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NUCLEAR
FirstEnergy explains nuclear fleet approach to NRC
Doug Moe: Madison airman - a lost hero?
Asia's ticking nuclear time-bomb
Beijing Explains Submarine Activity
Weapons of Self-Destruction
Inquiry Urges Recognition of Gulf War Syndrome
Peer's report: Gulf War Syndrome 'exists'
Iran's New Alliance With China Could Cost U.S. Leverage
Iran's New Alliance With China Could Cost U.S. Leverage
Group Says Iran Has Secret Nuclear Arms Program
Nuclear Deal With Iranians Has Angered Hard-Liners
US Exercises Missile Defense System To Prepare For Operations
Putin says Russia working on new nuclear systems
Russia Is Said to Develop New Nuclear Missile
US not worried about Russia's nuclear activities: State Department
NOVEL NUCLEAR MISSILE SYSTEMS FOR THE RUSSIAN ARMY
New Nuclear Weapon to Surpass Others, Putin Says
Russia to deploy new-generation nuclear weapons system: Putin
MILITARY
US offers $1bn weapons deal to Pakistan
Navy Unit Discovers Perils In Task of Rebuilding Fallujah
800 Civilians Feared Dead in Fallujah
Police defections add to Mosul's woes
Troops Move To Quell Insurgency In Mosul
U.S. Troops Move to Drive Out Rebels in North of Iraq
Canadian general elected to head NATO military committee
Quietly, tide of opinion turns on Chechen war
Some 148 Russian soldiers killed in Chechnya
China Plans To Have Over 100 Eyes In The Sky By 2020
Europe's Spacecraft Enters Lunar Orbit
NASA Buys Hydrogenics Light Weight Fuel Cell Stack
The Power of Light: An Airborne Laser for Missile Defense
CIA Says It Will Not Get Mixed Up in Policy
Clarke: CIA had low-level spies inside al-Qaida
Spy scandal rocks Paris
Pentagon cheers CIA shake-up
New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies
How They Count the Enemy Dead Why's it so hard? Let us count the ways.
Air Force leader quits; Army chief confirmed
Arabs outraged by US marine's 'war crime' against Fallujah Iraqi
Roche, Top Aide Plan to Resign Air Force Posts
Marine Set for Questioning in Wounded Iraqi's Shooting
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Questions Long Sentence in Drug Case
Man With Pot Given Choice: Jail or Military
U.S. Capitol Checkpoints Return, as Do Complaints
Checkpoints return to Capitol Hill
Making the Patriot Act 'SAFE'
Police scoff at Ashcroft speech
Report Faults F.B.I.'s Fingerprint Scrutiny in Arrest of Lawyer
POLITICS
47 parties boycott elections in Iraq
GOP Pushes Rule Change to Protect DeLay's Post
Court Nominee Gave False Data, Text Shows
The rise and rise of Condoleezza
The Rice appointment
White House insider relies on aid of 'allies'
The rise and rise of Condoleezza
The Rice appointment washtimes
White House insider relies on aid of 'allies'
Oil supply II: Why high prices?
We were told to fix Ukraine election, say police chiefs
Rice Is Named Secretary of State
ENERGY
14 Nations to Participate in Plan to Reduce Methane
U.S. and 13 Other States Agree on Push to Gather Methane Gas
OTHER
Terrorism Informant In Serious Condition
Man Who Burned Himself at White House Is Called Central to Terror Case
Abortion pill to stay on market
Global Health Alert Network Adds Languages
ACTIVISTS
Physicist Melba Phillips, 97, Dies
Activist chalks it up to experience
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
FirstEnergy explains nuclear fleet approach to NRC
The Associated Press
November 17, 2004
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-11172004-401959.html
CLEVELAND - FirstEnergy Corp. has shifted to a "fleet" approach to manage its nuclear power plants, a strategy the utility expects will help prevent problems that resulted in costly down time and repairs at its Davis-Besse nuclear plant.
FirstEnergy executives told Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials at a meeting Tuesday in Concord Township near Cleveland that problems might have been avoided if its three nuclear plants had consolidated management rather than operating independently.
The utility's executives met with NRC officials to explain the management overhaul and to give an update on its Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio and Beaver Valley plant in western Pennsylvania.
"We've seen great plans, but plans are just paper," said James Wiggins, an NRC deputy administrator. "It's results that are important."
During a maintenance shutdown in 2002, corrosion was found in the steel lid of the Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo. The NRC ordered the reactor shut down for two years, costing the utility of more than $630 million while FirstEnergy made extensive repairs and overhauled management processes.
Soon after Davis-Besse earned permission last March to restart, the NRC increased scrutiny of the Perry plant, 30 miles east of Cleveland. An inspection team is reviewing FirstEnergy's actions to correct a series of cooling-pump failures at Perry and its improvement plans.
FirstEnergy told the NRC it has hired managers from other nuclear companies that use the fleet approach and reorganized to place senior executives at each of the plants. Newly adopted morning conference calls identify problems that may be common to the plants and to develop shared solutions.
"We're beginning to operate as a fleet," said FirstEnergy chief nuclear officer Gary Leidich. "We've got a lot of work to do, and this organization is designed to get after that work."
The NRC is sticking with its approach of inspecting and regulating nuclear plants individually.
-----
Doug Moe: Madison airman - a lost hero?
The Capital Times
By Doug Moe
November 17, 2004
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=18359&ntpid=0
A lifelong resident of Madison, Doug Moe has written a daily column about the city for The Capital Times since 1997. Prior to that, he was editor of Madison Magazine. His books include "The World of Mike Royko," which was a Chicago Tribune Choice Selection of the Year, and "Uncommon Sense: The Life of Marshall Erdman," written with Alice D'Alessio. His new book, "Lords of the Ring: The Triumph and Tragedy of College Boxing's Greatest Team," a history of the storied varsity program at the University of Wisconsin, published in 2004.
MORE THAN half a century after he disappeared, presumed dead, into either the Pacific Ocean or the harsh high mountains of British Columbia, someone is calling Ted Schreier a hero.
It's a story that not even his family knew, and because of what it involves - an Air Force training exercise gone wrong, and the possible loss of the radioactive plutonium core of a nuclear bomb - it's a story still sheathed in speculation and mystery.
Friday night on the Discovery Channel in Canada (but not in the U.S.), Canadian filmmaker Michael Jorgensen will make the case that in February 1950, Capt. Theodore F. Schreier, who was from Madison, risked and ultimately lost his life in a single-handed attempt to keep U.S. nuclear weaponry and secrets from falling into enemy hands. The documentary is called "Lost Nuke," and it promises to be a stunner.
Schreier was born in Cashton, east of La Crosse, and came to school at UW-Madison in 1936. With his wife, Jean, he had a home on the north side of Lake Mendota. Ted's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Schreier, lived in Middleton, and Ted had a brother, Ernest Schreier, who also lived in Middleton.
Ted was a career Air Force officer, and in 1950 he was temporarily stationed in Fort Worth, Texas. On the night of Feb. 13, Schreier was part of a crew of 17 scheduled to fly from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Fort Worth aboard a B-36 aircraft - a larger plane than the 747 of today. Advertisement:
The Air Force called it a routine training mission, but in fact it was a simulated nuclear "attack" on San Francisco, something that was done with some regularity during the Cold War. After completing the "attack," the plane would fly to Texas. A Mark 4 atomic bomb - "the most advanced nuclear weapon in America's growing atomic arsenal," according to a later story in the Edmonton Journal - was on board the B-36.
Some six hours into the flight, the plane encountered heavy rains, and then icing on its wings. An engine sputtered and burst into flames. Soon three engines were burning.
That much is not in dispute. The mystery is over what happened next. As the Edmonton Journal noted in 2000: "To this day, the details of what happened during the next 25 minutes. ... continue to be shrouded in Cold War secrecy and speculation."
It was originally reported that all 17 crew members had parachuted out of the plane. Twelve were found alive by fishing boats and the Canadian Navy, off the coast of British Columbia. The remaining five, including Ted Schreier, were presumed drowned.
No mention was made then of a bomb having been aboard, but six months later, the Air Force issued a brief release saying a non-nuclear bomb had been dropped and exploded in mid-air above the ocean before the crew bailed out. In subsequent interviews, surviving crew members said the bomb's plutonium core was not aboard the airplane.
That is where the story might have remained, except that three years later, in the summer of 1953, a rescue team searching the mountains of British Columbia for a lost civilian plane came across the wreck of the B-36. The strange thing was, the wreck was 300 miles north - back toward Alaska - rather than near the spot where the crew bailed out, when the plane, on auto-pilot and disabled, was heading down and south.
The 2000 article in the Edmonton Journal said that discovery led some to "maintain the bomb or its radioactive components, and perhaps a second nuclear weapon, remained on board the B-36 and that a lone crew member desperately tried to pilot the plane to safety, only to crash into a mountaintop in the province's remote interior."
Shortly after the wreck was discovered the American military descended on the crash sight. They had a Geiger counter - which some said indicated they must have suspected radioactive material in the area - and explosives, which they used to obliterate the wreckage once they were finished with it. When they left, the Edmonton paper noted: "Rumors began circulating locally that a body had been recovered from the plane."
The Edmonton Journal did not speculate which crew member that might have been. But in an interview this week with the Canadian Press - the country's national newswire - filmmaker Michael Jorgensen says a team of experts, led by Canadian nuclear weapons researcher Dr. John Clearwater, believe one member of the crew did stay aboard the disabled plane and try to fly it back to Alaska.
"And that guy," Jorgensen said, "is the weaponeer - the guy responsible for the bomb, Capt. Ted Schreier."
Jorgensen told the Canadian Press that he regards Schreier as a "hero" who "did everything in his power to try to save the weapon" which might have fallen into enemy hands had it been dumped into the Pacific. The filmmaker adds that something called a "birdcage" - an object used to transport the bomb's plutonium core, which is kept separate from the bomb - was found at the British Columbia crash site.
The surviving crew members - now there are only four - have always maintained there was no plutonium core aboard. Jorgensen interviewed two of them, and the filmmaker recalled: "The couple of guys that I interviewed. ... say, 'There are things that happened that we just can't talk about because we don't want to say anything to damage our country.'"
Jorgensen's conclusion: "I think there was a plutonium core in that birdcage. ... I think it was on the mountain and I think it was taken out in 1954, when the Air Force went in there to destroy the airplane. It's my belief, given the evidence that we have, that a nuclear weapon laid in the mountains of northern Canada for four years."
Jorgensen told the Canadian Press that Schreier's family knew nothing of any of this. He reached Ted's nephew while shooting the documentary. "They were told when Ted went missing that he was on a transport plane," Jorgensen said. "They were totally shocked."
There was one other oddity, Jorgensen said. The Air Force named streets after four of the five crew members who died in the crash of the B-36. The only one not getting the honor was Ted Schreier.
Heard something Moe should know? Call 252-6446, write PO Box 8060, Madison, WI 53708, or e-mail dmoe@madison.com.
-------- asia
Asia's ticking nuclear time-bomb
Asia Times
By Alan Boyd
Nov 17, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK17Aa02.html
SYDNEY - Asia's relentless pursuit of nuclear energy is causing a few sleepless nights for the anti-terrorism community as the security focus shifts from rogue states with regional ambitions to the equally sinister back door of individual opportunism.
A summit of 18 Asia-Pacific security ministers in Sydney late last week was told that few states had safeguards in place to prevent the illicit export of nuclear materials that could be used to make explosive devices or hold countries to ransom.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) even went so far as to label the threat posed by this trade as "a race against time", noting that there had been about 630 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since 1993.
"We need to do all we can to work on the new phenomenon called nuclear terrorism, which was sprung on us after [September 11, 2001] when we realized terrorists had become more sophisticated and had shown an interest in nuclear and radioactive material," IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei said at the talks.
For now, the response is stronger on rhetoric than reason, with politicians in Sydney committing their governments to "expand and enhance the nuclear safeguards and security framework", but offering few leads on how these nebulous aims might be achieved.
The United Kingdom, the United States, France and the Soviet Union, the four original nuclear powers, pledged after China's entry into the select club three decades ago to freeze the spread of the technology in Asia as a Cold War buffer.
There was some logic in this approach, given that six of the 14 known nuclear alerts have occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, dating back to the decision by US president Harry S Truman to send atomic weapons to Guam in 1950 for possible use against China.
More recently, forces from Japan, the US and the Soviet Union went on a war footing in 1984 after a rogue officer in the Soviet navy sent an unauthorized message to nuclear-armed vessels approving a strike.
Two confrontations have occurred since 1999 between India and Pakistan that almost resulted in a nuclear exchange; the first was over Kashmir and the second followed an attack by Islamic militants on the Indian parliament.
But although there are still only three declared nuclear powers in Asia - China, Pakistan and India - the region has 100 reactors for research and power generation that some security experts believe pose a potentially bigger challenge due to the physical impossibility of accounting for every atom of radioactive material. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), which represents commercial interests in the nuclear field, Asia is the only region in the world where nuclear power is "growing significantly".
Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Vietnam all have operational reactors; North Korea has two partially completed reactors, but work has halted because of concerns over their illicit weapons capabilities. There is also a nuclear power plant in the Philippines, but it has been mothballed over litigation concerning bribery and safety deficiencies and is expected eventually to be converted to coal or oil.
Another 20 reactors are under construction and there are plans for a further 40, mostly in China, Japan, South Korea and India. If all proceed, Asia will have 160 reactors within a decade, with only Singapore yet to declare an interest in the technology.
Not surprisingly, it is big oil importers such as Japan and South Korea that have shown the strongest commitment to nuclear energy. The Japanese have 53 operational power plants and 17 research reactors, with three more under construction and 12 planned. Already nuclear energy provides 39% of total electricity generation and the dependency could rise to 50% by 2010 if greenhouse emission targets are met.
South Korea meets 39% of its electricity needs from nuclear power generated at 18 plants and has two more under construction and eight in the planning stages; there are also two research reactors.
China's nuclear industry is still modest, with only eight power units in operation, but is expected by the WNA to expand rapidly as domestic coal and gas reserves dwindle. An additional three plants are under construction, 10 more are planned or proposed, and there are 13 research facilities.
India and Taiwan have 14 and six power plants respectively, with the Indians expected to gain another 13 by the end of the decade. Taiwan, which gets 21% of its power from nuclear units, is building two more plants.
Keeping track of all of these plants has not proved easy, especially as the two countries with the most checkered record on nuclear brinkmanship - India and Pakistan - are not signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the IAEA's main monitoring mechanism.
Of the other countries with reactors, only Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are full NPT members, though China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Thailand have acceded to the treaty. North Korea signed an IAEA safeguards treaty in 1992, but withdrew the following year.
The IAEA itself failed to detect the worldwide black market in nuclear technology overseen by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, even while the highest levels of that country's armed forces were aware of his activities.
Critics, including many scientists in the environmental and human-rights movements, have suggested that the IAEA and other watchdog organizations were too complacent on the proliferation risks posed by Asia's blossoming peaceful nuclear-energy programs.
NPT allows the IAEA to keep count of the isotopes at individual plants, but only if it is granted free access to facilities. As shown by the IAEA's flawed success in verifying nuclear stockpiles in Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea, this doesn't always happen.
The Khan case also showed how impotent the agency becomes once materials go missing and reach smuggling routes, where they become entangled with mainstream criminal activities.
Researchers with the US-based Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and a group of security organizations, including the US Central Intelligence Agency, have concluded that plutonium filched from research facilities is passed along the same channels used by gangs that traffic narcotics and human beings.
Furthermore, "the networks that support the terrorist groups in Asia are probably intersecting with the networks that facilitate trade between suppliers and consumers in nuclear-proliferation trade", the agencies reported after a workshop on the effectiveness of the NPT.
"The nuclear-proliferation networks are in place. Shutting down A Q Khan's network in Pakistan did not necessarily eliminate the networks," the report added.
A review of the NPT is scheduled next year, with Asian policymakers variously advocating an extension of its mandate or total abolition. Japan, China and South Korea are among a group of countries that are lukewarm on multilateral solutions for security issues, though they will probably bow to pressure from Washington for a treaty extension.
Most analysts believe the NPT will only work at the anti-terrorism level if it is backed by a political response and a more responsible attitude by the suppliers of nuclear technology, which often ignore pleas for restraint. But as the SSI workshop noted, there has been a "fundamental failure of any state or group of states to emerge as a force to advocate regional solutions to nuclear security risks facing the Asia-Pacific".
"Important components of the international community's non-proliferation strategies - the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and other dual-use-technology export-control regimes - have failed to stem the trade in nuclear materials and technologies in Asia. There, nuclear suppliers appear willing to satisfy the demands of persistent buyers," the workshop reported.
The UK, the US and Russia, the original three sponsors of the NPT, have all exported nuclear technology to Asia, as has France. However, most of the recent growth has come from within Asia itself, with Pakistan, China, South and North Korea and India all entering the market.
Khan's network was based in a country that has refused to sign the NPT and its main customers - North Korea and Iran - are also outside the treaty. Yet there has been no peer pressure from elsewhere in the region.
One reason for the political lethargy is that there is no consensus on the extent of the threat posed by illicit exports of nuclear material, with much of Asia viewing localized terrorist activities as a more immediate problem.
IAEA chief ElBaradei also acknowledged in his address to the Sydney summit that attempts to regulate the flow of nuclear technology conflict with Asia's free-trade mentality, and governments are reluctant to provide export data.
"The only reasonable conclusion is that the control of technology is not, in itself, a sufficient barrier against further proliferation," he said. "For an increasing number of countries with a highly developed industrial infrastructure - and in some cases access to high-enriched uranium or plutonium - the international community must rely primarily on a continuing sense of security as the basis for the adherence of these countries to their non-proliferation commitments. And security perceptions can rapidly change."
-----
Beijing Explains Submarine Activity
Japan Considers Account an Apology
Washington Post
By Edward Cody
November 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53858-2004Nov16?language=printer
BEIJING, Nov. 16 -- Facing strong protests, China broke a week-long silence Tuesday and offered Japan its first explanation about a submarine that the Japanese said breached their territorial waters without signaling its identity.
The incursion, by what Japanese officials identified as a Chinese Han-class nuclear vessel, outraged the Japanese public and led Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government to lodge a diplomatic protest and demand an official apology. It sent temperatures rising in a relationship made delicate by the history of Japanese occupation of China and more complex as Chinese power expands and Japan reassesses its regional role.
The Foreign Ministry did not admit publicly that the submarine was Chinese or acknowledge that it had penetrated Japanese waters. Brushing off questions, a ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, said only that Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei had briefed Japan's ambassador in Beijing, Koreshige Anami. "This problem has been properly addressed," Zhang said.
But the Japanese government spokesman, Hiroyuki Hosoda, said in Tokyo that Koreshige was called in on Tuesday and told that technical problems caused the submarine to veer accidentally into Japanese territorial waters on Nov. 10 and that the Chinese government regretted the mistake.
"We consider this to be an apology," Hosoda said, according to news agencies reporting from Tokyo.
The delay in China's response may have been due in part to President Hu Jintao's absence from Beijing for his first test as commander of the armed forces, according to Chinese and foreign analysts. Hu, who recently added military chief to his positions as president and Communist Party head, was visiting Brazil on his way to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Chile.
The Chinese military, particularly its strategic submarine service, operates with autonomy from lower-ranking civilian authority, the analysts noted. Given the potential for embarrassment or trouble with Japan, decisions on what to do about the submarine detected in Japanese waters likely would have come from the top, they said, meaning Hu's traveling office.
The vessel was detected by Japanese submarine-hunting patrols not far south of Okinawa, a Japanese island 1,000 miles south of Tokyo where there are extensive U.S. military facilities. Although the vessel spent only a few hours in Japanese waters, the Japanese navy mobilized and gave chase for two days as the sub headed back toward China, still without identifying itself, officials in Tokyo said.
It was operating in waters near where Chinese vessels earlier this year began exploring for gas deposits along the median line of overlapping exclusive economic zones claimed by both countries. In response to Japanese demands, the Chinese and Japanese governments last month held a round of talks over the Chinese exploration, after which Japanese officials complained they had been stonewalled.
The Japanese trade minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, told reporters in Tokyo last week that the submarine incident could intensify Japan's doubts about the gas exploration and China's intentions in the disputed economic zones.
The Diaoyu Islands, which Japan controls under the name Senkaku, also lie nearby, about 180 miles southwest of Okinawa. Both nations claim the small chain of dots on the map, where petroleum deposits have been detected, and Chinese nationalists have occasionally sailed out to stake a claim, only to be ejected by Japanese police.
Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo contributed to this report.
-------- depleted uranium
Weapons of Self-Destruction
By David Rose
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004
Is Gulf War syndrome - possibly caused by Pentagon ammunition - taking its toll on G.I.'s in Iraq?
When he started to get sick, Staff Sergeant Raymond Ramos's first instinct was to fight. "I had joint pains, muscle aches, chronic fatigue, but I tried to exercise it out," he says. "I was going for runs, working out. But I never got any better. The headaches were getting more frequent and sometimes lasted all day. I was losing a lot of weight. My overall physical demeanor was bad."
A 20-year veteran of the New York National Guard, Ramos had been mobilized for active duty in Iraq in the spring of 2003. His unit, the 442nd Military Police company, arrived there on Easter, 10 days before President Bush's mission accomplished appearance on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. A tall, soft-spoken 40-year-old with four children, the youngest still an infant, Ramos was proud of his physique. In civilian life, he was a New York City cop. "I worked on a street narcotics team. It was very busy, with lots of overtime-very demanding." Now, rising unsteadily from his armchair in his thickly carpeted living room in Queens, New York, Ramos grimaces. "The shape I came back in, I cannot perform at that level. I've lost 40 pounds. I'm frail."
At first, as his unit patrolled the cities of Najaf and al-Diwaniyya, Ramos stayed healthy. But in June 2003, as temperatures climbed above 110 degrees, his unit was moved to a makeshift base in an abandoned railroad depot in Samawah, where some fierce tank battles had taken place. "When we first got there, I was a heat casualty, feeling very weak," Ramos says. He expected to recover quickly. Instead, he went rapidly downhill.
By the middle of August, when the 442nd was transferred to Babylon, Ramos says, the right side of his face and both of his hands were numb, and he had lost most of the strength in his grip. His fatigue was worse and his headaches had become migraines, frequently so severe "that I just couldn't function." His urine often contained blood, and even when it didn't he would feel a painful burning sensation, which "wouldn't subside when I finished." His upper body was covered by a rash that would open and weep when he scratched it. As he tells me this, he lifts his shirt to reveal a mass of pale, circular scars. He was also having respiratory difficulties. Later, he would develop sleep apnea, a dangerous condition in which he would stop breathing during sleep.
Eventually, Ramos was medevaced to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Doctors there were baffled and sent him on to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. There, Ramos says, one neurologist suggested that his condition could have been caused by some long-forgotten head injury or might just be "signs of aging." At the end of September 2003, the staff at Walter Reed ordered him to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where, he says, a captain went through his record and told him, "I was clear to go back to Iraq. I got the impression they thought I was faking it." He was ordered to participate in a long-distance run. Halfway through, he collapsed. Finally, on July 31, 2004, after months of further examinations, Ramos was discharged with a medical disability and sent home.
Symptoms such as Ramos's had been seen before. In veterans of Operation Desert Storm, they came to be called Gulf War syndrome; among those posted to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, Balkans syndrome. He was not the only member of the 442nd to suffer them. Others had similar urinary problems, joint pains, fatigue, headaches, rashes, and sleep apnea. Today, some scientists believe that all these problems, together with others found in war-zone civilians, can be traced to the widespread use of a uniquely deadly form of ammunition.
In the ongoing Iraq conflict, just as in the Gulf War of 1991 and in the Balkans, American and British forces have fired tens of thousands of shells and cannon rounds made of a toxic and radioactive material called depleted uranium, or D.U. Because D.U. is dense-approximately 1.7 times as dense as lead-and ignites upon impact, at a temperature of about 5,400 degrees, it can penetrate armor more effectively than any other material.
It's also remarkably cheap. The arms industry gets its D.U. for free from nuclear-fuel processors, which generate large quantities of it as a by-product of enriching uranium for reactor fuel. Such processors would otherwise have to dispose of it in protected, regulated sites. D.U. is "depleted" only in the sense that most of its fissile U-235 isotope has been removed. What's left-mainly U-238-is still radioactive.
Three of the main weapons systems still being used in Iraq-the M-1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the A-10 Warthog attack jet-use D.U. ammunition. A 120-mm. tank round contains about nine pounds of solid D.U. When a D.U. "penetrator" strikes its target, up to 70 percent of the shell's mass is flung into the air in a shower of uranium-oxide fragments and dust, some in the form of aerosolized particles less than a millionth of a meter in diameter. When inhaled, such particles lodge in the lungs and bathe the surrounding tissue with alpha radiation, known to be highly dangerous internally, and smaller amounts of beta and gamma radiation.
Even before Desert Storm, the Pentagon knew that D.U. was potentially hazardous. Before last year's Iraq invasion, it issued strict regulations designed to protect civilians, troops, and the environment after the use of D.U. But the Pentagon insists that there is little chance that these veterans' illnesses are caused by D.U.
The U.S. suffered only 167 fatal combat casualties in the first Gulf War. Since then, veterans have claimed pensions and health-care benefits at a record rate. The Veterans Administration reported this year that it was paying service-related disability pensions to 181,996 Gulf War veterans-almost a third of the total still living. Of these, 3,248 were being compensated for "undiagnosed illnesses." The Pentagon's spokesman, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of its Deployment Health section, says that Gulf War veterans are no less healthy than soldiers who were stationed elsewhere.
Those returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom are also beginning to report illnesses in significant numbers. In July 2004, the V.A. disclosed that 27,571 of them-16.4 percent of the total-had sought health care. Of that group, 8,134 suffered muscular and skeletal ailments; 3,505 had respiratory problems; and 5,674 had "symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions." An additional 153 had developed cancers. The V.A. claims that such figures are "typical of young, active, healthcare-seeking populations," but does not offer figures for comparison.
There is also evidence of a large rise in birth defects and unprecedented cancer rates among civilians following the first Gulf War in the Basra region of southern Iraq, where the heaviest fighting took place. Dr. Kilpatrick says, "I think it's very important to try to understand what are the causes of that high rate of cancer and birth defects. There has to be a good look at that, but if you go to the M. D. Anderson hospital, in Houston, Texas, you're going to find a very high rate of cancer. That's because people from all over the country with cancer go there, because it's one of the premier care centers. Basra was the only major hospital in southern Iraq. Are the people there with these different problems people who lived their entire lives in Basra, or are they people who've come to Basra for care?" It is possible, he says, that some other environmental factor is responsible for the illnesses, such as Saddam's chemical weapons or poor nutrition. "I don't think anything should be taken off the table."
In October 2004, an early draft of a study by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, a scientific panel run by the V.A., was leaked to The New York Times. According to the Times, the panel had concluded that there was a "probable link" between veterans' illnesses and exposure to neurotoxins, including a drug given to troops in 1991 to protect them from nerve gas, and nerve gas itself, which was released when U.S.-led forces destroyed an Iraqi arms depot. Asked why there was no mention of D.U. in the report, Dr. Lea Steele, the panel's scientific director, says that her group plans to address it in a later report: "We've only just begun work on this topic. We are certainly not ruling it out."
D.U.'s critics, meanwhile, say it's entirely possible that both neurotoxins and D.U. are responsible for the widespread sickness among veterans.
Members of the 442nd have vivid memories of being exposed to D.U. Sergeant Hector Vega, a youthful-looking 48-year-old who in civilian life works in a building opposite Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, says he now struggles with chest pains, heart palpitations, headaches, urinary problems, body tremors, and breathlessness-none of which he'd ever experienced before going to Iraq. He recalls the unit's base there: "There were burnt-out Iraqi tanks on flatbed trucks 100 yards from where we slept. It looked like our barracks had also been hit, with black soot on the walls. It was open to the elements, and dust was coming in all the time. When the wind blew, we were eating it, breathing it. It was everywhere." (The Department of Defense, or D.O.D., says that a team of specialists is conducting an occupational and environmental health survey in the area.)
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, 64, is a retired U.S. Army colonel and the former head of nuclear medicine at a veterans' hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. Dr. Durakovic reports finding D.U. in the urine of 18 out of 30 Desert Storm veterans, sometimes up to a decade after they were exposed, and in his view D.U. fragments are both a significant cause of Gulf War syndrome and a hazard to civilians for an indefinite period of time. He says that when he began to voice these fears inside the military he was first warned, then fired: he now operates from Toronto, Canada, at the independent Uranium Medical Research Centre.
In December 2003, Dr. Durakovic analyzed the urine of nine members of the 442nd. With funds supplied by the New York Daily News, which first published the results, Durakovic sent the samples to a laboratory in Germany that has some of the world's most advanced mass-spectrometry equipment. He concluded that Ramos, Vega, Sergeant Agustin Matos, and Corporal Anthony Yonnone were "internally contaminated by depleted uranium (D.U.) as a result of exposure through [the] respiratory pathway."
The Pentagon contests these findings. Dr. Kilpatrick says that, when the D.O.D. conducted its own tests, "our results [did] not mirror the results of Dr. Durakovic." "Background" sources, such as water, soil, and therefore food, frequently contain some uranium. The Pentagon insists that the 442nd soldiers' urinary uranium is "within normal dietary ranges," and that "it was not possible to distinguish D.U. from the background levels of natural uranium." The Pentagon says it has tested about 1,000 vets from the current conflict and found D.U. contamination in only five. Its critics insist this is because its equipment is too insensitive and its testing methods are hopelessly flawed.
At a briefing before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, Dr. Kilpatrick tried to reassure reporters about D.U. by citing the cases of about 20 Desert Storm vets who had D.U. shrapnel in their bodies. "We have not seen any untoward medical consequences in these individuals," he said. "There has been no cancer of bone or lungs, where you would expect them." It appears that he misspoke on that occasion: one of these veterans had already had an arm amputated for an osteosarcoma, or bone tumor, at the site where the shrapnel entered. Dr. Kilpatrick confirms that the veteran was treated by the V.A. in Baltimore, but says his condition may not have been linked with the shrapnel: "Osteosarcomas are fairly common." Studies have shown that D.U. can begin to move through the body and concentrate in the lymph nodes, and another of the vets with shrapnel has a form of lymphatic cancer. But this, Dr. Kilpatrick says, has "no known cause." He concedes that research has not proved the negative, that D.U. doesn't cause cancer. But, he says, "science doesn't in 2004 show that D.U. causes any cancer."
It does, however, show that it may. Pentagon-sponsored studies at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, in Bethesda, Maryland, have found that, when D.U. was embedded in animals, several genes associated with human tumors underwent "aberrant activation," and oncoproteins of the type found in cancer patients turned up in their blood. The animals' urine was "mutagenic," meaning that it could cause cells to mutate. Another institute project found that D.U. could damage the immune system by hastening the death of white blood cells and impairing their ability to attack bacteria.
In June 2004 the U.S. General Accounting Office (G.A.O.) issued a report to Congress that was highly critical of government research into Gulf War syndrome and veterans' cancer rates. The report said that the studies on which federal agencies were basing their claim that Gulf War veterans were no sicker than the veterans of other wars "may not be reliable" and had "inherent limitations," with big data gaps and methodological flaws. Because cancers can take years to develop, the G.A.O. stated, "it may be too early" to draw any conclusions. Dr. Kilpatrick dismisses this report, saying it was "just the opinion of a group of individuals."
Yet another Pentagon-funded study suggested that D.U. might have effects on unborn children. After finding that pregnant rats transmitted D.U. to their offspring through the placenta, the study concluded: "Fetal exposure to uranium during critical prenatal development may adversely impact the future behavioral and neurological development of offspring." In September 2004, the New York Daily News reported that Gerard Darren Matthew, who had served in Iraq with the 719th Transportation Company, which is based in Harlem, had tested positive for D.U. after suffering migraines, fatigue, and a burning sensation when urinating. Following his return, his wife became pregnant, and their daughter, Victoria Claudette, was born missing three fingers.
Ultimately, critics say, the Pentagon underestimates the dangers of D.U. because it measures them in the wrong way: by calculating the average amount of D.U. radiation produced throughout the body. When we meet, Dr. Kilpatrick gives me a report the Department of Defense issued in 2000. It concludes that even vets with the highest exposures from embedded shrapnel could expect over 50 years to receive a dose of just five rem, "which is the annual limit for [nuclear industry] workers." The dose for those who inhaled dust from burned-out tanks would be "far below the annual guideline (0.1 rem) for members of the public."
But to measure the effect of D.U. as a whole-body radiation dose is meaningless, Asaf Durakovic says, because the dose from D.U. is intensely concentrated in the cells around a mote of dust. The alpha particles D.U. emits-high-energy clumps of protons and neutrons-are harmless outside the body, because they cannot pass through skin. Inside tissue, however, they wreak a havoc analogous to that of a penetrating shell against an enemy tank, bombarding cell nuclei, breaking chains of DNA, damaging fragile genes. Marcelo Valdes, a physicist and computer scientist who is president of Dr. Durakovic's research institute, says the cells around a D.U. particle 2.5 microns in diameter will receive a maximum annual radiation dose of 16 rads. If every pocket of tissue in the body were to absorb that amount of radiation, the total level would reach seven trillion rads-millions of times the lethal dosage.
In the potentially thousands of hot spots inside the lungs of a person exposed to D.U. dust, the same cells will be irradiated again and again, until their ability to repair themselves is lost. In 1991, Durakovic found D.U. in the urine of 14 veterans who had returned from the Gulf with headaches, muscle and skeletal pain, fatigue, trembling, and kidney problems. "Immediately I understood from their symptoms and their histories that they could have been exposed to radiation," he says. Within three years, two were dead from lung cancer: "One was 33, the other 42. Both were nonsmokers, in previously excellent health."
D.U., he says, steadily migrates to the bones. There it irradiates the marrow, where stem cells, the progenitors of all the other cells the body manufactures in order to renew itself, are produced. "Stem cells are very vulnerable," Durakovic says. "Bombarded with alpha particles, their DNA will fall apart, potentially affecting every organ. If malfunctioning stem cells become new liver cells, then the liver will malfunction. If stem cells are damaged, they may form defective tissue."
If D.U. is as dangerous as its critics allege, it can kill even without causing cancer. At her home in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Susan Riordon recalls the return of her husband, Terry, from the Gulf in 1991. Terry, a security captain, served in intelligence during the war: his service record refers to his setting up a "safe haven" in the Iraqi "theatre." Possibly, Susan speculates, this led him behind enemy lines and exposed him to D.U. during the long aerial bombing campaign that preceded the 1991 invasion. In any event, "when he came home, he didn't really come home," she says.
At first, Terry merely had the usual headaches, body pain, oozing rash, and other symptoms. But later he began to suffer from another symptom which afflicts some of those exposed to D.U.: burning semen. "If he leaked a little lubrication from his penis, it would feel like sunburn on your skin. If you got to the point where you did have intercourse, you were up and out of that bed so fast-it actually causes vaginal blisters that burst and bleed." Terry's medical records support her description. In England, Malcolm Hooper, professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, is aware of 4,000 such cases. He hypothesizes that the presence of D.U. may be associated with the transformation of semen into a caustic alkali.
"It hurt [Terry] too. He said it was like forcing it through barbed wire," Riordon says. "It seemed to burn through condoms; if he got any on his thighs or his testicles, he was in hell." In a last, desperate attempt to save their sex life, says Riordon, "I used to fill condoms with frozen peas and insert them [after sex] with a lubricant." That, she says, made her pain just about bearable. Perhaps inevitably, he became impotent. "And that was like our last little intimacy gone."
By late 1995, Terry was seriously deteriorating. Susan shows me her journal-she titled it "The Twilight Zone"-and his medical record. It makes harrowing reading. He lost his fine motor control to the point where he could not button his shirt or zip his fly. While walking, he would fall without warning. At night, he shook so violently that the bed would move across the floor. He became unpredictably violent: one terrible day in 1997 he attacked their 16-year-old son and started choking him. By the time armed police arrived to pull him off, the boy's bottom lip had turned blue. After such rages, he would fall into a deep sleep for as long as 24 hours, and awake with no memory of what had happened. That year, Terry and Susan stopped sleeping in the same bedroom. Then "he began to barricade himself in his room for days, surviving on granola bars and cartons of juice."
As he went downhill, Terry was assessed as completely disabled, but there was no diagnosis as to why. His records contain references to "somatization disorder," post-traumatic stress, and depression. In 1995 the army doctors even suggested that he had become ill only after reading of Gulf War syndrome. Through 1998 and 1999, he began to lose all cognitive functions and was sometimes lucid for just a few hours each week.
Even after he died, on April 29, 1999, Terry's Canadian doctors remained unable to explain his illness. "This patient has a history [of] 'Gulf War Syndrome' with multiple motor, sensory and emotional problems," the autopsy report by pathologist Dr. B. Jollymore, of Yarmouth, begins. "During extensive investigation, no definitive diagnosis has been determined.... Essentially it appears that this gentleman remains an enigma in death as he was in life."
Not long before Terry's death, Susan Riordon had learned of Asaf Durakovic, and of the possibility that her husband absorbed D.U. His urine-test results-showing a high D.U. concentration eight years after he was presumably exposed-came through on Monday, April 26: "Tuesday he was reasonably cognitive, and was able to tell me that he wanted his body and organs to go to Dr. Durakovic," she remembers. "He knew it was too late to help him, but he made me promise that his body could help the international community. On the Wednesday, I completed the purchase of this house. On Thursday, he was dead.
"It was a very strange death. He was very peaceful. I've always felt that Asaf allowed Terry to go: knowing he was D.U.-positive meant he wasn't crazy anymore. Those last days he was calm. He wasn't putting the phone in the microwave; he had no more mood swings."
After Riordon's death, Dr. Durakovic and his colleagues found accumulations of D.U. in his bones and lungs.
Dr. Durakovic suspects the military of minimizing the health and environmental consequences of D.U. weapons, and suggests two reasons it may have for doing so: "to keep them off the list of war criminals, and to avoid paying compensation which could run into billions of dollars." To this might be added a third: depleted uranium, because of its unique armor-penetrating capabilities, has become a defining feature of American warfare, one whose loss would be intolerable to military planners.
In 1991, the U.S. used D.U. weapons to kill thousands of Iraqis in tanks and armored vehicles on the "highway of death" from Kuwait to Basra. The one-sided victory ushered in a new era of "lethality overmatch"-the ability to strike an enemy with virtual impunity. A Pentagon pamphlet from 2003 states that a central objective of the American military is to "generate dominant lethality overmatch across the full spectrum of operations," and no weapon is better suited to achieving that goal than D.U.
The value of depleted uranium was spelled out more simply in a Pentagon briefing by Colonel James Naughton of the army's Materiel Command in March 2003, just before the Iraq invasion: "What we want to be able to do is strike the target from farther away than we can be hit back.... We don't want to fight even. Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and D.U. gives us that advantage."
If the Pentagon is right about the risks of D.U., such statements should not be controversial. If it is wrong, says retired army colonel Dr. Andras Korenyi-Both, who headed one of the main field hospitals during Desert Storm and later conducted some of the first research into Gulf War syndrome, the position is less clear-cut. "You'd have to deal with the question of whether it's better not to use D.U. and have more of your soldiers die in battle or to use D.U. and lose very few in the field-but have them get sick and die when they get home."
One desert morning in the early spring of 1991, while sitting in his office at the Eskan Village military compound near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Lieutenant Doug Rokke was shown a memorandum. Rokke, a health physicist and training specialist, was a reservist and had recently been ordered to join the Third U.S. Army's depleted-uranium-assessment team, assigned to clean up and move American vehicles hit by friendly fire during Operation Desert Storm. The memo, dated March 1, came from a senior military officer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.
During the Gulf War, it said, "D.U. penetrators were very effective against Iraqi armor." However, "there has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of D.U. on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of D.U. on the battlefield, D.U. rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal.... I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after-action reports are written."
Rokke says: "I interpreted the memo to mean: we want this stuff-don't write anything that might make it difficult for us to use it again."
Rokke's assignment was dangerous and unpleasant. The vehicles were coated with uranium-oxide soot, and dust lay in the sand outside. He wore a mask, but it didn't help. "We could taste it and smell it," he says of the D.U. "It tasted very strong-and unmistakable." Years later, he says, he was found to be excreting uranium at 5,000 times the normal level. Now 55, he pants during ordinary conversation and says he still gets a rash like the one Raymond Ramos of the 442nd suffers from. In addition, Rokke has joint pains, muscle aches, and cataracts.
In 1994, Rokke became director of a Pentagon project designed to learn more about D.U. contamination and to develop training that would minimize its risks. "I'm a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission," Rokke says. "I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use D.U. safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can't do this safely in combat conditions. You can't decontaminate the environment or your own troops."
Rokke and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Nevada nuclear-test site. They set fire to a Bradley loaded with D.U. rounds and fired D.U. shells at old Soviet tanks. At his remote, ramshackle farmhouse amid the rural flatlands of central Illinois, Rokke shows me videos of his tests. Most spectacular are those shot at night, which depict the fiery streak of the D.U. round, already burning before impact, followed by the red cascade of the debris cloud. "Everything we hit we destroyed," he says. "I tell you, these things are just ... fantastic."
The papers Rokke wrote describing his findings are more sobering. He recorded levels of contamination that were 15 times the army's permissible levels in tanks hit by D.U., and up to 4.5 times such levels in clothing exposed to D.U.
The good news was that it was possible, using a special Department of Energy vacuum cleaner designed for sucking up radioactive waste, to reduce contamination from vehicles and equipment to near official limits, and to "mask" the intense radiation around holes left by D.U. projectiles by sealing them with layers of foam caulking, paint, or cardboard. (Such work, Rokke wrote, would naturally have to be carried out by teams in full radiological-protection suits and respirators.)
When it came to clothes, however, D.U. particles "became imbedded in the clothing and could not be removed with brushing or other abrasive methods." Rokke found that even after he tried to decontaminate them the clothes were still registering between two and three times the limit. "This may pose a significant logistics impact," Rokke wrote, with some understatement.
The elaborate procedures required to decontaminate equipment, meanwhile, would be almost impossible to implement in combat. "On a real battlefield, it's not like there's any control," Rokke says. "It's chaos. Maybe it's night. Who's going to come along and isolate contaminated enemy tanks? You've got a pile of rubble and mess and you're still coming under fire. The idea that you're going to come out in radiological suits and vacuum up a building or a smashed T-72 [tank]-it's ridiculous."
Large amounts of black D.U.-oxide dust were readily visible within 50 meters of a tank hit by penetrators and within 100 meters of the D.U.-packed Bradley that was set on fire. But less obvious amounts were easily detected at much greater distances. Worse, such dust could be "re-suspended" in the atmosphere "upon contact, if wind blew, or during movement." For American troops, that meant that "respiratory and skin protection is warranted during all phases of recovery." For civilians, even ones at considerable distances, it meant they might be exposed to windblown D.U. far into the future.
After Rokke completed the project, he was appointed head of the lab at Fort McClellan where it had been based. He resigned the staff physicist post he'd held for 19 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and moved south with his family. Early in 1996, after he began to voice the conclusions he was drawing about the future viability of D.U. weapons, he was fired. "Then I remembered the Los Alamos memo," he says. "They'd wanted 'proponency' for D.U. weapons, and I was giving them the opposite." I ask Dr. Kilpatrick, the D.O.D. spokesman on D.U., about Rokke's test firings. His reply: "One, he never did that. He was in Nevada as an observer. He was not part of that program at all. At that time he was working in education at an army school, and his assignment was to develop educational materials for troops." Rokke, he says, may have spent a few days observing the tests but did not organize them.
Documents from Rokke's service record tell a different story. His appraisal from December 1, 1995, written by Dr. Ed Battle, then chief of the radiation laboratories at Fort McClellan, describes Rokke's mission as follows: to "plan, coordinate, supervise and implement the U.S. Army ... depleted uranium training development project." He continued: "Captain Rokke has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to function well above his current rank and is as effective as any I have known." He had directly participated in "extremely crucial tests at the Nevada Atomic Test Site," and his achievements had been "absolutely phenomenal."
Rokke was awarded two medals for his work. The citation for one commended him for "meritorious service while assigned as the depleted uranium project leader. Your outstanding achievements have prepared our soldiers for hazards and will have a vast payoff in the health, safety, and protection of all soldiers."
Rokke's work in Nevada helped persuade the military that D.U. weapons had to be dealt with carefully. On September 16, 2002, General Eric Shinseki, the U.S. Army chief of staff, signed Army Regulation 700-48, which sets forth strict rules for handling items, including destroyed or disabled enemy targets, that have been hit and contaminated by D.U. "During peacetime or as soon as operational risk permits," it states, local commanders must "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE [radiologically contaminated equipment]. Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible." Under pre-existing regulations, damaged vehicles should be moved to a collection point or maintenance facility, and "covered and wrapped with canvas or plastic tarp to prevent spread of contaminants," with loose items placed in double plastic bags. Soldiers who carry out such tasks should wear protective equipment.
The burned-out tanks behind the 442nd's barracks in Samawah may not have been the only D.U.-contaminated pieces of equipment to be left where they lay. In the fall of 2003, Tedd Weyman, a colleague of Dr. Durakovic's, spent 16 days in Iraq, taking samples and observing the response of coalition forces to General Shinseki's directive. "When tanks shot up by D.U. munitions were removed, I saw no precautions being taken at all," he says. "Ordinary soldiers with no protection just came along and used chains to load them onto flatbeds, towing them away just as they might your car if it broke down on the highway. They took them to bases with British and American troops and left them in the open." Time after time, Weyman recorded high levels of contamination-so high that on his return to Canada he was found to have 4.5 times the normal level of uranium in his own urine.
A Pentagon memo, signed on May 30, 2003, by Dr. William Winkenwerder, an assistant defense secretary, says that any American personnel "who were in, on, or near combat vehicles at the time they were struck by D.U. rounds," or who entered such vehicles or fought fires involving D.U. munitions, should be assessed for possible exposure and receive appropriate health care. This category could be said to include any soldier who fought in, or cleaned up after, battles with Iraqi armor.
Still, the Pentagon insists that the risks remain acceptably small. "There isn't any recognized disease from exposure to natural or depleted uranium," Dr. Kilpatrick says. He tells me that America will mount a thorough cleanup in Iraq, disposing of any D.U. fragments and burying damaged vehicles in unpopulated locations, but that, for the time being, such an operation is impossible. "We really can't begin any environmental assessment or cleanup while there's ongoing combat." Nevertheless, he says, there's no cause for concern. "I think we can be very confident that what is in the environment does not create a hazard for those living in the environment and working in it."
As this article was going to press, the Pentagon published the findings of a new study that, according to Dr. Kilpatrick, shows D.U. to be a "lethal but safe weapons system."
In his Pentagon briefing in March 2003, Dr. Kilpatrick said that even if D.U. weapons did generate toxic dust, it would not spread. "It falls to the ground very quickly-usually within about a 50-meter range," he said. "It's heavy. It's 1.7 times as heavy as lead. So even if it's a small dust particle ... it stays on the ground." Evidence that this is not the case comes from somewhere much closer than Iraq-an abandoned D.U.-weapons factory in Colonie, New York, a few miles from Albany, the state capital.
In 1958, a corporation called National Lead began making depleted-uranium products at a plant on Central Avenue, surrounded by houses and an Amtrak line. In 1979, just as the plant was increasing its production of D.U. ammunition to meet a new Pentagon contract, a whistle-blower from inside the plant told the county health department that N.L. was releasing large amounts of D.U. oxide into the environment.
Over the next two years, he and other workers testified before both the New York State Assembly and a local residents' campaign group. They painted a picture of reckless neglect. D.U. chips and shavings were simply incinerated, and the resulting oxide dust passed into the atmosphere through the chimneys. "I used to do a lot of burning," William Luther told the governor's task force in 1982. "They told me to do it at night so the black smoke wouldn't be seen." Later, many of the workers were found to have inhaled huge doses into their lungs, and some developed cancers and other illnesses at relatively young ages.
In January 1980 the state forced N.L. to agree to limit its radioactive emissions to 500 microcuries per year. The following month, the state shut the plant down. In January alone, the D.U.-chip burner had released 2,000 microcuries. An official environmental survey produced horrifying results. Soil in the gardens of homes near the plant was emitting radiation at up to 300 times the normal background level for upstate New York. Inside the 11-acre factory site, readings were up to five times higher.
The federal government has been spending tax dollars to clean up the Colonie site for the past 19 years, under a program called fusrap-the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. Today, all that is left of the Colonie plant are enormous piles of earth, constantly moistened with hoses and secured by giant tarpaulins to prevent dispersal, and a few deep pits. In its autumn 2004 bulletin to residents, the fusrap team disclosed that it had so far removed 125,242 tons of contaminated soil from the area, all of which have been buried at radioactive-waste sites in Utah and Idaho. In some places, the excavations are more than 10 feet deep. fusrap had also discovered contamination in the neighboring Patroon Creek, where children used to play, and in the reservoir it feeds, and had treated 23.5 million gallons of contaminated water. The cost so far has been about $155 million, and the earliest forecast for the work's completion is 2008.
Years before fusrap began to dig, there were data to suggest that D.U. particles-and those emitted at Colonie are approximately the same size as those produced by weapons-can travel much farther than 50 meters. In 1979, nuclear physicist Len Dietz was working at a lab operated by General Electric in Schenectady, 10 miles west of Colonie. "We had air filters all around our perimeter fence," he recalls. "One day our radiological manager told me we had a problem: one of the filters was showing abnormally high alpha radiation. Much to our surprise, we found D.U. in it. There could only be one source: the N.L. plant." Dietz had other filters checked both in Schenectady and at other G.E. sites. The three that were farthest away were in West Milton, 26 miles northwest, and upwind, of Colonie. All the filters contained pure Colonie D.U. "Effectively," says Dietz, "the particles' range is unlimited."
In August 2003, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry published a short report on Colonie. On the one hand, it declared that the pollution produced when the plant was operating could have increased the risks of kidney disease and lung cancer. Because the source of the danger had shut down, however, there was now "no apparent public health hazard." Thus there was no need to conduct a full epidemiological study of those who had lived near and worked at the factory-the one way to produce hard scientific data on what the health consequences of measurable D.U. contamination actually are.
The people of Colonie have been trying to collect health data of their own. Sharon Herr, 45, lived near the plant for nine years. She used to work 60 hours a week at two jobs-as a clerk in the state government and as a real-estate agent. Now she too is sick, and suffers symptoms which sound like a textbook case of Gulf War syndrome: "Fourteen years ago, I lost my grip to the point where I can't turn keys. I'm stiff, with bad joint and muscle pain, which has got progressively worse. I can't go upstairs without getting out of breath. I get fatigue so intense there are days I just can't do much. And I fall down-I'll be out walking and suddenly I fall." Together with her friend Anne Rabe, 49, a campaigner against N.L. since the 1980s, she has sent questionnaires to as many of the people who lived on the streets close to the plant as possible. So far, they have almost 400 replies.
Among those who responded were people with rare cancers or cancers that appeared at an unusually young age, and families whose children had birth defects. There were 17 cases of kidney problems, 15 of lung cancer, and 11 of leukemia. There were also five thyroid cancers and 16 examples of other thyroid problems-all conditions associated with radiation. Other people described symptoms similar to Herr's. Altogether, 174 of those in the sample had been diagnosed with one kind of cancer or another. American women have about a 33 percent chance of getting cancer in their lifetimes, mostly after the age of 60. (For men, it's nearly 50 percent.) Some of the Colonie cancer victims are two decades younger. "We have what look like possible suspicious clusters," says Rabe. "A health study here is a perfect opportunity to see how harmful this stuff really is."
On June 14, 2004, the army's Physical Evaluation Board, the body that decides whether a soldier should get sickness pay, convened to evaluate the case of Raymond Ramos of the 442nd Military Police company. It followed the Pentagon's approach, not Dr. Durakovic's. The board examined his Walter Reed medical-file summary, which describes his symptoms in detail, suggests that they may have been caused by serving in Iraq, and accepts that "achieving a cure is not a realistic treatment objective." But the summary mentions no physical reason for them at all, let alone depleted uranium.
Like many veterans of the first Gulf War, Ramos was told by the board that his disability had been caused primarily by post-traumatic stress. It did not derive "from injury or disease received in the line of duty as a direct result of armed conflict." Instead, his record says, he got "scared in the midst of a riot" and was "emotionally upset by reports of battle casualties." Although he was too sick to go back to work as a narcotics cop, he would get a disability benefit fixed at $1,197 a month, just 30 percent of his basic military pay.
On the day we meet, in September 2004, his symptoms are hardly alleviated. "I'm in lots of pain in my joints. I'm constantly fatigued-I can fall asleep at the drop of a dime. My wife tells me things and I just forget. It's not fair to my family."
For the time being, the case against D.U. appears to remain unproved. But if Asaf Durakovic, Doug Rokke, and their many allies around the world are right, and the Pentagon wrong, the costs-human, legal, and financial-will be incalculable. They may also be widespread. In October, the regional health authority of Sardinia, Italy, began hearings to investigate illnesses suffered by people who live near a U.S. firing range there that tests D.U. weapons.
In 2002 the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that depleted uranium was a weapon of mass destruction, and its use a breach of international law. But the difference between D.U. and the W.M.D. that formed the rationale for the Iraqi invasion is that depleted uranium may have a boomerang effect, afflicting the soldiers of the army that fires it as well as the enemy victims of "lethality overmatch."
The four members of the 442nd who tested positive all say they have met soldiers from other units during their medical treatment who complain of similar ailments, and fear that they too may have been exposed. "It's bad enough being sent out there knowing you could be killed in combat," Raymond Ramos says. "But people are at risk of bringing something back that might kill them slowly. That's not right."
David Rose is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. His book Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights is an in-depth investigation of the atrocities taking place at the Cuban prison.
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Inquiry Urges Recognition of Gulf War Syndrome
PANews
17 Nov 2004
By Gavin Cordon and Neville Dean, PA
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3770038
An independent inquiry into illnesses suffered by veterans of the first Gulf War today called on the Ministry of Defence finally to recognise the existence of a "Gulf War syndrome".
The inquiry, headed by the former law lord Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said it was clear the cocktail of health problems suffered by an estimated 6,000 veterans were a direct result of their service in the 1991 conflict.
It urged the MoD to establish a special fund to make one-off compensation payments to those affected.
The inquiry's report was warmly welcomed by Gulf veterans who called on the Government to accept its findings.
Tony Flint, of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, said: "To have Gulf War syndrome recognised means a hell of a lot to us.
"We've said all along that it exists - now we have an eminent body saying it as well.
"We call on the Ministry of Defence to accept the conclusions of the committee and take on board its recommendations.
Veteran Noel Baker added: "This report vindicates the veterans and it shows that we are not malingerers, we are not making it up - there is a real problem."
The inquiry report admitted it had not been able to establish the scientific cause of the various symptoms suffered by the veterans, but said that should not prevent the acceptance that there was a "Gulf War syndrome".
It said that studies carried out by the MoD had shown that veterans who had served in the Gulf were twice as likely to suffer from ill-health as those who had not.
"We can see no good reason why they (the MoD) should not accept Gulf War syndrome," the report said.
"It does not imply a single disease with a single cause. It will not expose them to any new claims. It will make no practical difference. But it will make a great difference to the veterans and their families, if only for symbolic reasons."
Lord Lloyd told a news conference at Westminster to launch the report that even if there was more than one cause for the problems suffered by the veterans, there was no medical reason why they should not be described as a syndrome.
"Gulf War Syndrome means something, it has a certain resonance," he said. "As they (the veterans) are the ones who are ill it seems reasonable that they should name their disease.
"There is no medical objection to it and it is the name which seems to be the most convenient."
The report said that more scientific research was needed into the causes of the various conditions suffered by the veterans.
The most likely explanation was that they were the result of a combination of factors which had had a "potentiating effect on each other".
These included multiple injections of vaccines, including anthrax and plague; the indiscriminate use of organophosphate pesticides to spray tents; low level exposure to nerve gases such as sarin; and the inhalation of depleted uranium dust.
"All these causes are directly related to the veterans' service in the Gulf, in what was a very toxic environment. No other possible causes have been proposed," Lord Lloyd said.
The inquiry was set up at the request of Labour peer Lord Morris of Manchester, the parliamentary adviser to the Royal British Legion, after the MoD refused an official inquiry.
The MoD prevented serving military personnel and officials from appearing before the inquiry although it did submit written evidence.
However, the inquiry was still able to take evidence from former personnel including the commander of the British forces in the Gulf, General Sir Peter de la Billiere, scientific experts, and some 35 veterans or their families.
Lord Lloyd was scathing about the MoD's failure to co-operate fully with his investigation.
"The MoD thus lost a valuable opportunity to start the process of reconciliation with the ill veterans, an opportunity which would have cost them nothing," he said.
Asked if he thought the MoD should apologise to the veterans, he said: "No doubt if they take our recommendations to heart and set up a fund to compensate the veterans that will be tantamount to an apology."
Lord Morris today hailed the report and said that the inquiry showed that it was possible to challenge the Government if it would not accept the case for an official investigation into a particular issue of concern.
"Until now, if executive government refused an independent inquiry it was 'end of story'. Lord Lloyd's report ends that veto. We owe this tilting of the balance against executive government principally to him and those who have worked in fellowship with him," he said.
The Ministry of Defence today said it had just received Lord Lloyd's report and would consider its response once it had had a chance to fully assess his findings.
-----
Peer's report: Gulf War Syndrome 'exists'
17/11/2004
telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/17/usyndrome.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/11/17/ixportaltop.html
Gulf War Syndrome does exist, according to the findings of an independent inquiry into illnesses suffered by thousands of veterans of the 1991 conflict.
The inquiry, headed by Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said there was "every reason" to believe about 6,000 Gulf War veterans who have complained of a huge range of symptoms do suffer from a syndrome linked to their service 13 years ago.
It called on the Government to accept "not before time" that "the illnesses of those who were deployed to the Gulf were caused by their deployment" and urged it to set up a compensation fund.
The report said all scientific studies agreed veterans sent to the "very toxic environment" of the Gulf were twice as likely to suffer from ill health than if they had been deployed elsewhere.
Illnesses suffered by the veterans were likely to be due to a combination of causes, including multiple injections of vaccines, the use of organophosphate pesticides to spray tents, low level exposure to nerve gas and the inhalation of depleted uranium dust.
Illnesses reported have included cancers, motor neurone disease, chronic fatigue, skin rashes, traumatic stress and aching joints - and the report said only a "small proportion" could be attributed to post traumatic stress.
It is the second report in a week to come to the same conclusion, following publication of a report in America.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has maintained that insufficient evidence exists to prove a link.
Veterans said today the results were better than they had hoped for and called on the ministry to accept the report's findings without delay.
Noel Baker, 38, from Kent, said he had suffered multiple sclerosis, a cyst in his spleen and episodes of skin cancer since 1991.
He added: "This report vindicates the veterans, the people who have given evidence and it shows we are not malingerers, we are not making it up - there is a real problem."
Elizabeth Sigmund, from the Gulf Syndrome Study Group, said: "I think the MoD have got to come out and say 'we have made some terrible mistakes. We want people who have served in the Gulf to know that we believe them and we are going to do the best we can for them.'"
The inquiry was set up at the request of Lord Morris of Manchester, the Labour peer and parliamentary adviser to the Royal British Legion, after the MoD refused an official inquiry.
He said: "I profoundly hope there will be no delay now in giving full effect to Lord Lloyd's findings.
"Those left in broken health and bereaved by the conflict have already suffered more than enough."
Lord Lloyd said his report did not compel the Government to act, but he hoped the MoD would seize the opportunity to say "now is the time to bring this to an end".
-------- iran
Iran's New Alliance With China Could Cost U.S. Leverage
Washington Post
By Robin Wright
November 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55414-2004Nov16?language=printer
TEHRAN -- A major new alliance is emerging between Iran and China that threatens to undermine U.S. ability to pressure Tehran on its nuclear program, support for extremist groups and refusal to back Arab-Israeli peace efforts.
The relationship has grown out of China's soaring energy needs -- crude oil imports surged nearly 40 percent in the first eight months of this year, according to state media -- and Iran's growing appetite for consumer goods for a population that has doubled since the 1979 revolution, Iranian officials and analysts say.
An oil exporter until 1993, China now produces only for domestic use. Its proven oil reserves could be depleted in 14 years, oil analysts say, so the country is aggressively trying to secure future suppliers. Iran is now China's second-largest source of imported oil.
The economic ties between two of Asia's oldest civilizations, which were both stops on the ancient Silk Road trade route, have broad political implications.
Holding a veto at the U.N. Security Council, China has become the key obstacle to putting international pressure on Iran. During a visit to Tehran this month, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing signaled that China did not want the Bush administration to press the council to debate Iran's nuclear program. U.S. officials have expressed fear that China's veto power could make Iran more stubborn in the face of U.S. pressure.
The burgeoning relationship is reflected in two huge new oil and gas deals between the two countries that will deepen the relationship for at least the next 25 years, analysts here say.
Last month, the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border. Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquefied natural gas from Iran over a quarter-century.
Iran wants trade to grow even further. "Japan is our number one energy importer for historical reasons . . . but we would like to give preference to exports to China," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said this month, according to China Business Weekly.
In turn, China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including computer systems, household appliances and cars. "We mutually complement each other. They have industry and we have energy resources," said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China's trade with Iran is weakening the impact on Iranian policy of various U.S. economic embargoes, analysts here say. "Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China," said Hossein Shariatmadari, a leading conservative theorist and editor of the Kayhan newspapers.
Accurate trade figures are difficult to get, in part because trade is increasing so rapidly and partly because China's large arms sales to Iran are not included or publicized. But at the second annual Iran-China trade fair here in May, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said trade had increased by 50 percent in 2003 over the previous year, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Beijing has also provided Iran with advanced military technology, including missile technology, U.S. officials say. In April, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on Chinese manufacturers of equipment that can be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The Iran-China ties may be partly a response to the United States, analysts here say. President Bush's strategy has been to contain both China and the Islamic republic, said Siamak Namazi, a political and economic analyst, "so that's created natural allies."
The growing presence of U.S. and other Western troops in Central and South Asia and the Middle East is another joint concern. In the English-language Kayhan International, Ali Sabzevari wrote in an editorial: "Politically, the two countries share a common interest in checking the inroads being made by NATO in Asia. . . . The presence of outsiders does not bode well for peace and security."
The countries also share concerns over radical Sunni Muslims. Most Iranians follow the rival Shiite strain of Islam; China has more than 20 million Muslims, and the government has been facing Muslim unrest in some of its western cities. The dissidents receive support from Islamic groups in Afghanistan and the countries of former Soviet Central Asia -- the region that straddles both Iran and China.
Islam has historically been a link between the two civilizations. It made its way to China via Persia, the ancient state that was based in present-day Iran, Iranians note. Many Chinese Muslims pray in Persian, not Arabic. Their everyday language is Turkic, but their alphabet is Persian.
But in recent times, ties between China and Iran have not always prospered. In the midst of the unrest that led to Iran's revolution, one of the last foreign leaders to visit Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi before he was overthrown in 1979 was Chinese Communist Party chief Hua Kuo-feng. "The visit left a very strong negative feeling about China among Iranians," said Abbas Maleki, director of the Caspian Institute, a Tehran research organization.
But today, China with its one-party political system appears to feel fewer restraints than do Western nations in dealing with the world's only theocracy. "For China, issues like human rights don't affect your relations with Iran," Namazi said.
-----
Iran's New Alliance With China Could Cost U.S. Leverage
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55414-2004Nov16.html
TEHRAN -- A major new alliance is emerging between Iran and China that threatens to undermine U.S. ability to pressure Tehran on its nuclear program, support for extremist groups and refusal to back Arab-Israeli peace efforts.
The relationship has grown out of China's soaring energy needs -- crude oil imports surged nearly 40 percent in the first eight months of this year, according to state media -- and Iran's growing appetite for consumer goods for a population that has doubled since the 1979 revolution, Iranian officials and analysts say.
An oil exporter until 1993, China now produces only for domestic use. Its proven oil reserves could be depleted in 14 years, oil analysts say, so the country is aggressively trying to secure future suppliers. Iran is now China's second-largest source of imported oil.
The economic ties between two of Asia's oldest civilizations, which were both stops on the ancient Silk Road trade route, have broad political implications.
Holding a veto at the U.N. Security Council, China has become the key obstacle to putting international pressure on Iran. During a visit to Tehran this month, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing signaled that China did not want the Bush administration to press the council to debate Iran's nuclear program. U.S. officials have expressed fear that China's veto power could make Iran more stubborn in the face of U.S. pressure.
The burgeoning relationship is reflected in two huge new oil and gas deals between the two countries that will deepen the relationship for at least the next 25 years, analysts here say.
Last month, the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border. Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquefied natural gas from Iran over a quarter-century.
Iran wants trade to grow even further. "Japan is our number one energy importer for historical reasons . . . but we would like to give preference to exports to China," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said this month, according to China Business Weekly.
In turn, China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including computer systems, household appliances and cars. "We mutually complement each other. They have industry and we have energy resources," said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China's trade with Iran is weakening the impact on Iranian policy of various U.S. economic embargoes, analysts here say. "Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China," said Hossein Shariatmadari, a leading conservative theorist and editor of the Kayhan newspapers.
Accurate trade figures are difficult to get, in part because trade is increasing so rapidly and partly because China's large arms sales to Iran are not included or publicized. But at the second annual Iran-China trade fair here in May, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said trade had increased by 50 percent in 2003 over the previous year, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Beijing has also provided Iran with advanced military technology, including missile technology, U.S. officials say. In April, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on Chinese manufacturers of equipment that can be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The Iran-China ties may be partly a response to the United States, analysts here say. President Bush's strategy has been to contain both China and the Islamic republic, said Siamak Namazi, a political and economic analyst, "so that's created natural allies."
The growing presence of U.S. and other Western troops in Central and South Asia and the Middle East is another joint concern. In the English-language Kayhan International, Ali Sabzevari wrote in an editorial: "Politically, the two countries share a common interest in checking the inroads being made by NATO in Asia. . . . The presence of outsiders does not bode well for peace and security."
The countries also share concerns over radical Sunni Muslims. Most Iranians follow the rival Shiite strain of Islam; China has more than 20 million Muslims, and the government has been facing Muslim unrest in some of its western cities. The dissidents receive support from Islamic groups in Afghanistan and the countries of former Soviet Central Asia -- the region that straddles both Iran and China.
Islam has historically been a link between the two civilizations. It made its way to China via Persia, the ancient state that was based in present-day Iran, Iranians note. Many Chinese Muslims pray in Persian, not Arabic. Their everyday language is Turkic, but their alphabet is Persian.
But in recent times, ties between China and Iran have not always prospered. In the midst of the unrest that led to Iran's revolution, one of the last foreign leaders to visit Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi before he was overthrown in 1979 was Chinese Communist Party chief Hua Kuo-feng. "The visit left a very strong negative feeling about China among Iranians," said Abbas Maleki, director of the Caspian Institute, a Tehran research organization.
But today, China with its one-party political system appears to feel fewer restraints than do Western nations in dealing with the world's only theocracy. "For China, issues like human rights don't affect your relations with Iran," Namazi said.
--------
Group Says Iran Has Secret Nuclear Arms Program
November 17, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/international/middleeast/17iran.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - An Iranian opposition group says it has new evidence that Iran is producing enriched uranium at a covert Defense Ministry facility in Tehran that has not been disclosed to United Nations inspectors.
The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, is planning to announce its finding in Paris on Wednesday. The group says that inspection of the site would demonstrate that Iran is secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons even while promising to freeze a critical part of its declared nuclear program, which it maintains is intended purely for civilian purposes.
A senior official of the group, Muhammad Mohaddessin, said in a telephone interview late on Tuesday that the group had shared the new information "very recently'' with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But he and other officials of the group said it had not discussed the matter with the United States government, and its claims could not be verified.
Iran's mission to the United Nations did not return messages seeking comment on the assertion.
The group, based in Paris, is the political arm of the People's Mujahedeen, which is listed by the United States government as a terrorist organization because of its involvement in attacks on Americans in the 1970's. But the group also has a successful track record in gathering intelligence on Iran, and was the first, in 2002, to disclose the existence of what was then the secret Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.
United Nations inspectors "should not be fooled or deceived by the Iranian regime,'' Mr. Mohaddessin said.
A spokesman in Washington for the National Council for Resistance in Iran provided a seven-page summary of the assertion to The New York Times.
It says that the previously undisclosed site, in northeastern Tehran, covers 60 acres and houses biological and chemical warfare projects as well as nuclear activity. It says that the site, known as the Modern Defensive Readiness and Technology Center, now houses operations previously carried out at another Defense Ministry site in Tehran that was destroyed by the Iranian government this year before international inspectors could visit it.
The assertion by the opposition group is surfacing in a week in which France, Britain and Germany announced a formal agreement with Iran committing the country to freeze a critical part of its nuclear program in exchange for an array of possible rewards.
As part of the pact with the Europeans, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had promised to suspend its uranium enrichment program starting a week from now. But the agency said it could not rule out the possibility that Iran was conducting covert activities.
"All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," the agency said in a report, referring to possible Iran nuclear weapons activity. "The agency is, however, not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."
The United States and European countries have argued that Iran's nuclear program is intended to produce weapons. Iran's leadership has insisted that is not engaged in a nuclear weapons program but has the sovereign right to enrich uranium.
Officials of the opposition group said they believed that the Iranian Defense Ministry and Revolutionary Guards Corps were pursuing their program in secret and had not told Iran's atomic energy agency of the existence of the facility in Tehran.
--------
Nuclear Deal With Iranians Has Angered Hard-Liners
November 17, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/international/middleeast/17tehran.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 16 - Iran's hard-line Parliament reacted angrily on Tuesday to a complex deal reached with Germany, France and Britain over the nation's nuclear activities.
The chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, said Sunday that Iran had agreed to stop enriching uranium while it negotiated with the Europeans for the benefits it would receive in return for suspending enrichment. By agreeing to the pact, Tehran also removed the threat of United Nations economic penalties.
But none of that mollified the hard-liners, most of whom were elected in February after moderate candidates were barred from running.
"We agreed to make 13 precise commitments while the Europeans only made four vague ones," Ahmad Tavakoli, one of the hard-liners, fumed during a noisy Parliament session on Monday.
From the Europeans' perspective, the deal fell short of the comprehensive arrangement they had sought to permanently stop Iran from enriching uranium, a crucial step in the production of nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration, which has contended that Iran is likely to cheat on any agreement, had reacted coolly to news of the pact, saying that it needed to study the fine print.
Rafat Bayat, another hard-liner, said the accord ran counter to Iran's national interests. "I say to the United States and the Europeans - and, in particular France, who insists a lot on the suspension of enrichment - that our Parliament will not accept anything that goes against our national interests," she said.
Mr. Rowhani, speaking with journalists after his appearance in a closed-door session with Parliament, dismissed the criticism. "Members of Parliament have made their personal comments, and that is natural," he was quoted as saying by ISNA, the student news agency.
"This agreement has been studied by different bodies," the news agency quoted him as saying. "It has not been the work of an individual or an institute, and the decision was not made solely by the Foreign Ministry or the supreme national security council.''
Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and who appointed Mr. Rowhani to lead the negotiations, is widely thought to have approved the agreement. Mr. Rowhani said he assured Parliament during his meeting that the deal was a preliminary agreement.
"The suspension of enrichment will continue while the negotiations are moving in a positive direction," he was quoted as saying. "But if they hit a dead end, we will be under no obligation and the suspension will end."
-------- missile defense
US Exercises Missile Defense System To Prepare For Operations
By the end of 2007, America's ground-based missile interceptors are scheduled to grow to 28 at both the Alaska and California launch sites.
Washington (AFP)
Nov 17, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04zk.html
The US missile defense system is still on track to go on alert by the end of this year and key US military commands are conducting "shakedown exercises" in preparation, a defense spokesman said Wednesday.
Russia announced plans earlier Wednesday to acquire a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of defeating any anti-missile shield, but the spokesman said the US system is not designed to protect against long-range attack from either China or Russia.
US ground-based interceptor missiles are being installed in Alaska and California primarily to defend against a limited attack by a rogue power such as North Korea.
The United States also has proposed a third interceptor site somewhere in Europe to expand coverage against missiles fired from the Middle East, though no decision has been made on where to locate it, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the US Missile Defense Agency.
"This missile defense system as being deployed is not a threat to either the Russian or the Chinese strategic deterrent force," he said.
A sixth interceptor missile was installed in a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska last week and two more are due to be put in place before the end of the year at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, forming the first installment of the missile defense system.
Lehner said the plan "is still to have them on alert by the end of the year."
By the end of 2007, the numbers of ground-based missile interceptors are scheduled to grow to 28 at both the Alaska and California launch sites.
By 2007, the agency also plans to have 18 Aegis warships armed with new and faster missiles capable of intercepting and destroying medium range missiles.
Already two Aegis warships have been deployed in waters off North Korea to serve as platforms for forward radars for the missile defense system.
Critics have charged that the Pentagon is fielding the system without adequate testing.
The Missile Defense Agency is planning to conduct its first attempted intercept in more than two years sometime next month, resuming flight tests that were cancelled of delayed six times since December 2002, officials have said.
In earlier tests, target missiles have been successfully intercepted in five of eight attempts, but those have been under artificial conditions using some surrogate components.
The system uses a network of early warning satellites and high powered radars to detect and track and target long range missiles, feeding data to command centers that then fire interceptor missiles into a collision in space with the incoming missile.
The US Northern, Strategic and Pacific Commands are conducting "shakedown exercises" with the system to train crews and test the interconnectivity its parts, Lehner said.
"It's like when you deliver a ship to Navy, they take it out into the ocean sometimes for weeks and months to shakedown the different systems within the ship itself," Lehner said.
"It's the same with this system. It's making sure everything is integrated properly, that all the communications procedures are down pat, all the maintenance procedures for the command and control and for the interceptors themselves, for the radars - all those procedures are in place," he said.
-------- russia
Putin says Russia working on new nuclear systems
(Reuters)
Nov 17, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6839668&pageNumber=0
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is working on new nuclear missile systems that other powers do not have in order to protect itself against future security threats, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
Putin, speaking to armed forces chiefs, said although international terrorism was one of Russia's main security threats the country had also to keep its nuclear defences in sound condition.
"We know that we have only to weaken our attention to such components of our defences as the nuclear-missile shield, and new threats to us could appear," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
He said research and successful testing of new nuclear-missile systems technology was being conducted. "I am sure that in the near future weapons will appear ... which other nuclear powers do not and will not possess."
But leading Russian military analyst Alexander Golts said Putin's remarks were more likely to be an attempt to shore up the country's international standing than an announcement of any developments in its nuclear arsenal.
"It's more or less a tradition that the Russian leadership prefers to speak about our nuclear capacity, because after all it's the last attribute of a superpower," he said.
"Our nuclear armament is the single thing that makes us more or less equal to the United States and it's very important from a political point of view for Mr. Putin to keep mentioning it."
More than half of Russia's defence budget goes on nuclear programmes, he said.
Putin gave no further detail about what type of weapons he was referring to or what shape new security threats could take.
"We will continue to consistently and successively build up the armed forces in general and its nuclear component," he said.
Russia's latest nuclear innovation was a test launch in February of a missile designed to outwit Washington's planned $50 billion missile shield.
"It flies as a ballistic missile warhead in space, but when it penetrates the atmosphere it begins flying like a cruise missile," Golts said.
He said it made the American anti-missile plans more or less useless. "And it means that we still think about the United States as a potential adversary," Golts added.
U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters Washington did not regard Moscow's activities as threatening or as any violation of its arms control agreements with the United States.
"We do not perceive Russia's nuclear sustainment and modernization activities as threatening and what they are doing is fully consistent with our mutual obligations under the Moscow Treaty," Ereli told reporters in Washington.
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles)
----
Russia Is Said to Develop New Nuclear Missile
November 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Weapons.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is developing a new form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries, news agencies reported.
Speaking at a meeting of the Armed Forces' leadership, Putin reportedly said that Russia is researching and successfully testing new nuclear missile systems.
``I am sure that ... they will be put in service within the next few years and, what is more, they will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have,'' Putin was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Putin reportedly said: ``International terrorism is one of the major threats for Russia. We understand as soon as we ignore such components of our defense as a nuclear and missile shield, other threats may occur.''
No details were immediately available, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said earlier this month that Russia expected to test-fire a mobile version of its Topol-M ballistic missile this year and that production of the new weapon could be commissioned in 2005.
News reports have also said Russia is believed to be developing a next-generation heavy nuclear missile that could carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons, compared with the Topol-M's 1.32-ton combat payload.
Topol-Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998. The missiles have a range of about 6,000 miles and reportedly can maneuver in ways that are difficult to detect.
Earlier this year, a senior Defense Ministry official was quoted as telling news agencies that Russia had developed a weapon that could make the United States' proposed missile-defense system useless. Details were not given, but military analysts said the claimed new weapon could be a hypersonic cruise missile or maneuverable ballistic missile warheads.
----
US not worried about Russia's nuclear activities: State Department
(AFP)
Nov 17, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041117/pl_afp/us_russia_nuclear_041117193617
WASHINGTON - Washington was not threatened by President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites)'s announcement Wednesday that Russia intended to remain a major nuclear power by deploying a new weapon in the coming years that other states lack, a State Department spokesman said.
"We do not perceive Russia's nuclear sustainment and modernization activities as threatening, and what they are doing is fully consistent with our mutual obligations under the Moscow Treaty," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.
"Our mutual obligations in this area are covered under the Moscow Treaty. Pursuant to that treaty, we have regular consultations" with Moscow, Ereli said.
"And based on those regular consultations, we are confident that Russia's plans are not threatening and are consistent with its obligations, and I think are indicative of a new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia that is focused on reducing threats and increasing confidence," he added.
Putin announced in Moscow on Wednesday that Russia would soon be armed with nuclear weapons systems "which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers."
"We have not only conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems," Putin told a meeting of the armed forces' leadership. "I am sure that, in the coming years, we will deploy them."
The ITAR-TASS news agency speculated that Putin was referring to the mobile Topol-M missile, which is analogous to the US Minuteman-3 missile and is meant to form the backbone of Russia's future strategic nuclear arsenal.
Russia this year also successfully test-fired a different new missile that its developers claim can penetrate any shield, since it flies in space on a ballistic trajectory and in the atmosphere as a cruise missile -- swerving away from interceptor rockets.
----
NOVEL NUCLEAR MISSILE SYSTEMS FOR THE RUSSIAN ARMY
Ria-Novosti
17 Nov 2004
http://putinru.com/news/item/33561.html
MOSCOW, November 17 (RIA Novosti) - In the next two years, the Russian army will receive novel nuclear missile systems, which are being tested now, President Vladimir Putin said at a conference of the leading staff of the Russian armed forces. The conference was convened to sum up the results of combat training in the army and navy in 2004 and outline tasks for the next year.
Mr. Putin demanded that the troops be geared to the nature and direction of threats by the end of 2005. "The composition, structure and strength of the armed forces must be geared to the nature and direction of current and future threats by the end of 2005," said the president. "Effective and combat ready armed forces are a crucial factor protecting Russia from any forms of military-political pressure or potential aggression."
The main task of internal command agencies is to improve the combat ability of the troops, above all, permanent-readiness units that must become the core and the main striking force of the army, Mr. Putin said. "Combat training must be based on modern experience and development trends of the art of war."
The president recalled "major decisions" taken in the provision of equipment to the troops and cited positive examples of the creation of a basic missile system for the land forces and new-generation small arms, and the successful completion of trials of a naval nuclear missile system.
Vladimir Putin called for a saving attitude to technical rearmament. "These resources must be spent carefully but effectively, sparingly as good housekeepers do, and with best results," the president said.
He said that the accumulation mortgage program for servicemen must be closely monitored and that the government would allocate an additional 2 billion rubles ($1 = 28.67 rubles) for the construction of housing for servicemen in 2005.
"The deployment of Russian military bases [in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan] has greatly strengthened the collective security system in Central Asia," said Vladimir Putin. "It is being used to create conditions for neutralizing terrorist and extremist attacks in the region and increase the defense capability of Russia and its allies in the southern direction."
----
New Nuclear Weapon to Surpass Others, Putin Says
NYT
Nov 17, 2004
By By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/international/europe/17cnd-russ.html
MOSCOW, Nov. 17 - President Vladimir V. Putin, meeting with Russia's defense officials and military commanders here, said today that the country would soon deploy new nuclear missile systems that would surpass those of any other nuclear power.
Reiterating previous statements, though providing no new details, Mr. Putin said Russia would continue to emphasize its nuclear deterrent, despite a new focus on new threats like terrorism, which has roiled the country in recent months with deadly result.
"We are not only conducting research and successful testing of the newest nuclear missile systems," he said in concluding remarks to a regular gathering of commanders at the Ministry of Defense, which were reported by news agencies and broadcast on NTV. "I am certain that in the immediate years to come we will be armed with them. These are such developments and such systems that other nuclear states do not have and will not have in the immediate years to come.''In his remarks, which amounted to a broad overview of military strategy and budgets but with a dash of boosterism, Mr. Putin did not elaborate on the new systems he meant. The Russian military, however, is widely reported to have been trying to perfect land- and sea-based ballistic missiles with warheads that could elude a missile-defense system like the one being constructed by the Bush administration.
Mr. Putin announced in February that Russia had successfully tested a new nuclear-tipped missile during an exercise that also included two embarrassing missile misfires. At the time, he said the system would allow "deep maneuvering," a statement arms experts in Russia and abroad took to mean a warhead that could alter its course as it homed in on a target.
A day after that test, Col. Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, who this summer was promoted to the chief of the general staff, said the missile was a "hypersonic flying vehicle," though neither he nor any other officials have provided further details about the weapon or, more importantly, its viability.
The missile is reportedly a variant of the Topol, a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile that is already in Russia's arsenal, but Russia's efforts are shrouded in secrecy. Although the purpose of maneuverability would be to evade a missile-defense system, Russia already has more than enough missiles to overwhelm the limited system the United States is constructing.
In Washington, White House reaction to Mr. Putin's remarks was measured, with Scott McClellan, the presidential press secretary, telling reporters today that "this is not something that we look at as new.''
He said that President Bush and Mr. Putin, whom he characterized as "allies now in the global war on terrorism,'' had discussed the issue of modernization of Russia's military and that the nuclear element of the modernization was "something that we are well aware of.''
Pressed on whether Mr. Bush would be comfortable with changes that enabled the Russians to get around American missile defense systems, Mr. McClellan responded:
"We have a very different relationship than we did during the Cold War, and we are working together to significantly reduce our nuclear arsenals.''
Mr. Putin's remarks, made almost in passing and not a part of his main address, did not appear to be timed to any particular event. However, he has recently sought to bolster Russia's image as a superpower.
Dmitri V. Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and an expert on the Russian military, said Mr. Putin's statement was not particularly new.
He described it as a gesture to bolster confidence of the armed services. The Russian military remains troubled, despite the government's efforts to boost spending, including a 27 percent increase - to roughly $20 billion - in the military budget for 2005. Last month, a senior missile designer publicly complained in remarks to Russian news agencies that production of the Topol missiles had ground to a halt twice this year because of a lack of money.
Mr. Trenin also suggested that Mr. Putin's address could have been meant to calm discontent that has arisen in nationalist quarters over recent diplomatic initiatives, including a territorial concession to the Chinese on the Amur River and the possibility of a similar concession to the Japanese in the Kurile Islands.
"He wants to send a message to the republic that Russia remains a major military force," Mr. Trenin said.
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Russia to deploy new-generation nuclear weapons system: Putin
MOSCOW (AFP)
Nov 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041117164729.zvenke8i.html
President Vladimir Putin served notice Wednesday that Russia intended to remain a major nuclear power by deploying a new weapon in the coming years that other states lack and are unlikely to develop in the near future.
"We have not only conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems," Putin told a meeting of the Armed Forces' leadership. "I am sure that in the coming years we will deploy them.
"Moreover, these will be things which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers," he added.
Putin failed to specify what type of complex he was referring to, but Russia has been seeking to upgrade its nuclear arsenal after the United States announced plans in 2001 to deploy a missile defense shield in abrogation of its 1972 ABM Treaty with Moscow.
Washington argues its shield would be capable of defending the United States only from attacks from so-called "rogue states" and could not stand up to Russia's massive Soviet-era nuclear arsenal.
However Putin has since mentioned plans for Russia to also develop a similar system along with new types of intercontinental missiles that Moscow claims could penetrate any space shield put up by the United States.
The ITAR-TASS news agency speculated that Putin was referring to the mobile Topol-M missile, which is analogous to the US Minuteman-3 missile and is meant to form the backbone of Russia's future strategic nuclear arsenal.
Russia this year also successfully test-fired a different new missile that its developers claim can penetrate any shield, since it flies in space on a ballistic trajectory and in the atmosphere as a cruise missile -- swerving away from interceptor rockets.
The Topol-M is the first intercontinental missile developed by Russia alone following the Soviet Union's collapse, but deployment of the land-based mobile unit -- initially set for the end of 2002 -- has been repeatedly delayed because of severe cash constraints.
The ITAR-TASS report quoted the missile's Moscow developer as saying that funding for mass production of the mobile Topol-M will be included in the military's 2005 procurement budget.
If that timetable is respected, the missiles could be issued to the armed forces in 2006. Topol-Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998.
The shift in attention to nuclear deterrence came unexpectedly because Putin has for months pointed to international terrorism as the chief threat to Russia's national security amid a wave of deadly suicide attacks from guerrillas in rebel Chechnya.
Putin said Wednesday that Russia still viewed terrorism as the greatest threat to its national security but should also not forget about nuclear dangers.
"We understand that the moment we turn our attention from such elements of our defenses as a nuclear missile shield, then we will be facing new threats," Putin said.
"That is why we will continue to persistently develop our armed forces on the whole, including its nuclear arsenal potential," Putin said.
Putin said that Russia should also build up its navy's nuclear capacity -- it had 10 successful sea-based test launches this year -- and generally work to modernize armed forces that remain bogged down in war-torn Chechnya for a sixth year.
However analysts point to Russia's financial struggles and question how the military intends to follow through on Putin's vow.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reported at the same meeting that the 2005 budget has only pencilled in the purchase of four intercontinental ballistic missiles.
"This proves that Russia is still working from a doctrine of nuclear dissuasion as was the case in the 1990s. This highlights the weakness of its conventional forces," said independent political analyst Alexander Golts.
"The West should not get too excited about this" because it reflects an outdated mentality, Golts said.
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-------- arms
US offers $1bn weapons deal to Pakistan
November 17 2004
Financial Times
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and Demetri Sevastopulo
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d4dc494c-38c3-11d9-bc76-00000e2511c8.html
The US has proposed its largest arms sales package to Pakistan in more than 14 years, underlining the country's role as a close ally of Washington in the war on terror.
The Pentagon notified Congress about the $1.2bn package late Tuesday. It includes eight P3-C Orion surveillance aircraft, six Phalanx rapid fire guns for the Pakistan navy, and more than two thousand TOW 2 missiles for the army.
The package would mark the first significant arms sale to a US ally since this month's re-election of President George W. Bush.
"It's a positive development and it fits in to the context of the fast burgeoning defence relations between our two countries," a senior Pakistani official said.
Pakistan has also asked the US for 18 to 25 new F-16 fighter jets. The delivery of an earlier batch of 60 F-16s was suspended in 1990 over allegations at the time that Pakistan was manufacturing nuclear weapons.
"We are still pursuing the F-16 option," said a Pakistani official. But a western diplomat said: "The F-16 matter is still largely unresolved."
The Pentagon declined to say whether it was negotiating with Pakistan over the F-16 request.
"The issue of F-16 sales is raised periodically by the government of Pakistan," said Lt Col Joseph Yoswa, a Pentagon spokesman. "However, there has been no decision at any level of the US government to provide F-16s to Pakistan."
The Pentagon last month told Congress it planned to sell Turkey $3.9bn of equipment to modernise 218 of its existing F-16s.
The heart of the proposed package for Pakistan is the sale of eight P3-C Orion surveillance planes, built by Lockheed Martin, with a combined price tag of $970m. The Defence Security Co-operation Agency, which handles foreign arms sales for the Pentagon, said 2,000 TOW-2A and 14 TOW-2A fly-to-buy missiles manufactured by Raytheon of Tucson, Arizona, would also be sold for $82m.
Additionally, six Raytheon manufactured Phalanx rapid fire 20mm guns for the Pakistan navy as well as upgrade plans for another six gun systems are included under a separate contract for $155m.
Congress has 30 days to object to the proposed arms sales. But western diplomats said they did not expect the deal to be opposed by the Republican-dominated Congress.
The proposed sale follows an intensified campaign by the Pakistani military within the semi-autonomous tribal region that borders Afghanistan and which is believed to have become a haven for militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement fleeing US and Afghan troops.
The sale of weapons such as the Orion land and sea surveillance aircraft follow recent findings by Pakistan's intelligence services suggesting that al-Qaeda had ordered its Arab followers in Pakistan to leave for Iraq to attack US troops.
Pakistani intelligence officers said that fleeing al-Qaeda militants were most likely to use either theland route to Iraq through central Asia or board small vessels, such as fishing trawlers, from Pakistan's south coast.
"The wider significance of this new deal is that it deepens the relationship between the US and Pakistani militaries," said Lieutenant General Talat Masood, a commentator on defence and security affairs.
-------- iraq
Navy Unit Discovers Perils In Task of Rebuilding Fallujah
Engineering Group Encounters Hidden Explosives and Gunfire
Washington Post
By Jackie Spinner
November 17, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55574-2004Nov16?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 16 -- The green Humvee rolled up to the mangled railroad line on the northern edge of this city Tuesday, where thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces had launched an offensive more than a week before in a shower of bullets and mortar shells. Pen and notepad in hand, Equipment Operator 1st Class William Seado of the U.S. Navy jumped out and started to inspect the tracks.
As he walked around a tanker car, Seado, 31, of Custer, S.D., noticed a black wire strung across the metal rails. He followed it to the tanker, where he found two sandbags filled with mortar rounds. Seado, a member of the Navy's elite Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team, raced back to the Humvee, which was parked only a few feet from the tanker -- well within what is called the kill zone of the improvised explosive device, or IED.
"Let's get out of here," he said, as he cranked up the engine and sped off. "There's an IED on the track."
Navy Lt. Jeffrey McCoy, the convoy commander who was sitting in the passenger seat, grabbed the radio handset to warn the other team members.
"I've never seen you move that fast, Seado," said McCoy, 31, of Youngstown, Ohio.
"I intend to get out of here with my butt in one piece," Seado replied, his voice flat and matter-of-fact.
The assault on Fallujah that began the night of Nov. 8 was aimed at breaking the insurgents' grip on a city they had controlled since April. It was the biggest military operation in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, involving armored vehicles, artillery, airpower and thousands of troops. It was accompanied by a pledge from U.S. officials to rebuild the city after the offensive was complete.
But keeping that promise -- in a city rigged with booby-traps and explosives, with insurgents still fighting back in some neighborhoods -- may prove more difficult than anticipated, as the Seabees discovered on Tuesday. Their mission was supposed to be fairly simple -- get in, take some measurements, snap a few pictures, get out. That didn't happen.
After Seado discovered the bomb on the tanker car, the convoy quickly but gingerly backtracked across a muddy field dotted with land mines. Then the team spent nearly two hours securing the area around the rigged tanker before moving to another section of damaged railway. There, the Seabees spied the blue wire of a second bomb, forcing another quick exit. At a third stop, a group of Marines advised them to park behind a dirt berm because snipers were firing from a bank of houses a short distance away. The vehicles rolled over the berm and onto a flat area where construction stakes marked another batch of mines.
"These insurgents are really making things inconvenient," McCoy said.
As in other parts of Fallujah where U.S. forces have battled insurgents, the railway was more extensively damaged than the Seabees had expected. "It's pretty bad," Seado said. "I was hoping it wouldn't be that bad, but it's going to be a lot of work to rebuild."
McCoy said most of the city's basic infrastructure was damaged, not only by fighting but also by years of neglect.
"There's a lot of structural damage to houses and public buildings," he said. "The main utilities -- electricity, water, sewage -- are all going to need a lot of work."
On a tour of the city on Tuesday, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, passed rows of buildings riddled by bullets, tank rounds and artillery fire. Afterward, he said: "I must say, I didn't see a lot of major structural damage. There's a lot of debris in the streets. There's some electrical work that needs to be done, and there's some peripheral damage to the buildings, but I didn't see a lot of structural major damage, so I think it'll be a few months. Things will move along quickly once we get started."
Military engineers said they planned to begin making repairs to the city's infrastructure as soon as Fallujah was secure. But McCoy said those first repairs would amount to first aid, and that making Fallujah livable for its 250,000 residents, most of whom fled before the military operation, could take up to a year.
"If you leave them a mess like this with no running water, living in sewage, they are just going to be disgruntled," McCoy said. "We're going to have anti-American sentiment that's just going to breed. Reconstruction is as essential as the actual purging of the insurgents."
As the Seabees worked on Tuesday, it was clear that the insurgents had not been purged j