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NUCLEAR
Experts fear nuke genie's out of bottle
Outside View: Not All Nuclear Is Bad
Last nuclear rods leaves Sydney
Empire of the Senseless
EU drafts Iran nuclear timetable
Amanpour: Iran promises not to 'be nuclear'
Iran Says It Suspends Uranium Enrichment Program
Japan to speed up response time to missile attack
Scare Is Over, and Siberia Won't Glow in the Dark
Hungarian to head up nuclear non-proliferation organization
Residents in Western US Fear Government Plans
Robert Bacher, Manhattan Project Physicist, Dies at 99
DOE Cleanup Chief Tours Nuclear Reservation
MILITARY
U.S., Afghan Forces Search for Kidnapped U.N. Workers in Kabul
Contracts Awarded
Local Contract Pentagon Weighs Satellite Needs
EU agrees on new joint military units
Europe's New "Bill of Rights"
Iran Halts Key Nuclear Work to Avoid Sanctions
Iran has produced uranium gas: UN nuclear chief
United States, Iraq look toward reconstruction of Fallujah
'Baghdad is now a battlefield, and we are in the middle'
More Fallujah Hostage Sites Found
Officers See Need For Bigger Iraq Force
Iraqi Election Set for Jan. 30
HORRORS Clues on Hostages Emerge From Houses in Falluja
Powell Arrives for Talks On Palestinian Transition
Powell Says Israel Will Ease Strictures for Palestinian Vote
An ascendant NATO?
White House seeks study on whether to transfer CIA forces to Pentagon
Rolling Back the Fog of War
Institute Looks at Military Families
Saddam lawyers consider suing US for war crimes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Medicinal pot before high court
Passage of Intelligence Bill Called Doubtful
Bush Says He'll Seek to Revive Intelligence Bill House Blocked
POLITICS
Republican Defiance on Intelligence Bill Is Surprising. Or Is It?
Read the WSJ, If You Can Stand It
Cameraman Details Marine's Role in Mosque Shooting
Powell 'pushed out' by Bush for seeking to rein in Israel
How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush
Hong Kong Democratic Chief Resigns Over Election Results
ENERGY
D.C. Regulators Should Counter PEPCO's Rate Hikes
OTHER
Great Lakes Region Ponders How to Keep Its Precious Waters Safe
US Plans Would Defer Roan Plateau Drilling
ACTIVISTS
SOA Watch Update From Columbus, Georgia
Anti-war group slams the BBC
-------- NUCLEAR
Experts fear nuke genie's out of bottle
Arms technology spreading beyond Iran, North Korea
San Francisco Chronicle
James Sterngold
November 22, 2004
The Road to a Nuclear Bomb. Chronicle Graphic Nuclear Weapons Across the Globe. Chronicle The three-decade-old system for preventing the spread of nuclear arms may be eroding irreversibly as the spread of technology for producing weapons fuel circulates among smaller powers, experts warn, signaling that a quiet, low-scale arms race may be taking shape.
Despite occasional positive news, there are numerous ill omens. European diplomats appeared to score a success last week by persuading Iran to freeze its programs for enriching uranium, the heart of nuclear bombs. But a range of specialists said the success could prove temporary because Iran still has the know-how to transform peaceful facilities for creating reactor fuel into weapons plants. And the administration of President Bush charged over the weekend that Iran was hastily enriching a large amount of uranium before the freeze, which Iranian officials said would take effect today.
Not only do Iran and North Korea have the capability to make the fuel, the experts warn, but so do several dozen other countries -- from Brazil, Japan and South Korea to Turkey, Syria and Egypt.
As a result, after decades of nonproliferation policies based on the idea that the global community could prevent the spread of nuclear weapons by controlling nuclear materials and technology, such containment strategies may no longer be possible, these experts reluctantly agree.
The concern is that legitimate facilities, built to develop what is called the nuclear fuel cycle, could be used to increase the concentrations of enriched uranium or for processing plutonium to make weapons-grade fuel. Not only is the technology for these processes widely available to countries rich and poor, but some of the equipment needed for the job, such as high-powered computers and precision machine tools, can now be purchased easily, experts say.
Lack of faith
"Even if you take this out of the context of North Korea and Iran, at this point you have a fundamental lack of faith in the system that secured us for the past 30 years," said Jon Wolfsthal, a former U.S. nuclear inspector and now deputy director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We are ending up in the exact world we were trying to avoid for the past 30 years. Nuclear weapons are increasingly available and valuable in international affairs, and the fuel cycle issue is making it worse."
Added David Smith, a former arms-control negotiator under the first President George Bush and now chief operating officer of the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative Washington think tank, "Maybe in some ideal world where the sky is a different color, maybe you can stop the spread, but in my world there are just too many competing interests, too much technology that is already out there. What you can do is make it more expensive, harder to do, to get the bad guys from obtaining nuclear weapons."
In a recent interview with The Chronicle, Mohamed ElBaradei, director- general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.-affiliated body that has tried to halt nuclear proliferation with its monitoring and inspection system, called the widely distributed facilities for developing the fuel cycle "latent bomb plants."
"We are really headed in a really dangerous path, in my view," he said.
The numbers
"The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices," published recently by the Brookings Institution, examines in detail how many countries may be starting down this dangerous path. The book analyzes the situations in Egypt, Syria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, looking at their incentives for turning fuel cycle or research plants into bomb plants.
Peaceful uses of nuclear facilities include energy production, medicine and research. But both inside and outside the U.S. government, many experts now call ostensibly peaceful nuclear fuel facilities "virtual nuclear arsenals, " because those same programs can quickly become the heart of a weapons program.
"I think the sense that things are not going well is shared by a lot of people because of these programs," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a leading Washington think tank on nuclear weapons issues.
Albright calls himself an optimist, believing that inspections and persuasion can still prevent wider proliferation, but, he conceded, "we've reached a point where if we don't solve some of these problems, it becomes overwhelming."
Some of these fuel cycle programs have been covert, and some in the open. Iran, for instance, had violated the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by concealing some aspects of its program to build a fuel cycle -- a uranium enrichment facility. And some opponents of the fundamentalist regime have claimed the government is still hiding weapons facilities, though they have produced no evidence so far.
But most of Iran's efforts have been done legally, and the government has said that, under the deal with the Europeans, it would only suspend, not dismantle, its fuel cycle program. Iran says its nuclear facilities are intended only for peaceful purposes, but the Bush administration has generally insisted that the program has to be permanently shut down.
It is unclear how much that would matter.
Countries of concern
Currently, nine countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea -- possess, or are suspected of possessing, nuclear weapons. ElBaradei said that within a decade or so, as many as 40 countries will have the ability to make fuel, and thus warheads. He suggested that, no matter the outcome of the deal with the Europeans, Iran has essentially crossed the nuclear weapons threshold.
"Iran has developed every aspect of the fuel cycle. ... I'm saying they have the know-how," ElBaradei said.
Most of the recent efforts by the United States, the United Nations and the major industrialized countries in halting the spread of nuclear weapons have focused on what are regarded as the key vulnerabilities -- the large, poorly guarded stocks of weapons-grade material in the former Soviet bloc countries or rogue scientists from nuclear-armed countries selling their know- how on the black market, as happened in Pakistan.
Now there is growing concern over an alternative scenario -- exploiting fuel-cycle technology.
Nearly four decades ago, the global powers agreed to a world-wide containment approach to prevent the proliferation of weapons technology. The big five powers of the Cold War era, the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China, would maintain their nuclear monopoly. In return, other countries would be given access to what at that time was regarded as peaceful nuclear technology, in the form of reactors and other facilities, so long as they were opened to international monitoring.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which took force in 1970, did appear to help prevent a rapid spread of weapons. But the seeds of today's problem were spread widely as numerous countries obtained reactors and experimented with the fuel cycle.
Newcomers
Experts worry now that some countries, fearful over the success of Iran and North Korea in enriching fuel, could push their own programs, igniting an arms race. If North Korea's bomb program is not shut down, for instance, neighboring countries with fuel cycle technology -- Taiwan, South Korea and Japan -- might take the next step and build warheads.
South Korea, which has large commercial and research programs, recently admitted that it had secretly experimented with uranium enrichment, in violation of its treaty obligations. The South Korean government said the experiments were done by scientists without official approval, but North Korea seized on the disclosures to argue that it needed to maintain its programs.
"If North Korea conducts a test and breaks into the nuclear club, and if Iran completes facilities for enriching or reprocessing, the whole set of nonproliferation constraints will unravel quickly, maybe even explode," said Graham Allison, a senior Defense Department official in the Clinton administration and author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe."
During the presidential campaign, both Bush and Sen. John Kerry said in their first debate that the spread of nuclear weapons was the greatest security threat facing the United States.
In a speech last February, Bush said no new countries should be permitted to develop fuel cycle capabilities. But he has not offered any specific new policies, other than an initiative to seize illicit shipments of equipment or material on a case-by-case basis.
ElBaradei and some others have proposed the creation of a multilateral consortium that would take control of all fuel enrichment facilities, perhaps under U.N. supervision. Countries with peaceful nuclear reactors would be guaranteed access to fuel at reasonable prices, as long as it was properly monitored, but no new countries would be allowed to develop fuel cycle technology.
Many experts say a greater sense of urgency is needed. Raymond Jeanloz, a UC Berkeley physics professor who in January will become chairman of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences, said the issue is a frequent topic among scientists knowledgeable about weapons programs.
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of America's primary warhead design labs, the Center for Global Security Research, a think tank and advisory body, is devoting most of next year to an intensive series of forums and studies of latent proliferation.
In May, the fuel cycle problem is expected to be an important topic at a conference in New York, where the 189 signatory countries will review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and consider whether it needs to be updated.
Bush critics
Some critics of the Bush administration's record have insisted that the United States needs to play a more active role in trying to halt fuel cycle programs, in Iran and elsewhere. For instance, the administration has raised no objections to Brazil building an active fuel cycle, which it says is for commercial and peaceful purposes, even though that country has resisted opening all its facilities to full inspections by ElBaradei's agency.
The United States has said that since Brazil is regarded as a friendly and peaceful country, the program is not dangerous. But critics say the Bush administration has to be more consistent and treat all such programs as a threat.
"In the end, the big loser in all of this is the U.S.," since nuclear weapons are the only devices that can defeat America's overwhelming conventional military superiority, said Wolfsthal of the Nonproliferation Project.
"Fifteen to 20 more countries could develop this technology in a decade," he said. "It's disturbing, almost horrifying, but not unrealistic."
Some conservatives argue that it is already too late. The United States needs to focus, therefore, on stamping out programs only in the hands of perceived foes -- for example, Iran, Libya and North Korea -- and not worry about allies and friends.
"There's no answer, no solution that's practical," said Fred Ikle, for years a senior arms control negotiator and a well-known neoconservative. "It's hard to get the horses back in the barn. One should work to slow it down as much as possible. That's all you can do." NUCLEAR WEAPONS ACROSS THE GLOBE
Nine countries have acknowledged or suspected nuclear weapons programs. Others, including some nations that have abandoned their weapons programs, are suspected of maintaining nuclear fuel cycles - that is, the capability to produce nuclear fuel that could be used for peaceful purposes or be further processed for nuclear weapons..
-- Countries with confirmed nuclear weapons
United States: 10,500 nuclear warheads
Russia: 20,000 warheads, half of which are deployed
China: 400 warheads
France: 450 warheads
Britain: 185 warheads
India: 65 warheads
Pakistan: 30-50 warheads. The head of its nuclear weapons program was fired in February for secretly supplying nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran..
-- Countries with unconfirmed nuclear weapons
Israel: 110-190 (projected number) warheads; has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferaton Treaty (NPT).
North Korea: 2-9 (projected number) warheads; announced its withdrawal from NPT in January 2003..
-- Countries reported to be pursuing development of nuclear programs
Algeria, Syria: Suspected intentions to produce nuclear weapons, but no nuclear weapons programs have been identified.
Iran: Suspected of pursuing uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons programs since the 1970s. After disclosures by opponents of the regime, Iran admitted to having secret centrifuge facilities for producing highly enriched uranium, and last week agreed to freeze its enrichment program, at least temporarily, while negotiations continue..
-- Countries that have disbanded nuclear weapons programs
Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan: Inherited nuclear weapons at the breakup of the Soviet Union, but returned the weapons to Russia and signed the NPT as nonnuclear weapons states.
Argentina: Admitted only that it conducted unsafeguarded uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
Australia, Egypt: Ended their programs before they signed the NPT.
Brazil: Ended weapons program before 1970. Admits having a nuclear fuel cycle, but has resisted allowing U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors broader access to its nuclear facilities.
Iraq: Nuclear weapons program started in the early 1970s, but was effectively halted in 1991 by Security Council-mandated inspections. In 1998, Saddam Hussein refused to allow inspections to continue and was suspected of resuming a nuclear weapons program. But the final report by U.S. weapons inspectors, released in October, said Iraq did not have such a program at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
Libya: Agreed in December 2003 to abandon its nuclear program, including centrifuges and bomb designs provided by a rogue Pakistani scientist. It disclosed its history of trying to build the nuclear fuel cycle in return for a promise that Western countries would lift trade sanctions.
Romania: Former Warsaw Pact country once had a plutoniumseparation program.
South Africa: Abandoned its program before it signed the NPT in 1991, but maintains stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
South Korea: Program ended after 1970. Disclosed recently that its scientists had secretly conducted a plutonium-based experiment in 1982 and a uranium enrichment project in 2000.
Spain: May have had an unacknowledged nuclear weapons program under the previous military dictatorship.
Sweden: Had a program that was essentially ended by the time it signed the NPT.
Taiwan: Ended its program after 1970.
Yugoslavia: The former communist government had a program that was ended after 1970.. -- Sources: Nuclear Threat Initiative; Center for Defense Information; Monterey Institute for International Studies; "Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945- 2000," by Robert Norris and William Arkin; Institute for Science and International Security; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2000; BBC News; United Nations (disarmament.un.org); additional research by Chronicle librarian Lois Jermyn THE ROAD TO A NUCLEAR BOMB
Building a nuclear bomb requires either highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and both can be produced with reactors and other nuclear facilities intended for use in research or for commercial purposes..
Commercial power reactors generally use fuel that has a 3 percent to 5 percent concentration of uranium 235, the same material used in bombs. Most of the remainder is another variation of the material, an isotope called uranium 238. Any fuel with a concentration of more than 20 percent U235 is considered highly enriched, but for bombmaking purposes a concentration of 80 percent or higher is considered optimal.. -- ENRICHING URANIUM PLUTONIUM
There are several methods for enriching uranium, but the most common involves turning the uranium into a gas called uranium hexafluoride, and feeding it into a long series of tall, narrow centrifuges, together known as a cascade. Each centrifuge spins the gas into higher concentrations of U235. . -- The Process
1. Uranium gas is fed into the middle and circulates in the chamber.
2. Subjected to centrifugal force thousands of times greater than gravity, a fraction of the uranium becomes depleted of U235.
3. The depleted uranium is spun toward the outer wall and falls to the bottom.
4. Another fraction of the uranium, enriched in U235, is collected in the top of the chamber.
At the end of the process, the enriched gas is turned back into a solid,and the highly enriched U235 is turned into a metallic state, which is used for bombs.. -- PLUTONIUM
Plutonium is a by-product of nuclear reactor operations. Once the reactor fuel is spent, it is dissolved in hot nitric acid, and then a procedure known as reprocessing can begin. Through a series of chemical steps, uranium can be extracted from this nuclear soup, as can another isotope, plutonium 239. When the plutonium 239 is removed and purified, it is turned into a metal, a bomb-making material.. -- STOPPING THE PROCESS BEFORE ENRICHMENT Many countries have several different kinds of fuel cycles, producing both enriched uranium and plutonium, but most countries stop the enrichment processes before weapons-grade materials are obtained. These facilities, if built legally, are monitored closely by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA conducts regular inspections to make sure no nuclear materials are diverted and that the fuels are not enriched to weapons quality.
Sources: Institute for Science and International Security; New York Times; Associated Press
E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.
-----
Outside View: Not All Nuclear Is Bad
Nov 22, 2004
Washington (UPI)
by Ted Galen Carpenter
E-Mail: tcarpent@cato.org
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04y.html
The conventional wisdom is that all instances of nuclear weapons proliferation threaten the stability of the international system and the security interests of the United States.
Indeed, that is the underlying logic of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty adopted by the bulk of the international community in the late 1960s, which is the centerpiece of the existing non-proliferation system.
Members of the arms-control community have over the decades spent an enormous amount of time and energy agonizing over the possibility that stable, democratic status quo powers such as Germany, Japan, Sweden and South Korea might decide to abandon the NPT and develop nuclear deterrents.
Indeed, they have devoted at least as much attention to that problem as they have to the prospect that unstable or aggressive states might build nuclear arsenals.
The recent flap over the small scale (and probably unauthorized) nuclear experiments in South Korea is merely the latest example of such misplaced priorities.
The hostility toward all forms of proliferation is not confined to dovish arms-control types but extends across the political spectrum.
As the North Korean nuclear crisis evolved in 2002 and 2003, some of the most hawkish members of the U.S. foreign policy community became terrified at the prospect that America's democratic allies in East Asia might build their own nuclear deterrents to offset Pyongyang's moves.
Neo-conservative luminaries Robert Kagan and William Kristol regarded such proliferation with horror: The possibility that Japan, and perhaps even Taiwan, might respond to North Korea's actions by producing their own nuclear weapons, thus spurring an East Asian nuclear arms race ... is something that should send chills up the spine of any sensible American strategist.
That attitude misconstrues the problem. A threat to the peace may exist if an aggressive and erratic regime gets nukes and then is able to intimidate or blackmail its non-nuclear neighbors.
Nuclear arsenals in the hands of stable, democratic, status quo powers do not threaten the peace of the region.
Kagan and Kristol - and other Americans who share their hostility toward such countries having nuclear weapons - implicitly accept a moral equivalence between a potential aggressor and its potential victims.
America's non-proliferation policy is the international equivalent of domestic gun-control laws -- and exhibits the same faulty logic. Gun control laws have had little effect on preventing criminal elements from acquiring weapons.
Instead, they disarm honest citizens and make them more vulnerable to armed predators. The non-proliferation system is having a similar perverse effect.
Such unsavory states as Iran and North Korea are well along on the path to becoming nuclear weapons powers while their more peaceful neighbors are hamstrung by the NPT from countering those moves.
The focus of Washington's non-proliferation policy should substitute discrimination and selectivity for uniformity of treatment.
U.S. policymakers must rid themselves of the notion that all forms of proliferation are equally bad. The United States should concentrate on making it difficult for aggressive or unstable regimes to acquire the technology and fissile material needed to develop nuclear weapons.
Policymakers must adopt a realistic attitude about the limitations of even that more tightly focused non-proliferation policy. At best, U.S. actions will only delay, not prevent, such states from joining the nuclear weapons club.
But delay can provide important benefits. A delay of only a few years may significantly reduce the likelihood that an aggressive power with a new nuclear weapons capability will have a regional nuclear monopoly and be able to blackmail non-nuclear neighbors.
In some cases, the knowledge that the achievement of a regional nuclear monopoly is impossible may discourage a would-be expansionist power from even making the effort. At the very least, it could cause such a power to configure its new arsenal purely for deterrence rather than design it for aggressive purposes.
Washington's non-proliferation efforts should focus on delaying rogue states in their quest for nuclear weapons, not beating up on peaceful states that might want to become nuclear powers for their own protection.
The other key objective of a new U.S. proliferation policy should be to prevent unfriendly nuclear states from transferring their weapons or nuclear know-how to terrorist adversaries of the United States.
Those objectives are daunting enough without continuing the vain and counterproductive effort to prevent all forms of proliferation.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, is the author of six books and the editor of another 10 on international affairs. His latest book, co-authored with Doug Bandow, is Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (Palgrave/Macmillan).
-------- australia
Last nuclear rods leaves Sydney
AAP
November 22, 2004
http://au.news.yahoo.com/041122/2/ru45.html
The last shipment of spent nuclear fuel rods under a French-Australian reprocessing agreement left Sydney by ship on Monday.
Under the agreement, the rods from Australia's only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney's south are reprocessed and later returned to Australia as low or medium level radioactive waste for storage.
Future shipments of rods will go to the United States, but they will not be reprocessed or returned.
"The rods, stored in shielded casks, were taken by road to Port Botany at 2am (AEDT) today, and the ship left for France about 4am," the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) said.
The shipment contained 276 spent fuel elements. A further 387 spent fuel rods remain at Lucas Heights, along with 82 new elements still to be used.
All of these rods will eventually be shipped to the US.
ANSTO spokesman Craig Pearce said the rods were transported safely through Sydney, but community concern was understandable.
"Since 1971 there's been 7,000 shipments of spent fuel around the world, but there's never been an incident resulting in the release of radioactivity," he said.
"It's a pretty good safety record.
"You can't blame anyone for being concerned about radioactive material passing through where they live, but the safety record speaks for itself."
Greenpeace campaigner James Courtney said there was no truly safe method of transporting the fuel rods.
"ANSTO should take responsibility and admit that there are always risks surrounding these transports, and they should be telling the community the truth about what those risks are," he said.
"That's the only way that you can have adequate emergency planning.
"If something happens to one of these casks, the people living near it need to know what to do in an emergency."
The Australian Conservation Foundation called for a halt to the licensing of the replacement nuclear reactor being built at Lucas Heights.
And last week, the NSW government recommended the licence for the reactor not be granted, after a report on the transport and storage of nuclear waste was tabled in state parliament.
"A licence should not be granted until the Commonwealth has resolved the question of how to deal with nuclear waste currently being generated at Lucas Heights," Environment Minister Bob Debus said.
The federal government must promise that waste would not be dumped off the NSW coastline or on Commonwealth-owned land in regional NSW, he said.
-------- depleted uranium
Empire of the Senseless: A Review of Bill Blum's Freeing The World to Death
by Adam Engel
November 22, 2004
dissidentvoice.org
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov2004/Engel1122.htm
Bill Blum, one of the great American historians of the post WWII period, surely one of the boldest and most interesting, has his work cut out for him. From 1946 until now, this moment, and in the foreseeable future, the U.S. Empire's record of invasions, interventions and general malicious meddling in the governments, societies and "freedoms" of foreign peoples is virtually unparalleled in the history of meddlesome Empires. Never have so many been made so miserable so often by so few. And it's all on the public record, or enough of it to fill tomes denser by orders of magnitude than the two previous volumes, Killing Hope and Rogue State, both sizeable books Bill Blum has already written (he also penned a fascinating autobiography, West Bloc Dissident, regarding the pursuit of intellectual liberty in the totalitarian mindscape of the "free world").
Unlike most "academic" historians, Blum's style is to rely not on obscure scholarly journals or information grudgingly released by the government under the Freedom of Information Act, but on everyday newspapers accessible to all: the bulk of his citations come from dailies such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the London Guardian, The Observer and others, both full-size and tabloid, that millions read regularly as hard-copy or on the web but do not penetrate. Unlike Blum, they/we do not read between the lines, but accept the relentless propaganda churned out by Washington and Wall Street and dutifully "reported" by the nations "most respected" papers as truth. Hence the charade of "objective journalism" in which every uncomfortable fact or point of view is "balanced" by a cheerful explanation of "what's really going on" by a government official or hack journalist/lobbyist hired to help the public "understand" the news.
It's not that Blum "trusts" the mainstream newspapers more than the "alternative" journals and websites he himself writes for, or that he hasn't waited years for various tidbits to be released under the FOIA. Rather, it is his method to record and comment upon events that are exposed to all, accessible to all, even read by some, but seldom seen for what they really are and, on such rare occasions, never believed. To believe the truth about U.S. Foreign policy would be to fight against it with every fiber of one's being, or live a quiet, desperate lie. Fortunately, Blum has chosen the former, for if we assume that what has taken place since the end of WWII has actually taken place, that it is not the result of a conspiracy to fool us into thinking the world is bad, or worse, America is bad, "We the People" don't know anything. Or worse: we don't care.
But what about Bill Blum, author of the essays collected in Freeing the World to Death? Well, he's an historian, he's supposed to know stuff. Does that excuse us from not knowing? Or allow us to deliberately tell ourselves childish lies, such as we're "liberating" the people of Iraq by slaughtering 100,000 of them, not to mention the 100,000 we slaughtered in Persian Gulf I and the several hundred thousand, perhaps a million, we killed after that, literally starved, with sanctions.
Well, if Uncle Sam did it, it must have been the right thing. Even Madeleine Albright, who was not only gainfully employed, but rose to the position of Secretary of State, said all the living people who became dead ones during the sanctions were "worth it." That is, worth more to The Empire dead than alive. In America, and perhaps beyond, that is the conventional wisdom, "all that goes without saying," to paraphrase Nietzsche, who noticed some troubling trends in German culture that were later to manifest themselves in the ugliness, barbarism, mass murder and plain old tackiness of Nazism. What Blum argues is not so much the hypocrisy of the American government, but the gullibility or "willful ignorance" of the American people. Blum takes his citations from some of the most popular news sources of our time. The facts are there for everyone to see. Yet we don't see, or we gaze with eyes wide shut.
The United States, "leader of the free world," has spent over 50 years harassing over 100 countries world-wide, compiling a nearly spotless record of always supporting the most brutal, corrupt, and murderous dictators, even schooling these exotic beasts in the American way of torture and murder at the infamous School of the Americas, whose graduates rank among the vilest representatives of our species.
Freeing the World to Death cites sources that are familiar to many of us as the daily paper on the street or the URL that's so commonplace it's often pre-packaged as a "News Site" bookmark with new internet browsers (though since 9/11, U.S. Journalism has become such an obvious public relations arms of Washington and Wall Street that Blum has turned to the Guardian and the Observer, both British papers, to find out what's actually happening as a result of U.S. Foreign Policy). In his previous books, Killing Hope, and Rogue State, Blum demonstrated that today's journalism is tomorrow's history, culling the most outrageous transgressions of the U.S. against the rest of the planet (and its own citizens, who end up fighting its wars or taking the hit come "blowback" time i.e. September 11, 2001). But what if the corruption of American journalism, the deconstruction of the "fourth Estate" into an outhouse, is so pervasive that there will be nothing left but lies for future historians to sort through?
Well, there's always the victims. The many millions who did not have to "bear witness" or even get a job with a big corporate news outlet to experience U.S.-sponsored violence first-hand. By being born in the wrong place at the wrong time and daring to "say no to America," they became "the news" and consequently, "history", in every sense of the term.
Freeing the World to Death is history as most of us U.S. Citizens have "lived" it, via CNN or Fox News flashing and spewing in the background, or the daily reporting, corrections, and re-reporting of "the morning paper." The daily violations of human dignity that is the media background to our lives. I guess it's better than being the focus of attention a la the "victims", but there is a relationship, however distant, between the rebel fighting the Empire's G.I.s or local proxies, and the U.S. Citizens whose tax dollars foot the bill.
Blum writes, "An Empire can be defined as a state that has overwhelming superiority in military, economic and political power, and uses those powers to influence the internal and external behavior of other states to accommodate the empire's needs. This imperial power intrinsically includes the ability to overthrow or otherwise punish those governments which seek to thwart the empire's desires." (Freeing the World to Death, p. 8).
We must pause just to address the invasions/interventions that have occurred since 1987, the year after the first edition of Killing Hope was published: did the people of Panama want the U.S. Marines to "oust" Noriega, causing massive damage to lives and property? Do the people of Cuba, who are no more responsible for what their allegedly "Communist" government does than the people of China, living under an even more repressive "Communist" system, want to be punished by U.S. sanctions? Did the people of Nicaragua, having survived a revolution against the U.S.-sponsored Somoza dictatorship and a relentless "covert" war against U.S.-backed "contras", want to cede to U.S. demands that the Sandinistas be removed from power? Did the people of the Sudan want the U.S. to destroy the country's largest pharmaceutical plant because the U.S. "mistook" it for a chemical weapons factory, and since a mistake had been made, didn't they deserve reparations? Did the people of Serbia deserve to be bombed into the stone age for "humanitarian reasons" by the U.S. and it's NATO "allies?" Do the people of Iraq think it's "worth it" (declared in 1996 -- a whole lotta blood under the blown-up bridges since then) that 100,000 people died in the first "Gulf War" in 1991, followed by an estimated million deaths due to 12 years of sanctions, followed by another estimated 100,000 deaths (and counting), again mostly civilian women and children. Did those people choose to sacrifice their lives, since the April, 2003 invasion, to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the man the U.S. armed and supported when he "bombed his own people," as well as when he pursued a bitter internecine war with Iran which resulted in another million deaths on both sides (Hoorah! cried Uncle Sam. Got rid of two birds with one stone and didn't have to waste a shot)?
Oh, I didn't mention the ouster of Aristide in Haiti, or the absolute destruction of what was left of Afghanistan, or the U.S.'s $3-5 billion/year support of Israel while upbraiding the Palestinians as an "equal partner" in both peace and war. Blum covers these topics and other "diplomatic" sleights-of-hand. ("Interventions: The Unending List;" "Debate in Dublin" and other chapters in Freeing the World to Death).
Ask most Americans what "wars" the U.S. has been involved in before 1991, and you'll probably hear "WW1 and WWII - the 'good' wars - Korea, and Vietnam." But according to Blum there were at least 50 "attempts to overthrow foreign governments; unprovoked military invasion of some 20 sovereign nations; 25 countries who suffered the onslaught of U.S. bombing campaigns, including 40 consecutive days and nights in Iraq in 1991, 78 days and nights in Yugoslavia in 1999, and the subsequent destruction, post-9/11, of Afghanistan and Iraq." Depleted Uranium (DU), "one of the most despicable weapons ever designed by mankind" was and is still used with increased frequency and intensity, turning the areas we bombed into nuclear wastelands and poisoning the people exposed to DU, including U.S. troops, dooming them to a truncated future of illness, deformed children, and other maladies experienced by the survivors of the world's two other nuclear Petri dishes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Blum, p. 129)
The U.S. has used its massive but ever-expanding "defense" budget to finance the oppression of the planet, either through open invasions, like the ones we're witnessing today in Afghanistan and Iraq, or "covert" operations as we saw -- if we caught the movie, "Missing" -- in Chile, in which the CIA, (with a little help from the NSA and other branches of the military, not to mention the storm troopers of whatever lucky tyrant we happen to be supporting in the name of "freedom", in this case Pinochet), staged and supported a coup by a ruthless dictator and the inevitable "purging" of "radicals or extremists" (anyone who made the mistake of fighting back, like the Iraqis of today, in defense of his/her country's independence from U.S. domination - "Foolish mortals! Resistance is futile!" chortled the Bad Guy from Planet X).
We saw it all in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Central America. We watched the Empire grind up thousands if not millions worldwide, day to day, thwarting human desire and fulfillment of the basic necessities of life, never mind liberty and the almost unthinkable "pursuit of happiness" (can you imagine that some wacko idealist once considered that a "human right?"), yet we did and continue to do nothing. Well, not absolutely nothing: many of us voted for a cleaner, more efficient war in Iraq run by Kerry. Surely we realize some connection between the suffering of millions across the globe and the excessive, wasteful, much ballyhooed "life style" that more and more Americans cannot afford.
Our recent "great struggles" between Democrats, so called, and Republicans, so called, in light of bi-partisan support for Bush's invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, the absence of any real investigation into the affairs of 9/11, and Kerry's graceful acceptance of defeat as if, like Gore, he at least acknowledges that sometimes the "good" guys win, and sometimes the "bad" guys win, but no one ever cries "fix" or "foul" in Pro Wrestling.
We were an empire when Kennedy invaded Cuba as surely as we were an empire when both Johnson and Nixon showered South East Asia with ordnance. We were an empire under the "human rights" champion, Jimmy Carter, whose regime trained al Qaeda and began the U.S.'s covert economic and military offensive against Nicaragua, just as we were an empire under Ronald Reagan who, perhaps falling back on his old tricks as a Hollywood stool-pigeon and back-stabbing snitch during the McCarthy Inquisitions, supported both sides with guns and butter during the Iraq/Iran war. We were an empire under Bush I, who as CIA Chief, Vice-President and President helped arm and create the tyrant, Saddam, even as the latter "gassed his own people" with chemicals manufactured by American and European corporations.
Reagan and Bush armed, trained, and supported a fanatic fundamentalist named Osama Bin Laden (whose family goes back a long way with the Bushes) and his fellow Mujahadeen.
When I first read Killing Hope ten years ago, then Rogue State a few years after that, I pushed them on friends and family alike, saying "read this, you're not gonna believe ninety percent of this stuff, but it's been there all along, right there in the newspapers in front of our faces." The newspapers we skimmed daily without actually reading "between the lines." The dull block-paragraphs we failed to compare to similar paragraphs relating the same events months, weeks, perhaps days earlier with a "different" skew or spin according to what the powers in D.C. willed us to believe.
We'd already tossed the newspapers in piles for recycling or weaned puppies on them without questioning the "revisions" these proudly "objective" journals placed on events, without reading between the lines.
The newspapers purported to "balance" unpleasant facts with avuncular, "expert" opinion provided by corporate and government PR flacks who washed from our brains the vague suspicion that the U.S. was not acting with the best of intentions for all the good, hard-working people who didn't take drugs and "played by the rules" or some other such nonsense.
"The main shortcoming of the establishment media lies in errors of omission, much more than errors of commission. It's not that they tell bald lies so much as it is that they leave out parts of stories, or entire stories, or historical reminders, which if included might put the issue in a whole new light, in a way not compatible with their political biases. Or they might include all the facts, leading to an obvious interpretation, but leave out suggesting an alternative interpretation of the same facts which stands the first interpretation on its head. But the information they do report is often quite usable for my purposes." (Blum, p. 233.)
More than any particular "fact" or omission, reading Bill Blum and others like him teaches us not what so much as how to read: how to read between the lines; how to recognize government double-speak from facts reported by "renowned" journalists or even burped up by accident - then quickly retracted - from our "leaders'" own mouths. Such "accidents" and misstatements have kept George Bush's press handlers and their willfully gullible audience of mainstream reporters busy explaining what the president didn't say when he said whatever offensive thing he said the previous day, but what he meant to say, which was [fill in the blank and wish upon a star].
Though Blum's specialty is American Foreign Policy, also included in this collection, destined to provide fodder for future historians of our era, are essays regarding our domestic illusions or rather, the kind of domestic policy which one would expect to complement a foreign policy which puts us at endless war with everyone always: The War Against Drugs (but not Drug Companies); The War Against Crime (and Free Speech); The War Against Cholesterol (but not Fast Food conglomerates); The War Against The Philistines (or Palestinians, as Israel's all-powerful persecutors are known as today); The War Against Hugo Chavez (and any other defiant Latin American leader who might threaten the U.S. by setting a good example); The War Against Communism (or selective memories of it: sanctions against Cuba, but free trade with China), and of course, Son of the War Against Communism, the War Against Terror ("we have nothing to fear but fear itself?"), which is the toughest one of all. Freud, Jung, and countless others before and after them have devoted their lives to fighting Terror and the best anyone is yet to come up with is Oxycontin, to name only one of the legal chemicals, besides alcohol, in our vast armory of WMDs (gallant Republican Warrior, Rush Limbaugh, used Oxycontin to fight terror for over five years!)
Finally, Blum's book leaves one with a queasy feeling not only about the government created, ostensibly, "of the people, by the people and for the people," but...the people. Either "we" are extraordinarily ignorant and naïve, believing what "our" government tells us no matter what facts, opinions, or international outcry appears on the scene to nudge us awake, or we are not a very kind people at all. True, if one looks at Blum's citations one would see that virtually all of them are from nationally famous, "mainstream" newspapers, television news shows, and magazines, but not all of us have the skill of a historian for sorting public information from Public Relations.
Blum points out that "in the absence of European and Arab governments showing a lot more courage to stand up to the empire, it's the American people we have to turn to, for no one has the potential leverage over the monster than the monster's own children have. And that's the problem, for the American people are...well...how can one put this delicately?...like one in every 50 adult Americans claims a UFO abduction experience; a National Science Board survey found that 27 percent of adults believe the sun revolves around the earth; according to a Gallup poll 68 percent believe in the devil (12 percent are unsure); and most Americans believe that God created evolution...There are all kinds of intelligence in this world: musical, scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic, literary, and so on. Then there's political intelligence, which might be defined as the ability to see through the bulls
t which every society, past, present and future, feeds its citizens from birth on to assure the continuance of prevailing ideology." ("Winning Hearts and Mindless" pp. 265-267)
Is Blum saying that a citizenry 42% of whom believed (according to June, 2003 polls) that Iraq had a direct involvement with 9/11, most being certain that Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers and 55% of whom believed that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, (pg 265) aren't up to the task of being responsible citizens of a working democracy?
"One can only wonder what, besides a crowbar, it would take to pry such people away from their total support of what The Empire does to the world," writes Blum (pg 266).
Freeing the World to Death is an invaluable contribution to understanding (or attempting to understand) why contemporary Americans behave the way they do. The strongest point of this book, among many strong points, lies in its re-evaluation, from the side of rationality, not "gut feeling" or "faith", of all the "news" we've been exposed to since the "humanitarian" war in Serbia ushered in the age of Bush. It was Democrat Bill Clinton, after all, who signed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act well before 9/11; Clinton who liquidated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with sanctions; Clinton who said he would refuse to lift the sanctions, which amounted to a siege that hurt the Iraqi people, not Saddam, so long as Hussein remained in power; Clinton who oversaw the Empire between Bushes I and II. Kerry, it should be noted, debated Bush not on whether the U.S. Military should be in Iraq, but how it can be used most effectively while in Iraq.
Every American old enough to remember the enormous amount of government time, citizens' tax-money and creepy, voyeuristic wind, the foul air of a moral scold's "secret" perversions, blown across the "Lewinsky Scandal" should read this book. The news events are the stories they heard, or read, as they were occurring, but with the difference that Blum puts them into the necessary context of an Empire at war - covert or overt - with much of the planet, including its own pathetically loyal and unquestioning citizen/consumers ("We want to feel needed. What can we do to help?" asked the Citizen/Consumers. "Shop", said the Retailer-in-Chief).
Blum writes of "people who get virtually all their news from the shock-and-awe tabloid weeklies, AM-radio talk shows, and television news programs which, because of market-place pressure, aim low in order to reach the widest possible audience, resulting in short programs with lots of commercials, weather, sports and entertainment. These news sources don't necessarily have to explicitly state the above falsehoods to produce such distorted views; they need only channel to their audience a continuous stream of statements from the government and conservative 'experts' justifying the war and demonizing Saddam Hussein as if they were neutral observers; ignore contrary views except when an expert is on hand to ridicule them and label them 'conspiracy theories'; and never put it all together in an enlightening manner. This constant drip-drip of one-sided information, from sources who can be described as stenographers for the powers-that-be, can produce any benighted variety of the human species." (p. 267).
Ultimately, after reading a book such as Freeing the World to Death, we are faced with the question we ourselves put to Nazi Germany: to what extent are "the people" responsible? It is difficult, almost impossible, to finish this book, to "re-live" the events written about (often at the time they were happening at the end of the nineties and first years of this decade up to June, 2004, but with the perpetually happy talking heads excised, commercials lifted, man behind the curtain exposed), without asking oneself the question that was asked again and again of the citizens as well as the leadership of Nazi Germany: what kind of people would let this happen?
Bill Blum's updated commentary on the affairs of The Empire can be viewed on www.killinghope.org.
Adam Engel is a disloyal, disobedient, disgruntled and disillusioned citizen-by-circumstance of The Empire. He has seen crowds of up to 100,000 people at open air music and sports events, but he has never met 100,000 people, or even counted sheep past a few hundred, yet as a tax-payer, he has participated in the killing of 100,000 Afghans and Iraqis and over 1000 Americans, mostly since President-elect George Bush posed in a flight suit on May 1, 2004 and declared victory over...what? He can be reached at: bartleby.samsa@verizon.net.
-------- iran
EU drafts Iran nuclear timetable
bbc
22 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4033569.stm
The three European nations that won Iran's consent to suspend uranium enrichment have drawn up a resolution to maintain pressure on Tehran.
Iran said on Monday it was halting work on enrichment in a move hailed by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA board is scheduled to discuss Iran's compliance on 25 November.
Diplomats who have seen the motion drawn up by France, Britain and Germany say it is unlikely to satisfy the US.
The US has led calls for the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
Early stages
The European nations' draft resolution calls on Iran to "sustain the suspension" of uranium enrichment at nuclear facilities in the cities of Isfahan and Natanz.
It proposes that the head of the IAEA should "report immediately" to the agency's board if there is any evidence of incomplete suspension".
The US is thought to prefer a tougher stance, whereby any lapse would immediately trigger Iran's referral to the UN Security Council.
"For the US, there's a lot of negotiating left to go," AFP news agency quoted one diplomat as saying.
Another, who also did not wish to be named, said "much work" remained to be done on the draft resolution but expressed confidence that a solution would be reached. The IAEA is now checking "to see that everything has been stopped", the watchdog's director general Mohamed ElBaradei said.
He will deliver his verdict on Iran's conduct when the agency's 35-member board meets on Thursday.
Stepping stone
Mr ElBaradei welcomed news of Iran's suspension as "a good step in the right direction" that could "build confidence" in the Iranian government's intentions.
He also said that Iran had made the uranium gas used in enrichment but that the quantities involved were not enough to produce a nuclear weapon.
Iran reacted angrily to recent reports that it was speeding up uranium enrichment during the week-long gap between the deal being struck and the deadline for its introduction.
Tehran also hit back at outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion that it was trying to adapt its ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
"I believe Powell has understood his remarks were false," Iran's nuclear chief Hassan Rohani told state television on Sunday. "Such claims are totally baseless."
But Mr Powell has refused to back down, telling reporters on a flight to the Middle East: "I stick with it."
Sanctions unlikely
Iran has always denied US claims that it is developing a nuclear weapons programme, saying its intentions are peaceful.
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in Brussels that Iran's move was a positive one but warned that it was not the end of the matter.
"If there is a failure by Iran to meet its obligations then Britain and also Germany and France reserve our collective right to refer the matter to the Security Council," Mr Straw said.
Sanctions remain unlikely as China and Russia, two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, have said they support Iran's stance.
-----
Amanpour: Iran promises not to 'be nuclear'
(CNN)
November 22, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/22/otsc.amanpour/index.html
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt -- Iran confirmed on Monday a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Tehran has suspended its uranium enrichment program, a program that the United States says could contribute to the development of nuclear weapons.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi confirmed the news during an interview with CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour in Egypt, where Kharrazi is attending a special international conference focusing on events in Iran's neighbor to the west, Iraq.
AMANPOUR: Today the head of the IAEA is telling us "I think pretty much everything has come to a halt in terms of uranium enrichment in Iran." Can you tell us precisely what step Iran has taken now on this issue?
KHARRAZI: As a matter of fact, since today, the whole enrichment process has been suspended. And this is going to be verified by inspectors of IAEA.
AMANPOUR: Now, it just seems that every time you make these announcements and you take these steps it all sort of, so to speak, blows up again within a few months. The latest is that not only the opposition groups but others have said that Iran has "aggressively produced" a quantity of uranium hexafluoride, which is essential for the enrichment process. Also, that weapons-grade uranium has been purchased and bomb designs from Pakistan.
What is actually going on?
KHARRAZI: As a matter of fact, this was announced and it is not true, that Iran has not enriched uranium yet or has not bought any uranium from outside.
AMANPOUR: So it is now suspended?
KHARRAZI: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And is that an indefinite suspension? What is the plan?
KHARRAZI: The plan is based on the agreement reached between Iran and some of the Europeans, that we started negotiations in three working groups.
AMANPOUR: And what would constitute positive?
KHARRAZI: Positive means that we are arriving to some conclusions. And the commission and the commitments met by the other side is going to be materialized.
AMANPOUR: And what specific commitment are you talking about right now?
KHARRAZI: There are three working groups, and each group is going to evaluate different measures that has to be taken. But the final measure naturally is to come up with a mechanism that would assure Europeans that Iran is not going to divert to nuclear weapons.
AMANPOUR: You know your fiercest critics are in the United States. Your American counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, said just last week that he has been shown intelligence that Iran is "working hard to produce a nuclear-tipped missile," a missile that can take a nuclear warhead.
KHARRAZI: He has better to share this intelligence that he claims with others. Just claiming something is not enough. And the burden to prove is on the shoulder of the person who makes the claims.
AMANPOUR: Are you denying it?
KHARRAZI: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Does it concern you though that similar voices that were heard in the preamble to the Iraq war are saying about Iran that they suspect you have nuclear weapons or you're trying to produce nuclear weapons, and that it needs to be dealt with additional economic sanctions, with military action, or even with regime change?
KHARRAZI: I believe doing on wrong information has not added to the reputation of American administration, but has put it into serious question internationally. I believe there is need of more information. And American administration is in lack of information.
AMANPOUR: So you're just saying that the lack of intelligence on nuclear weapons in Iraq...
KHARRAZI: No, just generally. Iraq is one example. Americans have made many mistakes out of ignorance, out of lack of information, out of wrong information. And Iraqis won't accept that.
AMANPOUR: And are you nonetheless not concerned, though, that there is a very serious movement in the United States that they will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran?
KHARRAZI: No, Iran is not going to be nuclear at all. Iran does not have any plan to produce nuclear weapons. It is determined to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. And nobody can deny the right of Iran to do it.
AMANPOUR: So are you -- what will you do then after three months? Will you start enriching again in order for peaceful purposes? Or what happens? If you are determined to pursuit peaceful...
KHARRAZI: We hope. We hope to arrive to some kind of agreement with the European side that assures them that Iran is not going to divert toward nuclear weapons, but at the same time continue with ... technology for peaceful purposes.
AMANPOUR: Are you planning to have any dialogue here at this meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell?
KHARRAZI: No, it has not been scheduled.
AMANPOUR: So you will not meet him?
KHARRAZI: No.
AMANPOUR: Do you worry or are you concerned or are you prepared for a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities?
KHARRAZI: There are some concerns, but the question is that what happens if there would be such a preemptive action? I don't think it helps anyone, but it creates more crisis and more problems. And we have enough problems in the world. And therefore, I believe that leads to nothing but more crisis.
AMANPOUR: Can you tell me how you plan to bolster, if you like, the level of trust between your country and Western countries, whether it be Europe or -- or the United States? As I say, we've seen these declarations by Iran before, these instances of suddenly last year suspending the uranium enrichment, and then, you know, other things come to the surface. People then again point to the fact that, well, you've been doing this secretly and that secretly. I mean, how are you going to actually bolster the level of trust?
KHARRAZI: To take measures that would create more confidence. And that's what exactly what we are doing. If we have decided to suspend uranium enrichment ... it's just to bring more confidence, nothing else. And we hope that this measure's good and to more confidence. Otherwise it may be not useful.
-----
Iran Says It Suspends Uranium Enrichment Program
November 22, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/international/middleeast/22cnd-iran.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 22 - Iran said today that it had suspended its uranium enrichment activities as a sign of cooperation, even as the United States has been stepping up pressure over the country's nuclear program.
"To build confidence and in line with implementing the Paris Agreement, Iran suspended uranium enrichment (and related activities) as of today," according to a brief radio announcement.
In Vienna, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said the suspension appeared confirmed.
"I think pretty much everything has come to a halt," Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters, Reuters reported.
Mr. ElBaradei said he expected to have a definitive ruling by Thursday on whether Iran had honored its pledge - made earlier this month - to freeze activities that can be used in energy programs, but also to make nuclear weapons.
Iran agreed earlier this month with Britain, Germany and France to suspend its uranium enrichment program in return for economic benefits. The country said it would halt production on Nov. 22 in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will meet Thursday to decide whether to send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.
While Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for electricity production only, the United States has accused it of trying to make nuclear weapons. The Bush administration increased its pressure on Iran after diplomats familiar with the country's case accused it last week of racing to produce significant quantities of uranium hexafluoride, a gas that can be enriched for use in nuclear weapons, right up to its deadline.
An Iranian opposition group also said last week in Vienna and in Paris that Tehran was deceiving the world and conducting a secret weapons program at an undisclosed site.
On Sunday the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Mr. Assefi, dismissed accusations about its nuclear program and said the report about uranium hexafluoride production was "just a part of the propaganda to weaken relations between Iran and the agency and the work on building trust with the Europeans."
"What we have been doing over the past few days conforms with the Paris accord and had been carried out under the supervision of the agency," he added.
Mr. Assefi accused the United States of "trickery," and said the Bush administration's recent allegations about Iran's nuclear activities were "a sign of its anger."
"The Americans are not happy about our cooperation with the Europeans, but taking into account that we have cooperated with the I.A.E.A. and Europe, there is nothing to be worried about," he said.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, also denied the charges that Iran had accelerated enrichment activities, the official IRNA news agency reported.
A team of inspectors from the I.A.E.A. is in Iran to police the complete suspension of activities related to uranium enrichment.
In addition, a four-member group from the agency's Board of Governors visited Iran's conversion plant in the city of Isfahan on Saturday. The team is scheduled to return to Vienna on Monday.
-------- japan
Japan to speed up response time to missile attack
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041122075245.qmvlmy5n.html
Japan said Monday it wanted to speed up its military response to a potential missile attack as a report said the officially pacifist country was willing to let the prime minister take direct action in a crisis.
The move comes amid a standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive and six years after Pyongyang test-launched a missile over Japan.
"Under current procedures we could not respond in time after a missile is prepared and appears ready to strike Japan," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a news conference.
Hosoda said the government was still working out specific measures.
Under current procedure, the prime minister must convene his cabinet and a national security council to decide on any military action.
Kyodo News reported that Defense Agency Director-General Yoshinori Ono, on a weekend visit to Washington, said he wants to allow the prime minister to bypass the meetings in the event of a missile launch.
Japan's constitution imposed after World War II renounces war, but the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is reportedly mulling an overhaul of the document to allow a limited use of force.
Japan's military, known as the Self-Defense Forces, has asked for a 35 percent increase in missile defense and intelligence systems spending for the fiscal year to March 2006 to 144.2 billion yen (1.4 billion dollars).
The money would be used mainly to buy seaborne SM-3 missiles, upgrade land-based PAC-3 anti-missile systems and remodel high-tech Aegis system-equipped destroyers.
North Korea provoked an international outcry in 1998 by firing the missile over Japan, which the Stalinist state claimed was a satellite launch.
-------- russia
ZMEINOGORSK JOURNAL
Scare Is Over, and Siberia Won't Glow in the Dark
November 22, 2004
By C. J. CHIVERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/international/22plutonium.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ZMEINOGORSK, Russia, Nov. 16 - The gun buy-back program in this old Siberian mining town works like similar programs anywhere else.
There is a kitty of money. The local police put announcements in the newspaper, notifying residents that they will grant amnesty and pay small sums - in this case up to about $17.25 in rubles - to anyone who turns in an unregistered gun.
Then they wait at the station for the usual trickle of tired or inherited hunting guns. Usually they get shotguns (about 10 in the past six months). Sometimes they get boxes of ammunition. Often they receive weapons in such disrepair that they can no longer be fired.
Nothing in their experience, in other words, prepared them for the appearance of Leonid I. Grigorov, one of the stranger pack rats the world has ever known, who turned up at the police station last month in search of his $17.25.
"I have plutonium," he said.
So began a madcap chapter in the history of Zmeinogorsk, population 14,000, and in the life of Mr. Grigorov, who is learning that amnesty for weapons does not extend to Russians who store radioactive isotopes at home.
Mr. Grigorov, 58, a retired laboratory technician, had kept nine tablet-shaped bits of radioactive isotopes in his garage since 1996. In Russia, where it is a reliable news media chestnut that fuel for a nuclear or a radiological bomb is loose or unsecured or both, poisoning residents and tempting black marketeers, Mr. Grigorov's cache ignited a small wave of hysteria.
The police were alarmed, of course.
Mr. Grigorov, who wears square-framed glasses and a dark fur hat, did assure the police that his collection included industrial plutonium, not weapons-grade plutonium. But police officers are not physicists, and plutonium is a word with frightening connotations, invoking thoughts of hot fuel for reactors or mushroom clouds.
The authorities quickly seized the isotopes and locked them away. Mr. Grigorov had been helpful, an investigator at the prosecutor's office said - he had placed the radioactive material in a yellowish-green lead cylinder for the police to find on his porch.
Soon, the official certificates inside the cylinder told them that it held three tablets of cadmium 109, two of an isotope of iron, and four of plutonium 238. And they learned that just as Mr. Grigorov had insisted, plutonium 238 is not weapons grade. (Bomb fuel is a different plutonium isotope.)
Moreover, after having a local physicist test the radiation emitted when the lead cylinder was opened, they learned that the isotopes were too weak to be of much threat in a so-called dirty bomb, which theoretically could be made by dispersing radioactive isotopes with a conventional blast.
The case was all but closed.
Police interviews with Mr. Grigorov and former mine supervisors filled in the last level of detail: the isotopes had been components of a standard technical instrument, similar to an X-ray machine, that Mr. Grigorov had used to analyze ore at the now defunct mining laboratory where he had been employed.
Mr. Grigorov claimed to have found them abandoned after the laboratory closed in the mid-1990's, and decided to safeguard them himself in their original lead sleeve.
Mikhail Filippovich, Zmeinogorsk's mayor, described the decision in a sadly noble way. "During privatization, everybody got what he got, and Leonid got a container with some isotopes in it," he said. "It was not the most successful acquisition."
"But we are thankful for this," he added, "because thanks to him the isotopes did not get into any other hands."
Because Mr. Grigorov risked a criminal charge for illegal storage of radioactive substances, and a potential jail sentence of two years, the authorities filed reports to their regional bosses in Barnaul. They noted that the pack rat remained perplexed and incorrigible.
"He simply couldn't understand why he wasn't given any money," said Capt. Dmitri Boiko, the deputy police chief.
But as the case drew near its end, it grew stranger still. Someone in Barnaul, who knew only a sketch of the case, leaked inaccurate information about it, the police here say. Within hours their detective work was for naught.
Russian news agencies, radio stations, newspapers and television stations reported that weapons-grade plutonium had been discovered in a garage in Siberia. One account said more than a pound had been found, which in the age of modern terror would have been a frightening amount.
The reports provoked swift denunciations. Nikolai Shingaryov, spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, insisted that Russia had not lost custody of any plutonium bomb fuel. "What has been written absolutely doesn't correspond to what is there," he said in a telephone interview.
This opinion corresponds with the understanding of the case at the United States National Nuclear Security Administration, in Washington, which has helped Russia secure 900 radiological sources in recent years.
Paul M. Longsworth, deputy administrator of the administration, said that while the incident did not involve American help - the radiation level of Mr. Grigorov's plutonium tablets was well below the threshold of what the administration considers threatening - it carried larger meanings.
"While it is a humorous story on one level, it does indicate that there are sources out there that are unsecured," he said in a telephone interview. "It does indicate why we are doing what we are doing."
As the Russian news media dropped the story, its lasting effect seems not to have been on national security but on Mr. Grigorov, who, the authorities said, has been suffering from cancer, and was deeply uncomfortable about finding himself the subject of both a media storm and his neighbor's stares.
"Now he's scared," the mayor said. "He does not want to see anybody. He's hiding."
Mr. Grigorov did make an appearance this week in the lobby of the prosecutor's office, but when he saw three journalists, he dashed outside. When he heard his name called, he spun and showed a frightened face, then sped up and disappeared down the snowy streets.
Now the case is closing again. Captain Boiko mused that in the end he hoped there would be leniency for the ailing mine technician who gave Russia a brief but unfounded scare. "He is a normal guy,'' he said. "Quiet, balanced, competent in his sphere. I personally think that this case will just be stopped."
-------- u.n.
Hungarian to head up nuclear non-proliferation organization
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041122201228.77sbg83q.html
Hungarian Tibor Toth was elected the new executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), said the group from its Vienna headquarters on Monday.
The 50-year-old Toth, who is Hungary's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, will replace outgoing executive secretary Wolfgang Hoffman of Germany starting on August 1, 2005.
Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is a cornerstone of the international regime on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The Preparatory Commission was established to prepare for the Treaty's entry into force.
By instituting a total ban of any nuclear weapon test explosions the CTBT will constrain the development of advanced new types of weapons.
The Treaty will enter into force after it has been ratified by the 44 states that formally participated in the 1996 session of the Conference on Disarmament.
Today only 32 of those countries and three of the world's five nuclear powers (Britain, France and Russia) have ratified the treaty.
The other two, China and the United States, still have not done so.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Residents in Western US Fear Government Plans to Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing
voanews.com
By Serena Parker
22 November 2004
http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/2004-11-22-voa18.cfm
Preston J. Truman grew up in Enterprise, Utah, a small farming community of 800 people located 100 miles east of the U.S. government's nuclear weapons test site in the state of Nevada.
Anti-nuclear activist Preston J. Truman
Utah resident Preston J. Truman developed lymphoma as a result of the nuclear testing.
"My actual first memory of life is sitting on my father's knee watching an A-bomb go off on the Nevada Test Site," he says. According to Mr. Truman, the U.S. government would warn citizens when they were testing and where the radioactive fallout cloud was moving. But he says officials insisted there was no danger, even after people started getting sick.
"Within a few years after the testing started, we had our first case of childhood leukemia in town, and then there were clusters in nearby communities and then pretty soon it was adult cases," he remembers. "And in a very short period of time we all knew that something was dreadfully wrong."
The U.S. government finally banned above ground nuclear testing in 1963, but underground testing continued into the 1970's. It was only in 1990 that the U.S. Congress passed legislation to provide compensation to people who lived under the clouds of nuclear fallout, so-called Downwinders. Downwind refers to the fact that nuclear fallout was carried from Nevada by westerly winds across the continental United States.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, provides $50,000 dollars to individuals living or working in 21 counties in three states who were downwind of the Nevada Test Site and who later contracted cancer as a result of this exposure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 11,000 people in the United States died of cancers caused by exposure to radioactive fallout. In some instances, entire families were afflicted. One resident of Arizona, Danielle Stephens, has lost 26 of 31 family members to cancer.
Although radiation exposure in these 21 counties was high, there were similar so-called hot spots elsewhere in the United States. According to Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, the radioactive fallout has many components, including iodine-131, which tends to concentrate in animal's milk.
"Milk contamination happened in hot spots where fallout rained out of the sky," he says. "And the greatest exposure was in those hot spots for farm children who were drinking fresh milk. So you could find people in say Iowa, Kansas, even in Vermont that were very highly exposed because they lived in hot spots."
Currently, these people are not covered under RECA, but that may change soon. The National Academies' National Research Council is considering whether the U.S. Congress should amend RECA to include additional geographic areas and other types of cancers. Dr. Isaf Al-Nabulsi who is directing the study tells VOA that the report will be turned in to Congress at the end of March 2005 and made available to the public by the end of April.
Downwinders, like Utah resident J Truman, are anxious to read the report's recommendations, especially since many of them fear the government is planning to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site.
"Why are they putting money into getting the test site ready to resume testing on a presidential order within a short period of time? Of course, it means testing if it goes forward," he says.
But Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington vehemently denies that. "We can foresee no need for any testing in the near future. We are not planning any tests. We are not discussing any tests. It's just not on the table," he says.
According to Mr. Wilkes, the current budget does contain money to maintain the Nevada Test Site, but there are no plans to start mass producing nuclear weapons or testing them. "We do have money every year in the budget for what's called test readiness," he says. "That's because the Nevada Test Site is a huge complex that requires a lot of upkeep. And if we let that fall into disrepair that could mean that we wouldn't have any means for testing. And there could come a point some day - we don't foresee it right now - but there could come a point that there would be a need for testing."
Bryan Wilkes says the only reason the government would conduct a nuclear test is if there were some serious safety issue that couldn't be resolved using computer models. But many Downwinders, who feel that they were betrayed once by their government, remain unconvinced.
-----
Robert Bacher, Manhattan Project Physicist, Dies at 99
By JEREMY PEARCE
November 22, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/obituaries/22bacher.html?ei=5070&en=c0d4ab1b5c9e9b03&ex=1103000400&pagewanted=print&position=
Dr. Robert F. Bacher, a nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, died on Thursday at a retirement home in Montecito, Calif. He was 99.
His death was announced by the California Institute of Technology, where he had been a professor and provost.
In 1943, Dr. Bacher joined the Manhattan Project, the budding effort to develop an atomic weapon at Los Alamos, N.M. He served as head of the project's experimental physics division before leading its bomb physics division in 1944 and 1945.
Dr. Robert F. Christy, a colleague on the Manhattan Project and later at Caltech, said Dr. Bacher had urged J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director, to reject placing the project under military control as a way to ensure greater secrecy and security.
"Bacher had a sense of what was right and not right," Dr. Christy said. "He told Oppenheimer not to take an Army commission, and that scientists had to be able to think independently." The bomb project continued under civilian oversight.
After the war, Dr. Bacher served on the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1946 to 1949 and testified before a joint Congressional committee about a deterioration in the nation's nuclear weapons program. In 1946, he took an inventory at Los Alamos and later testified that he had been "deeply shocked to find how few atomic weapons we had." Bomb production increased soon afterward with technical improvements in preparing plutonium and other fissionable materials.
Dr. Bacher became a professor of physics at Caltech in 1949. He served as the institute's first provost, from 1962 to 1970, and as chairman of the division of physics, mathematics and astronomy from 1949 to 1962. He became a professor emeritus in 1976.
Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, a colleague at Caltech who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969, recalled Dr. Bacher as "a worldly wise person, an administrator who could always see the problems ahead, organizational, political and so on."
Dr. Gell-Mann cited Dr. Bacher's role at Caltech in building an electron synchrotron, a particle accelerator, as well as his support and testimony in defense of Oppenheimer when his security clearance was questioned, and ultimately revoked, in 1954 after Oppenheimer was accused of having Communist ties.
Robert Fox Bacher was born in Loudonville, Ohio. He received his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, and also taught at Columbia and Cornell.
He was a former president of the American Physical Society and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He was awarded the President's Medal for Merit in 1946.
Dr. Bacher is survived by a daughter, Martha Bacher Eaton of Santa Barbara, Calif., and a son, Andrew Dow Bacher, a nuclear physicist at the University of Indiana.
Correction: December 10, 2004, Friday:
A picture caption on Nov. 22 with an obituary of Dr. Robert F. Bacher, a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, referred incorrectly in some copies to the date of the first atomic bomb test. (A similar error occurred in a caption on May 11, 1999, with an article about research into atomic espionage, and in a caption on July 18, 1996, with an obituary of Dr. Kenneth T. Bainbridge, who also worked on the bomb.) While the photograph of Dr. Bacher and other Manhattan Project scientists was made in September 1945, the test was in July 1945.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
DOE Cleanup Chief Tours Nuclear Reservation
November 22, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=427
The Department of Energy still is evaluating its options on Initiative 297, said Paul Golan, DOE's acting assistant secretary for environmental management, last week.
Golan, who holds the position sometimes called the cleanup czar, spent two days visiting the Hanford nuclear reservation just two weeks after residents of Washington state voted to ban importing radioactive waste to Hanford until waste already there is cleaned up.
In Benton County, Washington, the only county that voted against the initiative, residents have been concerned that DOE's nationwide cleanup plan calls for importing some low-level radioactive waste to Hanford but sending far more radioactive material from the site to Nevada, New Mexico and possibly South Carolina.
Speculation has focused on whether DOE will challenge the legality of the initiative.
The nation will have to work together to clean up and shut down its nuclear sites left from the Cold War, Golan said. Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. When DOE's nuclear complex was built, it was integrated across the nation and the cleanup must be the same, Golan said.
"We will do it on our watch," he said.
DOE continues to push to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a national nuclear repository, he said. Some of Hanford's worst waste is planned to be turned into glass logs at a $5.8 billion vitrification plant now being built at Hanford and sent to Yucca Mountain for disposal. The state of Nevada is fighting to prevent the mountain from being used as a national repository for nuclear waste.
Just as it took years of work to open a national repository in the New Mexico desert for DOE wastes tainted with plutonium, it will take some time for Yucca to open for high-level radioactive waste and nuclear industry waste, Golan said. Hanford wastes already are being sent to the New Mexico repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project.
DOE also is working to find a place to ship leftover plutonium, Golan said. Hanford officials would like to start moving the plutonium kept in a heavily guarded vault in central Hanford to a more appropriate location in 2005.
"We're looking for a complete solution, and we do not have that yet," Golan said, although talks continue to send the plutonium to the Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site. The Hanford Advisory Board and boards for other nuclear sites across the nation are warning that challenges to disposing of waste at several DOE sites, including Hanford, are creating the risk of gridlock.
In a letter still making the rounds of site advisory groups for signatures, nine board chairmen warn that the challenges to waste disposal create the potential for skyrocketing costs and delays in cleanup. They're calling for a national forum to produce a technically and fiscally sound solution to dispose of waste and nuclear materials across the DOE complex.
Golan said he had not seen the letter, but that DOE is committed to working with communities and regulators.
He said he expects substantial progress in cleanup at Hanford and other DOE nuclear sites to continue in the next few years.
"Look at the magnitude of work and how much safer Hanford has become in the last three years," Golan said after touring the site. "Urgent risks are removed."
In 2004, Hanford workers emptied the last of the high-level radioactive liquid waste from the site's leak-prone underground tanks and finished stabilizing the plutonium left at the end of the Cold War in the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Within the last month, workers finished removing 2,300 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel that were corroding in leak-prone indoor pools 400 yards from the Columbia River.
Progress also has been made in preparing old reactors for long-term storage and digging up contaminated dirt near the Columbia River.
The tour "left a lot of good impressions of Hanford," Golan said.
He's pleased with the contractors at the site and with its local DOE leadership, he said, singling out Roy Schepens and Keith Klein, who manage DOE's two Hanford cleanup programs in the Tri-Cities.
Golan has served as acting assistant administrator since Jessie Roberson resigned in July, but this was at least his sixth trip to Hanford, he said. He was worked at DOE headquarters since 2000.
He met with representatives of the Yakamas, the Nez Perce and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation on Tuesday and Wednesday to continue government-to-government discussions, he said.
DOE has offered the tribes eight additional internships for high school or college students to work on science or technical projects, Golan said. He's also interested in more use of a Mid-Columbia-based bus equipped for training and education, he said.
After Golan left Washington, D.C., to tour the Rocky Flats, Colo., and Hanford nuclear sites this week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham resigned. Abraham had a strong commitment to nuclear cleanup and seeing him leave is tough, Golan said.
When Abraham was energy secretary, cleanup spending at Hanford increased to about $2 billion a year, although that is expected to decline in coming years.
Golan also discussed the protests that have become routine when Hanford contracts have been awarded in recent years. The transition of the contracts have been delayed while protests are decided.
"We're going to have to deal with it," he said. Because of the strong bid proposals made for Hanford contracts, the losing contractors' protests are understandable, he said. With substantial progress made to clean up Hanford along the Columbia River, attention is turning to how to clean up central Hanford. It has some of the most technically challenging and heavily contaminated cleanup projects.
DOE will be applying knowledge learned on other cleanup projects, Golan said. The goal is to keep the workers safe, protect the environment and respect the taxpayer, he said.
"We're not going to be perfect," he said. But "there are a lot of great things we can do here."
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S., Afghan Forces Search for Kidnapped U.N. Workers in Kabul
November 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Kidnapped-Foreigners.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan -- American and Afghan forces searching for three kidnapped U.N. workers smashed their way into houses in downtown Kabul early Monday, officials and witnesses said.
About 10 people were detained in the pre-dawn operation, but there was no indication that the three foreigners had been found.
A spokesman for the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Pamela Keeton, said the joint operation was ``related to the hostage situation,'' but said she had no further details.
Security forces began the assault in the west of the city at about 4 a.m., using rockets to blast a hole in a wall surrounding the two-story home of a doctor working for the United Nations, witnesses said.
The doctor, Munir Mosamem, and his 17-year-old son were detained, Mosamem's wife Zakia told The Associated Press. The intruders searched the house and confiscated three mobile phones and part of a computer, she said.
U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva confirmed that a doctor with that name worked at a clinic for the world body in the city, but had no information about the raid.
Another eight men were detained in a derelict house next door where several impoverished families of recently returned refugees were living, witnesses said.
A woman who gave her name as Angoma, 28, said her husband was among the eight taken away with his hands bound and his head covered by a hood.
``They showed us pictures of the three hostages, two women and one man, and asked if we had seen them,'' she said. ``I told them I recognized them from the television, but we don't know anything about them or where they are.''
An elderly woman called Mabuba sharing the doctor's house also said she had been questioned about the three.
``I told them no, and that we are very sad about this case,'' she said.
Armed men seized Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan, British-Irish citizen Annetta Flanigan and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo in Kabul on Oct. 28, the first such abduction in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban three years ago. It remains unclear where they are being held and by whom.
Afghan officials believe a criminal gang carried out the abductions and that negotiations have snagged over a ransom demand. But it remains unclear if the kidnappers are working for a Taliban splinter group which has claimed responsibility and demanded that Afghan and U.S. authorities free several prisoners.
-------- business
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology
Monday, November 22, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3177-2004Nov21?language=printer
Lockheed Martin Information Technology, a division of Bethesda-based government contractor Lockheed Martin, won a seven-year, $525 million contract to provide a wide range of information technology services to the Social Security Administration. Lockheed Martin's teammates include Global Commerce and Information Inc. of Columbia, Pointe Technology Group Inc. of Landover, CPSI Inc. of Baltimore, RS Information Systems Inc. of McLean, Engineering Systems Solutions Inc. of Frederick, Apptis Inc. of Chantilly, SM Consulting Inc. of Linthicum, and BAE Systems Information Technology of McLean.
Avilar Technologies Inc. of Laurel won a four-year, $6.6 million contract from the Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicacion Educativa, an international organization formed by 13 Latin American countries to enhance education opportunities through technology. Avilar will provide an e-learning platform for tracking the competency of teachers and students and for other educational needs.
BAE Systems North America Inc. of Rockville won two new Navy contracts totaling $26.4 million to provide engineering, configuration and acquisition support services for Navy and foreign military sales of Aegis-class ships.
CGI-AMS of Fairfax, a subsidiary of CGI Group Inc. of Montreal, won five contracts worth a total of $100 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to provide technical solutions and support for the CMS and Medicare Web sites, and four other CMS systems.
Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., won a four-year, $52 million contract from the Defense Department to provide product evaluations, biometric technology and application research, standards requirements and conformance testing, program management, and educational outreach to the department's biometrics fusion center in Clarksburg, W. Va.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda won a $30 million contract from the Army to build test beds for new technologies for the Comanche helicopter.
SI International Inc. of Reston won a $6.8 million, three-year task order from the Agriculture Department to provide information technology support for the Veterinary Services Processes Streamlining System, which monitors transport of animals to enhance food safety and protect against terrorism.
Sytel Corp. of Bethesda has awarded Electronic Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Texas, a one-year, $6.5 million subcontract to provide information technology infrastructure support to the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Dev Technology Group Inc. of Reston will be one of EDS's partners on the project. The contract, which includes five option years, could be worth as much as $34 million if all options are exercised.
Electronic Data Systems' Herndon office won a $29.4 million contract from the Pentagon Renovation Office for the Command Communications Survivability Program Systems integration contract.
L-3 Communications Flight International Aviation LLC of Newport News won a $7.6 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command for Commercial Air Services -- Mediterranean. The work, to be performed in Naples, Italy, includes passenger transport and fleet training, including electronic warfare, air intercept control and target towing.
Booz Allen & Hamilton of McLean won a $13.5 million contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for technical security engineering and technical program management support services. The contract value could reach $62.4 million if all options are exercised.
Accenture LLP of Reston won a $5.6 million contract from the U.S. Army Contracting Agency for evaluation, configuration, development, and software integration services to put in place human resources management software.
Lankford Sysco Food Services Inc. of Pocomoke City, Md., won a $12 million contract from the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia for full line food distributions for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Maritime Systems and Sensors of Manassas won a $31.9 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for production of three sonar systems and six executive workstations.
Solipsys Corp. of Laurel won an $8.8 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command to support the design and development of the Pacific Fleet Tactical Component Network.
Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems of Linthicum, Md., won a $139.2 million contract from the Air Force's Headquarters Space and Missile Systems Center to assure launch readiness and operational performance for selected government-owned sensor units; perform upgrades to give sensors enhanced capabilities; assure maximum sensor data integrity to support quality weather products; and perform integration management oversight of sensor manufactures, vendors and government laboratories.
Hewlett Packard Co., through its Greenbelt office, won a $2.8 million contract from the Navy for information technology services.
S. Cohen & Associates of McLean won a $10.6 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for regulatory, analytical and evaluation support services for radiation protection programs.
Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore won a $15.8 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department for patient safety monitoring in international laboratories.
Assessment & Training Solutions Consulting Corp. of Virginia Beach won a $2.5 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Catapult Technology Ltd. of Bethesda won a $9.5 million ceiling contract from the Labor Department for software services.
Staff writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
--------
Local Contract Pentagon Weighs Satellite Needs
By Susan M.Menke
The Washington Post
Monday, November 22, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3178-2004Nov21.html
The Defense Department's use of commercial communications satellites has soared with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, the Pentagon is trying to decide whether it can save money by buying service directly from satellite carriers instead of through three Washington area resellers.
It will take years for the military to launch enough satellites to fulfill its own bandwidth needs. The amount of commercial bandwidth bought by the Defense Department to fill the gap has grown ten-fold since 2001, before the war in Afghanistan, said Pravin Jain, chief scientist of the Defense Information Systems Agency's Global Information Grid engineering directorate.
The Pentagon needs commercial satellite services, for example, to support the operations of unmanned aerial vehicles and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors, as well as for voice communications.
The Defense Department relies on the Defense Satellite Transmission Services-Global contract. The contract with resellers, which began in 2001, could be worth as much as $2 billion if the Pentagon extends it for its full 10-year term. It is held by Arrowhead Global Solutions Inc. of Falls Church, Artel Inc. of Reston, and Spacelink International LLC of Dulles.
Together, the three companies have collected "$500 million to $600 million in revenue over the last three years," said Otto W. Hoernig III, chief operating officer of Spacelink.
The companies compete among themselves to provide satellite services to the military, and they make the satellite carriers compete to provide the communications bandwidth they need.
Now, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Reconnaissance Office are debating whether to start buying commercial satellite service directly from carriers. Their report is due in April.
Carriers affiliated with the Satellite Industry Association of Alexandria -- EutelSat, IntelSat, Loral Space and Communications Ltd., New Skies Satellites, PanAmSat Corp., and SES Americom Government Services Division -- have lobbied the Pentagon to buy directly from them, arguing that this would be less expensive.
"Where it's bulk capacity with no added value from an intermediary, the carriers want to deal directly" with the Defense Department, said Leslie Blaker, a vice president at SES Americom.
But Arrowhead president and chief executive Mary Ann Elliott said the resellers' cost per megahertz is 40 percent lower than it was before their contract began.
"The department has procured more commercial satellite service than at any other point in history, at lower cost and with greater flexibility of terms and conditions," she said.
Susan M. Menke, an editor-at-large, wrote about this contract for Washington Technology. For more details on this and other technology contracts, go to www.washingtontechnology.com.
-------- europe
EU agrees on new joint military units
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041122104019.knww86v7.html
EU defence ministers agreed Monday to create 13 so-called battle groups, military units which can be deployed rapidly to crisis situations around the world, Dutch minister Henk Kamp said.
The 1,500-strong tactical groups, which will put flesh on long-standing EU plans to have an independent military capacity, will be able to be deployed within 15 days. One unit will be up and running by next year, said Kamp.
France, Italy, Spain and Britain have each agreed to form one unit, and all other EU states have agreed to contribute to at least one group, said the Dutch minister, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
"The battle groups are at the forefront of capability improvement, providing the Union with credible, rapidly deployable, coherent force packages capable of stand-alone operations, for for the initial phase of larger operations," said an EU statement.
----
Europe's New "Bill of Rights"
European Parliament Approves New EU Constitution
Democracy Now!
Monday, November 22nd, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/22/1425243
As the European Commission prepares its agenda for the next few years, Europeans are debating the merits of a new Constitution signed by its 25 member states. Next February 20th, Spain will become the first country in the European Union to hold a popular referendum on the Constitution. This past week, the European Parliament approved a new European Commission, headed by the EU's new president, former Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manual Durao Barroso. Durao is best remembered internationally for hosting the summit in Azores between President Bush, Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar that declared war on Iraq.
The EU vote ended a crisis that began three weeks ago when the majority of parliamentarians refused to back Durao's choice of commissioners. He was forced to withdraw his list in order to remove his controversial choice for Justice, Freedom and Security, Italian Rocco Buttiglione. Buttiglione had publicly stated that homosexuality was a sin, and that a woman's place was in the home.
As the commission prepares its agenda for the next few years, Europeans are debating the merits of a new Constitution signed by its 25 member states. Next February 20th, Spain will become the first country in the European Union to hold a popular referendum on the Constitution. The treaty, which amounts to a European bill of rights, was signed on October 29th by leaders of all 25 European Union member states and three candidate countries. The countries now must ratify it individually. Some, like Spain, plan to put it to a popular vote, while others will approve it through Congressional ratification.
-------- iran
Iran Halts Key Nuclear Work to Avoid Sanctions
Reuters
Nov 22, 2004
By Louis Charbonneau
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041122/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_14
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran on Monday suspended sensitive nuclear activities that could be used to make a bomb in a move likely to thwart U.S. efforts to report the Islamic Republic to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Washington wants Iran to face sanctions, accusing it of trying to develop atomic bombs under the veil of a nuclear power project. But the EU has taken a softer line, persuading Tehran to stop sensitive activities in return for better ties.
Oil-rich Iran denies it is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal and says it just wants to generate electricity.
"Today the whole enrichment process has been suspended," Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told CNN. President Bush (news - web sites) reacted to the announcement with mild skepticism. "Let's say, I hope it's true," he said.
Uranium is enriched to generate atomic power, but when it is highly enriched can be used in a nuclear warhead.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) atomic watchdog, confirmed the freeze.
"I think pretty much everything has come to a halt right now. We're just trying to apply seals and make sure everything has been stopped," ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna.
Operations at an Isfahan facility readying raw "yellowcake" uranium for the enrichment process had also stopped, he said.
IAEA inspectors are verifying the suspension and plan to confirm it has been fully implemented at Thursday's IAEA board meeting which will discuss a draft EU resolution on the issue. Iran never fully suspended the program after making a similar promise to France, Britain and Germany in October 2003.
Iran has warned that the freeze of activities it considers a "sovereign right" would be short-lived. Kharrazi said Tehran would review the suspension in three months.
"If it was positive we can continue. Positive means we are arriving at some conclusions and the ... commitments made by the other side (the EU) are going to materialize," he said.
BUSH: IRAN MUST EARN TRUST
Bush said it was important for Iran to earn the trust of U.S. and European governments, who worry Iran wants the bomb.
"It looks like there is some progress, but to determine whether or not the progress is real there must be verification. We look forward to seeing that verification," Bush said.
France, Britain and Germany, who led the European Union (news - web sites) effort to persuade Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, circulated a draft resolution to be submitted to the IAEA board.
The draft urges Iran to "sustain the suspension" and says ElBaradei should "report immediately to the IAEA board should the agency encounter evidence that the suspension is not fully implemented, or be prevented from monitoring all elements of the suspension."
But the text, obtained by Reuters, makes no mention of punitive measures if Iran resumed enrichment-related activities.
A Western diplomat said the EU draft was too weak for the Americans who want a "trigger clause" that would call for a referral to the Security Council if Iran resumed enrichment.
"For the U.S., there's a lot of negotiating left to go," said a diplomat on the IAEA board. But a European diplomat said it was doubtful the EU would allow anything tougher.
ElBaradei urged Tehran not to restart enrichment while inspections were under way. He said this would be a long time "in light of the undeclared nature of the program for many years, in light of the less than optimal cooperation in the initial phase of the inspections."
"I think it's in Iran's interest to maintain the suspension while we are going through the (inspections), while we are trying to restore confidence that the program is for peaceful purposes," he said.
The EU hopes to persuade Iran to make the suspension permanent by offering it economic and political incentives. But it may still refer it to the Security Council if Tehran goes back on the deal, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
Skepticism about Iran's intentions was heightened last week when Iranian exiles accused Tehran of running a secret enrichment plant and diplomats revealed that Iran had stepped up some uranium conversion activities just ahead of the suspension.
ElBaradei said the IAEA would only follow up on "credible information" and that it was "looking into" the issue.
"There's a big difference between doing robust verification and harassing a country," he said.
-----
Iran has produced uranium gas: UN nuclear chief
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041122100912.euyv4tlt.html
Iran has produced up to two tons of uranium gas that can be used to make nuclear weapons, but this amount is not enough to make a bomb, UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei told journalists Monday.
ElBaradei said the amount of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) produced by Iran prior to a ban of uranium enrichment activites that began Monday was "probably a maximum of two tons."
An IAEA official said this was enough for "15 percent of a significant amount," that is 15 percent of the highly enriched uranium, which is made from UF6, needed to make an atomic bomb.
-------- iraq
United States, Iraq look toward reconstruction of Fallujah
11/22/2004
Arabic News.com
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/041122/2004112207.html
The US forces in Iraq are turning their attention to the task of rebuilding Fallujah as the military campaign to oust the city's insurgents winds down. Together, the United States and the Iraqi government have earmarked as much as $100 million for the reconstruction effort, according to Ambassador Bill Taylor of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.
"We have a commitment to the people of Fallujah -- indeed, to the people of Iraq -- to help them reconstruct their city and their country. We take that commitment very seriously," Taylor told reporters during a November 19 briefing from Baghdad.
He said that the reconstruction will likely begin with infrastructure projects aimed at restoring basic services. Specifically, he identified a need to repair electricity distribution lines, sewage lines and water treatment facilities.
Once basic services are restored, reconstruction efforts will turn to schools, clinics and solid waste management, he said.
Taylor said that reconstruction operations will likely begin within the next week or two depending on when the city is completely cleared of the remaining pockets of insurgents. "The first thing that has to happen is the final military action needs to be completed," he said.
According to Charles Hess of the Iraq Project and Contracting Office, the United States has committed $12.77 billion to reconstruction projects throughout Iraq. Of that money, $8.9 billion is already obligated under contract. Hess, who also spoke at the briefing, said that $1.77 billion has already been disbursed on the 873 construction projects that are currently under way.
Following is the transcript of Taylor and Hess' briefing:
Defense Department Briefing on Progress of Reconstruction Work in Iraq; Plans For Reconstruction in Fallujah
MODERATOR: BRYAN WHITMAN
WHITMAN: Good morning, gentlemen. This is Bryan Whitman from the Pentagon. Can you hear us?
HESS: Yes, we can.
WHITMAN: Good morning. As many of you here in the Pentagon know, the Project and Contracting Office is responsible for implementing nearly two-thirds of the $18.4 billion Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund that was approved by Congress, and so they're a key organization to the success of our mission in Iraq.
And today we are welcoming Charles Hess, who is the director of the Iraq Project and Contracting Office, and Ambassador Bill Taylor, who is the director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, for what is going to be one in a series of briefings that we hope to bring you over time periodically. Thanks to Amy Burns for arranging for this one and for subsequent ones that we'll have as we go into the future.
They're also prepared today to discuss a little bit about the reconstruction plans for Fallujah.
They can hear you but they can't see your smiling faces today, so when we get to the questions, if you'd just identify yourself and your organization, that would be helpful for them. They do have a presentation that they're going to make before we get into the questions. And so with that, gentlemen, I'd like to turn it over to you.
HESS: Thank you very much.
This is Charlie Hess. And on behalf of the Army's Project and Contracting Office of the Department of Defense, we're happy to be here this evening to brief the Pentagon press corps from Baghdad.
We're also very pleased, as was indicated, to have Ambassador Bill Taylor of the State Department's Iraq Reconstruction Management Office joining with us tonight.
And again, while our group, PCO, is responsible for the contracting and program project management aspects of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Relief Fund, Ambassador Taylor's group has broad responsibility for identifying the requirements and the priorities as we discussed the last time we briefed, on the 7th of October. Together I think we can give you sort of a comprehensive understanding of where we are today with respect to reconstruction activities.
I know that you all have been actively engaged in covering the events in Fallujah. Many of your colleagues actually have been embedded in the action. We would also like to brief you today on that related subject and to include what's projected to happen in Fallujah as well as give you a broader sense of what's happening with reconstruction efforts in general.
Again, we'd like to give you some indication of what's happened in about the six weeks since we talked the last time, and so I will do that and then I'm going to turn it over to Ambassador Taylor to give you some thoughts and focus on what's happening with respect to Fallujah.
First of all, let me give you some insight into the metrics that we talked about last time, and again, which was briefed to you on the 7th of October. With respect to the money that's been committed of the $18.4 billion, that amount that we talked about last time was about $10.66 billion, that has grown to $12.77 billion today, which is an increase of almost 20 percent, or roughly $2 billion.
Obligations. The amount of money that we're contractually bound, obligated to pay firms is up by over a billion dollars, from $7.7 billion to $8.9 billion, or approximately 15.6 percent.
Additionally, as a point of information, many of those contracts, which were awarded in open -- full and open competition -- many of those have been awarded to Iraqi firms, approximately 4,500 of which are under the management and stewardship of Iraqi-owned firms.
Amount of money that's been disbursed with respect to the program has gone from 1.3 billion (dollars) to approximately 1.77 billion (dollars), which is an increase of nearly half a billion dollars, or 34 percent, since the 7th of October.
And while those financial numbers are, I think, good news, perhaps the more compelling story is the number of construction starts. Right now, since the 7th of October, when we had 703 construction projects under way, we've now increased that number to 873, which is an increase of approximately 24 percent. And we are on target to surpass our goal of having a thousand construction starts by year end, which was outlined to you in our last briefing.
As we've talked previously, security is still a serious challenge. But as we indicated in these metrics, we are still moving forward, and we are still working to achieve our three main goals, which we talked about also at that briefing: one, which was to improve the infrastructure of Iraq; second, to improve Iraqi employment through the use of local Iraqi firms and subcontracting to the maximum extent we can to Iraqi firms; and then, finally, to build capacity within the ministries and within the interim Iraqi government, so that they can in fact do much of this work in the future themselves.
With that as a backdrop, let me turn it over to Ambassador Taylor, who can update you as well and give you some specifics on the situation in Fallujah. Thank you.
TAYLOR: Thank you, Charlie.
On Fallujah, as you know, the successful military operation needs to be followed by an equally successful reconstruction operation. The Marines, who have been doing most of the work along with Army and working very closely with the Iraqi forces, have done a lot of preparation for the reconstruction in Fallujah. They have focused their attention on preparing for humanitarian work. They've pre-positioned a lot of stocks of food and water and medicine. They have been preparing to start up on small reconstruction projects, in particular those that will restore essential services. So people are taking a look and assessing what the problems are with electricity distribution lines, for example, and sewer lines, water treatment in order to get clean water to people. We will then be able to move into the smaller projects of schools and clinics, and then eventually get to the larger projects that will -- that have been planned for some time but have not been able to move forward during the past several months.
This, as I said, is a carefully coordinated program. We are working very closely with the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has designated a Cabinet minister, Minister Hassani, who is the Minister of Industry and Minerals, to be the lead for the Iraqi government in this reconstruction effort. So he and I have met now two times. Our staffs have gotten together. The ministries of electricity and health and water resources, municipalities have gotten together with our folks in terms of the Marines and the Army, who are going to undertake these efforts, to coordinate that work. They've put up a good amount of money. We have some funds identified that will allow us to move forward on this reconstruction. As I say, this will be as important as the military operation in order to consolidate the victory.
With that, I think we're ready to take your questions.
WHITMAN: All right. Thank you, gentlemen, for that overview.
Let's go ahead and start right here.
Q: This is Will Dunham with Reuters. Gentlemen, can you say how much money is being devoted to Fallujah? When do you think the earliest that some of the projects can begin in earnest?
TAYLOR: We have identified tens of millions of dollars. The government of Iraq has identified tens of millions of dollars. These -- we're still working -- as I indicated earlier, we are working together with them to figure out which projects we should do and which they should do. This could get into the order of a hundred million dollars or so, into Fallujah.
In terms of when, of course, the first thing that has to happen is the final military action needs to be completed. As you know -- as you've seen, there are still some problems there. It's not totally done. I think we are in full control, but there are still pockets of resistance. And there's a lot of booby traps and of other explosives that are around that will inhibit our work.
Some work, however, has already begun. As I say, the Marines have begun some clean-up work themselves. I would imagine within a week or two our projects will be able to be assessed and begun in terms of contracts with local construction firms, that is with Iraqi construction firms there in Fallujah. So within a week or two, again, depending on when the city is cleared of people opposing what we're trying to do, we ought to be able to get the first of these small projects going, as I mentioned earlier.
HESS: (Off mike) -- with Bill's assessment there. Again, our experience in Najaf and Samarra has indicated to us that it takes approximately a week to two weeks. Many of these projects that will be started are in fact projects that were curtailed as a result of the hostilities. We have existing contracts, and it's a matter of just getting those contract entities back in position and getting them started up again. But clearly, we are waiting for our cue from the maneuver commanders to do that.
As an example of some of the projects that will be undertaken in Fallujah, we have a significant amount of money, approximately $8 million, identified for water-supply improvements. We've identified four new schools that will be constructed for a total of about $4 million. We'll be buying new solid-waste equipment, garbage trucks, so that they have some continuing means of debris and trash removal, along with many other projects. So those are the kinds of things that are in the portfolio.
Q: Briefly, the $100 million figure that you mentioned, that is a combination of U.S. money and Iraqi money?
HESS: That's correct.
WHITMAN: Pam, go ahead.
Q: Gentlemen, this is Pam Hess with UPI. Mr. Hess, I don't think we're related. (Laughter.) I have two questions for you. The first one is on that $100 million. That's money that was allocated before this battle. How much more do you think Fallujah is going to take to reconstruct, because that money was already on the books before at least 250 buildings were destroyed.
My second question is longer term. One of the problems that you have had throughout Iraq, but especially in Fallujah, is that there's not really a strong local economy. And it is our understanding from what you all have told us that the insurgency was a large part of that economy -- people were getting paid to take potshots at U.S. forces; paid to lay bombs. What are you going to do long-term for the economy there to make sure that Fallujans have actual jobs even after the initial money is spent from reconstruction, because obviously there will be an uptick in local employment for a while?
HESS: Let me start with the first question. And again, I think that addresses the issue of what needs to be done and how do we address those needs.
The reality is, we have teams of people, along with the civil/military operations folks, in Fallujah. They've been there for probably the last week to 10 days, assessing what needs to be done. And those -- frankly, those assessments will continue as more and more of the city becomes available for us to evaluate. So consequently, our estimates and our evaluation of what needs to be done will change, very likely, across the upcoming days.
Again, many of the projects that we've -- we have in our original portfolio are the kinds of things that you would need in any event -- again, improvements to the water system, power lines to certain neighborhoods, water pumping stations and so forth.
But in addition to that, we'll be certainly looking at damage. And again, one of the elements of this sort of portfolio that we're pulling together -- it's not just what's in the existing IRRF program, but it's also monies that had been allocated to the maneuver commanders and the Commanders' Emergency Response Program. So between that, the money that the Iraqi -- interim Iraqi government is going to be allocating for Fallujah, again, we will try and make the best match of projects and fill in the gaps with the money that's also coming in from other sources.
TAYLOR: Exactly right. That hundred million, as we said before, is both U.S. and Iraqi funds. And so none of the Iraqi funds were scheduled to go in there before the fighting. So those -- all of those are new.
As Charlie indicates, some of the more mobile programs, such as the CERP, the Commanders' Emergency Relief Program funds that the maneuver commanders have, but also USAID has similarly mobile funds under a program run by the Office of Transition Initiatives, OTI, in USAID -- and those you can move, and those have been increased. Both the CERP and the OTI funds have been increased, along with the Iraqi funds. They're a significant amount of new money going in, in addition to the current plans.
On the longer-term question, you're of course exactly right. In the long term, the economy needs to grow. People need to go back to work in jobs there -- Fallujah was known, has been known for some time as the center or a center of construction jobs and construction firms. So it has a base, it has an economic base that needs to be rebuilt because there is damage to the city, but that's the kind of program -- the kinds of projects we need to move into; that is, restoring the electricity, restoring the water, restoring basic services so people can move back in, begin to repair and resume their lives, hopefully better lives without the extremists there. And that will generate the jobs that is the answer. The jobs are the answer for the long term.
WHITMAN: Donna, I think you were next if you --
Q: No, actually --
WHITMAN: You didn't? Okay. I'm sorry.
Q: Thank you. (Laughs.)
WHITMAN: Let's go ahead over here.
Q: Mr. Hess, is it? I'm Joe Tabet from Al Hurra TV. Could you tell us if there is any construction projects on the Iraqi border to protect Iraq from illegal entry? And if yes, what kind of -- what type of project are --?
HESS: I'm sorry; I didn't catch the full extent of the question. I think you asked about Iraqi construction firms involved in projects?
WHITMAN: I think the question, if I may paraphrase, has to do with any projects that might help with border security and what those might be.
HESS: Yes. In fact, there are many projects. We have a substantial number of border forts under way, which are a part of the portfolio for the MNSTC-I program, and General Petraeus. Those projects are scattered throughout the bordering provinces to many countries, including Syria, Iran and others. And so those are under way and in construction, and many of those have been completed.
WHITMAN: Martha, go ahead.
Q: Just a couple of questions, sir. It's Martha Raddatz from ABC. I'm looking at your figures that you passed out on -- in these papers or your PowerPoint presentation here and you have -- say that you prepositioned humanitarian assistance, to include 14 days' supply of food and water, 2,000 health and comfort packages, 90-day supply of first aid. That seems low. How many people do you think are in the city that need assistance, and could you give some more specifics about what else is prepositioned in terms of sewage trucks, in terms of electrical workers that you've coordinated with the Marine Corps?
TAYLOR: In terms -- to your question about how many people are in the city, most people left. Most people left the city before the fighting. The people who remained did the fighting with our forces. We are now in the process of going out to the surrounding villages, where many of the people who left Fallujah are now staying. And they're staying with friends and relatives, in hotels and schools. So they are gradually going to come back into Fallujah, at which time we will, together with the Iraqi government, be able to provide for their needs.
The Iraqi government is making their plans, their very specific plans, to move food through the normal food-rationing system into Fallujah. The medical supplies that we've got there -- actually, it may not be fully evident -- medical supplies are adequate for probably three months in the clinics and in the hospitals there.
Right now, when people drive through the city they don't see civilians; the civilians are not there. There may be some people in houses, but they haven't come out in any kind of numbers yet. There are not very many people in the hospitals at this point. So we are prepared and ready for them when they come back; the government is prepared and ready for them when they come back, and additional supplies are coming from Baghdad and from the surrounding areas into Fallujah to be prepared.
Q: If I could just follow up, too, if you could go into the specifics. And also, one of the things you said in one of the questions, I guess, was we haven't decided on some of the projects who will do them, the Iraqis or the Americans -- if I'm correct about that. It seems that that would have been something you would want decided before this happened. Are you concerned that working this out also loses time?
TAYLOR: As I mentioned, the Iraqi government has recently decided how much -- in some general terms, how much money they're going to put into Fallujah. We have been meeting for the past two weeks with the Iraqi government and their ministries to talk about the specific projects and their priorities and our priorities. We have described to them our existing plans, that Charlie has described; we have described to them our ability to make changes, and particularly in the smaller, more immediate projects of cleaning and repairing with the two more mobile programs that I mentioned earlier, both the CERP and OTI.
So yes, we've been doing some planning well in advance on the Marine side. They've been doing some thinking about that. We are now comparing. We've got a week or two to continue these preparations, to bring supplies in, to identify contractors, and to be able to get started when the military commander on the Marine side, together with the governor, the acting governor that the Iraqi government has appointed, when they say it's time to go in and this part of the city is clean and ready to move, and this part of the city is clear of military problems, then we'll be able to move in. And I believe we will have a well-coordinated program. We have the makings of it right now. In the next week, we'll continue to work on that.
HESS: And I would add I think we also have contractual mechanisms in place that would allow us to rapidly get additional contracts placed if there are particular needs. For example, in terms of debris removal and things of that nature, where you don't necessarily have a full understanding of the quantity of materials to be removed, clearly we have indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity type contracts that can be used to adjust, based upon what we find when we get there and have more understanding of what the needs really are.
WHITMAN: Tony?
Q: This is Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg News. One question, one narrow question. Can you give us a sense of the extent of damage in Fallujah, in terms of how many homes, buildings, and what that represents from the whole city standpoint? It's hard to get a feel from Washington.
TAYLOR: Both Charlie and I will be down there shortly to take a look for ourselves. The reports that we've gotten in the last couple of days are that there are many buildings that are damaged. A limited number of buildings have been destroyed, but a large number of buildings have been damaged. So we understand there's a lot of work to be done.
The electricity distribution -- transmission and distribution lines are down. They need to be repaired. There is the need for rebuilding of some houses, probably many houses, at least repair of these houses.
So I'm expecting that we will see the extent of the damage when we go down there shortly.
HESS: Right. And I guess if -- I think we'll probably expect to see more damage, obviously, than we saw in Najaf and Samarra. So again, if you have some sensing of what that was like, I think this will be certainly more significant.
Q: To what extent are you getting the sense from Iraqis that this is going to be considered a major test of both the interim government and the U.S.'s ability to not only defeat the insurgency but to restore stability? Are you worried about heightened expectations that you need to dampen?
TAYLOR: We have a commitment to the people of Fallujah -- indeed, to the people of Iraq -- to help them reconstruct their city and their country. We take that commitment very seriously.
There is no doubt that there is damage to that city, and we've seen over the past year and a half damage to this country, and that's what Charlie and his colleagues and others that are working on this thing are committed to help repair. So yes, we have a commitment; we are confident that we will meet that commitment.
WHITMAN: Bob Burns.
Q: Ambassador Taylor, this is Bob Burns from Associated Press. Last time we talked to you, in early October, you discussed the extent to which security was a limitation on carrying out the construction projects. And I'm wondering, beyond Fallujah and the rest of the Sunni Triangle in particular, would you say now at this point that security is more or less of an obstacle than it was six weeks ago? TAYLOR: I would say it's different. In some places it's more; in some places it's less. It is less of a problem in many of the provinces. There are only three or four provinces where security is a big problem. There are incidents in other provinces, but in particular in the northeast and in the south, we are able to operate projects without much difficulty.
As you indicate, in the center, the center -- Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, up to Samarra, then up in Mosul -- so the city areas and then up in Mosul, it is worse today than it was, and we are having greater difficulties from security at that time.
We are at this kind of one by one. Charlie indicated -- he reminds us that we did this in Najaf, we did this in Samarra, we did this in Sadr City. We're now doing it in Fallujah. We are moving through the areas, the cities where the insurgents have given us a hard time and have kept us from doing reconstruction. And indeed, we're worried that in some areas -- again, not all, in some areas it would now be difficult to have elections. And it's that kind of work that we need to do between now and January so that we can have elections in the entire country.
HESS: And I would agree with Bill in that assessment. Again, we're seeing, I think, a change in terms of what's happening in the security environment. Again, one of our mechanisms to deal with that, frankly, is to start as many projects as we can, given the fact that we know the insurgents can't be everywhere. And so consequently, the more projects we start, we certainly are moving Iraqis out, we're getting them employed, they are doing meaningful labor, they're restoring their country. And in and of itself, that is a very positive and powerful thing that we want to accomplish here between now and the elections in January.
WHITMAN: Lisa?
Q: Lisa Meyer from Associated Press Radio. Following up on what Bob was talking about, gentlemen, I'm wondering what are you going to do specifically to protect projects against sabotage? And what security arrangements, in broad terms, do you have in place to protect the people that are working on the projects?
HESS: Let me start with that one. In regard to sabotage, that is still a challenge. Clearly, we've seen instances of that occurring in various places, particularly in the oil sector, where the insurgents have a propensity for damaging and destroying the source of revenue and income for the government. And that is a problem.
Given that, again part of the solution is to make sure that we've got systems and mechanisms in place to deal with the security, by either hiring firms; by looking at mechanisms to track and maintain visibility over the commodities that we move into the country, which we're doing; by more closely aligning ourselves with the maneuver commanders who are out there in the battle space so we know where we should operate and where we shouldn't operate; and by, again, using many more Iraqi firms to help support the effort, given the fact that there's a lower profile and they can fit in and have less of a footprint in terms of security problems. And so we're using all of those things in various ways and in various places, I think, to try and mitigate the security situation.
TAYLOR: Charlie mentioned the problems with oil and oil supplies. The product deliveries into Baghdad have been receiving an inordinate amount of attention from the insurgents. And the Minister of Oil is very concerned about this exact question, about the security of people repairing oil lines, and intimidating truck drivers. He has come to us, and we've been working, as Charlie indicates, with the maneuver commanders in the area to provide specific protection and convoy protection on the way between supply points.
But in addition, he also has been in touch, of course, with his Prime Minister and his Minister of Defense, who has agreed to provide two battalions that the oil minister needs to be deployed on specific areas. So in addition to the measures that Charlie described, the Iraqis themselves are taking measures to help deal with the security problems.
WHITMAN: Gentlemen, we'll make this the last one.
How about somebody that hasn't one. Go ahead.
Q: Thank you. Rebecca Christie from Dow Jones Newswires. I wanted to ask about contracting relationships, particularly by the U.S. U.S. contractors have said that there are more auditors on the ground in Iraq than there are project managers, and that they have sort of run into trouble with contracting regulations because they don't have the on-the-ground oversight to help them navigate these U.S. rules, and then auditors are trying to apply rules that maybe don't work as well in an unstable environment.
HESS: Let me provide some comment on that. Clearly there are a lot of auditors here. You're dealing with an exceptional amount of money, and we need to protect the public and the Congress' interest in the amount of money that they put into the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Program. And so, consequently, you will see auditors.
My belief, in talking to the prime contractors and the sector contractors who are working with us on this program, is that where there have been issues in terms of providing information to the auditors, we've done that. Again, I think it's important that we have appropriate oversight. This is an extremely large amount of money and it's moving in very many different places to try and accomplish many things at the same time. And so, consequently, we want to make sure that, when all is said and done, we've gotten the best value for the taxpayer's dollar in terms of the investments we've made throughout the country. And so, again, my sense is if there are issues we're working through those, and I'm personally not aware of any at this particular instant, which are truly an impediment to us making progress.
Having said that, we certainly are embracing the use of Iraqi firms. Clearly they play a very large part of this equation, and it's very much as if this were a U.S. disaster where local firms need to be engaged in the solution, and those local firms come from all over Iraq, not just from here in Baghdad.
Q: (Off mike) -- contractors are penalized by auditors for hiring local firms because they can't provide the same documentation or the same types of accounting that a Western contractor might be able to provide?
HESS: I'm not aware of any issues at this particular point in time with local firms being precluded from bidding on a project as a result of accounting requirements. In fact, just recently, most of the work that's being done on the village roads -- we've got five governorates awarded now, approximately 217 kilometers of roadway under way. All of that work is being done by local Iraqi firms.
WHITMAN: Well, gentlemen, again, thank you very much for your time this evening. We hope to have you back in a couple of weeks to continue to give us updates on how things are going in the reconstruction business in Iraq. Thank you.
HESS: Thank you very much.
TAYLOR: Thank you.
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'Baghdad is now a battlefield, and we are in the middle'
AP
BY HAMZA HENDAWI
November 22, 2004
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iside22.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Iraqi capital, on edge for months because of unrelenting violence, has shed its business-as-usual veneer and become a city at war.
Last week's U.S.-Iraqi raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque -- one of the most revered shrines for Sunni Muslims -- sparked street battles, assassinations and a rash of bombings.
The chaos has fanned sectarian tension and deepened Sunni distrust of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite installed by the Americans five months ago. It has also heightened the anxiety of the city's 6 million people -- already worn down by years of sanctions and tyranny, then war, military occupation, crime and deprivation.
''Baghdad is now a battlefield, and we are in the middle of it,'' said Qasim al-Sabti, an artist who kept his children home from school Saturday, which is a work day in Iraq. When he sent his children back to school Sunday, the teachers didn't show up.
In a sign of public unease, merchants in the outdoor markets, where most people buy their meat, vegetables and household supplies, say crowds are below normal. Many shops near sites of car bombings have closed.
Adding to the sense of unease, U.S. military helicopters have begun flying lower over the city. The distant roar of jets has become a fixture of Baghdad at night.
The latest escalation appeared to have been triggered by a U.S.-Iraqi raid Friday on the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah as worshippers departed after midday prayers. Witnesses said three people were killed and 40 arrested.
The next day, heavy street fighting erupted in Azamiyah between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Sunni insurgents who tried to storm a police station. The fighting raged for several hours and left several stores ablaze, according to witnesses.
Almost simultaneously, clashes broke out in at least five other Baghdad neighborhoods. In all, at least 10 people, including one American soldier, were killed throughout the capital Saturday.
Lt. Col. James Hutton, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, which is in charge of security in Baghdad, acknowledged an increase in insurgent activity there.
But he linked the increase to the fighting in Fallujah, where U.S. troops are still fighting pockets of resistance, rather than the raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque.
The Iraqi government has said the raid was carried out because of suspicions of ''terrorist activity'' there. It appears the operation was part of a crackdown on militant Sunni clerics, many of whom are believed to have links to insurgent groups and who had spoken out against the Fallujah operation.
Tensions are likely to sharpen as the Jan. 30 election nears. Balloting is expected to confirm the domination of Iraq's Shiite community, estimated at 60 percent of the nearly 26 million population.
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More Fallujah Hostage Sites Found
Troops Locate Cage Believed to Have Held British Engineer
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1920-2004Nov21?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 21 -- The U.S. military has found nearly 20 houses where intelligence officers said they believe hostages were killed or tortured in this city, including one containing a cage in which a British contractor who was beheaded last month was probably confined.
U.S. Army intelligence officers said the cage, discovered in a house in southern Fallujah, matched almost identically one shown in a videotape of the contractor, Kenneth Bigley, whose death was confirmed Oct. 10.
The house is near another raided by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers last week that was connected to associates of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant. A group headed by Zarqawi and linked to al Qaeda asserted responsibility for killing Bigley.
Bigley, 62, an engineer, became the first British hostage killed in Iraq. In a videotape aired on an Arab satellite network before his death, Bigley was shown in a metal cage with a chain around his neck, pleading for his life.
"They had a sick, depraved culture of violence in that city," said Lt. Col. Daniel Wilson, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Maj. James West, a Marine intelligence officer, said the houses, which he referred to as "places of atrocities," were scattered across Fallujah. Some had false walls that led to rooms splattered with blood. One house had bloody handprints on the wall. "They chained people to the walls," West said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces began an offensive on Nov. 8 to capture the insurgent-held city about 35 miles west of Baghdad. In some areas of Fallujah, the fighters had cordoned off entire blocks to use as bases for their operations. In other areas, they lived among residents.
"These thugs depended on fear and control," West said.
West said evidence existed that Zarqawi was in Fallujah at one time but that there was "no direct proof he occupied any house or another."
"It looks like we've found a number of houses where . . . the famous names have been held," West said, referring to hostages whose beheadings were widely reported in the news media.
Army intelligence officers said they were led to several of the houses by three Iraqi men who said they had been held captive in the city. The men had surrendered to Iraqi forces, waving a white flag with the word "help" scribbled on it in English.
The Army officers said they doubted that the men were victims and most likely were part of Zarqawi's ring or supported his terrorist network.
In an interview with The Washington Post at an Iraqi military base shortly after he was detained, one of the men said his captors hung him from a ceiling and beat him with electrical wires.
"One day someone came," said the 33-year-old man, who said he was a Baghdad resident but would not give his name. "I was blindfolded, and he said, 'Do you know who I am?' I said, 'No.' He said: 'I am your master, Abu Musab Zarqawi. I came to Iraq to honor you, your family and your people.' "
Another of the men, a 28-year-old son of an official in the interim Iraqi government who was allowed to return to his home in Baghdad, said he heard audiotapes during his captivity in which Zarqawi instructed his associates to kill.
"We saw the cage where the British hostage was put and shown on TV," the man said. "We heard them filming the tapes they sent to satellite channels when they announced the kidnapping of people or the slaughtering of others. They brought new people kidnapped every day. I remember one day, we were eight in the room, all kidnapped for silly reasons."
In a briefing Sunday, Wilson, the Marine operations officer, called the Fallujah offensive "some of the most intense combat . . . probably since Vietnam." Wilson said Marine units were still combing thousands of structures in the city for insurgents, some of whom had sneaked back into the city.
"There has been a little bit of infiltration . . . for those who don't want to die," he said. "Those are small numbers. It's a large town. You can't completely seal off the town."
Military commanders said the Iraqi government would not allow residents to return to the city until it was clear of bombs, essential public services had been restored and a local governing body was established.
Meanwhile, at a Marine outpost near the city, soldiers from the Army's 1st Infantry Division loaded Bradley Fighting Vehicles and tanks onto flatbed trucks, preparing to return to their bases elsewhere in Iraq. The division's Task Force 2-2 covered the eastern flank of the city when U.S. troops launched the Fallujah offensive.
The Marines provided one beer for each of the 650 soldiers to thank them for their contributions on the battlefield. To date, 51 U.S. troops have been reported killed in the Fallujah offensive and 425 have been wounded.
"We got the easy part," Lt. Col. Peter Newell, the Task Force 2-2 commander, told the soldiers, while lifting a beer to toast the Marines and the troops who were killed. "All we had to do is go in and kick some butt."
Spec. Howard Sheldon, 22, of Farmington, N.M., said the battle was "something I never want to go through again."
"You have no idea how ready I am to go," he said.
--------
Officers See Need For Bigger Iraq Force
U.S. Assessments Cite Tenacious Resistance
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2565-2004Nov21?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq say it is increasingly likely they will need a further increase in combat forces to put down remaining areas of resistance in the country.
Convinced that the recent battle for Fallujah has significantly weakened insurgent ranks, commanders here have devised plans to press the offensive into neighborhoods where rebels have either taken refuge after fleeing Fallujah or were already deeply entrenched.
But the forces available for these intensified operations have become limited by the demands of securing Fallujah and overseeing the massive reconstruction effort there -- demands that senior U.S. military officers say are likely to tie up a substantial number of Marines and Army troops for weeks.
"What's important is to keep the pressure on these guys now that we've taken Fallujah from them," a high-ranking U.S. military commander said, speaking on condition he not be named because of the sensitivity of the deliberations on adding more troops. "We're in the pursuit phase. We have to stay after these guys so they don't get their feet set."
The possibility that additional troops would be required to battle the insurgency in this critical period preceding the Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, has been signaled for weeks. The Pentagon took an initial step in this direction last month, ordering about 6,500 soldiers in Iraq to extend their tours by up to two months.
With some fresh U.S. forces already arriving in Iraq as part of a long-scheduled rotation, and two newly trained Iraqi brigades due to start operating next month, U.S. military leaders had hoped to avoid further increases.
But over the past week, a closer assessment of the forces needed for the Fallujah recovery effort and future offensive operations revealed a gap in desired troop strength, at least over the next two or three months, according to several officers familiar with the issue.
The officers said the exact number of extra troops needed is still being reviewed but estimated it at the equivalent of several battalions, or about 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq fell to nearly 100,000 last spring before rising to 138,000, where it has stayed since the summer.
To boost the current level, military commanders have considered extending the stay of more troops due to rotate out shortly, or accelerating the deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is scheduled to start in January. But a third option -- drawing all or part of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division on emergency standby in the United States -- has emerged as increasingly likely.
Hinting at this possibility at a Pentagon news conference on Friday, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy chief of U.S. Central Command, recalled that airborne forces were deployed to Afghanistan on a short-term basis to bolster military operations. Smith noted, however, that the Afghan case was "a little bit different" because "we had a very small number of forces to begin with" there.
If airborne units were rushed to Iraq, commanders here said, they likely would not be used in the offensive actions being planned, given their lack of heavy armor and their unfamiliarity with the targeted neighborhoods. Rather, their purpose would be to take over policing and other functions in Baghdad's International Zone, where American and top Iraqi government officials work. That would free locally seasoned units of the 1st Cavalry Division for such actions.
Much of the division's 2nd Brigade, which had been patrolling Baghdad, was shifted to Fallujah for the battle there earlier this month and remains unavailable for action elsewhere. This situation is the cause of much of the pressure for reinforcements.
"We feel that we need to keep the 2nd Brigade out there longer than we had originally thought, so we're not going to have all the flexibility we wanted in December," one senior military officer here said.
Some senior officers have worried that any move to bring in more U.S. troops could be perceived as a sign of U.S. vulnerability in the face of the tenacious insurgency or as a vote of no confidence in the ability of Iraq's new security forces to fill the gap. It also could fuel the U.S. political debate over whether the Bush administration has committed enough forces to secure Iraq.
But several officers who discussed the matter said any such appeal should simply be seen as reflecting the desire of the military command here to press the fight.
To further bolster U.S. forces in the short term, commanders also are considering extending the scheduled departure of the 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, which has been assigned to the Kirkuk area.
U.S. military intelligence assessments portray the Fallujah offensive as having destroyed the insurgency's largest haven, but the assessments also acknowledge that the violent resistance campaign is far from broken nationwide. Since the Fallujah operation, insurgent attacks have continued across a broad stretch of Iraq, from northern cities to a restive area in Babil province south of Baghdad.
Although U.S. military officials have reported 1,600 or more enemy fighters killed in Fallujah, no key leaders of the insurgency were either killed or captured, according to senior officers here. Many insurgents who fled the city either before or during the battle are now thought by U.S. commanders to be looking for opportunities to regroup and mount new attacks.
"Our assessment is that the insurgency remains viable," a senior military intelligence officer here said. "One of the things we see the insurgents doing is moving to areas where we don't have a lot of presence."
The number of daily attacks, which surged to about 130 at the start of the Fallujah operation, has declined to between 70 and 80 in recent days, roughly the level before the operation. But the senior intelligence officer said it is still too early to gauge the full impact of the Fallujah battle on the insurgency, estimating another week or two will be necessary for military analysts to get a clearer picture.
Everything found so far, the officer said, has confirmed Fallujah as the insurgency's largest and most significant stronghold. The sheer number of bombs, shells and other munitions discovered has stunned some senior analysts.
"The number of caches they're finding, the weapons and things like that, are greater than we probably assessed," the intelligence officer said. "So we may have done more damage to their capability than we previously understood."
In discussing battle plans, commanders here did not want to telegraph the areas U.S. forces might be focusing on for their next offensives. But some of the potential targets can easily be discerned by mapping the locations of attacks on U.S. forces, including areas in or around the restive cities of Mosul, Ramadi, Baqubah, Samarra and Baghdad.
At the same time, officers cautioned against expecting anything on the scale of Fallujah, which involved more than 10,000 U.S. troops and about 2,500 Iraqi forces.
"They're not going to be big operations like Fallujah, because there's no place else in Iraq where the situation is like what it was there," one commander said.
--------
Iraqi Election Set for Jan. 30
Vote Threatened by Violence, Calls for Sunni Muslim Boycott
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2096-2004Nov21.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- Iraq's electoral commission on Sunday set Jan. 30 for elections to choose a National Assembly, a vote that could deliver power to Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority after decades of disenfranchisement. The balloting, however, remained imperiled by calls for a Sunni Muslim boycott and a persistent insurgency that has roiled Sunni regions.
Under an interim constitution, the election was required to take place before the end of January, so the date itself was not unexpected.
But in recent weeks, attacks have intensified in cities such as Mosul and Ramadi, as well as Baghdad, where battles this weekend between rebels and U.S. troops backed by Apache helicopters sent a shudder through the capital. Key Sunni figures have said that unless the election is delayed until a semblance of calm returns, they will sit out the vote.
"There is no possibility under these circumstances for people to do a proper filling of forms and registration," said Ayad Samarrai, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose leader has called for a postponement of the vote.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has insisted that the rebellion will be crushed by U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies before voting takes place, and Shiite religious leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani have pushed hard for a vote to take place on time. Posters endorsing the election have gone up in Shiite neighborhoods, and even anti-American clerics such as Moqtada Sadr have stopped short of joining the largely Sunni boycott.
The election will choose a 275-member National Assembly. In turn, that body will select a new government to replace the current appointed leadership and will oversee the drafting of a constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005 to seat a permanent government.
Campaigning for the January election is scheduled to begin on Dec. 15, although Hussain Hindawi, chairman of the nine-member electoral commission, acknowledged that security was a problem.
Assassinations, raids and ambushes erupted across Iraq's Sunni region again Sunday, with a particularly bloody day reported in Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Fallujah.
The U.S. military said Marines at a checkpoint fired on a bus after its driver ignored warning shots and shouts to stop. Three civilians were killed and five wounded. Footage aired on Arab satellite channels showed the vehicle's windows blown out, with glass and blood on the floor. Area residents carried away the wounded.
Insurgents in Ramadi hijacked a convoy carrying Iraqi National Guard troops, killing nine guardsmen and wounding 17, the Reuters news agency reported. Other clashes erupted in the vicinity between U.S. troops and insurgents who have dramatically stepped up their activity there.
In the northern city of Mosul, where there has been a similar surge in violence, the bodies of at least two men killed by insurgents were left in a street Sunday, a day after U.S. troops discovered the corpses of nine Iraqi soldiers who had been shot in the back of the head. In Khalis, north of Baghdad, assailants killed the police chief and his driver.
In an Internet statement, a group affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi asserted that it had killed 17 Iraqi National Guardsmen from Kisik, about 30 miles west of Mosul.
Allawi's office announced that his elderly cousin, Ghazi Allawi, had been released by his kidnappers, nearly two weeks after he was abducted with his wife and daughter-in-law. The women were released on Nov. 15.
--------
HORRORS Clues on Hostages Emerge From Houses in Falluja
November 22, 2004
By ROBERT F. WORTH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/international/middleeast/22falluja.html?ei=5094&en=d524acec94fb5e3c&hp=&ex=1101186000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 21 - In one house hung a black banner with the words "One God and Jihad" and a distinctive yellow sun, terrifyingly familiar as the backdrop to videotaped beheadings by the group of that name. In another house there was a wire cage large enough to hold a human and a wall marked with Arabic writing and what appears to be a fingerprint in dried blood.
Before the doors to these houses in Falluja were thrown open to two reporters on Sunday, soldiers and intelligence officers had carried away other items from them, handcuffs, shackles, militant propaganda, bayonets, and knives - crusted with what looked like blood and resembling the ones used in the beheadings. A detailed photograph-catalog of the items was shown to the reporters.
American and Iraqi government officials have long said that Falluja was a center of the Iraqi insurgency and a depot where militants held hostages with impunity before the American-led invasion two weeks ago. A tour of the two houses on Sunday represented the first time that American journalists saw direct evidence of the places where the hostages may have been imprisoned and, in some cases, killed in videotaped executions.
Even so, there is no way to know for now exactly what happened here. The houses were discovered only a few days ago, and forensic investigators have not yet done DNA testing, analyzed the catalogued items that were removed, or compared this setting with the videos. So it cannot be said for certain that these were the last rooms that foreign or Iraqi hostages saw.
But both locations were found through Iraqi informants, one of them someone who said that he had been held hostage in the house with the black banner, American investigators said. They quoted the informant as saying he had heard the voices of at least three hostages in neighboring rooms, including one he believed to be that of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer decapitated in early October.
The houses are among almost 20 sites discovered during the past two weeks in Falluja where American and Iraqi military officers contend that atrocities were committed. Maj. Jim West, an intelligence officer with the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said the sites included houses where Western hostages appear to have been held and others where insurgents tortured or killed residents to help enforce their rule in the city, some of them basement rooms with bloody handprints on the wall.
Last week, Iraqi soldiers searching a house discovered what appeared to be a command center for militants associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is the most wanted insurgent in Iraq. In that house, the soldiers found what they said were believed to be letters between Mr. Zarqawi and some of his lieutenants, along with weapons, computers, bomb-making materials and medical supplies.
And there has been at least one discovery of a quite different kind. Near the house with the cage, soldiers searched a house that officials said contained a primitive chemical weapons lab. They said the lab had sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and other chemicals, along with indications that insurgents were trying to use them to make bombs.
It is not clear how the officials identified the chemicals or what kind of weapons the insurgents had been hoping to make. There were no reports of chemical weapons used in the battle for Falluja.
The two houses that had been filled with the paraphernalia of torture, though, provided the most graphic glimpse yet of what seem to have been horrific prisons.
The black banner was found inside a house in southeast Falluja, site of the worst fighting last week. In full, the yellow lettering on the banner read "The organization of One God and Jihad," the former name of the network run by Mr. Zarqawi.
The group, which has changed its name to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, is believed to be responsible for bombings, beheadings and ambushes that have left hundreds dead across Iraq. Eliminating Mr. Zarqawi's network was one of the goals of the American-led offensive in Falluja.
One of the houses, in a residential area strewn with rubble, contains two rooms where American military officials say they believe that hostages were kept, with metal handcuffs, plastic zip cuffs and shackles. A shackle had been attached to a rod in the bathroom, apparently to keep hostages chained, officials said.
When a reporter toured the house with Marine officers on Sunday, the handcuffs and shackles had been removed, but it was still strewn with the black masks and black tennis sneakers favored by the insurgents.
Underneath a staircase is an alcove where American officials believe that hostages were interrogated and tortured. Its walls are stained with a dark substance, with two large nails sticking out.
Investigators also found cellphones, computer disks, burned documents and cassette players in the house, as well as the bayonets and large knives, officials said. The other house is in a residential neighborhood closer to the center of the city. Inside it is a cage fashioned out of wire and metal about seven feet high, seven feet wide and four feet deep, set against a brick wall in a corner. Within the cage was a discarded I.V. bag, an empty bag of potato chips and a fluorescent light.
On Sunday, two Marine officers stood in front of the cage and held up a photograph of Mr. Bigley, who was videotaped in a similar cage before he was decapitated last month. One officer said the cages did not appear to match. Others who were present, though, said the evidence recovered earlier at least suggested that people had been kept in the cage.
In a windowless room nearby, there was a fingerprint on the wall, in what looked like dried blood. Near it was the word "hope," written on the wall in Arabic letters. Also on the wall were the words for "put," "kept," "plan" and "to pass on," in no intelligible order, according to an Army translator.
In another room, a piece of wire hung from the ceiling. Verses from the Koran were scrawled on walls in several places. Children's clothing, pictures and a child's pink bicycle were heaped into a corner, as though squatters had moved in and pushed aside the inhabitants' belongings.
Thin mattresses and frying pans with scraps of food in them were on the floor. By the window, covered with curtains fashioned from detergent sacks stitched together, was a box of onions, still fresh.
Two houses away was the makeshift chemical lab, where plastic bags of powder with Arabic labels sat on a shelf. Across the room were several rubber gloves and bottles of chemicals. A grenade sat upright on the table, its detonator removed. One plastic bag of pale powdery substance was labeled TNT. A faint chemical odor hung in the air.
Chief Warrant Officer Lee Fair of the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, said another room held evidence that someone had been mixing chemicals to make a "blood agent," a highly toxic compound. There were also blasting caps, apparently to spread the agent through explosives, he said.
"Anyone that knew what they were doing could put those things together and make something very dangerous," he said.
This article was reported by Robert F. Worth in Falluja and written by James Glanz in Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Powell Arrives for Talks On Palestinian Transition
By Robin Wright and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1933-2004Nov21.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 21 -- In a drive to jump-start the moribund peace process, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived here Sunday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders about steps to facilitate the Palestinian political transition after the death of Yasser Arafat.
Creating the right conditions for Jan. 9 presidential elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will involve dealing with some of the most contentious issues that have also blocked movement on the U.S.-orchestrated "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian peace. These include a Palestinian crackdown on violence and Israel's release of tax revenue so the Palestinian Authority can meet its payroll.
"I'm encouraging both sides to do everything they can to make sure this election comes off and that the maximum number of Palestinians have the opportunity to participate in the elections," Powell told reporters accompanying him from an economic summit in Chile to the Middle East. "Perhaps the things that we do, or that they do, will encourage a degree of cooperation to spread into other areas."
A senior Israeli official familiar with the negotiations said Israel is prepared to be open about redeployment of its security forces to allow elections, possibly including withdrawal from Palestinian cities, limiting military activities and removing roadblocks, as well as lifting travel restrictions.
"It's not a matter of pressure on Israel," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said in an interview. "It's in our national interest that the election succeeds. We're going to be more forthcoming than many people would expect."
The United States wants to provide $20 million in new aid, which Powell had hoped to announce on this trip, directly to the Palestinian Authority to help pay for elections. But because of congressional intervention, Powell must first press for more guarantees of accountability and oversight to ensure that the funds are not siphoned off by corrupt officials or end up in the hands of extremist groups, U.S. officials said.
"We have some ideas and we are examining what resources might be available," Powell said. The Bush administration now hopes to be able to announce a new aid commitment at an international donors conference next month in Norway, U.S. officials said.
Despite his plans to press Israel and the Palestinians to resume work on the road map for peace, Powell will not be able to assure the Palestinians that the deadline for a Palestinian state by the end of next year can be met.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said last week that the Palestinians want assurances that if they take the required steps, they will have a state within 13 months. "We'll tell him that the four years' time that was mentioned by President Bush to establish a Palestinian state will encourage the Israeli government to continue stealing our lands to build settlements and the wall," he told a Palestinian journalist, referring to the barrier Israel is building around and through the West Bank. "It is very dangerous."
But Powell told reporters en route to Jerusalem that the date for an independent state would depend on "progress and events," not the road map deadline.
"We'd all like to see a Palestinian state come into being as quickly as possible. But it is difficult to put any date on it. The end of 2005 was the date we had hoped for in 2002," Powell said.
In talks Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho, the Palestinians will also press Powell to help win the release of Marwan Barghouti, a charismatic Palestinian leader serving a life sentence after being convicted in connection with the deaths of several Israelis since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000. He has considered running for the Palestinian Authority presidency since Arafat's death, according to associates.
Powell told reporters he would "hear what others have to say" about Barghouti.
Israel has shown some flexibility on resuming talks, indicating that discussion of the road map could resume even if the Palestinians cannot rein in all extremists, as long as they show goodwill.
"Israel is ready to move forward," Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told the Associated Press.
--------
Powell Says Israel Will Ease Strictures for Palestinian Vote
November 22, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/international/middleeast/22cnd-mide.html?ei=5094&en=25b0730338232848&hp=&ex=1101186000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Nov. 22 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared today that Israel had promised to make it possible for Palestinians living in Jerusalem to participate in elections next January and to ease conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, so that Palestinians can more easily vote there as well.
In what is likely to be his final foray to the Middle East before leaving office, Mr. Powell also conferred with Palestinian leaders, praising them for their efforts to reform their government, work with the Israelis to plan for the elections and begin a process to draw militant groups into electoral politics and away from violence.
"I'm pleased with the level of coordination and cooperation that exists between the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority to make sure that those elections can be held," Mr. Powell said outside an elections district office in Jericho, where he heard a progress report on Palestinian efforts to get 1.7 million voters to the polls.
Later he said that this cooperation, building on Israeli-Palestinian coordination for the funeral of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat "is perhaps indicative of what can be achieved in the months ahead" as elections occur and Israel goes through with its planned withdrawal of settlers and armed forces from Gaza next year. Speaking still later on Television One in Israel, Mr. Powell said that "there is a new attitude" among Palestinian leaders "and we must take advantage of this new attitude."
Neither Mr. Powell nor Israeli leaders provided details on what steps Israel might take, but Israeli and American officials said they would include lifting checkpoints and road blocks so that Palestinians could vote and candidates could campaign, and setting up voting procedures in Jerusalem, which Israel regards as part of its sovereign territory.
Taken together, Mr. Powell's visit to Jerusalem and Jericho on a wet and blustery day, and the comments of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, offered the most dramatic indication of hope in nearly a year and a half that there was some prospect for improvement in the violent Palestinian-Israeli impasse.
The Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said the death of Mr. Arafat "represents an opportunity for real and positive change" and that "all sides must take this opportunity." Referring to the Palestinian elections, he said that "Israel will do everything in its power to ensure their smooth running."
In Jericho after meeting with Mr. Powell, Palestinian leaders were also hopeful but cautious. "We got promises, no more," said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, adding that the secretary "was positive in his responses to our demands and promised to support us and help us in achieving what we asked for."
He and other Palestinian leaders said they were asking for eased conditions in Palestinian areas, the release of Palestinian detainees held by Israel and reassurances that its network of roads, barriers and settlements in the West Bank do not signal a permanent occupation of the area.
For all these reservations, the last time there was any kind of optimism of this sort was in June 2003, after the Iraq invasion, when President Bush visited Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt and Aqaba in Jordan for meetings with Mr. Sharon, Arab leaders and with the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.
The goal was to get Mr. Abbas to wrest control of Palestinian security forces away from Mr. Arafat and rein in Palestinian attacks on Israelis. A few months later, Mr. Abbas resigned, charging that he had not gotten Mr. Arafat's backing or any help from Israel in lifting its siege in the West Bank, freeing prisoners or curbing settlements.
Some Bush administration officials now say that an opportunity was missed by a White House too preoccupied with Iraq and too concerned about pressuring Israel to get itself involved in the messy business of coaxing both sides to cooperate.
One senior official from that era, John Wolf, who served as the envoy to enact reciprocal steps by both sides, said recently that the administration failed to demand publicly that Israel and the Palestinians live up to their commitments as laid out in the plan known as the "road map" to establish a Palestinian state. Today, however, Mr. Powell was not particularly specific in his demands for either side, and administration officials accompanying him said there was no time to go into details.
"We discussed the fact that the Palestinians will need freedom of movement, and they will have to have access for candidates to move around for people to get to polling places," Mr. Powell said. "We didn't get into the specifics of the timing of actions that Israel might take."
On the sensitive matter of Jerusalem, which Israel has declared cannot be given over even in part to a new Palestinian state, Mr. Powell was more blunt, declaring that he expected the setting up of "modalities" for Palestinians to vote.
In 1996, he noted, a precedent was set when Israel let the Palestinians in Jerusalem go to post offices and in effect mail their "ballots" to the West Bank, so that technically Jerusalem's Palestinian areas were not regarded as a Palestinian constituency.
"Both sides," Secretary Powell said in Jericho, referring to the Israelis and the Palestinians, "believe that the model that was used in 1996 is a model that should be applicable to the current situation."
A senior Israeli official said, however, that "we haven't yet negotiated the specifics of a solution" to the problem of Jerusalem voting. "We have to find a mechanism we can all live with," he added.
A peripheral concern to the talks today was Mr. Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza, which the Bush administration hopes to support with financial assistance in tandem with Europeans and Arab countries. The secretary said that what he had heard about Palestinian reforms would "make a pretty good case" for Congressional approval of aid that aides say would amount to $20 million.
The United States faces what officials say will now be a two-stage process in which elections will occur and the Gaza withdrawal will take place as moderate Palestinians take charge. Then both sides will return to the process of other reciprocal steps aimed at establishing a Palestinian state.
European countries observing the increased tempo of American involvement have a slightly different approach. In return for financial assistance for the Palestinians, some want talks to speed right away to the "final status" of a Palestinian state, resolving up front the issues of Palestinian refugees, boundaries and Jerusalem.
Israel opposes entering into any such discussions until the Palestinians first demonstrate that they have not only stopped terrorism but also dismantled the arms and infrastructure of militant organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They won backing for that approach from Mr. Powell today.
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting for this article from Jerusalem.
-------- nato
An ascendant NATO?
November 22, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041121-105659-4015r.htm
As other multilateral institutions continue to be plagued by infighting and outmoded structures, NATO's leader is attempting to bolster the relevance of that strategic alliance. The alliance's secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has proposed a way for NATO to circumvent to some degree the potential political deadlocks involving its member countries.
"NATO is not and should not be only the executive agency ... implementing decisions taken elsewhere," Mr. de Hoop Scheffer told The Financial Times Nov. 16. "NATO has the full right and the need to be a player, not the key player, not playing the first violin, but a player in the political process," he added. Under such a structure, alliance actions would still be decided on by member countries, but NATO ambassadors could debate potential missions and how they could be carried out ahead of a directive from member governments to execute a plan. Such a role could energize the alliance at a critical time for U.S. and NATO interests. It would also complement NATO's rapid-reaction force. If the alliance can debate with some authority the how and why of a mission beforehand, troops could be sent to the field more quickly. Mr. de Hoop Scheffer also said that policy discussion among NATO ambassadors at the headquarters in Brussels would allow the alliance to better respond to future challenges, such as a NATO stabilization role in the Gaza Strip if Israel and the Palestinians were to request such a mission.
There is another advantage in broadening the role of NATO itself. The alliance could play an enhanced role in global counterterrorism efforts. Giving NATO some kind of political role would allow military collaboration to continue even as dialogue between countries flags.
In addition, multilateral organizations such as NATO need to begin moving towards making decisions based on majority consensus rather than unanimity. Such a structure would strengthen the alliance's ability to advance U.S. counterterror and other strategic interests. Giving NATO some political say could bolster the ability of its member countries to reach majority consensus on a range of issues.
There is a risk that NATO could become increasingly irrelevant as its founding purpose - to counter Soviet Communism - no longer applies and political deadlock paralyzes the alliance. Mr. de Hoop Scheffer is outlining a vibrant future for NATO which Washington should energetically back.
-------- spies
White House seeks study on whether to transfer CIA forces to Pentagon
The Associated Press
11/22/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-22-cia-paramilitaries_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House has requested that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon study whether the Defense Department should take over CIA paramilitary operations, as recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-acting CIA Director John McLaughlin rejected the idea - McLaughlin quite viscerally - when the commission issued its final report this summer. Bush's request indicates that the administration wants to give the issue closer study.
"The president asked that we look at this to understand and address the specifics of this issue," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday evening.
Both Whitman and a U.S. official, who also confirmed the study on the condition of anonymity, stressed that the work is being done collaboratively. The study is still in its early stages.
The review comes as Congress has reached an apparent stalemate over other sweeping recommendations from the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the creation of a new national intelligence director.
Within its 40-plus recommendations, the commission recommended the transfer of the CIA's paramilitary operations to the Defense Department. The commissioners said having two such organizations within the government to handle such operations was redundant.
Paramilitary operations can include a host of activities, including training rebel forces; destabilizing governments and organizations through violence; and directly attacking enemy targets and individuals. The operations can be handled by CIA paramilitary teams or units out of the Pentagon, such as the Green Berets or Delta Force.
Pentagon and intelligence leaders have said CIA paramilitaries and military special operations forces each have distinct capabilities, but work well together.
This summer, McLaughlin said he wouldn't accept the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation. He has since been replaced by CIA Director Porter Goss.
"I think we have a perfect marriage now of CIA and military capabilities. CIA brings to the mix agility and speed. Military brings lethality," McLaughlin said.
Rumsfeld, however, was initially less committal on the proposal, saying he is not sure the CIA's control over paramilitary operations is a problem that needs fixing.
Some nibbling away at the CIA's domain is already under way. Recent legislation would give the U.S. Special Operations Command up to $25 million to support "foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals" that help U.S. efforts against terrorists and other enemies. Such aid - which could mean cash, weapons or other assistance to often shadowy groups or figures - has traditionally been handled by the CIA.
Bush signed the measure into law last month.
-------- us
Rolling Back the Fog of War
Wartime data collection is getting more sophisticated.
Will it make a difference?
The Scientist
By Ricki Lewis
Nov. 22, 2004
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/nov/research_041122.html
The battlefield can be a laboratory for assessing response of the human body to stress. Although scenes may differ, from musket volleys to a shattering car bomb, effects to the body and psyche are similar. "Every war stimulates medical research. It is sad, but true," says Frank Freemon, a semiretired neurologist from Vanderbilt University who earned a PhD in history at age 54 and is an authority on the Civil War.1
As recently as the last Gulf War in 1990-1991, health effects of combat were assessed in fuzzy hindsight. That approach is changing, beginning with symptom chronicling among troops now in Iraq and Afghanistan. And future soldiers may wear biomonitoring outfits that will provide valuable new types of information based on real-time measurements.
"Tools embedded in soldiers' clothing and watch-like meters to monitor vital signs and exposures will allow us to know what an exposure is with much more certainty than in 1991, when we had to rely on soldiers' reports on what they think they might have seen," explains Charles C. Engel, director of the Department of Defense's deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and assistant chair of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University.
SURVEILLANCE AND MONITORING EVOLVE Medical and scientific knowledge both arise from war and influence it. Recognition of the danger of sepsis and importance of public health measures halved the death rate from infection between the American Civil War and World War I, although infectious disease remains challenging (see box, at bottom). Antibiotics slashed the risk further. And continuing analysis of health problems in Gulf War veterans is revealing potential dangers in current conflicts.
Information technology distinguishes what we are learning from war today compared to yesterday. "When Vietnam ended, we hadn't entered the automated age yet, and in the Gulf War we were just into it. We were not prepared for the need to have automated baseline health data on all troops," says Engel. In 1991, with the world interconnecting, the obsolescence of paper military records suddenly loomed. "Before we go off to war we need to have ways to automate databases on the health experience of each serviceperson deployed and follow up after they return to see how their health changes. We had to develop and implement baseline and longitudinal health data collection in military troops," he adds. Major efforts are underway now in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Record keeping also applies to the environment, as evidenced by a disaster in the Gulf War, with air so foul that matching symptom to pollutant was nearly impossible. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the darkness following the "shock-and-awe" attack echoed conditions in the first Gulf War, but with more building materials than burning oil. As the dust settled, particulates and sand emerged as the biggest threat to respiratory health, as in Afghanistan.2 Yet the air quality problem in both places is eclipsed by contaminated food and water supplies and temperature extremes.
For tomorrow's soldier, information such as reported symptoms and environmental conditions will be wed to output from the US Army's Warfighter Physiological Status Monitoring (WPSM) system. This wearable, lightweight suite of sensors, currently being tested in a variety of settings, will send physiological data to commanders and medics, communicating danger instantaneously. Devices track skin and core temperature, heart and respiratory rate, sleep, cognitive state, hydration, body orientation, and wartime acoustics, such as bullet impact. "When we optimize the science, we will field-test it for user acceptance. If those assurances are good, we will go into the next generation of development. But it will still be several years" before it is ready for the battlefield, explains Christopher Joyce, technology transfer and marketing specialist at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass.
Data from the WPSM project are generating predictive models that will guide implementation.3 For example, hydration data for males and females are documented for mountain climbing, arctic field training, and reconnaissance and surveillance missions. Heart rate and temperature changes in response to heat come from studies at Fort Benning, Ga. A 58-day stint at Army Ranger School in the desert, mountains, and swamps of the southeast United States tracked effects of extreme sleep deprivation.
FOLLOWING PTSD Careful monitoring can help identify soldiers at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which manifests at least a month following a triggering event. Recognition of PTSD came gradually. "During the Civil War it was seen but didn't have a name, other than 'malingering.' Guys never came back to themselves after the war," says Freemon. Longer engagements made PTSD more common. "A soldier would be hunkered down in a trench, hearing explosions day after day, with little hope. After 30 days new guys would come in. But nobody put it together until after World War I," Freemon adds, when it was dubbed "battle shock." By World War II it had become "battle fatigue," then later "post-Vietnam syndrome" before PTSD.
Understanding PTSD means understanding its roots, and that's where biomonitoring may reveal the precipitating conditions. "Vietnam was a milestone. No nation had rigorously conducted an epidemiological survey of males and females in the theater," says Matthew Friedman, executive director of the National Center for PTSD and professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. But scrutiny was delayed. "It was done in the mid-1980s, but the conflict raged in the 1960s and 1970s. For the first Gulf War, PTSD research began five years later," he adds.
Now researchers aren't waiting. The US military has already questioned 2,530 soldiers in Iraq and 3,671 in Afghanistan about PTSD symptoms pre- and postdeployment.4 The most telling finding, according to Friedman, is that only 23% to 40% of those affected sought help, fearing stigmatization. Since in the past symptoms typically peaked two years postengagement, current figures may be an underestimate.
QUESTIONS ABOUT INFERTILITY Few questions of fertility surrounded the return of WWII veterans, who promptly seeded a baby boom. But in the wake of the Vietnam War, anecdotal reports of a link between exposures and infertility contradicted conclusions from the National Academy of Sciences. "Since 1975 I've seen hundreds of patients who thought they were infertile because of exposures in Vietnam, either to Agent Orange or sustained trauma, stepping on a mine, or an illness," relates Cappy Rothman, medical director of the California Cryobank in Los Angeles. And so in 1990 and 1991, Rothman offered soldiers discounted sperm storage. "Not many guys availed themselves of the offer," he recalls.
But this year, announcement of a discount brought hundreds of requests, and prompted other cryobanks to follow. The reasons: fear of chemical and biological weapons and a link, after all, between infertility and exposures in the Gulf.5
Noreen Maconochie, senior lecturer in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues queried 10,465 Gulf War veterans trying to conceive and 7,376 matched controls in the military but not the Gulf.3 Results revealed more infertility and delayed conceptions for the vets. "We collected data on a number of self-reported exposures, including petrochemicals, pesticides, depleted uranium, as well as information on multiple vaccinations and pyridostigmine bromide, an anti-nerve gas agent," says Maconochie. In the future, biomonitoring data teamed with information from particulate monitoring devices and biosensors for biological weapons will pinpoint threats to fertility.
ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMES Soldiers in Iraq describe the punishing heat; those in Afghanistan, the treacherous and frigid mountains. US Army researchers at the Natick facility are listening. "We are trying to develop a body of scientific knowledge so we have a basis for medical and operational guidelines in environmental extremes," says Michael Sawka, chief of the thermal, mountain, and medicine division. For example, effects of extreme temperature on ion-channel functioning are being assessed in human cortical neurons and in mini-swine. Research using hypobaric chambers identifies susceptibility to mountain sickness.
Modern research into adaptation to extreme environments began at the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory in 1927. "After World War I we realized there were military problems, such as working in high-altitude aircraft or in extreme hot and cold, and we needed experts. After World War II it was discontinued," explains Sawka. The field, which had morphed into exercise physiology, relocated to university laboratories and the Department of Defense. But it was a stretch. "A soldier fighting is not as simple a situation as an athlete running a marathon. The athlete is in good condition and knows the outcome. The soldier is exposed to the environment not knowing for how long, with minimal food and water. Soldiers suffer tremendous sleep deprivation, fear, hard work, and exposure to heat and/or cold," he adds.
The WPSM project is proceeding with these extremes in mind. A "sleep watch, for example, tracks wrist movements that foretell stage of awareness. A swallowed 3-ounce, jellybean-shaped pill continuously transmits core body temperature readings, courtesy of the space program. And the WPSM recently added to its evolving ensemble the LifeShirt, from Ventura-based VivoMetrics, already used in exercise physiology studies. "It weighs 8 ounces, is machine washable, and feels like Lycra," says Elizabeth Gravatte, director of marketing. Embedded wires detect heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, carbon dioxide level, and coughing.
Just as WWII-era findings found their way to athletics and health care, so too will the fruits of biomonitoring in the battlefield yield valuable information on physiology under stress, even if it seems as if a future soldier won't be able to belch without setting off alerts miles away. But the incoming data may make the combat theater a safer place. Sums up Friedman, "Knowing what to do provides a better buffer against the debilitating effects of traumatic exposures."
Ricki Lewis (rlewis@the-scientist.com)
References
1. F. Freemon, Gangrene and Glory, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
2. U.S. Army "Guide to staying healthy," chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/deployment/shg.asp
3. www.usariem.army.mil/wpsm/index.html
4. C.W. Hoge et al., "Combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, mental health problems, and barriers to care," N Engl J Med, 351:13-22, July 1, 2004.
5. N. Maconochie et al., "Infertility among male UK veterans of the 1990-1 Gulf war: Reproductive cohort study," Brit Med J, 329:196-201, July 24, 2004.
INFECTION: AN ONGOING CHALLENGE
Infection may be the greatest weapon of mass destruction. In 1519, six hundred Spaniards unintentionally brought smallpox to the Aztecs in Mexico. The disease helped in decimating a population of 20 million down to 1.6 million. The invisible weapon must have seemed to target the natives, since the Europeans, long exposed to the virus through livestock, were immune. Globalization has continued to fuel infection. Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, for example, spread from prostitutes in Vietnam to US servicemen and beyond.
Wartime infection works two ways: Invaders introduce pathogens and succumb to unfamiliar ones. "A soldier with hepatitis E moves to a new zone. If he doesn't observe strict hygiene practices or the new zone has poor sanitation facilities, the infection can be transmitted where it was nonexistent," explains Michelle Gayer, acting program leader for communicable diseases in complex emergencies at the World Health Organization. In contrast, says Gayer, "A soldier arriving in a malaria-endemic region who has not previously lived there is prone to contracting severe forms. Adults from the community are much less likely to develop severe malaria due to the buildup of immunity over time."
Chronic effects of infection linger long after troops depart. Endemic conditions appear and epidemics rage out of control where infrastructure has collapsed, Gayer says. Wonder drugs are only part of the equation in infectious disease control.
1860-1865 Civil War
Infection/combat deaths = 2:1 Problems: Malaria, yellow fever, scurvy, smallpox, typhoid, dysentery Medical Advances: Management of mass casualties, anesthesia, very limited pharmacopeia
1866 -- Italian monk Montegazza uttered idea for cryobanks: "A man dying on a battlefield may beget a legal heir with his semen frozen and stored at home."
1867 -- Joseph Lister promotes carbolic acid as antiseptic
1900 -- Karl Landsteiner lays groundwork for blood transfusions
1902 -- United States begins manufacturing vaccines
1914-1918 WWI Infection/combat deaths = 1:1 Medical Advances: Triage, prosthetics, plastic surgery, public health, antisepsis medicines, vaccines
1930s Sulfa drugs
1939-1945 WWII
Infection/combat deaths = <1:1 Medical Advances: Improved sanitation, better vaccines, whole-blood transfusions
1949-1953 Korean War
Medical Advances: Helicopter evacuation, refined triage, cold-weather effects studied, plasma- volume expanders, mobile army surgical hospitals (MASH)
1960s-1975 Vietnam
Problems: Quinine-resistant malaria
Medical Advances: Recognition of "biological acclimatization" period of 6 weeks, trauma care in field, evacuation refined
1990-1991 Gulf War (Desert Storm) Problems: Norwalk virus, Shigella, malaria, leishmaniasis (transmitted by sand flies), pollutants, irritants, pesticides, Gulf War syndrome (chronic fatigue, PTSD, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities), inhibited red fuming nitric acid from scud missiles, uranium from munitions, smoke from burning oil fields, sarin. Medical Advances: Studies on multiple chemical sensitivities
2003-? The War in Iraq Problems: "Uxo" (unexploded ordnance), suicide bombings, beheadings on the Internet, blowing sand
Medical Advances: Automated real-time biomonitoring and health records, one-handed tourniquet, bandages with built-in clotting factors or chitosan gel
--------
Institute Looks at Military Families
Purdue Research Used To Aid Reenlistment
By Kimberly Hefling
Associated Press
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2442-2004Nov21.html
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The military, so the saying goes, enlists a soldier but reenlists a family. Getting families to re-up in time of war is a daunting task the Defense Department hopes will be made easier with research by experts at Purdue University.
"Today, more than ever, we don't go to war without the support of our families," said Lt. Col. Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman.
Purdue's Military Family Research Institute was formed five years ago with an $8 million Pentagon grant to study soldiers and their families, with the research being used by policymakers to retain soldiers in the service.
From better housing to financial incentives to postwar counseling, ways have to be found to keep soldiers and families happy if troop strength is to be maintained in an all-volunteer military, Richard said.
When the research started, the project focused on military families in peacetime. The fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq changed that focus.
"They're very concerned about redeployment," said Shelley MacDermid, co-director of the institute. "How do you bring people home and turn them around to go again?"
The researchers have created an index that measures commitment among soldiers and their spouses and tracks potential attrition problems. They also helped the Defense Department develop a "social compact" that links quality-of-life programs and the military's readiness.
Now, the institute is looking at the help soldiers get when they come home. A Purdue team traveled to Germany this year to interview soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, which lost at least 40 soldiers during the last three months of a 15-month deployment.
Deborah Olson of West Lafayette is participating in one study examining how soldiers from the Lafayette-based 209th Quartermaster Company have adjusted since returning home from Iraq in April.
Her husband, Sgt. David Olson, spent a year with the close-knit Army Reserve unit, which lost a member in a roadside bombing attack.
"Even my close friends couldn't imagine what it would be like to go through that," said Olson, who has two young daughters.
How the spouse views the military and the way the soldier is treated by it can determine whether the soldier reenlists, MacDermid said.
"Spouses are not just an appendage to the member," she said. "The spouse makes his or her own decision about whether or not the family should stay in the military."
Among other institute projects is an assessment of how military life affects children. Researchers recently began working with 1,000 families to find ways to ease the transition for children who move frequently.
The assessment is part of a larger project on how moving -- a mainstay of military life -- affects families. The Defense Department expects to issue a report to military leaders and school districts.
The institute was created specifically from the Pentagon grant after Purdue submitted a proposal and won the contract. Besides conducting research, the institute serves as a clearinghouse for other facilities studying military families.
MacDermid said the scope of the institute's work can be overwhelming.
"How do you try to address the needs of 3 million members and their families, 24-7, all over the planet?" she said. "It makes you just want to cover your head sometimes."
-------- war crimes
Saddam lawyers consider suing US for war crimes
(Reuters)
November 22, 2004
http://in.news.yahoo.com/041122/137/2i1ae.html
AMMAN - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's lawyers are considering legal action against the United States for war crimes in Iraq, their spokesman said on Monday.
"The defence team is studying the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the U.S. and its administration at the International Court of Justice for indefinite war crimes that it committed against Iraq and the Iraqis," a statement from spokesman Ziad al Khasawneh said.
It accused the United States of mass killings and of violating the Geneva Convention, and cited the actions of U.S. soldiers and their allies in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities.
Khasawneh, a member of Saddam's Jordan-based defence team, said the international court did not accept cases filed by individuals. The team was therefore trying to file a case through members of the former Iraqi government.
"We continue to stress that Saddam is the legitimate president of Iraq and his government is the only government that represents Iraqis, thus any member of this regime is able to file the suit," he told Reuters.
He said the defence team was in touch with some members of the previous regime, but did not name them or confirm their willingness to be involved.
The team has expressed frustration on several occasions that none of Saddam's lawyers had so far been allowed to see him. They have previously threatened legal action against the U.S. administration for that.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Medicinal pot before high court
November 22, 2004
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041122-122653-3824r.htm
The Supreme Court next week will hear the case of an ailing woman's battle with the federal government over her possessing marijuana to treat herself, in a decision that could determine the direction of the medicinal pot movement.
The case, to be heard Nov. 29, stems from the 2002 seizure by federal agents of marijuana plants grown by a California woman who claimed the weed was for medicinal purposes, which is legal under state law.
Diana Monson, a patient who was prescribed the marijuana to alleviate back-spasm pain, and another medicinal patient, Angel McClary Raich, sued the federal government. They claimed their growing and use of the drug was not covered under the federal Controlled Substances Act.
The two won a preliminary injunction last year in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found their cultivation and use of marijuana to be noncommercial and outside federal jurisdiction.
As voters in more states have approved measures to allow marijuana cultivation and use for medicinal purposes, the federal government has moved to arrest people engaging in that activity. Ten states have medicinal-marijuana provisions. Montana most recently joined the list with voter approval earlier this month.
"A decision that upholds the Ninth Circuit Court would allow individuals to grow their own cannabis in states that allow it," said Randy Barnett, a professor of constitutional law at the Boston University School of Law, who will argue the case for Miss Raich and Miss Monson.
"But more than that, this case is about federalism and that idea that this application of the Controlled Substances Act is an overreach of the federal government," Mr. Barnett said. "The state has authorized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. I am representing two clients who are suffering. This is not a case connected to the war on drugs, because my clients are not taking part in trafficking or using recreational drugs."
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the federal government argues that its actions were true to the law, saying that "Congress's conclusions that the local manufacture, distribution, and possession of drugs, including marijuana, are significantly linked to the commerce in drugs regulated under the statute and that comprehensive regulation of that local activity is essential to effectuate control of the interstate drug market."
Further, it added: "The [Controlled Substances Act] constitutionally regulates the commercial market in marijuana, which is international and interstate in scope."
A spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which sets drug policy for the administration, declined to comment on the pending case.
In a report published this month, though, the office said movements to legalize marijuana for medicinal use "are led not by medical professionals or patients-rights groups, but by pro-drug donors and organizations in a cynical attempt to exploit the suffering of sick people."
The most outspoken supporters of medicinal marijuana are well-organized pro-pot lobbies, including the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project.
"There is simply no constituency in this country for arresting and jailing people with cancer, AIDS, [multiple sclerosis] or other illnesses who find relief from medical marijuana," said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "So, whatever the Supreme Court does, the Bush administration is on the losing side of history."
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Passage of Intelligence Bill Called Doubtful
Lawmakers Say Bush, Cheney Need to Lobby
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2475-2004Nov21.html
Key Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and House said yesterday that it is doubtful that Congress will pass the intelligence reform bill when members return for two days in December, but some said success depends on lobbying by President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Bush said last evening during a news conference in Santiago, Chile, that he was "disappointed that the bill didn't pass."
"I thought it was going to pass up until the last minute," he said. "So I look forward to going back to Washington to work with the interested parties to get it passed.
"I saw the speaker today said that the matter wasn't complete, it wasn't over, it wasn't final, that we have a chance to get a bill. And therefore, when I get home, I'm looking forward to working it," he said.
The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), said that more than some House Republicans opposed a compromise measure that was generated by recommendations made in July by the Sept. 11 commission.
"There's been a lot of opposition to this from the first," Roberts said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some of it is from the Pentagon. Some of it, quite frankly, is from the White House, despite what the president has said." As a result, he added, "I just don't see it [being approved] as of December 6."
The compromise measure was worked out late Friday among House and Senate negotiators who had been deadlocked over the past month trying to reconcile separate reform bills passed by the House and Senate in early October. The proposed bill created a director of national intelligence who would coordinate and oversee the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community and have budgetary authority over spending.
The proposed legislation also created a counterterrorism center and amended immigration laws to fight terrorism, provisions added by House Republicans that never were the subject of Senate hearings.
On Saturday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) decided to pull the bill from floor consideration after two key committee chairmen who had participated in the negotiations voiced their opposition to the compromise at a conference of House Republicans.
Roberts pointed out yesterday that Bush had signed executive orders in August that put in place two of the main intelligence reforms. "The good news," he said, "is that the president has provided authority to the CIA director that sort of tracks what we would like to do -- we'd like to do more -- and also set up the national counterterrorism center."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) yesterday took a more optimistic tone about the possibility the measure could be revived next month, saying, "We're going to work over the next two weeks."
But he added, "For us to do the bill in early December it will take significant involvement by the president and the vice president and the White House." Even then, Frist said, he could not guarantee there would be a vote next month. "If it's not ready then, we'll come back in January," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), during an appearance on ABC's "This Week," said, "The bill may be on life supports, but I think it's still breathing." He said he based his viewpoints on Bush and Cheney taking a more active role. "The president's going to come back from Chile, and I think work on those guys," McConnell said.
"We can come back and do this on December 6," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, who had changed his mind since Saturday about the possibility of passing the bill. "I am now back on board and fully engaged."
Frist, citing questions raised by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) about the bill's potential interference with intelligence reaching the combat military, said, "There is not general agreement between the Pentagon and members of the White House, and hopefully that can be resolved over the next 10 days."
Roberts, on the other hand, said Hunter's objection to the bill represented "a false claim as far as I am concerned." Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee and one of four key negotiators, said the language that Hunter opposed, "making sure that the chain of command would not be interfered with, was drafted by the counsel to the vice president of the United States."
Appearing on Fox, Harman added that some House Republicans "never wanted a bill, they never will want a bill, and it was unfortunate that Speaker Hastert couldn't go around them." Harman, along with Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, said there is little chance an agreement will come in time for an early December vote.
Rockefeller, on ABC, pointed out that Hunter and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a proponent of controversial immigration proposals in the bill, received calls from Bush or Cheney "and still tried to kill the bill. . . . I think the implication of that is not a good one for Congress."
Staff writers Dana Priest and Mike Allen, traveling with the president in Chile, contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Says He'll Seek to Revive Intelligence Bill House Blocked
November 22, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/politics/22panel.html?ei=5094&en=e46a2fa604374154&hp=&ex=1101186000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - President Bush vowed Sunday to work with Congress to revive a bill to enact major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, as Republican lawmakers struggled to explain why influential House Republicans blocked the bill's passage despite the president's personal last-minute lobbying.
"When I get home, I look forward to getting it done," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Santiago, Chile, where he was attending a Pacific Rim economic summit meeting. "I was disappointed that the bill didn't pass. I thought it was going to pass up to the last minute."
Mr. Bush said he and Vice President Dick Cheney had talked "with key members of the House" to encourage support for the bill, which would create the post of national intelligence director to oversee the Central Intelligence Agency and the government's other spy agencies.
"It was clear that I wanted the bill passed," the president said. He declined to respond directly to a question about whether reports of opposition by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had contributed to the bill's collapse not quite three weeks after Mr. Bush won a second term and his party expanded its control over Congress.
Mr. Bush spoke on a day when Congressional leaders traded accusations and offered new details and interpretations about what doomed the legislation on Capitol Hill on Saturday.
After a month's stalemate, House and Senate negotiators announced that morning that they had finally produced compromise legislation that Congress could vote on before adjourning for the year. But just hours later, J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, refused to allow a vote on the measure, bowing to the will of two powerful committee leaders who had been personally lobbied by the president and vice president to allow the bill to go forward.
On Sunday, one of those committee leaders, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, suggested that he was unlikely to compromise further even as Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and other Republican lawmakers held out hope of making progress on the legislation during the traditional Congressional recess in November and December.
In tense hours of discussion on Saturday, a core group of conservative House Republicans continued to warn that the bill would dangerously dilute the authority of the Pentagon on intelligence issues, despite the addition of language drafted by Mr. Cheney's legal counsel that explicitly barred a national intelligence director from interfering in the military chain of command.
Others argued that the bill did not do enough to crack down on illegal immigration, while some lawmakers grumbled about the Senate generally trying to run roughshod over the House.
The bill had been endorsed enthusiastically by leaders of the Sept. 11 commission, whose final report last summer set off a frenzy of action in Congress and the White House to reorganize the intelligence community. If the bill had made it to the House floor, it most likely would have passed despite the objections of many in the Republican ranks. It faced no similar opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Spokesmen for the Pentagon and Mr. Rumsfeld were pointed Sunday in responding to speculation that the defense secretary had played a role in the bill's collapse. Earlier this year Mr. Rumsfeld publicly expressed skepticism about provisions that would require the Pentagon to cede much of its budget and personnel control over intelligence issues to a national intelligence director.
In an interview Sunday, Larry Di Rita, Mr. Rumsfeld's chief spokesman, said: "To place the failure of concluding that very complicated matter on one person is not only wrong, but immensely unfair. The secretary expressed strong support for the president's objectives. These are complicated matters. The fact that it didn't come together should not be blamed on one individual.''
In other interviews Sunday, proponents of the compromise bill worked out Friday night by a House-Senate conference committee insisted that the bill did nothing to interfere with the transfer of tactical battlefield intelligence within the Pentagon and that House Republicans and their Pentagon allies seemed more interested in preserving their bureaucratic turf on intelligence issues.
"This idea that somehow the Pentagon would be hurt by this, this is a canard," said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and a member of the conference committee. "I am a former marine, all right?" Mr. Roberts said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." "No bill that I have ever seen, even the one that I introduced that went even further than this, had anything to do with doing any harm to tactical intelligence in regards to that war fighter in the field."
Whatever the hopes of Republican leaders, Mr. Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said chances for a successful compromise had faded in light of the stinging public criticism of House Republicans by Republicans in the Senate.
"There was no respect for our position," he said, referring to the "condescending attitude of the Senate on the immigration and law enforcement provisions" on which House Republicans had insisted. Those provisions were eventually stricken from the compromise bill reached Friday.
Members of the House-Senate conference committee had been in negotiations since last month to reconcile very different House and Senate bills that were passed in response to the findings of the Sept. 11 commission.
While both bills created the position of national intelligence director, the panel's central recommendation, the bipartisan Senate bill provided the intelligence director with far more sweeping budgetary and personnel powers. The Senate bill was endorsed by the Sept. 11 commission.
The House bill, which was prepared by the House Republican leadership with little input from House Democrats, included a variety of provisions to expand the powers of law enforcement and immigration agencies to deal with terrorist suspects and illegal immigrants.
Negotiations on the conference committee had been reported close to collapse since early in the talks last month. And on Friday, with only a day to go before the House and Senate were to adjourn before Thanksgiving, the collapse appeared final.
Mr. Sensenbrenner and another powerful Republican on the conference committee, Duncan Hunter of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, seemed determined to oppose the bill and were believed to be close to persuading other Republican negotiators to join them.
Senate negotiators from both parties and House Democrats said they had given up days earlier on trying to persuade Mr. Hunter, a staunch advocate for the interests of the Pentagon, to go along with the bill, even after they had agreed to add language barring a national intelligence director from interfering in the military chain of command. Lawmakers said the provision had been drafted by David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney's legal counsel.
Mr. Bush intervened to try to rescue the talks about 7 p.m. Friday, when he telephoned Mr. Sensenbrenner from aboard Air Force One, en route to Chile, with a plea that Mr. Sensenbrenner compromise and drop his insistence that the bill contain a provision banning the issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Mr. Sensenbrenner had long championed the idea, which he depicted as a means of blocking terrorists from obtaining official government identification; several of the Sept. 11 hijackers had been issued driver's licenses. But it was opposed by White House officials and many lawmakers from both parties as unnecessary and an infringement on the rights of state governments.
"What the president was stressing to me was that he would like to get this issue off the table because the Congressional agenda and the presidential agenda were going to be very ambitious" next year, Mr. Sensenbrenner said of Mr. Bush's request for quick passage of an intelligence bill. "I didn't want to give up on the driver's license provision," he said. "But out of respect for him, if he asked me to, I said I would give up on it."
But in dropping the driver's license provision, Mr. Sensenbrenner told the other negotiators that he wanted to reintroduce other law enforcement and immigration provisions, including a measure that would give new discretion to immigration officials in deciding whether to grant political asylum to immigrants. The Senate negotiators and House Democrats said the new provisions, which have been strongly opposed by civil liberties groups, were equally unacceptable.
The chairman of the conference committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, decided to take a risk, colleagues said. He would forward the compromise bill - without Mr. Sensenbrenner's provisions and with the almost certain opposition of Mr. Hunter - to the House Republican leadership, urging them to allow a floor vote in the House.
To the delight of the Senate negotiators and House Democrats, Mr. Hastert decided on Saturday to allow a vote, despite the protests of the chairmen of two of the most powerful committees in the House.
Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Hastert had never been a committed advocate of either the bill or of the Sept. 11 commission. But lawmakers said the speaker and his inner circle, who usually exert a tight control on the Republican rank and file, had come to the conclusion that the political risks of not enacting changes called for by the panel were too great in the event of another terrorist attack.
Mr. Hastert's plans came undone when Republicans huddled for a private meeting in a room in the depths of the Capitol around noon on Saturday, where Mr. Hastert sought to sell the bill. He allowed Mr. Hunter to address his colleagues, and it was Mr. Hunter who carried the day by arguing that the bill would undermine American troops in the battlefield by interfering with the military chain of command and the transfer of intelligence.
"Duncan's concern was that the proposed reform could endanger our troops in the field who use real-time intelligence to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mr. Hastert said in explaining why he decided to block a final vote and to revive negotiations on the bill. "We must make every precaution to ensure that when we reform our intelligence agencies, we do it in a way that protects our troops and those people who protect our citizens."
Carl Hulse and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting for this article.
-------- POLITICS
Republican Defiance on Intelligence Bill Is Surprising. Or Is It?
November 22, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/politics/22assess.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - In the afterglow of his re-election, President Bush declared that he had ''earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." But the capital that he put on the line was not enough this weekend, when recalcitrant House conservatives refused to back an intelligence bill for which he had personally lobbied.
The compromise bill unraveled when two influential Republican House committee chairmen, Representatives Duncan Hunter of California and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, would not support it. At a time when Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, the outcome raises questions about how much power the president has on Capitol Hill and how he intends to exert it in a second term.
Did Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who called both chairmen in an attempt to turn them around, press as hard for the measure as they led the public to believe? Or are Mr. Hunter and Mr. Sensenbrenner so powerful that they can embarrass Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois - who negotiated the bill, then declined to bring it up for a vote when the chairmen balked - and thwart the will of the president?
"I don't think it was only House Republicans," Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the Intelligence Committee, told Fox News on Sunday. Mr. Roberts added: "There's been a lot of opposition to this from the first. Some of it is turf, you know, quite frankly. Some of it is from the Pentagon. Some of it, quite frankly, is from the White House, despite what the president has said."
Mr. Bush, speaking at a news conference in Chile, said he was disappointed that the bill did not pass, adding, "When I get home, I look forward to getting it done.''
Members of both parties, and independent analysts, said Sunday that they had no doubt Congress would have passed the measure had President Bush flexed his muscle, as he did last year for Medicare prescription drug legislation that passed by a narrow margin over conservatives' objections. The intelligence bill had bipartisan support in the Senate.
In the House, the leadership probably could have cobbled together a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to muster the 218 votes necessary for passage.
"I am convinced that had the speaker brought the bill to the floor, it would have passed," Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chief author of the measure, said in an interview on Sunday. "That's what's so frustrating. Here we have a bill that's been endorsed by the White House, by the 9/11 commission, by the 9/11 family groups, by the speaker of the House, and we can't get a vote."
But Mr. Hastert did not want to split his caucus and did not want the bill to pass with less than ''a majority of the majority," said his spokesman, John Feehery. "What good is it to pass something," Mr. Feehery said, "where most of our members don't like it?"
Some say there was no political impetus to pass the bill after the election because lawmakers did not hear complaints about it from their constituents as they did in 2002 when Congress failed to pass a measure creating the Department of Homeland Security.
At the same time, the bill came under criticism from Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose spokesman said Sunday that he did not work against the bill, and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wrote a letter to House Republican leaders contradicting the White House's stance on the bill. Mr. Rumsfeld, however, was widely reported to have criticized the idea of a national intelligence director during a classified briefing in September.
On Sunday, some Democrats wondered aloud if the Pentagon's back-channel lobbying had the tacit approval of the president.
"I find it very hard to believe that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense would do all of that in contravention of the commander in chief's wishes," said one House negotiator, Representative Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in an interview on Sunday. Mr. Bush, Mr. Menendez said, "has the dirty work being done by the Pentagon people, using Duncan Hunter."
The Pentagon criticism led Mr. Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to complain that the bill would endanger troops in Iraq. Mr. Sensenbrenner, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was demanding immigration-related provisions that were strongly favored by conservatives. When House Republicans lined up behind the chairmen at a caucus meeting on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Hastert pulled the plug on the bill.
Mr. Feehery characterized it as an act of political courage, but critics said it was a signal that Mr. Hastert could not control his own caucus.
"The problem was that some members of the House Republican majority dug in, they never wanted a bill, they never will want a bill, and it was unfortunate that Speaker Hastert couldn't go around them," Representative Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on Fox News.
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said it was clear that Mr. Bush did not want to take on the conservatives.
"He clearly decided to use enough of his clout to make sure that they got a bill together," Mr. Ornstein said. "But in the end, when it was a game of chicken between some of these powerful chairs and the conservatives on one side, and the president and the speaker on the other side, the president basically decided to blink."
At the same time, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who spent last week immersed in an ethics controversy, was uncharacteristically quiet about the bill. A spokesman for Mr. DeLay, Stuart Roy, said the leader "supported the speaker in his attempts to make America safer from terrorism."
And one person who attended the House caucus meeting on Saturday said Mr. DeLay spoke up for the bill, saying he thought Republicans should go ahead with it.
Had Mr. DeLay made a more powerful push, he might have been able to turn Mr. Sensenbrenner and Mr. Hunter around. But after Republican victories in Congressional races, Mr. Sensenbrenner said, committee chairmen are now more willing to take on their leaders. "We've got the expertise on these issues," he said.
On Sunday, lawmakers remained hopeful that the impasse could be resolved. Speaker Hastert and Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, decided against formal adjournment, to leave open the possibility that lawmakers could return in early December and pass the intelligence measure.
The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Sunday that the bill ''remains a high priority for the president."
The question now is whether Mr. Bush will spend some of his hard-earned political capital. "For us to do the bill in early December, it will take significant involvement by the president and the vice president," Dr. Frist said on the CBS program "Face the Nation.'' "It will take real focus on their part."
-------- propaganda wars
Read the WSJ, If You Can Stand It
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/read-wsj.html
Does anyone know when the Wall Street Journal became the capitalist equivalent of a Stalinist propaganda machine? I can vaguely recall reading some items on that editorial page that made some sense, though one wonders when that was.
You see, the page purports to comment on the Iraqi War, and it probably even has some readers. Whether or not those readers have read anything aside from the Journal is hard to say. If they had, one can imagine that the editorial offices are daily bombarded with protests against its brazen and even immoral ranting on behalf of the warfare state.
More likely, the people who read those editorials don't read anything else, are glad to believe that the US military is the god of liberty marching on the planet, and frankly don't care anything about information that contradicts that. Most serious people don't even look at it for anything other than discovering what the most extreme elements of the regime want us to think.
As a dedicated advocate of capitalism and free markets - causes the WSJ purports to support - I can only wince when I read the editorials these people write. Their writers are probably in their twenties, and it is impossible to know whether they write from total ignorance, and whether that ignorance is willing or just a condition, or whether they thrill to dish out the lies of which only shills are capable.
But rather than go on like this, let us fisk the editorial that appeared on November 17, 2004, called "Victory in Fallujah."
Whoops, can't even get past the title.
Victory? The Washington Post began a story the other day as follows:
Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe.
The aluminum shutters of shops on the main highway through town have been transformed by the force of war into mangled accordion shapes, flat, sharp, jarring slices of metal that no longer obscure the stacks of silver pots, the plastic-wrapped office furniture, the rolls of carpet. These things would be for sale, except there are no traders, no customers, hardly any people at all in the center of Fallujah.
U.S. Marines searching for insurgents in the Jolan neighborhood in the northwestern side of the city on Monday did see two elderly men emerge from a pile of rock. The men, who looked too old to fight, pointed to their stomachs. They were hungry. They were given brown, plastic pouches of military rations and disappeared back into the rocks, the Marines recounted.
Black smoke rose from buildings across the city as U.S. artillery continued to bombard insurgent positions and weapons bunkers a day after commanders declared that the city had been liberated.
Now, I don't know any moral person who can read that and not feel at least some pangs of sadness. Moral outrage too. It is a travesty. Keep in mind that Fallujah never did anything to any American citizens here. This ancient city of commerce and friendship was never a threat. It was never militarized. It contained no terrorists, at least not until the US made it a magnet. The people fighting there were resisting an invading military from the other side of the world. For this, the city was smashed in the most horrific and bloody way.
Not that any end justifies this means, but the known truth is that the pummeling of this city does nothing to curb terrorism, end resistance, punish injustice, warm the hearts of Iraqis toward the Americans. Rather - must it really be said? - it does exactly the opposite.
But to declare this liberation? Declare this a victory? It really leaves one morally stunned. Who would say such a thing? The devil perhaps, or the willfully blind or the heartlessly cruel. But these editorialists dash off such comments, sitting in their plush Manhattan offices, with no concern for truth or anything. The level of their abstraction is what chills you.
Now that we are past the title:
Iraqi insurgents respond by attacking in Mosul, Baquba, Kirkuk and Suweira. This, we now hear, proves that the more insurgents the U.S. kills, the stronger the insurgency grows. Call it the Obi-Wan Kenobi school of international relations: Strike him down, and he'll only become more powerful. In real warfare, of course, killing the enemy means there are fewer enemies to kill.
Yes, Star-Wars kids, killing does indeed kill people. And if killing is the only goal, you can accomplish that goal in precisely this way because the killing has indeed created ever more enemies and hence ever more targets.
It's like the bank robber who says that anyone who moves is going to be shot. As more and more people are shot, more and more are inspired to take the risk of moving to disarm the robber. And this is especially true when not everyone is in plain sight. The end result of this shoot-'em up approach is massacre. As in Fallujah.
The insurgents have been denied their principal sanctuary.
Yes, and so has everyone else. Killing fields are unhappy sanctuaries. The rebels will have to find other sanctuaries - most everyone with sense left as the Americans marched in - or take back Fallujah once the Americans go.
It is increasingly clear that the US controls only the ground under the tank treads and the soldiers' boots. The US doesn't even control Baghdad. In fact, Baghdad has been lost, in the words of Michael Ware of Time. But according to the Wall Street Journal:
Ordinary Iraqis can take heart that the Allawi government and the U.S. mean business, something that had been put into doubt by the failure to take Fallujah back in April.
We are really supposed to believe that ordinary Iraqis are taking heart in all this, huh? That citizens all over the country are thinking: it warms my heart that this once great and ancient city in my country has been bombed to smithereens and thousands have been killed and many more have fled. What graces have been bestowed on our beloved country!
As for the weak-willed, namby-pamby April attack that was too soft and thus encouraging to the insurgents, IBC says: "between 572 and 616 of the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children."
The sooner and more aggressively the fight is taken to other insurgent strongholds, the better the chances that January's scheduled elections can be held on time, in conditions of relative security...
Day by day, as long as this war has gone on, there has been less security and more misery for just about everyone. When you think about democracy in Iraq, just remember that most real experts admit that Saddam Hussein would win if he ran. This is the political situation that the US has created.
These insurgents will no doubt continue to mount gruesome attacks throughout the country, with the aim of cowing the silent majority of Iraqis who'd like to be on the side of freedom if given the chance.
The silent majority, huh? How do we know? Well, they are silent, so of course there can be no proof of this. They are there. We just can't hear them. It's just something that editorial writers in New York know. Just a solid intuition, an intuition so reliable that it can be put into an editorial as fact.
Well, here is a fact: never in the history of the world has a military conqueror engaging in mass bloodshed and imposing a lawless military dictatorship enjoyed a majority of support from the host country. Why doesn't this claim alone discredit this editorial page, now and forever?
Also, notice the identification of US government bullets and bombs with the cause of freedom. The cause of freedom has many great saints and martyrs in world history, but not one led a bloody military occupation of a foreign country while killing as many as 100,000 people.
Beyond whatever tactics the Iraqi insurgents may employ, their strategy is to convince Americans that there is no bottom; that their cause enjoys huge popular support; that it feeds off the resentments that "occupation" inevitably engenders; and that it can go on undeterred by whatever damage U.S. forces inflict.
Note that that word occupation is in quotes. We need to create a new category of propagandists: occupation deniers.
The big news of the Fallujah campaign is that most Iraqis quietly supported it. The protests from nationalist politicians was far more muted than in April.
Big news indeed. In other news, Ukrainians welcomed farm collectivization, Poland welcomed invasion from Germany, and the Chinese welcomed the Cultural Revolution. For more on each, see back issues of Soviet Life and the collected works of the Eher Verlag.
The task now is to build quickly on success in Fallujah by wiping out other insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi.
A sentence such as this makes one wonder whether the US might actually adopt some extreme solution to the Iraqi problem. The first and only nuclear weapons dropped in history on cities were built and deployed by the US to prevent other countries from building and deploying nuclear weapons. Imagine a scenario under which Iraq is destroyed by WMD in the name of purging Iraq of WMDs.
Those of us in the Old Liberal camp, who think of market economics as tied to peace, can only be disgusted by its identification with the cause of indiscriminate, imperial, total war. And yet the WSJ is not alone. Nor is their rhetoric without cultural cost.
Read the blogs and forums out there calling for death to dissidents, and for an end to the freedom to speak. This kind of editorial, and it is one of thousands published daily in this country, does more to further ignorance, violence, and statism than anything I see published on the left.
Freedom has no greater enemies than those who lie in its name.
November 20, 2004
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking of Liberty.
--------
CAPTIVES
Cameraman Details Marine's Role in Mosque Shooting
November 22, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ and EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 - A marine who appears to shoot and kill an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in an NBC News video was not aware that the incident was being recorded, and moments later approached the cameraman with seemingly remorseful words - "I didn't know, sir, I didn't know" - according to the first public description of the events by the cameraman, Kevin Sites, since his brief and somewhat ambiguous initial report.
No weapons were visible inside the Falluja mosque where the shooting took place, on Nov. 13, and the wounded Iraqi made no sudden or threatening moves before the marine shot him, Mr. Sites writes on his Web site, kevinsites.net, in an entry posted Sunday night.
Mr. Sites, a freelance photojournalist who had been hired by NBC News, made it clear that as a veteran of covering wars around the globe, he understood the ugliness and complexity of battle. Nevertheless, he said of the incident in the mosque, "it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right."
His account also raises new questions about another group of marines who entered the mosque just before Mr. Sites and fired on the prisoners - they had been left there, already wounded, after a battle the day before. Mr. Sites was so surprised that the prisoners he had seen there the day before had been attacked again that he informed a Marine lieutenant of the fact before the final shooting - the one he captured on tape - took place.
The video obtained by Mr. Sites has received sensational play around the world, particularly in the Arab news media.
Mr. Sites calls the posting on his Web log an "Open Letter to the Devil Dogs of the 3.1," or the Third Battalion, First Marines. "Since the shooting in the mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw," he wrote, "or explain the process by which the world came to see them as well."
He begins by writing, "I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat." Despite his attempt to be fair, he said, since the Falluja video was broadcast on Nov. 15, he has been "shocked to see myself painted as some kind of antiwar activist." Mr. Sites has received abuse and death threats on some Web sites, and has shut down the discussion section of his own.
He said the marines he was embedded with arrived at the mosque on Nov. 13, and after a series of other events, he heard shooting inside. The other set of marines emerged and were asked by a lieutenant, "Did you shoot them?"
"Roger that, sir," a marine responded. But when the lieutenant asked, "Were they armed?" the marine just shrugged, Mr. Sites wrote.
Inside, Mr. Sites said he was was surprised to see the wounded men from the battle the day before, now shot again. "There don't appear to be any weapons anywhere," he wrote.
He was videotaping some of the wounded men when, in the background, a marine yelled that one of the others was "faking he's dead."
"Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of the his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi," Mr. Sites wrote. "There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging."
Then the marine fired. "There is a small spatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down," Mr. Sites wrote, in what was apparently a suggestion that the man had been alive.
"Well," another marine said, "he's dead now."
Mr. Sites wrote that he could feel "the deep pit of my stomach." The marine who fired, who had been angrily shouting, suddenly changed his tone.
"The anger that seemed present just moments before turned to fear and dread," Mr. Sites wrote.
"I can't know what was in the mind of the marine," he wrote. "He is the only one who does."
On Sunday, in an episode whose aftermath was caught on videotape, the American military said marines killed three Iraqi civilians and wounded five others in central Ramadi as a van swerved toward a checkpoint. The driver ignored directions to stop, the military said, and the marines opened fire. The military said officials were investigating the incident. Video film from Reuters showed the van riddled with bullet holes and the inside covered in blood.
The marines have the most tenuous of holds on Ramadi, about 30 miles west of Falluja. They have a few downtown posts, but insurgents roam about freely and regularly attack American troops.
An Oil Ministry spokesman said Sunday that insurgents had set ablaze an oil well in the Kirkuk oil fields, leading to a gap in production of 2,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Months ago, after a similar attack in the area, the Oil Ministry hired a foreign company to extinguish the fire and fix the damage in 45 days, at a cost of $2.5 million, said the spokesman, Assam Jihad.
The Oil Ministry was considering doing the same now, he added. Guerrillas have set six northern oil wells on fire in the past two weeks, and none of the fires have been extinguished. In the volatile northern city of Mosul, at least seven more bodies were discovered Sunday. An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, said two had been discovered in west-central Mosul and another five on the city's western fringe. He said the bodies had not been identified.
Meshaal Rahoo, the secretary for the head of the Mosul health department, said the bodies of eight Iraqi policemen had been discovered Saturday 15 miles west of Mosul.
The discoveries occurred after nine Iraqi Army soldiers had been found dead in western Mosul on Saturday with bullet wounds to their heads. Colonel Hastings said Saturday that seven of the nine had been beheaded, but retracted the statement on Sunday. Four headless bodies were found last Thursday.
In a bit of positive news, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Sunday that a cousin of the prime minister, Ghazi Allawi, had been freed by a guerrilla band called Ansar al-Jihad.
The cousin, his wife and their daughter-in-law were kidnapped on Nov. 9, a day after the official start of the Falluja offensive. The two women were released last week.
The spokesman, Taha Ali, said he had received word of the cousin's release through Ibrahim al-Janabi, a senior official in Dr. Allawi's political party.
-------- us politics
Powell 'pushed out' by Bush for seeking to rein in Israel
telegraph.co.uk
22 November 2004
By Charles Laurence in New York and Philip Sherwell
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/21/wpow21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/21/ixnewstop.html
Colin Powell, the outgoing US secretary of state, was given his marching orders after telling President George W Bush that he wanted greater power to confront Israel over the stalled Middle East peace process.
Although Mr Powell's departure was announced on November 15, his letter of resignation was dated November 11, the day he had a meeting with Mr Bush.
According to White House officials, at the meeting Mr Powell was not asked to stay on and gave no hints that he would do so. Briefing reporters later, he referred to "fulsome discussions" - diplomatic code for disagreements.
"The clincher came over the Mid-East peace process," said a recently-retired state department official.
"Powell thought he could use the credit he had banked as the president's 'good cop' in foreign policy to rein in Ariel Sharon [Israel's prime minister] and get the peace process going. He was wrong."
Bob Woodward, the veteran Washington reporter who was granted unprecedented access to the first Bush administration for his books Bush At War and Plan Of Attack, said last week that Mr Powell had been "dreaming" if he thought that he could stay on.
Vice-president Dick Cheney and his fellow hardliner, John Bolton, an under-secretary of state to Mr Powell, are both understood to have lobbied Mr Bush to replace him.
They wanted to make Iran's alleged nuclear bomb aspirations and support for Islamic terror groups the foreign policy priority for the new administration and believed that Mr Powell would back away from a confrontational approach.
The two are frustrated that Britain, France and Germany are still seeking a diplomatic deal with Teheran rather than backing an immediate UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran and threatening sanctions.
Mr Powell's final pitch to remain in office for at least another year was made during Tony Blair's visit to Washington nine days ago, The Telegraph has learned. Earlier indications had been that he intended to step down after enduring four years of clashes with the office of Mr Cheney and the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld.
Friends of Mr Powell later briefed journalists that he had changed his mind because he saw the chance of progress on the peace process and wanted to see through the Iraqi elections.
Mr Powell is to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and close confidante of Mr Bush.
Mr Bolton's predicted promotion as her deputy is a further signal that the president wants to conduct foreign policy without the "moderating" influence and popular public face of Mr Powell.
Prominent neo-conservatives in Washington make no secret of their desire for regime change in Teheran, although few believe that a full-scale military operation is a viable strategy.
Instead, the emphasis is on establishing economic sanctions as a means to squeeze the ruling mullahs. There is also the option that the US may tacitly back Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
The overhaul of the CIA under its new director, Porter Goss, a recent Bush appointee, is also intended to remove critics of America's foreign policy.
--------
How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush
freepress.org
November 22, 2004
http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995
Following four community public hearings in Ohio about election irregularities and voter suppression - two in the capitol, Columbus, and one each in Cincinnati and Cleveland - a clear pattern and practice of voter disenfranchisement is emerging.
In order to understand the extent of the voter suppression in the inner city of Columbus and Franklin County, overwhelmingly Democratic wards, start with the phrase: "Machines Placed By Close Of Polls" on the last page of the county's 17-page voting machine allocation report.
This phrase at the end of the spreadsheet may be the key in unraveling a deliberate and unprecedented plan to repress African American and poor central city voters. In statistics, when you see a bizarre definition or measurement, it sends up red flags. Why doesn't the Franklin County Board of Elections have a number for "Machines Placed By Opening Of Polls"?
It now appears that the Franklin County BOE placed scores of machines too late in the day to alleviate the long lines of voters who gathered to vote before work and at lunchtime.
To better understand what the BOE did on Election Day, consider the following analogy. The near east side of Columbus needs four buses to move the population to the downtown business district. Each bus will move 100 people. At the start of the business day at 6:30am, there are only two buses running and another one with a dead battery. After a few hours, the third bus is put into use. Finally, towards the close of the work day at 6pm, a fourth bus is deployed. The Central Ohio Transit Authority then reports it had four buses operating by the end of the business day. What matters is not how many buses, or voting machines, were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.
Questions remain as to where these machines were placed and who had access to them during the day.
Pacifica reporter Evan Davis reported that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. The county's own documents reveal that they had 2,866 "Machines Available" on Election Day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day. Ward holds the exclusive three-year contract to deliver voting machines in Franklin County.
If the BOE only had 2,741 placed initially, this would explain the long lines in Columbus and voters leaving the polls during the morning voting rush. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE), in the city of Columbus, where voters waited in the heavily Democratic wards between 2-7 hours to cast the vast majority of their votes for John Kerry, voter turnout was 52.7%. In the affluent white suburbs of Columbus, with far more voting machines available, the turnout figure was 76.15%.
By contrast, 66.31% of registered voters went to the polls in Cincinnati and turnout was 76.82% in the suburbs. In Cincinnati, where more voting machines were available, the difference between the city and suburbs was only 10.5% compared to 23.45% in the Columbus area. Cincinnati and Columbus have similar demographics.
The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on Election Day. In addition, Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on Friday, November 19, that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day.
Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy criticized Damschroder for calling the elections "well-funded and well-planned and that problems could not have been averted, . . ." according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Damschroder, the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party, told the Franklin County Commissioners, "From our perspective, this election was a success."
Despite an increased registration of more than 167,253 new voters, Damschroder admits he ran the election with a "fixed and exhausted" pool of voting machines, the Dispatch reported. Kilroy pointed out that Damschroder and Franklin County election officials told her "We're fine, we're fine" and never requested additional money over the initial allocation.
The Washington Post reported "Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Control's ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system." Franklin County's voting machine allocation report shows that Damschroder deployed his Danaher (formerly Shooptronics) voting machines, which have been in use since 1992, in a formula that favored Bush over Kerry.
In precinct 55-B on Columbus' near east side, there were 1,338 registered voters and, according to Franklin County Board of Elections estimates, 956 active voters who had voted in the last two federal elections. Despite voter registration being up 17%, and by the BOE's own guidelines the polling place requiring ten machines (one per 100 voters), the polling site had only three machines, one less than for the 2000 elections.
The Election Protection Coalition that visited the voting site between 7:30-8:30 a.m. documented a dozen people leaving the polls, six to go to work and six who were either elderly or handicapped. But things were worse in other areas of Columbus.
In precinct 1-B where there were 1,620 registered voters, a 27% increase in voter registration, the precinct had five voting machines in 2000 and only three in 2004. Where did they go? Out to Republican enclaves like Canal Winchester, where two machines were added since 2000, for a total of five to service 1,255 registered voters? Or were they re-routed to Dublin 2-G where 1,656 registered voters apparently needed six machines, twice the number of Columbus' 1-B?
Nearby in Dublin precinct 3-C, 910 registered voters were allocated four voting machines. No doubt machines were shifted from precincts like Columbus 44-G with 1,620 voters and registration up 25%, which lost one machine from the 2000 elections to 2004.
In Cleveland, where a public hearing was held on Saturday, November 20, there was a different pattern of voting irregularities. These include heavily Democratic wards with abnormally low reported rates of voter turnout, three under 20%. In Precinct 6-C where Kerry beat Bush 45 votes to one, allegedly only 7.1% of the registered voters cast ballots. In precinct 13-D where Kerry received 83.8% of the vote, only 13.05% reportedly voted. In precinct 13-F where Kerry received 97.5%, the turnout was reported to be only 19.6%.
One explanation comes from Irma Olmedo, who provided the Free Press with a written statement of her activities in the heavily Hispanic ward 13, which contained the three low voter turnout precincts.
"Ohio does not have bilingual ballots and this disenfranchises many Latino voters who are not totally fluent in English . . . there were 13 poll workers at the school and none knew Spanish. Some could not even find the names of the people on the list because they couldn't understand well when people said their names. . . . Some people put their punch card ballots in backwards when they voted and discovered that they couldn't punch out the holes. They had not read the instructions which were in English, that they had to turn the card around in order to vote," Olmedo stated.
Olmedo translated at precinct 13-O, where 90% of the votes were for Kerry and only 53 votes were counted. The turnout of 21% was due to the lack of Spanish instructions and the misspelling of names: "I noticed that one named Nieves was misspelled as Nieues and the pollworkers were not able to find his name, these people were told to complete a provisional ballot because their names were not on the list."
In Cuyahoga County, according to the Secretary of State's website there are 24,788 provisional ballots, most of them from the city of Cleveland, not its surrounding suburbs. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell served as Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Ohio reelection committee.
There also seems to be an abnormally high vote count for third party candidates who received less than one-half of one percent of the statewide vote total combined. For example, in precinct 4-F, the right-wing Constitutional Law candidate Peroutka received 215 votes to Bush's 21 and Kerry's 290. In this precinct, Kerry received 55% of the vote where Gore received 91% of the vote in the year 200. These numbers suggest that Kerry's votes were inadvertently or intentionally shifted to Peroutka.
In Cincinnati, sworn testimony was taken on vote buying, the lack of machines in African American neighborhoods and the deliberate destruction of new voter registration cards by a private company hired to process the forms.
Exit polls on Election Day from both the polling firm Zogby International and CNN projected John Kerry winning the state of Ohio. University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman calculated the odds that the exit polls in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being wrong are 250,000,000 to one. Pollster John Zogby, President of Zogby International, is quoted as telling the Inter Press Service of Stockholm that "something is definitely wrong."
Zogby commented that he was concerned about the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote tallies stating "We're talking about the free world here."
The Alliance for Democracy-Ohio is preparing a lawsuit challenging the outcome of Ohio's election results due to the massive voting irregularities that have emerged in sworn testimony and affidavits.
-- Bob Fitrakis has a Ph.D in Political Science and a J.D. He is a lawyer working with the Alliance for Democracy-Ohio and the Editor of the Columbus Free Press. Reporting in this article also came from Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D and Joe Knapp (http://copperas.com/fcelection/wardbubble.jpg). For additional documentation, visit http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/900.
-------- voting
Hong Kong Democratic Chief Resigns Over Election Results
November 22, 2004
By KEITH BRADSHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/international/asia/22hong.html?pagewanted=all
HONG KONG, Nov. 21 - The leader of the Democratic Party here announced Sunday that he would step down next month, taking responsibility for the party's worse-than-expected showing in legislative elections in September.
Yeung Sum, the party chairman, sent a mobile phone text message to all party members on Sunday afternoon informing them that he would not seek a second, two-year term in party elections on Dec. 12. Mr. Yeung will remain a member of Hong Kong's 60-member Legislative Council, a party spokesman said.
His departure as party leader underlines the deep fractures in this city's democracy movement - fractures that have helped Beijing since it took over Hong Kong, a former British colony, in 1997.
The overall pro-democracy camp won 25 seats in the Legislative Council in elections on Sept. 12, up from 22 in the previous legislature. Those gains were made even as the Democratic Party lost 2 of its 11 seats.
Gaining seats partly at the party's expense were radicals who favor a more confrontational approach toward Beijing and pro-business lawyers who seek greater democracy but are wary of having the government do more for the poor. The Democratic Party once encompassed practically all democracy movement members of the legislature. The 25 pro-democracy members now include 7 independents, while the rest are scattered among the Democratic Party and 5 minor parties.
Mr. Yeung had been closely associated with the Democratic Party's recent decision to adopt a less confrontational approach to Beijing, in the hope of appearing to voters as less obstructionist and more capable of someday running the government. But pro-democracy voters gravitated toward more outspoken candidates in the legislative elections.
Three members of the Legislative Council said Sunday in telephone interviews that they did not expect Mr. Yeung's decision to change his party's policies immediately. After succeeding Martin Lee as chairman in December 2002, Mr. Yeung ran the party by seeking a consensus of its top leadership.
"Without a party consensus, no one, not even the chairman, can change" policies, said Fred Li, a Democratic Party member of the Legislative Council.
James To, another Democratic Party lawmaker, said Mr. Yeung had run the party as a triumvirate with the party's two vice chairmen, Lee Wing-tat and Albert Ho, who are now the two politicians most likely to succeed him. "I don't think there will be a significant change," Mr. To said.
But while party officials sought to portray an image of continuity, political analysts said that the party was under great pressure to broaden its appeal, and that a new leader would find that easier to do.
Analysts and local news media said that Mr. Lee was the more likely successor, and that he could bring a more confrontational style to the party. He has been especially active in organizing street demonstrations, and infuriated Beijing four years ago by asserting that the mainland was the enemy of democracy here.
Mr. Ho has long been a staunch defender of the students who protested in Tiananmen Square in 1989, serving on the committee of an association here that supports democracy on the mainland. But he is best known here for frequently calling on Japan to give China control of a disputed group of islands northeast of Taiwan, a nationalistic position that may mollify Beijing somewhat.
Michael DeGolyer, the director of the Hong Kong Transition Project, a group of university researchers tracking the territory's democratic development, said the party appeared to have erred in saying little in August when one of its Legislative Council candidates was arrested on the mainland and convicted without trial of soliciting a prostitute.
The candidate was sentenced to six months of detention at a "rehabilitation through labor" camp and remains there, despite the party's initial hope that a low-key approach might prompt his early release.
Stephen Lam, Hong Kong's constitutional affairs secretary, called Sunday for the Democratic Party to end its pursuit of letting the entire public vote for the territory's chief executive in 2007 and for all Legislative Council seats in 2008. Beijing said last April that it would not tolerate universal suffrage in those elections, but left open the possibility of a small broadening of voting rights for chief executive beyond the 800 prominent citizens who now cast ballots.
"It is very important for all political parties in Hong Kong, including the Democratic Party, to appreciate that whilst we can generate consensus within Hong Kong, likewise it is necessary for us to work together with Beijing to roll forward the reforms to these two electoral systems," Mr. Lam said.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
D.C. Regulators Should Counter PEPCO's Rate Hikes by Halting Disastrous Deregulation Experiment
Public Citizen Urges the Re-Purchase of PEPCO's Power Plants
Nov. 22, 2004
Public Citizen Press Room
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1828
WASHINGTON, D.C. - D.C. government regulators are powerless to protect consumers from PEPCO's proposed 17.7 percent electric rate hike because deregulation has allowed unregulated companies to set higher prices, Public Citizen said today. The consumer advocacy organization is urging the D.C. Public Service Commission (D.C. PSC) to reject the requested rate hike and work toward re-regulation, so the District once again will have the regulatory power to ensure that prices consumers pay are tied to the true costs of producing power.
The only way for D.C. to adequately protect consumers is to re-regulate the region's electricity system by ordering PEPCO to re-purchase the power plants it sold to Atlanta-based Mirant, because the commission is less able to control rates if PEPCO is buying power from another entity than if PEPCO re-acquires the plants it sold. Such a move would restore the city's ability to regulate power prices and implement the cost-based rate system that successfully protected consumers for 100 years.
Further, taking steps to re-regulate the system would be consistent with national trends; nine states have either repealed or delayed their deregulation laws in the past couple of years. Those states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon and West Virginia.
"This would put D.C. on the path of lower costs for consumers while maintaining reasonable profits for PEPCO," said Tyson Slocum, research director for Public Citizen's energy program. "Controlling rates is particularly important for those on fixed or lower incomes, because they are hit even harder by rate hikes."
PEPCO voluntarily sold four of its six D.C.-area power plants to Mirant in December 2000. Mirant, which has paid $17.8 million to settle allegations of Enron-style market manipulation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2003. The sale of PEPCO's power plants meant that D.C. no longer had any ability to regulate power prices as it had for 100 years, because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot regulate prices from power plants unless they are part of a vertically integrated system.
PJM Connection - a regional transmission organization coordinating the movement of electricity in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia - is the largest centrally controlled dispatch area in the United States. PEPCO must buy all its power through the PJM market, and power prices in PJM have skyrocketed 75 percent under deregulation, with inflation-adjusted electricity prices rising from $25.92 per megawatt hour in 1998 to $45.33 per megawatt hour over the first 10 months of 2004. These high prices are rising far above the actual cost to produce electricity, meaning unregulated power companies reap record profits while consumers pay more.
"The sole reason PEPCO is seeking a rate increase is because PEPCO is now forced to buy its power from unregulated power producers like Mirant in the regional PJM market," said Slocum.
The D.C. PSC originally supported PEPCO's decision to sell its power plants in an attempt to foster competition for consumers. The problem is, "competition" isn't occurring in D.C. or in any states that have deregulated.
For example, consider the benchmark used to measure the relative success of such "competition": the share of D.C.'s residential consumers who have chosen an alternative electricity supplier to PEPCO. The highest "choice" rate achieved in D.C. was in December 2002, when 12 percent of the city's residents "chose" an alternative supplier to PEPCO. Nearly two years later, by October 2004, nearly 10,000 fewer D.C. residents were "choosing" an alternative supplier, reducing the share of residential customers "choosing" to 7 percent. Nationally, just 5 percent of residential consumers in the remaining 15 deregulated states have switched suppliers because wholesale prices continue to climb and retail competitors have shown little interest in serving residential consumers.
There is little cost savings in choosing alternative providers serving residential consumers in the District. The average annual price per kilowatt hour for residential customers is 5.04 cents with PEPCO; 6.4 cents with Pepco Energy Services (PES), an unregulated subsidiary of PEPCO, when 51 percent of the power comes from renewable energy sources; 7 cents with PES' option of providing electricity generated 100 percent from renewable energy sources; 4.53 cents with Washington Gas Energy Services (WGES), an unregulated subsidiary of Washington Gas, D.C.'s regulated natural gas company; and 4.58 with WGES' option of providing electricity in which 5 percent comes from windpower.
Although consumers may save a nominal sum by selecting an alternative supplier, most residential consumers haven't made the switch because they will be even less protected than if they were to stay with PEPCO. For instance, the prices charged by alternative suppliers are wholly unregulated, and alternative suppliers can raise prices dramatically after a contract ends.
Under PEPCO's proposed rate increase, PEPCO's residential customers will pay an average of $120 more per year on bills of approximately $690 per year.
"Deregulation is clearly a failed experiment in D.C's electricity market," said Slocum. "It is time to recognize this colossal error and stop a trend that harms consumers instead of helping them. We urge D.C. to work towards fixing this broken system."
For more information about PEPCO and deregulation, click here. http://www.citizen.org/cmep/pepco
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Great Lakes Region Ponders How to Keep Its Precious Waters Safe
November 22, 2004
By John Flesher,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=425
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - When a Canadian company floated the idea of hauling Lake Superior water aboard huge tankers to parched sections of Asia, the reaction hereabouts resembled the fury of the region's infamous November gales.
"Back Off Suckers," warned billboards along Michigan highways that depicted outsiders sipping from the Great Lakes with gigantic straws. Politicians on both sides of the border voiced outrage. Before long, the Canadian agency that had issued a permit for the Superior shipments withdrew it.
In the six years since then, no other proposal has surfaced to ship, pipe or otherwise divert Great Lakes water to arid places. Yet many believe such grabs are inevitable as the global water crisis worsens. Of particular concern is the western United States, with its surging population, demand for water -- and political clout.
"There are threats, and they promise to increase over time," said David Naftzger, executive director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors.
Now, the region's governments are debating how to protect the inland seas, tributaries and connecting channels that make up 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water.
Although vast enough to spread a 9 1/2-foot-deep sheet across the continental United States, the lake system is heavily burdened. Nearly 40 million thirsty people live in the region, and its $2 trillion economy features water-dependent industries such as auto manufacturing, shipping, tourism and agriculture.
Lake levels haven't fully recovered from a dropoff several years ago caused by drought and a warming trend. Climate change could push them even lower over the next 30 years, scientists say.
"Despite their size, they're extremely fragile," said Cheryl Mendoza, watershed conservation manager for the Chicago-based Lake Michigan Federation.
Three years after agreeing to regulate large-scale water withdrawals, the Council of Great Lakes Governors released a detailed plan in July. A public comment period ended last month, and the region's eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces plan to vote on a revised version next spring.
Some environmentalists praise the plan for requiring that any new diversion of water outside the Great Lakes drainage basin meet tough conservation standards. But critics say there's a fatal flaw: The plan concedes such diversions could happen instead of simply prohibiting them.
Regional business groups are worried, too, because the plan would regulate major new uses of Great Lakes water within the region itself. That could inhibit economic growth by creating more bureaucracy and leaving companies uncertain about future water availability, they say.
"If we want to grow and prosper, we can't lock up our water," said George Kuper, president of the Council of Great Lakes Industries, whose members include the likes of General Motors Corp. and Eastman Kodak Co. "We should remember that it's a recyclable resource and focus on how to use it wisely and efficiently."
Defenders of the plan say it's unrealistic -- and probably unconstitutional -- for people in the region to treat the lakes as a bottomless well while demanding frugality of others.
"We should do better at living within our own means," said Emily Green, the Great Lakes program director for the Sierra Club's Midwestern office in Madison, Wis.
The plan is a legacy of the ill-fated Lake Superior water shipment scheme. The Nova Group, a consulting firm in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, received a provincial permit in 1998 to ship around 156 million gallons a year to Asia.
The company said the amount was such a tiny fraction of the lake's volume, it wouldn't be missed. One official likened the effect to "putting your finger in a bucket of water and taking it out."
But critics said letting one business treat the Great Lakes as an economic commodity would open the floodgates to others, eventually lowering water levels and doing serious ecological damage.
After the Nova permit was revoked, a team of water law experts warned the governors' council the lakes were vulnerable to more attempted raids.
A 1986 federal law allows the governor of any Great Lakes state to veto an out-of-basin diversion. But the lawyers said that measure could be struck down in court as an illegal restraint on commerce and trade.
Other attorneys disagreed, arguing that nothing in the U.S. Constitution or international trade pacts prevents states from protecting their water supplies. But the governors concluded that just saying no to diversions was no longer enough, and developed the Great Lakes Charter Annex Agreement.
Under the plan, any proposal for a new or increased out-of-basin diversion averaging at least 1 million gallons a day over 120 days would need approval of all eight Great Lakes states.
A higher threshold would be set for regulating new or increased withdrawals for consumption within the basin: Those averaging at least 5 million gallons daily over the same period would require approval of at least six states.
All such projects would have to meet standards such as doing no "significant" environmental harm and having a conservation plan.
"The governors and premiers want to be sure we have the strongest legal foundation we can to deal with these proposals, regardless of where they come from," Naftzger said.
Jim Olson, an environmental attorney in Traverse City, contends that by opening the door to even heavily regulated diversions, the plan "will leave the Great Lakes and its citizens, businesses and tourists with less protection than exists now."
For all the worries that water from the lakes will one day spout from Las Vegas casino fountains, the biggest threat may be closer to home.
Water diversions already take place within the Great Lakes region itself -- and pressure is mounting for more.
By far the biggest occurs at Chicago, which for more than a century has diverted Lake Michigan water to its own municipal system and the Mississippi River. The U.S. Supreme Court limited the volume to 3,200 cubic feet per second, but some worry the city will try to boost the flow.
"If Chicago were to fully utilize their canal system now, they could lower all the Great Lakes by up to six inches," David Ramsay, the Ontario natural resources minister, said recently.
He said Ontario wouldn't endorse the plan unless changes are made to give the lakes stronger protection.
Several communities that straddle or lie just outside the basin pull water from the lakes, including Akron, Ohio, and Pleasant Prairie, Wis. Now under consideration: allowing the rapidly growing Wisconsin city of Waukesha to pump nearly 20 million gallons a day from Lake Michigan.
Some believe the trickle of requests for close-in diversions will become a flood if the governors' plan goes forward. Even small projects could add up to big losses and set a bad precedent, critics say.
"Pinholes become larger holes as time goes on," Olson said.
Others say the plan's standards are strict enough to keep diversions to a minimum.
"I don't think we'll see this mad rush for Great Lakes water," said Dick Bartz, water division chief with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
But uneasiness persists -- especially about those water-guzzling Westerners. After all, trial balloons have been raised over the years about tapping the Great Lakes to boost levels on the Mississippi River or replenish the Ogalalla Aquifer beneath the Great Plains.
Then there was the idea hatched in the 1950s -- and briefly resurrected three decades later -- to pipe water from James Bay in Canada to the Great Lakes, which in turn would sell water to Western states. Estimated price tag: $100 billion.
Skeptics say it's no accident that such grandiose schemes have never gotten beyond the drawing board.
"The whole idea is overblown," said Kuper, of the Council of Great Lakes Industries. "It would cost a huge amount of money to move that much water, and you'd have all kinds of logistical issues to deal with."
The International Joint Commission, an agency that advises the United States and Canada on Great Lakes issues, said in a 2000 report there was "little reason to believe that such projects will become economically, environmentally, and socially feasible in the foreseeable future."
Don't be too sure, said Noah Hall, attorney with the National Wildlife Federation in Ann Arbor: "You see pictures out West of golf courses and booming cities and rivers that have dried up, and you know it's just a matter of time."
--------
US Plans Would Defer Roan Plateau Drilling
by Judith Crosson
REUTERS USA:
November 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28221/story.htm
DENVER - The US Bureau of Land Management on Friday said its preferred plan for the Roan Plateau rim in western Colorado is to defer oil and natural gas drilling until 80 percent of the anticipated wells are drilled below the rim.
The Bush administration has marked the Rocky Mountains as an area where it wants to see more oil and gas development to lessen domestic reliance on imported energy but environmental groups have been fighting the plans.
Environmental groups have argued for keeping public land on the top of the rim off limits to drilling because of the breathtaking scenic beauty of the area.
They have also campaigned to name the area a designated wilderness area, which would result in greater restrictions.
Colorado Environmental Coalition spokesman Peter Kolbenschlag said the Citizens' Campaign to Save Roan Plateau wanted the top of the rim permanently off limits to drilling. "This is not what the community wanted. They didn't say once the energy industry develops the bottom then they can do the top," he said.
"The area was set aside for energy back in 1912. Then got it converted by the environmental community into some sort of area that it isn't," Greg Schnacke, executive director of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association said, referring to the area formerly known as the Naval Oil Shale Reserve.
The draft management preferred plan is one of five alternatives the US agency was considering and falls in about the middle of possibilities for the plateau. A 90-day comment period on the draft plan will go into effect and public meetings will be held in western Colorado. The BLM will then create a final play that may include all or part of the five alternatives that were under consideration.
Jamie Connell, field manager for the BLM's Glenwood Springs, Colorado, office, said "tens of thousands of comments" had been received from the public. The BLM, an agency of the US Interior Department, has been working on the first ever plan for Roan Plateau for four years.
The preferred plan only affects publicly owned land. The US government owns large amounts of territory in the western United States, including about one-third of Colorado and about half of neighboring Wyoming.
In the preferred plan 35,000 acres -- all of the publicly owned land on the top of the rim -- would be off limits until 80 percent of the expected drills below the rim had been drilled and tested. But Connell said the wells below the rim would not have to be actually producing before permits would be allowed for the top of the rim. About 300 to 400 wells have been drilled in the area and the 80 percent estimate is around 2,400 wells, Connell said.
The BLM estimates the 80 percent would be arrived at in 16 years, but its window goes from 10 to 20 years. Energy companies prefer to move to adjacent areas when drilling wells and a delay of years would interrupt corporate plans.
Natural gas drilling is currently being conducted at the base of the plateau; the question was whether it should be expanded to the top.
Companies active in the area include independent energy company Williams Cos. Inc. and EnCana Corp which owns land on the rim.
-------- ACTIVISTS
SOA Watch Update From Columbus, Georgia
November 22, 2004,
media@soaw.org
1. Update on those arrested calling for the closure of the SOA/ WHINSEC
2. SOA/WHINSEC in the news
Those of us still here in Columbus are celebrating our incredible weekend of resistance and remembrance! We know that we are celebrating with so many of you who joined us this weekend and all of you who were with us in spirit from across the Americas. The feeling in the air at the gates of Fort Benning during this year's vigil was full of hope and struggle. More than ever, we know that it is not a matter of IF -- but WHEN -- we'll close the SOA forever.
UPDATE ON THOSE ARRESTED CALLING FOR THE CLOSURE OF THE SOA/ WHINSEC
13 of the 15 demonstrators arrested on Fort Benning yesterday have been arraigned by federal Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth, released from custody and ordered to reappear in court for trial on January 24, 2005. 12 of the 13 were released on $1,000 bond; one, a Georgia resident, was released on $500 bond. One man, Ed Lewinson, was released without charges, and another, Tom MacLean, 79, refused to pay bond and will remain in jail until his court date in January.
Ed Lewinson, 75, was not charged. Ed, blind since birth, was also arrested at last year's direct action but not charged. "This court treated me differently than other arrestees last year because I am blind," Lewinson stated, addressing Magistrate Faircloth. "This year you're discriminating against me again by refusing to charge me -- while charging everyone else who participated in nonviolent civil disobedience to close the SOA/ WHINSEC."
Each of the defendants will appear before Magistrate Faircloth during their trial in late January. The SOA Watch Legal Collective and SOA Watch will offer trial preparation and support for these defendants over the next two months and beyond.
Those arrested on the military base are:
Robert "Nash" Chantal, 52, a member of Koinonia Partners in Americus, GA
Elizabeth Deligio, 28, Director of Ministry for Misericordia Home for Disabled Children in Chicago, IL
Brian DeRouen, 26, a graduate student at the University of Dayton, OH
Meagan Doty, 21, a senior at the University of Dayton, OH
Ron Durham, 23, a catholic worker from Chicago, IL
Alice Gerard, 48, a former "prisoner of conscience" from Buffalo, NY
Ed Lewinson, 75, Professor Emeritus of Seton Hall University, New Jersey
Tom MacLean, 79, of Ashfield, MA
Sr. Lil Mattingly, 63, a Maryknoll Sister from Maryknoll, NY
Elizabeth Nadeau, 27, a student and Steelworker from Minneapolis, MN
Mike Ring,65, a retiree and employee of an alternative high school in Wall, NJ
Dan Schwankl, 31, a catholic worker from Silk Hope, NC
Aaron Schumann, 32, an activist with the Prison Activist Resource Center from Oakland, CA
And two minors
Additionally, three were arrested by the Columbus City Police throughout the weekend, two, Patrick O'Neill and John Redman, for issues surrounding the recently erected barricades and one, Kyle Shanahan, for wearing a mask under a seldom-invoked Georgia law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. These three are awaiting court dates.
SOA/ WHINSEC in the news
The Associated Press filed an article about this weekend's momentous gathering last evening. Call your local newspaper today and ask them to run the story! Let them know if you or friends of yours traveled to Fort Benning. Remember, the story that you tell is important! Let the media know what matters to you and your community.
Read the AP story here: http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=596.
To read recent coverage, visit the SOA Watch Newsroom at www.soaw.org/newsroom.
For tips on media outreach, visit: http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=266.
Please feel free to contact SOA Watch Communications Coordinator Christy Pardew this week with questions at 706-507-4860 or cpardew(at)soaw.org.
--------
Anti-war group slams the BBC
hamhigh.co.uk
Jonathan Marciano
22 November 2004
http://hamhighbroadway.london24.net/broadway/news/story.aspx?brand=NorthLondon24&category=Newsbroadway&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsbroadway&itemid=WeED22%20Nov%202004%2010%3A37%3A31%3A067
A MUSWELL Hill anti-war group has launched a campaign against the BBC's Iraq coverage.
The Muswell Hill Stop The War Group, which counts Victoria Wood and Juliet Stevenson among its backers, has accused the corporation of unfair reporting.
Robin Beste, 60, from Muswell Road, complained about Newsnight's coverage on the assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja.
Mr Beste said: "The broadcasts are simply a one dimensional justification of the assault.
"There was a long cast of pro-war commentators, with no counter-balancing opinion to represent what is, according to all recent polls, the view held by 50 per cent of the British public who oppose the war in Iraq.
"They did not show the results of the bombardment on the civilians living there."
He also suggested that the corporation has been afraid to criticise the government since the fallout from the Hutton report.
The campaign is now urging its 1,000 members to report biased coverage or stories trumpeting allied successes.
Muswell Hill has become a hotbed of activism since the war started nearly two years ago.
In March last year 60 children left Fortismere school in Tetherdown at breaktime and marched to Westminster.
The coalition receives around 40 new emails a day asking about its activities.
Muswell Hill celebrity supporters include actor Vincent Ebrahim from the Kumars at No.42, best-selling author and illustrator Ros Asquith, and Professor Harold Rosen, Emeritus professor at the university of London.
Their youngest campaigner is eleven and the oldest is 94.
Editor of Newsnight Peter Barron told the group: "The issue of whether the war in Iraq was, and is, right or wrong is an extremely important one.
"We have debated that issue on literally scores of occasions before and have no doubt will continue to do so in the future.
"The events were unfolding in the course of the evening and our primary aim was to find out what was happening and explain it. We certainly didn't attempt to justify or condemn the assault."
"I completely accept that many people in Britain oppose the war and the latest assault on Falluja. Polls suggest the figure has risen to 57 per cent and we are committed to reflecting this. The Hutton controversy has absolutely no bearing on the editorial decisions we make on Newsnight."
Mr Beste, who has been a political activist since he was 11, said of the anti-war movement: "There has never been a campaign like this in my lifetime.
"Normally you feel you are on the sidelines. But here we feel ourselves swimming with the tide."
broadway@hamhigh.co.uk
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