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NUCLEAR
Time for Arms Talks? Iran, Israel, and Middle East Arms Control
Vintage nuclear bomber up for grabs on Internet auction site
Your Pre-election Reality Check
Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis
India's Reliance Energy Keen To Open Nuclear Power Plants
Iran Votes to Resume Nuclear Work
Iran Would Freeze Enrichment for 6 Months at Most
Hundreds of Iranian students form human chain to back enrichment
Did Iraqi Materials, Experts Escape?
Ehime accepts Shikoku Electric's pluthermal project
North Korea says U.S. talks approach is "crafty trick"
Nuclear Shell Games
The right (nuclear) war, the right time, the right place
On The Horizon: Securing Borders With Information Analysis
Avoiding the Tipping Point
Nuclear Chief Pressures Iran, N. Korea
ElBaradei Presses N.Korea, Iran on Nuclear Threat
On eve of US vote, UN nuclear chief avoids Iraq explosives row
Oconee mishap shows the need for better storage of nuclear waste
MILITARY
U.N. Hostages Seen Alive on Videotape
Lockheed Martin Buys Naval Electronics Firm
Local Contract Stanley Associates Gets Army Software Contract
Contracts Awarded
Rebels vow to use chemical weapons
Looters breached Iraq sarin bunker
Martial Law Declared as Nearly 150 Die in Clashes in Central China
Attack Kills 15 as Allawi Warns Falluja Rebels
American, 5 Others Kidnapped in Iraq
Allawi threatens 'military solution'
Rocket Kills 15 Iraqis at Tikrit Hotel
The Creaky Coalition
Study: Iraq Invasion Has Killed 100,000 Civilians
A Question of Conscience: How Many More?
Arafat possibly poisoned: doctors
Can Pakistan Work? A Country in Search of Itself
ElBaradei Presses N.Korea, Iran on Nuclear Threat
Vietnam veteran seeks Agent Orange benefits
Copters Maxed in Counterinsurgency War
Japanese cities grow uneasy as U.S. military weighs shifting troops
U.N. Court: Milosevic May Defend Himself
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Military tribunals to begin for 2 Guantanamo detainees
The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die
Some Hazmat Trains Rerouted Since March
Major Breakthrough in the Detection of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Thais still forced on to trucks
Disagreement Over Detainees' Legal Rights Simmers
When the Voting Bloc Lives Inside a Cellblock
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
POLITICS
U.S. Spends Only Small Part of Funds to Help Rebuild Iraq
Party Censors Leave a Chinese City to Speculate on Corruption Scandal
Indymedia Launches Special Election Coverage
Robert Fisk: "Bin Laden's Vote is For George Bush"
New film pokes fun at Bush-speak
GOP expected to hold House; Senate at stake
IRS Investigating NAACP For Criticizing Bush
Foreign policy takes rare role at center stage
Foreign teams set to monitor balloting
Charges of Fraud and Voter Suppression Already Flying
ENERGY
Energy Regulations Costing Consumers Billions;
OTHER
Water, Women, and War
ACTIVISTS
New Initiative Calls for Mass Protest on Nov. 3 if Election is "Stolen"
US whistleblower urges civil servants to leak Iraq secrets
-------- NUCLEAR
Time for Arms Talks? Iran, Israel, and Middle East Arms Control
Arms Control Association
Dalia Dassa Kaye
November 2004
http://armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Kaye.asp
The Middle East has all it takes to frustrate international arms control regimes. Key regional actors do not recognize one actor's right to exist, let alone share diplomatic relations. Countries in the region perceive their own security as requiring the insecurity of others, leading them to adopt offensive military postures. At the same time, there is virtually no regional arms control culture or constituency.
The ongoing showdown between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran is a case in point, underscoring the limitations of global nonproliferation norms in addressing regional proliferation. Despite Tehran's stated commitment to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as the IAEA's success in uncovering a pattern of Iranian violations, the violations themselves raise many questions about the adequacy of the NPT in blocking determined states from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. Even strengthened verification measures under the Additional Protocol do not address the broader political and security context of proliferation problems in unstable regions such as the Middle East.
Without such consideration, even the best orchestrated international diplomatic efforts will fall short. Because effective arms control follows political relationships and is dependent on the broader security environment, current diplomatic efforts focused on Iran must take place in conjunction with attempts to create a more favorable regional climate for arms control. This will require altering political relationships and establishing new regional processes that focus not just on international disarmament goals but also on regional confidence-building measures.
Although solving current proliferation challenges such as Iran is not dependent on the creation of new regional security structures, strong political support for such processes by the United States and its Western allies could create a more favorable regional climate and provide some cover for regional actors to make concessions in the proliferation area. That said, the creation of a regional security dialogue should be viewed primarily as a long-term process to address the underlying motivations and security vulnerabilities that lead to the type of crises we are facing today with countries such as Iran.
Consequently, the United States and Europe need to work together, preferably in conjunction with Russia and other Western allies such as Japan, on three levels: first, rein in the Iranian nuclear program; second, involve Israel, the one nuclear power in the region, and its Arab neighbors more actively in regional and global nonproliferation efforts; and third, revive multilateral regional security talks. On none of these points are there reasons to be sanguine about the prospects for success, but neither are such efforts futile, particularly if international coordination and willingness to exert political capital on the Middle East proliferation problem increases.
Dealing With Iran
Iran's potential acquisition of nuclear weapons must be addressed quickly and resolutely. No other proliferation challenge would more dramatically disrupt the regional balance of power and escalate the regional arms race, not to mention undermine the credibility of the NPT, than an Iranian nuclear weapons capability. The potential for nuclear breakout among other Middle Eastern states, in addition to the horrifying risks of such technologies reaching terrorists, would create a proliferation nightmare several times worse than previous threats to the NPT regime.
Indeed, the prospect of a nuclear Iran is one of the few issues currently generating transatlantic agreement, even if tactics differ. Compared to the Europeans, the United States considers sanctions against Iran more favorably and prefers a shorter timeline for imposing them if Iran does not comply with IAEA demands. Both sides are in agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to develop its own nuclear fuel cycle, which could enable Iran to produce enough weapons-grade material for a small arsenal within a short period of time.
The specter of Iranian acquisition of nuclear capabilities is so troubling that Israel predictably has not ruled out a preventive military strike. Such a military option would be much more difficult (militarily and politically) than the Israeli strike against Iraq's Osirik facility in 1981. Worse still, it could prompt an Iranian military response, further destabilizing the region.[1] Still, the Israelis are leaving the option on the table, issuing statements and pursuing actions that are preparing the ground for such an attack, even if such preparations are solely for deterrent purposes.[2]
Although the IAEA has postponed a decision on whether to refer Iranian safeguards violations to the UN Security Council until its Board of Governors meeting on Nov. 25, Iran's hard-line position since a September IAEA resolution called on Iran to suspend all enrichment-related activities raises the prospects for escalation. Iran's refusal to fully abide by its previous commitment to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to suspend all enrichment activity and hints that it might consider withdrawing from the NPT are raising the stakes.
Generating agreement in support of sanctions will be difficult given the importance of Iranian energy supplies to Western countries, particularly with oil prices at an all-time high.[3] Nevertheless, in the face of continuing Iranian defiance, such a course of action is possible, even though it may take place outside the UN Security Council context. Unfortunately, as the India and Pakistan cases demonstrated, international sanctions that are not pursued through a broad multilateral process over a sustained period of time (as was the case with Libya) are not always an effective instrument in persuading determined states to reverse course.
Time is running out, but the contours of a transatlantic approach are apparent, providing some hope for a nonmilitary solution. Such a strategy, most clearly and forcefully outlined by Robert Einhorn, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration, essentially calls for the United States and Europe to switch roles, with Europe becoming the "bad cop" and the United States becoming the "better cop."[4] The idea is to change the cost-benefit analysis of the Iranian leadership to the extent that pursuing the nuclear path will be viewed as too costly.
In practice, this translates into tougher and more credible European threats to isolate Iran politically and economically if it does not reverse course (i.e., using sticks instead of simply the threat of deferred carrots). At the same time, the United States will need to indicate what Iranian nuclear capabilities would be acceptable even under the current regime (e.g., nuclear technology that did not allow for an indigenous fuel-cycle capability and would require the return of all spent fuel to approved third parties). Recent discussions between the United States and the Europeans on a package of incentives for Iran, including imported nuclear fuel, suggest the United States and its allies may be moving in this direction.
Even more significantly, the United States would need to drop its regime-change rhetoric and explore the improvement of bilateral relations, beginning perhaps with limited dialogues focused on issues of mutual concern such as Iraq and Afghanistan.[5] Improved relations with Iran will face tremendous domestic resistance in the United States, but an increasing number of voices are calling for such a shift. Indeed, an altered U.S.-Iranian political relationship is the linchpin for any other efforts to address regional proliferation; rethinking this relationship should be the top priority for whichever U.S. administration comes to office this January. The outlines of a Western strategy to resolve this crisis may be clear, but the political will to carry it out, both in Washington and European capitals, is still questionable.
Israel and Its Neighbors
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear challenge could gain momentum if other regional parties, particularly Israel, take steps to boost the nonproliferation agenda and improve the regional security environment. Accusations of double standards must be evaluated in the context of the existential threat Israel faces and its belief that nuclear weapons offer a valuable deterrent in warding off any attack. Iran's recent parading of its Shahab-3 missiles, capable of reaching Israel and covered with banners calling for Israel's destruction, only contributes to this security perception, even though Iran's motivations for nuclear weapons capabilities are complex and extend beyond the Israeli factor.[6]
Still, the perception among Arab parties and others in the developing world that the West applies double standards when it comes to "acceptable" and "unacceptable" proliferators is real and needs to be addressed. The recent U.S. focus on the Iranian nuclear threat in the context of the Bush administration's lack of commitment to global arms control treaties such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has only reinforced this perception of double standards.
Some specific steps by Israel could thus improve the climate in the Middle East. Expecting Israel to join the NPT or alter its policy of nuclear ambiguity is a nonstarter; efforts pressuring Israel in this direction will only backfire.[7] Still, Israel could move forward with other arms control measures, such as ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the CTBT (building on its recent signing of a facilities agreement with the CTBT Organization) and joining the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). At the 2005 NPT Review Conference, Israel could also reaffirm its commitment to join the NPT in the future if certain security conditions are met, such as peace treaties with all of its neighbors and the establishment of a verifiable weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-free zone (WMDFZ)-to include long-range missile capabilities-throughout the region.[8] The United States should encourage Israel to take such steps by offering assurances that renewed political attention to regional arms control will extend beyond a focus on the weapons themselves to include the broader agenda of transforming the security environment and nature of political relations in the region.
Moreover, because one cannot divorce nuclear arms control from other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, a comprehensive approach is necessary if arms control is to be a serious endeavor in the region. In particular, Egypt and Syria should be encouraged to join the CWC. Even if Syria is unlikely to move forward on the CWC until Israel's posture on the NPT changes, Syria could take other nonproliferation steps, such as ratifying the BWC and the CTBT and subscribing to the Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation.
Expectations in Europe that Syria may follow the Libyan model of completely ending its WMD programs may be unwarranted,[9] but the growing European attention to Syria in relation to weapons of mass destruction, especially its chemical weapons program, in conjunction with increasing U.S. pressure should continue. The European refusal to conclude its Trade and Cooperation Agreement with Syria until Damascus accepted the EU's new standard nonproliferation clause is a welcome step.[10] Europe's new Neighborhood Policy, which promises closer economic, political, and security relations with the EU's neighbors in exchange for progress on a variety of "priority" areas including nonproliferation, may also prove a useful lever for European influence on these issues. The Neighborhood Policy, initiated after the EU's enlargement in May 2004, applies to all non-EU participants in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, or Barcelona process, including key actors in the regional proliferation context such as Israel, Syria, and Egypt.[11]
Renewed Regional Security Dialogue
Specific steps taken by individual Middle Eastern actors can improve regional security, but ultimately the region needs a multilateral regional security process to address the interrelated web of security perceptions and vulnerabilities and the underlying sources for proliferation in the region. Such a process should work toward the creation of a WMDFZ in the long run, along the lines of the nuclear-weapon-free zone in Latin America. Given the political and security realities in the Middle East at present, however, a more realistic short-term agenda could focus on practical confidence-building measures in areas such as conflict prevention, misperception, and limitation of damage should conflict occur.
The short-lived history of the only official multilateral security experiment to date in the Middle East-the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) working group of the Arab-Israeli multilateral peace process-demonstrates that such an agenda is possible.[12] Established with the Madrid peace conference in 1991, the ACRS process accomplished more than many thought was possible in this region, even if it ultimately collapsed in 1995. As the co-sponsor of the group, the United States sought to structure the ACRS group based on previous arms control experience in the European and U.S.-Soviet context, suggesting that incremental approaches to arms control tended to precede formal arms control measures, such as the banning of certain military activities or actual reductions in capabilities.
Consequently, the ACRS group focused on incremental confidence-building measures to encourage cooperative security norms rather than on a more advanced arms control agenda. After the Oslo breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations in 1993, the ACRS group engaged in a number of conceptual and operational confidence-building activities, such as the drafting of a declaration of principles for regional security and arms control; the creation of a regional security center; the establishment of a communications network; the production of a Pre-notification of Certain Military Activities agreement; an Exchange of Military Activities document; and a number of maritime confidence-building measures such as Search and Rescue (SAR) and Prevention of Incidents at Sea (INCSEA) agreements.
Despite this active agenda, the ACRS group's demise was brought about largely by the dispute between Israel and Egypt over the Israeli nuclear issue. Egyptian pressure on Israel to sign the NPT increased tension in the group and essentially held all other activities in the process hostage to this issue. Its progress was also limited by setbacks on the bilateral peace process tracks as well as by the exclusion of key regional parties from the process, most notably Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
The ACRS experience underscores that regional security dialogue can be fruitful and confidence-building measures in a variety of areas are possible. Future efforts, however, will need to adequately address Egyptian and other Arab concerns over the Israeli nuclear arsenal while assuring the Israelis that this will not be the sole focus of such discussions. The ACRS process thus demonstrates the need to work both on longer-term disarmament goals as well as shorter-term regional security confidence-building and cooperative activity. Moreover, a renewed regional dialogue must include the actors who were absent from the ACRS group if the process is to be comprehensive and address the full range of regional security relationships and concerns.
After the demise of the ACRS process, the prospects for a renewed, regional arms control dialogue appeared dim, despite a variety of unofficial track-two dialogues.[13] Yet, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, which highlighted weapons of mass destruction and made clear that Iraq desired to maintain a nuclear deterrent even though it did not actually possess such an active weapons program after 1991,[14] attention is once again being focused on a regional arms control agenda. The ongoing crisis with Iran as well as the positive developments with Libya have only further fueled interest in re-establishing some sort of official regional process.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei underscored the critical need for a regional security dialogue during his visit to Israel in July 2004. As a result, ElBaradei secured the agreement of regional parties, including Israel, to participate in an IAEA conference this January, which will examine how negotiations established WMDFZs in other regions and what lessons these efforts might offer the Middle East. This meeting is a one-time event, however, and, although useful, cannot replace a more durable regional dialogue process with a broader agenda.
The recent Euro-Med agreement to start a dialogue on weapons of mass destruction is also a positive step. It will include both Israel and Syria, which participate in the Barcelona process. But it cannot replace a dialogue that includes key extra-regional actors such as the United States and critical regional parties in the Persian Gulf that are not part of the Barcelona process. In order to improve understandings of mutual threat perceptions and engage in confidence-building measures in such areas as surprise attack, transparency, conventional stockpiles, and the like, in addition to longer-term disarmament goals, a comprehensive regional security process is essential.
Many will argue that the creation of a multilateral regional security dialogue is impossible absent a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Few can doubt that progress on the Middle East peace process would create a more favorable climate for regional arms control, as occurred in the early 1990s with the ACRS process. A successful Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, for example, could generate momentum and provide political cover for the resumption of a regional arms control process, as would serious Israeli commitment to dismantling settlements deep inside Palestinian territory. Yet, the absence of progress on the peace process also should not provide an excuse for doing nothing. The WMD revelations in Iraq, the recent Libyan decision to dismantle its WMD programs, the growing vulnerability felt by Syria, and the current focus on the Iranian nuclear issue provide an opening for moving a regional arms control agenda forward even in the current environment, as the emergence of recent initiatives suggests.
A new regional security process can work toward a WMDFZ in the long run while maintaining a more pragmatic agenda in the short term. The fact that even under the best political conditions a WMDFZ in the Middle East may never fully transpire should not lead the international community and the region itself to avoid confronting the proliferation crisis and taking steps now to avoid further destabilization. Ultimately, a transformation of political relationships and the creation of a broad, durable, and effective regional arms control process will be key to meeting the proliferation challenges from the Middle East that so threaten stability today.
ENDNOTES
1. For an assessment of the risks regarding a use of force option, see Michael Eisenstadt, "The Challenge of U.S. Preventive Military Action," in Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions, eds. Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, January 2004).
2. On statements by Israeli leaders not ruling force out in response to the Iranian threat, see Aluf Ben, "Waiting to Bomb Iran," Ha`aretz, September 29, 2004. On one relevant defense acquisition, a purchase of 500 bunker-busting bombs from the United States, see Maggie Farley, "Powell Denies U.S. Plans to Attack Iran," Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2004.
3. See George Perkovich and Silvia Manzanero, "Plan B: Using Sanctions to End Iran's Nuclear Program," Arms Control Today, May 2004.
4. See Robert J. Einhorn, "A Transatlantic Strategy on Iran's Nuclear Program," The Washington Quarterly 27, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 21-32.
5. See "Iran: Time for a New Approach," 2004 (report of the Council on Foreign Relations task force co-chaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert M. Gates). Ray Takeyh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev similarly argue that, because regime change does not appear imminent, we have the opportunity to engage more pragmatic elements within the conservative camp who might find improved relations with Washington in their interest. See Ray Takeyh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev, "Pragmatism in the Midst of Iranian Turmoil," The Washington Quarterly 27, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 33-56.
6. See Ray Takeyh, "Iran's Nuclear Calculations," World Policy Journal 20, no. 2 (Summer 2003).
7. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency's revelations regarding Iranian violations and growing capabilities have only reinforced the Israeli rationale for maintaining its current nuclear stance. See Emily B. Landau, "ElBaradei's Message to Israel: Regional Security Dialogue," Tel Aviv Notes, no. 106, July 15, 2004.
8. For a similar list of recommendations, see Universal Compliance: Strategy for Nuclear Security, George Perkovich et al (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2004).
9. See Dalia Dassa Kaye, "Europe, Syria, and Weapons of Mass Destruction," PolicyWatch, no. 824, January 8, 2004, pp. 204-38.
10. In December 2003, the European Union adopted a nonproliferation strategy and has since agreed to include a nonproliferation clause in all agreements with third parties; the Syrians were the first to put this clause to the test. For the text of the nonproliferation clause, see http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/st14997.en03.pdf.
11. For the European Neighborhood Policy, see http://europa.eu.int/comm/world/enp/policy_en.htm.
12. For information on the Arms Control and Regional Security working group, see Bruce W. Jentleson and Dalia Dassa Kaye, "Securing Status: Explaining Regional Security Cooperation and Its Limits in the Middle East," Security Studies 8, no. 1 (Fall 1998).
13. See Dalia Dassa Kaye, "Track Two Diplomacy and Regional Security in the Middle East," International Negotiation 6 (2001): 49-77.
14. For the conclusive report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including assessments of Iraqi strategic intentions and perceptions, see "Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD," September 30, 2004, found at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/.
Dalia Dassa Kaye is currently a visiting professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. Kaye has published many articles on Middle East security issues and is author of Beyond the Handshake: Multilateral Cooperation in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process.
The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor.
Arms Control Association, 1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 620 Washington, DC 20036 Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 463-8273
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Vintage nuclear bomber up for grabs on Internet auction site
LONDON (AFP)
Nov 1, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041101/tc_afp/britain_auction_internet_041101162128
- A British plane enthusiast has put his vintage nuclear bomber up for sale on the Internet auction site eBay.
"Vulcan bomber XL391 (Complete with engines.) Your chance to own a piece of aviation history," reads the advertisement posted by flying instructor Brian Bateson.
As the plane weighs 40 tonnes and has a wingspan of 100 feet (30 metres), it also points out: "As is, where is. Buyer collects!"
Bateson, who had placed it at the entrance to Blackpool Airport in northwest England for visitors to admire, decided to sell the plane so the airport could expand.
The reserve bid of 6,000 pounds (8,600 euros, 11,000 dollars) was "not dissimilar" to what he paid for it in 1983, Bateson said Monday.
"There's no way it would fit in my hangars and I just hope it goes to a good home," he said. "People in the past have asked to buy bits and pieces of it for spares or memorabilia but I hope it stays in one piece."
Vulcans were built in the 1960s to carry nuclear bombs during the Cold War, but were later converted to carry conventional armaments.
Bateson's plane was stationed on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic during Britain's 1982 conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, but was not called up to the front.
-------- depleted uranium
Your Pre-election Reality Check
Colorado State Collegian
By Ben Bleckley
November 01, 2004
http://www.collegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/01/4185d42497bf2
On the eve of Election Day, it is time for a fair and balanced reality check.
Saddam Hussein is a bad man. He gassed his own people. It is good he is no longer in power.
But the full cost of our involvement in Iraq has yet to be seen.
More than 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the United States invaded in 2003, according to a report released by the Lancet Medical Journal Friday. These deaths were mainly attributed to bombings by coalition forces.
A great amount of our ammunition is tipped with depleted uranium, a radioactive material that is twice as hard as lead and capable of piercing armor. When this ammunition explodes, the depleted uranium becomes a fine powder, easily inhaled or dissolved into water.
The World Health Organization states that "inhaled uranium particles, tend to be retained in the lung and may lead to irradiation damage of the lung and even lung cancer if a high enough radiation dose results over a prolonged period" in the report "Depleted uranium: sources, exposure and health effects."
Iraqi officials claim that the use of these same weapons during the Gulf War in 1991 has caused an epidemic of cancer and birth defects.
At home, 42 million people have no health insurance.
The national debt is more than $7 zillion.
As a nation we use 2.5 million barrels of oil each day. Eventually this resource will run dry, if the threat of global warning (which every other nation in the world has accepted as fact) doesn't destroy us first. Our guzzling sport utility vehicles pump harmful pollutants into the air and still we have failed to join the rest of the free world in supporting the Kyoto Protocol. While nations such as Japan produce the most fuel-efficient cars in the world, the current government is focusing on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that won't be environmentally or technologically feasible for another 15 years.
Nationwide, the price of college has increased 35 percent in the last three years, and I know I'm feeling it. No Child Left Behind has some good ideas, but it has no funding, forcing schools to implement programs they can't fund. Schools are funded partially by property taxes, making suburban schools more well funded and urban schools less so.
Abstinence-only education is the only federally funded sex education program. According to www.plannedparenthood.org, "when (students) do become sexually active, they often fail to use condoms or other contraceptives. Meanwhile, students in comprehensive sexuality education classes do not engage in sexual activity more often or earlier, but they do use contraception and practice safer sex more consistently when they become sexually active." Currently, 35 percent of school districts require that abstinence is taught as the only sexual option for unmarried couples.
Lawmakers are attempting to divide our nation and restrict the rights of at least 10 percent of our citizens by passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. They seem to be concerned with preserving the values of the American family. I, for one, am not concerned about being lured away by a male from my fianc?e's side. Maybe others feel differently.
While I'm sure his heart President Bush's heart is in the right place, his policies are not. While Sen. John Kerry would not be my first choice for president, he has the best chance of replacing our president. To preserve our nation and move us forward to tomorrow, vote for John Kerry this Tuesday.
Ben Bleckley is a junior English major. His column runs every Monday in the Collegian.
On the eve of Election Day, it is time for a fair and balanced reality check.
Saddam Hussein is a bad man. He gassed his own people. It is good he is no longer in power.
But the full cost of our involvement in Iraq has yet to be seen.
More than 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the United States invaded in 2003, according to a report released by the Lancet Medical Journal Friday. These deaths were mainly attributed to bombings by coalition forces.
A great amount of our ammunition is tipped with depleted uranium, a radioactive material that is twice as hard as lead and capable of piercing armor. When this ammunition explodes, the depleted uranium becomes a fine powder, easily inhaled or dissolved into water.
The World Health Organization states that "inhaled uranium particles, tend to be retained in the lung and may lead to irradiation damage of the lung and even lung cancer if a high enough radiation dose results over a prolonged period" in the report "Depleted uranium: sources, exposure and health effects."
Iraqi officials claim that the use of these same weapons during the Gulf War in 1991 has caused an epidemic of cancer and birth defects.
At home, 42 million people have no health insurance.
The national debt is more than $7 zillion.
As a nation we use 2.5 million barrels of oil each day. Eventually this resource will run dry, if the threat of global warning (which every other nation in the world has accepted as fact) doesn't destroy us first. Our guzzling sport utility vehicles pump harmful pollutants into the air and still we have failed to join the rest of the free world in supporting the Kyoto Protocol. While nations such as Japan produce the most fuel-efficient cars in the world, the current government is focusing on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that won't be environmentally or technologically feasible for another 15 years.
Nationwide, the price of college has increased 35 percent in the last three years, and I know I'm feeling it. No Child Left Behind has some good ideas, but it has no funding, forcing schools to implement programs they can't fund. Schools are funded partially by property taxes, making suburban schools more well funded and urban schools less so.
Abstinence-only education is the only federally funded sex education program. According to www.plannedparenthood.org, "when (students) do become sexually active, they often fail to use condoms or other contraceptives. Meanwhile, students in comprehensive sexuality education classes do not engage in sexual activity more often or earlier, but they do use contraception and practice safer sex more consistently when they become sexually active." Currently, 35 percent of school districts require that abstinence is taught as the only sexual option for unmarried couples.
Lawmakers are attempting to divide our nation and restrict the rights of at least 10 percent of our citizens by passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. They seem to be concerned with preserving the values of the American family. I, for one, am not concerned about being lured away by a male from my fianc?e's side. Maybe others feel differently.
While I'm sure his heart President Bush's heart is in the right place, his policies are not. While Sen. John Kerry would not be my first choice for president, he has the best chance of replacing our president. To preserve our nation and move us forward to tomorrow, vote for John Kerry this Tuesday.
Ben Bleckley is a junior English major. His column runs every Monday in the Collegian.
-----
Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis
Provisional Government Seeks Cleanup; U.S. Downplays Risks
November 1, 2004
The Hartford Courant
By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS
http://www.ctnow.com/news/health/hc-ducleanup1101.artnov01,1,7556418.story?coll=hc-headlines-health
Despite assurances from the U.S. military that depleted uranium from exploded munitions does not pose a significant health threat, Iraq's provisional government is asking the United Nations for help cleaning up the low-level radioactive, metal dust spread across local battlefields by U.S. and British forces during the Persian Gulf wars.
The request comes as the United States continues to defend depleted uranium weaponry - prized for its tank-piercing and bunker- or cave-smashing ability - against strong opposition by other countries, scientists and veterans organizations.
Great Britain, a major partner in the coalition now fighting in Iraq, has provided the U.N. with the coordinates where its forces used depleted uranium, also known as DU, in southern Iraq, but the United States has not. Britain and Germany are supplying money to train Iraqis in environmental science. The United Nations plans to survey for DU hot spots from both wars in Iraq and says it needs the coordinates for an effective survey.
Neither British nor U.S. authorities have offered to augment the $4.7 million donated mainly by Japan to the United Nations to evaluate sites of wartime contamination that health experts say threaten the well-being of Iraqi civilians.
In late October, Army Lt. Col. Mark Melanson said a five-year, $6 million Defense Department study of a simulated DU tank explosion shows "the chemical risks of breathing in uranium dust are so low that it won't cause any long-term health risks," even for the tank crew.
Health Concerns Remain
Concern about the health effects of depleted uranium is not limited to overseas countries. The Defense Department's contention that depleted uranium has not been shown to affect health adversely and therefore doesn't need to be cleaned up is contrary to its own rules for handling it. Those rules mirror the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's treatment of depleted uranium as an environmental hazard and danger to public health. Federal regulators have shut down some U.S. nuclear weapons and uranium processing and munitions plants, found to be contaminated by depleted uranium. Billions of dollars are being spent on its cleanup in the United States.
Depleted uranium, or U-238, is a toxic, heavy metal byproduct of uranium enrichment that gives the world uranium suitable for use in nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. It is also used in munitions, ballast for airplanes, tank armor and other products. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
In 2002 at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., researchers found that even though the alpha radiation from depleted uranium is relatively low, internalized DU as a metal can induce DNA damage and carcinogenic lesions in the cells that make up bones in the human body.
Depleted uranium was first used widely in combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The material in armor-piercing munitions ignites and burns on impact at temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius. While burning, tiny particles, or dust, of uranium oxide aerosol are created. Wind can carry these considerable distances.
Since 1991, the cancer rates in Iraq have risen sharply in areas where depleted uranium was used, according to Iraqi medical studies reviewed by scientists from other countries. In addition, more than 230,000 of the 697,000 U.S. soldiers who served in that war have filed disability claims for various maladies, the majority of which fall under the broad category of gulf war syndrome.
With many of the causes of these illnesses still eluding researchers, several lawmakers, at the urging of veterans groups, pushed for legislation to study depleted uranium further, to see if there is a connection with gulf war and other wartime illnesses. It called also for cleaning up depleted uranium munitions firings.
In the Republican-controlled Congress, the measures quietly died this fall inside the House Health Subcommittee. Congress and three presidential administrations have either remained silent on the dispute or have dismissed the environmental and health concerns raised.
Council Urges Ban
U.N.-related organizations, citing studies showing more cancers and birth defects among civilians and soldiers in countries where depleted uranium munitions have been used, have pressed for more studies and a ban on their use until the effects are better understood. The Council of Europe, Europe's oldest inter-governmental organization of 46 nations, has called for a ban on the production, use, testing and sale of munitions containing depleted uranium or plutonium.
But U.S. political leaders in Congress and at the White House have refused to acknowledge that depleted uranium might seriously harm soldiers and civilians.
At home, the United States has spent billions of dollars cleaning up depleted uranium - at former munitions factories, military firing ranges and nuclear fuel production sites. A General Accounting Office report in 2000 put the cost of cleanup at the uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky., where DU is processed for use in weapons and nuclear reactors, at $1.3 billion. By December 2003, the cost of cleaning up and closing the plant, estimated to take until 2070, was up to $13 billion
Cleaning up DU contamination in Iraq, experts say, would come with a multibillion-dollar price tag.
Any money spent on cleaning up depleted uranium in Iraq would be in addition to the estimated $225 billion that the United States will be spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if Congress approves the Bush administration's estimated $70 billion in emergency funding request early next year.
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Agency, said the United Nations has not asked the Department of Defense or State Department for assistance in cleaning up depleted uranium in Iraq.
The U.N. Environmental Programme's chairman, Pekka Haavisto, however, said his organization has kept the State Department informed of those needs.
Since 1991, the United States and Britain have fired hundreds of tons of DU munitions during four wars - in the Balkans, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq.
U.N. environmental spokesman Michael Williams said the United States has not supplied coordinates on the sites where DU munitions were fired in Iraq or offered to clean it up. Haavisto added: "U.S. government has the information that if field assessments will be done, exact DU coordinates are needed."
Bill Dies Quietly
Last year, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, a U.S. Navy psychiatrist during the Vietnam War, sponsored a bill to pay for a definitive study of the health effect of DU munitions and to clean up dust and fragments after their use. The bill was referred to the House Armed Services and Energy and Commerce committees and then to the committee's Health Subcommittee, where it died.
McDermott's spokesman, Mike DeCesare, said the Republican leadership blocked the bill's passage. But a spokesman for the Health Subcommittee said the committee counsel could find no "aggressive action" by McDermott to get a hearing for it. DeCesare insisted, however, that if McDermott is re-elected, he intends to reintroduce the bill, which was supported by Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, R-4th District.
"Depleted uranium is a potential health hazard for the Iraqi people and we need to do all we can to make sure that as Iraq is rebuilt, we help the new Iraqi government mitigate any public health threats," Shays said.
The debate over DU has not made much of an impact on the presidential race. President Bush sides with the Pentagon. The Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts does not have a position on the use of depleted uranium munitions, his communications director, Andy Davis, said recently.
Independent candidate Ralph Nader, a Connecticut native, said DU munitions are environmentally dangerous and should never have been used in the first place.
"The denial and cruel coverup has gone on too long," Nader said. "These soldiers and civilians who suffered [adverse health from exposure to DU] deserve the truth and respectful assistance. The first step is to admit the problem. The second step is to measure the size of the problem and then clean up the environmental toxins. The next step is to stop using depleted uranium munitions."
But the Bush administration, which insists DU poses little environmental risk so cleanup is not needed, takes the Pentagon's advice on such matters.
"If the [Defense Department] indicated to us that the DU rounds or explosions were a cause of concern, and they have not done so, a study or inquiry of their use would be warranted," said Bush's National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones. "Then we would be faced with that decision. The [Defense Department] has not contacted us, nor to the best of my knowledge has any international body contacted us." Jones said.
Kuwait Cleanup
There have been many instances when the military directed depleted uranium cleanups overseas.
For example, a private contractor working for the Department of Defense was paid $3.5 million to cleanup DU-contaminated military equipment and a practice firing range in Kuwait. MKM Engineers Inc. based in Stafford, Texas, performed a limited cleanup in Kuwait from February 2003 to June 2004. The company recovered 22 tons of DU fragments and 75 pieces of non-DU ordnance scrap. The unexploded DU ordnance was destroyed with Kuwaiti assistance. MKM also cleaned military hardware, including tanks, and wrapped them to contain surface contamination before sending them back to the United States.
The U.S. Army Material Command, responsible for the Kuwaiti project, described the work as retrieval of equipment and munitions, not a clean up.
The Department of Defense "does not clean up DU once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle," said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official. Army regulations require the clean-up and proper handling of U.S. equipment hit by depleted uranium munitions.
MKM referred to some of its work in Kuwait as a cleanup. And, the Defense Department has a low-level radioactive waste cleanup program, whose goal is "the safe and compliant disposal of low-level radioactive waste," including depleted uranium. It includes the Army Contaminated Equipment Retrograde Team, which supervises cleanup of low-level radioactive contamination of Army equipment worldwide.
Military regulations require immediate medical tests and treatment for any soldiers exposed to dust and fragments from depleted uranium shell explosions. Some nuclear scientists studying the health effects of those inhaling DU believe even a speck of the dust in the lungs or bloodstream can eventually cause cancer or kidney disease in adults or cancers or deformities in babies if even one parent has been exposed.
Marion Fulk, 83, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who was involved with the Manhattan Project's development of the atomic bomb, said that even nano-size particles of DU in the blood and lungs are a serious destructive force.
Others who support the Defense Department position say only inhalation of large quantities creates serious health problems.
-------- india / pakistan
India's Reliance Energy Keen To Open Nuclear Power Plants
Asia Pulse/(PTI)
November 1, 2004
http://au.news.yahoo.com/041101/3/rgue.html
MUMBAI, Nov 1 Asia Pulse - Reliance Energy (BSE:RLEN) is looking at the possibility of setting up nuclear power stations to fulfil the baseload requirements of the country.
However, Dr V K Chaturvedi, the newly appointed director of the New Power Initiative of Reliance Energy said at the weekend this would require a lot of support from the government. It would also be the first time a private company would be entering into India's nuclear power market, he added.
Chaturvedi, who was the former company managing director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), said, "It will be necessary to have technical support from the Department of Atomic Energy and NPCIL".
As soon as the amended Atomic Energy Act on private participation in the nuclear energy production is cleared by parliament, Reliance Energy will be the first company to come forward to set up nuclear power plants, Chaturvedi claimed.
The idea is to meet the high energy demand of the country in view of the depletion of fossil fuels in the coming years, he said.
To meet the country's expected demand of 600 to 700 gigawatts of electricity by 2050, "the new resources should be looked into without any delay," he said.
Reliance Energy is working on other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy to cater for the requirements of isolated places where there is no connection to the main grid.
-------- iran
Iran Votes to Resume Nuclear Work
November 1, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/international/middleeast/01iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 31 - The hard-line Iranian Parliament unanimously approved a bill on Sunday supporting the resumption of uranium enrichment. The vote comes as talks with European countries over Iran's nuclear activities have so far failed to produce an agreement.
The measure was supported by all 247 lawmakers who were present in the 290-member body, with some chanting "Death to America" and "God is great." The session was carried live on the national radio.
The bill requires the government "to make use of scientists and the country's facilities'' to "enable the country to master peaceful nuclear technology, including the nuclear fuel cycle," ISNA, a news agency, reported.
Iran contends that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. The United States contends that it could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' monitoring agency, has called on Iran to give up its enrichment program before Nov. 25 or its case will be sent to the Security Council, where Iran could face the imposition of penalties.
Germany, Britain and France have taken the lead in trying to negotiate with Iran to persuade it to suspend its nuclear activities.
No agreements have been reached so far between Iran and the three European countries. Iran has rejected the offer to give up its fuel cycle in return for aid for its nuclear technology and imports of fuel.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Assefi, sounded more conciliatory on Sunday, saying there has been progress in the talks with the European negotiators. A week ago, he described their proposal as unbalanced.
"Offering Iran a supply of fuel is a positive step, which we welcome, but this must not deprive Iran of its right to nuclear technology for peaceful reasons," he said.
The bill passed Sunday must be approved by the Guardian Council, a group also dominated by hard-line leaders, before it becomes law. But the bill does not set a date for the government to resume uranium enrichment.
The speaker of the Parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, said the vote was a message to the world.
"The message of the absolute vote for the Iranian nation is that Parliament supports national interests," he said. "And the message for the outside world is that Parliament will not give in to coercion."
The leader of the Parliament's commission for national security and foreign policy, Aladdin Boroujerdi, said that sanctions had been in place against Iran for 25 years, and that Iran was not convinced that the Europeans would fulfill any commitments they made in the talks.
Nevertheless, talks with the Europeans are to resume on Friday in Paris. Mr. Assefi said Sunday that Iran was expecting a schedule from the Europeans to show how they would carry out their commitments.
"We expect that in the course of this meeting the Europeans will specify their precise commitments, concrete and clear, and the Islamic Republic will make the best decision in line with its own interests," he added.
Political analysts in Tehran said Parliament's action on Sunday was largely symbolic.
"What they did was merely political, to strengthen the position of Iranian negotiators ahead of the Paris meeting," said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and journalist in Tehran. "The country's supreme leader is the sole decision maker over nuclear activities and the Parliament or government have no power in this regard. Parliament wanted to send a message that this is our real stance even if the negotiators reach a compromise."
--------
Iran Would Freeze Enrichment for 6 Months at Most
Nov 1, 2004
TEHRAN (Reuters)
By Parisa Hafezi
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6675850&pageNumber=0
- Iran could agree to freeze uranium enrichment for six months at most and only provided the European Union abandons its demand that Tehran scrap enrichment for good, a senior Iranian security official said on Monday.
Tehran risks being reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it does not freeze enrichment before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board meets on Nov. 25.
Iran says it wants to enrich uranium to produce fuel for atomic power reactors generating electricity. But the same process can also be used to make atomic bombs.
The EU says the enrichment suspension should be indefinite. Iran wants its duration linked to Iran-EU negotiations on a package of incentives aimed at resolving the nuclear dispute.
Asked how long Iran would be prepared to freeze enrichment for, Hossein Mousavian, foreign policy committee secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told Reuters:
"We can agree to a period of two to three months, maximum six months, to finalize the package."
But he said that if the EU maintained its position that Iran must scrap its nuclear fuel cycle capabilities, "then, if not now, in some months we will reach a confrontation."
EU and Iranian negotiators are due to meet in Paris on Friday for a third round of talks over Iran's nuclear program.
The EU is offering Iran a number of incentives including guaranteed supply of imported nuclear fuel, help with a light-water power reactor and a resumption of trade talks if Iran agrees to scrap enrichment for ever.
50 PERCENT CHANCE OF A DEAL
Mousavian said the chances of reaching a compromise before the IAEA meeting were currently 50-50.
"The cessation of uranium enrichment is already rejected. It is our red line and if it is the Europeans' condition then it is better to leave the talks now."
"(But) if the Europeans' concern is to be assured that Iran's (uranium) enrichment will never in the future be diverted from peaceful purposes ... there's a very good chance of reaching a compromise."
Mousavian has said Iran is ready, if necessary, to defend itself in the U.N. Security Council and thinks it unlikely sanctions would be imposed on Tehran over the nuclear issue.
As a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to mine, process and enrich uranium to make reactor fuel under IAEA supervision.
While IAEA inspectors have found several instances of potentially weapons-related research and activities in Iran they have found no clear evidence it is trying to make atom bombs.
Iran's hard-liner-dominated parliament on Sunday approved a bill which calls on the state to continue to develop a civilian nuclear energy program, including the full nuclear fuel cycle.
Asked whether the bill could force the government to resume enrichment as some deputies have demanded, Mousavian said:
"No, it just means that Iran's rights should be respected and there should be no discrimination against it."
Analysts say there is widespread support for the nuclear program across the Islamic state's normally divided political spectrum.
Around 1,000 students and clerics gathered outside Iran's Atomic Energy Organization headquarters in Tehran on Monday to call on officials not to give in to EU demands.
"Nuclear technology is our legitimate right," they chanted. "We don't want atomic bombs, we are atomic bombs!"
--------
Hundreds of Iranian students form human chain to back enrichment
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041101135510.cz3cunn2.html
Hundreds of Iranian university students on Monday created a human chain around Islamic Republic's atomic organization headquarters backing the resumption of uranium enrichment.
"Enrichment is our natural right," the university students shouted, along with the habitual "Death to America".
Most of them also wore headbands showing their readiness for "martyrdom".
On Sunday, Iranian lawmakers, passed a bill backing the resumption of uranium enrichment, as the government left the door open for further negotiations with Europe over the controversial practice.
The motion was also passed to calls of "Death to America."
Iran's parliamentary speaker, Gholam Ali Hadad Adel described the vote as a "message addressed to foreign countries that parliament will not give in to intimidation". The text tells the government "to take action for the country to master civilian nuclear technology, especially in the fuel production cycle".
-------- iraq / inspections
Did Iraqi Materials, Experts Escape?
Paul Kerr
November 2004
armscontrol.org
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Iraqi_Materials.asp
The unstable security conditions that have reigned in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion may have allowed both unconventional weapons experts and weapons-related equipment to escape, according to U.S. and international officials.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in an Oct.1 letter to the UN Security Council that the agency is "concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." Manufacturing equipment and related materials that could assist another country's nuclear weapons efforts have been removed, the letter said, adding that entire buildings containing such equipment have been dismantled.
A Western diplomat told Arms Control Today Oct.19 that the removal of the equipment and buildings took place "at least through the entirety of 2003," a period during which the United States exercised formal control over Iraq prior to the establishment of an interim government this past June. At that time, the United States removed nuclear material that posed a potential proliferation threat from Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear complex. (See ACT, September 2004.)
ElBaradei's letter also points out that Security Council resolutions oblige Iraq to report inventory changes at sites subject to agency monitoring, but neither Iraq nor the United States has submitted such reports.
ElBaradei wrote a similar letter to the Security Council in April (see ACT, May 2004), but an IAEA official indicated in an Oct. 19 interview that new evidence has emerged suggesting that the removal of equipment and related materials was "apparently widespread and systematic."
Tuwaitha contained nuclear material subject to routine IAEA agency safeguards prior to the invasion. The agency has visited the site twice since the invasion, but no proliferation-sensitive material has been found missing.
In addition, Iraq notified the IAEA Oct. 10 of the disappearance after April 2003 of more than 340 metric tons of dual-use conventional high explosives that were subject to agency monitoring prior to the invasion. The explosives can be used in implosion-type nuclear weapons to compress a core of plutonium or uranium to start a nuclear chain reaction. The IAEA last inventoried the stockpiles in January 2003 and spot-checked a portion of them in March 2003.
Other reports from UN inspectors have described in detail the export of materials from Iraq, including missile engines that were associated with Baghdad's past weapons programs. (See ACT, October 2004.)
Department of State spokesperson Richard Boucher acknowledged during an Oct. 12 press briefing that Washington is concerned that "some material might have gotten out into the market immediately after the war." However, he added that IAEA visits and Iraq's development of export controls should "prevent any further leakage."
Iraq's interim science and technology minister, Rashad Omar, told the Associated Press Oct.13 that Iraq now has control over its former weapons sites.
Scientists
The ongoing insurgency in Iraq has also slowed U.S. efforts to redirect Iraqi scientists and other personnel previously associated with Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. A State Department official told Arms Control Today Oct.18 that these efforts are "progressing more slowly than we would like them to" because of the adverse security conditions.
David Kay, former CIA special adviser to the U.S.-led weapons inspectors, told Arms Control Today in March that some scientists with whom Washington wanted to speak had left the country.
According to the State Department official, the programs have the "overwhelming majority" of relevant Iraqi personnel "identified and engaged."
Several efforts are underway to redirect former Iraqi weapons personnel. The State Department is in the process of setting up an Iraqi International Center for Science and Industry. That center is tasked with identifying relevant Iraqi personnel and facilitating the development and funding of projects designed to aid Iraqi reconstruction efforts. The center was initially funded with a $2 million grant from the State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund and has access to an additional $2 million. (See ACT, January/February 2004.)
In addition, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has a similar program to be implemented by an international group of scientists. The NNSA announced in June that the project has completed a survey of Iraq's "science and technology priorities." NNSA spokesperson Kim Krueger told Arms Control Today Oct. 25 that two pilot projects concerning water resources and public health are to be completed before the end of the year. (See ACT, April 2004.)
Another program, the Iraqi Nonproliferation Programs Foundation, was set up by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in June. According to the CPA order establishing the program, the foundation was created to develop and finance projects to provide former Iraqi weapons of mass destruction personnel with "opportunities to redirect their expertise to transparent peaceful civilian activities." The foundation's mission has not yet been "entirely defined," the State Department official said.
The foundation received $37.5 million from the Development Fund for Iraq, which the UN Security Council set up for Iraqi reconstruction.
--
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-------- japan
Ehime accepts Shikoku Electric's pluthermal project
Kyodo News
November 1, 2004
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=317464
TOKYO - The Ehime prefectural government approved on Monday a pluthermal project by Shikoku Electric Power Co. to burn plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel at one of its nuclear reactors in Ikata. The town of Ikata has already given the go-ahead.
The utility has briefed local residents on the project at the Ikata nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor in a bid to reassure them about the project's safety. Pluthermal, or plutonium-thermal power generation, is designed to use plutonium-uranium MOX fuel, which makes use of spent fuel at nuclear reactors for power generation, as well as to unload a growing volume of spent nuclear fuel. (Kyodo News)
-------- korea
North Korea says U.S. talks approach is "crafty trick"
SEOUL (Reuters)
Nov 1, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2S3NZYQYV1F5GCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=6671442
North Korea brushed aside on Monday Washington's suggestion that Pyongyang had much to gain from returning to talks on its nuclear programmes, saying the U.S. approach was a "crafty trick" to win presidential election votes.
North Korea has held three rounds of talks on its atomic ambitions with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States but has ruled out fresh talks despite appeals from the other participants to come to the table.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the region. A South Korean government spokesman in Seoul quoted him as saying North Korea could expect "to get a lot of things" if it rejoined the talks.
"The Bush group's claim that the DPRK will gain much for coming out to the six-party talks does not reflect its intention to lead the talks to any solution to the problem but is nothing but a crafty trick to attain sinister political and military purposes by employing a delaying tactics," said Rodong Sinmun, the main North Korean newspaper.
DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
In comments reported by the North's official KCNA news agency, Rodong Sinmun said the U.S. aim was to give the impression it had tried everything to encourage North Korea and thus win votes in Tuesday's presidential election.
"If the U.S. truly wishes a solution to the nuclear issue through the six-party talks and peace on the Korean peninsula it should drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK and set forth a realistic alternative proposal," the newspaper said.
That was a nod to China and South Korea's suggestions last week to Powell to consult with allies and come up with what South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said should be a "creative and realistic proposal" to entice the North back to negotiations.
Pyongyang rejected a June 23 U.S. proposal for a three-month freeze of North Korean nuclear programmes and the North's agreement to verifiable measures to dismantle those programmes in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and fuel oil from South Korea and Japan.
North Korea says it wants aid in return for a freeze.
Washington suspects North Korea is holding back from restarting the talks to see who wins the election, President George W. Bush or Democratic challenger John Kerry. The North denies this.
----
Nuclear Shell Games
Whatever the history of South Korea's nuclear experiments, it doesn't bother the U.S. Why not?
Time
BY DONALD MACINTYRE
Monday, Nov. 01, 2004
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501041108-749478,00.html
The nuclear intentions of Iran and North Korea have been a major source of global angst for more than a year, and the Bush Administration is set to keep the pressure on both countries. Stopping in Seoul last week during a swing through Asia to revive talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the world badly needed to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. North Korea "is a danger to every one of its neighbors," he said.
Powell expressed far less concern about recent revelations that South Korea, a U.S. ally, has been secretly tinkering with the ingredients for atomic weapons. The South Korean government in September admitted it had failed to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its experiments with bomb-usable materials including plutonium, sparking an investigation by the agency into possible violations of Seoul's nonproliferation commitments. Although the IAEA is not due to report its findings until Nov. 25, Powell, in an interview on Korean television, said the case was as good as closed. "I'm quite sure that the IAEA will see it as a minor problem with experimentation," he said, "and not anything for the international community to be worried about."
Compared with its northern neighbor, South Korea certainly poses no threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula. But that doesn't mean the country is innocent of breaking its nuclear promises. Seoul signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1975, agreeing not to pursue bomb-making technology and to submit to IAEA monitoring so that techniques and materials used in nuclear-power plants are not converted to military use.
Seoul insists its scientists were not conducting weapons research and that it has fully disclosed its activities. But there is nagging evidence that the country has for decades periodically carried out clandestine experiments to gain know-how that would allow it to quickly develop atomic weapons, specifically through the production of plutonium and enrichment of uranium. (Much of the controversy surrounding Iran's nuclear program concerns efforts to enrich uranium.) Although those radioactive elements can be found in peaceful nuclear programs (with 19 reactors supplying 40% of its electricity, South Korea relies heavily on nuclear power), Seoul agreed not to produce either enriched uranium or plutonium without notifying the IAEA because the materials are essential to atom bombs. Now, the IAEA is trying to determine the truth. Among the incidents being investigated:
• A 1982 experiment in which a minute quantity of plutonium was separated from uranium. IAEA inspectors first became suspicious in 1997 when a swab at a research reactor near Seoul picked up traces of plutonium that shouldn't have been there. For years, Seoul offered no explanation, saying the paperwork had been lost. Finally, in September, the president of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), Chang In Soon, said the traces were residual material from a "one-off test" in which fuel was taken from a reactor and dissolved in chemicals, allowing the plutonium it contained to be extracted. A confidential Ministry of Science and Technology report obtained by TIME states that five fuel rods were involved and that testing took place over two months. More ominously, the test material was "depleted" uranium imported from the former West Germany in 1976. That was a red flag for the IAEA, because depleted uranium is no good for power-plant fuel and creates more plutonium when it decays than does ordinary uranium. When the agency found out, "it really got people bent out of shape," says Mark Hibbs, Asia and Europe editor at industry publication Nucleonics Week. "That made them very keen to explore more about it."
• The IAEA is also investigating an experiment carried out in 2000 at a sophisticated lab on KAERI's sprawling campus south of Seoul. Earlier this year, after South Korea ratified a new protocol giving the IAEA broader inspection powers, Seoul told the agency that scientists at the institute had used lasers to enrich uranium. Uranium used in fuel rods is lightly enriched, usually less than 5%. During the 2000 experiment, however, researchers produced uranium that was 77% enriched, or nearly weapons grade. Seoul characterized the laser experiment as independent research carried out by curious scientists who then neglected to report it. But TIME has been told by two sources that one of the scientists involved in the 2000 experiment was Lee Jong Min, a vice president at KAERI at the time and one of the country's top laser experts. Lee's office did not respond to requests by TIME for comment.
Standing beside Powell last week, Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon insisted his government had nothing to hide. "We're handling this in a transparent manner," he said. Officials and lawmakers in Seoul are seething over the international scrutiny, saying their country is the victim of a double standard because their ancient rival Japan is allowed to enrich uranium and separate plutonium to run reactors. "Every nation that pursues the full use of nuclear technology inevitably gets close to weapons technology," says Kim Tae Woo, a nuclear analyst at the government-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. "So what is wrong with that?"
The answer is easy. If a U.S. ally is allowed to get away with nuclear transgressions, there's every chance that Tehran and Pyongyang will scream bloody murder-and be less inclined to scale back their own plans. Seoul's murky nuclear history didn't seem to disturb Powell. That's a judgment he may yet come to regret.
From the Nov. 08, 2004 issue of TIME Asia Magazine
-------- terrorism
The right (nuclear) war, the right time, the right place
ROANOKE.COM By
Dr. Reginald Shareef
November 01, 2004
http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/shareef/13021.html
Graham Allison is the like the man in the old Smith Barney commercials -- when he speaks, you need to listen. And he is speaking loudly in his new book, ìNuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.î I heard him give a presentation last Sunday night on C-SPAN2 and spent the rest of the evening extremely uncomfortable with what he said: nuclear terrorism is a preventable threat but elected officials are doing precious little to prevent a nuclear attack from terrorist organizations.
Allison is the former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and is now the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at KSG. He has been writing increasingly alarming articles warning that the former Soviet Unionís nuclear arsenal remains inadequately secured and is vulnerable to theft by criminals or poorly paid military guards. Either group would reap a handsome profit by selling nuclear materials to organizations like Al Qaeda that desperately want to get their hands on WMDs. The new book means to shock the American public into putting pressure on either a Republican or Democrat administration to take action on this most pressing threat to national security.
If we maintain the status quo on this issue, Allison predicts a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States within the next decade.
For Allison, the Bush administrationís inaction on controlling the spread of ìfissile materialî (enriched uranium and plutonium) is hard to understand because prevention of nuclear terrorism is simply a matter of physics: without fissile material, you canít have a nuclear bomb; thus, no nuclear bomb, no nuclear terrorism. Moreover, the technology exists for keeping these materials from terrorist groups -- Russia does not lose items from the Kremlin Armory nor does the United States from Fort Knox. This should, consequently, be the operational model for controlling the spread of fissile material: storing these materials in Fort Knox-type structures. In the book, Allison proposes a comprehensive strategy for combating the threat of nuclear terror called the ìThree Noísî -- no loose nukes, no new nascent nukes, and no new nuclear states.
He strongly criticizes the Bush administration for not:
Assigning a nuclear terrorism czar to be responsible for preventing the spread of WDM material.
Furthermore, Allison believes that if the U.S. takes the lead in this initiative, we will find a willing ally in Russian leader Putin. Consequently, Great Britain, France and China will follow suit. He also believes that China can influence recalcitrant states like Pakistan and North Korea to come on board. The European states will likely have the same kind of influence over Iran.
Allisonís proposal is complicated, expensive and would require difficult trade-offs between the U.S. and enemies like Iran and North Korea.
The alternative? The same amount of enriched uranium (as fertilizer) packed in a van like that used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing and detonated in Manhattan would make that section of New York City completely disappear. More than 500,000 people would be killed immediately. The wind would carry the radiation far beyond NYCís city limits.
Once built, getting a nuclear weapon inside the country is not difficult. For instance, only 2 percent of the cargo containers that arrive at U.S. ports this year will be opened for inspection. Human ìmulesî can carry softball size balls of enriched uranium across our porous borders with Canada and Mexico. After 9-11, President Bush received word that a nuclear device was in NYC and sent VP Cheney and other ranking officials into secure, underground bunkers in case an attack was imminent. Other national security personnel then attempted to figure out if the report was true and how a nuclear device could have gotten into the country. The grim joke of the day was that it could have been packed into any of the pounds of marijuana that are delivered daily to The Big Apple.
Add to this the chilling desire for an ìAmerican Hiroshimaî by radical terrorist groups. Allison quotes an Al Qaeda spokesman who has publicly stated that the group aspires to kill 4 million Americans, including 1 million children, in response to the causalities supposedly inflicted on Muslims by the United States and Israel. Thus, Allison concludes that President Bush is correct in asserting that if Al Qaeda gets nuclear weapons, it would use them against the U.S. in a ìheartbeat.î
Yet, neither President Bush or Sen. Kerry addressed this issue during the presidential campaign. Allison is not the only one concerned about nuclear terrorism. The presidentís political party colleagues, and Kerryís Senate brethren, Richard Lugar and (former senator) Sam Nunn have also been sounding the alarm about nuclear terrorism since the fall of the Soviet Union. Still, neither the president nor Kerry has articulated a policy for keeping these materials out of the hands of terrorist groups whose stated goals is to kill Americans.
In making the case for the war against Sadaam Hussein, the president argued, ìIf the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of uranium a little bigger than a softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.î The fact that no WMDs have yet to be found in Iraq has effectively stopped both men from talking about nuclear terrorism. It shouldnít have. A nuclear explosion on U.S. soil -- not dirty bombs or planes flying into tall buildings -- represents the ultimate terrorist attack.
This is definitely the right time, and the presidential campaign was the right place, to talk about the war against nuclear terrorism.
An earlier book by Graham Allison on the Cuban Missile Crisis outlined how ìgroupthinkî between President Kenney and his advisors nearly lead to nuclear war in October 1962. The groupthink phenomenon was so discussed in management/policymaking circles and academic journals that the concept became archaic. That is, until the 9-11 Commission revealed that the Bush administration had been victimized by this cognitive pathology as well (see Defeating Groupthink, August 2004).
Again, Allison has warned of the hazards of only listening to the reinforcing views of members comprising a tightly closed circle. The desire to be members of the ìin-groupî precludes perspectives contrary to the groupís norms and worldview. Additionally, it is not a uniquely Republican or Democrat neurosis. Allison believes it will take several more deadly terrorist attacks before any administration will get serious about preventing a nuclear attack by terrorists.
--------
On The Horizon: Securing Borders With Information Analysis
Risk-assessment and supply-chain analysis are paramount to safety.
Nov. 1, 2004
informationweek.com
By Bradford C. Brown
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51201661
A trade disruption could "paralyze the economy," according to a report by Forrester Research. It cites the estimated $2 billion-per-day cost of the 2002 shutdown of West Coast ports and asks, "Are our supply chains less vulnerable now?"
Cargo containers move 80% to 90% of the world's freight. The federal government is moving toward screening all containers for radioactivity, yet ABC News has twice shipped a 6.8-kilogram cylinder of depleted uranium across the world and smuggled it into the United States undetected by port security. "It's simply not possible to open every container," Elaine Dezenski, director of cargo and trade policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said last month ("Ports Spend Millions On New Tech To Protect Borders And Waterways," Oct. 8, 2004).
The Bush administration has launched initiatives to identify more effectively high-risk freight. "Information is the key to improving many of our border and transportation systems," said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at Homeland Security in a press release.
Forrester conjectures that "the next terrorist attack is likely to be staged though a supply chain." If that's the case, then risk assessment and analysis of the supply chain would seem paramount.
As a result, the federal government is attempting to maximize the technology it has available, integrating new hardware and software while hardening systems. However, it's doing this in a political environment, not really a business environment. The focus isn't truly on business-technology optimization, but rather on government-technology optimization. That's different in a number of ways. Government-technology optimization means more than making the most of IT. It means trying to make transformations within the culture of a bureau that's managed under the umbrella of a national policy agenda. Structural and cultural issues that historically have made it difficult for the federal government to make optimal use of technology and related information analysis include a lack of continuity across administrations; management silos; budget concerns; a dysfunctional procurement process resulting in a jumble of systems; lack of information analysis and sharing among agencies; and changes in the structure of agencies and the creation of new ones.
The battle is against the clock. Can the federal government make the necessary changes to optimize technology and make better use of information, or will we have another terrorist incident first?
Business-technology optimization is a key part of delivering business value. No matter how much we would like to see the government managed like a business, there will always be broader political concerns. Securing the homeland through risk management, vulnerability assessment, technology optimization, and analysis has to be a priority. Yet success in the federal government is measured by the political case. The flip side of Forrester's supply-chain question asked repeatedly throughout the presidential campaign is, since the events of 9/11, "are we more secure?"
The short answer to both questions is yes, but there's a lot more that needs to be done.
Bradford C. Brown is chairman of the National Center for Technology and Law at the George Mason University School of Law. Reach him at bbrown2@gmu.edu. (Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the George Mason University School of Law.)
-------- treaties
Avoiding the Tipping Point
armscontrol.org
Thomas Graham Jr.
November 2004
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/BookReview.asp
In 1958, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made clear the reason the United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons. Referring to the British nuclear-weapon program, Macmillan said in a television interview that "the independent contribution [i.e., British nuclear weapons]...puts us where we ought to be, in the position of a great power."
Likewise, in a November 1961 speech, French President Charles de Gaulle said that "a great state" that does not have nuclear weapons when others do "does not command its own destiny." After the May 1998 Indian nuclear test, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced with pride, "We have a big bomb now, India is a nuclear-weapon state." Although it is a historical accident, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) are the five nuclear-weapon states sanctioned by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The belief held by many of the 182 NPT non-nuclear-weapon states that some nuclear-weapon states cling to nuclear weapons as their political claim to great-power status is not without foundation.
Indeed, in the early 1960s, there were predictions that there could be as many as 25-30 nuclear-weapon states within a couple of decades. President John F. Kennedy feared that nuclear weapons would sweep all over the world. If this had happened, there would be a large number of nuclear-weapon states in the world today: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said in September that "40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons." If they had all chosen to exploit this capability, it would be impossible to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorist organizations and rogue states.
Yet, there has been very little actual nuclear weapons proliferation since the entry into force of the NPT in 1970, far from what Kennedy feared. Beyond the five NPT nuclear-weapon states, Israel and India were already far along in their programs in 1970. The only additional states truly to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons since that time are Pakistan and probably North Korea. Reversing years of nuclear abstention would be long and difficult. Nevertheless, if a perception that the NPT regime has collapsed beyond repair takes hold, other countries could decide that they must join the nuclear bandwagon.
Many books have been written on the nuclear policies of the states that never subscribed to the NPT-India, Pakistan, and Israel-as well as those countries that have threatened the NPT from within-Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Yet, there has not been the same attention to the nuclear policies of states that have been stalwart in their observance of the provisions and principles of the NPT and who are central to the continued viability of the regime. This makes The Nuclear Tipping Point a most timely and valuable publication. This important volume edited by Kurt Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss-all highly prominent and respected nonproliferation experts who also contribute to the book-examines in detail the cases of Egypt, Syria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
These countries together have provided a cornerstone of the NPT regime: an assurance to the pact's many non-nuclear-weapon states that their regional neighbors will not acquire nuclear weapons. When the NPT was negotiated in the late 1960s, some of the negotiating parties were worried that this implicit pledge would not hold and so supported limiting the NPT initially to 25 years rather than granting it permanent status. By 1995 the NPT's success had been demonstrated to the point that states-parties agreed to extend the treaty indefinitely.
A crucial underpinning for these actions has been provided by the United States: the nuclear "umbrella" it used to shelter its allies in Europe (most importantly, Germany) and Asia (Japan and South Korea). During the Cold War, U.S. allies could enjoy the protection of nuclear deterrence without building nuclear arsenals and without creating a nuclear weapons infrastructure that would be politically difficult to dismantle. Giving up nuclear weapons, or any other means of strength and security, is not a natural action for states, but it is far easier to forswear them than to eliminate them once an arsenal is in place.
Even more important has been the international norm against nuclear-weapon proliferation established by the NPT. In 1960, after the first French nuclear-weapon test, there were banner newspaper headlines, "Vive La France." Yet, by the time of the first Indian nuclear explosion in 1974, the test was done surreptitiously, India received worldwide condemnation and New Delhi hastened to explain that this had been a "peaceful" test. What had intervened was the NPT. It converted the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a state from an act of national pride in 1960 to an act contrary to international law in 1974.
The NPT is based on a central bargain: the NPT non-nuclear-weapon states agree never to acquire nuclear weapons and the NPT nuclear-weapon states in exchange agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals. To use the words of a former Indian foreign minster, the NPT was not designed to establish "nuclear apartheid," permanently authorizing great-power status and nuclear weapons to a small group of states and assigning the rest of the world to permanent second-class status. Maintaining both ends of this central bargain is vitally important to the long-term viability of the NPT.
In the view of many of the NPT non-nuclear-weapon states, however, the NPT nuclear-weapon states have not lived up to their disarmament commitments. Most importantly, the nuclear "have-nots" point to the failure by the nuclear "haves," principally the United States, to put a permanent ban on nuclear-weapon testing in place-the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was finally opened for signature in 1996, but it is unlikely to come into force in the foreseeable future-and the political value of nuclear weapons remains as high as it was during the Cold War. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 explicitly contemplated the use of nuclear weapons not only against Russia and China, but also against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Libya-at the time, all NPT non-nuclear-weapon states. If the possession of a nuclear arsenal retains its high political value to NPT nuclear-weapon states, particularly the United States, the ability to persuade states not to acquire these weapons may diminish.
Add to that the withdrawal of North Korea from the NPT in 2003 and its likely acquisition of at least several nuclear weapons; the increasingly suspect Iranian nuclear program; and the disclosure of an illegal secret network of nuclear technology supply headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani program; and many are saying that the NPT is broken and must be fixed or, worse, is irrelevant. Heightening these concerns about the NPT is the threat of international terrorism and the possibility that terrorists may somehow come into possession of a nuclear weapon and actually use it against a large city somewhere. The NPT regime appears fragile, and many fear for its long-term viability.
The news from the states whose nuclear policies are analyzed in The Nuclear Tipping Point is essentially good as long as the NPT regime remains reasonably healthy. The book's editors conclude that the NPT regime remains much stronger than some believe it is and that reversing years of nuclear abstention would be long and difficult. Germany, for example, is deeply committed to remaining a non-nuclear-weapon state, according to Jennifer Mackley and Walter Slocombe.
Nevertheless, if a perception that the NPT regime has collapsed beyond repair takes hold, other countries, such as Japan, could decide that they must join the nuclear bandwagon.
As Kurt Campbell and Tsuyoshi Sunohara point out in their essay, many experts already consider Japan a "virtual" nuclear-weapon state because of its technological capability and the large amount of plutonium it possesses. Some of Tokyo's senior diplomats complain that they have been treated like a second-class nation in the international arena because Japan does not have nuclear weapons. Further, Japanese officials have grown increasingly concerned by what they view as a deterioration in the NPT regime, including the recent U.S. moves and, most disturbingly, the way North Korea has been able to pursue nuclear weapons from within the NPT and the nuclear threat Pyongyang poses.
In some ways, the most timely and foreboding essay is written about South Korea by Jonathan Polack and Mitchell Reiss, now the Department of State's policy planning director. A few weeks ago, news reports claimed that South Korea had conducted uranium-enrichment experiments as recently as a year ago, thereby indicating that its nuclear infrastructure is alive and well. (See ACT, October 2004.)
Polack and Reiss point out that China is increasingly the principal economic and political partner for South Korea and under no conceivable circumstance would South Korea ever countenance force by the United States against North Korea to eliminate its nuclear-weapon program. They posit the question in conclusion whether, after the ultimate disappearance of the regime in the North and an eventual successful reunification of the Korean peninsula, Korea would wish to remain a non-nuclear-weapon state or rather might the Korean people decide to retain the nuclear weapons they inherit from the North and emboldened by the end of a century of humiliation and division conclude that nuclear weapons are essential to security in a still dangerous world.
To prevent slippage in the nonproliferation regime, the editors offer a number of policy recommendations: stop Iran and North Korea (if this remains possible) from becoming nuclear-weapon states; alleviate security concerns by strengthening alliances; raise barriers to nuclear acquisition by discouraging independent fuel-cycle capabilities and securing fissile material in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere; strengthen verification and intelligence, in part by wider adherence to the IAEA Additional Protocol for verification; and follow a long-term strategy to devalue the role of nuclear weapons in the international system. As it is with many things, the NPT regime is affected by politics as much as security. The possession of a nuclear arsenal still significantly affects the status of a state. For the NPT regime to succeed long-term, this high political value of nuclear weapons must recede into the past. For this to happen, the United States must lead by example. No example would be stronger than U.S. ratification of the CTBT.
Strong U.S. leadership, the editors say, is needed to harness partners and institutions and to keep countries away from the nuclear tipping point where proliferation becomes inevitable and uncontrollable. They assert we are not near the tipping point now, nor are we necessarily destined to reach it, but they note that, once the tipping process becomes identifiable in the NPT regime, it may be very difficult to stop.
Thomas Graham Jr. is a former Special Representative of the President for Arms Control, Nonproliferation, Disarmament. In this and other senior capacities he participated in every major arms control/nonproliferation negotiation in which the United States took part from 1970 to 1997. Ambassador Graham is the author of Disarmament Sketches (University of Washington Press, 2002), Cornerstones of Security with Damien LaVera (University of Washington Press, 2003), and Common Sense on Weapons of Mass Destruction (University of British Columbia Press, 2004).
-------- u.n.
Nuclear Chief Pressures Iran, N. Korea
November 1, 2004
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_NUCLEAR_AGENCY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged Iran on Monday to suspend uranium enrichment and called on North Korea to dismantle its weapons program or at least allow inspectors to ensure it is "exclusively peaceful."
He also stressed the importance of resuming U.N. nuclear inspections in Iraq "as soon as the security situation permits" to ensure that items with both civilian and military applications are not being used in weapons programs.
In his annual report to the U.N. General Assembly and in comments to reporters, ElBaradei said Iran and North Korea highlight the need for stepped-up global efforts to ensure that declared nuclear material is not diverted "for non-peaceful purposes" and that "no undeclared nuclear material or activities exist."
ElBaradei said the International Atomic Energy Agency is "making progress" in Iran but Tehran needs to restore confidence with the global community by suspending its enrichment program after previously providing the IAEA with information "that was at times changing, contradictory, and slow in coming."
On Sunday, Iranian lawmakers shouting "Death to America!" unanimously approved the outline of a bill that would force the government to resume uranium enrichment. But Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, said a compromise was possible.
He held out the prospect of Iran suspending the construction of additional facilities to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel if European countries provide fuel for its planned power plants.
Noting that negotiations between Iran and the Europeans are still under way, ElBaradei said, "I think Iran is - I hope - ready to suspend."
"Whether that will be ultimately a total suspension, or something else, I think this very much depends on the kind of framework to be agreed with the Europeans," he told reporters.
Asked whether there could be a partial suspension, ElBaradei said, "I think at this stage we need a suspension," but he indicated that whether it would be indefinite or not would be part of the negotiations.
"We need to strike a balance between the right of Iran to use nuclear technology and the concern of the international community that any nuclear program is a peaceful one," he said.
"And I think the idea that Iran will be offered technology, including reactor technology, I think is a step in the right direction. We need to satisfy Iran's technological needs, we need to satisfy Iran's security needs," ElBaradei said.
"But also we need to ask Iran to do its utmost to create the transparency and confidence-building required for the international community to believe this program is a peaceful one," he said.
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to produce nuclear fuel, but if enriched further, it can be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran is not prohibited from enriching uranium under its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but it faces growing international pressure to suspend such activities as a good-faith gesture.
ElBaradei said he will report to the IAEA board this month, and wouldn't speculate on whether the issue might be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
"We're still working within the agency," he said. "I hope that we will be able to reach a settlement agreed to everybody."
As for North Korea, he said he was "a bit frustrated" at the slow pace of six-party talks to press Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic benefits and security guarantees. Pyongyang refused to show up for talks scheduled for September.
"I'm telling the North Koreans again that the international community is ready to look into your security concerns, ready to look into your economic and humanitarian needs, but a prerequisite is for them to commit themselves to full, verifiable, dismantlement of their weapons program - as they say they have a weapons program," he told reporters.
He said North Korea should agree to "a comprehensive verification by the IAEA to assure ourselves that this program is exclusively peaceful."
In his report to the General Assembly, ElBaradei emphasized "the need for a comprehensive settlement of the Korean crisis through dialogue," and stressed the importance for any settlement to include the return of North Korea to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Elsewhere, he said, IAEA inspectors confirmed that "for many years, Libya pursued an undeclared nuclear program which aimed to enrich uranium, and which included the receipt of nuclear weapons design documents."
While the IAEA's initial assessment indicates that Libya's statements on its program are consistent with available information, ElBaradei said more investigation is needed "to verify the completeness and correctness of Libya's declarations."
--------
ElBaradei Presses N.Korea, Iran on Nuclear Threat
(Reuters)
Nov 1, 2004
By Evelyn Leopold
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041101/wl_nm/nuclear_un_dc_3
UNITED NATIONS - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Monday pressed North Korea to come clean on its nuclear program, told Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and said U.N. inspectors should return to Iraq (news - web sites).
In his annual speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said North Korea continued "to pose a serious challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation regime" and that the IAEA could not "provide any level of assurance about the non-diversion of nuclear material."
U.S. officials say Pyongyang has one or two nuclear weapons already plus material for another six bombs.
The latest crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions began in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a secret uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea now denies having such a program, and has demanded energy aid and diplomatic concessions in return for freezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program.
In Iran, ElBaradei said that the IAEA had made some progress but that Tehran needed to suspend all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities as a confidence-building measure.
"I have continued to stress to Iran that, in light of serious international concerns surrounding its nuclear program, it should do its utmost to build confidence through these voluntary measures." ElBaradei said, adding that Iran's cooperation had improved "appreciably."
"We agree completely and we hope his assessment that they will comply is right," Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, told Reuters.
Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, Iran's deputy U.N. ambassador, said Tehran's program was aimed at producing fuel for atomic reactors generating electricity.
The same process can be used to make atomic bombs and
Tehran risks being reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it does not freeze enrichment before an IAEA board meeting on Nov. 25.
In Tehran, a senior official told Reuters on Monday that Iran could agree to freeze uranium enrichment for six months at most and only if the European Union abandons its demand that Tehran scrap enrichment for good.
Danesh-Yazdi said Tehran would cooperate with the IAEA but said actions against Iran were politically motivated. He also said it was "plausible" that contamination found in Iran had not resulted from uranium enrichment.
MONITORING IN IRAQ
ElBaradei also said Iraq should again be placed under U.N. monitoring, as it was under former President Saddam Hussein.
He did not mention directly the controversy over missing explosives in Iraq, which has featured in the U.S. election campaign after he reported that nearly 380 tons of high explosives monitored by the IAEA were no longer at a military facility south of Baghdad.
This fueled accusations against President Bush that he had mishandled military operations after last year's U.S.-led invasion.
ElBaradei expressed hope that the IAEA would be allowed to resume monitoring in Iraq as soon as security allowed "particularly in view of the dual-use items that have been under IAEA custody in Iraq that would be susceptible to misuse"
He said the IAEA, had "found no evidence of the revival of nuclear activities," a statement he also made before the Iraq invasion. "Naturally, the international community is reassured that these findings have since been validated," he added.
The Bush administration based its case for the invasion partly on an assertion, now been shown to be false, that Iraq had was aggressively pursuing nuclear arms.
In response Grenell said, "Hindsight is always 20-20. We would remind the IAEA that the Security Council had 17 resolutions demanding Iraq account for missing weapons materials."
--------
On eve of US vote, UN nuclear chief avoids Iraq explosives row
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Nov 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041101192942.7l5jbp3z.html
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog steered clear of the controversy over missing explosives in Iraq on Monday, declining to raise the issue at the United Nations on the eve of the US election.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei said UN inspectors should return to Iraq but stayed away from the explosives issue, which emerged in the final weeks of the close election race.
Last month, ElBaradei had reported that hundreds of tonnes of explosives had vanished from a depot in Iraq after the invasion of US troops that caused the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
The announcement led Democratic challenger John Kerry to accuse US President George W. Bush of incompetence in the handling of Iraq after Saddam's departure, with fears the explosives could fall into the hands of insurgents.
Some Bush supporters fired back that the revelation was made in October to undermine his bid for re-election, amid suggestions ElBaradei had been angered by US opposition to him holding a third term as IAEA director.
In his annual address to the UN General Assembly, ElBaradei said that his agency's mandate from the UN Security Council was still in effect despite the departure of UN inspectors in March 2003 just before the Iraq war.
"We had found no evidence of the revival of nuclear activities prohibited under relevant Security Council resolutions. Naturally, the international community is reassured that these findings have since been validated," he said. "It is clearly important to bring the whole question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to closure as early as possible," ElBaradei said, calling for UN inspectors to return to Iraq -- a move so far blocked by Washington.
Bush had cited Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction as a main reason for launching the war but none have been found. US voters will cast their ballots on Tuesday in what polls suggest is a very close presidential race.
The New York Sun reported on Monday that US Secretary of State Colin Powell called ElBaradei on Friday and warned him not to bring up the missing explosives in his General Assembly speech.
A leading columnist for the New York Times meanwhile said ElBaradei had used "exquisite political timing" in sending Iraq a letter on October 1 recalling the IAEA's "interest" in the missing explosives.
An Iraqi letter of reply indicated the explosives, which had been placed under IAEA seal when UN inspectors were still working in Iraq, were now missing, which set off the media reports.
Times columnist William Safire said that letter had been leaked to a US television network, which he said had planned to report on the revelation on Sunday, just 36 hours before polls were to open for the presidential election.
But the Times went ahead and reported the story of the missing explosives last week.
Safire, one of the few openly pro-Bush voices at the newspaper, accused ElBaradei of trying to manipulate the US election -- and compared such a move to last week's release of a new Osama bin Laden videotape.
-------- us nuc waste
Oconee mishap shows the need for better storage of nuclear waste
Spartanburg
Herald-Journal
November 01, 2004
http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041101/NEWS/411010304/1022/OPINION
An accident at the Oconee Nuclear Station shows the need for better storage and disposal of high-level nuclear waste.
The nation does not have a solution for disposing of high-level nuclear waste such as spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. Without a better alternative,that spent fuel ends up stored at the plants.
The problem is that the plants are not designed for permanent storage of this high-level nuclear waste. They aren't sited in the proper locations or designed for that purpose.
That can be seen in the incident at Oconee Nuclear Station. A valve was left open during a water transfer procedure, and 10,000 gallons of water were allowed to drain off the spent fuel rods into a storage tank.
It's not an incident that posed danger to anyone, but it points out that stockpiling this dangerous material at nuclear power plants is not a situation that this country should maintain.
Instead, the government should proceed with plans to open the disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This facility is sited and designed for the permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste. The material will be safe there for at least 10,000 years, much safer than it is in temporary holding containers at nuclear power plants.
But Yucca Mountain isn't even supposed to open until 2010. And it is a contentious political issue, fought over by politicians and lawyers. There is little hope that the controversies will be settled and the facility will be opened on time.
Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel continues to pile up in temporary holding facilities at power plants. The chances for an accident are higher at these facilities. And the security is not as tight as it would be at Yucca Mountain. The nation would be better able to keep track of this material and keep it away from terrorists if it were in one secured federal facility.
Washington leaders should stop trying to score political points with Yucca Mountain. They should acknowledge that the nation needs a permanent disposal solution for spent fuel rods and open the facility as soon as possible.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.N. Hostages Seen Alive on Videotape
Group Sets Deadline for Demands
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 1, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13486-2004Oct31.html
KABUL, Oct. 31 -- Three kidnapped U.N. election workers appeared frightened but otherwise well in a videotape aired Sunday on the al-Jazeera satellite television network. Their kidnappers, in telephone calls to news agencies, threatened to kill the hostages in 72 hours unless U.N. and foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan, and Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners were freed from U.S. military jails.
The three hostages -- Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Shqipe Habibi of Kosovo and Angelito Nayan, a Philippine diplomat -- were shown huddled together and sitting cross-legged on a floor.
The three were abducted on Thursday afternoon by several men in military uniforms brandishing AK-47 assault rifles, in the first such abduction of foreigners in Kabul since an American bombing campaign drove the Taliban from power nearly three years ago.
The kidnappings prompted a massive security review for the estimated 2,000 Westerners here, as fears mounted that the abductions could presage a deadly new phase in the ongoing, low-level insurgency that has included suicide bombings in the capital and roadside bombs and ambushes in the southern and eastern regions of the country.
Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, a splinter group of the ousted Taliban government, issued a set of four demands in telephone calls to various news agencies. The group called for the United Nations to cease operations in Afghanistan and condemn the "attacks and invasion of Afghanistan by foreign forces." It also demanded that the United States free all prisoners held at its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and U.S. prisons in Afghanistan.
The group also appealed directly to the home countries of the hostages. A spokesman said one demand was that Britain and Kosovo "withdraw their forces immediately" from Afghanistan -- even though Kosovo, a province of Serbia currently under U.N. protection, has no troops in the country. In its final demand, Jaish-e-Muslimeen said the Philippine government must "condemn the invasion of foreign forces in Afghanistan."
The demands were issued separately by a spokesman for Jaish-e-Muslimeen, Mohammed Ishaq, who contacted the French news service Agence France-Presse, and by a commander of the group, Sayed Mohammed Akbar Agha, who telephoned the Reuters news agency.
Ishaq said that if the governments involved did not meet the group's demands, they would "witness the deaths of their nationals in three days."
The United Nations appealed for the release of the hostages, saying all three suffered unspecified ailments. "We call on those holding them not to harm them," said a U.N. spokesman, Manoel de Almeida e Silva. "All three require medical attention, and the best response to such a situation is their immediate release." He declined to give further details.
A senior official with Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, Shah Mahmoud Miakhel, in an interview confirmed that the hostages were in the hands of Jaish-e-Muslimeen but said he was "one hundred percent certain" that they had been seized initially by a criminal gang, perhaps hired by the group.
Miakhel confirmed reports that commander Akbar Agha several months ago broke away from Taliban leader Mohammad Omar because of disagreements over how best to continue the insurgency and whether to disrupt the Oct. 9 presidential election through violence. Omar, along with Osama bin Laden, is being hunted by U.S. troops in Afghanistan's mountainous regions.
Miakhel said Akbar Agha's faction is relatively small and lacked the logistical structure in Kabul to carry out the kidnappings. "He doesn't have a network."
A spokesman for Omar's Taliban faction disavowed any connection with the kidnappings. "We have no comment about the issue," the spokesman, Hamid Agha, told Reuters. "It is their work, and we are not involved in it."
-------- business
Lockheed Martin Buys Naval Electronics Firm
Monday, November 1, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14654-2004Oct31.html
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin of Bethesda agreed to buy Sippican Holdings, a supplier of naval electronics systems, from the private equity firm Carlyle Group and Sippican's management.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Sippican, of Marion, Mass., develops and makes surface-ship countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare training and submarine communications systems as well as weather and oceanographic instrumentation. Lockheed Martin said the purchase enhances its global capabilities in naval warfare, unmanned underwater vehicles and low-cost manufacturing.
"Sippican's diverse product portfolio, engineering and manufacturing expertise and unique technologies will add a new set of innovative capabilities to the Lockheed Martin team," said Lockheed Martin president and chief executive Bob Stevens.
Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors in Manassas will manage the Sippican business.
MARYLAND
Chindex International, a small Bethesda-based provider of Western health care products and medical services in China, appointed A. Kenneth Nilsson as chairman, a position held by Roberta Lipson, who will continue as president and chief executive. Nilsson has been an independent director since 1996 and is chairman of the audit committee. He was president of Cooper Laboratories Inc.; managing director of Pfizer-Taito Ltd.; president of Max Factor Japan; and chairman of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Mobile Media, a Rockville provider of wireless games and other interactive entertainment, bought mobile service and distribution company Viva Technologies AS. Terms were not disclosed. The purchase follows the acquisition of leading U.S. mobile services and distribution company Telenor Interactive. Viva's operations will be consolidated into Mobile Media, based in Oslo.
First Potomac Realty Trust, a Bethesda real estate investment trust that buys and operates industrial buildings in Washington, Virginia and Maryland, said it recently agreed to buy $100 million of property. It completed the acquisition of two flex properties in Norfolk and an industrial property in Haymarket, Va. It has also agreed to acquire two flexible and industrial properties in suburban Maryland and agreed to sell its Ammendale Road property in Beltsville.
American Capital Strategies, a Bethesda investment company, invested $15 million in Pelican Products Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacture of unbreakable watertight protective cases and technically advanced professional flashlights. American Capital's investment is in the form of a second lien loan and supports Behrman Capital's acquisition of Pelican. A syndicate led by GE Capital, a unit of General Electric, is providing a revolving credit facility, senior term loans and a second lien loan. Behrman Capital and Pelican management are investing in equity.
WASHINGTON
The partners behind Sam & Harry's and other local restaurants popular with business people are splitting up. Larry Work and Michael Sternberg created the steakhouse's two locations in downtown Washington and at Tysons Corner, the similarly plush Caucus Room steakhouse downtown and the more casual Harry's Tap Room in Arlington. Work is taking the three high-end steakhouses and Sternberg has taken over Harry's Tap Room -- which has big expansion plans -- and restaurant software company GuestMetrics.
Danaher said a federal judge ordered the tripling of damages awarded against a Danaher subsidiary in a patent infringement lawsuit concerning sighting technology for infrared thermometers. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, a federal jury found the subsidiary liable and awarded the plaintiff about $8 million in damages. The filing didn't name the Danaher subsidiary or the plaintiff involved in the lawsuit. Danaher said it would appeal.
VIRGINIA
Gannett of McLean, which publishes USA Today and 100 other daily newspapers, said its board authorized repurchase of an additional $500 million worth of its common stock. The company said "a substantial portion" of the $1 billion authorized for repurchases under a program announced July 13 had been used.
--------
Local Contract Stanley Associates Gets Army Software Contract
By William Welsh
The Washington Post
Monday, November 1, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14645-2004Oct31.html
Stanley Associates Inc. of Alexandria has won a $10.3 million contract from the U.S. Army Field Support Command to provide software support for two logistics systems that help the Army deploy weapons and equipment.
The one-year contract, with four one-year options, extended the company's previous work on the systems and may be worth more than $50 million if all options are exercised.
Stanley will provide software development, maintenance and contingency operations support for the Army War Redeployment and Automated Battlebook systems. About 90 employees are to perform the work in Alexandria as well as at Army installations worldwide.
Military personnel responsible for tracking and maintaining weapons and equipment use the War Redeployment System to post information about the condition and location of the materiel. Commanders use the Automated Battlebook System to download this information as they prepare to deploy their units abroad.
Development of the systems was part of the rapid deployment and force modernization initiatives begun by the Army after the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations in 1991. The new systems are being used in the Iraq war to deploy forces more quickly.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom was a big test for us because there had never been that large of a deployment with the new policies, doctrine and systems," said Greg Denkler, Stanley's senior vice president of corporate operations.
The success of the systems in the Iraq war had a direct bearing on the contract renewal, he said.
Logistics Management Resources Inc. of Hopewell, a provider of automated logistics services, is a subcontractor on the project.
The contract was previously awarded to Stanley without competition, but this time the contract was competitive, Denkler said. "This is a very strong customer reaffirmation of the quality of work we've done through a very difficult time -- the war," he said. "In terms of morale and momentum, it is a big plus for all of the people who have worked on it."
In addition to the Army Field Support Command contract, the company provides related support to the Army Reserve Command through the Army Reserve Storage and Maintenance System project, Denkler said.
Stanley provides a range of information technology services, including software development, network design and implementation, systems engineering and consulting to the government and commercial sectors. The company has more than 1,500 employees and annual sales of $179 million.
William Welsh is a staff writer with Washington Technology. For more details on this and other technology contracts, go to www.washingtontechnology.com
--------
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology
Washington Post
Monday, November 1, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14644-2004Oct31?language=printer
Mind Over Machines Inc. of Baltimore won a five-year, $15 million contract with the National Institutes of Health to perform programming and database development.
Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. of Newport News won a $25 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for advance planning to provide drydock availability for the USS George Washington.
Kellogg Brown & Root Services of Arlington won three contracts for $9 million, $6 million and $5 million from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command to repair damage caused by Hurricane Ivan at the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Fla.
Science Applications International Corp. of McLean won contracts for $13.6 million and $5.6 million from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center to provide scientific engineering, analytical and technical system support services in Saudi Arabia for the Royal Saudi Naval Forces' Command, Control and Communications.
BAE Systems Applied Technologies Inc. of Rockville won a $7.93 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division for technical and engineering services to support air traffic control and landing systems.
Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc. of Columbia won a $7.53 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to provide engineering and logistics services to support a light airborne multipurpose system data link.
Integral Systems Inc. of Lanham won a $7.33 million contract from the Air Force Headquarters' Space and Missile Systems Center to support an upgraded capability to command and control the Air Force's communications satellites.
ASR Analytics, LLC of Potomac won a $5.8 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
CODA Inc. of Silver Spring won a $95.2 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department for research and development services.
AllWorld Language Consultants of Rockville won a $3.73 million contract from the Justice Department to provide translation and transcription services for the Caribbean Field division.
Louis Berger Group Inc. of Washington, IBM Business Consulting Services of Bethesda, Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Bearing Point (Barents Group) of McLean, Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda, International Business Initiatives of Arlington, and Nathan Associates Inc. of Arlington won the opportunity to share in a contract with a $2.4 billion ceiling from the Agency for International Development, for macroeconomic policy, poverty alleviation and economic institutions and analysis technical assistance services under the support for economic growth and institutional reform project.
Segura Consulting LLC of Bethesda, the Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, Inc. of Washington, Carana Corp. of Arlington, and Bearing Point (Barents Group) of McLean won the opportunity to share in a contract with a $500 million ceiling from the Agency for International Development, for Privatization II technical assistance services under the support for economic growth and institutional reform project.
Strategic Management Solutions Inc. of Gainesville,Va., won a $2.5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business services.
Eclat Consulting Inc. of Reston won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
C-Systems International Corp. of Alexandria won a $1.13 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Computer Business Methods Inc. of Fairfax won a $1.8 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Aviation Enterprises Inc. of Haymarket, Va., won a $13.2 million contract from the U.S. Marshals Service for large passenger and transport jet aircraft leasing, to transport prisoners and aliens.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $9 million contract from the Army for communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.
Creative Sign Service Inc. of College Park won a $5.5 million contract from the General Services Administration for signs and safety zone products, trophies, awards, promotional items, trade show displays and exhibit systems.
ExxonMobil Lubricants and PetroleumExxonMobil Lubricants and Petroleum of Fairfax won a $1 million contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for fuels, lubricants, oils and waxes.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
-------- chemical weapons
Rebels vow to use chemical weapons
The Australian
Hala Jaber, Baghdad
November 01, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11247879%5E2703,00.html
AS the US reeled from the death of nine marines in Iraq at the weekend, insurgents in Fallujah claimed to have obtained chemical weapons and threatened to use them in any battle for control of the rebel stronghold.
Rebel commanders said chemicals such as cyanide had been added to mortar rounds and missiles that would be deployed against coalition troops reported to be preparing for a major assault on the town west of Baghdad.
A military committee made up of former officers in Saddam Hussein's army, including experts on chemicals and guerrilla warfare, is said to have been organising forces in Fallujah and planning tactics.
The committee is understood to include members of all the main insurgent groups, including that of Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader behind the beheading of several foreign hostages and a string of car-bomb attacks.
The US suffered its worst day in Iraq since May when the marines were killed as violence flared across Iraq's rebel heartland.
About 30 Iraqis were killed as the US troops hit back.
A marine spokesman said eight of the soldiers died in a suicide car-bomb attack near Fallujah and the other was killed in Ramadi.
Nine marines were also wounded, he said, but the US military refused to provide further details.
The deaths take the US casualty toll since the war started in March last year to at least 1120. Aid groups say up to 10,000 Iraqis have been killed.
Seven Iraqis died and 19 were wounded on Saturday when a car bomb was detonated outside the Baghdad offices of Arabic broadcaster al-Arabiya.
A group calling itself Thawrat al-Ishrin (Revolution of the 1920s Brigades) claimed responsibility for the attack on "the infidels' television".
"The building was destroyed on (the heads of) the spies, the Americanised journalists ... the mouthpieces of the US occupation in Iraq," it said in a statement.
The majority Saudi-owned satellite channel has often been attacked on Islamist websites for its perceived pro-Western stance in the Arab world.
Sheikh Mahdi al-Sumaidi, a Sunni cleric in Baghdad, warned the US and interim Iraqi Government against attacking Fallujah.
He said they risked incurring a fatwa, or binding religious decree, that would command Muslims to launch street protests and a campaign of civil disobedience.
But US forces continued preparations for the widely expected offensive, with jets and artillery pounding targets in the city. US military officials have claimed there are up to 5000 Islamic militants, Saddam loyalists and criminals barricaded in the town.
"We're gearing up to do an operation and when we're told to go, we'll go," said Brigadier General Dennis Hejlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
"When we do go, we'll whack them."
The US military emphasised that the final order to attack should come from Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who has told the people of Fallujah to hand over Zarqawi's followers.
Peace talks to avert an assault on Fallujah, believed to have started last Wednesday, are being held by a Government-backed delegation and leaders from the rebel-held Sunni city of 200,000 people.
Dr Allawi has demanded foreign militants be expelled from Fallujah and Iraqi forces, backed by American troops, be allowed into its centre.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will call a general election in February rather than May or later next year as had been expected, London's Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday.
Mr Blair, who will be seeking a third term, hoped to benefit from a "Baghdad bounce", if Iraq staged successful elections in January as scheduled, the newspaper said.
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Looters breached Iraq sarin bunker
01 nov 2004
Advertiser Newspapers
By CHARLES HANLEY in New York
LOOTERS unleashed last year by the US-led invasion of Iraq overran a sprawling desert complex where a bunker sealed by UN monitors held sarin-filled rockets, a US arms inspectors' report says.
Charles Duelfer's arms teams say all UN-sealed structures at the Muthanna site were broken into.
If the so-called Bunker 2 was breached and looted, it would be the second recent case of restricted weapons at risk of falling into militants' hands.
"Clearly, there's a potential concern, but we're unable to estimate the relative level of it because we don't know the condition of the things inside the bunker," said a spokesman for the UN arms inspection agency in New York, whose specialists have been barred from Iraq since the invasion.
Chief arms hunter, Mr Duelfer, said he was unaware of "anything of importance" looted from the chemical weapons complex.
The report his Iraq Survey Group issued on October 6 said, however, it couldn't vouch for the fate of munitions at Muthanna.
One chemical weapons expert said that old, weakened nerve agents could be a threat to unprotected civilians. The weapons involved would be pre-1991 artillery rockets filled with sarin, or their damaged remnants - weapons openly declared by Iraq and which were under UN control.
In its October 6 report, Mr Duelfer's group disclosed widespread looting occurred at Muthanna, 55km north west of Baghdad, in the aftermath of the fall of the capital.
A little-noted annex of the 985-page report said every UN-sealed location at the desert installation had been breached in the looting spree, and "materials and equipment were removed".
Bunker 2 at Muthanna State Establishment, once Iraq's central chemical weapons production site, was put under UN inspectors' control in early 1991 after it was heavily damaged by a US precision bomb in the first Gulf War.
At the time, Iraq said 2500 sarin-filled rockets were stored there.
The looting at Muthanna, a 90sq km complex, is the latest example of how sensitive Iraqi sites - previously under UN oversight - were exposed to potential plundering by militants or looters.
Last week, UN officials confirmed almost 380 tonnes of sophisticated explosives - also under UN seal - had disappeared from a site south of Baghdad, a location left unsecured by US troops advancing to Baghdad in April 2003.
-------- china
Martial Law Declared as Nearly 150 Die in Clashes in Central China
November 1, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/international/asia/01china.html?pagewanted=all
BEIJING, Oct. 31 - Ethnic clashes between majority Han Chinese and Hui Muslims left almost 150 people dead and forced the authorities to declare martial law in a section of Henan Province in central China, journalists and witnesses in the region said Sunday.
The fighting flared Friday and continued into the weekend after a Hui taxi driver's car hit and killed a 6-year-old Han girl, prompting recriminations between different ethnic groups in neighboring villages, the journalists and witnesses said. One individual briefed on the incident by the police said 148 people had been killed, including 18 police officers sent to quell the violence.
The Chinese news media have reported nothing about unrest in Henan. But a news blackout would not be unusual, because propaganda authorities routinely suppress information about ethnic tensions.
Though most Chinese belong to the dominant Han ethnicity, the country has 55 other ethnic groups, including several Muslim minorities and others with ties to Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea and Mongolia.
Hui Muslims, scattered in several provinces in the central and western parts of the country, are relatively well integrated into Chinese society and not generally considered a threat to stability.
But outbreaks of Hui unrest were not uncommon in the 1980's, and tensions can bubble to the surface after even minor provocations. Many Hui areas remain impoverished despite rapid economic growth in China's urban and coastal regions, and some members of minority groups say the Han-dominated government does little to steer prosperity to them.
The road accident on Friday set off large-scale fighting after relatives, friends and fellow villagers of the girl who was killed, most of them Han, traveled to the mostly Hui village of the taxi driver to demand compensation. The rival villagers failed to settle their dispute, which quickly grew to involve thousands of people in Zhongmou County between the cities of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, according to two accounts of the incident.
The local police failed to contain the unrest and authorities deployed the paramilitary People's Armed Police to restore order. Martial law was declared over the weekend, people in the area said, adding that the situation had since stabilized.
One person briefed on the clashes said the authorities might have been particularly alarmed after the police stopped a 17-truck convoy carrying Hui men to the area from other counties and provinces as it passed through Qi County, near Zhongmou. Blockades were set up on major roads in the area, and some bus service was halted.
That suggests that word of the violence may have spread through a network of Hui and perhaps other Muslim groups and that mutual support among them is relatively strong. But details were sketchy and difficult to confirm.
A police officer who answered the telephone in the Zhongmou County public security office on Sunday night declined to provide any information on the matter.
China's countryside and second-tier cities are rife with unrest among peasants and workers complaining about corruption, unpaid wages and other issues. Violent protests, once extremely rare, occur frequently.
Last week, rioters set fire to police cars and looted government offices in Wanzhou, in Chongqing municipality in southwest China, after an argument between several people set off a riot involving as many as 10,000 people, residents and Western news agencies reported.
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Beijing for this article.
-------- iraq
INSURGENCY
Attack Kills 15 as Allawi Warns Falluja Rebels
November 1, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/international/middleeast/01iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 1 - Insurgents fired a rocket into a hotel in Tikrit on Sunday evening, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding 8. The attack came as Prime Minister Ayad Allawi issued repeated warnings that negotiations with the rebels holding another Iraqi town, Falluja, were swiftly running out of time and that an assault to retake the territory was imminent.
The rocket attack, about 7:50 p.m., struck a hotel where itinerant Shiite workers often stay, a new Iraqi satellite television channel, Al Sharqiya, quoted a local police chief as saying. Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, is Saddam Hussein's hometown and is dominated by Sunni Muslims.
The rocket, which struck the second story of the hotel, was one of two fired by insurgents, said Master Sgt. Robert Cowens, a spokesman for the United States Army's First Infantry Division. The second landed harmlessly, he said.
On Monday morning, the deputy governor of Baghdad was assassinated when unidentified gunmen fired on his convoy in the capital's southern district of Dura, the Interior Ministry said. The deputy governor, Hatim Kamil Abdul Fattah, was fatally shot, as were two of his four bodyguards, said the ministry spokesman, Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman.
In a meeting with reporters on Sunday, Dr. Allawi said that unless his government was allowed to establish control of Falluja immediately, he would ask the American and Iraqi forces massed around the town to attack.
Dr. Allawi said that as recently as Saturday night he had met with tribal and religious leaders from Falluja and nearby Ramadi, where clashes broke out early Sunday between insurgents and United States marines. But there was little sign of any progress, and the prime minister made it clear that chances for a peaceful settlement were rapidly fading.
"The time is closing down, really," Dr. Allawi said. "I am not putting a time schedule, but we are approaching the end."
An Army spokesman for the Second Brigade Combat Team in Ramadi said that one marine had been killed and four had been wounded when a roadside bomb went off during a patrol in Ramadi on Sunday. The spokesman had no information about any civilian causalities.
The spokesman also said that on Saturday, two Iraqis were killed and four were wounded when an armored personnel carrier shot at a suspected suicide car bomb that turned out to be a taxi with six apparently innocent people inside. The incident occurred at a vehicle control point.
A preliminary investigation found no explosives in the car, the spokesman said. He added that the episode was "a very unfortunate, very tragic event, and we hate it when these kinds of things happen."
"We have had six suicide bombs in the last week against our units," said the spokesman. "At least one of them was a taxi, so you could understand the soldier's actions. He fired first at the engine block, but it continued to accelerate so the second time he shot into the cab, killing the driver."
In a meeting with reporters inside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi ticked off what he said were recent successes in killing and capturing insurgents and their leaders in Iraq. He emphasized the capture of what he said were 167 fighters who had come from outside Iraq, but it was unclear whether they had come to the country recently to fight or had immigrated years ago.
He was unambiguous about his motivations in the gathering storm around Falluja.
"The terrorists and insurgents continue to use Falluja and the people of Falluja as a shield," Dr. Allawi said, giving a list of recent insurgent attacks. "That's why I cannot stand back and allow such attacks to continue."
Dr. Allawi said that he would keep pressing for a peaceful resolution but that "our patience is running thin."
Dr. Allawi declined to say much about something that has received intense discussion in the American presidential campaign in the past week - the disappearance of hundreds of tons of powerful conventional explosives from Al Qaqaa, a weapons site south of Baghdad, around the time of the invasion of the country last year.
"I don't like to really have a premature comment," Dr. Allawi said, adding that he had ordered the "relevant authorities" to start an investigation. "Once we have the results," he said, "we will make a public statement." Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article.
--------
American, 5 Others Kidnapped in Iraq
November 1, 2004
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Militants kidnapped an American, a Nepalese and four Iraqi guards in a bloody assault on their office in the capital Monday, and gunmen assassinated Baghdad's deputy governor in a drive-by shooting, new violence that came as voter registration began for vital January elections.
West of the capital, U.S. troops clashed with Sunni insurgents, and American artillery pounded suspected insurgent positions in Fallujah, witnesses said.
U.S. forces are gearing up for a major offensive against Fallujah, the strongest bastion of Sunni insurgets. The order to launch what would likely be a bloody assault must come from Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who warned Sunday that his patience with negotiations was thinning.
U.S. and Iraqi officials hope to curb the insurgency in time for national elections by the end of January.
A handful of Iraqis showed up for the first day of voter registration in central Baghdad on Monday. They refused to allow TV cameras to film them for fear of future retaliation.
To help protect the voting, fresh American soldiers arrived in the capital Monday - reinforcements that push the total U.S. military presence in Iraq to around 142,000, the highest level since the summer of 2003.
The latest in Iraq's wave of kidnappings came when gunmen stormed the offices of a Saudi company in the upscale Mansour district of Baghdad, sparking a battle with guards during the evening iftar meal when Muslims break their daylong fast in the holy month of Ramadan, police said.
One attacker and one guard were killed in the fight, before the gunmen made off with their captives, police said. Police Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf identified the captives as an American, a Nepalese and the four Iraqis. U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan confirmed that the fourth victim was an American.
"We heard gunfire. I went outside to see what's going on when a man pointed a machine gun at me and said: 'Get in or else I'll shoot at you,'" said Haidar Karar, who lives in the neighborhood.
From his house he saw "at least 20 attackers, some masked and some not." He said some were wearing traditional Arab robes and all were carrying automatic weapons.
The office is about 500 yards from a residence from which residents kidnapped two Americans and a Briton in September. All three were later beheaded. An al-Qaida-linked group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the slayings.
Twelve Americans have been kidnapped or are missing in Iraq, and at least three of them have been killed, including an American slain by al-Zarqawi's followers in April. The group also claimed responsiblity for the abduction of a Japanese hostage whose decapitated body was found on Saturday, wrapped in an American flag and dumped on a Baghdad street.
Also Monday, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying Baghdad province's deputy governor, Hatim Kamil, to work Monday morning, killing Kamil, said Baghdad Governor Ali al-Haidari. Two of Kamil's bodyguards were wounded, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.
A known militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for the attack in southeastern Baghdad.
"This is the fate of whoever is aiding or supporting the crusaders against the Muslims and mujahedeen," the group said on its Web site. It was impossible to verify the claim's authenticity.
Insurgents have killed dozens of Iraqi politicians and government workers in recent months in a bid to destabilize the country's reconstruction.
The group also said it was behind the assassination of the deputy governor of Diyala province on Friday in the central Iraqi city of Baqouba. Aqil Hamid al-Adili, the assistant to the governor for projects affairs, was killed by unidentified gunmen as he was sitting in a friend's office.
Allawi's speech Sunday seemed aimed at preparing the Iraqi public for an onslaught in Fallujah, Allawi warned of civilian casualties, saying that if he orders an assault, it would be with a "heavy heart."
"But I owe, owe it to the Iraqi people to defend them from the violence and the terrorists and insurgents," he said. Commanders have estimated that up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein loyalists and common criminals are holed up in Fallujah.
He did not give a deadline for how long he would give negotiations with Fallujah's city leaders in which he demands the handover of foreign fighters.
In a position that appeared to contrast with Allawi's, the country's interim president said a military assault was the wrong solution, according to an interview published Monday.
President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas that dialogue must continue and that insurgents "want nothing but a military solution, and the continuation of bleeding among Iraqis."
Meanwhile, heavy clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents continued Monday in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad.
A bomb in Ramadi on Sunday killed one Marine and wounded four others, the military said. The blast brought to nine the number of Marines killed in the area over the weekend. At least 1,121 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.
In Monday's fighting in Ramadi, one woman was killed and her two children injured, hospital officials said.
Also killed was an Iraqi freelance television cameraman, Diaa Najm, who provided material to Associated Press Television News - believed to be the 24 journalist killed in Iraq this year.
On Monday, the British army's new base south of Baghdad was rocketed for the fourth straight day as Black Watch troops prepared to begin patrolling their new area of operation, British pool reports said.
Seven rockets landed in the space of an hour yesterday morning in the perimeter of Camp Dogwood, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad. British forces were brought to central Iraq to relieve U.S. troops expected to take part in a major assault west of Baghdad.
Baghdad's Camp Victory North, the sprawling headquarters of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, was brimming to capacity with the arrival of the 3,700-member Louisiana-based 256th Enhanced Separate Brigade, a National Guard unit that has been rolling into the Iraqi capital over the past few days.
The 1st Cavalry's 2nd Brigade had been scheduled to return to Fort Hood, Texas, in November, but its departure was delayed by two months, military officials said.
The newly arriving troops leave Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry, in charge of eight Army brigades - or more than 32,000 soldiers.
(LEADS with 12 grafs to correct number, nationality of the kidnapping victims; ADDS details, that office 500 yards from house of earlier abduction. Picks up 12th graf pvs 'Also Monday, ...')
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Allawi threatens 'military solution'
November 01, 2004
By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041031-115522-4664r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister warned yesterday that efforts to resolve the standoff in Fallujah peacefully have entered their "final phase" and said he will not hesitate to order "a military solution" to end Sunni insurgents' hold over the city.
In another city in Iraq's stormy Sunni Triangle, a rocket slammed into the Sunubar Hotel in Tikrit late yesterday, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding eight others, hospital officials said. Insurgents might have been aiming at an American position, which was targeted by a second rocket. U.S. officials said no American casualties were reported.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's warning, delivered in a nationally televised press conference, occurred as U.S. forces prepare for a showdown with thousands of militants holed up in Fallujah - the city that has become the focal point of armed resistance to the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
Mr. Allawi appeared to be trying to prepare the Iraqi public for an onslaught that is likely to unleash strong passions, especially among the country's Sunni Muslim minority.
He warned of civilian casualties, saying that if he orders an assault, it would be with a "heavy heart," because "there will be some loss of innocent lives."
"But I owe, owe it to the Iraqi people to defend them from the violence and the terrorists and insurgents," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi commanders want to put down guerrillas before vital elections scheduled for Jan. 31, which Mr. Allawi has insisted will take place as scheduled. Yesterday, insurgents in Fallujah fired mortar rounds and rockets at U.S. Marines, who responded with artillery. U.S. aircraft also struck suspected rebel positions, Marine officials said.
Clashes also were reported between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, west of Fallujah, killing seven Iraqis and injuring 11, hospital officials said.
U.S. officials say Mr. Allawi will issue the final order to begin any all-out assault on Fallujah and other Sunni insurgent strongholds north and west of the capital.
Mr. Allawi gave no deadline for talks with Fallujah city leaders to bear fruit, but he insisted that they must hand over foreign fighters and allow Iraqi security forces to take control of the city.
Mr. Allawi also said authorities have arrested 167 Arab foreign fighters, who are in Iraqi custody.
Sunni clerics have threatened to call for a nationwide civil-disobedience campaign and to boycott national elections in January if the Americans attack Fallujah.
The city has become the nexus of an insurgent network that has carried out numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages since the Bush administration ordered Marines to halt an offensive against the city in April.
Fallujah is thought to be the headquarters of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, who announced his allegiance to al Qaeda last month.
---------
Rocket Kills 15 Iraqis at Tikrit Hotel
Associated Press
Monday, November 1, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14459-2004Oct31.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 31 -- A rocket slammed into a hotel in Tikrit late Sunday, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding eight others in the home town of former president Saddam Hussein, hospital officials said.
U.S. military officials blamed the attack on "anti-Iraqi forces," the term they use for insurgents. They said two rockets were fired, one of which exploded near a U.S. military position but caused no damage or casualties.
Clashes were also reported between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. Seven Iraqis were killed and 11 injured, hospital officials said.
As night fell in the Iraqi capital, the rumble of powerful explosions could be heard coming from the western edge of the city, but the cause of the blasts could not be determined.
The blast in Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, sent frightened guests of the three-story Sunubar Hotel running into the street.
British news reports said four mortar shells landed early Sunday at a British camp near Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad. Two rockets also exploded at the perimeter of the airport in the southern city of Basra where the British contingent has its headquarters.
There were no casualties or serious damage in either attack, British media reports said.
--------
The Creaky Coalition
Allies are getting balky about following America's lead
Newsweek
Nov. 1, 2004
By Stryker McGuire
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6315335/site/newsweek/
issue - America's 138,000 troops in Iraq were asking for a little help from their British friends. Could an 850-strong armored battalion of Scotland's Black Watch Regiment please be redeployed from Basra, in southern Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad? The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet it triggered another political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. As British commanders weighed the American request, London editors wrote scaremongering headlines about the Black Watch's walking into a "Triangle of Death." Blair's critics charged that acceding to the U.S. request would amount to an election-eve boost to Bush's presidential campaign. Is it not time "to say 'no' to the Americans?" one Labour Party M.P. demanded of Blair.
The prime minister didn't cave. But a new conventional wisdom is taking hold among Britain's military and foreign-policy elite: even if John Kerry defeats Bush, any British government will find it difficult, if not impossible, to muster popular support for a future American-led military intervention. A senior British diplomat put it bluntly to NEWSWEEK: "Never again."
BY THE NUMBERS
Troops in Iraq Which countries are providing military support
United States 138,000
Britain 8,530
Albania 70
Australia 850
Azerbaijan 150
Bulgaria 455
Czech Rep. 92
Denmark 510
Dominican Rep. 300
El Salvador 360
Estonia 55
Georgia 150
Hungary 300
Italy 2,700
Japan 1,000
Kazakhstan 25
Latvia 120
Lithuania 105
Macedonia 28
Moldova 25
Mongolia 180
Netherlands 1,263
New Zealand 60
Nicaragua 115
Norway 150
Poland 2,400
Portugal 120
Romania 730
Singapore 200
Slovakia 105
South Korea 675 (3,000 on way)
Thailand 460
Tonga 44
Ukraine 1,700
Sources: Reuters news reports/GlobalSecurity.org.
Other members of Bush's Coalition of the Willing are getting balky, too. A total of 29 countries now have troops in Iraq, including Britain's 8,300. After pro-war Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of office earlier this year, the new government withdrew all of Spain's 1,300 troops. Honduras and the Dominican Republic then brought home their small contingents. Under mounting domestic pressure, Italy (2,700 troops), Poland (2,500), Ukraine (1,600), the Czech Republic (100) and Slovakia (105) have hinted at troop reductions next year. The Coalition's Potemkin-village quality is perhaps best illustrated by Japan's contribution: 600 Self-Defense Force troops. By law, they cannot instigate combat, and have not fired a single shot in anger. In fact, troops from the Netherlands' 500-strong contingent are deployed around the SDF compound in southern Iraq to provide an extra layer of security for the Japanese.
Blair's fealty to Bush barely masks serious disagreements between the American and the British governments. In private, senior British military commanders have strongly criticized the United States' "overwhelming force" tactics in Iraq. Senior British Foreign Service officers have despaired at the post-9/11 collapse of American diplomacy. For Washington, it's one thing to see Thailand and New Zealand pulling troops out of Iraq. It's quite another to have Britain questioning its "special relationship" with the United States.
With Rod Nordland and Sarah Sennott in London and bureau reports
--------
Study: Iraq Invasion Has Killed 100,000 Civilians
democracynow.org
November 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1514200
We speak with the co-author of a new independent, peer-reviewed study that has concluded at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the U.S invasion last year. [includes rush transcript] A new independent, peer-reviewed study has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the U.S invasion last year.
The study entitled "Mortality Before And After The 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cluster Sample Survey" appears in Britain's foremost medical journal "The Lancet" and was conducted by researchers at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and Al-Mustansiriya in Baghdad.
The estimated number of deaths of 100,000 is considerably higher than previous estimates. The study found the rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities. Most of the victims were women and children.
The U.S. military claims it does not keep tallies on civilian casualties but the London Independent is reporting that the Pentagon does collect data on Iraqi casualties and is keeping the results classified. The U.S.-backed interim Iraqi government has also suppressed casualty figures. An official at the Iraqi Health Ministry who was compiling data from hospital records last year was ordered by a superior in December to stop.
- Les Roberts, co-author of the study on civilian mortality in Iraq since the invasion. He is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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: Les Roberts joins us, co-author of the study. He is an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Welcome to Democracy Now!
LES ROBERTS: Thank you very much. I am delighted to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Its good to have you with us. Explain the study. You were listening to Robert Fisk, your response?
LES ROBERTS: Sure. What we did was we got a breakdown of where people lived before the invasion: how many people were in Anbar province, how many people were in the city of Mosul and so on. At random, we picked 33 neighborhoods in the entire country, and essentially in a way that represented the pop lakes distribution on the first of -- population distribution on the first of January, 2003. When we go to the little villages or city neighborhoods, we would pick a point at random. We draw a map and pick one point on it, and go to that point and visit the nearest 30 houses, and we would knock on the door and we say, hello. We're from the university. We'd like to ask you a couple of questions. We said who lives here now? They gave us the age and gender of everyone. And then we said on the first of January, 2002, who lived here? Then we asked had anyone died or had anyone been born in the time in between? And my one authority of contradiction of what Mr. Fisk said is this wasn't an opinion poll. On a sub-sample of the deaths at the end of the interview when the people didn't know we were going to do this, we said, could you please show us the birth certificate, and four out of five times, the people could go back in their house and come back with the birth certificate. We're quite sure people didn't make up these deaths. These are something quite tangible. Lots of the people wept as they described the deaths. So, by going back to the beginning of 2002, we essentially knew the rate that people were dying at before the invasion. And we now know the rate after the invasion, and we compared the rates of death, and realized this is a nice advantage that every neighborhood is sort of being compared to itself. In this neighborhood, one person died in the 14 months before the invasion. In the same neighborhood, four people died in the 18 months after, therefore we know the mortality is higher in this neighborhood. We did it 33 times. Unfortunately, when we came to the end, one of the clusters, the city of Fallujah, was just radically different than everywhere else. And everywhere else the other 32 neighborhoods, violence, which was not a very important cause of death before the invasion, had become the main cause of death. But in Fallujah, essentially, we went to about 30 houses, and there were 52 violent deaths had occurred there. That's probably 30 times higher, 20 times higher than we saw anywhere else. And now, that's not quite true. Maybe ten times higher than we saw anywhere else. So, Fallujah was so different that we set it aside, so that 100,000 estimate that you heard was taking the 32 neighborhoods excluding Fallujah because it was so weird and so bad and saying, if these 32 neighborhoods represent the whole country of Iraq, and we worked very hard to take a sample that did, we believe approximately 100,000 people died. But, now, we do have that Fallujah information and we believe it to be true. Just in terms of statistics. We didn't want to put it in and start extrapolating to the whole country. So, that's why in our report, we said, we think that the numbers around 100,000, at least, but it could be much high person we say it could be higher because we excluded that Fallujah number. That's how we came to our estimate as it appears now in the press.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Roberts, what about the timing of the release of this report? And the question about whether this is political?
LES ROBERTS: That's unfortunate. I tried to do this last April. As you recall, a couple of people showed up on videos with their heads being cut off. My colleague out in Baghdad, a fellow named Riyadh Lafta, probably the bravest person I ever met, American, you cannot come here now. Don't come. Then we postponed until June, and in June it was even worse. Then we postponed until July. Then August came around and starting last week, I have about six months' worth of teaching obligations. So, I cannot travel. As we came to the end of august, it was either then or never, so I -- we did it. Essentially over a three-week window in September. We finished the last house on September 20. I got out of the country about four days later. I scrambled and wrote up the results as fast as I could, and they were into the Lancet by the October 1. The lancet critiqued this quite, quite -- heavily. They sent it out for multiple critiques from several different reviewers because they didn't want to publish something that was going to be unfair to one side or another that's with going to be bad science, and so it just took this long. I certainly wish that this had come out two weeks ago. I wish it had come out two weeks ago, because then both candidates would be forced to address the issue of casualties in Iraq, and would have been forced to pledge their eagerness to protect civilians in the future. So, I think the timing is unfortunate. I think that the fact that it came out before the election is probably a good thing for the Iraqi people. Don't get me wrong. I wish it had come out a couple of weeks earlier, so that all the hoopla would be more about the number than the timing.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to -- well, the report in the independent, the Pentagon collecting figures on local casualties in Iraq that they -- the pentagon is contrary to its public claims, but the results are classified, according to your colleague, one of the authors of this report, professor Richard Garfield, who is an expert on the effects of conflict on civilians. He lectures at Columbia University here in New York. Also at London School of Hygiene and Public Health, saying that since 1991, when Colin Powell was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the figures have been kept secret. He said the military is saying we don't believe it, but because we don't collect figures, we cannot comment. Mr. Powell decided to keep the figures secret because of the controversy over body counts in Vietnam, but I think democracies need this information. Any more information you have whether the Pentagon has the figures?
LES ROBERTS: I'm afraid I don't have any information to that effect. I know Richard said, that and I cannot comment. In keeping with what Mr. Fisk just said, I went out and I had to sneak into the country, because Americans, I think, are seen so hostilely. I laid down in the back seat of a car and was smuggled in. I spent a couple days sort of arranging logistics and getting myself sorted out. For eight days I went out to the first of the many clusters, and trained our interviewers. Then after, that I hid in a hotel room, like some of the reporters out there now, keeping a low profile as a foreigner in Iraq is essential. So, I really cannot comment on what the coalition is doing in terms of keeping records or what the Iraqi government is doing in terms of keeping records except to say that the ministry of health, themselves, admit that their surveillance and monitoring of deaths is extremely incomplete.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. We have been speaking with Les Roberts, the co-author of the study on civilian mortality in Iraq, since the invasion. He is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The report has appeared in the British Medical journal, Lancet.
LES ROBERTS: My pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. This is Democracy Now!
-----
A Question of Conscience: How Many More?
British Study Concludes That 100,000 Civilian Deaths Have Been Caused By Iraq War's Violence
01 November 2004
Media Monitors Network
by Evan Augustine Peterson III
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/10934/
"...if the USA's population suffered the proportional equivalent of 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, there would be 1,608,750 American civilian deaths. What if the entire population of a city the size of San Diego had been slaughtered over nineteen months after some hostile nation invaded US soil?"
"...it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error. The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and the attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient to bring peace and security to the civilian population. ... [I]mperialism has resulted in more deaths, not fewer. This political failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants. ... The lives of Iraqis are currently being shaped by the policies of the occupying forces and the military insurgents. For the occupiers, winning the peace now demands a thorough reappraisal of strategy and tactics to prevent further unnecessary casualties."
-- Dr. Richard Horton's commentary, "The War In Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities," in The Lancet, Vol. 364, No. 9445. [1]
At this critical moment of choice, people worldwide have been asking whether the American electorate realizes that Mr. Bush's neocon disdain for international law -- when coupled with his sacralization of all things military, and the Bushites' collective swoons into sociopathic denial -- are evoking frightening images of Nazi Germany? Furthermore, cosmopolitan globetrotters are reporting that people everywhere have increasingly ceased to admire the USA, but instead have come to fear and loathe the Bush administration, during these past three years! Why?
To some, the answer is obvious; for others, a complete answer would necessarily involve a multicausative analysis. But some of us still have to read all of those complex ballot measures, so here's the latest compelling answer in shorthand. Britain's foremost medical journal, The Lancet, has just published a peer-reviewed scientific study by five American and Iraqi public-health researchers, entitled "Mortality Before And After The 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cluster Sample Survey." The research team's stunning conclusion is that approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilians -- of whom about 40,000 were children -- have died violently since Messrs. Bush and Blair commenced their invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. [1] Moreover, they found that Anglo-American coalition's aerial weaponry is responsible for many of these deaths.
The research team's basic methodology was to first establish the "mean mortality rate" (i.e., the average number of deaths) in Iraq during a proportionately equivalent time period (i.e., nineteen months) before Mr. Bush's invasion. Then it studied the number of Iraqi civilian deaths in excess of the mean mortality rate during the nineteen months after Mr. Bush commenced the invasion. Stated differently, the researchers found that Mr. Bush's Iraq War has directly caused 100,000 violent civilian deaths in excess of the mean mortality rate.
Readers who find themselves yawning at this possibly bland-sounding statistic should rethink that initial response. Americans have been grieving mightily because their military has suffered 1,120 deaths in Iraq, and yet that number -- while it isn't small -- certainly pales in comparison to 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths! [2]
By way of comparison, if the USA's population suffered the proportional equivalent of 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, there would be 1,237,500 American civilian deaths. [3] And consider that our historians habitually characterize the American Civil War as a terrible tragedy. However, a grand total of 620,000 US and Confederate soldiers were killed during those four years of bloody fratricide, whereas 100,000 Iraqis already have lost their lives in only nineteen months -- and that's only counting the civilian deaths. Hence, it would be accurate to conclude that 100,000 civilian deaths are a catastrophe for Iraq! [4]
To underscore this point, please recall April of 2003, when the story about Pfc. Jessica Lynch was being concocted by our government-media complex. At that time, the US military was fighting inside the 50-mile "Red Zone" perimeter around Baghdad, and it was destroying the Republican Guard's Hammurabi and Medina Divisions. Indeed, more than ten thousand Iraqi combatants were killed during that one asymmetrical battle as two brigades were entirely obliterated. Additionally, military observers estimate that Iraqi combatants have suffered at least 20,000 more deaths in other battles, skirmishes, and incidents. Thus, the conservative estimate is that 30,000 Iraqi combatant have been killed since March of 2003.
If one adds 30,000 combatant deaths to 100,000 civilian deaths, it seems to be a safe conclusion that the Iraq War's violence has inflicted approximately 130,000 deaths on Iraqis.
Perhaps more importantly, if the USA's population suffered the proportional equivalent of 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, there would be 1,608,750 American civilian deaths. What if the entire population of a city the size of San Diego had been slaughtered over nineteen months after some hostile nation invaded US soil? Americans would regard those 1.6 million deaths, as far worse than a tragedy -- it would be a heinous crime!
Further consider that Americans have suffered a grand total of 1,300,000 casualties in all of the wars that the USA has fought, from the American Revolution through the Iraq War. That means that, proportionately speaking, Iraq has suffered more war casualties during the last 19 months than the USA has suffered throughout its entire 228-year history! [5]
Finally, the researchers concluded that the vast majority of the Iraqi civilian deaths that were attributable to the Coalition's forces were inflicted on women and children. [6] And their point about the disproportionate number of innocent civilian noncombatant deaths certainly isn't moot, because chaotic guerrilla warfare continues to rage in the Sunni triangle and to the west of Baghdad. And it's widely reported that Mr. Bush believes he can resolve that militarily while the world is distracted by the USA's election results. Therefore, he's ordered the commencement of an all-out siege against the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah (population = 300,000) and Ramadi (population = 400,000) sometime after Tuesday. [7] And for the past several days, the American media has been conveniently ignoring the infliction of more civilian casualties on Fallujah, as the US military's aerial sorties bombard it into rubble in preparation for their ground assault.
Conclusion: The Killing Of Iraq's Citizens Has Been Indiscriminate And Disproportionate. Americans suffered only 25,324 casualties during the entire Revolutionary War (1776-1783), and yet the USA's hypermilitarized media doesn't deem our military's "surgically accurate" techno-infliction of 100,000 civilian casualties to be a worthwhile story? One would think that any halfway-humane journalist's rational inference, upon receiving hard scientific evidence of 100,000 innocent civilians deaths in Iraq, would have to be that the belligerents are inflicting indiscriminate killing on a grossly disproportionate scale. After all, they've caused this enormous number of civilian deaths in just 19 months of warfare, which indicates that they're doing evil at a rate that's far outpacing any good that they possibly could achieve.
But is this unspeakable horror the butchery of barbaric insurgents? To the contrary, the researchers facts point directly to the perpetration of a massive number of war crimes inside Iraq: (1) NOT merely by the insurgents, but also by the occupying coalition; and (2) NOT merely by the US military's lower-level grunts on the ground, but also by higher-level commanding officers and civilian planners.
Hence, a question of conscience arises as to whether Americans: (A) are still capable of thrusting aside the phony cover-story of "unavoidable collateral damage" and vigorously opposing the Bush administration's active participation in the mass slaughter of innocent civilians; or (B) have collectively succumbed to The War Party's relentless brainwashing propaganda and become morally-blind cynics, who will say "It's all good!" so long as it's not Americans who are being killed, and especially if the mass killing of innocent foreigners stimulates enough profits for the military-industrial complex that our economy is temporarily jolted out of its recession doldrums?
If it's (A), our moral unwillingness to turn a blind eye toward these egregious atrocities begins at the polls on Tuesday. If it's (B), then haven't we degenerated into the morally-depraved accomplices of powerful war criminals who've killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and don't we live in a Mafiosi-esque nation that's economically addicted to war? [8]
The Bottom Line: Americans Need A New Leader Who Will Respect International Law. Americans must come to our senses, and recognize that we can neither win peace nor establish democracy by preemptively invading countries and indiscriminately killing their civilians.
Most Americans know that we can -- and realistically that we must -- do better than "more of the same." Most Americans know that our Commander-In-Chief has a profound legal obligation to act in accordance with international law, including the laws regulating land and air warfare. However, as our Commander-In-Chief, Mr. Bush has obviously betrayed that legal obligation by leading us into an unjust and illegal war of aggression. The hideously bellicose "strength" of his preemptive-war doctrine looks, from a mature perspective, exactly like machtpolitik (i.e., the scofflaw's politics of "might makes right").
And most Americans know that our Statesman-In-Chief has a profound moral duty to behave justly when conducting international relations. However, as our Statesman-In-Chief, Mr. Bush has obviously betrayed that moral duty by repeatedly authorizing his subordinates to violate the universal human-rights provisions in some of the world's most important treaties, as if he was somehow an above-the-law "King George."
People worldwide are asking: "How can Mr. Bush reasonably hope to forcibly impose democratic governance under the rule of law upon the peoples of the Middle East, when he is himself behaving like a warlord from some barbarian tribe by openly showing disdain for the rule of law in its international context?" Good question, Messieurs et mesdames!
In short, Mr. Bush has repeatedly and conclusively proven himself to be an unfit leader. Most Americans know that we're going to need a much wiser leader -- someone who can lead us forward into a better nation, and lead the nations forward into a better world. And that's why most Americans will be voting for distinguished Senator John Kerry on Tuesday! [9 -12]
Notes:
[1]. Download Richard Horton's 10-30-04 The Lancet commentary, "The War In Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities," at this URL: http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04cmt384web.pdf Or read Dr. Horton's commentary by signing up, free of charge, at TheLancet.com: http://www.thelancet.com/journal/journal.isa
[2]. Download The Lancet's 10-30-04 scientific study, "Mortality Before And After The 2003 Invasion Of Iraq: A Cluster Sample Survey," by Drs. Les Roberts, Riyahd Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, at this URL: http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf Or read this scientific study by signing up, free of charge, at The Lancet.com : http://www.thelancet.com/journal/journal.isa
[3]. As of 10-30-04, the Coalition troops have suffered a total of 1,261 casualties: http://icasualties.org/oif/
[4]. Based on the USA's population of 297 million people, and Iraq's population of 24 million people, the USA's population is proportionately 12.375 times larger than Iraq's. Therefore, 12.357 x 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians = 1,237,500 dead American civilians.
[5]. The US Civil War casualty statistics are from "Demography and War," in The Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1999; page 210 ).
[6]. The author calculated total American casualties in the USA's wars as follows: (a) 25,324 in the Revolutionary War; (b) 617,528 in the Civil War; (c) 116,708 in WW I; (d) 407,316 in WW II; (e) 54,246 in the Korean War; (f) 58,655 in the Vietnam War; (g) 79 in the Gulf War; and (h) 1,120 (as of 10-30-04) in the Iraq War. The grand total from wars (a) through (h) is 1,280,976 American casualties. He excluded US casualty statistics because they weren't unavailable for the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, or the Spanish-American War.
[7]. Read Edward Wong's 10-30-04 NYT article, "Provincial Capitol Near Fallujah Is Slipping Into Chaos," at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28ramadi.html
[8]. Read the author's 9-17-04 essay, "Was The Iraq War Legal, Or Illegal, Under International Law?", at: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article6917.htm
[9]. Michael Moore's Cannes Film Festival-winning 2004 documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," suggests that we can change our fate through political action, so the correct answer is (A). However, Errol Morris' Academy Award-winning 2003 documentary, "The Fog Of War," about 11 lessons controversial former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's learned from war, suggests that the downside of human nature is fixed, so the correct answer is (B). Hopefully, we'll know which filmmaker was correct on November 3rd.
[10]. Read Paul Harris' 9-16-04 YT article, "Iraq Is Full Of [American] WMD," at: http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=2080 While it's true that the guerrilla-war insurgents in Iraq have resorted to barbaric tactics like beheadings, and to the use of indiscriminate weapons like car bombs, their atrocities against civilians cannot justify -- and most certainly do not legitimate -- the commission of counter-atrocities by the occupiers' military forces! Moreover, the Anglo-American invasion was illegal (see #9 above), and respected international human-rights organizations have had to admonish the military occupiers repeatedly for using illegal tactics like torture inside their prisons, and for using deadly illegal weapons like radioactive Depleted-Uranium Munitions ("DUM"), euphemistically-renamed napalm bombs, and child-killing cluster bombs.
[11]. Mr. Bush uses phony trickle-down economics to pseudo-justify his policy of giving tax-incentives to wealthy corporations, so they can "outsource" even more US jobs overseas to slave-labor markets, the absurd result of which is that there ever-fewer American jobs that pay anything close to a living wage! However, if Mr. Bush is given four more years, he'll have cheap-labor conservative jobs waiting for you, your children, and your grandchildren, in the only growth sector within his pathetically-mismanaged economy. Preview that new service job now, at: http://www.EnjoyThe Draft.com
[12]. Finally, enjoy watching Mark Fiore's Halloween-spooky-yet-hilarious 10-27-04 animation, "The Final Days," at: http://www.markfiore.com/animation/days.html
-------- israel / palestine
Arafat possibly poisoned: doctors
Reuters, The New York Times
By Wafa Amr in Paris
November 1, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh30.htm
Medical tests on the ailing Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, have ruled out leukaemia or any other life-threatening condition.
"The latest tests have found that President Arafat does not suffer from any life-threatening illness and what he has is curable," an aide, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said yesterday.
Mr Arafat, 75, underwent tests and scans on Saturday at a French military hospital the day after being flown from his shell-battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Doctors are looking at a possible viral infection or poisoning, but the final test results will not be available until Wednesday.
Another aide, Mohammad Rachid, said Mr Arafat was sleeping much better, eating moderately and keeping his food down.
He had been vomiting and slipping in and out of consciousness before leaving Ramallah.
Mr Arafat was accompanied to the Percy Army Teaching Hospital in the Paris suburb of Clamart, which specialises in the treatment of blood disorders, by his wife Suha. He is expected to be joined on Wednesday by his daughter Zahwa, who spoke to him by telephone from Tunis on Saturday.
Mr Arafat, in effect confined to his offices by Israeli forces for the past 2- years, agreed to fly to France only after Israel promised to allow him to return to the West Bank after treatment.
Mr Arafat arrived at the French hospital with an abnormally low blood platelets count, a condition that can be caused by leukaemia but can also be a symptom of other serious illnesses.
French doctors and authorities have declined to comment and say they will only do so once all checks are complete.
Mr Arafat was brought to France on direct orders from President Jacques Chirac, who insists that peace will be hard to achieve if a man who has for so long enshrined the Palestinian struggle for statehood is sidelined.
Senior Palestinian figures gathered at Mr Arafat's battered West Bank compound on Saturday to show that the Palestinian leadership was still functioning. But Mr Arafat's chair was left empty in a gesture to the veteran leader.
"We call on all our people and factions to unite and work together in responsible fashion to protect our destiny and homeland," said the former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, who led the meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee.
Mr Abbas said he hoped Mr Arafat "would soon return to his people and his cause."
-------- pakistan / india
Can Pakistan Work? A Country in Search of Itself
Pervez Hoodbhoy
November/December 2004
Council on Foreign Relations
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20041101fareviewessay83611/pervez-hoodbhoy/can-pakistan-work-a-country-in-search-of-itself.html
Summary: Is Pakistan-nuclear proliferator, terrorist incubator, key U.S. ally-on the verge of collapse? In a new book, Stephen Philip Cohen rejects the most alarmist scenarios but warns that, without major reforms, Pakistan's prospects are indeed grim.
When he founded Pakistan in 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah-an impeccably dressed Westernized Muslim with Victorian manners and a secular outlook-promised the subcontinent's Muslims that they would finally be able to fulfill their cultural and civilizational destiny. Although the new nation arose from a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, and its fundamental premise was that Hindus and Muslims could never live together, its early years nevertheless held some promise of a liberal, relatively secular polity. But with time, Jinnah's Pakistan has grown weaker, more authoritarian, and increasingly theocratic. Now set to become the world's fourth most populous nation, it is all of several things: a client state of the United States yet deeply resentful of it; a breeding ground for jihad and al Qaeda as well as a key U.S. ally in the fight against international terrorism; an economy and society run for the benefit of Pakistan's warrior class, yet with a relatively free and feisty press; a country where education and science refuse to flourish but which is nevertheless a declared nuclear power; and an inward-looking society that is manifestly intolerant of minorities but that has never seen anything like the state-organized pogroms of India, Afghanistan, Iran, or China.
In The Idea of Pakistan, Stephen Philip Cohen sets out to understand this enigma of modern history. Cohen is the United States' leading analyst of South Asia, and this authoritative work of broad scope and meticulous research will surely become required reading on Pakistan. It also provides a view from the heart of the American empire, an analysis of how Washington can best advance its interests in South Asia. Cohen's facts are indisputable, his logic cold and clear, and his omissions deliberate and meaningful.
Ominous declarations of imminent chaos in Pakistan abound in the United States. Cohen aims both to raise warnings and to soothe fears. Although he acknowledges that profound problems plague both the idea and the reality of Pakistan, he distances himself from apocalyptic "failed state" scenarios. Catastrophic failure of this nuclear-armed state is surely a possibility. But Pakistan's fate will ultimately depend on whether its leaders can find an answer to the fundamental question that has plagued their fellow citizens for more than half a century: "How can we make the idea of Pakistan actually work?"
AN ARMY WITH A COUNTRY
According to a popular but rather humorless Pakistani joke, "all countries have armies, but here, an army has a country." Indeed, even when civilian governments have nominally been in charge in Pakistan, there has never been much doubt about who actually makes decisions there. In addition to holding political power, the Pakistani army controls vast commercial and industrial interests and owns massive rural and urban properties. As Cohen remarks, "regardless of what may be desirable, the army will continue to set the limits on what is possible in Pakistan."
General Pervez Musharraf, the country's current chief executive, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, and there have since been several attempts on his life. After each, the media has warned of a nuclear state careening out of control, with radical Islamists fighting to get into the driver's seat. Cohen rightly dismisses this view as alarmist. If the general were killed, the army establishment would quickly replace Musharraf with another senior officer, and various measures-the installation of former Citibank executive Shaukat Aziz as prime minister, most notably-have recently been undertaken to protect against a leadership crisis. Cohen also breaks with Musharraf's staunchest international backers, who "see him as a wise and modern leader, a secular man who is not afraid to support the West or to offer peace to India, and a man who can hold back the onrush of demagogues and Islamic extremists." Cohen notes that "no serious Pakistani analyst sees Musharraf in these terms. ... If he resembles any past Pakistani leader, it is General Yahya Khan-also a well-intentioned general who did the United States a great favor."
The question of why the warrior class was never tamed by civilian rule points back to the founding of the Pakistani state. As the respected Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad has emphasized, the civilian system of power was never regarded by Pakistan's citizens as just, appropriate, or authoritative. And despite Jinnah's declarations, the idea of Pakistan was unclear from the start. Lacking any clear basis for legitimacy or direction, the state quickly aligned with the powerful landed class: the army leadership and the economic elite joined forces to claim authority in a nation without definition or cohesion. In subsequent years, the government maintained the feudal structure of society and entered into a manifestly exploitative relationship with Pakistan's poor eastern wing (which became Bangladesh in 1971 after a short but bloody war). Even now, bonded labor is common, and many peasants live in conditions close to slavery. Politicians, with the exception of the mercurial demagogue Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, have made no attempt at reform, ignoring the hearts and minds of the masses in favor of cultivating elite favor and pursuing quick financial gain.
The result has been ideological confusion, civilian helplessness, and an environment eminently hospitable to putsches. Indeed, no elected government has completed its term in Pakistan's 57-year history. Pakistani generals express contempt for the civilian order and steadfastly hold that "what is good for the army is good for Pakistan," and Pakistani society is thoroughly militarized. Bumper stickers read, "The Finest Men Join the Pakistan Army"; tanks parade on the streets of Islamabad while jet aircraft screech overhead; discarded naval guns, artillery pieces, and fighter aircraft adorn public plazas. It is even a criminal offense to "criticize the armed forces of Pakistan or to bring them into disaffection."
The military is only one (albeit the most important) component of the wider "establishment" that runs Pakistan. Cohen calls this establishment a "moderate oligarchy" and defines it as "an informal political system that [ties] together the senior ranks of the military, the civil service, key members of the judiciary, and other elites." Membership in this oligarchy, Cohen contends, requires adherence to a common set of beliefs: that India must be countered at every turn; that nuclear weapons have endowed Pakistan with security and status; that the fight for Kashmir is unfinished business from the time of partition; that large-scale social reforms such as land redistribution are unacceptable; that the uneducated and illiterate masses deserve only contempt; that vociferous Muslim nationalism is desirable but true Islamism is not; and that Washington is to be despised but fully taken advantage of. Underlying these "core principles," one might add, is a willingness to serve power at any cost.
BLOWBACK
Pakistan was put under U.S. sanctions after its nuclear tests in May 1998 and is now frequently referred to as a nuclear proliferator motivated by radical Islamist visions. But, as Cohen points out, Pakistan's nuclear dreams probably began 40 years ago when-under the aegis of the Central Treaty Organization-the U.S. Army initiated large-scale training of Iranian, Turkish, and Pakistani officers in armor, artillery, and other technical services. Hundreds of Pakistani officers attended U.S. schools between 1955 and 1958. "There was an important American contribution in the form of periodic visits by American nuclear experts to the Staff College in Quetta," says Cohen. During a visit to the Staff College, he noted that the school's official history refers to "a 1957 visit by a U.S. nuclear-warfare team that 'proved most useful and resulted in modification and revision of the old syllabus' to bring it into line with the 'fresh data' given by the team." In Cohen's opinion, "present-day Pakistani nuclear planning and doctrine is descended directly from this early exposure to Western nuclear strategizing; it very much resembles American thinking of the mid-1950s with its acceptance of first-use and the tactical use of nuclear weapons against onrushing conventional forces."
Cohen brings this new, and quite surprising, insight to U.S.-Pakistan nuclear history, but one might have expected a more detailed examination of this critical area, rather than a few quick comments. It is, in fact, a subject worthy of another book from him.
Pakistan's nuclear program began in earnest after India tested a "peaceful nuclear device" in 1974. Washington initially succeeded in thwarting Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, persuading France not to sell Pakistan a reprocessing plant. But Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist employed by a European consortium that enriched uranium for nuclear power, forged ahead, surreptitiously acquiring classified information and materials and passing them to Bhutto's government. Using reverse engineering, Pakistan successfully built and began operating a uranium enrichment facility. By the time Bhutto was overthrown and hanged by his successor, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the nuclear program was in full swing.
The U.S. response has been a series of flips and flops, largely determined by immediate political needs rather than long-term strategic thinking. President Jimmy Carter imposed sanctions on Islamabad but waived them following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. A series of presidential waivers allowed U.S. economic and military assistance to continue flowing through 1990, as a reward for Pakistan's anti-Soviet efforts in Afghanistan. This was despite the fact that Pakistan disclosed in 1984 that it could enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and in 1987 that it could assemble a nuclear device. Even as the president of the United States solemnly informed Congress that Pakistan was not seeking to make nuclear weapons, anyone in Islamabad or Rawalpindi could hail a taxicab and ask to be taken to what was (and is) known as the "bomb factory." Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington toughened its stance on Pakistan's nuclear program and, after the 1998 nuclear tests (which were in response to similar moves by India), imposed harsh new sanctions. But soon after September 11, 2001-when Islamabad regained the strategic significance it had lost at the end of the Cold War-Washington dropped all nuclear-related sanctions, in part as a reward for Musharraf's decision to join the U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban.
Throughout this period, it was never a secret that Pakistan was and continues to be host to an array of radical Islamist groups. These pathological social and religious formations have a variety of aims-some target the American empire, whereas others focus on the more limited goal of "liberating" Kashmir or eliminating religious rivals-but all trace their origins to the U.S.-backed Afghan jihad, which over the course of a decade profoundly affected Pakistani society, culture, and politics and unleashed developments that would have dire consequences down the road. "During the first Afghan war, the [Inter-Services Intelligence agency's] strategy was to support hard-line Islamic groups, and with American concurrence, the ISI characterized the war against the Soviet intruders as a religious struggle against atheistic communism," Cohen writes. "Again with American encouragement, young Muslims were recruited to the 'cause' from the Arab and Islamic world, inadvertently creating a cohort that was to eventually form al Qaeda."
Cohen uses the words "concurrence" and "encouragement," but these are unsatisfactory descriptions: it is clear who the senior partner in this arrangement was. As the junior partner, Pakistan received a support package from Washington that included help with organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance. Of these, the last was by far the most important, serving as it did to attract men and materiel from the Arab world and beyond to the jihad in Afghanistan.
CIA funds went to buy advertisements inviting hardened and ideologically dedicated men to fight in Afghanistan, and a $50 million U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) grant, administered by the University of Nebraska, Omaha, paid for textbooks that exhorted Afghan children "to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs." These were approved by the Taliban for use in madrassas (Islamic schools) and are still widely available in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Radical Islam went into overdrive as its superpower ally, the United States, funneled support to the mujahideen. Ronald Reagan feted jihadist leaders on the White House lawn, and the U.S. press lionized them. When Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in the face of the U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi-Egyptian alliance in 1988, a chapter of history seemed complete. But the costs of this victory revealed themselves over the course of the next decade. By the mid-1990s, it was clear that the victorious alliance had unleashed a dynamic beyond its control.
WHITHER PAKISTAN?
"Pakistan has adapted to changing strategic circumstances," Cohen observes, "by 'renting' itself out to powerful states, notably the United States, but also Saudi Arabia and China." He warns that the September 11 windfall and the al Qaeda card will, beyond a certain point, cease to guarantee cash and support. And although economic growth is currently strong, Pakistan has a fundamentally weak economy that is deeply dependent on remittances from overseas workers. Low-tech textile exports are the mainstay of its industrial production, and its work force does not meet the requirements of a modern economy. The army, meanwhile, is strong enough to prevent state failure but not imaginative enough to push through major changes. In the long run, minimal economic opportunity, a booming birth rate, intensive urbanization, a failed educational system, and a hostile regional environment will result in a large, young, and ill-educated population that has few prospects for economic advancement and is susceptible to political mobilization by radicals.
Cohen ventures several reasoned-and reasonable-guesses as to Pakistan's trajectory, focusing his attention on the forces driving it in different directions. He thinks that the present system is likely to continue, but that certain trends (the rise of radical Islamist groups, revived ethnic and regional separatism) and possible disruptions (the loss of U.S. or Chinese support, a major war with India, a series of assassinations) could yet transform it.
An Islamist revolution is unlikely, but the gradual strengthening of Islamist parties will certainly start to affect the government's makeup. One possible scenario is the return of a military-civilian coalition government similar to that of Zia-ul-Haq, united by nominal adherence to Islamic doctrine. Of course, Pakistan's history does offer plenty of examples of leaders inviting disaster by making fundamentally wrong choices, so more extreme scenarios-civil war, the triumph of Islamist radicalism, the return of outright authoritarianism-can never be ruled out.
In the worst case, Pakistan would simply come apart, spewing nuclear technology and terrorists in all directions. What can be done to prevent such a disastrous outcome? How can the idea of Pakistan be made to work? A number of key reforms-some touched on, though not explored, by Cohen-are necessary.
First, Musharraf must be forced to take seriously his call for "enlightened moderation." He has, to the relief of liberal Pakistanis, sought accommodation with India, softened his stance on Kashmir, cracked down on Islamist terrorism at home, and begun to negotiate the revision of blasphemy and anti-woman laws. But as Najam Sethi, the editor of an influential Lahore weekly, remarks, "the momentum of change is too slow and awkward and unsure to constitute a critical and irreversible mass." Sethi emphasizes two especially critical areas in which Musharraf must do more: packing up the jihadists, which means accepting that they are not the solution to the Kashmir issue, and reducing the influence of Islamist parties by facilitating the rise of moderate mainstream parties in free elections.
This latter goal points to the need for broad political reform in Pakistan to build responsible civilian leadership while keeping the military at bay. Cohen worries especially about declining U.S. influence over the Pakistani army, which he cites as a reason for growing radicalism in its ranks. But it is a mistake to think that anti-U.S. sentiment in the military stems from insufficient contact with its U.S. counterpart. Anti-Americanism reflects the general tension between the United States and the Islamic world, and more contact will not do much good, as is evidenced by the fact that, among the senior officers forcibly retired by Musharraf after his U-turn in Afghanistan, were those who had spent extended periods of time training in the United States. It is also a mistake to think that contacts with the U.S. military have historically fostered liberal and democratic beliefs in the Pakistan army.
Political reform must begin with the reversal of the legacy of Zia-ul-Haq, who set out to purge Pakistan of "the scourge of politics." He and his successors succeeded in depriving the Pakistani people of their means of self-expression and collective action, and popular politics at the national level has disappeared along with Pakistan's once-thriving trade unions, student groups, and peasant collectives. Thirty years ago, university students noisily argued over ideological positions and competed for votes in student elections. Today, there is no voting and no legitimate student government-just Islamic sectarian movements and groups defined by ethnicity pitted against one another. With Islamism as the only outlet for political involvement, these students are prime candidates for membership in extremist organizations. Unless political organizations are once again allowed to organize locally and nationally and intelligence agencies stop harassing critics of state policies, this "depoliticization" will push Pakistan further down the path toward instability.
The greatest threat to Pakistan's future may be its abysmal education system. Pakistani schools-and not just madrassas-are churning out fiery zealots, fueled with a passion for jihad and martyrdom. The obstacles to reform are great. For example, recent street rampages by Islamists forced Musharraf's former minister of education, Zubaida Jalal, to declare herself a fundamentalist and denounce as unacceptable school textbooks that do not include Quranic verses on jihad.
The United States, along with the United Kingdom and the European Union, has recently poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Pakistani educational system-but with minimal effect. Usaid officials in Pakistan have shown little inclination or desire to engage with the government on the issue of eliminating jihad and militarism from school books. Indeed, rather than calling Musharraf's government on the continuing espousal of jihadist doctrine, the White House, out of either ignorance or compromise, even praised former Education Minister Jalal for her "reforms." Jalal's successor, General Javed Ashraf Qazi, is a former intelligence chief known for his ruthless tactics. It therefore appears that Musharraf's educational curriculum will go unchanged.
This difficulty, of course, reflects the underlying problems of Pakistan's government. Aware of its thin legitimacy and fearful of taking on powerful religious forces, no reigning government has made a serious attempt at curricular or educational reform, quietly allowing future minds to be molded by fanatics. But without such critical reforms, the long-term prospects for Pakistan are anything but comforting.
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ElBaradei Presses N.Korea, Iran on Nuclear Threat
(Reuters)
Nov 1, 2004
By Evelyn Leopold
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041101/wl_nm/nuclear_un_dc_3
UNITED NATIONS - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Monday pressed North Korea (news - web sites) to come clean on its nuclear program, told Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and said U.N. inspectors should return to Iraq (news - web sites).
In his annual speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said North Korea continued "to pose a serious challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation regime" and that the IAEA could not "provide any level of assurance about the non-diversion of nuclear material."
U.S. officials say Pyongyang has one or two nuclear weapons already plus material for another six bombs.
The latest crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions began in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a secret uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea now denies having such a program, and has demanded energy aid and diplomatic concessions in return for freezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program.
In Iran, ElBaradei said that the IAEA had made some progress but that Tehran needed to suspend all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities as a confidence-building measure.
"I have continued to stress to Iran that, in light of serious international concerns surrounding its nuclear program, it should do its utmost to build confidence through these voluntary measures." ElBaradei said, adding that Iran's cooperation had improved "appreciably."
"We agree completely and we hope his assessment that they will comply is right," Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, told Reuters.
Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, Iran's deputy U.N. ambassador, said Tehran's program was aimed at producing fuel for atomic reactors generating electricity.
The same process can be used to make atomic bombs and
Tehran risks being reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it does not freeze enrichment before an IAEA board meeting on Nov. 25.
In Tehran, a senior official told Reuters on Monday that Iran could agree to freeze uranium enrichment for six months at most and only if the European Union (news - web sites) abandons its demand that Tehran scrap enrichment for good.
Danesh-Yazdi said Tehran would cooperate with the IAEA but said actions against Iran were politically motivated. He also said it was "plausible" that contamination found in Iran had not resulted from uranium enrichment.
MONITORING IN IRAQ
ElBaradei also said Iraq should again be placed under U.N. monitoring, as it was under former President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
He did not mention directly the controversy over missing explosives in Iraq, which has featured in the U.S. election campaign after he reported that nearly 380 tons of high explosives monitored by the IAEA were no longer at a military facility south of Baghdad.
This fueled accusations against President Bush (news - web sites) that he had mishandled military operations after last year's U.S.-led invasion.
ElBaradei expressed hope that the IAEA would be allowed to resume monitoring in Iraq as soon as security allowed "particularly in view of the dual-use items that have been under IAEA custody in Iraq that would be susceptible to misuse"
He said the IAEA, had "found no evidence of the revival of nuclear activities," a statement he also made before the Iraq invasion. "Naturally, the international community is reassured that these findings have since been validated," he added.
The Bush administration based its case for the invasion partly on an assertion, now been shown to be false, that Iraq had was aggressively pursuing nuclear arms.
In response Grenell said, "Hindsight is always 20-20. We would remind the IAEA that the Security Council had 17 resolutions demanding Iraq account for missing weapons materials."
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Vietnam veteran seeks Agent Orange benefits
November 01, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041101-122453-5757r.htm
Dear Sgt. Shaft:
I am writing on behalf of my husband, who served in the Army and went to Vietnam for one year during 1971-72. During his tour of duty, he was exposed to Agent Orange. Due to this exposure he is constantly itching and there are rashes and redness. He has tried all types of medications, but the problems still persist. When he contacted VA some time ago, they informed him that he must die before receiving any type of benefits. They then forwarded to him 10 or 11 pages of documents to complete. He is almost near retirement from the U.S. Postal Service. Is there any information that you can give us concerning Agent Orange and veterans of Vietnam. It seems like the Persian Gulf and Iraq war veterans are able to get benefits.
Thank you,
Sandra J
Dear Sandra J:
I regret the perceived attitude of a representative of the Department of Veterans Affairs that seemed to suggest there would be entitlement to benefits only after your husband died. That is quite incorrect.
Every veteran who "stepped foot" in Vietnam is presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange. Exposure qualifies Vietnam veterans for disability compensation when they manifest symptoms and disease that are attributable to Agent Orange.
I hope that those lengthy forms sent to your husband were claim forms to submit to the Veterans Benefits Administration to have his problems considered for service-connected benefits. The VA will most likely schedule a medical examination to evaluate the problems and to determine their relationship to military service.
The benefits and entitlements available to all veterans are determined on a case-by-case basis. Some benefits are very easy to determine; others are more complex.
I suggest you and others interested in additional information visit the VA Web site, www.va.gov, and look for the link to Agent Orange.
Shaft notes
The Sarge was moved by the recent ceremony to commemorate Mental Illness Awareness Week at the VA Medical Center in Washington. This is an important national observance that was established by presidential proclamation in January 1990 to focus attention on the high incidence of mental illness in America. Also addressing the audience were veterans describing their constant struggle to overcome the torment of mental illness.
These are excerpts from the keynote remarks by VA Deputy Secretary Gordon H. Mansfield:
"The observance encourages people with mental illness to seek treatment for mental health problems with the same urgency as they seek treatment for problems with their physical health.
"Mental illness is a challenge that millions of Americans face every day. Many of these illnesses are disabling.
"The U.S. Surgeon General's report on mental health finds that about one in five Americans experience a mental disorder in the course of a year.
"Mental illness affects almost every American family. These illnesses can affect a person from any cultural, racial or ethnic background. And just as they affect the individual, they also affect our families and the communities in which we live.
"Following the presidential proclamation of 1990, the decade of the 1990s was designated the 'Decade of the Brain.' And during that decade, we expanded our understanding of how the brain works. Genetic discoveries have revealed that more than half of the human genome is composed of brain-related cells, and these genes influence a range of behaviors.
"New scanning technologies have enabled us to observe brain activity as it happens. So brain research is continually moving us closer to sound medical solutions for treating and living with severe mental illness.
"Despite these and other discoveries about the brain, we still have much to learn. And the need for continued research is compelling - millions of Americans are affected each year by disorders of the brain.
"We must constantly remind ourselves that the goal of this transformation in VA's mental health care system is healing and recovery.
"We are now in the decade of recovery. In order to move forward with this transformation, we must never underestimate the potential of the human spirit ... for healing and for renewal.
"For us to instill and impart hope to others, we must all of us in the health care system harbor and nurture that same hope.
"And when we do, we embrace a profound truth: that people can heal; that people can change.
"The narratives of recovery that you heard this morning from seven of our veterans are powerful testimonies of hope and renewal.
"It has been said before that hope has the power to sustain. And hope lays the groundwork for healing to begin.
"We are now in the decade of recovery. And recovery is all about healing.
"To meet the challenge of mental illness, we must defeat the stigma that is associated with it.
"Stigma isolates people, and discourages them from reaching out for the treatment that might bring them relief from mental illness.
"Stigma prevents many people from seeking help out of the fear that the confidentiality of their diagnosis or treatment will be compromised.
"The power of stigma is such that it often prevents people from acknowledging their own mental health conditions.
"Stigma takes many forms. It can appear as simple fear or distrust. Or it may manifest itself as prejudice and discrimination.
"Stigma can be stereotyping. It can be a few thoughtless comments that undo months or years of work.
"It also causes many people to avoid finding a job or having a social life.
"We must do all that we can to ensure that each and every VA employee understands what mental illness is."
• Send letters to Sgt. Shaft, c/o John Fales, PO Box 65900, Washington, D.C., 20035-5900; fax 301/622-3330; call 202/257-5446; or e-mail sgtshaft@bavf.org.
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Copters Maxed in Counterinsurgency War
Nov 1, 2004
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=9&u=/ap/20041101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopter_war
TAJI, Iraq - The U.S. military is increasingly turning to attack helicopters to battle guerrillas in Iraq (news - web sites), using tactics closer to those from Vietnam or Israel than the Gulf war formations that blasted Iraqi tanks.
The Army is also pushing its fleets of transport helicopters as hard as it can, ferrying U.S. troops and Iraqi leaders by air, rather than letting them drive the country's ambush-prone roads.
"When we fly, soldiers don't die," said Col. Jim McConville, who commands the 1st Cavalry Division's aviation brigade. "We're basically flying as much as we can. And we can't fly them enough."
Since February, McConville's 4th Brigade, headquartered on this dust-blown air base just north of Baghdad, has flown 50,000 combined hours in its nearly 100 helicopters, the highest airborne rate in division history.
Helicopters have emerged as the most important weapon in the U.S. air war in Iraq. Pairs of Apache, Kiowa and Marine Cobra attack helicopters often act as the eyes - and arms - for small bands of ground troops.
And they are expected to be critical to the forthcoming attempt to retake guerrilla-held Fallujah.
Helicopters have proven themselves in dozens of counterinsurgency battles, with pilots radioing directions or firing rockets, allowing ground troops to overcome ambushes or blocked streets.
"It's an adrenaline rush, guys flying 140 miles per hour just above the trees and firing rockets," said McConville, whose own helicopters have been rocked by rocket-propelled grenades or punched with bullets.
The Black Hawk, which entered service in 1979, has become a taxi for soldiers and contractors hopping from the safety of one U.S. base to another.
"If everyone had a choice no one would drive," said McConville, 45, of Quincy, Mass. "But there's not enough aircraft to fly every soldier who wants to fly."
The ominous thumping sound of American helicopters roaring over Baghdad's rooftops is becoming as emblematic of this war as it was of Vietnam.
In February, an Iraqi reporter asked Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the occupation forces, what he would recommend Iraqi mothers tell their children frightened by low-flying helicopters.
"What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom," Kimmitt said.
American helicopters provoke dread among insurgents as well, McConville said. The shooting often stops when one shows up.
"The Iraqis are afraid of helicopters," McConville said. "We think they're pretty deadly. But they think they're a lot more deadly than they are."
The 1st Cavalry, whose pioneering of Vietnam "Air Cav" operations was featured in the 1979 movie "Apocalypse Now," has seen two of its helicopters shot down. Two other 1st Cavalry Kiowas collided and crashed, for unknown reasons, in October.
Heavy armor, like the Black Hawk's Kevlar flooring, helps bring the machines back after they've been hit.
"They'll come in with holes and we'll repair them," said Maj. John Agor, 42, striding through a Taji hangar filled with disassembled Black Hawks and Apaches. "More likely than not we'll put them back into battle that night."
Helicopter tactics here resemble those that emerged at the end of the Vietnam war, when the Viet Cong acquired Soviet-made SA-7 missiles that were able to pick off high-flying choppers. U.S. pilots began flying low and fast, skimming the trees and fields in a technique known as "mapping the earth."
When the Apache gunship entered service, tactics evolved again.
The Army trained pilots to hover behind front lines and blast tanks with long-range missiles. Apache pilots did just that in the Gulf war.
But Iraqi insurgents have no front lines or tanks. After rebels with shoulder-fired missiles took down a pair of helicopters, including a Chinook transport in November that killed 16 U.S. troops, the Army stopped flying at high altitudes.
"We used to hover around. We can't do that now because you get shot down," McConville said. "People thought it was safer to come down low and risk small arms fire and wires."
So the Army went back to mapping the earth, with improvements. Helicopters have better armor and are loaded with precision weapons and night targeting systems, including those that can detect a person's body heat.
Apaches and Kiowas operate in street battles much the same way as in the Israeli military: rocketing single cars or buildings sheltering insurgents.
"You try to shoot them in an alleyway or shoot one car that's moving along a street," said Capt. Ryan Welch, 29, an Apache pilot with the 4th Brigade. "It's not something we used to train for."
The urban fighting puts big decisions into the hand of a 20-something flier.
When a 1st Cavalry Apache team fired on a disabled Bradley armored vehicle in August, among those killed was an Al-Arabiya television reporter who was broadcasting live. The widely viewed carnage brought criticism on the U.S. military. McConville said his pilots are well aware of their potential for instant infamy.
The Army relies so heavily on its helicopters that some are being flown at rates beyond military recommendations.
Lt. Col. Mike Lundy, commander of the 1st Cavalry's Kiowa regiment, said each of his armed Kiowas flies around 105 hours per month, well over the recommended 65 hours.
Major overhauls normally done every two years are now needed every six months, said Agor, the maintenance chief.
In the case of the Apache, the interval between complete overhauls been pushed back from once every 250 hours to once every 500 hours, said Agor.
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Japanese cities grow uneasy as U.S. military weighs shifting troops
Nov 01, 2004
By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10020076.htm
SAGAMIHARA, Japan - Half a world away from the debates at the Pentagon over how to realign U.S. military forces in East Asia, Mayor Isao Ogawa lays out his own aerial photos of a local U.S. base, Camp Zama, and wonders aloud how his city might cope with more U.S. soldiers.
"There is not enough space for them," Ogawa said, noting the dense urban growth around the camp, not far from Japan's famed Mount Fuji.
Japan and the United States are in the throes of evaluating their defense alliance, and the exercise is bringing anxiety to cities like this one. Few, if any, mayors want U.S. troops camped nearby, fearing noise, air crashes and crime, even as Japan's citizenry generally supports the U.S. security umbrella over the world's second biggest economy.
The municipal uneasiness is made more acute because Japan and the United States have agreed to shift some U.S. military presence from Okinawa, the far southern island, to other sites in Japan, putting a number of localities on watch.
City councils in Sagamihara and Zama, two adjoining cities with a combined population of 750,000 people, recently passed resolutions strongly opposing putting more troops in Camp Zama, the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Japan.
Ogawa, a white-haired mayor with an easy smile, came up with his own action plan. He delivered letters of protest to U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker, met with the foreign minister, the chief of Japan's defense agency and pestered Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's office with requests for meetings.
"I wanted to ask the prime minister, `Koizumi-san, what are you thinking? You said we cannot overly burden Okinawa,'" Ogawa recalled. So will more U.S. troops be brought to Sagamihara? Is it true that Camp Zama will double in size with a proposed move of the headquarters of the 1st U.S. Army Corps from Washington state to Japan, bringing some 500 to 800 officers?
Ogawa got no definitive answers, underscoring a dilemma for local officials: Such weighty strategic decisions are usually made at the highest government levels with little consultation below.
The debate over redistribution of U.S. forces in Japan comes amid a broader discussion within Japan about its vulnerability in an uncertain East Asia and a loosening of constraints on its self-defense forces.
Tokyo earlier this year sent 1,000 troops in a noncombat humanitarian role to Iraq, and since April they've been based in the southern city of Al Samawah.
Even as some Koizumi opponents argued that such a deployment was unconstitutional, it signaled a possible sea change in Japan. The evolution began in 1998, experts say, when North Korea test-fired a Taepodong-1 ballistic missile over Japan, stunning the nation. Since then, North Korea has boasted of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Japan is now working with the United States to develop a missile defense system.
Last month, in a sign of sometimes-testy relations with Beijing, an advisory board to Koizumi suggested that China should be viewed as a potential military threat. There's talk of turning the self-defense forces into a regular army.
"In the last few years, the Japanese have come to understand that they can talk about this without increasing fear in the neighborhood and tearing the nation apart," said Brad Glosserman, director of research at the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The more immediate decision, however, is how to redistribute the 53,000 U.S. troops in Japan, about half of them stationed on Okinawa, the major U.S. forward logistics base in the Western Pacific, close to potential flash points in Korea and Taiwan and a favored spot for jungle warfare training. The goal is to relieve pressure on Okinawa.
Anti-U.S. tensions on Okinawa have soared since 1995, when three U.S. soldiers gang-raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl. Since then, other crimes have been increasing.
Anger surged again in mid-August after a U.S. CH-53D military transport helicopter crashed into a university building in a densely urban area near Okinawa's Futenma air station. No civilians were hurt. But an anti-U.S. bases protest on Sept. 12 drew some 30,000 people, the biggest in nearly a decade.
On Oct. 12, Koizumi told parliament that new talks with the United States on reshaping the defense alliance would focus on U.S. protection for Japan against modern threats and on "reducing the excessive burden on local residents, such as the people in Okinawa."
The talks got off to a poor start. U.S. officials made a series of proposals for specific movements, and the Japanese generally rejected them.
"We perhaps began in the wrong spot," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in Tokyo, noting discussion about "individual locations ... rather than starting from a philosophical discussion of how we, that is Japan and the U.S., saw our alliance in say 15 years or 20 years."
Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to set a more positive tone when he visited Tokyo on Sunday.
In a roundtable with Japanese reporters on Sunday, Powell urged them not to focus on "what's going to happen to this airbase or that airbase or how many troops are leaving or how many troops are coming."
Powell said talks between Washington and Tokyo are focusing on new threats to the stability of East Asia and how to counter them.
"It is in everyone's strategic interest for there to be a strong U.S. presence in Asia and that includes a significant presence in Japan," Powell said.
The Japanese press is awash in different proposals about U.S. troop realignment, including the suggestion that 2,000 Marines from Okinawa may be sent to a training range in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, and that the U.S. Air Force headquarters functions at Tokyo's Yokota Air Base would be relocated to Guam.
Although no decision has been made, Camp Zama may find itself the new headquarters of the U.S. 1st Army Corps, which from its base at Fort Lewis, Wash., oversees deployments of 40,000 active duty and reserves, including some operating as far away as the Middle East.
"Local people are really afraid that that headquarters will move here," said Setsuko Kawarazaki, a 56-year-old housewife shopping at a local supermarket.
Ogawa, the mayor, pointed on a map to show how residents have to travel a long way around Camp Zama to run errands because of the lack of roads traversing the base. Camp Zama comprises three parcels of land with a total area of 1,255.3 acres. It has 1,200 U.S. soldiers, according to Lt. Col. John Amberg, the public affairs officer for U.S. Army Japan, rising to 3,500 when dependents, teachers and civilian employees are included.
Ogawa said moving the 1st Army Corps headquarters to Camp Zama would go against a 1960 U.S. defense treaty with Japan that limits U.S. forces there to ensuring "peace and security in the Far East" - not the Middle East where 1st Army Corps units are sometimes active.
Experts said the treaty language had been interpreted in increasingly malleable ways and that Tokyo may offer generous subsidies to soften opposition from cities.
"This is an opportunity for them (municipal officials) to bargain," said Sheila Smith, a scholar of U.S. security issues in East Asia at the East West Center, a research center in Honolulu. "So they can say, `If we get X number of forces, then we want this and that.'"
-------- war crimes
U.N. Court: Milosevic May Defend Himself
November 1, 2004
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_CRIMES_MILOSEVIC?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Slobodan Milosevic can once again lead his own defense at the U.N. war crimes tribunal but must accept a standby lawyer in case he becomes too ill to continue, appeals judges ruled Monday.
The compromise decision represents a rare courtroom victory for the former Yugoslav president and promises to break an impasse in his 33-month-old trial on charges of war crimes, including genocide.
Trial judges at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, imposed a defense lawyer against Milosevic's will in September after independent doctors said the 63-year-old defendant could be at risk of a heart attack.
Milosevic had defended himself for 2 1/2 years and cross-examined hundreds of prosecution witnesses, but his trial was delayed frequently when he was ill with flu or had dangerously high blood pressure.
The written ruling by the five-judge panel partially reversed the trial court's decision, saying that "when he is physically capable of doing so, Milosevic will take the lead in his case."
Milosevic will be allowed to lead his defense, "choosing which witnesses to present, questioning those witnesses ... giving a closing argument when the defense rests and making the basic strategic decisions about the presentation of his defense," the ruling said.
Prosecutors had urged the judges not to let Milosevic resume defending himself, saying his politicized statements show he is unfit as a lawyer, and his reappointment would lead to more delays because of his ill health.
"I fear Milosevic could gain by trying again to decide for himself when he is coming to court," Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said Monday at a news conference in The Hague. "Let's see what will happen."
Milosevic is charged with more than 60 counts of war crimes for his role during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
In September, the trial court appointed British lawyer Steven Kay to take over the defense. Kay had observed the entire trial as a "friend of the court" - invited by judges to help ensure the case proceeded fairly.
But Kay's position was made unworkable when Milosevic refused to speak to him or participate further in the proceedings.
Most of Milosevic's scheduled witnesses refused to come to The Hague unless the former president was allowed to defend himself, and the trial ground to a halt.
In October, Kay asked to quit, saying that trying to defend a hostile client was impossible.
People were "kidding themselves, making believe that what is happening here is a proper defense," Kay told appeals judges.
Trial judges have not yet ruled on Kay's request, which may now be withdrawn. Milosevic's trial is in recess and due to resume on Nov. 9.
Shortly before Kay was appointed, Milosevic made a two-day opening statement rejecting the charges against him as baseless and claiming his trial is politically motivated by his enemies in the United States, the United Nations and NATO.
Milosevic studied law but has no previous courtroom experience.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Military tribunals to begin for 2 Guantanamo detainees
November 01, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041101-122503-3888r.htm
U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - The first military tribunals conducted by the United States since World War II begin here today for two al Qaeda suspects.
The tribunals created by the Bush administration to try enemy combatants in the war on terror will begin with a round of hearings on motions filed in the cases of two of the four men charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes by serving in al Qaeda.
The hearings will move the cases of David M. Hicks, an Australian, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni and former chauffeur for Osama bin Laden, closer to the trial phase despite a possibility that the entire tribunal system may be dumped if President Bush does not defeat Sen. John Kerry tomorrow.
Sen. John Edwards, Mr. Kerry's running mate, has been quoted saying that if the Massachusetts Democrat were elected, his administration would do away with the tribunals - called military commissions by the Pentagon - which Mr. Bush authorized in November 2001.
Mr. Kerry's alternative plan for dealing with "enemy combatants" is unknown, although Mr. Edwards has said it would be based on the military court-martial system rather than special commissions, which were last used at the end of World War II to try and execute a group of Nazi saboteurs arrested in New York.
Military officials here said yesterday that they're pushing forward with the commissions until told otherwise, but indicated a preparedness to make changes if so ordered by a new commander in chief.
"The commissions are going to proceed; detention and interrogations are going to proceed," said Army Col. David McWilliams, a spokesman for the commissions. "At the time that our leadership, whether current or new, determines we need a change in policy and direction, then we'll make a change in direction."
Hearings beginning today will focus on a small mountain of motions filed by defense attorneys for the enemy combatants challenging everything from the charges in the cases to the very foundations, legality and jurisdiction of the military commissions.
"This is where the defense is challenging every aspect of the commission," said Navy Lt. Susan McGarvey, a spokeswoman for the system.
Mr. Hicks has been imprisoned for nearly three years, and the hearings today will focus on motions filed by his defense team, including one to dismiss his case on grounds that he has been denied a speedy trial.
One senior official involved with the commissions said that of the dozens of motions filed in the Hicks case, certain "show stoppers" would be addressed first, including one in which the defense seeks to bring in expert witnesses to testify on matters such as international law.
-------- drug war
The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die
The war on Colombia's drug lords is losing ground to an herbicide-resistant supershrub. Is it a freak of nature - or a genetically modified secret weapon?
wired.com
By Joshua Davis
November 2004
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html?pg=1&topic=columbia&topic_set=
I've got 23 ziplock bags filled with coca leaves laid out on the rickety table in front of me. It's been seven hours since the leaves were picked, and they're already secreting the raw alkaloid that gives cocaine its kick. The smell is pungently woody, but that may just be the mold growing on the walls of this dingy hotel room in the southern Colombian jungle. Somewhere down the hall, a woman is moaning with increasing urgency. I've barricaded the door in case the paramilitaries arrive.
I drop half a milliliter of water into a plastic test tube and mash a piece of a leaf inside. As the water tints green, I notice that my hands are shaking. I haven't slept for two days, and the Marxist guerrillas have this town encircled. But what's really making me nervous is the green liquid in the tube.
Over the past three years, rumors of a new strain of coca have circulated in the Colombian military. The new plant, samples of which are spread out on this table, goes by different names: supercoca, la millonaria. Here in the southern region it's known as Boliviana negra. The most impressive characteristic is not that it produces more leaves - though it does - but that it is resistant to glyphosate. The herbicide, known by its brand name, Roundup, is the key ingredient in the US-financed, billion-dollar aerial coca fumigation campaign that is a cornerstone of America's war on drugs.
One possible explanation: The farmers of the region may have used selective breeding to develop a hardier strain of coca. If a plant happened to demonstrate herbicide resistance, it would be more widely cultivated, and clippings would be either sold or, in many cases, given away or even stolen by other farmers. Such a peer-to-peer network could, over time, result in a coca crop that can withstand large-scale aerial spraying campaigns.
But experts in herbicide resistance suspect that there is another, more intriguing possibility: The coca plant may have been genetically modified in a lab. The technology is fairly trivial. In 1996, Monsanto commercialized its patented Roundup Ready soybean - a genetically modified plant impervious to glyphosate. The innovation ushered in an era of hyperefficient soybean production: Farmers were able to spray entire fields, killing all the weeds and leaving behind a thriving soybean crop. The arrival of Roundup Ready coca would have a similar effect - except that in this case, it would be the US doing the weed killing for the drug lords. Whether its resistance came from selective breeding or genetic modification, the new strain poses a significant foreign-policy challenge to the US. How Washington responds depends on how the plant became glyphosate resistant. That's why I'm here in the jungle - to test for the new coca. I've brought along a mobile kit used to detect the presence of the Roundup Ready gene in soybean samples. If the tests are inconclusive, my backup plan is to smuggle the leaves to Colombia's capital, Bogotá, and have their DNA sequenced in a lab.
In my hotel room, I put the swizzle stick-sized test strip into the tube filled with mashed Boliviana negra. The green water snakes up the strip. If the midsection turns red, I'll know that the drug lords have genetically engineered the plant and beaten the US at its own game. If it doesn't, it'll mean that Colombia's farmers have outwitted 21st-century technology with an agricultural technique that's been around for 10,000 years.
I first learned about the possibility of herbicide-resistant cocaine eight weeks before I arrived in South America. I was having a quiet Sunday brunch at home in California with a few friends and their Colombian guest. It was a beautiful day; we sat on the deck and chatted about upcoming vacation plans over waffles and grapefruit juice.
The conversation changed when the guest began talking about how he'd spent three years working in the military intelligence branch of the Colombian army, which has been waging a civil war against the guerrillas for four decades. His main assignment was to prevent insurgents from importing weapons and military technology.
After the US helped the Colombian military dismantle the Medellín and Cali cocaine cartels in the '90s, the guerrillas moved in and took over much of the drug trade. By the late '90s, rebels controlled more than a third of the country and had the financial clout to intensify the war and protect their newfound position as narcotraffickers. It's an extremely lucrative business. The coke habit in the US alone was worth $35 billion in 2000 - about $10 billion more than Microsoft brought in that year.
But the most intriguing development he mentioned was regular reports of Roundup Ready coca. "We started to hear about this plant three years ago," he said. "We understood then that the spraying was not killing it, but nobody wants to talk about it because it might put an end to American aid money."
US aid to Colombia totaled more than $750 million last year and has been flooding in since 2000, when Congress approved the Clinton administration's Plan Colombia, a regional anti-narcotics package. About 20 percent of the money was devoted to maintaining a fleet of crop dusters and support planes that make almost daily sorties over the Colombian countryside. (The rest of the money went to economic support, military aid, and police training.) The crop dusters fly high, out of artillery range, until they reach a designated coca field, and then descend to spray the plants with a coating of Roundup. The concept is simple: Kill the coca and there will be no cocaine.
The day after our brunch, I looked up the Herbicide Resistance Action Committee and spoke with Ian Heap, the committee's chair. Heap is a global herbicide watchdog. If a farmer in Thailand notes that a certain weed is surviving repeated herbicide applications, local scientists will collect a sample and ship it to Corvallis, Oregon, where Heap runs a private laboratory. He is funded primarily by herbicide manufacturers who want to know how effective their products are. I figured he would know something about the reported resistance in coca. "So they've finally done it," he said with a breezy Australian accent. "I've been waiting for a call like this for a long time."
Heap explained that few people knew how to genetically manipulate plants until the early '90s. Then suddenly, even undergraduates were learning the techniques. At the same time, scientific papers were published that identified CP4, a gene responsible for glyphosate resistance. By the late '90s, it's easy to imagine the narcos hiring one unscrupulous scientist to tinker with coca. "Cocaine dealers have a lot of money to do the convincing," Heap said. "Genetically modifying the coca plant is the most obvious defense against fumigation. If I were a drug lord, it's what I would do."
Heap suspects that the US government might keep such a development quiet. The herbicide would still be effective against older, more widely planted coca strains, and, for a while at least, Colombia's eradication campaign would continue to show impressive results. But eventually, as the modified strain spread, coca cultivation would rise again, and spraying would have no effect. In the interim, farmers growing the new strain would get free weeding. "It's critical for the war on drugs that this gets independently checked out," Heap concluded. "But I'm sure as hell not going down there."
To get another view, I called Jonathan Gressel, one of the world's foremost experts on herbicide resistance and a professor of plant science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "The only surprise is that the drug mafia didn't do it sooner," Gressel said when I told him about reports of glyphosate-resistant coca. "Privately, my colleagues and I have been predicting this for years."
Another way to explain the reported resistance, he said, was that over time the plants developed it naturally after repeated exposure. But in the case of coca, he estimated that it would take 20 years of constant spraying before a naturally resistant strain of the plant would establish itself. It was possible that farmers beat the odds and got lucky in the four years of intensive spraying. "But the most reasonable explanation," Gressel told me, "is that the illicit narcotics world has genetically engineered the coca plant to be resistant to glyphosate."
The only way to know for sure was to find the plant and test it.
The early evening air at the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá is thin and rain-scrubbed fresh. Outside, at the curb along the arrivals exit, throngs of people silently hold signs with names on them, but in the murky light it's hard to see. I file quickly past, heading for a line of taxis, until one sign makes me stop. It has my name on it.
Three days earlier, I'd placed a call to a Colombian geneticist. I explained that I was going to be arriving in Colombia in a few days and would like to talk to him about possible alterations to coca DNA. He cut the conversation short and asked for my flight information, saying he would meet me at the airport. I told him that wasn't necessary, figuring I'd call him when I got settled in my hotel.
Now he steps out of the shadows and introduces himself. "In Colombia, it is always better to talk in person," he says. He is a bookish, bespectacled man and seems distracted. "I'll drive you into town and we can talk."
We head for the city's central district in his old, messy car. The streets are narrow, and some of the once-grand stuccoed buildings are graffitied over with guerrilla slogans. He's either nervous or doesn't know how to drive, because he keeps stalling at stop signs. The flak-jacketed police that stand on almost every corner swivel their automatic rifles toward us as we lurch past.
We come to a stop in a historic section of Bogotá, and the scientist leads me into an empty, cavelike bar. He chooses a table in the farthest corner. A soccer game plays on a small TV by the entrance. We get two beers, and the scientist waits for the barkeep to go back to the other end of the bar.
"I would prefer it if you don't mention that we met," he begins.
He then asks me what I know. I tell him I'm just trying to figure out if this resistant strain exists, and if so, how it came into being. The scientist pauses.
"Nine years ago," he says, "a friend came to me. He told me that the traffickers wanted someone to modify the DNA. They wanted a glyphosate-resistant plant. The offer was 10 billion pesos. About $10 million."
"That's a lot of money," I say. "Did you do it?"
He smiles wanly. "No, I did not do it. I didn't want to invite that trouble into my life. These are not people you want to know. They are not good people. And if this fumigation benefits only them, I think that should be known."
He takes a sip of his beer. "So listen to me. If you can get me samples of the plant, I will extract the DNA and tell you if they have gotten inside the genetic code. If there are no signs of manipulation, then we will know that the farmers have done it on their own."
We look at each other for a second. It crosses my mind that he might be working for traffickers and will simply destroy the samples and lie about having done tests. If the local kingpins have created a Roundup Ready coca plant, they have a real interest in keeping that quiet. After all, they would be getting a guarantee that farmers will have no choice but to grow their new plant. The scientist's eagerness to help me and his surprising appearance at the airport make me consider this possibility.
But my guess is that he's genuinely curious to know the answer himself. I decide to trust him. I stick out my hand and we shake. Five minutes later, we leave the bar separately.
The next morning, I board a DeHavilland twin-engine plane for the two-hour flight into Putumayo province, the country's main coca-growing region. Colombia produces two-thirds of the world's cocaine, and most of it has historically come from this southern jungle. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of spraying missions have been flown here. US and Colombian officials insist that 92 percent of the plants sprayed in the region last year have now died. As a result, they say, the guerrillas have been weakened and will soon have to negotiate a surrender.
But the guerrillas aren't ready to be counted out yet. Just before we board the plane, they announce a paro armado - an armed shutdown of the southern region. If anybody travels, they will likely be shot. It's meant to be a show of force, a sign the guerrillas can still go on the offensive whenever they choose.
Our pilots don't think much of it. Puerto Asís, the region's capital, is heavily guarded by the military. Two years ago, the guerrillas laid siege to the town for nine months - everything had to be airlifted in, and the pilots became accustomed to running the blockade. Now, with the rebels pushed back into the jungle, our pilots calmly throttle up, and 90 minutes later we bounce to a stop on a jungle tarmac. A phalanx of heavily armed soldiers guards the perimeter, and two men with sawed-off shotguns stand beside a cagelike room that serves as the arrivals lounge.
The soldiers don't hassle me; one of them unlocks the far side of the cage and lets me out onto a partially paved road. A group of men across the street stop talking and watch me until a stocky man with a lazy eye introduces himself as Campo, the driver I had arranged in Bogotá. We get into his bright-red Toyota pickup, and before accelerating out of town he touches a picture of the Virgin Mary glued to a shiny blank CD dangling from the rearview mirror. On the map at the Bogotá airport, Puerto Asís was the last dot at the end of the last road. I watch the town fade behind us as we enter the jungle.
We drive for an hour before we come across the first evidence of violence. An oil pipeline alongside the road has been bombed, and flaming black sludge oozes out of a twisted metal pipe, sending swirling cumulus clouds of smoke half a mile above the forest. The grass below sizzles loudly. Campo keeps the car in the middle of the road. The guerrillas may have booby-trapped the far side with mines - better to stay closer to the flames, which sting my face like a sunburn.
Our destination, La Hormiga, is a jungle outpost of 15,000. It was carved out of the forest 40 years ago to house oil workers but in the '80s was transformed into a coca-farming boomtown. As we crest a ridge, the town appears below, bounded by a sharply defined line of trees that tower over ramshackle two-story cinder block and concrete buildings.
As we drive down the main drag, I see that one of those shoddy roofs covers a faux marble-floored, air-conditioned shopping palace selling imitation Versace jeans. A lady in red hot pants and a halter top window-shops pulling a pet lamb on a pink leash. A casino with rows of slot machines stands next to a dentist's office that doubles as a jewelry shop. Over the din from a half-dozen roadside discos, a man with a 3-foot-long megaphone meanders down the middle of the road reading the local news - an amplified town crier.
I spend a sleepless night at the inappropriately named 5-Stars Hotel and rise early to meet Miguel Lucero (aka Don Miguel), the local leader of the National Association of Peasant Land Users, a large farmers union. Don Miguel is a short, quiet man with a distinguished, furrowed face. Before he became a peasant leader he farmed coca, and he knows the region's farms well. I ask him if he has heard of Roundup-resistant coca.
"Yes," he says simply. "It is called Boliviana negra."
"Can you show me some?"
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
We are hiking through the jungle. The path is narrow, overgrown, and muddy. The knee-high rubber boots I just bought keep getting stuck in the muck, and I have to pull them out with my hands. Don Miguel walks fast and confidently. He has assured me that we are well within the government-controlled territory. The guerrillas, he says, haven't been here during daylight hours for at least a couple of years.
We come to a makeshift bridge. Two slender tree trunks are suspended over a flooding river the color of milky tea. Thin steel cables run above them to give you something to hold on to. Miguel says that the land on the far side belongs to a coca farmer who now grows Boliviana negra. "Everybody is planting negra now," he says and steps catlike over the bridge.
I follow, trying not to slip into the river 5 feet below. After climbing a small incline, we come upon an arresting sight: 300 yards of devastation. An entire slope of hillside vegetation has disappeared. There's only brown-gray dirt, a half-dead tree, and withered coca plants, which I recognize from photographs. "Peruviana blanca," Don Miguel says, pointing at the dead plants. "Not resistant. This slope was sprayed last year."
We hike up the ridge, and suddenly there are healthy coca plants stretching to the horizon. On one side of an imaginary line, devastation. On the other, billowing, neck-high coca plants dotting hillsides that are denuded of all other vegetation. "Boliviana negra," Don Miguel says, pointing at the large bushes. "They were sprayed as well."
Over a lunch of pounded chicken and french fries back in La Hormiga, Don Miguel tells me that Boliviana negra appeared in the region three years ago and is now spreading rapidly across the countryside - just as the herbicide experts told me it might. The new strain is disseminated via cuttings; farmers cut off stems and sell them. Some farmers, looking to make more money, travel with their cuttings and peddle them around the region. And once a farmer grows a new plant, he can sell his own cuttings. It's file-swapping brought to the jungle - a highly efficient decentralized distribution chain.
Don Miguel doesn't know where the strain originated. He has heard rumors of a group of mysterious agronomists who develop better coca plants for the traffickers, but he doesn't know where they are or anything about them.
He does have a clear sense of how the new plant is affecting his region. At first, he says, the aerial spraying was successful, but now, with the arrival of Boliviana negra, it's affecting only those who are growing lawful crops. "The truth is that the fumigation drives us to the one thing that will survive - and that is Boliviana negra," he says. "Not bananas, not yucca, not maize."
The Colombian and US governments want farmers to grow legal crops, he explains, and in the past have paid them to eradicate coca. But though American embassy officials insist that the spraying campaign is more than 99 percent accurate, Don Miguel says that almost all the farmers he knows and represents report that legal crops are sprayed as well. He says that his own tree farm was sprayed, pushing him to the edge of bankruptcy. If Boliviana negra will guarantee income for farmers, Don Miguel says, they will grow it and have less incentive to discuss eradication with the government.
Not to mention the financial benefits. One hectare of land in Putumayo will produce $100 of corn. The same plot will produce $1,000 of coca. Plus you don't have to transport the coca - the guerrillas will come to your farm and collect it. So why would anyone grow corn? "Because if you grow coca," Don Miguel says, "you deal with the guerrillas or the paramilitaries or both, and they kill whenever they want."
Don Miguel has another fear. He doesn't believe that the US will tolerate the existence of glyphosate-resistant coca. When the authorities find out that farmers are growing the new coca, he fears it will be only a matter of time before they switch to a new herbicide.
He has reason for concern. Last summer, documents show, anti-narcotics officials at the US embassy in Bogotá quietly approached Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe, and asked him if he'd consider switching from Roundup to Fusarium oxysporum, a plant-killing fungus classified as a mycoherbicide. Some species are known to attack coca; in the early '90s, a natural Fusarium outbreak decimated the Peruvian coca crop.
But Fusarium is not a chemical - it's a fungus, and it can live on in the soil. A proposal to consider using it in Florida in 1999 was rejected after the head of the state's Department of Environmental Protection found that it was "difficult, if not impossible, to control [Fusarium's] spread" and that the "mutated fungi can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn, and vines." A switch to Fusarium would, at the least, be an escalation in the herbicide war and a tacit acknowledgment of glyphosate's failure. It could also turn out to be the A-bomb of herbicides.
Still, according to a letter sent from the State Department to Colombia's US ambassador, Uribe was "ready to learn more." The letter, dated October 3, 2003, laid out steps for moving this plan forward, but when I spoke to officials at the embassy, they vehemently denied they are considering a herbicide switch. They stated that they are thrilled with the success of Roundup.
Don Miguel admits that on one level, the spraying has been highly effective. Almost all the old strains of coca have been eradicated. What's left are small plots of Boliviana negra, but these have become more productive, in part because the spraying has killed all the other plants competing for nutrients.
US officials point to the eradication results of the past three years and argue that the plant could not possibly be resistant. A high-ranking US anti-narcotics official who declined to be identified told me that she had never heard of Boliviana negra, la millonaria, or any Roundup Ready coca plant. Another American official began our conversation by saying, "So you're here to talk about the nonexistent glyphosate-resistant coca?" And then, more forcefully, "These campesinos have zero education. They can't be trusted to know whether a plant is resistant to glyphosate." Nonetheless, I was assured that a helicopter would be dispatched to Putumayo to search for samples. Even amid increasing reports of resistant superstrains, officials have yet to find any evidence of them.
Perhaps they haven't been to La Hormiga. Everyone I talk to here knows about the resistant plant. Three hours after leaving the coca fields, I attend a meeting of two dozen heads of local farmer cooperatives - they represent more than 5,000 farmers in Putumayo - and they nod knowingly when asked about the new breed. "Nobody listens to us because they think we are dumb farmers," says one man. "The Americans are arrogant. They don't talk to the people who live here. We are the ones who are sprayed. We are the ones who live with the plants."
That evening, I meet Fabio Paz, the energetic mayor of La Hormiga, at his simple concrete house. Paz is 32 and excited to be mayor, despite the fact that in the past three years guerrillas have assassinated more than 30 mayors. He wears jeans and a baggy shirt and does not look like an important man. But two plainclothes guards stand outside while we talk, and his armor-plated SUV is parked in front of the window, presumably to deflect any gunfire or bomb blasts.
"Boliviana negra is like goaaaal for the coca farmers," the mayor shouts, jumping to his feet and yelling "goal" like a crazed Latin American soccer announcer. "Maybe the narcos bought someone off at Monsanto. There would be poetic justice in that."
Paz doesn't know where the strain came from, though he assumes Bolivia, because of the name. He also believes that once refined, it produces a different high than older strains. Either way, he says, farmers are now planting only Boliviana negra: "You can't give away the other types of coca now."
When I tell him that I am having trouble getting more than a handful of negra samples because of the guerrilla clampdown, he calls in Chucky, one of his bodyguards. Chucky is short and baby-faced, with an emotionless gaze and a handgun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. The mayor tells me that his name isn't really Chucky; they just started calling him that after they saw Child's Play, the horror movie about a child's doll possessed by a serial killer named Chucky. Paz pronounces it "Shooky."
Chucky stares at me blankly and nods. I ask if he can identify the strain, and he nods again. Chucky, the mayor explains, was a coca leaf picker before he became a bodyguard.
Twenty hours later, Chucky knocks on my hotel room door. From under his shirt, he pulls out a stack of ziplock bags filled with coca leaves. "Boliviana negra," he says and points at some of the leaves that have yellow blotches on them. He says those were sprayed a couple of weeks ago. In some cases, he says, the leaves fall off and then regrow after spraying. In other plants, the leaves stay on. This is an important piece of information. A genetically modified plant would be impervious to glyphosate.
It takes me a few minutes to arrange a mobile laboratory on the simple wooden table in my room. When placed in water with macerated soybean and canola, a chemical in the plastic test strip will bond with CP4 ESPS, a protein produced by the Roundup Ready gene. If the protein is present, the chemical turns a section of the strip red.
The problem is, the strips were made specifically to test soybean and canola, not coca. I would rather not travel to Bogotá with a backpack full of coca leaves, but after a series of the tests fail to detect the gene, I realize I have no choice.
By the time I get back to the airport in Puerto Asís, the leaves are giving off a pungent odor of broken twigs even though they're wrapped in a combination of dirty socks and ziplock bags at the bottom of my backpack. Security at the airstrip is almost nonexistent. A stout, mustachioed woman in olive-green fatigues rifles through my bag. No x-rays, metal detector, or even a pat-down. But at the last minute, she demands that my bag be placed in the hold underneath the plane to better balance the plane's weight.
I am nervous about landing in Bogotá and dealing with internal customs agents. But before we reach the capital, the plane stops in a city called Neiva to pick up more passengers. While we're sitting on the runway, the hold is opened and a group of soldiers with a German shepherd approaches. A wave of nausea hits me.
The dog puts two paws up on a trolley carrying the new passengers' luggage. It sniffs around and then drops back down. I watch with terror as the soldiers stand around chatting for a few minutes. I imagine scenes from Midnight Express, where the dumb American drug smuggler wastes away in a Turkish prison. I promise myself that if I make it out of this, I'll never smuggle anything again. The dog casually sniffs the wheels of the trolley, and then the group turns and walks away. The hold is closed and we take off again.
We land in Bogotá. There are no internal customs officers at the arrivals terminal. I catch a cab and sink into the backseat. The ride into town is blissful.
The next morning, I take a taxi to the laboratory of the scientist I met on my first night in Colombia. The leaves spent the night jammed among tiny bottles of Chivas Regal in my hotel minibar, and some have turned black. But the scientist assures me that this is not a problem. He smells them and his eyebrows go up. "Very good," he says and locks the door to the lab. It will take him a month to complete the tests.
Four weeks later, the scientist sends me an email saying that he has completed the DNA analysis and found no evidence of modification. He tested specifically for the presence of CP4 - a telltale indicator of the Roundup Ready modification - as well as for the cauliflower mosaic virus, the gene most commonly used to insert foreign DNA into a plant. It is still possible that the plant has been genetically modified using other genes, but not likely. Discovering new methods of engineering glyphosate resistance would require the best scientific minds and years of organized research. And given that there is already a published methodology, there would be little reason to duplicate the effort.
Which points back to selective breeding. The implication is that the farmers' decentralized system of disseminating coca cuttings has been amazingly effective - more so than genetic engineering could hope to be. When one plant somewhere in the country demonstrated tolerance to glyphosate, cuttings were made and passed on to dealers and farmers, who could sell them quickly to farmers hoping to withstand the spraying. The best of the next generation was once again used for cuttings and distributed.
This technique - applied over four years - is now the most likely explanation for the arrival of Boliviana negra. By spraying so much territory, the US significantly increased the odds of generating beneficial mutations. There are numerous species of coca, further increasing the diversity of possible mutations. And in the Amazonian region, nature is particularly adaptive and resilient.
"I thought it was unlikely," says Gressel, the plant scientist at the Weizmann Institute. "But farmers aren't dumb. They obviously spotted a lucky mutation and propagated the hell out of it."
The effects of this are far-reaching for American policymakers: A new herbicide would work only for a limited time against such a simple but effective ad hoc network. The coca-growing community is clearly primed to take advantage of any mutations.
A genetic laboratory is not as nimble. A lab is limited by research that is publicly available. In the case of Fusarium, the coca-killing fungus and likely successor to glyphosate, there is no body of work discussing genetically induced resistance. If the government switched to Fusarium, a scientist would have to perform groundbreaking genetic research to fashion a Fusarium-resistant coca plant.
The reality is that a smoothly functioning selective-breeding system is a greater threat to US antidrug efforts. Certainly government agents can switch to Fusarium and enjoy some short-term results. But after a few years - during which legal crops could be devastated - a new strain of Fusarium-resistant coca would likely emerge, one just as robust as the glyphosate-resistant strain.
The drug war in Colombia presupposes that it's eventually possible to destroy cocaine at its source. But the facts on the ground suggest this is no longer possible. In this war, it's hard to beat technology developed 10,000 years ago.
Contributing editor Joshua Davis (jd@joshuadavis.net) wrote about wiring the apocalypse in issue 12.04.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Some Hazmat Trains Rerouted Since March
Washington Post
By Spencer S. Hsu
November 1, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14392-2004Oct31?language=printer
Three Democratic House members said yesterday that CSX Corp. has redirected rail shipments of hazardous materials away from Washington since the March 11 commuter train bombings in Madrid.
The decision to divert some chemical freight, which was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, acknowledges the potential risk the cargoes pose to the nation's capital if targeted by terrorists.
It comes as District officials battle with the Bush administration over the security-sensitive CSX rail line that passes through the city, crossing the Potomac River near the 14th Street bridge, paralleling the Mall and coming within four blocks of the U.S. Capitol. City leaders want to permanently bar shipments of such substances as chlorine, ammonia and hydrochloric and sulfuric acids.
Homeland security officials have said rerouting raises more security problems than it solves and have delayed a long-term decision on an issue that has been studied for eight months.
About 6 million tons of chemical freight pass through the District a year, according to the National Capital Planning Commission. Only a fraction, fewer than 1,000 cars, carry toxic inhalants that cause the most concern, officials say.
In a statement, Reps. Jim Turner (D-Tex.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) called on Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to explain why his department has not mandated rerouting and name the other cities being studied for rail threats. The lawmakers said their staffs had been briefed by CSX, law enforcement and homeland security officials.
"Rerouting may not always be the right option, but we will never know because the administration appears to have taken it off the table even though CSX has voluntarily rerouted dangerous cargoes for the last seven months," said Turner, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. "This is wrong. All options must be considered to protect our nation's citizens."
Markey, a member of the panel along with Norton, added, "Even the railroad itself has evidently concluded these shipments are too dangerous to send through our nation's capital."
Ridge briefly touched on the issue Saturday, telling reporters that the U.S. has rerouted shipments. He did not give specifics. Describing talks with state and local officials since videotapes aired last week featuring Osama bin Laden and a man claiming to be an American affiliated with al Qaeda, Ridge said, "We will work with our cities to reroute, as we've done from time to time in the past, hazardous material, be it in truck or railroads, around some of our major urban areas."
A homeland security official confirmed yesterday that CSX has redirected certain cargoes from Washington at the government's request. The official cited examples elsewhere, from the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to regular season professional football games in cities with stadiums near rail lines.
"Every day we have a better ability to target our security measures when a threat would warrant it, such as rerouting hazardous materials if need be," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for Ridge. "We, of course, don't want to talk about the specifics."
Bob Sullivan, spokesman for Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX Corp., said the rail giant also would not discuss details about security. "We have a series of things and countermeasures that are being taken and can be taken based on whatever information is made available to us. . . . We have cooperated with" federal security agencies, he said.
Sullivan declined to say whether the company has diverted any shipments without a government request.
Rick Hind, spokesman for Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, criticized Ridge for failing to disclose that the rerouting in the District has gone on since March. "Why have you kept it a secret?" Hind said. "There's a real question of adequate security for the whole country."
Safety studies posit that a worst-case accidental release of 90 tons of chemical from a tanker could kill or injure people up to 14 miles away or kill 100,000 people in a half-hour during a celebration on the Mall.
--------
Major Breakthrough in the Detection of Weapons of Mass Destruction Announced by GammaSight Technologies - Ports and Borders Now Safer
emediawire.com
November 1, 2004
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/11/emw173019.htm
New homeland defense technology for ports, borders, airports and military bases was announced today by GammaSight Technologies. The new system, NIRIDS (non-intrusive rapid inspection and detection system), permits the rapid detection of weapons of mass destruction including shielded weapons-grade uranium & plutonium, radiation dispersion devices (dirty bombs), chemical warfare agents, and conventional explosives, all automatically and without risk of human error or the slowing of commerce.
Newport News, VA (PRWEB) November 1, 2004 -- GammaSight Technologies LLC, a Virginia based company, announced today its newest Homeland Defense product, a Non-Intrusive Rapid Inspection and Detection System (NIRIDS) capable of rapidly detecting weapons of mass destruction hidden inside cargo containers.
Leading this technological endeavor is world renowned physicist, Dr. Andrei Afanasev, Vice President of Nuclear Research and Technology at GammaSight Technologies. According to Dr. Afanasev, the new GammaSight system rapidly sees inside cargo containers to automatically identify terrorist weapons, including shielded weapons-grade uranium & plutonium, radiation dispersion devices (dirty bombs), chemical warfare agents, and conventional explosives, all automatically and without risk of human error or the slowing of commerce. "NIRIDS is no mere copy of what is now being deployed at ports" said Dr. Afanasev, "it is a major breakthrough in technology since the rapid and simultaneous detection of multiple threat materials was impossible prior to NIRIDS."
According to the Coalition for Secure Ports, a private group consisting of companies dedicated to the security of ports, vessels, and cargo, nearly nine million cargo containers arrive at the United States' 361 seaports each year. Each of these containers offers terrorists an excellent delivery vehicle for weapons. Unfortunately, less than three percent of the containers entering U.S. ports each year are ever checked, leaving more than eight million containers available to transport cataclysmic weapons.
"No one disputes that detecting weapons of mass destruction before they are loaded into a vessel is the key to securing our borders" says Jeffrey Ash, Vice President of Business Development at GammaSight Technologies. "The more difficult question is which system can locate the most weapon materials", said Ash, "and which system can do it accurately, quickly, and without disruption to commerce." With today's announcement by GammaSight, the question has been answered. For rapid and complete container inspection, NIRIDS is the obvious choice.
CONTACT INFO: GammaSight Technologies LLC Press Relations Phone: 757-320-4205 www.gammasight.com
-------- police
Thais still forced on to trucks
The Australian
Kimina Lyall
November 01, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11247912%5E2703,00.html
TROOPS ordered to load 1300 Muslim demonstrators onto a convoy of military trucks in southern Thailand last week continued to force detainees to lie on top of each other even after doctors discovered men had died in the first trucks to arrive at their destination.
The revelation came in an address to the nation by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra late on Friday night.
He vowed to set up an independent inquiry into the suffocation deaths of 78 men as they were transported from the southern province of Narathiwat to neighbouring Pattani after an unruly protest last Monday.
Mr Thaksin's address was designed to appease national and international criticism of the military and police who handled the crackdown.
He also promised compensation to the victims' families.
This was followed by the release on Saturday of 1178 survivors who had been detained in army camps since their arrest. Another 113 are still undergoing interrogation.
Mr Thaksin's speech revealed for the first time that the first of what is believed to have been about 30 trucks arrived at the Pattani military camp about 7pm last Monday - about four hours after police and soldiers had used water cannons, tear gas and live ammunition to break up mobs of thousands of angry protesters outside the Tak Pai police station.
Mr Thaksin said one man was found dead on the first truck and later in the address said the last truck had left Tak Pai at 10pm. It was already known there were deaths on all the trucks.
The Prime Minister said most of the deaths had occurred in the last six trucks to leave Tak Pai, as they were carrying many people and were pressed for time.
He did not say why the detainees had continued to be loaded into the trucks in stacks up to seven men high after earlier trucks had already arrived with fatalities.
But Senator Chirmsak Pinthong, who joined a delegation to the area on Thursday, said he had asked army commander Pisarn Wattanawongkeeree if officers at the camp had contacted Tak Pai to tell them men were dying on the trucks, and he had said they did not.
"It is intentional, that's what I say. They intended not to give the warning," Senator Chirmsak said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Disagreement Over Detainees' Legal Rights Simmers
November 1, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/politics/01gitmo.html
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Oct. 31 - From the moment the Bush administration decided to use the naval base here as a prison colony for accused terrorists, policy makers were determined to keep everything that went on here beyond the reach of United States courts.
But a decision by the Supreme Court in June seemed to upset those plans as the justices ruled that prisoners at Guantánamo were entitled to some rights, notably the ability to have their claims that they were wrongfully imprisoned heard by a federal judge. But what the justices meant as to how far the government must go to accommodate the Guantánamo prisoners has produced a sharp debate now being played out in lower courts.
Lawyers for many of the detainees, including the ones named in the Supreme Court ruling, say the Bush administration is purposely ignoring the justices' mandate and stalling.
They cite the government's refusal to acknowledge that detainees are entitled to free access to lawyers to make their cases before federal judges. More broadly, they argue that the government is still trying to argue issues it has already lost in the Supreme Court, especially that the detainees have full rights to challenge their detentions in lower federal courts.
The Justice Department responded to demands by the detainees' lawyers with language remarkably similar to that it used almost two years ago in the case it has already lost.
"The notion that the U.S. Constitution affords due process and other rights to enemy aliens captured abroad and confined outside the sovereign territory of the United States is contrary to law and history," a recent government brief asserts, in an echo of the briefs submitted in the original Supreme Court case.
Thomas Wilner, a lawyer for several detainees who were involved in the original lawsuit, said in his brief that the government's motion was "simply outrageous.''
"It is filed in direct violation of the federal rules and it simply rehashes the same arguments that were made before, and rejected by the Supreme Court," Mr. Wilner said.
He compared the government's behavior to the "massive resistance" urged by some Southerners in response to the court's landmark desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
A senior Justice Department official said in response, "It's easy for our adversaries to say, 'My gosh, when the Supreme Court said that there is habeas jurisdiction, that must mean there are real rights at stake, that the detainees are protected by the Constitution.' " But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the litigation was continuing, said the court's ruling that prisoners may challenge their detentions in lawsuits called habeas corpus actions left open that question for lower courts.
The court, by a 6 to 3 margin, ruled in June that the people held at Guantánamo as unlawful enemy combatants "no less than American citizens are entitled to federal courts' authority" to challenge their detentions.
The Justice Department said in its brief that "the court expressly declined to address 'whether and what further proceedings' would be appropriate after remand," as proof the justices left open the issue of whether the government was required to afford the prisoners more rights. But the full sentence at the end of the principal opinion reads, "Whether and what further proceedings may become necessary after respondents make their response to the merits of petitioners' claims are matters that we need not address now."
Prof. Anthony G. Amsterdam of the New York University School of Law said he believed that the government's resistance to recognizing the detainees' rights, including the right to a lawyer, to make their cases bordered on the unethical.
"It's simply amazing that they are proceeding as if those cases had not been heard before the Supreme Court and that those arguments had not been heard and rejected by the court," Professor Amsterdam said. "I would not expect a reputable lawyer to split nonexistent hairs that way and treat what was plainly a decision that these people had a right to be in court as if it were nothing."
He said the government was apparently hoping to delay the day it would have to explain for each detainee the reasons of imprisonment.
Prof. Douglas W. Kmiec of the Pepperdine University School of Law said he believed that the Supreme Court ruling in June was "written in a deliberately incomplete manner so that it found a right to habeas review but left the nature of that review to some district court." Professor Kmiec said he believed the government was acting "well within its bounds and is not obliged to do anything beyond what they have done."
The senior Justice Department official who asked not to be named said the administration understood that while "we don't think there is a constitutional right to counsel, we understand there is a sort of a functional right" under the federal law that covers habeas corpus challenges.
The administration has agreed to let lawyers visit with detainees to help them bring habeas challenges but under strict security conditions that prohibit them from discussing some aspects of the cases with the client. Defense lawyers have challenged those restrictions.
The administration has also argued that a new legal proceeding it put in place here at Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruling, combatant status review tribunals, should satisfy the justices' demand that the detainees get individualized fair hearings. Under that procedure, detainees are allowed to contest their imprisonment but do not have a lawyer and are not entitled to see the evidence against them. So far, about half of the base's 580 detainees have been through such hearings, and one detainee has been sent home after having been deemed not to be an unlawful enemy combatant.
Another set of legal proceedings involving the Guantánamo detainees, war crimes trials before military commissions, is set to resume here on Monday.
--------
When the Voting Bloc Lives Inside a Cellblock
November 1, 2004
By PAM BELLUCK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/politics/campaign/01prison.html
WARREN, Me. - John Barczak has had a lot of time to think about what he wants in a president. In a sense, he has had nothing but time.
Mr. Barczak is spending at least 35 years in a maximum security prison for committing a double murder.
"I killed a couple of friends," he recently explained, dressed in jailhouse blue at Maine State Prison here, about two hours northeast of Portland. "Got in an argument and shot them."
Still, Mr. Barczak, 45, a self-described moderate independent who says he is concerned about Iraq and the economy and "worried about the Supreme Court," is as engaged as any other voter. That is because he is a lot like any other voter, able to cast a ballot in federal, state and local elections.
He has voted ever since he went to prison for the 1987 murders. And this year, he cast his vote for the candidate of what prides itself as the law-and-order party: President Bush.
"Kerry can't make up his mind," Mr. Barczak said.
Maine and Vermont are the only states that allow felons to vote while behind bars, a controversial issue in much of the country.
In most states, felons can vote only after they get out of jail. In seven states, they cannot vote at all unless, after their release, they successfully petition for their voting rights to be restored.
Several states, including Utah and New Hampshire, have outlawed inmate voting in recent years, and some legislators in Maine have been trying to do the same.
"I just was horrified when I realized they could vote," said Mary Black Andrews, a state representative from York, Me., whose first husband was a Maine state trooper who was shot and killed in the line of duty. "I just don't think that they deserve that right if they've been convicted of a violent crime."
Massachusetts used to let felons vote while in prison, but that was before three inmates tried to form a political action committee in 1997 to lobby for cheaper telephone calls and better medical care. Paul Cellucci, then the governor, opposed the prison PAC and proposed a constitutional amendment to stop inmate voting, which passed in 2000.
Vermont's commissioner of corrections, Steven M. Gold, is a supporter of inmate voting and says no one has tried to stop it in that state.
"The vast majority of inmates are going to return to their community," Mr. Gold said, adding, "that very basic and important right of voting is part of trying to get them functioning as taxpayers, rather than tax users."
In Maine and Vermont, inmates can vote (by absentee ballot) on everything, including the election of judges and how much money is spent on the police in their hometowns.
And while voter apathy is an even bigger problem behind bars than in society at large, Maine and Vermont officials say more prisoners seem to be voting this year, fueled by issues like the war and by voter registration drives conducted by inmate advocates and groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Even Maine and Vermont prisoners held in other states can vote in their home states. Because of overcrowding, about 400 of Vermont's 1,800 inmates are housed in a prison in Beattyville, Ky., and this year, inmate advocates visited there and registered 104 Vermont prisoners to vote.
"There's almost a childlike excitement here," said Kirk Wool, 44, one of the Vermonters in Kentucky, who is serving 29 to 73 years for a sexual assault conviction, and said he "hadn't begun voting until actually after my incarceration."
But now Mr. Wool, inmate No. 263524, says he feels so empowered by voting that "if I had chosen politics instead of crime, call it arrogance, but I believe with my ability to touch people, my ability to speak, I believe I very well could have been governor of the state of Vermont."
One might think that criminals would be a solid liberal constituency, given liberals' generally stronger support for prisoners' rights. But interviews suggest there are a number of conservatives behind bars.
Take Joe-Pete Saucier, in the Maine prison serving his fourth year of a 14-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter after he led the police on a nine-mile chase before crashing his pickup, killing a woman who was a passenger.
Mr. Saucier, 27, comes from Democratic stock: his aunt was a state representative and his father was appointed to a commission on juvenile corrections by a Democratic governor, Joseph E. Brennan.
"I had a treehouse built from Brennan for Governor signs," he said.
But Mr. Saucier is a registered Republican. He voted for Mr. Bush because "I think he needs to finish what he started," he said.
Mr. Wool voted to re-elect Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, because he appointed a commission on prison overcrowding, and Mr. Wool hopes he will bring Vermont inmates back from Kentucky.
No one recalls politicians specifically stumping in the cellblocks. ( A spokesman for Gov. John E. Baldacci of Maine said "he'll stick with the Rotary and the Kiwanis Club.")
But inmates pay attention, reading newspapers, watching television, and even perusing campaign leaflets that are mailed to registered voters like themselves. Mr. Saucier voted for Mr. Baldacci in 2002 because he liked what he said when he visited to meet with prison guards.
One avid watcher of the presidential debates was Thomas Karov, serving 20 to 30 years for kidnapping and aggravated assault. ("I went to my ex-wife's house and I wouldn't let her leave there for a couple of hours," he said.)
"I don't think much about the economy because I'm in prison, you know what I mean?" said Mr. Karov, 60, from the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vt. But Mr. Karov says that he considers issues like "how big this deficit is getting" and that "I have a son that's 20 years old and I don't want to see him ending up in Iraq."
He was "thinking of a protest vote for Nader or a write-in for one of the dead presidents," but has changed his mind. "I didn't want to waste my vote," he said. "I voted for Kerry reluctantly."
Not that the prison constituency is likely to sway an election. Inmates register in the town they lived in before they were incarcerated, so they do not become a voting bloc in the towns where prisons are located. And many do not vote. Maine State Prison logged its biggest voter turnout this year - about 100 of the 880 inmates.
Still, as Mr. Wool, the would-be governor of Vermont, said of his fellow Vermont inmates, "If all 1,800 of us vote, you have families that are connected to those 1,800, and that's more votes."
And the dignity of being allowed to vote means a lot, Mr. Wool said.
"When I register for my absentee ballot, I get a slew of brochures," he said. "You see yourself in this little cell and yet these people with all this power and freedom are reaching out to you, too. It gives me hope, it really does."
-------- terrorism
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
counterpunch.org
November 1, 2004
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11012004.html
George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden's head handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he's from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan's last king). Educated at St Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban.
After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohabbat returned to the United States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan.
In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows, portions of Mohabbat's role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the full story.
By the end of 1999 US sanctions and near-world-wide political ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and they had come to see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as, in Mohabbat's words, "just a damn liability". Mohabbat says the Taliban leadership had also been informed in the clearest possible terms by a US diplomat that if any US citizen was harmed as a consequence of an Al Qaeda action, the US would hold the Taliban responsible and target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders.
In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to Afghanistan, Mohabbat had a summit session with the Taliban high command in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with appropriate officials in the European Union, to broker a way in which they could hand over Osama bin Laden . Mohabbat recommended they send bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in the Hague.
Shortly thereafter, in August of 2000, Mohabbat set up a meeting at the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt between a delegation from the Taliban and Reiner Weiland of the EU. The Taliban envoys repeated the offer to deport bin Laden. Weiland told them he would take the proposal to Elmar Brok, foreign relations director for the European Union. According to Mohabbat, Brok then informed the US Ambassador to Germany of the offer.
At this point the US State Department called Mohabbat and said the government wanted to retain his services, even before his official period on the payroll, which lasted from November of 2000 to late September, 2001, by which time he tells us he had been paid $115,000.
On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mohabbat was in Washington DC, preparing for an 11am meeting at the State Department , when he got a call from State, telling him to turn on the tv and then come right over. The USS Cole had just been bombed. Mohabbat had a session with the head of State's South East Asia desk and with officials from the NSC. They told him the US was going to "bomb the hell out of Afghanistan". "Give me three weeks," Mohabbat answered, "and I will deliver Osama to your doorstep." They gave him a month.
Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.
After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed," Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two Cruise missiles."
Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.
In the wake of the 2000 election Mohabbat traveled to Islamabad and met with William Milam, US ambassador to Pakistan and the person designated by the Clinton administration to deal with the Taliban on the fate of bin Laden. Milam told Mohabbat that it was a done deal but that the actual handover of bin Laden would have to be handled by the incoming Bush administration.
On November 23, 2000, Mohabbat got a call from the NSC saying they wanted to put him officially on the payroll as the US government's contact man for the Taliban. He agreed. A few weeks later an official from the newly installed Bush NSC asked him to continue in the same role and shortly thereafter he was given a letter from the administration (Mohabbat tells us he has a copy), apologizing to the Taliban for not having dealt with bin Laden, explaining that the new government was still setting in, and asking for a meeting in February 2001.
The Bush administration sent Mohabbat back, carrying kindred tidings of delay and regret to the Taliban three more times in 2001, the last in September after the 9/11 attack. Each time he was asked to communicate similar regrets about the failure to act on the plan agreed to in Frankfurt. This procrastination became a standing joke with the Taliban, Mohabbat tells CounterPunch "They made an offer to me that if the US didn't have fuel for the Cruise missiles to attack Osama in Daronta, where he was under house arrest, they would pay for it."
Kabir Mohabbat's final trip to Afghanistan on the US government payroll took place on September 3, 2001. On September 11 Mohabbat acted as translator for some of the Taliban leadership in Kabul as they watched tv coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Four days later the US State Department asked Mohabbat to set up a meeting with the Taliban. Mohabbat says the Taliban were flown to Quetta in two C-130s. There they agreed to the three demands sought by the US team: 1. Immediate handover of bin Laden; 2. Extradition of foreigners in Al Qaeda who were wanted in their home countries; 3. shut-down of bin Laden's bases and training camps. Mohabbat says the Taliban agreed to all three demands.
This meeting in Quetta was reported in carefully vague terms by Pizzey on September 25, where Mohabbat was mentioned by name. He tells us that the Bush administration was far more exercised by this story than by any other event in the whole delayed and ultimately abandoned schedule of killing Osama.
On October 18, Mohabbat tells us, he was invited to the US embassy in Islamabad and told that "there was light at the end of the tunnel for him", which translated into an invitation to occupy the role later assigned to Karzai. Mohabbat declined, saying he had no desire for the role of puppet and probable fall guy.
A few days later the Pizzey story was aired and Mohabbat drew the ire of the Bush administration where he already had an enemy in the form of Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed on September 22 as the US special envoy to Afghanistan. After giving him a dressing down, US officials told Mohabbat the game had changed, and he should tell the Taliban the new terms: surrender or be killed. Mohabbat declined to be the bearer of this news and went off the US government payroll.
Towards the end of that same month of October, 2001 Mohabbat was successfully negotiating with the Taliban for the release of Heather Mercer (acting in a private capacity at the request of her father) when the Taliban once again said they would hand over Osama Bin Laden unconditionally. Mohabbat tells us he relayed the offer to David Donahue, the US consulate general in Islamabad. He was told, in his words,that "the train had moved". Shortly thereafter the US bombing of Afghanistan began.
In December Mohabbat was in Pakistan following with wry amusement the assault on Osama bin Laden's supposed mountain redoubt in Tora Bora, in the mountains bordering Pakistan. At the time he said, he informed US embassy officials the attack was a waste of time. Taliban leaders had told him that Bin Laden was nowhere near Tora Bora but in Waziristan. Knowing that the US was monitoring his cell phone traffic, Osama had sent a decoy to Tora Bora.
From the documents he's supplied us and from his detailed account we regard Kabir Mohabbat's story as credible and are glad to make public his story of the truly incredible failure of the Bush administration to accept the Taliban's offer to eliminate Bin Laden. As a consequence of this failure more than 3,000 Americans and thousands of Afghans died. Mohabbat himself narrowly escaped death on two occasions when Al Qaeda, apprised of his role, tried to kill him. In Kabul in February, 2001, a bomb was detonated in his hotel in Kabul. Later that year, in July, a hand grenade thrown in his room in a hotel in Kandahar failed to explode.
He told his story to the 9/11 Commission (whose main concern, he tells us, was that he not divulge his testimony to anyone else), also to the 9/11 Families who were pursuing a lawsuit based on the assumption of US intelligence blunders by the FBI and CIA. He says his statements were not much use to the families since his judgment was, and still remains, that it was not intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks, but criminal negligence by the Bush administration.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
U.S. Spends Only Small Part of Funds to Help Rebuild Iraq
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 1, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14333-2004Oct31.html
After more than a year of difficulties, the pace of contracting for Iraqi reconstruction projects picked up substantially over the past three months, but U.S. authorities have still spent only a fraction of the rebuilding money allocated by Congress, according to a new report.
The inspector general monitoring Iraq's rebuilding also said in his latest quarterly report, released today, that reconstruction aid promised by international lenders and other countries has only trickled into Iraq. Of the $13.5 billion pledged at a donors conference last year in Madrid, contributions and firm commitments total $2.7 billion, the report said.
Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen paints a picture of lawlessness and corruption hampering a reconstruction program that once promised Iraqis a significant boost from their pre-war standards of living. Allegations have surfaced of large-scale embezzlement, robberies perpetrated by Iraqi police, even payoffs to U.S. military personnel who aided in theft.
"Iraq is largely a cash-based economy, and daily life there remains volatile and hazardous," Bowen wrote.
Of the $24.1 billion that Congress has allocated for Iraq's reconstruction over the past two years, $13.4 billion has now been obligated to rebuilding contracts, the report said. Three months ago, 30.6 percent of the reconstruction funds had been earmarked for specific projects. Now, that total has risen to 40.7 percent, the report said.
But only about $5.2 billion has been spent. In the quarterly report released three months ago, about $3 billion had been spent. Congress's high-profile allocation of $18.4 billion, approved in October 2003, is still largely untapped. About $1.6 billion of that has been spent, up from $400 million three months ago, according to the inspector general's office.
Other reconstruction projects have come out of various smaller accounts or have been financed with Iraqi oil money.
"Demanding and frequently dangerous conditions . . . have challenged the pace of reconstruction," Bowen wrote in an opening message for the report.
The inspector general has managed or coordinated 113 criminal investigations, and opened cases on 272 reports of fraud, waste or other problems reported on the agency's hotline.
In one case, Iraqi construction companies were accused of stealing construction equipment from the Iraqi interim government. U.S. military personnel allegedly helped transport the materials and accepted payment for the assistance. Some of the equipment has been recovered, but the case remains under investigation by the military and the Iraqi government, according to the report.
In another case, an Iraqi government official was suspected of embezzling $500,000 of funds allocated to help local governance, and possibly funneling some of that to insurgents. The investigation found that the official had actually spent only $70,000 on legitimate projects. He returned the other $430,000.
A U.S. contractor also reported an alleged theft by Iraqi police officers, who threatened one of the company's Iraqi employees. The investigation led to the arrest of five Iraqis -- including two police officers -- who were charged with robbery.
The inspector general's investigations have been hampered by confusion, since the U.S. occupation government was disbanded June 28, the report said. Since the inspector general's office was established to keep an eye on the Coalition Provisional Authority, it was unclear whether it would continue to exist. The audit staff has declined by 42 percent since then, Bowen said.
Last month, Congress extended the inspector general's mandate until 10 months after 80 percent of Iraqi reconstruction funds are obligated to contracts.
-------- corruption
Party Censors Leave a Chinese City to Speculate on Corruption Scandal
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 1, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14707-2004Oct31?language=printer
HARBIN, China -- When a corruption scandal swept through this northern Chinese city several weeks ago, leading to the dismissal of five high-level officials, the Communist Party tried to keep it secret from the people. Newspapers and broadcast stations, under strict censorship, were allowed to report only that the five had resigned, without saying why, and even that came two weeks after the fact.
Many people in Harbin and the surrounding Heilongjiang province, based on experience in a region with a long history of official malfeasance, assumed bribery and influence-peddling were involved. But as the gossip and speculation buzzed through Harbin and made their way south to Beijing, authorities maintained silence and party censors forced a blackout on the media.
Despite the rapid pace of reform in China over the last 25 years that has produced rich capitalists and a much freer social climate, information has remained tightly controlled government property. The country's 1.3 billion people still have the right to know only what the Communist Party's publicity department says they should, particularly on sensitive topics such as Taiwan and the doings of senior leaders.
Journalists for major Chinese publications, particularly those who deal directly with national-level censors in Beijing, say the reins have loosened in recent years, allowing more reporting in vanguard newspapers and magazines and on Web sites. But the party's power ultimately to decide what is reported, exercised with particular stringency regarding television and local papers, has remained intact even in the information age, they add.
"This is China's most obvious problem right now," said Jiao Guobiao, a Beijing University professor who made waves last spring with a Web site essay denouncing party censorship as heavy-handed and backward. "One reason it's so efficient is that all the top editors are government officials," he added. "They are not professional journalists. They are just like soldiers. They have to follow orders."
Chinese who depend on their own media for information were left in the dark three weeks ago, for instance, when President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan made what his aides described as a conciliatory appeal to resume discussions with China. Beijing's relationship with Taiwan is one of the most important subjects in the country, an issue that could lead the country to war. But only four days later, when the Chinese government announced its rejection of Chen's proposal, was the story allowed to be fully reported.
Signs have emerged that the government of President Hu Jintao, or parts of it, has set out to undo even the tentative loosening of recent years. Party declarations have exhibited what seem to be fears that the more open atmosphere could undermine the party's grip on information, perhaps even its power to rule.
"In 1996, Comrade Jiang Zemin emphasized many times that newspaper employees must keep in mind a very strong concept of national interests and must keep the secrets of the party, the nation and the army," Xu Guangchun, deputy director of the party publicity department, wrote recently in the official People's Daily, referring to China's former president and party leader.
"They must abide by news reporting disciplines in their work," he said.
A meeting of the Central Committee, which sets policy for the Communist Party, concluded in September that Communist control of the country is not guaranteed if the party is seen as doing a bad job, according to a party communique. Since then, the party has issued calls for ideological orthodoxy, urging students and its own officials to study Marxism-Leninism and Maoism more intensely. It also has silenced a bold magazine, arrested a New York Times researcher, closed a popular Beijing University chat site and, producing bitter smiles from students, barred a Tsinghua University site from discussing the closure of its rival.
Despite these steps, the party has had only limited success.
Party censors also have had difficulty in stifling Harbin's scandal. The city, 550 miles northeast of Beijing near the border with Russia, had already gained a reputation as a nest of corruption, particularly since the Chinese government began selling off Heilongjiang province's numerous money-losing state enterprises.
A former minister from the region was drummed out of the party at September's Central Committee meeting for accepting bribes, according to a party announcement. A half-dozen lower-ranking officials were dismissed here last year and put on notice that they were being investigated for allegedly selling nominations to positions of influence, whose holders could be expected to rake in bribes. One of those dismissed, Han Guizhi, a party personnel chief, became so well known as Harbin's go-to person for buying a lucrative post that she was nicknamed "Auntie Han," residents said.
A retired city official, who spoke on the condition he be identified only as Song, said locals assumed the five officials dismissed last month were forced out as a result of the continuing investigation into the job-selling network.
Judging by his and others' comments, the censorship encouraged the very cynicism toward the government and party that it was designed to prevent. It did not help that one of those dismissed last month, provincial procurator Xu Fa, had been chief editor of a book used at the provincial party training center and entitled, "How to Prevent Crime by Those in Official Positions."
"It is very common for Heilongjiang province to have so much corruption," Song, 67, said during a conversation in Harbin's Children's Park on a frigid but sunny morning.
"Do you see those big apartment buildings next to the park?" he continued, gesturing toward four high-rises. "No ordinary Harbin citizens can afford to buy apartments there. Most people who bought apartments there are officials from counties and towns. Where does their money come from? Everyone in this park knows where. The provincial party committee knows, too. But so what?"
The government in Beijing has warned of more arrests to come and, according to China Newsweek magazine, dispatched a 30-member team from the capital to fill posts being vacated because of corruption-related dismissals.
China Newsweek, which has no relation to the U.S. publication of a similar name, at least one other magazine and one newspaper broke the censorship barrier two weeks ago and reported the dismissal of the five Harbin officials. The publications were based in Beijing, which meant they were dealing with national censorship officials who, journalist say, tend to be more flexible than their provincial counterparts.
The city editor for a prominent Beijing daily said central party censors have become more sophisticated in recent years, relaying their views as advice rather than orders and focusing on specific stories rather than general topics.
But when the crunch comes, the party can wield its power however it decides, he added, calling the relationship between editor and censor "one-way communication."
Even in Beijing, editors trying to break stories such as the Harbin scandal have often had to resort to cat-and-mouse tactics to get sensitive news into the paper. One stratagem, they said, is to turn off cell phones and tell their secretaries to inform callers the boss is out. Another is to keep a story quiet until 5 p.m., when most censorship bureaucrats leave for home, and then push it into the paper so the news is out by the time censors' advice notices are faxed over the next day.
The party's judgment about what the public should know differs greatly from what it believes its own officials should know. According to involved journalists, the country's most clearly official organs -- New China News Agency, China News Agency, People's Daily and Guangming Daily -- have multi-channel reporting systems. One channel is for public consumption; the others are for "reference" news that goes to officials only, according to their ranks.
Chinese journalists and others interviewed for this story, most of whom declined to be quoted by name for fear of retribution, frequently expressed frustration with the censorship system. But they also indicated a broad willingness to accept government guidance on what might hurt China's interests if it were published.
Doctoral candidates in a prestigious Tsinghua University media program said, for instance, that controls seem necessary on displays of anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public, lest relations with Tokyo be undermined. Fresh in their memory was an outburst by Beijing soccer fans when Japan's team defeated China Aug. 7 in the Asia Cup tournament.
The Beijing press reported street demonstrations but held back on some violent clashes with police and omitted the most virulent anti-Japanese slogans shouted by Chinese fans during and after the match.
Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Indymedia Launches Special Election Coverage
democracynow.org
November 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1514215
The Indymedia network is launching a new website, indymedia.us, as part of its special coverage of the 2004 election. We speak with Joshua Breitbart, who is working with the Michigan Indymedia Center. [includes rush transcript] The Indymedia network is announcing the launch of a new website as part of its special coverage of the 2004 election.
The website indymedia.us will publish articles by participating local US-based IMC"s from around the county.
- Joshua Breitbart, who is working with the Michigan Indymedia Center and is an editor at the Toledo Ohio-based magazine Clamor. He speaks to us from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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're also joined by Josh Breitbart, who is working with the Michigan Independent Media Center, and is an editor of the Toledo, Ohio-based magazine, Clamor, speaking to us from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Indymedia Network has announced the launch of a new website as part of its special coverage of the 2004 election. Can you talk about the website, Josh?
JOSHUA BREITBART: Yes. Hi, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. It's good to have you with us.
JOSHUA BREITBART: It's the U.S. IMC. It's a site to collect all information from the over 50 Independent Media Centers around the country, and it's particularly useful now because we don't know where news is going to break around the country on November 2 and on November 3. And we're here. We're throughout the country, and this new website indymedia.us is there to gather information from wherever it may come.
AMY GOODMAN: There's also something interesting going on, a kind of continuation of what we saw outside the Republican National Convention, the whole textmob approach. Can you explain it, and explain what you are doing right now?
JOSHUA BREITBART: Yeah. We learned lessons from February 15, 2003, with the international war protests where there were reports from all over the world being gathered together in this network form, and at the R.N.C., we learned how to take breaking news calls and send out alerts through text messaging. But we have greatly expanded that capability instead of just using these local loops where people can email back text messages back and forth, people are using these tools to notify tens of thousands of people where their polling places are tomorrow morning. We can also use them to send out alerts to, you know, whether they're relevant to Ohio or relevant to the whole country, and you can sign up for the Michigan IMC alerts at michiganimc.org.
AMY GOODMAN: And say how people can sign up to get these alerts one more time.
JOSHUA BREITBART: You go to michiganimc.org and again if you, yeah, just go to indymedia.us and all of the information will be linked from there and hopefully on the Democracy Now! site, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want thank you very much, Josh Breitbart, for joining us, working with the Michigan Independent Media Center and on the launch of indymedia.us. And Medea Benjamin, organizer with the No Stolen Elections campaign, speaking to us from Palm Beach, Florida.
--------
Robert Fisk: "Bin Laden's Vote is For George Bush"
democracynow.org
November 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1513254
As the newest videotaped message from Osama bin Laden is broadcast four days before the election, we speak with veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who has interviewed bin Laden three times. Fisk also discusses Iraqi civilian casualties, kidnapped humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan, Palestinian leader Yasser Araft's ailing health and much more. [includes rush transcript] This is Democracy Now!'s special election coverage "Countdown to the Showdown: The Battle for the White House," The final Gallup poll of the 2004 election was released yesterday showing President Bush and John Kerry in the closest presidential race in the history of Gallup Polls. The poll puts the two in a statistical dead heat, 49-49.
At least 10 states could end up going to either Bush or Kerry. Of six states polled by Gallup, Kerry was slightly ahead in three: Ohio, Florida and Minnesota. Bush had slight leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa, although a Des Moines Register poll released Sunday had Kerry up slightly in Iowa. And other polls released over the weekend showed Kerry ahead in Pennsylvania and Bush ahead in Florida. In all six states, terrorism or the war in Iraq were named by at least half of prospective voters as their primary concern.
The poll comes as the newest videotaped message from Osama bin Laden dominated the Sunday talk shows. Some are calling it a mini-October surprise. The tape was broadcast on Friday afternoon by the Arabic network al Jazeera. Bin Laden appears to be in good health and is dressed in a gold colored robe standing at a podium reading from prepared notes. The 18 minutes address was directed at the American people. Bin Laden mentioned both Bush and Kerry by name, saying that neither of them can bring security to the people of the United States.
On the tape, bin Laden says that the motivation for the September 11 attacks goes back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the US support for the invasion. He said "As I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same -- and that we had to destroy the towers in America so that they taste what we tasted, and they stop killing our women and children."
Bin Laden blasts Bush's handling of the 9/11 attacks saying, "We never knew that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his people in the two towers to face those events by themselves when they were in the most urgent need of their leader. He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events."
He compares the Bush administration and the Bush family to Gulf monarchies and military dictatorships in the Middle East, saying Bush "moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom to his own country, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the disguise of fighting terrorism. And Bush, the father, found it good to install his children as governors and leaders."
Bin Laden dismissed the Bush administration's contention that the attacks were carried out because al Qaeda hates freedom. Bin Laden asks, if we hate freedom --let him tell us then, "Why did we not attack Sweden?"
Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. He is the author of "Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon"
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: Robert Fisk joins us on the line right now, the chief Middle East correspondent for The London Independent, author of, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert.
ROBERT FISK: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Your reaction to the Bin Laden tape.
ROBERT FISK: Well, it is clearly timed for the election, and indeed it, looks to me like he's voting for Bush. Although he tells the American people, it is in their hands, it is not Bush or Kerry. He has always had this notion. I remember in 1996, I thought it was outlandish, I didn't put it in my report of my meeting, he had this idea that the American people would shrug off the American government, and would -- their individual states of the union would become individual countries, a bit like Yugoslavia has now become. I said to him at the time, I don't think you seem to realize the American people vote for the government in the United States, which they don't of course in Saudi Arabia and most other states in the Middle East. And he just seemed to let that go. He was obsessed at the time with Somalia and how the Americans were paper tigers there. I must say when I read that he was telling the American people that Bush couldn't protect them, he didn't do very well in protecting the Afghanistan from the Americans, did he? But no, this is clearly Osama Bin Laden coming back into the picture. You have to realize that he is, and this is a fact I can promise you, he keeps up with television news reports, writing, and so on. So, he knows what is being said. The idea of thinking that he is out of touch, he might have been many years ago but not now. He's not a -- an internationally shrewd figure. He has never traveled very much although oddly enough, he has been to Sweden. I did notice that reference to Sweden in the text. He has actually been there, but he does understand what's going on in the rest of the world. So, therefore, this was a clear attempt to come in. My belief is that he would calculate correctly, that a tape in which there's a further threat against the United States by the people who -- well, he actually says himself, he admits it the idea occurred to me of the twin towers and the international crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001. I'm sure he realizes that further threats are more likely to help Bush than Kerry and what Osama Bin Laden wants now, of course, is a president to be elected who will further mire the country into the Middle East swamp, and cause, of course more American casualties, which Bush will surely do. So, I think that this is probably Osama Bin Laden's vote for George W. Bush.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who interviewed Osama Bin Laden twice.
ROBERT FISK: Three times, actually.
AMY GOODMAN: Three times? When did you interview him and how does he compare in how he looks to when you interviewed him?
ROBERT FISK: Well, it's an odd thing to say, and I noticed this before the American bombardment of Afghanistan. When I used to see him, he was always dressed very humbly, in a white Jallabia, a cheap cotton gown and Keffiyeh headdress like any Palestinian or Gulf Arab might wear. But more and more now he appears, when he does appear in videos, in sort of gold-fringed robes. And I wonder if that is not a certain amount of vanity crept into his personality. After all, he is a fairly well known guy now. And I wonder if this isn't - if I could see something of the Mahdi there, the person who began to believe he was a personal sort of interpreter for some higher being. It's interesting that he constantly wants to be portrayed as did before as being in a cave. Of course, the prophet Mohammad lived in a cave. And indeed he was on a mountain outcrop when he first received the message from God. And I wonder what is actually going on not politically over the United States or attacks, but I wonder what's going none the Bin Laden mind. That's not the first time he has had such a smart gown on. He was wearing it like that all in 2000. But before that he was a much more humble figure, but I suppose could you say that, before he probably thought he had more to be humble about.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet interestingly, he did not make any reference to the Koran.
ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the tape was slightly longer than the one that you have seen. And I believe he does make reference to the Koran in the full half hour tape. You thought it was 18 minutes. But it hasn't all been aired. I have spoken to the people who got the original tape and there are a number of Koranic expressions. That's not quite right, but it is not your fault that you got it wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read you to Walter Cronkite's comments. I don't know if you heard about them.
ROBERT FISK: Well, I know who Walter Cronkite is but I don't know about his comments.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, he said this on Larry King. He said, so now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election. And I have a feeling it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up Bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principle subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the Al-Qaqaa explosive dump.
ROBERT FISK: I don't really think it's worth much comment. I know the timing and the dates when this tape originally arrived in Islamabad. I don't think anything could have been -- it wasn't -- for example it didn't arrive five weeks ago and was then held up until the right moment in the election if that's what Cronkite was suggesting. I don't think there is any -- yeah, I think that's a conspiratorial theory. There's a lot of things in this, which suggest that Bin Laden is oddly enough actually trying to torture Americans. You see, at the very beginning, when he says, Bush is still misleading you and misinforming you by not telling you the truth. The odd thing about that is an awful lot of people think that Bin Laden is quite correct and accurate in saying that. He is not correct in much else, but in that he is. He never was of course in Beirut in 1982, you know, he keeps going back to the Lebanese invasion. Although he certainly would have seen pictures. And I saw the real thing in Beirut, whole apartment blocks crumbling to the ground with all of the occupants inside, with -- after the Israelis had bombed the buildings from the air, claiming that "terrorists" were inside, when in fact in almost all cases, I went to, they were just civilians families, babies, children, who of course were flattened like pancakes underneath this mass of concrete and iron. They looked frankly when I saw them very much like the dead looked of September 11. So, I'm not making a dark comparison. That's what Bin Laden is doing. But I understand what he is talking about when he talks about the destroyed towers in Lebanon. The odd thing is that there's a slightly wrong translation from the Arabic. He says that, you know, he never thought of an attack on the twin towers in New York. What he actually says in the Arabic was, I had never thought of doing it until I saw what happened in Lebanon. Then the idea occurred to me. In other words, he's saying that the inspiration came from Israel's invasion rather than him sitting down and saying there's a good target. I'm not sure I believe him because it's quite clear that the targets, which were chosen were to represent finance and the military. And I -- if indeed Ziad Jarrah's plane, the Lebanese hijacker, I would have thought that would have gone for the legislature and Capitol Hill. Interesting enough, Ziad Jarrah himself was in the Beirut siege and his family who I met managed to get him out. He was a small boy at the time, fascinated by airplanes and flying. He was just a schoolboy. Actually attending a Christian school. And his father told me that after he had gotten out of Beirut and he had seen the air attacks, he refused to play with his sister in the park or go to the swings because he said, what had happened in Beirut was too serious. Of course, he naturally occurred to me when I heard Bin Laden speaking, that if he had met Ziad Jarrah, and I rather suspect he had, Jarrah himself may have given his childhood memories of what happened in Lebanon to Bin Laden, but that might sound as conspiratorial as Walter Cronkite. I don't know.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, we have to break, when we come back I want to ask you about Yasser Arafat, his health and the significance of his going to France, and his leadership in Palestine and Israel's struggle. And I want to ask you about the deadliest weekend we have seen in Iraq over the last six months for U.S. soldiers. And then the study, 100,000 Iraqis dead.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk on the line us with, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. You wrote a piece on Saturday, Robert, the title, "The Truth is that Yasser Arafat died years ago. He married the revolution. And in the end, he became a little dictator, falsely promising democracy." Your response to the latest news of Yasser Arafat and his health?
ROBERT FISK: Well, he has been -- he's died so many times, hasn't he? We were told originally, he died in one of the air raids in Beirut in 1982, and he didn't. Then he had a crash in the Libyan desert in his plane and he was okay, but the pilot was killed. Then he had a blood clot in the brain on the way to Baghdad from Amman and Jordanian doctors saved him. This time, of course, it clearly is serious. Although, I mean in a way, when you look at it symbolically, this old man like an elderly owl who has been trapped inside this rubble for three years, still talking about going to Jerusalem and leading his people to a new state, and so on, peace of the brave, and then eventually, he's hauled out on a stretcher looking like a skeleton and taken off to a foreign country from which he may never return alive. It's not the way in which leaders should go, but the problem is, you see, all along, he never allowed a new leadership to take shape around him. He was a corrupt man. He is a corrupt man. He won't be doing much corruption for a while now, but all this time, and this is the great tragedy of the Palestinians, apart from the fact their living under occupation, which is a greater tragedy for them, is that this is a man who didn't allow young and educated Palestinians to take their place in a new political entity. If you look at the pictures or look at any of the pictures that you see of Arafat outside the Mukada building in Ramallah, you look at the pictures of him coming out when he was led out of the building and put in the helicopter, all the men around him are paunchy, 50-60 year olds from the days of fighting the Israelis in Lebanon in the 80's. Whenever a bright young spokesman has popped up on television from the Palestinian side, they are being slapped out and the old men are being brought back. Like, for example, the Palestinian representative of the United Nations, who is almost incomprehensible on television or radio. Especially when the Israelis put up extremely eloquent and well educated young people to represent their country. So he's -- you know, I have said many times, even Arafat as a physical existence, that's not a face that you would see on a student dorm window along with Che Guevara or even Castro. In a sense, he represents by his continuity, by his desire to represent the revolution, to be married to the revolution, as he put it, which is wife found out what that meant. It has a consistency and a kind of courage to it, but he had everything wrong with the Arabs in the sense that he turned into just another Arab dictator, which is exactly what I think the Israelis wanted. They want an obedient dictator to manage the occupation for them. It was interesting that when the second Intifada broke out, the Israelis asked the question, can Arafat control his own people, which of course was dutifully taken up, the Israelis set the agenda for CNN and the BBC, who said, can care fat control his people, having forgotten that the principle behind the Oslo agreement was not that Arafat would control his people but that he would represent them. And in a sense he does represent them, because in the streets there are people who say we need control, you see? One of the great sicknesses I think, the cancers of the Arab world is the desire for people to put a form of authoritarian regime over the freedoms of the kind of democracy that we think we live in. I would have to say, however, that if he was an Iraqi, living in the hell of Iraq at the moment, I might well look back wishfully on the terrible days of Saddam compared to the infinitely more violent and dangerous days today.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of which, your latest question, what's happening in Iraq right now, as well as the capture, the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, and the threatened, what will happen to her, the killing of the U.S. soldiers, and the 100,000 report, which we're going to talk about in a minute, of casualties in Iraq--Iraqi civilians.
ROBERT FISK: Well, you know, the problem is that although some of us, when we go to Iraq are still moving around, most of my colleagues, and I don't blame them at all, scarcely leave their hotels tells because it's too dangerous. We still have the two French journalists missing. Although mostly, I understand they're still alive. We have had journalists murdered; quite a few of them. So, when you talk like this, for example, I just listened to your questions. Excuse me. We are constantly faced by this kind of theatrical facade. Who has Margaret Hassan? We don't know. I know Margaret very well, but there's no claim from a particular group. There are no armed men standing in the background with the Islamic banners. Who took her? Why? We hear eight marines were killed. On operational duties. What does that mean? Were they ambushed? Were they in a tank that blew up? Were they in a helicopter that crashed? What does it mean? We hear 100,000 casualties. Well, there are two ways of getting a casualty rate, an Iraq casualty rate in Iraq. One is to go around all of the scholarly notebooks of doctors and morticians who wrote down five more bodies at 2:17 p.m. this afternoon. To go to all of the hospitals, to go the ministry of health and when we've done that, and of course, the associated press had a pretty good go at this before most of Iraq went outside of government control, we came up with a figure that got to around 20,000 or 30,000 Iraqis. The figure of 100,000 has been extrapolated from a series of interviews in specific locations based upon percentages. In other words, if they went to five houses in a street and found that 20 more people had died of violence in the previous year, then they would extrapolate out from that increase in violence and what it meant. But the 100,000 is not a record of actual deaths. It's an extrapolation of percentages put forward in what is in effect a kind of opinion poll. It may be less than 100,000. It may be considerably less, but I think when you get to the point where you are sort of saying, "my god it wasn't 30,000 but 100,000," you are beginning to forget the individual and it's the individual Iraqi who is suffering every day, every day, and there are many, many deaths will never be recorded simply because in a small village out in the desert, they will bury the person quickly and the authorities essentially have no control there anymore. There's no one to take down deaths and no one to notify. In Baghdad you still have to notify deaths. So you can go down to the Baghdad city mortuary, and I actually go there and meet the doctors and morticians. I actually stand there among the corpses and we can count them each day. Now that I can do. I can tell you, on a certain day 27 people were brought with gunshot wounds into this hospital. And I can do all the hospitals in Baghdad. But I can't travel to Najaf and Samara and Fallujah and count there, too. So there is and there will be no precise statistic. That of course is precisely the way the United States and Britain and the American military and America's appointed Iyad Allawi, so-called interim prime minister, that's the way they want it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well Robert Fisk, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Middle east correspondent for The Independent, interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times.
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New film pokes fun at Bush-speak
AFP
01 November 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4875FDFC-295D-4E5A-A129-76EBB90D8B98.htm
Just days before the US presidential election, a new political film is taking a poke at the lexicon of unique words and phrases invented by President George Bush.
"I know how hard it for you to put food on your family," a sympathetic Bush told baffled single mothers in one of his inimitable foot-in-mouth utterances.
The one-hour film, titled Bushisms, gently lampoons 50 of the president's most memorable verbal gaffes, welding them together with commentary by US comedian Brian Unger and author Jacob Weisberg, who has compiled three volumes of "Bushisms" into book form.
"It'll take time to restore chaos," Bush reassured people in a speech on the situation in war-torn Iraq featured in the movie.
Producer and director Elizabeth Reeder said she sifted through a "mountain of material" when searching for the president's most quotable quotes.
Political fun
"We wanted to have some political fun in the middle of a very heavily charged political atmosphere," said Reeder, who this year produced the political documentary Bush's Brain, widely seen as an anti-Bush film.
"A peeance, freeance secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact"
President George Bush
"This film is not intended to influence the election in any way. It's political comedy, with more emphasis in comedy," she said, adding that Bush had the ability to laugh at his own gaffes and mangling of the English language, and had done so publicly.
But she conceded that the timing of the film, released just weeks before one of the tightest presidential races in years, was sensitive and that some retailers had been loathe to carry copies of the DVD.
Reeder and her team said they had fun picking Bush's most amusing slip ups from hundreds of hours of news clips.
"If you teach you child to read, he or her would be able to pass a literacy test," the president memorably noted a few years ago. "Rarely is the question asked: 'Is our children learning'," he said in another.
Clear as mud
Another of the clips featured recalls the president's thoughts on the complex business of keeping an eye on the country's spending. "It's clearly a budget," he said. "It's got a lot of numbers in it."
In a speech in Washington in October 2003, Bush spoke of his long-term aspirations for Iraq after the US invasion of the country earlier that year.
Bush admits his wife speaks English better than he does
"A peeance, freeance secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact," he said without pausing or stalling, even as audience members scratched their heads over what "peeance and freeance" means in any country.
Among the new words coined by Bush, the film picks out "subliminable" - which the sporting Bush gamely repeated in a joke at his own expense on a US television satire show before the 2000 election.
Also recalled are "ingrinable" - as in prescription drugs will be an ingrinable part of the medical plan - "strategery" and "hopefuller".
But Reeder said she did not believe the film was mean-spirited because even Bush had laughed at some of his own slips and even quipped this month that his wife Laura "speaks English better" than he does.
"It just so happens that President Bush has come out with quite a few 'Bushisms', but if (former Democratic presidential candidate) Al Gore had won in 2000, I'd have made an Al Gore dance music video," she said of the famously stiff former vice-president.
-------- us politics
GOP expected to hold House; Senate at stake
November 01, 2004
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041101-011601-4693r.htm
Republicans are expected to hold on to their House majority tomorrow, but the Senate is turning into a nail-biter, with nine races in play that could upset the party's precarious hold on power.
As the congressional elections enter their final hours, control of the Senate - where Republicans have a 51-48 seat majority, with one Democrat-leaning independent - appears to be up for grabs.
Eleven governorships also are at stake tomorrow, five held by Republicans and six by Democrats, that could expand the Republicans' 28-seat statehouse majority by a seat or two.
Senate Republican seats are in danger of being taken over by the Democrats in Illinois, Alaska and Colorado, while four of five Southern Democrat open seats are at risk and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle is running behind in some polls against Republican former Rep. John Thune. Two other Republican seats in Kentucky and Oklahoma also look vulnerable.
"We continue to believe that it is easier for the Republicans to get to 51 seats than it is for the Democrats," veteran elections analyst Stuart Rothenberg told his newsletter subscribers over the weekend. "But the Senate remains a very interesting and unpredictable battleground.
"Anything from a Democratic gain of a seat or two to a GOP gain of two or three seems possible. The most likely scenario is continued Republican control of the Senate - and possibly a gain of a seat for the party," he said.
A pickup of two or three Republicans would give President Bush a stronger majority on Capitol Hill to get his legislative agenda passed, should he win re-election, but it would pose a significant, if not insurmountable, obstacle if Sen. John Kerry becomes president. A Democratic takeover, on the other hand, would block the Bush agenda for at least the next two years.
House: Few seats in play
In the House races, veteran congressional election analysts generally agree there are not enough competitive contests for the Democrats to get the 218-seat majority needed to take back the chamber they lost in 1994 after a 40-year reign. Republicans rule with a 227-205 majority, with one independent and two vacancies.
While several senior Republicans are in trouble, "few seats are in play, and the party's House majority does not appear to be at risk," Mr. Rothenberg said in his latest report on House races.
All 435 congressional seats are up for election, but 405 (213 Republicans and 192 Democrats) are considered safe or favored to win their elections. Most of the rest are competitive or tilting Republican, with eight races clear tossups.
The fate of five Democratic lawmakers in Texas, as a result of a redistricting plan passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature and engineered by House Republican Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, was the most far-reaching factor in the House elections battle.
It now appears likely that four of the five Democrats who had their districts redrawn by Republican map makers will be defeated, dramatically changing the political makeup of the Texas delegation. Overall, Texas Republicans could add as many as six seats to their House lineup.
Among the five redistricted Democrats, Reps. Charles W. Stenholm, Max Sandlin and Nick Lampson were running well behind their Republican opponents by at least 10 percentage points. Rep. Martin Frost also was struggling against Republican Rep. Pete Sessions. Only seven-term Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards had a strong lead over challenger Arlene Wohlgemuth.
Senate: Shift of power?
In the battle for the Senate, 15 Republican seats and 19 Democratic seats are up this year. Two contests, in Illinois and Georgia, are expected to be takeovers, nine are close or clear tossups, and the rest are mildly competitive or safe.
Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, who delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, was expected to easily beat former Ambassador Alan Keyes to win the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. He would be the first black man to be elected to the Senate by a popular vote since Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke in 1966, who served two terms.
In Georgia, three-term Republican Rep. Johnny Isakson also was a shoo-in to win the seat of Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, who is calling it quits after a single term.
Here is how the other competitive Senate races look now:
•North Carolina: Democrat Erskine Bowles, who was President Clinton's chief of staff, had been leading in the polls for months until Republican Rep. Richard M. Burr began running a wave of TV ads that reminded voters of Mr. Bowles' close connections to the Clinton White House. Mr. Bowles' lead quickly evaporated, but the race remains close, though several polls give Mr. Burr a slight edge.
•South Carolina: Rep. Jim DeMint was favored in this Republican-leaning state. Then a slew of ads from Democratic state Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum, running as a conservative, attacked him for supporting a bill that called for replacing the income tax with a 23 percent sales tax. That has made this race "too close for comfort. South Carolina remains a Democratic upset possibility," Mr. Rothenberg says. Still, polls give Mr. DeMint a single-digit edge in a state that likes to elect Republicans.
•Florida: The race between former state Education Commissioner Betty Castor and former Bush Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez is tied. But Mr. Martinez is getting strong support in the state's large Hispanic community, particularly among Cuban Americans. Both the Mason-Dixon and Quinnipiac polls are giving him a one- to three-point lead.
•Louisiana: The challenge for Republican Rep. David Vitter, the consistent front-runner in this state's open, multicandidate election, is to get 50 percent of the vote to avoid a December runoff that always favors the Democrats. An Oct. 25 state poll by MRI gave him 51 percent of the vote, but other polls continue to show him running in the low 40s against his two Democratic rivals.
•Oklahoma: After hitting some rough spots this month, former Rep. Tom Coburn's campaign has made a comeback of sorts and the Republican physician now leads his Democratic opponent, Rep. Brad Carson, in most polls - by 42 percent to 39 percent, according to Wilson Research Strategies. Both men are seeking to replace retiring Sen. Don Nickles, a Republican.
•Colorado: Most of last week's polls showed Attorney General Ken Salazar leading Republican Pete Coors, who is making his first bid for elective office, but not all of them. Zogby International put Mr. Salazar ahead by nine points, the Rocky Mountain News had him up by six points, but Mason-Dixon had the contest dead even at 46 percent for each.
•Alaska: Still fighting charges of nepotism after her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, appointed her to fill his open seat, Sen. Lisa Murkowski is trailing former two-term Gov. Tony Knowles. She was running two to six points behind in the latest polls. But Ted Stevens, the state's senior senator and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has been campaigning hard for her. Republican strategists say a heavy vote for Mr. Bush in this strongly Republican state could give her the edge to overcome Mr. Knowles' lead.
•South Dakota: Mr. Thune, making a second try for the Senate at the urging of the White House, is running slightly ahead of Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. A new Thune TV ad shows Mr. Daschle talking positively about trial lawyers, abortion rights and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
•Kentucky: This contest was not supposed to be on the vulnerable list, but when Republican Sen. Jim Bunning began making some erratic statements, getting into shouting matches, his critics in the press began attacking him and his double-digit polling numbers dropped. He has a single-digit lead over Dan Mongiardo and is favored to win, but the race has tightened in the past week.
Who's moving in
In the governorship races, Republicans are hoping to pick up seats in Indiana, Missouri and Washington state.
In Indiana, Mr. Bush's former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., is in a tight race against Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan, a former POW in Vietnam who was lieutenant governor until he stepped into the governorship after the death of Gov. Frank O'Bannon.
The Democrats have held the governorship for the past 16 years, but Indiana has been hit hard by a manufacturing downturn and revenue shortfalls. The latest independent polls show Mr. Daniels with a narrow lead.
In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt, son of House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, is running against state Auditor Claire McCaskill, a former prosecutor who defeated Gov. Bob Holden in the Democratic primary.
The race is considered too close to call, though polls showed that Mr. Blunt, a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks, was up by a few points.
In Washington state, Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire and former state Sen. Dino Rossi also are in a tight race to replace Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, whose popularity plummeted as a result of a declining economy and budget problems. As of last week, Mr. Rossi was gaining on his opponent in a contest that is considered too close to call.
Democrats, however, are hoping to pick up a Republican-held governorship in Montana, where Gov. Judy Martz, whose job-approval polls have plunged to 20 percent, decided not to seek re-election. Rancher Brian Schweitzer, who made a strong but unsuccessful bid to unseat Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in 2000, is running against Secretary of State Bob Brown, who won a five-way Republican primary in which his rivals accused him of being a tax-raiser.
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IRS Investigating NAACP For Criticizing Bush
democracynow.org
November 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1514204
The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the non-profit status of the NAACP after its chairman, Julian Bond, criticized the Bush administration in a speech at its annual convention in July. We speak with NAACP Director Hilary Shelton about the investigation as well as the intimidation and suppression of voters around the country. [includes rush transcript] Three members of Congress are calling on the Internal Revenue Service to drop an investigation into the non-profit status of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The IRS audit comes after its chairman, Julian Bond, criticized the Bush administration in a speech at its annual convention in July.
At the time, President Bush turned down an invitation from the NAACP - the country's oldest and largest civil rights organization - to speak at the convention. In his speech, Chairman Bond criticized Bush's civil rights record, the Iraq war, the high black unemployment rate and the decline of educational opportunities for blacks.
The letter addressed to the IRS Commissioner by three House Democrats: Charles Rangel of New York, Pete Stark of California and John Conyers of Michigan says: "it is obvious that the timing of this IRS examination is nothing more than an effort to intimidate the members of the NAACP."
The NAACP's tax-exempt status allows contributors to make tax-deductible contributions but restricts its lobbying efforts. If the IRS investigation determines that the NAACP intervened in a political campaign, the most severe penalty would be the loss of its tax-exempt status.
The IRS said about 60 charities, churches and other tax-exempt groups are currently under investigation for possibly breaking federal rules that bar them from participating in political activities. This comes as a new report by OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group, finds a growing pattern of intimidation and suppression of free-speech and advocacy rights of charities and other nonprofits.
- Hilary Shelton, Director of the NAACP Washington Bureau in Washington DC.
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 going to address this issue now, with the head of the Washington section of the NAACP. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
HILARY SHELTON: It's good to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: It's great to be with you. Can you talk about the attack on the NAACP, or the I.R.S. investigation of the NAACP?
HILARY SHELTON: Very good. I think you have laid it out rather well. For our listeners who are not as aware, 501(c)3s are not allowed to participate in partisan political activities, but they can participate in political activities and have done it for years and years. You can legally involve yourself in non-partisan voter registration, voter education, get out the vote campaigns, as well as voter protection campaigns that the NAACP has been involved in since 1909, the founding of the organization about 95 years ago. We found it rather peculiar, number one, that the investigation would be based on a speech given by the chairman of the national board of directors of NAACP, Julian Bond. Julian Bond was critical of democrats. As a matter of fact, one of the terms that he used to describe his concerns over the Democratic Party was them being spineless at a time when the Republican Party was being ruthless about how they were handling things. So, he's been very critical of both parties. All of that was done in the context, quite frankly, of an historic analysis of both parties and African American community involvements with those parties and those parties' support, or lack thereof, of the African American community. So it's peculiar that we received such a letter less than a month prior to an election, when usually that kind of thing doesn't happen. We talked to people not only on both sides of the aisle, but lawyers that represent organizations in many different political perspectives.
AMY GOODMAN: Hilary Shelton with us. How has it affected the NAACP?
HILARY SHELTON: I think people that are not familiar with the organization, and that indeed not only do we not involve ourselves in partisan political activities because of the 501(c)3 law, we don't involve ourselves in partisan political activities also because the constitution of the NAACP prohibits it. So, as much as we have been trying to make sure people understand that the involvement we have had in political activities is always, and it will continue to be, non-partisan. We do have people that are not as familiar. We have actually even gotten a couple of inquiries from some of the other non-profit organizations that we work with, all of which, when they understand what we have been doing and so forth, continue to be very supportive of how we do business.
AMY GOODMAN: Hilary Shelton is director of the NAACP Washington bureau. I'm wondering about the timing of the I.R.S. audit, and the role that the NAACP has played both specifically in Florida, NAACP being the organization that brought a lawsuit after the 2000 election over disenfranchisement of African Americans, and being a part of and a leader of the Election Protection Coalition.
HILARY SHELTON: Absolutely. It sent a very chilling effect, as a matter of fact, to our members and coalition partners across the country. Indeed, knowing how safe the NAACP has been in its political activities, for us to be investigated at this point, and such a highly contested election, makes many others wonder if they can continue to do the kind of political activities they are involved in. And indeed, we are totally committed to our full involvement in the political process, to see to it that African Americans and all other Americans are able to cast an unfettered vote, to be left alone and allowed to do what they want to do to have their voices heard in the ways that we have always worked to make sure their voices could be heard. But it does send a chilling effect for it to happen now. Why would they do an investigation or begin an investigation less than one month prior to a presidential election? Normally, these kinds of investigations of your tax status are usually done at the end of your filing period, which will be at the end of the year, so it's amazing to us that this is happening now.
AMY GOODMAN: And the reports from South Carolina, Charleston County election officials cautioning South Carolinians Friday to steer clear of a fake letter that threatens the arrest of voters who have outstanding parking tickets or have failed to pay child support.
HILARY SHELTON: It's that kind of activity that we have been working so hard to bring to the forefront. It has happened in other places in the country, too. They have asked everything from not only outstanding parking tickets and any other citations, but in many cases, fliers went out, predominantly in the African American community saying when you comes to the polls to vote, make sure you bring canceled checks showing that you have paid your child custody payments. Make sure that you bring receipts showing that you have even paid your utility bills, because there will be people at the polling sites to check. We have had outrageous fliers sent around in some communities saying, don't worry about voting on November 2, Tuesday, you can always come back and vote on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday as well. Those kind of things that disrupt political involvement to actually suppress the African American vote is something that we'll continue to work to prevent.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I'm looking at a report in Newsday, headlined "Minorities' Voter Rights Raises Concerns." It's about the civil rights division under Acosta, the civil rights division of the U.S. government. And it says, black voters -- under Acosta, black voters don't even come in second as a priority this year for the civil rights division. He reserves that for overseas voters, according to department statements in a recent report by the government accountability office.
HILARY SHELTON: Well, we have clearly addressed -- we have clearly pushed the assistant attorney general for civil rights to be very actively involved in communities that we suspect are going to be problematic. As you know with early voting and problems we experienced in the 2000 election, we have a pretty extensive list that we have shared with the Justice Department of areas that we're concerned may very well be a problem as well. We are also concerned that the backlash of sending out prosecutors from the Justice Department to actually observe at polling sites with the sole purpose of bringing criminal cases against individuals and groups is something we're also very fearful of. If indeed police lines are set up in front of polling sites in the African American community, as we experienced, by the way, in the 2000 election, are armed, uniformed police officers, are standing around polling sites, then to many particularly new African Americans, those who have come from countries like Haiti and totalitarian governments in Africa that are now U.S. citizens and planning on casting their vote could also send a very chilling effect and again suppress African American participation.
AMY GOODMAN: Hilary Shelton, I want to thank you for being with us. Director of the NAACP, the Washington bureau.
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Foreign policy takes rare role at center stage
By David R. Sands
November 01, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041101-122933-5461r.htm
Foreign policy, typically an afterthought in U.S. election campaigns, will be foremost in many voters' minds tomorrow as they decide whether President Bush or Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry can best lead the country in a post-September 11 world.
In the first presidential election in more than a generation in which foreign policy and terrorism vie with the economy at the top of the list of voter concerns, the choice between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry may come down to style, not substance.
Despite bitter and often intensely personal attacks, the incumbent and the challenger broadly agree on a range of prickly international questions, from the need to stay the course in Iraq and support for Israel to a pre-emptive U.S. right to deal with terrorist threats and the danger posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
What is in sharp dispute, however, is which candidate is temperamentally better suited to protect American interests and head off threats above all in the global war on terrorism.
"The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror," Mr. Bush told supporters in Pennsylvania last week. "And in this war, there is no place for confusion and no substitute for victory."
Mr. Kerry argues that Mr. Bush's diplomatic style - assertive, unapologetic about American interests and unashamed of American power - has alienated key allies, damaged America's image, and, in Iraq, led the country into a disastrous diversion from the real terror threat backed by a sham coalition of "the coerced and the bribed."
"The president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside," Mr. Kerry said during the second presidential debate.
"And Iran now is more dangerous, and so is North Korea, with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball, off of Osama bin Laden."
Foreign-policy debates traditionally play only a minor role in U.S. presidential campaigns compared with the economy and other domestic issues. But the world-altering events of Mr. Bush's first term - September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq - have rewritten the equation.
A Time magazine poll early last month found that 42 percent of voters listed either the war on terror or Iraq as the most important issue in their presidential decision, compared with 26 percent for the economy and 12 percent for "moral issues" such as homosexual "marriage" and abortion.
Voter worries about security and the international scene have led both campaigns to talk tough.
Mr. Bush has mocked Mr. Kerry's often strained efforts to explain his position on the war in Iraq, while Kerry partisans insist the Democrat will fight a smarter - and tougher - battle against the terrorists.
"John Kerry has a comprehensive plan to wage a relentless, single-minded war to capture or kill the terrorists, crush their movement and free the world from fear," said Wendy Sherman, a senior State Department aide under President Clinton and a leading foreign-policy adviser for Mr. Kerry.
"He will destroy the terrorist networks, take strong action to prevent nuclear terrorism, cut off terrorist financing, protect the homeland, deny terror safe havens and new recruits, support democracies in the Arab and Muslim world, and restore alliances to combat terrorists across the globe," she added.
But foreign-policy analysts still see a major divide between the two candidates flowing out of the September 11 attacks.
For Mr. Bush, who as a candidate in 2000 famously promised to make the country a "humble nation but strong," the al Qaeda strikes in New York and Washington required a complete overhaul of the rules of diplomacy and U.S. foreign policy.
"After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes back to hurt us," he said in the town hall debate with Mr. Kerry in Missouri last month .
"In the old days, we'd see a threat and we could deal with it if we felt like it or not. But 9/11 changed it all."
Mr. Kerry's supporters say the administration's "us-versus-them" diplomacy, its disdain for traditional alliances and its unwillingness to work through established institutions have left the United States isolated, feared and less safe than before.
"What hasn't changed is what constitutes legitimate action on the part of a nation-state that violates the sovereignty of another nation-state," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime Senate colleague of Mr. Kerry.
"What hasn't changed is any consensus on what constitutes a humanitarian crisis, and under what circumstances an individual state, let alone a group of states, has the right to intervene," Mr. Biden told a recent Council on Foreign Relations forum.
There are some specific policy differences.
Mr. Kerry favors direct talks with North Korea's Stalinist leadership to resolve the nuclear standoff with Pyongyang. On this issue, it is Mr. Bush who is the multilateralist, arguing that Mr. Kerry's approach would undermine ongoing six-nation regional talks hosted by China.
On Iran, Mr. Kerry has said he is open to a deal with Tehran to supply nuclear fuel for the country's energy needs if Iran abandons efforts to develop its nuclear programs. Mr. Bush has let a trio of European powers take the lead in talks with Iran, but has struck a hard line against any deals on Iran's nuclear programs.
Mr. Kerry has promised a more aggressive - critics say protectionist - stance on trade and labor deals, unnerving a number of Asian countries that export heavily to the United States.
The Democrat also vows to scale back the Bush administration's ambitious plans for a missile-defense shield and a new generation of so-called "bunker-busting" nuclear bombs, saying they undermine U.S. credibility in pushing other states on weapons-proliferation questions.
Despite his unilateralist reputation, Mr. Bush can point to a number of foreign-policy successes, many employing the patient, multilateral diplomacy that his critics say he disdains.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice recently noted that U.S. relations with Cold War adversaries China and Russia are perhaps as warm and productive as they have ever been. Despite major differences on Iraq, Russian President Vladimir Putin has all but endorsed Mr. Bush for re-election, saying his defeat would be a victory for terrorists around the world.
Mr. Bush has also forged strong ties with two other major Asian powers, Japan and India, both of which privately express alarm at Mr. Kerry's economic policies.
The United States and Britain negotiated a deal with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to dismantle Tripoli's nuclear programs. Critics say Libya had been seeking a deal for years, but Mr. Gadhafi began negotiating in earnest only as the bombs were falling on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in March 2003.
U.S. pressure after September 11 brought a fundamental strategic realignment in Pakistan and across Central Asia, as regimes lined up to meet Mr. Bush's demands to cooperate in the war on terror.
Mr. Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, begun in mid-2003 with 10 European and Asian allies, has brought new coordination to international efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Bush proposed a massive increase in spending for AIDS treatment in Africa and has pushed a fundamental rewriting of U.S. foreign-aid programs to reward poor countries with sound economic policies and strong legal systems.
But the divisive debate leading up to the war in Iraq and the postwar violence and instability have provided an opening for Mr. Kerry and the Democrats. Mr. Kerry has aggressively challenged Mr. Bush on security and foreign policy - issues that traditionally have been Republican strengths.
Through its rhetoric and abrupt rejection of international treaties, the Bush administration has alienated allies in Europe, Latin America and across the Arab and Muslim world, the Kerry camp charges.
"At every turn, before the war, in its immediate aftermath and today, this administration has treated potential allies with disdain," Mr. Kerry said in a speech in Iowa last week. "As president, I will treat our allies with respect."
A senior European diplomat with long experience in Washington said Mr. Bush is broadly unpopular across both Western and Eastern Europe. The diplomat, speaking on background, said remarks such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's "Old Europe/New Europe" distinction were seen by many as an effort to undermine the cohesiveness of the European Union.
"If Bush is elected with the same agenda as the past four years, I can see big problems," the diplomat said. "The Europeans, frankly, are scared."
Even some supporters of the war to oust Saddam say the administration's handling of diplomacy and the postwar period has undermined the goals of Mr. Bush and his foreign-policy team.
Marshall Wittmann, a former adviser to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and now a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, argued that "the manner in which this administration has conducted this war has been devastating to future efforts to employ force to defend American interests and values."
"The Bush administration has handed isolationists on the right and the left a major victory," he added.
The president insists he can work with Europe, but makes no apologies for rejecting favored European pacts such as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the International Criminal Court.
"I don't think you want a president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing," Mr. Bush said in the second debate with Mr. Kerry. "You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe."
-------- voting
Foreign teams set to monitor balloting
November 01, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041101-122925-6356r.htm
About 60 mainly European election observers have taken up their posts in six states, including Florida and Ohio, saying they hope their presence will serve as a "preventative to the shenanigans" during voting tomorrow.
"We will tell the people of Ohio whether their election is free and fair," said one of the observers, Hugo Coveliers, a Belgian senator who plans to monitor voting in Cleveland.
But many of the parliamentary observers sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are here to learn about the American electoral experience as much as to monitor it.
Several sat up straight during a lecture late last week by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf when he talked about wedge issues and how to concentrate resources where they will produce the most ballots.
"That's not a bad idea," whispered one Eastern European observer to a colleague. "This may be useful next year."
The observers all are legislators who have volunteered to observe the U.S. elections at the request of the OSCE, a 55-member alliance founded in 1975 to foster East-West cooperation and monitor compliance with the Helsinki Accords.
This is not the first time the OSCE has sent monitors to the United States, but it is the largest and most controversial of its U.S. missions.
The Bush administration issued the invitation only reluctantly, and the presence of the Europeans has angered many Americans, who see it as an infringement of U.S. sovereignty.
The observers have already fanned out to Florida, New Mexico, Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia. After meeting with local officials and voters groups, the observers - whose home countries range from Belgium to Kazakhstan - will spend Election Day watching the polls.
The OSCE rules do not allow observers to do much more than make sure that local rules are followed. If they see someone burning ballots in the alley, they are not permitted to interfere. Nor are they supposed to criticize the army of lawyers, negative advertising or simplistic campaign speeches that many of them seem to find jarring.
Nevertheless, the observers hope their presence will serve as a "preventative to the shenanigans," said Mr. Coveliers, the Belgian senator. "What [the voters] can be sure about is, if there are obvious shortcomings, an international organization of 55 countries will declare there are shortcomings."
OSCE officials also see the exercise as an opportunity for the organization to demonstrate its own fairness.
Many Eastern European nations are frustrated by the OSCE's focus on monitoring elections in emerging democracies, explained Andreas Nothelle, a German parliamentarian who is now an ambassador at the organization's Vienna, Austria, headquarters.
"It is important to see the organization applying the same standards to everybody," he said.
The program has not been easy to coordinate: The Greek delegation, which won the coveted Fort Lauderdale, Fla., slot, confounded the OSCE by refusing to stay in nonsmoking hotel rooms.
The Russians and Kazakhs must monitor elections within driving distance of Washington because their governments cannot afford to fly them around the United States, according to Vitaly Evseyev, a Russian official with the OSCE.
There are few concerns about voting plans in North Carolina and Virginia, he added, "but they really want to experience a U.S. election. They're not here to look for trouble."
During an intense two-day briefing on the American political system from federal election officials, technocrats, political experts and others, the Europeans received a crash course in U.S. political history and theory, as well as a primer on how complex and expensive the U.S. political process has become.
When Federal Election Commission information officer Greg Scott told them that candidates, their political parties and other groups will have spent more than $1 billion on the 2004 campaign, they nodded and frowned.
When they heard that the average U.S. congressional candidate raises about $1 million and a senator four times that, they gasped.
"It would be impossible to spend that much money in Switzerland," marveled Cleveland observer Barbara Haering, a full-time environmental lawyer and member of Switzerland's part-time parliament, "probably because we are not allowed to advertise on television."
The delegates are from Greece, Belgium, Denmark, Cyprus, Sweden, Serbia-Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Romania, Switzerland, France, Malta, Albania, Romania, Norway, Finland, Italy, Russia, Monaco, Belarus, Estonia and Turkey.
•Jon Ward contributed to this article.
--------
COMPLAINTS
Charges of Fraud and Voter Suppression Already Flying
November 1, 2004
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE and WILLIAM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/politics/campaign/01voting.html?pagewanted=all&position=
In Lake County, Ohio, officials say at least a handful of voters have reported receiving a notice on phony board of elections letterhead saying that anyone who had registered through a variety of Democratic-leaning groups would not be allowed to vote this year.
In Pennsylvania, an official of the state Republican Party said it sent out 130,000 letters congratulating newly registered voters but that 10,000 were returned, indicating that the people had died or that the address was nonexistent. Mark Pfeifle, the Republican spokesman, said the numbers showed that in their zeal to register new voters, Democratic-aligned groups had committed fraud.
And in Michigan, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said she had to put out a statement in mid-October about where to send absentee ballots after voters in the Ann Arbor area received calls telling them to mail the ballots to the wrong address.
With lawyers and poll watchers descending on battleground states and the presidential race tight enough that every vote could count, elections officials say that charges of voter intimidation and voter fraud, on the street or in courtrooms, are flying more furiously than any one can remember in recent elections.
Much of the tone has been set by a propaganda war of sorts between the parties, with the Democrats charging that efforts are being made to suppress the vote and Republicans warning against voter fraud or double voting.
In part, the charges are designed by each party to get out their core supporters to the polls. But court battles already under way over such matters as who gets to cast provisional ballots show this is also a serious struggle that could continue in the courts after Election Day.
Democrats have tried to walk a fine line. For weeks they made charges that Republicans were working to keep down turnout and deter newly registered voters. But as Election Day has approached, they have moderated their tone, assuring voters that all will be fine at the polls, mindful of surveys showing that reports of confusion can deter voters.
In Philadelphia, where turnout among blacks is considered crucial to the Democrats winning Pennsylvania, state Democrats held a press conference last week where the Rev. Jesse Jackson assured voters there would be no disruptions at the polls. Michael Whouley, the get-out-the-vote expert at the Democratic National Committee, held a teleconference with reporters last week to insist that the reports of challenges and confusion at polling places were greatly exaggerated. "American democracy is working," he said.
Jenny Backus, another adviser to the D.N.C., said that early voting had gone smoothly, and that Election Day would too. "For all the Republican talk of beware, beware, millions of Americans are having a perfectly pleasant voting experience," she said.
Still, Democrats were putting out briefing papers outlining incidents they said were designed to suppress voting or intimidate voters.
Republicans say they are trying to prevent people from voting twice in states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where in Philadelphia the number of registered voters is almost as high as the number of voting-age residents. Ed Gillespie, the Republican national chairman, has said that in some critical places registration is even higher than the number of eligible voters, though election officials say such discrepancies can result from people moving.
Republicans also say they want to keep those ineligible, such as illegal immigrants, from voting. "I'm astonished at the lack of concern with the fraud that exists out there," said Mindy Tucker Fletcher, an adviser to the Florida Republican Party.
Republican supporters in Florida sought to capitalize on Democratic charges of voter intimidation with a radio advertisement over the weekend. "Republicans won't let us vote? They say it to distract us," says the advertisement, which the Bush campaign said was not one of its own. The ad concluded, "There is no one stopping you from voting, and if you pay attention to what these Democrats are doing instead of what they are saying, you'll vote Republican."
Caught in the middle are elections officials, trying to sort out which complaints are real.
"I have had an election year I'd never thought I'd experience in my 21 years," said Jan Clair, the director of the Lake County Elections Board in Ohio. "I've had to do so much damage control."
Ms. Clair said she took solace from the fact that she had gotten only about five calls about the flier saying those who had registered through certain Democratic-leaning groups could not vote. She said the sheriff had gotten fewer than that. "The majority of people realize that they were bogus on its face," she said. Still, she added, "to have some campaign or candidate spill over into my business to create confusion, that really offends me."
But her county, east of Cleveland, is not the only one facing problems. In Cleveland, elections officials say people claiming to be from the Board of Elections have gone door to door offering to retrieve absentee ballots - election officials say there is no such delivery service; ballots must be mailed or dropped off in person.
Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that runs a hot line for reports of problems like missing absentee ballots and long lines at polling places, reported yesterday that of 53,252 calls received nationwide, 8,658 have been from Florida, the state where the bitter recount took place in 2000.
In fact, the parties are in full combat in Florida.
Some Democrats last week seized on a BBC report saying that Republicans had obtained a list of 1,886 predominantly black and Democratic voters in Duval County and suggesting that Republicans could be planning to challenge those voters on Election Day.
Asked about the report, Ms. Fletcher, the adviser to the Republican Party in Florida, said it was unfounded. She said that the list was created from returned mail the Republican National Committee sent to newly registered voters and that it showed that some newly registered voters did not have valid addresses.
Florida Republicans on Thursday said they had determined that at least 925 felons had either already voted illegally in early voting or had requested absentee ballots. And Ms. Fletcher left open the possibility that the party intended to challenge ineligible voters at the polls on Election Day.
"It's really not a gray area at all," she said. "You either want the laws to be enforced or not."
Charles H. Lichtman, special lead counsel for the Kerry campaign in Florida, said Republicans were raising the threat of challenges "to scare people away by talking about intimidation so there's a smaller turnout, which they think favors them.''
Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the Miami-Dade elections department, said the agency has heard of several complaints from harassed voters. "We have heard sporadic reports of people attempting to inform voters, maybe offering assistance to voters who don't want it, but nothing systemic," Mr. Kaplan said.
On Thursday, after concerns increased that some polling places would be clogged by challenges to voters, the Florida elections director, Dawn Roberts, sent a memorandum to county elections supervisors emphasizing that any challenges to voters must not delay others from voting and that a challenged voter should still be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that will be considered later by the county canvassing board. Challenges must be made in the form of written affidavits.
Kate Zernike reported from Philadelphia for this article, and William Yardley from Florida. Ford Fessenden contributed reporting from Cleveland.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Energy Regulations Costing Consumers Billions;
Members of the National Energy Marketers Association Provide Benefits to Millions of Consumers
Business Wire
November 1, 2004
http://www.canelect.ca/english/article.html?SMContentIndex=1&SMContentSet=0
WASHINGTON, Nov 1, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- "Unlike Michigan, millions of New York consumers could become economic for the first time because of new deregulation policies formulated over six years of analysis, consensus building and hard work by the N.Y. Public Service Commission (NYPSC). Members of the National Energy Marketers Association (NEM) and other regional choice coalitions estimate that Michigan consumers alone have received a 'Restructuring Dividend' of approximately 100 million dollars per year in energy savings, with very limited competition," says Craig Goodman, president of NEM.
"This newly emerging industry is just beginning to develop data to quantify such a 'dividend,'" says Goodman. "Frankly, I will be surprised, if at the end of the restructuring process, it is revealed that homeowners are only saving billions of dollars per year, instead of tens of billions of dollars per year," predicted Goodman. "Savings resulting from competition in the marketplace cumulate upon themselves like compound interest (even if prices are otherwise rising)," said Goodman, a former energy policy official with the Reagan and Bush Administrations.
"A unique confluence of recent events highlights how energy regulations that impede competitive markets are costing consumers billions of dollars," says Goodman. "At a recent EEI conference, certain state regulators openly voiced concern that many homeowners and small businesses may never receive the benefits of price competition. In my opinion, until and unless the smallest, lowest income consumer receives energy price and technology competition in the same way they currently receive price competition for long distance and cell phone services, the U.S. energy markets will not have been restructured properly," said Goodman. "Millions of customers are being punished for shopping for lower prices under today's partial deregulation laws," said Goodman.
"NEM reviewed the findings in the Fraser Institute report on price impacts of state restructuring laws finding that states closed to competition are losing nearly two billion dollars per year and believes that the findings could be conservative. Thirty years of government statistics on this industry unequivocally shows that price competition has a direct, obvious and significant impact on energy prices even during times of increasing demand or inadequate supply," said Goodman.
"Importantly, natural gas prices increased dramatically after the imposition of price controls in 1979 and did not start to decline until their repeal in 1985. Despite that repeal and the collapse of wellhead prices, the gross profits on natural gas sales to homeowners have increased virtually unabated for approximately thirty years. Unlike the profit on homeowners, the profit margin on sales to large industry has declined steadily since decontrol," said Goodman.
"Price increases to industrial customers literally stopped at the prospect of natural gas restructuring starting in 1983 and reversed a decade of price increases on the order of fifteen to forty eight percent," said Goodman. "NEM's research supports the Fraser Institute conclusion that even in times of rising prices, both the prospect of price competition as well as price competition itself imposes significant discipline on the marketplace resulting in savings that consumers would not otherwise receive," said Goodman.
NEM is a national, non-profit trade association representing wholesale and retail marketers of natural gas, electricity, as well as energy and financial related products, services, information and advanced technologies throughout the United States, Canada and the European Union. For additional information contact NEM's Washington, DC headquarters at 202-333-3288 or its Web site at www.energymarketers.com.
SOURCE: National Energy Marketers Association (NEM)
CONTACT: National Energy Marketers Association (NEM)
Craig Goodman, 202-333-3288
Facsimile: 202-333-3266
www.energymarketers.com
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Water, Women, and War
Z Magazine
By Laura Santina
November 2004
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/santina1104.html
Water was the biggest buzz at the 2004 Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Congress held in August in the town of Kungälv, Sweden. During the week-long conference, which included official reports from 12 countries, over 300 women from 31 countries discussed the condition, distribution, and availability of water in their own countries.
The Congress took place at Nordiska Folkhighschool, situated on one of the many Kungälv hills overlooking canals and rivers. Nordiska Folkhighschool is one of 350 schools in a special government-supported school system exclusively "for adult people who long to study something during the winter," according to the headmaster. "There are no structures here- no exams, no curriculum, no credits, and no prescribed courses." Though some of the legislative business of WILPF (the world's oldest women's peace and justice organization) was structured, this informal school inspired a process of learning, sharing, and rebuilding a unique, collective knowledge, which often extended into late night discussions.
Over the course of the Congress, a picture of the world's water took on a grim and dangerous face.
A dramatic shift came with the 1991 UN decision-muscled by international corporations and the World Trade Organization-to define water as a human need instead of a human right, meaning that it can now be bought and sold for profit by private companies. Every WILPF delegate I spoke with disagreed with the UN position. Water, they agreed, was the earth's most precious resource and a human right, meaning that all people must have equal access to it on a not-for-profit basis.
In spite of floods and droughts, water was taken for granted by most of the world's people until the exploding 21st century demands of population growth, pollution, industrialization, militarization, and privatization created the current critical scarcity. The Congress learned from WILPF women in developing nations that high yield genetically engineered seeds, developed by the U.S. and forced on their farmers, had actually created an irrigation catastrophe. Indigenous, drought-resistant crops were replaced with crops that required more water. Rivers began to dry up before reaching the ocean. The previous sustainable irrigation methods were replaced with deep wells and large dams to compensate for the lack of water, at a rate of 2 a day for the last 50 years.
"Sixty-three hundred people in the world die every day from lack of water," announced Regina Birchem, the newly elected president of International WILPF.
Bolivian delegate Katty Pattino said, "Only three out of five people in my country have access to safe drinking water. The lack of clean water is one of the major causes of our infant mortality and disease." She held up a jar containing water from her home. It was half filled with dirt.
Several presenters confirmed that pollution by industry, herbicides, and insecticides is creating serious illnesses such as cancer and birth defects in many countries. "Our rivers, lakes, the surface water, and the underground water are 94 percent contaminated," said Leticia Paul de Flores from El Salvador. "There is a completely uncontrolled construction, industry polluting our rivers."
There is also a high instance of mortality because contaminated waters are especially prevalent in areas where people have reduced immune systems due to HIV/AIDS. Reports from several countries indicated a critical shortage of "safe water" in the cities and the rural areas, particularly in the countryside. Liss Schanke reported that cholera, typhoid fever, and diarrhea are prevalent in Tanzania, a condition echoed by several other speakers, again due to lack of safe water.
Though there was no official presenter on water from the U.S., problems were addressed in continued discussions. In addition to overuse of water, a devastating problem is radioactive waste from plutonium production used to build nuclear weapons, which is now invading U.S. rivers and streams. Overuse of water was also seen as a problem in Australia where the average citizen consumes more water than anyone else in the world.
"Just as we fought wars over oil, so will we fight wars over water," was the threatening mantra hanging over the WILPF Congress. Dr. Shusma Pankule of India confirmed, "We have disputes with Pakistan on one side and with China on the other over water." "Israel has stolen the Palestinian water and is selling it back to them at prices they cannot afford," reported Aliyah Strauss of Israel. "The situation is explosive."
Vivendi Universal (France), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (France), Bouygues-Saur (France), RWE- Thames (Germany), and Bechtel- United Utilities (U.S.) have become the water barons who are taking over public utilities. A common practice is to buy the water from a poor community, bottle it, and sell it to consumers in the U.S., thereby leaving the original community without enough water to sustain itself. These corporations also buy local water rights and sell the water back to the community at much higher rates.
Most WILPF presenters agreed that we must have a sustained investment in water infrastructure in order to protect safe and clean water. Private companies' allegiance is to profit, not to community or to long term solutions. Upgrading or replacing infrastructures is expensive. In order to upgrade they charge more for water or sell out to the highest bidder. Many companies also have profit guarantees in their contracts giving them the right to raise prices if communities use less water than predicted, a practice that stultifies conservation.
The Congress did not, due to time constraints and the enormity of the problem, spend much time on solutions, but there are many grassroots communities already taking back their water and in finding long term solutions to the water dilemma. They are evaluating the condition and availability of water in their own communities, including: ownership, prices, military, industrial, or agricultural pollution, condition of infrastructure, purposes for which water is used in a given community, availability now and predictions of availability in the future. They are fighting back.
We can take inspiration from existing protest movements. In Sri Lanka, Dulci de Silva reported, "We are resisting converting water to a commodity for exploitation by international water markets as encouraged by the World Bank. We have established several campaigns to protect our water. We have a coalition of 300 women's groups and NGOs and farmers and everybody who is being affected by the encroaching privatization of water in Sri Lanka."
The Bolivian people successfully kicked out Bechtel afer it bought the rights to their water and raised the prices higher than people could afford to pay. "Killer Coke" and "Boycott Coke" campaigns initiated in Columbia are underway. Citizens of Lexington, Kentucky have organized Bluegrass FLOW to regain control of the Kentucky- American Water Co. which had been bought by RWE in 2003. Nestle's right to local spring water for bottling is being challenged by local citizens in Mecosta County, Michigan. There are countless other examples.
The morning after Congress adjourned, I went for a walk up to an old fortress on the hill. The walls were covered with grass that had edged its way through the rock, living testimony to the decision by the Swedish people-190 years ago-to eliminate war as a way of solving problems. Perhaps it was possible for the rest of us to put war behind us, too, including the predicted water wars.
It was hard to leave the company of new and old friends from all around the world who take every life so seriously. The stuff of our collective dreams seemed almost within reach in Kungälv.
-------- ACTIVISTS
New Initiative Calls for Mass Protest on Nov. 3 if Election is "Stolen"
democracynow.org
November 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1514210
We speak with Medea Benjamin, an organizer with the No Stolen Elections campaign that is calling on people everywhere to engage in protest and non-violent civil disobedience if they find that significant fraud in the election. [includes rush transcript]
Medea Benjamin, an organizer with the No Stolen Elections campaign. She joins us from Palm Beach, Florda.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: As we turn to Palm Beach, where Medea Benjamin is standing by, an organizer with the No Stolen Elections campaign. Welcome to Democracy Now!
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Hey, Amy. Thanks for having me on.
AMY GOODMAN: What's happening in Palm Beach, Florida?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Palm Beach, Florida, is the home of the infamous Theresa LePore and the butterfly ballot. She's up to her same tricks this time around, disenfranchising voters. The longest lines in the whole State of Florida for early voting are happening right here. Eight hours and 40 minutes from yesterday at one of the polling stations. Making people who didn't get their absentee ballots stand on those same long lines even though it was the fault of the county for not sending out the absentee ballots in time. A lot of people will be disenfranchised. And the question is what happens on November 3, Amy, and that is a question for the whole United States. If there is a stolen election again, we are trying to organize people around the country, and particularly here in Florida, to say we won't stand by quietly and let it happen again. That's why this No Stolen Election campaign has been put together, and we encourage all of your listeners to go onto the website which is nov3.us. Take the pledge that you will be out there on the streets with us on November 3, if need be.
--------
US whistleblower urges civil servants to leak Iraq secrets
American who disclosed Pentagon Papers on Vietnam war arrives in London to show solidarity with prosecuted peace activists
The Guardian
Duncan Campbell
November 1, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1340564,00.html
One of the world's best-known whistleblowers is in London this week in a mission to encourage public servants with vital information about the war in Iraq or any future conflicts to come forward. His arrival coincides with the prosecutions in Denmark and Ireland of people who took action in opposition to the war.
Daniel Ellsberg, whose disclosure of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 helped end the war in Vietnam, said he hoped to encourage people with access to official information regarding the war and questions about its legality to come forward.
"I am not saying that people should do what I did because that would seem self-aggrandising, rather I am saying that people should do what I didn't do - that is, they should come forward with information to prevent war rather than wait until years after it has been going on as I did," he said.
Mr Ellsberg was prosecuted for leaking papers to the New York Times but cleared in 1973 after it emerged how the Nixon administration had engaged in criminal acts against him and tried to influence the trial.
Now based in Berkeley, California, he has been in Denmark for the trial of the Danish whistleblower Frank Grevil and in Ireland for the trial of peace campaigner Mary Kelly who was convicted this week of criminal damage to a US plane at Shannon airport. Mr Ellsberg made statements on behalf of both the accused, although he did not give evidence.
The Truth-Telling Project, which Mr Ellsberg started, encourages "whistleblowing in the national interest".
It urges current and recently retired government officials to pass on information about "governmental wrongdoing, lies and cover-up. It aims to change the norms and practices that sustain the cult of secrecy, and to de-legitimise silence that costs lives."
Mr Ellsberg's campaign, which is supported in this country by GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun, has been aimed primarily at officials in the US administration. He said it had become increasingly clear that "a dominant practice of the Bush administration is cover-up on urgent matters of life and death and cover-up of the real motives for the war and of the foreseeable costs and problems of the occupation".
He said the latest example of attempted concealment was the classification of reports and photographs on torture at Abu Ghraib prison which would have remained unknown were it not for unauthorised disclosure.
Frank Grevil stands accused of leaking three classified "threat assessments" to a Danish newspaper.
The documents indicated his employer at the time, the Danish defence intelligence service, was providing inaccurate intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the Danish parliament joined the coalition in March last year.
The documents showed that the service was basing its threat assessments almost entirely on data from US and British intelligence agencies. In a statement to the court, Mr Ellsberg said Mr Grevil had acted "unselfishly and conscientiously in order to strengthen democracy, and government transparency, and true national security".
In court in Ennis, Ireland, Kelly was convicted on Thursday by a 10-2 majority of criminal damage without lawful excuse of a US navy plane. The peace campaigner had attacked the plane with an axe at Shannon airport in January last year, causing £800,000 worth of damage.
She said she had taken the action "to protect lives and prevent crimes".
Kelly, 52, was alleged to have caused £1.5m damage to the plane, which was en route from Fort Worth, Texas, to Italy.
She told the jury: "I wanted to stop the daily slaughter that is going on."
Judge Carroll Moran told the court: "The law does not allow us to take the law into our own hands because we disagree with what our government is doing. People act frequently to take actions on principles of conscience and if they break the law they take the consequences."
He added: "There is a certain self-opinionated element to the stance she is taking. No one can stand above the law. I dare say that you have a lot of sympathy for Ms Kelly but I would ask you to deal with the matter as dispassionately as you can. Be ruled by your head and not your heart."
Kelly has not yet been sentenced.
Mr Ellsberg, who has been arrested around 70 times in peace protests in the US, said he believed that whistleblowing was a patriotic activity which should be encouraged. "It is an expression of the higher loyalty officials owe," he said. "It is courageous, patriotic and effective."
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