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NUCLEAR
Proposed Irving power plant will affect N.B. decision
A Hint of a Nuclear Compromise by Iran
MPs aim to force Iran to resume nuclear activities
Iraqi Explosives Missing, U.N. Is Told
Bush Making Us Safer?
Explosives Missing from Iraqi Ex-military Site, Says U.N.
Powell Urges North Korea to Resume Nuclear Talks
S.Korea on Alert for Possible Infiltration
Top Russian Envoy Calls for Joint Projects With NK
We had power to prevent N. Korea from going nuclear
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire
U.S. Nuclear Panel Closes Online Library
Nuclear body seeks new technology
Power outage trips alarms at Yankee
Fluor may miss DOE deadline on K Basins
Hot Waste Builds at U.S. Nuclear Plants
MILITARY
Officials Say Karzai Is Clear Winner
Politics Delay U.S. Airlift Of Peacekeepers to Sudan
Attacks on Women in West Sudan Draw an Outcry
Report Warns of Failure to Control Biological Weapons
Pentagon Probes Halliburton's Iraq Contracts
Whistle-Blower Asks for Halliburton Investigation
Powell's China Comments Anger Taiwanese
Beijing Rebuffs Powell on Taiwan
France and Germany to set up rapid reaction 'battle group'
U.N., U.S. confident in Iraqi elections
Allawi Blames Ambush on'Negligence'
Flurry of Violence Kills At Least 15
Allawi Faults U.S.-Led Forces on Execution of Iraqi Soldiers
At Tense Syria-Iraq Border, American Forces Are Battling Insurgents
Sharon defends plan to cede settlements
Israeli Parliament Begins Debate on Gaza Withdrawal
Israeli Parliament Approves Sharon's Gaza Withdrawal Plan
Analysis: Jordan's cold peace with Israel
Russian warships to join NATO exercise
NATO says no "firm evidence" of terrorist activity in Bosnia
U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
F.B.I. Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib
Carry on spying
U.S.-Led Afghan Coalition Critcized
Beijing boosts Delhi's bid for UN council seat
Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report
Inquiry ordered in massacre case
GI Janes battle Iraqi insurgents, M-60 in one hand
Embedded Reporter Saw No Explosives Search
A Soldier Speaks: Robert J. Acosta
Veterans' Voices Rise in Protest
China official asks Japan, US to consider neighbours in troop deployment
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rehnquist's illness raises stakes in election
Military resists anti-drug role
9/11 reform bill facing 'lame-duck' congressional vote
9/11 Panel Leaders Give Warning
Mass. Governor Criticizes Flow of Terror Information
Delays on 9/11 Bill Are Laid to Pentagon
New York Police Expand DNA Testing
POLITICS
Increase in War Funding Sought Bush to Request $70 Billion More
Debt, the Greatest Threat to Our Security
Bush campaign accuses Kerry of 'fabricating' U.N. meetings
On the Campaign Trail
Final Ads Continue Trend of Negativity
Lafayette Park Blues
Judge upholds touch screens
OTHER
Environmental Proposals
Expert Criticizes Bush on Global Warming Policy
ACTIVISTS
Thailand Says 78 Muslims Died in Army Custody
The Soldiers Who Said No
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- canada
Proposed Irving power plant will affect N.B. decision about nuclear station
Canadian Press
CHRIS MORRIS
Oct 26, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20041026/ca_pr_on_bu/nb_irving_power_3
FREDERICTON(CP) - A decision on whether to dump or fix up New Brunswick's aging nuclear power plant could be swayed by a private firm's plans to build a giant gas-fired generator, says the province's energy minister.
Irving Oil, one of New Brunswick's largest industries, announced this week that it plans to build a mega power plant in Saint John, N.B., using gas from a liquefied natural gas terminal. The New Brunswick government, facing a looming energy crunch within 10 years, must soon decide whether it will spend at least $1.4 billion to upgrade the aging Candu reactor at Point Lepreau, in southern New Brunswick.
"It is an independent decision from that (the Irving) announcement," Fitch said of the decision on Lepreau.
"But we'll have to put it on the scales as we make the decision."
NB Power, the provincial Crown utility, is preparing a recommendation to the Tory government on the future of Lepreau.
Following that step, the Tories are expected to announce the fate of the Lepreau generating station, which has a maximum capacity of 600 megawatts, before Christmas.
Bob Scott of NB Power said Tuesday it's too early to say much about the Irving Oil announcement, which proposes a 500 to 750 megawatt, gas-fired station to be built somewhere in the Saint John area.
"This idea that has been put forward by Irving Oil company still requires a great deal of work before it would even get to the proposal stage," Scott said.
Tom Adams of Energy Probe, a national energy watchdog based in Toronto, said private generating stations are becoming common in North America.
"This is how most power plants get built, either by or directly on behalf of customers, rather than the old model where the utility built for itself and then customers were stuck with it."
Adams is a strong critic of NB Power which he has faulted over the years for its poor decisions and large debts. The utility has a debt of over $3 billion.
In addition to complex problems relating to the Lepreau nuclear station, the utility recently launched a $1-billion lawsuit over a failed deal with Venezuela for the purchase of a special fuel called Orimulsion for the generating station at Coleson Cove, N.B.
Adams said one of the reasons Irving Oil may want its own generating station is its concern about NB Power.
"One of the factors that may be motivating this is a loss of confidence in NB Power," he said.
Adams said that while the Irving plan may be bad news for NB Power, it should be good news for consumers in New Brunswick.
He said that a large, gas-fired power plant will help ensure a reliable supply of electricity in the future.
The Irving plant would be capable of providing as much as one-third of New Brunswick's energy needs.
-------- iran
A Hint of a Nuclear Compromise by Iran
October 26, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/middleeast/26iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 25- In a reversal, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator hinted Monday that Iran might maintain its freeze on enriching uranium to end a standoff with European countries over its nuclear program.
His remarks came one day after a Foreign Ministry spokesman had rejected a request by three European countries last week that Iran indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment in return for technical and economic assistance, saying Iran was waiting for a more "balanced" offer.
"The European proposal for an unlimited suspension of uranium enrichment can be implemented, provided it does not contradict the Islamic Republic's criteria," the ISNA news agency quoted the nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, as saying on Monday.
"We have said that we accept the suspension as long as it is voluntary,'' Mr. Rowhani said. "No country has the right to deprive us of our right."
He did not say how long Iran might be willing to forgo enrichment, but said it would "patiently take any measure towards confidence-building."
His comments were the first positive response to the proposal offered by Germany, France and Britain on Thursday. The three countries asked Iran to give up its enrichment program in return for a guarantee to help Iran build a light-water power reactor and to provide a supply of reactor fuel, as well as a package of economic trade incentives.
--------
MPs aim to force Iran to resume nuclear activities
TEHRAN (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026143219.7cuc62n6.html
Iranian MPs have submitted a bill which would force the government to resume uranium enrichment, a key process in the nuclear fuel cycle, in defiance of the international community, a deputy said Tuesday.
"Ninety-three deputies have signed the bill," said Rafaat Bayat, a conservative MP whose faction controls the 290-seat parliament, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.
It calls for "an immediate halt to the suspension of uranium enrichment as well as to the voluntary implementation of the additional protocol" of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), she said.
Bayat added that it would be debated Sunday, but a senior parliamentary official ruled that out.
"The only text which will be examined on Sunday will be the proposed law adopted by the foreign affairs and national security committee," deputy speaker Hamid Reza Hadji-Babai told AFP.
He said 50 MPs had signed a request for the bill to be given priority.
On October 5, the committee gave preliminary approval to the bill which calls for the government "to take action for the country to master civilian nuclear technology, especially in the fuel production cycle".
But the text does not demand an immediate resumption of enrichment.
Iran's pro-reform government agreed in late 2003 to suspend enrichment and signed the additional protocol allowing more intrusive inspections by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The decisions have been implemented without ratification by parliament, which has since fallen under the control of conservatives after most reformist candidates were banned from running in February elections.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, said Monday that Tehran was ready to consider a European request to maintain the enrichment suspension, ahead of renewed talks on the nuclear standoff in Vienna on Wednesday.
Three European states last week offered Iran a deal under which Tehran would receive valuable nuclear technology if it indefinitely suspended all uranium enrichment activities, a key stage in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Britain, France and Germany hope that if Iran agrees to the deal it will be possible to stave off US demands for the nuclear issue to be sent before the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
The two sides are to meet again Wednesday in the Austrian capital, where the IAEA is based, to hear Tehran's response to their offer.
The proposed law states that "the Europeans have called for Iran to put a total halt to its activities to enrich uranium and to purchase its fuel from foreign countries".
Depending on the level of purification, enriched uranium can be used either as fuel for a civilian reactor or as the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran strongly rejects US accusations it is seeking to manufacture atomic weapons.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraqi Explosives Missing, U.N. Is Told
U.S. Disputes Timing of Loss of Munitions Sealed by Inspectors at Weapons Facility
By Colum Lynch and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62731-2004Oct25.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 25 -- The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported Monday that massive quantities of high explosives at an Iraqi weapons facility have disappeared, including some material under U.N. seal because of its potential use to detonate a nuclear bomb.
U.N. and Iraqi officials indicated the explosives were lost while the country was under U.S. occupation. But U.S. officials suggested that the munitions may have disappeared before the U.S.-led forces established full control over the country. They said a search of the facility by U.S. troops shortly after the fall of Baghdad last year turned up no evidence of the explosives.
The conflicting accounts generated confusion over who bore responsibility for allowing the loss of the explosives that had been stored at the sprawling Qaqaa weapons facility outside Baghdad before the war. The munitions included the explosives RDX, PETN and HMX.
HMX, the only one of the three under U.N. seal, has application as a nuclear trigger. But it and the other two can also be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners and produce warheads for missiles.
The disappearance of the material raised the possibility that some could already have found its way into explosive devices used against U.S. and allied troops in Iraq -- or could do so in the future. But U.S. officials in both Washington and Baghdad played down such a likelihood, noting that the car bombs and roadside explosives that have menaced troops have tended to be made from old artillery shells or dynamite.
Pentagon and State Department officials said the matter has been referred to the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA-run agency charged with accounting for what became of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. But Charles A. Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector who heads the group, said in a telephone interview that he had received no such orders.
Duelfer also said that a U.S. team inspecting the site in May 2003 turned up no evidence of explosives under U.N. seal. "My sense is, it's been looted, it's gone missing," he said of the material. "I don't know the specifics, but it's not there now.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, presented the U.N. Security Council with an Oct. 10 letter from the interim Iraqi government reporting the loss of the explosives. Word of the letter was reported Monday by the New York Times and CBS News.
The disclosure came less than a month after ElBaradei warned the council that U.N. satellite photos had detected "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement" of buildings linked to Iraq's former covert nuclear weapons program. Those buildings "housed high precision equipment" that had been subject to U.N. monitoring during Saddam Hussein's reign.
The letter from Mohammad J. Abbas, a senior official in the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology, said that nearly 215 tons of HMX, 156 tons of RDX and 6 tons of PETN had gone missing after April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces. The letter blamed a "lack of security" for the loss.
The IAEA first discovered Iraq's stores of HMX and RDX in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War. The agency placed more than 250 tons of HMX under U.N. seal at Qaqaa. An additional ton of the explosive was housed at the nearby facility of Hatteen, about 24 miles south of Baghdad.
The IAEA authorized U.N. weapons inspectors to use some of the explosives in 1996 to destroy an Iraqi biological weapons facility. More than 32 tons of HMX under IAEA seal disappeared from the site from 1998 to 2002. Iraq told U.N. authorities that it had used the explosive in its cement industry.
ElBaradei informed the Security Council on Monday that the last time IAEA inspectors were able to verify the presence of the explosives at Qaqaa was in January 2003, two months before the U.S. invasion began.
Administration officials have acknowledged the inability of U.S. troops to secure the large stocks of weaponry discovered after the invasion. But officials at both the Pentagon and State Department suggested Monday that the high explosives said to have vanished from Qaqaa may have been removed from the facility by Hussein loyalists before the invasion, then hidden or sent abroad.
"We don't know that this site was looted," a senior State Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity citing department policy. "All we know is that it's not there. We don't know whether it was moved by Saddam before the war."
The official added that U.S. authorities lacked a complete list of material that had been placed under IAEA seal. "We weren't doing accounting of everything under IAEA seal. Some stuff yes, but not all of it," he said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said U.S.-led forces searched the Qaqaa facility after the invasion.
"Coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations," he said. "The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility. While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals."
In satellite photos of the Qaqaa site taken in November 2003 and shown to The Washington Post on Monday by senior U.N. officials, signs of damage from previous U.S. bombing campaigns and looting were evident. But the facilities that stored HMX and RDX were still largely intact, according to the officials.
Graham reported from Washington. Staff writers Walter Pincus and Robin Wright contributed to this report from Washington.
--------
Bush Making Us Safer?
Informed Comment
by Juan Cole
October 26, 2004
http://progressivetrail.org/articles/041025Cole.shtml
The complete lack of interest of the Bush administration in actually securing dangerous materials connected to the old, abandoned Iraqi nuclear program has long belied Bush's stated concern with Iraq's alleged weapons as a pretext for the war.
James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger with Khalid al-Ansary reveal in the New York Times today that the Bush administration allowed 380 tons of super-powerful explosives to disappear from al-Qaqaa, one of Iraq's sensitive military installations, after the war in spring of 2003. These are not ordinary bombs. This explosive material, HMX and RDX, can be used to detonate atomic bombs, collapse buildings, and form warheads for missiles. A pound of it brought down a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
A lot of the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of US troops and maimed thousands have been made of HMX and RDX, as suggested by how infrequently the guerrillas have blown themselves up in planting them. HMX and RDX are favored by terrorists because they are stable and will only explode via a blasting cap.
Incredibly, the International Atomic Energy Commission and European Union officials warned Bush before the war that these explosives needed to be safeguarded.
Josh Marshall is suspicious that this major screw-up has been known to the Bush administration for some time, and that it may have pressured the Iraqi government not to mention it.
If Bush cannot even protect our troops from explosives at a sensitive facility in a country he had conquered, how is he going to protect the American public from terrorists who have not even yet been identified?
The disappearance of these explosives is yet one more disaster caused by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's mania to send a small military force into Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled the officers in the Pentagon, who wanted hundreds of thousands of troops and knew that many would be needed to secure the country after the war. Why hasn't Rumsfeld been fired? He ran Iraq for most of the last 18 months and it is beginning to be as cratered as the dark side of the moon.
Only two weeks ago, The International Atomic Energy Commission reported that not only had dual-use equipment been stripped from an old Iraq nuclear weapons facility, but even the buildings had been stripped and dismantled. Muhammad al-Baradei said that some of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Iraq has already begun showing up in other countries. But the dual-use equipment, which has applications in nuclear weapons construction, has disappeared. (Hmm. I wonder which neighbor of Iraq might be desperately at work on a nuclear bomb and might be willing to pay top dollar for such equipment?) How bad a job Bush is doing is clear when we consider that we might well be relieved to know that this equipment went to Iran, since that means Bin Laden doesn't have it.
So let me ask this again. Bush is making us safer? The American public trusts him to fight terror more effectively than Kerry? On what record? Bush appears to have all but just called up Usamah and Khamenei and told them where Saddam's old stuff was in case they needed it for their programs. And he politely made sure that no pesky US troops would be around to impede their access.
Bush administration spokesmen are being careful to say that the hundreds of tons of explosives stolen from al-Qaqaa are not themselves useful as fissile material, i.e. they are not enriched uranium or plutonium.
But the fact is that one of the first such "missing deadly weapons" scandals to break in Iraq had to do with the disappearance of radioactive materials from Tuwaitha. This theft was known already in the summer of 2003, and worries were expressed that that material could be used to make a dirty bomb.
So Bush not only failed to have al-Qaqaa guarded against theft of HMX and RDX, not only failed to guard against theft of dual-use equipment from a long-defunct nuclear program site, but also failed to do the elementary work of ensuring that the notorious al-Tuwaitha facility was secured against the theft of radiocative materials!
Since Tuwaitha was the great bugaboo impelling the Iraq war in the first place, you would imagine that Bush would have sent out a unit to secure and search it immediately. But no, he politely let the looters have a look-around first, waiting in line.
I know someone is going to write me asking whether the existence of all this equipment and dangerous explosives doesn't prove that Saddam still had an active weapons program. The answer is a categorical "no." A lot of this stuff was left over from the 1980s when there had been such active programs, but which were abandoned after the Gulf War. Ironically, the bits and pieces Saddam still had were useless to a major state. But they could be stolen and cobbled together by a small band of terrorists to deadly effect.
I just don't feel any safer with Bush in the White House. Maybe it is just me.
Reuters has the main stories of mayhem in Iraq on Sunday. The big one is of the cold-blooded murder of nearly 50 Iraqi army recruits in Diyala province. They were killed mafia-style, a bullet in the back of the head. They were unarmed and being trucked back from their training. This was obviously an inside job, since the guerrillas knew where they were and that they were unarmed. Iraqi al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, which is plausible since Monotheism and Holy War does hate Shiites, and the troops were poor Shiites from the south.
I googled Ed Seitz, the State Department security official killed by a mortar shell on Sunday. The story of his death at the hands of nativist Iraqi guerrillas is even more complicated and poignant if it is true that he was a crusader against the anti-globalization movement who tried to keep Canadian anarchists out of the US and used to ask them where Bin Laden is. The contrast of the demand for open borders for corporate purposes and for closed borders with regard to ideas is striking. In some ways, Iraq is proving highly resistant to the distinction, and is if anything turning it on its head. Companies are being chased out of Iraq, but all sorts of ideas are swirling in from Iraq's nieghbors and from the United States and Europe.
--------
Explosives Missing from Iraqi Ex-military Site, Says U.N.
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
October 26, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=251
VIENNA, Austria - Hundreds of tons of explosives are missing from a site near Baghdad that was part of Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear arms program but never secured by the U.S. military, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday.
The missing 377 tons of high explosives - monitored by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (UAEA) until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 - could potentially be used to make a detonator for a nuclear bomb or in conventional weapons as well as in a variety of other military and civilian uses, arms experts said.
Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology informed the IAEA two weeks ago that the explosives had been "lost after April 9, 2003, through the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security," the watchdog agency told the 15-nation U.N. Security Council.
The New York Times said arms experts feared the most immediate use of the explosives would be to attack U.S. or Iraqi forces, which have come under increasing fire ahead of Iraq's elections due in January.
Diplomats at the IAEA warned that materials useful in making nuclear bombs could also easily be shipped out of Iraq and sold to countries like neighbor Iran or terrorist groups.
The IAEA has been barred from most of Iraq since the war and has watched from afar as the former nuclear sites it once monitored have been stripped by looters.
Vienna diplomats said the IAEA had cautioned the United States about the danger of the explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told U.S. officials about the need to keep them secured.
U.S. presidential challenger John Kerry accused President Bush of committing a massive blunder in failing to safeguard the explosives.
Kerry Sees "Great Blunder"
"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the greatest blunders of this administration, and the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and this country at greater risk," Kerry told supporters in Dover, New Hampshire.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth said the Bush administration was investigating the matter.
"Obviously this is a serious matter. We are looking into it," he said.
ElBaradei informed Washington of the seriousness of the matter on Oct. 15, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Vienna. Bush was informed days later, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Prior to the war, 215 tons of HMX explosives had been sealed and tagged with the IAEA emblem while stored at Iraq's sprawling Al Qaqaa military facility. Some 156 tons of RDX and 6.4 tons of PETN were also stored at the Al Qaqaa site and monitored by the IAEA.
The U.N. agency last verified the presence and amounts of the three types of explosive at Al Qaqaa in January 2003, ElBaradei told the Security Council.
Iraq was allowed to keep some explosives for civilian use after the IAEA completed its dismantling of Saddam's covert nuclear weapons program after the 1991 Gulf War.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA, who declined to be identified, said it was hard to understand why the U.S. military had failed to secure the facility.
"This was a very well-known site. If you could have picked a few sites that you would have to secure then ... Al Qaqaa would certainly be one of the main ones," the diplomat said.
At the Pentagon, a U.S. defense official said Al Qaqaa was "well known as a storage depot for conventional explosives" but doubted U.S. forces in Iraq made it "a high-priority location" for providing security.
The missing explosives were not weapons of mass destruction, the official said, adding that U.S. forces gave higher priority to suspected WMD sites after the invasion. No WMD were found, however.
"You just can't leave a guard force at all these places you find. If you leave a squad at all 10,000 places that are known so far, then there's 50,000 (troops) out of action," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Additional reporting by Javier E. David in New York; Patricia Wilson in Dover, New Hampshire; Will Dunham at the Pentagon in Washington; and Irwin Arieff at the United Nations in New York)
-------- korea
Powell Urges North Korea to Resume Nuclear Talks
October 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asia-Powell.html?pagewanted=all
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell urged North Korea on Tuesday to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks if it wants international aid, while South Korea ended a high alert triggered by holes cut into a border fence.
South Korea, meanwhile, called on Washington and other participants in six-nation talks to show more flexibility in resolving the nuclear standoff -- comments that appeared to distance Seoul from U.S. proposals.
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon urged ``all participating countries in the six-nation talks to make more creative and realistic proposals to help bring North Korea to the talks as soon as possible.''
Powell said Washington has no intention of changing its North Korea policy soon, but would work to resolve the nuclear dispute.
``We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieving this goal through multilateral diplomacy and six-party talks,'' Powell said in a joint news conference with the South Korean foreign minister.
``Clearly, everybody wants to see the next round of six-party talks get started,'' Powell said, referring to the stalled talks among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia. ``This is the time to move forward, to bring this matter to a conclusion.''
He said the goal was to help the people of impoverished North Korea have a better life, in part by providing more food aid.
``We don't intend to attack North Korea, we don't have any hostile intent notwithstanding their claims,'' he said. ``It is this nuclear issue that is keeping the international community from assisting North Korea.''
U.S. officials believe North Korea is biding its time on six-party talks, sensing that Democratic candidate John Kerry might win the election and be easier to deal with than Bush.
Powell, who was in Seoul following visits this week to Japan and China, also met Tuesday with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and South Korea's unification minister.
Powell predicted that North Korea will return to the talks after next week's U.S. election, South Korean officials said.
Meanwhile, South Korea said that two mysterious holes found on the wire fence on the tense border with North Korea were most likely used not by communist infiltrators but by a South Korean defector to the North. It ordered its troops to stand down from a high alert.
About 60 miles north of Seoul, South Korean border guards had earlier found two holes in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since their 1950-53 war. The conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, and the two Koreas remain technically at war.
The highly unusual discovery of the holes -- found on the fence checked daily by troops for signs of infiltration -- had triggered fears of North Korean commandoes slipping through the border and led South Korea to tighten roadblocks and traffic checks north of Seoul.
``After investigating the way the fence was cut and the foot prints in the scene, we have concluded that an unidentified person crossed into the north,'' said Brig. Gen. Hwang Joong-sun, an operational officer of the South Korean military.
Three rounds of six-party talks, held in Beijing, have yielded little progress. North Korea skipped a fourth round that was to have taken place in September, and lashed out Tuesday at Washington.
``It is impossible to open the talks now that the U.S. is becoming evermore undisguised in its hostile policy toward the (North),'' said North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
``The Bush administration is employing a sleight of hand to mislead the public opinion at home and abroad and garner support from more electors,'' it said.
North Korea reiterated that it would rejoin the six-nation talks only if Washington is ready to roll back its hostile policy, and offer a ``reward'' for freezing its nuclear development.
The United States is seeking the permanent denuclearization of North Korea and has said it will provide the communist government with economic benefits only after it offers a credible commitment to meet U.S. disarmament demands.
Powell rejected the North's demand that Washington change its proposals.
``We modified (our proposal) for the third round of six party talks, showed flexibility and tried to accommodate the interests of other parties,'' he said. ``The way to move forward is to have the next round of six party talks, so that we can discuss that proposal and not have a negotiation with ourselves in a press conference.''
--------
S.Korea on Alert for Possible Infiltration
The Associated Press
By SANG-HUN CHOE
October 26, 2004
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/90-10262004-389521.html
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea went on high alert over possible infiltration by North Korean agents Tuesday after border guards found a hole cut in a fence. The alert came as Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the North to return to nuclear talks if it wants international assistance.
During his visit to Seoul, Powell said the United States and South Korea reconfirmed their commitment to a "peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula."
"We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieving this goal through multilateral diplomacy and six-party talks," Powell said in a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
"Clearly, everybody wants to see the next round of six-party talks get started," Powell said, speaking after visiting Japan and China, which also participate in six-nation nuclear talks on North Korea. "This is the time to move forward, to bring this matter to a conclusion."
He said the goal was to help North Koreans have a better life, in part by providing more food aid.
"We don't intend to attack North Korea, we don't have any hostile intent notwithstanding their claims," he said. "It is this nuclear issue that is keeping the international community from assisting North Korea."
U.S. officials believe North Korea is biding its time on the nuclear disarmament talks, sensing that Democratic candidate John Kerry might win the election and be easier to deal with than President Bush.
On Tuesday, Powell met South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun as well as South Korea's foreign minister and unification minister.
"Secretary Powell said he predicts that North Korea will come to the six-party talks after the U.S. election," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Jong-jae said.
Powell was in Seoul to discuss a strategy for restarting the talks and a redeployment of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula, following visits to Japan and China, where officials told him they believed it possible for the nuclear talks to resume in the next few months.
About 60 miles to the north, South Korean border guards found a hole in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since their 1950-53 war, Brig. Maj. Gen. Hwang Joong-sun said. The conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, and the two Koreas remain technically at war. Click here!
The 16-inch by 12-inch hole, which was cut through two layers of wire fence yards apart, was discovered early Tuesday.
"We are conducting our military operations in case there is an infiltration by an enemy," Hwang told a news conference. He declined to elaborate.
The military's vigilance was at its highest level short of what happens when a communist infiltrator is actually spotted, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Commenting on the border development, Powell said: "There was an apparent small breach in the wire system coming south out of the DMZ and it's being looked into. That's the extent of the information that I have."
Powell was accompanied by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, the chief U.S. delegate to the nuclear talks among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.
North Korea skipped a meeting that was to have taken place in September, and lashed out at Washington ahead of Powell's visit.
Pyongyang said U.S.-led naval exercises taking place this week in Japanese waters were a provocation, and that prospects for new six-nation talks were getting dimmer every day.
The United States is seeking the permanent denuclearization of North Korea and has said it will provide the communist government with economic benefits only after it offers a credible commitment to meet U.S. disarmament demands.
The United States announced earlier this month that it will withdraw 12,500 troops from South Korea by 2008. Once completed, 24,500 U.S. troops - two-thirds of the current number in South Korea - will remain in the country.
The United States pledged to upgrade its remaining forces on the peninsula to counter fears that North Korea might become emboldened and that investors would be deterred from the South.
South Korea recently admitted conducting a plutonium-based nuclear experiment in 1982 and a uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000.
South Korea says they were part of scientific research, and told Powell on Tuesday it had no intention of developing nuclear weapons.
"We didn't intend and will not intend to develop nuclear weapons," Chung's spokesman, Kim, quoted the minister as telling Powell. October 26, 2004 2:36 AM
-----
Top Russian Envoy Calls for Joint Projects With NK
10-26-2004
Hankooki.com
By Jung Sung-ki
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200410/kt2004102616303311990.htm
Russian Ambassador to South Korea Teymuraz O. Ramishivili yesterday called for multinational economic projects involving North Korea as part of efforts to resolve the ongoing stalemate over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.
``What the North needs is international economic projects, including inter-Korean ones, to help the country out of its extreme poverty,'' the top Russian envoy said at the sixth Korea-Russia Forum held in Pyongchang, Kangwon Province. He added that humanitarian aid has limited effect in persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.
``Multinational business projects involving North Korea will not produce results in the short-term, but they will surely help the country change and improve their systems, leading to a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff,'' he said.
Ramishivili stressed that international economic aid for North Korea should keep pace with developments in the ongoing six-way talks aimed at resolving the 24-month long nuclear impasse.
The Russian ambassador also argued that it is not appropriate to demand North Korea follow Libya's model for nuclear disarmament. ``North Korea and Libya have some things in common, but there are also many different aspects between the two countries,'' he said. ``Libya has grown rich under a market economy and hasn't been under communist rule.''
To peacefully resolve the nuclear issue at the multinational negotiation table, all parties concerned should refrain from making threatening remarks, Ramishivili advised.
The two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China have held three rounds of six-way talks to seek a solution to the crisis, but no significant progress has been made. A scheduled September meeting did not happen because North Korea refused to attend it, citing Washington's ``hostile'' policy toward it and South Korea's past nuclear experiments.
The nuclear dispute erupted in the fall of 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted running a uranium-based nuclear weapons program _ a claim denied by the North. The North's alleged uranium program violated a 1994 accord under which the communist country promised not to pursue any nuclear weapons program, including its known plutonium-based one.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
-----
We had power to prevent N. Korea from going nuclear
October 26, 2004
St. Petersburg Times
By PETER D. ZIMMERMAN
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/26/Opinion/We_had_power_to_preve.shtml
NANJING, China - Senior Chinese nuclear scientists attending an international arms control meeting in this ancient capital city, as well as senior officials and scholars in Beijing, express significant fears over the twin developments on Taiwan and in South Korea. Both countries have been caught red-handed producing enriched uranium or plutonium which can be used in nuclear weapons. Both countries are also a long way from being able to build atomic weapons. But the same Chinese scientists are even more worried about the failure of the Six Party Talks intended to end the North Korean nuclear program. They do not want yet another nuclear power on their borders; Russia and India are enough.
The question most frequently asked in Chinese scientific circles is whether the Six Party Talks, including North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States have any chance to succeed. These are the talks of which George W. Bush appears to be so proud because he is reaching out to "form a coalition." My Chinese counterparts point out that the dispute over a nuclear North Korea, formally called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK, does not involve four of the six parties. Early on North Korea cast the issue as a simple one between the United States and itself, and it has stuck to that formula.
What North Korea wants, and the Chinese impressed this on me most strongly, is some kind of normal relations with the United States along with a pledge that the United States will not invade the DPRK. In principle, these should have been easy for the United States to grant. Diplomatic recognition does not state that the United States approves of a government; it merely says that we acknowledge that the government controls a specific piece of land, and that we will talk to that government should problems arise. As to the security pledge, it's obvious that we have no intention of going to war on the Korean Peninsula for a second time, so long as the DPRK does not attack our ally, South Korea. North Korea's immense artillery formations along the Demilitarized Zone could pulverize Seoul, the South Korean capital city, in a matter of hours, no matter what the United States did short of a major nuclear first strike practically on the city limits of Seoul.
Among the NATO nations, the United States stands practically alone in refusing to extend diplomatic recognition to North Korea. Most of our closest friends and allies, including France, Britain, Canada and Germany, accredit ambassadors to Pyongyang.
In the fall of 2002, long before the North Koreans broke the seals placed on its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and months before they ejected the IAEA's inspectors, the DPRK stated officially and publicly that it would agree to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, if the United States would discuss the outstanding issues face to face.
Face-to-face negotiations are precisely what George W. Bush rejects. His first state visitor after he was sworn in in 2001 was Kim Dae Jung, then-president of South Korea and a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his attempts to build bridges to the North. Secretary of State Colin Powell, after meeting with President Kim, announced that the United States would continue to support Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" toward the DPRK and would continue the Clinton administration's policy of openness to both countries. A few hours later, President Kim had met with Bush and been told that because the U.S. president "loathed" Kim Jong Il, the mercurial and sometimes very oddly behaving "Dear Leader" of North Korea, American support for the sunshine policy and the Clinton policy was withdrawn.
While Bush was focusing on spurious intelligence to spur the United States to war with Iraq, Pyongyang was desperately sending signals that it did not particularly want to reprocess the plutonium in its nuclear reactor, but that U.S. actions were forcing just such a decision. While the Bush administration looked high and low for a nonexistent Iraqi nuclear program, Kim Jong Il's scientists were preparing to reprocess plutonium, ordering the chemicals and, finally, ejecting the IAEA inspectors from its Yong Byong nuclear installation.
The Bush administration, its attention on Iraq to the exclusion of real problems, failed to do much to meet North Korea even a quarter of the way. In the end, all the Bush team could do was convene six nations, at least three of which were impotent when it came to solving the bilateral problem with North Korea, and hold three meetings, none of which made much progress.
While Bush looked for nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq - as Condoleezza Rice suggested, to ensure that the next warning did not come as a mushroom cloud - the capability to generate plenty of mushroom clouds was being acquired by North Korea.
I cannot guess the probable outcome had the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration's initiatives on North Korea. The DPRK is a very difficult negotiating partner, and even their principal friends, the Chinese, agree. But I cannot imagine that we would have been worse off with bilateral negotiations and a few small concessions made by the United States. It would have hurt nothing to try. Indeed, my Chinese counterparts still urge such a course with China acting to interpret honestly each side's problems with the other. North Korea is now a nuclear power, with four to six nuclear usable weapons assembled on Bush's watch - built only after the DPRK told us exactly what we could have done to prevent it.
Without question, George W. Bush has failed the American people and put them and their Northeast Asian friends in harm's way so that he could avoid talking in one direction while starting an unnecessary war in the other. His statement during the third presidential debate that Six Party Talks on North Korea were better than bilateral talks because more nations were involved was self-serving and duplicitous. After all, he refused any kind of multilateral diplomacy concerning Iraq.
-- Peter D. Zimmerman is professor of science and security at King's College London and a former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Last modified October 26, 2004, 00:40:26]
-------- latinamerica
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
(Reuters)
Oct 26, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041026/sc_nm/environment_brazil_greenpeace_dc_1
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Greenpeace activists welded shut the entrance to the headquarters of Brazil's state nuclear power company on Tuesday and chained themselves together in front of the building.
The pro-environment group said it was protesting against new investments in Brazil's nuclear program, including a government plan to enrich uranium that has caused a dispute with the United Nations (news - web sites) over nonproliferation inspections.
The unfurled a banner outside the Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB) in Rio de Janeiro demanding an end to Brazil's "nuclear adventure."
"We want to know if the population agrees with the proliferation of nuclear energy in Brazil," one protester said before firefighters cut the activists free and police led them away.
The uranium enrichment program has been in the headlines since Brazil refused to allow officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to fully inspect its new Resende uranium enrichment plant, northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
The IAEA wants full access to Resende to ensure no uranium is diverted for weapons but Brazil will not allow access to the plant's centrifuges, saying it fears industrial espionage.
Brazil, home to the world's sixth-largest proven reserves of uranium, says its enrichment operations will be entirely peaceful and small compared to other countries. Brazil has two nuclear reactors and is considering a third.
A Science and Technology Ministry spokesman said the government was revising Brazil's nuclear program and hoped to present recommendations to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by the end of the year.
A commentary by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control published in Friday's issue of the journal Science said the Resende plant had the potential to produce enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs every year, a claim Brazil has denied.
-------- terrorism
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire
10. 26. 04
sierratimes.com
By Anthony C. LoBaido
http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/26/lobaido.htm
Part 2 of 5
Think of the architect of the Tiananmen Square Massacre getting a 21 gun salute at the Arlington National Cemetery. Think of China threatening to nuke Los Angels if America comes to the aid of Taiwan. Think of Bill Clinton saying China can help America with our (America's) human rights problems. Think of Tibet and forced abortion and the "one child policy." Think America is changing China? Think again.
In other writings I predicted the rise of Nelson Mandela and his murderous ANC to power in South Africa. What I could not have foreseen was the massive killing of the white South African farmers; 1660-plus out of 40,000 with another 9,0000 recorded attacks. (Some say there have been 15,000 attacks.) On the night of Nelson Mandela's funeral it is rumored that "Operation White Clean Up" will begin and every white person left in South Africa will be killed. Will this urban myth become reality? Let's hope it won't for everyone's sake. But if it does, would anyone really be that shocked?
Sadly, I also predicted 9-11 many, many years before it occurred. I even sensed it as a small child growing up in a then pristine and even idyllic Long Island. (This was before it was completely overwhelmed and ruined by the Jerry Springerization of traditional America and the apocalyptic Third World immigration wave.) I used to plead with my parents to move away from New York. The energy in that city always frightened me.
On the morning of 9-11 my sister Carol-Donna phoned our beautiful home and exclaimed, "Anthony, you were right!"
I thought it would be a radioactive nuke on Wall Street, perhaps even a suitcase nuclear weapon placed in the editorial offices of The Wall Street Journal or some such terrible thing. Neil Livingstone wrote a book about all of this, "America the Vulnerable." No one listened to Mr. Livingstone, I presume.
Maybe a small-scale nuclear attack is still to come. Maybe that's right around the corner. It could happen when "The Last Fatwa" (an "order" probably issued by the Muslim Pope after the Abu Ghraib prison photos were made public) is carried out. And it is very possible that it will be carried out to the letter.
Consider that the Aum Shin Rikyo cult of Japan most likely detonated the world's first non-governmental nuclear bomb in the Australian Outback in the early 1990's. This was cited in The New York Times and in Bill Bryson's book on Australia, "In a Sunburned Country." In the past Aum members have worked with rouge Russian special forces from an elite unit specializing in sabotage called Vymple. (Read my article about this on WND.com.) Who is to say al-Qaida ("The Base" in Arabic) hasn't received similar help?
Indeed, Russia and China might well assist these terrorists. They are the two greatest mass murdering regimes in human history. (Stalin and Mao were quite a pair.) Cuba, North Korea, ANC-led South Africa and the drug cartels have also been helping al-Qaida. In fact, al-Qaida operatives have been using South African passports given them out of the Department of Home Affairs, where the number two man on the totem pole - a Billy Something or Other, a high level ANC intelligence operative -- worked to hamstring and undermine the conservative Zulu leader of Home Affairs. Where are Oprah!, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather on that story? Where's Good Morning America? Or should I rather say, "Good Night America?"
Moreover, a nuclear attack on New York could transpire because these Muslim jihadists can't look at the sin in their own lives. Much in the same way so many Christians feel the need to attack any and all gays. Evangelical Christians have more abortions, watch more pornography and divorce at a higher rate than the general population. But why look at the sin in our own lives when we can blame gays and Jews and others for our idolatry, which is embedded in our DNA? Many non-gay men have anal sex with their wives and or girlfriends.
What's the difference between that and gay sex? This is the MTV-raised, feminized, Playboy-reading, Howard Stern-watching America that gave you the Abu Ghraib prison debacle. (Bush Jr. was so wrong, this IS how we do things in America!) It's no accident. This is who we are. Which retard let a woman like Janice Karpinski run that Arab prison? Again, it's Allah McBeal "liberated" by Ally McBeal. And may we all ask just who feminized the American military and who is going to un-feminize it?
These atomic Muslims (who understand clearly the Abu Ghraib prison photos were for all intents and purposes the final shredding of moral America no matter what the Bush Jr. Administration's spin might be) also want to mimic America's genocidal handiwork in Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam and Laos, Sudan, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Legions around the world will cheer their coming attack on America. Those Americans ready for a war to eradicate political correctness, the role of the Federal Reserve Bank and Hollywood's Christ-hating and debased elite might well see this as a roadmap to liberty. In reality it will be the end of our remaining freedoms and the beginning of a dictatorship in the U.S. as Army General Tommy Franks very politely informed us.
Again, will we be shocked or surprised when nuclear terror finally knocks on the door? And what about suicide bombers at our shopping malls? I was told by a pilot that one recent classified pilot's briefing spoke of suicide bombers in all 50 states going live on a very important Christmas-shopping day. Let's pray that doesn't happen. After all, half of all retail sales take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. What would Alan Greenspan say? Who will buy all of the toys made in Mainland China by Christians and other dissidents languishing in the slave labor laogai gulags the Politburo in Beijing is so proud of? What will it do to the economy if suicide bombers begin exploding on America's once peaceful shores? Just think of the Texas A&M bonfire as a parallel to the violence against the unborn in America has been exploding for three decades plus in our baby killing abortion clinics.
It should be more than obvious that the filth you see advertised on the billboards in Time Square is coming down one way or the other. I mean, can't you feel it? Are these rap and gang cockroaches and other assorted human filth going to be the role models for yet another generation of real Americans? Not bloody likely. Putin won't allow it. Hence his recent boarding of a nuclear submarine to practice all out nuclear attack on America, which our media and leaders, including Bush Jr. and Kerry and the Congress forgot to tell you. Just keep shopping at the mall - while you still can. We live in scary times.
Even when that statue of Saddam was being pulled down, couldn't you feel something was very wrong in Iraq? By this I mean wrong beyond the fact there were no WMD's, no link to al-Qaida and we didn't have enough combat troops on the ground. (Even though we heroically called up mothers with children to the front lines out of the reserve units. "USA! USA! USA!"
Why are we there in spite of all sanity? Fresh water from the Tigris and Euphrates. Oil. Going along with the plans of the Mossad. Destroying Islam as the last barrier to world government. The sexual liberation of Allah McBeal. Central Asian population control. Destroying America's army and youth with depleted uranium in preparation for the coming scaled down "police force" America's military machine is slated to become under the United Nations. These are the real reasons we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. To believe otherwise is the very worst kind of self-delusion.
So, will the radical Muslims unleash a nuclear hell upon New York? Will God allow this to happen? Can such an attack be prevented, or as the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA and even Vice President Cheney have all told us, "It's not a matter of if but when?"
Is this what FDR said during World War II? "Oh, the Germans and Japanese will nuke us, it's not a matter of if but when."
Back then scores of Japanese-Americans were put in internment camps. It was ugly and unfair. Their property was stolen. Yet it was necessary as many Japanese men went back to Japan and fought for their emperor when give the choice to do just that or join the American army. (Like the kind Mr. Miagi of Karate Kid fame.)
Today more than a few radical Arab/Islamic immigrants are doing fund raising in American-based mosques. They have trained in our flight schools. (Did the kamikazes training in U.S. flight schools?) It's the A&M bonfire all over again as 4,000 new faces illegally cross our borders every single day. We in America are not allowed to implement the correct solution because of our Soviet-style political correctness. No one is allowed to question the lunacy of "open borders" because of the Holy Grail of so-called "free trade" which in reality is highly regulated. No one is allowed to get their feelings hurt by the idea of internment camps - except of course if right wing Christians are the occupants. (Look at Waco and Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City. Look at Clinton speaking of The Patriot Act saying, "We've been working on this for a long time.")
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire Part 1
Coming up Thursday: The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire By Anthony C. LoBaido Part 3 of 5
Anthony C. LoBaido is an American journalist, photographer, explorer and teacher who has worked in over 40 countries. His articles have appeared in WorldNetDaily.com, CBN, Pravda, Way Press International of Belgium, (translated into French) The Arizona Republic, Soldier of Fortune, Rense.com, Sierratimes.com, the South African Mail & Guardian as well as having been cited by Court TV and the U.S. Congress' House Ways and Means Committee. His book on the Kurds was published by Times-Lerner Ltd. of Singapore. His new novel Our Name is Legion can be found on Amazon.com. LoBaido will also be releasing his life story this autumn. It is entitled Carina.
--------
U.S. Nuclear Panel Closes Online Library
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 26, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2004/oct/26/102606799.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has shut down its online document library, pending a review to determine what potentially sensitive documents should be removed because they might be useful to terrorists, the agency said Tuesday.
While the agency's Web site does not contain classified material, the NRC "is widening its review to remove additional information that could potentially be of use to a terrorist," the agency said in a statement.
The action came after a report by NBC that among the items found on the NRC Web site were detailed information on the location of radioactive substances, generally used in medicine and for industrial purposes, that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb.
In some cases, the data included detailed building diagrams that pinpointed the location of the material in hospitals and other facilities, according to the NBC report.
As part of the review, the NRC said it temporarily closed public access to its online document library, its electronic hearing docket files, and to NRC staff documents related to NRC consideration of a high-level nuclear waste repository.
"This action, when completed, is intended to ensure that documents which might provide assistance to terrorists will be inaccessible while maintaining public access to information regarding NRC activities," the agency said.
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 1,000 documents were removed from the NRC's Web site. Additional documents disappeared in subsequent reviews.
"Agency guidelines provide that any information that could be useful, or could reasonably be expected to be useful, to a terrorist in a potential attack should be withheld," said the NRC statement.
-------- u.n.
Nuclear body seeks new technology
BBC
By Tracey Logan
26 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3954061.stm
Bushehr reactor in Iran
The UN agency aims to keep an eye on nuclear plants across the world The computer systems used to monitor the world's nuclear power installations are so outdated that they are hampering the work of inspectors.
A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its current technology could allow key information to be overlooked as it was more than 20 years old.
Such systems are the only method of tracking nuclear material worldwide.
The agency has appealed for more funds to update its hardware and software.
"A major overhaul of the system is needed to allow inspectors immediate, secure online access to information," said project manager Livio Costantini.
Inefficient search
IAEA inspectors make around 3,000 visits a year to more than 900 nuclear facilities worldwide.
They are there to verify official reports of activities in the plants, to carry out environmental checks, and also to look for any signs that nuclear material is being smuggled in or out of the facility.
Czech Temelin nuclear power plant Hundreds of nuclear facilities worldwide are inspected The computer system inspectors currently use for comparing data from earlier visits, for instance, was built in the 1970s and largely paper based.
An IAEA spokesman said this was extremely inefficient and makes searching for anomalies like searching for a needle in a haystack.
The organisation is aiming to start a system upgrade in November, aiming to provide inspectors in the field with secure online access to previous inspection data, design blueprints of nuclear facilities, even satellite images of the plant.
Where possible, it hopes to link the system with national records of the import and export of nuclear materials.
Further analysis of these could help spot potential smuggling activities or illicit technology transfers between countries, according to a spokesman.
Cash shortfall
Computer specialist at the IAEA, Peter Smith, would like to be able to incorporate state of the art visualisation techniques, more familiar to video games players, into the inspector's toolkit.
"The commercials you now see have people are moving around in a virtual world," he said.
"If we could have that on our laptops, we could be walking through the plant seeing, on the laptop, how the plant should look.
"And if there's a door in the wall that is not on our laptop, then we have a problem."
The IAEA estimates the total cost of the four-year project to upgrade its technology will be $40m. So far it has only received $11m from the US and the UK.
"Failure to replace the hardware and software, and to integrate fully all the information system components will carry large risks," said an agency statement.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Power outage trips alarms at Yankee
reformer.com
October 26, 2004
http://www./Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2492105,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Firefighters were called out to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, when fire alarms in the plant support building were tripped by a power outage on Monday evening.
The building's power comes from Green Mountain Power, which supplies the area surrounding the plant.
According to Dorothy Schnure, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power, the utility's feed from National Grid was cut off and approximately 750 customers lost power at 6:23 p.m. It was restored at 8:50 p.m.
Schnure said that most of those affected live in Vernon.
The cause of the power loss is still under investigation.
-------- washington
Fluor may miss DOE deadline on K Basins
tri-cityherald.com
By Annette Cary
October 26th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5713626p-5646764c.html
Fluor Hanford is off to a problem-filled start to meet the first of the revised deadlines to clean up radioactive sludge left in the Hanford K Basins -- the leak-prone pools of water 400 yards from the Columbia River.
Fluor has notified the Department of Energy it cannot meet DOE's commitment to the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board to have the sludge in the K East Basin corralled in underwater containers by the end of December. The containers are kept in water to shield workers from radiation.
However, Fluor still believes it can meet a legal deadline of March 1 for completing the work.
The safety board provides independent oversight of Hanford, but does not have the authority to issue fines.
Fluor also faces an interim deadline under the Tri-Party Agreement, which regulates Hanford work, requiring it to start work on getting the sludge into containers by the end of this month.
Meeting that deadline appears uncertain.
Fluor Hanford expects to announce today that it is ready to begin putting sludge in containers. If an independent review team agrees, work will start to pump the sludge into containers Saturday or Sunday.
However, Fluor Hanford is prepared to delay the start of the project by a week if workers need more training, said Pete Knollmeyer, Fluor Hanford vice president. A delay now could prevent time-consuming problems in the future, he said.
Fluor had planned to have more training completed by now, but workers were delayed in starting as the fuel removal project continued for more than two months longer than planned.
The sludge retrieval project has been a source of problems for DOE for several years.
The K Basins were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated nuclear fuel until it could be processed to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. But when reprocessing stopped in the mid-1980s, about 2,300 tons of fuel was left stranded in the indoor pools of the K Basins.
It decayed over two decades, creating a sludge of radioactive particles, cement from the pool walls and dust blown in from the desert in the K Basins. The sludge particles settle to the bottom of the pools, but dissipate in the water when disturbed, making them difficult to collect.
Removing the fuel that produced the contaminated sludge has been one of Hanford's success stories. DOE announced Friday that project had been completed.
But removing the sludge has been difficult and complicated. Fluor Hanford was fined $935,000 this summer for multiple and extensive safety violations as it prepared to start pumping sludge from Hanford's K Basins in spring 2003. Its predecessor, Fluor Daniel, had been fined for similar problems in 1999.
Although the Tri-Party Agreement had called for Fluor Hanford to begin pumping sludge in the K East Basin by the end of 2002, the work began this summer on a less technically challenging area of K East.
A new technical approach was adopted for the balance of the project, which is planned to speed up the treatment and disposal of the sludge by a decade and get the basins removed as much as five years sooner than proposed in past schedules.
DOE became concerned about Fluor's ability to meet new deadlines and commitments to the safety board in September, when Fluor discovered a system did not work consistently well to gather up the smallest particles of sludge dispersed in the water.
The focus on schedule created some concern by the safety board. "A similar focus on schedule in the past has resulted in insufficient preparation ... and premature declarations of readiness ... ," said a recent weekly report.
Fluor has brought in industry experts to come up with a consistent method to chemically collect the small particles of contamination that disperse in the water. In the meantime, it will proceed with collecting the rest of the sludge in containers.
But the project has run into two other problems in recent weeks.
Installation of equipment was delayed when work elsewhere in the basin turned the water too murky to see the bottom of the pool.
Then work had to be stopped last week because of a high airborne radiation reading in the K East Basin. The reason for the problem is being investigated. It could be caused by changes to a system used to clean water or by radiation becoming airborne when equipment is moved and breaks the surface of the water in the basin.
The contractor has sent DOE a list of measures to improve performance that includes identifying more activities that can be performed in parallel, more planning so work on one part of the project does not delay work on another and buying ready-made equipment when possible rather than designing it in house.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the K Basins, has been monitoring work to start the project.
"We're carefully watching their progress and looking forward to resolution of technical and policy issues related to treatment and disposition of sludge," said Nick Ceto, EPA's Hanford project manager.
-------- us nuc waste
Hot Waste Builds at U.S. Nuclear Plants
October 26, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-26-09.asp#anchor3
The rate of nuclear power plant relicensing doubled after Congress approved Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in 2002, a new analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows. The Washington based organization warns that all the space at Yucca Mountain is already taken, so the nuclear waste generated by the license extensions will stay at the power plants where it was made.
Currently there are renewal applications pending for 18 more reactors. No application to date has been denied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nuclear power plants supply 20 percent of America's electricity.
U.S. nuclear power plants are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for 40 years, and can renew their licenses for an additional 20 years. To date, 19 have received license renewal and 32 more are expected to have their licenses renewed. Eventually, virtually all U.S. nuclear plants are expected to apply for license renewal, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association.
The EWG says these plants "will produce thousands of tons more waste, ensuring large or larger stockpiles near local power plants, much of which - after cooling on-site for decades - will probably come to Nevada to the Yucca Mountain dumpsite."
But if Yucca Mountain opens for storage in 2010 as the Bush administration proposes, its storage space will be fully claimed.
"Shortly thereafter, an additional 9,000 tons of nuclear waste will be waiting to come to Yucca and even more waste will sit at plants around the country. Therefore, Congress must either expand Yucca Mountain from its very first day of operation or allow nuclear waste to continue to pile up at 79 sites in 35 states," the EWG warns.
"This analysis confirms what we suspected, but what the public was never told, that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is really a nuclear expansion plan in disguise," said Richard Wiles of the EWG Action Fund.
The EWG Action Fund's interactive website, at www.ewg.org, lists each reactor around the country that has been or will soon be relicensed and for how long, along with how many tons of waste it will generate while in continued operation.
Visitors to the site can see how much waste that reactor is permitted to send to Yucca Mountain, and how much will be left on site. Shipping the waste generated by power plant relicensing will take either 6,000 more truck shipments or 1,050 train shipments through communities in Nevada on their way to Yucca Mountain, the EWG Action Fund estimates.
Communities near each of the country's 103 operating nuclear power plants were the targets of public relations campaigns by the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy with the message that the Yucca Mountain repository would get rid of their waste.
The relicensing means that most of these communities will not get rid of their waste. The EWG Action Fund warns that they will see "large or larger amounts of waste sitting on-site for decades before being shipped to Nevada."
The nuclear industry points out that the additional generating capacity obtained by extending nuclear power plant licenses is required to meet the energy needs of the United States, which are expected to increase 50 percent by 2025, according to the Energy Information Administration's "Annual Energy Outlook 2004."
-------- MILITARY
------- afghanistan
Officials Say Karzai Is Clear Winner
October 26, 2004
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_ELECTION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Counting in Afghanistan's presidential election concluded Tuesday, with U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai the clear winner even though some ballot boxes were "obviously stuffed," election officials said.
Investigators were still examining about 100 ballot boxes to clear up lingering fraud allegations, but the election's chief technical officer said the count was effectively "over and done."
"It's just these last dribs and drabs to be approved," David Avery told The Associated Press. "It's really nothing that can affect the outcome."
Election officials have said they will not announce the official results of the Oct. 9 vote until investigations into irregularities alleged by Karzai's main rivals have been concluded. That could be this weekend.
The winner will be inaugurated in about a month.
Final results were not posted on the election Web site, either. But in a tally based on 98.4 percent of total votes cast, the U.S.-backed Karzai had 55.5 percent, which was 39 percentage points ahead of his closest challenger, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni.
"If the fraud was not so serious, we would accept that Karzai has won," Qanooni's running mate, Taj Mohammed Wardak, told AP.
"I hope there was not so much fraud so our democracy is safe. If it was serious, then we are sad and it will affect the election result. We will accept the conclusion of the panel."
Karzai had to receive more than 50 percent of the votes cast to avoid a runoff and secure a five-year term. He has pledged to raise impoverished Afghans' living standards after a quarter-century of fighting.
Karzai has been the interim leader since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 after a U.S. invasion. An election victory would make him Afghanistan's first popularly chosen leader.
It also could provide a foreign policy boost to Afghanistan's main sponsor, President Bush, in his own bid for re-election next week.
"He is happy and satisfied" with his lead, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said of Karzai. "God willing, he will hold onto it."
Karzai has racked up more than 90 percent support in many parts of the south and east, which is dominated by his fellow Pashtun tribesmen, and leads in all major cities.
But rivals have eclipsed him across much of the north and center, the heartlands of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, and charge that Karzai is ahead only through cheating.
Investigators had held back hundreds of boxes and say they have clear evidence of ballot-stuffing in some cases, though not on a scale that could overturn Karzai's majority.
"Some boxes were so obviously stuffed that we don't believe they were legitimately cast votes," Ray Kennedy, deputy chairman of the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral commission, told The Associated Press.
That was an indication the commission will acknowledge irregularities - the key condition set by Qanooni, Karzai's closest rival, for conceding defeat.
Avery said all but about 100 of the ballot boxes were released Tuesday after inspectors found no evidence of foul play. Officials were expected to complete their inspection of the remaining boxes by Thursday.
Election managers say they will reserve overall judgment on whether the election was "free and fair" until they issue their final report.
While irregularities detected during the counting process are being examined by the electoral board's legal experts, a panel of foreign election specialists is looking separately into problems on polling day.
The three-member panel was established after Qanooni and 14 other candidates threatened to boycott the poll because of a mix-up in which washable, instead of permanent, ink was used to mark people's fingers in an effort to prevent multiple voting.
Associated Press reporters Matthew Pennington and Amir Shah contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Afghan election results: http://www.afg-electionresults.org
-------- africa
Politics Delay U.S. Airlift Of Peacekeepers to Sudan
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62798-2004Oct25.html
KIGALI, Rwanda, Oct. 25 -- Well before the sun rose over the city's winding hills Monday, Col. Charles Karamba was wide awake, ready to give his 120 Rwandan army troops an energetic send-off to western Sudan.
They were to be the first troops airlifted to Darfur on U.S. military planes as part of a two-week mission to move African Union peacekeepers quickly into the war-torn region, where 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes and where violence, hunger and disease have killed tens of thousands.
Two C-130 transport planes, sent by the U.S. Air Force from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, stood ready on the rain-soaked tarmac outside the Rwandan capital. Karamba sat by his phone, waiting for the orders to board.
Instead, just after 10 a.m., word came that the Rwandans would not be leaving quite yet. According to diplomats, that was because Nigeria, whose president heads the African Union, had demanded to go first. Although the airlifts from Kigali were planned last week, diplomats said, Nigerian officials wanted their troops to arrive first as a matter of prestige.
"We had more people ready than we had seats," said Karamba, noting that 237 Rwandan troops were trained and ready to go. "But we will wait. When they are ready, we will be there."
Both Nigerian and African Union officials declined to comment on the confusion, saying only that the Nigerians are now scheduled to deploy before the Rwandans, possibly on Thursday. But Rwandan officials suggested that logistical problems had caused the delay.
"There is no food and no tents, and you don't just throw soldiers out into the desert to fend for themselves," said Foreign Minister Charles Murigande.
The Bush administration has called the atrocities in Darfur genocide, but the airlift is the first American military operation aimed at curbing the violence. No Western countries have been willing to send troops to the region.
The African Union last week approved an expansion of its military presence in Darfur, from 300 to 3,000 troops. Despite an uneasy truce, which is being observed by 150 African Union monitors, violence between rebel and government forces continues to unfold, including reports of rapes and killings.
Last week alone, officials said, 200,000 people were driven from their villages. At the same time, two new rebel factions have emerged in Darfur, including one that African Union officials said attacked a government convoy Oct. 6.
The United Nations, which feeds more than 1 million people in western Sudan, said the African Union mission was urgently needed to protect aid routes. Rebel groups as well as the government-backed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed are accused of blocking aid convoys, and two relief workers were killed last week.
The promised increase of African troops is viewed as a test of the willingness and ability of African governments to help solve the region's problems. Rwandan officials have said they are especially eager to help because of their own country's experience with genocide 10 years ago, in which more than 800,000 people were slaughtered.
Diplomats expressed concern that the dispute over who should be airlifted first could delay getting troops on the ground and saving lives in Darfur. Officials have said that without the airlift and other help, it could take up to a year to deploy the troops.
"Obviously this is holding up the mission," said a Western diplomat in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The diplomat said it was up to African Union officials to negotiate "who's going to be first."
The latest round of peace talks between rebels and Sudanese officials resumed in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. But U.N. officials worried that the new rebel groups, who are not participating in the talks, could further derail peace efforts. On Friday, President Bush committed $2.5 million in military services to support the mission, and the U.S. government awarded $20.5 million in contracts to two U.S. companies to provide tents, electricity and other support. The European Union also announced it would spend $125 million to support the peacekeepers, but the promised aid falls short of the African Union's request for $220 million.
The conflict began in early 2003, when two rebel groups launched a revolt in western Sudan, saying they faced discrimination. They have accused the government of bombing villages and arming the Janjaweed militia to crush them. Sudanese officials blamed the rebels for starting the war and said the Janjaweed is made up of miscreants largely out of their control.
--------
Attacks on Women in West Sudan Draw an Outcry
October 26, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/africa/26sudan.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KEBKABIYA, Sudan - Even with the eyes of the world on this burned-out swath of western Sudan, threats of oil sanctions against the government and the trickle of African Union monitors into the countryside, one brutality has apparently continued undeterred: violence against Darfur's women. Women were insulted, beaten and raped as their families were chased from their homes at the height of the war in this region. They continue to be insulted, beaten and raped as they try to eke out a living far from home in the miserable camps of the displaced across Darfur.
Judging from the accounts by victims themselves, as well as those of aid workers, human rights monitors and African Union military observers posted in Darfur, the victims are overwhelmingly women who belong to African communities here, and those who committed the acts are armed men who belong to Arab tribes.
Since early 2003, the war in Darfur has pitted the Arab-led government of Sudan against rebels who are led by members of African tribes.
Whether violence against women constitutes a war crime or whether it is part of a campaign of genocide remains unanswered. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has appointed a panel of experts to determine whether the violence in Darfur meets the international legal definition of genocide. If previous United Nations inquiries are any guide, this one is not likely to offer swift answers.
Definitions aside, the more pressing question for people here, not to mention the credibility of the international community, is this: Can anything be done to stop it and then bring a measure of redress?
"Depending on the magnitude of it, it can constitute a crime against humanity," said Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. Investigators in Darfur have not yet determined the magnitude. Eight of them are in the region, spread across an area the size of France.
For now the victims are left to the whim of local law enforcement, in which, it is apparent, there is little or no confidence. A recent inquiry by the Sudanese government turned up two cases of rape during the entire 18-month-long war in Darfur. Ms. Arbour, of Canada, rebuked the government, saying it was "in denial." [On Oct. 23 the agriculture minister of Sudan, its chief negotiator in peace talks mediated by the African Union, described reports of widespread rape as "a lot of fabrication."]
Violence against women in this conflict is not limited to rape. They are also verbally abused, threatened, robbed and beaten with whips, the reports say. These days they are most vulnerable when they trek out to do women's work - fetch firewood.
Some of them bear gunshot wounds to the ankle, a sign that their attackers tried to keep them from fleeing. Others are marked as violated women. One woman in a refugee camp in eastern Chad lifted her veil not long ago to reveal a violent gash on her right cheek, and then she began weeping. She was sexually assaulted by five men, all in military garb, she said, during an attack on her hometown, Karnoi.
A report by Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, says some women have been raped in front of their relatives.
Fear and distrust in local law enforcement authorities runs so deep that the crimes are rarely reported to officials. When they are, victims and independent human rights observers say, little is done.
No international legal mechanism has been set up. Military observers from the African Union cease-fire commission take reports of abuse, but all they can do is report the cases to the United Nations human rights agency. "It's a little bit ambiguous," the United Nations official said.
The evidence on the ground has been overwhelming.
In January, during the height of the war, refugees fleeing into Chad said in interviews that attacks on their villages by the Sudanese military and the Arab militiamen whom they call janjaweed - or marauders on horseback - were frequently accompanied by sexual violence against women as they tried to flee.
In August, a refugee woman in a camp called Kounoungo in eastern Chad described vividly how two men on horses had hunted her down as she tried to run away from an attack on her village. One held a gun to her head while the other raped her. She was pregnant at the time. In the same camp, another woman held up the product of a violent assault: a baby boy with wavy hair, whom she called the son of a janjaweed.
Sexual violence has been a tried-and-true way for armed men to sow terror among civilians in wartime, from the Balkans to Colombia and Congo to the genocide in Rwanda. The latter offers a particularly trenchant lesson for Sudan: Ten years later only a handful of allegations of rape have been investigated and prosecuted, according to a recent report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.
Here, even after women have fled attacks on their hometowns and villages, they have not found refuge.
In early September, investigators with the United Nations refugee agency tracked down 13 women who said they had been raped in a period of 10 days just beyond a displaced people's camp near Nyala, the state capital of southern Darfur.
In late September, a 13-year-old girl was taken by donkey cart to the African Union cease-fire commission's office here with a chilling tale. Three men in uniform found her one afternoon as she was gathering firewood on the edge of town.
They called her Tora Bora, a reference to the place in Afghanistan that once was a stronghold of Al Qaeda. The pro-government militias here use the name to refer to the rebels or anyone they deem to be their sympathizers. The men took turns raping her. African Union monitors found blood caked on the dry earth.
Another woman, Hawa Ishak Mahmood, said she was on her way to seed someone else's farm on the outskirts of Kebkabiya in the summer when four men on camel and horseback stopped her in her tracks. They accused her of looking like a member of the Zaghawa tribe, which dominates the chief Darfur rebel group.
Despite her denials, they beat her with the butt of their guns and wrestled her to the ground, she said. Then they took turns raping her.
She no longer ventures out to work on anyone else's farm. She no longer collects firewood. Her children, ages 4 to 15, subsist on aid rations. "Always, when people go out, they get beaten, they get raped," she said.
Reports like this no longer surprise Seth Appiah-Mensah, the African Union sector commander here. "It's very common, almost on a daily basis," he said. "When you report it the authorities say it's not true. They always insist their soldiers are disciplined, they're under Shariah, they won't do this." The Shariah is the Islamic legal code.
Who is committing the assaults remains unclear. Men in uniform here can be regular soldiers or members of pro-government militias. The lines are blurry.
Besides, the African Union's mission is to monitor violations of the cease-fire between the government forces and the rebels. Rapes and other attacks against women are criminal offenses, and the organization has no law enforcement authority.
In early October, the police arrested a man who had gone to file a complaint with the African Union cease-fire commission about attacks on several women outside a displaced people's camp near El Fasher, the state capital of northern Darfur. He was freed only through the intercession of a United Nations human rights investigator.
-------- biological weapons
Report Warns of Failure to Control Biological Weapons
Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62567-2004Oct25.html
LONDON, Oct. 25 -- Biological weapons that can wipe out entire populations pose one of the biggest threats to the world today, yet remain almost completely uncontrolled, the British Medical Association said on Monday.
The association urged the United States to end what it called efforts against strengthening the 1972 international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention when it comes up for renewal in 2006.
"This technology could be used by sub-state terror groups and eventually by deranged individuals," Malcolm Dando, author of the association's study, said at a news conference.
He warned that the development of biological weapons designed to target specific ethnic groups was becoming increasingly possible, and said it was already theoretically possible to re-create devastating viruses such as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 that killed as many as 40 million people.
The convention, which banned the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling and retention of germ weapons for offensive purposes, contains no monitoring or enforcement mechanisms. "The best way of describing it is as a gentleman's agreement," said Dando, who is head of peace studies at the University of Bradford.
He said there were strong international mechanisms controlling nuclear and chemical arms, but nothing to control what he termed the "riotous development" of biotechnology.
Dando said the Bush administration had turned its back on many international accords, which he asserted was the key reason the convention remained weak.
The powerful U.S. biotechnology industry has put pressure on the administration not to back strong international monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, arguing that they could stifle research, Dando said.
Russia, which was known to have developed a major biological weapons capability, has also kept a very low profile on the issue, he said. "There are still several of its military laboratories that have not been opened up for inspection. You have to wonder why," he said.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said it was vital for scientists to get involved in self-regulation to ensure that experiments and information not be misused.
"The real key to biosecurity, to not having to deal with deliberately spread epidemics, is to make sure that these materials are not produced," she said. She argued for a code of ethics covering scientists and governments and the enforcement of sensible international laws. -------- britain
Kennedy: Ministers using terror threat to erode civil liberties
independent.co.uk By Marie Woolf 26 October 2004 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576072
Charles Kennedy accused the Government yesterday of contributing to a "climate of fear" about terrorism and of exploiting it to erode historic civil liberties in Britain.
In a stinging attack, the Liberal Democrat leader accused David Blunkett of responding to the terrorist threat with "the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied on."
He blamed the Home Secretary for pushing through a raft of measures which increase the power of the state to interfere in ordinary people's lives. Stop-and-search powers brought in under the Terrorism Act had been "misused by the police" and "led to a 300 per cent increase in the number of Asian people being stopped".
Mr Kennedy also warned that some of the freedoms removed by the Government to defend the country against terrorism may never be restored.
"Extraordinary threats - like those posed by international terrorism - may require us, in times of emergency and for limited periods, to find a different balance between our hard-won liberties and our security," he said in a speech at the National Liberal Club in London. "But the correct response to such threats should not be, as the current Home Secretary appears to think, the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied upon. Hard-won rights, once lost, may never be regained."
He warned that some of the measures brought in by the Government to combat crime and terrorism were so draconian that they "run the risk that interference with individual liberty outweighs the benefits in terms of crime detection."
Mr Kennedy singled out the detention of foreign terrorist suspects without trial in Belmarsh prison. "We need Government to protect our rights and freedoms too. We need a system of government that is genuinely accountable to an effective, democratically elected parliament," he said.
The Government's trust rating had been eroded by its response to the terror threat, Mr Kennedy said. "If the Government shows little enthusiasm for trusting the people, how in return can it expect trust?" he asked. "In 1998, 58 per cent of people felt that Tony Blair's government was honest and trustworthy. By March this year, it was only 25 per cent. When trust is breached, that contract is broken."
Mr Kennedy said the Liberal Democrats would also resist government interference in people's lives and caution against eroding personal freedoms. "We must apply our natural Liberal Democrat caution to an over-mighty state when it threatens to undermine individual freedoms," he said. "We must be sure that the Government, at whatever level, will not abuse its powers and ride roughshod over people's rights as it addresses the new challenges that face our society."
He said that the Liberal Democrats supported many measures to enhance police powers to fight terrorism but he cautioned against curbing personal freedoms permanently: "Any curtailment of our civil liberties should only be justified in exceptional circumstances and then subject to strict review."
-------- business
Pentagon Probes Halliburton's Iraq Contracts
Associated Press
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62570-2004Oct25.html
The Pentagon's internal watchdog is looking into claims by a top Army contracting official that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary unfairly won no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars for support services in Iraq and the Balkans.
The complaint alleges that the award of contracts without competition to restore Iraq's oil industry and to supply and feed U.S. troops in the Balkans puts at risk "the integrity of the federal contracting program as it relates to a major defense contractor."
It also seeks protection from retaliation for the whistle-blower, Bunnatine Greenhouse, chief contracting officer of the Army Corps of Engineers.
A letter from an Army lawyer to Greenhouse's attorney said the matter is being referred to the Defense Department's inspector general for "review and action, as appropriate."
It also said the Corps had been ordered to "suspend any adverse personnel action" against Greenhouse "until a sufficient record is available to address the specific matters" in her complaint.
Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Halliburton, said company subsidiary "KBR doesn't have any information on what Bunny Greenhouse may or may not have said to other Pentagon officials in early 2003. Certainly, we can't address any threatened legal action she may be considering against her employer."
"On the larger issues, the old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," Hall said.
--------
Whistle-Blower Asks for Halliburton Investigation
Reuters
By Sue Pleming
October 26, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=247
WASHINGTON - The Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official has demanded an investigation into contracts given to Halliburton, citing improper action that favored Vice President Dick Cheney's old company.
According to documents made available Monday by congressional sources, Army Corps whistle-blower Bunny Greenhouse complained of repeated interference in billions of dollars of contracts given to Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) for work in Iraq and the Balkans.
"This interference was largely focused on multibillion-dollar contract issues pertaining to a Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root," said a letter faxed to Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee by lawyers for Greenhouse.
"As set forth below, employees of the U.S. government have taken improper action that favored KBR's interests," the letter said.
An Army attorney said the matter was being referred to the Defense Department's inspector general and the Corps was asked not to act against Greenhouse until a sufficient record was available.
The Corps said it supported the right of employees to use established procedures to ensure governmental actions complied with applicable laws but declined further comment.
The Pentagon inspector general's office said it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.
A decision could take months or even years.
Fear of Losing Job
Greenhouse lawyer Michael Kohn said his client went public after the Corps tried to remove her from her post as principal assistant responsible for contracting and not because she wanted to influence next week's election by raising questions about Halliburton, which Cheney ran from 1995-2000.
Halliburton, which is already under investigation for overcharging for work in Iraq, has been a target of Democratic criticism ahead of the Nov. 2 election, with suggestions the Texas firm got special treatment because of Cheney.
A spokesman for Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg said the New Jersey senator would introduce a resolution after the election to create a special committee to look into the contracts given to KBR.
"When Halliburton is sitting in on the drafting of its no-bid contract, you know lines have been crossed," said Lautenberg, referred to complaints by Greenhouse that KBR officials were allowed to attend military planning meetings before it was awarded a sole-source Iraq contract.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said KBR did not have any information on what Greenhouse may or may not have said to Pentagon officials in 2003 when a no-bid contract worth up to $7 billion was given to KBR to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
"On the larger issues, the old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," said Hall.
Greenhouse said the Iraq oil contract given to KBR, which was later replaced by a competitively bid deal, as well as another to feed and house U.S. troops in the Balkans, put at risk the "integrity of the federal contracting program."
Kohn said KBR contracts were awarded despite his client's reservations, which she expressed in hand-written notes on official documents, a tactic her superiors asked her to stop.
In one case, he said Army Corps officials bypassed getting a signature from Greenhouse to grant a waiver for KBR to be relieved of its obligation to provide cost and pricing data for bringing fuel into Iraq.
That waiver was granted after a draft Army audit said KBR may have overcharged the military by at least $61 million to bring in fuel to Iraq to ease a shortage of refined oil products.
-------- china
Powell's China Comments Anger Taiwanese
October 26, 2004
By WILLIAM FOREMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TAIWAN_US_CHINA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has angered Taiwanese officials and lawmakers by making unusually strong comments denying that the island is an independent nation and suggesting Taiwan should unify with China.
Washington usually avoids weighing in on the touchy split, which arose when Mao Zedong's communist army won control of the Chinese mainland in 1949 and anti-communist forces took refuge on Taiwan.
But Powell waded into the unification question Monday in interviews with CNN and Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television during a one-day visit to China.
According to a State Department transcript, Powell told Phoenix: "There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy."
That was a departure from the U.S. government's longtime "one China policy," a purposely fuzzy approach that merely "acknowledges" people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree there is one China. Washington also insists differences should be settled peacefully and in recent years has emphasized that the Taiwanese people should have a say in the matter.
Taiwan is highly sensitive to any kind of language - especially from Washington - that might suggest their democratic island is part of the communist mainland. Taiwanese view China's government to be repressive and have spent decades resisting rule by Beijing, which occasionally threatens to use force to bring the island under its sway.
Rebuking Powell without mentioning him by name, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian told visiting former South Korean President Kim Young-sam on Tuesday that the island is a separate nation.
"Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign, independent nation. It's a great nation, and it absolutely does not belong to the People's Republic of China. That is the present situation, that is the reality," Chen said. Using the island's official name, Republic of China, Chen said no country had the right to tell Taiwan it isn't independent.
"Other countries, whether they have official diplomatic relations with our country or not, have no way of influencing or deny the present situation and the fact that the Republic of China or Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation," Chen said.
Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun made a terse response to Powell's comment. "Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. This is reality," Yu told reporters Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Mark Chen told lawmakers that Powell used "heavy language" that left "a deep impression" on Taiwan. He also complained Washington didn't warn Taiwan that Powell would depart from long-standing policy.
"They (America) hope that we'll try hard not to give them any surprises. They've really dropped an extremely big surprise on us," said Chen, adding that Taiwan had asked for explanations from U.S. officials in Washington and Taiwan.
Lawmakers with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party also complained.
"This kind of talk ignores reality. The Democratic Progressive Party's legislative caucus absolutely won't accept it," lawmaker Tsai Huang-liang said.
In an interview with CNN, Powell appeared to suggest Taiwan and China both favor unification. He said he didn't want to see either side "take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking."
The Taiwan issue is extremely awkward for the United States. Washington doesn't want to appear to be forcing Taiwan to become part of the communist mainland. But the United States doesn't want Taiwan to provoke a war with China - a conflict that would likely involve U.S. forces.
On the Net:
Powell's Phoenix interview: http://usinfo.org/wf/041025/epf105.htm
Powell's CNN interview: www.state.gov/secretary/rm/37366.htm weapons
--------
Beijing Rebuffs Powell on Taiwan
U.S.-China Dialogue On Rights to Resume
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62655-2004Oct25.html
BEIJING, Oct. 25 -- Chinese officials rebuffed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's suggestion that they use a possibly conciliatory speech by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, to restart cross-strait discussions, telling him in strong terms Monday that they are not impressed by Chen's words and are worried about his actions.
After a series of meetings with top Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao, Powell told reporters that the Chinese had agreed to reopen a dialogue with the United States on human rights that had been halted for seven months. He also indicated that Chinese officials planned to use their influence to prod North Korea to return to talks on ending its nuclear programs.
But Powell received a noncommittal answer when he inquired about the recent arrest of a New York Times researcher and he came away empty-handed on Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
In a National Day speech on Oct. 10, Chen proposed the resumption of long-suspended talks on the basis of a 1992 meeting in Hong Kong, at which Taiwanese and Chinese officials papered over differences by agreeing there is only one China but acknowledging that each side has a different understanding of what that means. Chen's gesture was regarded as a concession in Taiwan, which is in the midst of a campaign for parliamentary elections Dec. 11. Previously, Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party had rejected such ambiguity, insisting that Taiwan is a separate country.
"The United States thought there might be some elements [in the speech] the Chinese could work with in improving cross-straits dialogue," Powell told reporters. "The response I received from Chinese leadership today was that they are still concerned about President Chen Shui-bian's actions and they did not find his statement to be that forthcoming." A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of diplomatic talks, put it more bluntly, saying Chinese officials "were uniformly downbeat in their assessment of Chen's speech."
China had rejected Chen's speech, which called for dialogue and other "concrete actions," shortly after he delivered it.
Some experts have described Chen's speech as a ruse in which he used clever language to suggest more flexibility.
The State Department official said Powell chose to visit Beijing at this time because "the president and vice president, because of their campaign, were unlikely to be able to have the kind of meetings that in other years they have had with the Chinese."
During Powell's tour of East Asia, he has pressed for a resumption of six-nation talks on North Korea. He told reporters that China shared the Bush administration's interest in quickly restarting the talks, which the North Korean government has balked at attending.
The State Department official said he believed China, North Korea's main benefactor, "will use a combination of influences" to bring North Korea back to the table.
On human rights, State Department officials said dialogue has been stalled for months, largely because of Chinese anger over a resolution the Bush administration sponsored in April at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva condemning China's human rights practices. As a result, U.S. officials have not been able to ask questions about particular prisoners, and U.S. groups promoting religious freedom have faced difficulties getting trips to China approved.
China's decision to restart human rights discussions will now allow those diplomatic exchanges to begin within three or four weeks, the official said.
In a meeting with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, Powell expressed concern about the detention in September of a New York Times researcher, Zhao Yan, on suspicion of divulging state secrets. Zhao was formally arrested last week, but officials have not specified the allegations against him. Speculation has centered on Zhao's role in a Sept. 7 article by the Times disclosing plans by former president Jiang Zemin to leave his post as head of China's military, resolving a power struggle among China's leaders.
Powell said he asked Li to look into the matter and suggested that Zhao be released quickly. But the foreign minister noted that Zhao is a Chinese citizen who is being handled "in accordance with Chinese law," Powell said.
-------- europe
France and Germany to set up rapid reaction 'battle group'
BERLIN (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026163037.z366u2aw.html
Germany and France agreed at a bilateral summit here on Tuesday to increase their defence cooperation by setting up a "battle group" unit to help improve the European Union's rapid reaction capabilities.
A joint declaration after the summit said this tactical group would be drawn from the existing Franco-German Brigade and "would be open to other contributions, mainly from the nations involved in Eurocorps".
Troops from Eurocorps, which was set up in the 1990s, are currently leading the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
The declaration said that planning for the new "battle group" had already begun.
"France and Germany play an important role as a catalyst for the development of Europe's capacity in the rapid reaction to crises," the statement added.
"They will therefore continue with determination to develop the Franco-German Brigade to make it the core of an 'initial entry force' for the European Union and NATO, principally within the framework of Eurocorps.
"Our two countries underline that the concept of tactical groupings and the NATO rapid reaction force are complementary and reinforce each other."
Ten "battle groups" are in the process of being set up across the European Union. The aim is that each will be able to deploy 1,500 troops within 15 days to trouble spots.
-------- iraq
U.N., U.S. confident in Iraqi elections
October 26, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-122112-1020r.htm
Iraqi elections scheduled for January will go ahead and will represent the popular will, thanks in large measure to the courageous efforts of Iraqi politicians and organizers, both U.N. and American election advisers say.
But much of the hard work of registering voters, organizing and training parties and setting up polling places must take place in near secrecy for fear of attracting the attention of terrorists bent on derailing the process, the experts said.
"I think elections can be credible," said Carlos Valenzuela, the top U.N. elections adviser in Iraq, in an interview yesterday with Reuters news agency. "It is a difficult situation, but when you have a transitional election by definition it is conducted in an environment that is less than ideal."
A Washington spokesman for the International Republican Institute (IRI), which advises political parties around the world on how to organize elections, agreed.
"It isn't going to be smooth and pretty. There's going to be controversy, fighting and challenging of results, and plenty of credible evidence that here or there, there were some kind of shenanigans or cases of violence," said the IRI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"But it's going to happen, and people will say it was what it was. It's going to be messy, it's going to take a while to sort it out. But I think they are going to do it."
Nevertheless, the threat of violence is so great that officials on all sides are reluctant to discuss in detail how they are preparing for the election of a 275-member national assembly that in turn will draw up a new constitution.
The United Nations, which suffered 22 deaths in a bomb blast a year ago, has limited its non-Iraqi staff in the country to no more than 35 persons, of whom only 10 are working to prepare for elections.
Officials with IRI and its counterpart, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), said they each have roughly a dozen expatriates directing larger staffs of Iraqis, and conceded their movements have been severely restricted by the level of violence.
"Lots of meetings are canceled, and a lot of what we do is close to Baghdad," the IRI staff member said. "But the greatest risk in all of this would seem to be borne by the Iraqis who are working most closely with us.
"These people can only be under our security umbrella for certain portions of time. When they move out from under it, they are extremely vulnerable. The terrorists regard them as collaborators and high-value targets," he said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized the United Nations this week for not doing more to help, pointing out that its staff in Iraq falls far short of the 300-member contingent it sent to East Timor for an independence referendum in 1999.
"It is unfortunate that the contribution and participation of U.N. employees in this process is not up to expectations," Mr. Zebari said.
U.N. officials said that member nations had not responded to an appeal for troops to guard U.N. workers and facilities so more staffers could be sent in. But the IRI official in Washington said the United Nations could and should do more.
"I know the Iraqis have been appealing to the United Nations to come in and lend a hand, and it seems to me there is a lot of politics in this," said the IRI official.
"One would hope the U.N. could see beyond that, and look into its international obligations and its obligation to the people of Iraq. Iraqis see them a little as missing in action."
Mr. Valenzuela told Reuters that even the small number of experts in his team was adequate to meet the U.N. mandate, which was simply to advise the Iraqi electoral commission on how to organize the vote.
"From the very beginning, in February when we first came, the U.N. said this should be an Iraqi-led process," he said. "Now people say, 'You are letting the Iraqis do this all by themselves,' but it was always meant to be like that."
Mr. Valenzuela said the nine-member Iraqi commission, on which he sits as a nonvoting international commissioner, would be ready to begin voter registration Monday.
Voters will sign up at established food-distribution points that have existed since Saddam Hussein's time - logistically the most practical way forward, but a security nightmare.
The closer the election date gets, the more violence is predicted by security experts working in Iraq. Registration centers and voting booths present especially easy targets.
Iraqis have said they are not sure they are willing to risk their lives to cast a ballot. But officials say the fear of attacks is not discouraging election workers.
"The people we have working with us in Iraq, Iraqi and expatriate, they are charging away believing they can make a difference. We are optimistic - but Iraq presents the greatest challenge," said Les Campbell, an NDI official in Washington.
--------
Allawi Blames Ambush on'Negligence'
October 26, 2004
By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's interim prime minister blamed U.S.-led coalition forces Tuesday for "great negligence" in the ambush that killed about 50 American-trained soldiers, and a U.S. airstrike in Fallujah killed an aide to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said.
An Iraqi insurgent group, meanwhile, said on a Web site it had taken 11 Iraqi National Guard soldiers hostage.
They were seized on a highway between Baghdad and Hillah, according to the Internet posting by the militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. The posting included the names of all 11.
The authenticity of the posting could not immediately be verified. The movement claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and hostage takings, including the kidnap and murder of 12 Nepalese, who were seized in August. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi blamed the coalition for poor security in Saturday's ambush about 95 miles east of Baghdad.
"It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guards were targeted," Allawi said. "There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces. It seems there was sort of determination on doing Iraq and Iraqi people harm."
The attack on the soldiers, who were returning home on leave, occurred on a remote eastern highway when their buses were stopped by insurgents at a fake checkpoint, police and defense officials said.
Some of the bodies were found in rows - shot execution-style in the head, the Defense Ministry said. Other bodies were found on a burned bus nearby.
Allawi told the Iraqi National Council: "You should expect an escalation in terrorist acts."
The U.S. military said the early-morning raid in Fallujah struck a safe house used by al-Zarqawi's group. U.S. forces have stepped up aerial and artillery assaults on Fallujah in recent weeks in an attempt to root out insurgents.
Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, fell under rebel control after the Bush administration ordered Marines to lift their three-week siege of the city in April.
The United States has offered a $25 million bounty for the capture or killing of al-Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility in numerous suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including three Americans.
"Recent strikes and raids targeting the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network have severely degraded its ability to conduct attacks," the U.S. statement said. It did not identify the slain al-Zarqawi aide.
In London, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the interim government is working to achieve a political solution to the military standoff around Fallujah.
"We are trying to exhaust all political channels and avenues before any final decision is made," Zebari told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Fallujah is one hot spot that we need really to resolve before getting to elections" scheduled for January.
A masked gunman, meanwhile, warned in a videotape that insurgents will attack all Iraqi and multinational military and civilian targets with "weapons and military tactics they have not experienced" if U.S. troops try to storm the city.
In the videotape obtained by Associated Press Television News, the gunman, dressed in an old-style Iraqi army uniform, read the statement on behalf of the "factions of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq."
The speaker, who appeared with seven other masked, armed men, accused the Iraqi government of "aborting a peaceful solution with the people of Fallujah."
He warned all Iraqi military personnel and government employees to quit their jobs, otherwise they "will be permissible targets for our fighters."
In Ramadi, insurgents attacked two U.S. Army convoys Tuesday with roadside bombs, the military said. No U.S. troops were injured but some Iraqi civilians were wounded, Lt. Col Lyle Gilbert said.
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is in the insurgent-heavy Sunni Triangle.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said an investigation was launched into the deadly ambush of about 50 U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers Saturday.
"The investigation is mainly to know whether there was any information leakage," Defense Ministry spokesman Salih Sarhan said.
Iraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents, mostly with car bombs and mortar shells. However, the fact that the insurgents were able to strike at so many unarmed soldiers in such a remote region suggested the guerrillas may have had advance word on the soldiers' travel.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala province's Deputy Gov. Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya television. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."
Last week, a U.S. defense official in Washington described Iraq's security forces as "heavily infiltrated" by insurgents, saying some Iraqi soldiers and police have developed sympathies and contacts with the guerrillas. In other instances, infiltrators were sent to join the security services, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Zarqawi's group, renamed al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack on an Islamic Web site, but there was no way to verify its authenticity.
Dozens of suspect police officers and Iraqi soldiers have been arrested for insurgent ties, although U.S. and Iraqi officials declined to release numbers.
In September, U.S. troops arrested a senior Iraqi National Guard commander, Lt. Gen. Talib al-Lahibi, for insurgent ties. Al-Lahibi was arrested in Diyala province near where Saturday's massacre occurred.
Also, U.S. troops arrested an Iraqi National Guard battalion commander, Col. Daham Abd, allegedly for providing ammunition, money and information to the insurgents near the northern city of Kirkuk.
A mortar attack Oct. 19 on an Iraqi National Guard compound near Baghdad is being viewed as a probable inside job. The attackers apparently knew when and where the unit's members were gathering and dropped mortar rounds in the middle of their formation. At least four Iraqis were killed and 80 others were wounded.
--------
Flurry of Violence Kills At Least 15
Across Iraq Hundreds Rally for Aid Worker's Release
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61021-2004Oct25.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 -- A rash of bombings and skirmishes killed at least 13 Iraqis, a U.S. soldier and an Estonian soldier Monday, according to reports from around the country. Meanwhile, several hundred Iraqis staged a street demonstration in Baghdad to demand the release of Margaret Hassan, the veteran aid worker who was kidnapped last week.
Three Iraqi civilians were killed on a central Baghdad street when explosives apparently hidden in a parked car exploded beside an Australian military convoy. The force of the 8 a.m. blast, which occurred near the Australian Embassy, knocked an armored vehicle off the pavement. It was the first attack directed against an Australian force that protects the country's diplomats in Baghdad. Three Australian troops and six Iraqis were wounded.
In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded five, the U.S. military said.
The Estonian was killed when an explosive charge detonated beneath a convoy in western Baghdad. He was the second soldier from the Baltic country to die in Iraq this year. Estonia maintains 45 troops here.
Fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, west of Baghdad, killed five civilians, according to a hospital director quoted by the Reuters news agency.
A bomb planted in the vehicle of a tribal leader in the northern city of Mosul killed three people, including the unidentified sheik, when it detonated outside the downtown headquarters of the provincial government, according to news service reports. A second car bombing targeted the commander of the city's Facilities Protection Service, which guards government buildings. He survived, but three guards were wounded.
News services reported two other civilians killed in insurgent attacks: a man struck by shrapnel from mortar fire apparently aimed at an Iraqi National Guard base north of Baghdad, and a farm worker killed when a roadside bomb apparently meant for a U.S. patrol exploded 50 miles southwest of Kirkuk, also in the north.
In Khaldiya, about 12 miles west of Fallujah, a suicide bomber steered a sedan into a convoy of six U.S. military vehicles.
"The Americans warned the driver not to be close, but he did not care," said Laith Mohammed, 23, a laborer who witnessed the incident. "We immediately thought he will blow up the car. He had a beard. The Americans started shooting, but he drove fast and hit them.
"I saw some civilians driving, and some of them were wounded by shrapnel and some of them by the shooting of the Americans," said Mohammed. There was no immediate report of casualties from the military.
In Fallujah, which insurgents have held since April, the body of the leader of a radical group was pulled from rubble left by a U.S. airstrike. Abu Thar Qatary was identified by locals as a leader of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, a group that has posted several videos of beheadings on the Internet and asserted responsibility for suicide attacks.
The largely Kurdish group is one of several successors to Ansar al-Islam, which U.S. and allied Kurdish forces routed from a stronghold in northern Iraq at the start of the war. Ansar al-Sunna operates mostly in Mosul and other northern cities but has sent fighters to Fallujah in anticipation of a U.S. assault on the city, residents said.
In Najaf, the southern city badly damaged by fighting between U.S. forces and a Shiite militia in August, U.S. Marines have paid more than $1.9 million in compensation for lives lost and property damaged in the hostilities, according to the Marines. The money has been distributed to 2,660 residents so far.
"Now that Najaf is secure, we're working around the clock to get this city up and running again," Col. Anthony M. Haslam, commander of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said in a statement. "These payments are one way we are showing goodwill and building trust with the locals."
The kidnapping of Hassan, the aid worker, has caused an outcry in Iraq, where she has spent 30 years working in social welfare programs. Last week her captors released video footage of her pleading to Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, for the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq.
"We love her. She built us a hospital," said Ahmed Jabir, who spoke from his wheelchair at a rally attended by several hundred Iraqis, many of them disabled, outside the Baghdad office of CARE International, where Hassan worked. A banner read: "Please release Margaret Hassan who has helped us."
"If it wasn't for her," Jabir told Reuters, "we would probably have died."
--------
Allawi Faults U.S.-Led Forces on Execution of Iraqi Soldiers
October 26, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/middleeast/27iraqcnd11.html?hp&ex=1098849600&en=27610202a5ecdb22&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 26 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi partly blamed the American-led military forces on Tuesday for the massacre by insurgents of 49 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers on Saturday, saying the military had shown "major negligence."
In a speech before the interim National Assembly, the prime minister said a committee he had assembled had begun investigating the ambush, the deadliest of the guerrilla war. The assault took place on Saturday night in remote eastern Iraq, as three minibuses of unarmed Iraqi National Guardsmen were heading south for the soldiers' leave. Guerrillas dressed as police officers waylaid the travelers at a fake checkpoint, killed all 49 soldiers and their 3 civilian drivers, mostly with shots to their heads, police officials said. The vehicles were burned.
"I think there was major negligence by the multinational forces," Dr. Allawi said before the 100-member assembly. "It was a way to damage Iraq and the Iraqi people."
The relentless assaults on Iraqi security forces continued, as a militant group called the Army of Ansar al-Sunna posted Internet photos showing that it had captured 11 Iraqi guardsmen. A message on the Web site said the insurgents had captured the "infidels" of the "crusaders' militia" on a road between Baghdad and Hilla, about 50 miles south, where the guardsmen were apparently out on patrol. In the photos, the guardsmen sit at the feet of three armed guerillas.
The kidnappings and the massacre on Saturday revealed the weak state of the Iraqi security forces, despite President Bush's assertion that local police officers and soldiers will soon be able to take over security duties from 138,000 American troops. An Iraqi national security aide said on Monday that up to 5 percent of the Iraqi forces might be infiltrated by insurgents, and American troops say the police and national guardsmen are worthless or working with insurgents. Reporters also frequently encounter Iraqi security officers who say they are ready to take up arms against the occupation forces.
Prime Minister Allawi's razor words before the National Assembly marked the first time he has publicly criticized the American-led forces, and revealed his profound frustration at the assault and quite possibly at the deteriorating security situation in the country. He did not elaborate on his criticism. He added that he expected attacks to rise as Iraq moved toward general elections scheduled for January.
The ambushed guardsmen had just finished basic training at an American-run base in Kirkush, and it was unclear why they were traveling without any arms or other protection, especially given the frequent attacks on Iraqi security forces. The guerrillas who staged the ambush likely had inside information on the movements of the soldiers, Iraqi defense officials have said.
The First Infantry Division, which is charged with controlling restive Diyala Province, where the assault took place, did not return an e-mail request seeking comment on Dr. Allawi's accusation. The office of Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is overseeing the recruiting and training of the Iraqi security forces, also did not return a similar request.
The interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, also appeared before the National Assembly and said that the government was starting to filter out police officers whom it deemed to be bad.
"Some of them are lazy," he said. "They came just for the sake of making a salary or earning a living. We have a real unemployment problem."
If the men are turned away from these jobs or fired, he said, then insurgents will recruit them and pay them an even higher salary.
In interviews, police officers almost invariably cite the lack of jobs as the main reason why they chose to join the Iraqi security forces, despite the dangers. The nationwide unemployment rate is an estimated 60 percent. The average police officer makes more than $220 a month, a solid middle-class income in this society.
Several prominent arrests recently have revealed potential high-ranking corruption among the security forces. Last month, the First Infantry Division arrested a commander of the Iraqi National Guard in Diyala Province, where the massacre took place, saying he had ties with the insurgency. In August, marines arrested the police chief of Anbar Province, which includes the volatile cities of Falluja and Ramadi, on charges of corruption.
--------
COMBAT
At Tense Syria-Iraq Border, American Forces Are Battling Insurgents Every Day
October 26, 2004
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/middleeast/26syria.html?pagewanted=all&position=
AL HIRI, Syria, Oct. 22 - Villagers in this tiny hamlet on the Syrian-Iraqi border no longer wait for the call to prayer to mark the end of the daily fast for Ramadan. Instead, sundown arrives in tandem with an eruption of mortar rounds and gunfire between Iraqi insurgents and the American forces stationed next door.
"Even before the muezzin cries out 'God is great!' we start hearing the bombs and shelling," said Fayad al-Hussein, the owner of a one-story house with an unexploded mortar round in his front yard and a view of the American flag flapping over a small base some two hundred yards away in the Iraqi town of Al Qaim.
"Now, just 10 minutes before the call to prayer, we gather all the children into the house, because we are pretty sure there will be a firefight just as soon as the iftar starts," he added, using the Arabic word for the sunset meal.
The only explanation for the week-old phenomenon is that the insurgents open fire when they are certain most Iraqi civilians are indoors eating and unlikely to get caught in the crossfire, said Lt. Col. Ali Ahmed al-Shammari, the officer in charge of the Abu Kamal border crossing.
Syria's management of crossings like this one, and indeed its entire 400-mile border with Iraq, has been a major source of tension with the United States since the war started in March 2003. There have been recent accusations that American forces in Al Qaim took mortar fire from the Syrian side of the border, and that some men, money and arms continue to filter across.
Syria has repeatedly protested that it is doing what it can and that what trickle of insurgents may cross remains insignificant. But in recent weeks the Syrians say they have taken measures to ensure tighter border security. They arranged a rare tour to display the changes.
"We now have intensive patrols along the border, and the number of sentry posts has increased markedly," Colonel Shammari said. "If one bullet was fired from the Syrian side to Iraq, we would turn the world upside down."
Western diplomats and other analysts in Damascus said there was no question that in the past six weeks the Syrian government understood that Washington's concern about the border ran deep and began a serious effort to tighten security.
What is less clear, they say, given Syria's eagerness to speed an American military withdrawal from Iraq, is whether they have put all possible barriers into the insurgents' path.
"The whole border has become a less welcoming environment for insurgents," said a senior Western diplomat. "But the Syrians are trying to have it both ways. They are doing enough to show they have a real effort, but they don't want to be seen as having sold out."
Syria, like most Arab governments in the region, those analysts say, is happy to see just enough violence so that the Americans reconsider the policy of regime change through force and the local population is convinced of the bloody costs of any transition to democracy. But it does not want anarchy that might spill across its border or prompt a stampede of refugees.
A central problem faced by President Bashar Assad, and to an extent by all Arab leaders, is that the anti-American fighting in Iraq enjoys wide public support. Taking steps against it could make unpopular governments even more suspect.
During the noon sermon in Abu Kamal on Friday, the prayer leader called on God to help Muslims defeat their enemies and return all usurped land. But at a much more ardent, private prayer sermon in Aleppo a week earlier, the venom aimed at Syria's foes was far more potent.
"God grant us victory over Israel. God grant us victory over America and its allies," bellowed one worshiper at a prayer service, before a religious sheik rose to deliver a sermon condemning Zionists and their American allies for killing children.
Sentiments like those are repeated in thousands of mosques across the region and help speed the flow of insurgents through Syria. In several major cities this week, the Syrian government even allowed rare street demonstrations in support of Palestinian and Iraqi resistance.
The Syrian government maintains that it remains deeply interested in containing the fighters. So in the months after the American-led invasion last year they limited permission to cross the border to Syrians over 40 years old. All non-Syrians must obtain written permission from their embassies in Damascus and from the Syrian security services.
Along the border itself, the Syrians are reconstructing a nine-foot-high sand berm topped with barbed wire that was first built more than 30 years ago but gradually eroded, said a military intelligence officer who would not give his name. In addition, he said, there is now a double troop line consisting of soldiers and intelligence officers, and sentry posts positioned about every 1.5 miles.
Western diplomats emphasize the sad sack nature of many of the posts, consisting of little more than a tent or a brick shack with a few soldiers who often lack binoculars, radios or night vision equipment.
Analysts also point out that given the rampant corruption and numerous secret services here, buying or arranging a passage across the border is not impossible. Plus, there are at least five great confederations of mostly Sunni Muslim tribes with branches on both sides who view the border as little more than an inconvenience.
That said, Western diplomats characterize insurgents who pass through here as a contributing but not essential factor to the resistance in Iraq. They also dismiss accusations about serious weaponry flowing across or Iraq's deposed Baathist leadership huddling here.
"I don't see the insurgency being masterminded from Syria," the senior Western diplomat said.
Colonel Shammari said the Americans in Al Qaim sometimes closed the border crossing for days or even weeks at a time, and once for a month starting April 17 as they tried to stamp out the insurgency raging around the city. It continues whether or not the border is open, he said, because it is the people from Al Qaim who are the resistance.
The Syrian officers took pains to deny any contact, and certainly any joint patrols, with the American forces visible across the border.
A team lead by the American military attaché in Damascus carried out an inspection tour last week and pronounced itself satisfied, the Syrian officers said.
"They thought that there was shelling from certain places in the village,'' the military intelligence officer said. "But when we took them to those sites they discovered just normal houses, so they laughed and realized it was all just rumors."
Brian J. O'Rourke, the spokesman for the United States Embassy in Damascus, said it had no comment about the border situation. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has praised cooperation by Syria in talks on border and other issues but said its actions still had to be evaluated.
Villagers here curse the day the Americans moved in next door, saying not a month goes by without somebody being wounded by bullets or shrapnel from stray mortars. A few months back, an 18-year-old man died from a gunshot in the head, and a customers inspector, also shot in the head, lies in a coma. The villagers are convinced that the fatal shot was fired by an American soldier, and his family is trying to file a lawsuit against the United States government.
Muhammad Rafa al-Obeid, 22, lay groaning on a bed in his family's living room, bandages wrapped around his torso where a piece of shrapnel had hit him just below the shoulder. "The whole village used to eat the iftar outside, but now from sunset to sunrise everyone is afraid to even walk outside," said his brother Ahmed, 21.
They yearn for the time before the war when the loudest noise in the village was the braying donkeys or crowing roosters that roam freely through its alleyways.
"This is Syria and that is Iraq," said their father, Rafa Awad al-Obeid, 45. "Sure we live near the border, but we never expected to be affected by what is happening over there."
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon defends plan to cede settlements
October 26, 2004
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-122126-7654r.htm
TEL AVIV - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday defended his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, arguing on the eve of a crucial parliamentary vote that continued control over the Palestinians is untenable and assailing Jewish settlers as misguided messianists.
Mr. Sharon's address to the Knesset opened an unprecedented debate on whether to abandon settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. As the politicians talked, Israeli troops moved on the Gaza town of Khan Younis, killing at least 14 Palestinians and wounding 72.
The disengagement bill is expected to pass with a comfortable majority, but Mr. Sharon will need the support of opposition lawmakers to make up for a rebellion within his own Likud Party.
Security was tightened around the parliament building and for individual lawmakers owing to fear of attacks by Israeli protesters.
The rift within Likud has left Mr. Sharon without a stable majority in parliament, raising doubts about whether he can survive politically to see the plan through the next year.
Support for a national referendum on the initiative has been spreading among Likud leaders such as Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Sharon opposes the referendum, which would delay the pullback by months.
In a speech billed as historic, Mr. Sharon spoke with little animation, seldom lifting his eyes from a prepared text except during the interludes forced by heckling lawmakers.
"The disengagement plan isn't meant to come instead of negotiations and doesn't seek to freeze the situation forever," said Mr. Sharon, who refuses to recognize Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a legitimate peace partner. "Everything is open to negotiation after the terror" stops.
Despite his wooden oratorical style, the prime minister expressed some startlingly dovish views for a man who until very recently was regarded as Israel's most hardened hawk.
"The sword alone won't be decisive in this bitter fight in this land," said Mr. Sharon, adding that he had advocated relinquishing control over Palestinian territories as early as 1988.
Mr. Sharon said his redeployment strategy was guided by demographic trends, and that it is unrealistic for Israel to expect to retain control over a rapidly growing population of millions of Palestinians.
In the Gaza Strip, there are about 8,000 Jewish settlers in about 20 enclaves scattered along a coastal belt that is home to 1.3 million Palestinians.
Israel's army sent troops and dozens of armored vehicles into the Khan Younis refugee camp in an offensive the military said was aimed at silencing Palestinian mortar fire on nearby Jewish settlements.
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported on its Web site that an 11-year-old boy and two policemen were among the Palestinians killed. The Israeli army said two soldiers were critically wounded by an anti-tank missile.
Palestinian reactions to the disengagement plan have been mixed. Although some welcome the redeployment as a victory for the four-year-old uprising against Israel, the Palestinian government is annoyed by Israel's unilateralism.
"What Israel is discussing today is not an internal Israeli matter. If the Israeli government is serious about the peace process, they should come back to the negotiating table," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian official.
"To dictate my future to me by a vote in the Knesset is unacceptable."
Jewish settlers - who once viewed Mr. Sharon as the leading patron of their movement - now decry him as an undemocratic leader who must be brought down. Some settler rabbis have called on soldiers to refuse to carry out orders to evacuate the settlements.
In his Knesset address, Mr. Sharon responded with a rare barb at the settlers. Quoting criticism from former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Mr. Sharon said the settlers had developed a "messianic complex."
The vote today will permit the government to lay the groundwork for the withdrawal, authorizing steps such as settler compensation packages. However, the final green light will come with a Cabinet vote in March.
Mr. Sharon may opt to fire Cabinet ministers who vote against the disengagement. He also could bring the opposition Labor Party into the government, but that would risk a permanent rupture in the Likud.
Education Minister Limor Livnat, a Likud member, said yesterday that a national referendum was necessary to avoid a rift within the Israeli public and the party. Politicians such as Mr. Livnat and Mr. Netanyahu have been walking a thin line between Mr. Sharon and his right-wing opponents, but the support for the referendum represented a tilt to the latter.
Speaking immediately after Mr. Sharon, Labor leader Shimon Peres sounded more like a coalition partner than an opposition leader. "I don't agree with the prime minister" that there is no partner for peace talks on the Palestinian side, Mr. Peres said. "But he is looking reality in the eye."
--------
Israeli Parliament Begins Debate on Gaza Withdrawal
Approval Seen Likely Today; Troops Kill 16 Palestinians
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60858-2004Oct25.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 25 -- Israeli lawmakers began a fiery debate Monday over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, as thousands of demonstrators marched at the parliament and police beefed up security around Jerusalem.
Lawmakers have scheduled 17 hours of debate on Sharon's plan over Monday and Tuesday, with a vote scheduled for Tuesday night. Sharon is expected to win approval by a margin of about five votes in the 120-member Knesset, Israel's parliament.
If the plan is approved, more than 8,000 Israelis in 21 Gaza settlements would be forced to relocate in a process Sharon wants to begin early next year. In addition to the Gaza withdrawal, his disengagement plan calls for closing four settlements with about 470 residents in the northern West Bank.
Sharon opened the session in the Knesset with an impassioned speech acknowledging the departure from Gaza would be painful, but saying he was "absolutely convinced this disengagement will strengthen Israel" and promising not to waver in implementing it.
Repeatedly interrupted by heckling, Sharon accused some of his erstwhile allies in the settlement movement of being "messianic" extremists and called on Israelis to unite behind him and the Gaza withdrawal. Three members of the Knesset were evicted from the chamber during the speech for refusing to be silent.
Debate on the proposal opened as 16 Palestinians were killed and almost 100 wounded by the Israeli military in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis late Sunday and early Monday. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the latest operation targeted Palestinians who had fired more than 28 mortar shells at Jewish settlements and Israeli military targets in Gaza over the weekend. Palestinian militant groups said the attacks were in retaliation for the killing of a top leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, in a targeted assassination by Israel Thursday night.
In a sign of how the Gaza issue has altered traditional political alliances, at least 17 members of Sharon's Likud Party -- including several cabinet ministers, and most of the ultranationalist and religious parties that typically are Sharon's staunchest supporters -- have said they will abstain or vote against the plan. At the same time, most of the dovish opposition in the Knesset, including the entire Labor Party, and some of Sharon's harshest critics, including several Israeli Arabs and well-known peace activists, have said they will vote with the prime minister to give him a majority.
But a victory for Sharon could come with a big price tag. Numerous Israeli politicians and political analysts claim that the issue could split the Likud into two parties, or cause the collapse of Sharon's government. Influential rabbis have called on Israeli soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements, and there have been several death threats against Sharon.
The Gaza pullback would be the first withdrawal from territory seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war since Israel left the Sinai in 1982 following the Camp David peace agreement struck between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In his speech, Sharon said his decision to advocate leaving Gaza was the toughest of his life, especially since he had been so deeply involved in promoting Jewish settlements there. But, he said, "We do not wish to rule forever over millions of Palestinians." There are about 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. After the withdrawals, about 240,000 Jewish settlers will remain in the West Bank, in 120 settlements, amid about 2.2 million Palestinians.
The pro- and anti-disengagement forces have launched emotionally charged campaigns to sway lawmakers, even though it became clear more than a week ago that Sharon had enough votes for his proposal to pass. The fervor of the anti-disengagement campaign reflected the possibility that the plan could be thrown out further down the legislative path or submitted to a nationwide referendum.
The pro-disengagement camp staged a torch-lit march outside the Knesset Monday night that drew thousands of demonstrators, and it ran a quarter-page ad in the Maariv newspaper declaring: "A fanatic minority will not decide the future of the state."
Anti-withdrawal forces inundated members of parliament with faxes, e-mails and telephone calls urging them to vote against the plan. On streets leading to the Knesset building, they hung signs with a crazed-looking photograph of Sharon asking: "Madman? Will the Egyptians maintain our security?"
Settlements across Gaza and the West Bank canceled school and ordered a strike on Tuesday -- the day of the vote -- so that thousands of children could be bused to the Knesset, where they would attempt to form a human chain around the building.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, officials said Yasser Arafat had undergone a diagnostic endoscopy and that doctors had found no major ailment after a week of concern about the Palestinian leader's health, the Reuters news agency reported.
The procedure was performed at Arafat's battered Ramallah headquarters, where he has been confined by Israel for more than two years.
--------
Israeli Parliament Approves Sharon's Gaza Withdrawal Plan
October 26, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/middleeast/27mideastcnd.html?ei=5094&en=25fe9feafc37178d&hp=&ex=1098849600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 - Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, won what he called the most important vote of his political life tonight, as the Israeli parliament approved his plan to remove all Israeli settlements from Gaza.
The vote, in an atmosphere of high drama and tension, with thousands of settlers in their trademark orange T-shirts demonstrating outside, was 67 to 45, with 7 abstentions and 1 legislator absent due to illness.
The vote, which was narrower than Mr. Sharon had hoped and badly split his own Likud Party and coalition, leaves the prime minister with some difficult choices about whether to restructure his government or call new elections, or both.
While a defeat tonight would have doomed Mr. Sharon and his Gaza plan, a victory does not guarantee implementation. But the vote is an occasion of profound symbolism - the first time Israel will agree to dismantle settlements in Gaza, 21 of them, and the West Bank, though only 4 tiny ones there will go.
A large part of Mr. Sharon's Likud Party, which had an old slogan about its refusal to return Palestinian territory - "Not one inch!" - opposes the plan and will continue to try to block it and its committed proponent, Mr. Sharon.
After the vote, Mr. Sharon's finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking for three other ministers, said they would resign from the government if Mr. Sharon did not agree to hold a national referendum on the Gaza plan within 14 days. Mr. Netanyahu, a former prime minister, voted stony-faced for the plan before his ultimatum and said: "We do not wish to topple anyone. We do wish, however, to give unity a chance."
But a close adviser to Mr. Sharon said the prime minister would not allow a referendum to delay implementation and would call Mr. Netanyahu's bluff. "He is playing politics and it's a little pathetic," the adviser said of Mr. Netanyahu. "Sharon is not playing games, and he is armed with the Knesset vote and wide popular support, and he will concentrate on the real interests and hopes of the Jewish people to live in a democratic, Jewish homeland." Mr. Sharon, said the adviser, would continue to govern with whatever majority he could muster.
For a moment last night, Mr. Sharon thought he had faced down Mr. Netanyahu when the finance minister came in late and voted in favor, along with the foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, and the education minister, Limor Livnat, who had been meeting together to try to force a referendum. After Mr. Netanyahu's vote was recorded, a very relieved vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, burst into laughter, but Mr. Sharon's face was almost as stony as that of his rival.
Minutes later, Ms. Livnat, Danny Naveh and Yisrael Katz joined Mr. Netanyahu in threatening resignation. They said they had voted yes "in order not to put Mr. Sharon on the spot," Mr. Netanyahu said.
Mr. Sharon believes a referendum would only delay the withdrawal from Gaza and he threatened to fire any minister who voted against him - two did, both were fired within minutes.
The religious right also opposes the plan, saying that it is a sin to pull Jews from their homes and that Gaza is part of the Land of Israel given to Jews by God. Palestinians, of course, have a different view of God's intentions. Mr. Sharon hoped for some votes from some of the religious parties; in the end, he got only one, from a rabbi, Michael Melchior, whose party is affiliated with Labor.
Mr. Sharon had full support, however, from his formal opposition on the left, which sees Gaza disengagement as a vital first step toward a smaller Israel that can make peace with a Palestinian state. And he has a firm majority in public opinion. The latest opinion poll, published today by the daily Yediot Aharonot, showed that 65 percent of Israelis favor Mr. Sharon's Gaza plan and 26 percent oppose it.
While Mr. Netanyahu left the hall without speaking to Mr. Sharon, the Labor leader, Shimon Peres, came over to congratulate the prime minister.
Even the Bush administration got into the act, with a State Department spokesman calling Mr. Sharon's proposal a "real opportunity for progress and a return to the political process."
Earlier today, in the second day of debate before the vote, Mr. Shalom, the foreign minister, urged legislators to approve the plan by minimizing its importance, saying that this vote was not a vote to actually dismantle settlements, implying that there will be other opportunities to thwart his party leader and the plan.
Mr. Shalom insisted that those who characterize the vote as historic are wrong. "There is no bigger lie than this," he said.
Asher Susser, the director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East Studies, said Mr. Shalom was disingenuous. "This is one of the most historically important moments in Israel's history since 1948, and certainly since 1967," he said.
"This is not about Gaza - this is the opening of a major debate about Israel's soul," Mr. Susser said. "We are for the first time since 1967 discussing what Israel is, how it shall be governed, and how we define ourselves. Is Israel a secular democratic state, or a state governed by Jewish religious law? We are debating the borders of Israel, its long-term survivability and the very nature of the Jewish state."
Today was also the ninth anniversary, by the Jewish calendar, of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and his son, Yuval, spoke movingly of the similar dilemmas his father had faced over Oslo. He said the essence of the parliament's decision today was the same as over Oslo: "It is the realization of the need to separate from land, from settlements and from a home." Mr. Sharon, he said, "joins his predecessors, Menachem Begin and my father, who had led similar processes that entailed painful concessions." Like their decisions, Mr. Rabin said, Mr. Sharon's decision "cannot become a consensus - decisions that enjoy complete support are merely decisions that are easily made."
There were also echoes today of another fundamental transition that will come in time in the Palestinian world. Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian president, has been suffering from some form of intestinal problem - perhaps ulcers, perhaps a viral infection, perhaps a large gallstone, perhaps even a flu, as his doctors insist. Mr. Arafat, 75, has had a series of visits from doctors, an endoscopy and today, at his doctors' urging, broke his Ramadan fast to undergo more medical tests. There is speculation that his ailments are more serious, and that his doctors and spokesmen are behaving in a Soviet style, when general secretaries like Leonid Brezhnev had the flu until the day they died.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, visited Mr. Arafat today and said: "He needs some time to recover completely, but it's nothing dangerous."
Even if Mr. Arafat's ailment proves minor, his time is also passing. He has faced a series of challenges to his leadership from a younger generation urging more efficiency, transparency, democracy and less corruption in the Palestinian Authority, and Mr. Sharon and President Bush have written off Mr. Arafat as a serious partner for peace talks.
The Israeli army ended today the latest iteration of its incursion into Gaza in an effort to stop mortar firing from Khan Yunis into the very Gaza settlements Mr. Sharon wants to dismantle. In this latest operation, which began Sunday night, 17 Palestinians died and more than 80 were wounded; two Israeli soliders were seriously wounded in intermittently heavy fighting.
Part of Mr. Sharon's intention is to de-escalate in Gaza by removing the 8,000 or so settlers and removing the obligation of the Israeli army to defend them against a population of more than 1.3 million Palestinians. As Mr. Sharon said Monday night, "a democratic Israel will not be able to withstand" an effort "to control millions of Palestinians who double their presence each generation."
Another intention of the Gaza plan, he said, is to "strengthen Israel's grip over the land that is crucial to our existence" - in other words, parts of the West Bank, where more than 230,000 Israeli settlers live, not including east Jerusalem. Palestinians fear that for Mr. Sharon, "Gaza first" means "Gaza last," and object to any Israeli effort to divide and rule. But for many Israelis and Mr. Bush, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will be a challenge to Palestinians to run their own affairs and to crack down on militancy and terrorism.
In an indication of the mood here, a right-wing legislator, Aryeh Eldad of the National Union Party, read out the names of settlers slated for evacuation in the somber tone and form that legislators read out the names of Jews murdered in the Holocaust on memorial day. "Gidi Reish, age 43, Atzmona resident, Jew, slated for expulsion," Mr. Eldad intoned. A Shinui legislator, Etti Livni, broke in to accuse Mr. Eldad of incitement. "I think Goebbels would be very happy with a student like Aryeh Eldad," she said. "I think the words that were said, and the connection that was made, is forbidden to make."
Mr. Eldad answered, "Everyone to their own associations."
-------- mideast
Analysis: Jordan's cold peace with Israel
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
By ORAIB RANTAWI
Oct. 26, 2004
Amman, Jordan, (UPI) -- Ten years after they have signed a peace treaty ending decades of enmity and war, Jordan and Israel have failed to normalize relations due to the persistent Arab-Israeli conflict, notably the Palestinian crisis.
The Oct. 26, 1994, Wadi Araba peace treaty resulted in demarcating the border between the two neighbors for the first time since January, 1949 and restored Jordan's water rights in the rivers of Jordan and Yarmouk.
Officially and superficially, the treaty ended the state of war and enmity, but Israeli-Jordanian relations are far from good or merely normal.
"Lack of trust and depression are the main characteristics of relations between the two countries, whereby Israel is dealing with peace in a partial, not comprehensive, way," Adnan Abu Audeh, a political analyst, told United Press International.
He said peace between Jordan and Israel is standing on the basis of the Wadi Araba Treaty, and bilateral dealings are continuing accordingly.
"However, Jordan's approach to that treaty is different from Israel's in the sense that Amman looks at the agreement as a first step toward a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region," Abu Audeh explained.
"Such an approach entails a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict through the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian territories and the creation of the independent Palestinian state."
"But the Israelis viewed the treaty differently, which explains that peace with the Palestinians has not been achieved 10 years later," he added.
The U.S.-sponsored Wadi Araba treaty was signed in the presence of former U.S. President Bill Clinton by late King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish zealot a year later for his overtures to the Arabs.
Political observer Ibrahim Badran argues that peace between Jordan and Israel exists only legally "because Jordan believes in a broader and more comprehensive peace."
"The swirling violence and growing complications on the Palestinian scene indicates that the initial implementation of the treaty was going on smoothly, but stumbled in the past five years," Badran told UPI.
"Israeli policies harmed the region in recent years, and what is happening in the Palestinian territories adversely affected Jordanian-Israeli relations," he said.
Moreover, the peace treaty is not popular among Jordanians, but it is actually manipulated by the opposition to rally the people around it on the grounds that it failed to achieve the objectives it was supposed to achieve.
Israeli practices against the Palestinians since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip four years ago further strengthened the opposition stance rejecting peace with Israel.
Opposition parties led by the Islamic Action Front, the group representing Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, have been engaged in a nationwide campaign to resist normalization of relations with Israel.
Mounir Hamarneh, secretary general of the Jordanian Communist Party, contends: "True peace between Israel and the Arabs has not been achieved despite the peace treaties signed by the Jewish state with Jordan and Egypt."
He argued, "Israeli policies in the region still posed a real threat to Jordan, notably the separation wall which Israel insists on building in the West Bank and Israeli practices aimed at displacing the Palestinians in contradiction to the spirit and content of the peace treaty."
Political writer Jamil Nimri noted that "the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel is nothing but ink on paper since it failed to secure peace and stability and could not motivate the people to normalize relations.
"The existing peace is only in the form. ... It is simply disfigured," he added.
"The experience of the past 10 years makes us come out with one conclusion -- that is, peace has not been achieved yet due to Israel's practices against the Palestinian people," Nimri said.
Observers agree that the treaty did not have any impact on ending the conflict and violence sweeping the region even though it gave Jordan land and water rights and eliminated the approach that Jordan could be an alternative state for the Palestinians.
Jordanian-Israeli relations have had many ups and downs since the treaty was signed 10 years ago.
Ties were particularly strained in 1997, when Israel's intelligence, the Mossad, tried to assassinate Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Meshaal in Amman. That was followed by Israel's refusal to supply Jordan with its water share from Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) in 1999 under the pretext that the water level had dropped.
But tension in relations increased after the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000. The Jordanian government then summoned its ambassador in Tel Aviv and has since refused to resend him before Israel implemented its commitments under the so-called Road Map for peace in the Middle East.
Israel's construction of the separation barrier in the West Bank further strained relations, as Jordan led an international diplomatic campaign to press for the destruction of the barrier, which it regards as a threat to its own national security.
The issue of Jordanian prisoners in Israel is another bone of contention in Jordanian-Israeli relations, whereby Israel is refusing to liberate some 22 Jordanians held in its prisons, including four who have been sentenced to life terms for killing Israelis.
-------- nato
Russian warships to join NATO exercise
October 26, 2004
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041026-122227-2655r.htm
Moscow, Russia, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Two Russian Black Sea Fleet ships will join a NATO exercise this week, Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.
The two warships are expected to travel to the Mediterranean Sea by the end of the week to join a NATO operation concentrating on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and related technologies, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said according to the Interfax report.
"This week, two surface ships of the Black Sea Fleet will leave Sevastopol to begin a patrol mission in the Mediterranean Sea. They will stay there until the end of this year and, probably, until early 2005," Ivanov told journalists.
--------
NATO says no "firm evidence" of terrorist activity in Bosnia
SARAJEVO (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026145426.ug6svqx6.html
NATO peacekeepers on Tuesday rejected claims by a top US analyst that terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden are using the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia as a training ground and gateway to Europe.
"As far as SFOR (NATO-led Stabilization Force) is concerned there remains no firm evidence of any terrorist organisation either operating or training in this country," SFOR spokesman Mark Hope said.
A statement came a day after Yossef Bodansky, director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US Congress, told the Glas Srpske daily that terrorists responsible for the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad last year were trained near the central Bosnian town of Zenica.
"We cannot ignore such statements, but also we should not accept them as an obvious truth," Bosnian Foreign Minister Mladen Ivanic said at the press briefing.
Ivanic added that Bosnian authorities should investigate statements that link the country with terrorist organizations such as bin Laden's Al-Qaeda.
Some 7,000 NATO peacekeepers are still deployed in Bosnia under peace accords which ended the country's 1992-95 war, during which hundreds of foreign so-called mujahedeen, or holy warriors, fought alongside Bosnian Muslim forces.
Foreign Muslim fighters were ordered to leave Bosnia under the 1995 peace accords, but some of them stayed and obtained citizenship either on the basis of their army service or by marrying local women.
Bodansky said bin Laden was actively directing terrorist cells in Bosnia which had been responsible for a series of suicide attacks in Iraq last year.
"There is a terrorist network in Bosnia, composed of several well-trained and connected groups, which are directly or indirectly (linked) to ... Osama Bin Laden," he was quoted as saying in the Serbian-language paper.
"The network in Bosnia ... is training and controlling terrorists who later travel to Western European countries."
-------- prisoners of war
PRISONERS
U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
October 26, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/26detain.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.
The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
The officials outlined the opinion on Monday in response to a report in The Washington Post over the weekend that the Central Intelligence Agency had secretly transferred a dozen non-Iraqi prisoners out of Iraq in the past 18 months, despite a provision in the conventions that bars civilians protected under the accords from being deported from occupied territories.
Since early 2002, the United States has moved hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. American officials have said prisoners captured in Iraq would not be moved to Guantánamo, but they declined to say Monday where any prisoners transferred out of Iraq were being sent.
The officials said the new opinion represented a consensus reached by lawyers from the State Department, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and other agencies in discussions since March 2004, when the Justice Department circulated an initial draft memorandum on the issue. A government official said the opinion had been sought by the C.I.A. to establish the legality of its secret transfers of non-Iraqi prisoners, beginning in April 2003, for interrogation outside Iraq. The officials made clear that they were now describing the decision in order to publicly defend the legality of the C.I.A.'s newly disclosed actions.
The contents of the March 2004 draft memo were first reported on Sunday by The Washington Post, which said the C.I.A. had secretly transported as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq for interrogation purposes in the past six months. On Monday, government officials said the March 2004 document had not been incorporated into the new legal opinion. They also said all of the prisoners the C.I.A. had transferred out of Iraq had been moved between April 2003 and March 2004, with none transferred in the past six months.
But the government officials said the new ruling could open the way for additional transfers on a broader scale, because the status of prisoners being held in Iraq is reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Under the administration opinion, the non-Iraqis who could be deemed exempt from Geneva Conventions would include suspected members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations as well as other non-Iraqis believed to have traveled to the country after the invasion of March 2003 for the purpose of engaging in terrorism or joining in the insurgency.
The administration officials did not specify exactly how decisions about an individual's status under the Geneva Conventions would be made. But they said that the factors would include nationality, affiliation with terrorist organizations and activities inside Iraq, and that the decisions would be made by American government agencies who held the individuals in their custody.
As recently as May 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reiterated in public testimony the administration's view that "everyone in Iraq who was a military person" as well as "the civilians or criminal elements" who were detained by the American authorities would be "treated subject to the Geneva Conventions."
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 11, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, was asked whether President Bush's previous designation of suspected Qaeda terrorists as unlawful combatants not protected by the conventions applied just to that group or to any terrorist organization. He responded, "My guess is that, depending on the circumstances, if we found ourselves in armed conflict with some other organization, the president would take that under advisement."
On Monday, a Justice Department official who outlined the new opinion said that in the administration's view, suspected members of Al Qaeda in Iraq were not protected under the Geneva Conventions.
A Defense Department spokesman did not immediately return a phone call asking for comment.
The C.I.A.'s transfer of the dozen non-Iraqi prisoners has not been publicly acknowledged, but it was described on Monday by government officials from several different agencies. Those officials said that each transfer had been approved by the Justice Department, but that the circumstances surrounding the prisoners were highly classified. They refused to identify the prisoners by name or nationality, to say where they were being held or to explain the reason for their removal.
It is possible that some of the prisoners transferred out of Iraq may have been handed over to friendly governments, like those of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, in a procedure known as rendition. Another possibility is that they were transferred to the secret American-run sites around the world that have been used since the Sept. 11 terror attacks to house the highest ranking Qaeda detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks.
Such transfers have been used by American officials in the past three years in part to subject suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to interrogation practices harsher than those permitted under the Geneva Conventions or under American law. American officials have defended such practices, including a technique in which a prisoner is made to believe that he will drown, as essential to extract information that may be useful in preventing terrorist attacks.
Among those who had sought to call early attention to the C.I.A.'s transfer of prisoners from Iraq was an Army intelligence officer who served at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. The officer, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, told Army interrogators in March 2004 that the C.I.A.'s practice of not registering inmates at the prison was intended to smooth the way for their transfer to sites outside Iraq.
A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, continued to assert Monday that "the Geneva Conventions are applicable to the conflict in Iraq, and our policy is to comply with the Geneva Conventions." But an administration official who described the new opinion said that although all Iraqis would be treated as protected by the Geneva Conventions, the government lawyers had concluded that "not everyone who might be in Iraq after the occupation began is a protected person" under the conventions.
Until now, the Bush administration has publicly acknowledged only one case in which the C.I.A. moved a prisoner from Iraq outside the country for interrogation, and that acknowledgement did not come until months after the prisoner, an Iraqi, was returned in the fall of 2003.
In that instance, intelligence officials said the Iraqi prisoner had been returned in compliance with an October 2003 legal opinion barring such transfers in cases involving Iraqis. But they have refused to comment on whether non-Iraqis might have been transferred.
The American officials said the C.I.A.'s moving of some non-Iraqis from Iraq had been authorized by the October 2003 memorandum, which was issued by the Office of Legal Counsel. They said it had been given support under the new legal opinion holding that some non-Iraqi prisoners were not protected by the Geneva Conventions. They said that the draft memorandum issued March 19, 2004, provided a narrower foundation for the practice, by holding that everyone in Iraq was a protected person, under the Geneva Conventions, but that the C.I.A. could nevertheless permanently remove persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration law."
The officials also disclosed for the first time that the C.I.A. had removed a second Iraqi from the country in 2003, and they said he had not been returned to Iraq until this spring. The officials described that episode as a mistake. In the past, the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as a number of human rights advocates, have criticized the administration for applying the protections of the Geneva Conventions too narrowly. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits "the deportations of protected persons from occupied territory" no matter what the motive.
According to The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the document, the March 19 memorandum includes a footnote recommending "any contemplated relocations of 'protected persons' from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case-by-case basis."
A Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, said the March 19 document obtained by The Washington Post "was a draft and should be considered a draft." Mr. Corallo would not say whether a final opinion had been reached. "At the outset of the hostilities in Iraq, both the Defense Department and the agency were instructed by the Justice Department that the Geneva Conventions apply for Iraq," Mr. Corallo said.
Still, a Justice Department official said separately, "No matter what the provision is in the Geneva Convention, they are subject to legal interpretation."
--------
F.B.I. Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib
October 26, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/26prison.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - F.B.I. agents witnessed harsh treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003, but did not believe that what they saw was abusive or worth reporting, according to a newly released document.
The document, a May 19 report by the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, shows that after Abu Ghraib abuses became public in April, the bureau's leadership was concerned about what its employees had seen. The report was among documents released over the weekend by the Bush administration in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
The report said bureau officials had interviewed 14 special agents and language specialists who had participated in interrogations.
"F.B.I. personnel did not report observing anything outside of our understanding of Defense Department guidelines,'' a bureau official said Monday night.
Using an abbreviation for Abu Ghraib prison, the report concluded that none of the 14 bureau employees had "reported observing misconduct or mistreatment of detainees at A.G.P. similar to that which has been reported in recent media accounts."
But the report then listed some of their observations. One agent reported seeing an inmate with a sack over his head who was covered with a shower curtain and handcuffed to a waist-high rail. The detainee was occasionally slapped on the back by a guard. The report said the agent had been told he was seeing a sleep-deprivation technique.
The report said an agent saw a naked or partly clothed inmate made to lie prone on a wet floor. One agent reported seeing inmates stripped naked and put in isolation cells. The report said this seemed similar to what the agent had seen in prison strip-searches in the United States.
-------- russia / chechnya
Carry on spying:
Russian agents flood UK in revival of intelligence Cold War
independent.co.uk
By Jason Bennetto
26 October 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576076
Russia has resumed Cold War levels of spying and intelligence gathering in Britain, senior Whitehall and security sources have told The Independent.
Among the spies are at least 32 Russian diplomats who are attempting to obtain secret information about the United Kingdom's military, technical and political capabilities, according to authoritative sources.
The spy network is also collecting information about opponents and critics of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and a former KGB officer, who are exiles in Britain.
A Whitehall source said: "The level of espionage by the Russians in the UK is back to Cold War levels: it is business as usual for the spies."
MI5, the counter-intelligence agency, has warned David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, of the growing Russian spying activities. It is concerned that funding for counter-espionage work has been cut by half because resources have been reallocated to deal with al-Qa'ida.
A confidential document, Espionage Threat, based on information provided by M15 and MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, also reveals that Russian spies have been monitoring the movements of military aircraft in the UK.
The classified paper, written by military intelligence earlier this year, said the agents were using the internet to target military specialists with access to secret information.
Several Russians have left Britain for alleged spying activities, although these departures have not been publicised to avoid a diplomatic rift with the Putin government. The build-up of the Russian spying capability in Britain and other European countries follows a policy change by President Putin since coming to power in 2000.
Putin has replaced the powerful oligarchs of the Boris Yeltsin era with intelligence and military officers. The old Soviet culture of secrecy and foreign espionage has returned under the Putin regime.
Britain is of great interest to Russia because of its strong ties to the United States and its influential role in Nato, and its attitudes towards Iraq and Iran. In addition, the oligarchy and opponents of Putin living in the UK are prime targets for the Russian spying machine. These have included fallen oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky, who has been in exile since 2000.
In Britain, the Russian spying network is run by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), which partly replaced the old KGB, and the GRU, the military intelligence organisation. The SVR has about 18 officers in Britain, while the GRU has about 14, all of whom have diplomatic status, according to intelligence sources. They say officers each have dozens of informers and agents. SVR is divided into three specialist fields - gaining intelligence on political issues, matters of security, and technology, such as military and commercial secrets.
The GRU, which is considered the most hardline and active of the agencies and which also runs dozens of agents, is involved in obtaining information on issues such as Britain's nuclear and military capabilities, and American bases.
MI5 and MI6 have given a series of warnings about the growth of Russian espionage to the Intelligence and Security Committee, the group of MPs that oversees security matters.
The committee's annual report, published earlier this year, said: "The threat from espionage did not disappear when the Cold War ended ... countries such as Russia and China still want to acquire both classified material and technology for exploitation by their own industry."
It also noted that in 1999/2000 MI5 allocated 20 per cent of its budget to counter-espionage work, the bulk of which involved Russian spy activities. This has since dropped to 10 per cent. Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of MI5, told the committee: "There's not less of it [espionage] about, we are doing less work on it, we are being more selective about the priority cases. It is something I have discussed with the Home Secretary: I recently gave him a summary and he is well aware that we are carrying some risk here.
"The plan is to back-fill when we can, but the problem is that the international counter-terrorist work is moving and expanding at such a rate."
Oleg Gordievsky, the double agent who served as head of the KGB at the Soviet Embassy in London before he defected in 1985, said: "The strength of the KGB is that there are so many Russians living here and working for British companies. Each second Russian in a position of some importance is acting as an informer to the KGB.
"The information is about individuals who might be of interest to the Russian authorities and technology. They also want information about politicians. They have become much more active under Putin. Russia is under the foot of the KGB now."
Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, said: "We are seeing a steady increase in the number of diplomats being posted in the UK. If you look at the profile of the individuals you see a significant proportion of these people are linked to the SVR. Putin is rapidly building up intelligence systems that have been allowed to fall into decline under the Yeltsin era."
A spokesman from the Russian Embassy, based at Kensington Palace Gardens, in west London, said: "No comment".
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U.S.-Led Afghan Coalition Critcized
Oct 26, 2004
Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=731&e=10&u=/ap/20041026/ap_on_re_as/un_afghanistan_rights
UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. human rights expert criticized the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan (news - web sites) for violating international law by allegedly beating Afghans to death and forcing some to remove their clothes or wear hoods.
Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago who is the U.N. Human Rights Commission's independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, said in a report Monday to the U.N. General Assembly that the coalition should be "a role model" for Afghan authorities - but it often is not.
"When they engage in practices that violate or ignore the norms of international human rights and international humanitarian law, they establish a double standard, enabling the continuation of abuses by various domestic actors," he said.
But Bassiouni blamed warlords, local commanders, and drug traffickers for most of the rights violations and stressed that "the absence of security has a direct and significant impact on all human rights."
"The coalition forces, which at one time could have marginalized these warlords, did not do so, and even worked with them to combat the Taliban regime and to pursue al-Qaida," he said. "This situation contributed to the entrenchment of the warlords."
Subsequently, the 18,000-strong U.S.-led coalition and 9,000 NATO (news - web sites) troops based mainly in Kabul have supported the government's program to disarm and demobilize combatants, Bassiouni said.
While the coalition justifies its practices as necessary to fighting the "war on terrorism," Bassiouni said, "many coalition activities undermine the goals of enhancing national compliance with international law and weaken the government's efforts to enforce international law standards."
He cited several examples of alleged violations by coalition troops, including entering people's homes without warrants, detaining people without judicial authority, "beatings resulting in death, ...forced nudity and public embarrassment, sleep deprivation, prolonged squatting, and hooding and sensory deprivation."
Since no U.S. detention centers are open to inspection, Bassiouni said, "there is no way of ascertaining the veracity of these allegations."
But he said several incidents have been reported including possible criminal charges against up to 28 U.S. soldiers in connection with the deaths of two prisoners at an American-run prison in Afghanistan two years ago.
Bassiouni said he also received reports from international human rights organizations and the U.N. mission in Afghanistan regarding individuals who died in coalition custody. Some bodies were reportedly returned to their families "showing signs of torture, including bruises and internal bleeding from severe beatings and serious burn marks on victims' skin," he said.
The U.N. expert said an estimated 300-400 detainees are being held "without legal process" under domestic or international law at detention facilities operated by the coalition at Bagram, Kandahar and at field "fire bases."
He called for the Afghan government to sign agreements with the coalition and the separate NATO-led force in Afghanistan covering arrests, searches and seizures and detentions, in accordance with international law.
Despite serious human rights problems that must be tackled, President Hamid Karzai's government "has accomplished a great deal" and "there is no doubt that the people of Afghanistan are better off today than they were during the 23 years of conflict that preceded 2001," Bassiouni said.
Bassiouni expressed "special concern at pressing human rights issues about which the government is in a position to take immediate corrective action" - from improving the failing justice system to helping returning refugees who face extrajudicial executions, torture, rape, extortion and seizure of their land by local commanders.
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Beijing boosts Delhi's bid for UN council seat
Asia Times
By Siddharth Srivastava
Oct 26, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FJ26Df01.html
NEW DELHI - India's quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has for the first time been endorsed by China, a signal that Beijing's foreign policy has shifted significantly - from one of distrust dating from a brief border war with India in 1962 to one that now recognizes India's importance and seeks to engage with the major South Asian power.
China expressed its support for India's council bid last week during the visit of Chinese state councilor Tang Jiaxuan, China's first foreign minister from 1998-2003 and who plays an influential and authoritative role in Beijing's foreign policy today. Tang's visit marks the highest-level contact between India and China since the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assumed office earlier this year. Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing and representatives dealing with border issues, including national security advisor Dai Bingguo, already have visited India to interact with representatives of the new government.
[China has made it clear, however, that it opposes a permanent seat on the Security Council for Japan, which also has made a quest of a permanent council seat. Though the two nations are close economic partners, they are at political odds over Japanese aggression in China in World War II and what China sees as rising militarism.]
During his visit, Tang said, "The Chinese government is supportive of a reasonable and necessary reform of the UN Security Council, believing that the reform should take into account the interest of all parties, the developing countries in particular, follow the principle of equitable distribution, and give priority to increased representation of the developing countries. The Chinese government values India's influence and role in international and regional affairs and is willing to see a greater Indian role in the international arena, the United Nations included."
"We hope to see India playing a larger and constructive role in the Security Council for world peace and development," Tang said in response to questions by journalists. "China fully understands and endorses your country's interest in playing a bigger role in international affairs," he said.
Tang's support for India's quest follows similar backing by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "India is a country of 1.2 billion people. For India not to be represented on the Security Council is, I think, something that is not in tune with the modern times in which we live," Blair told a news conference.
China is the fourth of the five permanent members of the Security Council to support India's claim to a permanent seat in the Security Council. The US is now the only one opposed to India's candidacy. Washington's opposition to India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council is due to its Indo-Pakistan centric South Asia policy, with Pakistan seen as Washington's key ally in its "war against terrorism". The US does not want to upset Pakistan, which opposes India's entry to the council. The five permanent members, all with veto power, on the 15-member council are Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The 10 other members are chosen by regional groups and serve two-year terms. India has served on the council as a regular member in the past.
However, momentum in favor of India is increasing. Last week, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke, on a visit to India, supported New Delhi's claim for a permanent seat, saying the Security Council must reflect the new world order. "It is hard to believe that India will not be playing a greater role in the reforms of the Security Council," which she said "must change as it [still] reflects the world order of 1945 and not 2004".
A permanent seat on the Security Council is extremely prestigious and improves a country's standing in the world, since permanent members with veto power members have the power to block any UN resolution. [Plans for expansion and reform of the council are being considered, some of them would provide permanent seats, quite possibly without veto power, to major countries, such as India, Nigeria, Brazil, Japan, Germany, among others. A permanent seat without veto power - veto power being still held by the Big Five - on an enlarged council is still appealing but not hardly as prestigious or as potent as veto-wielding membership. Britain, China, France, Russia and the US are not likely to invite countries from the developing world into their club and give them veto power; they can veto any new member.]
However, it remains a complex issue, as each aspiring country faces strong opposition from within its own continent. Argentina opposes Brazil's bid, Italy that of Germany, South Korea points to Japan's occupation of its territory in World War II, while India has had to contend with Pakistan, which insists that the Jammu and Kashmir issue be resolved first. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has set up a committee to examine the aspirations of many countries in a new global order.
India has been zealously pursuing its place on the council, as part of Manmohan's priority agenda. Last month, Manmohan addressed the UN General Assembly and lobbied for a Security Council seat for India. New Delhi now has reciprocal arrangements with other nations seeking a permanent seat. Brazil, Germany and Japan are also pressing to join the veto-wielding members of the council. India and Japan have agreed to back each other, rather than contest each other's efforts, thus increasing each others' chances. India claims it deserves a seat on the basis of its huge population, growing economy and contribution to many UN activities.
The support from China comes as a major fillip, but has not come as a surprise to some observers. The reasoning behind Beijing's policy shift is being partially attributed to the change in leadership in China, with President Hu Jintao, who superceded Jiang Zemin, considered to be a technocrat with a better grasp of the nuances of international relations.
Tang himself reflected on some of the rationale that swayed Beijing, an indication of the realpolitik that is beginning to govern relations between the two countries that went to war four decades ago, from October to November 1962, and have long been at odds over both border and territory issues. Tang described India as a "major" Asian nation with a large population and one of the fastest growing economies. It was clear from Tang's visit that he had arrived with a definite message - Beijing wants to engage India as an emergent power and the world's fourth largest economy and he wants the two countries to be on the same side rather than opposed to each other.
The galloping trade between India and China has crossed US$5 billion annually. It is no surprise that the US has in the past voiced support for Germany and Japan (both among its largest trading partners and close allies) for a permanent seat. India is positioning itself as a voice for South Asian countries on the Security Council.
In terms of strategic relationships in the region, China no longer wants to be seen as ganging up with Pakistan, which would only push India towards the US. Further, China has for long been opposed to Japan gaining leverage in the Asian region and would prefer to live with India in the security council, should an expansion take place.
A 16-member UN reform panel is expected to submit its recommendations to Annan by December concerning the expansion of the Security Council, adding nine more members, five of which will be new permanent members. The veto issue has not been resolved.
Indeed, while the final shape of a restructured UNSC remains unclear, there is enormous international pressure to revamp the body in the face of the unilateral decision of the US to declare war on Iraq, bypassing the UN. The US move, without UN endorsement. has seen various nations close ranks, which clearly is an attempt to set themselves apart from the hegemony of one country.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report
October 26, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041026-122118-2138r.htm
The Pentagon said yesterday that 380 tons of missing explosives from an Iraqi munitions facility may have been moved before U.S. troops overran the area during the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
The statement came after a joint project by CBS' "60 Minutes" and the New York Times reported that the Iraqi government has told the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the stockpile of material for plastic explosives went missing during postwar looting. The IAEA did not publicly reveal the issue of missing explosives until after the CBS-Times report.
But Pentagon officials said yesterday that Iraq had already admitted to breaking the IAEA seals and moving tons of the explosives from the Al Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad, before U.N. inspectors re-entered the country in 2002. Officials said the rest of the explosives stockpiles may have been removed and hidden before the arrival of American troops.
That explanation was bolstered last night by a report from NBC News, which said the weapons already were missing when their embedded reporter arrived at the site on April 10, 2003.
"NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they [took] over the weapons installation south of Baghdad. But they never found the 380 tons" of missing explosives, the network reported.
A Pentagon statement said troops searched the Al Qaqaa site during and after major combat. They searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings, the Pentagon said, but found no weapons of mass destruction or any material under IAEA seal.
"Although some believe the Al Qaqaa facility may have been looted, there is no way to verify this," the Pentagon said. "Another explanation is that regime loyalists or others emptied the facility prior to coalition forces arriving in Baghdad in April."
The "60 Minutes-New York Times report said Pentagon officials acknowledged the material disappeared after Baghdad fell. But Pentagon and White House officials said yesterday they do not know when the explosives went missing and have asked the CIA's Iraqi Survey Group to investigate.
The Pentagon also said allies have cleared more than 10,000 arms caches since April 2003, destroying more than 240,000 tons of arms and explosives. Another 162,000 tons are awaiting destruction.
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts seized on yesterday's report as evidence of "the unbelievable blindness, stubbornness, arrogance" of the Bush administration.
"George W. Bush, who talks tough, talks tough and brags about making America safer, has once again failed to deliver," he said at a rally in Dover, N.H. "After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in iraq, this president failed to guard those stockpiles."
Joe Lockhart, an adviser to Mr. Kerry, told reporters on a conference call yesterday that is not an indictment of the troops fighting in Iraq, but of their civilian leadership - a point Mr. Kerry made as well.
"They have been doing their job courageously and honorably. The problem is the commander in chief has not been doing his," Mr. Kerry said. "These are the very errors of judgment that are supposed to be avoided by a wise president."
But Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said the NBC report, which he distributed to reporters, disproved Mr. Kerry.
"John Kerry today launched attacks against the president that have been proven false before the day is over," he said. "John Kerry's attacks today were baseless. He said American troops did not secure the explosives, when the explosives were already missing."
Unlike the Pentagon, White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not dispute the timeline presented by the Iraqi government on when the material was missing. Instead, he focused on the tough task some 140,000 American troops faced when Baghdad fell.
"There were munitions caches spread throughout Iraq at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That's why I pointed out the large volume of munitions that have already been destroyed and the large volume that are on line to be destroyed. The sites now are the responsibility of the Iraqi government to secure."
Iraq has a history of moving armaments to evade detection by the United Nations. During U.N. inspections after the first Gulf war in 1991, the Iraqi Intelligence Service was seen in surveillance photographs clearing out facilities before inspectors arrived.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council one month before the allied invasion that Iraq had moved some of its highly explosive HMX from the Al Qaqaa site. The United Nations could not verify Iraqi claims that it used the explosives for commercial uses.
The missing explosives include HMX as well as RDX, two highly explosive substances used to make C-5 plastic devices that can be used for legitimate commercial purposes, or by terrorists to bring down an airplane.
Mr. ElBaradei told the Security Council yesterday he was informed Oct. 1 by the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology that the explosives were lost after April 9, 2003, throughout the theft and looting of the government installations due to lack of security.
•Stephen Dinan, traveling with Sen. John Kerry's campaign, contributed to this story.
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Inquiry ordered in massacre case
October 26, 2004
From combined dispatches
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-122107-4637r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraq ordered an investigation yesterday into whether a security breach triggered the massacre of 49 army recruits; meanwhile two foreign soldiers, an Estonian and an American, were killed in surging guerrilla raids during Ramadan.
The inquiry established by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi would examine whether details of the victims' planned movements on Saturday were leaked and why the recruits were unarmed and without an armed escort, a source close to Mr. Allawi told Reuters news agency.
Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, an al Qaeda ally, took responsibility for the attack in which the recruits were killed execution-style with shots to the back of the head.
The Defense Ministry said the three drivers of minibuses carrying the recruits on home leave were also killed in the ambush by guerrillas dressed as policemen and manning a checkpoint.
The possibility of a major security breach was investigated as guerrilla attacks showed no sign of abating during Ramadan, the holy Muslim fasting month. Twelve Iraqis were among those killed in the latest violence.
U.S. military officials this morning announced that a bombing raid on the rebel-held city of Fallujah killed an unidentified top aide to Zarqawi.
"Multiple sources reported that a known associate of the Zarqawi network was present at the time of the strike," the Army said.
In Vienna, Austria, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency confirmed that several hundred tons of explosives were missing from a former Iraqi military depot in an insurgent hot spot south of Baghdad.
The revelation raised concerns that the explosives fell into the hands of insurgents who have staged a spate of bloody car bombings. But there was no evidence to link the missing explosives directly to the attacks.
Yesterday, a roadside bomb in western Baghdad killed one U.S. soldier and wounded five, the U.S. military said.
An Estonian soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded at a market just outside Baghdad as his patrol went by, the Estonian military said. Five other Estonian soldiers were wounded, two seriously.
A car bomb also targeted an Australian military convoy 350 yards from the country's embassy in Baghdad, killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding nine persons, including three Australian soldiers who sustained minor injuries, Iraqi and coalition officials said.
"This is the first time that ... Australian vehicles have been attacked by direct enemy action," an Australian Defense Force spokesman, Brig. Mike Hannan, said in Australia's capital, Canberra.
Zarqawi's group, renamed al Qaeda in Iraq, took responsibility for the attack on the Australians. His group, formerly known as Tawhid and Jihad, has been blamed in numerous suicide car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including deadly twin bombings inside Baghdad's highly secured green zone, which houses the U.S. and Iraqi leadership.
In near-simultaneous attacks in the city of Mosul yesterday, suicide car bombers struck government offices and a military convoy, the U.S. military said.
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GI Janes battle Iraqi insurgents, M-60 in one hand, make-up kit in the other
(AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026064244.ui5w364o.html
RAMADI, Iraq - Private Cherish Cooper, from Steamville, Texas, wears her blue eyeshadow when she goes out on deadly missions in the badlands of the Sunni Muslim triangle.
"Just because I am at war, doesn't mean I have to look like crap," said the 19-year-old in her thick southern drawl, as she leaned on her M-60 machine gun, her long blond hair tucked beneath her army helmet.
Cooper and her comrade in arms, Private Atiyhia Godbold, 20, have hunted down snipers in Ramadi and tangled with insurgents on the perimeter of Fallujah.
The pair are living their dreams of being hard-as-nails soldiers -- as bad as the boys, all the while insisting on their lip gloss and mascara even if their hair is not shampooed.
"We're doing roadblocks, cordon and knocks... We're doing everything the guys are doing... It's like GI Jane," Cooper said.
In the past, women like Cooper were assigned mundane jobs like clerks. But in Iraq, they have been thrown into the middle of combat operations against the insurgency.
It may well be the furthest woman soldiers have ventured in the US military. During the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, supply convoys with female soldiers traveled right behind combat soldiers, but were not in the thick of the fight.
In fact, the adventures of Cooper and Godbold -- like female military police women on the streets of Baghdad -- may be one step ahead of Pentagon guidelines, which still enforces a ban on women on the frontline.
But don't tell that to Cooper, who prides herself on being more "badass" than her brothers back in Texas, who never joined the military. She comes back from missions "hyped up."
Almost two weeks ago, she visited the edge of Fallujah and helped US soldiers and marines arrest the city's police chief.
She frisked angry female relatives in the chief's house. When she handed them candy, they threw it back at her. When one female relative started to follow male soldiers around the house, Cooper handcuffed her.
"It beats staying in the office," she said, explaining her fascination with running around restive Al-Anbar province's wild and unpredictable streets.
In May, when Cooper's second combat brigade was told they would be deploying to Iraq from their base in South Korea, her logistics company picked her to be a "Lioness" -- a female soldier used to pat down Iraqi women on the frontline.
Gathered around, with a team of male soldiers waiting to go on a mission to search cars, an officer asks "Are the Lionesses around?"
The freckled Cooper bats her massacred eye lashes and growls "Grrr, Grrr" ready to pounce on any foe who dares come her way.
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Embedded Reporter Saw No Explosives Search
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 26, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-NBC.html?ex=1099823281&ei=1&en=e5610d19164a90b5
NEW YORK (AP) -- An NBC News reporter embedded with a U.S. army unit that seized an Iraqi installation three weeks into the war said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives that are now missing from the site.
Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne, Second Brigade, said her news team stayed at the Al-Qaqaa base for about 24 hours.
``There wasn't a search,'' she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel. ``The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around.
``But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away.''
On Monday night, NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops did discover significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX explosives.
The NBC report came after the U.N. nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday about the disappearance of the 377 tons of high explosives, mostly HMX and RDX, which can be used in the kind of car bomb attacks that have targeted U.S. forces.
Iraq blamed ``theft and looting ... due to lack of security.''
The disappearance raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the Al-Qaqaa facility 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the facility but found none of the explosives in question or weapons of mass destruction.
``The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility, but found no indicators of WMD,'' Whitman said Monday.
That raised the possibility that the explosives had disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate invasion aftermath.
However, Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA the explosives disappeared sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.
The NBC team accompanied the 101st Airborne at Al-Qaqaa the following day -- on April 10, 2003.
Lai Ling told MSNBC that there was no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they left.
She said the roads were cut off ``so it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.''
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A Soldier Speaks: Robert J. Acosta
AlterNet
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
October 26, 2004.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20293/
One bad day in Iraq and a 19-year-old boy faces a lifetime without his right hand. This veteran speaks about his hopes and fears - and the long, hard road ahead.
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of profiles of some of the tens of thousands of Iraq War veterans who have come home bearing the scars of battle - emotional and physical wounds that may never heal unless the nation pays them the attention and care that they deserve. We at AlterNet believe that in an election defined by a deep and bitter partisan divide, it is the one issue that can and must bring us all together as Americans.
Robert Acosta was glad when he joined the army straight out of high school. "If it weren't for the army, I'd probably be locked up right now," says the Santa Ana, Calif., native. He was stationed in Germany when his unit, the 1st Battalion 501st Regiment, 1st Armored Division, was called up for duty in Iraq.
Robert was 19 years old.
On July 13, 2003, his life changed forever. Robert and a buddy were driving down the road - a quick trip off the military base at the Baghdad International Airport to pick up a couple of cans of soda - when a grenade came flying through the window of his Humvee. When he grabbed it to throw it out the window, it slipped from his fingers. He picked it up again - and the grenade exploded.
He now wears a prosthesis on his right arm, which ends in a two-pronged claw, and his left leg is completely shattered.
The gentle, soft-spoken 21-year old is slowly trying to build a new life as a civilian in New York. But he hasn't forgotten the friends that he left behind, still fighting for their lives in Iraq. Robert is one of the Iraqi veterans featured in the latest Operation Truth ad, calling the Bush administration to account for making a spurious case for war.
He spoke to AlterNet about the war, his hopes and fears, and the hard road ahead.
Is there one memory from the war that still stays with you?
When I was injured, someone threw a hand grenade, and it blew up in my hand. And I was conscious from that moment on. I didn't lose consciousness at all so I remember seeing my hand just gone and my foot was turned completely backwards. I remember seeing all that blood.
And I see it now when I go to bed at night. It's one of those things that will stick with me forever.
When you look back, how has this war changed you?
Mentally, it's made me a lot stronger. I've learned to appreciate life and everything that goes with it a lot more. Physically, of course, I've lost my right hand and my leg is heavily damaged.
But I think it's been a learning experience. Even the four months that I was in Iraq, I've learned so much about myself and about life. I've learned to cherish what I have - like my parents. I almost never saw them again. You don't know what you got until it's almost gone.
What are your hopes and fears now that you look at the future?
I hope that I'll find better ways to deal with this [my injuries] because it's really, really hard.
I hope that one day all these soldiers will come home. These guys are getting so messed up over there and it's just not cool at all.
I hope one day I can be a teacher, because that's what I want to do.
And when it comes to fears, yeah, I really, really, fear being alone. I so don't want to be by myself. I need to have people surrounding me, have this big family. I have a girlfriend now and she helps me out so much. She's stuck by my side throughout this whole experience. I can't imagine being without her, or being alone.
If you had five minutes with the president - whomever it may be on Nov. 3, George Bush or John Kerry - what would you say to him?
Wow, that's a powerful question. I'd say, "Look, I was 19 years old when I went over there, and now my life has changed forever. And there are guys younger than me that are getting hurt - and in ways that is going to stick with them for the rest of their lives.
"Just think about what's going on. Think about the parents and what they have to go through when they get that phone call. Or the soldier who is injured so badly, and his entire life is completely changed - it's so stressful, it's so hard."
They don't understand because they're not out there. So I'd try and get the point across: the numbers have faces behind them.
Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of AlterNet. This profile was made possible with the assistance of Operation Truth, a non-partisan organization dedicated in getting out the truth about the Iraq War, and Patricia Foulkrod, the producer/director of "The Ground Truth."
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Veterans' Voices Rise in Protest
Antiwar.com
by Dahr Jamail
October 26, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=3850
With the news that members of a U.S. Army Reserve platoon have been arrested in Iraq for refusing a "suicide mission," dissent among veterans of the U.S.-led campaign in that country continues to grow.
The recent incident mirrors other stories of troops being sent on missions without proper equipment, and again raises the specter of plummeting troop morale as the security situation in Iraq deteriorates and elections scheduled for January approach.
Even as late as six months after the March 2003 U.S.-led attack, as many as 51,000 U.S. soldiers and civilian administrators in Iraq had still not been properly equipped with body armor and other protective gear, according to the Washington Post.
Alerted to the situation, family members bought expensive flak jackets and other security gear and used international couriers to send it to the front lines.
Speaking of the low rates of readiness of his ground forces due to inadequate combat and protective equipment, the senior U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq from mid-2003 to mid-2004 said, "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low."
Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez added that Army units were, "struggling just to maintain relatively low readiness rates" for key combat systems, reported the Post.
The mother of Amber McClenny, who serves in the platoon that in mid-October refused orders to transport fuel through an area north of Baghdad where ambushes are known to occur, told the Associated Press her daughter called and told her, "We had broken-down trucks, non-armored vehicles, and we were carrying contaminated fuel. They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners."
While a senior U.S. military official has said the unit had been ordered to carry out what is known as a maintenance stand-down and its soldiers are not under arrest, many Iraq veterans in the United States feel the incident is indicative of poor troop morale, which stems from the growing belief among soldiers that the war in Iraq is unjustified.
Army National Guard Sergeant Kelly Dougherty served for 10 months in Iraq at Tallil Air Base, near Nasiriya. "The people in Iraq didn't have money or jobs, and their cities were destitute," said Dougherty, who worked escorting convoys and patrols.
"I wondered how these people were functioning after they'd been through so much. They hadn't even rebuilt from the first Gulf War [in 1991]."
During a phone interview Dougherty said her unit did not even have translators for the first nine months of the occupation and were thus unable to communicate with Iraqis while conducting security patrols.
"I think it was definitely wrong to go into Iraq," she added. "I thought that before we went in and the intelligence is proving this now."
Like other soldiers who are beginning to speak out against the Bush administration, Dougherty has strong words about how the war was waged. "People say the president didn't lie - but it's hard for me to believe that they truly thought the reasons they went in were true," she said.
"I think we were intentionally lied to in order to get the U.S. into Iraq, and the Bush administration seized this opportunity." The president, she added, was also being dishonest about the dangers that soldiers would face when he did not provide them with the necessary armor and supplies.
Another veteran of the war in Iraq is Corporal Alex Ryabov, who participated in the invasion of Iraq until May 9. "What I realize after having been there is that it [the war] is such a huge waste of life on both sides," he said in an interview.
Ryabov also commented on U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's statement in September that the 1,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq are just some of the victims of the "war on terrorism."
"The reality is that Bush and Rumsfeld don't have family in the military, and they have never served. Each U.S. death in Iraq - each of those people has family and friends, and you can't tell them that this is a small number."
Ryabov, who served as the ammunition chief for his Marine Corps unit, believes the administration should be held to account for the horrendous situation in Iraq. "They should be impeached. They should be put on trial."
He also believes the administration is not doing enough to support Iraq war veterans.
"When troops come home we need to have benefits and VA [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs] support. There are a lot of people having problems with this and no support. My friends are coming back angry and screwed up and not getting any help."
According to the U.S. military, more than 7,500 soldiers have been injured in Iraq through Sept. 27. Of those, more than one-half did not return to action after 72 hours. But veterans' advocates say the Pentagon is not counting nearly 16,000 more soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for "non-combat causes," according to United Press International (UPI).
Another veteran who has served in the Middle East is Senior Airman Tim Goodrich. While serving two deployments at Prince Sultan Air Base for Operation Southern Watch, where he patrolled no-fly zones in southern Iraq during the buildup to the current war, "that is when it first hit me that this was the wrong idea," said Goodrich.
"I was watching troop movements for Iraq going through our base between August and October of 2002, Army troop movements preparing to go to war with Iraq six months before the war," he told IPS.
Goodrich too is angry. "I feel absolutely betrayed by this administration. I was brought up believing it was the most honorable thing to do to serve in the military. Now I've learned that it is not a glorious undertaking, and that our country isn't living up to the standards I believed it was - that our foreign policy has been flawed for decades."
Goodrich feels so strongly about the horrendous situation in Iraq that he has joined a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). The organization, which started two and a half years ago with only nine members, has now grown to over 60, including active duty service personnel in Iraq.
In order to accommodate the growing numbers of Iraq veterans joining the group, IVAW is trying to obtain office space and find a part-time employee to assist in its mission of ending the occupation and seeing service members return to the United States.
The group will also be sending members on speaking tours until the end of November, according to its Web site.
Goodrich believes the situation in Iraq is the reason why the military has failed to meet its recruiting goals recently. And he applauded the platoon in Iraq for refusing to follow orders.
"I think it's about time that someone stood up and did something. They are working with sub-par equipment that is putting peoples' lives at risk," he said. "There are not enough armored vehicles and not enough supplies for the soldiers. One hundred fifty billion dollars [has been spent] to fund these guys and the money isn't getting to where it needs to be."
When asked what he would do if he were called up to serve in Iraq again, Goodrich replied, "No comment."
-----
China official asks Japan, US to consider neighbours in troop deployment
TOKYO (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026135554.uxn1sz7k.html
A senior Chinese military official urged Japan and the United States on Tuesday to take neighbouring countries into consideration when they discuss the planned redeployment of US troops on Japanese territory.
The request was made by Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, when he met Takemasa Moriya, deputy director general of Japan's Defence Agency, Japanese officials said.
Xiong told Moriya that in discussing the redeployment both Japan and the United States should take into consideration that "countries in the region are intent on maintaining peace," the officials said.
He added that the two countries should see to it that the plan will contribute to peace and stability in the region.
Moriya replied that Japan believes that "the Asia-Pacific region is not stable," the officials said.
The deputy defence chief added that the repositioning of US troops in Japan would be consistent with Tokyo's new defence strategy due to be worked out by the end of this year.
In a meeting with US President George W. Bush last month, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered to speed up talks on the US military presence in Japan as Washington forges ahead with its plan to redeploy US forces worldwide.
As part of this the Pentagon plans to relocate a major army command, which covers the "arc of instability" stretching from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula, to Camp Zama outside Tokyo from the state of Washington.
The transfer plan has sparked controversy here as the 1960 US-Japan security treaty limits the scope of US forces stationed in Japan to "the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Rehnquist's illness raises stakes in election
October 26, 2004
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041026-123128-1764r.htm
The surprise announcement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's treatment for cancer underscores the likelihood that whoever wins next week's presidential election is likely to reshape the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, 80, spent the weekend at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where he underwent a tracheotomy for thyroid cancer, the Supreme Court announced yesterday. The court said he is expected to return to work Monday, one day before the election.
While both liberals and conservatives rushed to extend their best wishes for Chief Justice Rehnquist's speedy recovery yesterday, both sides also busily speculated how the news might help or hurt President Bush or challenger Sen. John Kerry in the election.
"Justice Rehnquist's illness highlights the concern among conservatives - as well as moderates - who must consider the prospect of a President Kerry nominating Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court," said Sean Rushton, spokesman for the conservative Committee for Justice. "That really focuses the minds of voters."
Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way was also concerned.
"The future of the Supreme Court is certainly the most important domestic issue facing the country today," Mr. Neas said. "While the issue does energize both bases, it also energizes independents and moderates who care deeply about privacy and reproductive rights."
At the very least, the news intensifies the political standoff going into the final week of the campaigns. It also reminds voters of the acrimonious presidential contest four years ago that wound up in the Supreme Court, where many Democrats say partisanship influenced the decision that ended the Florida recount dispute.
Court watchers of every stripe agree that the winner of next week's presidential election likely will nominate at least two justices to the high court.
Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor both are expected to retire in the next year or so. Many observers have speculated that the only reason they haven't retired is that the two Republican appointees wanted to wait until Mr. Bush was re-elected without the court's involvement - or perhaps even to retire during a Democratic administration.
Many observers say as many as four seats on the Supreme Court could have vacancies during the next presidential term.
It has been 10 years since the high court's last retirement, when Justice Harry A. Blackmun stepped down, Mr. Neas pointed out, the longest such retirement drought since 1823.
Mr. Rushton called Chief Justice Rehnquist "the godfather" among three reliable conservative votes on the court - along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia - and said replacing him with anyone less conservative would shift the court's balance drastically toward the left.
"Just to hold our position would suddenly become much more complicated," he said.
Many conservatives have expressed concern over the prospect of a Kerry administration because the Democratic challenger has said he would rule out appointing judges who do not support abortion rights.
Both liberals and conservatives lament - at least privately - that neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry has made judicial nominations a central issue of the presidential campaign. Strategists on both sides figured the debate would spill across the country during the presidential campaign.
Some of the most bitter battles in Mr. Bush's term have revolved around the president's nominees to federal courts, many of whom have been blocked by Senate Democrats, including several whose nomination votes have been filibustered in the Senate.
Activists yesterday seized on the news of Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness to call voters' attention to the role the president plays in choosing the federal judiciary.
If Reagan appointee Robert Bork - whose Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 1987 - had been confirmed, "Roe v. Wade would already have been overturned," said Mr. Neas, referring to the decision that guarantees the right to abortion.
Mr. Rushton said the prospect of Chief Justice Rehnquist's retirement frightens conservatives even more.
"People don't want a court that is going to set a whole lot of social policy or completely scrub religion from the public square," he said. "Average folks don't want the court mandating gay marriage."
Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the news "a sobering reminder of just how high the stakes are in this election" and said Mr. Bush "cannot be trusted" to nominate people to the Supreme Court.
"If President Bush were to nominate Supreme Court justices in the mode of judges he has named so far, the right to privacy and right to choose [abortion] would be doomed," she said. "Americans who believe in choice will show up in record numbers next Tuesday to make sure that does not happen."
-------- drug war
Military resists anti-drug role
October 26, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-104441-1273r.htm
Advocates of a direct combat role for the U.S. military in counternarcotics in Afghanistan have lost their fight inside the Bush administration, according to military sources.
For months, the Pentagon's counterdrug office and government allies have pressed top officers to OK a new role in Afghanistan: hitting opium labs and supply routes that are funding anti-coalition forces, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
But top officers have succeeded in repelling such arguments, saying drug-busting should largely remain a mission for law enforcement and that Afghan authorities should be trained to do the job. The U.S. military is, however, likely to take on a bigger role in assisting Afghan counternarcotics forces, the sources said.
The 18,000 American troops are already hard-pressed in Afghanistan, fighting insurgents along the Pakistani border, said one official.
"The attitude is, this is not a military mission; it's a law-enforcement mission," said the military source knowledgeable about the internal debate. This official said the White House could overrule the generals at some point, perhaps after the Nov. 2 election.
For now, most drug labs will stay off-limits since, in the opinion of military sources, the Afghan army does not yet have the capability to conduct sophisticated operations to find and destroy production sites.
The sources, who asked not to be identified, said that without direct U.S. military interdiction the poppy crop will continue to grow, producing more opium and heroin for the world market, with profits going to warlords, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The hard-line Islamic Taliban rule, which was ousted by the allies in December 2001, did away with much of the poppy crop. But it also hoarded stashes of existing opium and heroin, driving up the price before being sold to sustain the regime. Since the liberation, farmers have gone back to the poppy plant in record numbers, rejecting government invitations to grow replacement crops, such as saffron.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told Congress earlier this year that the administration misjudged when harvesting would begin, so much of the crop escaped irradiation.
The British are the lead agency in Afghanistan for destroying the drug trade. But U.S. officials describe U.S. troops as too overburdened to do the job adequately.
"They don't have the time, the energy, the personnel to mount the kind of long-term effort they need," this official said.
Several prominent lawmakers, including House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, have urged the White House in writing to order U.S. troops into the drug battle. Mr. Hyde has said he may work to get funds for foreign troops to do the job if the administration refuses.
In Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, U.S. military personnel play a large role by training anti-drug units and provide intelligence, but do not directly participate in operations against communist guerrillas who control the drug trade.
Statements last week by Army Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top commander in Afghanistan, suggests the military may take on that role. Gen. Barno, fresh from successfully protecting Afghan voters in an historic presidential election, was in Washington for discussion with Pentagon leaders.
Saying his troops already have a "full plate" of missions, Gen. Barno said troops would not become involved in crop eradication. "I think we will play larger roles in assisting in other aspects of the drug fight, particularly in the interdiction aspect of it," he said.
"We also recognize that the threat of narcotics, particularly as we go into this coming year, is very significant and threatens our overall strategic objective," he said. "So we're assessing right now how the military will be able to re-look what our current roles are, within our capabilities and our missions, to provide further assistance in that fight."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
9/11 reform bill facing 'lame-duck' congressional vote
October 26, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-104446-8067r.htm
Congressional negotiators said yesterday that with time running out, they had all but given up hope of getting a compromise bill on the September 11 panel reforms of U.S. intelligence on President Bush's desk by Election Day.
Despite a last-minute meeting with senior Republicans on the ad hoc conference committee charged with hammering out a compromise between the different Senate and House bills, staff involved said the so-called "drop dead line" for producing a final bill would be today.
Senators had been promised at least three days to review any deal before being asked to vote on it.
"We're going to keep negotiating," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, but he acknowledged that at this point the best they could probably hope for before the Nov. 2 election was a deal in which Congress could vote in a "lame-duck" session.
Mr. Feehery said Mr. Hastert met yesterday with the senior Republican Senate negotiator, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican.
"It was a good meeting, but there were no major breakthroughs," Mr. Feehery said.
During the weekend, House Republicans sent a compromise deal to the bipartisan Senate delegation, which rejected it after a conference call Saturday.
The key sticking point is the scope of authority that should be given to a new national intelligence director, especially over agencies in the Pentagon that build and operate spy satellites and other electronic eavesdropping equipment.
The Pentagon argues that the Department of Defense has to maintain its control of these agencies to ensure that the military gets access to needed intelligence. Reformers counter that the capabilities of these agencies are vital to every element of government, and that the military is simply defending its turf.
Senate staff presented a counterproposal Sunday, but House negotiators said it basically restated their original proposal on the budgetary powers question. The Senate version of the bill is supported by the September 11 commission, which recommended the establishment of the new intelligence director in its final report in July, and - on the question of budgetary authority - by the Office of Management and Budget.
But last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers wrote to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, supporting the House version of the bill and calling the Pentagon's budget control "a vital lifeline" for those in the military.
Reformers, however, questioned the commitment of the administration to getting changes through.
"What we can't have is the administration singing off two different hymn sheets," said September 11 commission member Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "The [Office of Management and Budget] is issuing statements in support of strong budget power for the director, and Gen. Myers is writing letters opposing it. Which one represents the view of the president?"
--------
9/11 Panel Leaders Give Warning
Congress Must Act on Bill or Share Blame If U.S. Is Attacked
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62646-2004Oct25.html
Leaders of the Sept. 11 commission warned lawmakers yesterday that the nation will hold them partly responsible if another terrorist attack occurs before Congress restructures the government's intelligence community. Nonetheless, House-Senate negotiators reported little progress in efforts to reconcile two massive bills on the topic, and Capitol insiders said there was little chance that Congress would approve a measure before next week's election.
"We are at a crossroads," commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton said in a statement to reporters in the Capitol. In July, when the commission released its book-length report, they said, "we noted that if the government does not act on our recommendations and if there were another attack, the American people would quickly fix responsibility for a failure. There is very little time left in this Congress to act."
The bipartisan commission's members have said they fear that momentum for reshaping the intelligence community will fade if a bill is not signed before the presidential election. The Family Steering Committee, representing relatives of people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said in a statement: "We are sounding an alarm. The opportunity to strengthen our intelligence system is vanishing. After three years of effort, we are on the brink of failure."
Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), said there is little chance that the House-Senate conferees can resolve their differences and the House and Senate return to Washington for a final vote before Election Day. A more likely scenario, she said, would involve the conferees reaching an accord by the week's end, allowing Congress to approve the compromise in its "lame-duck" session scheduled to start Nov. 16.
Some reform advocates, however, said the bill's opponents would find it easy to kill or postpone it in a post-election atmosphere. If the negotiators "don't come to a resolution in the next 12 hours, we go into a lame-duck session with a dead-duck issue," former representative Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), one of the 10 commission members, said in a mid-afternoon interview.
Legislative matters that remain unfinished when the 108th Congress finally adjourns, presumably in late November, will die. New versions of the House and Senate intelligence bills, now more than 500 pages each, would have to be introduced and debated in the 109th Congress that convenes in January.
Disagreements between the House and Senate negotiators have remained essentially the same for three weeks. For example, the House bill would empower the defense secretary to continue overseeing the flow of federal funds to three intelligence-gathering agencies, including the National Security Agency, that are housed in his department. The Senate bill would give a newly created national intelligence director a larger role in shaping and managing the budgets of those agencies.
Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, reiterated yesterday that they prefer the Senate language on budgetary powers.
President Bush over the weekend called House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), urging that lawmakers resolve their differences and send a bill to his desk soon. Some lawmakers questioned his enthusiasm, noting that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently sent the conference committee a letter endorsing the House's stand on budgetary matters, which they considered at odds with previous White House statements.
Hastert, campaigning for GOP candidates in Maine, met yesterday in Bangor with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), leader of the Senate negotiators. Collins later said she appreciated the visit, adding that "many significant issues remain to be resolved."
--------
Mass. Governor Criticizes Flow of Terror Information
Reuters
By Kevin McNicholas
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62763-2004Oct25.html
BOSTON, Oct. 25 -- The Republican governor of Massachusetts expressed frustration Monday with the way the federal government tells states about possible terrorism threats.
During a speech at a conference on domestic security preparedness, Gov. Mitt Romney described how rumors and a lack of coordination appear to hamper the flow of essential information from Washington to local governments across America.
Romney's criticisms came with a week left in a presidential campaign that has focused heavily on the war in Iraq and domestic security issues. President Bush, a Republican, has made his leadership in the war on terror central to his reelection campaign.
Romney said states must deal with an uncoordinated flow of information from the federal government regarding possible terror threats, and he called for a centralized way of advising local governments of such risks.
"We have to have a single conduit, where every single state knows they're getting the same story," Romney, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, told the conference at Northeastern University.
"What state and local governments need, in our view at least, is that intelligence information is validated, delivered rapidly to us and comes in a concise and actionable format, and, of course, that it's updated regularly," he said.
Romney cited examples of hearing information from one source in the government and then asking another source about it -- only to be told the first source didn't necessarily have the facts straight. "We're giving information to certain federal agencies about what we're hearing from other federal agencies. That doesn't make sense," he said.
Romney was elected governor more than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
--------
Delays on 9/11 Bill Are Laid to Pentagon
October 26, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/26panel.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A months-long, behind-the-scenes lobbying effort by the Pentagon to water down the powers of a new national intelligence director is largely responsible for a stalemate threatening to derail Congressional efforts to enact the major recommendations of the independent Sept. 11 commission, Congressional officials and commission members said Monday.
The Pentagon's continuing effort to influence the negotiations on Capitol Hill became public last week with the disclosure of a letter sent to a prominent House Republican by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers.
General Myers contradicted the public stance of the White House and offered his support to provisions of a House bill written by Republicans that would limit the budget powers of a national intelligence director when it came to three large Pentagon spy agencies. While intelligence budgets are classified, at stake is control over an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion in intelligence spending by the agencies, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
The creation of a national intelligence director to coordinate the government's 15 intelligence agencies was the chief recommendation of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission in its unanimous final report in July.
The White House and the 10-member commission have endorsed provisions of a rival, bipartisan Senate bill that would give the intelligence director far more sweeping budget powers over the three intelligence agencies that are within the Pentagon but have wide-ranging duties not directly related to combat needs. They include the National Security Agency, which is the government's largest spy agency, in terms of budget, and is responsible for electronic surveillance and foreign eavesdropping.
House and Senate negotiators say that the extent of the powers of a national intelligence director is at the heart of their disagreements over the past week on a final bill, and that General Myers's letter stiffened the resolve of House Republicans to limit the powers of a director on military issues.
"The letter has been very unhelpful," said a Republican aide who supports the Senate bill and has been involved in the negotiations. "And it makes you wonder what else the Pentagon has been up to."
A member of the Sept. 11 commission, Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, said he was discouraged that the Pentagon was lobbying against policy positions stated repeatedly by the White House.
"I find it surprising that an administration known and duly respected for its discipline would allow its Joint Chiefs of Staff to disagree with the president's position at such a critical time," Mr. Roemer said. "The president needs to redouble his effort to have a single message."
House and Senate negotiators insisted Monday that they had not given up hope of agreement on a compromise bill that could be approved by a conference committee this week.
But Congressional officials said that it was now all but impossible to imagine the full House and Senate reconvening in time to vote to approve a final bill and send it to President Bush before the Nov. 2 election, which had been the goal of the conference committee.
Instead, they said, the committee may agree on a final bill this week, with the House and Senate voting to approve it soon after the election.
John Feehery, a spokesman for the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, said Mr. Hastert met Monday with Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the principal Republican sponsor of the Senate bill, during a previously scheduled trip to Maine and remained "optimistic" that a bill could be completed in the conference committee within days. "The speaker wants to get a bill," Mr. Feehery said.
Even as the White House has insisted that it supports the major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, including the creation of a powerful national intelligence director, senior Pentagon officials have made it clear that they are reluctant to give up any of their authority over intelligence programs that relate to the military.
The Pentagon controls about 80 percent of the nation's total intelligence budget, which is supposed to be a secret figure but is widely estimated at $40 billion a year.
Last month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was widely reported to have criticized the idea of a powerful national intelligence director when he met with members of the House and Senate at a classified briefing that focused on Iraq. Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, reported after the meeting that Mr. Rumsfeld had been "dismissive" about the concept and "just trashed everything about the national intelligence director."
A spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld insisted at the time that the defense secretary did not oppose the idea of a national director but had intended to emphasize only that creating such a important job should "be done right."
Mr. Rumsfeld's wariness was in evidence when he testified before the House in August and urged Congress not to move hastily in creating a national intelligence director. While Mr. Rumsfeld said the new post "could conceivably lead to some efficiencies in some aspects of intelligence collection," he warned that "the devil is in the details" and "if we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great."
Pentagon officials have warned against any change in the structure of the nation's intelligence-gathering operations that may interfere with the military chain of command and delay the transfer of intelligence to soldiers on the battlefield.
The Senate version of the bill to enact the recommendations of the commission would provide a national intelligence director with far broader budgetary power over Pentagon spy agencies than would be the rival House bill.
The Senate bill calls for the intelligence director to "determine" the nation's total intelligence budget and to "manage and oversee" how the money is distributed. The House's bill waters down those powers, leaving more power in the hands of the individual spy agencies. The House called for the intelligence director only to "develop" the intelligence budget, and to "ensure the effective execution" of the budget and "facilitate" how the money is spent.
In his letter, to Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, General Myers interpreted the House bill as allowing the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies within the Pentagon to continue to develop their own budgets and present them to Mr. Rumsfeld and his successors before they reach the national intelligence director.
Similarly, General Myers said, appropriations made to Pentagon spy agencies would be passed to them through the defense secretary. He was referring specifically to the National Security Agency; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which coordinates satellite-based mapping for the Defense Department; and the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops and operates spy satellites.
-------- police
New York Police Expand DNA Testing
October 26, 2004
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/nyregion/26dna.html
The burglary of Nick Haralampopoulos's house in Queens on Jan. 28 was just one of the 21,300 break-ins reported in New York City this year, and an unremarkable one at that: a kitchen window broken, a computer and some jewelry missing, and little hope of finding the person responsible.
But the Police Department crime lab responded with a strategy rarely used in burglary investigations: they sent a scarf left at the scene to be tested for DNA.
It was a bull's-eye. Not only did the DNA match that of Robert Medina, a 24-year-old with prior felony convictions, the police said, but it also matched DNA found at four other burglaries. Mr. Medina has since pleaded guilty in all five cases.
The investigation was among 250 cases, mostly burglaries in Queens, that were part of a trial expansion of DNA testing to crimes other than rape and homicide. Since it was started in January, the program, called Biotracks, has identified 23 suspects tied to 34 cases, most of which the police say would not otherwise have been solved.
In that small pool of results, the police see enormous potential to combat the city's most vexing crimes, the ones that leave victims feeling frustrated and vulnerable and the investigators searching, usually in vain, for witnesses or fingerprints. In 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Police Department made arrests in just 15 percent of the city's burglaries.
The department hopes to expand DNA testing to burglaries, robberies and car thefts in all five boroughs, a goal that city officials say will be greatly advanced when the medical examiner's office opens a new $267 million DNA lab in 2006. "We're just beginning to learn how effective this is," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. "We've had it in rape cases and homicide cases. Now you see the kind of natural expansion and progression of the program."
As little as 10 years ago, testing samples from thousands of crime scenes would have been unthinkably expensive. Yet DNA has long held out the promise of revolutionizing the way not just rapes and homicides but virtually all types of crimes are solved. A handful of cities and states have begun to test that promise, using technology that can glean DNA from ever smaller samples of biological material. In New York, Mr. Medina is among the first group ofsuspects identified by DNA in a nonviolent crime. Trying to find DNA at every burglary scene is not extravagant, Commissioner Kelly said, because evidence shows that many burglars are "crossover" criminals who commit violent crimes like rape. They are also more likely than other criminals to strike repeatedly.
According to the National Institute of Justice, which paid for Biotracks with a grant of $175,000, the most active burglars each commit an average of more than 230 break-ins a year. Biotracks has identified several suspects with long police records, including one man with 29 prior arrests, 15 of them on burglary charges. Another suspect served time for a homicide in Georgia. One burglary was linked to a 1994 rape. Mr. Medina was previously convicted of two felony drug offenses and two misdemeanors.
The National Institute of Justice has made grants for DNA testing in property crimes to New York and to Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties in Florida, said its director, Sarah V. Hart. The grants are part of President Bush's $5 billion initiative, which hopes to make DNA a routine law-enforcement tool across the country, she said. The agency has looked at countless ways to expand the use of DNA, even testing pets that criminals may have encountered at a crime scene, on the theory that pet hair is so hard to avoid that most criminals would carry some away with them when they left.
Ms. Hart compared the use of DNA in nonviolent crimes to the "broken windows" theory of policing: the idea that enforcing laws against low-level offenses like turnstile jumping and graffiti helps reduce the number of felonies. "We're very, very interested in trying to measure the success of this," she said.
The effectiveness of using DNA evidence in property crimes has been measured to some extent in Virginia, which has been doing such testing for more than 10 years. Dr. Paul Ferrara, the director of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science, said that in a study of the database's first 1,000 hits, there were 244 matches in sexual assault cases. Fifty-four of those suspects were in the database because of prior burglary convictions, compared to just 35 with prior drug convictions.
Dr. Ferrara said he could not provide a dollar amount for the added expense of testing at the scene of property crimes. But, he said, the cases are simpler and cheaper than violent crimes because they yield fewer samples to test, and the samples are not usually mixtures of DNA from two people. "Instead of 10, 20, 50 samples, you usually have this little speck of blood, or a little tissue from a window shard, and that's all," Dr. Ferrara said.
Of the 250 Biotracks cases, there were 366 samples taken from things like cigarette butts and hats left at the scene. One hundred and ten yielded profiles that met the requirements for the national DNA database maintained by the F.B.I. Of those, 34 matched known offenders. (Nationally, crime lab officials said, between 10 and 30 percent of DNA profiles generate a match, placing Biotracks on the high end.) At least eight suspects have been arrested solely because of Biotracks, and seven others were already in custody for other crimes, said Deputy Chief Denis M. McCarthy of the Forensic Investigation Division.
Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said biological evidence would be a significant help to prosecutors. Defendants would be more likely to plead guilty, which means less time and money spent on trials, he said. Besides Mr. Medina, Juan Romero, 50, has pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to seven years, and Giulio Lemorte, 34, has pleaded guilty to attempted burglary and will be sentenced to three years, said Patrick B. Clark, a spokesman for Mr. Brown. Gregory Lehman, a lawyer who represents Mr. Medina and other suspects in the Biotracks cases, declined to comment.
Mr. Brown said there was another reason such evidence was invaluable: it convinces skeptical juries. "Juries have come to expect to be provided with DNA evidence," he said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Increase in War Funding Sought Bush to Request $70 Billion More
By Jonathan Weisman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62554-2004Oct25.html
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.
White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not happen until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection.
But Pentagon and House Appropriations Committee aides said the Defense Department and military services are scrambling to get their final requests to the White House Office of Management and Budget by mid-November, shortly after the election. The new numbers underscore that the war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last longer, than the administration first suggested.
The Army is expected to request at least an additional $30 billion for combat activity in Iraq, with $6 billion more needed to begin refurbishing equipment that has been worn down or destroyed by unexpectedly intense combat, another Appropriations Committee aide said. The deferral of needed repairs over the past year has added to maintenance costs, which can no longer be delayed, a senior Pentagon official said.
The Army is expected to ask for as much as $10 billion more for its conversion to a swifter expeditionary force. The Marines will come in with a separate request, as will the Defense Logistics Agency and other components of the Department of Defense. The State Department will need considerably more money to finance construction and operations at the sprawling embassy complex in Baghdad. The Central Intelligence Agency's request would come on top of those.
"I don't have a number, and [administration officials] have not been forthcoming, but we expect it will be pretty large," said James Dyer, Republican chief of staff of the Appropriations Committee.
Bush has said for months that he would make an additional request for the war next year, but the new estimates are the first glimpse of its magnitude. A $70 billion request would be considerably larger than lawmakers had anticipated earlier this year. After the president unexpectedly submitted an $87 billion request for the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts last year, many Republicans angrily expressed sticker shock and implored the administration not to surprise them again.
This request would come on top of $25 billion in war spending allocated by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The two bills combined suggest the cost of combat is escalating from the $65 billion spent by the military in 2004 and the $62.4 billion allocated in 2003, as U.S. troops face insurgencies that have proven far more lethal than expected at this point.
"We're still evaluating what our commitments will be, and we will submit a request that fully supports those commitments," Kolton said.
The senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said final figures may be shaped by the outcome of the presidential election and events in Iraq. But assuming force levels will remain constant in Iraq at about 130,000 troops, the final bill will be "roughly" $70 billion for the military alone, he said.
In making cost estimates for the supplemental budget request, Pentagon officials have distanced themselves from the Bush administration's public optimism about trends in Iraq. Instead, they make the fairly pessimistic assumption that about as many troops will be needed there next year as are currently on the ground.
The latest request comes on top of three earlier emergency spending bills approved by Congress in support of the war. In August, Congress approved $25 billion for the war as a bridge to the larger request the president promised for early 2005. Last October, lawmakers passed an $87.5 billion emergency spending measure that included $65 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. An additional $18.6 billion of that money went to Iraqi reconstruction.
Congress approved the first war spending measure in April 2003, a $78.5 billion measure that included $62.4 billion for combat and $7.5 billion for foreign assistance.
The White House has been careful to keep the war spending numbers "close to the vest," Dyer said. But Pentagon officials have been working on the request for two to three months, even as they put together their far larger budget request for fiscal 2006, the Pentagon official said.
The Iraq war has proven so costly because of the unexpectedly intense opposition from insurgents. That has led the Pentagon to keep far more troops in Iraq than it planned.
At the end of the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, Pentagon officials expected to be able to radically trim the occupation force by the end of that year to perhaps 50,000 troops or less. Instead, they maintained a force of about 130,000 personnel there and have supplemented that force with about 20,000 civilian contractors.
On top of paying the wages of the all-volunteer force and the contractors, the military has paid for building dozens of bases and keeping a high-tech force equipped with computers, communications gear and expensive modern weaponry.
Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus estimated that in inflation-adjusted terms, World War I cost just under $200 billion for the United States. The Vietnam War cost about $500 billion from 1964 to 1972, Nordhaus said. The cost of the Iraq war could reach nearly half that number by next fall, 2 1/2 years after it began.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment. "We are going to let OMB talk for the administration on this issue," Marine Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch said.
--------
Debt, the Greatest Threat to Our Security
Antiwar.com
by Rep. Ron Paul
October 26, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=3851
Once again the federal government has reached its "debt ceiling," and once again Congress is poised to authorize an increase in government borrowing. Between its ever-growing bureaucracies, expanding entitlements, and overseas military entanglements, the federal government is borrowing roughly $1 billion every day to pay its bills.
Federal law limits the amount of debt the U.S. Treasury may carry, and the current amount - a whopping $7.4 trillion - has been reached once again by a spendthrift federal government. Total federal spending, which now exceeds $2 trillion annually, once took more than 100 years to double. Today it doubles in less than a decade, and the rate is accelerating. When President Reagan entered office in 1981 facing a federal debt of $1 trillion that had piled up over the decades, he declared that figure "incomprehensible." At its present rate of spending, the federal government will soon amass $1 trillion of new debt in just one year.
Government debt carries absolutely no stigma for politicians in Washington. The original idea behind the debt limit law was to shine a light on government spending, by forcing lawmakers to vote publicly for debt increases. Over time, however, the increases have become so commonplace that the media scarcely reports them - and there are no political consequences for those who vote for more red ink. It's far more risky for politicians to vote against special interest spending.
Since 1969, the federal government has spent more that it received in revenues every year. Even supposed single-year surpluses never existed, but were merely an accounting trick based on stealing IOUs from the imaginary Social Security trust fund. Remember that the total federal debt continued to rise rapidly even during the claimed surplus years. Since Congress is incapable of spending only what the Treasury takes in, it must borrow money. Unlike ordinary debts, however, government debts are not repaid by those who spend the money - they're repaid by you and future generations.
The federal government issues U.S. Treasury bonds to finance its deficit spending. The largest holders of those Treasury notes - our largest creditors - are foreign governments and foreign individuals. Asian central banks and investors in particular, especially China, have been happy to buy U.S. dollars over the past decade. But foreign governments will not prop up our spending habits forever. Already, Asian central banks are favoring Euro-denominated assets over U.S. dollars, reflecting their belief that the American economy is headed for trouble. It's akin to a credit-card company cutting off a borrower who has exceeded his credit limit one too many times.
Debt destroys U.S. sovereignty, because the American economy now depends on the actions of foreign governments. While we brag about our role as world superpower in international affairs, we are in truth the world's greatest debtor. Like all debtors, we are not truly free. China and other foreign government creditors could in essence wage economic war against us simply by dumping their huge holdings of U.S. dollars, driving the value of those dollars sharply downward and severely damaging our economy. Desmond Lachman, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, states that foreign central banks, "Now have considerable ability to disrupt U.S. financial markets by simply deciding to refrain from buying further U.S. government paper." Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers warns about "a kind of global balance of financial terror," noting our dependency on "the discretionary acts of what are inevitably political entities in other countries."
Ultimately, debt is slavery. Every dollar the federal government borrows makes us less secure as a nation, by making America beholden to interests outside our borders. So when you hear a politician saying America will do "whatever it takes" to fight terrorism or rebuild Iraq or end poverty or provide health care for all, what they really mean is they are willing to sink America even deeper into debt. We're told that foreign wars and expanded entitlements will somehow make America more secure, but insolvency is hardly the foundation for security. Only when we stop trying to remake the world in our image, and reject the entitlement state at home, will we begin to create a more secure America that is not a financial slave to foreign creditors.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush campaign accuses Kerry of 'fabricating' U.N. meetings
October 26, 2004
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041026-123136-5638r.htm
President Bush's campaign team yesterday called Sen. John Kerry's claims to have met the entire U.N. Security Council before voting to authorize the Iraq war the latest example of making false statements to embellish his foreign-policy record.
Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman likened Mr. Kerry's claim to have met with the Security Council to a similarly unsubstantiated assertion that he met with "foreign leaders" who endorsed him for president.
"First, John Kerry told us about secret meetings with unnamed foreign leaders to bolster his campaign," Mr. Mehlman said, responding to an article yesterday in The Washington Times. "Now, we learn he touted made-up meetings with the United Nations Security Council in the second debate to justify his vote for the war."
On the campaign trail in the Midwest yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney, recounting the article, said Mr. Kerry "apparently talked to a few individuals up on the Security Council, but there was never a meeting with all of them."
"What I see is somebody who ... now is trying to put a new gloss on his record," Mr. Cheney told a rally in Wilmington, Ohio.
"It is troubling that John Kerry would fabricate meetings with United Nations Security Council members to score political points on an issue as important as sending our troops to war," Mr. Mehlman added.
Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart yesterday insisted that his boss met with representatives of the Security Council, although he stopped short of repeating Mr. Kerry's claim to have met with "all" members of the 15-nation council.
While avoiding comment on the substance of the story, Mr. Lockhart said its impact on the election was limited to conservative Web sites.
"I read all the right-wing blogs over the weekend about the blockbuster story," he said. "I don't imagine this story's going anyplace."
But conservatives on the campaign trail were taking the story to heart.
When describing the article to a crowd in Moorhead, Minn., Mr. Cheney said "So the problem here I think is ..."
"He's a liar," yelled out an audience member, interrupting the vice president.
Mr. Cheney chuckled and said, "Now the press is going to attribute that to me."
At issue is Mr. Kerry's claim in the second presidential debate earlier this month that he met with the entire Security Council before voting for a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq in October 2002.
"This president hasn't listened," Mr. Kerry said. "I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."
But ambassadors from Mexico, Colombia, Bulgaria and a fourth nation that wished to remain nameless said nobody from their U.N. missions met with Mr. Kerry in the week before the vote. The Times was able to confirm Kerry meetings with representatives of only France, Cameroon and Singapore, although he reportedly also met with Britain.
Mr. Mehlman suggested the article went to the heart of an issue that Mr. Kerry has made the centerpiece of the presidential campaign - his own veracity.
"John Kerry has spent much of his campaign attacking President Bush over diplomacy," he said. "Now we know that he has not been talking honestly about his encounters with United Nations Security Council members.
"He has shown once again that he will say or do anything to be elected, even mislead the American people on the foundation of his political attacks," he added.
The second debate was not the first time Mr. Kerry claimed to have met with the Security Council. He made the same assertion in December 2003, during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Specifically, Mr. Kerry said he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."
However, a U.N. spokesman said: "Our office does not have any record of this meeting." An official at the U.S. mission also was mystified by Mr. Kerry's claim of a meeting.
A representative of France disputed Mr. Kerry's claim of a single meeting with all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council, saying instead the Massachusetts Democrat held several one-on-one or small group encounters.
Last week, the Kerry campaign initially stood by the candidate's claim of a single meeting with the entire U.N. Security Council. But when pressed for elaboration, the campaign issued a less-definitive statement that said Mr. Kerry "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."
The statement added: "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."
In March, Mr. Kerry claimed to have secured the endorsements of unnamed foreign leaders.
"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.'"
After an investigation by The Times cast doubt on this claim, a Kerry official said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."
•Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
--------
On the Campaign Trail
Cheney Mixes Stinging Rhetoric With Retail Politics
By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62560-2004Oct25.html
In Vice President Cheney's final push before next Tuesday's election, talk of nuclear annihilation and escalating war rhetoric have blended with balloon drops, confetti cannons and the other trappings of modern campaigning with such ferocity that it is sometimes tough to tell just who the enemy is.
At an appearance in Pennsylvania after the final presidential debate, Cheney fired up the political faithful in a hotel ballroom by saying John F. Kerry is constitutionally unable to fight, let alone win, the war on terrorism. "It's just not in him," Cheney said to supporters, who were cheering even before he had gotten, as he likes to say, to the "good part."
"I'm delighted with where we are now, heading into the final home stretch of this campaign. We're going to take the fight to our adversaries, wherever they may be. We're going to carry Pennsylvania!" Cheney told the roaring crowd.
It was the kind of dual-use dig that has come to define Cheney's style and strategy in this campaign. Dangerous leaders must be defeated, whether Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian blamed for kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings and other attacks in Iraq, or Kerry in Massachusetts.
Vice presidential candidates often play the role of attack dog for their bosses, and Cheney has long been more aggressive and certain than President Bush in asserting controversial claims, such as the ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. During the campaign, Bush often dispatches his jabs with mocking humor and incredulous expressions; Cheney and his advisers, including wife Lynne -- who helps write many of his sharpest lines -- tend toward more sweeping pronouncements that can evoke alarm.
Cheney's mix of mass casualties and retail politics has been on full display on recent campaign stops, where grim terrorist warnings and attacks on his Democratic opponents have veered -- gleefully at times -- toward piling on.
One moment, the vice president will munch a pumpkin doughnut from a supporter, the next he'll warn that hundreds of thousands of Americans could be killed. He'll caution that extremists are trying to kill infidels -- "And we're the infidels," he says -- then schmooze with a local official about fly fishing.
His nuclear rhetoric has seeped into domestic matters. In a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, riff on the administration's troubles getting judges confirmed through Senate Democrats, Cheney said Republicans have considered procedural challenges designed to prevent nominations from being filibustered. "Some people call that . . . sort of the nuclear option," Cheney said, adding that such a move "would start an amazing battle on the floor of the Senate. Some of us think there's a certain appeal to that kind of an approach."
In appearance after appearance for more than a year and a half, Cheney has warned voters that the most important threat facing the United States is that an American city could be gassed, sickened or vaporized by an unconventional attack -- and that Kerry cannot be trusted to protect them.
Yesterday, Cheney told supporters in Minnesota: "The biggest threat we'll face today is . . . a group of these terrorists in one of our cities with the kind of deadly capability we're talking about."
On campaign stops from Charleston to Johnstown over the past two weeks, Cheney has repeated his warnings about the "ultimate threat" and has stepped up the rhetoric further by assailing Kerry's fitness to lead in highly personal, often evocative terms.
Cheney has reprised his controversial assertion that voters need to make the "right decision" on Nov. 2 to protect themselves from terrorism. And Saturday, he unearthed the threat of the Red Menace, saying that had Kerry been president "maybe the Soviet Union would still be in business." Cheney's comments have riled Democratic strategists. After the Soviet remark, Kerry campaign communications director Stephanie Cutter decried the "politics of fear and smear" and said it "sounds like Dick Cheney is coming unglued."
"Next thing you know, he'll be blaming John Kerry for losing the Alamo," she added.
But Cheney's advisers love the attention their man gets when he says things his opponents call outlandish. They say Cheney's decades of experience and expansive, unprecedented role as vice president have made him the perfect person to issue the toughest warnings about the dangers of terrorism and a Kerry presidency.
"It's like when you look back to Winston Churchill and appeasement. Everyone thought Winston Churchill was crackers," said Cheney adviser Mary Matalin, adding that Cheney is a realist. "He's just an American pragmatist when it comes to . . . how we use our might around the world," Matalin said. "If you think that's fear-mongering, you don't have a realistic view of the challenges we face."
Cheney's rhetoric has been foreshadowed by other candidates in earlier campaigns, Stanford University historian Barton Bernstein said. He noted that Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) blamed all major U.S. wars of the 20th century on the Democrats when he was running for vice president in 1976 on the ticket headed by Gerald Ford, and Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for president, warned in 1952 that if the United States did not stop the communists in Korea, the fight would move to America's shores.
"The stuff this year is a little more raw and a little more personal," Bernstein said. "It's a bit more extreme."
--------
Final Ads Continue Trend of Negativity
New Spots Target Contested States
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62756-2004Oct25.html
Presidential candidates traditionally close their advertising campaigns on a positive note. But not this year.
In new ads released yesterday and targeted at the tightest battleground states, President Bush and John F. Kerry made some effort to sell their policies but did not abandon the negativity that has marked their airwaves battle for the past two months.
The president's ad begins on an uplifting note, saying Bush and his congressional allies -- no mention of Republicans -- want "strong leadership to protect America, tax relief, common-sense health care and [to] strengthen and protect Social Security." But the spot then charges that Kerry and his "liberal allies" are for "higher taxes, voting to tax Social Security benefits, government-run health care, a record of slashing intelligence and reckless defense cuts."
The tag line: "Alone in the booth -- why take the risk?"
Despite Bush's repeated charge, Kerry has not proposed a "government-run" health plan. Analysts say the ad, like Kerry's, appears designed more to motivate core supporters than to persuade undecided voters.
One of three Kerry ads unveiled yesterday is positive, with the senator from Massachusetts telling middle-class voters, "You need someone to fight for you." The second is mostly positive until Kerry says: "The president is satisfied with an economy of lower-paying jobs. I'm not."
In the unusually defensive third spot, he chides the president for insisting that Kerry would impose a "global test" on U.S. military action, a phrase the Democrat used in one debate.
"They're misleading Americans about what I said," Kerry declares in the ad. "I will never cede America's security to any institution or to any other country. No one gets a veto over our security, no one." In an implicit criticism of the Iraq war, he adds: "I will never take my eye off Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the terror in Afghanistan."
Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton calls the contrast in commercials "hope versus fear, real plans versus empty promises." Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said the GOP ad shows "the president has a dramatically different approach" to vital issues. Bush plans one final ad this week.
-------- us politics
Lafayette Park Blues
www.dissidentvoice.org
by Joe Bageant
October 26, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct04/Bageant1026.htm
In the late 1960s I used to sit in Lafayette Park across from the White House, have spring picnics on the benches there with hippie girlfriends, reading Rimbaud, while waiting for the Robert Rauschenberg exhibit to open at the Corcoran Museum down the street. Usually there would be protesters across Pennsylvania Avenue, sometimes chained to the White House gate, a Buddhist monk or an anti-war group or mothers against whatever. Those were freer times. I know they were freer because I was there, I felt it and can remember it, as do millions of other Americans my age. So when we now look at the White House with its steel wire, concrete barricades, police dogs and snipers posted on rooftops we cannot help but ask ourselves: What the hell has happened to my country? Who imposed this national lockdown?
Admittedly, we were just dumb artsy kids in those Lafayette Park days, youthful dreamers who couldn't imagine ever being thirty years old (much less fifty eight!) And in an age when you could smoke a joint in the White House restrooms during a tour, we certainly never imagined a time when special enclosures for public dissenters would be given the authoritarian state term "Free Speech Zones." I never thought I would hear our government brand the liberalism of Jefferson as terrorism, never imagined an election could be successfully rigged in this country and never thought I'd see the Supreme Court back a junta. I never thought I would see three percent of our citizens pulling hard time in a vast complex of prisons. I never thought I would see 911.
But most frightening of all has been watching Americans accept all this in such Orwellian fashion. Which is what one has to call it because our national behavior is way beyond anything that could be called ordinary denial.
How in the hell did those far right nutjobs pull this off? Well, for starters they had to erase public memory of those freer times. So they ginned up the Heritage Foundation and the Rand Institute's lie machines in a fashion that would make Joe Stalin and Kim Il Sun proud. One of the first lies they had to sell (in what are now being called the culture wars) was that freedom equals danger and charity equals communism. After their success in the 1994 elections, rightwing propagandists started identifying the Sixties as a "counterculture" and as the source of all American social rot. When it came to this rank howl, the loudest dog in the pen was history professor Newt Gingrich, who managed to hallucinate a version of the Sixties in which "countercultural McGoverniks," were somehow leftist agents in cahoots with The Great Society, to tear down Western civilization. Oh what a colorful hallucination! Counterculture types were supposedly saving up gobs of spit for Vietnam vets (though how it could be done, given the prevalent marijuana "cottonmouth" of the times is beyond me) and welcoming the commie hordes ashore at the San Francisco docks. And it was somehow all Dr. Spock's fault.
According to the neocons, this malignant counterculture started festering on the ass of the republic in 1965 and ended when the Republican Revolution lanced it in 1994. People like Robert Bork and Gingrich had best sellers on the theme. Today this rank lie has become a trope, and is accepted as social history by a new generation. Nevertheless, here we are forty years later and the issues confronted by the Sixties counterculture still haunt us. Free speech, the right to control one's own body and consciousness, the right to be unpatriotic, anti-nationalistic and as obstreperous as we choose to be so long as no one gets hurt.
Even the best writers, people such as Thomas Frank, miss this animating spirit of the era. Frank describes it solely as a youth marketing phenomenon, and the Sixties was that too. But commerce was not the soul of the movement, which was as much spiritual as political. Or, as my crotchety old friend, the blacklisted writer Al Aronsky says, "The fact that public nudism, marijuana smoking, advanced bisexuality, unmailable poetry, wino drunkenness, unconsecrated marriage ... can be termed a religious quest might come as a surprise to a public that swears it doesn't partake of these joys." However, one must forgive Frank's missing such a point since, as he admits in his book, he was a young Republican, which gave him great insight into the Republican takeover of Kansas (What's the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank) but is a distinct disadvantage in understanding any kind of alternative culture. Much as I hate the cliché, "You had to be there" Tom. Put simply, few generations ever loved being self-realizing Americans more. And surely no generation ever had more goddam fun doing it.
That Sixties vision is gone from society, though it still inspires some in my generation who love this nation enough to resist its lesser angels. Not a majority -- we were never a majority -- but nevertheless many. There was nothing wrong with attempting to bring world peace and personal freedom and a joyful cosmology. In fact, the counterculture's aspirations were a lesser extension of it parents aspirations, considering that at the end of World War Two 65% of Americans wanted "one world government" and all nuclear weapons under the management of the United Nations! Pacifists Bertrand Russell and Norman Thomas were right all their lives and are still right in death: a predatory corporate political culture's dependence upon war is antithetical to everything human. Laugh if you want, but many made commitments to this which involved risk and sacrifice and anyone who was serious in that movement can name friends who were ruined or died in the process. But they will also tell you it was the noblest public thing they ever did. Above the foaming dreck
SCREAMING MAN VOLUNTEERS HIS SERVICES TO PERSONALLY DISARM THOSE LITTLE NOSE-PICKING NEOCON SPAWN OF PIG JISM...AND DE-NUT THEM LIKE THE FAT, BRAYING LITTLE FASCIST BEASTS THEY ARE. PEEL THEIR ARYAN NATIONS TATTOOS FROM THEIR NAKED BODIES WITH A SET OF ELECTRIFIED PLIERS. AND WHEN I DO, LADY LIBERTY THROW HER TORCH IN THE AIR, FLING UP HER SKIRT AND SCREAM: "FREE AT LAST...THANK GOD ALMIGHTY...SOMEBODY ROLL ME A GODDAM JOINT!"
---Leftist internet denizen called SCREAMING MAN.
As the above posting illustrates, it is difficult, to say the least, for the left to get the public's attention these days, what with all the goose stepping and God, guns and oil rhetoric filling the public plaza these days. Hell, half a million demonstrators for women's rights in Washington D.C. failed to get even local television coverage, which gives some notion of the pitch and fervor of our war crazed republic. It is doubtful we could get any leftist concept whatsoever across to the public.
Especially if that idea requires genuine literacy. The American mindscape having become such nasty intellectual terrain since the Sixties, when most new concepts were transferred through books. According to the Book Industry Study Group, less than half of American adults read books -- at all. Even then, half of the top sellers are celebrity-based ga-ga stuff, mediocre fiction such as The Da Vinci Code, or the rants of folks like Ann Coulter, oh prancing princess of the GOP vomitorium. (Or vapid liberal comfort food such as Michael Moore's Stupid White Men) You are probably reading some book right now and I am writing one, but neither of us is expecting to see a Jean-Paul Sartre revival anytime soon. Not in a nation where a girl eating two feet of fried horse anus on reality TV commands the awe of millions. Our national taste runs toward idiopathic grotesques, the Coulters, Limbaughs and Liddys. Ann Coulter can call for the jailing of liberals and the treason trial of poor old Jimmy Carter to the cheers of millions. To her credit, she was perceptive enough to understand that the conservative hatefulness ceiling had risen substantially, and with a tad more goosing it would produce best sellers -- also that the GOP wanted to badly prove that Republicans could show some fine leg too. By the way Annie, I see by the centerfold in the GOP magazine that you have finally found a pair of jackboots that reach all the way to your ... And I must admit that the SS double lightning nipple piercings are a nice touch.
Saner people try to write it all off as the far right's rabid media moment, or quick-buck publishing, assuring themselves no one takes such crap seriously. I can tell you that a stunning number of people I know are convinced that Coulter's hysterical recommendations are exactly what needs to be done. And they will do it too, given the opportunity. Chances are that the reader thinks I am being hyperbolic. So be it. But as I keep telling my liberal urban friends: "It's a lot dumber and meaner out here in the heartland than you believe." The left could send two million protesters to New York tomorrow and the heartland's response to the news would be: "Honey, come quick! They've got a million tree huggin homos in a free speech cage in New York!" I live amid some of the most dangerous voters in America, neocon snake handling Southerners, and I know these people and I know what it says about part of America. It says that the kinder, gentler Republican era of Newt Gingrich is far behind us.
The Republican revolution is at full throttle now and if you get down on all fours and look at the world like a Republican, you will see that we have never been more successful as a nation. Five percent of our citizens are either in prison or on parole. We now have 6,000 bases in 130 countries. I am told that is about 4,000 more full installations than the Roman Empire staffed with legions at its zenith. There is scarcely a citizen in this militaristic economy of ours that does not have a stake in providing bullets or Snickers bars, CD players, cell phones, depleted uranium shells or some unimaginable death-dealing technology to the outposts of the empire. What cannot be accomplished with bribes and threats in the United Nations gets done with the fist, either by our own or by putting weapons in someone else's. Or by offing some democratically elected leftist leader suffering under the obscene notion that people deserve enough daily bread to shit regularly. We remain quite true to our roots as homicidal white Euro-trash hog thieves, despite the comforting national lies regarding liberation and furthering democracy.
Speaking of lies since and about the Sixties, one of the most pervasive is that all activists of the counterculture grew into fat, happy yuppies. I know dozens who've remained true to their beliefs at great personal cost to their lives and families...and now teach in tribal schools, work in social services, clinics, etc. They are making the world better and could do more given the chance. The trouble is, they have no voice and are effectively kept out of politics because of their pasts, kept from running for office by things like youthful drug possession charges, etc. But we are starting to see some of their children enter the arena...children who I know are sharers of the dream. It may well be that the best in my generation inadvertently pulled off a coup by simply loving their kids and sharing their hopes with them. If the coldest among us can impart their bitter vision to their children, why can't the poets among us do the same?
You in the generation that came of age in the '80s and '90s will have to bring new vision. What a line of bullshit! Sounds like a politician. My god a'mighty! You confront a worse specter than we ever did. You were born into a hardening police state and have lived your lives inside the invisible bars of a corporate military consumer society. Your government hands over your nation's coffers to the feasting rich and plays shell games with the coffins of your brothers killed at a voracious free market's far flung edges. And if you point any of these things out you will be called "over the edge." Love it or leave it or stay and suffer the consequences. It's not just you kid. All of us who manage to love America for deeper philosophical reasons feel like battered lovers these days.
Still, on the internet---which is uniquely yours---some undefined new thing is stirring. There is the scent of that good old time freedom-loving chaos. A challenge to authority and the state-enforced social lie, voices rising above the foaming dreck. And they increase daily. Of course this anti-authoritarian challenge seems like quite a stir to those passionately involved, but at this point most Americans have no notion of it yet and, besides us, only the Department of Homeland Security is listening in on the conversation with any interest. Republic of love and fear
An informed polity needs information, and Americans do care about the facts. We can give you the basketball odds, tell you how many carbs are in a Sarah Lee cheesecake and name the characters in "Shreck". Forget insignificant ones such as 15,000 civilians were killed in the US attack and occupation of Iraq. This is not important, which is why the media never informed us of it. Then too, dead sand monkeys do not register in the American conscience as anything to grieve over. They are the same color and speak the same jabber language as the freaks who crashed those airliners. Right? America's racist colonial underpinning is still alive and kicking; it just doesn't wear sheets and hoods these days. It wears Chinese slave labor made garments and burns high test in its riding lawn mowers and works one full month a year just to pay for its imperial armies.
This has not been a good month. We had a death in my family and I had one of those late-life age brushes with cancer. It's been a curious time of love and fear at home and as a citizen. Love and fear both well describe what some of us feel these days in the nation of the Great Dream -- the republic putatively sprung full bloom from the womb of the Enlightenment. Only America could have dreamed up a people such as you and me, so funny, brave, obese, well-meaning, oblivious and full of shit. Only America could have fattened us on its alleged idealism, then declared the end of the Enlightenment and ordered us to Buy or Die, holding the entire world at gunpoint so we could eat fried chicken in the comfort of our SUVs while listening to Hood Hop on quad CD/MP3 in-car stereo. Only America could have created this scientifically orchestrated consumption-based hell that calls itself paradise.
America: When we first stepped onto this playground of the national soul together, I truly believed you were not a bully, that you were the protector of queers and thick-tongued immigrants and laboring spiritual hoboes like me. I have tossed down your dreams straight from the bottle with no chaser, then bought a round for the house, because this is the goddam land of the free where even a redneck boy from Virginia can dream the dreams of bards, call himself a writer then walk away from dark ancestral ghosts to actually become one.
I believed it all, America. And I still fall for it if I let my guard down...just like the abused wife who believes she will not be punched again for that thousand and first time. All the neighbors -- whole nations -- believed in you too, despite the muffled screams of the black slave and the Red Indian coming from within your own house. But now you are lurking on the neighbors' porches smelling of the halls of Abu Ghraib and gun grease and there are no cops to call because you ARE the cops, so they are going to break down the doors and cut your balls off.
I can't sleep at nights and don't you pretend that you are asleep. Talk to me! You are going to have to say you love your native son or this whole terrible ecstatic thing of ours is over. You have changed over the many years we have been writhing together in this little power struggle of yours and mine -- the one between little guy liberty and big authority. Now you have become the police court judge of my days and I dare not even leave your house for a quart of milk or a look at the stars. It's too late for counseling. You have broken my heart one too many times. Cracked one too many ribs.
Time is short. Dawn will bring nothing good, I promise you. Speak to me like you used to. Right now. Or it's over.
Joe Bageant is a magazine editor and essayist living in Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at bageantjb@netscape.net.
-------- voting
Judge upholds touch screens
October 26, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-104441-6436r.htm
MIAMI - Florida does not need to create a paper record for touch-screen voting machines in case recounts are needed in tight races, a federal judge ruled yesterday, upholding the state's emergency rule that set standards for electronic-voting recounts.
Touch-screen machines "provide sufficient safeguards" of constitutional rights by warning voters when they have not cast votes in individual races and allowing them to make a final review of their ballots, U.S. District Judge James Cohn ruled.
Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat, had sought either a paper record for manual recounts in close elections like the contentious 2000 presidential race or an order switching voters in 15 counties from touch-screens to optically scanned paper ballots by 2006. He wanted a way to help determine voter intent when no votes were recorded, known as "undervotes."
The judge found there was no constitutional violation in a touch-screen recount rule issued by the state Oct. 15. That rule replaced one thrown out in August by a state judge.
The current requirement is to determine "voter choice," which the state maintains is whatever is recorded on a touch-screen machine when a voter presses the final button.
Mr. Wexler said he planned an appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Judge Cohn, who heard three days of testimony last week, concluded that "the preferential method of casting a ballot" would include a paper printout allowing voters to make sure their selections are correct, but he said he was limited to determining "whether the current procedures and standards comport with equal protection."
Mr. Wexler called that a partial victory, but said he disagrees with the judge's conclusion that the voting machines meet the requirement in state law for manual recounts.
He said he believes the judge was reluctant to make "drastic changes" in voting systems since early voting already is under way.
"Governor [Jeb] Bush successfully ran the clock out on the ability to improve the election process for 2004," Mr. Wexler said.
Mr. Wexler's attorney, Jeff Liggio, argued the machines have no way to deal with malfunctions or distinguish between voter mistakes and intentional decisions to skip ballot items. The judge said the question of malfunctions was a state issue, rather than a federal one.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood's office said the machines have a successful track record since they were introduced in the state in 2002, after the fallout from confusion over the punch-card ballots used in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush won the state by 537 votes.
"Florida voters should have complete confidence in the voter systems we're using, and for Congressman Wexler to try to erode the voter confidence or put doubt in the voter's mind does a real disservice to the voters of Florida," Hood spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.
Ron Labasky, an attorney for county election chiefs, claimed in court that Mr. Wexler was just trying to find a way to "squeeze one more vote out" and "regress" to the confusion of 2000.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Environmental Proposals
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A05
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62561-2004Oct25.html
Here are selected elements of the candidates' proposals for the environment:
Bush
• Championed the Healthy Forests bill, which has accelerated logging on public land in an effort to reduce the potential for forest fires.
• Has supported legislation or, if necessary, rules that would require cuts in power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by as much as 70 percent by sometime after 2018.
• Has sought voluntary reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and has proposed a large spending boost on climate change research.
• Opted out of the Kyoto Protocol, which would have imposed limits on carbon emissions in the United States.
Kerry
• Opposed the Healthy Forests bill, on the grounds that it would allow timber companies to log valuable forests miles from communities at risk for forest fires.
• Would seek curbs on emissions of carbon dioxide, as well as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, within a shorter time frame.
• Voted for a bipartisan bill to create a pollution-credit-trading system that would bring carbon emissions back to 2000 levels.
• Supported the Kyoto Protocol and has since vowed to re-engage the international community on the question of carbon limits.
--------
THE ENVIRONMENT NASA
Expert Criticizes Bush on Global Warming Policy
October 26, 2004
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/science/26climate.html
A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a senior administration official told him last year not to discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures.
The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, expects to say that the Bush administration has ignored growing evidence that sea levels could rise significantly unless prompt action is taken to reduce heat-trapping emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes.
Many academic scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates, have been criticizing the administration over its handling of climate change and other complex scientific issues. But Dr. Hansen, first in an interview with The New York Times a week ago and again in his planned lecture today, is the only leading scientist to speak out so publicly while still in the employ of the government.
In the talk, Dr. Hansen, who describes himself as "moderately conservative, middle-of-the-road" and registered in Pennsylvania as an independent, plans to say that he will vote for Senator John Kerry, while also criticizing some of Mr. Kerry's positions, particularly his pledge to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada.
He will acknowledge that one of the accolades he has received for his work on climate change is a $250,000 Heinz Award, given in 2001 by a foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, Mr. Kerry's wife. The awards are given to people who advance causes promoted by Senator John Heinz, the Pennsylvania Republican who was Mrs. Heinz Kerry's first husband.
But in an interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen said he was confident that the award had had "no impact on my evaluation of the climate problem or on my political leanings."
In a draft of the talk, a copy of which Dr. Hansen provided to The Times yesterday, he wrote that President Bush's climate policy, which puts off consideration of binding cuts in such emissions until 2012, was likely to be too little too late.
Actions to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions "are not only feasible but make sense for other reasons, including our economic well-being and national security," Dr. Hansen wrote. "Delay of another decade, I argue, is a colossal risk."
In the speech, Dr. Hansen also says that last year, after he gave a presentation on the dangers of human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate shifts to Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, "the administrator interrupted me; he told me that I should not talk about dangerous anthropogenic interference, because we do not know enough or have enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic interference."
After conferring with Mr. O'Keefe, Glenn Mahone, the administrator's spokesman, said Mr. O'Keefe had a completely different recollection of the meeting. "To say the least, Sean is certain that he did not admonish or even suggest that there be a throttling back of research efforts" by Dr. Hansen or his team, Mr. Mahone said.
Dr. Franco Einaudi, director of the NASA Earth Sciences Directorate at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Dr. Hansen's supervisor, said he was at the meeting between Dr. Hansen and Mr. O'Keefe. Dr. Einaudi confirmed that Mr. O'Keefe had interrupted the presentation to say that these were "delicate issues" and there was a lot of uncertainty about them. But, he added: "Whether it is obvious to take that as an order or not is a question of judgment. Personally, I did not take it as an order."
Dr. John H. Marburger III, the science adviser to the president, said he was not privy to any exchanges between Dr. Hansen and the administrator of NASA. But he denied that the White House was playing down the risks posed by climate change.
"President Bush has long recognized the serious implications of climate change, the role of human activity, and our responsibility to reduce emissions,'' Dr. Marburger said in an e-mailed statement. "He has put forward a series of policy initiatives including a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our economy.''
In the interview yesterday, Dr. Hansen stood by his assertions and said the administration risked disaster by discouraging scientists from discussing unwelcome findings.
Dr. Hansen, 63, acknowledged that he imperiled his credibility and perhaps his job by criticizing Mr. Bush's policies in the final days of a tight presidential campaign. He said he decided to speak out after months of deliberation because he was convinced the country needed to change course on climate policy.
Dr. Hansen rose to prominence when, after testifying at a Senate hearing in the record-warm summer of 1988, he said, "It is time to stop waffling so much and say the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thailand Says 78 Muslims Died in Army Custody
By REUTERS
October 26, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-thailand.html?pagewanted=all
PATTANI, Thailand (Reuters) - Almost 80 Muslims died in military custody in southern Thailand, suffocated while being transported in trucks to an army barracks after a violent demonstration, officials said on Tuesday.
Only six people were previously believed to have been killed when troops and police opened fire to quell a riot outside a police station on Monday in the restive, Muslim-majority region.
The huge leap in the toll, and the manner of the deaths, are bound to add to tensions. One local Muslim scholar accused authorities of gassing the victims and called it a massacre.
Justice ministry official Manit Sutaporn said 78 people died of suffocation, making it the bloodiest day in the Buddhist kingdom since April 28, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding militants, also in the south.
``We found no wounds on their bodies,'' Manit told a news conference in Pattani, a provincial capital 1,100 km (700 miles) south of Bangkok, of the latest deaths.
He said the victims were among hundreds of Muslim men arrested after a 1,500-strong rally was dispersed outside a police station in Narathiwat province.
The deaths appear to have occurred while the detainees, who were stripped semi-naked after their arrest, were being taken by truck to barracks in Pattani, a journey that took five hours, Major-General Sinchai Nutsatit told the news conference. ``We have never seen this sort of torture in Thai history before. It is just like gassing them,'' said Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, an Islamic scholar from the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani province. ``It is a deliberate massacre. They rounded protesters up and crammed them into closed trucks. They died from lack of air.''
Troops and police fired live rounds, as well as water cannon and teargas, to end a six-hour standoff with the crowd, which was demanding the release of six villagers accused of handing over government-issue shotguns to Islamic militants.
Shots were also fired from the crowd, officials said, adding that some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs or were frail because of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Six protesters died at the scene, and 20 people were injured.
``This is typical,'' Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said when asked about reports of scores dead. ``It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them.''
``DELIBERATE MASSACRE''
Human rights groups said the deaths in military custody raised alarming questions in the self-styled ``Land of Smiles,'' where campaigners say basic civil rights are under threat from an administration increasingly known for intolerance.
One of Thailand's 11 National Human Rights Commissioners appeared less concerned.
``The government did not over-react. It has done the right thing,'' Pradit Charoenthaitawee told Reuters.
``These people are rebels, separatists with some help from foreigners. This part of the country has belonged to Thailand since our grandparents. We can't allow separation.''
One reporter said he saw troops round up the protesters after 15 minutes of gunfire, forcing men to strip to the waist and lie face down with their hands behind their backs.
The soldiers led about 20 women and children in the crowd into the police station, and roped the men outside together. The reporter said some soldiers picked out suspected ringleaders and beat them with rifles and batons.
Soon after, the commander of the troops arrived and reporters were told to leave. They left before the protesters were herded onto trucks.
Security officials justified the use of force, saying they feared the police compound would be attacked.
Police also said they recovered seven automatic rifles, a pistol, four hand grenades and some machetes either dropped by demonstrators or thrown into a nearby river.
Security outposts have been common targets in the 10-month unrest that looks increasingly like a revived Muslim separatist movement in the deep south.
Thailand's three southernmost provinces are home to the majority of the country's Muslims, who make up 10 percent of the mainly Buddhist nation's 63 million people.
At least 440 people, including Buddhists and Muslims, have been killed in the unrest, which started in January when guerrillas raided an army barracks, killed four soldiers and made off with around 300 assault rifles.
With an election looming, Thaksin is under increasing pressure to resolve the trouble, which analysts fear could create a fertile breeding ground for militant networks such as Southeast Asia's al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah.
``It's all building up to the point where we're in serious danger of what is so far a rather serious law and order issue turning into a broader insurgency,'' said Steve Wilford of Singapore-based Control Risks Group.
Despite a curfew imposed in eight districts of Narathiwat province after Monday's unrest, militants set fire to a school building and burned tires on several highways.
--------
The Soldiers Who Said No
A pair of Mississippi women challenge the army brass on behalf of their soldier-husbands in Iraq
villagevoice
by Tom Robbins
October 26th, 2004
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0443/robbins.php
No matter how the military ultimately decides to deal with Staff Sergeant Michael Butler for disobeying orders, once the war in Iraq is through with him, he'll be welcomed home by an adoring family and the big yellow ribbon that is pinned to the tall long-leaf pine tree outside his one-story brick house in Jackson, Mississippi.
"I am very, very proud of him. He is a definite leader, someone who is capable of doing many things," said Butler's wife, Jackie, as she sat in her living room facing a wall of awards earned by her husband during his 24 years of duty in both the regular army and the reserves. There are a half-dozen Army Achievement Medals and a plaque for "1997 NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] of the Year." Four short words of high military praise are inscribed on it: "Can do. Damn good."
It was that same type of leadership that Butler, 44, was exhibiting this month, his wife insisted, when he and 17 others in his army reserve platoon did the militarily unthinkable by refusing direct orders to drive a convoy of fuel trucks from their post at the Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq to Taji, north of Baghdad. Butler told his wife that their breakdown-prone trucks-and the lack of steel-plated armor on the vehicles-made them sitting ducks for hostile fire along the 200-mile route. According to Jackie Butler and family members of others in the unit, commanders of the 343rd Quartermaster Company reacted by arresting the soldiers at gunpoint, reading them their rights, and holding them in a tent under guard for 24 hours-actions denied by army spokesmen.
A day later, after Jackie Butler and others spread the alarm, the incident was worldwide news, providing sharp focus to charges that many troops in Iraq lack adequate equipment, criticism that dogged the Bush administration even before Democrat John Kerry made it a stock element of his stump speech. It has also rekindled memories of the last days of the Vietnam War, when there were incidents of demoralized U.S. troops refusing orders they believed would accomplish little other than placing themselves in peril.
Jackie Butler said she was less concerned with the big-picture implications of her husband's actions than the fact that he was in trouble and needed her help. That news had come in an alarming call in the early morning of October 14 from a stranger who said he was a lieutenant in the army in Iraq and friendly with her husband. "He said, 'Your husband snuck this note to me to call you, that you should call your sister-in-law and she should call the lawyers she knows, because he needs their help.' I asked him what was going on, and he said, 'Your husband has been charged with disobeying orders.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Yes, your husband has been falsely accused. He is being held under guard right now. I have to go.' Then he hung up."
Butler said she immediately began calling family members. She also left a message at the local daily paper, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.
A couple of miles away, Patricia McCook, whose husband, Sergeant Larry McCook, 41, was also serving in the 343rd, was awoken at 5:12 that same morning when he called from Iraq.
"He was saying, 'Baby, baby, wake up, wake up please. Get a paper, take this down.' He sounded panicky. He said they were trying to make them go to a place called Taji-I can't even pronounce it. He said the trucks didn't have protection, that it was a suicide mission. He said, 'They've arrested us. They've got military police armed with guns guarding us; they read us our rights.' He said, 'Write these names down, these are the others in trouble with me.' "
Among the names her husband gave her was that of Michael Butler. The two wives had never met, but within a few days, Jackie Butler and Pat McCook were granting joint interviews to media from around the country, holding court in Butler's living room, so much in tune with each other's concerns that they noddingly finished each other's sentences.
It was a sudden and unexpected thrust into the national spotlight, putting them at the crossroads of a volatile issue at the heart of the presidential election.
In many ways, they are an unlikely pair to be taking on a mighty military establishment. Both are devout churchgoers: Butler at Zion Travelers Missionary Baptist, McCook at the Jones Chapel Church in nearby Flora, Mississippi, where her husband is a deacon. McCook is raising a pair of teenagers; Butler, a hairstylist, is stepmother to two children, ages 10 and 14. The trunk of Pat McCook's sedan bears a "Support Our Troops" yellow-ribbon sticker. Another urges people to find guidance through prayer. McCook was born in Flora and raised in Jackson; Butler has lived here all her life. Her modest but comfortable home is on a street of well-groomed lawns and spreading magnolias, a quiet neighborhood located in the city's northeast, where the only discordant note is the protective metal bars that cover most windows. It is about a mile and a half from another pleasant neighborhood of single-family homes, where Jackson civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot dead in his driveway in 1963 by a virulent racist.
Despite the unexpectedness of the crisis, both women quickly rose to the challenge posed by the emergency messages from the other side of the world. Armed with a mutual bedrock belief in their husbands' integrity, they enlisted friends, relatives, and local politicians in a campaign to expose what they called "a terrible cover-up" by the army.
"It's a leadership problem," said McCook. "They knew those vehicles were unsafe. Why in the world would you send soldiers out unprotected like that?"
Probably their most effective calls were those to The Clarion-Ledger, where reporter Jeremy Hudson got the military to acknowledge the incident and wrote the initial account. National and international coverage followed. "I thought, Well, The Clarion-Ledger has it, that'll be it, just a local story," said McCook. "We're surprised at all the national attention."
They share the same analysis, however, of what's driving the news. "It's because it's election time," said McCook.
Both women declined to discuss their own political preferences. "I don't deal with politics," said Butler. "I vote for the best person."
They both said, however, that they believed President Bush to be badly misinformed in his assurances to the public that troops in Iraq have all necessary equipment. "He should go to the 343rd," said McCook.
"I don't know how he says these soldiers are all so enthusiastic," said Butler. "He is getting some bad information from someone."
The issue of shortages isn't new, they said.
"It's not as though this hasn't come up before," said McCook. "Even General [Ricardo] Sanchez [former commander of coalition forces in Iraq] wrote a letter to the Pentagon about the equipment problem."
"From what I was told there have been many direct orders disobeyed before this," said Butler. "But it was just one person. This was so many, all at the same moment."
"They all stood together, they made a united front, that's what makes the difference," added McCook. "It's like a fist, it makes a mighty blow. I know you don't have any clout when you stand alone."
Pat McCook has a first-person understanding of how the military works. She spent three years on active duty, serving as an army administrative specialist in 1983 in Fort Polk, Louisiana, where she met her husband. "I loved everything about him," she said. Larry McCook followed her home to Jackson and, about 10 years ago, joined the army reserves. He was working for the Hinds County Sheriff's Office as a detention officer when he was called up last year. In February, he was shipped to Iraq from Rock Hill, South Carolina, where the 343rd is based.
Iraq is Michael Butler's second round of combat in the Middle East. He served in the 1990-91 Gulf War and came home to Jackson, maintaining his enlistment in the reserves. He married Jackie three years ago. When he was summoned for active duty last fall he was working as a carpenter for the Jackson public school system. "I asked him why he was in the army," said Jackie Butler. "He said, 'Baby, I volunteered. I was looking to serve my country, and I wanted to go to school.' He did, too. He got himself licensed as a mechanic and learned carpentry skills. He did well by the army."
Jackie Butler gave her husband a pre-paid telephone calling card when he left. When he was able, they managed to speak two or three times a week. Not all of the calls were reassuring. "I've been talking to him on the phone when I hear the bombs coming in. You hear that sound, 'Ssssss,' and the explosion, and then my husband says, 'Got to go, baby.' "
Michael Butler was home for a two-week leave at the end of August. "He was fine. We didn't go out much; we had the family over, had a lot of fun, eating and laughing. At night, though, me and him would sit together and talk. He talked about the problems he was having over there, the trouble with the equipment. He told these stories. I said, 'Just go to him, your commander.' He said, 'She's a female, and I tried that. She's not going to do anything.' "
Pat McCook also noted changes in her husband after he went to war. "Most of all I love his sense of humor; he is just a naturally funny man. People say he even looks like Eddie Murphy so he should be funny. But ever since he went over, I don't hear it as much in him. I can tell he's worried."
Their husbands' complaints kept coming back to the trucks, both women said. "I remember him pulling out of Rock Hill, South Carolina," said Jackie Butler. "They had to drive down to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Even then the trucks were breaking down. He said he could've outrun those trucks, they went so slow. They were just no good."
In Iraq, breakdowns had occurred while the trucks were on their way to deliver fuel and supplies, the men told their wives. "He said they just sleep on top of the trucks when that happens," said Jackie Butler.
"What they wanted was bulletproof armor for the trucks," said Pat McCook. "At least it gives them a fighting chance."
McCook and Butler weren't the only ones sending up alarms about the incarceration of the platoon members. Relatives of other soldiers in the 343rd also called the media. Some offered a different explanation for the platoon's refusal to take the convoy to Taji. Rick Shealey of Quinton, Alabama, said his son Scott, 29, told him by phone that the fuel the platoon was ordered to deliver to Taji had been contaminated by diesel fuel and had been rejected as unusable when they had tried to deliver it to another army location.
"They had just got back from that trip when they got woken at 4 a.m. and told to take it to Taji," Shealey said. "The soldiers sat there for three hours arguing with the commander, saying it didn't make sense. They were saying, 'Now what if that bad fuel got into a helicopter?' " said Shealey. "I asked my son, 'Wasn't you all tired?' He said, 'Daddy, we do that every day. Tiredness doesn't matter. We are used to it. The point was that the fuel was contaminated. That's the whole reason.' "
Jackie Butler and Pat McCook said that their husbands never raised the fuel issue in their initial conversations, and since then, both women say, their husbands have been guarded in their conversations with them about the incident. "We try not to talk about stuff like that over the phone now," said Butler.
Whatever the army's reasons-either the mini-maelstrom kicked up by the media, or its own second thoughts-the platoon members were freed after being held for about a day, according to relatives. Five members of the platoon, however, including Butler, McCook, and Shealey, were sent to other units. "They saw them as the ringleaders," said Jackie Butler. Pat McCook said her husband told her he is back driving a fuel truck again, this time one in good condition and equipped with armor. "He said it's like going from driving a Yugo to driving a Cadillac," she said.
The army has sent other signals that it recognized that the soldiers had legitimate gripes. Last week, the military confirmed that the commander of the 343rd had been relieved of her duties. Although the army refused to name her, The Clarion-Ledger reported that it was Captain Nancy Daniels, the commander whom sergeants McCook and Butler had complained about. There have also been reports that the army will seek to have the leaders of the revolt released under a general discharge rather than bring courts-martial against them.
"What I would like is to have the army admit that this is why these soldiers did this-to save lives of other soldiers," said Jackie Butler. "They should fix the problem, finish the mission, and get our husbands home-"
"Alive and whole," interjected Pat McCook, beside her on the couch.
"The same way they left," added Butler.
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without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.