan doing aid work, his father said.
Mr. Himdy sent two relatives to find his son and bring him home, but they could not locate him. His son called later in the summer, Mr. Himdy added, and said he wanted to come home. But the next thing Mr. Himdy heard about his son was that he had been captured in Afghanistan. The United States said he had been with a Taliban military unit.
Mr. Hamdi was first sent to the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and then to a Navy brig in Virginia, once it was established that he was an American citizen.
-------- POLITICS
-------- corruption
DeLay's Ethics Troubles Refocus House Races
October 10, 2004
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/politics/campaign/10delay.html?ei=5094&en=0bc330710bb01b70&hp=&ex=1097467200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - Congressional races, which have been overshadowed by one of the most heated presidential campaigns in years, have been energized in recent days by the back-to-back ethics scoldings delivered to the House majority leader, Tom DeLay.
Immediately after the House ethics committee's actions against Mr. DeLay, Democrats set about trying to exploit the issue - sending an e-mail appeal for contributions based on Mr. DeLay's troubles, pointing out his ties to moderate Republicans they hope to defeat in November and renewing calls for Republican candidates to return contributions from the Mr. DeLay's political action committee.
House Republicans said the action against their embattled leader has served only to reinvigorate their support for him.
Just last week, the ethics committee - composed of five Republicans and five Democrats - issued a formal rebuke to Mr. DeLay for pressuring a fellow lawmaker to change his vote on an important health care bill. On Wednesday, the panel issued a second round of admonishments, citing Mr. DeLay for engaging in fund-raising activities that created the appearance of impropriety and for using his position to exert influence over a federal agency for political gain.
The impact, if any, that the ethics committee findings may have on Congressional races is unclear. Democrats need to gain 12 seats to win back the majority. Analysts have said consistently this year that that was unlikely, but the Democrats believe Mr. Delay's troubles could give them an effective new weapon. Only about three dozen of the 435 House seats are truly in play.
As the House approached a pre-election recess late Friday, the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, forced a vote on bringing in an outside counsel to investigate Mr. DeLay, a proposal she knew would be defeated but one that put all House Republicans on record against a further inquiry.
Then on Saturday morning, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, noted in the national Democratic radio response that Mr. DeLay has now been "rebuked" by the panel four times in five years. Democrats, he said, "will not elect leaders who spend more time fending off ethics charges than they do tending the people's business."
While Democrats say they have seen evidence of Mr. DeLay lowering his political profile, Republican leaders say they do not believe that Mr. DeLay will be a detriment in the upcoming elections and that he continues to be sought after for campaign appearances.
"I haven't heard of anyone that doesn't want him," said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, a member of the Republican leadership.
The Democratic maneuvers and the fusillade of calls for Mr. DeLay to step down have enraged his House allies, who say they view the ethics findings as the tainted result of a politically inspired push to stifle Mr. DeLay by those who have been unable to defeat him otherwise. Instead of limiting his political effectiveness, they say, the ethics cases and partisan recriminations are sparking a backlash and building party support.
"This was quite obviously an attempt to chill fund-raising and take the House out of Republican hands and it has really ticked off a lot of Republican members," said Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, finance chairman for the House Republican campaign organization. He said lawmakers had approached him in recent days pledging to increase donations to the party effort in anger over the Democratic assault.
Even the most ardent Republican defenders of Mr. DeLay will acknowledge privately that the ethics admonishments are an unwelcome distraction as the election looms. But they say he has been cleared of the most serious accusations and that while the rulings could complicate his future, his leadership position is safe for now.
Democrats say Republicans are engaged in wishful thinking if they believe there will be no serious repercussions from the ethics findings, the first on Sept. 30 for his attempt to trade a political endorsement for a vote on the House floor for a teetering Medicare bill. Then on Wednesday, the panel chided him again for a fund-raiser that appeared to grant undue access and for using federal resources in a partisan conflict.
"There is no question that he is a liability to Republican House members," said Representative Robert T. Matsui of California, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He and others said the slaps from the bipartisan panel gave substance to the Democratic assertion that Mr. DeLay pushes the limits in accumulating and wielding his power.
"It is certainly not going to help the Republicans maintain that they are a House of which people can be proud," said Mr. Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.
If Democrats hope to convert Mr. DeLay's woes into Congressional victories around the nation, they have hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is that Mr. DeLay is not a well-known figure on a par with the former speaker Newt Gingrich, another Republican leader Democrats sought to convert into a political issue.
State leaders of both parties say they do not get a sense that Mr. DeLay has a profile that can move voters.
"Congressional leaders like Tom DeLay, most voters in Kansas don't even know who he is," said Scott Poor, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party. "He's not that big a deal here. In the minds of most voters, it's a real stretch to link their wonderful congressman to Tom DeLay."
Don Morabito, executive director of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, where a number of closely contested House races are under way, shared a similar view. "I'm old school, someone who believes all politics are local," he said. "Our close races are more about local issues, like sprawl, the economy and quality of life. The Kerry-Bush race does have an impact, but I haven't seen anything yet about DeLay, and I don't know if it will get any traction."
Democrats say they are not certain if they will broadcast television commercials that focus on Mr. DeLay, but they certainly intend to keep the heat on him and Republican candidates they can link to the majority leader. For instance, even the prospect of a visit by Mr. DeLay to the Seattle suburbs to raise money for King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, a Republican House candidate, sent Democrats into action.
"Who does Dave Reichert want to represent - Tom DeLay's conservative, win-at-all-costs wing of the Republican Party or the independent voters of the Eighth'' Congressional District, asked Paul Berendt, chairman of the state Democratic Party.
But a spokesman for Mr. Reichert said the Republican welcomed the chance to meet with Mr. DeLay. "The sheriff will jump at every opportunity to discuss issues of importance to the Eighth District with the second-ranking member of the House of Representatives," said the spokesman, Josh Mathis.
Aides to Mr. DeLay said he would keep a full schedule of political activities in the days leading up to the election, though he would also be campaigning in his own suburban Houston district that was redrawn in the political battle that helped launch a grand jury investigation in Texas that has resulted in indictments of top DeLay political aides.
Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he believed Mr. DeLay could continue to be a campaign force for the party. But he noted that the organization has relied more heavily in the 2004 House campaigns on appearances by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Vice President Dick Cheney rather than the majority leader.
Allies of Mr. DeLay also say they do not see any impact for the fund-raising juggernaut on which the lawmaker has built his political foundation, doling out dollars to Republican candidates who repay him with loyalty. His political action committee raised about $3.3 million through August, but spent much of it, ending last month with about $538,000. Befitting his position, Mr. DeLay has led the Congress in contributions to fellow candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Susan Hirschmann, who was Mr. DeLay's chief of staff for years before leaving in 2002 to work as a lobbyist and political adviser, said her former boss still enjoyed the support of his Republican colleagues and that the flow of money was not likely to slow or stop.
"Everyone sees this for what it is: election-eve politics," she said. "It's just not going to make a difference."
Some of the Republican anger over Mr. DeLay's treatment has also been directed at the ethics panel, which some critics say crumpled under pressure from outside groups and chastised Mr. DeLay for activities that were not outside the realm of normal politics. Republican members of the panel bristle at the suggestion and say they were trying to rein in Mr. DeLay as well as set limits of behavior for others.
"The consensus feeling was that he had been a couple of steps across the line and we ought to point that out," said Representative Joel Hefley, Republican of Colorado and chairman of the ethics panel.
-------- investigations / reports
Bush's Civil Rights Record Is Criticized, Silently
October 10, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/politics/campaign/10civil.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 (AP) - The United States Commission on Civil Rights voted on Friday to wait until after next month's election to discuss a report critical of the Bush administration's civil rights record. Republican members had objected to the report's timing.
The report remains posted on the commission's Web site (http://www.usccr.gov/), despite objections from Republican commissioners.
The report says Mr. Bush "has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words" on the subject. It finds fault with Mr. Bush's funding requests for civil rights enforcement; his positions on voting rights, educational opportunity and affirmative action; and his actions against hate crimes.
The report said, however, that Mr. Bush is committed to help people with disabilities and praised him for "a commendably diverse cabinet and moderately diverse judiciary."
A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, said, "President Bush is fully committed to making a real difference in the lives of all Americans, and his record reflects that goal."
The commission chairwoman, Mary Frances Berry, who lists her political affiliation as independent, said that the report's timing had nothing to do with the election, a view disputed by a Republican commissioner, Jennifer C. Braceras.
-------- propaganda wars
Saudi Urges Arab Media to Combat 'Improper Ideas'
Associated Press
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20886-2004Oct9.html
KUWAIT CITY, Oct. 9 -- Saudi Arabia's interior minister appealed to regional news media Saturday to help combat "improper ideas" that lead young people to support extremist movements.
Speaking before a meeting with his counterparts from Persian Gulf nations, Prince Nayef said Arab journalists need to confront Islamic militancy.
"We insist that the media participates with us in fighting terrorism," he said. "No matter how hard we work and no matter what the security apparatus does, it is not the solution. The solution is in an intellectual effort that removes these improper ideas and brings back to the right path those who went astray."
He also said Persian Gulf countries were committed to uprooting terrorism.
"Terrorism is rejected and, unfortunately, I say with pain that those who carry it out are citizens of ours, and it is attributed to Muslims and Arabs," he said.
The prince raised the media issue in response to an unrelated question -- one about Saudi reaction to Thursday night's coordinated bombing attacks on tourists, many of them Israeli, in the Egyptian resorts of Taba and Ras Shytan. Some Israeli officials have said they believe the al Qaeda network was probably behind the attack. Condemning attacks against Israelis is awkward for governments in Arab countries, where sympathies lie firmly with the Palestinians in their fight with Israel.
Abdulrahman Attiyah, secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, also sidestepped direct condemnation of the attacks.
The six-nation group believes "the lack of a fair and comprehensive peace for all parties on the issue of Palestine and the Middle East motivates such acts," he said. "What happened at the Taba Hilton should not be looked at in isolation of this truth."
Saudi Arabia, which terrorists have targeted in a series of attacks since last year, came under intense international pressure after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States to reform its society and crack down on militants and their financial backers. Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 plane hijackers involved in the attacks were born in Saudi Arabia.
--------
UNDER FIRE IN BAGHDAD
Get Me Rewrite. Now. Bullets Are Flying.
October 10, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/weekinreview/10filk.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the 19 months since American troops first rolled across the border here, Iraq has been many things to many people: necessary war, project for democracy, quagmire without end.
Yet for the dozens of newspaper and television reporters trying to make sense of the place, Iraq above all is a shrinking country. Village by village, block by block, the vast and challenging land that we entered in March 2003 has shriveled into a medieval city-state, a grim and edgy place where the only question is how much more territory we will lose tomorrow. On some days, it seems, we are all crowded into a single room together, clutching our notebooks and watching the walls.
What I mean, of course, is that the business of reporting in Iraq has become a terribly truncated affair, an enterprise clipped and limited by the violence all around. If the American military has its "no-go" zones, places where it no longer sends its troops, we in the press have ours: not just Falluja and Ramadi, but Tikrit, Mosul, Mahmudiya and large parts of Baghdad. Even in areas of the capital still thought to be relatively safe, very few reporters are still brazen enough to get out of a car, walk around and stop people at random. It can be done, but you better move fast.
To state the preceding to anyone who has worked in Iraq in recent weeks would be a waste of time. Most of us have our own store of close calls to remind us of how dangerous the streets here have become. For the newcomer, there is the video of the two French reporters, kidnapped and pleading for their lives, and the list, updated regularly, of the 46 reporters killed here while doing their jobs.
It was no small surprise, then, to witness the reaction to an e-mail message written by Farnaz Fassihi, a reporter in Iraq for The Wall Street Journal, that was intended to be a private letter to friends but made its way to the Internet and a mass audience. Any number of Ms. Fassihi's newspaper stories have described in detail the chaotic and uncertain state into which this country has fallen. Yet her description of her own working conditions, of the shrunken and dangerous world in which she now operates, shocked many people.
Part of the fascination with Ms. Fassihi's e-mail message may lie in its personal nature; it's one thing for a reporter to describe a country in anarchy, but quite another thing - far more immediate and tactile - for the same person to say she can't leave her hotel room for fear of being killed.
Part of the surprise may also lie in the presumption, now quaint, that reporters are regarded as neutrals in armed conflicts, that they are there to record the event for history. In Iraq, this has not been true for many months. For many insurgents here, and for a fevered class of Islamic zealots, Western reporters are fair game, targets in their war.
Here at The New York Times, where we have spared no expense to protect ourselves, the catalogue of hits and near-misses is long enough to chill the hardiest war correspondent: we have been shot at, kidnapped, blindfolded, held at knifepoint, held at gunpoint, detained, threatened, beaten and chased. One of our correspondents was driven blindfolded to the outskirts of a town in the dead of night by armed men who told him to get out of the car. Another time, a crowd began throwing bricks, and one of our photographers, who was standing next to me, was struck in the head and required stitches.
And that's just the intentional acts. On any given day here, car bombs explode, gun battles break out and mortar shells fall short, none of them exactly aimed at us, if they are aimed at anyone at all. In the writing of this essay, a three-hour affair, two rockets and three mortar shells have landed close enough to shake the walls of our house. The door to my balcony opens onto an Iraqi social club, and the roar from the blasts set the Iraqis into a panic, their screams audible above the Arabic music wafting from the speakers.
In my time here, I have marked significant events here, like the drafting of a new Iraqi Constitution and the formal end of the American occupation, and I have marked a number of personal ones, too.
Oct. 27, 2003: Attacked by a mob.
Dec. 19, 2003: Shot at.
May 8, 2004: Followed by a car of armed men.
Aug. 28, 2004: Detained by the Mahdi Army.
The last case was instructive, at least regarding how difficult it has become to work here. I was grabbed by a midlevel leader of the Mahdi Army in Najaf outside the Imam Ali Shrine, as Muktada al-Sadr's guerrillas were still streaming out. The fight was supposed to be over.
"You are the second American spy I have captured today," the insurgent leader boasted, leading me away.
I found out later that the "first" American spy the Mahdi Army had captured that day was my own colleague, nabbed a couple of hours earlier. He had already been released by the time I was detained; I was let go following my assurances to another Mahdi commander that I was just a journalist and that I would be on my way.
"Get out of here," he said.
With the Mahdi Army, at least I had the chance to talk. Stepping out of my car at the scene of a suicide bombing last fall, I stepped into what appeared to be a placid crowd, only to find that it was seething and angry, blaming the Americans, as Iraqis often do, for the death and destruction all around them. The crowd surged before I and my colleagues could get back into the car.
"Kill them!" an old man shouted. "Kill them!"
We barely got away. Back at the office, we counted 17 bricks inside the car, whose every window was smashed. One of the bricks is now on my bookshelf.
In most foreign countries where I have worked, being an American was a kind of armor; the fear of messing with an American forced even the angriest zealots to take a moment to think.
Here, that fear has vanished, and indeed, it has become its opposite. To be an American reporter in Iraq, any kind of American, is not just to be a target yourself, but it is to make a target of others, too. As a result, some Iraqis now shy away from meeting. Just the other day, for instance, an Iraqi man I had met with several times before asked me not to speak English in the hallway leading to his office. He also asked me to stop wearing my sunglasses and polo shirt and jeans when I came to see him. I came back again, in the same attire.
"Why didn't you take my advice?" he asked.
In another case, a senior Iraqi government official whom I have met several times often asks that I meet his armed guards in front of a local mosque, who then drive me to his house. Better not to have an American reporter's car parked in front of his house.
The real consequence of the mayhem here is that we reporters can no longer do our jobs in the way we hope to. Reporters are nothing more than watchers and listeners, and if we can't leave the house, the picture from Iraq, even with the help of fearless Iraqi stringers, almost inevitably will be blurry and incomplete.
Some of my colleagues have given up. Most of the European reporters, like the French and Italians and Germans, are gone. And there are far fewer American reporters here than was the case just a few months ago. This is usually not clear until someone important holds a press conference, and you look around the auditorium, as I did the other day, and realize that there are far fewer Western reporters here than there used to be.
In my many months here, I have often reminded myself that however bad it gets here, at least I can still work, and I have a passport in case I can't. My Iraqi friends are not so fortunate. Most are trying to get on with their lives amid the daily chaos.
In the social club outside my window, the Iraqis, after a pause from the bombing, have gotten going again, the Arabic music and their laughter rising to my balcony.
--------
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Nuclear Fiction
October 10, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10dowd.html?hp
When W. debated Al Gore, it was the Insufficient versus the Insufferable.
When W. debated John Kerry, it was the Obfuscating versus the Oscillating.
We face a choice now between a president who rolled us on Iraq and a senator who got rolled by the president on Iraq.
George Bush is not giving an inch on Iraq. He's toughing out the cascade of confirmation and criticism from his own people about the hyperpower hyperbole that led to an unnecessary war and an unruly occupation. His advisers say it's better for the president to appear out of touch than apologetic. He'd rather seem delusional than deluded.
He can't admit what the Duelfer report says, that Saddam was no threat to the U.S. or any other country. The mushroom cloud was a Fig Newton of Dick Cheney's feverish imagination. That would mean W. didn't fix his father's screw-up, but he screwed up his father's fix. A big Oedipal oops.
After Bush 41's Persian Gulf war, Saddam devolved into the Norma Desmond of vicious dictators, shrinking but pretending to still be big, writing romance novels, trying to order liposuction machines, teeth-whitening material and hair transplant equipment, soaking up American culture like his favorite song, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night,'' and his favorite book, Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."
The president may not have gotten his money's worth with the report of Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector. After all, in a vain retroactive attempt to justify his hokum about W.M.D., he had 1,200 people working for 15 months - stretching our scarce supply of Arab linguists - to produce 918 pages at a cost of about a billion dollars just to find out that Saddam would have liked to have had weapons if he could have, but he couldn't, so he didn't.
But at least for his billion, the president got some earnest Introduction to American Literature analysis of the Iraqi dictator and his taste for some Western culture, noting that Saddam felt a kinship with Hemingway's protagonist Santiago, the poor Cuban fisherman (even though the rich Saddam liked to grenade-fish - toss a grenade in the water and then send in scuba divers to fetch the dead fish).
"Saddam's affinity for Hemingway's story is understandable, given the former president's background, rise to power, conception of himself and Hemingway's use of a rustic setting similar to Tikrit to express timeless themes," the report stated. "In Hemingway's story, Santiago hooks a great marlin, which drags his boat out to sea. When the marlin finally dies, Santiago fights a losing battle to defend his prize from sharks, which reduce the great fish, by the time he returns to his village, to a skeleton. The story sheds light on Saddam's view of the world and his place in it. ... to Saddam even a hollow victory was by his reckoning a real one."
Even though his own report stated that U.N. sanctions had worked to defang Saddam, Mr. Bush decided to stand firm on nonsense, insisting in the debate Friday night that "sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein."
When a questioner named Linda asked the president to give three bum decisions he had made in office, Mr. Bush took a pass. Lincoln could admit mistakes. J.F.K. could admit mistakes. But W. thinks admitting mistakes is for powder puffs. Of his decision to invade Iraq, he said: "Sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they're right." Or you stick to them even after you know they're wrong.
The president's living in a dream world. He kept insisting that 75 percent of Al Qaeda has been "brought to justice," even though such a statistic is misleading, since counterterrorism experts say that the invasion of Iraq was a recruiting boon for Osama and that Al Qaeda has metastasized and spawned other terrorist groups.
Mr. Bush tried to pretend the devastating Duelfer report backed him up, noting after the report came out that Saddam "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."
W. should have followed his father's policy on hypotheticals. As Poppy Bush would say, when someone asked him to be speculative: "If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its tail on the ground."
-------- us politics
Behind the Scenes, Officials Wrestle Over Voting Rules
By Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20795-2004Oct9?language=printer
As President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry enter the final weeks of a tight presidential campaign, election officials in many key states are waging less noticed but equally partisan battles that could affect the outcome of the race.
In the battlegrounds of Ohio and Missouri, Republican secretaries of state have crafted election rules that Democrats say could disenfranchise legitimate voters likely to cast ballots for Kerry. Republicans say Democratic election officials in New Mexico and Iowa are making it easier for potential Kerry supporters to vote.
The disputed 2000 election cast a new light on the crucial role that secretaries of state play in crafting the rules that determine who can vote -- and whose votes are counted. Florida's then-secretary of state, Katherine Harris (R), was pilloried by Democrats when a series of decisions made by her office helped elect George W. Bush.
Election officials help determine what type of machines people use to vote, how ballots are printed, what identification voters must bring to the polls, how to get absentee ballots and countless other regulations. Already this year, with each party sensitive to every nuance of election law, issues as mundane as the weight of paper stock for new voter-registration forms are the source of controversy. Lawsuits have been filed or litigated in more than half a dozen swing states over state officials' interpretations of election law. Even in Maryland and Virginia, which are not battlegrounds this year, court battles have been waged over the role of state election officials and which candidates should be included on ballots.
"There's an unprecedented level of scrutiny," said Oregon's deputy secretary of state, Paddy McGuire (D). "Having an election decided by 537 votes in Florida made people see how decisions made by elections officials across this country can add up to electing the next leader of the free world."
Adding to the sensitivity is the fact that a number of chief election officials in key states are playing an active role in the presidential race.
Just as Harris served as co-chairwoman of Bush's 2000 Florida campaign, Ohio's J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) is co-chairing the president's effort in that state. Nevada's Dean Heller (R) and Arizona's Jan Brewer (R) are also active on behalf of Bush, as is Missouri's Matt Blunt (R), who is also running for governor. West Virginia's secretary of state, Joe Manchin III (D), is helping Kerry even as he runs for governor.
And while most election officials this year say they are determined to avoid the kind of partisan charges that dogged Harris for her role in the last presidential election, many of their decisions help the candidate whose party they share.
Take, for instance, a new federal law that requires all states to give voters whose names do not appear on the rolls a "provisional ballot" that will count if it can be determined after Election Day that the voter was properly registered.
Democrats see the provision as useful in correcting problems that caused eligible voters to be turned away from the polls in 2000.
Blackwell, Blunt and Republican election chiefs in Florida, Michigan and Colorado have been sued by Democratic groups for putting up hurdles in the counting of such ballots. Several, for instance, have ruled that ballots cast by eligible voters should be disqualified if they are cast in the wrong precinct, a move Democrats say disproportionately hurts poor voters, who may be more likely to move about.
Late last month, Blackwell came under fire for telling county election officials in Ohio to reject new voter registrations turned in on forms that do not meet an arcane law that mandates that the forms be on paper stock of a certain weight.
Though Blackwell subsequently said he would not enforce the law, Democrats and the League of Women Voters worry that his conflicting directives could cause confusion and prompt legal challenges in a state where the Democrats have signed up more new voters than the Republicans.
"I can't tell you what his motives are," said Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Dan Trevas, "but I can say that most of his actions help Republicans."
Blackwell counters that he also kicked third-party candidate Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot, a move that he said helps Kerry. As for the rest, Blackwell said he is just following the law.
"What you have here is a clash of ideals," he said. "There are those that believe a person should be able to register any time, on any form, and vote in any place. Then you have another point of view -- my point of view -- that says ours is a society of rule and law and rules have to be complied with to turn a ballot into a vote."
In Missouri, Blunt went to court this summer and quashed an effort by Francis G. Slay (D), the mayor of St. Louis, to open polls early in that heavily minority, Democratic stronghold.
Slay, a co-chair of Kerry's national finance campaign, argued that early voting was needed to prevent widespread disenfranchisement of city voters caused by long poll lines and other problems that occurred in 2000; Blunt argued that the mayor was trying to bend state law for partisan gain.
More recently, Blunt moved forward with a plan to accept ballots via e-mail from some overseas service members, a group that traditionally favors Republicans, despite concerns about the integrity of the system. And late last month, Blunt asked local election officials to send the state GOP weekly lists of those requesting absentee ballots, which were then used to contact voters, prompting Democrats to charge that he was ignoring a state law that prohibits contacting such voters for the purpose of advocating candidates.
Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson said, "You'd be hard pressed to find a more bipartisan secretary of state."
Sara Howard, Missouri spokeswoman for the Democratic group America Coming Together, said Blunt's gubernatorial candidacy raises a fundamental question: "Does he want to oversee elections in a fair, nonpartisan manner, or is he out to help himself and the president?"
Some election officials have tried to avoid such questions by refusing to campaign for their party's presidential nominee, but that has not inoculated them from criticism.
Florida Secretary of State Glenda E. Hood (R), for instance, eschewed the formal campaign role played by Harris but has come under criticism for a series of decisions affecting the election. Her latest move -- she issued a legal opinion that new registrations should be discarded if applicants signed an oath affirming their citizenship but forgot to check a citizenship box -- could bar thousands from voting.
Some local election officials, including those in Miami-Dade County, are ignoring the directive, and last Thursday, Democrats in Florida sued her in federal court, one of several cases pending on Hood's election-related rulings.
Hood's spokesman, Alia Faraj, said that Democratic interest groups signing up new voters are to blame for submitting incomplete applications.
In Iowa, Secretary of State Chet Culver (D) is under attack for sending out a voter guide that included an absentee-ballot request. Although the mailing went to every Iowa household, absentee voting in that state has traditionally favored Democrats, and Republican officials cried foul.
Culver said he is "offended" by Republican suggestions that distributing a voter guide to every Iowa household is aimed at anything other than increasing participation. "There's a big difference between a secretary of state putting out a voter guide and someone not accepting new voter registrations because of the weight of the paper," he said.
In New Mexico, state GOP Executive Director Greg Graves calls that state's chief election official, Democrat Rebecca Vigil-Giron, the "most partisan secretary of state I've ever seen." Vigil-Giron successfully fought off a GOP-led lawsuit that sought to require thousands of newly registered voters to show identification at the polls.
Graves said that twice as many new Democrats have registered in that state as Republicans, and he points to a $500 contribution that Vigil-Giron made to Kerry in concluding: "She feels the looser the rules are, the better it is for Democrats."
Vigil-Giron said she is just following the law. "In my heart and in my mind, I am a Democrat," she said. But when it comes to being secretary of state, she added, "I apply the law equally and fairly."
The D.C. region also has had its share of partisan sparring over election matters. In Virginia, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (R), who plans to run for governor, pushed to place Nader on the ballot, a fight he won after the state's highest court ruled that Democratic election officials improperly disqualified Nader petitions.
In Maryland, the Republican-led State Board of Elections is trying to oust Administrator Linda H. Lamone, a Democrat. Her party has called the bid an openly partisan maneuver led by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich (R) to give Republicans control over the state election apparatus.
In the swing state of Minnesota, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer (R) is fed up with the partisan sparring. Liberal groups have charged her with attempting to stifle voter turnout by failing to keep up with the demand for new voter registration forms, rushing into service a flawed statewide registration system and issuing warnings about terrorism at the polls.
Kiffmeyer said her record speaks for itself: Under her watch, the state has had among the highest turnouts in the nation. "But I have the sense that if I walked on water, the Democrats would say I can't swim."
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Recasts Rationale For War After Report
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20562-2004Oct9?language=printer
In announcing 19 months ago that the United States was poised to invade Iraq, President Bush told the nation: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
Bush's decision to attack Iraq came after urgent warnings by the president and his top aides about the challenge posed by Iraq -- what Bush called "a serious and mounting threat to our country" in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address before Congress. Few lawmakers questioned these warnings -- Sen. John F. Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, did not -- and many frequently echoed them.
But the argument that the United States faced a moment of maximum peril in early 2003 from Iraq has been greatly weakened by the release last week of the comprehensive report of chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The report found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability, leaving it without any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein hoped to someday resume his weapons efforts, the report said, but for the most part there had been no serious effort to rebuild the programs.
In the wake of the report, President Bush has reframed the way he characterizes his rationale for the launching the war. A review of his public statements before the war and this week shows how broadly his public argument has shifted, away from warnings that Hussein actually possessed horrible weapons in favor of talking almost exclusively about the dictator's intent.
This week, Bush said Iraq had been a "unique threat" and the United States was justified in attacking, largely because Hussein "retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction."
"And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies," the president told reporters.
In the months leading up to the war, however, Bush and other administration officials made serious and specific allegations about Iraqi capabilities in biological, chemical and nuclear warfare:
• "Saddam Hussein [has] biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people," Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. He also cited reports that Iraq had "materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure."
• "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; in such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands," Bush continued. He also said Hussein had "upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents," and "several mobile biological weapons labs."
• Bush asserted that if Hussein obtained key nuclear material, he could produce a bomb within a year.
• A CIA report released by the administration in October 2002 said: "Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
• The CIA also said Iraq "has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX." It said "all key aspects" of Iraq's biological weapons program "are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." The report said Iraq was developing drones likely "intended to deliver biological warfare agents."
Kerry, while raising questions about the administration's approach, said in an Oct. 9, 2002, Senate floor speech -- when he voted to give Bush authorization to conduct a war -- that it was clear that Hussein had "continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction" in the past four years.
"We will not be blackmailed or extorted by these weapons, and we will not permit the United Nations -- an institution we have worked hard to nurture and create -- to simply be ignored by this dictator," Kerry said.
All these assertions were disproved or rejected by the Duelfer report. Not only did Duelfer say Iraq had no weapons, but he said Hussein was interested in acquiring weapons because Iran, Iraq's longtime enemy, had its own weapons programs -- not because it wished to attack the United States.
Duelfer said that before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the sanctions on Iraq were eroding and that Hussein hoped to rebuild his programs if those sanctions were ever lifted. But the appetite for lifting the sanctions evaporated in the U.N. Security Council after Sept. 11, 2001, and Duelfer said Hussein had no formal written strategy or plan for restarting his programs.
White House officials said not attacking would have only delayed the inevitable. "The Duelfer report shows a clear choice: either remove Saddam when we did or fight him in the very near future, when he bribed enough others to bring down the sanctions and restart his WMD," Jim Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser, said.
The United States is still suffering from the diplomatic consequences of launching a war without explicit support from the U.N. Security Council. France had threatened a veto, but many smaller countries on the council also rejected a resolution authorizing force after the Bush administration refused to consider waiting a few more months -- or even weeks -- to give U.N. inspectors more time to assess whether Iraq still possessed banned weapons.
"This is a matter of weeks, not months," Bush had insisted six weeks before the attack was launched.
The result is that many countries that provided troops in the first Gulf War -- such as Canada, France, Germany, Pakistan and Syria -- refused to provide help either during this war or in its troublesome aftermath. A book published in France last week said France had been willing to commit as many as 15,000 troops, though a French official said the offer was contingent on the Security Council approving a resolution authorizing war after determining that Iraq had committed a "material breach" during the inspection process.
While the Duelfer report said that the prospect of Iraq escaping the sanctions faded after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush took the opposite lesson.
Before Sept. 11 , "we were trying to fashion a sanction regime that would make it more likely to be able to contain somebody like Saddam Hussein," Bush told reporters on Jan. 31, 2003. "After September the 11th, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water, as far as I'm concerned. . . . The strategic vision of our country shifted dramatically, and it shifted dramatically because we now recognize that oceans no longer protect us, that we're vulnerable to attack."
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THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
Rumor of a Draft Touches a Nerve
Bush and Kerry deny conscription plans, but Rock the Vote raises the specter
October 10, 2004
By Kathleen Hennessey
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes346.htm
WASHINGTON - An army of new voters received a startling call to serve recently, when one of the largest nonpartisan groups trying to increase voting by young people sent fake draft cards to nearly 640,000 e-mail addresses.
"You've been drafted" was the subject line of the message sent by Rock the Vote. The message contained an image of a draft card addressed to the recipient and warned, "real cards may be in the mail soon if the situation doesn't improve."
President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry both have rejected suggestions that they would move to reinstitute the draft, positions they reiterated in their debate Friday night in St. Louis.
But by raising the threat of the draft, Rock the Vote has staked its claim as the edgiest of the multimillion-dollar campaigns trying to push young people to the polls. The effort has also caught the attention of Republicans, who said the group misled voters and crossed into partisan politics.
"It has the face of a nonpartisan group, yet it's promoting the agenda of the liberal left," said Alison Aikele, spokeswoman for the College Republican National Committee. Aikele said has she received complaints from local chapters about draft rumors on campus.
Rock the Vote political director Hans Riemer said the group was trying to inform its members about the limits of U.S. military forces, not persuade them to vote for a particular candidate.
"It would be crazy if young people went to the polls and didn't factor this into their votes, however they come down on it. It's very real," said Riemer. "We're one major military conflict away from the draft. I don't see why candidates get to talk about war all day long and we can't talk about a draft."
Despite the stated opposition by Bush and Kerry to reinstating the draft, a recent survey found that only a quarter of young people knew this, compared with 42% of older people.
About half of 18- to 29-year-olds believe that Bush wants to reinstate the draft, according the poll conducted by the Annenberg National Election Survey this month.
Last week, House Republicans sought to dispel suggestions that the war in Iraq could lead to a new draft by hastily bringing the idea to a vote and defeating it in a 402-2 vote.
But that move is unlikely to end the talk on college campuses.
"If there is a draft, I would still be eligible," said University of Michigan student Paul Indyck, explaining why he was leaning toward Kerry.
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President's lies feed terrorism
The Union Leader
By ROBERT KOEHLER
October 10, 2004
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=45351
WHENEVER TRUTH is murdered, the blood at the scene has a high irony content.
"In this young century, our world needs a new definition of security. Our security is not merely found in spheres of influence or some balance of power; the security of our world is found in the advancing rights of mankind.
"These rights are advancing across the world. And across the world, the enemies of human rights are responding with violence."
Hello? Down is up, you say? War is peace? This was President Bush the other day, deigning to address the world, which by about a three-to-one margin sees him as the number-one destabilizing force on the planet. That didn't stop the landlord of Abu Ghraib from lecturing the U.N. General Assembly about, ahem, human rights.
Every time I hear the President speak, I get an anxiety attack that's a lot more complicated than merely disagreeing with him. I become desperate for oxygen.
What GOP heavies do at street level - keep anyone who might harbor unscripted thoughts out of the arenas and assembly halls where their leader is scheduled to talk - White House speechwriters do with far more efficiency at podium level. They interlock feel-good phrases so seamlessly, when the President utters them there's no room for doubt.
If truth is a complex wetland, Bush's words are the mall parking lot paved over it.
"Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.
"They believe the dictators should control every mind and tongue in the Middle East and beyond."
Boo, hiss. This is an enemy as black-hatted and dastardly as any silent-film or Saturday morning cartoon villain you've ever met, but don't you fret now, world, because, "We're determined to destroy terror networks wherever they operate."
And there's the case for pre-emptive invasion, carpet-bombed cities, occupation, torture; open-ended imprisonment, the slaughter of women and children, and the contamination of two countries with several thousand tons of depleted uranium dust, exposure to which is linked to a ghastly array of health problems, including leukemia, lung cancer, liver disease, bone disease and birth defects.
In my opinion, terrorism begins with murdered language. What's intolerable about listening to Bush is the airtightness of the lie he constructs out of the shredded language of human hope.
An hour before the President addressed the General Assembly, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke to the same group, pre-rebutting, you might say, the case for benevolent U.S. dominance that Bush was about to make. "Every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home must respect it abroad," he said, "and every nation that insists on it abroad must enforce it at home.
"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it; and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it."
As if! But what if words truly mattered? What if the pen really were mightier than the sword, and words that merely stood their ground and declared a principle, words that served no superpower's agenda, could disarm war criminals?
Well, maybe they can. I take heart, at least, that voter registration is way up. Something's simmering. The pressure of being lied to has driven countless Americans into activism on behalf of middle-of-the-roader John Kerry, potential inheritor of a mandate he barely acknowledges. That's a disconnect to be dealt with later (I hope). For now, "the advancing rights of mankind" have a showdown on Nov. 2.
Robert Koehler is an editor at Tribune Media Services and a syndicated writer.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
E.P.A. Cuts Pollution Levels With Refinery Settlements
October 10, 2004
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/politics/10epa.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - Despite its continuing difficulties forcing power plants to reduce their toxic emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency has enjoyed unusual success in bringing down pollution levels from some of the nation's largest oil refining companies.
Enforcement efforts begun in the Clinton administration have led to negotiated settlements with a dozen companies in the last four years, resulting in fines of $40 million and promises by the companies to spend $2.2 billion for equipment upgrades that reduce toxic emissions. The improvements are projected to eliminate nearly 170,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, substances that cause problems for human health and the ozone.
Agency officials say the settlements represent 41 percent of the industry, with negotiations under way that would reach 60 percent by early next year. Officials say no other industry group monitored for toxic emissions has responded so aggressively to threats of litigation over Clean Air Act violations.
"This is the model," Thomas V. Skinner, the E.P.A.'s chief enforcement officer, said of the refineries. "Our goal is 100 percent, but I'm sure some companies won't sign on; they'll end up fighting. But 60 percent is an incredible success story."
Even environmental groups admit that the agency has done a commendable job reducing toxic emissions at refineries, which account for about one percent of the nation's total emissions.
"These refinery settlements show that enforcing the Clean Air Act works," said John Walke, director of the Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
He added: "What that highlights, however, is a perverse contrast with power plants, where the Bush administration is not enforcing the law. If the administration would enforce clean air protections against coal-fired power plants in the same way as it has against the refineries, America would see millions of tons of reduced pollution and accompanying health benefits."
The first of the refinery settlements came just after the 2000 elections, when the agency concluded deals with Koch Industries, BP Exploration and Oil, Motiva Enterprises LLC/Equilon and Marathon Ashland Petroleum. The latest settlement, with Citgo, was concluded this week.
In each case, the company has eight years to complete its upgrades.
The agency has had less success with utility companies because of the way they interpret accusations of violations of Clean Air Act regulations under what is known as the New Source Review rule, which requires older facilities to install pollution controls when renovations would lead to increased emissions.
The operators of power plants, which account for almost a quarter of the nation's nitrogen oxide emissions and nearly 70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, have generally argued that they are complying with all federal laws and court decisions would eventually bear that out.
The utilities' willingness to litigate has been emboldened by two lawsuits, now on appeal, in which the trial court ruled in favor of the company, as well as by a Bush administration decision to revise the New Source Review rule to make it easier for operators to delay or avoid adding the new controls. The revision has come under attack from environmental groups and the E.P.A.'s inspector general, who issued a report last week that criticized the administration approach as lenient to companies and harmful to the air.
The government has reached settlement agreements with six utility companies, representing just five percent of the industry, and has prevailed in one other case at trial.
"The utilities have taken the position, win or lose, they'll battle it out," Mr. Skinner said. "They believe that time is money and as long as they can delay improvements, the better off they are."
Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a trade group, said that the issue was not so much whether to litigate. Rather, he said, the government's interpretation of New Source Review rules exposes companies that undergo maintenance every few years to "a perpetual cycle of litigation."
Refineries undergo fewer changes that expose them to New Source Review oversight. But they are subject to standards for other substances. Jim Mahoney, executive vice president of Flint Hills Resources, said his company and others that had settled with the E.P.A. made their decisions based on economic considerations for the company and environmental considerations for the communities.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Wis. Peace Activists Shy From Nader
In Bedrock Antiwar Communities, the Positions Click but the Campaign Doesn't
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20883-2004Oct9?language=printer
LUCK, Wis. -- A small but zealous group of antiwar activists in a pacifist commune called Anathoth in this lakeside speck near the Minnesota border say that four years ago, they gave presidential candidate Ralph Nader all five of their votes.
Residents of the rustic community -- founded in 1986 and today boasting nine voting-age members -- say they saw a kindred spirit in the tireless consumer and environmental advocate, as did legions of peace workers across the country.
"He had us excited," said Anathoth's Bonnie Urfer, 52, who helps run Nukewatch, a group that opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons and energy, out of a second-floor office in her stove-heated wood cabin.
But if Nader fails on Nov. 2 to match the 2.8 million votes he won nationally in 2000, he can blame it in part on his shifting fortunes in places such as Luck (population 1,210) and other far-flung outposts of the peace movement.
"To be honest, I don't know anyone who is supporting him this year," Urfer said. "In our community, he'll get something like zero out of nine."
As the most visible opponent of the Iraq conflict in the presidential race, Nader, who says he would slash the military budget and bring U.S. troops home within six months of taking office, has made his antiwar stance the centerpiece of his campaign. He is counting on the support of like-minded voters, especially as casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to mount.
After the first debate between President Bush and Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, who both declared their resolve to defeat insurgents in Iraq, Nader released a statement warning of an "endless occupation," and a "quagmire war."
But leaders of several peace organizations across the country say that Nader is unlikely to earn widespread backing from their members this year. "I think a lot of us are wondering why he is running again," said Woody Powell, executive director of St. Louis-based Veterans for Peace. "It's not clear what there is to gain by voting for him."
In Wisconsin -- a battleground state with a vibrant peace movement, where last week the high court granted Nader a spot on the ballot -- activists expressed little support for his candidacy.
"There's a lot of people who would be sympathetic to his message, but the antiwar movement is very fractured right now," said Robert Ricigliano, director of the peace studies program at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Some activists say they are backing Kerry, not because they prefer his platform to Nader's, but because they are concerned he might otherwise lose to Bush, whom they consider the worst available option.
"I'm not even paying much attention to the Nader campaign right now because I am so obsessed with getting rid of the other guy," said Eva Robar-Orlich, 37, a staff member for Wisconsin Peace Action, whose vintage clothing shop in Milwaukee doubles as a voter-registration site and salon for political discussion.
Others, including several residents of the Anathoth commune, expressed disappointment that Nader has failed to turn his antiwar message into a viable, third-party alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. Many who think along these lines say they will back Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, who has called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq but gets few headlines.
Nader, who ran on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000, made a halfhearted attempt to earn its support this year, skipping its convention in Milwaukee and asking for its endorsement, not its formal nomination.
"We want to build a peace party, not just a peace candidate," said Ben Manski, Nader's Midwest campaign coordinator in 2000, who is backing Cobb this year.
In 2000, Bush lost Wisconsin by about 5,700 votes and this year leads Kerry by a slim but shrinking margin, according to recent opinion polls. Nader, who earned just under 4 percent of the vote here four years ago (94,070 votes), has registered anywhere from 2 to 6 percent in statewide opinion polls over the past month.
Bill Linville, Nader's Wisconsin coordinator, said that there is little appreciable difference between the two major party candidates' views, and compares Nader to the legendary former governor, "Fightin' " Bob LaFollette, a proponent of free speech during World War I. But Linville acknowledges his candidate is struggling for support, even in such left-leaning communities as Luck and Madison, the state capital and the center of Wisconsin's activist community, which became a hub of the student movement against the Vietnam War.
"With our peace message, you'd think Madison might be friendly terrain, but, to be honest, we get yelled at a lot when we go out to campaign. I've been legitimately worried we were going to be attacked," Linville said. Nader last campaigned in Wisconsin in mid-September, although his running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo, visited the state on Friday.
Last weekend, 10 student-age volunteers handed out fliers at Madison's vast outdoor market, where hundreds of merchants sold farm-fresh gourds, cheese bread and frozen custard.
With half a dozen campaigns and candidates working the crowd, every passerby appeared to be plastered in political paraphernalia. But the Nader volunteers, who implored bystanders to "support the peace candidate" or to "help bring the troops home" drew some strong responses.
"Vote Nader, vote peace," Alex Correll, a student at Edgewood College in Madison, repeated every few seconds as shoppers streamed past.
" 'Vote Nader, vote Bush,' you mean," responded a woman pushing her daughter in a stroller, as she took his brochure and crumpled it into her pocket.
The Democratic Party has worked for months to undercut Nader's support, both by unleashing high-profile Kerry surrogates to criticize him and by filing a series of lawsuits to bar him from the ballot in battleground states.
Earlier this month, an anti-Nader interest group called United Progressives for Victory, distributed a letter signed by more than 50 peace activists who declared, "We stand with Nader in demanding that the cause of security and peace be at the top of the national agenda. But we will not vote for him this election."
Republicans, meanwhile, have actively aided Nader's efforts.
As of early last week, Nader had qualified for the ballot in more than 30 states and the District; his name appeared on the ballots of 43 states four years ago.
In Luck -- which according to local legend was named for residents deemed fortunate to live next to the placid local landmark, Butternut Lake -- Nukewatch activists call Nader's advocacy work an inspiration for their efforts to shut down a guidance system used by the U.S. Navy for nuclear submarines.
The Wisconsin transmission point for the program, in which electromagnetic waves are pumped into the bedrock and dispersed across the globe, was closed last month after two decades of protests that led to more than 600 arrests, most of them for trespassing on government property.
"It is a struggle Nader would probably be proud of. And we agree with him about just about everything," said Barbara Miles, a founder of Anathoth, which is named for a biblical city of refuge. "But you can admire a man without voting for him."
--------
In Wartime, Critics Question Peace Prize for Environmentalism
By PATRICK E. TYLER
October 10, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/europe/10nobel.html
OSLO, Oct. 9 - The decision by the five-member Nobel Committee to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to an environmental activist prompted some prominent Norwegians to criticize the selection, saying the effectiveness of the prize in promoting peace, enhancing security and ending conflicts could be diluted.
In Norway's reserved and polite style of public debate, critics joined Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik in congratulating and praising Wangari Maathai for receiving this year's prize, which includes a $1.36 million cash award, in recognition of her work in Africa fighting deforestation and her advocacy for democracy and women's rights.
But then some prominent voices here wondered whether giving the prize for environmental activism, while a laudable activity, in a time of global concerns about war in the Middle East, terrorism and nuclear proliferation was underplaying the potential of the prestigious award.
"I thought the intention of Alfred Nobel's will was to focus on a person or organization who had worked actively for peace," said Carl I. Hagen, leader of the Progress Party, whose senior political adviser, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, is a member of the Nobel Committee. "It is odd that the committee has completely overlooked the unrest that the world is living with daily, and given the prize to an environmental activist," he told Norwegian state television on Friday.
Espen Barth Eide, a former deputy foreign minister, said: "The one thing the Nobel Committee does is define the topic of this epoch in the field of peace and security. If they widen it too much, they risk undermining the core function of the Peace Prize; you end up saying everything that is good is peace."
Nobel committee officials said Friday that they were further expanding the reach of the prize to recognize environmentalism as a critical global issue. Work in humanism and human rights activism has already been recognized.
"I know some people have said the committee is enlarging the peace vocabulary with this award," Mr. Hagen said, "but I think they should have gone the other way. It's fine to fight for human rights and the environment, but this is the Nobel Peace Prize."
But other prominent voices disagreed.
On Saturday morning, Aftenposten, Norway's most influential paper, admitted that it was possible to ask, "What does tree planting have to do with peace?"
But the answer, the newspaper replied, can be found in the Amazon, Haiti, China and Africa where deforestation, erosion and climate change "have changed the conditions of life for millions of people, led to hunger and need, created tensions between populations and countries."
Therefore, the newspaper concluded, "there is something untraditional and exciting with this award."
Former Prime Minister Kaare Willoch said in an interview that he, too, "would have expected that the Peace Prize would have dealt with nuclear proliferation, but I am in full agreement that there are good reasons for this prize, too."
He said environmental and development problems in the third world were "distantly related to terrorism" because they exposed the divide between wealthy and poor nations and thus engendered resentment, hatred and, eventually, threats to security.
"I will not participate with criticism of this prize," he said, "because it is intensely important to the Western world to understand what is going on in less advantaged countries and to contribute to the improvement of conditions."
Walter Gibbs contributed reporting for this article.
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