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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Industry Attempt to Ban Greenpeace Protest
NRC blocks public access to documents
For Shadis, nuke fight personal
earthquake in Niigata
"ON SHAKY GROUND" WILL JAPAN'S NUKE PLANTS BE NEXT?
Russian ecologists urge Hungary to keep nuclear waste
Pakistan reacts calmly to Indian missile test
India tests medium-range missile
Pakistan's disturbing nuclear trail
Iran Threatens to End Nuclear Talks
Group discloses secret nuke effort
Tough nuclear neighborhood
Iran heavy water nuclear plant nears completion
World wants peaceful solution to Iran nuclear issue, even Israel: Powell
Vienna nuclear talks "very constructive": Iran
Iran unveils plant, indicating it will proceed with nuclear program
No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says
The Weapons No One Looked For
Unusual activity spotted at North Korean missile base: report
S. Korea Joins China in Criticizing U.S. on N. Korea
In Asia, Powell defends N. Korea policy
US plans to acclerate deployment of Aegis warships for missile defense
Russian Diplomats Worried Over EU Nuke Proposal to Iran
Nuclear strike 'key terror risk'
NRC Closes Web Library for Security Review
Energy Department fights state fine at Hanford
Perma-Fix Awarded a $23 Million Contract
Firm gets $23M contract to neutralize waste
MILITARY
Taiwan's controversial arms deal
Scientists warn of 'ethnic weapons'
Halliburton says profit in Iraq is weak
Lending military equipment to US causes headache for Norwegian PM
Turkey's top security body meets for the first time with civilian head
Poland signs defense deal with Iraq
British Troops in Iraq Begin Redeployment
Signs Point to Imminent Showdown in Iraq
Shells point to police in guardsmen slayings
Allawi Accuses Foreign Troops Of Negligence In Massacre
Military Assault in Falluja Is Likely, U.S. Officers Say
Parliament OKs Sharon's withdrawal plan
Sharon Wins Vote For Gaza Pullout
Sharon Rejects Calls for Referendum on Pullout
Settlements Are Emptied for a Day of Protest
Israel's Coming Civil War
Netanyahu, Livnat threaten to quit unless poll held on pullout
The Struggle to Pry Open Brazil's Military Archives
Zarqawi attains mythic status in his Jordanian hometown
Six NATO warships anchor off Montenegro
Ex-CIA Official Defends Detention Policies
Russia To Build South Korean Launch Pad
UN Terrorism Treaty Deadlocked
Small Minority Says Draft Could Happen
Pentagon denies detainees' torture charges
Judge Bars Military from Forced Anthrax Shots
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Hopefuls' Preferences for Court Spring to Forefront
Intelligence bill misses deadline
Turf War Stalls Intelligence Bill
C.I.A. Is Accused of Delaying Internal Report
Deaths in Custody Could Inflame Thailand's Muslim South
Fingerprinting Glitches Are Said to Hurt Antiterror Effort
POLITICS
White House Weighs Price Tag on Emergency Request for Iraq
CBS eyed '60 Minutes' Bush bombshell
36 Papers Abandon Bush for Kerry
Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire
Bush voted "Movie Villain of the Year"
Attacks Sharpen as Clock Ticks Down
The Battle of the Polls:
Pre-emptive Pie-hole Policy Not an Option
Kerry Campaign: Bush-Cheney Ad Fact Check
Supreme Power: Election 2004 and the Future of the Country's Highest Court
Democrats file 9 suits in Florida
Electorate more fearful than officials of vote fraud
Legal Battles Over Ballots Put Election Rules in Flux
ENERGY
Making waves with renewable energy
China told to invest in cleaner energy technology or face consequences
High natgas prices may open way for new US nukes
ACTIVISTS
78 Arrested in Thai Protests Suffocate in Crowded Trucks
Suffocation cited in most deaths
78 Thai Muslims Die After Protest
Thailand Acknowledges Prisoner Deaths During Transit
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Industry Attempt to Ban Greenpeace Protest Against Plutonium Shipment
Common Dreams
October 27, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1027-19.htm
FRANCE -- -- Greenpeace has been summoned to appear in the Cherbourg Court tomorrow, where it will face a request by Areva, through its subsidiary Cogema, and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), for an injunction preventing it from approaching within 300m of the two ships carrying plutonium from the US to France or within 100m of the Cherbourg harbour.
The nuclear companies are further seeking to keep the international organisation from getting closer than 100 m from the road that the nuclear transport will take from the harbour to the La Hague plant (1).
"Once more the nuclear industry is trying to gag peaceful protest. They have nothing to fear from Greenpeace, rather the courts time would be better focussed on the threat posed by 140kg of bomb grade plutonium traversing the high seas and France's highways," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. The hearing will take place in Cherbourg Court tomorrow, Tuesday October 5th, at 2:30 p.m.
The plutonium, sent by the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), left the port of Charleston, South Carolina, on September 20 The Pacific Teal and Pacific Pintail, operated by BNFL, are approaching Cherbourg where an international flotilla of French, English and Irish protest vessels are waiting.
In contrast to recent statements made by the U.S. Government and BNFL this is not a one-off shipment of plutonium It is the first instalment of 68 tonnes of plutonium from US and Russian stockpiles to be put on the world's roads and seas at a time when terrorists are actively seeking such material.
Greenpeace wants and immediate end to plutonium production and separation and believes current stocks both civil and military should be treated as nuclear waste not shipped around the world as reactor fuel. Plutonium should be mixed with radioactive waste, solidified or vitrified, and stored. This approach would be cheaper, faster, safer, and more secure.
Earlier today, Eugene Riguidel, one of France's most famous sailors, John Castle of Guernsey and Pernilla Svenberg from Greenpeace International were released from the military arsenal in Cherbourg. They were arrested yesterday for mounting a peaceful protest inside the military port against the plutonium shipment.
"We have a military exclusion zone in Cherbourg against small yachts while plutonium transports are free to threaten the lives and livelihoods of everyone in their wake, it is the trade in nuclear bomb material that should be banned not peaceful protest," said Eugene Riguidel, after spending a night in jail.
-----
NRC blocks public access to documents
Vermont Guardian
By Kathryn Casa
October 27, 2004
http://vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/1027.shtml#article1
BRATTLEBORO - Nuclear watchdogs are howling over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's move this week to shut down the agency's online database - the public's only comprehensive source for NRC information. The NRC took its Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) offline late Monday afternoon, just hours before NBC Nightly News broadcast a report that revealed the database contained security-sensitive information.
Some of that sensitive information included floor plans of university nuclear laboratories, including one at Norwich University in Northfield. "We did have it pointed out to us that there were some documents that might be better withheld and the way to address that is to shut it down," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said Tuesday.
An e-mail message from an NRC system librarian said it "may be several weeks before the public database is restored."
In Washington, the Union of Concerned Scientists called the action "unbelievable, unfair, unwarranted and unacceptable." That organization has been alerting the agency of security breaches on the site since before the 9/11 attacks, but a complete shutdown is unnecessary, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the group.
"If you decide for whatever reason that access needs to be interrupted, you should suspend all licensing actions until access to ADAMS is restored," said Lochbaum. "Basically they shut the public out, but the nuclear business of power uprates is ongoing."
Among the groups most hampered by the shutdown is the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, which is attempting to legally intervene in the NRC application filed by Vermont Yankee to increase power by 20 percent.
The coalition late Tuesday filed a motion with the NRC calling for Vermont Yankee's corporate owner, Entergy, and the NRC to send all pertinent documents directly to the coalition so that it can continue its work.
The coalition also demanded a 30-day filing extension from the time ADAMS goes back online. Ray Shadis, an adviser to the coalition, said the ADAMS lockout "hampers no one but the public."
A full report will be published in this week's Vermont Guardian, available in stores on Friday.
-------- accidents and safety
For Shadis, nuke fight personal
Reformer
By CAROLYN LORIé
October 27, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8860~2494197,00.html
WISCASSET, Maine -- One of these days, Raymond Shadis plans to do something about the neglected paintings gathering dust and mold in the attic of his art studio.
He would also like to begin the project for which he purchased two bags of cement -- last year -- that sit unopened and ossifying on his front porch.
Similarly, the kitchen windows that were nailed in as a temporary measure in 1972 will be replaced.
But not now.
At the moment, Shadis is occupied taking on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee and anyone else blocking the path to what he considers a safer world.
Shadis began opposing fission for power 25 years ago and ever since, a substantial part of his life has been relegated to the proverbial back burner.
He is now the technical advisor to the nuclear power watchdog group, the New England Coalition, and the executive director to Friends of the Coast, a Maine-based nonprofit.
Considering how powerful the institutions are that Shadis considers to be his adversaries, the undertaking has been no small task. Or as he once put it: "It's like Godzilla versus the ant-people."
Shadis, who is 62, was born and raised in Livingston, N.J., the youngest of three sons. His grandparents were from Lithuania and he refers to the household where he grew up as a "Northern European homestead."
When Shadis was 10, his brother was killed fighting in the Korean War. Fifty-two years later, there is a sharpness in his voice when he speaks of that loss.
"It leaves you with a permanent edge about reckless wars," he explains.
After high school, Shadis went to West Virginia State College, where he majored in fine arts and married a fellow art student named Patricia during their senior year. The couple graduated in 1963 and four years later moved to Wiscasset.
Shadis got a job teaching art in the public schools, while Patricia tended to their growing family and worked various side jobs, including waiting tables.
In 1970, the school opted not to renew Shadis' contract.
"It was a lifestyle question," he says, looking back. "I didn't get my hair cut very often and I probably had an attitude they didn't care for. And I was 'from away.'"
The Shadis' "lifestyle" was one that many people were adopting in the late 1960s and 70s: They grew their own organic food, raised their own animals and lived as much as they could off the land. Ray's art, along with some carpentry jobs on the side, generated enough income to keep the family afloat and the rest they produced themselves.
By 1979, they were more than a decade into their homesteading life.
In addition to Ray and Patricia, the household included their two daughters and four sons. At that time, Shadis' youngest child was 6 years old and had never had a sip of store-bought milk -- a choice that would turn out to be not as wholesome as Shadis would have hoped, although he wouldn't know that until an accident hundreds of miles away changed everything.
At 4 a.m., on March 28, 1979, an electrical or mechanical failure tripped an emergency pump at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, triggering the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
It was the beginning of the end of Shadis' quiet idyllic life.
Although he was well aware that he and his family were living downwind from Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, he had never given it much thought.
After March 28, however, the Shadises began researching the plant and discovered that it was not problem-free. Far from it.
After going over documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Shadis discovered that the neighborhood power plant had had some troubles. Earlier in 1979, coolant was spilled on the reactor floor, the vents failed to open, the filters were not aligned correctly and iodine 131 seeped into the air unmonitored.
"It was indicative to us that the plant wasn't any better run than Three Mile Island," he says.
At that point, the Shadises decided to have the milk from their cows tested, which commercial dairies in the area did regularly. The milk turned out to have the highest concentration of radioactive nucleoids of any of the local farms.
The Shadises sold or slaughtered all their animals.
"We decided that we had to do something. It came down to the question, what do you care about? What do you treasure," says Shadis.
Ray and Pat organized a protest meeting in April 1979. They designed, printed and distributed posters. They called everyone they knew. They sent out mailings. They did everything they could think of to turn the community out and then wondered if people would show up.
They did.
According to Ray, between 750 and 1,000 people attended that first meeting, some standing in the rain for a chance to speak at the podium.
And so began the long battle against Maine Yankee.
Fast forward to 1996. By then, Shadis had given 17 years of his life to the cause of closing the plant and according to those who have worked with him, he had become something of an expert.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, met Shadis in 1996. The NRC had just completed an independent safety inspection at Maine Yankee and Shadis asked Lochbaum for his opinion on the inspection report. Lochbaum was impressed by how much the activist knew.
"He does his homework. When Ray tells me something, he's very seldom wrong," explains Lochbaum.
Peter Alexander, executive director of the coalition, echoes that sentiment.
"I spent two years getting a master's degree in environmental advocacy and have learned more in just a few months from working with Ray than I ever dreamed possible," said Alexander.
But Shadis does have his share of critics. Most of them are people working within the nuclear industry or in the government, who have been on the receiving end of Shadis' less-than-diplomatic barbs.
He has accused elected officials of not knowing the difference between "neutrons and croutons" or of being the "lap dog" of the industry. Most recently he called the hearings before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel a "kangaroo court." The next day he retracted, saying it was much closer to a "platypus court."
"Some people find Ray to be uncompromisingly blunt and some people take offense at that." says Alexander. "My own personal experience is that he is completely accountable and completely accessible as a human being."
He also happens to be effective. It was Shadis who spear-headed the call to have Maine Yankee inspected and Shadis who got the Union of Concerned Scientists involved. The plant permanently shut down in 1997, when the owners decided it would be too costly to fix all the problems uncovered by the inspection.
It took 18 years, but Shadis got what he wanted.
There was, however, a price. One that was paid through the paintings never done and the projects left unfinished and the burden of taking up a fight that seems far from over.
But Shadis has no regrets.
"We'll never win these things by giving out of our surplus. It's only when it's given out of our substance that we'll get somewhere," he says.
Carolyn Lorié can be reached at clorie@reformer.com.
-----
earthquake in Niigata
kisnet.or.jp
October 27, 2004
http://www.kisnet.or.jp/net/help.htm
Dear friends,
It is a chilly morning. After four days since the earthquake in Niigata, the reported figure of casualty has increased up to 31, and more than 2000 have been found injured. It rained yesterday, and 130,000 live in shelters as aftershocks continue.
There is an article from the Asahi Newspaper.
http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200410260126.html
This morning, I received a call for stop operation of the nuclear reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa by email.
The local group "Citizens' Network of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who raise question to Pluthermal Program" calls the immediate shut-down of the nuclear reactors at least until the warning of the Meteorological Agency announces the cease of the aftershocks.
The following is the abstract of the message.
Satomi Oba
Plutonium Action Hiroshima
Kota-goldencat@kfa.biglobe.ne.jp
--
Now is the time to stop Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP.
In spite of the demand to stop the operation of the reactors from citizens and workers at NPP, Neither Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the government, nor local municipalities of Niigata Prefecture and Kashiwazaki City would take action. If there is another bigger shock, it could trigger an unprecedented disaster.
The site of this NPP is located in the area hit by the tremendous earthquake. The workers of the local municipalities, firefighters, and medical workers are working very hard all the time. And they are the most needed power in case of a nuclear disaster.
The Meteorological Agency still warns the possibility for a strong aftershock. http://www.jma.go.jp/JMA_HP/jma/indexe.html
If there be a severe damage at the NPP, it is not likely that the prevention program for the nuclear accidents works as designed, because the infrastructure such as road and railway are destroyed in a wide area. There is a traffic jam even between the NPP and the city of Kashiwazaki.
In such an emergency, the reactors are running as usual! We have heard whistle blowing about the crack of the important pipes, and we are not sure about the reliability of emergency equipments.
(Geological) Experts say that not only possibility of a strong after shock, but separate strong earthquake can take place near the reactors.
Talking on the phone, we found that the local municipalities and the government have had no plan in case of a nuclear disaster now.
At least we think it a wiser decision for the operator to stop the operation of the reactor until the authority announces the cease of the aftershock. Or until the disaster prevention system is recovered.
It is a question why the damages around Kashiwazaki, and Kariwa have been excluded from media reports. (We heard this from friends who live out of the damaged area.)
In fact, water supply has been cut and many are evacuated in Kariwa Village where large number of workers at the NPP lives.
The train of the shinkansen, which had boasted its safety, derailed. Even if the NPP stopped immediately, the nuclear fuel will maintain its heat for a considerable duration. In case of the coolant loss, the nuclear fuel would melt down, causing a catastrophe.
We know the consequence of the nuclear accident will last for an immeasurable time.
We wish you to call the agencies to stop the reactors of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa.
Citizens from Kashiwazaki-Kariwa still in fear of continuous aftershocks
net0257328818@hotmail.com http://www.kisnet.or.jp/net/
-----
"ON SHAKY GROUND" WILL JAPAN'S NUKE PLANTS BE NEXT?
Dateline Tokyo
http://www.mothersalert.org/earthquake.html
Legend has it that there is a giant catfish buried deep in the sand beneath the Japanese islands who occasionally shifts and changes positions. When that happens the earth shakes and splits, rocks roll down from the mountain tops and the fragile constructions of human beings collapse. People used to say that the ever present danger of earthquakes here contributed to the Japanese sense of ephemerality of all things.
Who would have thought they would build forty-eight [now fifty-two] nuclear power plants on the back of the catfish?
Naturally, people worry about this. In the visitor's center at the Mihama Nuclear Power Complex there is an earthquake safety demonstration display. Viewers stand in front of a mock reactor and a narrator's voice says, "See, the reactor can be safely stopped."
As it happens, running directly beneath this Visitor's Center is an earthquake fault. Far from believing in the ephemerality of their constructions, power company scientists and engineers in Japan seem to believe that science and technology, properly employed, can overcome unpredictability and eliminate the danger of an "accident" from the world. This is a superstition common to scientists everywhere. Without it, no one in his right mind would build a nuclear power plant.
When the nuclear plant at Chernobyl blew up, Japan's nuclear engineers went on TV to assure the public it can't happen here. The Chernobyl plant was badly built; Japanese plants are of a different type, and have superior safety features. There will not be an accident.
And when the killer earthquake hit San Francisco on 1989, and ferro-concrete buildings, elevated highways and a piece of the Bay Bridge came down, engineers here went on TV and said much the same thing. The buildings and highways that collapsed were not built to be earthquake proof, they explained. In Japan, where earthquakes are well understood, all large constructions are built to withstand any earthquake that might predictably occur.
In the great Kobe earthquake of January 17, 1995, every kind of construction went down -- concrete buildings disintegrated, steel buildings looked like squashed tin cans, the subway became a mine disaster and 550 yards of the Hanshin Super highway toppled over to one side, it's massive posts reduced to gravel.
Now the experts are back on TV again, explaining. The construction was earthquake proof, they say, meaning it was built to withstand any earthquake that might PREDICTABLY come to Kobe. This earthquake was beyond prediction. It was bigger than anyone thought possible, and also different. It occurred on a number of different faults, some of which had not even been know to exist. It jiggled in an unusual way, producing strange effects, such as the collapse of only one of the middle floors of high-rise buildings.
It was a tremendous accident of nature. Accidents can happen. The city of Kobe lies next to the southwest corner of what is called the Kinki Triangle, an area where an extraordinarily large number of earthquake faults form a roughly triangular shape. The southeast corner of the triangle is under Ise Bay, and the tip is under Tsuruga Peninsula. Tsuruga is at the eastern edge of Japan's notorious Genpatsu Ginza -- eighty eight miles of coastline dotted with fifteen nuclear power plants. The peninsula itself is the site of the prototype fast breeder reactor Monju, three pressurized water reactors, two boiling water reactors plus a unique Japanese reactor called Fugen, which like Monju, uses plutonium (the earth's most toxic substance) as a fuel. Any one of the commercial reactors on the Genpatsu Ginza contains, at the time of refueling, 1,000 times the radiation generated by the Hiroshima bomb. Monju, on the other hand, contains 1.4 TONS of plutonium. If an "unpredictable" Kobe scale earthquake hit Tsuruga, Koreans would wonder at the green sun rising to their east at the wrong time.
Could such an accident happen?
There is an earthquake fault that runs a third of a mile east of the Mihama Complex (the one under the visitor's center), passing about half-mile west of Monju. Government officials insist that this fault is "inactive." Other experts point out that "inactive" simply means that there has been no earthquake for a long time. It is utterly unscientific to say that this guarantees that there will be no earthquake on that fault in the future. As mentioned above, the Kobe earthquake occurred partly on faults that the experts didn't even know were there.
In any case, the "earthquake-proof" power plants were built on the basis of calculations that excluded the possibility of of an earthquake on this fault. Other faults also run in the area. Calculations that include the possibility of an earthquake on a combination of these faults indicate an earthquake with twenty times the force of the maximum predicted by the governments experts.
What would happen then? One official complained, "That's like asking what would happen if the world blew up!"
There is a strong, but by no means strong enough, anti-nuclear power movement in Japan. On the whole it has been weakened by excessive trust in scientists and government officials.: "They must know what they are doing" is the usual refrain. The Kobe catastrophe has made it clear that they do not. There is no question that nuclear power generation is absurd on these shifting islands and will be abolished some day. The only question is whether that day will come in time."
-------- europe
Russian ecologists urge Hungary to keep nuclear waste
MOSCOW (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027170612.13uq6csr.html
Russian ecologists and inhabitants of the region of Cheliabinsk in the Ural mountains wrote to Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on Wednesday urging him to stop plans to send 1.5 tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia, the green organisation Ekozachtchita (Eco-defence) said.
Russia and Hungary are currently negotiating the transfer the waste from the Paks nuclear plant to the south of Budapest, to Russia's only factory processing nuclear waste, Maiak, in the region of Cheliabinsk, Vladimir Sliviak, the co-president of Ebozachtchita told AFP.
"Maiak has a monstrous heritage," according to a message to the Hungarian premier signed by 5,000 inhabitants of the region of Cheliabinsk. "Over the past 50 years a lot of people (living in the area) were victims of radiation."
The statement said that if the transfer went ahead Hungary would "become an accomplice to the kinds of nuclear experiences practiced on millions of Russians. Hungary's ecological problems should not be resolved at Russia's expense".
Russia's Supreme Court in May 2002 banned Hungary from sending nuclear waste to Russian territory after ecological organisations and inhabitants of the region for stocking.
However, the court did not ban to delivery of the waste for processing.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan reacts calmly to Indian missile test
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027114001.r0lljpre.html
Pakistan reacted calmly to neighbouring India's test on Wednesday of a nuclear-capable missile, while emphasising it did not want an "open-ended" arms race in South Asia.
India tested the naval version of its Prithvi-III nuclear-capable ballistic missile, which has a range of 250 to 300 kilometres (156 to 188 miles).
Foreign office spokesman Masood Khan told AFP Islamabad had noted the missile test and had prior information about it through Pakistan's mission in New Delhi.
He said Pakistan had also conducted similar tests to validate the technical parameters of its arsenal.
Khan said Pakistan and India were committed to working towards strategic stability in the region and a meeting of the two nations' nuclear experts was scheduled for December 14-15 in Islamabad.
"We do not favour an open-ended arms race in South Asia. We believe that a strategic restraint is in the interest of both nations," Khan said.
Pakistan conducted its last missile test on October 12 when it fired a Hatf V or Ghauri missile with a range of 1,500 kilometres. It was the country's fourth missile test this year.
Nuclear-capable India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars, routinely carry out missile tests.
-----
India tests medium-range missile
BBC
27 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3957587.stm
India has successfully test-fired a naval version of its Prithvi-III nuclear-capable missile, defence sources say.
The launch took place on Wednesday in the Bay of Bengal off Chandipur in the state of Orissa.
India's nuclear rival, Pakistan, test-fired its own nuclear-capable missile on 12 October.
Both countries have continued test launches on a routine basis despite the recent peace process.
Underwater platform
The latest launch comes two days after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suggested a new initiative to end the long-standing bilateral dispute over Kashmir.
The Prithvi has a range of up to 300km (180 miles), can carry a nuclear warhead and can be launched either from a ship or submarine.
The Press Trust of India said the latest launch was the first from an artificial underwater platform.
Pakistan has conducted four tests this year of its nuclear-capable Ghauri missile.
Islamabad said it had been notified of the latest Indian test through its mission in Delhi.
Pakistani foreign office spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan and India were committed to working towards regional strategic stability.
-----
Pakistan's disturbing nuclear trail
Materials from A.Q. Khan's black-market nuclear network remain unaccounted for.
October 27, 2004
By Faye Bowers
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1027/p03s01-usgn.html
WASHINGTON - It's been a year since US and British agents boarded a German ship in the Mediterranean Sea that led to the exposure of the unimaginable: a vast black-market nuclear arms bazaar operating under superpower radar for more than a decade.
Today, investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and some 20 countries working together have uncovered many parts of the clandestine network run by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Just in the past month, three more people who allegedly acted as middlemen were arrested in South Africa. The records confiscated from these men's companies, together with other confiscated documents and information from Dr. Khan and his top aides, have led to the virtual shutdown of the clandestine network.
But government officials and experts say that in today's world, where both major presidential candidates say nuclear proliferation is the nation's most critical security threat, much more needs to be done.
"Overall, the Khan network is the biggest nonproliferation disaster of the nuclear age," says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "It is certainly good news that at least the beginning of breaking up that network has occurred. Unfortunately, a substantial number of players in that network are still walking around free people."
Those walking free are probably additional businessmen, still unidentified, with specific technical capabilities to manufacture parts for centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium, a necessary ingredient for a nuclear bomb.
Moreover, Dr. Khan and his top aides remain free, or at least semi-free. Although Khan publicly admitted his guilt this past February, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him. Khan is said to be under house arrest in five costly mansions. His top aides are free as well, their movements apparently monitored.
Neither US nor IAEA investigators have been given access to Khan and his aides - a huge problem, investigators say, because they need to know if other countries besides Libya, North Korea, and Iran were offered Khan's plans and/or technology. For example, investigators in Iraq found records indicating that before the 1991 Gulf War, Khan offered Saddam Hussein, through a middleman, the same blueprints that he provided Libya.
Pakistani officials have interviewed Khan and his aides, and have "provided some information," says a Western diplomat close to the IAEA. "But they could provide much more."
Far more useful, say experts familiar with the network, have been documents confiscated in the raids on the various companies tied to the network - in Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Malaysia, Dubai, and South Africa.
The IAEA, the nuclear watchdog arm of the United Nations, has no leverage on Pakistani officials. The United States is widely seen as the only country with the clout to pressure Pakistan.
But Washington walks a fine line with Islamabad: It must avoid alienating the country, since it's crucial to the US war on terror. At the same time, however, by backing the Musharraf regime too much, the US could inflame Islamic radicals in the country, leading to the government's overthrow. Relations between the two nations are tenuous.
Still, on balance, many experts think the US could do more to persuade Pakistan to let IAEA investigators interview Khan. "For the US to leverage Musharraf so the IAEA could talk to Khan, how does that destabilize Pakistan?" asks David Albright, president of the Institute of Science and International Security in Washington.
US government officials, for their part, won't talk about how much information Musharraf has handed over, nor how much pressure they are applying. A CIA official said the State Department is the government's focal point for tracking the network. Secretary of State Colin Powell has only said he's speaking with Musharraf, who is cooperating.
Still, investigators and officials are concerned that Khan's plans and technology may have been passed to other unknown people or countries.
One top concern: Critical parts for the centrifuge remain unaccounted for, even though individuals and companies in some 30 countries have been apprehended and searched, IAEA officials say. That suggests that other companies or people, still not caught, may be able to produce the missing parts.
"There's no sense that all the information this network possessed - gas centrifuge or nuclear weapons design or fabrication - has been recovered," says Dr. Albright. "It's still out there and could be offered to others."
"The most disturbing sign found in Libya was the bomb blueprints," says the Western diplomat close to the IAEA. "Is there some hard disk somewhere that has all these designs and where are they?"
Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman, says an intensive probe is under way. "We need to determine who all the players were, what was involved, who the customers were, and to what extent it has now been busted or contained."
-------- iran
Iran Threatens to End Nuclear Talks
October 27, 2004
By SUSANNA LOOF
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader threatened to pull out of negotiations if European countries press their demand for total suspension of uranium enrichment, as a new round of talks ended Wednesday without an agreement to avert the possible threat of U.N. sanctions.
Britain, France and Germany are trying to work out a deal that would avoid a standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, which the United States says aims to develop nuclear weapons.
The Europeans are offering Iran incentives - a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology, including a light-water research reactor - in return for a halt in enrichment, which can produce fuel for both nuclear energy and atomic weapons.
They have warned that most European states will back Washington's call to refer Iran's nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions if Tehran doesn't give up all uranium enrichment activities before the Nov. 25 meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
In talks Wednesday, Iran's delegates insisted on the right to enrich uranium. And supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all issues in Iran, ruled out any long-term suspension of the program.
"A long term suspension of enrichment is a discussion without logic," Khamenei said, according to state-run television in Tehran.
"If there is any form of threat in the talks, it will show a lack of logic on the part of (Iran's) partners in the negotiations," he said. "In that case, the great Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic of Iran will reconsider the very basis of negotiations and cooperation."
Sirus Naseri, a member of the Iranian delegation at the talks in Vienna, said "total suspension will not be accepted under any circumstances."
Diplomats have called the EU package a "last chance" offer ahead of a key Nov. 25 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The meeting could result in Tehran's defiance being reported to the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose punishing sanctions.
Still, Iranian negotiators held out the possibility of a compromise with the Europeans. The Iranians and British officials said another round of talks would be held soon.
Hossein Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, told Iran's state-run radio Wednesday that Iran has not ruled out a compromise with the Europeans before the IAEA meeting.
"We haven't closed the door for an understanding before the November meeting, but will reach compromise if there is a balanced package of agreements. Obligations and confidence-building measures have to be bilateral," said Mousavian, adding that the agreement had to be clear and contain a timetable.
"There has to be no discrimination against Iran," he said.
In London, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said "some progress was made toward identifying the elements of a common approach toward the issues, and the two sides agreed to meet again shortly."
Iran insists its nuclear activities are peaceful and geared solely toward generating electricity. The United States, pointing to Iran's vast oil reserves, contends it is running a covert nuclear weapons program.
Heightening the U.S. concerns, Iran has resumed testing, assembling and making centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
The European envoys, who first presented their offer to the Iranians in Vienna last week, made clear they would not budge on the enrichment issue, but Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, has suggested there was some flexibility in the talks.
Rowhani told state television earlier this week his government might be willing to consider a temporary suspension of enrichment, but he cautioned: "No other country can stop us exploring technology which is the legal right of Iran."
Rowhani said Iran has run its program "under the influence of agreements and safeguards of the IAEA" and has signed a so-called additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows unfettered IAEA inspections of Iranian facilities.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
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Group discloses secret nuke effort
October 27, 2004
By Jennifer Joan Lee
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-100139-5203r.htm
PARIS - The Iranian opposition group that exposed the nation's covert nuclear weapons program two years ago said yesterday that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the effort to continue in secret.
The opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), also disclosed the existence of what it said is a new uranium enrichment facility in central Iran that is nearing completion.
Speaking to reporters in Paris yesterday, Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI's Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Iranian regime is "playing a double game" with Europe.
"Khamenei has ordered his regime to not only continue the enrichment of uranium, but to buy time and accelerate the project in order to make the bomb as quickly as possible," Mr. Mohaddessin said.
"Khamenei has ordered his diplomats and his negotiators to prolong the negotiations as much as possible, possibly by between eight and 12 months, which is exactly the time needed to complete the bomb," he said.
The Bush administration and European powers have branded the NCRI a terrorist group, mainly because its military wing was sheltered by Saddam Hussein at bases in Iraq, from which it launched attacks in Iran.
The group, however, gained credibility in August 2002 by exposing another secret uranium enrichment facility being built underground in Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, and a heavy water production facility at Arak, about 120 miles southwest of Tehran.
That exposure triggered the current nuclear standoff with Iran, by forcing the Islamist regime to open these sites to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Talks today between European negotiators and Iran represent a "last-chance" at getting the Tehran regime to stop enriching uranium and avoid the threat of U.N. sanctions.
In exchange, the Europeans are offering technical assistance - such as helping Iran build a light-water power reactor and providing a supply of reactor fuel - and trade incentives.
Mr. Mohaddessin said that while the regime was negotiating with Europe, it was also putting the finishing touches on a major site that would be needed to produce large quantities of enriched uranium.
The site, located in Isfahan in central Iran, would convert uranium oxide, called "yellowcake," into uranium hexafluoride gas, a stage prior to enrichment.
He said a test center for centrifuges had been constructed with "utmost discretion" near the site, and that between 120 and 180 centrifuges will be installed there.
Uranium hexafluoride is fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Mr. Mohaddessin credited a network of sources inside Iran for his information.
A spokesman at the British Foreign Office, reached by telephone, declined to comment on Mr. Mohaddessin's charges but said there was "nothing to lose" by continuing to negotiate.
"If we do get compliance, that's all well and good, and if we don't, there's more chance of a consensus at the next [IAEA] board meeting because all options would have been looked at," he said.
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Tough nuclear neighborhood
The Washington Times
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
October 27, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041026-090659-7596r.htm
From the days of Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, who ruled the Persian empire some 500 years before Christ, through the shah en shah (king of kings), who lost his throne to revolutionary clerics in 1979, the talons of military supremacy ruled strategic thinking. The shah, not the ayatollahs, decided Iran would be a nuclear power.
Before the cancer-stricken shah was forced into exile, he had launched a plan to build 20 nuclear reactors, including two in Bushehr, which became a Russian project. The shah's regime also ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970, and promptly began research and development efforts on fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
Today, as the ayatollahs survey the neighborhood, Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers - Russia to the north, Israel to the West, Pakistan and India to the east. That's four of the world's eight nuclear powers. No amount of economic sticks and carrots will deflect the Iranian theocracy from a course originally set by the late shah. The ayatollahs will lie and cheat, but they won't roll over and play dead like Libya's Col. Muammar Gadhafi, who surrendered his embryonic nuclear weapons program.
Russia made clear in 2002 it will finish construction of the $840 million nuclear reactor in Bushehr and has contracted to build five more Iranian reactors over the next 10 years for $10 billion. Jobless former Soviet nuclear engineers are known to have landed lucrative contracts in Iran. Could this know-how and expertise have rubbed off on Iranian counterparts in the form of weapons technology?
With 140,000 U.S. soldiers next door in Iraq, and U.S. carrier task forces south and west in the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean, and the Israeli Air Force rehearsing pre-emptive strikes against Iran's underground nuclear facilities, the incentives, as the ayatollahs see them, are to speed things up. Tehran is also buying time by agreeing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A new IAEA report on Iran won't be ready till mid-February 2005.
"We have a lot of work to do before we can conclude that Iran's program is exclusively for peaceful purposes," as the clerics claim, said IAEA Director-General Mohammed el-Baradei. Meanwhile, uranium enrichment and a parallel plutonium effort continue in 11 different underground facilities. These are designed to reduce the risk of detection or attack.
Pakistani denials notwithstanding, nuclear black marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and arguably his country's most popular figure, built his fortune by assisting North Korea and Iran - two of the evildoers on President Bush's axis of evil - in their nuclear quest. Mr. Khan supplied the centrifuges now used to process uranium into fuel for reactors or fissile material for bombs.
Iran received Mr. Khan's centrifuge designs as early as 1987. That was when Gen. Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's late dictator, greenlighted secret nuclear cooperation with Iran. Pakistan's intelligence agency knew Iran was willing to cough up several billion dollars - much of it in free oil - for "Dr. Strangelove" Khan's nuclear secrets. Mr. Khan and some of his nuclear scientists made several trips to Iran in the late 1990s.
President Pervez Musharraf has assured the Bush administration he knew nothing of Mr. Khan's extracurricular activities. If that were true, Mr. Musharraf was conceding by the same token he didn't know what his intelligence agency was up to.
Some ranking European diplomats based in Tehran have told their home governments Iran will pursue its nuclear ambitions as long as Israel remains the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Israel, for its part, long ago concluded its very survival depends on its nuclear monopoly in the region. Hence, its decision to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor before it went critical in 1981.
With 10 percent of the world's oil reserves and oil at $50 plus per barrel, Iran may not be too impressed by the threat of U.S. and European sanctions under counter-proliferation strategies. But these may persuade Iran to opt out of NPT and, like North Korea, go nuclear before the U.S. can figure out how to neutralize its efforts.
North Korea's latest act of nuclear defiance came over the weekend with a warning it would double its nuclear deterrent force if the United States persists in challenging its nuclear-weapons program.
Iraq has drained what little credibility the United States has left in the Middle East. For the United States to demand an end to Iran's nuclear programs while developing a new class of bunker-busting tactical nukes and to acquiesce in Israel's nuclear arsenal by pretending it doesn't exist, doesn't build back trust.
Unencumbered by image problems in the Middle East, Israel may take it upon itself to find a military solution to Iran's budding nuclear threat. That may well be the message the Bush administration intended when it was leaked that the United States had supplied Israel with 500 deep-penetration precision-guided bombs. They are effective through concrete walls and ceilings to a depth of 100 meters.
There is little doubt Israel, using fighter-bombers, air-to-air refueling over Iraq, and submarine-launched cruise missiles from the Persian Gulf, can retard Iran's nuclear plans several years. But there is also little doubt such an Israeli strike would inflame the region. Some Arab intelligence sources believe Iran would retaliate by "activating" a new Iran-Iraq front. That, in turn, would spell quagmire for U.S. forces in Iraq.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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Iran heavy water nuclear plant nears completion
REUTERS
October 27, 2004
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20041027-0357-nuclear-iran-plant.html
TEHRAN - An Iranian nuclear plant which atomic experts say could give the Islamic state access to bomb-grade material is nearing completion, a senior Iranian nuclear official said on Wednesday.
The Arak heavy water production facility in central Iran is one of several plants the European Union is hoping to persuade Tehran to close down.
"Two of the three main units are now operational," said Manouchehr Madadi, head of research and development at Arak.
"We hope that the third unit will become operational by the end of the current (Iranian) year (March 2005) so that we can reach full production capacity," he told state television.
Iran denies U.S. accusations that it is making a covert bid to build nuclear arms and it has resisted international pressure to scale back an ambitious atomic programme.
Iran's defiance has brought it to the brink of being referred to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions when the International Atomic Energy Agency's board next meets on November 25.
Iranian officials were due to meet negotiators from Britain, Germany and France in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss an EU proposal which would avert Security Council referral provided Tehran freezes key activities which could be used to produce bomb-grade material.
The announcement on the Arak facility, which followed the announcement earlier this week that another nuclear facility in the city of Isfahan was near completion, reflected Tehran's desire to show it intends to push ahead with its atomic plans regardless of international pressure.
The heavy water complex at Arak is designed to feed a 40 megawatt heavy water reactor to be built nearby.
Experts say bomb-grade plutonium is far easier to extract from used fuel rods at heavy water reactors than at the more common light water reactors.
Part of the EU trio's proposal to Iran, being discussed in Vienna, is the offer of help with a light water reactor in exchange for Iran scrapping its heavy water reactor project.
Arak is one of two key Iranian nuclear sites. The other is the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, first revealed by an Iranian exile opposition group in 2002.
U.N. inspectors have subsequently visited both sites and many others in Iran. While they have uncovered considerable activities which are potentially weapons-related, they have not found a "smoking gun" that proves Iran is seeking atomic arms.
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World wants peaceful solution to Iran nuclear issue, even Israel: Powell
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027203258.0gohesz2.html
The entire world, including Israel, wants a peaceful solution to problems posed by Iran's nuclear program, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday.
"I think the whole world, to include Israel, is trying to find a diplomatic and peaceful solution to this problem," Powell told CNBC.
He said he had no information on rumors that Israel might launch pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities if Israeli officials suspect Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Earlier, Iran and the European Union failed to agree on getting Tehran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities but will hold more talks on the matter, an Iranian official said after a meeting in Vienna.
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Vienna nuclear talks "very constructive": Iran
AFP
Oct 27, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041027/wl_mideast_afp/iran_nuclear_iaea_europe_041027170303
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran said its negotiations on uranium enrichment with European officials in Vienna were "very constructive" while insisting on its right to nuclear technology, state television reported.
"The negotiations were very constructive for Iran, and numerous questions were dealt with during five hours of negotiations," a member of the delegation said, quoted on television.
Officials from Britain, France and Germany met with their Iranian counterparts to hear Tehran's response to an offer that would allow it to avoid potential UN sanctions and receive nuclear technology for indefinitely suspending uranium enrichment.
"Negotiations will continue and, most certainly, can satisfy both parties," Syrus Nasseri, also part of the delegation, told Iranian television, adding that "Iran will in no way give up its right to uranium enrichment."
While the talks broke up without any agreement announced, Nasseri told journalists in the Austrian capital where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based that a follow-up meeting would be hosted "very soon" by one of the so-called European Three.
"A certain progress has been accomplished and there will soon be a second meeting," senior nuclear official Hossein Moussavian told AFP in Tehran.
"Concerning the suspension of uranium enrichment, as a confidence-building measure, we have not yet given a definitive reply."
The MP in charge of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee insisted that Europe recognize the Islamic republic's right to uranium enrichment.
"It is very important that our right to uranium enrichment be recognised and they (the Europeans) must recognize this right", Allaeddin Borujerdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA agency.
"I hope we reach an agreement that considers (Iran's) need to follow through with (peaceful) nuclear technology," Borujerdi added.
He also said that a bill to force Iran's reformist government to resume uranium enrichment in defiance of the IAEA was likely to pass after it is debated Sunday.
"I think this bill will be adopted by a vast majority," Borujerdi said of the bill that was proposed earlier this month by his committee.
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Iran unveils plant, indicating it will proceed with nuclear program
Oct. 27, 2004
Knight Ridder Newspapers
By Saeed Kousha and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10030936.htm
ARAK, Iran - Iranian officials unveiled their disputed heavy water plant 40 miles south of here Wednesday in a sign that Iran has no plans to suspend its nuclear program, despite calls from the United States to do so.
Leading a small group of journalists on the first-ever public tour of the facility, the plant's deputy director for research and development said that if the West won't provide Iran with nuclear technology, Iranians would provide it themselves. He said the United States and Europe have no reason to be concerned about the plant.
"They are 100 percent wrong" to be concerned over Iran's development of the ability to manufacture heavy water, said Manouchehr Madadi. "It is only for research."
So-called heavy water, which contains a heavier hydrogen particle than regular water, will allow Iran to run other nuclear reactors with the natural uranium it mines, rather than enriched uranium, which is far more expensive and difficult to produce, Madadi said.
But heavy water also can be used to develop material for nuclear weapons. It's that possibility that has alarmed the Bush administration, which has demanded the site be shut down and Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment halted.
Great Britain, Germany and France, trying to avert a showdown next month between Iran and the United States before the U.N. Security Council, have offered to provide Iran with nuclear fuel and a light water research reactor that can't be used to develop nuclear weapons if Iran agrees to cease activities like those at Arak.
Iranian officials told European negotiators in Vienna Wednesday that they wouldn't suspend work on their nuclear program. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened on Iranian television to pull out of the talks if the West failed to soften its stance.
There were no signs of surrender at the plant, heralded at its entrance by a sign reading "Distillation Workshop." Anti-aircraft batteries guarded the facility.
Showing off the maze of pipes, cranes and scaffolding that took 10 years to construct, Madadi said the plant currently produces 8 tons of heavy water a year.
Within five months, he said, the plant is expected to double its output. Madadi said the plant's output would be used only for peaceful purposes.
But the facility remains a question for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog in Vienna scrutinizing Iran's nuclear activities whose inspectors have toured it twice.
"Of all the types of nuclear reactor, why heavy water?" asked one Western diplomat reached by phone in Vienna, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
(Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondent Kousha reported from Arak, Iran. Nelson reported from Amman, Jordan.)
-------- iraq / inspections
MISSING EXPLOSIVES
No Check of Bunker, Unit Commander Says
October 27, 2004
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27bomb.html?oref=login
hite House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.
But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.
The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.
Colonel Anderson, who is now the chief of staff for the division and who spoke by telephone from Fort Campbell, Ky., said his troops had been driving north toward Baghdad and had paused at Al Qaqaa to make plans for their next push.
"We happened to stumble on it,'' he said. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."
What had been, for the colonel and his troops, an unremarkable moment during the sweep to Baghdad took on new significance this week, after The New York Times, working with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," reported that the explosives at Al Qaqaa, mainly HMX and RDX, had disappeared since the invasion.
Earlier this month, officials of the interim Iraqi government informed the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives disappeared sometime after the fall of Mr. Hussein on April 9, 2003. Al Qaqaa, which has been unguarded since the American invasion, was looted in the spring of 2003, and looters were seen there as recently as Sunday.
President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, they could have been removed before the invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video images of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.
By yesterday afternoon Mr. Bush's aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.
On Sunday, administration officials said that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. taskforce that hunted for unconventional weapons, had been ordered to look into the disappearance of the explosives. On Tuesday night, CBS News reported that Charles A. Duelfer, the head of the taskforce, denied receiving such an order.
At the Pentagon, a senior official, who asked not to be identified, acknowledged that the timing of the disappearance remained uncertain. "The bottom line is that there is still a lot that is not known," the official said.
The official suggested that the material could have vanished while Mr. Hussein was still in power, sometime between mid-March, when the international inspectors left, and April 3, when members of the Army's Third Infantry Division fought with Iraqis inside Al Qaqaa. At the time, it was reported that those soldiers found a white powder that was tentatively identified as explosives. The site was left unguarded, the official said.
The 101st Airborne Division arrived April 10 and left the next day. The next recorded visit by Americans came on May 27, when Task Force 75 inspected Al Qaqaa, but did not find the large quantities of explosives that had been seen in mid-March by the international inspectors. By then, Al Qaqaa had plainly been looted.
Colonel Anderson said he did not see any obvious signs of damage when he arrived on April 10, but that his focus was strictly on finding a secure place to collect his troops, who were driving and flying north from Karbala.
"There was no sign of looting here," Colonel Anderson said. "Looting was going on in Baghdad, and we were rushing on to Baghdad. We were marshaling in."
A few days earlier, some soldiers from the division thought they had discovered a cache of chemical weapons that turned out to be pesticides. Several of them came down with rashes, and they had to go through a decontamination procedure. Colonel Anderson said he wanted to avoid a repeat of those problems, and because he had already seen stockpiles of weapons in two dozen places, did not care to poke through the stores at Al Qaqaa.
"I had given instructions, 'Don't mess around with those. It looks like they are bunkers; we're not messing around with those things. That's not what we're here for,' " he said. "I thought we would be there for a few hours and move on. We ended up staying overnight."
Thom Shanker and William J. Broad contributed reporting for this article.
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The Weapons No One Looked For
antiwar.com
by Matthew Barganier
October 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/barganier2/?articleid=3862
Who was searching for the vast cache of explosives recently revealed to be missing from al-Qaqaa? Not the U.S. military:
"The first U.S. military unit to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that Iraqi officials say were stolen from the site sometime following the fall of Baghdad, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.
"When the troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.
"The soldiers 'secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area,' Wellman wrote in an e-mail message. 'Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.'
"'Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they [high-explosive weapons] were everywhere in Iraq,' he wrote.
"His remarks appeared to confirm the observations of an NBC reporter embedded with the army unit who said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives during their 24 hours at the facility en route to Baghdad, 30 miles to the north."
CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who recently released his findings on Iraq's missing WMD, says he was never told to look for the weapons, either. Meanwhile, the State Department claims that securing all weapons facilities in Iraq was "impossible."
"'We, from the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, did everything we could to secure arms caches throughout the country. But given the number of arms and the number of caches and the extent of militarization of Iraq it was impossible to provide 100 percent security for 100 percent of the sites,' [State Department spokesman Adam] Ereli said."
But according to a top Iraqi science official, the weapons could not have been removed from the site before the Hussein regime fell.
Either way, according to reporter David J. Morris, al-Qaqaa is only the beginning:
"However disturbing this story, what the New York Times and CBS News have overlooked so far is that the missing munitions at Al Qaqaa are only the tip of the iceberg and in all likelihood represent a mere fraction of the illicit explosive material currently circulating in Iraq. Having personally toured weapons caches comparable in scale to Al Qaqaa and seen similar ordnance in the process of being converted into roadside bombs at an insurgent hideout, I believe that the theft and redistribution of conventional explosives and weapons represent the largest long-term threat to American troops in Iraq. Strangely enough, it is likely that dealing with this conventional weapons threat, rather than eradicating the mythical unconventional WMD threat, will be the U.S. legacy in Iraq."
-------- korea
Unusual activity spotted at North Korean missile base: report
SEOUL (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027035501.ykznnpc5.html
The United States, South Korea and Japan have been closely monitoring a North Korean missile base where brisk activity has been spotted in the past several days, a newspaper reported here Wednesday.
The three countries have yet to confirm the movements at the base in Jeongju, 100 kilometers (some 60 miles) north of Pyongyang, are for test-firing missiles or for simple training, the largest-circulation South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo said, quoting an unnamed official.
"Since two or three days ago, there have been activities -- such as the relocation of mobile launchers in an apparent bid to test-fire Scud or Rodong missiles," the official said.
"We are following the movements to see if this is just part of a routine training or intended to launch a missile."
Seoul's defense ministry officials refused to confirm the report.
North Korea has short-range Scud missiles targeting South Korea and intermediate-range Rodong missiles with a 1,300 kilometer range which cover most areas of Japan.
Pyongyang stunned the world in 1998 by test-launching over Japan a Taepodong-1 missile with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers.
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S. Korea Joins China in Criticizing U.S. on N. Korea
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post
October 27, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63255-2004Oct26?language=printer
SEOUL, Oct. 26 -- South Korea joined China on Tuesday in expressing concern that the Bush administration had not been sufficiently creative or willing to compromise in stalled negotiations over ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
South Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon, told reporters after meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that he suggested to Powell that the United States and its allies "must come up with a more creative and realistic proposal" to lure North Korea back to the talks "as soon as possible." He did not elaborate.
Chinese officials in Beijing told Powell on Monday that the Bush administration should be more open to compromise in the six-nation talks. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told him that China wished "the U.S. side would go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude," the official New China News Agency reported.
The United States has insisted that it will give North Korea no rewards until the communist state fully discloses its nuclear programs and allows independent verification of its report. South Korea and Japan, by contrast, have proposed to immediately provide fuel oil if the North commits to freeze and ultimately dismantle its programs.
At the news conference with Ban, Powell defended the administration's position. "We have a good proposal on the table," Powell said, noting that U.S. officials had modified their plan in June, which he said demonstrated flexibility.
"The way to move forward is to have the next round of six-party talks so we can discuss that proposal and not have negotiations with ourselves at press conferences," Powell said.
During a three-day swing through the region, Powell won support from Japan, China and South Korea for resuming the talks as soon as possible. But the conflicting statements on the U.S. position suggested a growing divide with key U.S. allies over how to structure an opening offer to North Korea.
Multilateral talks planned for September were scrapped after North Korea refused to attend, citing what it described as the Bush administration's "hostile policy."
South Korean officials have privately pressed the United States to make a symbolic contribution to the fuel oil deliveries, such as paying a few million dollars in administrative expenses. But the Bush administration has resisted the idea.
In official statements before Powell's arrival in Asia on Saturday, North Korea tried to take advantage of the division by insisting it would return to the bargaining table only if the United States committed to making such a goodwill gesture upfront. At the news conference Tuesday, Ban also expressed some irritation at a new U.S. law signed by President Bush last week that calls for human rights issues in North Korea to be addressed at the nuclear talks. Ban said that while South Korea supports standing up for human rights in the North, "the particular situations of that particular country have to be taken into account when we deal with these kinds of issues." He expressed hope that the legislation -- heavily criticized by the North Korean government -- would not harm the talks.
Three rounds of talks, which also include Russia, have been held in Beijing since August 2003, with inconclusive results. Li said China would "make efforts to push for a new round of six-party talks at the earliest possible date." In the past, China, North Korea's main benefactor, has provided aid worth tens of millions of dollars to North Korea before each session in order to prod its reclusive government to send a delegation.
During his one-day visit to Seoul, the South Korean capital, Powell also sought to ease concerns over the Bush administration's plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in South Korea. The cut is part of a broader plan for military redeployments around the world designed in part to better counter terrorist groups.
The reduction of U.S. troops, including some stationed in Seoul, "will return valuable urban land to our Korean hosts that will allow us to adapt to the new international circumstances and take advantage of new military technology" while still deterring North Korea, Powell said.
U.S. intelligence analysts have said they believe that North Korea has produced enough weapons-grade plutonium in the past two years to make six nuclear weapons. Officially, the United States says that North Korea now possesses one or two nuclear weapons.
Powell has repeatedly stated that the United States wants a diplomatic solution to the standoff over North Korea's nuclear programs. But a U.S.-led naval exercise this week in Japanese waters, simulating the interception of a ship carrying chemical weapons from North Korea, has riled officials in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. The official KCNA news agency condemned the exercise on Monday as the "ultimate war action," warning that "these moves only make the prospect of the negotiations . . . dimmer as the days go by."
On Tuesday, Pyongyang levied a new accusation, claiming Bush was trying to win votes in next week's presidential election by blaming North Korea for a delay in the nuclear talks.
Special correspondent Joohee Cho in Seoul contributed to this report.
-----
In Asia, Powell defends N. Korea policy
Washington Post
By Glenn Kessler
October 27, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2004/10/27/in_asia_powell_defends_n_korea_policy/
SEOUL -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday sought to fend off complaints from key partners in the effort to end North Korea's nuclear programs that the Bush administration has not been sufficiently creative or willing to compromise in the negotiations.
During his three-day swing through Asia, Powell has insisted that North Korea must return to the bargaining table without any modification of the tough American position on dismantling the weapons. But Chinese officials told Powell on Monday that the Bush administration should be more flexible. South Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki-Moon, told reporters yesterday that he told Powell the United States and its allies "must come up with a more creative and realistic proposal" to bring North Korea back to the talks "as soon as possible."
A September session of the six-nation talks was scrapped after North Korea refused to show up, citing the US administration's "hostile policy." But while Powell won support from Japan, China, and South Korea during his trip for a resumption of talks, the conflicting statements suggested the effort to disarm North Korea was in disarray because of a growing divide among key US allies over how to structure an opening bid to North Korea.
South Korea and Japan have proposed to provide fuel oil immediately if Pyongyang commits to freezing and dismantling its programs. But Washington has maintained that it would provide benefits, such as a security guarantee, only after North Korea discloses and allows the verification of the full extent of its programs.
Seoul has privately privately pressed the United States to make a symbolic contribution to the fuel oil deliveries, such as paying a few million dollars in administrative expenses. But the Bush administration has resisted the idea. North Korea, in official statements before Powell's arrival in Asia on Saturday, tried to take advantage of the division by insisting it will return to the bargaining table only if the United States commits to making such an upfront gesture.
On Monday, China's foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, told Powell "we wish the US side would go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude" during the North Korean negotiations, the official New China News Agency said.
Powell said the administration already has addressed the concerns of its allies. "We have a good proposal on the table," Powell told reporters after his talks in Seoul. "We modified it for the third round of six-party talks," he said, adding that in doing so the United States "showed flexibility."
-------- missile defense
US plans to acclerate deployment of Aegis warships for missile defense
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026220727.gn5ql5n3.html
The United States plans to accelerate the deployment of Aegis warships in waters off North Korea to serve as forward radars for a missile defense system that is being readied for operations, a top US general said Tuesday.
Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, also said discussions were well underway with allies about placing a third site for ground-based interceptor missiles in Europe.
He outlined US missile defense plans amid expectations that President George W. Bush will declare the missile defense system to be operational before the end of the year.
Speaking to defense analysts and reporters at a luncheon, Obering would not say when the system would be put on alert but said it was now in a "shakedown period" with trained crews.
"There's no show-stopper there, and there's no reluctance," he said. "What we're doing is making our way very systematically through this. I believe when the time is right, there will be a declaratory policy that will be issued and then we will go on with business.
Two Aegis destroyers already are operating in the Sea of Japan, their powerful tracking radars serving as the leading edge of a system of ground-based interceptor missiles centered in Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenburg Air Force Base, California .
Obering said four or five Aegis warships will be operating by the end of the year, and plans call for deploying 18 Aegis ships -- 15 destroyers and three cruisers -- in a missile defense role wherever they are needed by 2007. They will serve initially only as forward radars to track long-range missiles. But starting next year they also will be equipped with SM-3 missiles designed to intercept medium-range ballistic missiles, he said.
"We'll accelerate initial forward deployed radars into 2005," Obering said.
While the North Korean missile threat is the focus of the initial missile defense system being set up in Alaska and California, the Pentagon also has begun to take steps to increase its coverage of the Middle East. "We also have plans, and have conducted quite a bit of consultations with our allies, on putting (in) a third interceptor site," he said. "In addition to Fort Greely and Vandenburg we'll put a site in Europe to expand that coverage to our allies."
British newspaper reports earlier this month said Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed in principle to host interceptors in Britain.
Asked why Washington was moving now on the British site when US intelligence does not forsee an Iranian threat before 2015, Obering said, "We think its prudent to lay the foundation now because we are going to expect we're going to run into problems. There may be some delays we'll have to address."
"But I think it's important that we invite our friends, our allies to participate in this with us, and that they can benefit from the coverage the same way we have. Because they are defenseless against the threat just like we would have been if we had not begun to deploy this," he said.
A tracking radar at Beale Air Force Base in California also will be upgraded next year to provide coverage of ballistic missile threats emanating from the Middle East, he said.
As envisioned by the Pentagon, the system initially will be centered on ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and California that would be cued to collide in space with incoming long-range missiles through an elaborate computer-linked network of radars and other sensors.
The plan has aroused intense controversy over the years. Critics say it has been insufficiently tested, and that the tests to date have been conducted under unrealistic conditions.
Obering said the system's next integrated flight test will be in December, its first in nearly two years.
Meanwhile, five interceptor missiles have been positioned in launch silos at Fort Greely, and a sixth is due to be added in November. Two more interceptor missiles are to go into silos at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California by the end of the year.
Work to upgrade a Cobra Dane tracking radar on Shemya Island has been completed, upgrades of another radar in RAF Fylingdales in Britain are on track for completionin February, he said.
A huge sea-based X-band radar that is capable of detecting an object the size of a golf ball from 1,000 miles away is being built on giant pontoons. Obering said it will be on station off Alaska by December 2005.
-------- russia
Russian Diplomats Worried Over EU Nuke Proposal to Iran
MosNews
27.10.2004
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/27/iraneu.shtml
Some diplomats in Moscow are worried Russia might lose Iran as a strategic nuclear customer after the European Union's "Big Three" offered to help Tehran with atomic technology.
Despite concerns expressed by Moscow diplomats Tuesday, Russia's Atomic Energy Agency said the EU proposal that Iran stop enriching uranium in exchange for European nuclear technology would not harm Russian interests centering on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor, Reuters reported.
Russian nuclear officials said the EU offer posed no threat to Russian plans as Britain, France and Germany were in no rush to make concrete proposals before the U.N. nuclear agency declares Tehran fully clean.
"We have long-standing, traditional ties with Iran in that field. Our relationship is solid, besides we don't expect the Europeans to start building nuclear reactors there any time soon," Reuters quoted a spokesman at Russia's Atomic Energy Agency.
"So we are not particularly worried."
"Basically, it's a big bargain," a Western diplomat was quoted as saying. "It's all about competition. For Russia, Bushehr is not just about money, it's also about Russia's status as a major nuclear power."
"And they are going to fight for the Iranian market."
Russian media speculated the EU proposal might involve shipping Western-mined uranium for processing in Russia and then on to Iran -- an offer likely to benefit all parties involved.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has given Iran until Nov. 25 to stop all uranium enrichment activities or face being reported to the U.N. Security Council. Russia, a veto-wielding permanent council member, has long urged Iran to stop all sensitive nuclear work.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear strike 'key terror risk'
BBC
27 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3956813.stm
The UK and US must realise they cannot prevent all terror attacks and should focus on making sure they are not nuclear strikes, says a top academic.
Amitai Etzioni, a key influence on New Labour thinking, says the US emphasis on an "Axis of Evil" is misplaced.
The priority should instead be on "failing states", including Russia and Pakistan, who cannot properly control their nuclear material, he argues.
His report demands a major overhaul of world rules on nuclear technology.
Arms access
Professor Etzioni was a senior adviser to President Carter's White House and is the guru behind communitarian ideas which influenced the development of Blairite Third Way politics.
In a report for the Foreign Policy Centre think tank, he says a nuclear terrorist attack is the main danger faced by many nations.
"Attempts to defend against it by hardening domestic targets cannot work, nor can one rely on pre-emption by taking the war to the terrorists before they attack," he says.
That means there is an urgent need to curb terrorists' access to nuclear arms and the materials used to make them.
"We must recognise that we will be unable to stop all attacks and thus ensure terrorists will not be able to strike with weapons of mass destruction," Prof Etzioni continues.
Russia warning
He suggests so-called rogue states such as Iran and North Korea are less of a problem than "failed and failing states", which are more likely to be a source of nuclear materials.
He names Russia as the "failing state" of gravest concern as it has an estimated 90% of all fissile material outside America.
And he is also worried about Pakistan after one of its top nuclear scientists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted leaking nuclear secrets.
Prof Etzioni criticises the US for overlooking those reports, suggesting it was done in return for Pakistani help in hunting Osama Bin Laden.
"This is like letting a serial killer go because he promised to catch some jay-walkers," he says.
Among his proposals for an overhaul of the current world non-proliferation regime are:
- Upgrading security at nuclear arms stores as a temporary measure
- Creating a new Global Safety Authority to tackle nuclear terrorism, using the intelligence links established in the wake of 11 September - backed by the United Nations' authority
- Encouraging, pressuring and using "all available means" to persuade countries to switch their highly-enriched uranium for less dangerous less-enriched uranium
- When possible, taking fissile material away from failing states to safe havens where it can be blended down or converted
- Compelling "failing and rogue states", and eventually all states, to destroy their nuclear bombs.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NRC Closes Web Library for Security Review
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A455-2004Oct26.html
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has closed public access to 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 yesterday.
"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," the NRC said in a statement.
The action came after a report by NBC that the agency's Web site included detailed information on the location of radioactive substances, generally used in medicine and for industrial purposes, that could be used to prepare a "dirty bomb."
In some cases, the data included 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 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 of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 1,000 documents were removed from the NRC Web site. Additional documents disappeared in subsequent reviews.
While the 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.
-------- us nuc waste
Energy Department fights state fine at Hanford
10/27/2004
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/washingtonstate/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1098915860139450.xml&storylist=orwashington
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy and two contractors at the Hanford nuclear site have appealed a record $270,000 fine issued by the state of Washington last month.
The state Department of Ecology contends the federal government shipped unknown waste from another nuclear site to the south-central Washington reservation. The penalty was the largest the state has ever issued to the Energy Department.
In documents filed with the state Pollution Control Hearings Board, the Energy Department, contractor Fluor Hanford and subcontractor Duratek Federal Services of Hanford contend the state is holding them to regulations that do not apply to plutonium-tainted waste shipped to Hanford from the Savannah River nuclear site in South Carolina.
Even if the board does find the regulations apply, the fine is excessive, the documents said.
"Ecology would have the board believe that the Hanford Facility is an egregious violator of the state's dangerous waste regulations, but the facts simply do not support such an unfair proposition," according to the appeal documents.
The violations center on 83 drums of debris from Savannah River, which has been conducting treatment studies on waste from Hanford's 177 underground waste tanks. The waste is the remnants of decades of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
Federal law allows the waste to be shipped to South Carolina for study and returned to Hanford, exempting it from provisions of state and federal hazardous-waste regulations. But the state contends those exemptions do not apply to waste generated at Savannah River - debris such as equipment, clothing and supplies that may have been contaminated in the testing process.
Waste brought to Hanford also falls under state regulations for hazardous waste, which mirror federal regulations, state officials said.
The state fined the Energy Department and two contractors for not following regulations, which include requiring trained workers observe the packing of the drums, verify the type of waste and place a tamper-resistant seal on the drums.
The Energy Department and the contractors say they managed the waste in a safe manner.
Even if the regulations apply to the waste, they represent infractions of administrative and record-keeping requirements that would pose "relatively minor or even no potential risk to human health or the environment," the documents said.
The state also issued an administrative order last month with three pages of instructions for the Energy Department. The federal agency has been complying with the order while the appeal is heard, spokesman Erik Olds said.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today it is the nation's most contaminated site, with cleanup costs expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion.
-----
Perma-Fix Awarded a $23 Million Contract by Fluor Hanford for Thermal Treatment of Mixed Low-Level Waste
Capitol Reports
(10/27/04)
http://www.caprep.com/b1004034.htm
OAK RIDGE, TN -- Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: PESI; BSE: PESI; Germany: PES.BE) has been awarded a multi-year contract valued at approximately $23 million for the treatment of mixed low-level wastes generated at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site.
The Hanford Site, located in southeastern Washington State and covering 586 square miles, was a plutonium production complex that played a pivotal role in the nation's defense for more than 40 years. Today, under the direction of DOE, the Hanford Site is engaged in the largest environmental clean-up project in the world. Fluor Hanford, a prime contractor supporting DOE's cleanup mission at Hanford, has awarded this contract to Perma-Fix to provide specialized thermal treatment for a variety of mixed low-level radioactive wastes generated at Hanford. Some of these mixed wastes are currently in storage awaiting treatment while additional wastes will be generated through ongoing site operations.
Perma-Fix will utilize the capabilities of its Nuclear Segment's three mixed waste treatment facilities to accomplish this work for the term of the three-year contract. The variety and complexity of these mixed wastes require specialized technical expertise and operational capacity that will be provided using the synergistic capabilities of each of our facilities. Dr. Louis F. Centofanti, Perma-Fix chairman and chief executive officer, stated, "The award of this contract is very gratifying to Perma-Fix in that Fluor Hanford continues to be confident of our capability to address some of the most challenging waste streams that result from the Department of Energy's cleanup efforts. We have performed similar work for Fluor Hanford, and we will continue to support DOE and its contractors with their goals to clean up the legacy of the Cold War."
Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. is a national environmental services company, providing unique mixed waste and industrial waste management services. The Nuclear Segment provides radioactive and mixed waste treatment services to hospitals, research laboratories and institutions, numerous federal agencies, including the Departments of Energy and Defense, and nuclear utilities. The Industrial Segment provides hazardous and non-hazardous waste treatment services for a diverse group of customers including Fortune 500 companies, numerous federal, state and local agencies and thousands of smaller clients. The company operates eleven major waste treatment facilities across the country.
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" which are based largely on the Company's expectations and are subject to various business risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the information concerning statements that the contract has a potential value of approximately $23M. These forward-looking statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. While the Company believes the expectations reflected in this news release are reasonable, it can give no assurance such expectations will prove to be correct. There are a variety of factors which could cause future outcomes to differ materially from those described in this release, including without limitation, general economic conditions, future environmental regulatory restrictions, disputes arising under the contract, failure to deliver waste volumes anticipated under the contract, or termination of the contract prior to its completion. Contracts with the federal government or with others as a subcontractor to the federal government generally provide that the government may terminate or renegotiate the contract at the government's option. The Company makes no commitment to disclose any revisions to forward-looking statements, or any facts, events or circumstances after the date hereof that bear upon forward-looking statements.
Please visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.perma-fix.com .
------
Firm gets $23M contract to neutralize waste
October 27, 2004
Knoxville News Sentinel
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_3283272,00.html
OAK RIDGE - Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc. has won a $23 million contract to treat radioactive and hazardous waste from a government cleanup site in Washington state, and most of the work will be done at the company's Oak Ridge facilities.
Lou Centofanti, the chairman and chief executive officer of Perma-Fix, said the project is expected to take about 2 1/2 years to complete. It will involve about 2,000 drums of solid wastes shipped from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford, Wash., operations.
The wastes will be thermally treated at Perma-Fix's Oak Ridge facilities to destroy hazardous chemicals. The materials then will be mixed with cement to fix the low-level radioactivity.
The company's treatment facilities are at the East Tennessee Technology Park, a former uranium-enrichment plant once known as K-25.
After the wastes are processed in Oak Ridge, they will be shipped back to Hanford or somewhere else for disposal, Centofanti said. He emphasized that the wastes will not remain in Oak Ridge.
It will take about 25 truck shipments to bring the wastes to Oak Ridge, he said.
The wastes are categorized as "mixed low-level" and will include soil and other solids contaminated with radioactivity and organic chemicals, Centofanti said.
"What we will do is treat them to make them nonhazardous," he said.
Perma-Fix earlier this month completed another Hanford project involving the treatment of depleted uranium chips, Centofanti said. That work was valued at about $5 million, he said.
The Florida-based company's nuclear division has annual revenues of about $45 million, and about half of that work is done in Oak Ridge, he said.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Taiwan's controversial arms deal
BBC, Taipei
By Caroline Gluck
27 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3950907.stm
Ever since Taiwan's cabinet approved plans for a special budget to buy $18bn of weapons from the United States, the issue has proved highly controversial.
There have been heated debates over the arms deal and large protests in Taipei and other big cities - including one in the southern port city of Kaohsiung last week end.
A Taiwanese soldier stands in front of one of Taiwan's many Patriot missile air defence systems Friday, Oct. 22, 2004, near the northern coastal town of Wanli, Taiwan. Taiwan wants to upgrade its missile defence system
The government had hoped the plan would get swift legislative approval in the current session. Instead, it is shaping up to be one of the hottest topics in legislative elections set for 11 December.
The arms purchase - which includes Patriot Pac-3 antimissile systems, eight diesel submarines and anti-submarine aircraft - is part of a package first approved by Washington three years ago.
The US switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979. But under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington is obliged to supply weapons to Taiwan to allow it to maintain a self-defence capability against a possible Chinese attack.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to take the island by force.
For years, Taiwan had urged the US to sell it more sophisticated military hardware to defend it against mainland China.
Time running out
Defence officials in the US and Taiwan say there is a now a new urgency.
For starters, there is no guarantee that after the US presidential election, Washington will honour the existing arms package on offer.
And some US officials appear to be losing patience with Taiwan.
US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Richard Lawless, said this month that the island would be viewed as a liability rather than a partner if lawmakers did not approve the arms package.
Taiwan's Foreign Minister, Mark Chen, is also concerned about the impact on ties with the US if the arms budget is not passed.
"The basic message that could be interpreted by our American friends is that we are not really willing to defend Taiwan by ourselves," he said.
"Our mutual interactions may be discounted in some way; and that's something I don't want to see that happen. "
China threat
Analysts worry that the military balance of power is already tipping in China's favour.
China has already targeted more than 600 missiles at Taiwan, and is adding around 75 ballistic missiles each year to its arsenal.
There is no way Taiwan can compete against China in military build-up... the more you buy weapons the more dangers we face Hsu Hsin Liang, DPP founder
"We are facing China's military threat; therefore have to defend ourselves to increase our defence capability," said Deputy Defence Minister Michael Tsai.
He said the weapons Taiwan wants to buy are of a defensive nature, designed to intercept incoming missiles and aircraft and detect underwater submarine operations.
The Ministry of National Defence (MND) has embarked on an unprecedented public relations campaign to try to convince a sceptical public that the costly arms purchase is essential.
It earlier released brochures with cute cartoon characters setting out its case.
One argument said the money for the weapons deal over the next 15 years was equivalent to the savings that could be made if the people of Taiwan skipped drinking one cup of a popular drink called pearl milk tea each week, over the same period of time.
Last week, the MND opened up one of its three Patriot missiles bases for the first time to the media, to underline its argument about the need for more advanced weaponry.
But critics have questioned the massive cost - and the effectiveness of the systems on offer to deter threats from China.
They say the money would be better spent on public welfare projects.
Many like Hsu Hsin Liang, a founder and former chairman of the governing Democratic Progressive Party who has since moved away from the party, fear Taiwan will end up in an arms race.
Several thousand protesters take the streets of the capital to denounce an arms deal with the U.S., Saturday, Sept. 25, 2004, in Taipei, Taiwan. There have been big protests against the costly arms deal
"There is no way Taiwan can compete against China in military build-up. This kind of military build-up itself is against peace," he said.
"The more you buy weapons the more dangers we face."
Protestors are now urging people to not vote for legislators who support the arms deal in December's.
"We think Taiwan peace is more important than an arms race," said Professor Yachung Chang, of one of the protest groups, the Democratic Action Alliance.
"More legislators are supporting us - saying if they are re-elected they will back our case."
Out on the campaign trail, Lai Shih Bao, candidate for the opposition KMT, has made it a key plank of his election campaign.
"The arms sale is a hot issue", he said. "We are against this; we don't need this expensive budget. We're not against national defence, but we oppose this special budget."
Political manoeuvring in the legislature has meant that a vote on the arms deal is unlikely to take place before the elections.
The governing DPP and its smaller ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, hope to increase the number of seats they hold in the 225-seat legislature and gain a working majority.
In 2001 elections, the DPP captured 87 seats.
But Deputy Defence Minister, Michael Tsai, is cautiously optimistic that the budget will eventually be passed. The bill is high, he admitted, but unavoidable.
"What a choice do we have? The US spends a lot; so does Japan, Israel, so does Singapore. I know its more expensive to develop defensive than offensive weapons. But in order to win the peace, we have to pay the price," he said.
-------- biological weapons
Scientists warn of 'ethnic weapons'
The Australian
By Leigh Dayton
October 27, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11197760%255E401,00.html
BIOLOGICAL weapons that target selected ethnic groups could become part of the terrorists' arsenal unless governments and scientists act now, the British Medical Association warns.
Such designer weapons would be based on the growing ability of scientists to unravel and compare human DNA.
In theory, experts could engineer organisms to attack genetic variations commonly found in, say, Chinese or German populations.
Genetically engineered anthrax, smallpox and polio viruses are also "approaching reality", the BMA claims in a new report, Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II.
The report, released yesterday in London, adds that organisms designed to attack food crops and even human immune and nervous systems are serious threats.
For instance, the agent used by Russian authorities to end the Moscow theatre hostage crisis in 2002, a fentanyl derivative, is an example of a "bio-regulator" targeted against the human nervous system.
"All of the above are feasible or possible if anyone would be mad enough or evil enough to do it," commented University of Melbourne immunologist Sir Gus Nossal.
"There already exist potential biological weapons of enormous destructive power, chief among them smallpox and anthrax," added Professor Emeritus Nossal, who in 1979 announced the eradication of smallpox on behalf of the World Health Organisation.
He agreed with BMA head of science and ethics Vivienne Nathanson that, "If we wait too long it will be virtually impossible to defend ourselves (against biological weapons)".
According to the BMA report the "window of opportunity" to control the spread of powerful biological weapons is shrinking fast.
That's so, said the report's author, Malcolm Dando of Britain's Bradford University, because "the same technology being used to develop new vaccines and find cure's for Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases could also be used for malign purposes".
Professor Dando said it was essential that governments worldwide beef up the international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention when it comes up for review in 2006.
The BTWC prohibits signatory states from acquiring biological weapons and means of delivery them.
But eminent Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner questioned the effectiveness of the BMA recommendations.
"It's all very well to say governments ought to adhere to these suggestions, but they didn't adhere to them before and even now the US Government says it's not going to take any notice of the (BTWC)," he said.
According to Emeritus Professor Fenner -- who was central to the development of myxoma virus to control rabbits, as well as the WHO smallpox eradication campaign -- public health strategies designed to respond to biological weapons such as smallpox are more likely to be effective.
In Canberra, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia signed the BWTC in 1972 and ratified it in 1977.
-------- business
Halliburton says profit in Iraq is weak
Agence France-Presse
October 27, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/26/business/halli.html
HOUSTON Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice president, reported on Tuesday a quarterly loss and only meager pickings from its vast operations in Iraq.
Halliburton had a loss of $44 million, or 9 cents a share, in the three months ending Sept. 30 as costs of an asbestos-related settlement swelled to $230 million. A year earlier, Halliburton had posted a profit of $58 million, or 13 cents a share.
Revenue surged 15.5 percent to $4.79 billion - nearly 30 percent of which came from the operations in Iraq conducted by Halliburton's KBR unit.
Halliburton said it squeezed out just $4 million in operating profit from its Iraq operations, despite taking in $1.4 billion in revenue.
The Iraq operations produced an operating profit a year earlier of $34 million and revenue of $900 million.
KBR said it had an operating loss of $50 million, reversing a year-earlier operating profit of $49 million, because of losses including those at a gas plant in Algeria. KBR revenue for the third quarter rose 15 percent to $2.7 billion.
The chairman, president and chief executive of Halliburton, David Lesar, said the core energy-services business had record revenue, operating income and operating margins.
KBR had restructured to cut costs and "resolved issues with customers on a number of projects," he added. "These efforts should position KBR for profitability in future years."
Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000, has been in a dispute with the Pentagon over its accounting for services provided to the U.S. Army in Iraq.
Lockheed profit surges 41%
Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, posted a 41 percent rise in quarterly profit Tuesday, beating Wall Street forecasts, on strong demand for its combat aircraft and information technology services, Reuters reported from New York.
The maker of the Joint Strike Fighter jet said third-quarter earnings jumped to $307 million, or 69 cents per share, from $217 million, or 48 cents per share, a year earlier. Wall Street analysts' average forecast was 65 cents per share.
Lockheed, which also makes the F-16 fighter plane as well as commercial and government satellites and data-gathering technology, said revenue rose 4 percent to $8.44 billion. Analysts' average forecast was $8.58 billion.
The company's 2004 and 2005 sales forecasts were lower than Wall Street estimates. Lockheed's chief financial officer, Chris Kubasik, attributed this to difficulty in predicting exactly when a product will be delivered and counted in sales.
-------- europe
Lending military equipment to US causes headache for Norwegian PM
OSLO (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027143929.ec7uta7p.html
Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was on Wednesday forced to defend a harshly criticized government decision to lend military equipment to the United States ahead of the war in Iraq, which Norway was officially against.
"We do not usually insist on being kept abreast of how materiel we lend to our allies in NATO is used," Bondevik said during a question session in parliament.
Norwegian public broadcaster NRK revealed on Tuesday that the Norwegian military had in March 2003 lent 25 laser searchlights and range finders to the US that were used by US troops to direct bombers to their targets during the US-led military operation in Iraq only days later.
Officially, the Norwegian government said it was opposed to the war on the grounds that the US failed to secure United Nations Security Council approval for the action.
The NRK report provoked a wave of criticism from opposition parties, which accused the government of "double speak".
Bombarded with questions in parliament on Wednesday, Bondevik admitted that he had been informed at the time that Norway was lending the laser searchlights and range finders to the US military, but insisted that such equipment exchanges were common practice between NATO member countries and that they were in line with parliament approved policy.
"We will gladly look into ways of giving parliament a more detailed overview" of military equipment exchanges, he said, but ruled out transferring the right to authorize such exchanges to the legislative body, as had been suggested by opposition parties.
-----
Turkey's top security body meets for the first time with civilian head
ANKARA (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027160922.9f43rtec.html
Turkey's top security body Wednesday held its first meeting under a civilian secretary-general, named to curb military influence in Turkish politics and help align the country's democratic standards with EU norms.
Yigit Alpogan, a former ambassador appointed to the post in August, was the center of attention at a regular meeting of the National Security Council, which brings together the country's top civilian and military leaders.
Only senior generals had served thus far as secretaries-general of the body, a forum the military used to weigh in on decisions concerning key domestic and foreign policy issues, such as Iraq, Cyprus and the fight against Kurdish separatism and Islamist extremism.
Reforms aimed at boosting Turkey's bid to join the European Union have stripped the military wing of the council of its executive powers and put military spending under civilian control.
Turkey's EU prospects topped the agenda of the council on Wednesday.
A brief statement issued at the end of the meeting urged EU leaders not to discriminate against Turkey when they meet on December 17 to decide whether to start accession talks with the Muslim nation.
"Criteria and methods that have not been envisaged for other countries should not be envisaged for Turkey either," it said.
The European Commission, the EU executive arm, said in an October 6 report that Turkey had fulfilled the democracy norms required for the opening of accession talks.
But much to Ankara's discontent, it said the launch of talks would not guarantee Turkey's ultimate membership and mentioned the possibility of permanent measures to bar the free movement of Turkish nationals in the bloc.
The Turkish military is officially in favor of Turkey's EU membership, although some generals have expressed reservations on some of the reforms sought by Brussels.
The European Commission report noted that "civilian control of the military has been strengthened," but added that the generals continue to exercise influence through "informal channels."
The Turkish army carried out three coups -- in 1960, 1971 and 1980 -- and in 1997 forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the country's first Islamist prime minister.
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Poland signs defense deal with Iraq
(AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027151533.71wwy9je.html
WARSAW, Oct 27 (AFP) - Poland said Wednesday it had signed a cooperation agreement with Baghdad to help train and equip the Iraqi security forces.
Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke said the agreement signed by the defense ministers of the two countries would provide for training for leaders in various branches of the Iraqi armed forces. He recalled that Iraq already had ordered 60 million dollars (46.9 million euros) worth of military equipment and ammunition from Poland.
A close ally of Washington in the Iraq conflict, Poland commands a 6,000-man multinational force in a sector south of Baghdad, of whom 2,500 are Polish soldiers.
-------- iraq
British Troops in Iraq Begin Redeployment
October 27, 2004
By RAWYA RAGEH
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Nearly 800 British forces left their base in southern Iraq on Wednesday, heading north toward Baghdad to replace U.S. troops who are expected to take part in an offensive against insurgent strongholds.
The deployment came hours after Iraq's most feared militant group released a video threatening to behead a Japanese captive within 48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq. Japan's prime minister, a staunch U.S. ally in Iraq, took a tough stance and rejected any troop withdrawal.
Large flatbed trucks were seen carrying armored British vehicles up a road through Iraq's southern desert as the redeployment began for the nearly 800 Scottish soldiers of the First Battalion, Black Watch, headquartered in Basra.
"We can confirm that there is some movement," said British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Mayo. He gave no specifics on troop numbers, citing security concerns.
British officials have been vague on the precise destination, though the troops are expected to deploy in an area just south of Baghdad. Som media reports indicated the Black Watch would be sent to Iskandariyah, a town that sees frequent violence between the capital and the city of Hillah.
The soldiers' families expressed worries Wednesday that the redeployment puts the troops in greater danger.
"It wasn't a cake walk in Basra but it's going to be a lot, lot more dangerous up there," said James Buchanan, 56, from Arbroath in central Scotland, who has two sons with the regiment in Iraq. "They're going to get one hell of a kicking this time," he said.
The troops are to replace U.S. forces who are expected to take part in offensives against insurgent strongholds west and north of the capital in an attempt to bring order to Iraq before elections in January.
The American military wants the British to assume security responsibility in areas close to Baghdad, so U.S. Marines and soldiers can be shifted to insurgency strongholds west of the capital, including Fallujah.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to agree to the U.S. request for redeployment is a politically sensitive one for the British leader, whose popularity has plummeted because of his support for the Iraq war.
Britain's 8,500 troops are based around the southern port city of Basra in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq. Sixty-eight British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, compared with more than 1,000 U.S. troops.
The political pressure mounted with last week's kidnapping of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who heads CARE International's operations in Iraq. Hassan, 59, who also holds Iraqi and Irish citizenship, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility.
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday that more extremists are massing in Fallujah and warned of increasing terrorist attacks to come. On Saturday, insurgents ambushed and executed about 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers as they were heading home from a U.S. military training camp northeast of Baghdad.
On Wednesday, a motorcycle bomber attacked a U.S. convoy in central Iraq, killing one American soldier and wounding another, the U.S. military said in a statement. The name of the soldier killed was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
In the hostage drama, a video of the Japanese captive was posted on a militant Web site Tuesday, and the al-Qaida-linked militant group led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowed to kill the hostage within 48 hours unless the 500 Japanese troops in Iraq leave the country.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected the demands.
"The Self-Defense Forces will not withdraw," he said. "I cannot allow terrorism and cannot bow to terrorism."
The captive, who in the video had long hair and wore a white T-shirt, was identified by the Japanese government as 24-year-old Shosei Koda. He spoke briefly in halting English and Japanese, addressing himself to Koizumi.
"They asked me why Japanese government broke the law and sent troops to Iraq," the man said in English. "They want Japanese government and Koizumi prime minister, they want to withdraw the Japanese troops from Iraq or cut my head."
He then paused, sighed and switched into Japanese.
"Mr. Koizumi. They seek the withdrawal of Japanese Self-Defense Forces... (and say they) will take my head off," the captive said. "I'm sorry. I want to return to Japan again."
The video's authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
Tokyo has dispatched some 500 troops to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah on a humanitarian mission to purify water and rebuild schools in support of U.S.-led reconstruction efforts.
The video claimed that Koda was connected to the Japanese military, but the government denied that. Friends and relatives suggested Koda had gone to Iraq as a tourist.
"Mr. Koda is a private individual who is not related to the Self-Defense Forces or the government of Japan," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said.
When the captive finished speaking, the video showed him kneeling before three masked militants. The man's head was bowed to the floor as the militant spoke, and another of the militants grabbed him by the hair to face the camera.
"We give the Japanese government 48 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq, otherwise his fate will be the same as that of his predecessors, Berg and Bigley and other infidels," the man said, referring to the beheadings of British engineer Kenneth Bigley and U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg.
The video, which lasted just under three minutes, bore the logo of al-Qaida in Iraq, the new name for al-Zarqawi's group, which was previously known as Tawhid and Jihad and has allied itself with Osama bin Laden. The group has claimed responsibility for the beheadings of Bigley, two American co-workers and Berg, as well as numerous car bombings and other attacks.
The United States has offered a $25 million bounty for the capture or killing of al-Zarqawi, who is believed to be hiding in the militant stronghold of Fallujah.
--------
Signs Point to Imminent Showdown in Iraq
October 27, 2004
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_SHOWDOWN_AHEAD?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad - a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq can succeed.
American officials have not confirmed a major assault is near against the insurgent bastions of Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi. But Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has warned Fallujah leaders that force will be used if they do not hand over extremists, including terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
A similar escalation in U.S. military actions and Iraqi government warnings occurred before a major offensive in Najaf forced militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to give up that holy city in late August. And U.S. and Iraqi troops retook Samarra from insurgents early this month.
Now U.S. airstrikes on purported al-Zarqawi positions in three neighborhoods of eastern and northern Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, have increased. And residents reported this week that Marines appeared to be reinforcing forward positions near key areas of the city. Other military units are on the move, including 800 British soldiers headed north to the U.S.-controlled zone.
The goal of an attack would be to restore government control in time for national elections by the end of January. However, an all-out assault on the scale of April's siege of Fallujah would carry enormous risk - both political and military - for the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
A series of policy mistakes by the U.S. military and the Bush administration have transformed Fallujah from a shabby, dusty backwater known regionally for mosques and tasty kebabs into a symbol of Arab pride and defiance of the United States throughout the Islamic world.
A videotape obtained Tuesday by Associated Press Television News featured a warning by masked gunmen that if Fallujah is subjected to an all-out assault, they will strike "with weapons and military tactics" that the Americans and their allies "have not experienced before."
Regardless of whether the threat was an empty boast, insurgents elsewhere in Iraq could be expected to step up attacks to try to relieve pressure on fighters in the Fallujah and Ramadi areas.
But the main problem an assault would pose for both the U.S. military and Allawi's government is political, such as a widespread public backlash. A nationwide association of Sunni clerics also has threatened to urge a boycott of the January elections if U.S. forces storm Fallujah.
So Iraqi officials appear anxious to convince the public that they have made every effort to solve the Fallujah crisis peacefully. The government spin is that the people of Fallujah are held as virtual hostages of armed foreign terrorists. Although Fallujah leaders insist there are no more than a few foreign fighters in the city, Arab journalists who have visited say they heard non-Iraqi accents at some checkpoints.
U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the Iraqi people are so fed up with suicide attacks, assassinations and kidnappings - many of them believed orchestrated from Fallujah and Ramadi - that they will acquiesce to the use of force.
"There are terror groups in this city who are taking human shields," Iraq's deputy prime minister for national security, Barham Saleh, said Wednesday, referring to Fallujah. "We are working hard to rid the people of Fallujah of them and to let security and stability prevail across Iraq."
In the event of an attack, Iraqi insurgents, who have skillfully used the Internet as a propaganda tool, would likely attempt to muster opposition in the Arab world with graphic accounts of the suffering and death of innocent women and children caught up in the fighting.
It's a tactic that worked when Marines attacked in Fallujah last April seeking to root out foreign fighters and capture the killers of four American security contractors whose mutilated bodies were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
The attack was called off within weeks - reportedly on orders from the White House - after a wave of outrage among Sunni Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere over reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. Ghazi al-Yawer, now the interim president, and other leading Sunni politicians threatened to resign from the then-Iraqi Governing Council if the assault did not stop.
After the Marines pulled back, the city fell under the control of extremist clerics and their mujahedeen allies, who had defended Fallujah against the Americans. The Fallujah Brigade, organized from residents to assume security duties, melted away within a few months.
Weeks after the siege ended, Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi and others complained that the April agreement enabled insurgents to transform Fallujah into a sanctuary. The wave of car bombings and the beheading of foreign hostages that accelerated after the end of the Fallujah fighting seemed to validate those criticisms.
To avoid a repeat of the April political disaster, the Iraqi government has been preparing the public for a showdown. On Wednesday, Allawi said more extremists were flooding into Fallujah.
Although negotiations with Fallujah clerics broke down this month, government ministers maintain they are still in contact with community leaders in hopes they will hand over al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom the clerics insist is not in the city.
---------
Shells point to police in guardsmen slayings
October 27, 2004
By Pamela Hess
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041027-121029-2825r.htm
Two weeks before the massacre of almost 50 Iraqi national guard recruits on Saturday, 17 national guardsmen were shot execution-style at their base near the Syrian border, apparently with the aid of Iraqi police, U.S. officials said.
The national guard compound in Karabilah near the town of Husaybah and the U.S. Marine base at al-Qaim then were leveled by explosives.
Eleven Iraqi national guard soldiers died in the Oct. 12 attack and six others survived their gunshot wounds, U.S. officials said.
These officials said the soldiers were forced to kneel facing a wall and then were killed with a combination of AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
Because of incidents involving Iraqi security forces, the U.S. military has been spray-painting the shell casings of the ammunition given to each of the divisions.
The spent shells found at the site compound where the Iraqi soldiers were executed were red, the color earmarked for the Iraqi police force, one military official said.
Iraqis perceived to be helping the U.S.-led coalition have been increasingly under attack; more than 800 have been killed in Iraq in the past year and many more wounded, according to U.S. estimates.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi blamed the coalition for Saturday's ambush and execution of soldiers returning home from initial training. They were traveling in four vans, and apparently were forced to stop along the road by a checkpoint and then were fatally shot.
"There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces," Mr. Allawi told the Iraqi National Council in Baghdad yesterday.
The Iraqi soldiers killed Saturday were unarmed, press reports said.
The soldiers killed Oct. 12, however, were armed and on the job.
Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan blamed the recruits, who in their eagerness to get home left immediately after their graduation and took an unauthorized route, the Associated Press reported.
"They are to blame. They graduated at 12 p.m. and could have delayed their trip," Mr. Shaalan said in an interview with Al Arabiya television.
The U.S. command did not respond directly to Mr. Allawi's comments, but said in a statement: "This was a cold-blooded and systematic massacre by terrorists. They and no one else must be held fully accountable for these heinous acts."
In other developments yesterday, a video on an Islamist Web site showed a captive that it said was a Japanese man kidnapped by Abu Musab Zarqawi's group and threatened to behead him within 48 hours unless Japan pulls its troops out of Iraq.
In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated today that he will not withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq in response to demands from kidnappers, saying, "I cannot allow terrorism and cannot bow to terrorism."
"The Self-Defense Forces will not withdraw," Mr. Koizumi told reporters after press reports of the hostage-taking.
Militants yesterday made a new threat of nationwide attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces "with weapons and military tactics they have not experienced before" if American forces try to storm the militant stronghold of Fallujah.
U.S. forces have ratcheted up their aerial and artillery assaults against Fallujah, using precision air strikes to destroy safe houses, command centers, and weapons storage belonging to Zarqawi's network. An aide to Zarqawi was killed during an overnight strike, the U.S. military said.
On Oct. 10, Iraqi national guard soldiers aided in a border police operation in which two smugglers or militants were killed, U.S. officials said. Two days later, a militant force of fewer than 20 attacked the Karabilah compound.
An initial report said the conflict was tribal. All the national guard soldiers in the town are from one tribe, and the Iraqi police are from another.
The remaining Iraqi national guard members retreated to a phosphate plant protected by U.S. Marines in al-Qaim, a senior military official said.
Iraqi police also took their families with them from Husaybah to the phosphate plant. The police department in Husaybah no longer is functioning.
"I can't really count the number of Iraqi police stations that have fallen out west in the last three weeks or the number of [Iraqi national guard] compounds. I am getting really tired of no one wanting to or having the will to fight back," a military official said.
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Allawi Accuses Foreign Troops Of Negligence In Massacre
Killing of Guardsmen Elicits Rare Criticism by Iraqi Leader
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63772-2004Oct26.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, on Tuesday accused foreign troops in the country of "gross negligence" in the massacre of 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits over the weekend, an unusually critical remark by the U.S.-backed leader.
Allawi, in a weekly address to the Iraqi National Assembly, said his government had launched an investigation into the deaths of the U.S.-trained recruits, most of whom were lined up and executed shortly after sunset Saturday near the National Guard's main training base in Kirkush, about 60 miles northeast of the capital.
"A terrible crime was committed in which a large number of the ING were martyred," Allawi said. "We think this shows, in addition to gross negligence on the side of some of the multinational forces, it shows the kind of insistence to hurt Iraq and its people."
Allawi, whose interim administration assumed political authority from the U.S.-led occupation authority in late June, did not explain how foreign forces had been negligent. Efforts to reach government spokesmen on Tuesday night were unsuccessful.
The remark was an unusual public condemnation of the U.S. military and its allies in Iraq from the prime minister, who worked closely with Washington as an exile leader during the rule of President Saddam Hussein. His political party, the Iraqi National Accord, was funded for several years by the CIA.
The unarmed recruits killed Saturday had just left the Kirkush training base aboard three buses when they were stopped at a checkpoint manned by insurgents dressed as Iraqi police officers, according to Iraqi officials. The recruits appeared to have been forced off the buses, lined up, ordered to lie facedown and then shot. The buses, which were taking the recruits from the base for the start of a 20-day leave, were not accompanied by security vehicles.
In a statement on Tuesday, the U.S. military called the killings "a cold-blooded and systematic move by terrorists" and said U.S.-led forces were not responsible.
The terrorists "and no one else must be held fully accountable for these attacks," the statement said. The Iraqi interim government "is investigating this tragic incident. Multinational forces will fully support and cooperate to establish the facts and avoid repetition of similar events."
In Washington, a former top occupation security official said more Iraqis were being trained for the country's security forces than the United States and its allies are capable of protecting.
"There are so many being trained now, U.S. forces can't watch them all now," said Peter Khalil, an Australian defense expert who was in Iraq from last summer until this spring as the director of national security policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority. "There are 40 battalions of the Iraqi National Guard, six or seven battalions of the Iraqi army. Recruits are coming in all the time. You don't have force levels to protect indigenous forces."
Insurgents in recent months have carried out frequent attacks on Iraqi security forces and recruits, who are being trained to eventually assume responsibility for security in the country. There are about 100,000 members of the Iraqi security forces, and that number is expected to increase to 145,000 by January and 250,000 by the end of next year, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Meanwhile, an insurgent group, the Ansar al-Sunna Army, said Tuesday that it had kidnapped 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen, according to a statement posted on its Web site, the Reuters news agency reported.
"The mujaheddin in the army of Ansar al-Sunna captured a group of militia linked to the coalition forces that was out on patrol along the Baghdad-to-Hilla road," the group said in the statement. Hilla is about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
The claim could not immediately be verified, but a video and photographs of the men and their captors was posted on the site.
In a separate development, a militant Islamic Web site posted a video of what it claimed was a Japanese man kidnapped by insurgents loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant whose organization asserted responsibility for Saturday's massacre, the Associated Press reported. The Web site said the man would be beheaded within 48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected the demand.
In the insurgent-held city of Fallujah, the U.S. military said it had killed an associate of Zarqawi. The military said multiple sources reported that the associate was in a house in northwest Fallujah when it was attacked by U.S. aircraft at 3 a.m. on Tuesday.
The U.S. government, which has accused Zarqawi of engineering many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in recent months, has offered a $25 million reward for his capture or death. Military forces have struck Fallujah, where they believe Zarqawi and his operatives are based, almost nightly for the past several weeks. A major offensive there is expected, possibly after the U.S. presidential election, and most of the city's residents have fled in anticipation.
Allawi predicted on Tuesday that insurgent attacks would increase and become even more violent. "The enemies know if Iraqi stabilizes, it will be a serious defeat to them," he said. "Thus, they'll escalate the situation. You should expect wider operations than ones done now against Iraq."
But Allawi vowed the insurgents would ultimately lose.
"I am confident that the majority of Iraqis are willing to cooperate to stabilize the country," he said.
Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.
-------
INSURGENTS
Military Assault in Falluja Is Likely, U.S. Officers Say
October 27, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/international/middleeast/27marines.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, Oct. 22 - A military offensive by American and Iraqi forces to reclaim rebel-held Falluja is probably inevitable and would be the largest and potentially the riskiest since the end of major combat in May 2003, senior American officers say.
It would also involve major operations to seize control of Ramadi, another contested Sunni Muslim city 30 miles away, and to shut Syrian border crossings to prevent foreign fighters from streaming into Iraq, Marine commanders here say.
This expanded set of combat operations reflects a growing consensus among American military commanders and Iraqi government officials that the insurgencies in the two nearby cities are linked and must be quelled at the same time.
The timing and decision to carry out any attacks or close any border crossings is up to the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, senior Marine officers say. But as peace negotiations with representatives of Falluja have broken down, senior officers say it could be just weeks before air and ground attacks begin, in a battle that officers estimate could last from several days to two weeks.
"If we're told to go, it'll be decisive," Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the commander of nearly 40,000 marines and soldiers in western and south-central Iraq, said in an interview. "The goal will be to limit the damage, limit the casualties and do it as rapidly and decisively as possible. We're not here to destroy the town. We're here to give it back."
The issue extends far beyond Falluja and Ramadi. Military officials said smashing the resistance there would deal a blow to the insurgency nationally, because Falluja in particular has been a haven and staging ground for attacks. Defeating insurgents there could help to calm the nation and set the conditions for elections, commanders say.
Senior officers say they are mindful that an attack on Falluja and Ramadi could set off uprisings in other Sunni towns and possibly in Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite area of Baghdad that exploded in violence during the revolts in April. But military officers say they are planning for such contingencies.
Several important military and political decisions remain to be made before any attack, officers said. Britain is redeploying about 850 troops from Basra to an area south of Baghdad to free up American forces to swing into position near Falluja. Iraqi security forces have not yet moved into position, though General Sattler said that would happen quickly once the order is given. A last-minute settlement also is possible, as has happened before at Falluja.
Commanders here insist that the planning and timing for any possible offensive has not been influenced by the American elections on Nov. 2 and that political issues have not come up in discussions with their military and civilian superiors in Baghdad or at the Pentagon.
In interviews at this dusty desert headquarters three miles east of Falluja and at other military headquarters in Iraq, commanders sketched out a broad outline for how the offensive would probably unfold. They declined to discuss specific troop numbers, tactics and important political and military decision points to protect operational security. But thousands of marines and soldiers, joined by thousands of newly trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and commandos, would attack Falluja from multiple directions, unleashing direct tank, artillery and mortar fire against insurgent positions that had been weakened by allied airstrikes and internecine fighting in recent weeks.
A great number of residents have fled the city in recent weeks, but thousands of insurgents remain, along with vestiges of the population. While keeping the city out of government control, the insurgents have also orchestrated attacks across much of Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is believed to have organized attacks that have killed hundreds in Iraq from his base in Falluja, is of primary interest to the Americans.
In the battle of Samarra last month, 3,000 American troops and 2,000 Iraqis fought roughly 500 insurgents. Officers estimated that perhaps three to four times that number of hard-core insurgents are in Falluja, meaning that an American-Iraqi force much larger than 5,000 troops is likely to be massed.
As in allied operations in Najaf and Samarra, Iraqi forces would be relied on to clear and secure mosques and other culturally sensitive targets, with marines and soldiers providing backup.
"We'll match capabilities with the mission to have an appropriate blend" of Iraqi and American forces, said Col. John Coleman, the First Marine Expeditionary Force chief of staff.
Allied warplanes including Navy FA-18's and Air Force F-16's and F-15E's would conduct air strikes against insurgent safe houses, weapons caches and other leadership targets that have been carefully analyzed for possible damage to civilian infrastructure.
The bombing would be an intensified version of the nearly nightly strikes the Americans have conducted in Falluja for the past two months but would not be a huge barrage, the commanders say.
The weapons of choice have been laser-guided and satellite-guided 500-pound bombs, which are considered better able to limit the risk of civilian casualties than 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound bombs.
Commanders say the offensive would get off to a fast start, but the insurgents are likely to respond with roadside bombs and car bombs to slow it, and could try to initiate popular outbursts in nearby Sunni towns.
Commanders also say the air campaign in Falluja has been largely directed against the network of Mr. Zarqawi, who is considered so dangerous that the Americans have put a $25 million bounty on him.
Using information from informants, spy satellites, communications intercepts and other intelligence sources, commanders have assembled a target list that will change as sites are hit, checked and hit again during battle, or added based on fresh intelligence.
Military engineers and civil affairs specialists would follow quickly behind the main combat force, with the job of assessing how to restore services like water, sanitation and electricity, and of assigning contractors or military experts to the task.
General Sattler said he and his commanders were not in a rush to storm the city, contending that recent airstrikes have killed many of Mr. Zarqawi's top lieutenants and have seriously disrupted the operations of another Sunni militant leader, Omar Hadid.
The insurgent leaders are wary of meeting in groups and have been forced to use couriers and trusted aides to pass messages, fearing that their telephone conversations would be monitored, General Sattler said. Indeed, American forces believe that they have come very close to killing or capturing Mr. Hadid at least twice, the general said.
Mr. Zarqawi has been able to keep his leadership ranks filled but is no longer able to plot with his most trusted aides, officers said. "They are replaced by the second string and sometimes the third string," said General Sattler, who commands the First Marine Expeditionary Force. "It's a downward spiral for his organization."
Checkpoints on the main roads leading in and out of Falluja have also disrupted the insurgents' operations, commanders said. Nearly 100 people have been detained in a recent seven-day period at temporary barriers, which typically are created for an hour or two. Many of the detainees are still in American custody. In one car that was searched, American troops found rocket-propelled grenades in the trunk; in another, they found $80,000 in crisp $100 and $50 bills.
But the insurgents are not giving up easily, commanders acknowledge. Car bombings and suicide attacks have increased here and in Baghdad. Mortar and artillery attacks against American troops and bases have increased, especially since the start of Ramadan in mid-October.
An offensive on Falluja would be conducted nearly at the same time as parallel military operations, or possibly political negotiations, in Ramadi, the restive capital of Al Anbar Province, just 30 miles west of Falluja, General Sattler said. Insurgents, including leaders like Muhammad Daham, have seized control of most of the city from the local Iraqi police and municipal officials using a campaign of intimidation, officers said. Although marines are present in Ramadi, the city has become increasingly violent.
To keep foreign fighters from joining the battles, General Sattler said, he is considering having military-aged men prevented from crossing into Iraq from Syria at the main border crossings unless they can show they have official business in Iraq. Dr. Allawi would decide that. Senior marines said Syria's recent agreement with Iraq to police its borders had yielded results.
"Cooperation has actually risen," said Col. Ron Makuta, the chief intelligence officer for the Marines in Iraq.
-------- israel / palestine
Parliament OKs Sharon's withdrawal plan
October 27, 2004
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-100138-9515r.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel's parliament yesterday approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank enclaves, voting 67-45 over stiff opposition from Mr. Sharon's own Likud Party.
Within minutes of the historic vote - which included seven abstentions - he was confronted with a new challenge from Likud rival Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Netanyahu, a former prime minister and current finance minister, said he would resign within two weeks unless Mr. Sharon reconsidered his opposition to holding a national referendum on the pullback plan.
The final go-ahead for the evacuation won't come before Israel's Cabinet until March, but the legislation approved yesterday allows the government to begin laying the foundation for the move with steps such as offering compensation packages to thousands of settlers who will be relocated.
"This is a victory for Ariel Sharon, and the position that we need to disengage from Gaza," said Meir Sheetrit, a minister without portfolio. "We have nothing to look for in Gaza. With all the pain involved, we need to move forward."
In the run-up to the balloting yesterday, Israeli newspapers drew comparisons with Knesset ratifications in past decades for peace treaties with Egypt and the Palestinians.
And yet Mr. Sharon's plan is unilateral without any tangible commitment to an end to four years of fighting with the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority has welcomed the pullback, even as it criticized Mr. Sharon for refusing to negotiate a withdrawal. Militant groups such as Hamas hailed the decision as a triumph of their strategy of violence.
"Some people understand that without the resistance and intifada, Sharon would not have thought about leaving," said Ghazi Hamad, an editor of an Islamic newspaper affiliated with Hamas. "We think that if Israel withdraws from any millimeter, it's considered a victory."
Outside the parliament, thousands of settler supporters protested the decision by forming a human chain around the government compound.
The most problematic resistance for Mr. Sharon on the pullout has come from his own party.
After the vote, Mr. Sharon dismissed Likud's Uzi Landau - a minister without portfolio who has led a party insurgency against the prime minister for months - signaling zero tolerance for Cabinet members who don't support the government in parliamentary votes.
Mr. Netanyahu seemed to have chosen the same path until he entered the Knesset floor moments before the closing of the balloting to cast a vote in favor.
"The fate of Israel depends on whether there will be a referendum," Mr. Netanyahu said.
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Sharon Wins Vote For Gaza Pullout
Israeli Parliament Is Bitterly Divided; Likud Ministers Demand Referendum
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64391-2004Oct26?language=printer
JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 -- Israel's parliament voted Tuesday night to close all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, evacuate their 8,100 residents and withdraw thousands of Israeli troops that protect them, handing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a major political victory on an issue that has created a deep rupture in Israeli politics and society.
Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan was approved by a 67 to 45 vote in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset, even though almost half the members of his Likud Party and most of his traditional allies in ultranationalist and religious parties abandoned him. Sharon was supported instead by longtime opponents in more dovish parties who historically have viewed him as their archenemy. Seven lawmakers abstained, and one was absent.
Immediately after the vote, however, four cabinet ministers from Likud, including Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, announced that they would resign from the government within two weeks if Sharon did not agree to subject his plan to a nationwide referendum. In addition, Sharon fired one Likud cabinet minister, Uzi Landau, and a deputy minister for voting against the proposal.
The vote moved Israel a step closer to what would be its first withdrawal from Jewish settlements since 1982, when settlers were pulled out of the Sinai Peninsula under the Camp David peace accords with Egypt. Israel has never vacated a settlement in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, which many religious Jews say would be an abandonment of the Jewish homeland. Thousands of settlers protested outside the Knesset building Tuesday, many branding Sharon a traitor.
Yet many Israelis described Tuesday's vote as a milestone, with Sharon forcing the country to reconcile its need for peace and security with its 37-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
"This is the most dramatic, head-on confrontation in years between ideology and reality, between the messianic ideology of the Israeli right and the pragmatic considerations of the state of Israel in its relations with the Palestinians," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The vote, which was widely predicted, followed 17 hours of acrimonious debate on the floor of the Knesset punctuated by name-calling and heckling. Three members were evicted during Sharon's opening speech Monday for refusing to remain silent.
Sharon's plan, which was crafted without Palestinian input, must still clear several legislative hurdles. But if it is implemented, settlers would begin leaving all 21 Gaza settlements and four small settlements in the northern West Bank early next summer. Homes and synagogues would be destroyed; infrastructure would be turned over to a third party rather than handed directly to the Palestinian Authority. Compensation packages ranging from about $100,000 to $500,000 have been approved for uprooted families.
Israeli troops would pull out from most of Gaza by the end of 2005, but the Israeli military would retain control of Gaza's borders, coastline and airspace.
Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have called on soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements while political leaders have warned that such evacuations could take Israel to the brink of civil war. Israeli security officials say Sharon has been the target of death threats.
Senior politicians and leading political analysts say Tuesday's vote could split Likud -- the Knesset's largest party with 40 seats -- and cause the government to collapse or force Sharon to call early elections.
Many lawmakers on opposing sides of the issue favor subjecting the plan to a binding, nationwide referendum, and negotiations continued Tuesday night to persuade Sharon to accept the idea. Even though public opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Israelis support withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon has said he opposes a referendum, describing it as a legalistic stall tactic intended to kill the measure. But Likud activists and political analysts say he may have to accept such a vote to prevent his minority government from collapsing.
That seemed to be the threat implicit in Netanyahu's warning that he, Education Minister Limor Livnat, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz and Health Minister Danny Naveh -- all of whom voted Tuesday night in favor of the Gaza withdrawal -- would quit the cabinet in two weeks if Sharon did not agree to a referendum. Likud members voted against the plan this year in a party-wide referendum, and the Likud Central Committee rejected it at a party convention in August.
"We are giving them a two-week chance, and if not, we can't remain in the government," Netanyahu, a former prime minister, told reporters outside the Knesset chamber.
Efraim Inbar, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, said that if Sharon refused and the cabinet members resigned, "he may become a minority in his own party, and this will bring down his government."
While Israelis saw Tuesday's vote as historic, many Palestinians and some Israeli Arabs criticized the disengagement plan, noting that Israel would continue to control all access to the Gaza Strip after the withdrawal. Several pointed to an interview two weeks ago in which Sharon's top adviser and former chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, said that the true aim of the plan was to indefinitely freeze the political process with the Palestinians while allowing Israel to strengthen its grip on the West Bank, where about 240,000 Jewish settlers live in 120 settlements, surrounded by about 2.2 million Palestinians.
"I cannot accept the evacuation of Gaza from the inside and the incarceration of Gaza from the outside while Weisglass talks about deepening the occupation of the West Bank and annexing settlements there to the state of Israel," said Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset who voted against the plan.
"We welcome any Israeli withdrawal from any Palestinian land," said Hassan Abu Libdeh, chief of staff to the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia. But to be successful, he said, it has to be part of "a resumption in the peace process and implementation of President Bush's vision of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state."
Instead, Abu Libdeh said, Sharon is "marketing the Gaza redeployment as a major Israeli step, when in fact it is a major initiative to take over for good much of the West Bank."
About 17,000 demonstrators, mostly from Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, held a festive, day-long protest outside the Knesset. Many said they felt betrayed by Sharon, who is widely considered the architect of Israeli settlement expansion.
"Sharon is a traitor," said Anat Livni, 45, of Nofim, a small West Bank settlement 25 miles north of Jerusalem that is not targeted for evacuation. "We built our lives in these places, and we raised our families there. How dare Sharon tear us away from our homes and give them to the enemy?"
Some complained that by withdrawing unilaterally, Sharon was rewarding Palestinian terrorism and getting nothing in return, unlike the 1982 Sinai withdrawal, part of an agreement in which Israel won a formal peace with Egypt.
"Giving away territory only encourages the terrorists and shows them that murdering us pays off and brings them the results they want," said Adi Rodal, 31, who lives in the northern West Bank settlement of Peduel, which is not to be evacuated.
Settlements closed schools and gave children the day off so they could attend makeshift civics classes in the parks that surround the parliament building.
"My brother and I built a model of our house in Gush Katif that the bad men in government want to destroy," said Avital Kadishman, 8, referring to settlements in the southern Gaza Strip. "They want to smash up our house and throw us out, not just our family but all our neighbors as well. The government doesn't like us anymore and are throwing us away."
Researcher Samuel Sockol and special correspondent Ian Deitch contributed to this report.
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Sharon Rejects Calls for Referendum on Pullout
October 27, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER and GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/international/middleeast/28mideastcnd.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Oct. 27 - Israel took a deep breath today after a dramatic vote in Parliament to unilaterally dismantle all Israeli settlements in Gaza, and the politically minded burned up their cellphones with speculation about the future of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his divided government.
But for the potential beneficiaries of a prospective Israeli withdrawal, the Palestinians, there was ambivalence and watchfulness. Militant groups took credit for the Israeli intention to pull its settlers out of Gaza, claiming that their armed resistance to Israeli occupation has been decisive.
Ordinary Palestinians, too, could claim the Israeli vote - and the bitter political divisions in Israel over it - as the first significant victory of a four-year intifada that has been marked by punishing defeats. But because Israel is acting unilaterally, without any discussion with the Palestinians, and because Mr. Sharon is open about strengthening Israel's hold over the more important settlements on the West Bank, the Gaza withdrawal feels like a very limited success, if not a setback.
"I didn't notice that the Palestinians were excited," said Ghassan Khatib, the Labor minister of the Palestinian Authority. "From their experience, they judge things on practical results, and right now, there is a feeling that this is not a significant development. If there is a withdrawal of settlements, then perhaps they will feel it has some significance."
Politically, however, Palestinians could take little pleasure in watching Israel pursue its own interests without reference to them, Mr. Khatib said.
"If the idea is to buy freedom for expanding settlements and consolidating them in the West Bank, then I don't think this is moving us toward the peaceful political objectives we seek," he said. "If it moves us to the road map, it makes sense."
The road map is an outline for peace negotiated with the Israelis and Palestinians by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, which calls for a freeze on all Israeli settlement activity and for a halt in Palestinian terrorism. But Israel argues that continuing Palestinian terrorism has put the plan in abeyance.
Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator from Gaza, said that the Palestinians would watch to see if the Israelis actually carry out the withdrawal.
"It depends if Sharon follows through," he said. "As a matter of principle, we are not opposed to any withdrawal from any part of the occupied territory. But it will not put an end to our demands or an end to the occupation."
Palestinians want to make sure that "Gaza first" does not mean "Gaza last," and that Israel is not allowed to separate the political future of Gaza and the West Bank or to destroy the possibility of a viable and territorially coherent Palestinian state.
This is the importance of the road map, which remains American policy, Mr. Amr said. "If this withdrawal can get us back to the road map, we would support it,'' he said. "After the U.S. election, I feel the administration will feel obligated to revive it."
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, also called for a renewal of negotiations in the context of the road map.
"If the Israeli government is serious about peace they should come back to the negotiating table to implement the road map and make the proposition for withdrawal from Gaza part of the road map and not an alternative to it," he said.
For the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Israeli vote was seen as a vindication of their violent struggle against the Jewish state, which both organizations wish to see destroyed. "The Zionist enemy will be removed from our land whether their Parliament voted with or against," said Sheik Nafez Assam of Islamic Jihad. "Resistance will drive them out."
Musheer al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, called the Israeli vote "a big achievement of the Palestinian people and the resistance, which alone has pushed the Zionist enemy to think of leaving Gaza."
Mr. Masri, too, pointed to Israel's intentions to hold on to large parts of the West Bank, and noted that the Israeli army would continue to patrol Gaza's coastline, air space and land borders. "Sharon is aiming to achieve his security aims by separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank," he said, "and Sharon will aim to intensify settlement activity in the West Bank."
Israel has been talking to Egypt about mediating a ceasefire with Hamas and other militants in Gaza so that the evacuation of the settlers can be done without gunfire and combat. But Hamas is "not ready to give any security or political commitment because it's a unilateral plan," Mr. Masri said. "Let it be as it is."
For Israelis, it was a day to speculate on what is ahead, but also to commemorate the ninth anniversary in the Jewish calendar of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who shook that hand of Yasir Arafat and signed the Oslo accords, which gave Palestinians political autonomy and significant control over the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Sharon, whose own life is said by the security forces to be under threat, praised Mr. Rabin, whom he criticized so fiercely at the time that he was accused of contributing to the climate of incitement that led to the murder.
"The disputes were never personal," Mr. Sharon said at Mr. Rabin's graveside at Mount Herzl. "If in the heat of the moment things were said that shouldn't have been, I am so sorry."
Mr. Rabin's daughter, Dalia, told Mr. Sharon that the family was with him in his political fight to pull out of Gaza. "We know the power of incitement and fear for your well-being, and for the country's well-being," she said.
Mr. Rabin's son, Yuval, pointed to the irony that those most opposed to his father at the time, like Mr. Sharon, were leading the disengagement process today - and doing so with the firm backing of the opposition Labor Party, while half of Mr. Sharon's Likud Party opposes him.
Earlier, Mr. Sharon seemed to dismiss the resignation threat of his finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and three other ministers, who say they will resign if he does not call a national referendum on the Gaza plan within two weeks.
"I will never give into pressures and threats and I won't accept any ultimatums," Mr. Sharon said. A referendum, he said, "will lead to terrible tensions and a rupture in the public." As he left the parliament hall Tuesday night, he told younger aides they should learn one lesson.
"Never, never give in to pressure and threats," he said to the daily Yediot Aharonot. "You can change your minds, I told them, you can be persuaded. But you must repel pressure and threats absolutely, as capitulation is the worst thing that can happen to you."
A senior Sharon adviser said today that Mr. Sharon would press ahead even if the ministers and the small National Religious Party leave the government and the Likud splits. He said Mr. Sharon could simply name some new ministers and would try to work out "cohabitation, Israeli-style" with the Labor Party in order to stay in office until the Gaza evacuation plan is carried out next year.
Early elections would be preferable to a national referendum, the adviser said. But elections, which would delay everything by at least three months, were a last resort, he said.
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Settlements Are Emptied for a Day of Protest
October 27, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/international/middleeast/27settlers.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 - For much of the day, it appeared Tuesday as if the Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip had already been evacuated.
By the thousands, settlers piled onto buses, leaving behind closed shops and padlocked schools. In a nod to Gaza's citrus farms, they dressed in orange T-shirts and then traveled in a convoy to a hilltop park outside the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem. There, they joined forces with West Bank settlers to again raise their voices against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan.
Well organized and highly motivated, the settlers have staged frequent mass rallies in an attempt to derail the Gaza pullout. By Tuesday afternoon, most had headed home, though some rallied outside the gates of Parliament well into the night.
Now, despite Mr. Sharon's victory in securing a parliamentary vote to withdraw, the settlers say the protests will continue.
"There are still many, so many, steps to go," said Liora Wechsler, 37, a 17-year resident of Gaza, who attended the Jerusalem protest along with her husband and five of their six children. "We think this plan can still fall through, and we'll stay in our home."
Well over half of Gaza's 8,000 Jewish settlers traveled to Jerusalem to take part in the demonstration, according to Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the settlers.
Most parents brought their children, and the festive scene resembled an end-of-year school picnic, complete with a band and vendors offering cotton candy.
In the largely deserted streets of the Gaza settlements, some who stayed behind said they had not yet considered where they would go if uprooted from Gaza, though Mr. Sharon says he wants to remove all of them next summer.
"All my life has been here in Gaza," said Pazit Alfasi, 26, who has lived in the coastal territory since she was a year old. "It's too difficult to think about going anywhere else. My husband and I haven't talked about it."
Mrs. Alfasi spoke from her desk in a car insurance office, one of the few businesses open Tuesday morning in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gaza settlement.
Yonatan Bassi, head of the government office established to administer the withdrawal plan, said last month that some Gaza settlers were resigned to leaving, but he estimated that about half were in "a state of denial."
Despite the frequent protests, there is little evidence that the settlers have swayed public opinion, which is firmly in support of the pullout.
Still, the plan has proved deeply divisive, and settlers believe it could yet collapse amid the tumult of Israeli politics.
"I think this plan would take two to three years to implement on the ground,'' Mr. Sternberg said.
"That means Sharon will have to win re-election," he said, "and I don't believe that will happen."
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Israel's Coming Civil War
Antiwar.com
by Uri Avnery
October 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/avnery.php?articleid=3855
Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.
The talk is about the coming civil war.
Only a few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly, is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another blown-up media sensation. Not yet another of Sharon's political manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers. But the real thing on the ground.
They talk about it at cabinet meetings and in the Knesset, on TV talk shows, in editorials and the news pages. The chief-of-staff has publicly warned that the army may fall apart. One of the ministers says that the very existence of the State of Israel is in danger. Another minister prophesies a bloodbath like the Spanish Civil War.
Quietly and not so quietly, the Shin Bet is taking precautions. The prison service has been ordered to prepare facilities for mass detentions. The army leadership is planning the call-up of 10,000 reserve soldiers and starting to think about the steps they must take in the case of . . .
No, it's a very real threat.
On the face of it, it may seem to have appeared from nowhere. But whoever has eyes to see knows that it is going to happen, sooner or later.
The seeds of the civil war were sown when the first settlement was put up in the occupied territories. At the time, I told the prime minister in the Knesset: "You are laying a land mine. Some day you will have to dismantle it. As a former soldier, let me warn you that the dismantling of land mines is a very unpleasant job."
Since then, hundreds of mines have been laid. The minefields are being extended even now.
The process was led by religious cranks. Their declared aim, as they said then and never tire of repeating, is to drive all the Arabs out of the country that God promised us. And the land God promised us, as one of them reminded us on TV the other day, is not the "Palestine" of the British mandate, but the Promised Land - including Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria and Sinai. Quoting the Bible, another one declared that we have come to this country not only to inherit, but also to disinherit the others, to drive them out and take their place.
Since the then minister of defense, Shimon Peres, implanted the first settlement, Kedumim, in the middle of the Palestinian population on the West Bank, the settlements have spread like locusts. Every settlement has gradually stolen the lands and water of the neighboring Palestinian villages, uprooted their trees, blocked their roads and built new roads, barred to Palestinians. Almost all the settlements have spawned satellite outposts on the nearby hills.
This is continuing at this very moment. After Sharon solemnly promised President Bush to dismantle some of the "outposts," dozens of new ones have sprung up. All the ministries are actively helping the outposts that were officially defined as "illegal." Not only is the army defending them, thereby putting its soldiers in harm's way, but it is actually telling the "hill-boys" where to set up their outposts and secretly advising them how to go about it.
When we warned of the danger, we were told to relax. Only a small minority of the settlers, we were comforted, are fanatical freaks. These are indeed crazy and will forcibly resist any attempt to remove them. But that will not be a big problem, because the vast majority of Israeli citizens detest them and consider them a sect of crackpots.
Most of the settlers, we were told, are not fanatics. They went there because the government presented them with expensive villas, which they could not even dream about in Israel proper. They were looking for "quality of life." When the government tells them to move, they will take the compensation and move on.
That is, of course, a dangerous delusion. As Karl Marx observed, people's consciousness is determined by their situation. The good Laborites who were implanted by the Labor government on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip now talk and behave like the worst followers of the late fascist rabbi Meir Kahane.
Moreover, we were told, even the weirdos recognize Israeli democracy. Nobody will raise his hands against soldiers of the Israeli army. When the government and the Knesset decide to evacuate settlements, they will obey. They may raise a ruckus and put up a show of resistance, as they did during the evacuation of the North Sinai settlements in 1982, but at the end of the day they will give in. After all, even in North Sinai not one single settler refused, in the end, to accept their compensation.
But this disdain for the settlers is no less dangerous than the disdain for the Arabs. What had been hidden all the time is now becoming clear: the settlers don't give a damn for democracy and the institutions of the state. Their hard core spells it out: when the resolutions of the Knesset contradict the Halakha (Jewish religious law), the Halakha has priority. After all, the Knesset is just a gang of corrupt politicians. And what value have the secular laws, copied from the Goyim (Gentiles), compared to the word of God, blessed be his name?
Many settlers do not yet say so openly and pretend to be insulted when such attitudes are attributed to them, but in fact they are dragged along by the hard core that has already thrown off all the masks. They challenge not only the policy of the government, but Israeli democracy as such. They declare openly that their aim is to overthrow the State of Law and put in its place the State of the Halakha.
A State of Law is subject to the will of the majority, which enacts the laws and amends them as necessary. The State of the Halakha is subject to the Torah, revealed once and for all on Mount Sinai and unchangeable. Only a very small number of eminent rabbis have the authority to interpret the Halakha. That is, of course, the opposite of democracy. In any other country, these people would be called fascists. The religious coloration makes no difference.
The religious-rightist rebels are powerfully motivated. Many of them believe in the Kabbala - not Madonna's fashionable Kabbala, but the real one, which says that today's secular Jews are really Amalekites who succeeded in infiltrating the People of Israel at the time of the exodus from Egypt. God Himself has commanded, as everyone knows, the eradication of Amalek from the face of the earth. Can there be a more perfect ideological basis for civil war?
Why has this become a threat at this point in time? It is not yet clear whether Sharon really intends to dismantle the few settlements in the Gaza Strip. But as the settlers see it, even the idea of removing one single settlement is a casus belli. It attacks everything that is holy to them. Sharon tried to convince them that it is only a ploy - to sacrifice a few small settlements in order to save all the others. In vain.
In preparation for the Great Rebellion, the settlers have unveiled their potential. The most eminent rabbis of the "Religious Zionist movement" have declared that the evacuation of a settlement is a sin against God and have called upon the soldiers to refuse orders. Hundreds of rabbis, including the rabbis of the settlements and the rabbis of the religious units in the army, have joined the call.
The voice of the few opponents is being drowned out. They quote the Talmudic saying "the law of the kingdom is law," meaning that every government has to be obeyed, much as Christians are required to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, etc. But who listens to these "moderate rabbis" now?
The conquest of the army from the inside began long ago. The "arrangement" with the yeshivot (religious schools) that serve in the army as separate units has allowed the entry of a huge Trojan horse. In any confrontation between their rabbis and their army commanders, the soldiers of the "arrangement yeshivot" will obey the rabbis. Worse: for years now, the settlers have systematically penetrated the ranks of the officers' corps, where they now constitute an even more dangerous Trojan horse.
The right-wing refusal to obey orders is unlike the left-wing conscientious objection. The leftist refusal is a personal stand, the rightist refusal a collective mutiny. On the left, a few hundred refused to serve the occupation, on the right, many thousands, even tens of thousands, will obey their rabbis' orders to refuse. As the chief-of-staff has warned, the army may disintegrate.
Altogether, the settlers, together with their close allies in Israel including the yeshivot students, may amount to something like half a million people - a mighty phalanx for rebellion.
As of now, the settlers are only using this threat as an instrument for blackmail and deterrence, in order to choke off any thought of evacuating settlements and territories. But if the blackmail does not do the job, the Great Rebellion is just a matter of time.
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Netanyahu, Livnat threaten to quit unless poll held on pullout
By Haaretz Service
October 27, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/493814.html
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Limor Livnat both threatened on Tuesday evening to quit unless Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to hold a referendum on a pullout from Gaza.
They said that Likud ministers Yisrael Katz and Dan Naveh would also quit if a decision is not made on the poll within 14 days.
The announcement came minutes after the Knesset approved Sharon's disengagement plan.
"We ... have decided to give the prime minister two weeks to announce a referendum, and if not, we will not be able to see ourselves as staying in this government," Netanyahu told reporters in parliament, minutes after legislators approved Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan.
Netanyahu told reporters that the group of ministers does not want to topple anyone, but only wants to give a chance to unity within the Likud party. Livnat reaffirmed what no one in the group wants to topple Sharon, and added that she only hopes the prime minister will accept the plea for a referendum, which is shared by most Likud MKs.
"I believe that the prime minister will go for a referendum and we can all do the right thing, if not, we have to say enough, is enough," Livnat said.
Deputy Prime Minister and Trade and Industry Minister Ehud Olmert called the threats "an unfair and dishonorable maneuver."
Ealier Tuesday, Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party) announced that his party would quit the government, unless Sharon decides to hold a referendum on his disengagement plan. The NRP also gave Sharon 14 days to make a decision on the nationwide poll.
Orlev's announcement came after he met with Netanyahu and Livnat to work out a deal to keep the NRP in the government. The NRP's six MKs all voted against the plan on Tuesday evening.
Orlev told reporters that he had assured Sharon that the party would remain in the coalition until the next general elections (currently set for 2006), whatever the results of the referendum.
The Yesha Council of Settlements also signed the NRP's pledge.
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The Struggle to Pry Open Brazil's Military Archives
(Inter Press Service)
by Mario Osava
October 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/osava.php?articleid=3859
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's first run-in with the military ended up giving a boost to the movement to gain access to the secret archives dating back to Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
The Torture Never Again Group (GTNM) of Rio de Janeiro is demanding the immediate opening of what human rights activists refer to as the "archives of terror."
Since it was founded in 1985 by relatives of those killed, tortured, and "disappeared" in the "dirty war," the GTNM has played a key role in pressing for information on the identity, whereabouts, and fate of around 150 victims of military rule.
"What we have been denouncing since 1992 has now been proven: that the secret archives do exist," and can shed light on cases of torture and murder that the armed forces want to keep as an "eternal secret," Cecilia Coimbra, the group's vice president, told IPS.
The London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International expressed its support for those efforts on Monday.
On Oct. 17, the newspaper Correio Braziliense, which is produced in the capital, Brasilia, published two photos that allegedly showed a local journalist, Wladimir Herzog, naked and in despair in a military prison in Sao Paulo shortly before he died there in October 1975.
At the time, the armed forces implausibly reported that Herzog had hung himself in his cell. The high-profile case had wide repercussions amidst the denunciations of torture and political repression, and led to the dismissal of the military commander of Sao Paulo.
After the photos were published, the army criticized the newspaper for "reviving the thirst for revenge and inciting a sterile debate" on the past.
The communiqué issued by the army claimed that the 1964 military coup d'etat was staged in response to "popular clamor," and that the political repression practiced by the military was "a legitimate response to the violence waged by those who refused to engage in dialogue and opted for radicalism and illegal actions."
But the declaration went even further, adding that the de facto regime led to "the construction of a new Brazil, in an environment of peace and security," and stating that in the army there has been "no change of position or conviction with regards to what occurred during that period of history."
The statement drew loud protests from members of the government and leaders of the ruling leftist Workers Party (PT), as well as from the human rights movement.
President Lula demanded that the army issue a retraction, which put Defense Minister José Viegas in a difficult position.
The chairman of the government's Special Commission on the Death and Disappearance of Political Prisoners, Joao Luiz Pinaud, threatened to resign if the conditions making it possible to investigate the cases of forced disappearance were not guaranteed.
The crisis was overcome with a second statement, signed by army chief Roberto de Albuquerque, who admitted that the issue was not treated "in an appropriate manner." The communiqué also said "the army laments the death of journalist Wladimir Herzog" and that it defends democracy.
The man who appears in the photos published by the Correio Braziliense was apparently Canadian priest Leopold D'Astous, who was detained in 1973 by the security forces, along with a Catholic lay worker, Terezinha Sales. Both were tortured and photographed naked, as a form of pressure to force D'Astous to leave the country.
However, Herzog's widow says that at least one of the photos is of her husband.
Regardless of the controversy over who appears in the two photos, the images made it clear that "the archives exist," said Coimbra.
The photos were in the hands of the Human Rights Commission in the lower house of Congress, but had not been made public, she said.
The army claims that all secret military archives were destroyed, but that is "only an argument to keep them hidden," said the activist.
Under pressure from the armed forces, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) signed a decree in 2002 expanding the timeframe for keeping the government's most confidential documents secret from 30 to 50 years.
The GTNM is demanding that the decree, which was ratified by Lula in February 2003, be overturned.
The military has a long tradition of keeping documents secret. The archives from the 1865-1870 War of the Triple Alliance, in which Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay fought against Paraguay, still remain closed today, said historian Denise Rollemberg, who is researching the period of the recent military regime.
But today there is greater pressure from society, the human rights movement has gained strength, and the families of the "disappeared" are actively demanding information, she commented to IPS.
"I have hopes that now things will be different," said Rollemberg.
Although the military successfully dismantled the groups that opposed the dictatorship, "they have lost the memory battle," she added, underlining the importance of salvaging that portion of the country's recent history, to avoid a repeat of the torture, censorship and other crimes committed by the authoritarian regime.
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Zarqawi attains mythic status in his Jordanian hometown
October 27, 2004
By Toby Harnden
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041027-121030-1476r.htm
ZARQA, Jordan - Here in a depressed industrial town on the dusty road from Amman, the capital, he is remembered as an ordinary, if somewhat wayward, young man called Ahmed Khalayleh, who later took his nom de guerre from his birthplace.
The Khalayleh home is still here - a drab, white building with a large satellite dish on the roof. Outside, grubby-faced children swarm around at the rare sight of a foreigner. Two young boys are playing tag.
"You're Abu Musab," cries Saddam Aoudi, 10.
"No, you're Abu Musab," his friend shouts back.
Behind the myth of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the West's new boogeyman, is the soft-featured terrorist who started out here as a tattooed small-town thug.
In the dimmed recesses of the American military operations rooms dotted across Iraq, they call him "the Z-man." Intelligence specialists dedicated to studying him are referred to reverentially as "Zarqeologists."
Zarqawi seems to be everywhere and yet nowhere, plotting terrorist attacks in Britain, Spain and Jordan, while moving like a specter through Iraq's heart of darkness. Files labeled "Top Secret" bulge with details of his life, but much of the lore surrounding him is suspected to be rumor or misinformation.
A U.S. Marine Corps profile noted that he has a "possible prosthetic leg," a "possible shoulder injury" and a "possible Jordanian accent." He likes to travel alone, it revealed, as an "unassuming businessman" in a red Pontiac, gold sedan, white van or "any vehicle."
But the rumors about his prosthetic leg have been revised. "He's understood to walk with a limp," said one source.
Zarqawi also is thought to use a personal digital assistant and take Zantac tablets - a common indigestion remedy.
Disputed details
No one knows for sure whether the Sunni fundamentalist is still hiding out in the Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah. Many opponents of American policy view him as an invention - rather than a terrorist mastermind with cells all over Iraq, the Caucasus and Western Europe.
Whatever the truth, coalition intelligence officers certainly accept his claims that he has organized the killings of hundreds in Iraq and personally beheaded Westerners - including British engineer Kenneth Bigley, killed Oct. 7 by his kidnappers after three weeks in captivity. A videotape of his beheading was delivered to an Arabic television channel the next day.
The myth of Zarqawi grows by the hour. Zarqawi, 38 this month, once was just like the tag-playing boys in his hometown, a child from a settled Bedouin family who enjoyed playing soccer on the dusty ground. He supported Ramtha, the local soccer team, and cheered for Argentina.
"I hope to be like him," one of the small boys said. "He's big in America. He makes us hold our heads up high."
When a foreigner knocks, an elderly woman unbolts the rusty metal front door.
"We don't have anything to say," she growls.
When one tries to take a photograph of the house, Zarqawi's elder brother, Mohammed Khalayleh, comes shooting out.
"He doesn't live here," he shouts, his clenched fists quivering. "He used to live here a very long time ago - so why do people keep coming to look for him?"
The house, 13 al-Hasmi St., is situated at the top of a hill, opposite an abandoned quarry. Like most of the neighboring houses, it is built of cement blocks and borders a road that is strewn with trash.
Locals call this town, known for poverty and crime, the Chicago of the Middle East.
Teenage troublemaker
Despite his soft features, Zarqawi had a reputation as a hard youth who was adept with a knife. There is talk of a fondness for alcohol - and he was convicted of drug possession. On the inside of his left forearm, he had a homemade tattoo of an anchor.
He might have been just another semi-delinquent, but there is enough resentment here against the West for the residents to view him - with some contradiction - as both a boogeyman created by the Americans and a hero fighting for the oppressed Muslim masses. His first wife still lives in the town with their four children - although, three years ago, Zarqawi married his second, a 14-year-old Palestinian, in Pakistan.
"If he came back, I would welcome him," said Jihad Sa'id, 36, at the local store. "I don't think a single person in Zarqa would turn their face away. The Arabs are worn down, beaten almost. They will support whoever defends them, like Osama bin Laden previously, and now Abu Musab."
Firas Ali, a grocer, was skeptical. Zarqawi was a resistance fighter who defended Muslims, but not a major player in Iraq, let alone in a global jihad, he said.
"No one thinks he's a terrorist, like they say on television. When Americans blow places up, saying they are looking for him, we know these are all excuses and that he's not behind every bombing. They've built him up into something superhuman."
Salem Khalayleh, 44, spoke fondly of his first cousin.
"I love him," he said. "I respect and have esteem for him. I can't say any more than this. He had a strong personality, and he was always outspoken and had the courage of his convictions."
When asked whether he approved of the beheadings of hostages, he replied: "They're just kidnapping a few people to tell them to leave their land. Why don't you ask the Americans if it's right to bomb people who don't even have anti-aircraft guns to defend themselves?"
Some elements of Zarqawi's background helped transform him from local thug to America's No. 1 target in Iraq, with a $25 million reward for his capture.
From anger to action
The fact that Zarqa became home to a large Palestinian refugee camp, where generations have lived in abject conditions, has fueled an acute sense of injustice, even among non-Palestinians. Almost inevitably, the town was fertile ground for radical Islamic preachers.
In his late teens, Zarqawi began to heed their message, first giving up alcohol and drugs and then becoming an avowed Islamist.
"He was like all these religious people who have no television in their house and just read the Koran," his cousin said.
His family almost certainly encouraged this transformation. Zarqawi's father, a sheik, returned home in 1949 after defending Jerusalem against the fledgling state of Israel. He was respected for both his religious views and his part in fighting the Jews.
He appears to have approved of his son's departure for Afghanistan in the late 1980s to fight the Soviets - along with many other idealistic young Arabs. There, Zarqawi acquired yet another name: "al-Gharib," "the stranger."
Returning to Jordan in 1992, he joined a radical Islamic group called Bayat al Imam. A year later, he was arrested and convicted of plotting to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy after explosives and assault rifles were found in his house.
Fellow inmates in prison - from which he was released under a general amnesty in 1999 - were struck by the hold that Zarqawi exerted on those around him. He gradually marginalized and then excluded his superior, Abu Mohammed Maqdisi, and emerged as leader of Bayat al Imam.
By then, he was wearing Afghan robes and a turban and committing to memory all 6,236 verses of the Koran. He forbade his new followers from reading anything else. The anchor tattoo was removed with hydrochloric acid.
"He was a perfectionist," said Abdallah Abu Romman, a journalist who was jailed about the same time for criticizing Jordan's King Hussein.
"He looked on himself as a role model, who was honest, brave, clean and very serious. In the three months I was with him, I don't believe I heard him laugh once."
Basil Abu Sabha, the prison doctor, recalled: "He could direct his men simply by moving his eyes."
Prison transformation
It was in prison that Zarqawi's ideology took shape. As a Salafist, who rejects all modern interpretations of Islam, he would seek to convert the world to the faith as it was in the days of the prophet Muhammad, 14 centuries ago. Zarqawi's dream is to establish a worldwide medieval caliphate, governed by Islamic fundamentalist law, or Shariah.
His righteous fury initially was directed not against Christians or Americans, but those who rejected all religion.
"He did not consider America an enemy," Mr. Abu Romman said. "His main foe was Russia and communism. Americans, at least, had faith in God."
Yousef Rababa, another prisoner, said Zarqawi divided the world into "infidels" and believers and would debate so fervently that "he almost used to attack us with his fists."
"The infidel is, for him, an infidel - whether he is a foreigner, Arab or Muslim," Mr. Rababa said. "His principle is: 'If you are not with me, then you are against me' - the same logic that President Bush uses.
"Bin Laden is a person of political priorities - he has enemies in America, Iraq and Palestine. Zarqawi has no political issues. It is all about doctrine."
So what propelled Zarqawi into such rabid anti-Americanism? The Zarqeologists think the trigger was the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which unseated the Taliban regime - viewed by Zarqawi as a true Salafist state. Afterward, he fled to Iran before basing himself in northern Iraq in 2002.
American military planners think Zarqawi is more extreme than bin Laden, whom the former met some time before the September 11 attacks.
"His mental state, his rabid dedication to jihad causes him to do things a normal person would not do," said one senior U.S. military officer.
"He blows up people he's trying to get to join him in his cause. He professes in deed, if not in word, that it's OK to kill Shias if you are a Sunni. That's not even al Qaeda's plan."
CIA profiles portray him as almost mentally deranged, but America's obsession with Zarqawi may have boosted the numbers of his potential recruits and financial backers.
Iraqi followers
"Have we contributed to the misperception that he is more than he is? The answer's 'yes,' " the officer said. "But it's an unintended consequence. He is not our main adversary right now. In terms of what amounts to a potential for a grass-roots insurgency that would hinder the future health of Iraq, the former regime elements (FREs) are the problem."
Those "FREs" - mainly former military officers loyal to Saddam Hussein - reject Zarqawi's methods and his desire for an Islamic state. But there are some low-level alliances between the two groups because they share the short-term aim of forcing out American and British forces.
According to best U.S. estimates, Zarqawi commands about 500 men in Iraq, the majority of them fighters from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia. He is backed by wealthy persons abroad, but no states support him.
So how dangerous is he? The senior U.S. military officer theorizes that Zarqawi may no longer be able to pull off the "spectacular" coordinated attacks that he was achieving months ago; he is killing fewer people, and more of his operations are being thwarted.
The recent announcement that he apparently has joined forces with al Qaeda could be a sign of weakness or desperation.
"He was more of an al Qaeda competitor, in many ways, and resisted allying with them because he didn't want to be dominated by them," the officer said.
Mr. Bush, however, long has said that the Jordanian is bin Laden's man in Iraq, despite evidence to the contrary.
"Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda," he said at an Ohio campaign rally.
Some have accused the Bush administration of deliberately exaggerating Zarqawi's role in Iraq as a way of delegitimizing the insurgency - the main elements of which are indigenous.
Meanwhile, American forces are increasingly confident that his days are numbered.
"We've been real close to killing him, and we're in hot pursuit right now," the U.S. officer said. "He's more lucky than he is good - and he's going to get unlucky soon."
Whether eliminating Zarqawi also will slay the monstrous myth that continues to swirl around his name is a more difficult question. The power of "the Z-man" might not die with him.
-------- nato
Six NATO warships anchor off Montenegro
(AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027150443.5oqc4lj8.html
PODGORICA, Serbia-Montenegro - Six NATO warships anchored in the Montenegrin ports of Bar and Kotor on Wednesday, navy sources said.
The ships are manned by some 700 sailors and come from the Dutch, Turkish, British and Spanish navies, the official said.
They were invited to anchor in the area by Serbia-Montenegro Defence Minister Prvoslav Davinic, as a part of ongoing efforts to improve cooperation between the North-Atlantic alliance and the Serbia-Montenegro military.
The military in Serbia-Montenegro, the loose union of two Balkan states which replaced the disbanded rump Yugoslavia last year, is going through a massive transformation in order to meet NATO membership requirements.
In early June the Serbia-Montenegro Navy held joint exercises with the Italian Navy in the Adriatic Sea.
-------- prisoners of war
Ex-CIA Official Defends Detention Policies
Careful Vetting, Approval Cited
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A556-2004Oct26.html
The recently retired director of CIA operations worldwide yesterday defended the legality of the CIA's interrogation and detention policies in Iraq and elsewhere, saying they were carefully vetted and approved by the National Security Council and disclosed to the appropriate congressional oversight committees.
"There's a perception that the CIA does things on its own, sort of makes things up out of whole cloth," said James L. Pavitt, who retired in August. "There are hard, fast, unambiguous rules about how things are done and not done. . . . The view that this is some sort of rogue activity . . . it's just not true."
Pavitt's comments came in an interview two days after disclosure that the Justice Department, at the CIA's request, drafted a confidential memo in March authorizing the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation, which some legal specialists say violates the Geneva Conventions.
The draft opinion, first disclosed in a Washington Post article on Sunday, said the section of the Geneva Convention that protects civilians, insurgents and other nonmilitary personnel in Iraq would permit the CIA to take Iraqis and non-Iraqis out of that country temporarily for questioning. But some experts in international law said the draft legal memo was a misreading of the treaty, which prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive."
The CIA, according to an intelligence source, used the document to transfer as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq since March.
The CIA's interrogation techniques and handling of detainees have been under scrutiny since the abuse scandal at the military-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Resulting investigations have found that the CIA hid some detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan from the International Committee of the Red Cross, transferred others to secret detention sites in unspecified countries and has been given authority to conduct harsh interrogations on certain al Qaeda terrorist suspects.
Pavitt, who declined to talk about specific CIA authorities or legal memos, said the activities recently in the news were "done in consultation with the executive at all levels, the National Security Council and such. . . . Any impression that we were operating high, wide and handsome, without appropriate congressional oversight, I think would also be, incorrect."
White House officials declined to discuss the issue yesterday, as did the CIA. One intelligence official who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, echoed some of Pavitt's comments, saying, "These operations are conducted in consultations with other elements of the government."
In addition to ruling on the transfer of Iraqi detainees, the Justice Department's office of legal counsel also created a new category of people in Iraq that it said did not qualify for protection under the Geneva Conventions: non-Iraqis who were not members of Saddam Hussein's former Baath Party and who went to Iraq after the invasion. The new classification was included in a one-page October 2003 interim ruling, which was finalized March 18.
The intelligence official said non-Iraqi detainees were taken out of Iraq under that provision only after review and approval by the Justice Department.
Although the military's treatment of detainees in Iraq has been the subject of public hearings and investigations, the CIA's policies and general authorities have received little review in such public forums.
After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the House and Senate armed services committees held about a dozen hearings on Defense Department interrogation and detention policies. The hearings included Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top generals. The department has also declassified hundreds of pages of documents relevant to the investigation.
But neither the House or Senate intelligence oversight committees has held an open session on the CIA's detention or interrogation policies. The chairman and vice chairman of the House and Senate committees were briefed, without staff members present, on the new enhanced interrogation techniques being employed by the CIA against selected terrorist suspects soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The chairman and vice chairman were also briefed, said intelligence and congressional sources, on the legal justification for the CIA's policies governing what are called renditions -- when captives are turned over to other governments for interrogations. In some cases those governments are known to abuse human rights.
Some of the legal opinions concerning the renditions were discussed among the chairman, vice chairman and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, sources said.
Human rights groups and others have criticized the intelligence committees for not holding public hearings on such practices. "The armed services committees have been doing their job, but they are prevented, because of jurisdiction, from looking into the CIA's policies," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "The internal policies developed by the CIA influenced the conduct of the military in Abu Ghraib and Iraq. The intelligence committees clearly have not done the necessary oversight."
-------- space
Russia To Build South Korean Launch Pad
Moscow (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-04zy.html
Russia is to build a space launch pad in South Korea by 2007, Itar-Tass news agency reported Wednesday, quoting Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roskosmos. A contract covering "construction of a rocket launch pad for civilian use and space exploration" was signed by both countries, the spokesman was quoted as saying.
Khrunichev, a Russian space group that is to participate in the project, agreed in September to help South Korea build its first space rocket, and Russia also plans to launch a South Korean cosmonaut into space by 2007.
Approval to carry a South Korean to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz rocket must nonetheless be approved by the ISS' 16 partners, including NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
-------- un
UN Terrorism Treaty Deadlocked
(Inter Press Service)
by Thalif Deen
October 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=3861
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations, which was on the verge of adopting a new international convention against nuclear terrorism, has been forced to shelve the proposed treaty because of opposition from Islamic states.
"After six years of protracted negotiations, the final draft was ready for adoption by the UN Legal Committee last week," a Third World diplomat said Tuesday. "But it hit a snag over definitions of terrorism and military exemptions," he said.
Rohan Perera, chairman of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Terrorism, who piloted the 28-article draft treaty, admitted that an eleventh-hour hitch had prevented adoption of the convention.
"We will meet early next year to continue our discussions," Perera told IPS. "We are hopeful of resolving the outstanding issues."
The treaty not only obligates states to extradite anyone committing an offense with a nuclear explosive device but also outlaws the possession of radioactive material by non-state actors.
The United States is sticking by a contentious article in the draft treaty that says the activities of armed forces - in as much as they are subject to rules of international law - will not be governed by the proposed convention.
Muslim countries are not only opposed to this military exemption, which they say will provide governments such as Israel with free passage to "state terrorism," but are also demanding a clearer distinction between a "terrorist" and a "freedom fighter."
These countries are also pushing for an international conference on terrorism in order to agree on a definition of the term.
"A universally accepted definition of terrorism must be agreed upon, so that terrorism is not confused with the struggle of peoples for self-determination," says Emine Gokcen Tugral of Turkey.
Speaking on behalf of the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC), she told delegates last week that the OIC believed the proposed treaty should differentiate between terrorism and the struggle for self-determination against foreign occupation.
In singling this out, the OIC is implicitly hinting at the U.S.-led military occupation of Iraq and the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories.
The United Nations already has 12 core conventions and protocols relating to terrorism, the last two being the 1997 International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.
Ambassador Andrey Denisov of Russia sided with the United States when he insisted that the clause exempting armed forces be kept intact in the proposed convention. "The question of extending a provision in the draft text to cover the activities of armed forces of states should be accepted," he added.
Ever since the break up of the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, military experts and peace activists have warned that the world continues to face the threat of "loose nukes."
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a U.S.-based non-governmental organization (NGO) advocating a nuclear weapons-free world, says it takes the threat of nuclear terrorism very seriously and welcomes actions to reduce that risk.
"The most important step to prevent nuclear terrorism is that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons," Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford of IPPNW told IPS.
The reason the world faces the risk of nuclear terrorism, she argues, is that the eight nuclear states continue to hold more than 30,000 nuclear weapons, with some 4,000 on alert, ready to launch on warning.
The proposed UN treaty, Ashford added, would not completely eliminate that risk.
"Because the threat or use of nuclear weapons by states is not included in this convention, this agreement must be regarded as a useful step in reducing the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, and a step toward tighter control of fissile materials, but more a stop-gap measure than a decisively effective action," she said.
Ashford also argued that effective prevention of terrorism hinges on the important work of addressing its root causes in economic inequality and injustice, and the exploitation and oppression of people in countries where hopelessness fuels anger.
Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle East Report, says the UN debate over "terrorism" reflects that the term has "for all intents and purposes become an ethno-religiously-based term, even a racial epithet used to dehumanize, more than a neutral definition of a specific form of political violence, namely that which is deliberately, knowingly, or indiscriminately directed against civilians."
"Thus a Palestinian who deliberately kills an Israeli child is a terrorist; an Israeli who deliberately kills a Palestinian child is a soldier or settler," Rabbani told IPS.
This seems to be the observable rule in virtually every conflict in which Arab or Muslim protagonists are involved against non-Arab, non-Muslim adversaries, who generally engage in identical practices, more often than not on a considerably larger scale, he added.
Secondly, the definition of "terrorism" has been further skewed and distorted by serving as a label for political violence - often any form of political violence - by non-state actors, rather than as a definition of a specific form of political violence irrespective of its perpetrator.
"The official U.S. definition of terrorism in fact excludes, as a matter of definition, states from direct culpability. That is why the State Department - even in reference to [former President] Saddam Hussein's Iraq - only speaks of 'state sponsors' of terrorism; by definition there are only terrorist organizations."
Given the historical background and current ideological climate, he added, it is hardly surprising that Arab and Muslim states at the United Nations are demanding a clear, precise, and neutral definition of terrorism - one that defines it on the basis of actions rather than the identity of the perpetrator.
In the context of negotiations about a convention on nuclear terrorism, eliminating distinctions based on the ethno-religious or organizational identity of potential perpetrators is a vital concern, he said.
"It seems Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East has in this respect only stiffened the OIC's resolve," Rabbani concluded.
-------- us
Small Minority Says Draft Could Happen
New Conflict Would Further Strain Troop Levels
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A440-2004Oct26?language=printer
Many military experts believe that reviving some sort of military draft is extremely unlikely, even impossible -- but not all of them.
The issue has taken on urgency because of the dynamics of the presidential campaign, with Democratic operatives using the prospect of a draft to drive the youth vote, and the Democratic nominee himself raising the possibility on the campaign trail.
Neither presidential candidate supports resuming conscription. President Bush, responding to John F. Kerry's assertion that there is a "great potential" that a reelected Bush could restart a draft, insists that it will not happen. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week: "The truth is, we do not need a draft. We're not going to have a draft."
Overwhelmingly, military insiders agree with both of Rumsfeld's points. "Very simply and strongly, I do not foresee a need nor a desire for a draft," retired Army Lt. Gen. Joseph K. Kellogg Jr. said in a comment typical of those heard across the armed forces. "The all-volunteer military is a thing of true magnificence and should not, and need not, be changed." Resuming conscription, he added, has become one of the lethal "third rails" in American politics, akin to fiddling with Social Security.
But a small minority of defense specialists say that, given the strains placed on the U.S. military over the past three years, they can imagine scenarios in which a new conflict would require significant numbers of new troops -- and in which the draft would be reinstituted.
Oddly, the debate comes as the all-volunteer force experiences the first sustained ground combat in its history -- and just after the last draftee has left the Army. On July 29, Sgt. Maj. Archie Turner, who was conscripted in January 1973, retired from the Defense Logistics Agency after more than 31 years of service.
Army Maj. Donald Vandergriff, author of two influential books on military personnel policy, said that if current strains on the armed forces continue, especially the need to keep 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, he could see the need for a draft.
"If the force is stretched and the same people are always rotating with little breaks in between, they become worn out, tired, start becoming bitter, start making mistakes," he said in an e-mail interview. The Army's recent moves to restructure itself to have more deployable brigades, and to keep soldiers in one unit longer, are steps that promise to lessen that strain, he said.
Even so, Vandergriff said: "We either have to come up with a plan that details how we are going to sustain the long-term effectiveness of our force for a decades-long war that says we can continue to do it with the volunteer force, or have to look at other alternatives like the draft."
For the past 30 years, the Army and the other services have filled their ranks with volunteers, lately recruiting about 190,000 enlistees annually. Today there are 1.4 million people in the active-duty force and 865,000 in the Guard and reserve components. Rumsfeld is fond of pointing out that every one of them asked to be there -- while Kerry likes to note that "stop-loss" orders have prevented some from leaving, a move he has labeled a "back-door draft."
Other experts worry that trouble elsewhere, in addition to the Iraq war, could trigger a need for more troops.
An Army colonel at the Pentagon, who said he could not speak on the record about the draft without being fired, said that he does not believe a draft is politically possible, but that new crises could make it militarily necessary. "The military right now is stripped down pretty thin," he said. "If the president decided we needed to go somewhere other than Iraq, it doesn't take a mental giant to figure out that we don't have the people to do that."
Iran is mentioned frequently in such assessments. Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert in targeting nuclear facilities, worries that the looming confrontation with that country over its nuclear program could result in a need to greatly expand the military. "The Iran train is bearing down on us quickly," said Gardiner, who recently conducted a private war game on how U.S. forces might attack and destroy Iranian nuclear capabilities. He estimates that "we would need four to five divisions to have a reasonable military option" to do that. The Army has 10 active-duty divisions, and most either are in Iraq, just returned from there or are preparing to go.
Likewise, retired Army Col. Lloyd Matthews, a former editor of the Army War College's Parameters magazine, said he does not foresee any possibility of a draft but also worries about the huge troop requirements that could stem from a new confrontation. "After the election, and after we obtain breathing space in Iraq, we are going to have to get serious about the nuclear situation in Iran and North Korea," he said. "If our responses in any way involve ground troops, we will have to discover new means of raising them."
Even if the military needed huge numbers of troops quickly, predicted Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Pentagon first would increase recruitment with new incentives, mobilize all the reserves and take other steps, such as twisting the arms of allies to contribute troops. "At that point, the draft might be instituted, but only after every other work-around possible," Kohn said.
Many more defense experts say the United States would need a draft if its homeland comes under a clear threat. The requirement for new soldiers could then increase sharply because a large crisis in the United States would call upon the National Guard, which is being used heavily to supplement the active-duty U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are 173,172 Guard and reserve troops now on active duty, many of them in those two countries.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Lawson W. Magruder III said it might be possible that a draft would be needed to produce soldiers who could "serve as a backfill -- replacements -- for deployed National Guard units, if we have insufficient force to defend our own homeland from looming terrorist threats."
Likewise, a commander in the 82nd Airborne Division said he thinks it is possible that there could be a narrowly focused draft aimed only at filling the National Guard and Army Reserve but that keeps the active-duty Army an all-volunteer force.
Several national security specialists predicted that it would take more than just a vague threat to the homeland to resume the draft. "It will take something very emotion-charged to galvanize those in favor and immobilize those who would otherwise be opposed," said retired Army Col. Ralph Hallenbeck, who worked in Iraq last year as a contractor. But he noted that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the political debate on whether to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Some experts believe that even if there is a clear and urgent need for a draft, political leaders will shy away from the idea.
"There is no question that the growing gap between the supply of U.S. ground forces and the actual and potential demands for them is approaching a condition of unacceptable strategic risk, if we are not there already," said Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air Force's Air War College.
Record, who is also the author of "Dark Victory: America's Second War Against Iraq," a scathing critique of the Bush administration's handling of the war, said he expects other steps to be taken, more along the lines of market-oriented solutions. "I can see an expansion of the AVF [all-volunteer force] via major increases in pay and benefits," he said. "I can even see the hiring of foreign mercenaries, which is essentially what we are doing in Iraq. The Defense Department has outsourced everything else. Why not badly needed ground combat forces?"
--------
Pentagon denies detainees' torture charges, says no legal basis for paying claims
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041027191906.zkezbsp8.html
The Pentagon Wednesday denied allegations by four former British detainees that they were tortured and abused in US custody and said there was no basis in US law for paying claims to people taken prisoner as a result of combat.
Lawyers for the former detainees filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking 10 million dollars in damages from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials for the alleged torture and abuse.
Since their release in March from the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith have charged they were regularly beaten, deprived of sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures, forcibly undressed, threatened with death or dogs, and harassed about their religion and ethnicity.
Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "Those allegations are false."
He said the Justice Department was representing the Defense Department in the matter.
Shavers said the four former detainees were captured illegally fighting for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and were properly classified as enemy combatants.
"Their detention was directly related to their combat activities as determined by an appropriate DoD official before they were transferred to Guantanamo," he said.
"There is no basis in US law to pay claims to those captured and detained as a result of combat activities," he said.
He said it was US policy to treat all detainees "in a manner consistent with US legal obligations, and specifically legal obligations prohibiting torture."
However, the United States contends that as "illegal combatants" suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured in Afghanistan are not protected by the Geneval Conventions.
The suit refers to a memo signed by Rumsfeld in December 2002, authorizing interrogators to use various strong-arm tactics.
--------
Judge Bars Military from Forced Anthrax Shots
Reuters
By James Vicini
Oct 27, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041028/us_nm/health_anthrax_military_dc_4
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday barred the U.S. military from forcing troops to be vaccinated for anthrax without either getting their informed consent or obtaining a special order from President Bush.
About 1 million troops have already been given the shots in the six-year-old program and many who refused have faced punishment, including being thrown out of the military.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan set aside a final rule and order by the Food and Drug Administration that late last year declared the anthrax vaccine safe and effective to protect troops against inhaled exposure of the deadly bacteria.
"By refusing to give the American public an opportunity to submit meaningful comments on the anthrax vaccine's classification, the agency violated the Administrative Procedures Act," he ruled in a 41-page decision.
Defense officials have said about 1 million troops have been given the shots under the anthrax vaccination program. Some have reported inflammation in the area of the vaccination. Others have reported extreme fatigue, joint pain and temporary memory loss.
Worried about possible dangerous side effects, hundreds of U.S. service members have refused the vaccinations and many have been punishment, including being discharged.
Sullivan told the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider the issue after an appropriate public comment period. In the meantime, he barred the military from continuing the compulsory vaccinations.
"Congress has prohibited the administration of investigational drugs to service members without their consent. This court will not permit the government to circumvent this requirement," he wrote.
"The men and women of our armed forces deserve the assurance that the vaccines our government compels them to take into their bodies has been tested by the greatest scrutiny of all -- public scrutiny," Sullivan said.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by six unidentified troops and civilian workers for the Department of Defense who challenged the military's policy.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer for the six plaintiffs, hailed the ruling. "We're ecstatic. This confirms that we've been stating for six years now -- that the program was illegal and ill-conceived from day one."
The Defense Department said it remained convinced that the vaccine is safe but would stop giving anthrax vaccinations until the legal situation was clarified.
Anthrax is considered the No. 1 biological weapon threat. It can be transmitted in three ways -- through inhalation of the spores, into a cut in the skin, or by eating contaminated meat.
Inhaled anthrax is by far the deadliest form. In 2001, five Americans died from anthrax inhaled from contaminated mail.
The Justice Department is reviewing the ruling, a spokesman said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Hopefuls' Preferences for Court Spring to Forefront
Usually Low-Key Issue Gets Attention as Rehnquist's Illness Becomes Public
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A547-2004Oct26?language=printer
It is axiomatic of presidential politics that while many people are concerned about the future of the Supreme Court, the issue mainly influences narrow groups of voters at either end of the political spectrum, and then only by intensifying preferences, Democratic or Republican, they already have.
Both President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) have campaigned as if they accepted that view in 2004. Each has limited his remarks on the court to carefully phrased messages aimed at reassuring his core followers without inflaming his opponent's.
But with the court's announcement Monday that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, is suffering from thyroid cancer, the wider public is seeing more news about the prospect of change in the justices' ranks than at any other time in the campaign -- and the presidential candidates' positions on judicial nominations have been thrust into the spotlight.
The current nine justices have been together since 1994, the longest period without turnover at the court since the 1820s. With the court sharply divided between liberals and conservatives on such key issues as affirmative action, abortion rights, states' rights and gay rights, the next nomination to a life appointment as a justice will probably be the focus of intense political combat when it comes before the Senate.
"What we've been saying is that the Nov. 2 election will determine the law of the land for several decades," said Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal organization People for the American Way.
Indirectly, Bush and Kerry have already clashed over judicial nominations over the past four years. Bush has sent the Senate the names of conservative nominees for federal appellate judgeships. Senate Democrats, with Kerry's support, have blocked them, citing ideology and other factors.
In 2004, the most direct exchange on the issue came during the second presidential debate, on Oct. 8, in response to a question from an audience member.
Bush said, as he has before, that he would put "strict constructionists" on the court. "We've got plenty of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution," Bush said.
In a clear appeal to his conservative base, the president said that he would not elevate any judge who would have supported the ruling of a federal appeals court, later overturned by the Supreme Court, that barred the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance as recited by schoolchildren.
Somewhat more obscurely, he added that he would not appoint jurists who approve of the Dred Scott decision, a long-discredited 1857 ruling in which the Supreme Court denied citizenship to all black people, free and enslaved. The reference was one that most abortion opponents would have recognized as a signal of disapproval for Roe v. Wade, the court's 1973 decision recognizing a constitutional right to choose abortion.
"It's not unusual for speakers, when they are talking about the life issue, to compare Roe to Dred Scott, because both took a whole class of individuals and said that they are not persons," said Gary Bauer, president of the antiabortion Campaign for Working Families.
Challenged at the third and final debate on Oct. 13 by moderator Bob Schieffer to say whether he supported repeal of Roe v. Wade, Bush replied that he would have no "litmus test" for judicial appointments.
Kerry also appealed to his base on the issue, taking a jab at Bush for his remark during the 2000 campaign that he wanted justices in the mold of Supreme Court conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- justices so widely loathed on the left that Democrats recently sent out a mass mailing urging donors to help elect a Democratic Senate lest Republicans confirm "Chief Justice Scalia."
Kerry also flatly stated his support for judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade.
"I'm not going to appoint a judge to the court who's going to undo a constitutional right, whether it's the First Amendment or the Fifth Amendment or some other right that's given under our courts today, or under the Constitution," Kerry said at the third debate. "And I believe that the right of choice is a constitutional right."
The main non-ideological factor in the Supreme Court equation may be ethnicity. For both parties, naming the first Hispanic justice could be a way to curry favor with Hispanic voters.
For Bush, however, this has grown slightly more difficult, according to analysts on both sides of the partisan divide.
White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales was once thought to be a near-certain pick, but his involvement with controversial administration policies on terrorism detainees may have hurt his chances.
The president tried to appoint Washington lawyer Miguel A. Estrada to the federal appeals court, in an apparent bid to groom him for the high court. But Estrada withdrew amid a Democratic filibuster.
Some Republicans still back Estrada as a dark horse for the Supreme Court, along with federal appeals Judge Emilio Garza. A President Kerry could turn to federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor. Democrats increasingly speak of a different kind of Supreme Court first, in the form of a nomination by Kerry of David S. Tatel, a federal appeals court judge who is blind and would therefore become the first disabled justice.
If Rehnquist's seat is indeed the first to come open, each party would also have the option of defusing a possible Senate battle by elevating Sandra Day O'Connor, a popular centrist, as the first woman chief justice in tandem with an associate justice nomination.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Intelligence bill misses deadline
October 27, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041026-115153-6611r.htm
The House-Senate conference on the intelligence reform bill engaged in intense negotiations yesterday but failed to reach agreement, effectively missing the deadline for the legislation to reach the president before Election Day.
Congressional aides said yesterday's talks centered on how much power to give a national intelligence director. The creation of that post was a main recommendation of a bipartisan panel that investigated the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In addition, negotiators have not even been able to address other contentious issues, such as the immigration-related provisions in the House version of the bill, aides said yesterday.
Although the bill's chance to become law before the nation picks its next president Tuesday dissolved with yesterday's deadline, there was still hope an agreement might be reached between the House and Senate on a final version by the end of the week.
"It's most unlikely that we will have a congressionally passed bill before the election, but we are now striving to reach an agreement before the election," said Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, who drafted the Senate version of the bill with Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican.
If a conference agreement is met, congressional aides said, it would set the stage for the legislation to be among the first orders of business during the lame-duck session of Congress scheduled to start Nov. 16.
Mr. Lieberman and Miss Collins continued meeting last night with House conferees, Reps. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, and Jane Harman, California Democrat.
At issue is whether the national intelligence director will control budgets of intelligence agencies under the Defense Department, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the intelligence divisions of the military's four branches, congressional aides said.
The "big sticking point" is the national intellegent director, said John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.
Jen Burita, a spokeswoman for Miss Collins, said that "negotiations are continuing."
About 80 percent of the nation's overall intelligence budget is for agencies under the Defense Department. The initial House version of the reform bill would keep control over such agencies' budgets in the hands of the secretary of defense, but the Senate version would give the national intelligence director a significant amount of control.
The Pentagon is fighting to maintain its power over the budgets. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, wrote Congress last week urging "critical provisions be preserved" in the House version of the bill.
Also contributing to the impasse are several immigration-related provisions in the House version, including one to expand the government's legal jurisdiction to deport terror suspects, and another to require asylum seekers to produce corroborating evidence that they are fleeing persecution.
Human rights and Hispanic groups aggressively oppose the asylum provision, and the White House has said it has "concerns" about it. But several key Senate Republicans support it and other immigration-related provisions in the House version.
There was frustration among House Republicans that negotiations on the provisions were held up yesterday, said Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, who has fought for the provisions.
"They're all being taken off the table until the intelligence reform provisions are addressed," Mr. Lungren said. "There's just been a refusal by the Senate and House Democrats to come to closure."
--------
Turf War Stalls Intelligence Bill
Pentagon Allies at Odds With Advocates of New Director
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A441-2004Oct26.html
Congressional efforts to restructure the U.S. intelligence system before the election have stalled because of a bitter turf war over control of intelligence spending that pits the Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill against advocates of a new national intelligence director, according to lawmakers and staff aides.
President Bush, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and the families of victims have all called for swift action to address failures in intelligence gathering related to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in misleading information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Members of Congress and their aides say the main holdup now is over who will have final say over spending the billions of dollars a year earmarked for the three Pentagon-based agencies that collect and analyze intelligence.
Yesterday, relatives of Sept. 11 victims and a member of the Sept. 11 commission continued to apply public pressure at a morning news conference at the Capitol, saying Bush and House Republicans will be held accountable if a bill does not pass before Tuesday's election.
Mary Fetchet, whose son Brad died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, said the president could resolve the matter with one phone call to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). She called on the two men, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), to drop their opposition to the Senate version of the legislation.
"History will judge their actions, and we . . . will hold them personally accountable," said Fetchet, a leader of the Family Steering Committee, a group representing victims' families.
The slow-paced negotiations are over competing 500-page bills that were crafted in response to scores of recommendations in a report issued this past summer by the commission. The recommendations include creation of the national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center. Commission leaders and victims' families favor the Senate bill over the House version, which contains a number of controversial intelligence issues as well as changes to immigration laws.
The major sticking point involves the degree of control the new director would have over determining the budget of Pentagon intelligence-collecting agencies and how that money is spent.
According to people directly involved in the closed-door talks, the fight is over whether the director or the defense secretary "has final control over the spigot of funds" for the National Security Agency (NSA), which intercepts and analyzes electronic messages; the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and operates intelligence satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes imagery and makes maps.
Overall intelligence spending -- about $40 billion a year -- is treated as classified information, and the funds are hidden in dozens of Defense Department accounts. The Senate bill would consolidate and declassify the funding for the NSA, NRO and NGA under the control of the new director. That would allow the funds to pass directly through the new director to the agencies.
The House bill would keep those funds classified and continue to hide them in the overall Pentagon budget, meaning money to be spent by the three agencies would have to pass through the defense secretary.
Some skeptical legislators and staff members said the budget authority fight may be a straw man created by a quiet coalition of senior House and Senate members opposed to creating an intelligence director or concerned that their committees will lose clout.
Senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said yesterday that they were surprised by the intensity of the fight over budget control because previous budget disputes between former CIA director George J. Tenet and Rumsfeld were easily settled.
"Tenet never wanted to take on money issues," one former CIA colleague said, adding that "the problem was more in theory than in practice." A senior Rumsfeld aide agreed. "Everyone wants actionable intelligence fast and unfiltered, and sometimes there is professional disagreement on how," the defense official said. "But I can't think of a disagreement over funds and have been told we worked closer [with the CIA] than at any time in history."
After a late-night session Monday and meetings yesterday, the leaders of the House-Senate conference committee reached agreement on giving the intelligence director authority to "determine" the national intelligence budget that includes funds for the NSA, NRO and NGA.
The four legislators -- Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) -- quit last evening and arranged to meet again this morning. "We are making progress, but it is slow going," Collins said.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who has led the House fight inside the conference committee on protecting Pentagon interests in the budget authority controversy, said: "The [national intelligence director] does have full budget authority in the latest House offering."
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.
--------
C.I.A. Is Accused of Delaying Internal Report
October 27, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27attack.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - The Central Intelligence Agency has blocked, at least temporarily, the distribution of a draft internal report that identifies individual officers by name in discussing whether anyone should be held accountable for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of Congress from both parties said.
The delays began in July, at the direction of John E. McLaughlin, then the acting director of central intelligence, and have continued since Porter J. Goss took over as the intelligence chief last month, members of Congress said. The delays have postponed the next step in the process, which calls for the draft report to be reviewed by affected individuals.
It is not known who is named in the report, conducted by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, an independent internal investigator. The review was sought in December 2002 by the joint Congressional committee that investigated intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. The purpose, that panel said, should be to determine "whether and to what extent personnel at all levels should be held accountable'' for any mistakes that contributed to the failure to disrupt the attacks.
In a Sept. 23 letter to Mr. McLaughlin, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representatives Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Jane Harman of California, said they were "concerned that the C.I.A. is unwilling to hold its officers accountable for failures to meet the professional standards we know C.I.A stands for.'' On Tuesday, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, wrote separately to Mr. Goss, expressing concern "about the appearance that the inspector general's independence is being infringed.''
Neither letter has been made public, but copies were obtained Tuesday by The New York Times. In both letters, the members of Congress cited as evidence of the delays identical letters sent to the intelligence committees on Aug. 31 by John Helgerson, the C.I.A. inspector general. The members of Congress described the delays as a departure from normal procedure.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about the status of the report. An intelligence official said that Mr. Goss had asked to review the draft himself before it was distributed further. The official would not address the question of who might be named in the document but said, "No C.I.A. official, current or former, has been found accountable, because we're talking about a draft.''
Senator Pat Roberts, af Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did not sign the letter that Mr. Rockefeller sent. A Republican Congressional official said that Mr. Roberts did not yet believe that the postponement of the report was a matter for concern and said the delay was "uncommon but not abnormal.''
Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts, said: "Senator Roberts is closely monitoring the progress of the C.I.A. inspector general's report on 9/11. Senator Roberts has already made it clear to the agency that he expects to see the report upon its completion."
That Mr. Hoekstra and Ms. Harman had called on the C.I.A. to release the report had been previously disclosed, but not the contents of the letter. In it, Mr. Hoekstra and Ms. Harman said that Mr. Helgerson had indicated that Mr. McLaughlin had broken with normal practice and directed him "not to distribute the sections of the report that identify individual officers by name.''
A spokesman for George J. Tenet, who stepped down in July after seven years as director of central intelligence, said that Mr. Tenet had not been interviewed for the draft report, had not been briefed on its contents and had not been asked to respond to it.
James L. Pavitt, who retired in August as the C.I.A.'s deputy director of operations, also said he had not seen the report and had not been asked to respond to it. Mr. Pavitt said in an e-mail message: "We failed to stop the 11 September attacks. It surely was not for lack of effort, lack of focus or lack of courage.''
"Given what we now know, in all the hindsight of the year 2004, I still do not believe we could have stopped the attacks,'' Mr. Pavitt added. "If there is to be blame, it belongs with me, not with the remarkable folks who worked the counterterrorism issue day in and day out."
-------- human rights
Deaths in Custody Could Inflame Thailand's Muslim South
Antiwar.com
October 27, 2004
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/macan.php?articleid=3857
BANGKOK - A clash at the start of this week between hundreds of Muslim protesters and heavily armed Thai troops in the country's south - which left over 80 dead - has delivered a blow to Bangkok's view that it has the local communities on its side.
The showdown on Monday that initially resulted in six Muslim demonstrators killed and an estimated 20 soldiers, police, and protesters wounded marked an ominous sign in a region gripped by spiraling violence since early January this year.
That climate worsened by Tuesday evening, when a senior Thai army commander confirmed that 78 Muslim protesters had died of suffocation while being taken in packed military trucks to army camps in the southern province of Pattani - five hours by road from where the demonstrators were arrested.
Reporters who attended the press conference in Pattani quoted Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nutsathit, deputy commander of the Fourth Army Region, which handles security in Thailand's south, as affirming that "over 80 percent of the deaths were due to suffocation."
This is the second highest number of people killed in a day in the troubled southern provinces, three of which have a predominant number of Malay-Muslims.
The bloodiest day was on April 28. It happened after a showdown between heavily armed Thai troops and Muslim assailants with machetes and knives. Over 110 people died, the vast majority of whom were Muslims who had attacked police and army posts in three southern provinces - Yala, Songkhla, and Pattani.
The killing of 32 militants among that number who had taken refuge in a historic mosque in Pattani prompted cries of "massacre" for the military's excessive use of force.
Already, the fallout from Monday's clash is being cast in dismal tones by politicians and human rights advocates.
"This display of public anger was never the case before. What we have is a collective outcry by Thai Muslims against the government for the methods used in the south," Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs in the Thai Senate, told IPS.
"It is a response to the violent and tough methods used by the government to quell any form of protests there," he added. "Thai-Muslim communities are fed up with the government."
The government imposed martial law after violence erupted in January. That has resulted in alleged human rights violations by the police and government troops, such as arbitrary arrests, tortures, killings, and disappearances, say groups like Amnesty International.
Soon after Monday's bloody clashes, the administration of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced plans to seek out the masterminds of the protest. First in line for this inquiry will be the estimated 1,300 protesters who were arrested and taken to military barracks in Pattani.
Local newspapers carried large photos of some of these men - forced to lie on the road, face down, with their hands tied behind their backs.
On Monday night, television stations provided graphic footage of the clashes that had erupted in the southern province of Narathiwat.
The protest began at six in the morning, when about 200 people gathered outside a police station to demand the release of six men suspected of stealing firearms given to civilians to protect their community, say Thai newspapers.
By afternoon, the numbers had swelled to an estimated 2,000 agitated people, and the police station's security had been reinforced by close to 1,000 armed soldiers.
Fire engines were brought in to spray water at the protesters, but they were unable to contain the crowd. When security forces fired tear gas at the protesters, pandemonium ensued.
The Thai troops are also being accused of firing live ammunition into the crowds.
A Thai human rights advocate finds this week's outburst "alarming" and concurs with Kraisak, the senator, about the possible sparks that triggered the over six hour-long stand off between the booing and jeering demonstrators and the security forces.
"It is understandable, because of the maltreatment of the people. The public in the south doesn't trust the government and officials anymore," Boonthan Verawongse, secretary of the Bangkok-based Peace and Human Rights Resource Center, told IPS.
Increasing signs of such visible collective anger by the Malay-Muslim minority toward symbols of the state in the south have surfaced in recent months. In late September, for instance, paramilitary rangers were forced to flee a checkpoint in Narathiwat after being confronted by hundreds of villagers, who converged on the soldiers with sticks and rocks.
That animosity grew out of a charge made by the villagers that the soldiers had allegedly shot a 37-year-old Muslim woman with birdshot.
In mid-September, a Muslim cleric threatened to bring over 50,000 people onto the streets to protest against the manner in which Thai troops were raiding Islamic boarding schools in search of suspected Malay-Muslim separatists.
Violence in southern Thailand erupted on Jan. 4, when assailants stormed an army camp in the south and escaped with military hardware, including 380 M-16 rifles. That day also saw 21 public schools torched.
The attacks have escalated since then, and Bangkok is accusing Muslim separatists for killing over 200 people, including policemen, soldiers, civil servants, teachers, Buddhist monks, and students.
According to official figures, over 350 people have died since Jan. 4.
The Malay-Muslims account for 2.3 million people of Thailand's 63 million population, the majority of which is Buddhist.
Militants among this Muslim minority waged separatist struggles in the 1970s to reclaim five southern provinces that are home to Muslims. Over a century ago, these provinces belonged to the kingdom of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.
Besides religion, the Malay-Muslims have a history, culture, and language that are different from the one shared by the majority of Thailand.
According to Boonthan, the human rights advocate, this division is bound to grow, given the message Bangkok is sending out in its policy toward the south.
"The government seems to think that only using violence can solve problems," he said.
-------- police
LAW ENFORCEMENT
Fingerprinting Glitches Are Said to Hurt Antiterror Effort
October 27, 2004
By JEFF GERTH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27print.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - Problems in searching fingerprint databases have left the American military unable to check fully the identities of thousands of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, raising concerns that they might be releasing suspects prematurely, according to Pentagon officials and documents.
The Defense Department, in the field, has used a mobile system that records fingerprints of suspects, but it cannot always search for a match in other government databases.
In a memorandum last February, the Pentagon said the fingerprinting "problem must be rectified as soon as possible" to fight terrorism more effectively. It required that all new electronic fingerprinting systems comply with accepted standards.
The situation has improved since then, said John D. Woodward Jr., the director of the Defense Department's Biometrics Management Office. But he added, "We still need to improve."
Mr. Woodward said the memorandum resulted from complaints in late 2003 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the fingerprint data being collected in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Pentagon was not as compatible with other databases as it should be.
Mr. Woodward, citing "national security concerns," declined to say how many prints had gone unprocessed as a result. Another official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information, said it exceeded 16,000 at the time of the memorandum.
Fingerprint matches have led to the identification and imprisonment of people accused of terrorism, a success story advertised by Defense Department officials. But it is unclear if the inability to search fingerprint records has allowed someone guilty of terrorist acts to be released.
For more than 100 years, fingerprinting has relied on primitive, inexpensive equipment. A person would put his fingers on an ink pad and then roll them onto a piece of paper. A full set of 10 prints, if properly transmitted, can be searched against the F.B.I.'s 47 million records and other government databases. Matches, even with inked prints, can be made in 15 minutes.
Ink pads and paper were the technology of choice for the F.B.I. agents who first went to Afghanistan in November 2001, said Michael Kirkpatrick, who recently retired as head of the F.B.I.'s criminal information system. Eventually, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the F.B.I. also used systems that electronically took 10 fingerprints and met global standards. Those customized portable units can cost $10,000 each. Meanwhile, the Pentagon was using its own system, the Biometrics Automated Toolset, or B.A.T., developed by the Army.
It had a more modest purpose, Mr. Kirkpatrick said. Instead of checking other databases to ascertain a person's identity, it only sought to know whether "you ever encountered this particular person before," a question answered by searching your own internal database, he explained. The Army system also sometimes relied on only two fingerprints or used equipment that was not certified to interact with other databases.
The F.B.I. in late 2003 brought the deficiencies to the attention of Mr. Woodward, who had just taken over the Pentagon's biometrics office. Mr. Woodward, in turn, relayed those concerns to senior military officials.
About the same time, an Army report on Iraqi prisons found other problems with fingerprints, even though the prisons were using certified equipment. The report, by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, found ineffective central administration and inadequate data networks for processing information about the 4,300 people who had been interned.
A brief version of General Ryder's comments were incorporated into the report on abuses in Abu Ghraib prison last February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
That same month the Pentagon's chief information officer, John P. Stenbit, ordered the fingerprint problem rectified.
"It has come to my attention," Mr. Stenbit wrote in a widely distributed memorandum, that Defense Department "organizations are currently using electronic systems that do not comply with the internationally accepted standard to collect fingerprint data from 'red force' personnel, i.e., detainees, internees, enemy prisoners of war and foreign persons of interest as national security threats."
He directed that, "effective immediately, all new acquisitions or upgrades of electronic fingerprint systems" must meet certain standards, including being interoperable with the F.B.I.'s fingerprint database.
Mr. Woodward, in an interview, said substandard equipment was compounded by a lack of training in the fingerprint system. Army officials did not make anyone available to discuss B.A.T. Proper fingerprint matches, said Mr. Kirkpatrick, have been "an intelligence bonanza" with detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As an example of a fingerprinting accomplishment, Mr. Woodward cited the case of Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi and the presumed 20th hijacker in the plans for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Held in Guantánamo, Mr. Kahtani did not initially disclose his identity. But F.B.I. agents were able to match his prints against those taken when he was denied entry into the United States in Orlando, Fla., in August 2001.
Last August, Army intelligence officials said a fingerprint match saved lives in Iraq. They noted that prints from an Iraqi detained in July matched the prints of a suspicious Iraqi detainee who was freed in September 2003. The man's prints, according to an account in the Army News Service, were entered into a database during his first detention. He was then jailed, keeping him from fighting American troops. The Army is home to one of the world's leading fingerprint experts, Ed German, said Mr. Kirkpatrick and Mr. Woodward. He heads the intelligence unit of the Army's criminal investigative command. Earlier this year, Mr. German complained internally that substandard equipment was put in use even after Mr. Stenbit's memorandum, but was told to muffle his complaints, according to the official who asked not to be identified.
Mr. German, reached by telephone, declined to comment.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
THE BILLIONS
White House Weighs Price Tag on Emergency Request for Iraq
October 27, 2004
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27costs.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - With no sign of a letup in the war in Iraq, the Bush administration is preparing another emergency request for tens of billions of dollars to cover military and civilian costs there through the fiscal year 2005.
Congress has already provided $25 billion for the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, with the understanding that the White House would ask for more money once the fall elections have passed and the continuing costs of the war are reassessed.
"We have been explicit that we were going to ask for more money, and we have been explicit that we were going to ask for money in early 2005," said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.
But administration officials said they would not decide on the size of the request until late this year, adding that they have yet to receive a specific budget proposal from the Pentagon.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Bush administration was planning to ask for about $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal 2005, on top of the $25 billion already provided. That would be a major increase over this year, but many analysts were skeptical.
"Given what we know about the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - which is about $4 billion to $5 billion a month - that doesn't extrapolate to $70 billion on top of the money that is already available," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office.
In June, the nonpartisan budget office estimated that military costs in Iraq and Afghanistan next year would total between $55 billion and $60 billion if the number of troops in Iraq remained at its current level of about 135,000.
Pentagon officials estimate that Iraq and Afghanistan war costs are now running roughly $5 billion to $6 billion a month.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said Tuesday that if Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan continued at the current rate, then the service alone would need between $35 billion and $40 billion for the fiscal year beyond what Congress already has approved. In the past, the Army has incurred about 60 percent of the war's expenses.
At the Pentagon, a senior Defense Department official said, "The fact of the matter is that the supplemental will be put together towards the end of the year."
Republican and Democratic congressional aides said they do not expect to see specific numbers until late November.
"I've heard $30 billion and I have heard $100 billion," said a Republican aide on the House Appropriations Committee. "Right now, it's all water-cooler talk."
Last February, the White House said the costs of the war in 2004 and 2005 were unlikely to exceed $50 billion each year, but that figure has long been viewed as obsolete, given the unexpected strength of the insurgency, which required the Pentagon to maintain about 35,000 more troops in Iraq than had been planned.
Military officials have stretched their money by deferring work on maintenance and other projects. Many of those costs cannot be deferred much longer.
Military commanders have said the number of troops in Iraq could balloon at the end of this year, at least temporarily, because the Pentagon is planning to rotate several new units into the country and is planning for at least some overlap that would push up the total number of soldiers there just before and during the scheduled Iraqi elections at the end of January.
Even so, many military budget experts were skeptical that the White House would ask for $70 billion on top of the $25 billion already received. That would be about $25 billion higher than Mr. Bush's Democratic critics have predicted.
-------- propaganda wars
CBS eyed '60 Minutes' Bush bombshell
October 27, 2004
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041027-123351-4664r.htm
CBS News apparently had an October surprise of its own for President Bush.
The network, already reeling from accusations of bias over anchorman Dan Rather's use of bogus memos to challenge Mr. Bush's Texas Air National Guard record, acknowledged yesterday in a statement that it had planned to air a story critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraqi munitions Sunday on "60 Minutes," two days before the presidential election.
CBS opted to allow its "reporting partner," the New York Times, to run the story Monday, citing concerns over competition, and ran it on its network news Monday night.
"This was a timely story that was developing quickly, and we wanted to air it as soon as possible on '60 Minutes,' " spokesman Kevin Tedesco said. "Then it became apparent the story was already breaking elsewhere, so we agreed to run it in the Times, and on our own evening news Monday night."
Both news outlets reported that the Iraqi government has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that 380 tons of plastic explosives, one pound of which can bring down a jet aircraft, went missing during postwar looting.
The stories now are being challenged by the Pentagon and by an NBC News reporter embedded with the U.S. unit that first took control of the munitions dump.
NBC News revealed Monday night that when one of its reporters embedded with the 101st Airborne Division arrived at the Al-Qaqaa site April 10, 2003, the Iraqi explosives were missing. The network added a slight nuance yesterday, adding that U.S. forces never undertook a thorough search.
The Pentagon stands by its statements that U.S. forces found no IAEA-sealed explosives there and that the site already had been looted by April 10.
Nevertheless, the tale emerged as an instant political weapon for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who called it a Bush administration "blunder" and promptly based a campaign TV spot on the revelation.
"Kerry gins up his attack machine based on a flawed New York Times story," the Republican National Committee stated yesterday.
American Conservative Union Executive Director Richard Lessner called the story "a cheap, baseless and partisan hit-job on President Bush," adding that "neither the Times nor CBS has much interest in reporting the facts."
Exactly seven weeks have passed since Mr. Rather claimed on "60 Minutes" that he had documents proving that Mr. Bush had shirked his National Guard service three decades ago. The documents later proved to be falsified, CBS issued an apology and the affair was dubbed "Rathergate" in press accounts.
Historically, news outlets avoid investigative pieces critical of candidates within days of an election to avoid appearing partisan. But last year the Los Angeles Times, which first reported CBS' plan to air the story days before the election, was criticized for publishing sexual-harassment accusations against Arnold Schwarzenegger days before a gubernatorial-recall vote.
CBS would not address its initial plans to air the anti-Bush story two days before the presidential election, but pundits interpreted it as an "October surprise," a late-breaking news event designed to tilt an election one way or the other.
Some Democrats have accused Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign of conspiring with the regime in Iran to extend a hostage crisis that damaged President Carter's standing. The charges were investigated by a congressional committee, and Mr. Reagan's team was cleared.
In 1992, Republicans cried foul when - after six years of Iran-Contra investigations and on the Friday before Election Day - Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh announced a new indictment of Caspar W. Weinberger, secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
Four years ago, just five days before Election Day, a Democratic operative in Maine alerted the press to a previously unreported 1976 drunken-driving citation for George W. Bush.
"Major media outlets have constructed this story to appear that the Bush administration is to blame, a week short of an election. It's become fodder for the campaign, and in a close race like this, the story easily could sway voters," said Clifford May, a syndicated columnist and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a District-based nonprofit group that analyzes global terrorist threats.
Attempts to manipulate the U.S. election with strategically timed leaks goes beyond journalists, Mr. May said.
"What has to be investigated here is whether [IAEA Director-General] Mohamed ElBaradei has attempted to manipulate an American election, and whether certain components of the American media helped him by not exercising sufficient journalistic skepticism," he said.
In an online column of the National Review yesterday, Mr. May wrote, "The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud."
"The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohamed ElBaradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The U.S. is trying to deny ElBaradei a second term, and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear-weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program."
Variations of the missing-explosives theme also appeared on CNN, CBS and ABC.
The " 'October surprise' missing-weapons story flops," noted the Media Research Center's Brent Baker, while the Drudge Report cast CBS as a habitual Republican basher, airing accounts critical of the party "a few days before the vote" in 1992 and 2000.
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36 Papers Abandon Bush for Kerry
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A447-2004Oct26.html
The Orlando Sentinel has backed every Republican seeking the White House since Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Not this time.
"This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations," the Florida paper said in supporting John F. Kerry, prompting some angry calls and a few dozen cancellations.
"A lot of people thought they could trust that the Sentinel would always go Republican, and when that didn't happen, they felt betrayed," said Jane Healy, the paper's editorial page editor.
The Sentinel is among 36 newspapers that endorsed President Bush four years ago and have flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, into Kerry's corner. These include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, according to industry magazine Editor & Publisher. Bush has won over only six papers that backed Al Gore, including the Denver Post, which received 700 letters -- all of them protesting the move.
Nine more papers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday, abandoned Bush after four years but did not support the Massachusetts senator. Instead, these papers -- the Detroit News, the Tampa Tribune and the New Orleans Times-Picayune among them -- threw up their collective hands and made no endorsement.
"We have decided not to add one more potentially polarizing voice to a poisoned debate," the Plain Dealer editorial said. Amid reports that Publisher Alex Machaskee, who chairs the editorial board, wanted to back Bush, the Ohio paper acknowledged that a majority of the board favored Kerry.
Even many editorial page editors say they do not believe their endorsements move many voters in an age of round-the-clock opinion-slinging on television and online. But the Bush defections may reflect a degree of disillusionment with the president, at least among opinion leaders, principally on Iraq but on domestic issues, as well.
"I've always argued that presidential endorsements, which may mean a lot to political activists and groupies, are the least important endorsements big-city newspapers make," said Brent Larkin, the Plain Dealer's editorial page editor, whose paper has backed a candidate in every election since at least World War II. "People make up their own minds and do not need our nickel's worth."
Nolan Finley, who runs the Detroit News editorial page, disagrees: "I've heard people speculate they don't mean as much anymore, but I think they're influential still, particularly in close races. Voters are looking for answers in an election like this one." The decision not to endorse was "an agonizing process," he said, noting that the News has backed every Republican seeking the White House since Ulysses S. Grant.
All told, Kerry leads Bush 142 to 123 in endorsements, and when measured by circulation, 17.5 million to 11.5 million, Editor & Publisher says. The Massachusetts senator has won the backing of the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Des Moines Register and both Seattle newspapers. The president has the support of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, the Arizona Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Columbus Dispatch, the Dallas Morning News, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Washington Times and both Cincinnati newspapers.
Others that switched from Bush in 2000 to Kerry in 2004 include the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.; the Idaho Statesman in Boise; and the Bangor Daily News in Maine.
Kerry won over some editorial boards through personal campaigning. Earlier in the year, said the Sentinel's Healy, she believed that "Kerry was too liberal for us as a senator from Massachusetts." But through an hour-long interview with the board and the presidential debates, "we became convinced he would be moderate as president, and more moderate than President Bush in terms of fiscal responsibility and the war, in terms of bringing in international cooperation."
Kerry also spoke by phone with the Plain Dealer's Larkin and Machaskee.
In its no-one-to-endorse editorial, the Tampa Tribune put it this way: "We cannot support Bush because of his mishandling of the war in Iraq, record deficits pending, assault on open government and failed promise to be a 'uniter not a divider,' but what Kerry stands for is unclear."
--------
Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire
AlterNet
October 27, 2004
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/20309/
In an astonishingly candid and far-ranging interview, the journalist who exposed major stories from the My Lai massacre to the Abu Ghraib scandal, proves that his voice is every bit as powerful as his pen.
An interview with Seymour Hersh is never dull - to put it mildly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist can be contentious, just as willing to challenge a question as answer it. He can be unpredictable, ever able to throw a hapless reporter off-balance with the unexpected. "Did you ever take a stewardess' course?" he might inquire just as you're trying to get him to discuss the role of the media.
When Hersh does answer the question - which he will, with eloquence and at great length - he is likely to make your head reel as he follows four separate lines of thought - at the same time. In other words, it's a bit like being on a roller-coaster: often disorienting and a little daunting, but always a hell of a ride.
For when Seymour Hersh speaks, he does so with unparalleled insight, passion, and candor. He is willing to say what most other star journalists rarely permit themselves to even think in this era of celebrity journalism, when image is king. When Hersh speaks, it's for two simple reasons: it's important and he cares. It's why we care to listen.
Be it his coverage of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War or his recent work exposing the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, Hersh has been a dedicated watchdog for democracy. His latest book, ""Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," builds on his reporting as a staff writer at The New Yorker. The book - among other things - reveals how National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was made aware of human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay two years before the torture in Iraq took place. It is a searing indictment of the Bush administration for its willful ignorance, ideological agenda, and above all, a profound failure of leadership.
He spoke to AlterNet from his office in Washington D.C.
So what does the Abu Ghraib scandal say - the fact that it happened and the way it was handled by the Bush administration ...
Oh, c'mon. You can ask a better question than that.
No, no, no, does it reveal a deeper truth ...
OK, fine. Abu Ghraib is a symptom, a terrible symptom of a system that went bad from the beginning. From the first days of the war, the attitude was 'We can do anything we want.' When John Walker Lindh - that young boy who was captured with al Qaeda, that lost kid from California - was first captured, the mistreatment was astonishing. He was stripped, thrown around. There was a bullet they didn't take out for days. The soldiers spit on him. There were people at the time who thought it was just madness what we were doing and that it would stop soon. But the American public liked it.
So in a funny way, we got what we wanted. We wanted payback, we wanted revenge. And we saw everybody in al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Muslim world as our enemy.
So you're describing a blood-lust on the part of the American people.
No, what I said was what happened is ... OK, one of the amazing things is the first report [on Abu Ghraib] that was done by Antonio Taguba, a wonderful, highly motivated, brilliant officer. And he traced the tracks of Abu Ghraib back to Afghanistan. The prisoner abuse began then.
And here's my complaint about Bush, and Cheney and Rumsfeld. Of course, none of these people knew about Abu Ghraib - all that madness, piling up naked people. But at no time did the people at the top of the chain of command say, "You will not mistreat people."
In an article in the New Yorker, you included the testimony of one of the soldiers who was one of the whistleblowers that exposed the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Yet in the bit that you quoted, he referred to the prisoner as an "it." And this is someone who was appalled by what he saw around him. Doesn't that reflect the larger environment within the prison - where these prisoners were simply not seen as human beings?
Ah, I think you may be over-intellectualizing. You can't begin to know what's in their head. Look, America is a very racist country and war brings out the worst in it. I have said - several times, publicly - that the one thing I've always liked about Bill Clinton is that he was the first American president since World War II to bomb white people.
There's a lot of racism. And when you fight a war, you dehumanize the other side - that's inevitable. And that's why you need leadership from the president. That's why you need clear guidelines to be established.
The reality is that anybody could do what they goddamn wanted in that prison. They couldn't kill them, but they could do anything else they wanted. And that's exactly what happened. It was just awful.
And we will discover that as bad Abu Ghraib was, the torture in the prison in Guantanamo is going to turn out to be more systematic, more brutal.
So you're saying that racism is a given fact and it takes rules in order to ...
Of course. Is there anything more dangerous than a 20-year-old with a weapon? C'mon! In a war zone, you'll steal and kill and do pretty much anything.
The interesting thing to me with this war is that the American public - left, right, and center - is not mad at the soldiers as they were in Vietnam. In this war, there seems to be an understanding that these Army reservists and National Guard members are as much victims as the people they have to kill and shoot and maim. This is the war that the president wanted and he made people go to battle - and the public seems to understand that.
Why has Abu Ghraib not had any political impact? I just read this piece in the American Prospect which shows that many of the senior officers implicated in the scandal have been promoted. What's more, neither presidential candidate has even mentioned Abu Ghraib.
Why should they? Since when is having a disciplined, finely-tuned sense of morality an element in the presidential campaign?
But do you think it is also because the American public is not interested in hearing about Abu Ghraib?
What I was trying to say with the previous remark is that one of the things that a leader does is lead. And yes, neither leader is taking the chance for the reason that you mention.
As for the American people, look, you're never going to be able to persuade me that even the most rabid Bush supporter in Texas wasn't horrified by what he saw. The question though is how do you deal with it. And for a lot of people in America, they simply expunge it or deny it.
When I wrote my first stories about My Lai, I remember vividly a Minnesota public opinion poll that showed that more than half of the American people didn't think I should have published that story. They weren't accusing me of doing anything wrong, but they didn't think I should have written about it. So you always have this resistance to an ugly truth.
I think it would take enormous amount of guts and integrity for Kerry to have pushed the story. But he didn't. On the other hand, he's trying to win an election. Kerry has nothing to gain, politically - anybody who hates Abu Ghraib is not going to like the war. And if he raises this issue, people will interpret him as being anti-military - which he doesn't want and in fact is not true.
So you're not surprised that the scandal didn't have a bigger fallout than other ...
What I'm saying to you is that it did have a bigger fallout. It just didn't come the way that you'd see it. It left an enormous scar not just here, but around the world.
Even the most devout Bush lover in the Deep South knows what those pictures mean - whether they want to acknowledge it or not. It's completely implausible that anyone could look at those pictures [of torture] without an enormous sense of shame.
The thing that drives me crazy is that Bush has won on this issue. He's prosecuting seven or eight "bad seeds." This one guy [Ivan "Chip" Fredricks] got eight years yesterday - are you kidding me? Eight years? They're prosecuting the hell out of them and I still don't see any officers charged. At most they're talking about doing reprimands. And I haven't even seen anyone getting reprimanded yet.
Bush has gotten away with it. He won the public relations battle and we're all happy. It's a little traumatic, a little horrible, a little discouraging.
And that's because we live in this post-9/11 era where there is a sense there should be no limit in what we can do to keep ourselves safe.
The mistreatment began immediately and why is that crazy? Real simple, you don't want their prisoners treated any differently than you want our prisoners treated. And two, you can't get good intelligence by coercion - with bombs or bullets or breaking fingers with people who are willing to die.
It was a really, really dumb decision.
You've said in other interviews that it would be better to have a realist like Henry Kissinger in the White House than utopians like the neoconservatives. So is there a lesson in Iraq then for the so-called humanitarian hawks - the liberal hawks who believe in going to war for moral reasons?
I'm one of those people who believes that Bush really did go to war to free the Middle East and turn these nations into democracies. I don't think he went to war for oil primarily or Israel. He went because he has this idee fixe that it was his mission, his crusade to change the Middle East - to turn it into a democratic stronghold of good, well-meaning people who would buy American and support Israel against the Palestinians and keep the oil flowing.
It's idealistic. It's utopian. Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?
Now, one of the things I've heard from people who found themselves supporting the war is that whether the UN went in or not, the fact is that there was a moral imperative. That Saddam was doing terrible things to his people and suppressing the Shi'ites, violating human rights and so on.
The only problem with that thinking is that it's been more than a year and a half since we went in. And right now, the abuses in the prisons, the bombings, and the attacks, the violence in the country are now being caused by us. Is that a moral position we want to be in? Of course, it is an unintended consequence, but it is still very much a consequence.
If Bush wins re-election, he will bomb and bomb and bomb. He's been doing that steadily every since the Allawi government was put in place by us. Since June 28, the bombing has gone up exponentially. Bombing, bombing, bombing. Civilian targets, civilian neighborhoods.
But I don't see anyone in the press worrying about it. I don't see them demanding to know how many sorties we're flying - have they grown? Are more bombs being dropped? What's the tonnage? We don't know any of that, do we?
Michael Ignatieff's review of your book posited you as the mirror-image of Bob Woodward. Where Woodward's writing is based on his access to the inner circle, your reporting is based on relationships you've built with insiders who make up the rank-and-file. But then he goes on to say that both of you run the risk of being "played" by the sources. How do you respond to that?
Of course, it's absolutely true that both of us are vulnerable to being played by our sources. But the question is to what extent.
Bob was reflecting what he thought their views were. And I would bet he is pretty accurate about that. One of the things that amazed me about the first book ... So I read Bob's first book, "Bush at War," which begins with 9/11 and ends with the invasion [of Iraq] in March, 18 months later. And it was not until months later that I realized what it was about that book that really troubled me.
It was that at no point in these 300-400 pages of this book does any of the major players in the Bush administration say to one of his aides, "Hey, what's this Muslim thing here? And why don't you give me a little paper on this thing they call the [putting on a Texan drawl] Koh-ran."
This lack of curiosity about Arab motives. What the assumption was that the Muslim world was mad at us because we had what they wanted. The president still has this notion.
So Bob's books are really valuable. And I don't think he was played by his sources. He did exactly what he wanted to do - to play back what they gave him. And I think in my case, I've been dealing with people for a long time. And over the years, you establish trust. It doesn't mean someone can't or won't use me.
But since 9/11 I've been writing an alternative history of the war which is clearly being perceived - now - as having a lot of accuracy. It wasn't seen that way two years ago. I was considered to be out there - looney tunes, if you like.
Someone like Judith Miller (of the New York Times) seems a more likely anti-Hersh, so to speak. She represents the flipside of anonymous sourcing, where unnamed sources become a way to disguise sloppy reporting. So given these kinds of examples, what future do you see for your type of reporting - the kind which as you point out relies on ...
Do you really think I'm going to get into a discussion of this?
OK, you don't want to? We can move on.
I'll stay away. All I can say to you is I do find it absolutely, utterly amazing that Judy Miller is suddenly the poster child for the kind of reporting we want in America. But that's OK. [hesitates]
Fine, we don't really ...
I didn't really like what she wrote about Iraq, but I think she's taken the right stance in the case she's involved in now. Anyway ...
I don't want to talk about that kind of stuff because it's ... It gets to be self-serving and I don't want to get into that aspect of it ...
Well, some people have sources and some people have real sources is all I'm saying. There are sources that tell you the White House spin and there are sources that tell you what's really going on. And that's a tough level to get to.
OK, let's talk about the media in general.
Let's, oh let's. Ask me something that I can answer so it isn't self-serving - that doesn't have me brushing snow from my mantle.
OK ...
Michael Gordon [the New York Times' war correspondent] has done an excellent three-part series, full of interesting information. Oh would be that he wrote some of that stuff or knew some of that stuff before the war - instead of the stuff he actually wrote before the war, which generally reflected the opinion of guys who were dead wrong about what was going to happen. What am I supposed to think? Am I glad he wrote it? Yes.
Look, I'm glad the New York Times and the Washington Post have done their mea culpa. I just think they should have done those mea culpas before March of 2003 - before the war began, because that would have been important.
Yes, there have been mea culpas, but do they get the fact that the media now faces a credibility gap? The public seems to have lost a certain amount of trust in the major media outlets, be it the New York Times or CNN, because of their coverage since 9/11, and especially during the war.
I've been speaking around the country quite a bit. I presume that most of the people who see me are pro-Kerry or on the fence about him. It's more than a credibility gap - it's utter disillusionment with the American press over this war. It's sort of shocking. The lack of respect for the press is pretty astonishing.
There is a sense that the press failed us. If you ask the good reporters, they'll tell you, "We did."
So do you think people in the media understand what a big crisis they're facing?
Ask the question again. Ask it differently ... Here's my issue. I don't feel good about putting down the tremendous number of good reporters in the press. But I do feel there was a collective attitude at the top of newspapers that after 9/11, we're going to be good soldiers. And there were guys coming up with rough nasty stories, who were not welcome. It was like farting in church. Even at the good newspapers, they want happy stories, [to] hear about our heroism. And the idea that [Saddam] didn't have weapons of mass destruction ... should have been reported on extensively before the war. There should have been a debate instead of accepting what the president said.
But the failure is really very significant and very depressing. I don't know how the mechanism failed. I just don't know.
The right wing was never very happy with the so-called "liberal" media. But now liberals - and not just the far left but moderate liberals - have lost faith in these same outlets. So what does that mean for the future? And how do they begin to win back the trust?
Just as long as it's going to take the United States - many more years than you want to believe - to win back the trust of the people in the Middle East. They are reeling from Abu Ghraib - it was stunning to them. They really did view us as preternaturally sexually perverse people.
In terms of the press ... [sighs] I can't even begin to tell you what we have to do. I think time will heal things, like it always does - if we get a couple of years of no war and some prosperity between us. But in the short term, no one is going to believe the press very much any more. Just like no one is going to believe the United States if we start screaming about nuclear weapons some place. So I think we're in real trouble.
I hope it comes out the right way in the election. If it doesn't then we're all in trouble. The Europeans so far give us a pass on the grounds that, well, you've got these crazy leaders and they do crazy things. But if we re-elect them, then it's not just the president they're mad at. They're going to be mad at all of us.
Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of AlterNet.
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Bush voted "Movie Villain of the Year"
(Reuters)
27 October, 2004
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=610550
LONDON - President George W. Bush may see himself as defender of democracy and compassionate conservatism but film fans have voted him "Movie Villain of the Year".
The American "Axis of Evil" fighter is wooing voters with security pledges ahead of the presidential election next week, but it was Bush's role in Michael Moore's anti-war film "Fahrenheit 9/11" that won him the villainous title.
In a poll for Total Film magazine, the U.S. leader fought off competition from such well-known baddies as atomic scientist Doctor Octopus from "Spider-Man 2" and fellow Texan Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
"The overwhelming response of our readers voting Bush top villain just goes to show how frightening people found him in Fahrenheit 9/11," Total Film's editor Matt Mueller told Reuters.
"He was absolutely terrifying in that film. The infamous scene where he's informed about the Twin Towers attack while visiting a school, and sits there absolutely paralysed, is enough to strike fear into anyone's heart," he said.
-------- us politics
Attacks Sharpen as Clock Ticks Down
By Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63431-2004Oct26.html
RICHLAND CENTER, Wis., Oct. 26 -- With a week to go until the election, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry accused President Bush on Tuesday of hiding embarrassments in Iraq, and Bush chastised Kerry for grasping at passing headlines instead of building a coherent proposal.
Bush, appealing to what he called "discerning Democrats" as he rumbled through rural Wisconsin on the last of 20 campaign bus tours, said Kerry projects "weakness and inaction," forsaking his party's tradition of national strength. "My opponent has no plan, no vision -- just a long list of complaints," Bush said in the Mississippi River town of Dubuque, Iowa. "But a Monday-morning quarterback has never won any game."
Kerry, also in Wisconsin, accused Bush for a second day of failing to secure stockpiles of explosives in postwar Iraq and painted a grim and ominous portrait of the Bush presidency. "These explosives . . . could produce bombs powerful enough to demolish entire buildings, blow up airplanes, destroy tanks and kill our troops," Kerry said at an early-morning rally at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay.
With Tuesday's clash in Wisconsin -- one of nearly a dozen states where the electoral outcome is unclear -- the candidates approached the last seven days of the campaign with ever-harsher attacks even as their aides planned to close on a positive note. Polls show no clear advantage or momentum for either side, magnifying the importance of each campaign stop and news cycle.
In a new Kerry commercial airing in five states and in his speeches, the Democrat continued to make a case that the disappearance of nearly 400 tons of conventional explosives in Iraq is fresh evidence that Bush has botched the war and now is covering up his miscalculations. And Bush remained determined not to respond to the Democratic charge. Asked by a reporter about who was responsible for the missing munitions, Bush, on a visit to a dairy barn in Viola, Wis., simply glared, journalists with him said.
The White House says that the explosives' disappearance, first reported by the New York Times and CBS News and confirmed Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been exaggerated by what they describe as the liberal media. Bush's campaign worked aggressively to discredit the report, reflecting the nervousness of aides about a race over which they now have little control and worry could tip on any given story.
Vice President Cheney, speaking at a rally in Pensacola, Fla., said it is "not at all clear those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived." He said Kerry does not "mention the 400,000 tons of explosives our troops have captured or destroyed" in Iraq. "Senator Kerry is playing armchair general and is not doing a very good job at it," Cheney said.
On Monday night, the Bush campaign urged reporters to look into an NBC News report that U.S. forces searching the site three weeks into the war found nothing, suggesting that they were moved before Saddam Hussein's government fell. But NBC followed up Tuesday night by reporting that the soldiers were "not actively involved in searching for Iraqi weapons."
White House senior adviser Karl Rove had said the NBC account, heavily covered on Fox News and talk radio, "feeds the belief of a lot of people out in America that the media has a bias."
"Kerry, by so rapidly embracing the story, is going to end up being tarnished by it," Rove said. "What would he do as president? Get up every morning and say, 'I'm going to govern based on what I find in the newspapers?' "
Several Kerry advisers are convinced their candidate's numbers improve every time there is bad news out of Iraq that dominates coverage of the campaign. In a private meeting with a few aides this week, Kerry let it be known he wanted to return to the strategy of blaming Bush for what he considers the mess in Iraq to make sure undecided voters get the message before voting. He is more comfortable citing newspaper reports at the top of speeches as he did the past two days, because he feels it adds credibility to allegations made during the heat of a campaign, aides say.
Kerry said Tuesday that the explosives were evidence of broader problems with Bush's presidency, accusing him of plotting to cover up the missing explosives until after the election, a charge the White House denied. In recent weeks, Kerry also has charged Bush with concealing plans for draft and a secret call-up of reservists and members of the National Guard. He pointed Tuesday to a report in The Washington Post detailing the administration's plans to request $70 billion more to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to suggest a systematic plan to deceive.
"Mr. President, what else are you being silent about?" Kerry said. "What else are you keeping from the American people? How much more will the American people have to pay?"
Many Kerry aides predict victory, but they also express concern about daily tracking polls that show Bush gaining ground in Florida and Ohio. They also fear the great unknown of this campaign: Will the GOP turnout machine, tested in 2000, and tuned up in 2002, exceed expectations next Tuesday?
Kerry visited three states Tuesday he is nervous about losing: Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico, each of which has anunemployment rate less than the national average and a large population of rural voters. He is planning a sleepless weekend to hit as many cities as possible in the final 72 hours.
Bush's aides said that they will release his closing ad Wednesday, featuring an emotional clip from the president's speech to the Republican National Convention, as part of an effort to lure back voters who supported Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but have turned on him.
Bush, watched by alert cows and Secret Service agents, stopped by a dairy barn as he wended through Wisconsin, which he lost in 2000 but hopes to pick up this time as part of an upper Midwest cluster of states that includes Minnesota and Iowa. That would provide a cushion if job losses in Ohio wind up putting that pivotal state out of reach.
Reaching out to moderates, Bush, who supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, said in an interview aired Tuesday by ABC's "Good Morning America" that he supports civil unions for gay couples "if that's what a state chooses to do."
Bush aides insist that the election will again be decided in Florida, and announced that he will spend Saturday night in Orlando. Bush's travel plans show he is still playing defense in Ohio and New Hampshire, both of which he won in 2000, but he is investing the rest of his time in the next few days trying to wrest states from the Democratic column. Rove said two-thirds of Bush's stops in the final two weeks are in states he lost to Al Gore. In Ohio, Bush will be accompanied by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).
Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), talked up Kerry's character after several weeks of focusing on Bush's shortcomings, saying that the Massachusetts senator "took bullets for this country when he didn't have to."
VandeHei is traveling with Kerry. Staff writers Lyndsey Layton, with Cheney, and John Wagner, with Edwards, contributed to this report.
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The Battle of the Polls:
A Look Behind the Influential Polling Organizations that Shape the Presidential Race
democracynow.org
October 27th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/1428242
A look at the methods behind the influential polling organizations that could have a major impact on November 2nd and who is behind them. We speak with Ruy Teixeira, who tracks the daily presidential polls and publishes a weekly column on the polls. [includes rush transcript] Much of the focus of the election campaign right now is on whether next Tuesday's vote will be fair. As we have been reporting consistently on the program, there are already widespread concerns that certain voters will again be disenfranchised or prevented from voting. The Democrats say they are deploying some 10,000 lawyers across the country to challenge any scandals that emerge. The Republicans are deploying thousands of operatives in places like Ohio, they say to ensure that everyone that votes is a legitimate voter. Some charge that the Republican effort is nothing short of a voter intimidation or suppression campaign. Meanwhile, thousands of people are volunteering to serve as Voter Protection workers, where they will spread out to districts of concern and monitor the fairness of the vote. These efforts are being organized by groups like People for the American Way, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations.
As the various factions spread their people across the country and prepare for a showdown, another battle is being fought in the media. And that is the battle of the polls. Both campaigns point to polls that show them leading the race, embracing the old addage that if you look like a winner, you'll win. A new CNN/Gallup poll released earlier this week showed President Bush with a 5 percent lead over John Kerry. The Republicans have seized on this going into the final stretch of the campaign, with pundits citing it over and over on TV and in the papers. But who controls the polls?
Last month, MoveOn.org took out a full page ad titled "Gallup-ing to the Right" charging that the poll was biased toward Bush.
- Ruy Teixeira, Joint Fellow at the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation. He edits the website Donkey Rising which tracks the daily presidential polls and publishes a weekly column on the polls titled Public Opinion Watch. He is the author of five books, including The Emerging Democratic Majority, which he co-wrote with John Judis.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by Ruy Teixeira, a joint fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation. He edits the website donkeyrising, which tracks the presidential polls and publishes a weekly column on the polls entitled "Public Opinion Watch." He's the author of five books, including The Emerging Democratic Majority, which he co-wrote with John Judis. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ruy Teixeira.
RUY TEIXEIRA: Delighted to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about these polls.
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, the one you were referring to, the Gallup poll, which showed a five point lead and -- for Bush -- and they actually had some 13 point leads in September, these leads in particular are among what they call likely voters. And you know, you hear the phrase "likely voters" and that sounds pretty good, you know. Gee, who wants the unlikely voters, but the thing is that the way they create these samples they call likely voters is all driven by a very elaborate set of questions that tends to screen out, at least in this campaign, as tending to screen out a lot of democratic-leaning voters, that you can easily wind up with fewer minorities and young people than you would normally get in a sample of real voters on election day. So, to make a long and technical story short, the likely voters, in fact, are not particularly likely voters. The way that Gallup uses its methodology, it tends to produce these samples that under-represent constituencies in the electorate that are more likely to favor democrats than republicans. So we just -- I and a lot of other people feel that the way they do their sampling, they wind up with these likely voter samples that just are not right, and then they present that to the public as representing the way voters really feel, and then they draw another likely voter sample a week later, which may change quite a bit, and then they say, "Oh, look what the voters think now." The fact of the matter is, what they're measuring is just their construct of likely voters and how it's changing over time. They're not necessarily capturing the way voters' sentiments are really changing. So, we feel that's quite misleading, and as you pointed out in your intro, these things really do have an effect, because they do enter the echo chamber of the media, particularly something like a Gallup poll, which still has a certain amount of prestige, still has a certain profile with a lot of people. So, when people hear Gallup poll they think, "Oh, that must be pretty reliable." I guess the contention of myself and a lot of others is they're not so reliable, at least anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: In the Gallup ad that MoveOn did, the full page ad, they pointed out that George Gallup, Jr., is the son of the Gallup Organization's founder and long-time executive of the firm, a devout evangelical Christian. What is that supposed to mean, what does that have to do with anything?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, I think what they were trying to suggest is that, at least what I would take from this, is not so much that George Gallup and the people who work for him aren't consciously manipulating the data, but rather that, let's just hypothesize that their methodology works in such a way as, at least in this campaign cycle, there may be some underlying structural reasons, as well, it tends to favor republican candidates and more conservative causes. Now, if you are running the show at Gallup, and you're probably not too interested, then, in sort of updating your methodology and changing it to deal with changing circumstances. You could be kind of happy with the way things are. And if you are a professional working for George Gallup, you're perhaps less likely to push for change than you might otherwise be, given what you know about the predilections of your boss. I cannot prove any of that, but to some extent it's just a given that when an organization is controlled by people with a certain agenda, things are less likely to change that perhaps need to be changed if those things actually suit that agenda. So that's what I take from it, not conscious manipulation.
AMY GOODMAN: Ruy Teixeira, what about this whole issue of who gets polled, and the whole idea of the likely voter being a voter who voted before, and the level of voter registration, new voters who are being registered right now, where they get counted?
RUY TEIXEIRA: The nature of most likely voter models is such that it's unlikely to pick up a lot of the new voters. I mean, a lot of the questions that people ask is about your past voting behavior. People ask about things like, do you know where your polling place is, people ask - and, of course, there's all kinds of questions about interest level and commitment to voting, which may, in fact, be a little less among people who are newly registered. So for a variety of reasons, these questions tend to screen out the new voters, they tend to screen out young voters, they tend to some extent screen out minority voters who typically tune in very late in the process. For a variety of reasons, you know, without any necessarily conscious intent, the nature of these questions is such that you're going to wind up screening out these kinds of voters. To the extent these voters have leanings toward a certain candidate or certain kind of political leanings, that's consequential for how the poll turns out.
AMY GOODMAN: Do we know who are these newly registered voters? I mean, is it overwhelmingly democrat, is it equal republican and democrat?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, there's some debate about that. My sense is that the registration wars have been won by the democrats, by and large. You can tell that both from looking at the states where they keep figures by registration and even where they don't, where have the registrations been concentrated, the democratic leaning areas or republican leaning areas? For example, it's clear that in Ohio, the democrats just completely cleaned the republicans clock in terms of new registrations. That's one reason why the republicans are out there busily trying to challenge every newly registered voter they can find. That's a whole other story. But I think the democrats have net out-competed the republicans on this. And then if you look at the political leanings of newly registered voters or people who will be new voters, who say they will be new voters, by and large, though there are some exceptions, most polls tend to suggest that they're leaning fairly heavily toward the democrats this year. So this the kind of thing where these voters are not being picked up by the polls, by and large, as we said, and then, you know, the problem and then -- and I think you were also alluding to this - could sort of pre-justify in a way the -- Paul Krugman wrote about this in his column -- if , in fact, there is a lot of disputes about newly registered voters and in fact the election is skewed by that towards the republicans, right, they can sort of point to the polls that have been taken before the election and say, "Well, look, there's no problem with this outcome because the polls before the election said this is how it would come out." But if the polls before the election are to some extent driven by who has been excluded from the polls before the election, then it becomes a self-justifying cycle, which I think is a very bad thing for, you know, obviously for the democrats, but for democracy in general.
AMY GOODMAN: What about who answers the polls, and specifically the issue of cell phones? RUY TEIXEIRA: Cell phones are yet another thing that pollsters are scrambling to try to figure out how to deal with. The thing that mitigates the cell phone problem is that most people who have cell phones also have landlines. The number of pure cell phone users is relatively small, though it is growing fast. However, even if you confine your intention to that group, there is some evidence that by excluding the cell phone-only users, it is a group with a fairly distinct demographic profile which leads to a certain kind of politics. They tend to be poor, they tend to be renters. There is some evidence that excluding them from polls does skew the polls slightly.
AMY GOODMAN: And young as well?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Toward the republicans.
AMY GOODMAN: Are we talking young, as well?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Yes. These voters tend to be young, as well. Another very interesting study was done just recently by the Consumer Electronics Association, which -- I'm not ready to take it to the bank yet, it needs more study, but -- it's suggested that not only are cell phones a problem, but the kind of people who are willing to answer polls who don't, you know, who don't screen their calls, who are likely to answer the phone and do these things actually tend to skew toward the republicans. In other words, democrats, you know, sort of even controlling for the cell phone issue, are just less likely to answer the phone and do a poll, because they're screening their calls or for other reasons. All of that adds up to a series of response biases that, you know, in today's world may be making the polls less reliable and skewing them at least somewhat toward the right. So, pollsters, their first instinct was denial on all of this stuff, right? But now they're moving toward the "Well, it's a problem, but it's not a big one." I think eventually, we'll drag them kicking and screaming toward the idea it's not only a problem, it's actually big enough that it needs to be solved.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the position of the master republican strategist, Karl Rove, around polls?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, Rove is a notorious, as you mentioned in your intro, if you look like you're winning, you're going to win. So he loves to spin those polls. The guy who's actually best at it is not Karl Rove, it's Matthew Dowd, who is the chief political strategist for the campaign and a pollster. He's just relentless in spinning those polls, in fact, a lot better than the democrats are, I think, in some ways. They very much believe in the momentum theory. If you can convince people that you're going to win, that enhances your likelihood of winning, because it pumps up your side and it demoralizes the other side and it makes them less likely to show up at the polls. So they love these skewed polls. They just love them, love them, love them.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ruy Teixeira, for listeners and viewers right now who where we're being fed polls constantly throughout the day and night, both television, newspapers, what do you think is the most important question to ask? What kind of critical eye should we have? How do we dissect them? How does a layperson do that?
RUY TEIXEIRA: Well, gosh, in a way that's such a big subject, I hardly know where to start. One thing is just to look at as wide a range of polls as possible, and make sure you're not looking at outliars. So when Gallup comes in with a big Bush lead, for example, and everybody else has it close to a dead heat, well, that's some sort of indicator. And one way you can look at as wide a range polls as possible is you plug my website, I'll plug somebody else's website. A guy named Bob Poulson has a site called 2.004k.com. That's probably the best site for tracking all the latest polls, all the national polls, all the state polls. He does a great job. So my advice is to look across as wide a range of data as possible, and then for sort of extra credit, you can look at the internals of these polls, see if they have got any demographics, look at their distribution of party identification or, you know, does it seem like there's too many republicans, and so on, so by all means, a critical eye is very much in order, and the more data that you have the better.
AMY GOODMAN: Ruy Teixeira, I want to thank you for being with us, joint fellow with the Center for American Progress. His poll is -- his website is donkeyrising, which tracks the daily presidential polls.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
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Pre-emptive Pie-hole Policy Not an Option
Democratic Underground
By Sheila Samples
October 27, 2004
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/10/27_piehole.html
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." - Ernest Hemingway
My friend Bernie says anyone who believes that George W. Bush's war on terror isn't a miserable, howling failure is surely a member of the media, a perp over at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), or has had "the lobotomy." Bernie says if Bush manages to screw up another election, the second thing he's going to do is hit us with a full-blown draft.
"The second thing?" I asked. "Okay - since Bush always screws up everything he touches - I'll bite. What's the first thing?"
"Iran!" Bernie snorted. "Don't you pay attention? The articles have already been written. The graphics are loaded. The media is just waiting for Bush to give 'em the signal so they can write the headlines and fill in the date and time of the attack. Then," he grinned, "Hi-ho, hi-ho - it's off to war we go..."
Bernie could be on to something. Anybody even remotely familiar with the totally mad ravings of the Machiavellian Michael Ledeen for the past two decades, or the sheer inhumanity lurking behind the chilly smile frozen on the warmongering face of Bill Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch's neoconservative Weekly Standard, knows that Iraq was only the beginning of a struggle with the "terror masters" of evil - a war that Ledeen cheerfully announces will "go on forever."
"I've been watching Ledeen for years," Bernie said, "ever since the '80s, when he weaseled his way not only into the National Security Council and the Pentagon, but into Alexander Haig's brain over at State. Now, he squats in the 'freedom chair' at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and works with folks at AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) whippin' up blind fear that Iran is gonna nuke us before sunset."
"Nobody makes a better livin' at killin' than Mikey Ledeen. Hell," Bernie continued. "The body parts hadn't been scraped off the streets of Baghdad from Bush's premature and giddy attack on Iraq before Ledeen was ready to move on - to deliver God's gift of freedom to millions of folks unfortunate enough to live on top of the oil in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and even little ol' Libya. Liberation's a dirty job," Bernie said. "It's hard work - but like Ledeen says, somebody's gotta do it."
"Bernie," I said, fighting the impulse to skitter into the corner to crouch there, whimpering and gnawing on what little remains of my hair, "there must be another way. Surely, if George Bush screws up... er, wins another election, surely he's learned his lesson. He won't listen to people like Kristol and Ledeen..."
"Naw, Bush don't listen to 'em," Bernie grinned. "He don't have to listen. He wouldn't understand what they were sayin' even if he did listen. He just opens up, and whatever they shout in his ear immediately blasts out through his pie-hole. I call it Bush's pie-hole foreign policy. I call it Bush's premature, pre-emptive pie-hole foreign policy. I call it Bush's predatory, pre-emptive, pie..."
"Okay - okay! I get the picture!" I interrupted hurriedly. "But you're right, Bernie. There's no way we can continue on this course without a draft. As of today, we've lost 1,110 American troops in Iraq. Seven of that number are reported as killed but not identified because their families don't yet know they are gone forever. More than 8,000 have been wounded and nearly that many more evacuated because of disease, much of which - like Ledeen's eternal war - is the depleted uranium gift that just keeps on giving."
"Americans need to snap out of it," Bernie said, his eyes suddenly hard. "Time's up. Americans are out there dancin' alone on the brink of catastrophe, and nobody's covering their backs. They've been played for fools by the media, betrayed by their political leaders and cuckolded by their religious leaders."
"Help is not on the way for folks who think they can barricade themselves behind closed doors and ride out the storm," Bernie said. "War is on the way. A draft is on the way, and you can take it to the bank that these guys agree with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has been widely quoted as saying contemptuously that military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."
"Look," Bernie continued, "I don't know whether Americans just can't handle the truth - or if they've been lied to so damn much they don't recognize it anymore. They may not like it - you may not like it - but this guy's a liar. Plain and simple. If what comes blaring out of his pie-hole isn't true - it's a lie. Not an exaggeration. Not a misrepresentation. Bush doesn't 'misspeak.' He lies. Lies. Lies."
Bernie pointed out that Bush likes to brag about not only his first, but his best accomplishment after taking office - the massive 670-page No Child Left Behind Act. Although he has relentlessly cut funds for this education program, buried so deep that few noticed is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information, to include addresses and telephone numbers, for every student - or face a cutoff of all federal aid.
In his November/December 2002 article in Mother Jones Magazine, David Goodman says recruiters are up-front about using school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls and personal visits - even if parents object.
According to Goodman, Major Johannes Paraan, head US Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York, said, "The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman... Or maybe if the kid died, we'll take them (sic) off our list."
Although Bush is promising unequivocally, "There will never be a draft as long as I am the President," and House Majority Leader, Texas Republican Tom DeLay tried to allay voters' fears by the sudden call-up and defeat earlier this month of a draft bill sponsored by New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel, who candidly admits he submitted it to make the political point the military is being stretched too thin under Bush, the beat goes on.
Especially in the halls of the Selective Service Department. Last week, the New York Times reported there were contingency plans for a draft of "doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps."
When pinned down, the Selective Service blandly said it was merely a routine update, and assured us that it was "on the shelf," or just an option on the table, and would stay there unless they were directed to carry it out.
However, the Pentagon was furious. "It is the policy of this administration to oppose a military draft for any purpose whatsoever," spokesman Lawrence T.Di Rita said. "A return to the draft is unthinkable. There will be no draft."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoed that sentiment. In an interview with WOAI-AM Radio in San Antonio, Texas, Rumsfeld said the draft idea was "false and mischievous." He knocked the option completely off the table by emphasizing, "We do not have a draft. We do not intend to have a draft. There is no intention to draft doctors or dentists or veterinarians or anything else I can think of."
Goodness gracious! Henny Penny! Tell that to the thousands of soldiers affected by the June 2004 "stop-loss" orders that forced them to remain in the service and head back to Iraq even though their contractual commitments were up.
Tell it to soldiers of Fort Carson, Colorado's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, who were told to reenlist for three more years or be transferred to units deploying for Iraq. These all-volunteer active-duty soldiers suddenly find themselves involuntarily restrained until 2007.
Tell it to the National Guard, the Reserves, and especially to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) forces - people honorably discharged after serving four to six years, but remain in the IRR for the rest of their eight-year commitments. These people are rarely called up, but more than 4,000 IRR troops have been, and fully a third - 843 - have failed to report for duty.
Tell it to 70-year-old Ted Wallace of Los Gatos, California, who was recently ordered to report for deployment to Iraq. NBC Affiliate KNTV reported that Wallace "checked the documents with his local recruiting office and they told him they were accurate and authentic. He says he is going to report to duty but hopes they don't put him on the front line. He also hopes that the army will put off his deployment until after his upcoming knee surgery."
Although denial after denial comes blaring out of Bush's pie-hole on the campaign trail that there will be no draft, those who haven't been bludgeoned into blind obedience or infused with unthinking ideological stupidity, know differently. It is an abomination that American citizens accept this administration's outlook that their children are "dumb, stupid animals" to be used as pawns in a greedy crusade of what Russian activist Alexander Berkman once described so succinctly as "brutish callousness, wanton destruction and irresponsible murder."
Bush has plans for our young men and for our young women as well. Why - when millions of Americans will be affected - is the response only long silence followed by a few vague bleats of polite demurral - drowned out by mindless chants of "four more years... four more years?"
Don't these people have children? Don't they know that in the critical weeks remaining of this destructive administration, many more Americans will die like dogs on a bloody battlefield for no good reason? Don't they know we can't take four more years of this madness?
Bush cannot be allowed to screw up another election. He cannot be allowed to force more war, an involuntary draft - a pre-emptive pie-hole foreign policy on the innocent peoples of this world - a police state on the American people - and all for no good reason.
When Americans realize the best they can hope for is another black memorial wall in Washington, D.C., all options for four more years of George W. Bush are - or should be - off the table.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She will accept praise and atta-boys at rsamples@sirinet.net. Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin, Junior Samples, at BR-549.
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Kerry Campaign: Bush-Cheney Ad Fact Check
10/27/2004
U.S. Newswire
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=38990
THE SCRIPT
GEORGE W. BUSH: "These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget. I've learned first hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers who say they were just doing their job. I have held the children of the fallen who are told their dad or mom is a hero but would rather just have their mom or dad. I've met with the parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation. Because of your service and sacrifice, we are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan and you're making America safer. I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes. I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message."
THE FACTS: WHERE GEORGE BUSH HAS FAILED US...
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget."
BUT GEORGE BUSH FAILED US IN TIMES OF TRIUMPH...
Bush Has Failed To Balance a Single Budget: $5.6 Trillion Surplus Replaced With A Whopping $2.3 Trillion Deficit. The $5.6 trillion ten-year surplus projected in January 2001 is gone, replaced with $2.3 trillion in deficits over the next ten years-a fiscal decline of $7.9 trillion in just three years. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal budget deficit will be a record $442 billion in 2004. (CBO, The Budget And Economic Outlook: An Update, 9/04)
Federal Deficit Will Be Record $415 Billion In 2004. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal budget deficit will be a record $415 billion in 2004; the deficit will be $348 billion in 2005. Both figures dwarf the previous record of $290 billion posted by Bush's father in 1992. (OMB, 7/30/04; CBO, The Budget And Economic Outlook: An Update, 9/04, "Monthly Budget Review," 10/6/04)
...AND ADVERSITY
Bush Administration Ignored Terrorism Before September 11...
Clinton Administration Warned Bush Team That Al Qaeda Would Be The Biggest threat. The 9-11 Commission report "quoted Clinton as telling the commission that he told Bush in their transition meeting that 'I think you will find that by far your biggest threat is bin Laden and the al Qaida.'" In his book My Life, "When he and President Bush have a meeting just as Bush is about to take over, Clinton writes that he cited Al Qaeda as the nation's No. 1 foreign policy concern. Sandy Berger, Clinton's NSC advisor told the 9-11 Commision that : "I told my successor (Condi Rice) that she would be spending more time on terrorism and al Qaeda than any other issue. I did my best to emphasize the urgency I felt." (Boston Globe, 7/23/04; Chicago Tribune, 6/27/04; Sandy Berger, Testimony Before The 9-11 Commission, 3/24/04)
Bush Ignored the August '01 PDB That Warned Of An Imminent Al Qaeda Attack Inside the US. Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing on August 6, 2001, entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US." However, Bush did not hold a cabinet meeting on terrorism until September 4, even though his counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke had requested one in January 2001. (Associated Press, 4/8/04; Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp. 231-237; CBS "60 Minutes," 3/21/04)
Cheney Was Told Al Qaeda Had Hit the USS Cole - But Chose Not to Respond: "At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold the regime responsible for an al Qaeda attack. But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole -- a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Cheney -- the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action." (Washington Post, 1/20/02)
...Failed to Fund Intelligence and Counterterror Efforts...
Bush Administration Proposed Intelligence Cuts AFTER 9-11. In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a request for "collaborative capabilities." (Washington Post, 4/13/04, 3/22/04)
Bush Provided Only One-Third Of Counter-Terrorism Funding In 2005 Budget. Bush's FY05 intelligence budget only provided a third of the counter-terrorism funding that our intelligence agencies said they needed to fight terrorism next year. The CIA Counterterrorism Center is only funded at 20 percent in the President's budget request. The other 80 percent of the money it needs to fight al Qaeda will have to come from supplementals. The bill would authorize an estimated $40 billion for intelligence spending, including roughly $30 billion for defense intelligence agencies and $5 billion for the CIA. Exact funding levels are classified. (CQ, 6/25/04; House Intelligence Committee Minority Staff, Rep. Harman release, 7/8/04)
...Then Tried To Block Attempts To Investigate Intelligence Failures
Bush Stonewalled The Independent 9-11 Commission At Every Possible Turn. Bush opposed an independent inquiry into 9/11, arguing it would duplicate a probe conducted by Congress. He finally agreed to support an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks after "the congressional committees unearthed more and more examples of intelligence lapses." Bush then fought the extension of the 9-11 Commission, and refused to provide it with the funding it needed. He subsequently tried to limit amount of time the commission would have to testimony from himself, and tried to prevent Condelezza Rice from having to testify under oath. (Statement of Administration Policy, Executive Office of the President, 7/24/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/28/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/28/02; (New York Times, 1/28/04; White House Press Briefing, 1/27/04, emphasis added; Washington Post, 3/27/03; Associated Press, 2/28/04; 3/9/04; Washington Post, 3/26/04)
Bush Initially Opposed Calls To Give The National Intelligence Director The Level Of Authority The 9-11 Commission Urged. On August 3, 2004, Bush announced he would accept one of the 9-11 Commission's recommendations by proposing the creation of a national intelligence director. The AP reported, "Bush rejected the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation that a new national intelligence director control all intelligence budgets and have the authority to choose who would lead the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies." (AP, 8/3/04)
9-11 Commissioner Chairman Has Said Bush Needs Get More Involved In Intelligence Reform. After three elapsed since the 9-11 commission made its recommendations, Chairman Kean prodded Bush to get a final bill passed. He said: 'I would certainly urge the president to do everything in his power to get a final bill to his desk before the election... I would hope that he would urge his friends in Congress to act...I will reach out to the White House to urge them to do everything they can." (NYT, 10/15/04)
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "I've learned first hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right."
BUT GEORGE BUSH DIDN'T TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS WAR IN IRAQ...
George Bush Said Saddam Hussein "Has Got Weapons of Mass Destruction" - But Inspectors, Outside Experts Say No Stockpiles Existed, and Powell and Blair Admit Errors. Bush said "The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction." But weapons inspector David Kay said there "were no large stockpiles of WMD," a conclusion agreed with by the new Duelfer report, which found that Iraq "did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons." Colin Powell said he was "not happy" that information he presented "turned out not to be accurate," and Tony Blair says the evidence "turned out to be wrong." Paul Wolfowitz later admitted that WMD was "settled on" as the cause for war because "everyone could agree on" it, not because it was the most compelling. (Bush, 1/22/03; Kay Testimony, 1/28/04; Washington Post, 10/6/04; Remarks by Secretary Colin Powell, in Joe Davidson, BET.com, 9/24/04; New York Times, 9/28/04; Vanity Fair, 7/03)
George Bush Said Iraq Had Ties to al Qaeda - But Experts Found Claim Was Inaccurate. Bush said "evidence ... reveal(ed) that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda." But numerous independent investigations, including the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee, U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, and a new CIA report requested by Dick Cheney found no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Dr. Jeffrey Record, a professor at the Air Force Air War College, called the conflation of Iraq and Al Qaeda "a strategic error of the first order." (Bush 2003 State of the Union, 1/28/03; 9-11 Commission Final Report, 7/22/04; Los Angeles Times, 7/10/04; Duelfer Testimony, Senate Armed Services Committee, 10/6/04; Miami Herald, 10/5/04; "Bounding the Global War on Terror," December 2003, Army Strategic Studies Institute)
George Bush Implied Iraq Was an Imminent Threat to the U.S. - But His Claim of a 45-Minute Attack Was Discredited. Bush said that "according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given," but the Washington Post reported that the Bush administration "did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say. The claim... has since been discredited." (Bush remarks, 9/26/02; Washington Post, 7/20/03)
George Bush Said Reforming the Greater Middle East was a Reason for War - But a CIA Analyst Said Iraq War Has Created "More Angry Muslims." Bush said "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all of the Middle East. Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both." But according to Paul Pillar, a top CIA intelligence analyst who covers the Middle East, said the war in Iraq "probably has increased, rather than decreased, the chance of anti-U.S. terrorism." While "he and his colleagues" made this conclusion "early" on, "nobody asked -- not even Tenet" what the impact of a war would be. (Bush Remarks, 2/20/03; Dallas Morning News, 9/6/04; Robert Novak column, Chicago Sun-Times, 9/27/04)
...AND SENT AMERICANS TO WAR WITHOUT A PLAN...
George Bush Pulled Resources Away From The Real War On Terror...
Former White House Counterterror Official: "Iraq Did Take Focus and Energy Away from the Afghanistan Campaign." "'I support the decision to go into Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime,' said (Retired Army Gen. Wayne A.) Downing, a former U.S. Special Operations Command chief. 'But in fact it was a gamble of sorts because Iraq did take focus and energy away from the Afghanistan campaign.'" Downing was recruited to head the White House Office for Combating Terrorism a few weeks after September 11. (Washington Post, 10/22/04)
Iraq a "Voracious Consumer of Time, Money, Personnel and Diplomatic Capitol ... That Until Then Were Engaged Against al Qaeda". "What is not in dispute, among scores of career national security officials and political appointees interviewed periodically since 2002, is that Bush's choice had opportunity costs -- first in postwar Afghanistan, then elsewhere. Iraq, they said, became a voracious consumer of time, money, personnel and diplomatic capital -- as well as the scarce tools of covert force on which Bush prefers to rely -- that until then were engaged against al Qaeda and its sources of direct support. " (Washington Post, 10/22/04)
Gen. Tommy Franks: Resources Were Being Diverted To Iraq 14 Months Before The Invasion. In an excerpt read on NBC's "Meet the Press," Senator Bob Graham said Gen. Tommy Franks told him in February 2002 that "his men and resources were being moved to Iraq, where he felt that our intelligence was shoddy. This admission was coming almost 14 months before the beginning of combat operations in Iraq and only five months after the commencement of combat in Afghanistan." (Associated Press, 9/5/04)
Bush Failure to Focus On Capturing Bin Laden The "Gravest Error" In The War on Terror. The Bush administration itself concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first- hand knowledge. (Washington Post, 4/17/02)
Special Forces, Intelligence Personnel Pulled Out of Afghanistan to Support the Iraq War. In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. US Intelligence officials said that as much as half of the intelligence and special forces assets in Afghanistan and Pakistan were diverted to support the war in Iraq. (USA Today, 3/29/04; KnightRidder, 9/5/03)
New Report Shows War in Iraq is a Distraction from the War on Terror. A new report by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Israel's leading strategic think tank, concluded that the war in Iraq has become a distraction from the international war on terror. Jaffee Center director Shai Feldman "said that the vast amount of money and effort the United States has poured into Iraq has deflected assets from other centers of terrorism, such as Afghanistan." (Associated Press, 10/11/04)
...Failed to Send Enough Troops to Do the Job in Iraq...
General Zinni: "Everybody In The Military" Knew That "We Would Need 300,000 Troops To Pacify Iraq." "Recently, the Army chief of staff (Shinseki) testified that we would need 300,000 troops to pacify Iraq. Everybody in the military knew he was right. But the party line down from the Pentagon decreed that the number was half that, and he was pilloried." (Zinni, Battle Ready, p. 426)
General Abizaid Said He Had Asked for More Troops. "Do I have enough troops in Iraq for the current circumstances? Clearly, I asked for more troops. The 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armory Cavalry Regiment were on their way home. And I asked that we up the number of forces in the country so that we could have a mobile reserve to deal with the conditions that were developing in the Fallujah area and down in the Najaf-Karbala area." (CENTCOM Briefing, 4/30/04)
Bremer: "The One Thing That Would Have Improved The Situation- Would Have Been Having More Troops In Iraq." "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout..." (Paul Bremer, 9/16/04)
Generali Shinseki: "Something On The Order Of Several Hundred Thousand Soldiers." Would Be Required To Win The Peace in Iraq. "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." (Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, 2/25/03)
...Failed to Secure Adequate Support from America's Allies...
American Troops Have Borne 90 Percent of Total Casualties In Iraq War. There have been 1,110 American casualties and 140 non- American casualties in Iraq since the beginning of the war. American troops have borne almost 90 percent of the casualties. (CNN.com, Special Reports: Iraq Casualties, 10/27/04)
Nearly 90 Percent Of Coalition Troops Are American. There are now 162,000 coalition troops in Iraq. 138,000 of those troops are American - nearly 90 percent. (Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index," Updated 10/20/04)
Most Coalition Contributions Are Small. During the (first) gulf war, 8 countries - the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and Egypt - deployed more than 10,000 troops. Together, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states contributed more than 150,000 troops. Today, no country other than the United States has more than 10,000 troops in Iraq. Only the United Kingdom has more than 3,500 troops in Iraq and more than half the coalition has contributed fewer than 200 troops. (Associated Press, 1/16/91; Newsweek, 10/11/04; http://www.globalsecurity.org; Singapore Embassy)
Many of the Troops on the Ground are not Available for Combat. These include 32 Estonian cargo handlers, 12 Moldovan mine- sweepers, 10 remaining Norwegians that stayed on to do police training after Norway withdrew their 140 troops, and Japanese soldiers whose mandate restricts them to "non-combat zones" for an exclusively humanitarian mission, which means they can't help our troops shoulder the burden of fighting the insurgency. (BBC, 7/20/04; Copley News Service, 7/28/04; Knight-Ridder, 7/25/04)
Bush Losing Coalition Members In Iraq. Since the beginning of the war, eight countries have pulled out of Iraq so far: Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, and New Zealand. In all, nearly 3,000 troops have pulled out of Iraq. And more key allies, like Poland, Italy and Ukraine are talking publicly about drawing down their forces. (AP, 8/13/04; http://www.globalsecurity.org; Agence France Presse, 10/4/04; CNN, 10/4/04; AP, 10/4/04)
Costa Rica Had to Tell U.S. To Remove it From the Coalition. Costa Rica told the U.S. government that it wants to be excluded from the list of nations that support the war in Iraq. The country provided neither troops nor aid to the effort in Iraq. Despite this, the country had been listed as a coalition member on the White House website. (Reuters, 9/9/04)
Bush Administration "Alienated" Allies by Limiting Iraq Reconstruction Contracts to "Coalition Partners" The Bush administration - citing "the essential security interests of the United States" - initially announced that bidding for reconstruction contracts would be limited to countries who were "coalition partners," which excluded countries like Russia, France, Germany and Canada, who opposed the war in Iraq. Several of Mr. Bush's aides said they feared that the memorandum would undercut White House efforts to repair relations with allies who had opposed the invasion of Iraq ... 'What we did was toss away our leverage,' one senior American diplomat said. 'We could have put together a policy that said, "The more you help, the more contracts you may be able to gain."' Instead, the official said, 'we found a new way to alienate them.'" (Paul Wolfowitz, Determination and Findings on Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Iraq reconstruction contracts, 12/5/03, http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/pdf/D_F.pdf; New York Times, 12/11/03)
...And Had No Plan To Win The Peace
George Bush Rushed To War With No Plan To Win The Peace. In August 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a secret report assessing the post-war planning for Iraq. The report blamed "setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process." It also said "planners were not given enough time" to plan for reconstruction. A New York Times report found that, "A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq." The study was produced by experts on Iraq from various fields, yet "several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials" until after the war. Several administration officials and Bush himself have admitted to a "miscalculation" of what postwar conditions would be. David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, believes the administration's plans for locating and securing Iraqi WMD were "practically useless" and it was "not a task that the military planned to take on or gave a high priority to." (Washington Times, 9/3/03, emphasis added; New York Times, 10/19/03; NYT, 8/27/04; Powell Interview, BBC Television, 6/24/04; Arms Control Today, 4/04)
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers who say they were just doing their job."
BUT GEORGE BUSH HAS FAILED OUR FIGHTING MEN AND WOMEN
George Bush's Failed Policies Overextended America's Troops
Former Bush Administrator in Iraq Said Army Is In Terrible Shape. "'There is no question that the Army personnel system is stressed. I think the Army is in terrible shape,' said retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who served last year as the Bush administrations first administrator in postwar Iraq. 'I think people are worn out, equipment is run down and we've overstressed the reserves. Were drastically short (of) infantry and MPs because the Army is too small.'" (Washington Post , 7/6/04)
Only 22,700 Iraqi Security Personnel Sufficiently Trained to be Considered "Minimally Effective." He says he has trained 100,000 Iraqi security forces. Back in February, they told us it was 200,000. Interim Prime Minister Allawi told a joint session of Congress two weeks ago that only 50,000 are ready. And, according to documents provided by the Pentagon to Cong. Obey, only 22,700 security personnel have enough training to be "minimally effective." (Rumsfeld, Department of Defense Briefing, 9/7/04; Allawi, Address to Joint Session of Congress, 9/23/04; Appropriations Committee, Democratic Staff; Rep. Obey; Fact Sheet, 9/24/04)
Army Fails To Meet Recruiting Goals For Second Straight Year. "For the second straight year, U.S. Army recruiters fell short of their goal for signing up enlistees in the first month of a new recruiting cycle. For the first 30-day period in its new recruiting year, the Army was 30 percent shy of its goal of signing up 7,274 recruits. The Army had a particularly hard time recruiting for the Army Reserve, on which the Pentagon has relied heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enlistments for the reserves were 45 percent below the target. In the same period last year, the Army came up 25 percent short in its goal in the first month for enlisting 6,220 regular recruits and 40 percent short of its reserve enlistment goal." (Wall Street Journal, 10/20/04)
Army Obtains Fewer Recruits Than One Year Ago. "But this year, the Army entered fiscal 2005 with an unusually low number of recruits in the bank, about 16,000, or 21 percent of its overall goal for the year. By contrast, a year ago, it began fiscal 2004 with 33,000 prospective soldiers -- meaning 45 percent of its recruiting goal already had been met. That also means its monthly goals in fiscal 2005 are higher than they were a year ago." (Wall Street Journal, 10/20/04)
Bush's Lack of Plan Has Made Soldiers Bear Burden of Overstressed Military. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told senators in early February that the U.S. military is so overstressed that he is using emergency powers to expand it by 33,000 troops and that he will increase it further if required. "There is no question that the Army is stressed," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee in January 2004. The Pentagon already has instituted "stop-loss" orders to maintain troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing troops from retiring or leaving the service at the end of their enlistments, while "stop-move" holds them overseas beyond the original end of their tours. About 40,000 servicemen and women have been affected by the "stop-loss" and "stop-move" orders. Of these, about 16,000 are Reservists. (Chicago Tribune, 2/5/04)
George Bush Sent Troops Into Battle Without the Protection They Needed
Military Leaders: George Bush Sent Troops To Iraq Without Proper Protection. The Bush administration sent our soldiers into battle without the protection they needed. According to Defense Department estimates, "more than 40,000 troops, most notably Reserve and National Guard combat support units, were not outfitted with the new 'Interceptor' body armor before deploying to Iraq." General Don Sheppherd (ret.) told CNN, "it does leave you wondering why couldn't we have done this before the war, and we simply didn't." Brigadier General David Grange (ret.) called the shortage of armored vests "a long-term problem that should have been fixed, however, well before the Iraq war started." General George A. Joulwan (ret.) said that in December 2003, troops deploying to Iraq "were short basic equipment: radios, vests, armored Humvees, et cetera. We're better than that as a nation, and we're better than that as a military." And Gen. John Abizaid could not "answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply." (Stars and Stripes, 10/31/03; CNN, 3/14/04; Gen. John Abizaid, House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, in Washington Post, 10/4/03)
Soldiers Lacked Armored Vehicles, Still Buying Their Own Equipment as Late as This Year. In late March 2004, the AP reported, "Soldiers headed for Iraq are still buying their own body armor - and in many cases, their families are buying it for them - despite assurances from the military that the gear will be in hand before they're in harm's way. The Portland Press Herald wrote that "In early March, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, questioned Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee about the shortage of body armor and fortified Humvees for troops serving in Iraq. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said after a visit to Iraq in mid-June that U.S. forces still need better armored equipment. Of the 15,000 Humvees in Iraq, about 1,500 to 2,000 are armored, according to the Army." (Associated Press, 3/26/04; Portland Press Herald, 7/2/04)
Senior Ground Commander In Iraq- Troops Suffered From Body Armor Shortage. On Dec. 4, 2003, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote in a letter "to the number two officer in the Army, with copies to other senior officials, that his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor, but that their delivery twice had been postponed in the month before he was writing." (Wash Post, 10/17/04)
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "I have held the children of the fallen who are told their dad or mom is a hero but would rather just have their mom or dad. I've met with the parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation."
BUT GEORGE BUSH HAS FAILED OUR MILITARY FAMILIES
Bush Refused to Provide Full Health Care to Reservists. The Bush Administration has opposed a measure to extend health care benefits to members of the National Guard and Reserve. On July 8, 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld wrote to the House Armed Services Committee, "If the President is presented a bill that...expands TRICARE, then I would join other senior advisors to the President in recommending that he veto the bill." OMB Director Josh Bolten wrote that "The Administration strongly opposes these provisions, including Senate provisions that would allocate an additional $1.3 billion for VA medical care and the provision that would expand benefits under the TRICARE Program." (Foxnews.com, 10/21/03; Seattle Times, 11/21/03)
Bush Administration Proposed Cut to Soldiers' Pay. Congress enacted two measures to provide a 50 percent pay increase for troops facing imminent danger and a 150 percent increase for family separation in of April 2003. The bill raised the imminent- danger pay of servicemen and servicewomen, including reservists, from $150 to $225 a month in addition to their regular paychecks, and increased from $100 to $250 a month the amount a family receives when a member goes on active duty. The Bush administration initially said it would not renew these benefits that were set to expire in late September 2003. In July 2003, "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent a letter to House and Senate leaders stating the Bush Administration's opposition to" legislation that would extend full benefits to part-time military reservists. After a nationwide wave of protest, the Pentagon agreed to a temporary extension of the benefits. (The Leaf- Chronicle, 10/2/03; Boston Herald, 8/15/03; Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/6/03; Office of Senator Tom Daschle, 7/14/03; Army Times, 8/13/03; http://www.ngaus.org/newsroom/Sec percent20523 percent20Letter.pdf)
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "Because of your service and sacrifice, we are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan and you're making America safer."
BUT GEORGE BUSH HAS FAILED TO CURB GLOBAL TERROR...
Terrorism On The Rise Around the World...
Terrorism Reached A Twenty Year High In 2003. The State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism showed significant terrorist attacks worldwide reached a two-decade high in 2003. According to the report, there were 175 "significant" terrorist attacks last year, the most in two decades, and that the number of individuals injured by international terrorism jumped to 3,646 from about 2,000. (Chicago Tribune, 6/23/04; Knight Ridder, 6/23/04)
Bush Said Bin Laden Had Been Marginalized, Yet He Continues To Plan Attacks. In the weeks following the September 11 attacks, Bush said he wanted Bin Laden "Dead or Alive." Yet in March of 2002, Bush said "(Osama Bin Laden is) just - he's a person who has now been marginalized. His network is -- his host government has been destroyed. you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I...I truly am not that concerned about him." Yet his own administration admits that "...bin Laden not only remains at large but also may already have ordered up another major attack." (Bush Remarks, 9/17/01; 3/13/02; TIME, 8/16/04; New York Times, 9/15/04)
...And In Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi: "Terrorists are Still Pouring In." GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "But more than 300 Iraqis died this week. There are 50 attacks every single day on US forces." IYAD ALLAWI: "No, this is an international war that being fought on Iraqi territory. Terrorists, foreign terrorists are still pouring in, and they're trying to inflict damage on Iraq to undermine Iraq and to undermine the process, democratic process in Iraq, and, indeed, this is their last stand. So they are putting a very severe fight on Iraq." (ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 9/19/04)
General Sanchez, Commander of Coalition Ground Troops In Iraq, Calls Iraq A Terrorist Magnet. "General Sanchez said this week that Iraq was becoming a "terrorist magnet" for anti-American groups. Asked if Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network of radical Islamists was among those present, he replied: "They probably are operating in Iraq." He also named Ansar al Islam, which formerly had a base in the mountainous Kurdish-controlled zone of northern Iraq, and said he thought "other extremist groups" were active too. "There are foreign fighters that have come into this country," he said. "And some Islamic fundamentalists also."" (Channel NewsAsia, July 31, 2003)
More Than 150 Kidnappings and at Least 26 Murders in Iraq. The Brookings Institution reported that more than 151 foreign nationals have been kidnapped in Iraq since March. "At least 26 (foreigners) have been killed, including two Americans whose beheadings were recorded on grisly video footage and posted on the Internet," according to the Associated Press. Reuters reported that "at least nine (hostages) are known to have been beheaded." (Associated Press, 9/29/04; Reuters, 9/22/04; Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index," Updated 10/19/04)
87 Attacks Per Day. "On average, nearly three U.S. soldiers have been killed each day this month - the highest rate since April. Insurgent attacks are averaging 56 per day this month. In August, they averaged 87 a day - their highest level since major combat ended in May 2003." (Associated Press, 10/17/04)
...AND FAILED TO KEEP US SAFE
Our Nuclear Plans Are Not Safe From Terrorist Attack. An NRC security official who conducted security tests found "a significant weakness" 46 percent of the time at nuclear plants. He also found that mock attackers were able to take actions "which would lead to core damage and in many cases, to a probable radioactive release." Three years after 9/11, despite Al Qaeda's demonstrated interest in nuclear facilities and the GAO's specific security recommendations, Bush appointees at the NRC have teamed up with the nuclear industry to resist stronger safety standards. (Public Citizen, "Homeland Unsecured," 10/18/04)
Bush Has Bowed To Special Interests And Has Failed to Secure Chemical Plants. There are over a 100 chemical plants that could threaten more than one million nearby residents, and 7,728 chemical plants where an attack could endanger more than 1,000 - yet Bush decided in 2002 to drop chemical plant security regulations, a major victory for chemical manufacturers. Three years after 9/11, there are still no federally required security measures for chemical facilities. (GAO, 01-3233, 2/03; Wall Street Journal, 8/20/04; Senate Testimony of Frank Libutti 3/04; Washington Post, 8/5/02; House Testimony by Ridge on 9/21/04)
Bush Has Left U.S. Ports Under-funded, Un-inspected, And Susceptible To Terrorism. For the first three fiscal years following 9/11, Bush requested $0 for port security. His FY2005 request was only $46 million, 63 percent less than the level congress appropriated in 2004, and vastly short of what is necessary to secure our ports. Nearly seven million cargo containers arrive in America's 361 ports each year and only 5 percent of those containers are physically screened. (Senate Democrat Policy Committee, 9/14/04; Boston Globe, 6/21/03; www.omb.gov; House Select Committee on Homeland Security Democrats, America at Risk, pg. 10)
Department Of Homeland Security Confirms: Port Security Measures Can't Detect Smuggled Uranium. For two years in a row, an ABC news team was able to ship depleted uranium into the country without being detected. "The Department of Homeland Security Inspector-General, finds there are major problems detecting nuclear material. Rep. Jim Turner said, 'The sad state of affairs is that three years after 9/11, it still seems possible to be able to get nuclear material into this country.'" (ABC News, 10/13/04; DHS IG Report 10/14/04)
Most Ports Still Do Not Have The Ability To Detect A Nuclear Or Dirty Bomb, Even Though The Technology Exists. The House Appropriations Committee reported that the Administration's fiscal year 2005 budget provided for 165 new radiation portal monitors to screen cargo containers but admitted that "over a thousand" more are needed. (U.S. House of Representatives. Report on the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, 2005, H. Report 108-541, June 15, 2004, 25)
Bio-Terror Attack Likely Yet America Still "Woefully Ill- Equipped." "Scientists and biotechnology specialists still think the nation is woefully ill-equipped to handle a more sophisticated...terrorist attack using newer bioengineered germs or other unanticipated pathogens, according to the report by the Baltimore-based Center for Biosecurity...The lack of vaccines for SARS and the West Nile virus as well as the nation's difficulty in manufacturing large quantities of flu vaccine are seen as early signs of the potential problem...The survey found nearly unanimous agreement that a biological terrorist attack is likely in the United States." (Baltimore Sun, 10/13/04)
Recent Evaluation Of Airport Security-Undercover Investigators Able To Sneak Explosives and Weapons Past Security Screeners at 15 Major Airports. "Undercover investigators were able to sneak explosives and weapons past security screeners at 15 airports nationwide, according to a government report on aviation security." The government watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General, Clark Kent Ervin, stated that "The performance was poor." (USA TODAY, 9/23/04)
Porous Borders - 4,000 illegal aliens a day cross into Arizona. "In a single day, more than 4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful gateway into the U.S., the 375- mile border between Arizona and Mexico each day...The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11 have grown more porous. And the trend has accelerated in the past year. The number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million...the largest wave since 2001." (Time 9/20/04)
BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP
GEORGE W. BUSH: "I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes."
BUT GEORGE BUSH FAILED TO KEEP DEADLY EXPLOSIVES OUT OF TERRORIST HANDS
380 Tons of Explosives Missing from Sensitive Former Iraqi Military Installation. "The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations." (New York Times, 10/25/04)
Bush Administration Ignored Warnings of Leaving Explosives Unsupervised. "A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the I.A.E.A.'s Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa. But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces 'went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.' It is unclear whether they ever returned." (New York Times, 10/25/04)
Experts: "Immediate Concern" Is Weapons Could Be Used Against Troops. "American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings." (New York Times, 10/25/04)
Same Type of Explosives Have Been Used By Terrorists Before. "The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people." (New York Times, 10/25/04)
Former U.N. Weapons Inspector David Albright: Missing Explosives "May All Be In The Hands Of Insurgents, Which Is Even A Worse Picture Than I Would Have Anticipated." (CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown, 10/25/04)
THE FACTS: JOHN KERRY WILL KEEP AMERICA SAFE
John Kerry Has a Plan to Win the Peace in Iraq. John Kerry and John Edwards believe the following principles should guide American policy in Iraq right now: internationalize, because others must share the burden; train Iraqis, because they must be responsible for their own security; move forward with reconstruction because that's an important way to stop the spread of terror; and help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it is up to them to run their own country. (http://www.johnkerry.com)
John Kerry Will Wage a More Effective War on Terror. John Kerry has a seven-point plan to win the war on terror by capturing or killing the terrorists, crushing their movement and freeing the world from fear. John Kerry will transform the world's most powerful military to better address the modern threats of terrorism and proliferation. He will deny terrorists the weapons they seek by securing nuclear materials worldwide and implementing port and bio-terrorism security strategies. Kerry will cut off terrorist finances, and make homeland security a real priority, backed up by real resources. He will launch a strategy to win the war of ideas to prevent terrorists from poisoning more minds, and will promote democracy and freedom throughout the Muslim world. Finally, Kerry will rebuild America's strong alliances, critical not only to our military operations but in everything we do to track down and capture terrorists. (http://www.johnkerry.com)
John Kerry Is Fighting to Ensure the America's Military Remains the Best Equipped, And Best Trained in the World. John Kerry and John Edwards will add 40,000 troops to the army, and end the stop-loss policy instituted by the Bush administration, which is effectively a back door draft that runs counter to the traditions of an all-volunteer military. The Kerry-Edwards plan will also double the Army Special Forces capabilities, the troops who land behind enemy lines, conduct counter-terrorism operations, perform reconnaissance missions, and gather intelligence. Kerry will also increase our civil affairs personnel, build new forces specializing in finding, securing, and destroying weapons of mass destruction, and make homeland security one of the primary missions of the National Guard. (http://www.johnkerry.com)
Kerry Supports Better Health Care For Active-Duty, Reserve, And Retired Servicemen and Women. Kerry voted for the Military Members' Bill Of Rights, which expanded military health care coverage, ensured that healthcare benefits follow servicemen and women as they move from base to base, and improved the quality of care by implementing measures to attract more qualified physicians. Kerry has also supported extending the military TRICARE system to give members of the National Guard and Reserve the quality healthcare that they deserve. As president, John Kerry will propose a Military Family Bill of Rights, to provide our military families with competitive pay, good housing, decent health care, quality education for their children, first rate training, and the best possible weaponry, armor, and state-of- the-art equipment. (Vote No. 21, 2/23/99; http://www.johnkerry.com)
John Kerry Will Lead the Fight to Protect U.S. With a Comprehensive Strategy to Secure the Homeland. John Kerry's comprehensive homeland security strategy addresses the critical security gaps that continue to remain after 4 years of ineffective leadership by George W. Bush. As president, Kerry will secure America's ports, step up border security and create a single integrated terrorist watch list, enhance screening of airline passengers and cargo, expand rail and subway security, implement mandatory standards to secure America's chemical plants and other critical infrastructure, defend against bio-terrorism, and provide our first responders the resources they need. (Kerry- Edwards Plan to Win the War on Terror, press release, 9/24/04)
Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.
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Supreme Power: Election 2004 and the Future of the Country's Highest Court
Democracy Now
October 27th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/1428226
Some pundits predict that the winner of the 2004 presidential election could potentially fill 2 to 3 vacancies on the Supreme Court, which could have a major impact on abortion, affirmative actions, gay marriage and much more. We speak with National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr. [includes rush transcript] This is Democracy Now!'s special coverage "Countdown to the Showdown: The Battle for the White House. Six days until the election. It may not be the October surprise that has been speculated on for months now, but the hospitalization earlier this week of Chief Justice William Rehnquist for cancer has brought the issue of the next president's power to mold the court to front and center in the race for the White House. Even before his thyroid cancer diagnosis, most believed the 80-year-old would step down in the next presidential term. Rehnquist has been the court's conservative anchor for a generation. Some analysts predict that the next president could potentially fill 2 to 3 vacancies on the court. In addition to the health of the 80 year-old Rehnquist, Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens is 84 years old, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is 74 and 5 of the 6 other justices are over 65. The appointments in the next presidency could have a major impact over such issues as Roe v Wade, affirmative action, gay marriage and other significant domestic issues.
As it stands now, the court is weighted with more conservatives than liberals - but barely. Many of the closest cases, like the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision that gave Bush the presidency, are decided on 5-4 votes. If Bush wins, and Republicans keep their narrow control of the Senate, a Rehnquist retirement would give Bush the opportunity to promote a sitting justice to chief justice, and put a new face on the court.
- Stuart Taylor Jr., columnist at the National Journal and contributor to Newsweek.
-------- voting
Democrats file 9 suits in Florida
October 27, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041027-123332-5663r.htm
Democrats in Florida already are pursuing nine election-related lawsuits, accusing state election officials of conspiring to disenfranchise minority voters.
Led by the Florida Democratic Party, the People for the American Way, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the AFL-CIO, the lawsuits target, among others, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother.
The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations, established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.
Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said Republicans are "trying to scare people away from the polls."
But Mrs. Hood's spokesman, Alia Faraj, described the lawsuits as politically motivated, saying they were eroding public confidence in the election process by challenging "every single law we are following."
One suit challenges a ruling by Mrs. Hood to throw out forms on which new voters had failed to check a box indicating whether they were U.S. citizens, and another argued that although only 17 percent of the voters in Broward County and 20 percent in Miami-Dade County were black, more than a third of the voter-registration forms that were determined to be incomplete and invalid in both counties involved black voters.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has successfully challenged a ruling on how counties with touch-screen voting should conduct manual recounts. The state had banned the recounts, but an administrative-law judge agreed with the ACLU challenge and tossed that rule in August.
Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, yesterday predicted that Mr. Kerry would employ "fraud, intimidation and lawsuits" in an attempt to overturn a Bush victory on Tuesday. He said if Democrats lose at the ballot box, they would use lawyers "to try to shoehorn a victory."
"What you're seeing is an attempt, through lawsuits and through intimidation, by Democrats to convert their allies' registration fraud into voter fraud on Election Day," he said. "What you're going to see is an attempt by them, regardless of what the outcome is, to say: 'It's unfair. We're going to sue.' "
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Ed Gillespie said the lawsuits are part of a Democratic plan to "use lawyers and baseless allegations to skew the results in their favor." He said the RNC thinks that "no legitimate voter should be disenfranchised, either by being denied a vote or by having an honest vote canceled out by a fraudulent vote."
Mr. Gillespie said teams of Democratic lawyers will seek to change the rules in ways that would make it easier to engage in systematic voter fraud on Election Day.
"The American people should be confident that legitimate voters casting legitimate votes determine the outcome of this election," he said.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe has accused Republicans of engaging in "systematic efforts" to disenfranchise voters, imposing unlawful identification requirements on voters, throwing eligible voters off the rolls and depriving voters of their right to cast a provisional ballot.
"Regardless of party or candidate, it is the civic and moral duty of both parties to encourage complete and full participation in the democratic process," he said in a recent letter to Mr. Gillespie.
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a Florida recount be halted after 36 days, giving the state's 25 Electoral College votes to Mr. Bush, which put him in the White House. The high court, according to public statements by several justices, did not think the ruling would prompt a flood of lawsuits in future federal, state and local elections. But both major parties since have hired an army of lawyers to respond to potential legal challenges this year.
The DNC has 10,000 lawyers on call, including six "SWAT squads" that are ready to deploy on the orders of Mr. Kerry and his campaign staff. The team is headed by Steven Zack, whose law partner, David Boies, argued for former Vice President Al Gore before the Supreme Court in 2000.
The RNC is coordinating a countervailing force of lawyers to respond to voter challenges in 30,000 key precincts, mostly battleground states. The effort is being directed through Republican state party officials. Former Bush administration Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who argued for Mr. Bush in the Supreme Court case, is expected to be a key player in any Republican legal challenges.
"We will have the folks on the ground, we will have the strategy to deal with that and we will protect the integrity of the election process," Mr. Mehlman said.
In 2001, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said after a three-month investigation that the Florida presidential election was rife with "injustice" and "ineptitude" that resulted in the disenfranchisement of black voters.
But two members of the eight-member panel, Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican, and Russell G. Redenbaugh, an independent, disputed the findings in a 50-page dissent, saying commission investigators used flawed data to justify a "preconceived, partisan belief" the election was marred by discrimination and disfranchisement of minority voters.
Mrs. Thernstrom said at the time that a more rigorous statistical analysis showed that race was unrelated to the rate of ballot spoilage and that no evidence supported accusations of disfranchisement or discrimination of minorities. She said the Florida election was "hampered only by problems that were neither motivated by racial discrimination nor served to disfranchise minority voters."
During hearings in Tallahassee, Fla., the commission called three black voters to substantiate what the panel said was a "conspiracy" to block minority voters from polling places, but none of three could show that they had been denied their right to vote. No other witnesses were called.
John Nelson, the Rev. Willie D. Whiting and Roberta Tucker, all of Tallahassee, testified under oath that they had concerns and had read about problems concerning voter irregularities, but all of them voted at their polling precincts.
Mr. Nelson said he saw unmanned police cars near different polling places on Election Day and thought that was "unusual." Mrs. Tucker said she was detained at a routine police driver's license checkpoint that had been functioning for weeks before the election, but was waved on after producing her valid license. Mr. Whiting said his name had been purged by mistake from the voting rolls when he had inaccurately been identified as a felon, but was allowed to vote after a call to an election supervisor.
Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry, an independent who has supported Democratic candidates and causes, said at the time that even though none of the witnesses had been denied access to a polling site, "we know some bad things happened."
•Bill Sammon contributed to this article.
--------
Electorate more fearful than officials of vote fraud
October 27, 2004
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041027-123334-5023r.htm
Many Americans are worried about the accuracy of the voting process next week, a national poll finds, but election officials in most battleground states believe an influx of new voters and a high turnout will cause logistical problems - not increase the specter of fraud.
Election officials say they do not anticipate being plagued by voter fraud, overvoting (voting more than once), or the types of ballot problems that beset the presidential election in Florida four years ago.
"The higher number of voters will bring its own set of problems. Crowd control becomes an issue. There's always an opportunity for fraud, but we've made efforts to minimize it," said Kevin Kennedy, spokesman for the Wisconsin State Board of Elections.
An Associated Press poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, including registered and likely voters, found that 69 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans fear the election will be unresolved on Nov. 3. Fewer than half of Democrats and about three-fourths of Republicans say they are "very confident" the election results will be accurate.
About half of those surveyed said they expect the results will be challenged in court, like those in 2000. Lawsuits already have been filed on everything from how provisional ballots are counted to accusations of fraud in voter registration.
Election officials in Michigan, as in most states, predict a higher-than-normal turnout Tuesday, but they expect to have results shortly after the polls close.
"[W]e're so decentralized [in terms of elections], and we have 5,300 polling places throughout the state. So even if there is an increase of 200,000 voters on Election Day, that increase will be dispersed pretty well and will be manageable," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office.
In Arizona, election officials have established a "fraud line" for people to report suspicious activity and cross-check voter rolls to prevent illegal voting activity.
"We have a centralized voter-registration list, so we can cross-check county by county, so someone can't be registered in two places," said Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
One thing likely to help keep elections clean and accurate in Wisconsin and several other contested states will be the use of optical scans, which require running paper ballots through electronic tabulators. No computerized touch-screen voting machines will be in use.
Many view optical scans as the most fail-safe method for reliable voting.
"They'll give us a paper trail of votes statewide," said Mrs. Brewer, who noted that every county in Arizona will be using optical scans.
In contrast, touch-screen voting machines work without any paper or ballot receipt, leaving no tangible trail for a recount or audit after an election. Only in Nevada will there be touch-screen voting with a paper trail on Tuesday.
To help prepare for potential problems in Wisconsin, the state election board trained and certified all 8,000 inspectors, who are in charge of polling places, Mr. Kennedy said.
Unlike touch screens and optical scans, punch-card voting machines - Florida's nemesis in 2000 - allow voters to overvote and still are used in many jurisdictions. In Ohio, 67 of the state's 88 counties will be using punch cards.
But unlike the situation in Florida four years ago, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell spokesman James Lee said: "We have clear standards for how punch-card votes are to be counted, and those standards are codified into law. ... In Ohio, two corners of a chad must be punched out for a vote to count."
What's more, Mr. Lee said, "We've launched an aggressive voter-education campaign to instruct voters on how to correctly execute all types of ballots. And our election officials are prepared and trained. They know how many voters are registered, and they know the personnel levels required to handle them. Personnel will be ever-vigilant in looking for suspicious activity."
Because of the debacle in 2000, the Florida Legislature decertified the use of punch-card voting machines in that state.
Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, said: "Touch screens, which 15 of 67 Florida counties will be using, don't allow a voter to overvote. And If you overvote on an optical scan, it will kick it out," nullifying the vote.
Patricia di Constanza, superintendent of elections in Bergen County, N.J., said voters will be using the same Sequoia electronic-voting machines used in elections during the past decade and the county is not worried about tampering.
"We have a stand-alone system. It's not hooked into the Internet, and results are not sent over telephone lines."
In fact, she said, law-enforcement officials hand deliver both the cartridge and a printout of its contents to municipal and county clerks.
"Turnout will be massive. But I think we're set up to address potential problems," said Ramon de la Cruz, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections, who expects at least 500,000 new voters there to cast ballots Tuesday.
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Legal Battles Over Ballots Put Election Rules in Flux
By Jo Becker and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A548-2004Oct26.html
Iowa Republicans charged yesterday that Democrats are trying to rig the presidential election there by allowing voters to cast ballots even if they vote in the wrong precincts, while in Ohio Democrats sued to try to stop the GOP there from challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters.
The two moves were part of an ongoing legal fight for the presidency that has put election rules in flux less than a week before Election Day.
Court battles have been underway in virtually all of the battleground states, leading to last-minute hearings and rulings that have election officials scrambling as they prepare for voters to come to the polls on Tuesday and contend with hundreds of thousands of voters who are already casting ballots in states that allow early voting.
Many of the lawsuits have focused on how provisional ballots should be counted, a new voting procedure that was intended to be an improvement in balloting. After the disputed 2000 election, Congress declared that no voter could be turned away at the polls and passed legislation requiring that provisional ballots be given to those who come to the polls but whose names are not on the rolls. But the measure left unclear the standards for determining whether the ballots are valid and should be counted -- and how quickly -- after Election Day.
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that provisional ballots cast outside the voters' correct precinct cannot be counted in Michigan. The court had previously made a similar ruling for Ohio.
The dispute over provisional ballots has a distinct partisan tint: Democrats want the ballots counted even if they are cast in the wrong place, arguing that many voters who move frequently would otherwise be disenfranchised. Republicans counter that allowing ballots cast in the wrong precinct to be counted would open the election to fraud.
Democrats have unsuccessfully sued Republican election officials who have adopted the stricter counting rules in the critical states of Florida and Missouri, as well as Ohio and Michigan.
This week, it was the GOP's turn. Five Iowa Republicans filed a lawsuit in state court Monday to overturn a recent opinion by that state's Democratic attorney general that ballots cast in the wrong precinct must be counted. The suit contends that the ruling could produce "voting irregularities, confusion, uncertainty" and "Election Day chaos."
Secretary of State Chester J. Culver (D) said his only goal "is to ensure that every eligible vote counts." A hearing is scheduled for today.
But even in states where litigation has settled the rules, problems could still arise. Many states, Florida among them, have not spelled out uniform rules on the steps election officials should take to determine whether a voter is eligible.
Some say they will simply check their voter rolls. Others might try to find the voters at their homes or to cross-reference the signatures they have on file. That could lead to the same county-by-county counting discrepancies that led the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount four years ago.
"If it's close, I foresee a swarm of lawyers, with some saying this guy didn't cross the 't' the same way as he did on his registration card, so it shouldn't be counted, while others insist the 't' is fine," said Elliott Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way Foundation, a liberal group that is sending lawyers to monitor the polls.
The amount of time election officials will have to make such determinations varies widely. In Florida, for example, that period is less than two days, which officials there say is not enough time.
Analysts say it is difficult to predict how many provisional ballots will be cast this year. But in locales that have allowed them for years, the ballots have reached huge numbers. In 2000, for instance, about 100,000 were cast in Los Angeles County.
In Ohio, a move by the Republican Party last week to challenge the eligibility of tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters could drive up the number of people forced to cast provisional ballots in that crucial state, a goal that GOP strategists said would benefit the president because it is likely many of those ballots would not be counted under Ohio's strict rules.
Another potential benefit: Because provisional ballots are not counted until after Election Day, the more Democrats use them, the more likely it would be that Bush will appear to be ahead on election night. Tony Fabrizio, a GOP consultant and pollster, said that is a "significant psychological advantage," because the country is "not going to tolerate waiting a month for the outcome."
Democrats argue that the Ohio challenges violate federal law; Republicans say they are trying to prevent fraud.
In a legal battle on a different election issue, a federal judge in Florida ruled yesterday that state election officials will not have to process the thousands of incomplete registration applications. A coalition of civil rights groups and labor unions had argued that the required information was irrelevant and that the rejected applications were disproportionately those of minority applicants.
Edsall reported from Des Moines.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Making waves with renewable energy
October 27, 2004
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Story by Mia Shanley
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27873/story.htm
HAYLE - Denmark catches the most wind for power. Japan absorbs the most sun. Now Britain wants to rule the waves.
Wave and tidal stream machines are the latest exploratory technology in the rush to find alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels with soaring price tags.
"Britain has one of the best wind, wave and tidal resources in Europe," said Martin Wright, managing director of Marine Current Turbine (MCT), the company that built the world's first large-scale tidal stream machine.
Denmark beat out Britain after a strong showing in the early stages of the race to build a viable wind power industry, but the country has a terrific opportunity to develop a wave and tidal power industry, Wright said.
Portugal, Japan, the United States, Australia and South Africa are also among the countries that want to pool energy from the natural flow of the ocean. But the global wave industry is still small and Britain wants to develop it on a large commercial scale and then export the technology.
"It's a bit of an international race to develop the technology," said Tim German, manager of Cornwall Sustainable Energy Partnership.
Proponents say if they harnessed the energy of the ocean, they could have enough energy to power the planet. Britain's available wave power has been estimated to be around double the country's energy consumption.
IN THE WATER
Developers are already running tests and some are linked into national grids. Britain's Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) plugged its 750-kilowatt Pelamis machine into the grid in Scotland in August and Dutch Archimedes Wave Swing connected its two-megawatt machine in Portugal this month.
Britain wants these kind of developers in its waters off Cornwall, a peninsula that catches the swells of the Atlantic. A feasibility study is being conducted to develop a test centre called Wave Hub that would give developers a chance to test large-scale projects before they launch globally.
"If, for instance, Pelamis was developed in a farm of 40 machines, it could power 20,000 homes in the UK," said Michael Hay, marine renewables development manager for the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).
Twenty farms could power a whole city the size of Edinburgh with a population of nearly 450,000.
The Wave Hub would be located 12 to 15 kilometres (10 miles) off the white sandy beach at Hayle in Cornwall and cover an area up to 20 square kilometres (7.7 square miles). The hub could eventually produce 30 to 40 megawatts of electricity each year which would be directly linked into the national grid via an old power station.
"We hope to have the machines in the water by 2006," said Mike Patching, project manager for Scott Wilson Oceans, the firm managing the feasibility study.
Patching said OPD would likely be first in the water but expects other developers from Europe and the United States could also get involved.
WAVE BLOCKS
One of the biggest advantages to wave farms is that they can't be seen. Wind farms are economically competitive but some people complain they are an eyesore.
But just because they are out of sight doesn't mean there shouldn't be a note of caution. The devices would be on or just below the surface of the water making such farms a no-go zone for sail and fishing boats, with their deep keels and nets.
There are also some concerns about the impact on tourism, marine mammals and if the devices will cut waves for surfers.
The technology is not cheap either. Developers will need help from the government to get to the point where the economies of scale will allow the wave industry to stand on its own.
Britain wants 15 percent of the country's electricity needs to be met with renewable energy by 2015 and has allocated 50 million pounds to develop marine renewables.
Wave hub is expected to cost 9.5 to 11.5 million pounds.
"The government is keen. It's the force. It is worried about dependence on imports, an increase in price volatility and carbon dioxide emissions," said MCT's Wright.
Developers reckon there is more incentive to develop renewable energy than ever before because of record high oil prices, security concerns about supply and global warming.
"You don't have to be an engineer to realise gas, coal and oil will run out one day. This century will be a transition century, but you can't change a multi-billion dollar carbon-based industry overnight," said Patching.
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China told to invest in cleaner energy technology or face consequences
BEIJING (AFP)
Oct 27, 2004
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/041027090007.bk4irhci.html
China must cut down on gas emissions and adopt cleaner energy technologies or face disastrous consequences along with the rest of the world, international experts warned Wednesday.
Based on current world trends, scientists have predicted that global temperatures could rise over two degrees Celsius within this century, chairman of the European Climate Forum Carlo Jaeger said at a briefing here.
This would have a disastrous impact on China, which would experience more frequent and more severe droughts and floods, stronger storms and more serious water shortages, Jaeger said.
Natural disasters like floods and drought already cost thousands of lives in China each year and billions of dollars in economic losses.
"To some extent, we may also have more tropical diseases, more dangerous malaria," he said.
Experts at the forum said China, like other countries, should invest in new technologies for cleaner energy.
Jaeger suggested it follow the European Union's example and look into renewable, hydrogen-based energy as a possible solution, or investigate other emission-free solutions.
"It is important to say that coal can be burned in a much more efficient way, it is also good for air pollution. This needs new power plants and new technologies," he said.
"It is possible today to burn coal so you make no emission, you can capture carbon dioxide and store it."
The drawback is that the new technologies need huge amounts of investment. Europe has earmarked several trillion euros over the next 20 years.
China still relies heavily on coal-fired power plants, which are cheaper and quicker to build than alternatives like natural gas, nuclear or hydroelectric plants. Coal is also readily available.
But coal-burning emits large amounts of sulphur dioxide and other pollutants, causing acid rain and respiratory illnesses.
As a first step the government has ordered the plants to adopt pollution control measures such as installing emissions-cleaning equipment, but requirements are not strictly enforced.
Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan pledged last month that China would pursue environmentally friendly production and consumption patterns to reduce pollution and save resources.
-------- energy
High natgas prices may open way for new US nukes
REUTERS
October 27, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27875/story.htm
SAN DIEGO - High natural gas prices, if sustained, may open the way for power plants using other fuel sources to be built, with even a resumption of nuclear construction possible, industry sources said.
"As long as natural gas prices stay high, I do think nuclear looks more and more attractive," Kenneth Schisler, chairman of the Maryland Public Service Commission, told a conference here.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Suedeen Kelly saw high gas prices providing opportunities for several other fuel sources, including renewables such as wind, and saw a role for nuclear.
"We are going to see some more nuclear (if natural gas prices stay high)," she told a panel at the Edison Electric Institute financial conference.
Nuclear power suffered a major setback in the U.S. when thousands were forced to flee their homes following a 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
It fell further out of favor in 1988 when massive cost overruns at the Seabrook plant led to the bankruptcy of a New Hampshire utility.
The vast majority of new power plants built in the U.S. during the last five years have been gas-fired with the overall leading generation source, coal, losing some popularity due to growing concern about the emission of greenhouse gases.
Nuclear plants emit virtually no greenhouse gases.
DIVERSITY IMPORTANT
Xcel Energy Inc. (XEL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) President for Commercial Enterprises Paul Bonavia said uncertainly would encourage utilities to invest in diverse fuel sources.
"We don't have a clue what the price of natural gas is going to be. Nobody else knows either. The key word in the (utilities' resource) plan is balance. We are simply not in a position to bet on one fuel or another," he said. FERC Commissioner Kelly said uncertainty would make state regulators put aside their wariness about allowing utilities to use futures markets to hedge risk. "I think we are going to see that change. We've seen it change a bit. I think we are going to see it change some more," Kelly said.
Stephen Baum, chief executive officer of Sempra Energy (SRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , said the approval of transmission projects was vital particularly if renewables such as wind are to play an important role in meeting future load growth.
"I think the most important single issue is transmission. It is the key to renewables, the key to address environmental issues," Baum said.
Many of the U.S's richest resources of wind and some other renewable resources are located far from key consuming areas, making adequate transmission a necessity.
Kelly of FERC noted Wyoming has already created a state transmission authority and New Mexico was in the process of creating one as more thinly populated states look to develop power generation and ship supplies to key centers of demand such as California.
-------- ACTIVISTS
78 Arrested in Thai Protests Suffocate in Crowded Trucks
October 27, 2004
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/international/asia/27thailand.html?hp&ex=1098849600&en=050aad9522b29c84&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BANGKOK, Oct. 26 - At least 78 people died from suffocation while being transported in overcrowded military trucks after a violent demonstration in Thailand's largely Muslim south, officials said Tuesday.
Six others were shot to death and about 20 were wounded during the demonstration on Monday when the police fired live rounds as well as water cannons and tear gas into wild, rock-throwing crowds, witnesses and officials said.
It was the latest surge in violence in the increasingly restive region, where the government has opted for strong-arm measures to quell what seems to be a rising tide of anger and militancy.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appeared to have little sympathy for the victims. Referring to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is under way, he said: "This is typical. It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them."
Though he has blamed bandits and drug runners in the past, he now points the finger at separatists.
"We cannot allow these people to harass innocent people and authorities any longer," he said, adding, "We have no choice but to use force to suppress them."
The deaths occurred when the detainees were taken in trucks on a five-hour journey to a military barracks in Pattani Province, Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nutsatit said at a news conference. He said more than 1,300 people were packed into six-wheeled trucks, but did not say how many trucks were involved.
An army spokesman, Akom Pongprom, confirmed the toll to reporters and said the cause was suffocation.
A forensic pathologist, Pornthip Rojansunan, said at a news conference in Pattani that 80 percent of the victims had died because they could not breathe, according to news agency reports.
"We didn't find any bodies with broken arms or legs, but two or three of them had broken necks, which may have occurred during transportation," she said.
Reporters were barred from the area and did not see the loading of detainees into the trucks. Prisoners were seen earlier lying in rows on the ground, stripped of their shirts, with their hands tied behind their backs.
The volatility of Thailand's deep south was underscored by the relatively minor grievance that brought a furious crowd estimated at up to 2,000 into the streets in Narathiwat Province. Their demand was the release from police detention of six men arrested on suspicion of selling weapons to Muslim fighters.
Plans for a rally had apparently been under way and security officials had prepared for it, Siwa Saengmanee, a senior official of the Interior Ministry, told a Bangkok radio station. "If we had not set up roadblocks on various highways, there could have been 10,000 people there," he said.
Most of Thailand's Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of its largely Buddhist population of 63 million, live in the southern region, which for years has felt neglected and disparaged by the distant central government.
The region was in earlier centuries the Pattani Sultanate, a center of Muslim culture. It was annexed by Thailand in 1902, but there have been only periodic efforts to integrate it into the cultural and economic mainstream of the country.
The three southernmost provinces, Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, have large populations of Malay speakers and have more in common with the people of neighboring Malaysia than with those of the distant capital, Bangkok.
Hundreds of people have been killed there this year, including 107 men, most of them armed only with machetes, who were shot and killed on April 28 when they attacked police outposts and other targets. Many were killed in an assault by government forces on a mosque.
On Jan. 4, more than 100 attackers raided a military depot, killed four soldiers and stole up to 400 firearms in an operation whose meticulous planning and execution led to suspicions of outside training and participation.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda, are known to have passed through southern Thailand, but no evidence has been shown of their involvement. Thai authorities have recently focused on militant Muslim preachers as a cause of the unrest.
The almost daily attacks continued Tuesday as gunmen on motorcycles wounded six people in separate incidents in Narathiwat Province.
The attacks have mostly been directed against soldiers, police officers, teachers, suspected informers and Buddhist monks. Small bombs have been set off and dozens of schools have been burned. One more school was burned Monday night, after the demonstration.
Southern Thailand has been plagued with violence for years, involving military and police rivalries, political feuds, smugglers, drug runners and criminal syndicates.
Increasingly, the unrest has been driven by a rise in Muslim radicalism as well as a revival of a dormant separatist movement, experts say. Now, after months of brutality, anger and revenge are an added motive.
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Suffocation cited in most deaths
October 27, 2004
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-100133-8091r.htm
BANGKOK - At least 84 Muslim protesters died, mostly from suffocation so severe their eyes bled, after being arrested and locked in army trucks following clashes with security forces in the south, officials said yesterday.
"Seventy-eight people were found dead on arrival in the vans at the military camp," Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan, a Justice Ministry pathologist, said.
"They showed bleeding in the eyes, in the white part of the eyeballs, and bleeding on the body underneath the skin, only tiny spots of bleeding" which are evidence of "suffocation," Dr. Pornthip said.
She examined the corpses with a team of other doctors at the military camp in the southern province of Pattani.
The deaths occurred on Monday after security forces fired live ammunition, tear gas and water cannons at more than 2,000 angry people in nearby Narathiwat province, including some who stormed the Tak Bai district police station.
Moderate Islamic leaders accused Thai troops of overreacting to the protest and they warned that an upswing in violence could follow.
"I am in shock," Abdulraman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, told the Associated Press. "I cannot say what is going to happen, but I believe that hell will break out."
In a potential hint of what is to come, suspected Islamist militants riding on motorcycles shot and wounded six persons yesterday in separate drive-by attacks in other parts of Narathiwat.
The clashes began when about 2,000 protesters demanded the release of six Muslim men who were jailed on suspicion of stealing weapons from pro-government volunteers.
During several hours of clashes, when protesters attempted to storm the police station, at least six persons died from bullet wounds, officials said Monday.
About 1,300 people were arrested and taken away in army vehicles.
The 78 additional deaths occurred after the arrested people were locked inside "many vans" that "belong to the army," Dr. Pornthip said in the interview by cell phone while she was investigating the deaths in Pattani.
"They were all males. There were no gunshot wounds on the bodies," said Dr. Pornthip, who was honored by Thailand's king in 2003 for her nationwide forensic work.
"From the medical examination, nearly 80 percent of [the dead] showed signs of asphyxiation, and 20 percent of them showed convulsion, maybe caused by electrolyte imbalance, dehydration and heat stroke while in the vans," she said.
Asphyxiation, or suffocation, occurs from an extreme decrease in oxygen in a person's body accompanied by an increase of carbon dioxide, and can be caused by a lack of air, choking, drowning, electric shock, injury, or the inhalation of toxic gases.
"When they collapsed, they cannot move," Dr. Pornthip said of the victims who perished in the trucks amid tropical heat before the army vehicles' doors were unlocked and officials discovered piles of bodies.
"After we brought people who were arrested into detention, we found that another 78 people were dead," Thailand's Justice Ministry spokesman Manit Suthaporn told reporters in Pattani yesterday.
"According to the investigation of the dead bodies, they died because of suffocation," Mr. Manit said.
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78 Thai Muslims Die After Protest
Men Suffocated Or Were Crushed In Army Trucks
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63714-2004Oct26?language=printer
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 26 -- At least 78 Muslim men suffocated or were crushed to death in southern Thailand on Monday as they were being taken to military barracks in packed army trucks after a demonstration, Thai officials said Tuesday.
The news, coming a day after officials said six people were killed when security forces tried to break up the protest, sparked fears of further violence in the already tense south. Muslims, an aggrieved minority in the largely Buddhist country, outnumber Buddhists in that region.
The death toll of at least 84 was Thailand's second highest for an incident this year. On April 28, an assault by security forces killed at least 112 people, most of them Muslims. This week's incident was the latest sign that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's campaign to quell a 10-month rebellion in the south is failing. The growing crisis could threaten his reelection.
Monday's protest began when hundreds of residents gathered outside a police station in Tak Bai, a district in Narathiwat province, demanding the release of six men accused of giving weapons to Islamic insurgents. Military officials said the crowd ranged from 1,500 to 2,000 people. Army officials said more than 1,300 were detained.
A Justice Ministry official, Manit Sutaporn, told reporters in Pattani that the 78 detainees likely suffocated from being piled on top of each other in the trucks. "We found no wounds on their bodies," he said.
A forensic expert at the ministry, Pornthip Rojanasunan, said the men could have been gagged to death. "They might have had something stuffed in their mouths or nostrils," she told reporters.
"I'm absolutely shocked," said Ahmad Somboon Bualang, a sociologist and retired university lecturer in Pattani. "For people to die like this during Ramadan, in the Muslim fasting month, is tragic. Suffocating to death is . . . more violent than being shot to death. These people suffered greatly in dying."
Television news Tuesday showed rows of mostly young men sprawled on the ground, roped together with their shirts off and hands tied behind their backs. The scene was apparently filmed before the men were placed in trucks to be taken to an army barracks in Pattani, about 60 miles north of Tak Bai.
Thaksin went to the site of the protest and ordered the military to disperse the crowd, a security analyst said. At least 300 troops with assault weapons surrounded the protesters, firing a water cannon, tear gas and live rounds. The demonstrators threw stones, according to wire service reports.
Thaksin suggested Tuesday that the detainees could have died because they were "weak" from fasting during Ramadan, the Associated Press reported.
[On Wednesday, the prime minister acknowledged security forces had made mistakes in their handling of the riot and voiced regret at the loss of life, according to Reuters.
["I can say that the government resorted to gentle measures and did not use force in suppressing the protesters," Thaksin told parliament. "But mistakes happened during the transfer of the arrested people to trucks."]
The government's handling of the incident has prompted fresh concerns of human rights abuses. Natalie Hill, deputy Asia director for Amnesty International, said the allegations that authorities used excessive force to quell the protest "must be immediately investigated." She said that all deaths related to the incident should be investigated and that anyone suspected of being involved with the deaths should be suspended from duty and brought to justice.
Some analysts said they believed the death toll could rise further and might include extrajudicial killings.
The south has been under martial law since January, when guerrillas raided an army camp, killed four soldiers and took 300 assault rifles. A spate of violence followed, including torchings of schools, assassinations of teachers and policemen and, lately, bombings of hotels.
In April, government troops stormed a mosque, killing more than 30 Muslims in a three-hour shootout after machete-wielding assailants attacked 11 police posts in three Muslim-majority provinces. By day's end, more than 100 were dead.
The government has attributed the violence to Muslim separatists, but no Muslim separatist group has asserted responsibility for any of the attacks. On Tuesday, a Web site for the separatist Pattani United Liberation Organization praised those killed in Narathiwat and vowed that "the enemy's capitol shall be burned to the ground."
But no official is sure who is behind the violence or whether any of the attacks are related. What is clear is that Thaksin's approach, a combination of stepped-up security and outreach to the Muslim community, has not quelled the conflict, analysts said.
The six men whose arrest sparked Monday's protest were community defense volunteers, trained and armed by the government ostensibly to protect villagers against Muslim insurgents. They reported this month that they had been robbed of their shotguns. Police investigators concluded that the men had staged the robbery and arrested them.
The resulting protest was a "spontaneous grass-roots demonstration that displayed the continued estrangement between the community and the government," said Paul Quaglia, director of PSA Asia Co., a Bangkok-based security consulting firm.
"The violence and, in particular, the possibility of extrajudicial killings will further inflame the growing Islamic extremist movement in the area and could raise the level of violence considerably, spreading beyond the south," Quaglia said.
Special correspondent Somporn Panyastianpong in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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Thailand Acknowledges Prisoner Deaths During Transit
October 27, 2004
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/international/asia/27thailandcnd.html?pagewanted=all
BANGKOK, Oct. 25 - At least 78 people died from suffocation while being transported in overcrowded military trucks after a violent demonstration in Thailand's largely Muslim south, government officials said today.
Six others were shot to death and about 20 were wounded during the demonstration on Monday, when the police fired live rounds as well as water cannons and tear gas into wild, rock-throwing crowds, witnesses and officials said.
It was the latest surge in violence in the increasingly restive region, where the government has opted for strong-arm measures to quell what seems a rising tide of anger and militancy.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appeared to have little sympathy for the victims. Referring to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is now under way, he said: "This is typical. It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them."
Though he has blamed bandits and drug runners in the past, he now pointed the finger at separatists.
"We cannot allow these people to harass innocent people and authorities any longer," he said, adding, "We have no choice but to use force to suppress them."
The deaths occurred when the detainees were taken in trucks on a five-hour journey to a military barracks in Pattani Province, Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nutsatit said at a news conference.
He said more than 1,300 people had been packed into six-wheeled trucks, but did not say how many trucks had been involved.
An army spokesman, Akom Pongprom, confirmed the toll to reporters and said the cause was suffocation.
Thailand's most prominent forensic pathologist, Pornthip Rojansunan, said at a news conference in Pattani that 80 percent of the victims had died because they could not breathe, according to news agency reports.
"We didn't find any bodies with broken arms or legs, but two or three of them had broken necks, which may have occurred during transportation," she said.
Reporters were barred from the area and did not witness the loading of detainees into the trucks. Prisoners were earlier seen lying in rows on the ground, stripped of their shirts, with their hands tied behind their backs.
The volatility of Thailand's deep south was underscored by the relatively minor grievance that brought a furious crowd estimated at up to 2,000 into the streets in Narathiwat Province. Their demand was the release from police detention of six men arrested on suspicion of selling weapons to Muslim fighters.
Plans for a rally had apparently been under way and security officials had prepared for it, Siwa Saengmanee, a senior official of the Interior Ministry, told a Bangkok radio station. "If we had not set up roadblocks on various highways, there could have been 10,000 people there," he said.
Most of Thailand's Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of its largely Buddhist population of 63 million, live in the southern region, which for years has felt neglected and disparaged by the distant central government.
The region was in earlier centuries the Pattani Sultanate, a center of Muslim culture. It was annexed by Thailand in 1902, but there have been only periodic efforts to integrate it into the cultural and economic mainstream of the country.
The three southernmost provinces, Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, have large populations of Malay speakers and have more in common with the people of neighboring Malaysia than with those of the faraway capital, Bangkok.
Hundreds of people have been killed there this year, including 107 men, most of them armed with nothing more than machetes, who were shot and killed on April 28, when they attacked police outposts and other targets. Many were killed in an assault by government forces on a mosque.
On Jan. 4, more than 100 attackers raided a military depot, killed four soldiers and stole up to 400 firearms in an operation whose meticulous planning and execution led to suspicions of outside training and participation.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda, are known to have passed through southern Thailand, but no evidence has been shown of their involvement. Thai authorities have recently focused on radical Muslim preachers as a cause of the unrest.
The almost daily attacks continued today as gunmen on motorcycles wounded six people in separate incidents in Narathiwat Province.
The attacks have mostly been directed against soldiers, police officers, teachers, suspected informers and Buddhist monks. Small bombs have been set off and dozens of schools have been burned. One more school was burned on Monday night, after the demonstration.
Southern Thailand has been plagued with violence for years, involving military and police rivalries, political feuds, smugglers, drug runners and criminal syndicates, many of them operating along the border with Malaysia, a Muslim nation.
Increasingly, the unrest has been driven by a rise in Muslim radicalism as well as a revival of a dormant separatist movement, experts say. Now, after months of brutality, anger and revenge are an added motive.
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