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NUCLEAR
Pakistan downplays CIA report on leaks of nuclear technology
Pakistan Downplays CIA Report on Leaks
Iran dug tunnel for military nuclear work - magazine
Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once
Iranian Minister Says Differences Remain
Iran, EU agree on uranium enrichment program freeze
Iran's Stealthy Nukes
Many types of isotopes
Palestinian security chief says infamous security unit to be dismantled
Our man in the US: Israel uses TV show to find its best spin doctor
Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes
North Korea Reactor Plan Suspended Until 2005
CIA report cites N. Korean proliferation threat
IAEA finally drops S. Korea investigation
South Korea breathes sigh of relief over IAEA decision on nuclear tests
North Korea accuses US of waging psychological warfare
High time North Korea makes up its mind on nuclear talks: South Korea
Nuke Rep. Hobson's bill
Browns Ferry's Unit 3 back up
PSB recommends $85,000 fine for Vt. Yankee
MILITARY
U.S. military looks forward to hand over of bases
Afghanistan waits for tourists
Army sells off jets to public
Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties
Berne to fund Moscow chemical weapons destruction
I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds
U.S. Marines Mull Fallujah's Future
U.S. Sends in Secret Weapon: Saddam's Old Commandos
Seven Days of Hell
The Morality of Waging War on Iraq
U.S. to Skip Nairobi Conference on Land Mines
Bhutto's Husband Wants Fresh Election in Pakistan
Russia Criticized Over Dalai Lama Visa
Turmoil at CIA as Goss lays down the law
US commander warns Iran, others not to underestimate US military power
Navy project spurs questions
Congress threatens to cut aid in fight over criminal court
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Government whistleblowers reap hefty rewards
Afghanistan's Drugs
Colombia Drug Lords Join Paramilitaries to Seek Leniency
ACLU Says New Passports May Leak Personal Data
FAA Must Improve Oversight of Hazardous Materials, Report Says
POLITICS
EU reveals increase in aid fraud
Pentagon Panel: US Invasions Unite Extremists
Congress spending increase criticized
Bush Says World Is Watching Ukraine's Election Dispute
Ex-Soviet bloc states mull election
Opposition demands new Ukraine vote
OTHER
Flu Crisis Sparks Fresh Look at Vaccine Production
W.T.O. Authorizes Trade Sanctions Against the United States
ACTIVISTS
Habits hard to break for jailed nuns
Mary Kelly: Sentencing To Take Place Wednesday December 1st
Seven Activists Arrested in Sit-In At Former Homeless Shelter in SW DC
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan downplays CIA report on leaks of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya
The Associated Press
11/27/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-11-27-pakistan-nukes_x.htm
Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was considered a national hero for leading the development of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent against rival India, admitted in February to passing nuclear technology to other countries. He was pardoned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who cited his service to the nation, but he is under virtual house arrest in Islamabad.
The CIA this week posted on its Web site an unclassified report to Congress, "Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions." It details reported efforts by Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria to obtain chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons technology.
"Iran's nuclear program received significant assistance in the past from the proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan," the report said. "The A.Q. Khan network provided Iran with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models and components."
It said Libya had disclosed receiving similar assistance from Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program from the 1970s until 2001.
"Even in cases where states took action to stem such transfers, knowledgeable individuals or non-state purveyors of WMD- and missile-related materials and technology could act outside government constraints," the report said. "The exposure of the A.Q. Khan network and its role in supplying nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea illustrate one form of this threat."
The New York Times reported that the CIA disclosure indicates that bomb-making designs provided by Khan's network to Iran in the 1990s were more significant than Washington has previously disclosed.
It focused on the phrase "designs for more advanced and efficient models, and components," indicating that "components" refers to weapons components.
The Times pointed out that American officials have publicly referred only to the Khan network's role in supplying Iran with designs for older Pakistani centrifuges used to enrich uranium but that they also have suspected it provided a warhead design, too.
Citing a tape it obtained of a closed-door speech to a private group, the paper quoted former CIA director George J. Tenet as describing Khan as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden" because of his role in providing nuclear technology to other countries.
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan criticized the Times report.
"The writer of the report has spun a strange web based on flimsy evidence, hearsay and snippets of conversations," Khan said Saturday. "The CIA report does not mention any 'designs for weapons or bomb-making components.' Weapons and bomb-making are the writer's own creative insertions.
"In the past year, Pakistan has conducted an inquiry to unearth an illicit network of international black-marketeers, dismantled it and shared the results of the inquiry transparently with the people of Pakistan," Khan said. "Pakistan has been cooperating with the IAEA and the international community to thwart international black-marketeers from proliferating sensitive nuclear technology."
-------- iran
Iran dug tunnel for military nuclear work - magazine
(Reuters)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VN2XLWMSYC3KYCRBAEOCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6933444
BERLIN - Iran is working on a secret nuclear programme for military purposes despite promising the European Union it would halt all activities related to uranium enrichment, the news magazine Der Spiegel said on Saturday.
The magazine said it had obtained documents from an unnamed intelligence agency showing that Iran had dug a secret tunnel near an Isfahan facility preparing raw uranium for enrichment, even though operations there had been stopped.
Iran, which has repeatedly denied trying to develop nuclear weapons, promised the European Union on Nov. 14 it would halt all activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that creates atomic fuel for power plants or weapons.
It then demanded an exemption for some 20 enrichment centrifuges for research purposes, a move Western diplomats argued could torpedo the whole deal. They said Iranian officials in Vienna dropped the demand on Friday, but were waiting for a final decision from Tehran.
Der Spiegel, in an advance release of a report due to appear on Monday, said the secret underground facility near Isfahan could soon be ready to produce large amounts of uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). Centrifuges that spin at supersonic speed can produce enriched uranium from UF6.
The magazine said that according to the intelligence documents, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei personally issued a directive at the start of October to build the secret tunnel.
Diplomats say the Iranian attempt to exempt some centrifuges from the deal struck with the European Union was infuriating both the EU, which is offering Tehran a package of economic incentives in exchange for freezing enrichment activities, and Washington which is adamant Iran is trying to produce nuclear arms.
Oil-rich Iran says it wants nuclear power only to meet booming domestic demand for electricity.
--------
Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once
antiwar.com
by Charley Reese
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=4066
Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered. Hence, the problem the Bush administration has in dealing with Iran is that having been so wrong about Iraq, who can believe it now?
I recognize that a majority of Americans shrugged off going to war on false premises. The rest of the world is not so forgiving. The Bush administration's unprofessional, undiplomatic approach to the question of Iran's nuclear intentions sounds too much like the Iraqi dialogue. That dialogue consisted of American officials calling the Iraqis liars and the Iraqis denying they had weapons of mass destruction.
Now we're hearing the same childish dialogue directed at Iran. Iran insists it is not attempting to build nuclear weapons, and the United States replies with name-calling.
It's sad to say, but the Iranian government currently has more credibility than the Bush administration. All credibility was destroyed by the administration's militant insistence that it had "factual evidence" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "We know where they are," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said with his smug grin. Everybody from the president and the vice president to the national-security adviser to the secretary of state kept belligerently insisting that those weapons existed and scoffed at everyone who expressed any skepticism. And every one of them was 100 percent wrong.
So, I'm sorry, but merely saying that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons without a shred of proof just doesn't cut it. The Iranians might well be lying about their intentions, but the Bush administration has offered us no proof that they are. Two things favor the Iranian position. One is the Iranians' explanation for building nuclear plants. Their only export of real value is oil. They recognize that they have a limited supply of oil. So, rather using up their high-value export for domestic power, they decided to employ nuclear energy for their domestic use and thus stretch out their ability to export oil. That makes perfect sense.
Second, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran has repeatedly called for a nuclear-free Middle East. Guess who opposes that idea? The United States. Guess why? Israel is the only country in the Middle East that really does have nuclear weapons. Israel has also refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and refuses to allow international inspections. And it is Israel that views Iran as a threat.
But in the perverted world of Washington, a Muslim country that has signed the non-proliferation treaty, which allows international inspections, and that has called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East is the villain, while Israel, which refuses both the treaty and inspections and has actually built nuclear weapons, is the hero.
And you wonder why we have problems with the Muslim world.
Furthermore, the attempt by Israel to maintain a nuclear-weapons monopoly in the Middle East explains quite well why Iran has dispersed its nuclear facilities. The Iranians haven't forgotten that the Israelis bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq, nor are they unaware that the Bush administration has agreed to sell Israel our biggest bunker-buster bombs.
In the meantime, Iran has agreed with Europeans to suspend its enrichment of uranium, an operation Iran has a legal right to perform.
If Israel attacks Iran, the Iranians, who have missiles capable of reaching Israel, will fire back. Then we will probably get into it, and if the Syrians have any sense, they will attack Israel, and, to use a quote from an old movie, "This situation is out of control."
"Out of control" is a phrase no rational person would ever want to apply to the Middle East. There are just too many possibilities, and all of them are bad.
Rather than repeat the bad handling of the Iraq situation, the Bush administration should be joining the Arabs and Iran in calling for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. But as John Wayne would say, "That'll be the day."
--------
Iranian Minister Says Differences Remain
Nov 27, 2004
Associated Press
By GEORGE JAHN
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=10&u=/ap/20041127/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_agency
VIENNA, Austria - Iran's foreign minister dampened hopes Saturday of a quick end to a dispute over the scope of his country's freeze on nuclear technology, suggesting Tehran remained committed to exempting key equipment from such a suspension.
The squabble over Iran's interpretation of its deal with the European Union (news - web sites) to freeze all activities linked to uranium enrichment stalled an International Atomic Energy Agency board meeting, which was adjourned for the weekend.
That was meant to give time for Iran to consider approving a total freeze of the program, which can produce both low-grade nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material for the core of nuclear warheads, and for delegates to decide on further steps in policing Tehran's nuclear activities.
But in Tehran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters that Iran still believed that it had a right to exempt about 20 centrifuges from the agreement, despite contrary views from the European Union.
Iran says it wants to run the centrifuges purely for research purposes, something Kharrazi insisted was not banned by a Nov. 7 agreement worked out with Germany, France and Britain on behalf of the European Union.
"The centrifuges will work under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision and will be for research purposes only," he told reporters.
The meeting was adjourned Friday to give time for a formal Iranian response, by letter to the IAEA, on whether Tehran accepts a full suspension that includes the 20 centrifuges.
As the board meeting awaited a formal Iranian response, France, Germany and Britain dangled both a carrot and a stick.
Moving to meet Iranian demands, a confidential draft resolution written by the European three, made available to The Associated Press on Saturday, weakened language on how any freeze would be monitored by the agency.
But an EU official told the AP that Tehran's refusal to drop demands to exempt equipment from the suspension could prompt a harsher resolution that could include the threat of U.N. Security Council action.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said work on such an "alternate" text had already begun, although he expressed hope it would not be needed.
Anticipating that Iran would honor the Nov. 7 deal on full suspension, the three European countries had drafted a relatively mild resolution that takes much of the heat off Iran after more than 18 months of IAEA scrutiny and diminishes the threat of referral to the Security Council.
But Iran came to Thursday's opening day of the meeting with demands that it be allowed to operate the 20 centrifuges - which spin gas into enriched uranium.
In comments to the AP before Kharrazi spoke, senior Iranian delegate Hossein Mousavian had suggested the dispute was close to being solved, describing the demand that the centrifuges be exempted as "not an important issue for Iran."
The newest version of the draft authorizes IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to "pursue his investigations" into remaining suspicious aspects of Iran's nuclear activities over the past two decades.
But instead of mandating him to "report without delay" to the board if there are violations, it says only that he should "inform" board members of irregularities.
Kharrazi, however, suggested that even such language was too tough for Iran.
"There are still provisions in the resolution we don't agree with," he said
-----
Iran, EU agree on uranium enrichment program freeze
Haaretz
November 27, 2004
By Yossi Melman and Yoav Stern
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/506755.html
Reports emerging late Friday night from officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna indicate that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program has been averted. Diplomatic sources in Vienna told Haaretz that negotiations between European Union representatives and Iran have yielded an agreement by Tehran to completely freeze all activities related to uranium enrichment.
Iran gave up a last-minute demand whereby the agreement would not apply to 20 centrifuges that it claims are intended for "research and development purposes."
The IAEA's board is expected to approve the understandings reached between the EU and Iran and to adopt an Iranian resolution according to which it freezes its uranium enrichment program.
Iranian spokesmen say that the agreement will expire within a few months while EU officials say the agreement will be in effect for a long time.
In return for Iran's pledge for a uranium freeze, Europe has committed to negotiating with Iran on providing advanced nuclear technology which would include low-grade enriched uranium that could aid in generating electricity.
The Europeans have also promised to begin negotiations with the Islamic republic on a trade agreement.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said that Iran had suspended its uranium enrichment activities last Monday, in accordance with its agreement with the EU. The suspension, however, did not include the 20 centrifuges that is on the agenda in the latest round of talks.
IAEA inspectors were permitted to identify all structures, sites, and machinery that has been used for the uranium enrichment process except for the centrifuges.
Last week it was reported that Iran quickly moved to complete the first stage of uranium enrichment - where natural uranium is converted to gaseous uranium - prior to freezing the program.
According to diplomatic sources in Vienna, Iran has already managed to produce three and a half tons of gaseous uranium, an amount which enables the manufacturing of one-fourth of the 25 kilograms of enriched uranium required to produce an atomic bomb.
Iran to speed up missile program A defense source in Iran said that his country is accelerating its development of missiles capable of carrying atomic, biological, and chemical warheads.
The senior general was quoted Friday in the Arab-language paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying that five villages in the Kurdistan and Urumiya region near the Iraqi border were evacuated in the last month to make way for Iranian military testing of the improved Shihab-3.
The source also said that Iranian president Ali Khameini authorized a transfer of $1.5 billion of the country's oil revenues for its missile program.
--------
Iran's Stealthy Nukes
Antiwar.com
by Gordon Prather,
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=4061
Apparently President Bush believes he has been given another four years to subvert and/or replace the half-dozen or so regimes he deems to be either a threat to the "freedom" of its citizens or to our "national security."
Iran is at the top of his list.
How else to explain the concerted effort this week by the neo-crazies and their media sycophants to subvert the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general's report to the IAEA Board of Governors on the status of his two-year go-anywhere, see-anything inspection of Iran's nuclear programs.
Not coincidentally, someone ordered the release of an unclassified version of the report former CIA head George Tenet sent to Congress last year entitled "Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, 1 July Through 31 December 2003."
The neo-crazies - in and out of government - are spinning last year's report as if it were this year's report and, hence, justification for regime change in Iran, if not a casus belli. Their media sycophants are being typically sycophantic.
Here's what Tenet had to say about Iran in last year's report.
"The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program, in contradiction to its obligations as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)."
Notice that "Slam-Dunk" Tenet didn't tell Congress that he was convinced, or even that the intelligence community he headed at the time was convinced. No, "Slam-dunk" simply notes that "The United States" - presumably personified by President Bush - remains convinced. Tenet goes on to say,
"During 2003, Iran continued to pursue an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle, ostensibly for civilian purposes, but with clear weapons potential. International scrutiny and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and safeguards will most likely prevent Tehran from using facilities declared to the IAEA directly for its weapons program as long as Tehran remains a party to the NPT."
So, a year ago, Tenet assessed that if Iran remained a NPT-signatory, Iran could probably not successfully exploit the "clear weapons potential" of its indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.
In October 2003, Iran had provided the IAEA what purported to be a complete and final disclosure of its nuclear program, committing itself to correct the failures and past breaches of its obligations under its existing IAEA Safeguards Agreement.
In November 2003, Iran agreed to cooperate with the IAEA in accordance with the provisions of the go-anywhere, see-anything Model Additional Protocol, and Iran signed such an additional protocol to its comprehensive safeguards agreement in December 2003.
Once the additional protocol is ratified, Iran will be required to declare its plans for the succeeding 10-year period for developing its nuclear fuel-cycle, as well as its current nuclear fuel cycle-related R&D activities, even those that do not involve "nuclear material."
Meanwhile, Iran decided to voluntarily suspend nuclear materials enrichment and reprocessing activities as a confidence-building measure - pursuant to a request by the IAEA Board of Governors in September 2003 - and invited the IAEA to verify this suspension.
The focus of the IAEA's work in Iran over the last two years included verifying the origin of the enriched-uranium contamination found at a number of locations; determining the extent of Iran's efforts to import, manufacture, and use centrifuges of both the P-1 and P-2 designs; and developing a comprehensive understanding of Iran's uranium enrichment program and related R&D.
Director General ElBaradei was able to report to the IAEA Board this year that he had reached the conclusion that all "nuclear material" in Iran had been properly accounted for, that none of it had been "diverted to prohibited activities," and that - subject to further investigations of the origin at the uranium-enrichment equipment Iran imported - he was inclined to decide all related issues in Iran's favor.
In a letter dated Nov. 14, 2004, Iran notified the IAEA secretariat that it had decided to continue and extend the voluntary suspension, making all nuclear materials enrichment-related and processing activities - including the conversion of yellowcake to uranium metal, tetrafluoride, and hexafluoride - subject to IAEA containment and surveillance measures.
ElBaradei - after conducting a two-year-long go-anywhere, see-anything inspection - reported to the IAEA Board of Governors last week that he has found no evidence as yet that Iran has a "clandestine nuclear weapons program."
Of course, that's what ElBaradei told the UN Security Council last year about Iraq. So the neo-crazies are spinning ElBaradei's report as justification for regime change in Iran, if not a casus belli.
-----
Many types of isotopes
November 27, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41659
The neo-crazies - in and out of government - lied to you last year about Iraq's "nuclear programs," and this year they're lying to you about Iran's.
What constitutes lying? Well, either making an untrue statement with intent to deceive or deliberately creating a false impression.
The neo-crazies told you right up till the eve of President Bush's "pre-emptive strike" that Iraq had reconstituted - deep underground and widely dispersed - the uranium-enrichment facilities totally destroyed back in 1991. That was an untrue statement, made with intent to deceive you.
They also told you that a uranium-enrichment capability was a necessary and sufficient condition for Iraq to have nukes within a year or two. That was an untrue statement, made to create a false impression.
You see, if you want to make a gun-type nuke, a uranium-enrichment capability is certainly necessary. And, if you have two 60 pound sub-critical pieces of weapons-grade enriched-uranium, all you have to do to make a gun-type nuke is bang them together.
But if you want to make an enriched-uranium implosion-type nuke - which is what Saddam was attempting to make - a uranium-enrichment capability is by no means "sufficient."
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei had reported to the U.N. Security Council that, as of March 2003, there had been no attempt whatsoever to reconstitute Iraq's uranium-enrichment capability. Furthermore, the CIA's Iraq Survey Group spent a billion dollars in the year following the invasion, searching everywhere and interviewing all the "usual suspects."
Result? Not only was ElBaradei right about there being no reconstituted uranium-enrichment capability, but there had also been no attempt since 1991 to design or test the high-explosive system absolutely required for an implosion-type nuke.
Well, now the neo-crazies would have you believe that Iran has an underground, widely dispersed uranium-enrichment capability. And that uranium-enrichment capability is a sufficient condition for Iran to have nukes in a year or two.
But while the neo-crazies have been making that claim, Iran has been allowing ElBaradei to conduct in Iran the same sort of go-anywhere see-anything inspection he conducted in Iraq.
Result? ElBaradei has concluded that all "nuclear material" in Iran has been accounted for and has not been diverted to activities prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Hence, there is no Non-Proliferation Treaty issue for the IAEA Board to refer to the U.N. Security Council.
Furthermore, ElBaradei has found no evidence that Iran has yet introduced "nuclear material" into the uranium-enrichment facilities under construction.
That's important, because until "nuclear material" was actually introduced, Iran was under no obligation to report to the IAEA the construction of the gas centrifuge plants at Natanz.
Obligated or not, Iran has placed "all essential components of centrifuges as defined by the Agency" under IAEA seals, except for 20 sets of centrifuge components to be used "for R&D purposes." Even then, Iran also offered to provide the IAEA with access to that R&D program "if requested."
Well, the neo-crazies promptly went bonkers. They charged this R&D "exception" proved the Iranians had no intention of abiding by the agreement they made with Germany, France and Great Britain to "suspend" all uranium-enrichment related activities and that this latest Iranian perfidy had to immediately be brought before the U.N. Security Council for action.
But don't let those neo-crazy charges create a false impression.
You see, Iran also stated that "AEOI (the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran) is not intending to use nuclear materials in any of the tests associated with the said R&D."
Gas centrifuges are not used exclusively for uranium isotope separation. Cascades of gas centrifuges are used to separate - in kilogram quantities for commercial sale - the isotopes of zinc, tungsten, molybdenum, krypton, xenon, germanium, iron, sulfur, oxygen and carbon.
For example, large quantities of zinc-acetate-dihydrate are used as an additive in water-cooled water-moderated nuclear power plants - particularly those burning plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide [MOX] fuels - to reduce corrosion and cracking of key components. However, the use of naturally occurring zinc would result in increased radiation exposure to plant workers, because Zn-64 - constituting 48 percent by isotopic concentration in naturally occurring zinc - is transformed into radioactive Zn-65 in the reactor environment. Hence, the lucrative market for large quantities of "depleted" zinc-acetate-dihydrate wherein the Zn-64 isotopic concentration is reduced to less than 1 percent.
So, until IAEA-safeguarded "nuclear materials" are actually introduced into them, the origin of the centrifuges, the construction of cascades and the operation thereof is none of the IAEA's beeswax. And who knows? Maybe the Iranian's secret plan all along has been to take over the "depleted zinc" market.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- israel
Palestinian security chief says infamous security unit to be dismantled as part of security overhaul
Associated Press
IBRAHIM BARZAK
November 27, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/27/international1237EST0472.DTL
A top Palestinian official said Saturday he would dismantle an elite security unit accused of abuse and corruption in a first step toward overhauling the tangled network of Palestinian security forces.
Palestinian Preventive Security chief Brig. Gen. Rashid Abu Shbak also announced plans to merge the ruling Fatah party's myriad militant groups to make them more accountable for their actions and to end the gun chaos on Palestinian streets.
The United States has long demanded a major overhaul of the Palestinian security services, including disbanding many of the rival -- and in some cases warring -- forces, but faced stiff resistance from Yasser Arafat, who used the forces to maintain his hold on power.
Since Arafat's death Nov. 11, his successors have taken steps to restore confidence in the Palestinian leadership -- tainted by accusations of corruption under Arafat -- calling for elections to choose a new leader and promising to be more open and accountable.
As part of that effort, Shbak said Saturday he would abolish the Gaza Security and Protections unit -- nicknamed the "death squad" by Palestinians -- in the wake of accusations that some of its members abused their powers and used intimidation to rule the streets of Gaza.
"We are facing a new phase and we must say farewell to chaos and to all those who cause it in the Palestinian street," Shbak told reporters in Gaza City. "We must clear the air of past mistakes of the previous era."
The 70-person unit was formed more than a year ago to crack down on militant groups and track and arrest high-profile criminals in Gaza. But some members of the unit were accused of turning into criminals themselves, confiscating land, smuggling weapons and intimidating the general public with threats of violence.
Shbak also announced the creation of a committee within Fatah to work to merge its fragmented and decentralized armed militias, including the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group responsible for many suicide bombing attacks on Israelis.
"These groups must be brought under control and there must be a central leadership that can be held responsible for their actions," Shbak said.
The committee will pursue ways to bring these armed groups under control without interfering with their "principles of resistance," indicating Fatah had no intention of pushing them to end the 4-year-old armed uprising against Israel, he said.
Meanwhile, in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,000 Palestinians, including scores of armed, masked militants affiliated with Fatah, demonstrated for the continuation of the uprising.
The demonstrators also declared their support for Mahmoud Abbas, the new head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Fatah's candidate in Jan. 9 presidential elections.
Abbas, 69, is a pragmatist who has spoken out against the uprising and is believed to be the candidate favored by Israel and the United States.
The rally came a day after jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti dropped his plans to run in the elections and endorsed Abbas.
Barghouti, 45, is the leader of the Fatah movement's young guard, which has been agitating for reform and a chance to capture leadership positions currently monopolized by older politicians.
Fatah has selected Abbas as its candidate and, in an effort to persuade Barghouti to drop his planned challenge, announced Friday it would hold long-delayed party elections in August, the first poll to fill the top party posts in 16 years.
"A whole generation within Fatah was marginalized, and now it will be able to be represented," said Mohammed Hourani, a young Fatah leader.
The announced elections, as well as fears that Barghouti's candidacy would split the Fatah vote and allow another candidate to win the presidential election, helped push Barghouti out of the race.
Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison after being convicted of murder in attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk.
Fatah officials Saturday called on the Palestinian leadership to hold parliamentary elections May 15, the anniversary of the day Israel declared its independence in 1948, considered a day of tragedy by the Palestinians.
Also, a 4-year-old girl, Shaima Abu Shammaleh, was in serious condition after Israeli soldiers shot her in the mouth as she stood in front of her home, witnesses and medical officials said. The army had no immediate comment.
------
Our man in the US: Israel uses TV show to find its best spin doctor
The Guardian
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
November 27, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1360969,00.html
In some countries, reality television offers contestants fame and fortune. In Israel, the winner gets the equivalent of a job with the civil service.
The latest reality programme to catch the country's imagination is The Ambassador, in which 14 contestants compete at defending Israel's reputation abroad.
The winner will receive a year's contract at an agency set up in New York to promote the country in the United States.
The show's popularity and the prize it offers reflect, say academics, domestic confusion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it is perceived around the world.
The 14 contestants must carry out a variety of diplomatic tasks in Washington, New York, France, Britain and Israel. The judges are a former spokesman for the Israeli army, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security agency and a television political correspondent.
The winner will be the person who best demonstrates the qualities of a professional advocate and presents Israel in the most positive light.
The format is based on The Apprentice, the show in which the tycoon Donald Trump sets aspiring job applicants tasks and then tells one at the end: "You're fired."
The first edition of The Ambassador featured a debate between the seven male and seven female contestants at the Cambridge University Union.
Appearing for the men, Tzvika Deutsch asked the audience how they would feel if a football game in Manchester was cancelled because the stadium was threatened with rocket fire from militants. "For the people of Manchester this would be a very bad joke. But for people in the Israeli city of Sderot this is the reality."
Ravit Shemtov, for the women, said Israel had offered the Palestinians many peace solutions but they had all been rejected. "Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority has declined every opportunity the Israeli government offered them."
Under hostile questioning, one contestant, Ofra Bin Nun, was prompted into saying: "Israel has not taken anything from anyone." The audience groaned in response.
The judges ruled that Ms Bin Nun had made a major error and she became the first contestant to be expelled.
Candidates must strive to spin Israel's story most effectively and need not pay much attention to reality or the Palestinian point of view.
Nachman Shai, a judge on the programme and a former spokesman for the Israeli army, described advocacy as an ongoing war for the past and for the future.
Yoram Peri, a professor of politics and media at Tel Aviv University, said the series went to the heart of Israeli society and its emphasis on how it is perceived rather than what it does.
"The major concern in Israeli society is that we do not explain ourselves well. When we discuss the horrible things that happen in the West Bank, we don't talk about the issue but about how it will be seen.
"It's a fundamental issue in Israeli life. It explains the popularity of someone like Benjamin Netanyahu [finance minister and former prime minister]. It's not because he is a good ambassador, it's because he is good at PR."
Prof Peri added: "The programme reflects a major problem in Israeli society. We do not think we do anything wrong but we think we explain ourselves badly and that the international media is anti-semitic."
The Ambassadors highlighted Israel's real problem, the professor said, which was not one of advocacy but facing up to the true nature of its problems. "We are fighting two wars. One is a war against terrorism, which is legitimate, and the other is a war against Palestinian liberation, which is not," he said.
"Most Israelis cannot make the distinction and President Bush has added to that confusion by seeing only terrorism."
-----
Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes
Tel Aviv's concern about an Iranian bomb is more likely political rather than military
Antiwar.com
by Roger Howard
November 27, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/howard.php?articleid=4065
Israel's leaders are apt to portray the prospect of an Iranian nuclear warhead in highly apocalyptic terms. Earlier this year, for example, Ariel Sharon was prepared to call Iran "the biggest danger to the existence of Israel" and warned that "Israel will not allow Iran to be equipped with a nuclear weapon."
But though the image of fanatical mullahs brandishing nuclear weapons is of course a terrifying one, and a reality that the outside world must of course try very hard to prevent, the real reasons for Israel's alarm are, on closer inspection, easy to misapprehend.
Tel Aviv's concern is not, for example, likely to be based on narrowly military considerations. If Israel's main installations at Dimona really do house a large arsenal of around 200 nuclear missiles, as most independent analysts believe, and of course it has such close relations with the world's biggest nuclear power, the United States, why would the Iranians dare to provoke the massive and devastating retaliation that any foolish nuclear move would inevitably provoke?
The same logic holds true about the supposed risk that hardliners in Tehran could pass nuclear materials into the hands of terrorist third parties whose fanaticism renders them immune to the mutually assured destruction their actions would invite. But don't the mullahs know that any such move could easily be traced back to Iran and would therefore prompt a similarly devastating response?
Nor would an Iranian bomb make any difference to the state of play on the ground between the Israeli Defense Forces and Tehran's supposed protégés in the Middle East such as the Lebanese militia Hizbollah. As Basil Liddell Hart once argued, a nuclear weapon will deter only nuclear blackmail but will make no difference to the behavior of conventional forces in the field. Consider, after all, how many nuclear states have been attacked by the conventional forces of the non-nuclear - America in Vietnam, Britain in the Falklands, and Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
It seems likely, then, that there are other, more convincing, reasons why Israel is concerned about an Iranian bomb. One possibility, for example, is that Tel Aviv is deeply concerned that such a development could potentially create deep splits in the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Consider, for example, what would happen if Tehran, having developed a warhead and withdrawn from the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, offered to reduce the size of or even eliminate its own nuclear arsenal in return for similar moves - all UN-monitored - by Tel Aviv.
This would be a typically calculating and manipulative ploy by an Iranian regime playing the Israeli card to bolster its support at home and in the Islamic world as a whole. But any such ploy by Tehran would also seek to divide the more moderate European governments from a U.S. administration that has consistently been far more skeptical of Iranian nuclear assurances.
This might prove an adept move by posing a very difficult dilemma for an administration anxious to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability but equally reluctant to pressure its key Middle Eastern ally.
Any subsequent U.S. diplomatic pressure on Tel Aviv would infuriate Israeli leaders, who have long considered their nuclear arsenal as their best deterrent against what they regard as a hostile and numerically vastly superior Arab world. On two occasions, during the wars of 1967 and 1973, IDF chiefs ordered the preparation of their nuclear missiles against enemy forces.
But because the Israelis have frequently fended off intense U.S. diplomatic pressure before now, this is probably not the real reason why Tel Aviv would fear any such Iranian move. More important, perhaps, is the possibility that it would pose awkward questions, or even a far-reaching debate, in Washington and amongst the American public in general about the cost to America of an unquestioning loyalty to Israel.
In short, the development of a nuclear bomb has not just obvious military implications; it also brings far-reaching political fallout of which Israeli chiefs must be very conscious.
-------- korea
North Korea Reactor Plan Suspended Until 2005
Associated Press
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15337-2004Nov26?language=printer
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 -- An international consortium said Friday that it has extended for another year a freeze on a project to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea.
The four main partners in the New York-based Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization -- the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union -- had previously suspended the project for a year through Dec. 1, 2004.
The freeze will be extended until Dec. 1, 2005, the group said in a statement.
Reports from South Korea and Japan in recent months have said the United States sought to kill the program outright but could not persuade Seoul or Tokyo to adopt that stance. The two countries are heavily invested in the $4.6 billion light-water reactor program, which is about one-third complete.
The reactor projects were started after a 1994 deal in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its Russian-model heavy-water reactors producing plutonium.
In exchange, the international partners agreed to build two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors, which do not produce large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct, and to send annual shipments of 500,000 tons of fuel oil to help North Korea ease its chronic power shortage.
The U.S.-funded deliveries of fuel oil were halted in 2002 after North Korea acknowledged that it also had a secret uranium-enrichment program that could produce weapons, in violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean accord and of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which North Korea signed in 1985.
----
CIA report cites N. Korean proliferation threat
November 27, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041126-111219-4624r.htm
North Korea threatened in secret talks to export nuclear weapons and to conduct a test blast, according to a CIA report made public this week.
"In late April 2003 during the Six-Party Talks in Beijing, North Korea privately threatened to 'transfer' or 'demonstrate' its nuclear weapons," the semiannual report on arms proliferation to Congress stated.
"North Korea repeated these threats at the Six-Party Talks in August 2003."
The CIA's description was the first official confirmation that the official North Korean statements were a threat. The disclosure also contradicted public comments on the matter by Bush administration spokesmen.
The North Korean threat to export nuclear arms and to test a nuclear device was first reported by The Washington Times of May 7, 2003.
The danger of North Korean nuclear transfers to other nations or entities is being taken seriously by the commander of U.S. military forces in South Korea, Army Gen. Leon J. LaPorte.
Gen. LaPorte said in a speech Nov. 17 that "there is concern that North Korea, in its desire for hard currency, would sell weapons-grade plutonium to some terrorist organizations."
The State Department, eager to continue dialogue with North Korea, has sought to play down the threats.
After a Chinese diplomat publicly repeated the North Korean threat in June, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters that comments by North Korean officials about wanting to conduct a nuclear test "were not phrased as a threat."
The CIA report notes the threats followed a December 2003 proposal by Pyongyang to freeze nuclear activities and hold off on exporting nuclear arms in exchange for rewards.
Administration officials said the threat was first made by North Korean official Li Gun during a meeting with James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, during a closed-door meeting in Beijing.
Mr. Li's comment was described at the time by one official as "clearly a threat."
Mr. Li told Mr. Kelly that the communist state would "export nuclear weapons, add to its current arsenal or test a nuclear device," the official said.
Mr. Li said the specific actions by North Korea on its nuclear program would be based on how the United States responded to its overtures.
Mr. Kelly later testified before Congress that he "strongly cautioned them against any escalation."
The six-party talks among China, the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Russia are stalled as a result of North Korea's refusal to return for the next round. U.S. officials said they hope the next meeting of the six nations' representatives will be in December or January.
A State Department official said yesterday that North Korea proposed in June that it would not make additional nuclear arms, will not test them and will not export them.
"We haven't been back [to the negotiating table] since June 25," said the official, explaining that the North Koreans said during the meetings that "elements" in North Korea are moving toward a nuclear test.
Also, North Korea has repeated that it will not export nuclear weapons if the United States meets its demands for rewards, the official said.
The CIA report said that North Korea continued development and production of ballistic missiles and that Pyongyang may be preparing for a flight test of its long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile. The missile is believed to be capable of "reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload," the report says.
"North Korea has demonstrated a willingness to sell complete ballistic missile systems and components that have enabled other states to acquire longer-range capabilities earlier than would otherwise have been possible and to acquire the basis for domestic development efforts," according to the report.
The CIA also stated that China continued to supply missile-related goods to Pakistan and Iran.
However, the report states that "Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic missile-related projects during the second half of 2003."
The report adds: "Chinese entity assistance has helped Pakistan move toward domestic serial production of solid-propellant [short-range ballistic missiles] and has supported Pakistan's development of solid-propellant [medium-range ballistic missiles]."
China also supplied missile goods to Iran, Libya and North Korea, according to the report.
On other issues, the CIA report states that:
•Syria is developing a nuclear research center at Dayr Al Hajar and "we are monitoring Syrian nuclear intentions with concern."
•Syria's missile program received support from North Korea and Iran.
•Syria has chemical nerve agents and is developing more toxic and persistent nerve weapons.
•A Pakistani nuclear engineer, Bashir al-Din Mahmood, discussed nuclear weapons development with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and may have provided assistance to the terror group.
•Russia is playing a key role in building nuclear power reactors in Iran, China and India.
•Russian companies supplied missile equipment and know-how to Iran, India and China, and were instrumental in speeding up Iran's Shahab-3 medium-range missile.
•Russia has failed to tighten controls on exports of weapons and weapons-related goods.
•Iran bought dual-use military and commercial goods from Western European states, as did Pakistan and India, and North Korea sought uranium enrichment material from Western European states.
The European states were not identified, but other officials have said supplier nations include France and Germany.
The report also states there is "growing concern" among U.S. intelligence agencies that ingredients for weapons of mass destruction will continue to be sold by "nonstate actors."
--------
IAEA finally drops S. Korea investigation
November 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041127-073757-9581r.htm
Vienna, Austria, Nov. 27 -- The International Atomic Energy Agency, as expected, has ended its investigation into two once-unreported nuclear experiments by South Korea.
The IAEA investigations, which ended Friday in Vienna, centered on scientists' work to enrich small amounts of plutonium and uranium in 1982 and 2000, the Korea Times reported Saturday.
South Korea has acknowledged the tests, but insist they were isolated, unauthorized and unrepeated.
The two South Korean incidents have long appeared virtually trivial in relation to IAEA concerns about Iran's and North Korea's ongoing nuclear programs, officials said.
--------
South Korea breathes sigh of relief over IAEA decision on nuclear tests
SEOUL (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127062418.4wammeol.html
South Korea on Saturday breathed a collective sigh of relief after the UN atomic agency opted not to refer it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its past nuclear experiments.
At a meeting on Friday in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reproached South Korea for its undeclared nuclear experiments in which small amounts of weapons-grade nuclear material were produced.
Following a meeting of the 35-nation board of governors, the IAEA chided South Korea for breaching nuclear safeguards with the experiments, but allowed it to escape referral to the UN Security Council.
In a seven-point statement, it said "the quantities of nuclear material have not been significant and that to date there is no indication that the undeclared experiments have continued."
It said the IAEA's board of governors felt, as IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has already said, that that "the failure of the ROK (Republic of Korea) to report these activities in accordance with its safeguards agreements is of serious concern."
However, the "Board welcomed the corrective actions taken by the ROK and the active cooperation it has provided to the agency," the IAEA said.
The foreign ministry here welcomed the statement.
"The government finds to its satisfaction the issue of the nuclear material experiments were objectively evaluated and properly dealt with in accordance with the nature of the case," it said in a statement.
"Consequently, suspicions such as those concerning the possibility of the government having condoned the experiments were cleared," it said.
"We are satisfied that the case has neither been referred to the UN Security Council nor have discussions on the case been put off to a next meeting of the IAEA governors," it said.
It said the government would strengthen control over nuclear-related activities to enhance transparency and would step up cooperation with the international community to prevent nuclear proliferation.
South Korea admitted in September that its scientists produced small amounts of plutonium in 1982 and enriched uranium in 2000 without informing the nuclear watchdog.
It said the tests were conducted without government authorization, had now stopped and were not designed to produce nuclear weapons.
However the revelations embarassed both Washington and Seoul which are trying to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear weapons drive.
South Korea's chief government delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin, said in Vienna that controversy over the nation's nuclear material experiments has been fairly and properly evaluated and concluded by the IAEA.
"The government will extend full cooperation to the IAEA board's future confirmation efforts regarding (South Korea's) past nuclear material experiments," Choi said.
The ruling Uri Party also welcomed the IAEA statement as a "fair and balanced" assessment of the case.
"We hope that this decision will bring an end to suspicions raised at some corners of the international community that South Korea has ben carrying out nuclear tests for a military purpose," it said.
-----
North Korea accuses US of waging psychological warfare
SEOUL (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127081735.6klrz865.html
Stalinist North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of waging psychological warfare and said US hostility was obstructing efforts to settle the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.
The official Minju Joson newspaper said Washington's attempt to topple its regime through psychological warfare and espionage "is nothing but a very foolish and despicable plot based on an anachronistic delusion."
The paper, in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said the US is considering spending two million dollars a year to smuggle radios into North Korea "and increasing hours of false propaganda broadcasting against it."
It said the new CIA director Porter Goss also reportedly instructed his operatives to conduct "offensive intelligence activities" against the North.
"Their escalated anti-DPRK (North Korea) moves will result in nothing but completely checking the solution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and bedevilling the relations of stand-off between the DPRK and the U.S," it said.
Three rounds of six-party talks have taken place since the stand-off over North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons began in October 2002. The North boycotted a fourth round set for September, blaming what it deemed Washington's hostile policy.
South Korean media said Thursday that informal six-nation talks -- involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas -- may take place in mid-December in Beijing.
The confrontation began when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea has denied running such a program. But it has demanded economic and diplomatic concessions in return for halting an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program which was mothballed in 1994 but later restarted.
US President George W. Bush last month signed a law to promote human rights in North Korea. It provides four million dollars for expanding US radio broadcasts into the North.
-----
High time North Korea makes up its mind on nuclear talks: South Korea
VIENTIANE (AFP)
Nov 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041127153504.4w0chisl.html
South Korea said Saturday it was high time North Korea decided whether to return to six-nation nuclear talks as it was joined by China and Japan in hoping for a resumption of the dialogue by year-end.
"We have to exert diplomatic efforts to hold the next round of six-party talks hopefully by the end of this year," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon told AFP amid preparations for an Asian summit in Laos next week.
"We have explained our position and I think that it is high time that the North Koreans make a strategic decision," he said.
Ban later discussed the simmering nuclear dispute with his counterparts from China and Japan, where the outlines of a new consensus on an end-of-year timeframe appeared to be emerging.
"All three agreed that North Korea should agree to resume the six-party talks as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of this year," said Hatsuhisa Takashima, a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman.
The remarks followed heightened speculation that the stalled six-party talks could resume soon.
South Korea's state-run KBS television network reported Friday informal six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme may take place between December 15 and 23 in Beijing.
"The point is that since the American presidential election is over, it is a fact that North Korea has to deal with the Bush administration for the coming four more years," said Takashima. "They have no other way."
Three rounds of six-party talks have taken place since the standoff over North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons began in October 2002. The North boycotted a fourth round set for September, blaming hostility from Washington.
One of the apparent reasons for Pyongyang's foot-dragging was its wish to await the outcome of the US presidential election.
The talks involve the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
When the foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan met Saturday, they agreed that a "stick-and-carrot" approach might be necessary to lure North Korea back to the negotiating table, Takashima said.
"The three countries will work hard together with the other parties to hold talks at an early date," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said as he emerged from the discussions. "Our timetable is 'the sooner the better'."
China is believed to be the country with the most direct influence on North Korea, due to traditional political ties going back three generations combined with generous fuel and food aid.
But all parties should do their best to get it back to the negotiations, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said.
"Each country has its own channel so that we will exercise our influence upon (North Korea)," he said. "China will do their best, I'm sure."
The South Korean foreign minister, Ban, said Seoul would prefer a high-level round of six-nation talks but failing that, lower-level talks would also be a possibility.
"We hope to have a formal meeting at the chief delegates' level, however we are flexible about the format of the meeting," he said, adding that "intensive diplomatic efforts" were under way.
The confrontation began in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a covert uranium-enrichment programme.
North Korea has since denied running such a programme. But it has demanded economic and diplomatic concessions in return for refreezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms programme mothballed in 1994.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
[ To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com ]
Nuke Rep. Hobson's bill
November 27, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041126-085502-5675r.htm
Who would have believed that President Bush would have to allocate some of the political capital he accumulated from his 3.5 million-vote, 31-state re-election victory to change the mind of a single seven-term House Republican who has, virtually single-handedly, blocked the will of the White House, 95 percent of his House Republican colleagues and 98 percent of Senate Republicans? Yet that is precisely what Ohio Republican Rep. David Hobson is bent on doing. In fact, he has managed to prevail, so far, by exercising his will in the $388 billion omnibus spending bill adopted last Saturday. The fact that the issue at hand directly affects America's long-term nuclear-weapons policy makes Mr. Hobson's stand all the more unacceptable.
The policy Mr. Hobson has been pursuing is identical to the policy vigorously advocated in recent years by Ted Kennedy. It is also the nuclear-weapons policy supported by 2008 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Because congressional and presidential elections are held to decide such matters, it is the will of the president and the overwhelming majority of Congress' majority party that must prevail, not Mr. Hobson's.
The issue involves research programs conducted by the Energy Department to evaluate the feasibility and desirability of developing two small nuclear warheads. One is the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator weapon, commonly known as a "bunker buster," which could be useful in destroying deeply buried weapons of mass destruction developed and/or hidden by rogue regimes or their stateless terrorist allies. The other program, the Stockpile Services Advanced Concepts Initiative, includes researching extremely low-yield nuclear weapons, commonly known as "mini-nukes," whose destructive power would be less than five kilotons.
It is important to emphasize that both are research programs. No decision has been made to deploy either weapon, and congressional approval would be necessary before any such deployment could take place.
Both research programs, which, if they were properly funded (which they have not been), could be completed in a few years. They have been debated and authorized since the Bush administration first began exploring the idea of adding them to the nation's nuclear arsenal in 2002. In May, 207 of 218 House Republicans voted to authorize the programs. In June, 50 of 51 Republican senators voted to defeat Mr. Kennedy's amendment that would have prohibited the use of $36 million to research the programs.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hobson's energy and water appropriations subcommittee deleted the research funding and redirected the money elsewhere. It was this decision that found its way into the omnibus spending bill. This wrong decision needs to be reversed promptly so that research can be resumed.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Browns Ferry's Unit 3 back up
Reactor returned to service after Tuesday shutdown
November 27, 2004
Huntsville Times
By CHRISTOPHER BELL chrisb@htimes.com
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1101550589282651.xml
ATHENS - A reactor at Browns Ferry nuclear plant near Athens returned to service Thursday night, two days after it shut down unexpectedly, the Tennessee Valley Authority said.
A lightning strike might have caused the automatic shutdown of Unit 3 on Tuesday about 10 a.m. during a heavy thunderstorm, Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Atlanta, said Friday.
Hannah said the "hot shutdown" was classified as an "unusual event," lowest of four emergency classifications for a nuclear plant. According to TVA, the shutdown of a steam-powered turbine led the reactor to automatically shut down.
-------- vermont
PSB recommends $85,000 fine for Vt. Yankee
The Associated Press
November 27, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2561315,00.html
BRATTLEBORO (AP) -- A hearing officer has recommended that Entergy Nuclear be fined $85,000 for beginning construction on a Vermont Yankee repair building without first getting state approval.
Hearing officer George Young wrote that Entergy's past business practices, and history of not following directives from state regulators, worked against the company.
"Entergy's past performance ... shows a pattern in which the company has not complied with its legal obligations," he wrote.
"Entergy knew or should have known that it could not commence site preparation without first receiving approval from the board," Young wrote. "The facts make clear that at least some of Entergy's management did understand the applicable law."
He added, "Even if no individual at Entergy had specific knowledge of both the legal requirements and the fact that site preparation may commence, there is no question that Entergy, an entity, is properly charged with knowledge of both."
Young said there were a few mitigating factors, and so he wasn't recommending the maximum fine of $100,000 allowed under Vermont law.
Young said he was proposing close to the maximum fine "to encourage Entergy to establish appropriate internal mechanisms to ensure compliance."
Entergy, as part of its site preparation, removed about 30 truckloads of soil from the Yankee nuclear reactor site in Vernon. But after a public outcry during a public hearing on the plan, it hauled the soil back to the plant and it was tested for possible radioactivity contamination.
There was none beyond normal background levels, the Department of Health determined.
Entergy eventually withdrew its application, and rebuilt the large electric turbine rotor in an old paper mill in Brattleboro.
According to the PSB process, all sides in the case have two weeks to respond to the proposed fine, and then the full board will make a decision.
Laurence Smith, spokesman for Entergy, said the company would decline comment until Dec. 7, when comments are due.
"It's under review," he said, noting the proposed fine was a "preliminary recommendation on an issue that is just over a year old."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. military looks forward to hand over of bases
November 27, 2004
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041126-085504-8842r.htm
Hours after Congress approved $400 million for training and equipping the Afghan national army, U.S. military officials told reporters in Afghanistan that they hope to hand over their bases to Afghan troops one day.
The goal, expressed at a briefing last weekend by officers of the U.S. Army Reserve's 367th Engineer Battalion near Kabul, is shared by the international community, which is helping the United States raise a national army in Afghanistan.
"It's difficult, but definitely achievable," said one of the officers briefing journalists at the Bagram Air Base near Kabul.
Afghan officials concede that raising an army from the ruins of a war and civil strife that plagued their country for more than 20 years will not be easy, but they note that not too long ago Afghanistan had a professional army. The Afghan army, trained and equipped by the Soviets, disintegrated in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Last Saturday evening, Congress approved $400 million for Afghanistan's national army and $300 million in military assistance to neighboring Pakistan. The total, $700 million, was a $350 million increase over last year.
While the aid to Pakistan will bolster the Pakistani military engaged in fighting al Qaeda militants along the Afghan-Pakistan border, observers believe nothing will bring more stability to the region than to have a national army in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai outlined plans for a 70,000-strong national army for his country while addressing a donors' conference in Germany in December 2002.
Mr. Karzai told the donors that he hoped the proposed army would "bring peace and stability to Afghanistan" and would be the "only legal army in the country."
He also looks forward to a time when the national army would be established and private militias, which control large parts of rural Afghanistan, would be disbanded.
Since then, Mr. Karzai has come a long way toward fulfilling his promise. The most difficult decision for him was to abandon his defense minister and senior vice president, Gen. Mohammed Fahim, when he announced his team for the October elections.
The move caused some observers to predict that Gen. Fahim, who heads the largest private militia in Afghanistan and enjoys the support of the Tajiks, the country's second largest ethnic group, would make it difficult for Mr. Karzai to win the election.
But contrary to these predictions, he did win the election with an impressive majority, even in Tajik areas.
Now, with assistance from the United States, France and Britain, the Afghan government has been developing the national army Mr. Karzai promised two years ago. The United States is also providing uniforms and basic equipment, while weapons have come from former Soviet bloc countries.
The Afghan government has undertaken a comprehensive plan to disband private militias. It offers cash and vocational training for members of the militias who volunteer to disarm.
At a recent briefing in Kabul, Mr. Karzai said he was confident that with the help of its allies, the Afghan government would raise a 70,000-man army by 2009.
Initially, the training program progressed slowly. By January 2003, just over 1,700 men in five battalions had completed the 10-week training course. But by the middle of this year, the Afghan national army (ANA) had 7,000 soldiers.
In July, the ANA contributed 1,000 soldiers to the U.S.-led Operation Warrior Sweep against the Taliban and al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. These were the first major combat operations for the new Afghan army.
In September, the ANA contributed a combat-support battalion, providing engineering, medical and scouting skills to the U.S.-led coalition forces.
Afghan officials said progress was slow because regional warlords were unwilling to disarm, and also because there was not enough international commitment to ensure rapid progress.
They also complained that the CIA continues to fund some local warlords to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas hiding in their areas.
Afghan officials hope now that they have a respectable number of soldiers in the army, recruitment will increase as Afghans see the emergence of a national force.
Despite these encouraging developments, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, is still reluctant to join the army. Afghan officials, however, hope that Mr. Karzai's victory in the election, in which large numbers of Pashtuns voted for the president, will also help.
Mr. Karzai is also a Pashtun, and one of the reasons he distanced himself from Gen. Fahim was to dispel the notion that he depended on the non-Pashtun defense minister for staying in power.
Mr. Karzai had asked other regional commanders to contribute troops to the ANA so that an ethnically balanced force would be created. But two of the most powerful regional warlords - Abdul Rashid Dostum in the north and Ismail Khan in the west - refused to cooperate.
-------
Afghanistan waits for tourists
November 27, 2004
By Nathan Hodge
COX NEWS SERVICE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041126-085506-1772r.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan - In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan was part of the hippie trail, a magnet for stoned backpackers seeking nirvana. Well-heeled tourists also came to visit. Afghanistan's rugged terrain was ideal for mountaineering expeditions and hunting trips, and rich collectors could stock up on antiques and fine carpets.
Then came the Soviet invasion and its long occupation and war against guerillas, followed by the grim rule of the Taliban and, in 2001, the U.S. invasion following the September 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Three years after an American-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime, the State Department still warns U.S. citizens against visiting Afghanistan. A low-level insurgency continues on the border with Pakistan, and rival warlords occasionally clash. Al Qaeda's chief, Osama bin Laden, remains at large, believed to be somewhere in the region.
Still, adventurous tourists are returning to this wild and exotic landscape.
It is not a vacation spot for the fainthearted.
Charles Clapham recently drove to Afghanistan from Bristol, England, in a 1961 Land Rover. After crossing Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India, he headed north to Afghanistan, planning to drive back to Europe through the former Soviet Union.
He stopped for a few days at a guest house in Kabul and spent a few days cycling around the capital. Contacted later by e-mail in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he was waiting for a visa to Uzbekistan, Mr. Clapham said he encountered no problems crossing the Torkham border post between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but saw few signs of other solo motorists on the same route.
According to the border register, "mine was the fourth foreign vehicle to cross the Torkham border this year," he said.
Hessamuddin Hamrah, president of the Afghan Tourism Organization, is confident that foreign visitors will come back. But since the fall of the Taliban, his agency has hosted only 35 tour groups, comprising 247 individuals from around the globe, mostly from Western Europe and Japan.
"We hope a lot of tourists will come," he said, "because it's really important to us for economic revival."
Admittedly, Afghanistan's reputation as a haven for terrorists - and as one of the most heavily mined places on the planet - has been a poor advertisement for tourism.
"The news they hear from Afghanistan is bad," Mr. Hamrah said. "But the security in Afghanistan now is not bad. ... We send groups out, they go there and come back very happy."
Lonely Planet, the bible of budget travelers, published a section on Afghanistan in the latest edition of its Central Asia guidebook - previous editions said simply: "Don't Go!" Other guidebooks plan to include information and advice about the country.
Haji Sefat Mir remembers the golden age of Afghanistan as a tourist destination. He recalls a day in 1968 when he worked as a guide for a wealthy European hunter, who dropped two wild rams with one shot at 150 yards.
They were in the Wakhan Corridor, a mountainous sliver of land in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to the border with China. His client, a member of the Rothschild banking family, was stalking the Marco Polo sheep, a sought-after trophy for big-game hunters. He was pleased with his day and gave his guide a watch and several hundred dollars.
Mr. Sefat Mir still has an outdoorsman's robust physique, but he last led a hunting expedition in 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion began two decades of ruinous war. During the Soviet-Afghan conflict, Mr. Sefat Mir fought with the mujahideen under the late, legendary Tadjik guerilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. With a tenuous peace taking hold in Afghanistan, he is hoping the government will resume the big-game hunts.
"Maybe next year," he said.
Entrepreneurs are also counting on a revival of Afghan tourism.
Volodymyr Yakovliev, general director of Mandryk & Co., a company based in Kiev, organizes "extreme tours" for newly wealthy Ukrainians. He recently visited the Afghan Tourism Organization to get approval for an expedition to Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.
"These are people who are adrenaline addicts," he said of his clients. "They love the thrill of danger."
Mr. Yakovliev's next tour group is scheduled for early January - not the most hospitable time of year.
"It's mostly businessmen," he said. "They've already been on the beach a bunch of times, in Bulgaria or Turkey or wherever, and it's not interesting to them anymore."
For some of Mr. Yakovliev's clients, it's not their first trip to Afghanistan. Others are veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war, now returning for a nostalgic trip. Mr. Yakovliev said there had been a Soviet headquarters in Kandahar, "so we know the place very well."
Mr. Yakovliev, sporting impressive sideburns and a fedora, said Afghans harbor no ill will toward Ukrainians, despite the wartime experience.
"We're brothers, in the sense that we were occupied by one and the same country - Bolshevik Russia," he said. "As soon as I explain that to Afghans, they're my best friends."
Expatriates now working in Afghanistan visit weekend getaway spots. Bamiyan, the site of monumental Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban, is a favorite.
The Panjshir Valley, Mr. Massoud's base during the Soviet-Afghan war, is just a few hours' drive from Kabul.
Najibullah Rassa, a radio and television newscaster and native of the Panjshir, said the region's spectacular scenery makes it ideal for tourism.
"It's the best place for tourism in Afghanistan because it's close to Kabul," he said. "We have every kind of hunting, some very nice places to rest. And on the top of the mountains, we have natural streams and lakes."
But the region also has poor roads and no electricity.
"If we had an electrical terminal, we could build mountain cabins," Mr. Rassa said hopefully.
Encouraging tourists to return may not be as simple as running power lines. Continuing violence deters tourists - particularly after recent attacks aimed specifically at foreigners.
Shortly after the Oct. 9 presidential elections in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber hit Chicken Street, Kabul's main tourist thoroughfare. A young American woman and an Afghan girl were killed along with the attacker.
More recently, kidnappers from a group called the Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of three U.N. workers in a residential district of Kabul. The hostages were released on Tuesday.
Still, Mr. Sefat Mir hopes the big-game hunters will return. That, of course, may alarm conservationists: The rare sheep are already threatened by poachers.
But if the government gives the go-ahead, Mr. Sefat Mir could be leading expeditions as early as next year. The license fee?
"Now, if the hunters come, they should pay $20,000," Mr. Sefat Mir said.
-------- business
Army sells off jets to public
27 nov 04
From correspondents in Buochs, Switzerland
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11513973%255E1702,00.html
PRIVATE buyers have snapped up 13 old Mirage supersonic military jets - minus their weapons or engines - which were auctioned off by the Swiss army for a total of 521,000 Swiss francs ($577,000).
About 180 Swiss and foreign bidders, mainly collectors or flying enthusiasts, attended the sale at the Buochs military airbase in central Switzerland, the Swiss army said.
Three of the delta-wing French-made planes, dating back to 1965, were sold to foreign buyers.
Prices ranged from 23,000 to 60,000 Swiss francs ($25,000-$66,400) for a Mirage III RS reconnaisance aircraft painted deep black.
The Swiss army bought 61 Mirages until 1983 and some of the planes - which have since made way for sophisticated US-made F15 jet aircraft - were in operation until 2003.
-------- canada
Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties
Cultural Gap Between Neighbors Widens Even as Economies Grow Closer
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15409-2004Nov26?language=printer
TORONTO -- The weather won't be the only thing that's cool when President Bush visits neighboring Canada next week.
Longtime observers here say the societies in Canada and the United States are drifting further apart in values and outlook even as their economies become more closely intertwined. Politically, they say, the two countries' populations are more estranged than at any time in recent memory, and Canadians are becoming increasingly critical of their southern neighbors.
"In 1981 only 8 percent of Canadians had an unfavorable view of the United States. Now 45 percent have an unfavorable view," said Michael Adams, a veteran pollster and philosophical proponent of the view that the two societies are diverging. "There has never been that kind of lopsided skew."
Much of the antipathy here is focused on Bush. He will be met by demonstrations in Ottawa over issues ranging from U.S. involvement in Iraq to gay marriage, and the White House has declined an invitation to address Parliament, where Bush might be heckled.
Canadians, proudly polite and intensely politically correct, would be shocked to be described as anti-American. Yet the chill toward Washington often slips into general derision of Americans.
When Carolyn Parrish, a Liberal Party member of Parliament, said last year, "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards," she evoked cheers from many supporters. When she carried her anti-American tirade further this month, stomping on a Bush doll in a nationally televised satire show, she was ousted from the Liberals' parliamentary caucus as an embarrassment to the ruling party and Prime Minister Paul Martin. But radio talk shows and Web sites suggest that as many applauded her actions as condemned them.
"I say nice going. The U.S.A. has been walking over Canada and treating it like an annoying baby brother for too many years," wrote G.J. Davis, of Winnipeg, in a typical comment to the National Post's Web site.
Examples of those feelings are commonplace, as when a Toronto matron sniffs over fruit -- "Not bad, for American strawberries" -- or an audience full of Canadian dignitaries applauds the opening of an America-bashing opera by Canada's best-known author, Margaret Atwood.
The Canadian government is usually wary of offending its powerful neighbor, and official relations are likely to improve with Bush's visit. His administration is moving to eliminate a major irritant to relations with Canada: the 18-month-old ban imposed on Canadian beef because of mad cow disease. Martin will offer, in return, to send Canadian observers to help oversee the planned Jan. 30 Iraqi election, an olive branch intended to salve Washington's annoyance at Canada's rejection of the Iraq invasion.
But the public reaction to Bush is likely to be less accommodating.
"This is a nadir in terms of how the Canadian people view a president. George W. Bush probably ranks lowest on the scale in Canadian history, since the birth of Canada in 1867," said Lawrence Martin, author of the history, "The Presidents and Prime Ministers." He reconsidered: "Well, maybe just lowest in the last century. Ulysses Grant wanted to take over the country."
As the writer Martin documents, personal differences between U.S. and Canadian leaders have sometimes been profound -- and profane. But he and other analysts contend that the more fundamental shift among the publics of the two countries holds more importance. "Until the 1960s there was a great commonality of spirit. That is no longer the case. . . . Our values are going in a different direction than yours," he said.
That is evident in social issues. Canada's federal government is moving to decriminalize use of marijuana. Gay marriage is legal in three provinces, and gay partners of Canadian servicemen get spousal benefits. Abortion is considered a private issue. Capital punishment is banned. Religion is largely absent from politics here.
Adams argues that his long-term polling shows a growing alienation between Canadians and Americans on such basic matters as their approaches to life, their attitudes toward government, religion and authority, their standards of living and their resolution of conflicts.
"The divergence is not at the elite level. It's in the social values that motivate people in their everyday life," Adams, who laid out his findings in "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values," said in an interview.
Those differences were exacerbated by the Iraq war, which Canada balked at, and by the unilateralist streak in the Bush administration's foreign policy that offended Canadian preferences for working with other countries, said Reginald Stuart, an expert on U.S.-Canada relations at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. "Canadians have an almost genetic instinct for multinationalism and distrust the U.S. government."
In an opinion survey in April, 82 percent of Canadians said Bush "doesn't really know anything when it comes to Canadian issues." With the approach of the U.S. election, polls showed Canadians preferring John F. Kerry overwhelmingly. Dismay at the outcome was palpable.
Some Canadians think it has gone too far. "Canadians demonstrate a remarkable conviction of moral superiority," concluded the research firm EKOS, which conducted a recent poll and found that "Bushwhacking is emerging as our new national sport." Historian Michael Ignatieff, a Harvard professor and a Canadian favorite son, returned to Toronto last week and scolded Canadians for their condescending dismissal of Bush.
Canadian businessmen fret that strains in the relationship will disrupt U.S. trade, the lifeblood of Canada's economy. Canada sells 84 percent of its exports to the United States and buys 71 percent of its imports there.
"Canadians take for granted the continued access for goods and products in the United States," said Nelson Wiseman, a specialist in Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. "But on the cultural side, they can strut around proudly and smugly in the belief that Americans are culturally inferior. To be popular in this country, you can't be seen as a lackey of Americans."
-------- chemical weapons
Berne to fund Moscow chemical weapons destruction
Saturday November 27, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/27-11-2004/world/w8.htm
MOSCOW: Switzerland will provide funds to build two new sites for Russia to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons under agreements signed Friday during a visit to Moscow by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey.
Berne is to pay Russia a total of 15 million Swiss francs (10 million euros, 13 million dollars) over the next five years under the accord signed during talks between Calmy-Rey and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
The money will help Moscow buy equipment for two new sites in the Ural region, which will be built in 2005 and 2008 respectively, to add to the single plant currently functioning in the southwestern Saratov region.
Russia plans to build seven sites in all by 2009 to destroy an estimated 40,000 tonnes of weapons by 2012 under the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries' programme to get rid of chemical arsenals.
The G8 pledged in 2002 to raise 20 billion dollars over 10 years to prevent chemical or nuclear weapons held by Russia and other former states of the Soviet bloc falling into the hands of terrorists.
-------- iraq
I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds
November 27, 2004
Pakistan Tribune
http://www.paktribune.com/news/print.php?id=84915&PHPSESSID=73a38ae226635cffc29cb094a31d8b09
The crimson waters of the Euphrates are now emptying into the Persian Gulf the hopes and aspirations of innocent people whose lives were snuffed out on the orders of a man rewarded for his monumental crimes by his great nation.
Known as the "city of mosques" for its more than 200 mosques, Fallujah is also known for refusing to add Saddam's name to the call for prayers from its ancient minarets. It is located on the banks of river Euphrates, the largest river in Southwest Asia. The 1700 miles long Euphrates is linked with some of the most important events in olden history.
The city of Ur, found at its mouth, was the birthplace of Abraham. On its banks stood the city of Babylon. In the past, the army of Necho was defeated on its banks by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Younger and Crassus perished after crossing it. Alexander traversed it and continued his journey eastward. Presently, George Bush's forces are crossing and re-crossing it making its waters redder each time with the blood of Fallujah's citizens.
Fallujah has been laid waste. It has been bombed, re-bombed, its citizens gunned down, its structures devastated by powerful weapons. It is a hell on earth of crushed bodies, shattered buildings and the reek of death. In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, 70-ton Abrams Tanks and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunship that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers crisscrossing the entire town firing at will at whatever moved outside the buildings. For those inside, the US troops were equipped with thermal sights capable of detecting body heat. Any such detection was eagerly assumed to indicate the presence of "insurgents" inviting a deadly salvo.
No body has an accurate idea of how many Iraqis-combatants and noncombatants-have been killed by the thousands of tons of explosives and bullets let loose upon the city. Mortuary teams collecting the dead rotting in the city streets are fighting the wandering dogs that are busy devouring their former masters. The hundreds buried beneath the rubble and debris will be dug out later. A US marine spokesman, Colonel Mike Regner, estimated 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqis dead. The world is awaiting the toll from more reliable sources with a wincing anticipation.
Eyewitnesses report human corpses littering the city's streets, nibbled at by starving canines. Parents have been forced to watch their wounded children die and then bury their bodies in their gardens. An Iraqi journalist, reporting in the city for the BBC and Reuters, said: "I have seen some strange things recently, such as stray dogs snatching bites out of bodies lying on the streets. Meanwhile, people forage in their gardens looking for something to eat. Those that have survived this far are looking gaunt. The opposite is happening to the dead-left where they fell, they are now bloated and rotting..."
Some images that did manage to filter through the layers of American censorship include scenes of the devastated landscape of the city; the bloodied and fly-covered corpses of young Iraqi men lying in the streets or heaped in rows amidst the debris; a headless body; women and children escaping with the few possessions they have left; mortuary teams collecting the dead; and Fallujah infants being treated for horrific injuries in Baghdad hospitals. US general John Sattler declared: "We have liberated the city of Fallujah."
The assault on Fallujah is a pure and simple Nazi-style collective punishment, not liberation. The city has been razed to the ground because its political, spiritual and tribal leaders, motivated by Iraqi patriotism and opposition to the presence of foreign troops in their country, organized a guerilla resistance to the US invasion.
The aim of the US assault is to make Fallujah a model to the rest of Iraq of what will happen to those thinking on similar lines. It is the leading thrust of an orgy of killing intended to crush and drive underground every voice of dissent and ensure that elections this coming January will throw up a weak-willed, pro-US toady regime. The American military is rumored to be planning similar attacks on scores of other Iraqi cities and towns.
Not a single major voice has been raised in the American media against the ongoing destruction of Fallujah. While much of the world recognizes something dreadful has occurred, the US press does not even bat an eyelash over the organized leveling of a city of 300,000 people. In none of the US media commentaries is there a single phrase of unease about the moral, or legal, questions involved in the attack on Fallujah. None have dared say it in as many words that the American military operation in the city is an unlawful act of aggression in an equally illegal, criminal, aggressive war.
The opposite is true in fact. Ralph Peters, the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace." a rabid Neocon mouthpiece and revered by the ruling Neocons, in his prominently placed November 4 New York Post article wrote: "We need to demonstrate that the US military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price. Most of Fallujah's residents-those who wish to live in peace-have already fled. Those who remain have made their choice. We need to pursue the terrorists remorselessly...
"That means killing. While we strive to obey the internationally recognized laws of war (though our enemies do not), our goal should be to target the terrorists and insurgents so forcefully that few survive to raise their hands in surrender. We don't need more complaints about our treatment of prisoners from the global forces of appeasement. We need terrorists dead in the dust. And the world needs to see their corpses...
"Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America."
Though the carnage carried out by Hitler's regime was on a different scale than that now being committed by the Bush administration, there are striking parallels. For the first time since the Wehrmacht swept through Europe, the world is witnessing a major imperialist power launching an unjustifiable war, placing an entire people under military occupation and carrying out acts of collective and visible punishment against civilian populace. The US media's wretched connivance in this deception is incredible, as incredible as the fact that this war, based on undeniable lies as it was, was sold to the American people as the gospel truth ordained by God.
To be honest, George Bush is not the first US president ordering the state's machinery to pulverize nations and peoples abroad. Even a hurried analysis of the American's government's conduct in the last century makes for a most damning indictment. Out of the US's past foreign policy woodwork, crawl out numerous invasions, bombings, overthrowing governments, suppressing movements for social change, assassinating political leaders, perverting elections, manipulating labor unions, manufacturing "news", selling blatant lies, death squads, torture, biological warfare, depleted uranium, drug trafficking, mercenaries ... you name it.
This terrorizing of nations and individuals by various US governments has been going on full bore since at least the late 1890s, when Americans obliterated a million Filipinos to keep them safe from the Spanish. 60 million Native Americans, the children of a lesser God, were exterminated by the orders of earlier administrations throughout the 19th century. The difference with past is that George Bush does it in the name of his God, a God far superior to any other and sanctioned fully by his coterie. Ironically, both George Bush and his nemesis, Osama Bin Laden, refer to God almost equal number of times in their public pronouncements.
The United States went into Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. They killed 10,000 innocent Afghans but could not find their man. They went into Iraq to discover and eliminate Saddam's WMDs. They killed tens of thousands of Iraqis but found no WMD. They laid siege to the city of Fallujah to kill or capture Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The city and its inhabitants have been blown to smithereens but there is no Zarqawi. Is it not only too convenient? Next when they want to attack Pakistan, or Iran, they simply have to say that Bin Laden is taking refuge there. Just like the next Iraqi city awaiting the fate of Fallujah will be the latest refuge of Zarqawi; the WMDs too could next fly to Syria or may be even Saudi Arabia. Is one imagining things here? Or is it that the US imperialism is indeed now riding full time on the back of gargantuan lies?
After granting George Bush a carte blanche to do what he likes the American citizens, of course, continue their daily lives oblivious to what is being done in their name. Between their work places and the nearest fast food joints, they just do not have enough time to check back on the activities of the man who is playing the Terminator in the name of God and in their name.
Those who do get to know a little are in a constant state of denial. One thing is sure though. Just like in post-war Germany where some even denied the holocaust. "We didn't know what was happening" is bound to become a cliché that will one day be used to ridicule Americans who claim ignorance of the atrocities committed by their administration in their name. Ironically, Khomeini died trying to get people to see America as "the great Satan," It took George W. Bush and his cohorts just four years to do exactly that, and not just in the eyes of the Muslim world.
As America sinks deeper into the heart of darkness, its thinking citizens need to jolt themselves out of their apathy. With each passing day their beloved America is scaling ever greater heights of hideous glories. The man in charge, George W. Bush, is actually living the throes of his apocalyptic dream of "I am become death-the destroyer of the worlds". He codenamed his destruction of Fallujah as "Operation Phantom Fury". But as the falsehood dies and gives way to truth, as all lies must one day, it will be the Iraqi dead that will form a legion of phantoms and would throng around Americans in a macabre dance to haunt them for decades. The fury of those phantoms will be hair raising.
Fallujah will enter history as the place where US imperialism carried out an offense of heinous proportions this November, a monstrous crime far beyond any possible forgiveness. The crimson waters of the Euphrates are now emptying into the Persian Gulf the hopes and aspirations of innocent people whose lives were snuffed out on the orders of a man rewarded for his monumental crimes by his great nation.
The Euphrates flows on.
Email : eagleeye@emirates.net.ae
--------
U.S. Marines Mull Fallujah's Future
Associated Press
By KATARINA KRATOVAC
Nov 27, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=5&u=/ap/20041127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_cleaning_up_fallujah
FALLUJAH, Iraq - At first glance, the U.S. Marines saw nothing extraordinary about a baby crib in the corner of a bombed-out house in Fallujah. But when Lance Cpl. Nick Fenezia threw back the blankets, a Kalashnikov rifle and bulletproof vest lay on the tiny mattress.
"Man, did you have to be just another muj?" Fenezia mused of the baby's missing father, employing American shorthand for Iraq (news - web sites)'s insurgents - mujahedeen - or Muslim holy warriors. "Couldn't you have stopped shooting at us and watched your baby grow instead?"
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with rebel holdouts as they clear Fallujah of weapons. On Friday, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said only about half the buildings in the city had been cleared even though organized resistance has collapsed.
But as the battle calms, U.S. forces are reflecting on the fight, their often-unseen foes and the future of a city that lies in ruins.
Fenezia, of Red Bank, N.J., also turned up a bayonet, ammunition and a baby photo - all lying amid walls shattered by the Americans' devastating firepower.
A burst of gunfire rattled nearby in southern Fallujah, but the Marines shrugged it off.
"They have no idea what they are shooting at. It's just mental games they play. They know they've lost and there is no way out," says Lance Cpl. Brian Wyer, 21, of Chouteau, Okla. "This is nothing, not after the intense battle here."
Marine, Army and Iraqi troops opened their Fallujah assault Nov. 8 with massive artillery and air strikes pounding the city before tanks, armored vehicles and troops on foot pushed in from the north.
They battled for days with rebels who had been fortifying the city since April, when planners called off a Marine assault amid widespread outcry over reports of civilian casualties emanating from Fallujah's hospital, numbers U.S. officers called inflated.
The U.S. military says upward of 1,200 insurgents died in the latest offensive. More than 1,000 suspects were captured, and more than 50 U.S. forces along with eight Iraqis were killed.
Marines are now clearing weapons from the city on the banks of the Euphrates River and preparing for the return of civilians, who once numbered up to 300,000 by some tallies, though U.S. officers estimated that only 50,000 to 60,000 were in the city before the well-publicized attack.
Nationwide elections are scheduled for Jan. 30, but some Marine estimates say Fallujah may not be fully repopulated by then. And on Friday, leading Iraqi politicians called for a six-month delay in the voting because of violence in the country.
As the fight dies down, Marines are finally finding free time to reflect on the furious battle. The Americans wonder how Fallujah could have devolved into what officers say was a center from which rebels spread bombings, beheadings and attacks across Iraq.
Cpl. Perry Bessant, 21, says Marines are "like a detective agency, coming to investigate, to put the pieces together of what Fallujah was."
"It was a space for so many foreign fighters. I just can't believe the locals tolerated them," adds Bessant, from Mullins, S.C.
"Maybe they were terrified of them. Maybe I'd feel like that too if someone said they'd kill my family," replies Staff Sgt. Alexandros Pashos, 38, from New York City.
New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Oklahoma: The Marines' homes are all a far piece from this central Iraq city in the middle of dusty plain, once dominated by Muslim men in red-checkered scarves and black masks who try to kill the American "infidel" invaders.
When Fallujans do return en masse, they will find many parts of their city in ruins, with bank buildings scorched, mosques bombed, shops destroyed, cars burned, doors to their homes forced open and their cupboards and drawers rifled by foreigners.
"It's going to be difficult putting Fallujah together again, but not impossible," said Pashos. "That is the saddest, to have it all come to this, all these people's homes destroyed."
But even before air and ground assault, Fallujah was poor by the Marines' standards, with many of its people living in mud-brick homes in tight, crowded neighborhoods.
"After we rebuild Fallujah, it will be a lot better place to live," said Wyer, the Oklahoman, "something that was worth our sacrifice."
-----
U.S. Sends in Secret Weapon: Saddam's Old Commandos
(Reuters)
Nov 27, 2004
By Alastair Macdonald
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1TWUDIDSYI5YICRBAE0CFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=6933057&pageNumber=1
NEAR ISKANDARIYA, Iraq - Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heart of Iraq's old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon -- ex-members of Saddam's special forces.
For five months, Iraqi police commandos have been based with U.S. Marines in charge of the region along the Euphrates river immediately south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go area for outsiders and earned it the melodramatic description "triangle of death."
The performance of these police is a critical test of the ability of U.S. forces to hand security over to Iraqis in order to meet their goal of withdrawing while leaving Iraq stable. U.S. officers in the area say they are increasingly optimistic.
"The hardest fighters we have are the former special forces from Saddam's days," Colonel Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters late on Friday.
Praising their local knowledge and fighting skills, Johnson singled out one man who fought against him at Nassiriya, the hardest battle of last year's brief war against Saddam's army.
"If I could have an Iraqi security force guy who's honest, reliable and dependable, it's worth five Marines," he said.
"They're aggressive, they're tough," said Captain Tad Douglas after a raid in the town of Latifiya on Saturday in which the bulk of his force was an Iraqi police "SWAT team."
"Ninety-five percent of our intelligence is from the SWAT," he said of the local knowledge that saw nine people detained.
"We have been...living with them for five months. We've put a lot of time into working with them."
U.S. raids to capture or kill insurgents are now mounted almost exclusively alongside commandos from the Ministry of Interior and a SWAT team from the provincial capital Hilla.
"Our goal since September has been never to go anywhere on our own," said intelligence officer Major Clint Nussbaum. "This is police work, not finding a tank battalion in the desert."
IRAQI PRESENCE This week, Johnson has stepped up raids against insurgents in an operation code-named Plymouth Rock, hoping to maintain pressure on Sunni insurgents in the aftermath of their rout at Falluja, just upstream of his area. More than 100 people have been detained in four days in night-time raids on their homes.
Of Johnson's 5,000-strong force in the region, which was once the heart of Saddam's arms industry and base of the Medina armored division of the elite Republican Guard, some 2,000 are Iraqi, the rest made up of Marines and 850 British soldiers.
At the Marine camp near Iskandariya, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Iraqis are a clear presence, wearing the khaki jumpsuits of Marine scouts and almost ubiquitous black mustaches. Like special forces troops anywhere they are less than forthcoming about their work.
None were comfortable speaking with a reporter.
Iraqi forces in other regions have had mixed success. This month, thousands of police in the northern city of Mosul fled or changed sides when Sunni Muslim insurgents took charge.
Johnson acknowledges the loyalties of some Iraqis in his force may be divided but says they "want to be on the winning side" and is confident that, in time, U.S.-led troops will end what he sees as limited and decentralized violence by at most a few thousand disgruntled Saddam supporters and local bandits.
Iraqi police here have stuck to their posts despite killings of comrades in bomb attacks and murders of off-duty officers: "They don't cut and run, despite their losses," Johnson said.
Citing intelligence that he says shows broad support for democracy, Johnson forecast local turnout of 45 percent or more at an election due on Jan. 30 -- despite probable violence.
Clearly exasperated by the "triangle of death" tag, he said: "I'm getting more optimistic every day."
-----
Seven Days of Hell
With fewer Western journalists covering the war-torn nation, the true grim picture of continued violence isn't getting out. Our correspondent reports on the last week.
Newsweek
By Rob Nordland
Nov. 27, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6594892/site/newsweek/
Nov. 27 - To a casual observer, the past week seemed to have been seven days of comparatively good news for the war in Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi's No. 2 was captured in Mosul, while in Fallujah the victorious Marines were uncovering torture chambers and hostage prisons, bomb labs and mosque-based armories. The prime minister's kidnapped relatives were released. Major powers and Iraq's neighbors got together in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's foreign debt, while supporting elections, which the government announced would take place Jan. 30, 2005, after weeks of speculation they might be delayed, as many rebellious Sunnis had demanded. "We feel we've broken their back and their spirit," said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "After Fallujah," added the Iraqi national security adviser, Qassim Daoud, "we saw terrorist activities, bombings, mines, reduce dramatically in Baghdad and elsewhere, clearly confirming our analysis that Fallujah was a safe haven for terrorists."
It was pretty good spin, but that's all it was. Partly it's as if the military gave a big dose of chemo to Fallujah, largely destroying the tumor, but sending fugitive cancer cells zinging around Iraq's lymphatic system. As insurgents fanned out, there were new flare-ups from one end of Iraq to another, even in places that had previously been quiet. Highways became even more dangerous than usual. During these seven days, at least 10 American soldiers were killed in action, and incomplete reports showed an average of 100 attacks on coalition forces daily-far more than the pre-Fallujah average. By Nov. 26, 117 American soldiers will have died in November, making it the second deadliest month of the war (after April 2004, when 140 coalition troops died). And by the end of this week, Iraqi elections looked more imperiled than ever.
Why then was the public perception, at least in the United States, dramatically different? Partly it's because there are fewer Western journalists here than at any time in the war so far, and most of them are either embedded with military units, or largely confined to assorted bunkers around the capital. (NEWSWEEK correspondents themselves have been either in the Green Zone or embedded since October.) Getting a broad view of the war has become harder than ever before; even investigating major incidents can be nearly impossible. For instance, two weeks ago 60 Iraqi police recruits reportedly were kidnapped from their hotel in Rutbah, in Anbar province, and to date no one has been able to confirm what became of them, because Rutbah is too dangerous to reach, even for Iraqi journalists. Compounding the problem, both Iraqi and coalition authorities often simply don't report much of what happens, while private contractors almost never reveal attacks on their reconstruction efforts, even when their foreign personnel are killed (although 190 such deaths have surfaced so far this year, it's a fraction of the probable total).
Here then is a necessarily incomplete, but nevertheless alarming chronicle of seven days in the war in Iraq, culled from interviews with Iraqis, foreign contractors and Western officials, wire services, confidential security and intelligence daily reports, and even military press releases.
Saturday, Nov. 20 is a particularly bad day. Mosul has been in an uproar ever since Nov. 11, three days after Fallujah's Operation Phantom Fury began; 3,200 of the 4,000 police have abandoned their posts in the country's third biggest city, and 1,200 American troops are still restoring an uneasy order. Today nine Iraqi soldiers are found, all shot in the head, seven of them also beheaded. And near Kirkuk in the north, an oil well is blown up, the sixth in 10 days. Insurgents in Ramadi, Fallujah's sister city, clash with American Marines, leaving nine Iraqis dead and five wounded.
Baghdad is even worse. A suicide car bomb blows up on the airport highway, wounding five American soldiers. Insurgents attack a police station in the Azamiyah district, and fight a pitched battle with U.S. troops. Another car bomb explodes on Sadoun Street, the main shopping thoroughfare, while in Amariyah, roadside bombs target Iraqi National Guardsmen. In all, according to official figures, 10 die in political violence in Baghdad today, while nine American soldiers are wounded and one killed.
Official figures don't count an Iraqi civil defense employee, shot to death in the Dora neighborhood today by four 18- to 20-year-old gunmen who don't even bother to cover their faces. "We'll be back," they tell a witness. "We have six more names to execute here." Only a few days before, on the same street, they'd shot a U.S. army translator as he walked his six-year-old son to school, and then shot the child too-the second such father-son execution in the neighborhood. Both fathers had received death threats ordering them to quit their jobs with the "infidels."
Sunday, Nov. 21. Long lines form at gasoline stations in the capital, the consequence mainly of an attack a week earlier on a major oil refinery north of Baghdad. There have also been repeated attacks on the power station at Bayji. In Ramadi, eight National Guardsmen are ambushed and killed. A rocket attack on the Green Zone, where American and Iraqi government officials are based, is launched from just across the river near the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels, where many foreign contractors and news agencies are housed. One American soldier is killed in Baghdad, but officials release no details. In Latifiyah, the notorious apex of the "triangle of death," an Iraqi reporter for Reuters is stopped at a checkpoint on Highway One, the country's main north-south artery. In broad daylight, 17 masked insurgents search every car in a long queue; at the one in front of the reporter, they find National Guard and police uniforms in the trunk, and make the three occupants get out of the car. "Take them over there and kill them," an insurgent orders, and the three are shot out of hand. The reporter persuades the insurgents that he works only for Arab media, and is allowed to go. Later he files his report anonymously.
Monday, Nov. 22. The streets of the capital look half-deserted, even long before the 10:30 pm curfew. Many worried parents are keeping their children home from school lately, after insurgents circulate flyers ordering all Baghdad schools to close-or else. Today, only a week after Baghdad International Airport reopened, a homemade bomb is found on a commercial airliner there; authorities do not reveal which carrier it is, but both Iraqi Airways and Royal Jordanian operate scheduled flights to Baghdad. "American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans," an embassy warning says, "to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time." There are, however, no alternative routes, with highways to the north (Bayji), west (Ramadi/Fallujah) and south (Latifiyah) all deemed by Western security companies as too dangerous for travel, except under heavily armed escort. In Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, two U.S. Marines are killed; no further details are released.
Up in Mosul, four more dead Iraqi soldiers or National Guardsmen are found. The Mosul police chief, Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi, is arrested carrying $600,000 in cash, accused of selling out to the insurgency. And a prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Feydhi Mohammed al-Feydhi, is assassinated.
Down in Latifiyah, Coalition forces raid a house and find 12 decapitated bodies, at least one of them an Iraqi National Guardsman. And in Basra, insurgents blow up the 42-inch pipeline feeding the oil export terminal, cutting off 750,000 barrels a day in exports.
In Baghdad, one American soldier is killed by a mortar strike. When nervous bodyguards for the Iraqi Minister of Interior open fire on a suspicious vehicle, the occupants turn out to be British private security operatives, who fire back and kill one Iraqi guard; in the parlance of the reports, this is known as a "blue on blue" incident, and it's become a common phenomenon on the jumpy streets. Jumpy with good reason; gunmen ambush a car carrying a top Ministry of Public Works official, Amal Abdul Hameed, killing her and three of her employees on the way to work.
In all, one private security firm tallies 94 attacks on government and Coalition workers during the 24-hour period ending today; 23 of these in Baghdad, 15 in central and western Iraq, 46 in northern Iraq, and 10 in the south. Fallujah in the west is indeed relatively quiet; insurgents have just gone everywhere else.
Tuesday, Nov. 23. Another prominent Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ghalib Zuhairi, is assassinated, this time in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad. Both he and the other victim were critics of the American presence, but apparently not critical enough; later Zarqawi issues a Web screed accusing Sunni clerics of being soft on the infidels. Kidnappings seem to have abated a bit, either because of Fallujah, or because nearly all foreigners are staying off the streets. Today that hiatus ends. Al Jazeera TV airs a videotape showing an American contractor of Lebanese extraction in captivity.
In Samarra, a roadside bomb goes off, killing one American soldier, and later a mortar is fired at the American base, and wounds several Iraqi children. Samarra is where the Coalition's current counteroffensive began, with Operation Baton Rouge on Oct. 4, a kind of dress rehearsal for Fallujah. The First Infantry Division's Task Force Danger quickly pronounced the city cleansed of the 100-200 foreign terrorists said to have taken over the streets, but incidents have continued ever since, often daily.
In Baghdad, Iraqi workers leaving the Green Zone by the 14th of July Bridge are fired on by gunmen, and a member of the government advisory body, the National Council, is assassinated; so are officials in Basra and in Kirkuk. And in the Abu Dshir neighborhood in south Baghdad, two men walk into the principal's office at the Ahahran Primary School, which has remained open, and shoot to death both the principal and his deputy.
Two big Iraqization announcements today. Election officials say that the Iraqi National Guard and the police will protect polling places on election day, instead of U.S. forces, who have made training their indigenous counterparts an urgent priority. And in the northern oil fields around Kirkuk, the government proudly announces, 2,000 Iraqi National Guardsmen today take over responsibility for oil pipeline security, a job previously handled by foreign security firms.
Wednesday, Nov. 24. With temperatures nearing freezing at night, stocks of kerosene in the capital disappear. Because of daily and prolonged electricity blackouts, most Iraqis use kerosene heaters to stay warm. Another suicide car bomb goes off on the airport highway, the 14th since Sept. 1 on that two-mile-long stretch of road; this time four Iraqis are killed and 43 wounded. Later, a foreign contractor is assassinated in an ambush on his car in Baghdad. Then in the Green Zone, an alert goes out that a suicide car is on the loose; it isn't found, but a nervous military convoy gets into a blue-on-blue shootout with a private security company that tries to pass it. No one acknowledges casualties, if there were any.
Coalition forces launch another anti-insurgent offensive, this one codenamed Operation Plymouth Rock, aimed at cleaning up Latifiyah and the triangle of death, which incidentally begins at the southern borders of Baghdad. While they're rounding up dozens of insurgents down there, Mosul remains restive, with gunmen trying unsuccessfully to assassinate both the deputy governor of the province, Kasro Ghuran, and police major general Rashid Flaih, in charge of a new anti-terrorist unit sent to work with American troops.
Thursday, Nov. 25. Another suicide car bomb goes off, this time in Samarra aimed at a police post; two Iraqi civilians die, and 15 are wounded, including six policemen. In Baghdad, an American diplomat, Jim Mollen, is shot to death driving his own, unarmored car out in the Red Zone; he's the second U.S. diplomat killed since the American embassy opened July 1. No explanation is given for why Mollen was outside the Green Zone with no security, a violation of embassy rules. Zarqawi's group later claims credit. Even the Green Zone isn't completely safe; rockets slam into a crowded tent camp there in mid-afternoon, killing four Nepalese Gurkha security guards employed by Global Risk Strategies, a British security firm that guards government facilities. Another 15 Gurkhas are wounded. Ansar al-Sunna, a terrorist group from Kurdistan, claims credit. In the north, two days into the job, the National Guard is unable to thwart a bombing that cripples the main pipeline from Kirkuk to the beleaguered Bayji power station.
Friday, Nov. 26. Even Fallujah appears far from pacified. Insurgents announce a counter-offensive, "with the aim of shattering the myth of the invincibility of the coalition forces," according to a statement published by Middle East Online. There is no way to verify those claims, but insurgents do kill two U.S. Marines with grenades during an attempted house search; the Marines kill three insurgents in return. In Mosul, 15 more bodies are found, bringing to 35 the total apparent murders of security forces there this week.
Most insurgent attacks are small, hit-and-run affairs, or remote-controlled and suicide bombings-but not always. In the previously calm town of Khalis, 37 miles north of Baghdad, a unit of 100 insurgents today attacks the two police stations and briefly takes over the city hall, Iraqi police say.
If the rest of the world hasn't been very alarmed by what's happening in post-Fallujah Iraq, some of its politicians certainly are. No one seriously thinks Iraqi forces who can't guard an oil pipe could possibly protect the country's thousands of polling places. In restive Anbar province, voter registration has all but stopped; nearly a fifth [90 out of 540] of the country's voter registration centers have in effect shut down, officials say, especially in Sunni areas where the insurgency is strongest. Friday a group of prominent Iraqi politicians, including the two main pro-American Kurdish parties, issue a statement calling on Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to delay elections for six months, to give a chance for order to be restored. Leading the effort is Adnan Pachachi, a pro-American Sunni politico.
Allawi rejected the demand on Saturday, but even some members of his own government have called for considering it. As one Sunni politician commented, "Look at it his way-he gets another six months as prime minister." But most Sunnis, the minority that long ruled Iraq, would much rather see Allawi in temporary power, than elections that give permanent control to the Shia, who make up 60 percent of the population and have long been disenfranchised. Far more important will be the reaction of the Shiites' most revered leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has already issued a fatwa making voting a religious obligation. The Shia have been so high on elections that even their firebrands, like Moqtada al-Sadr, have put down their weapons lately. If the government does give in and delay the elections, and Sistani objects, the unrest that follows will indeed make these last seven days seem tame.
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The Morality of Waging War on Iraq
By Li Tsze Sun
Al-Jazeerah,
November 27 ,2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/November/27%20o/The%20Morality%20of%20Waging%20War%20on%20Iraq%20By%20Li%20Tsze%20Sun.htm
On March 19, 2003, the United States of America launched its first series of air strikes on Baghdad. For the 22 days thereafter, a full-fledged war went on between the United States and Iraq. Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. The United States won the war, but is waging the war moral?
Let's assess the morality by utilizing a humanitarian moral system proposed by Scholars Jacques Thiroux and Rushworth Kidder based on the five principles of