NucNews - December 11, 2004
-------- NUCLEAR
Virtual Nukes
Antiwar.com
by Gordon Prather
December 11, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=4152
David Sanger's recent interview with Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has resulted in a New York Times article about "virtual nukes."
What is a "virtual" nuke?
Well, apparently, it's a nuke that doesn't yet exist, but conceivably could, soon.
Sanger claims that if a state can convince the world that it quickly "could screw together a workable, deliverable nuclear weapon" then a potential invader will be as deterred from invading as if that state already had nukes.
Quoth Sanger, "In an age when centrifuge components and bomb designs are on the black market, and when technology has made bomb-building much less expensive and time-consuming, it doesn't take much for the world to take you seriously."
Sanger must have gotten this hopelessly naïve idea from the neocons.
The neocons would have you believe that having a nuclear power plant – even one whose operation is subject to IAEA Safeguards, like Iran's – is tantamount to having a plutonium-239 implosion nuke.
Or that having a uranium-enrichment facility – even one whose operation is subject to IAEA Safeguards, like Iran's – is tantamount to having a uranium-235 gun-type nuke.
Now, in the 1980s, before signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, South Africa did develop indigenous technology for increasing the uranium-235 concentration in uranium ore – from 3/10ths of a percent to 3 percent – for use as nuclear power plant fuel. And did "divert" some of the 3 percent enriched uranium to a nearby secret facility for further enrichment to 90 percent uranium-235.
Over a period of years, they produced about 750 pounds of 90-percent uranium-235 from which they constructed six "gun-type" nukes – the kind we dropped on Hiroshima. Each nuke weighed about a thousand pounds and was, therefore, not deemed deliverable by South African aircraft or missiles.
However, South Africa decided to sign the NPT, so they secretly obliterated their nuke facility, dismantled the 6 gun-type nukes they had fabricated, and blended the recovered 90-percent uranium-235 back down to 3 percent.
Meanwhile, Iraq was also secretly attempting to produce 90-percent uranium-235. They failed to even produce significant quantities of 3-percent uranium-235. So making hundreds of pounds of 90-percent uranium-235 is not a "slam-dunk."
Now, almost anyone having 120 pounds of uranium-235 can construct a gun-type nuke. But you can't make a gun-type nuke with any amount of plutonium-239. You have to make an implosion-type nuke and that means you have to develop a high-explosive implosion system. And that certainly is no "slam-dunk."
So, the 6-10 sub-critical pieces of plutonium-239 the North Koreans have is not tantamount to having real or "virtual" nukes.
Nevertheless, the neocons realize that China would never allow Bush to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea's "nuclear" facilities. So, they've adopted a new approach to effecting 'regime change' in North Korea.
The official Korean Central News Agency rather well characterized their new approach in this editorial of Nov. 27, 2004.
"A far-fetched assertion is a main leverage employed by the U.S. to implement its strategy to dominate the world and it, therefore, used to launch aggression and war on its basis.
"It is the U.S. brigandish logic and mode of action to rob others of their properties and charge their owner demanding their return with theft and pressurize themIt is an irrefutable and stark fact that the U.S. invaded Iraq last year on the basis of the sheer lie and far-fetched assertion that it possesses 'weapons of mass destruction.'
"The U.S. deliberately assesses and finds faults with the human rights performances in other countries by its own human rights standards and interferes in their internal affairs, another manifestation of its brigandish method.
"The U.S. has abused the name of the UN and unlawfully kept South Korea under its occupation for more than half a century while committing all sorts of crimes.
"This is a clear proof of the unreasonable and criminal nature of the far-fetched method employed by it.
"However, it is now busy with the false propaganda aimed to stifle the DPRK by force of arms and realize its ambition to dominate the whole of Korea.
"The U.S. does not hide its intention to use the human rights issue, missile issue, the issue of reduction of conventional armed forces and the religious issue as pretexts for stifling the DPRK even after the settlement of the nuclear issue.
"This clearly proves how frantic the U.S. has become in its moves to provoke the second Korean War. The U.S. far-fetched assertions will get it nowhere."
-------- accidents and safety
Shutter the nuclear nightmare on I-5
Saturday, December 11, 2004
By: RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN - For the North County Times
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/12/12/opinion/commentary/21_06_2812_11_04.txt
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station should be shut down permanently. It is brittle, frail, old. Its bones are hardened. Its arteries are clogged and stiff. It keeps popping and poofing, bursting and spilling, leaking, spraying, steaming, venting, dripping, gushing, pouring out poisons into our environment.
The tritium alone released from the nuclear power plant is a serious environmental concern. Tritium (half-life: about 12 years) is readily absorbed by all parts of the human body. It does occur naturally, but that is no good reason to increase the dose to people.
In normal daily operation, the facility also releases cesium-137, strontium-90, uranium, plutonium (both in a variety of isotopes) and hundreds of other radioactive "daughter products" created by the nuclear chain reaction. Although the plant owners say these legal releases are harmless, many insidious mechanisms for biological damage by radioactivity are now well-known in the scientific community and undeniable to any unbiased observer.
In fact, no energy source is as damaging to our biological structure as ionizing radiation. One atomic decay inside your body can directly destroy 20,000 or more chemical bonds, including those that bind your DNA. A single damaged DNA strand can lead to fetal deformities or cancer.
Radiation accelerates aging (including in humans). Additionally, salty air and water destroy most metals.
Right now, San Onofre's steam generators are failing and need to be replaced (as do Diablo Canyon's). Cost: at least $680 million for San Onofre, and at least $706 million for Diablo Canyon.
San Onofre's water heaters also all need to be replaced (about 30 per unit). Cost: an additional $7 million for each plant, plus $30 million or so for the "downtime." Pipes and joints at the plant have been cracking, and undoubtedly many need to be replaced ---- there are about 100 miles of pipes at the site. Last August, a pipe accident at a 27-year-old nuclear plant in Japan killed five workers. The pipe had eroded to 10 percent of its original thickness.
In 2002, more than 700 pounds of unnoticed corrosion at Davis-Besse, a nuke plant in Ohio similar to San Onofre, brought us, in some ways, nearer to a full-scale meltdown than Three Mile Island did.
Replacing San Onofre's pipes, and maybe her reactor pressure vessels ---- both now more than two decades old ---- could cost ratepayers billions of dollars. Failure to replace critical parts could result in a meltdown.
Old breakers and transformers have exploded and burned, causing outages costing more than $140 million. But the 150 or so identical breakers were not replaced. That's tens of millions of dollars more work that should be added to the list.
Everything at the facility is suspect ---- including the record-keeping. The power plant is practically immune from state and local inspections, even in areas the Nuclear Regulatory Commission won't inspect because they are not "nuclear" areas!
Even if all these (and many more) problems were fixed, nuclear power does not actually generate any "net" energy whatsoever, because of the incredibly energy-intensive processes needed to mine and refine uranium into fuel, as well as construction costs, reconstruction costs, and dismantling costs. Add to that the cost of guarding the hazardous radioactive waste for thousands of generations. Additional funds could also be needed to care for the sick and dying that would result from a serious nuclear accident.
Besides being a financial rat-hole, nuclear power plants are terrorist targets. Dry casks are especially vulnerable, but dry cask storage could be stopped at San Onofre if we shut the facility permanently now.
San Onofre makes money only for its owners, who are practically given uranium fuel by the federal government, which also promises to take it away after it has been turned into radioactive waste (at great profit) by Southern California Edison. Yucca Mountain shouldn't open, probably never will, and if it does, it's more than a decade away at best and will take about 25 years to fill. Meanwhile, new waste accumulates at the rate of 500 pounds every day at the plant; that waste may not fit at Yucca Mountain ---- it may need to wait for Yucca Mountain II! An operating nuclear plant is thousands of times more vulnerable to terrorism, forces of nature, design flaws or operator error than one that is shut down. A terrorist with an armor-plated bulldozer packed into a jacked-up house trailer and off-loaded at the state park could ruin San Onofre in minutes and take Southern California with it.
If properly harvested, the sun provides all the energy we need, through wind, wave, hydro, biomass, and by direct solar power. Currently, the vast majority of that nearly-free energy spills into the biosphere, becomes disorganized, and is wasted.
San Onofre's power is replaceable. Our land and our lives are not.
Carlsbad resident Russell D. Hoffman is an independent researcher on energy solutions, a computer programmer, and a small-business owner. He has studied nuclear issues for more than 30 years and writes a newsletter that is distributed to nuclear physicists, doctors and activists in more than a dozen countries.
-------- depleted uranium
US Troops Ordered To Commit War Crimes
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
12-11-4 Rense.com
http://www.rense.com/general60/troops.htm
As Americans prepared for Thanksgiving, an estimated 100,000 residents of the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, trapped in their homes, struggled to survive without fresh food, water or electricity, reportedly cut off by U.S. forces on Nov. 8.
Meanwhile, on the streets of Fallujah, a city of more than 350,000, dogs gnaw on bloated and rotting corpses that remain unburied for weeks.
Thousands of families in Fallujah were reported to be in a critical humanitarian situation after U.S. forces prevented the delivery of relief supplies. An Iraq Red Crescent Society (IRCS) humanitarian aid convoy, reportedly blocked by U.S. troops for more than two weeks, was allowed to deliver aid to residents in the heart of the city on Nov. 25.
On Thanksgiving, U.S. forces permitted the IRCS convoy carrying thousands of food parcels, blankets, tents and medical supplies to enter the city and allowed one of the clinics to be converted into a temporary hospital to treat the injured.
Rana Sidani of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, however, told American Free Press on Nov. 30 that "many civilians" were still prevented from receiving aid or medical care.
At the beginning of the U.S. operation in Fallujah on Nov. 5, a hospital in the central Nazzal district of Fallujah was reduced to rubble as a result of U.S. air and artillery bombardment. "Only its façade, with a sign reading Nazzal Emergency Hospital, remained intact," Reuters reported.
"A nearby compound used by the main Fallujah hospital to store medical supplies was also destroyed," witnesses told Reuters. Fallujah,s main hospital was occupied by U.S. forces when the ground offensive began. These actions are apparent violations of international humanitarian law.
"Bodies can be seen everywhere, and people were crying when receiving the food parcels," Muhammad al-Nuri, a spokesman for the IRCS in Baghdad, said. "It is very sad. It is a human disaster."
Al-Nuri said that it is difficult to move in the city due to the large number of dead bodies in the streets. The IRCS estimates there are more than 6,000 dead in Fallujah, al-Nuri said.
6,000 DEAD?
AFP asked Maj. Jay Antonelli at the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in Baghdad if the IRCS estimate of 6,000 dead in Fallujah was credible. "We do not keep a count of dead Iraqis," Antonelli said. Asked the same question, the ICRC,s Sidani said, "We don,t know."
Antonelli said, "U.S. forces never blocked aid convoys from reaching the wounded. We only recommended to the aid convoys that they should not enter the city because the MNF [Multi-National Forces] could not guarantee their security or safety."
"The ICRC is very worried about the humanitarian situation in Fallujah," Sidani said. Asked what the ICRC was doing to alleviate the suffering in Fallujah, Sidani said: "We are reminding the parties of their responsibilities under international humanitarian law."
It shouls be noted that the United States and Britain, the occupying powers in Iraq, are the two largest contributors to the ICRC, providing more than 42 percent of its budget for field operations.
A second convoy from Baghdad, headed by Dr. Said Ismael Haki, the IRCS president, delivered aid to Fallujah on Nov. 26. "There are no houses left in Fallujah, only destroyed places," Haki said. "I really don,t know how the people will return to the city. No one will find their homes."
As U.S. troops in Fallujah engaged in what has been described as the most intense urban combat since Vietnam, the controlled press scrupulously avoided discussion or footage of the devastation of the rebellious Sunni city. For example, during the second week of the attack, rather than discuss the widespread devastation of Fallujah, U.S. television news programs focused largely on a brawl between basketball players and fans in Detroit.
At least 136 U.S. soldiers were killed during November in Iraq, and more than 800 were wounded, most of them in Fallujah, making it the most costly month, and operation, in terms of U.S. lives lost since the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.
FOR WHAT CAUSE?
Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief for Time magazine, who has been in Fallujah during the fighting, said U.S. actions in Fallujah are "creating the nightmare that we are seeking to prevent.
"I stood there as I saw American boys die," Ware told Chris Matthews of MSNBC on Nov. 24, "I mean, a man shot at close range, blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade. He dies there in front of you, and I can,t help but think why? For what cause?
"I see us creating the very thing that the president said we went there to prevent," Ware said, ". . . . subsequent to this invasion and the occupation and the guerrilla war that is currently under way, we are the midwives of the next generation Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist."
Ware, who has interviewed senior insurgent leaders, said they study the writings of the Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Che Guevara and Mao Zedong. "They,re bringing it straight from Vietnam and the broader insurgency playbook," Ware said.
"The name of the game is deny the population to the insurgents," Ware said. "That,s what we,re trying to do, win hearts and minds. But we,re not winning them."
The New York Times has reported actions taken by U.S. forces in Fallujah, which appear to be prima facie evidence of war crimes, without mentioning that the actions constitute clear violations of the Laws of Land War found in The U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10.
For example, a Nov. 20 Times article by Edward Wong, with two correspondents in Fallujah, reports that U.S. Marines had transformed a mosque into a fortress with snipers and machine gunners perched on the roof.
Then, using the passive form, Wong goes on to say that "no neutral group has been able to enter the city," without mentioning that U.S. forces blocked humanitarian aid convoys. Likewise, Wong wrote, "Electricity and water had been cut off."
The Times, whose motto is "All the news that,s fit to print," apparently didn,t think that its readers needed to know the U.S. forces had cut off the water and power to a city of 340,000 people.
Asked if U.S. forces had cut power and water to Fallujah, Maj. Antonelli wrote: "MNF did, with approval of the Interim Iraqi Government, cut off electricity to the city of Fallujah as Operation Al-Fajr began. Water was not cut off intentionally. However, the water system did sustain some kinetic damage during strikes."
American Free Press asked the Pentagon,s Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa if it is true that U.S. forces were using mosques as fortresses.
"It's not possible," Yoswa said. "Under no circumstances. We would not set up snipers in a mosque in an offensive position."
CPIC,s Antonelli said: "MNF would not use a mosque as a fortress., MNF and Iraqi security forces would only fire from a mosque if they were being fired upon and were firing back in self-defense."
Abu Sabah, a refugee from Fallujah, reported seeing phosphorus bombs: "They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fell from the air with long tails of smoke trailing behind them. These exploded on the ground with large fires that burnt for half and hour," Sabah said. "When anyone touched these fires their bodies burnt for hours."
Eyewitnesses from Fallujah also reported seeing "melted" bodies.
OBLITERATION OF FALLUJAH
The "obliteration of Fallujah" is a serious war crime, according to Francis A. Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois. "The obliteration of Fallujah continues apace," Boyle wrote in his Nov. 15 article, "A War Crime in Real Time: Obliterating Fallujah."
"Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defines a Nuremberg War Crime in relevant part as the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages,, " wrote Boyle. "According to this definitive definition, the Bush administration,s destruction of Fallujah constitutes a war crime for which Nazis were tried and executed."
Throw Away Soldiers? [insert]
HAVING SEEN WHAT APPEARED to be a depleted uranium (DU) missile fired at a building in Fallujah on CNN during the first week of the fighting, AFP asked the Pentagon if DU weapons are being used in Fallujah. "Yes," Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa said, "DU is a standard round on the M-1 Abrams tank."
Because U.S. Marines in Fallujah are very close to the poison gas produced by exploded DU shells, AFP asked Yoswa if anything was being done to protect the troops from DU poisoning. Yoswa seemed unaware of the dangers posed by the use of DU.
Marion Fulk, a retired nuclear scientist from Livermore National Lab, told AFP that U.S. troops in DU contaminated battlefields are considered "throwaway soldiers." The Marines exposed to DU in Fallujah, and elsewhere, face greatly increased risks of cancer, deformed children, and other health problems in the future.
-------- japan
Japan's Chugoku finds holes in reactor pipe
(Reuters) Dec 11, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VJDHPGBULOXNMCRBAEZSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=7062956
TOKYO - Japanese utility Chugoku Electric Power Co. Inc. has found holes in pipes used to carry steam in a turbine at one of its nuclear reactors in western Japan, Kyodo news reported.
There was no leak of radiation at the utility's Kashima No. 2 reactor because of the holes, Kyodo reported the company as saying on Saturday, adding that the pipes would be replaced soon.
In August a leak of hot water and steam from a broken pipe at Kansai Electric Power Co. Inc.'s Mihama nuclear plant killed five people in Japan's worst accident at a nuclear power plant. The accident was blamed on poor maintenance.
Kyodo said the pipes at Chugoku's reactor had not been replaced since the reactor started operation in 1989, but were not subject to mandatory inspections.
-------- korea
North Korea showed jars of plutonium to delegation
Joongang Daily
by Oh Young-hwan, Jeong Yong-su
December 11, 2004
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200412/09/200412092157590279900090309031.html
13th in a series
December 10, 2004 - A U.S. civilian delegation was invited by North Korea's Foreign Ministry to tour the nuclear facilities in Yeongbyeon, North Pyeongan province, on Jan. 8, 2004. The five-member delegation included Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for North Korean affairs, and Siegfried Hecker, a renowned nuclear physicist and former director of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. This was the first time the Yeongbyeon facilities had been opened to outsiders since the North expelled inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in December 2002.
When the delegates entered the laboratory where nuclear reprocessing was suspected to have taken place, North Korea played another political card.
Mr. Hecker later said that the facilities were extremely well maintained and that North Korean scientists had answered technical questions without difficulty. He said the delegation told the North Koreans that they could not assess the amount of plutonium that the North would have been able to produce.
After that remark, Mr. Hecker said, the North Koreans showed the U.S. delegates a red metal box containing two glass jars. One jar contained 150 grams of plutonium oxalate powder, the North Koreans said, and the other 200 grams of plutonium metal. Plutonium oxalate powder is an intermediate product toward purifying metallic plutonium.
Mr. Hecker said he could not make a firm judgment as to whether the jars contained plutonium. He asked to conduct a simple verification test but was not allowed to do so.
After touring the facilities for nearly seven hours, Mr. Hecker and Kim Kye-kwan, North Korea's vice foreign minister, met alone. "Pyeongyang has nuclear deterrent power," Mr. Kim said. "This trip probably gave you confirmation about that power."
Mr. Hecker challenged Mr. Kim, however; he said that what he had seen did not convince him. He said he told Mr. Kim that nuclear deterrent power consists of three parts. One is the ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and the second is the ability to design a nuclear weapon. The third is the ability to integrate the nuclear weapon and a delivery system such as a missile. Mr. Hecker told Mr. Kim that he had only seen North Korea's capability to produce plutonium.
Mr. Hecker also attacked Mr. Kim more directly. He said that nuclear deterrence is a term that was used by the United States and the Soviet Union in the past when the two sides were nearly equal in their nuclear armament. Mr. Hecker told Mr. Kim that North Korea's concept of nuclear deterrent was meaningless between the United States and North Korea.
After Mr. Hecker's challenge, North Korea dropped the term "nuclear deterrent power" for some time, replacing it with "self-defense ability." But more recently, the North started using the term "nuclear deterrence" again.
During the meeting, Mr. Kim seemed somewhat nervous, Mr. Hecker recalled later. Mr. Kim reportedly asked Mr. Hecker whether the U.S. government would take military action if Mr. Hecker told Washington that North Korea was already nuclear-armed. Mr. Kim also told Mr. Hecker that North Korea was concerned that the U.S. government would use his conclusion as a reason for attacking the North.
North Korea's invitation to the team was interpreted by the international community as an attempt to bargain. But the North did not show the entire scope of its nuclear activities in order to maintain some strategic ambiguity.
The United States, which had already suffered an intelligence embarrassment over the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saw North Korea's nuclear capability as another dilemma.
"North Korea claimed that it had reprocessed all 8,000 used nuclear fuel rods between January and June of 2003," a senior Seoul official said. "But the South Korean government believed that the North had been unable to do so. The U.S. side agreed. Although we should have accepted the North's claim, our observations were hinting in the other direction, puzzling the U.S. and South Korean intelligence communities."
Another South Korean intelligence source said the United States and South Korea had detected signs of nuclear reprocessing three times up to that point. "A U.S. satellite found on April 30, May 1 and July 29, 2003, that vapor was coming out of the cooling tower of the laboratory," the official said. "What was interesting was that we had detected vapor on July 29 - after the North claimed that it had completed its nuclear reprocessing."
The official said the U.S. and South Korean intelligence communities believed that the North had reprocessed about 2,000 to 3,000 spent nuclear fuel rods. He added, though, that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency claimed that the North had completed its nuclear reprocessing.
On Jan. 12, 2004, North Korea made public a new proposal, demanding rewards in return for a freeze of its nuclear activities. Pyeongyang intended to focus the second round of six-nation talks with Seoul, Washington, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo on such an offer.
The six countries involved in the talks began their negotiations, but then the nuclear connection between Pakistan and North Korea emerged. North Korea had provided missile technology to Pakistan in return for nuclear weapons technology.
On Feb. 2, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, confessed that he had allowed the technology, design and material for uranium enrichment to be transferred to North Korea, and the technology had been passed beginning in the late 1980s. Mr. Khan said that during a visit to North Korea five years earlier, he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices.
But, North Korea's revelation of its plutonium and uranium weapons development capabilities did not stop the second round of six-nation talks from taking place. The United States, which was facing a predicament in Iraq, wanted strongly to keep the multilateral framework going to share the burden of dealing with the North.
On Feb. 25, the second round of talks opened in Beijing. North Korea changed its chief negotiator, but the other five countries sent the same delegates. Replacing Kim Yong-il, the North Korean deputy foreign minister in charge of Asian affairs, was Kim Kye-kwan, the deputy foreign minister in charge of U.S. affairs.
The delegates locked horns over Washington's demand for a complete, verifiable and irreversible end to Pyeongyang's nuclear programs and Pyeongyang's demand for compensation in return for a freeze rather than a dismantling of its facilities. No compromise was reached, and the six nations struggled to coordinate a joint press statement. A deadlock loomed.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. begins winter offensive in Afghanistan
The Associated Press
12/11/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-11-us-afghan-offensive_x.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. troops have begun a new offensive to hunt Taliban and al-Qaeda militants through the harsh Afghan winter, aiming to sap their strength ahead of planned spring elections, the American military said Saturday.
The U.S. military said Saturday that it hoped the new push, dubbed Lightning Freedom, would persuade insurgents to accept an amnesty offered by President Hamid Karzai that could stabilize the country and allow foreign troops to pull back.
"It's designed basically to search out and destroy the remaining remnants of Taliban forces who traditionally we believe go to ground during the winter months," spokesman Maj. Mark McCann said. "It's going on throughout the country of Afghanistan."
The operation was initiated after Karzai's inauguration Tuesday as the country's first democratically elected president, McCann said. He didn't know exactly when it began and gave no details of any specific moves against militant targets.
But Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 American commander here, told The Associated Press last month that the operation would include a redeployment to tighten security on the border with Pakistan and raids by special forces to snatch rebel leaders.
Protecting Afghanistan's young democracy has become the most urgent priority for American commanders frustrated by their failure to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who disappeared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The landmark Oct. 9 vote, which gave a landslide victory to Karzai, was free of the major violence threatened by Taliban diehards, who continue to fight on three years after being ousted from power. Attention is already turning to the more complex National Assembly election, slated for April.
The new military drive, which involves the entire 18,000-strong U.S.-led force here, also is aimed at persuading militants to take up an offer of amnesty from the American military and the Afghan government, McCann said.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, Olson's superior, told AP last week that if a large number of Taliban foot soldiers give up the fight in return for a promise that they can return to their villages, U.S. troop strength could be cut by next summer — once the parliamentary election is complete.
McCann said the military believes the operations "will establish security conditions that allow the parliamentary elections in the spring to occur with the same success" as October's vote.
Lightning Freedom represents a new phase, rather than any shift in strategy, and commanders will continue mixing combat operations with humanitarian actions, the spokesman said.
Compared with last winter, the United States has several thousand more troops strung out across the south and east, where insurgents are strongest.
McCann said the U.S. military will also help Afghan forces combat the country's booming drug industry by sharing intelligence, ferrying counter-narcotics units to and from raids, and rescuing them if they get into serious trouble.
Karzai says exploding cultivation of opium poppies, the source of most of the world's heroin, is now a bigger threat to the country than militants. Officials are vowing to arrest top smugglers and refiners next year.
However, the U.S. military is concerned that raids could lead to fresh political instability and will lend a hand to anti-drug raids "as long as they do not interfere with the coalition's primary missions" of defeating insurgents and fostering reconstruction, McCann said.
The number of so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams — small military units tasked with supporting local authorities and carrying out small-scale relief and development projects — has also risen from five to 19 over the past year.
"It's not just about conducting combat operations. It's also about connecting with the people here," McCann said.
The new operation follows Lightning Resolve, a massive security operation begun in July to protect the October election, the first national vote since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
In previous winters, the U.S. military has mobilized one or two battalions for sweeps of particular regions, an approach which brought few visible results.
-----
18,000 U.S. Troops Begin Afghan Offensive
Associated Press
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Dec 11, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_US_OPERATION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Some 18,000 American troops have started a winter offensive against Taliban rebels in Afghanistan, vowing to eliminate insurgents who could threaten parliamentary elections slated for the spring.
The U.S. military said Saturday that it hoped the new push, dubbed Lightning Freedom, would persuade insurgents to accept an amnesty offered by President Hamid Karzai that could stabilize the country and allow foreign troops to pull back.
"It's designed basically to search out and destroy the remaining remnants of Taliban forces who traditionally we believe go to ground during the winter months," spokesman Maj. Mark McCann said. "It's going on throughout the country of Afghanistan."
The operation was initiated after Karzai's inauguration Tuesday as the country's first democratically elected president, McCann said. He didn't know exactly when it began and gave no details of any specific moves against militant targets.
But Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 American commander here, told The Associated Press last month that the operation would include a redeployment to tighten security on the border with Pakistan and raids by special forces to snatch rebel leaders.
Protecting Afghanistan's young democracy has become the most urgent priority for American commanders frustrated by their failure to capture al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who disappeared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The landmark Oct. 9 vote, which gave a landslide victory to Karzai, was free of the major violence threatened by Taliban diehards, who continue to fight on three years after being ousted from power. Attention is already turning to the more complex National Assembly election, slated for April.
The new military drive, which involves the entire 18,000-strong U.S.-led force here, also is aimed at persuading militants to take up an offer of amnesty from the American military and the Afghan government, McCann said.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, Olson's superior, told AP last week that if a large number of Taliban foot soldiers give up the fight in return for a promise that they can return to their villages, U.S. troop strength could be cut by next summer - once the parliamentary election is complete.
McCann said the military believes the operations "will establish security conditions that allow the parliamentary elections in the spring to occur with the same success" as October's vote.
Lightning Freedom represents a new phase, rather than any shift in strategy, and commanders will continue mixing combat operations with humanitarian actions, the spokesman said.
Compared with last winter, the United States has several thousand more troops strung out across the south and east, where insurgents are strongest.
McCann said the U.S. military will also help Afghan forces combat the country's booming drug industry by sharing intelligence, ferrying counter-narcotics units to and from raids, and rescuing them if they get into serious trouble.
Karzai says exploding cultivation of opium poppies, the source of most of the world's heroin, is now a bigger threat to the country than militants. Officials are vowing to arrest top smugglers and refiners next year.
However, the U.S. military is concerned that raids could lead to fresh political instability and will lend a hand to anti-drug raids "as long as they do not interfere with the coalition's primary missions" of defeating insurgents and fostering reconstruction, McCann said.
The number of so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams - small military units tasked with supporting local authorities and carrying out small-scale relief and development projects - has also risen from five to 19 over the past year.
"It's not just about conducting combat operations. It's also about connecting with the people here," McCann said.
The new operation follows Lightning Resolve, a massive security operation begun in July to protect the October election, the first national vote since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
In previous winters, the U.S. military has mobilized one or two battalions for sweeps of particular regions, an approach which brought few visible results.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan nabs head of group suspected of kidnapping U.N. workers
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) 12/11/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-11-pakistan-terror-suspect_x.htm
Pakistani security forces have arrested the head of a militant Islamic group suspected in the kidnapping of three U.N. workers in Afghanistan in October, a senior Cabinet minister said Saturday.
Syed Akbar Agha, chief of Jaish-al Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, was captured in the southwestern city of Quetta this week, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press.
He gave no other details.
Armed men seized Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo on Oct. 28. They were freed in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Nov. 23.
Pakistan had been searching for Agha, who used a cell phone to contact some media outlets to claim responsibility for the kidnappings.
After the abductions, Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said Agha's group hired bandits to kidnap the U.N. workers, who were helping organize Afghanistan's Oct. 9 presidential election.
Agha last month told AP that he would be "flexible" on freeing the trio if Aghan authorities accepted the group's demand for the release of 26 prisoners held in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Because Agha had contacted Pakistani media to claim responsibility for the kidnapping, Afghan and U.S. officials sought Islamabad's help to track him down, an intelligence official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Agha's real name was Haji Fazal Karim.
"He (Agha) was captured with his wives and children this week, but the women and children were later freed," he said.
Agha's group said 15 of the prisoners they wanted released were seized by American troops near the southern border town of Spin Boldak last month. The others were detained earlier and have been transferred to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan have declined to confirm whether they are holding any of the 26 or if they will release any suspects.
Officials have said no ransom or other concessions were made to the kidnappers, who dumped their captives on a street in Kabul.
-------- un
Saddam's Illicit Trade No Secret to U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Saddams-Smuggling.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein was dead broke, the result of U.N. penalties. Or so it was thought.
So where did the Iraqi president find the money to pursue missile technology from North Korea, air defense systems from Belarus and other prohibited military equipment?
The CIA's top weapons inspector in Iraq said Saddam carried out much of that trade with proceeds from illegal oil sales to Syria, one of three Iraqi neighbors that bought oil from Baghdad in defiance of the United Nations.
Trade with Syria, Jordan and Turkey was the biggest source of illicit funds for Saddam, more so than the much-maligned U.N. oil-for-food program, according to investigations of Saddam's finances.
Though considered smuggling, most of the trade took place with the knowledge -- and sometimes the tacit consent -- of the United States and other nations.
With Republican-led congressional committees investigating allegations of oil-for-food corruption, some Democrats are pressing for answers about why the United States did little to stop the smuggling. The issue is part of a series of broader questions these lawmakers have about what U.S. officials knew about Saddam's overall illicit finances.
``I am determined to see to it that our own government's failures and oversights or mistaken judgments and decisions should also be exposed,'' said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif.
Some Republicans are promising to hold hearings on the matter next year.
``I believe the smuggling issue is huge,'' said GOP Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security.
During the dozen years between the two Iraq wars, Saddam's oil sales were supposed to be limited to those permitted under the U.N. oil-for-food program. From 1996 to 2003, the $60 billion program allowed Iraq to sell oil and use proceeds to buy food, medicine and other necessities.
That program has come under scrutiny because of allegations that Saddam received kickbacks and bribed U.N. and foreign government officials. Besides the congressional inquiries, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head an investigation.
The report by CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer found that oil-for-food corruption generated $1.7 billion for Saddam. It said illegal oil contracts generated about $8 billion: $4.4 billion with Jordan, $2.8 billion with Syria and $710 million with Turkey. A short-lived agreement with Egypt generated $33 million. Overall, Saddam had $10.9 billion in illicit revenue from 1990 to 2003, Duelfer said.
The Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, using a different methodology, came up with a $21.3 billion overall estimate, including $13.7 billion from oil smuggling. The panel did not break that figure down by nation and it includes some smuggling related to the oil-for-food program.
Lawmakers frequently lump together estimates of Saddam's illicit income from smuggling and from the oil-for-food program, blaming the United Nations for the full $21.3 billion. Critics of the United Nations say a surge in smuggling was made possible by the general lawlessness caused by oil-for-food corruption.
But Democrats say Annan cannot be held accountable for smuggling that they say the United States condoned.
``When three-quarters of the money ... is something that we specifically acquiesced in, it just sort of highlights how wrong it is to put it at Kofi Annan's doorstep,'' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
Former State Department officials said the United States had little choice but to allow some of these sales to Iraq's neighbors.
Jordan was desperate after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.N. penalties against Iraq had cost Jordan a major trading partner. Iraq owed Jordan money, but could not repay without selling oil. Jordan needed oil, but could not import from other producers, angry that Jordan supported Iraq in the war.
``We realized that the Jordanian economy and the Jordanian state would collapse'' if it didn't get access to oil, said David Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs at the time.
The United Nations formally acknowledged Jordan's oil dealings with Iraq in May 1991, without approving or disapproving of it. Because of that, some people question whether the trade can be considered illicit.
``It was not authorized, but nobody objected,'' said James A. Placke, a Middle East and oil policy analyst and a former U.S. diplomat.
Turkey, which had trade agreements with Iraq from 2000-03, also said it was hurt because of the U.N. penalties.
Turkey had an important role in containing Saddam: Its Incirlik air base was used by U.S. military planes that patrolled a no-fly zone over northern Iraq.
``With Turkey, it was plain illegal. It was smuggling, but everybody just said, `Oh well, geez, it was too hard to try to do anything about that,''' Mack said.
The shipments to Jordan and Turkey were not concealed. Trucks carrying oil were frequently seen entering those countries from Iraq. The Clinton and Bush administrations annually issued waivers that allowed the two countries to continue receiving U.S. aid despite their violations of the Iraq penalties.
Syria was another matter.
Allen Keiswetter, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs in 2000-01, said U.S. officials were aware that Syria was buying oil from Iraq through a pipeline.
``We objected to it mightily and often, but there did not seem any good way to stop it short of military action,'' he said.
In a February 2001 visit to Damascus, Secretary of State Colin Powell believed he had secured a commitment from Syria to put the pipeline under U.N. scrutiny. But that never happened.
Syria's oil purchase agreements with Iraq lasted from 2000 to 2003. Iraq's proceeds were deposited in bank accounts in Syria and Saddam used those funds to buy conventional weapons and items that could be used for civilian or military purposes, Duelfer's report said. During this period, Syria was the main source of illegal exports to Iraq.
More than with Jordan or Turkey, Duelfer tied the proceeds from the Syria-Iraq trade agreement to Iraq's illegal weapons trade with various countries. Those countries included:
--Belarus, described as the largest supplier of high-technology conventional weapons to Iraq from 2001-03. Products included radar technology and air defense systems. Belarus received nearly $114 million in payments from Iraq.
--North Korea, which signed $10 million of contracts for missile-related projects and other military equipment.
--Bulgaria, which used the Iraq-Syria agreement to sell Iraq machine tools that could be used for military or civilian purposes.
Because Duelfer found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- President Bush's main justification for the Iraq war -- there was no suggestion that oil proceeds paid for unconventional weapons.
But Duelfer has argued that Saddam's ability to subvert the U.N. penalties probably meant the embargo eventually would collapse, giving Saddam an opportunity to pursue chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Saddam took heart from the U.S. failure to stop the oil trade with Syria, Duelfer wrote.
``Baghdad could read this turn of events only as growing momentum of its strategy to undermine sanctions with the goal of an ultimate collapse,'' the report said.
-------- us
Marines on the front lines talk of God and guns
The Christian Science Monitor
By Scott Peterson,
12/11/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-11-marines_x.htm
FALLUJAH, Iraq — The first few pages of Marine Cpl. Tim Milholin's small zip-up Bible are stuck together — drenched "too many times" from the sweat of battle, he explains. It lives under his armored vest in his chest pocket, with an inscribed metal plate: "The Lord is my strength and my shield."
Marine Cpl. Tim Milholin carries a Bible, photo of his wife and an inscribed religious medal into battle.
By Scott Peterson, Getty Images
Corporal Milholin, a 21-year-old machine-gunner with a pencil-thin mustache, is girded for war in Fallujah with both book and sword. He is as well-versed in the King James text as he is in the killing potential of hollow-tipped bullets or the amount of C4 plastic explosive and TNT needed to blow through an Iraqi door. To him, they are all essential tools of his warfighting trade, as important as the photo of his wife, Brianne, that's tucked inside his helmet.
"I pray earnestly every day, and believe that God puts his angels out before us, to protect us," says the marine, who fires up his camp stove daily before daybreak to brew coffee for the unit during the violent days of Operation Dawn in Fallujah. Since the dark night of Nov. 8 when they rolled into the dense urban environment of this now-empty city of 300,000, U.S. forces have been in their toughest fight since the Vietnam War. As they search for their enemy, breaking through one closed door after another, the Raider platoon — the Death Dealers, as they dub themselves — are on the front lines in a city hammered to rubble.
They're a microcosm of the modern military, a disparate handful of young men drawn from the melting pot of America. But they share obsessions: with guns and God, with guitars, girls, wives, and fiancees.
Most took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And the common experience of combat has deepened a bond of brotherhood — a tie upon which their lives depend every day on the terror war's most dangerous battlefield: Fallujah. In this crucible, they have seen death and delivered it, and grown mature beyond their years amid unrelenting rigors and danger.
Preparing for battle
Every day, sometimes twice or more in a 24-hour period, the scouts gather for final orders.
The moment of deepest contemplation comes before each attack, often early in the morning, as on the group's seventh day in Fallujah. In near silence and darkness, they clean weapons once more, pack rifle magazines with bullets, and load gear belts with explosives.
Not all are religious, but a few scouts, like Corporal Milholin, keep small Bibles in their chest pockets, close to pounding hearts.
Many use a black permanent marker to ink their hands or gloves with their blood type and "kill" numbers — information that will enable news of casualties to be passed immediately over the radio. It's a habit that's taken on greater significance in the course of a month of battle that has killed or wounded more than 20% of Charlie Company, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) battalion.
Not all are impressed. "I don't write any of that [expletive] on me," says Lance Cpl. Matt McClellan (X58, B+), a tattooed serial rule breaker. "It's bad luck."
Quick response
It was just August when the company commanders created the concept of Raider One — a single vehicle that can deposit up to 10 scouts on the ground within seconds to fight in conjunction with Light Armored Vehicles known as "war pigs." The setup provides new flexibility during hand-to-hand combat and has proven so effective that Raider is assigned constant missions in Fallujah.
It's been during these operations that the brutal emotions of battle, of tragedy and triumph and coping, mix with Washington's calculation that Fallujah — which was a hub for hostage-taking, rebel weaponry, and car bombs — had to be destroyed, to be saved.
"This is urban combat to a 'T,' with 360 degrees of danger," says Sgt. Kevin Boyd, the young-faced chief scout from Pittsburgh, Pa., who forged Raider's clockwork skills of houseclearing by daily practice on the ship to the Middle East, storming stairwells and clearing catwalks on upper decks.
"You've always got to be looking in every house — behind every couch there could be a guy hiding," says Sergeant Boyd, an Eagle Scout who wore his first camouflage at age 3 and owns more than 20 guns.
Boyd graduated from high school on a Friday, celebrated on Saturday, and left for the Marines on Monday. He says Fallujah is "10 times" as dangerous as the Iraq invasion, during which LAR lost one marine, who stepped on an artillery shell.
"It's a lot faster combat, a lot more deliberate. Grenade, grenade, rocket-boom! You're in," says Boyd. For luck, he keeps an Ace of Spades in his helmet.
"I love the adrenaline of it, the fast pace," Boyd adds. "I'm breathing in plaster and composition B from the grenade, choking on it — spitting out black stuff as I'm clearing the room out. It's great!"
But the edge of this front line is not for everybody. Another chief scout of a sister platoon, called Red, watched at close range on the first day as an insurgent fired a rocket from just 25 yards, narrowly missing his platoon leader.
"Everybody has a breaking point, and his was a lot earlier," says 1st Lt. Paul Webber, the Red platoon chief from Newcastle, Calif. "His eyes were huge. He stood up [after the exchange] and slumped over." Back in the vehicle, Lieutenant Webber recalls, the sergeant "curled up in the fetal position and was banging his head on the toolbox. The doc had to restrain him."
"There is nothing more personal than someone trying to kill you, and you trying to kill him," says Capt. Gil Juarez, the LAR company commander from San Diego, Calif. "Not marriage. Not parenting. Nothing is more personal than having to toe the line, when it's either you or him."
During pauses between operations, the men set up camp, living cramped in occupied Iraqi houses. It's at such times that the marines try to digest the unpredictable moments of Fallujah, with feisty debates that erupt about everything from too-young girlfriends to the utility of God.
"I'm sure they see it in every war; so many people become religious out here," says Milholin, sitting on a floor mattress covered with red satin. The windows of the house are gone — smashed out by the marines so that glass will not fly when mortars land nearby.
Milholin and two others are known as the "Three Wise Men." "I put so much faith in God, I don't know how people do it without being religious."
Corporal McClellan knows how — and often takes issue with the Wise Men's certitude. "I have confidence. Ever since I was a little kid, I knew I was not going to die, so I don't need [religion] to lift me up," says the machine-gunner from Clayton, N.J., turning down the volume on his heavy metal CD.
McClellan racked up 26 counts of grand-theft auto while still a juvenile. He had six ear studs on one side, seven on the other, and a tongue stud — which once got stuck in his lip ring. Joining the Marines has tempered such behavior, but it hasn't erased McClellan's independent streak.
If anything, McClellan says he blames God for what goes wrong — a key reason being the fate of his friend Lance Cpl. Kyle Burns, of Red platoon, who was going to be the best man at McClellan's wedding until he was killed in an ambush Nov. 11.
McClellan took the death hard. He stills clings to a photo of himself and the square-jawed marine in a cowboy hat from Laramie, Wyo., sitting together smoking a Middle Eastern water pipe.
After the ambush, McClellan was put in charge of guarding an Iraqi who had surrendered with a white flag. The marine made no secret of his distaste for the man.
A second marine was added to guard duty to keep an eye on both of them. "If anybody left me alone with him, I would be in the brig [military jail] right now," McClellan says later.
Losing his friend changed McClellan's sense of mission. "Before [Burns] was killed, I thought we were here to kill the bad ones and save the good ones," says McClellan, a wry wit who sometimes jokingly refers to himself "trigger-happy Mick." "Now I think: 'Is he the one who shot Kyle?' It's a revenge thing. Every time I see an Iraqi, I could be face-to-face with the guy who killed my best friend."
Perhaps as a result, McClellan expects this conflict to bring him closer to his father, a former marine who survived three tours of Vietnam unscathed and fought in the urban battle at Hue City in 1968.
"He used to talk about how, 10 seconds from now, you don't know if you'll be alive," McClellan recalls, swinging a pair of dog tags on a chain. "His buddy right next to him was shot in the face and died. Now I know how he felt."
Death and salvation
Burns's death has become a point of debate within the unit. The marine shared McClellan's animosity toward religion until just days before the ambush, when he "gave his life to Christ" at a church service, according to some who were there.
"God has a perfect plan," says Cpl. Christopher DeBlanc, a team leader and one of the Wise Men. He keeps a red leather Bible in his rucksack, part of a pile of personal gear deposited upstairs in the Iraqi house. "For example, Red [platoon] got hit by a [mine], and after that they had a church service. They accepted God; Kyle accepted it. Kyle is in heaven now."
"That was God's gift to Kyle?" asks McClellan incredulously. "Great. You accept God, and the next day you get killed. That's some advertisement. You are done at 20 years and three months, unmarried."
That reaction doesn't surprise Corporal DeBlanc, a tall, reliable marine. His path to the military, and to his overarching faith, has been circuitous. From the age of 12, he worshiped the guitar and played in rock bands, practicing for hours after school in Spotsylvania, Va., often falling asleep with the instrument in his hands. But his rock-star lifestyle didn't take him far. "During my teenage years, I hit the bottom of the barrel," DeBlanc says. "When I joined the Marine Corps, I was done living that way."
His change of heart was sparked by the burial, with full military honors, of his grandfather, a World War II veteran and a man he wanted to emulate.
"I didn't cry [at first], but when the honor guard got up there for the 21-gun salute — as soon as that first round cracked, it was Niagara Falls," DeBlanc recalls. "I didn't like how my life was going, so I gave it to the military."
The marines instill a new set of values and "force you to grow up," says DeBlanc. For him, that included a growing framework of faith that he applies in Fallujah. "The big thing is the spiritual battle going on in our lives — the fight we're fighting is good against evil," he says. He knows the Americans are not the only ones to call on divine power: On the wall of one house, written with yellow paint in Arabic: "God help [Iraq's] mujahideen."
DeBlanc easily reconciles war with the biblical commandment against killing. "Doesn't the Bible say: 'There is a time to pick up the sword, a time for peace, and a time for war?' " he asks. "I can pull the trigger here and have a clear conscience."
To a degree, that goes for Lance Cpl. Jason Bell, the original Wise Man from Spokane, Wash., who tries to balance the battle with the message of his Bible, which he keeps on him in a plastic meal sleeve that also holds a stun grenade and an extra rifle magazine.
"I always prayed, before we came here, that Iraq's innocent civilians wouldn't look badly on us," says Corporal Bell. He wistfully recalls breaking out in laughter with a young Iraqi after several failed attempts to communicate — an uncommon moment of levity between Americans and Iraqis.
Bell's faith was tested during a pre-dawn raid, when small fragments of a U.S. grenade ricocheted and embedded in his cheek, effectively shielding this correspondent from the blast.
"I thought it was a blessing in a weird way — [the wound] wasn't that bad," recalls Bell, who wants to go to Bible college and preach. "It's kind of crazy: God told David he couldn't build a temple, because he had blood on his hands.
"Though we've been in contact, I don't know that I've killed anybody," Bell adds. "I've never hesitated, but it seems whenever I've gone out, there was nothing out there."
DeBlanc also plans to go Bible college, and has dreamed of himself as an elderly man at a pulpit, his wife with three children (as yet unborn) in the front pew. That's a welcome change from the nightmares he had for a year after returning home from Iraq in 2003. "I would wake up, looking for my rifle," says DeBlanc. "I dreamed I was in a fire hole and being overrun, and couldn't find my gun."
"Doc" Nick Navarrette, the U.S. Navy medical corpsman from Omaha, who serves as Raider's ambulance chief during casualty evacuation, had a nightmare too in Fallujah. "There are 50 Iraqis coming at us, I had an M-16 [rifle] and all it shot is dust," says the slightly built corpsman. "I reach for my [pistol], and it's only crunching sand."
No noncombatants here
The corpsman's job requires him to be a noncombatant, limited to using his M-16 rifle. But when the Raider One vehicle was sent to reinforce Red platoon during the Nov. 11 ambush, he got behind a belt-fed machine gun when he saw three insurgents shooting from a third floor. He killed at least one and stopped fire from the others.
Then, when casualties were announced on the radio, Navarrette's real work began. After he gets home from Iraq, he wants a fourth tattoo: a pair of angel wings across his back.
"As soon as I jumped out [of the vehicle], the shots started flying by my head. I could feel the wind [from the bullets] in my face," Navarrette recalls of his 30-yard dash to the wounded. He got the first casualty back to the vehicle when word came about another one. Navarrette and a gunner, bullets striking in front of their feet, retrieved Burns, who was dead.
There is speculation among Raider platoon that Navarrette may be put up for a bronze star, with a 'V' for combat valor.
But his mother was angry. "She told me, 'Don't do anything crazy,'" he recounts after a call home. "I'm already a hero to her; I don't need to be a hero to anybody else. I tell her: 'It's my job; these are my friends.' "
Days later, wrapped in McClellan's thick blanket to ward off a morning chill in the occupied house, Navarrette elaborated while eating potato chips and French onion dip from a care package.
During the call to his mother, he also learned that a close friend, Shane, was killed the same night. The news also reached Shane's wife, April, just hours after she gave birth to the couple's first child. The emotional ride gave the corpsman pause. He pulls out the video camera he used to film part of the ambush.
The rattle of bullets and pounding high-caliber rounds dominate the soundtrack. Then the footage goes calm, and Navarrette is speaking from the back of the Raider vehicle after delivering the casualties to the combat hospital.
"Yeah, well, we lost two guys. I'm here by myself," he records, clearly shaken. "I got blood all over my hands; I got blood all over my pants, and my flak [vest]. It was not a good day. I never want to go through a day like that again."
"But we're going right back out there. No breaks," Navarrette says, his voice threadbare. "I'll turn you back on, when the [bullets] start flying again. All right — peace."
* Yesterday, Lt. Gen. John Sattler said that 97% of Fallujah's more than 20,000 buildings "have been swept for the third and hopefully, final time."
-----
Army moves to speed up Humvee production
(AP)
12/11/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-12-11-humvee-increase_x.htm
WASHINGTON — The Army entered negotiations with an armor manufacturer Friday in an effort to accelerate production of armored versions of the Humvee to get them to the troops more quickly, Army and company officials said.
Bill King installs a ballistic panel on the side of a Humvee for ArmorWorks R&D, a company that supplies the military with lightweight armor kits.
By Jeff Topping, Getty Images
Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey spoke with officials at Armor Holdings, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Fla., who told him Friday they could increase production by up to 100 vehicles a month.
Army officials had previously believed the factory was working at capacity until the company told the news media Thursday that it could make more. Democrats immediately criticized the Bush administration for not boosting production sooner.
Still, company officials said the Armor Holdings plant was not immediately capable of boosting output. Armor Holdings said in a statement issued Friday that it could increase its rate of production by February or March.
"During the interim period, we will continue to build as many vehicles as possible, as we have done to date. In fact, we are currently ahead of the Army's production schedule by more than 330 total vehicles," the statement said.
In addition, the Army would also have to go to Congress for additional funding if Armor Holdings sought more money, officials said.
The Army has ordered 8,105 of the armored Humvees, and 5,910 are in Iraq, Afghanistan and nearby countries. Armor Holdings is already producing 450 a month, meaning they would be finished sometime in the early spring. Any increased production by the company before then would accelerate the completion of the order.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfield, responding to a soldier's complaint about not enough armored vehicles for the troops, said Wednesday the Army was working to produce more armored vehicles, but it was "a matter of physics, not a matter of money," suggesting that production lines at operating at capacity.
But Armor Holdings spokesman Michael Fox said Thursday that the company recently completed an analysis after the Marines inquired about buying 50 to 100 armored vehicles each month.
"We determined it was doable," Fox said.
Armor Holdings said it expected to produce about 4,000 armored vehicles this year, compared to 500 in 2001, 600 in 2002, and 850 in 2003.
Cost of the armored Humvees is about $150,000 each.
Production has to be coordinated with AMC General LLC of South Bend, Ind., which produces the trucks used to make the Armored Humvees.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, who continually decried the lack of equipment during his unsuccessful presidential campaign, on Friday called on Rumsfeld to investigate.
Several companies that manufacture protective equipment have indicated they can significantly boost production, Kerry said in a letter to Rumsfeld.
There are thousands more Humvees in Iraq that were built without the extra armor. The military has purchased thousands of kits with bolt-on armor, but several thousand Humvees, and thousands more heavy trucks, remain without armor for use against insurgent bombs, guns and rockets.
The soldier's question to Rumsfeld, at a town-hall meeting in Kuwait this week, has led critics to ask why the Pentagon has been unable to send enough armored equipment 21 months into the war. They said war planners had too rosy a picture of how the campaign would last and didn't think so many troops and so much armor would be needed for so long.
"This is about faulty analysis and a failed strategy," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee. "We've never had enough troops on the ground since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government to deal with the insurgency because we didn't expect one."
Loren Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank, agreed.
"We have pretty much miscalculated every step along the way — why we went, how we should do it, what we needed, what support we would have, how long it would last — we pretty much got it all wrong," he said.
There was far too little advanced body armor and there were too few armored vehicles to deal with what the Pentagon has since acknowledged is a far stronger and longer insurgency than expected. Officials say more is being manufactured as fast as possible.
-----
Soldier injured in Iraq gets donations, little from Army
pantagraph.com
By Scott Richardson srichardson@pantagraph.com
December 11, 2004
http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/121104/new_20041211009.shtml
BLOOMINGTON -- It's been a bitter-sweet Christmas season for Mike Geason.
The Iraq war veteran, who has been unable to work since his return home, and his two young children have received gifts and cash donations after The Pantagraph highlighted his battle with the U.S. Army over whether his disability is war-related.
But, Geason, 29, of Eureka, received a letter from the U.S. Army this week indicating a one-time payment of about $9,000 was the only money he can expect from the military, said his mother, Ruth Tabor of Congerville, who is supporting her son and grandchildren.
All but about $2,000 of that was deducted for overpayments and equipment left behind in Iraq, and that was used up long ago, she said. Geason was advised to continue pressing his case with the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration.
"I don't know whether to try to appeal it anymore or not. It's so discouraging. It is so frustrating," said Tabor, who handles her son's affairs due to lingering confusion and seizures he suffers from a head injury. "I don't know where else to go. I don't know what else to do."
Geason insists his current seizures began in June 2003 after an injury he suffered in Iraq. He banged his head on a cannon while ducking for cover when shots were fired nearby. His condition led to his honorable discharge in February.
The Army says Geason's problem dates to a car accident in 1995. However, Tabor said those earlier seizures ended. She points out her son was allowed to transfer from the Army Reserves to the National Guard and finally to active duty with the Army in Iraq without his physical condition being questioned.
As the bureaucratic battle continues, Geason has no income.
But Pantagraph readers have given cash gifts totaling $1,500 to Geason and his children, Shyanne, 2, and Luke, 4, Tabor said. Some people have given directly to a fund set up in his name; others have forwarded gift cards and gift certificates.
Chapters of Disabled American Veterans from Woodford County and Bloomington have given along with the Woodford County Veterans Assistance. The Pantagraph's Good Fellow Fund helped as has Farmers Insurance from LeRoy, Helmers Farms Inc. in Cropsey. The Lincoln We Care seniors group has "adopted" the family, which also has received a much-needed used washer-dryer, Tabor said.
Children from Eureka Apolstolic Christian Church have sung to the family and left donated food.
"The donations were a surprise and a blessing," Tabor said. "We want to thank everyone for their generosity, but most of all for lifting our spirits. ...we are just so thankful for living in such a wonderful area as this."
-------- war crimes
Evidence of Extensive War Crimes, unprecedented in the annals of legal history
Premeditated Death and Destruction unleashed against a Sovereign Nation and People
www.globalresearch.ca
by Niloufer Bhagwat
11 December 2004
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BHA412A.html
Opening statement before the Iraq tribunal hearings at Tokyo, 11 Dec 2004
Honorable Judges , Prosecutors , Amici Curiae , witnesses of the satanic death and destruction of the people of Iraq , of homes and livelihood , of hospitals , schools and places of worship; concerned citizens of Japan .
We live in strange times. For even as a war rages fiercely in Iraq which in epic terms can be compared to a "Mahabharat" , a fierce war between the forces of right and wrong , justice and injustice , occupation and national liberation ; we resume this trial in the dark shadows of an "Apocalypse" which is the continuing military occupation and the reduction of the entire population of Iraq into the inmates of a vast concentration camp unmonitored even by the Red Cross and other UN and other International humanitarian organizations.
Unprecedented in the annals of legal history, evidence is being recorded in this trial even as crimes continue to be committed with impunity, bringing home to us the reality of human existence, that words are never enough to defeat a brutal tyranny and even those of us who use words as tools are speechless in the face of the deliberate and premeditated death and destruction unleashed against a sovereign nation and people ,a member state of the United Nations waged solely to capture its oil resources and with that objective to subjugate and eliminate its population through one strategy or another.
Millions of people in the world including in the United States , even before the aggression and military occupation commenced , much before we commenced our slow and painstaking examination of evidence and precedents , sensing imminent and unprecedented danger to the peoples of the entire world including to soldiers recruited to defend Republics and parliamentary democracies proceeded to pronounce their verdict against the doctrine of "continuous war " against one nation or another ;against the conversion of domestic economies into "war economies" even as thousands and thereafter millions were rendered unemployed .The people across continents opposed the policy of "blood for oil" and declared their rejection of this strategy of pre-emptive war for the control of resources of other societies and nations .
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War had estimated before the military onslaught that a fresh attack against Iraq would result in the deaths of anywhere between 48,000 to 260,000 Iraqi citizens and that post-war effects could take the lives of an additional 200,000 Iraqis excluding those killed in the 1991 attack on Iraq and those dead because of illegal sanctions imposed on the civilian population of Iraq by the Security Council and issue which I had dealt with in detail at Kyoto, quoting extensively from the statements of Mr. Dennis Halliday a former International Civil Servant of rare integrity who had resigned on the issues of sanctions claiming that it amounted to an illegal declaration of war on the civilian population.
Now in the 19 month of the occupation by the military forces mainly drawn from the United States and UK along with other smaller contingents all members of the coalition of the aggressors ; Lancet Online Medical Journal based in the UK has published a study by American health experts and researchers at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, Columbia University and al Mustansiriya University Baghdad on the deaths of Iraqi civilians under the military occupation. The study confirms that :
" Violent deaths were widespread….and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children…"
The report went on to say that:
"Making conservative assumptions , we think that about 100,000 excess deaths , or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes of coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths."
Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham who collaborated on the research published informed the media that they had evidence of the use of air power in populated urban areas. Richard Horton editor of the Lancet in an editorial emphasized that the "findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq – in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre –emptive war".
The mounting evidence of the human catastrophe in Iraq not seen since the days of the Second World War prima facie indicates that the death toll may be more but not less than 100,000 and even the Lancet report however sincere has underestimated the death toll from all facets of the Occupation.
In assessing the extent of Genocide it is necessary to focus on the destruction and attack on hospitals and health clinics to deny medical relief to those who could be saved if the Iraqi health service was not destroyed .
This strategy was visible in the policy of organized looting and destruction of Iraqi hospitals in the weeks and months after the attack .The deliberate bombing of water pipes, the cutting off of water supplies to cities and town under siege by US, UK and other forces , destruction of sewage pipes and sanitary facilities , of electricity and heating have condemned millions in Iraq to consume contaminated water and food ,as a consequence the old, the feeble, and the children have been dying of diarrhea and related diseases caused by contamination of food and water with lack of medicines and health care leading to an increase in mortality. This is an indicator that apart from death by violence the Occupation has condemned people to death from malnutrition and lack of food , and water and food borne diseases with inadequate health care directly caused by the Occupation .
The intrepid reporter Dahr Jamail reporting for a weekly in Alaska has disclosed that from what he had seen in six months in Iraq at close quarters , it was difficult to find any family in Iraq who had not had a member killed on account of the conditions arising from the Occupation.
And what of the heroic city of Fallujah which dared to resist the mercenaries of US and UK Security Companies and Agencies, who have no combatant status under the Geneva Convention in any armed conflict , yet are to-day high profile in one war after another in Bosnia, in Kosovo , in Afghanistan and other theatres including in the trafficking in human beings as slaves .On 14th October 2004 sensing that the city of 300,000 was to be singled out for destruction as it had become a symbol of Resistance against the Occupation ; the people of Fallujah through several organizations of Teachers, Tribal Leaders, the Shura Council , the Bar Association, through the President of the Study Centre of Human Rights and Democracy forwarded an urgent appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations in these words:
" Your Excellency, It is obvious that the American forces are committing crimes of genocide every day in Iraq .Now while we are writing to Your Excellency , the American warplanes are dropping their most powerful bombs on the civilians in the city , killing and injuring hundreds of innocent people . At the same time their tanks are attacking the city with their heavy artillery…"
"On the night of 13th October alone American bombardment demolished 50 houses on top of their residents. Is this a genocidal crime or a lesson about democracy? It is obvious that the Americans are committing acts of terror against the people of Fallujah for one reason only : their refusal to accept the Occupation."
"Your Excellency and the whole world knows that the Americans and their allies devastated our country under the pretext of the threat of the Weapons of Mass Destruction .Now after the destruction and the killing of thousands of civilians , they have admitted that there were no weapons found .But they say nothing about all the crimes they have committed .Unfortunately everyone is now silent and will not dignify the murdered Iraqi civilians with words of condemnation .Are the Americans going to pay compensation as Iraq has been forced to do after the Gulf War……."
" We know we are living in a world of double standards .In Fallujah , they have created a new vague target: AL ZARQAWI. This is a new pretext to justify their crimes, killing and daily bombardment of civilians. Almost a year has passed since they created this new pretext and whenever they destroy houses ….they said ‘We have launched a successful operation against AL Zarqawi. hey will never say that they have killed him because there is no such person. And that means the daily killings of civilians and the daily genocide will continue."
"At the same time the representatives of Fallujah , our tribal leader has denounced on many occasions the kidnapping and killing of civilians , and we have no links to any group committing such inhuman behaviour."
" Excellency , we appeal to you and to all the world leaders to exert the greatest pressure on the American administration to stop the crimes in Fallujah and withdraw their army….the city was quiet and peaceful when its people ran it ….We simply did not welcome the Occupation. This is our right according to the UN Charter , International Law and the laws of humanity. If the Americans believe in the opposite they should first withdraw from the UN and all its agencies before acting in a way contrary to the Charter they have signed"
" It is very urgent that your Excellency along with the world leaders, intervenes in a speedy manner to prevent a new massacre…."
This was the voice of the people of Fallujah appealing to the UN and to world leaders and what was the response? After the administration of the United States had taken care of the African-American voters and others through the Diebold electronic voting machines on the 8th November commenced the destruction of Fallujah which to the United States was a symbol of Iraqi resistance throughout the world. There is hardly a home intact in the city of Fallujah. The first attack by US forces with the Black Watch Regiments poised on the highways , was on the Fallujah hospitals and medical personnel who report the casualty figures and treat the wounded the messengers of the devastation and loss of lives .Dr Khamis al-Muhammadi of the Fallujan General Hospital has informed the media that she was seized and taken away by Occupation forces even as she was about to cut an unbilical cord during child birth; several doctors have been reported to have been killed and all hospitals and clinics destroyed. AL ZARQAWI like BIN LADEN was never captured despite the destruction of the entire city. Yet who can destroy the spirit of Fallujah which has survived many attempts of a whole century to crush it.
Even as use of Depleted Uranium , of napalm, of banned chemicals spread throughout the world , Mr. Kofi Anan reacted to the appeal of Fallujah and pronounced what had already been known to millions that :
"The Occupation of Iraq is illegal…" with the Japan Times subsequently reporting that the Secretary General of the United Nations would pay the price for this statement with calls for his resignation despite past services rendered and though the real price for the fraudulently conceived ‘FOOD FOR OIL’ program vests with the Security Council and the entire policy and its implementation was illegal as it sought to impose control over the resources of anther sovereign country to regulate production and distribution of Oil.
With the war declared categorically illegal even by the Secretary General of the United Nations , on what basis does the US administration plan to increase troop levels .Why has it concealed from the world that it has already created four military bases in Iraq with the objective of permanent occupation . And what is the nature of the liberation of Iraq. Dahr Jamail reports that Baghdad after 19 months remains in shambles bombed out buildings sit as insulting reminders of unbroken promises of reconstruction 70 % of Iraqis at the very minimum are unemployed and there is a five mile petrol lines in an oil rich country.Engineers and doctors are unemployed and ply taxis .there are mass graves of innocent civilians in Fallujah and bodies with skins melted by napalm .bodies bloated and rotting devoured by dogs in the street after the complete destruction of the city of Fallujah water supply is frequently cut off from cities and towns targeted for attack children lie deformed by Depleted Uranium exposure in shattered hospitals from lack of treatment or even pain medication the Iraqi Red Crescent, other relief teams and the Red Cross has been obstructed in rendering aid mosques are bullet ridden with blood stained carpets."
Even as governments and heads of State continue to deal with war criminals we must recall that the assault on Fallujah and other cities , towns and villages of Iraq are covered by article 6 (b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter and in the trials of the Far East or Tokyo trials among the war crimes defined include the" Wanton destruction of cities , towns or villages " crimes for which the Nazi leaders and other Generals and militarists were tried and executed .The acts perpetrated by US,UK forces in the onslaught on Fallujah constitutes a clear violation of the laws of Land War found in the US army Field Manual 27-10.
What of the US, UK soldiers used as one half of the poor to kill the other half ;recruited from working class families from isolated and marginalized communities and towns affected by the economic recession and the downturn sweeping the United States and England with employment opportunities steadily decreasing. Christian Bollyn of the American Free Press , Washington D.C asked Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa if the US was using Depleted Uranium in Fallujah and received the reply that " DU is the standard round on the M-1 Abraham Tanks" which have been used in Fallujah. Because of the nature of poison gas exploded by the exploded DU shells, American Free Press asked Yoswa if the troops were protected from DU poisoning .Lt.Col. Joe Yoswa seemed unaware of the dangers posed by DU. Marion Falk a retired Nuclear scientist from Livermore Lab informed the media that US troops in DU contaminated battlefields are considered "throw away soldiers" who are dispensed with once exposed , and replaced by others who become throw away in their turn with risks of cancer ,deformed children from genetic damage and serious health problems. There is no higher purpose to fulfil for the "throw away soldiers" than the war and oil profits of the Corporations at stake from the continued occupation and the fear and unemployment at home; the bankrupting of the US economy are two sides of the same coin of which one side is the Occupation and the other side is the whipping up of fear and frenzy in the United States.
There is a direct connection between the appropriation sought for the war at the cost of sweeping budget cuts and the steady elimination of social security funds and post office savings .There is also a direct connection between the nature of elections held in the United States , in Kabul where Mr.Hamid Karzai the representative of the UNOCAL Company cannot stir out of Kabul , and the elections proposed to be held in Iraq under conditions of Occupation and coercion .
In all three countries the strategy is the same ; coerce the electorate and declare an election as "won" after which without a constitutional mandate enslave the majority of the people by obfuscating political ,economic and social rights reducing countries to garrisons .In recognition of these similarities and the impact of the illegal war on the people of the United States that the anti-war coalition has supported the "absolute right of the people of Iraq to resist the occupation of their country" and declared their own resistance to re-instate the draft and to prepare for resistance if conscription returns. In what has far reaching consequences for International Security the movement has declared that "it is incumbent on us to reject that notion that smaller countries must disarm and leave themselves defenseless at the demand of Bush and the Pentagon. Such demands are not only hypocritical , irrational and unjust , they amount to little more than a pretext for more invasions and occupations " .
In the context of the fact that the resistance to the Iraq war has more than one front with the the military front in Iraq and the political front in the Americas it is necessary in view of the Security Council having acquiesced to the Occupation despite the fact that it is illegal that the General Assembly should be moved by a member of the United Nations to initiate moves for the vacating of the aggression against Iraq under Article 35 read with article 11 (2 ) . Any organization in which some powers have the hegemony of the veto can never fulfill the requirements of a new democratic international order .
Prof. Niloufer Bhagwat
11 December, 2004
At Tokyo
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Homeland Security Nominee Kerik Pulls Out
Ex-Police Official Says He Failed to Pay Taxes for Nanny Who May Have Been Illegal Immigrant
Washington Post
By Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei
December 11, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56247-2004Dec10.html
Former New York City police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik withdrew as President Bush's nominee for secretary of homeland security last night, saying he had not paid taxes for a domestic worker who may have been an illegal immigrant.
The White House made the announcement in a two-sentence e-mail at 10 p.m. but did not give any cause beyond saying that Kerik "is withdrawing his name for personal reasons."
Kerik, 49, elaborated in a written statement, saying that in filling out forms required for Senate confirmation he "uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny."
"It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made," he wrote.
"Nanny problems" have sunk several high-profile nominations in recent years. In 2001, Linda Chavez withdrew as Bush's first nominee for labor secretary after it was learned she had housed an illegal immigrant. The departures of Chavez, and now Kerik, recalled the nomination of Zoe Baird to be President Bill Clinton's attorney general. Baird withdrew after it became known that she had employed an illegal immigrant couple and failed to pay Social Security taxes.
Republican officials said the White House counsel's office had asked Kerik about the matter repeatedly in investigating his background before the nomination was announced last week. A Republican source said some White House officials found it highly suspicious that Kerik was not aware of a potential problem with a nanny who left the country very recently. Employers can face fines and other sanctions for hiring any of the 8 million to 10 million illegal immigrants who are estimated to live in this country, and it is also illegal not to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for domestic employees.
Because of the past incidents, nanny issues are among the first that administration officials explore, and among the ones they probe most aggressively. Administration officials said such concerns have sunk other potential nominees that Bush has considered over the years in addition to Chavez.
Even before the nanny issue arose, Democrats had targeted Kerik as the most vulnerable of Bush's second-term nominations. White House officials realized he was becoming a lightning rod, although they had thought he would survive.
Democrats were focusing on the quick riches Kerik had accumulated since resigning in 2002 as police commissioner, a post he held during the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Since leaving his city office, he had received $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received as a consultant and director for Taser International, a maker of stun guns that did business with the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats had raised numerous questions about Kerik's records and qualifications, including his role in training Iraqi police as interim minister of interior and senior policy adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
Kerik was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1984 after a power struggle with the head of a hospital complex where he helped command the security staff. Kerik was using surveillance and other techniques to investigate employees' private lives, which he said was necessary because of Saudi laws prohibiting drinking and mingling of the sexes in public.
With Kerik at his side, Bush said in announcing the nomination at the White House on Dec. 3 that his pick was "one of the most accomplished and effective leaders of law enforcement in America."
In his statement last night, Kerik said he had "initiated efforts to fulfill any outstanding reporting requirements and tax obligations related to this issue" but said he realized that disclosure of the issue would generate "intense scrutiny" that would distract from the missions of the Department of Homeland Security. Among them is enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.
The disclosure disrupts the swift and orderly schedule Bush had tried to impose for replacing nine of his 15 Cabinet secretaries after winning reelection last month.
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had made Kerik commissioner of corrections and later police, had recommended him strongly to Bush. Giuliani said in a telephone interview that Kerik had employed the woman recently to take care of his two young children. Officials would not provide the woman's name or native country.
"Bernie told me that they really loved her and the kids loved her, but she had to go back to her country," Giuliani said. He said she returned voluntarily but would not say what country it was. He did not have the date but said it was "pretty recently," although he said he believes it was before the nomination.
"When he actually sat down and did the form, he realized there was a real problem here," the former mayor said. "He hadn't focused on it. There are personal reasons for it."
Giuliani called Kerik "uniquely qualified" and said he feels "badly for him and for the president."
The White House released a four-paragraph letter from Kerik to Bush that cited personal reasons without elaboration. "I cannot permit matters personal to me to distract from the focus and progress of the Department of Homeland Security and its crucial endeavors," the letter said. "I personally apologize to you for not having focused on this earlier."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that at about 8:30 p.m., Kerik had a brief telephone conversation with Bush, who was at the White House for a holiday party. McClellan said that it was Kerik's decision to withdraw and that the president "will move as quickly as we can to name a new nominee."
Republican officials said last night that they were grateful the discovery came as quickly as it did, although they said it was still a huge embarrassment for Bush. "We took more on faith than we probably should have," said an official close to the White House. "It was a combination of biography and his close association with the mayor."
Staff writers Brooke A. Masters and John Mintz contributed to this report.
-----
Security nominee Kerik withdraws
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
December 11, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041211-122641-4298r.htm
Bernard Kerik, the tough-talking former New York City police commissioner named last week by President Bush to head the Homeland Security Department, abruptly asked last night that his name be withdrawn amid a growing number of questions concerning his past business dealings.
Questions also surfaced yesterday regarding the immigration status of a housekeeper and a nanny he employed.
"I remain firm in my belief that I could have made valuable contributions to the department and to its efforts. Under the present circumstances, however, I cannot permit matters personal to me to distract from the focus and progress of the Department of Homeland Security and its crucial endeavors," Mr. Kerik said in a letter to the president.
"For these reasons, I must ask you to withdraw my nomination. I personally apologize to you for not having focused on this earlier," he said, although the letter did not elaborate on what he meant by personal matters.
Mr. Kerik said in the letter that he was convinced that moving forward with the nomination "would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people."
The announcement caught the Bush administration by surprise, but White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president would "move as quickly as we can to name someone else to fill the position." Several administration favorites, including former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, were on the shortlist when Mr. Kerik was named.
"Commissioner Kerik informed the White House this evening that he is withdrawing his name for personal reasons from consideration for secretary of Homeland Security. The president respects his decision," Mr. McClellan said.
In recent days, Democrats and a number of news organizations have raised questions about Mr. Kerik's ties to Taser International, an Arizona-based manufacturer of stun guns. Mr. Kerik earned millions from the company by promoting the sale of Tasers to law-enforcement agencies.
Yesterday, outgoing Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said Mr. Kerik went through a "rigorous process of filling out disclosure forms" after being tapped for the job, although department officials said Mr. Kerik had not yet completed ethics filings required by Congress that detail his sources of income and financial liabilities and that his FBI background investigation remained incomplete.
"Bernie and I have talked," Mr. Ridge told reporters. "And I firmly believe that if there is a conflict of interest standing between my successor and his ability to serve his country, then he'll do his best to resolve it. So I'm going to let the ethics folks make that decision."
Earlier in the day, Mr. McClellan said the White House had "looked into all these issues," and had "full confidence in his integrity, and we are confident that he will take the appropriate steps necessary to make sure that there are no conflicts."
Mr. Kerik's so-called "nanny problem" led to the withdrawal of three Cabinet nominations during the Clinton administration, including Zoe Baird, an attorney who was President Clinton's first choice as attorney general; Lani Guinier, a Clinton classmate at Yale University Law School who had been tapped to head the Justice Department's civil rights division; and Kimba Wood, a U.S. District Court judge who was Mr. Clinton's second choice for attorney general.
Questions concerning Mr. Kerik's involvement with the Arizona firm were reported earlier this week, when it was learned that he had earned $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received from Taser International, which did lucrative business with the Homeland Security Department.
Mr. Kerik said in a separate statement attached to his letter that the Taser issue surfaced when he was completing documents required for Senate confirmation.
"I uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny. It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made," he said.
Mr. Kerik said at the time that disclosure of the issue would generate intense scrutiny that would "only serve as a significant and unnecessary distraction to the vital efforts of the Department of Homeland Security."
• Bill Sammon contributed to this report.
--------
Catching the torchers
December 11, 2004 Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041210-083501-8236r.htm
The serial arsonist struck again yesterday, and again the occupants of the home were able to escape with their lives. The early morning blaze in Northeast Washington, which meets the general characteristics of the arsons that began in March 2003, forced federal and local law enforcers to mark yesterday's torching as No. 46. Arlington County is the juridiction that has — so far — escaped the destruction of the arsonist (or arsonists), and his motives are unknown. The media have given much attention to this frightening 23-month-old news story, as well they should, since he seemingly strikes indiscriminately. But no news organization has asked authorities what we think is a critical question at this juncture: Do our local law enforcers have the capacity to mount a strong arson investigation?
The arsonist first struck in March 2003, setting ablaze two homes in Southeast. In April of that year, he hit two homes in Prince George's County, and in May he struck again in both the city and the county. Still on the prowl for targets in June 2003, his only fatality occured on June 5 — a day he set two separate blazes. The culprit likes to toss flammable liquids on wood-frame homes, which is precisely what he did yesterday, when the 46th arson broke out at about 5 a.m. Because of that torching and two others in the same area since early September, authorities labeled the Woodridge area a so-called hot zone.
The serial arsonist's latest fire came the same week that arsonists set fire to 26 houses in an upscale subdivision in Charles County. Evidence uncovered the arsonists' intention to set 10 other homes on fire, too. Like in the serial arsonist case, authorities in the Charles County case have yet to rule out any possible motive, so they are probing everything from ecoterrorism and insurance fraud to racial motivation (since most of the homeowners are black) and disgruntled construction laborers. The blazes, which were set on Monday, comprise Maryland's worst-ever case of arson. People are anxiously awaiting results of the investigation. "We have made significant progress," is the reassurance State Fire Marshal William E. Barnard offered on Thursday, after investigators completed their work at the massive crime scene.
We appreciate all the hard work our law enforcement officers have dedicated to catching the torchers — especially the risk to life and limb as they fight the blazes, and the incredible numbers of man hours they put in. But the obvious issue of probity must not be overlooked.
Indeed, a task force of regional and federal authorities is investigating the serial arsonist, while the Charles County arsons are under the eye of the FBI, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as Maryland authorities. Still, as The Washington Times reported yesterday: "A source close to the multiagency arson invesigation team said the investigators appeared stumped. The lack of suspects reminded the source of the early days of the hunt for the Washington-area snipers," who conducted a bloody three-week rampage before being caught.
Huge rewards are being offered in both cases, and that is a smart tool that often induces people with concrete information out of the woodwork. Nonetheless, putting a bounty on the head of firebugs and other criminals doesn't guarantee people will come forward with information that leads to an arrest or a conviction. (Where's "America's Most Wanted" when you need it?)
In these uncertain days of homeland security, policy-makers in our local jurisdictions need to take a harder look at firefighting capabilities — not to criticize, however, but to use these arsons as a springboard to question-and-answer sessions to determine whether our firefighters and fire marshals have the money and manpower they need to prevent and catch arsonists. So far, the misfortunes have only claimed one life (that of an elderly woman), despite the considerable damage to property.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Inauguration Gives Troops High Profile
In Wartime Celebration, Special Ball to Honor Fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan
Washington Post
By Timothy Dwyer and Maureen Fan
December 11, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56180-2004Dec10.html
A major component of President Bush's second inaugural celebration will be a Commander in Chief Ball to honor troops who have just returned from Afghanistan and Iraq or are about to be deployed, inaugural committee officials said yesterday.
About 2,000 guests will be invited to the Jan. 20 ball, one of the highlights of an inauguration that promises to be the most expensive and the most secure of any. The Commander in Chief Ball will reaffirm that Bush is a wartime president, one of the major themes of his reelection campaign.
Inaugurations have historically been a reflection of the president's personality or events of the day. Abraham Lincoln stayed secluded at the Willard Hotel the night before he was sworn in; Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath in a business suit; Jimmy Carter walked the parade route instead of taking a limo; and the Americans held hostage in Iran were released on the day of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration.
For weeks, Washington has been undergoing a transformation from center of government to host city. Few events compare to the impact the inauguration has on the city, from bleachers sprouting on grand avenues, to parties being planned, to security arranged for hundreds of thousands of celebrants flocking to the District, filling hotels and restaurants and clogging the streets.
Officials said the Commander in Chief Ball is a major difference in Bush's second inauguration. It will be one of nine balls scheduled for that night, the same number as in 2001. It is customary for the president to attend all the balls.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee plans to announce Tuesday the details of the inauguration -- including the theme, the locations of the balls, a complete schedule and the participants, such as bands and marching groups, in the inaugural parade, officials said. As in 2001, major events will stretch over three days, beginning Jan. 18.
Those planning the inauguration said they are seeking the right tone to put partisan politics aside, while acknowledging that the country is at war.
"The renewal of the oaths of office celebrates a continuation of the constitutional democracy, and we should celebrate that," said Steve Schmidt, the Presidential Inaugural Committee's communication director. "This is not a dance-in-the-end-zone type of celebration, though. The day transcends that. The whole world is watching."
The cost of the inauguration will be about $50 million, all of which is to be paid with private donations. The cost four years ago was about $40 million. Inauguration officials attributed the increase to one reason: Things cost more now.
This week, the Presidential Inaugural Committee sent out hundreds of invitations to events, which came with price tags attached. Individuals who give $150,000 or $250,000 to underwrite the inauguration get access to special events, including lunch with Bush and Vice President Cheney. The top donors -- donations are capped by the committee at $250,000 -- also will have access to all the inaugural balls.
Security for the inauguration, the first since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be tighter and stricter than before and will affect everyone who attends, even the media covering the events of the day, officials said.
Campaign officials have been studying other wartime inaugurations as part of their planning.
"While inaugurals are almost wholly celebratory affairs," Schmidt said, "there will be a solemnity to this one with regard to the fact that we're a nation at war that you'll see reflected in programming."
Inaugural officials are working with the Department of Defense to distribute free tickets to the Commander in Chief Ball to servicemen and women and their spouses, with an emphasis on enlisted troops and noncommissioned officers, they said.
"It was a presidential directive to specially honor the men and women whose hard work is critical to the security of our country," said Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the inaugural committee, "and it is an opportunity to celebrate those individuals and their families who have sacrificed and a way to acknowledge those who are out on the front lines of freedom."
The war has also given protesters a major reason to come to the inauguration. Protest organizers predict a massive outpouring of dissent, saying that Bush's Nov. 2 victory has galvanized an array of activists from across the country. Marches, street theater and civil disobedience are part of the plans, which are still being fine-tuned, they said. They said tens of thousands -- some said hundreds of thousands -- will be on the streets Jan. 20, fueled by their opposition to the war in Iraq and the administration's policies on civil liberties, the environment and other causes.
"I think people will see a nonviolent, popular uprising by people of all ages, colors and backgrounds, declaring this administration illegitimate, corrupt and thoroughly unacceptable," said Shahid Buttar, 30, a D.C. lawyer involved in counter-inaugural plans.
The D.C. police department will cancel days off and put most of its 3,800 officers on 12-hour shifts on Inauguration Day, Chief Charles H. Ramsey said. Police officials said they expect at least 2,500 officers from other jurisdictions to help maintain security. "This is the first post-9/11 inauguration we've had," Ramsey said. "We have to deal with the security of the parade, deal with the [protest] issue."
There will be more visible security at hotels, too, said Lisa Stewart, spokeswoman for nine full-service Marriott and Renaissance hotels in the District and Arlington. She said that there would be more patrols in lobbies and that guests downtown would be affected by street closures.
That hasn't dissuaded people from booking rooms, she said: "There are still rooms available, but they are going really fast, much faster than last season. It's very busy, and all the hotels do expect to sell out."
One reason rooms are going faster is that people knew more quickly this time who won the election, she said. By the week after the election this time, she said, hotels were "heavily booked."
On the streets, there also will be new screening technology and a specialized military contingent.
Working reporters, photographers and other journalists requiring access to the U.S. Capitol or to elevated media stands on the West Front Terrace during the inauguration will be required to undergo fingerprinting and criminal background checks for one-day credentials.
The total number of journalists affected is expected to be a small fraction of the media covering the event, said Larry Janezich, director of the Senate Radio-TV Gallery, which serves electronic media outlets.
Security officials emphasized that they wanted to encourage public participation and expected a crowd of hundreds of thousands.
U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said that the public still could expect to be as close to event participants as in 2001 and that the security perimeter would not be greatly increased, although sturdier fencing and more checkpoints will be in place.
"We and the U.S. Secret Service are going to be processing a couple of hundred thousand people just on the West Front alone, so people should be as intelligent as they can about what they bring with them," Gainer said. "We understand it could be cold. They should bundle up. But no large objects."
Staff writers Karlyn Barker, D'Vera Cohn, Manny Fernandez, Spencer S. Hsu, Neely Tucker and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.
-------- voting
Ukraine: Yushchenko to reveal poisons
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Natalia A. Feduschak
December 11, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041210-112601-5174r.htm
KIEV — Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko promised yesterday to release a medical report by Austrian physicians that identifies 100 possible poisons used in a suspected September assassination attempt that left his face horribly disfigured.
"It is not just my belief; it is my growing conviction that what happened to me was an act of political reprisal against a politician in opposition," Mr. Yushchenko told reporters.
"The goal, without doubt, was to kill me," he said at his first press conference since Ukraine's parliament approved a historic reform package on Wednesday that ended nearly three weeks of street protests over falsified presidential balloting.
Mr. Yushchenko, 50, said forensic tests could be made public in the next several days, which would help solve the mystery about what happened to him after he fell ill in September, leaving his face disfigured.
Mr. Yushchenko fell ill on Sept. 6 and was admitted to the Rudolfinerhaus Clinic in Vienna, Austria, four days later with severe abdominal pain and lesions on his face and trunk.
His liver, pancreas and intestines were swollen and his digestive tract covered in ulcers.
Against the advice of physicians, he left the clinic Sept. 16 to continue campaigning, his face half paralyzed and a catheter inserted in his back so that doctors could inject painkillers into his spinal column.
Mr. Yushchenko returned to the clinic in Vienna later yesterday, where he told reporters: "Everything is going well. I plan to live for a very long time. I plan to be very happy. I am gaining better health every day."
His face remains bloated and pocked with lesions.
He told reporters in Kiev that he would release results of investigations "into more than 100 possible poisons."
During the nearly 90-minute meeting with reporters, Mr. Yushchenko said he believed he would win the Dec. 26 runoff with "more than 60 percent" of the vote and would take as many as 20 of Ukraine's 26 regions.
In a historic decision, Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled last week that the Nov. 21 runoff between Mr. Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, was so fraudulent it did not reflect the will of the people.
Mr. Yanukovych, the pro-government candidate, has taken leave as prime minister.
Yesterday Mr. Yanukovych came out fighting, accusing Mr. Yushchenko of instigating "totalitarianism" against voters and he accused President Leonid Kuchma of doing nothing to stop the "orange coup" — two weeks of protests by orange-clad opposition supporters charging fraud in last month's balloting, Reuters news agency reported.
Mr. Yushchenko said he would quickly clean house in what he has often called a corrupt government, including reviewing a handful of key privatization deals that benefited relatives of Mr. Kuchma. One of these included the sale of a metallurgical plant in eastern Ukraine to the president's son-in-law and his business partner for nearly half the price foreigners were bidding.
The opposition leader said he also hoped the "myths" that had been created about him by the government would now be shattered after Ukraine's news media, which for many years censored the opposition, promised to be balanced in its coverage.
"The time will come when people in the east realize that I stand for broadening economic relations with Russia. The time will come when we will lift the curtain on the legends created about me for people in Eastern Ukraine," he said.
"I want the people in Eastern Ukraine to know I am not a Nazi and that I am the son of a former prisoner in Buchenwald and Auschwitz," Mr. Yushchenko said, referring to his father, who as a Red Army soldier was imprisoned in German concentration camps.
The news media over the past year often portrayed Mr. Yushchenko, who was born in Eastern Ukraine, as a nationalist.
Mr. Yushchenko also said he had voted Wednesday for a package of political reforms seen by critics as weakening the authority of the presidency. He said he voted for the package because it was the most important step out of the country's political crisis.
Critical presidential powers remain intact, he added.
--------
Taiwan's pro-independence parties defeated in elections
The Associated Press
12/11/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-11-taiwan-vote_x.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan's pro-independence parties lost a hotly contested legislative election Saturday — a defeat that might reduce the risk of a conflict with China but also continue the political gridlock that has paralyzed one of Asia's youngest democracies.
The loss was a big blow to President Chen Shui-bian, who tirelessly campaigned for candidates and promised to use his control of parliament to revise the constitution and push for a new Taiwanese identity — pledges that unnerved China.
Chinese leaders dislike Chen because he refuses to accept their goal of unification. Taiwan has had loose ties with the mainland — just 100 miles to the west — throughout much of China's history. The Communists, who took over China in 1949, say Taiwan must unify eventually or endure a punishing attack.
Taiwan's opposition coalition, known as the "blue team," won a fragile majority of 114 of parliament's 225 seats in a campaign that Chen would become too reckless and provoke China if his supporters controlled the legislature.
Voter Mary Lee, a 45-year-old Taipei office worker, said she backed the opposition, led by the Nationalist Party, because she feared Chen would start a war.
"We need the Nationalists to check and balance Chen Shui-bian so he won't lead the country on the dangerous path to independence," she said.
Nationalist leader Lien Chan celebrated his coalition's first victory in the last four major elections.
"Today we saw extremely clearly that all the people want stability in this country and want to continue to develop," Lien told a cheering, flag-waving crowd at his party headquarters.
Although Chen's Democratic Progressive Party was still parliament's biggest party with 89 seats, the party was no match for the Nationalist and People First parties, which for the past four years have teamed up to block the president's policies.
The president quickly conceded defeat, congratulated the opposition and urged all parties to work together.
"People have made their choices. Let's take it as a starting point for cooperation between the ruling and opposition parties," Chen said, "Let's turn our competition into a force for pushing the nation forward."
But it seemed unlikely that there would soon be an end to the intense political feuding that began when Chen was elected in 2000. Chen snapped the Nationalists' five-decades of rule on Taiwan, and the vindictive party has struggled to adapt to its role in the opposition.
Chen's support for more Taiwan-centric policies and his efforts to rid the island of China's influences have angered the opposition, whose supporters include many mainlanders who fled China when the Communists took over.
Political analyst Yang Hsien-hung said Chen made a strategic error in the campaign's final days by announcing that state-run companies with "China" or "Chinese" in their names will have to change their titles. Yang said the move seemed too radical.
"To win over the undecided voters, he should have adopted a more moderate stance," Yang said during a panel discussion on ETTV cable news.
One notable result was that parties known to take extreme positions on unification and independence finished poorly. The pro-unification People First Party won 34 seats — 12 less than in the last election. The staunchly pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union's support shrank by one seat to 12.
The biggest winner was the Nationalists, who picked up 11 more seats for a total 80. Chen's party only won two additional seats.
The president's supporters quickly left his party's headquarters, where a stage and massive TV screen were set up for a victory rally. Party workers looked glum and an elderly woman in a pink dress who was to sing at the celebration broke down in tears.
-------- ENERGY
Bush nominates Bodman for energy secretary
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Sammon
December 11, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041211-120344-5543r.htm
President Bush yesterday nominated a new energy secretary, leaving just two vacancies in a Cabinet that has undergone a 60 percent turnover since his re-election last month.
Mr. Bush picked Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman to replace Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who resigned last month. The president hinted that he expects Mr. Bodman to push for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR).
"We will pursue more energy close to home, in our own country and in our own hemisphere, so that we're less dependent on energy from unstable parts of the world," the president said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
"I'm optimistic about the task ahead, and I know Sam Bodman is the right man to lead this important and vital agency," he added. "So I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination without delay."
Mr. Bodman's appointment leaves just two vacancies in the president's Cabinet — a replacement for outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and for Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. The HHS opening may be filled by the government's Medicare chief, Mark McClellan, brother of White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Mr. Ridge's replacement, former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, withdrew his name late last night citing personal reasons.
Although Mr. Bodman, like the president, did not specifically mention ANWR, he left no doubt that he will push for the program, which is a key component of Mr. Bush's stalled energy reform legislation.
"If confirmed by the Senate, my colleagues and I at the Department of Energy stand ready to carry forward your vision of sound energy policy," he said, "and to work toward the day when America achieves energy independence."
Mr. Bush pledged to renew his push for legislation codifying the energy plan he unveiled 31/2 years ago, which was stymied by lawmakers despite Republican domination of Capitol Hill.
The nominee also will have to find a way to untangle both legal and budgetary problems that have threatened progress on getting a nuclear waste dump built in Nevada. Congress this year refused to provide enough money to keep the Yucca Mountain waste-disposal project on schedule, and a federal court earlier this year ordered a review of proposed radiation standards for the site.
Congress for four years has tried and failed to enact energy legislation. Mr. Bush has vowed to press lawmakers next year to try again.
The administration in 2005 also will face continuing concerns about high oil prices and a winter that is expected to bring near-record high heating costs. Although crude prices have receded in recent weeks they remain unusually high, edging up on Thursday to $42.90 a barrel.
Mr. Bodman took over as Treasury deputy secretary last February after serving as deputy secretary at the Commerce Department.
At Treasury, he was charged with a range of matters, including making sure the economic recovery is lasting, stopping the flow of funds to terrorists and helping efforts to modernize the IRS.
"In academics, in business and in government, Sam Bodman has shown himself to be a problem solver who knows how to set goals and he knows how to reach them," Mr. Bush said. "He will bring to the Department of Energy a great talent for management and the precise thinking of an engineer."
The Energy Department manages the nation's emergency petroleum reserve. Despite frequent calls by some Democrats to use some of these reserves to ease prices, the administration has argued repeatedly that the stored oil should be used only in time of severe shortages.
•This story is based in part on wire-service reports.
SAMUEL W. BODMAN
Energy secretary nominee
Born: Nov. 26, 1938, Chicago
Education: Bachelor's degree, Cornell University, 1961; doctorate of science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1965
Family: Wife, Diane; three children; two stepchildren; eight grandchildren
Career highlights: Associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT, 1965-70; technical director of the American Research and Development Corporation, 1964-70; various positions with Fidelity Investments, including president and chief operating officer; chairman, chief executive officer and a director of Cabot Corporation, 1987; Cabot Corporation board of directors, 1988-present; deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, 2001-04; deputy secretary of Treasury Department, 2004-present
Source: Associated Press
-------- OTHER
-------- health
Data Mounts on Avoiding Chemotherapy
By ANDREW POLLACK
December 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/health/11cancer.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Nmew findings add to the evidence that genetic tests can help predict whether breast cancer will recur, giving valuable guidance to doctors and patients about whether potentially toxic chemotherapy will be useful or can safely be avoided, researchers said yesterday.
The findings, presented at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and in a paper released by The New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that telltale genetic signatures of tumors will in time be used to tailor treatments to individual patients.
"It would probably make a difference in the treatment of tens of thousand of women," said Dr. Robert C. Bast Jr., vice president at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and co-author of an accompanying editorial released by the journal.
But Dr. Bast added that the tests were still "a work in progress" and needed more study before they could be used routinely.
The tests address a quandary for patients with breast cancer. When tumors are detected early and removed surgically, many women undergo chemotherapy to lower the chance that the cancer will recur.
But for a vast majority of women, the cancer will not recur regardless of whether they receive chemotherapy. So they are exposed needlessly to the treatment, which can cause nausea, hair loss, vulnerability to infections and, more rarely, cardiac problems or leukemia. Doctors cannot now tell, however, which women need the chemotherapy.
"There's a substantial portion who we either undertreat or overtreat because we don't have adequate information on who will recur," said Dr. Gary H. Lyman of the University of Rochester, who has reviewed 10 such experimental tests.
The new tests "enhance the ability to distinguish between low risk and high risk," said Dr. Lyman, who was hired to do a cost benefit analysis for the maker of the test described in the paper released yesterday.
That test was developed by Genomic Health, a company in Redwood City, Calif. The test looks at the activity levels of 21 genes in tumor samples. It categorizes the cancers as being of low, intermediate or high risk of recurrence.
To validate the test, company scientists and academic collaborators from the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project used samples from 668 women. Those women had taken part in a trial in the 1980's, so it was already known whether their cancers had recurred.
Only 6.8 percent of the women rated by the test to be in the low-risk group suffered a recurrence outside the breast within 10 years, compared with 14.3 percent in the intermediate group and 30.5 percent in the high-risk group.
Those results apply only to women who are taking a hormonal drug called tamoxifen for newly diagnosed cancer that has not spread to the lymph nodes and that is stimulated by estrogen. Still, there are estimated to be at least 50,000 new cases a year that fit that category.
The data on risk, initially reported at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium a year ago, showed only whether the cancer was likely to recur, not whether chemotherapy would help prevent a recurrence.
But new data presented in San Antonio yesterday, from a different trial by the same authors, showed that the patients in the high-risk group had benefited from chemotherapy while those in the lower-risk groups had not. In the high-risk group, 40 percent of patients who got only tamoxifen had a recurrence of cancer within 10 years, compared with just 12 percent who got both tamoxifen and chemotherapy. But in the low-risk group, both those who got chemotherapy and tamoxifen and those who got tamoxifen alone had a recurrence rate of roughly 5 percent.
Genomic Health is already selling its test, for $3,460. Since the company performs all testing in its own laboratory, it did not need approval from the Food and Drug Administration as it would if it were selling test kits to doctors.
Genomic Health is hardly the only company in the field. A Dutch company, Agendia, is offering a test that looks at 70 genes. And Exagen Diagnostics, based in Albuquerque, introduced preliminary data in San Antonio on a three-gene test it hopes to bring to market in 2006, one that it said would work for a broader range of breast tumors than the other tests. Exagen said its test's prediction that cancer would not recur was correct 91 percent of the time.
Yet a fourth company, Arcturus Bioscience, based in Mountain View, Calif., is also developing a test.
The tests vary not only by which genes they look at but by how they are performed. Agendia's requires fresh frozen tumor samples, which are not always obtained. Genomic Health's test uses samples preserved in paraffin wax, the usual procedure, which doctors said would make that test more practical. Exagen said its test would also use standard samples and could be performed by many laboratories, not just in a central location.
So far, the tests have not been widely used, as doctors await more study. Scientists said it was not clear, for instance, whether the Genomic Health test would apply to women who get newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors, which are starting to replace tamoxifen.
Insurance companies do not routinely pay for the tests.
-------- ACTIVISTS
"Alternative Nobel" Awarded For Human Rights and Environmental Work
REUTERS SWEDEN: December 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28517/story.htm
STOCKHOLM - Bianca Jagger of Nicaragua was awarded an honour known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize" on Thursday for her work to promote human rights and social justice.
Jagger, who first became famous for her eight-year marriage to rock star Mick Jagger, shares the 2004 Right Livelihood Award with two others.
Russian human rights and civil liberties lobby group Memorial was also awarded the prize along with Argentine environmentalist Raul Montenegro, for his work with indigenous people and conservation of natural resources.
The award, founded in 1980, tries to compete with the prestigious Nobel prizes, set up in 1901 by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite.
The Right Livelihood Award, worth 2.0 million Swedish crowns ($297,300) this year, was set up by Swedish-German philatelist and former European Parliament member Jakob von Uexkull.
Von Uexkull found the peace, medicine, physics, chemistry, economics and literature Nobels too academic and narrowly focused on the industrialised world.
He set up his alternative prize to recognise efforts to tackle pollution, poverty, human rights abuse and the danger of nuclear war. Joint awards are frequently made.
"Bianca Jagger has shown over many years how celebrity can be put at the service of the exploited and disadvantaged," the Right Livelihood Award Foundation said in a statement.
Past winners include Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, Britain's anti-nuclear lobby Trident Ploughshares and Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, who will receive the 2004 Nobel peace prize in Oslo on Friday.
--------
Indian cities wrestle with changed names
December 11, 2004
By Ramola Talwar Badam
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041210-102053-8942r.htm
BOMBAY — You say Bombay and I say Mumbai. You say Calcutta and I say Kolkata.
The old rhyme about pronunciation — "Po-tay-to, po-tah-to; to-may-to, to-mah-to" — could be the refrain of most Indians, as well as citizens of other former colonial territories bent on dropping the Westernized versions of city names.
In 1995, the city council of Bombay renamed India's largest city "Mumbai" — after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi. Nine years on, the financial