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NUCLEAR
Asia-Pacific summit opens in shadow of war on terror
Bush says US, partners united on North Korea
Russian Sailor Dies in Submarine Blast
Study Suggests Chernobyl Affected Sweden
We appear evil
MoD must pay up now, says Gulf War veteran
Diplomats Say Tehran Sends Wrong Signal
Doubts Persist on Iran Nuclear Arms Goals
Bush Warns Iran After Uranium Processing Reports
Iran Said to Be Producing Gas for Nukes
Russia Calls New Missile System Defensive
Talks on new nuclear plants will continue: Zhukov
Farmers Buying Up Former Missile Silos
Yucca's energy role
MILITARY
Pakistan rejects Indian objections over US arms sale
Air Force Pitch for Boeing Detailed E-Mails Show Pressure by Roche
Bush to Assess War on Drugs in Colombia
12 headless bodies found in Mosul
Rebels Attack Baghdad Police, Troops
Troops Invade Baghdad Mosque
Israeli Army to Investigate Reported Abuse of Arab Corpses
Israeli Army to Probe Reports of Corpse Abuse
NASA Launches Black Hole Hunter
Casualties up at military hospitals
Air Force Pitch for Boeing Detailed
Riggs Uncovers Deep Ties to Pinochet
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Hill Works Overtime On Intelligence Bill
Air-Travel Screening Snagged
News Gathering Is Illegal Under New Patriot Act ll
POLITICS
Fed chief shakes markets
Raising the Debt Limit: A Disgrace
Accord Is Near on $388 Billion Federal Spending Bill
Greenspan Sounds Alarm
Uranium-Enrichment Myths Busted
Fallujah Video has congressman calling for reporter ban
Kerry blames bin Laden for defeat
Kerry Urges Democrats To Fight Values 'Assault'
OTHER
U.S. Withdraws Effort to Prohibit Human Cloning Worldwide
Of Mice, Men and In-Between
ACTIVISTS
Protesters Greet Bush In Santiago
Chile Police, Protesters Clash at Summit
Thousands Demonstrate Against Bush in Santiago
19 Political Prisoners Are Released in Myanmar
-------- NUCLEAR
Asia-Pacific summit opens in shadow of "war on terror," nuclear proliferation
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Nov 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041120181726.8feltpxw.html
Asia-Pacific leaders opened an annual summit here Saturday, immersed in US President George W. Bush's "war on terror" agenda and in the shadow of the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
Heads of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum began formal discussions in a heavily guarded, brick-and-glass conference center in Santiago by the foothills of the snow-capped Andes.
Anti-Bush, anti-APEC protests were expected later in the day.
Violent clashes between rock-throwing demonstrators and anti-riot police firing tear gas and water cannon erupted the previous day. By the early hours of Saturday, three people had suffered bullet wounds and 250 were detained.
Preparations for the talks, which wrap up Sunday with an informal "retreat" in the neoclassical La Moneda palace of Santiago, have been dominated by fear over nuclear proliferation and by the anti-terrorism campaign.
Bush warned Iran over reports it has accelerated production of uranium material that could be used to make nuclear weapons, and vowed to unite Asia-Pacific allies in pressing North Korea to abandon an admitted nuclear weapons program.
He gave a stern caution to Iran.
"This is a very serious matter, the world knows it's a serious matter, and we're working together to solve this matter," the US leader said.
"It's very important for the Iranian government to hear that we are concerned about their desires, and we're concerned about reports that show that prior to a certain international meeting, they're willing to speed up processing of materials that could lead to a nuclear weapon," Bush said.
In a rush of meetings with fellow leaders before the summit, Bush also tried to wrench the Asia-Pacific alliance together against Pyongyang's nuclear weapons scheme.
"The leader of North Korea will hear a common voice," he promised.
Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Chinese President Hu Jintao, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and Russian President Vladimir Putin, all partners in six-party talks with Pyongyang.
"What's very important is for the leader of North Korea to understand that the six-party talks will be the framework in which we continue to discuss the mutual goal we all have, which is to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons," he said.
Washington hopes to pull Pyongyang back to the negotiations as early as possible, perhaps as early as this year, but more likely in early 2005, according to a senior administration official.
North Korea, which revealed it had a nuclear weapons program two years ago, boycotted the latest round of talks in September.
Anti-terrorism measures are bound to be central at the APEC summit talks.
APEC foreign ministers, including outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell, set the tone for the leaders, agreeing to keep closer tabs on shoulder-mounted missile launchers, which could give a terrorist the capacity to down a plane.
Leaders are also expected to discuss a business leaders' proposal for the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, or FTAAP, embracing the giant trading groups of the Americas and East Asia.
APEC appeared split over the free trade plan.
Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States backed it, while others, such as China, Indonesia, Japan and Malaysia, were cautious or opposed it, APEC sources said.
-----
Bush says US, partners united on North Korea
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Nov 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041120202228.cndikwiw.html
US President George W. Bush said Saturday after meeting with leaders of China, Japan, South Korea and Russia that they had a joint message for North Korea: "Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs."
Bush's comments came after individual meetings in which he sought to unite those US partners in dragging North Korea back to stalled six-party talks aimed at ending its atomic activities.
"I can report that having visited with the other nations involved in this collaborative effort that the will is strong, that the effort is united, and the message is clear to Mr. Kim Jong-Il: Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs," the US leader said in a speech.
-------- accidents and safety
Russian Sailor Dies in Submarine Blast
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 20, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/europe/20russia.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
MOSCOW, Nov. 19 (AP) - A Russian seaman was killed in an accident aboard a Russian nuclear submarine at a Pacific base, a Russian Navy spokesman said Friday.
The sailor, Dmitri Koval, died when a pipe burst, the spokesman, Capt. Igor Dygalo, told Itar-Tass and Interfax news agencies.
Captain Dygalo said the accident occurred last Sunday while the submarine was docked at the Vilyuchinsk base on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East. The accident damaged one section of the submarine, but the vessel remained fully operable, he said.
Russia's NTV network said two crewman had been injured in the blast.
Captain Dygalo identified the submarine as the K-223, Interfax said. The K-223 is a Delta III-class submarine built in 1980, and is equipped to carry 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
--------
Study Suggests Chernobyl Affected Sweden
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sweden-Chernobyl-Cancer.html
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- More than 800 people in northern Sweden may have cancer as a result of the fallout that spewed over the region after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, according to a new study by Swedish scientists.
The figure is significantly higher than any previous estimate, and the study drew immediate fire from critics who said they doubted the accuracy of the results.
The radiation was released on April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded and caught fire, contaminating an area roughly half the size of Colorado, forcing the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and ruining some of Europe's most fertile farmland.
The study monitored cancer cases among the more than 1.1 million people in the northern parts of Sweden who were exposed to the radioactive fallout between 1988-1996, and found that the cancer risk increased in areas with higher levels of fallout, which was spread by winds.
Of the 22,400 cancer cases among the group, 849 can be statistically attributed to Chernobyl, said Martin Tondel, a researcher at Linkoeping University who headed the study. The findings were first published in this month's issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, a science magazine.
But Leif Moberg, a radiation expert with the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority, questioned the findings.
``The radiation dosage that we in Sweden got after the accident was too low to produce this many cancer cases,'' Moberg said, adding it was probably too early to see any definite results of Chernobyl. ``Most cancer cases don't develop until 20, 30 or 50 years later,'' he said.
Tondel, however, said that although the increase of cases can't directly be attributed to Chernobyl, he could not see any other explanation.
``We've tried our best to explain it in other ways, but we can't,'' Tondel told the AP. ``So then you have to believe your data.''
Tondel said factors like increased smoking, population density and age had all been taken into account in the study.
``With every statistical method we used to look at it, we see an increase (in cases) across the board,'' he said. ``That indicates that it's a Chernobyl effect.''
The Swedish Radiation Protection Authority has previously estimated that the fallout will produce about 300 cancer deaths in 50 years.
Moberg said another factor that speaks against the study was that there was no significant increase in cases of leukemia or thyroid gland cancer, which are usually the most common among radiation victims.
-------- depleted uranium
We appear evil
The Salt Lake Tribune
11/20/2004
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2469436
A bubble of interest seems to be occurring on the Web: Google recently had 360,000 hits for "depleted uranium" all within a 24-hour period. I've been following reports of the United States' use of depleted uranium ammunition over the past couple of days on the Web.
Our use of this poison has hurt our troops and the people of Iraq and Kosovo. It appears that thousands of tons of this very dense material were used in the Gulf War of 1991. It was used in Kosovo and again in Iraq. It is radioactive and remains dangerous virtually forever, longer than man has walked on Earth. Its most horrible effects appear not from cancer, but in human fetuses.
We have been terrified by the thought of some terrorist setting off a dirty bomb and poisoning a U.S. city. Meanwhile we have spread radioactive uranium all over Iraq. Who answers to the Iraqi mothers whose babies cannot live, poisoned in their wombs by dust or vapor from uranium. The earth, air and water in Iraq has been contaminated by our use of depleted uranium munitions. We would call it a war crime if someone else did it. We've sunk to the level of our adversaries the terrorists.
The radiation dangers are long-term effects. In the short term, the attack on Fallujah during Ramadan is just the perfect recruitment device for future terrorists. We do appear evil.
Steve Worcester Salt Lake City
-----
MoD must pay up now, says Gulf War veteran
nwemail.co.uk
MERVYN GRAY
20/11/2004
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=155860
A WALNEY war veteran has demanded the government accepts the findings of an inquiry which asserts that Gulf War Syndrome does exist.
The independent inquiry, headed by former law lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, called on the Ministry of Defence to recognise the existence of a Gulf War syndrome.
The inquiry 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, and urged the MoD to establish a special fund to make one-off compensation payments to those affected.
Mervyn Gray, 55, of Eamont Close, Walney, claims to suffer from Gulf War Syndrome after being given antidote drugs before the conflict in Kuwait.
He said he suffers from headaches and neuralgia, and wants the government to pay him and fellow sufferers compensation and a war pension.
He said: "I'll say it until the day I die, my service in the Gulf has led to my illness.
"I want the government to acknowledge the fact.
"We want money and the war pension.
"It's not just the soldiers who suffered, but their wives and children."
Next week Mr Gray will undergo a test for depleted uranium at a private clinic in Manchester.
-------- iran
Diplomats Say Tehran Sends Wrong Signal
Iran Said to Continue to Convert Uranium Despite Pact With Europe
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63735-2004Nov19.html
Despite promises to freeze its nuclear programs, Iran has continued to convert uranium for enrichment, diplomats in Washington and Vienna said yesterday, a situation that they said signals potential trouble for a new and still untested agreement between the Islamic republic and European countries.
Earlier this week Tehran agreed to freeze its nuclear programs in exchange for guarantees that it would not face the prospect of U.N. sanctions while it continued to negotiate with diplomats from Britain, France and Germany. That deal was to take effect Monday, so while Iran's conversion work does not technically violate its terms or international law, it sparked concern among the Europeans that Iran was going to look for loopholes to continue its nuclear programs.
"This is really a shot in the eye," one European diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of hurting the deal more.
To help sell the deal to a skeptical Bush administration, Britain, France and Germany drafted a U.N. resolution making it clear that any Iranian attempt to pursue nuclear materials during the negotiations would result in immediate referral to the Security Council, according to diplomats who have seen the draft.
The unambiguous language in the two-page resolution was shared with Bush administration officials yesterday; a final version is to be presented at the International Atomic Energy Agency's board meeting on Iran next week in Vienna.
Diplomats here and in the Austrian capital confirmed yesterday that Iran has continued to convert raw uranium to hexafluoride gas, known as UF6, the end stage for the uranium before it can be enriched.
"The Iranians are trying to get as much work in before the suspension takes effect because they know most countries want the freeze to be permanent," a Western diplomat said.
The IAEA expects all of Iran's programs to come to a halt on Monday, in accordance with the European deal. It will then attempt to verify the freeze and report its findings to the agency's board three days later.
Iran, rich in oil and gas, insists its work is geared toward the development of a nuclear energy source. But the scale of its programs and the years of secret work Iran conducted have fueled suspicion that it has a covert weapons program.
U.S. officials have said little publicly about the Euro-Iranian deal, though privately many in the Bush administration are skeptical that it will last more than a few weeks.
State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said Wednesday that the United States was "agnostic" about the agreement and has noted that a previous deal among the four countries fell apart in June.
Diplomats for the three European allies have said they are not convinced the deal will hold either but are willing to give direct negotiations a chance.
But the deal has been rocked almost daily by fresh accusations and information since it was accepted on Sunday.
During a conversation about Iran with reporters accompanying him on a trip to Chile on Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he had "seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems."
He continued: "I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead, I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."
Powell's comments surprised senior officials in the administration who had been privy to the classified and unverified information about Iran's missile and warhead capabilities.
Earlier this month, U.S. intelligence received hundreds of pages of documents purporting to be Iranian nuclear warhead designs and plans to modify missiles to carry such warheads. But that information, officials said, has not been authenticated by U.S. intelligence. Officials have been proceeding cautiously in attempting to verify the information, mindful of mistakes made in prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons capabilities based partly on bad intelligence.
European officials, worried that Powell's comments undermined their deal with Iran, were told that the secretary misspoke, several sources said.
Powell, whose spokesman said the secretary stood by his remarks, did not refer to the controversy during an interview yesterday with Spanish-language Univision television.
His deputy, Richard L. Armitage, told al-Jazeera television: "There's not a big secret that Iran has been developing missiles. It's always been the combination of a drive for nuclear weapons and missiles that has been a great concern for the United States."
Also this week, an Iranian exile group claimed in Paris that Iran was already beyond the conversion process and was enriching uranium for a bomb. The group, known as the National Council for Resistance in Iran, offered no evidence for its allegations.
-------
Doubts Persist on Iran Nuclear Arms Goals
November 20, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/middleeast/20intel.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
ASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - Despite having collected substantial information about Iran's nuclear and weapons programs over the last several years, Western officials have limited intelligence about the crucial question of whether Tehran is trying to meld those two programs to produce a nuclear warhead that can be carried by a missile, administration officials said Friday.
The inability to answer that question so far poses an obstacle to the Bush administration's efforts to press for a hard line against the Tehran government.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said this week that he had seen intelligence indicating that Iran was "working hard" to produce a functioning nuclear-tipped missile. American officials said Friday that while such an effort would not be surprising, it would be significant if the new intelligence is true. But they suggested the intelligence had come from a single source and had not yet been verified, a detail first reported by The Washington Post.
A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, defended Mr. Powell's comments on Friday, saying, "We believe we are on very, very solid ground in pointing to a clandestine effort by Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems."
United Nations inspections in 2003 disclosed that Iran was capable of enriching uranium, the main ingredient in a nuclear bomb. In the past year, they have deeply investigated Iran's nuclear program, which Iran says is for civilian use.
In recent days, the inspectors discovered that Iran had mastered a central technology needed to produce weapons-grade uranium that can be used to make nuclear bombs, Western diplomats based in Vienna said Friday.
But the inspectors, with the International Atomic Energy Agency, have not been able to shed much light on whether Iran has begun work on a covert nuclear program that could produce a weapon within the next several years, as Western intelligence agencies believe.
American allies in Europe have now reached an agreement with Iran to suspend work on its nuclear program. The accord has yet to take effect.
The Bush administration has been skeptical of the deal, and President Bush is expected to raise the issue of Iran when he meets in Chile on Saturday morning with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian leader.
Iran may also be discussed next week when Mr. Powell attends a conference at an Egyptian resort, Sharm el Sheik, which representatives of Iran are also expected to attend.
In many ways, the state of Western knowledge about the civilian nuclear program acknowledged by Iran is much more extensive than was the state of knowledge about Iraq at the time of the American invasion in 2003, after a long period without United Nations inspectors there.
Still, the problem that the administration is facing on Iran, in seeking to enlist allies behind a confrontational approach on the basis of limited intelligence, has echoes of the dilemma the Bush administration faced before the Iraq invasion.
After the experience in Iraq, where American intelligence about illicit weapons turned out to be badly overstated, the lesson now being applied in the case of Iran is "to be appropriately skeptical about intelligence claims, and to really do your homework," a State Department official said Friday.
"We're not in a Feb. 5 mode on Iran," the official said, referring to the date in 2003 when Mr. Powell presented what later proved to be a flawed case against Iraq to the United Nations Security Council, "in the sense that we're not ready to submit our information to public scrutiny."
Intelligence on Iran, as was the case with Iraq before the invasion, is riddled with holes, some current and former government officials acknowledge.
"Prior to the invasion of Iraq, we knew our intelligence on Iraq was inadequate but we did not realize how poor it actually was," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who is the author of a new book on Iran. "Today, most intelligence officials believe that our intelligence about Iranian decision making and weapons of mass destruction is even more fragmentary and uncertain than what we believed to be our state of knowledge about Iraq."
Even so, United Nations inspectors have learned in recent days that Iran is producing large amounts of uranium hexafluoride at the gas processing facilities at its vast installation in Isfahan, said Western diplomats who are in contact with the I.A.E.A. Although Iran's uranium enrichment process is frozen under the agreement announced Monday with Britain, France and Germany, Iran has said it will begin suspension of its enrichment activities on Dec. 22.
Officials in Vienna, Paris and London who are familiar with Iran's nuclear program said they suspected that Iran intended to prove to the world its mastery of the crucial step of the process before the agreement goes into effect.
Beyond the United Nations inspectors, intelligence about Iran has come from a variety of sources.
In recent years, some of the most important information about Iran's nuclear program has been brought to the attention of American intelligence by a dissident group, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran. That group, which issued new claims this week, has sometimes shown an inconsistent record as a source of intelligence information.
Former intelligence officials said that in recent months American intelligence officers have gained a new window on Iran as a result of their operations in neighboring Iraq. But it was not clear whether the large flow of new information being gathered on Iran from Iraq was proving reliable, the former officials said.
American intelligence officials have always described Iran as a hard target, because of the impenetrability of the clerical government, which along with Iran's intelligence service and Revolutionary Guards maintains a monopoly on sensitive national security information. The Bush administration has said it believes that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but it has not presented evidence to back up those assertions.
Beyond the debate over Mr. Powell's comments on Iran, experts have long known that it is pursuing advanced missile and atomic programs. Mr. Powell's comments were the strongest suggestion to date from an American official that Iran might have gone far toward melding these two efforts to create a deliverable nuclear warhead, potentially crossing a deadly line.
The Iranians say that their nuclear reactor program is for making electricity and that the rocket program for making conventional military arms as well as for putting satellites into orbit. But the size, secrecy and aggressiveness of both programs have sown doubt among federal and private experts.
Suspicions soared in the past year as European inspectors found that Iran had hidden some of its most sensitive nuclear work for as long as 18 years, and that some equipment bore traces of uranium pure enough to make nuclear arms. In August, a new surprise emerged as Iran test-fired a rocket that bore a suspicious-looking nose cone.
The rocket was an updated version of their Shahab-3 missile, and the test ignited a quiet debate among experts over whether its advanced nose cone was designed to carry a nuclear warhead. For two decades, the Iranians have been developing generations of long-range rockets with the aid of North Korea, and the Shahab, which means shooting star in Persian, stands at the cutting edge.
After last summer's test-firing, Charles P. Vick, an expert on the Iranian program at GlobalSecurity.org, a research group based in Alexandria, Va., said, "What I've seen fly is a prototype for a nuclear warhead."
But other experts said the nose cone might be part of Iran's preparations for launching a satellite into orbit, which Tehran has said it plans to do in April. It was too thin, one said, to hold a relatively crude nuclear weapon.
"These guys need all the space they can get" atop a missile, said a European expert who closely follows the Iranian program.
Elaine Sciolino contributed reporting from Paris for this article.
--------
Bush Warns Iran After Uranium Processing Reports
November 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-apec-iran.html
SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - President Bush on Saturday warned Iran of growing international concern over reports that Tehran is preparing large amounts of uranium for an enrichment process that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
``This is a very serious matter. The world knows it's a serious matter and we're working together to solve this matter,'' Bush told reporters during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Santiago.
The two leaders were in Chile for a summit hosted by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Bush was referring to reports from diplomats that Iran was aggressively producing uranium hexafluoride, or UF6, days before a Nov. 22 deadline by which Tehran promised the European Union that it would freeze enrichment and all related activities.
UF6 is the form of uranium that is fed into gas centrifuges, which purify uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or weapons.
Iran had promised France, Britain and Germany to freeze its enrichment program in a bid to ease concerns that its nuclear plans are aimed at producing atomic weapons and to escape a referral to the U.N. Security Council when the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, meets on Nov. 25.
``It's very important for the Iranian government to hear that we are concerned about their desires,'' Bush said.
``We're concerned about reports that show that prior to a certain international meeting, they're willing to speed up processing of materials that could lead to a nuclear weapon.''
Iran, which maintains that it has no ambition to attain nuclear weapons, also denied diplomats' claims that it had ramped up UF6 production.
IAEA chief Mohamed Elbaradei said Monday in a report on his two-year investigation of Iran's nuclear program that Tehran had not diverted any of its declared nuclear materials to a weapons program.
But he did not rule out the possibility that other secret atomic activities existed.
--------
Iran Said to Be Producing Gas for Nukes
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Raising doubts about its commitment to dispel international distrust, Iran is producing significant quantities of a gas that can be used to make nuclear arms just days before it must stop all work related to uranium enrichment, diplomats said Friday.
Iran recently started producing uranium hexafluoride at its gas-processing facilities in the central city of Isfahan, the diplomats told The Associated Press.
When introduced into centrifuges and spun, the substance can be enriched to varying degrees. Low-grade enriched uranium is used in nuclear power plants. Highly enriched uranium forms the core of nuclear warheads.
While Iran says it is only interested in enrichment to generate power, the United States and its allies accuse Tehran of wanting the technology to make weapons-grade uranium.
In the latest accusation, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday he had seen intelligence to confirm claims by an Iranian dissident group that Tehran was secretly running a program intended to produce nuclear weapons by next year.
Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi dismissed that allegation Friday.
``There is no place for weapons of mass destruction in Iran's defense doctrine,'' he said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Asefi suggested that U.S. officials ``reconsider their intelligence sources.''
Iran last week agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and all linked activities in a deal worked out with Britain, France, Germany and the European Union. The deal, which goes into force Monday, prohibits Iran from all uranium gas-processing activities, as well as other programs linked to enrichment.
A senior EU diplomat said Iran's decision to carry out uranium processing right up to the freeze deadline disappointed the Europeans and cast doubt on Tehran's goodwill -- even if it did not violate the letter of the agreement.
It also appeared to bolster the U.S. effort to have the U.N. Security Council examine Tehran's nuclear activities. When the deal was announced last week, it looked to weaken the U.S. drive, even though the agreement commits Iran to suspension only while a comprehensive aid agreement with the EU is finalized.
Asked about quantities being processed at Isfahan, one of the diplomats said, ``It's not little,'' but he declined to elaborate.
But another diplomat familiar with the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. nuclear watchdog -- said the Iranians apparently were in the process of converting 22 tons of uranium into gas, either as a precursor to uranium hexafluoride or as the finished product.
In Washington, U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said the reports ``only heighten our concerns that Iran continues to pursue nuclear activities and does not honor its commitments.''
Iran has huge reserves of raw uranium and has announced plans to extract more than 40 tons a year.
That amount, if converted to uranium hexafluoride and repeatedly spun in centrifuges, could theoretically yield more than 200 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, enough for about five crude nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials say the Isfahan plant can convert more than 300 tons of uranium ore a year.
Iran announced suspension of enrichment last week, and the agency said it would police that commitment starting next week, ahead of a Nov. 25 IAEA board meeting.
The main focus of that meeting is Iran, with Tehran and its allies pushing to close the books on an examination of nearly two decades of covert nuclear activities and the Americans seeking to keep open the option of Security Council involvement.
By opting to freeze -- and not scrap -- the enrichment program, Tehran has not dropped plans to run 50,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for what it says will be the fuel requirements of a nuclear reactor to be finished next year.
Iran currently possesses fewer than 1,000 centrifuges. But even with 1,500 centrifuges, experts say Iran would be able to make enough weapons-grade uranium for about a bomb a year.
On the Web:
IAEA: http://www.iaea.org
-------- russia
Russia Calls New Missile System Defensive
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Russia-Nuclear.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Russia's new nuclear missile system is purely defensive and part of the country's program to upgrade its military, Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said the country is developing a new ``state-of-the-art'' nuclear missile system unlike any weapon held by other countries. He said it will be deployed ``in the near future'' but gave no details.
``It's a military issue, of course,'' Fedotov told The Associated Press on Friday when asked about the new missiles. ``Any armed forces needs a kind of upgrading, so it's a natural process.''
The Russian minister was asked why the country was trying to improve its nuclear capabilities at a time when the international community is working to get countries like North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear programs.
``Of course it is necessary to improve missile system in order to avoid any accidents. This is standard procedure,'' Fedotov said.
Fedotov said that ``as everything we have, it's totally defensive.''
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush and Putin had discussed the issue previously. He suggested that close ties between the two leaders makes alarm unnecessary. But he didn't eliminate Washington's concern.
``We have a very different relationship than we did in the Cold War,'' he said. ``The fact that we do have a good relationship enables us to speak very directly to our Russian friends.''
Christopher Langton, head of defense analysis at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Putin's comments appeared to be the first time that Russian officials had spoken publicly about a new deterrent, though he had no idea what the system might be.
Putin has made clear that improving the armed forces, which declined after the breakup of the Soviet Union, is a priority. In the past year, Russia defense officials have made several announcements about new weapons.
Fedotov was in New York for a series of meetings and to introduce a General Assembly resolution to commemorate next year's 60th anniversary of the end of fighting in World War II's European theater.
----
Talks on new nuclear plants will continue: Zhukov
The Hindu
By Amit Baruah
Nov 20, 2004
http://www.hindu.com/2004/11/20/stories/2004112013161200.htm
NEW DELHI, NOV. 19. The Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Zhukov, said today that Russia was "determined, in principle" to expand cooperation in the civilian nuclear power sector beyond the Koodanakulam project by holding talks with the Government of India.
Stating that Russia was aware of the "large plans" that India had in the field, Mr. Zhukov, at the same time, pointed to Russia's international treaty commitments (under the Nuclear Suppliers' Group). Leaving the door open for further cooperation, he said that discussions on the issue would continue with India.
In an interview to The Hindu, Mr. Zhukov, who co-chaired the joint commission meeting with the External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, said that Russia was keen on making billion-dollar investments in both thermal and hydel power sectors in India.
Major partner
Pointing to the fact that Russian companies had been involved in the Tehri hydel project as well as other NTPC tenders, Mr. Zhukov said that in the long term Russia would become India's "major partner" in the power and energy sector.
Referring to the joint commission meeting, he said both sides appreciated the participation of ONGC Videsh in Sakhalin-I and further cooperation in "Sakhalin-III" and third country oil and gas fields. Mr. Zhukov, who is Russia's economic czar and has a degree from Harvard University, said India and Russia had also approved two "draft" agreements in high-technology cooperation.
The Russian Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organisation had decided to enter into a long-term agreement for the "peaceful use" by ISRO of the Russian satellite navigations system, Glonas. Also, they would sign an accord on the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. The protocol signed by the two sides also noted the progress made in the development of a joint supercomputer, "Padma-Ru".
According to Mr. Zhukov, the two countries had also agreed to set up a Russia-India Science and Technology Centre in Moscow.
Market economy status
The Deputy Prime Minister, however, remained concerned that India had still to accord Russia "market economy" status - that had been granted unconditionally by China, the European Union and the United States.
When it came to anti-dumping procedures relating to India, Russia had to "prove" each time that it was a market economy, Mr. Zhukov said. This was a major problem. One option to avoid this would be for the two countries to exchange letters with India recognising Russia's "market economy" status unconditionally.
Earlier, at a joint press conference with Mr. Singh, he said he was very satisfied with the results of his visit. 'The two sides had also agreed to "finalise" issues relating to Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation. In his opening remarks, Mr. Singh said he expected business travel and tourism to receive a boost through easier visa facilities.
"An agreement is in the final stages of discussion between the two Governments."
Mr. Singh said the first Indo-Russian Round Table on Information Technology would be held in Bangalore on December 1-2. Fifteen major Russian IT companies will participate. Also, the first Indo-Russian energy meet will be held in New Delhi on January 15.
"We expect Canara Bank and State Bank of India to sign agreements shortly with two Russian banks to facilitate trade and mutual bank guarantees," he added.
Lack of bank guarantees have long been a problem in boosting trade between the two sides, which stood at $1.67 billion in 2003.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Farmers Buying Up Former Missile Silos
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Silos-for-Sale.html
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. (AP) -- Warnings against digging more than two feet into the ground because of cancer-causing chemicals haven't stopped people from buying 130 of the 150 former missile silo plots the federal government is selling in Missouri.
The Air Force removed the solid-fueled Minuteman II missiles and destroyed the underground silos years ago, but the soil is still contaminated with fuel, asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, found in waterproof coatings on the silos and underground fuel storage tanks.
Much of the property is being bought back by the farmers who owned the land before the government took it 40 years ago to install the silos.
Some farmers said they purchased the plots just to ensure that no one else grabbed them.
``I didn't really want to buy it back, but it has a frontage on a blacktop road that is well-traveled,'' said Mary Gorrell, who bought a plot on her farm near Sedalia. ``We were afraid someone would buy it and it would become a public nuisance.''
Retired farmer Eugene Wells, who leases his Johnson County farm for grazing, turned down an offer to buy a silo site.
Besides the price of $2,200 for 2.8 acres of land, Wells said, he was concerned about deed restrictions, including a stipulation that the buyer and all future owners of the land could not make any claims against the government if the ground were disturbed and required cleanup.
``Why should I be responsible?'' Wells asked. ``The government is the one that contaminated the land.''
Military officials said that as long as the land is not disturbed, the contaminants should not be hazardous to humans or livestock.
Missouri has asked the military to help pay for a state registry to track the sites and inspectors who could check the property each year, said James Werner of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
``We increasingly learn that the risks, at least the urgent risks, are not so much an immediate and acute health risk,'' Werner said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Yucca's energy role
November 20, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041119-083409-3162r.htm
Over the foreseeable future, increasing nuclear energy's role in electricity generation would be the most environmentally friendly way of addressing concerns about global warming and the health effects of burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike electricity generated by these carbon-based fuels, the burning of which constitutes the primary source of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, nuclear-generated electricity emits no greenhouse gases. Moreover, an energy policy emphasizing a significantly increased role for nuclear power represents sound geopolitical strategy. It would prevent America from becoming as dependent in the near future upon potentially unstable foreign sources for natural gas as it is dependent today upon the Middle East for its growing demand for imported oil.
Throughout the recent campaign, President Bush extolled the benefits of expanding nuclear power. Particularly noteworthy was his success in winning for the second time the five crucial electoral votes of Nevada, a battleground state in which the nuclear issue could not have offered a more striking difference between the two candidates.
Pivotal to an increased role for nuclear power is Yucca Mountain. The designated repository for nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain is located 90 miles from Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. In 2002, Mr. Bush approved Yucca for that purpose, and on Nov. 2, he prevailed again. That isn't to say that Nevadans overwhelmingly endorsed the president's position. Rather, he took a bold stand on a highly politicized issue and lived to pursue its implementation.
Despite the fact that no nuclear power plants have been ordered since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, Mr. Bush nonetheless endorsed increasing their number. With 45,000 tons of nuclear waste waiting to be transferred to a permanent storage facility, now is the time to move forward on Yucca Mountain. And it is time to pursue the next generation of nuclear power plants.
In recent years, the fuel of choice for new electric-power plants has been natural gas, which burns more cleanly than other carbon fuels (but far less cleanly than nuclear power). The United States, however, could soon become dependent for its natural-gas needs on foreign sources beyond Canada. In ascending order, the countries controlling the largest reserves of natural gas are the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia, which is trying to cartelize the market. For both environmental and national-security needs, nuclear power represents a win-win option.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Pakistan rejects Indian objections over US arms sale
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Nov 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041120135621.e7qm956s.html
Pakistan Saturday rejected Indian objections to a proposed 1.3 billion dollar US arms sale to Islamabad, saying its "modest" defence requirements should not irk New Delhi.
"Indian comments were unwarranted," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesman Friday said New Delhi had conveyed its concern to Washington over US plans to sell a range of sophisticated weapons to Pakistan.
"It is incomprehensible that India, which has a massive weaponisation and weapon acquisition programme, should object to Pakistan's modest defence requirements," the Pakistani spokesman said.
"Pakistan is ready to engage India purposefully on question of strategic and conventional restraint.
"We have made proposals for establishing a stability and strategic restraint regime in South Asia," he said.
Washington has notified Congress of a possible 1.3 billion dollar arms package for Pakistan, including eight P-3C Orion planes to beef up surveillance of its coasts and borders to stop the movement of terrorists and drug smugglers, US defense officials said Thursday.
It would be the largest US foreign military sale to Pakistan since sanctions against Islamabad were lifted in late 2001 as a reward for supporting US forces fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
Besides the Orion surveillance planes, Pakistan also has requested 2,000 TOW-2A anti-armor guided missiles and six Phalanx Close-in Weapons Systems for its warships.
Although regarded as a key US ally in the war on terror, Pakistan also has a longstanding military rivalry with India, with which it has fought three wars since independence in 1947.
The Pentagon can conclude negotiations with Pakistan on the proposed sale unless Congress acts to stop it within 30 days.
-------- business
Air Force Pitch for Boeing Detailed E-Mails Show Pressure by Roche
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63815-2004Nov19.html
Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force's decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, according to e-mails released yesterday by a Republican senator critical of the tanker deal.
Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as "animals," and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to "blow . . . away" the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing.
Sen. John McCain said he will keep pursuing internal communications on the Boeing tanker lease deal.
At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!"
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has conducted an equally vigorous campaign against the lease, said in releasing the internal Pentagon communications in a speech on the Senate floor that the missives reflect a "systemic Air Force failure in procurement oversight, willful blindness or rank corruption."
McCain said top Air Force officials have recently been trying to "delude the American people" into believing that a single person is responsible for misconduct in the $30 billion leasing plan -- namely, Darleen A. Druyun, the Air Force contracting official who pleaded guilty two months ago to overpricing the tankers as a "parting gift" to Boeing before she became one of the firm's executives.
"I simply cannot believe that one person, acting alone, can rip off taxpayers out of billions of dollars," said McCain, who said he will keep pursuing internal Defense Department and Bush administration communications until "all the stewards of taxpayers' funds who committed wrongdoing are held accountable."
Roche and Marvin R. Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisitions manager, announced their resignations several days before McCain's speech. But both men said through Pentagon spokesmen that they had not been pushed out, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a statement hailing Roche for serving "our country capably and with honor."
The e-mails McCain released add detail to previous disclosures about the scope and intensity of the Air Force's lobbying effort, mostly working with Boeing, to defend against early complaints from the Office of Management and Budget and various Pentagon analysts that the lease was a costly Boeing bailout. The critics have contended that buying the refueling planes outright would save billions of dollars and that no urgent need exists to replace Air Force tankers.
For Boeing, securing the lease was a way to keep its 767s in production during a period of declining orders from passenger airlines. It mounted an aggressive lobbying effort that drew support from influential members of the House and Senate, many of whom had received substantial Boeing campaign contributions, and eventually gained the backing of White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
The deal was blocked by Congress this year, after Druyun pleaded guilty to ethics violations and two senior Boeing officials resigned. One, Michael Sears, has since pleaded guilty to violating an ethics law governing employment negotiations with defense officials such as Druyun.
Yesterday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and senior committee Democrat Carl M. Levin (Mich.) joined McCain in a letter to Rumsfeld that called the tanker lease "the most significant" abuse since the "Ill Wind" bribery and fraud cases of the 1990s. They jointly demanded a review of the roles played by all Pentagon officials, both military and civilian, who "participated in structuring and negotiating the proposed tanker lease contract."
Warner said in a personal statement after hearing McCain's speech that he thinks the information shows that the departures of Roche and Sambur were in the "best interests" of the Defense Department. Air Force spokesman Douglas Karas declined to provide detailed comment on the e-mails but said they reflect "negotiations on an acquisition program that is now behind us" and will be reviewed by the defense secretary before talks are restarted.
"Ms. Druyun is solely responsible for her misconduct," Karas said, "and the fact that she was caught, convicted and sentenced reflects that the checks and balances in the system work. . . . All airmen deplore her misconduct as an assault on our core value of integrity."
According to the e-mails, Roche and Sambur organized a three-track effort to promote the deal: They sought to beat back a competing tanker offer from Airbus, to silence internal administration dissent, and to promote glowing assessments of the tanker program in public forums and military circles, frequently with Boeing's help.
Druyun expressed fury in a Sept. 5, 2002, e-mail to Roche about published remarks by an Airbus official about the lease plan, for example. Calling his remarks "BS" and "slime," she added: "His day of reckoning will come hopefully." Roche's response was "Oy. I agree." He also said he wished Druyun could have "tortured him slowly" over a period of years.
Roche has denied in congressional testimony that he ever asked Boeing to put pressure on Michael W. Wynne, principal deputy undersecretary for acquisition, who complained in 2003 that the tanker aircraft were too costly. McCain reported yesterday that on May 7 of that year, a Boeing lobbyist reported in an e-mail to Roche that Sambur was feeling pressured by Wynne to cut the cost; the lobbyist, Paul Weaver, asked if Boeing "needs to do anything like calling in the big guns to help out."
Roche responded that "it's time for the big guns to quash Wynne! Boeing won't accept such a dumb contract form and price, and Wynne needs to 'pay' an appropriate price."
Six weeks later, Roche complained directly to Wynne, who by then was an acting undersecretary of defense and more supportive of the program, that officials in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) who said the lease did not meet key regulatory criteria were "about to cause us to embarrass SecDef [Rumsfeld], who having approved the lease, will now have to explain why his staff is destroying the case for it."
Roche rendered his own view on the critics: "This is their way of asserting dominance over you. I know this sounds wild, but animals are animals."
Wynne's answer was that "I see this as an OSD discipline problem myself," and shortly afterward, he wrote an e-mail to a PA&E official complaining: "I have plenty of problems, but being 'fragged' didn't seem to be one of them. Now I worry."
-------- colombia
Bush to Assess War on Drugs in Colombia
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Bush-Visit.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- When President Bush comes to Colombia on Monday to discuss the future of the U.S.-funded war on drugs, he will find one of his last conservative allies in South America.
In a meeting with President Alvaro Uribe near the seaside city of Cartagena, President Bush is expected to reaffirm commitments launched in August 2000 to continue a $3.3 billion, five-year military aid program to combat narcotics and insurgent groups.
While the program, called Plan Colombia, has failed to keep cocaine off U.S. streets, it has helped bring a measure of stability to this Andean nation wracked by four decades of guerrilla warfare.
Under the program, a massive aerial fumigation program has reduced by 30 percent the cultivation of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine. Scores of drug traffickers have also been locked up and authorities have reported record drug seizures.
But overall cocaine production in the Andean region has not visibly diminished. Colombia is still the world's largest producer of cocaine, and remains a major supplier of heroin. Similarly, the price of cocaine in the United States is unchanged -- a sign there is no shortage of the drug.
Counternarcotics officials have been unable to explain why the fall in coca production over the past four years has not translated into a drop in the supply of cocaine.
``The impression in Washington is that 'Plan Colombia' has not been a particularly successful effort, that we appear to have reached a stalemate,'' said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
Uribe has used Plan Colombia money for an aggressive military buildup against Marxist guerrillas -- who fund themselves through drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion -- and to restore the rule of law.
In the two years since he came to power, crime rates have dropped, kidnappings are down and government forces have driven the rebels deeper into the jungle, drawing widespread support among Colombians and lavish praise from the White House.
The Bush administration tends to see the fight against Colombia drug trafficking and the rebels as being important to U.S. security, virtually ensuring continued funding after the current package expires in 2005.
Nevertheless, Congress next spring is expected to debate shifting some funds from military assistance to economic programs, said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington-based Center for International Policy. Currently, 80 percent of the money goes to Colombia's military, police and aerial drug crop-eradication programs.
But Uribe insists the United States needs to extend the military aid package beyond 2005. ``The battle needs to be fought until Colombia has defeated the drug problem,'' Uribe said on Thursday.
Given that South America has turned to the political left recently -- with left-leaning leaders now in power in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia, often challenging U.S. policies toward the region -- Uribe's request is unlikely to be refused, Roett said.
The two leaders are scheduled to hold four hours of talks as Bush heads home from a Pacific Rim nations economic summit hosted by Chile. Uribe is expected to push for a free trade agreement with the United States, arguing that access to U.S. markets is crucial to encourage farmers to shift away from coca to legal crops such as bananas.
Security will be tight in the Spanish colonial city.
Radars will be on the lookout for hostile planes or missiles, with combat helicopters overhead and submarines prowling the waters, said navy Admiral Guillermo Barrera. Thousands of troops will be deployed to seal off the city.
-------- iraq
12 headless bodies found in Mosul
November 20, 2004
The New York Times, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/19/news/iraq.html
MOSUL, Iraq Twelve decapitated bodies were found strewn about the northern city of Mosul on Friday as about 400 Iraqi commandoes stormed numerous locations around the city in search of rebel hideouts.
And in Baghdad, four people were killed Friday, and at least nine wounded, while 23 suspected insurgents were arrested when hundreds of Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces stormed a Sunni Muslim mosque after prayers, witnesses and an influential group of Sunni clerics said.
The Iraqi troops raided the mosque in the Sunni district of Aadhamiya, firing percussion grenades and damaging the doors, the Muslim Clerics Association said.
They opened fire when furious worshippers began to chant "Allahu Akbar" - "God is Great" - and tried to beat back troops by throwing shoes at them - a grave insult in Islam.
The raid followed more than 100 arrests in a Sunni area of Baghdad the day before, when the police said they detained some militants suspected of escaping the Sunni Muslim bastion of Falluja during the bloody rout of insurgents by U.S. troops.
The incident in Baghdad took place at the hard-line Sunni Abu Hanifa mosque, the last place that Saddam Hussein was publicly seen during the American invasion last year before he was found hiding months later in a hole in Tikrit.
An Iraqi policeman who was praying in the mosque said that Iraqi national guardsmen opened fire on people inside. He was wounded in the arm.
One cleric on the scene was weeping after what he said was rough treatment by the Iraqi national guard. He showed the red imprint of a boot bottom on his side.
In other violence, three people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack against police officers in Baghdad on Friday.
In Mosul, some of the beheaded bodies found are thought to have been Iraqi soldiers killed for collaborating with Americans.
One witness said that two of the soldiers were surrounded in a public square and decapitated, and then the insurgents warned that anyone attempting to remove the bodies would be treated similarly.
-----
Rebels Attack Baghdad Police, Troops
November 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas stormed a Baghdad police station and ambushed an American patrol, killing a soldier and wounding nine in daylight attacks in the capital on Saturday, defying efforts to crush a Sunni Muslim revolt.
Hours after a U.S. general acknowledged that it was hasty to claim this month's offensive on Falluja had broken the back of the insurgency, rebels killed three policemen in a dawn strike on their station in Baghdad's Sunni Aadhamiya district.
Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group claimed the attack on what it called ``the army of idolatrous America and its apostate subordinates.'' Washington says Zarqawi probably fled Falluja before a U.S. assault that killed 1,200 guerrillas.
The U.S. general who captured Saddam Hussein said it would be harder to track down Zarqawi whose well organized network was moving him between hideouts. But, Gen. Ray Odierno said, the job would be easier now Zarqawi did not have a haven in Falluja.
The Aadhamiya attack followed a raid by the Iraqi National Guard on the nearby Abu Hanifa mosque, a revered shrine for the once dominant Sunni minority, at the end of Friday prayers. It enraged worshippers and triggered clashes that left four dead.
Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan said insurgents had moved from Fallujah and Babil province, south of Baghdad, to the capital. But, he told U.S.-funded al Hurra television: ``We have a comprehensive plan similar to the Fallujah operation ... There is great operation planned in Babil.''
The government says it will quell the Sunni insurgency before an election in January.
But asked about his ministry's plans for election security, Shalaan said: ``We do not have any plan yet, but when we approach the election stages we will have a plan.''
Violence threatens the election date. But an enthusiastic response from political parties wanting to register to take part caused the deadline to be pushed back by two days from Saturday. Some 145 applications had been received, overloading the clerks.
Iraq's main creditors at the Paris Club of wealthy nations also agreed to cancel 80 percent of Baghdad's debt to them. The deal could become a benchmark for debt relief from Iraq's other creditors and help Baghdad rebuild the shattered country.
BAGHDAD BLOODSHED
Government spokesman Thaer al-Naqib said the assault on Falluja, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad, had reduced the number of guerrilla attacks in the past two weeks.
But the capital witnessed one of its most unsettled days for a while, as U.S. tanks and helicopters helped beat off the rocket-firing rebels during a three-hour battle in Aadhamiya.
The U.S. soldier was killed and nine wounded when a patrol was caught in an ambush in Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
In the city's western Amriya district, gunmen in cars opened fire on a National Guard unit. A Guard at the scene said seven of the assailants were killed and seven passers-by wounded.
In the center, a car exploded killing two and, close to the airport, U.S. forces traded fire with gunmen, witnesses said.
The offensive on Falluja has been accompanied by violence throughout the Sunni heartlands north and west of the capital.
In Qaim, close to the Syrian border, gunmen took to the streets on Saturday and clashed with U.S. troops. Two people were killed, witnesses and a hospital official said.
Mosul in the north, Iraq's third city, remains on edge after insurgents routed the new police force a week ago.
The militant Army of Ansar al-Sunna, posted a video on a Web site which said it showed one of its members shooting dead two Kurds from the government-allied Kurdistan Democratic Party.
A senior U.S. general, acknowledged it was ``too early to say ... that the backbone of the insurgency is broken.''
Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy U.S. commander in the region including Iraq, said he may ask for 3,000 to 5,000 more troops to add to the nearly 140,000 U.S. soldiers now in Iraq.
HOSTAGE FREED
In Ramadi, scene of frequent clashes just west of Falluja, U.S. forces sealed off roads into the city early on Saturday and called on people through loudspeakers to hand over ``terrorists.'' Helicopters flew over and Americans blocked access in or out of the Sunni city as troops searched buildings south of the center.
In Falluja itself, U.S. troops continued hunting for rebels and it was unclear when its 300,000 residents could return.
Sunni Arabs, who account for about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, have long dominated its political life, most recently under Saddam. The prospect of power shifting to the long-oppressed 60-percent Shi'ite minority after the January election has turned unease into violence among some Sunnis.
The Iraqi interim government blames Saddam loyalists and foreign-inspired Islamists for fueling the insurgency.
A Polish woman freed by kidnappers on Friday and flown to Warsaw said she was treated well, raising hopes for other foreign hostages after a week in which the only other woman held captive, a British aid worker, was thought to have been killed.
--------
Troops Invade Baghdad Mosque
Raid on Sunni Site Leaves Two Dead
By Karl Vick and Khalid Saffar
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62155-2004Nov19.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 -- Iraqi troops backed by U.S. soldiers raided the most revered Sunni mosque in Baghdad, setting off stun grenades, arresting dozens and leaving at least two people dead, according to witnesses and a hospital official.
The raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque just after Friday prayers was the latest in a series of moves targeting clerics who support the insurgency, which continues to churn violently in the sections of Iraq dominated by the country's minority Sunni Muslim population.
Spokesmen for Iraq's interim government, which must approve major military operations in the country, tried in recent days to prepare the way for the wave of arrests by citing Iraqi law that equates support for insurgency with the actions themselves. But popular outrage was apparent in the wake of the raid on Abu Hanifa, the burial place of a medieval scholar who founded one of the faith's most prominent schools of law.
"In the more than 55 years I have been praying at this mosque, it was hit twice," said Abu Numan, 65. "The first was in April 2003 when the Americans entered Baghdad, and the second was today, again at the hands of the Americans and the National Guard.
"Why? This is a holy place and the tomb of one of Islam's most revered figures. There should be some sanctity and respect for our shrines. This is unacceptable."
Witnesses said U.S. troops set up a perimeter around the mosque complex while uniformed Iraqi security forces disarmed the shrine's guards and swept into the sanctuary. Loud bangs and gunfire followed; afterward, bloodstains were visible on the sidewalk outside the main gate.
Security forces searched the building, and worshipers were herded into a small room and searched as well, the witnesses said. "They didn't find any weapons, but they killed some of our people," said Abdul Hadi Jasem Obeidy, a handyman at the mosque.
The mosque dominates the central square in the capital's northwestern Adhamiya neighborhood, a longtime favorite haunt of former president Saddam Hussein. On April 9, 2003, the day U.S. troops pulled down his statue several miles away, Hussein paused in Adhamiya to bask in cheers from the roof of a sedan. The mosque became the scene of the last firefight in the battle for Baghdad, with Syrian and local fighters firing from inside its walls at advancing U.S. forces.
Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarrae, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, told al-Arabiya television that the prayer leader, Muayed Adhami, was arrested. The association, which vocally supports the insurgency and has called for a boycott of national elections, has also seen some of its senior officers detained and their houses searched.
U.S. forces also raided a mosque in the city of Qaim on the Syrian border, the Associated Press reported. The resident imam, Maudafar Abdul Wahab, said the troops took $2,000 meant for repairs, and he accused the troops of retaliating for his opposition to the offensive on Fallujah.
Fighting flared again in cities across northern and central Iraq as mostly Sunni insurgents continued their efforts to open fronts away from Fallujah.
In Mosul, guerrillas mostly remained hidden as U.S. and Iraqi forces struggled to return firm government control to the northern city of 1.8 million.
But mortar shells fell on a U.S. base, a soldier was wounded by a car bomb and residents found two headless bodies in the middle of a central street. In an Internet posting, the group al Qaeda in Iraq claimed to have beheaded the men -- said to be members of the Iraqi National Guard -- before a crowd.
In the northern town of Hawija, American forces entered a ninth day of battle against insurgents, according to the military.
In Baghdad, a car bomb at a police checkpoint on the city's east side killed one officer and wounded 10, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman.
"Why are they after the police?" asked Haider Kareem, 32, a taxi driver at the scene. "Do you remember after Baghdad fell, when there were no police on the streets, and how the thieves were out? We were not able to go out because of them, and we were waiting to see the police in the streets again."
[On Saturday, insurgents attacked a police station in northwestern Baghdad with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, witnesses told the Associated Press.
Clashes broke out around dawn in the Azamiyah neighborhood, and three U.S. armored vehicles were seen in flames, witnesses said. The U.S. military had no immediate comment. Heavy fighting also broke out between gunmen and Iraqi National Guardsmen and U.S. troops in the western Amiriyah neighborhood, the Associated Press reported.]
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Army to Investigate Reported Abuse of Arab Corpses
November 20, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/middleeast/20israel.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 19 - The Israeli Army has ordered an investigation into allegations that soldiers in the West Bank photographed one another two years ago posing with the head of a suicide bomber with a cigarette stuck in its mouth, the chief of staff, Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said Friday. He was responding to a report in the weekend magazine of Yediot Aharonot, the country's largest-selling daily.
The paper also reported several incidents of abuse of corpses of Palestinian fighters by soldiers who then took photos.
General Yaalon told the army radio that any such behavior "is inappropriate for an Israeli and a Jewish soldier," adding, "Our moral fortitude is no less important than our military fortitude." He said he had ordered an investigation by the military police.
"I intend to reach the truth," he said. "God forbid if we are compared and likened to those against whom we are fighting."
In one of the most gruesome acts detailed in the report, soldiers in a strictly Orthodox unit reassembled the body parts of a Palestinian suicide bomber, sticking a cigarette in his mouth and then posing for photographs, according to the report.
"Everyone was really excited," said a soldier identified as Y. The newspaper quoted him saying: "I tried to tell them: 'Are you crazy? You are disgusting.' They didn't understand what I was talking about."
The chief rabbi of the army, known as the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., Gen. Israel Weiss, also condemned the reports. "I don't know what term of condemnation to use, as these actions are immoral, inhuman, inappropriate to the I.D.F., un-Jewish," he said on the army radio. "One terrible action such as this cuts away the I.D.F. moral ground."
"We have proved, as an army and as a nation, more than once, that we are different, that we are other,'' he said. "We don't rejoice when blood is spilled. We don't sing and dance in celebration over a dead body lying at our feet, though some of our enemies do this, with great delight."
The newspaper details soldiers' accounts of several other incidents, including one in the Gaza Strip last year, when soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian who was walking in a forbidden area. Although the man turned out to be unarmed, soldiers tied his body to the hood of an army jeep and drove him to a base, where they photographed the scene.
According to Yediot, the Israelis nicknamed the dead Palestinian "Hefi," short for "innocent" in Hebrew. Later, when other Palestinian dead were brought to the base, some soldiers would joke, "He's nothing like Hefi."
In the weekend edition of another daily, Maariv, journalists describe a short-lived sniper unit called the Ice Men, made up of six soldiers, all trained in the Russian Army, who were professional snipers. The unit, put together in September 2003, lasted only 10 months, according to the paper, because the six, though regarded as highly professional, were "light on the trigger."
"There was a gap between them and us on understanding open-fire rules," an officer of the Givati Division told Maariv. "They come from a different mentality and thought it was enough to have intuition to suspect someone."
One of the snipers, identified as Dima, told the paper: "We destroyed terrorists, those that shot at our soldiers and harmed Israel. To this day, there has not been one complaint against us that we fired at civilians, at children, or at farmers.''
"Soldiers told us that finally they managed to sleep at night because there was less Palestinian shooting,'' Dima continued. "That testifies to our professionalism. Why did they shut us down? Because the officers above became frightened of us."
--------
Israeli Army to Probe Reports of Corpse Abuse
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63495-2004Nov19.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 19 -- Israel's top general announced Friday that the military would investigate allegations that soldiers abused the bodies of Palestinians killed during army operations, including a case in which soldiers posed for pictures with the severed head of a suicide bomber.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the military's chief of staff, responded to photographs and interviews with soldiers published Friday in an Israeli newspaper by condemning the abuses and saying that maintaining the army's ethical strength was as important as sustaining its military power.
Photographs published in Friday's editions of the Hebrew daily newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, depicted three incidents: a soldier posing next to a bomber's blackened head with a cigarette dangling from its mouth, a soldier with his boot on the chest of a dead Palestinian and his gun pointed at the corpse's head and a dead Palestinian's body draped over the hood of a jeep.
A military spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, said the Israeli military did not doubt the veracity of the photographs.
As the current Israeli-Palestinian hostilities move into their fifth year, soldiers and officers have become increasingly outspoken about abuse of Palestinians by soldiers at checkpoints, on urban battlegrounds and in detention. In recent months, the Israeli military has issued new ethics guidelines and has expanded ethics training for soldiers.
The Israeli soldiers' actions "testify to a moral imperviousness, and there must be action taken to prevent this from recurring," Ophir Pines-Paz, a member of the Israeli parliament from the main opposition Labor Party, said in a statement Friday after introducing a motion denouncing the abuses.
"This is a very serious phenomenon that attests to profound weakness in IDF behavior, even when its battles and acts are justified," Mordechai Baron, a former chief of military education, told Israel Radio, referring to the Israeli Defense Forces.
The outrage expressed by some Israeli officials Friday over the alleged abuses closely resembled criticism of U.S. soldiers who placed Iraqis captives in degrading positions and photographed them at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Since the scandal broke last spring, eight U.S. Army Reserve soldiers have been charged in connection with the abuses. Three of those have pleaded guilty to some of the charges.
"When I was released from the service, I said to myself, 'Here, we are no different from the Americans abusing soldiers in Iraq,' " one soldier who said he served in the Gaza Strip told Yedioth Aharonoth, adding: "At some stage, we need to stop and ask ourselves where we have gone. When I think about it, about all those pictures of our guys partying with the bodies, it makes me feel bad."
Soldiers who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity said that taking photographs of Palestinian corpses had been a common practice among soldiers since the current Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. One soldier said the pictures "simply became part of the album" passed around the military unit. Soldiers said it was a frequent practice to pose with the bodies.
The incident involving the suicide bomber occurred 2 1/2 years ago when a 19-year-old Palestinian blew himself up near an Israeli military road block in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, according to soldiers interviewed by the newspaper.
One soldier said that no soldiers were injured in the explosion and that afterward, they collected the attacker's body parts. The soldier said that one of his officers helped assemble them, stuck the head on a metal pole and "turned him into a scarecrow."
Dallal, the military spokesman, said: "No matter how difficult the circumstances, that behavior is inexcusable. We have to draw a very strong line between stopping a suicide bombing -- which the soldiers did -- and, after the fact, acting in a way that shows disrespect to the body."
-------- space
NASA Launches Black Hole Hunter
November 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Black-Hole-Hunter.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The fastest-swiveling space science observatory ever built rocketed into orbit Saturday to scan the universe for violent celestial explosions that astronomers believe represent the birth screams of black holes.
NASA launched the observatory -- named Swift for its speedy pivoting and pointing -- following weeks of delays caused by hurricanes and a three-day postponement due to rocket trouble. The unmanned rocket climbed smoothly through a cloud-flecked midday sky, and delighted flight controllers wished the spacecraft a successful mission.
Swift, a $250 million collaboration by NASA, Italy and Britain, should begin its hunt for gamma ray bursts by January and erase some of the mystery surrounding these explosions and black holes.
Gamma ray bursts are the most powerful events in the universe, exceeded only by the cosmic curtain-raising Big Bang itself. Lasting just a few seconds on average, the bursts appear out of nowhere like flashlight beams and are thought to signal the formation of black holes.
Astronomers theorize the collapse or collision of massive stars is what produces black holes -- so dense not even light can escape -- and that the resulting gravitational energy sends gamma rays shooting out across time and space.
``We think that, perhaps, bursts are the birth cries of black holes and we're seeing these throughout the universe,'' said NASA's Neil Gehrels, principal scientist.
A single gamma ray burst releases more energy than the sun will emit in its entire lifetime at all wavelengths, Gehrels said.
Put another mind-blowing way, ``If you added together everything in the rest of the universe during that second, it would not be as bright as the gamma ray burst,'' said Pennsylvania State University astrophysicist John Nousek, director of mission operations.
So far, astronomers have managed to identify only a couple dozen gamma ray bursts, as close as a few million light years and as far as 12 billion light years. Swift should zero in on two gamma ray bursts a week as far away as 15 billion light years, representing the very first generation of stars, for a grand total of more than 200 during the planned two-year mission.
The spacecraft will scan one-sixth of the sky at any one time and thus see one-sixth of all gamma ray bursts out there. The observations will help scientists learn more about what the bursts are and how many are out there, and how and when black holes form.
As soon as Swift's gamma ray burst-alert instrument spots an explosion, the spacecraft will quickly turn all by itself so that two other on-board telescopes can observe the X rays and ultraviolet and optical light streaming from the afterglow.
This swinging into position will take just a minute, lightning speed by astronomical standards because of Swift's six momentum wheels, double the usual number for a science satellite. Speed is crucial because once the ever-so-brief gamma ray burst subsides, the afterglow is difficult to find and fades within hours or sometimes weeks.
News of the gamma ray burst and its precise location instantly will be relayed to astronomers everywhere by the mission control center at Penn State. Ground observatories can then be aimed to assist in the afterglow analysis.
Deputy project manager Tim Gehringer calls Swift ``the roadrunner of spacecraft, speeding from birth to birth as it advances mankind's knowledge of the most violent explosions in the universe.''
Scientists are quick to point out that military spy satellites may well exceed Swift's swiftness. On the scientific front, though, this rapid-response observatory has no peer.
Until now, 15 minutes was considered ``really fast'' for a space observatory and its team to respond to a late-breaking astronomical event, said Anne Kinney, director of NASA's universe division. Swift ``is a completely different level of fastness, one minute, one minute and designed to do that consistently, not dependent on anybody answering their cell phone,'' she said.
The Hubble Space Telescope, by contrast, takes hours if not an entire day or two to swivel into an impromptu viewing position.
After chasing gamma ray bursts for a year or two, Swift will expand its repertoire to other rapidly occurring cosmic events.
``If you want to see something like that,'' Nousek said, snapping his fingers, ``who you going to call? Swift is the people to call.''
On the Net:
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission--pages/swift/main/index.html
-------- us
Casualties up at military hospitals
U.S. facilities undergo 'very intense' week as war-wounded stream in
BY JAMES W. CRAWLEY
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
November 20, 2004
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Common%2FMGArticle%2FPrintVersion&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779253595&image=timesdispatch80x60.gif&oasDN=timesdispatch.com
WASHINGTON - Injured Marines and soldiers wounded during the intense fighting in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities are flooding military hospitals, tripling the number of casualties being treated here.
Officials at Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Army Medical Center said yesterday that both are at the highest patient loads since April 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
More than 70 Marines were being treated for combat wounds at Bethesda and another 70 are at Walter Reed, officials said. Hundreds more are recuperating as outpatients while staying nearby.
Because of crowding at Bethesda, some wounded Marines are being shifted to military hospitals in North Carolina and California, often within hours of arriving in the States, officials said.
Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany, the first stop for troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, was caring for more than 400 war-wounded this week, according to news reports.
During much of the summer, Bethesda and Walter Reed each were treating between 20 and 30 wounded on any given day, spokesmen said. Bethesda has 215 patient beds, while Walter Reed normally can accommodate 260 patients. The medical centers also treat active-duty military, dependents, military retirees and government officials.
Yesterday, Walter Reed stopped accepting some ambulance patients at the emergency room because the hospital was nearly full, said Col. James Gilman, who runs the hospital.
However, he added, "We haven't turned off other things that we do." Outpatient clinics, surgery and other hospital functions are running normally, he said.
Bethesda continued to accept medical appointments and schedule routine surgeries, said spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler.
Unlike in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the military hasn't built large field hospitals near the battlefield. Instead, nearly all the seriously wounded troops are being rushed back to the States, often within days of their injuries, said Gilman.
As the flow of wounded arrives from Iraq, many Bethesda staff members have been working long hours to treat arriving casualties.
"This week has been very intense," said Lt. Paula Godes, a Navy physical therapist. "Everyone has had to jump in and help out."
Godes and 200 other hospital staffers serve on medical evacuation teams that help transport incoming patients from nearby Andrews Air Force Base to Bethesda. The duty means double shifts for the men and women who also serve as nurses, aides and lab technicians.
Nearly every night, convoys of ambulances and buses back up to the rear ramp of a transport plane to pick up injured troops arriving from Landstuhl, where casualties are initially treated after leaving Iraq.
Many are carried off the jet transport on litters. A few walk down the plane's rear ramp with a corpsman or nurse at their side. Some arrive in tattered uniforms still caked with the dust of combat.
The 10-hour flight can be grueling for the injured troops. Being strapped on to a litter and stacked like cordwood in the belly of a noisy cargo plane is not comfortable.
"They're very glad to be on the ground," Godes said.
It's emotional work for the corpsmen, many of whom are the same age as the maimed Marines they carry to waiting ambulances, she said.
"It's a somber experience," she said. "You see firsthand the result of war. You try to be as strong as you can for these guys."
--------
Air Force Pitch for Boeing Detailed
E-Mails Show Pressure by Roche
Washington Post
By R. Jeffrey Smith
November 20, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63815-2004Nov19?language=printer
Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force's decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, according to e-mails released yesterday by a Republican senator critical of the tanker deal.
Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as "animals," and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to "blow . . . away" the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing.
At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!"
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has conducted an equally vigorous campaign against the lease, said in releasing the internal Pentagon communications in a speech on the Senate floor that the missives reflect a "systemic Air Force failure in procurement oversight, willful blindness or rank corruption."
McCain said top Air Force officials have recently been trying to "delude the American people" into believing that a single person is responsible for misconduct in the $30 billion leasing plan -- namely, Darleen A. Druyun, the Air Force contracting official who pleaded guilty two months ago to overpricing the tankers as a "parting gift" to Boeing before she became one of the firm's executives.
"I simply cannot believe that one person, acting alone, can rip off taxpayers out of billions of dollars," said McCain, who said he will keep pursuing internal Defense Department and Bush administration communications until "all the stewards of taxpayers' funds who committed wrongdoing are held accountable."
Roche and Marvin R. Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisitions manager, announced their resignations several days before McCain's speech. But both men said through Pentagon spokesmen that they had not been pushed out, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a statement hailing Roche for serving "our country capably and with honor."
The e-mails McCain released add detail to previous disclosures about the scope and intensity of the Air Force's lobbying effort, mostly working with Boeing, to defend against early complaints from the Office of Management and Budget and various Pentagon analysts that the lease was a costly Boeing bailout. The critics have contended that buying the refueling planes outright would save billions of dollars and that no urgent need exists to replace Air Force tankers.
For Boeing, securing the lease was a way to keep its 767s in production during a period of declining orders from passenger airlines. It mounted an aggressive lobbying effort that drew support from influential members of the House and Senate, many of whom had received substantial Boeing campaign contributions, and eventually gained the backing of White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
The deal was blocked by Congress this year, after Druyun pleaded guilty to ethics violations and two senior Boeing officials resigned. One, Michael Sears, has since pleaded guilty to violating an ethics law governing employment negotiations with defense officials such as Druyun.
Yesterday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and senior committee Democrat Carl M. Levin (Mich.) joined McCain in a letter to Rumsfeld that called the tanker lease "the most significant" abuse since the "Ill Wind" bribery and fraud cases of the 1990s. They jointly demanded a review of the roles played by all Pentagon officials, both military and civilian, who "participated in structuring and negotiating the proposed tanker lease contract."
Warner said in a personal statement after hearing McCain's speech that he thinks the information shows that the departures of Roche and Sambur were in the "best interests" of the Defense Department. Air Force spokesman Douglas Karas declined to provide detailed comment on the e-mails but said they reflect "negotiations on an acquisition program that is now behind us" and will be reviewed by the defense secretary before talks are restarted.
"Ms. Druyun is solely responsible for her misconduct," Karas said, "and the fact that she was caught, convicted and sentenced reflects that the checks and balances in the system work. . . . All airmen deplore her misconduct as an assault on our core value of integrity."
According to the e-mails, Roche and Sambur organized a three-track effort to promote the deal: They sought to beat back a competing tanker offer from Airbus, to silence internal administration dissent, and to promote glowing assessments of the tanker program in public forums and military circles, frequently with Boeing's help.
Druyun expressed fury in a Sept. 5, 2002, e-mail to Roche about published remarks by an Airbus official about the lease plan, for example. Calling his remarks "BS" and "slime," she added: "His day of reckoning will come hopefully." Roche's response was "Oy. I agree." He also said he wished Druyun could have "tortured him slowly" over a period of years.
Roche has denied in congressional testimony that he ever asked Boeing to put pressure on Michael W. Wynne, principal deputy undersecretary for acquisition, who complained in 2003 that the tanker aircraft were too costly. McCain reported yesterday that on May 7 of that year, a Boeing lobbyist reported in an e-mail to Roche that Sambur was feeling pressured by Wynne to cut the cost; the lobbyist, Paul Weaver, asked if Boeing "needs to do anything like calling in the big guns to help out."
Roche responded that "it's time for the big guns to quash Wynne! Boeing won't accept such a dumb contract form and price, and Wynne needs to 'pay' an appropriate price."
Six weeks later, Roche complained directly to Wynne, who by then was an acting undersecretary of defense and more supportive of the program, that officials in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) who said the lease did not meet key regulatory criteria were "about to cause us to embarrass SecDef [Rumsfeld], who having approved the lease, will now have to explain why his staff is destroying the case for it."
Roche rendered his own view on the critics: "This is their way of asserting dominance over you. I know this sounds wild, but animals are animals."
Wynne's answer was that "I see this as an OSD discipline problem myself," and shortly afterward, he wrote an e-mail to a PA&E official complaining: "I have plenty of problems, but being 'fragged' didn't seem to be one of them. Now I worry."
-------- war crimes
Riggs Uncovers Deep Ties to Pinochet
Internal Inquiry Finds Indications of Money Laundering
By Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63814-2004Nov19.html
A Riggs Bank internal investigation has uncovered signs of money laundering by bank employees, including efforts in 2003 to help Argentine naval officers hide $3.8 million in cash to prevent seizure by investors after the Argentine government defaulted on bond payments.
The investigation by a small team of former Secret Service agents hired by Riggs last year also discovered that efforts by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to hide millions of dollars at Riggs go back to 1985, nearly 10 years earlier than previously known. Pinochet came to power in a 1973 coup and instituted several years of bloody repression. He resigned after a 1989 election, but he remained commander-in-chief of the armed forces until 1998.
Previous accounts have described the bank's close relationship with Pinochet and what appear to be attempts to hide his assets from federal prosecutors. But the bank's own investigation, according to sources familiar with its findings, turned up detailed information about the lengths the bank went to accommodate the former dictator, whom bank officials referred to by code names including "Red Fox" and "APU." The sources agreed to speak only on the condition that they not be identified since the investigation is continuing.
In the late 1990s, Pinochet was under house arrest in London after being indicted in Spain in 1998 on charges of crimes against humanity. The Chilean Air Force mission there contacted Robert Roane, who headed Riggs's London office, asking if the bank's corporate jet could fly nonstop from London to Chile and whether it could be available if Pinochet were released, according to the investigation. Roane passed the request on to a Riggs executive in Washington; Pinochet did not use the jet.
Although the investigation turned up no evidence that Joe L. Allbritton, Riggs's largest stockholder and its chief executive until 2001, participated in any suspicious activity involving Pinochet accounts, numerous bank officials told investigators that they thought Pinochet was a favored client and a friend of Allbritton.
Sources close to the Allbritton family, speaking on their behalf but only on condition of anonymity, said Allbritton met Pinochet twice and the two men were not friends.
The investigation so far has resulted in the firing of at least three Riggs employees, including a lawyer in the bank's general counsel office, according to sources. Evidence obtained through the investigation has been given to the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Justice, bank regulators, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the sources said.
The Pinochet account was closely managed by Carol Thompson, who ran the Latin American embassy and international private client business for Riggs. Thompson was also involved in the Argentine transaction, in which Riggs helped Argentine naval officers transfer $3.8 million in cash from an account to Riggs safety deposit boxes. The Argentine government feared that private investors in the country's defaulted bonds would seek a court order freezing government funds in the United States.
Two representatives from the naval mission withdrew $3.8 million from the navy's account at Riggs, stuffed the cash into two large paper bags, and deposited it in five boxes at the Riggs Dupont Circle branch on April 28, 2003.
Investigators reviewed an e-mail in which Thompson said that she had asked a Riggs lawyer for advice about the transaction and that no objections had been raised. Former Riggs National Corp. president Timothy C. Coughlin found out about it at a lunch with Thompson and the Argentine admiral the same day the transaction took place. He abruptly left the lunch, went back to the bank, and ordered the transaction reversed.
Thompson quit Riggs in 2003 and until recently was an employee of Wachovia Bank. She could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Wachovia said Thompson was no longer employed there.
Among the investigation's other findings:
• Riggs paid $5,000 into a Pinochet family foundation in 1997, shortly after senior bank executives visited Pinochet in Chile to solicit his business.
• Some Riggs internal bank documents relating to Pinochet are missing from the bank's files.
• Pinochet and his family had more accounts than previously disclosed, including 10 accounts at Riggs's Miami bank and several opened by Chilean military officers described by bank executives as "fronts" for the dictator.
Riggs closed out its remaining Pinochet accounts in 2002 under pressure from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), but the bank was never cited for laundering any money for the general. This year, the bank was fined $25 million for failing to report suspicious transactions in Washington accounts held by the government of Equatorial Guinea and by Saudi Arabian diplomats.
The OCC has also asked other banks that held Pinochet-related accounts, including Bank of America and Citibank, for information, sources said.
Riggs in May began reconstructing its 19-year relationship with Pinochet in response to an investigation by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. The subcommittee published what it called a case study on money laundering and foreign corruption, describing Riggs's relationships with Pinochet and the dictator of Equatorial Guinea.
The subsequent bank investigation found that Riggs's suspicious dealings with Pinochet were much deeper than was previously known by anyone except a small number of former private client managers in Riggs's shuttered international banking unit in Miami. It involved most members of Pinochet's family, including a son, and other members of Chilean military elite who were courted by Riggs senior bank management, including Allbritton, according to sources.
Pinochet's commonly known full name is Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, but he requested that Riggs personnel refer to him as José.
The first record found by investigators is of an account opened at the Miami subsidiary in 1985 under the name Jose Ramon Ugarte. Eventually, Pinochet would control, directly and indirectly, as much as $12 million at Riggs and its various subsidiaries. In all, the Riggs Miami operation had 10 accounts that were used as "conduits" for money going to Pinochet or his personal assistant.
The first suspicious transactions involving the Miami accounts that the investigation found occurred as early as 1990, when a Riggs account in the name Daniel Lopez issued a $410,000 check to a Riggs account that belonged to Augusto Pinochet and his wife, Lucia Hiriart.
In all, more than $1.3 million from the Lopez account was deposited into Pinochet's accounts at Riggs. When Riggs internal investigators withdrew the customer identity folder on Lopez from a Miami storage facility in August, the folder contained only two return U.S. Postal Service receipts for an address in Santiago, Chile. Investigators had expected to find documents revealing the identity of Daniel Lopez. Although some cursory documentation about Lopez's identity -- he was listed as "businessman" -- was discovered in September at a Riggs office in Washington, the bank was not able to positively identify Lopez until two weeks ago, when Pinochet's son Marco Antonio sent an e-mail to Riggs investigator B. J. Moravek confirming that Lopez was an alias of his father.
Thompson, Allbritton and Coughlin made numerous trips to Chile, meeting with Pinochet on several occasions and with a wide variety of Chilean government and military officials in the 1990s and as late as the spring of 2002.
Allbritton was periodically informed by Thompson about the status of Pinochet's accounts, and he was aware of them at least since the mid-1990s, according to sources close to the investigation. When the OCC forced Riggs to close Pinochet's accounts in 2002, Allbritton was so upset that he asked bank officers to prepare materials so he could make a personal call to then-Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke Jr. to complain, according to sources close to the bank's investigation. Apparently, Allbritton thought better of it.
"He didn't call," Hawke said yesterday from his office at Arnold & Porter, where he now practices banking law. "If he had, I would not have discussed the issue."
Allbritton could not be reached for comment. His spokesman, Paul Clark, said Allbritton wanted to register displeasure that a bank examiner could decide what kind of clients a bank had, not that Riggs had to surrender Pinochet in particular.
Mark N. Hendrix, a Riggs spokesman, said, "Riggs is committed to full compliance with laws and is attempting to cooperate fully with all ongoing investigations."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Hill Works Overtime On Intelligence Bill
Backers Concede Hope Is Running Short
By Walter Pincus and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63734-2004Nov19.html
House-Senate negotiators gave themselves a few more hours last night to try to reach a consensus -- and then win separate House and Senate votes -- on a massive and ambitious bill to reshape the government's intelligence community, an effort that began months ago.
With both chambers planning to complete the 108th Congress's work today, the bill's advocates acknowledged that time and hope were running short. Negotiators said they would work past midnight in an effort to put a reconciled bill, likely to run a few hundred pages, on the House and Senate floors sometime today. The 535 lawmakers then would have at most a few hours to digest the measure before voting yes or no and going home for the year.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist did not mention the intelligence bill when he outlined today's workload.
If a bill does not pass, the effort will have to be started anew in the 109th Congress, which will convene in January.
As a sign of the measure's diminished prospects, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) did not mention it at 6:25 p.m., when he announced the Senate's expected workload today: a major spending bill for fiscal 2005 and the reauthorization of an education program for people with disabilities. Still, no congressional leader pronounced the intelligence bill dead, and some staffers said last-minute passage remained possible.
Congressional aides close to the negotiations said the sticking points were largely the same as those that have barred a reconciliation of the House and Senate bills since their passage several weeks ago. Lawmakers at midafternoon were still discussing the powers that a new national intelligence director should wield over intelligence-gathering agencies within the Defense Department, aides said.
A Senate Democratic source said House leaders presented "a page of 14 items they thought were still unresolved," including the guidelines for issuing driver's licenses to immigrants.
Despite those disagreements, the House-Senate conferees have settled a great majority of issues involving the restructuring of the intelligence community, the legislation's main focus. The new chief intelligence adviser to the president, who would run all 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community, would be called the director of national intelligence (DNI), instead of the national intelligence director.
Intelligence community funding, said to exceed $40 billion a year, would remain secret, hidden in the Pentagon budget. The DNI would determine the budgets for intelligence collection and analysis, other than in the tactical military areas, including the work of three Pentagon-based agencies. And under a provision drafted by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, the funds for those three agencies -- the National Security Agency (which collects electronic intelligence), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (which analyzes imagery) and the National Reconnaissance Office (which builds and operates intelligence satellites) -- would "be protected" from being siphoned off by the defense secretary.
The control of this money has been a particular sticking point. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) remains concerned that the plan could harm military operations and interfere with the chain of command. Hunter has not completely agreed with the proposal, according to House and Senate staff members.
Although the new DNI could not at the same time run the CIA, as the current director of central intelligence does, the legislation must still clarify the DNI's relationship with the CIA director. Under the House bill, the DNI would "control" the CIA; under the Senate bill, the CIA director would report to the DNI and to the president.
Both versions would establish a national counterterrorism center (NCTC), but the House and Senate have disagreed over its powers and those of its director. Under the House bill, the NCTC director would report to the DNI and have only a planning and supervisory role over covert operations, which would remain with the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon. Under the Senate bill, the president would appoint the NCTC director, who would report to the president and the DNI.
The legislation would permit the DNI and the DNI's staff to be located wherever it seems best for the new offices, which probably means the George H.W. Bush Intelligence Center, which houses the CIA. The Senate bill had prohibited the DNI from sharing office space with other intelligence agencies. CIA Director Porter J. Goss has begun clearing space for the DNI on the agency's seventh floor.
-------
Air-Travel Screening Snagged
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63951-2004Nov19.html
The federal government's plan to test a computer screening system for airline passengers could be delayed because the program has not yet received a required evaluation by the Government Accountability Office.
The Transportation Security Administration said it is working with the GAO and lawmakers to ensure the agency receives the approvals needed to move forward. Testing was scheduled to begin in the next few weeks.
"We're confident in our ability to remain on schedule," said TSA spokesman Mark O. Hatfield Jr.
This month, the TSA ordered airlines to turn over millions of passenger records so it could test a new airline security program called Secure Flight. The program aims to create a better system of comparing passenger names against government watch lists of known or suspected terrorists. It also seeks to verify each passenger's identity by comparing names against a database of consumer information.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which contends that Secure Flight allows the government to pry too much into travelers' private information, said language in a law funding the Department of Homeland Security prohibits the TSA from conducting some parts of the test until the GAO has evaluated the program.
The law says the TSA cannot test passenger records using databases of consumer information until the agency "has developed measures to determine the impact of such verification on aviation security and the Government Accountability Office has reported on its evaluation of the measures."
"The language on testing of commercial data is crystal clear," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program.
A spokesman from the GAO did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
The airline security program, which has evolved from a 2002 project called CAPPS II, has been plagued by delays and opposition from privacy rights and civil libertarians. The TSA said it would like to begin operation of Secure Flight in spring or summer 2005, but it faces legal hurdles.
European countries have strict laws that forbid airlines from disclosing passenger information to the government. U.S. airlines could find themselves in a bind if the program forces them to turn over passenger lists to the TSA. The records typically include flight information, passengers' names, telephone numbers, addresses, credit card numbers and traveling companions. Members of the European Union agreed this year to share similar records with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, but they have not negotiated an agreement to do the same with the TSA.
-------- justice
News Gathering Is Illegal Under New Patriot Act ll
By Alex Jones
InfoWars.com
11-20-4
http://www.rense.com/general59/newsgatheringisillegal.htm
SECTION 102 of the new Patriot Act ll states clearly that any information gathering, regardless of whether or not those activities are illegal, can be considered to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power. This makes news gathering illegal.
A Brief Analysis of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003 - Also Known as USA Patriot Act II
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on October 27, 2001. The first Patriot Act was universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum. William Safire, while writing for the New York Times, described the first Patriot Act's powers by saying that President Bush was "seizing dictatorial control." On February 7, 2003 the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan public interest think-tank in DC, revealed the full text of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. The classified document had been leaked to them by an unnamed source inside the Federal government. The document consisted of a 33 page section by section analysis of the accompanying 87 page bill.
The bill itself is stamped "Confidential - Not for Distribution." Upon reading the analysis and bill, I was stunned by the scientifically crafted tyranny contained in the legislation. The Justice Department Office of Legislative Affairs admits that they had indeed covertly transmitted a copy of the legislation to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, (R-Il) and the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney as well as the executive heads of federal law enforcement agencies.
It is important to note that no member of Congress was allowed to see the first Patriot Act before its passage, and that no debate was tolerate by the House and Senate leadership. The intentions of the White House and Speaker Hastert concerning Patriot Act II appear to be a carbon copy replay of the events that led to the unprecedented passage of the first Patriot Act.
There are two glaring areas that need to be looked at concerning this new legislation:
1. The secretive tactics being used by the White House and Speaker Hastert to keep even the existence of this legislation secret would be more at home in Communist China than in the United States. The fact that Dick Cheney publicly managed the steamroller passage of the first Patriot Act, ensuring that no one was allowed to read it and publicly threatening members of Congress that if they didn't vote in favor of it that they would be blamed for the next terrorist attack, is by the White House's own definition terrorism. The move to clandestinely craft and then bully passage of any legislation by the Executive Branch is clearly an impeachable offense.
2. The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship.
I challenge all Americans to study the new Patriot Act and to compare it to the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. Ninety percent of the act has nothing to do with terrorism and is instead a giant Federal power-grab with tentacles reaching into every facet of our society. It strips American citizens of all of their rights and grants the government and its private agents total immunity. Here is a quick thumbnail sketch of just some of the draconian measures encapsulated within this tyrannical legislation:
SECTION 501 (Expatriation of Terrorists) expands the Bush administration's "enemy combatant" definition to all American citizens who "may" have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act. (Section 802 is the new definition of domestic terrorism, and the definition is "any action that endangers human life that is a violation of any Federal or State law.") Section 501 of the second Patriot Act directly connects to Section 125 of the same act. The Justice Department boldly claims that the incredibly broad Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act isn't broad enough and that a new, unlimited definition of terrorism is needed.
Under Section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activities can be grabbed off the street and thrown into a van never to be seen again. The Justice Department states that they can do this because the person "had inferred from conduct" that they were not a US citizen. Remember Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act states that any violation of Federal or State law can result in the "enemy combatant" terrorist designation.
SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a criminal act for any member of the government or any citizen to release any information concerning the incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also states that law enforcement does not even have to tell the press who they have arrested and they never have to release the names.
SECTION 301 and 306 (Terrorist Identification Database) set up a national database of "suspected terrorists" and radically expand the database to include anyone associated with suspected terrorist groups and anyone involved in crimes or having supported any group designated as "terrorist." These sections also set up a national DNA database for anyone on probation or who has been on probation for any crime, and orders State governments to collect the DNA for the Federal government.
SECTION 312 gives immunity to law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people and would place substantial restrictions on court injunctions against Federal violations of civil rights across the board.
SECTION 101 will designate individual terrorists as foreign powers and again strip them of all rights under the "enemy combatant" designation.
SECTION 102 states clearly that any information gathering, regardless of whether or not those activities are illegal, can be considered to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power. This makes news gathering illegal.
SECTION 103 allows the Federal government to use wartime martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring that a state of war exists.
SECTION 106 is bone-chilling in its straightforwardness. It states that broad general warrants by the secret FSIA court (a panel of secret judges set up in a star chamber system that convenes in an undisclosed location) granted under the first Patriot Act are not good enough. It states that government agents must be given immunity for carrying out searches with no prior court approval. This section throws out the entire Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.
SECTION 109 allows secret star chamber courts to issue contempt charges against any individual or corporation who refuses to incriminate themselves or others. This sections annihilate the last vestiges of the Fifth Amendment.
SECTION 110 restates that key police state clauses in the first Patriot Act were not sunsetted and removes the five year sunset clause from other subsections of the first Patriot Act. After all, the media has told us: "This is the New America. Get used to it. This is forever."
SECTION 111 expands the definition of the "enemy combatant" designation.
SECTION 122 restates the government's newly announced power of "surveillance without a court order."
SECTION 123 restates that the government no longer needs warrants and that the investigations can be a giant dragnet-style sweep described in press reports about the Total Information Awareness Network. One passage reads, "thus the focus of domestic surveillance may be less precise than that directed against more conventional types of crime."
SECTION 127 allows the government to takeover coroners' and medical examiners' operations whenever they see fit. See how this is like Bill Clinton's special medical examiner he had in Arkansas that ruled that people had committed suicide when their arms and legs had been cut off.
SECTION 128 allows the Federal government to place gag orders on Federal and State Grand Juries and to take over the proceedings. It also disallows individuals or organizations to even try to quash a Federal subpoena. So now defending yourself will be a terrorist action.
SECTION 129 destroys any remaining whistle blower protection for Federal agents.
SECTION 202 allows corporations to keep secret their activities with toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials.
SECTION 205 allows top Federal officials to keep all their financial dealings secret, and anyone investigating them can be considered a terrorist. This should be very useful for Dick Cheney to stop anyone investigating Haliburton.
SECTION 303 sets up national DNA database of suspected terrorists. The database will also be used to "stop other unlawful activities." It will share the information with state, local and foreign agencies for the same purposes.
SECTION 311 federalizes your local police department in the area of information sharing.
SECTION 313 provides liability protection for businesses, especially big businesses that spy on their customers for Homeland Security, violating their privacy agreements. It goes on to say that these are all preventative measures - has anyone seen Minority Report? This is the access hub for the Total Information Awareness Network.
SECTION 321 authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people and to share information with foreign governments.
SECTION 322 removes Congress from the extradition process and allows officers of the Homeland Security complex to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish. It also allows Homeland Security to secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.
SECTION 402 is titled "Providing Material Support to Terrorism." The section reads that there is no requirement to show that the individual even had the intent to aid terrorists.
SECTION 403 expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.
SECTION 404 makes it a crime for a terrorist or "other criminals" to use encryption in the commission of a crime.
SECTION 408 creates "lifetime parole" (basically, slavery) for a whole host of crimes.
SECTION 410 creates no statute of limitations for anyone that engages in terrorist actions or supports terrorists. Remember: any crime is now considered terrorism under the first Patriot Act.
SECTION 411 expands crimes that are punishable by death. Again, they point to Section 802 of the first Patriot Act and state that any terrorist act or support of terrorist act can result in the death penalty.
SECTION 421 increases penalties for terrorist financing. This section states that any type of financial activity connected to terrorism will result to time in prison and $10-50,000 fines per violation.
SECTION 427 sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in terrorist activities. There are many other sections that I did not cover in the interest of time. The American people were shocked by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation in modern world history.
There are many other sections that I did not cover in the interest of time. The American people were shocked by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation in modern world history.
Usually, corrupt governments allow their citizens lots of wonderful rights on paper, while carrying out their jackbooted oppression covertly. From snatch and grab operations to warantless searches, Patriot Act II is an Adolf Hitler wish list.
You can understand why President Bush/Dick Cheney & Dennis Hastert want to keep this legislation secret not just from Congress, but the American people as well. Bill Allison, Managing Editor of the Center for Public Integrity, the group that broke this story, stated on my radio show that it was obvious that they were just waiting for another terrorist attack to opportunistically get this new bill through. He then shocked me with an insightful comment about how the Federal government was crafting this so that they could go after the American people in general. He also agreed that the FBI has been quietly demonizing patriots and Christians and those who carry around pocket Constitutions.
I have produced two documentary films and written a book about what really happened on September 11th. The bottom lin