NucNews - February 9, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- canada

Canadian PM Martin met privately with Turkish energy minister, discussed nuclear reactors

Wed Feb 9, 4:53 PM ET Canadian Press
DAN DUGAS

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/02/09/925599-cp.html

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin met privately with the Turkish energy minister during a brief stopover in Ankara last month and discussed Canada's Candu nuclear reactors.

Word of the meeting, which reporters travelling with Martin were not told about, drew the ire of environmentalists concerned that Turkey is enlisting Canada's help to relaunch its nuclear power aspirations. The meeting came within days of the Turkish government committing $5 million to re-establish its office of nuclear energy.

Martin's staff acknowledged Wednesday that Canadian nuclear expertise, among other topics, was discussed with Hilmi Guler, but said it was mainly a protocol visit.

Such meetings usually last 20 minutes, said deputy communications director Melanie Gruer, who could not say how long the Martin-Guler meeting lasted.

She said the meeting took place at the request of Turkish officials and the two spoke of Turkey's energy needs, including the Candu nuclear power plant. But she said it would be wrong to say the meeting was all about Candu.

"In terms of Candu, it was not a hard sell, there were no specifics. The prime minister spoke of Canadian electricity generating expertise in general, including engineering services and hydroelectric."

David Martin, Greenpeace Canada's energy co-ordinator, said the nature of the meeting looks like the prime minister is continuing a tradition of prime ministers fronting for a failing business.

"It tells me that, sadly, Paul Martin may be following in the footsteps of his predecessor Jean Chretien in acting as a personal envoy and salesperson for the nuclear industry.

"I'm very disappointed that the prime minister wouldn't first consult with the public about whether Canada should be again promoting nuclear power abroad."

Turkey shopped for Candu reactors in the mid 1990s and was looking at spending billions of dollars on two 700-megawatt units.

It wanted them with no money down and financed completely by loans from Canada. It abandoned the idea in 2000 amid domestic opposition, mounting debt and economic upheaval that saw it devalue its currency.

Critics say international lenders, including the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites), balked at allowing Turkey to go deeper into debt, even if it could get 100 per cent financing from Canadian taxpayers.

Canada is keen to sell reactors but has not done well for at least a decade.

Critics have long complained of the billions of dollars in subsidies given to Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. - it received $135 million last year.

Greenpeace notes that it was Martin, as finance minister in his 1996 budget, who said that AECL subsidies ought to be limited to $100 million a year.

In 1995, AECL committed to sell 10 reactors in 10 years. Since then, only two have been sold, both to China. 



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

What happened to the test tube paradigm?

February 9, 2005 San Francisco Bay View
by Dennis Kyne

http://www.sfbayview.com/020905/whathappened020905.shtml

These members of the 369th transportation battalion from New York City fought in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. They walked into the "test tube" - they were the "experiment" - that tested the effects, including the genetic effects, of the 300 tons of uranium used by the U.S. military on that battlefield. Now half a million of them are sick, and many of their babies have birth defects. Far more uranium is being used in Iraq.

When I was in eighth grade science class, Mr. Wadley, who reminded us more of an ice cream truck driver than a teacher, taught the pupils one thing with an incredible amount of emphasis: If the test tube paradigm does not reflect the real world paradigm, then there is absolutely no reason to ever do scientific experiments. Wadley further explained that if you monitor the results of a laboratory experiment and allow this information to be a basis for your intelligence in real world applications, you should see results that are nearly identical.

If the results are not nearly identical, then your departure point was faulty. That is the only safe conclusion. Again, if the results are not similar in scope or comparable in nature, then the departure point was wrong and the test tube lacked something that the real world provides to the equation.

This makes my inquiry most important: "Why does the United States Army violate the very simplest of scientific requirements when it determines the validity of using uranium weapons on the battlefield? What test tube did the military explode hundreds of tons of uranium in and then walk hundreds of thousands of humans into?" We live in a real world result of the use of uranium that you could never put into a test tube to study.

Recently, while in New York, I had the opportunity to discuss the implications of uranium use with Dr. Thomas Fasy, associate professor of pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Fasy casually informed GNN's Anthony Lappe and me that the most damaging research regarding uranium is coming out of government laboratories in Bethesda, Md.

Lappe, author of the recent "True Lies," with an entire chapter dedicated to uranium, was on the lookout for this evidence. Not only does it prove uranium is horrific to the human experience, it illustrates the military knows just how pathetic it is to denounce us who have been exposed to this microwave wasteland.

In 1994, Lt. Gen. Calvin Waller said in a "Dateline" television interview with Storm Phillips that he had never been informed this uranium could be deadly. He appeared disgusted by memorandums which stated exposure to uranium used in weaponry could leave a residual effect which might cause death, sickness and, worst of all, genetic mutations.

Calvin Waller was the second in command, behind Norman Schwarzkopf, during Operation Desert Storm. Waller has since passed away, and over a decade after his interview, Bethesda is busy burning through test tubes to come up with conclusions that are late by any standard of science.

Tests should have been done before the military dumped a minimum of 300 tons of uranium in the Middle East in 1991. One ton is equal to 2,600 pounds. Studies should have been conclusive after they stuffed returning veterans into a slew of study groups.

I was in one that tested for ionizing radiation, and in 1995 I was compensated for undiagnosed illnesses. The results should have been solid by the time they dumped bombs in Somalia and Yugoslavia.

What are they going to tell the people living in Vieques, Puerto Rico? Sorry, they didn't have a test tube that resembled your city, so we will just go with the studies from Bethesda. Whatever happened to the test tube paradigm? Maybe Vieques is the test tube.

Pandora's box was opened by the mining of uranium from the cradle it rested passively in. It has killed millions of indigenous humans and altered millions of others genetically.

Modern medicine calls it cancer; I call it radiation exposure. Both express themselves as ruptured cells and altered organs.

With hundreds of thousands of veterans from Operation Desert Storm filing for disability compensation, it is alarming how many of us cannot be diagnosed. How many years will it be before they can diagnose a human being with radiation sickness? Sounds like the half million veterans who stood on the front line of Desert Storm got tossed in the test tube as well.

While we know the test tube was broken, we are sure that other problems were ignored. There was no test tube that included the results of uranium's 21 phases of oxidation, all deathly. There was no test tube that had metallurgical particles cooking down to become smaller than bacteria and viruses.

There was no study of the implications of walking into these gaseous oxides or these particulates so small that even a standard military issue protective mask could not keep them from lodging in lungs. There was no study of the short term, long term or genetic effects of walking into low level radioactive particulate.

I say was, and now there is us. Us being the 500,000 men and women sent to the front who walked into this madness remembered as Operation Desert Storm. Sadly, the 10,000 dead troops and half a million sick and dying veterans are left wondering what happened.

What happened to the daughter of Sgt. Daryl Clark, who was on the front line and drowned in uranium dust from the tank buster rounds that were pelted at his feet? In the same "Dateline" episode, Phillips asks Clark how he feels. Clark responds, "When America called, we were there. Now that we are calling, America isn't answering."

This cry has been echoed in the hospitals, psych wards, prison cells and gutters of America for the past decade, and it is an indicator of what the returning veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom can expect.

Later in this same "Dateline" episode, a goofy looking general by the name of Blank admits to the viewers that the Army dropped the ball. Storm asks him, "Who dropped the ball?" Blank can't provide a name. This is the military way: field grade officers promise to take care of the soldiers and can't seem to figure out who is dropping the ball.

A general sat in the television monitor and said the buck stops somewhere else, but I can't tell you where. The ball dropped so hard that Clark's daughter Kennedy was born without a thyroid and with expressions of radiation exposure. Looks like Kennedy got stuffed down the test tube also.

Middle East experts state that there is an incredible amount of pesticides and herbicides being used in the current war, and this is confirmed by the Department of Defense as well. What does that do in the test tube of 25 million Iraqi citizens? Pesticides, uranium, herbicides, fires, plastics, gases and a list of potential hazards, from rifle cleaner fluid to brake fluid, are being spilled all over the place by gallons.

Science hijacked the battlefield, and supporters say the uranium is necessary because we can pierce the armor of a tank with it. They did the studies, it is conclusive, the stuff pierced armor. Testing officers would fire uranium tipped rounds and watch them pierce tanks.

While we can't dispute these occurrences, surely we would never call it science. Surely it isn't scientific enough to base conclusions that put life as we know it in jeopardy.

Mr. Wadley, my science teacher, would have failed the experiment. He'd have stamped a big "F" on the report entitled "Saving the Middle East with a history of good solid scientific research." He'd say, "There is not one bit of scientific support to substantiate the use of uranium. First of all, everyone knows that most military troops couldn't hit the broad side of a barn when firing any weapon. So, how many of these rounds hit innocent people? Churches, tin shacks, people on motor scooters?"

Wadley was sharp. I know this is where he would lead us: "To fire a round in a piece of steal such as a tank that contains the explosion and say it is safe to fire at a wedding somewhere off the battlefield in Afghanistan is ridiculous."

His style was such he might throw in: "You won't be getting out of junior high school bringing projects like this in. Do you know why?"

"Class, do you know why this fails?" Wadley wasn't afraid of a little embarrassment for the kids either. The class loved it when they spotted one as easy as this, though, and got to yell as loud as their voices could bellow, "It doesn't meet the test tube paradigm."

If the test tube paradigm does not reflect the real world paradigm, then there is absolutely no reason to ever do scientific experiments. It doesn't matter if you are an ice cream truck driver or a teacher, an eighth grade student or a four star general; firing a round into a tank as the test tube paradigm is not even close to the real world paradigm.

We have been tossed in the tube together on this one. Are you going to rely on Gen. Blank telling the world someone dropped the ball here, and we don't know who?

We can slip back into junior high with Wadley for a moment, though, and accept the fact that this is not science they provide us. It is a military misdirection, one that has cost thousands of lives and untold environmental consequences. It is a crime against all living species. Worst of all, it doesn't meet the test tube paradigm.

Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation. Email him at d_kyne@hotmail.com and visit his website, http://www.denniskyne.com.


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Middletown Iowa Army Ammunition Plant workers yet again hold hope for closure

A petition to be unveiled today seeks automatic $150,000
compensation for many former Iowa Army Ammunition Plant workers who became ill.

By LAURIE MANSFIELD
DESMOINES REGISTER STAFF WRITER
February 9, 2005

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050209/NEWS08/502090334/1010&template=printart

Every time a strange new growth appears, Robert Anderson wonders how much longer it will take the government to investigate the claim that his cancer was caused by exposure to deadly substances at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown.

He has already waited four years.

Meanwhile, the health problems keep coming. Last year, it was his thyroid. The gland in his neck became swollen, cutting off his breathing, and was eventually removed.

In 2001, Anderson applied to the Department of Labor for the $150,000 in compensation and medical care offered to thousands of sick former Iowa Army plant workers like himself.

His application went nowhere.

Today, Anderson is in St. Louis to pursue his claim and those of the co-workers he managed as a security guard shift commander at the ammunition plant, where 4,000 workers assembled and tested nuclear weapons components from 1947 to the mid-1970s.

Many of his co-workers are dead or dying, friends he still feels responsible for, even though they were told there was no danger.

Last week, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health revealed that it is still sitting on nearly 500 cancer claims filed by former workers at the southeast Iowa Army plant. The institute is charged with using old plant records to help estimate the amount of radiation exposure for each worker.

Spokesman Larry Elliott said the institute refuses to process the claims, saying it would require using documents classified for national security reasons.

Although the institute has access to the classified papers, it questions the ethics of using the records if the public can't examine them to verify the findings.

Elliott will also be in St. Louis today to ask the institute's advisory board whether the Iowa plant claims should be processed anyway.

Anderson - along with U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley, University of Iowa doctors and other plant workers - have their own point of view: Do away with the controversial radiation investigations that depend on classified records and automatically compensate workers suffering from cancer.

"I especially want the people I personally directed to work in and around the dangers to be taken care of," Anderson said.

The petition he presents today asks that workers from 1947 to 1974 who have one of 22 cancers covered under the compensation program automatically be given $150,000.

He hopes the institute's board recommends approval of the petition, which then goes to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. Its fate ultimately lies with Congress. If the petition isn't blocked, it will take effect by early April, according to Harkin.

Workers with cancer deserve special consideration because of two factors, said Maureen Knightly, a Harkin spokeswoman: the lengthy process time and insufficient data.

Cancer claims take longer to process and require examining old plant records that Knightly said are inadequate and sketchy.

The claims are also more difficult to prove, requiring radiation exposure estimates, known as "dose reconstructions." In contrast, the 48 workers who filed claims for chronic beryllium disease have been compensated. Tests can easily detect the potentially fatal lung ailment.

Even the institute admits the dose reconstructions aren't moving fast enough. On average, a claim moves through the institute in 67 days, missing a 60-day turnaround goal, Elliott said.

"That's good, but not good enough," he said.

Each dose reconstruction must be done on a case-by-case basis. Claims have been processed in anywhere from four days to 1,100 days, Elliott said.

Robert Anderson's paperwork has been at the institute since March 15, 2002.

"These people have been waiting for years," Knightly said. "It's just long overdue."

Nationally, the institute has finished about 35 percent of the 18,775 cancer claims forwarded by the Department of Labor, Elliott said.

So far, one of 116 cancer claims from the Iowa plant that the institute has completed has been recommended for compensation, according to the Labor Department.

The remaining claims have not met the radiation exposure threshold necessary to qualify for the compensation, Elliott said. They were filed by a range of workers, including secretaries, who would not have been in areas of radiation exposure, he said.

If the institute is advised to use the classified material to process the claims, Elliott said, officials there are confident they have sufficient information and data to perform dose reconstructions accurately.

"There is a lot of information on exposure monitoring available for the Iowa plant," he said.

Harkin's experts disagree, citing missing information in plant records. A report released from the institute last week listed "data gaps" for the Iowa plant.

Among them was an absence of personal radiation monitoring data prior to 1955, area monitoring prior to 1962 and depleted uranium air sampling prior to 1971.

If there are gaps in the records, as with the Iowa plant, the institute uses data from similar facilities as estimates.

"They're using data from a different time from an entirely different facility," Knightly said.

If Anderson's petition is approved, cancer claims that were denied could be revived. That would be good news to Bobby Richardson. He recently received a letter from the Department of Labor denying a claim he filed on behalf of his mother, Bernice Findley, who died in 2001.

Findley's type of cancer, multiple myeloma, is one of the 22 that would qualify for the automatic compensation.

Of the 605 cancer cases the institute received for review, 384 were filed on behalf of plant workers who have died, Knightly said.

The number of dead or dying workers is what makes Anderson determined to get the claims processed quickly. He doesn't want to think about how much longer people would have to wait if the petition fails.

"It seems like a do-or-die situation for us," he said.

Vera Anderson and Karen Harshbarger

MIDDLETOWN CONNECTION: Their father, James Wahl, worked at the plant.
UPDATE: Wahl was an electrician and master mechanic who worked on Line 1 at the Iowa Army Ammunition plant from 1941 until he retired in 1973. He died in 1980 after being diagnosed with lung and bladder cancer. Anderson and Harshbarger believe their father's cancer was caused by his work at the plant. Harshbarger says the sisters are waiting for a ruling on the $150,000 claim they filed in their father's name. Occasionally, they receive a letter tracking the progress of the paperwork, but Harshbarger said she is skeptical she will ever get an answer.

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Military training area in Puerto Rico added to Superfund list

Feb. 9, 2005 Waste News 

http://www.wastenews.com/headlines2.html?id=1107971382
 
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has formally listed the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area in Vieques, Puerto Rico, on the Superfund National Priorities List of the hazardous sites.

The Feb. 7 listing is the next step in a process that began in June 2003 with a request from former Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon to list the site for cleanup.

The training area was impacted by 100 years of military operations, mostly by the Navy. Some land and water may be contaminated with mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium, perchlorate, TNT, napalm, depleted uranium, PCBs, solvents and pesticides, according to the EPA.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is trying to negotiate a memorandum of agreement with the commonwealth for the cleanup of another portion of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area on the island of Culebra. If an agreement is not reached, that portion might also be placed on the Superfund list, according to the EPA.



-------- europe

US has more nuclear weapons in Europe than thought: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) Feb 09, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050209070333.aov1fd6u.html

The United States is keeping some 480 nuclear weapons in air bases in Europe -- twice as many as analysts had previously estimated -- to deter attacks from terrorists or rogue nations, The New York Times said Wednesday, quoting a new study by a private group.

The short-range nuclear bombs are stored under US control, under tight security and regulated by secret military agreements at eight bases in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey, said the daily which obtained the report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

An unnamed senior US military official in Europe told the daily that the number of nuclear weapons in Europe had been "significantly reduced" in recent years and currently stood at "around 200."

However, Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms specialist and the author of the council's 102-page report titled "US Nuclear Weapons in Europe," said recent declassified documents, commercial satellite imagery and other documents he analyzed pointed to the higher number.

Other US officials said there were no plans to reduce the US nuclear arsenal in Europe and that the issue had caused strain among North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) political and military leaders.

"Some allies and US military see a lot of value in going to zero," the senior military official in Europe said. "That said, some allies and US military see value in at least keeping some capability."

The newspaper's account of the council's report and findings conincide with a NATO meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Nice, France.

US Secretaries of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and of State, Condoleezza Rice are attending the meeting which France is hosting for the first time.

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Up to 480 U.S. Nuclear Arms in Europe, Private Study Says

By ERIC SCHMITT
February 9, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/politics/09nukes.html?pagewanted=print&position=

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The United States still keeps as many as 480 nuclear weapons at air bases across Europe, more than twice what independent military analysts previously estimated, according to a new study that says the weapons' presence is hurting efforts to curb nuclear proliferation worldwide.

Military officials insisted that the size of the nuclear stockpile in Europe, while classified, was smaller than that. But they acknowledged that it still existed to deter terrorists or nations that could threaten America or its allies with unconventional weapons. The officials also say the stockpile's presence and its long-term fate have caused simmering tensions among senior NATO political and military officials.

The report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group here that advocates arms control and monitors nuclear trends, says short-range nuclear weapons are stored under American control and regulated by secret military agreements at eight bases in Germany, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands. The bombs are kept under tight security at sites reinforced against attack.

American and allied air forces regularly rehearse nuclear bombing missions at training ranges in Europe in the case a war calls for striking nuclear, chemical or biological weapons sites or command posts in countries that threaten to use unconventional arms, the report states. Military officials confirmed that the training continued as part of prudent military contingency planning.

The findings in the 102-page report, "U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe," come as NATO defense ministers, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, prepare to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Nice, France. An advance copy of the report was provided to The New York Times by the research council.

One topic of discussion is likely to be nuclear proliferation, including Iran's nuclear program, Pentagon and NATO officials said.

Capt. Curry W. Graham, a spokesman for the military's European Command, said the United States still maintained a sizable nuclear arsenal in Europe to support NATO's strategic deterrence mission to "maintain peace and stability in the region." Pentagon policy prohibits the disclosure of the amount or location of American nuclear weapons.

But a senior military official in Europe said in response to the report's findings that the number of American nuclear weapons there was now "around 200," and had been "significantly reduced" in recent years.

The author of the research council report, Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear arms specialist and consultant for the organization, acknowledged that he did not have the most recent data but said his conclusions were based on recently declassified documents, commercial satellite imagery and other documents. He added that classified documents he obtained as recently as last year showed the nuclear stockpile to be roughly what his new study estimates.

A former senior American officer in Europe said the report's accounting of weapons was "in the ballpark." And a NATO briefing in June 2004 showed the nuclear stockpile in Europe had not changed in more than a decade, suggesting any reductions had taken place quite recently.

A study the council did in 1998 estimated the number of nuclear weapons in Europe at about 150.

The senior military official in Europe would not discuss which countries or targets the weapons could be used against, but military officials in the past have left open the possibility, however remote, of using nuclear arms against targets in so-called rogue nations, including Iran and Syria, if they threatened to use unconventional weapons.

"Militarily, you can't rule out something like a biological threat, so this capability has not been taken off the table," the retired senior American officer said.

There is no proposal to reduce the American nuclear arsenal in Europe, officials said, but the issue has caused strain among the alliance's political and military leaders. "Some allies and U.S. military see a lot of value in going to zero," the senior military official in Europe said. "That said, some allies and U.S. military see value in at least keeping some capability."

Gen. James L. Jones, the head of the European Command and the top NATO commander, has privately told associates that he favors eliminating the American nuclear stockpile in Europe, but has met resistance from some NATO political leaders. The alliance's Nuclear Planning Group is to meet Feb. 17, but it is unclear if the issue will come up then.

Spokesmen at the embassies of several European nations here declined to comment, citing their policy of not discussing American nuclear weapons on their soil.

At the height of the cold war in the early 1970's, the United States had about 7,300 short-range nuclear weapons in Europe to be used as a last resort against a huge ground attack by the numerically superior Soviet military, the report said.

Arms control agreements in the 1980's began to reduce that number, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, President George H. W. Bush announced in September 1991 that the United States would withdraw all tactical ground-launched and naval nuclear weapons worldwide.

About 1,400 air-delivered nuclear bombs were still left behind, the report says, but that number continued to dwindle over the next decade. The remaining weapons in Europe are B61 bombs, which can be dropped from fighter planes and are typically less powerful than long-range nuclear weapons fired from silos or submarines, the report said.

The research council's report challenges the rationale for keeping short-range nuclear weapons in Europe when the United States has thousands of long-range missiles that could hit any target in a matter of minutes.

Unlike the situation during the cold war, American aircraft are not kept on alert to deploy at a moment's notice. Still, with the United States straining to meet many of its conventional missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the report asserts that eliminating weapons to be dropped by Air Force F-15's and F-16's could free up fighter-bombers for those missions.



-------- iran

Rice Urges Europe to Get Tougher on Iran

Wed Feb 9, 2005 09:03 AM ET (Reuters)
By Saul Hudson

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1MFMETAZ1XKGICRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=7580655

BRUSSELS  - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged European allies on Wednesday to get tougher with Iran, highlighting continuing policy differences despite her call for a new chapter in transatlantic relations.

Rice held talks with NATO foreign ministers and was due to visit the European Union after saying Iran should be warned it faces referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions unless it accepts an EU deal on its nuclear program.

"(The) Iranians need to hear that if they are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the Security Council referral looms," she told Fox News.

"I don't know that anyone has said that as clearly as they should to the Iranians," she said in a comment intended not only to pressure Tehran but also to spur the three main European powers to be firmer in their negotiations with Iran.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair played down any division with Washington over Iran, telling parliament in London: "We are pursuing the policy of engagement which we have conducted with France and Germany -- and with United States' full support."

Blair took a step toward the U.S. view of the Islamic Republic on Tuesday, branding it a sponsor of terrorism, but he defended Europe's policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

"It is important to make clear to Iran that they cannot breach the rules of the atomic energy authority and they cannot develop nuclear weapons' capability. That is the very clear wish of the entire international community," he said.

Divisions over Iran and China were a reality check on the upbeat mood nurtured by Rice this week on her maiden journey as secretary of state.

The United States has rejected European pleas for the Bush administration to bolster the EU's leverage by getting involved in the bargaining and offering incentives of its own for Iran to end uranium enrichment, which Washington says are part of a secret drive to build a bomb. Iran denies the charge.

The EU has meanwhile rebuffed U.S. pleas to reverse course on plans to lift an arms embargo on China this year.

PREPARING FOR FAILURE?

Rice's first stop was at NATO, the transatlantic military alliance whose members disagreed over the Iraq war and are still willing to give only limited collective support for the U.S.-led operation in Iraq, mostly by training Iraqi officers.

Iran has signaled its impatience with the pace of the EU talks, the third round of which began in Geneva on Tuesday. Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, said on Wednesday that this week's talks would "probably reveal the degree of Europe's commitment to the negotiations."

He told Reuters on Sunday he did not believe any incentive from the West would persuade Tehran to give up nuclear enrichment.

Diplomats said both Washington and Brussels appeared to be preparing the ground for a possible failure of the talks.

A senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, said: "We are giving them the chance (to get Iranian compliance). We appreciate their efforts, good for them. But if the Iranians don't take the opportunity, then we have to be talking of the alternatives."

The policy splits could undermine Rice's appeal on Tuesday in Paris for an end to the U.S.-European rift over the Iraq war -- an appeal that was well received in France.

In her keynote speech of an eight-nation tour, delivered symbolically in France, one of the biggest critics of the war, Rice called for a new chapter in transatlantic ties and received a cordial welcome from French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier.

Barnier called for U.S. support in trying to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, indicating Europe is not satisfied with Washington's mere acquiescence in their talks.

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Rice: U.S. has no 'timeline' on Iran

2/9/2005 5:34 PM (AP)
	
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-09-rice_x.htm

BRUSSELS — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put Iran and Europe on notice Wednesday that their negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program cannot go on forever.

Nearing the end of a fence-mending tour of European allies, Rice said the United States had set no deadline on the Iran talks, but she also said the Bush administration had not changed its view that the United Nations should step in to get tougher on Iran. (Video: No deadline on Iran nuke program)

In Washington, President Bush said the Iranians needed to know that the free world was working together to send a clear message: Don't develop a nuclear weapon.

"And the reason we're sending that message is because Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destabilizing force in the world," Bush said.

"I think the message is there," Rice said at a news conference at NATO headquarters. "The Iranians need to get that message," she said, adding that Tehran should know that "there are other steps" the international community can take.

Iran says its program is for nuclear power, not weapons. In Tehran, President Mohammad Khatami said Wednesday that no Iranian government would ever abandon the progress the country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology.

The comment did not augur well for negotiations with three European countries that are trying to persuade Iran to cease permanently the enrichment of uranium and have promised economic and technological aid in return. Khatami said that if the talks with Britain, France and Germany fail, his government will not be bound by its undertaking to suspend enrichment.

"If other parties are not committed to their promises, we will not be committed to our promises at all," Khatami told a meeting of foreign diplomats.

The Bush administration has long viewed the European process as futile and thinks Iran is stalling.

"They need to hear that the discussions that they are in with the Europeans are not going to be a kind of way station where they are allowed to continue their activities, that there's going to be an end to this and that they are going to end up in the Security Council," Rice said earlier Wednesday.

Those remarks, in an interview with Fox News, also urged Britain, France and Germany to put pressure on Iran. Rice has spoken in tough terms about Iran during this trip, but had been careful to leave any criticism of the Europeans unsaid.

"Iranians need to hear that if they are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the Security Council referral looms," she said. "I don't know that anyone has said that as clearly as they should to the Iranians."

Asked at Wednesday's news conference how long the diplomatic efforts should continue, Rice replied, "We've set no deadline, no timeline. The Iranians know what they need to do."

Over the past week, Rice visited Britain, France and Germany, the three countries talking to Iran. The United States has kept the European diplomacy at arm's length, and Rice's remarks Wednesday underscored that the United States and the Europeans still did not see eye to eye.

The three European countries are reluctant to take the matter to the United Nations before making further efforts at negotiation.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier used a news conference with Rice Tuesday night in Paris to repeat that France and the other European participants wanted to let diplomacy run its course.

"We believe this political and diplomatic work with which we are committed is by far the best way," Barnier said. "We need the confidence and the support of the United States in this very delicate phase ... and that's ... the message we conveyed to Condi Rice."

Rice did not directly respond during the joint press conference, instead putting the onus on Iran to comply with international compacts governing civilian and military nuclear programs. She also thanked the three nations for their efforts.

Iran has been a topic for most of Rice's meetings with European politicians. European governments have generally maintained closer ties to Iran in the more than two decades since an Islamic government took power.

Some Europeans suspect that the United States intends to attack Iran during Bush's second term. Rice said at the start of her trip, in London, that an attack is "not on the agenda" now.



-------- japan

TEPCO restarts reactor at Fukushima No. 1 plant

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 at 14:46 JST

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=327307

FUKUSHIMA — Tokyo Electric Power Co resumed Wednesday the operation of a reactor at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, about 50 days after the operations of all six reactors at the plant were suspended due to defects and inspections, the utility said.

The No. 6 reactor will start generating electricity from Friday, and will be operated at normal capacity from Sunday, the electric power company said. (Kyodo News)



-------- korea

Bush Bites His Tongue

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
February 9, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/opinion/09kristof.html?pagewanted=print&position=

There are two words the Bush administration doesn't want you to think about: North Korea.

That's because the most dangerous failure of U.S. policy these days is in North Korea. President Bush has been startlingly passive as North Korea has begun churning out nuclear weapons like hot cakes.

The dangers were underscored with last week's reports that the uranium in Libya's former nuclear program may have come from North Korea. Indeed, Mr. Bush seems to recognize that his policy has failed - that's why he isn't talking much about North Korea now, at least publicly, and why (as reported in The Times today) he sent an emissary to talk last week with the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, about how to tame North Korea.

North Korea is particularly awkward for Mr. Bush to discuss publicly because, as best we know, it didn't make a single nuclear weapon during Bill Clinton's eight years in office (although it did begin a separate, and secret, track to produce uranium weapons; it hasn't produced any yet but may eventually). In contrast, the administration now acknowledges that North Korea extracted enough plutonium in the last two years for about half a dozen nuclear weapons.

In fairness, Mr. Bush is paralyzed only because the alternatives are dreadful. A military strike on North Korea's nuclear sites might have been an option in the early 1990's, but today we don't know where the plutonium and the uranium are kept, so a military strike might accomplish little - but trigger a new Korean war. To fill the time, Mr. Bush has pursued six-party talks involving North Korea, but they have gotten nowhere.

So what would work?

The other option is the path that Richard Nixon pursued with Maoist China: resolute engagement, leading toward a new "grand bargain" in which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear program in exchange for political and economic ties with the international community. This has the advantage that the best bet to bring down Mr. Kim, the Dear Leader, isn't isolation, but contacts with the outside world.

A terrific new book on North Korea, "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader" by Bradley Martin, underscores how those few glimpses that North Koreans have had of the outside world - by working in logging camps in Russia or sneaking trips to China - have helped undermine Mr. Kim's rule. Yet Westerners have in effect cooperated with him by helping to keep his borders sealed.

At least China and South Korea have a strategy to transform North Korea: encourage capitalism, markets and foreign investment. Chinese traders, cellphones and radios are already widespread in the border areas, and they are doing more to weaken the Dear Leader than anything Mr. Bush is doing.

North Korea is the eeriest and most totalitarian country I've ever visited, making even Saddam Hussein's Iraq seem normal by comparison. I realized how regimented the entire country was when I stopped two girls randomly on the street for an interview on a 1989 trip and the girls started praising their leaders - reciting identical lines in perfect unison.

In his new book, Mr. Martin tells the story of how one of the Dear Leader's assistants, while drunk, told his wife about his boss's womanizing. The wife, apparently a true believer in the North Korean system, was shocked and wrote a letter to the leadership to protest this immorality.

The Dear Leader had the woman brought to him, then denounced her before a crowd and ordered her shot. At that point, her husband begged to be allowed to kill her. Graciously acceding, Mr. Kim handed him a gun to kill his own wife.

So this is a regime that is not just menacing, but monstrous. Mr. Bush is right to regard it with loathing. But U.S. policy on North Korea for the last four years has only strengthened Mr. Kim and allowed him to expand his nuclear arsenal severalfold.

The risk is that Mr. Bush will respond to the failure of his first term's policy by adopting an even harder line in the coming months, seeking Security Council sanctions (he won't get them) and ultimately imposing some kind of naval quarantine. That would only strengthen Mr. Kim's grip on power, as well as risk a war on the Korean peninsula. A Pentagon study in the 1990's predicted that such a war could kill one million people.

In short, our mishandling of North Korea has been appalling - and it may soon get worse. 




-------- russia

Russia Said to Sign Weapons Deal With U.S.

Wednesday February 9, 2005 3:31 PM
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4788735,00.html

MOSCOW (AP) - The chief of Russia's state arms-trading company said Wednesday that Moscow will sign a deal with the United States to tighten control over portable anti-aircraft missiles but won't restrict sales of other weapons to countries out of favor with Washington.

Russian officials have said the deal will be signed by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Feb. 24 summit between Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, the Slovak capital.

Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rosoboronexport, said the U.S.-Russian agreement will restrict sales of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to ``hot spots'' and envisage ``tight control over the use of every unit sold.''

Chemezov said his company was strictly observing international law while selling weapons abroad, but warned that it wouldn't obey U.S. recommendations.

``If the United States makes its own decisions, it has no effect on us: we proceed from international law,'' he said at a news conference.

Chemezov gave few details on prospective arms sales, and refrained from commenting on exports to the sensitive Mideast region.

The United States and Israel have been angered by Russia's intention to sell upgraded anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Russian officials denied that such a deal was in the making, but Syrian President Bashar Assad defended his nation's right to buy anti-aircraft missiles from Russia during a visit to Moscow last month.

Russia's arms exports last year totaled $5.8 billion, achieving a post-Soviet sales record, Chemezov said, adding that Rosoboronexport accounted for about 90 percent of the sales.

Even Soviet weapons sales never matched last year's amount in terms of hard currency earnings, Chemezov said. The Soviet Union was exporting weapons worth an estimated $20 billion a year during the 1980s, but most were provided to Soviet allies on a credit or barter basis or even free of charge.

Even though arms exports have risen steadily since the Soviet collapse thanks to the Russian weapons' comparatively low price and reliability, their volume has now reached a ceiling, Chemezov said.

``Regrettably, we have approached the limit of our sales - $5-$6 billion,'' he said.

Most Russian weapons now being sold were designed in the late 1970s or early 1980s - one example is the best-selling Su-27 fighter jet - and the defense industries would need huge investments to design and produce their successors, Chemezov said.

One way to boost sales is to sell production licenses for existing export items. Russia has already sold licenses for manufacturing the Su-27 and the Su-30 fighters to China and India, respectively.

The two Asian nations have remained top Russian weapons customers since the 1990s. They account for about 80 percent of Russian arms sales, and their share is expected to remain high, Chemezov said.

Plans to sell more Russian weapons to Indonesia and Sri Lanka were thrown off by the December tsunami, but talks with Thailand were continuing and Moscow may agree to accept poultry and other products as payment for weapons, Chemezov said.

He said his company signed a deal with Morocco last month and is negotiating a contract with Saudi Arabia. Rosoboronexport is also working with new NATO members in Eastern Europe to upgrade their Soviet-built weapons to NATO standards, Chemezov said.

He acknowledged that quality deteriorated after the Soviet collapse because of slackening standards at defense enterprises. Increasing spare parts sales and developing a network of maintenance centers for Russian weapons abroad are key goals, Chemezov said. 



-------- terrorism

U.S., Russia Should Strengthen Cooperation Against Terrorism, WMD Proliferation, Experts Say

(Alexander Alexandrov, ITAR-TASS, Feb. 9)

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_9.html#A6898B38

While relations between Russia and the United States are “asymmetrical” due to overwhelming U.S. influence in the world, closer work with Moscow on preventing WMD proliferation is essential, a panel of Russian and U.S. experts said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 25).

Experts from the Carnegie Moscow Center and Politika Foundation released a report recommending the creation of a Joint Intelligence Committee to increase security cooperation on terrorism and nonproliferation issues, ITAR-Tass reported.

“We are living in a new reality,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov of the Politika Foundation. “Differences do not preclude cooperation,” Nikonov added.

----

The fear that terrorism will go nuclear

Traditional thinking, focused on governments, still dominates US 
weapons policy, writes Steve Coll.

February 9, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-fear-that-terrorism-will-go-nuclear/2005/02/08/1107625210454.html

At a recent conference on the future of al-Qaeda sponsored by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, I posed a dark question to 60 or so nuclear weapons scientists and specialists on terrorism and radical Islam: how many of them regarded the probability of a nuclear fission bomb attack on US soil in the next several decades as negligible - say, less than 5 per cent?

At issue was an explosion as big or bigger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives, rather than an easier-to-mount but less lethal radiological attack. Amid sombre silence, three or four hands went up. This grim view, echoed in other quarters of the national security bureaucracy, can't be dismissed as Bush Administration scare-mongering.

"There has been increasing interest by terrorists in acquiring nuclear weapons," Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said recently. "I cannot say 100 per cent that it hasn't happened [already]."
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But there is little specific, rigorous, apolitical discussion of this threat available to the public.

In focusing all-out on nuclear aspirants such as Iran and North Korea, the US may be distracting itself from a graver problem. A time traveller tuning in to the American discussion about nuclear proliferation early in 2005 might think the dial had been accidentally set to 1965. Then, as now, US arms control debate focused heavily on the fear that too many governments would go nuclear. The Bush Administration recognises that catastrophic terrorism has changed the context in which states own or seek to acquire nuclear weapons. Yet traditional non-proliferation thinking, focused on governments, still dominates US policy. When George Bush mentioned nuclear dangers in his State of the Union address, he referred only to the problem of governments seeking weapons. That challenge remains urgent, but it does not explain the gloom at Los Alamos.

A startling number of US nuclear and terrorism specialists believe the threat of a jihadi nuclear attack in the medium term is very serious. They recognise that as a technical and scientific matter, such an attack can be very difficult for private groups to pull off. They fear it anyway. They may have professional incentives to conjure the worst case, but I believe this to be their honest assessment. At the centre of their pessimism stands Osama bin Laden.

Some of these analysts may lean towards pessimism because, with the stakes so high, they would rather be wrong than fail to anticipate a preventable attack. In 1998, Richard Clarke, a White House aide, was accused of scare-mongering about a little-known terrorist named Osama bin Laden to win budgetary funds from Congress. September 11 taught us that Chicken Little sometimes gets it right. But the failures to correctly assess Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction showed he sometimes gets it wrong.

By 2001, al-Qaeda had a formal headquarters, management committees, a dozen or more training facilities, global recruiting centres, a few thousand sworn members and thousands of other followers. Today al-Qaeda is no longer much of an organisation. Its headquarters have been destroyed, its leadership scattered, or dead or in jail.

Since the late 1980s and certainly since 1991, bin Laden has seen the US as the principal invader of the Muslim world because of its support for the Saudi royal family, Israel and other Middle Eastern governments he labels apostate. His inspiration is the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which he says shocked Japan's fading imperial government into a surrender it might not otherwise have contemplated.

Bin Laden has said he seeks nuclear weapons not only because it is God's will, but because he wants to do to American foreign policy what the US did to Japanese imperial surrender policy.

It's difficult to doubt bin Laden's intent. There is evidence that he and his allies have experimented with chemical and biological weapons. But in public, bin Laden talks mainly about nuclear bombs.

As far as is known, he and his followers lack the capability to carry out a significant attack. Given the pressure he is under, it is difficult to imagine how bin Laden will ever regain the space he would need to carry out or closely supervise such a complicated attack himself.

Yet as long as he is at large, he will at the least seek to inspire others to act on his behalf. He has helped to radicalise several individual scientists associated with Pakistan's nuclear program. And his rationale for attacking the far enemy has been globally distributed, on satellite television and the internet.

The Washington Post



-------- u.n.

U.S. Aims to Oust U.N. Nuke Official

Wednesday February 9, 2005 1:46 PM
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4788548,00.html

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The United States is seeking backing from allies in a possible bid to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency at a meeting later this month, diplomats and Western government officials said Wednesday.

During the same Feb. 28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Washington also will increase the pressure on Iran for allegedly trying to make nuclear weapons, the officials told The Associated Press.

Washington considers IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei too soft on Iran and its alleged plans to make nuclear arms and the international community ineffective in dealing with the same perceived threat.

No U.S. comment was available for Washington's strategies for the upcoming IAEA board of governors meeting.

But several diplomats and government officials from IAEA member countries dismissed recent reports that the United States had given up attempts to unseat ElBaradei because of lack of support from other countries.

``They've been lobbying, and close friends have given them a good reception,'' said one of those familiar with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another said U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other senior State Department officials ``were still lobbying the capitals.''

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put Iran on notice that it cannot use a European diplomatic initiative to delay indefinitely accountability for a suspected nuclear weapons program.

``The Iranians need to hear that if they are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the Security Council referral looms,'' she said in an interview Wednesday with Fox News that was taped before she arrived in Belgium.

``I don't know that anyone has said that as clearly as they should to the Iranians,'' she said in a strong reiteration U.S. policy that the issue of Iran's nuclear program should be taken before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

``We have believed all along that Iran ought to be referred to the Security Council and then a variety of steps are available to the international community,'' she said in the interview.

``They need to hear that the discussions that they are in with the Europeans are not going to be a kind of waystation where they are allowed to continue their activities; that there's going to be an end to this and that they are going to end up in the Security Council.''

Britain, France and Germany are in talks with Tehran, but the United States kept its distance from that effort and the Europeans has been reluctant to take the matter to the United Nations before making further efforts at a deal.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier used a news conference with Rice Tuesday night in Paris to repeat that France and the other European participants are committed to letting the diplomacy run its course. He said he had asked Rice for American ``support and confidence.''

Rice told reporters that Iran is already on notice that it must not use a civilian nuclear power program to hide a weapons project. 

----

Diplomats say U.S. lining up allies for possible bid to oust ElBaradei as head of U.N. nuclear agency

By GEORGE JAHN, The Associated Press, Wednesday, February 09, 2005

http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~2702915,00.html

VIENNA, Austria The United States is lobbying allies in a bid to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, perhaps as early as the end of the month, diplomats and officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Anticipating that present European diplomatic efforts on Iran will fail, the diplomats and officials also told AP that Washington plans to increase pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program when the International Atomic Energy Agency meets Feb. 28.

In Tehran, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told foreign diplomats that no Iranian government would ever abandon the progress the country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology.

Washington, which accuses Iran of making nuclear weapons and wants it brought before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, considers IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei too soft on the Tehran leadership.

No U.S. comment was available on Washington's strategy for the upcoming IAEA board of governors meeting.

But several diplomats and government officials from IAEA member countries dismissed recent reports that the United States had given up attempts to unseat ElBaradei because of lack of support from other countries.

"They've been lobbying, and close friends have given them a good reception,' said one of the officials familiar with the issue, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another said Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other senior State Department officials "were still lobbying the capitals, telling them it's the way to go.'

With Elbaradei's agency spearheading international attempts to squelch nuclear proliferation, the head of the IAEA is a key position for Bush administration officials. They want someone who shares their views of which country represents a nuclear threat and what to do about it.

ElBaradei has challenged those views first over prewar Iraq and then Iran, both labeled part of an "axis of evil,' along with North Korea, by President Bush.

He first disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program claims that remain unproven. He then refused to endorse arguments by Washington that nuclear activities Iran claims are meant only to generate power are actually part of a clandestine weapons program.

A direct U.S. move to oust ElBaradei failed late last year the Americans were unable to find anyone to challenge him for a third term by the Dec. 31 deadline, shortly after calling on him to step down with his second term completed.

It remains unclear whether Washington could muster the 12 votes needed among the 35-nation IAEA board for a vote of non-confidence in ElBaradei.

Ahead of the Feb. 28 meeting, the majority is either in favor of a third term for the IAEA head or appears to be undecided. Reflecting sentiment among the latter, one diplomat said his country "had full confidence' in ElBaradei but still shared the U.S. view that no U.N. agency head should serve past two terms.

The contacts appeared to be restricted to the high level, with Vienna-based diplomats saying the U.S. mission in Vienna pointedly refuses to discuss the issue.

In a related issue, the United States will try to redirect international focus on Iran's nuclear activities back to the IAEA by pushing for creation of a special agency committee that would deal with "problem countries,' a diplomat said.

For the first time in more than two years, ElBaradei is not producing a written report on Iran for the upcoming board meeting.

While investigations continue into past and present suspicions about Iran's nuclear program, agency officials say that no major revelations meriting the need for a written report have surfaced this time around.

But American officials suggest the lack of a written report is the latest reflection of the IAEA's failure to be tough on Iran's nuclear transgressions, which, they say merit referral of Tehran's dossier to the U.N. Security Council.

The U.S. push to create a special committee, first proposed last year by Bush, appears driven by the feeling that talks between Iran and Germany, France and Britain will fail.

Those three countries are trying to persuade Iran to agree to either scrap its plans to enrich uranium or extend its present short-term suspension to a freeze lasting for at least several years.

While the United States publicly supports the talks, officials privately say they expect them to fail, leading to renewed enrichment activities which can produce the fissile core of nuclear missiles and a fresh need for the IAEA board to consider Security Council referral.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested as much Wednesday, telling Fox News that if the Iranians "are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the Security Council referral looms.'

The Europeans have promised Iran economic and technological aid in return for cooperation on the nuclear issue.

On Wednesday, the Iranian president warned that if the talks fail, his government will not be bound by its undertaking to suspend enrichment.

"If other parties (to the negotiations) are not committed to their promises, we will not be committed to our promises at all,' Khatami said. 




-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Duck and Cover Redux
Bunker  Busters and City Levellers

By  JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
February 9, 2005 Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair02092005.html

In the fall of 2004, anti-nuclear activists won what appeared to be a stunning victory when the Republican-controlled congress eliminated funding for a new generation of nuclear weapons, the so-called bunker busting nukes. Shortly after the final vote, Rep. Ed Markey called it the "biggest victory that arms control advocates in congress have had since 1992."

In the omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress on December 1, all funding was zeroed-out for two favored projects of the wizards of Armageddon: the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or nuclear "bunker buster", and for the Advanced Concepts Initiative, which provided the breeding grounds for research into so-called micro nukes.

Moreover, Congress also slashed funding for grooming the Nevada Test Site for future nuclear blasts from $30 million to $22.5. The nuclear bomb lobby has long been lobbying for a new "pit" production facility-pits are the plutonium cores of nuclear bombs that ignite the atomic chain reaction resulting in thermonuclear explosions. The Bush administration asked congress for $30 million to develop a new production facility, but congress reduced the total outlay to $7 million and included language prohibiting the Department of Energy from naming a site for the facility.

All in all, these amounted to a series of devastating defeats for the nuclear-bomb making industry and its supporters in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. But such victories tend to have a very brief half-life.

And don't look now, but the nuclear weapons clique has launched a covert counterattack using a small provision in the very same funding bill as a kind of radioactive loophole for a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Buried in the mammoth omnibus appropriations bill was an obscure single item for something called the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. With an initial seeding of $10 million, this innocuous-sounding project will likely become the drawing room for the kind redesigned nuclear warheads that Congress tried to eliminate.

The project will fund the work of 100 nuclear weapons designers at three bomb-making laboratories: Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia. Proponents expect the project to start slowly, then gather budgetary momentum within the next five years. By 2015, they expect to unveil their new warhead design and inaugurate a new series of underground nuclear tests.

And guess what? Instead of the small, mini-nuke feared by anti-nuke activists, these weapons designers are moving in the opposite direction. These new nukes are likely to be bigger, bulkier and many times more potent than the current generation of weapons.

Once the project gets rolling, it nearly impossible to turn off the flow of money. For one thing, the beneficiaries of these doomsday funds will soon extend beyond the weapons labs and to defense contractors, the most omnipotent lobby on the Hill. That's because the new heavier warheads will need a new generation of rockets to launch them on their path of annihilation. Here's where Lockheed and Boeing enter the picture.

All of this was sold to congress on the grounds of reliability. The nuclear priesthood at the labs and in the Pentagon complained to congress that the current nuclear arsenal is becoming decrepit. Most of the 10,000 nuclear warheads in the US arsenal were designed to last about 15 years. The average age of a warhead is now 20 years. And some are 30 years old and older.

The bombmakers gripe that the arsenal is getting so old that the reliability of the weapons to generate city-destroying thermonuclear blasts is now in doubt. In addition, the nuclear cohort chafes that the global test ban treaty, which outlaws underground detonations of nuclear weapons, makes it impossible for them to assess what they snidely refer to as the "health" of the US stockpile--as if regular nuclear blasts in the Nevada desert were only a kind of treadmill to evaluate the vitality of geriatric warheads.

The only alternative, lament the weapons designers, is to redesign a new generation of warheads that are bigger and easier to certify as being reliable, that is ready to incinerate millions at the touch of a button.

Of course, a new generation of nukes will inevitably bring the US into stark conflict with the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, long the bane of the weapons-designers and the neo-cons in the Bush administration. And once nuclear testing begins a new arms race could follow, with Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel, Russia and Iran all in the mix.

And what about those mini-nukes? Don't count them out just yet.

In January, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fired-off a memo to the Department of Energy requesting that the agency quietly revive funding for a study on the design of bunker busting bombs.

"I think we should request funds in FY06 and FY07 to complete the study," Rumsfeld wrote. "Our staffs have spoken about funding the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) study to support its completion by April 2007. You can count on my support for your efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure and to complete the RNEP study."

The Bush budget for the Department of Energy contains $10.3 million for further work on the feasibility study, which is being conducted by weapons designers at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. So much for the administration's new devotion to fiscal austerity.

Rummy's move was a brazen slap in the face to Republican congressman David Hobson of Ohio. Hobson chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on water and energy and played the key role in eliminating funding for the bunker-buster bomb after reviewing a report from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the nuclear program within the Energy Department, that estimated the Department would spend almost $500 million to produce the weapon in the budgets for fiscal years 2005 to 2009.

"Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Energy has ever articulated to me a specific military requirement for a nuclear earth penetrator," Hobson said in a recent speech to the Arms Control Association. At the Pentagon's urging, I even spent an entire day at Offutt Air Force Base getting briefed by STRATCOM, but I was never told of any specific military mission requiring the nuclear bunker buster.

"The Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex has so many fundamental management problems that have not received sufficient Federal oversight that it troubles me deeply that Congressional opposition to RNEP generate so much attention. The development of new weapons for ill-defined future requirements is not what the Nation needs at this time. What is needed, and what is absent to date, is leadership and fresh thinking for the 21 st Century regarding nuclear security and the future of the U.S. stockpile."

Search across the arid vistas of the Clinton years and you're unlikely to find a more caustic indictment of the archaic and demented nuclear ambitions of the Pentagon and the nuclear labs. Indeed, the mini-nuke program was initiated and nourished by Clinton and Gore. But David Hobson is a lonely voice against an industry that has never really suffered a long-term defeat. In the absence of a real anti-nuke movement in this country, his courageous legislative victories won't amount to much.

Of course, if the demise of the Soviet Union didn't provide a rationale for the dismantling of the US nuclear arsenal, then the budgetary meddling of a fiscally conservative congressman is unlikely to provide much of an impediment. Committee chairs come and go, but the nuclear program endures forever.

So instead of witnessing the welcome abortion a new class of nuclear warheads, the Pentagon and nuclear labs have incubated two new monsters: mini-nukes and fat nukes. Pick your poison.

Now count the months before the Bush administration invokes the "reliability" ruse as an excuse to breach the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The desert of Nevada will be ground zero, once again.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature. This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon, to be published in July by Common Courage Press.

----

U.S. Said to Remove Its Nukes From Greece

- By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/02/09/national/w140708S06.DTL 

(02-09) 14:07 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The United States quietly removed the last of its nuclear bombs from Greece early in President Bush's first term, making Greece the first NATO ally where nuclear weapons have been completely withdrawn, according to a new study by private defense experts.

The change, which the Pentagon has not publicly confirmed, was disclosed in a book published last month _ "Code Names," by William Arkin. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group that advocates arms control, described the change in detail in a study released Wednesday.

Arkin said he believes the withdrawal from Greece could lead to an unraveling of NATO's long-standing policy of "burden sharing" in the hosting of U.S. nuclear weapons, which are meant to deter an attack on Europe but are highly unpopular among segments of the European population.

Enormous political battles were fought in Germany and other European NATO countries over the early 1980s deployment of new U.S. ground-launched missiles capable of striking the former Soviet Union. Those weapons were withdrawn in the early 1990s, but air-launched bombs remained.

The NATO countries that still host U.S. nuclear weapons are Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Reports on the number of these weapons vary. The study released Wednesday said the total is as high as 480, but others believe it is about 200.

"It is a bit of a mystery," Arkin said, about whether the correct total is 480 or something lower. He said it is possible that 480 is the authorized maximum but the actual number deployed is in the 150-200 range.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said Wednesday that as a matter of policy the U.S. government does not discuss the numbers, capabilities or locations of its nuclear weapons abroad. The only nuclear weapons deployed beyond U.S. borders are in Europe and aboard ballistic missile submarines.

"Nuclear weapons support the general deterrence goals of the NATO alliance," Whitman said.

The defense council study said 20 U.S. nuclear bombs were airlifted out of Araxos air base in southern Greece in the spring of 2001. President Bill Clinton authorized the removal of the bombs in a top-secret document dated Nov. 29, 2000, according to a person who has seen the document.

U.S. nuclear weapons also were removed from two air bases in Turkey in 1991 and one air base in Italy in 1993, the study said, but other nuclear bombs are still stored elsewhere in those countries.

"The trend seems clear: Nuclear burden-sharing in NATO, in as far as host country nuclear strike missions are concerned, is on a slow but steady decline toward ending altogether," the study said.

The United States has stationed nuclear weapons in Europe since 1954.

The weapons that were at Greece's Araxos air base were intended for use by the Greek air force, in coordination with the United States. But when Greece scrapped its older A-7E warplanes as certified to carry nuclear bombs in the late 1990s, it did not replace them with a new certified nuclear-capable aircraft, thus prompting removal of the weapons, Arkin said in an interview from his home in Vermont.

Arkin, a former Army intelligence officer, has written numerous books on nuclear weapons and other military topics. In "Code Names," he discloses the classified code name _ Flaming Arrow _ of the U.S.-only UHF communications network that is installed at all main operating bases and munitions support squadrons in Europe where nuclear warheads are stored.

The high-frequency nuclear weapons radio communications system that would be used to transmit a U.S. presidential authority for the launch of nuclear weapons in Europe is code-named Regency, Arkin wrote.

Those two code names are still being used today. Arkin justifies revealing them by saying his information was gathered from documents in the public domain or through interviews with government officials.

On the Net:

National Resources Defense Council study:

Defense Department:

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/euro/contents.asp

http://www.defense.gov



-------- u.s. nuc facilities


-------- nevada

Energy Secretary 'Focused' on Yucca Mtn.

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/02/09/national/w152255S08.DTL

(02-09) 15:22 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- Energy Secretary Samuel 
Bodman told lawmakers Wednesday that while progress on a 
nuclear waste project in Nevada will be delayed, the 
government is "very focused and committed" to building the 
facility.

Bodman was questioned about the Bush administration's 
commitment to the program two days after the Energy 
Department said it would ask for only $651 million for the 
Yucca Mountain program for the budget year that begins in 
October.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, noted that until recently, it had 
been anticipated that beginning next year the department 
would need more than $1 billion a year to keep the program 
on track so it could begin accepting high-level waste from 
nuclear power plants by 2010.

Department officials have delayed plans to submit a license 
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the 
project and acknowledged the new target date for opening the 
facility _ if it gets an NRC license _ is 2012.

Potential problems that could delay programs, Bodman said, 
are court rulings that strike down the proposed radiation 
safety standards for the site and problems in preparation of 
the license application. But that "is not to suggest any 
less enthusiasm for Yucca Mountain," Bodman told the House 
Energy and Commerce Committee.

Bodman said the $651 million requested for upcoming budget 
year for the Yucca project is adequate "given the restrains 
under which we are operating."

In Nevada, Robert Loux, head of the state agency fighting 
the proposed waste site, said he saw the scaled-back 
spending as evidence that "the project is limping along" and 
likely never to be built.

"We believe the project is dead," said Loux at a hearing 
before the state Legislature in Carson City. "It looks to us 
and others that the project may never rekindle and get 
started again."

Bodman, who just took over at the department, said, "It is 
clear that the administration is very focused and committed 
to the program." He added, "We need Yucca Mountain to be in 
place."

The project has widespread and bipartisan support on Capitol 
Hill. But Congress provided $577 million this budget year, 
far less than the $880 million the administration had sought.

Yucca Mountain, a ridge of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest 
of Las Vegas, was first considered as a place for the 
nation's central repository for high-level nuclear waste 27 
years ago. The government initially promised the industry it 
would begin accepting the waste _ building up at power 
plants around the country _ for long-term disposal by 1998.

President Bush gave the go-ahead to the project in 2002. 
Congress overrode Nevada's objections to the dump and last 
year an appeals court rejected Nevada's argument that the 
federal government's decision to single out Nevada for the 
facility was unconstitutional.

On the Net

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: 
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov



-------- new mexico

Uranium facility won't be in New Mexico

February 9, 2005 (AP) 

http://bizneworleans.com/109+M593216f90d4.html

HOBBS, N.M. — A facility to treat waste from a proposed uranium enrichment factory near Eunice will not be built in New Mexico.

That's what the chief engineer for Louisiana Energy Services, Rod Krich, told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board yesterday in Hobbs.

LES wants to build a $1.2 billion factory to refine uranium for nuclear reactors.

But questions have been raised about how the company plans to dispose of its radioactive waste.

LES has reached an agreement with Areva Inc. to build a facility to handle the waste.

The only other site currently being discussed for the waste-treatment facility is in Texas.

A decade ago, LES wanted to build a uranium enrichment plant in Claiborne Parish. The plan was abandoned after opponents accused the group of environmental racism for picking a site populated by minorities. 




-------- washington

Judge says Hanford cleanup initiative will not be enforced

This story was published Wednesday, February 9th, 2005
By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald staff writer

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6137529p-6019514c.html

The Hanford cleanup initiative will not be enforced until legal decisions are made, U.S. Judge Alan McDonald ordered Tuesday as he turned key questions over to the Washington Supreme Court.

Federal and state courts must rule before Initiative 297 may be enforced at Hanford or Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, McDonald wrote in court documents.

McDonald's decision to move key questions to the state Supreme Court was a victory for the state. Last week it told the judge it would agree to take no action to enforce the initiative until decisions were made, if key elements were moved to the state court.

"It confirms our position that it's appropriate for a state court to decide what a state law means," said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.

Voters passed the initiative in November to stop the Department of Energy from bringing more radioactive waste to Hanford until waste already there is cleaned up. The site is massively contaminated from 50 years of producing plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.

The federal government sued the state, saying the initiative, now called the Cleanup Priority Act, was unconstitutional.

Whether the initiative violates the U.S. Constitution is a matter for the federal court rather than a state court, federal attorneys argued. No state interpretation is needed for the federal court to decide that question, they said.

"This court believes the CPA is susceptible of an interpretation that would avoid or substantially modify the federal constitutional challenge," McDonald wrote in an order to send key questions to the state court.

Among questions he asked the state Supreme Court to answer is whether a finding that part of the initiative is unconstitutional would void the entire initiative.

Other questions ask for interpretations of what waste is covered by the initiative, including whether it expands the definition of mixed waste.

The Department of Justice has argued that the initiative covers radioactive materials used in homeland defense and other research at the national laboratory.

The state also would clarify whether the initiative prevents waste from being moved from one facility to another at Hanford, which would halt cleanup work.

Under a temporary restraining order issued by McDonald and then an agreement between the state and federal government, no action has been taken on the initiative since it became law in early December.

However, that agreement is extended until May 13. McDonald's order Tuesday extends the temporary restraining order, likely for much longer.

The Department of Justice had argued against turning key questions over to the state Supreme Court, saying the state court had taken seven months to three years to reach similar decisions. McDonald agreed Tuesday that moving part of the suit could considerably delay resolution of constitutionality questions.

The Justice Department is reviewing the decision to turn key questions in the lawsuit it filed over to the state and has not decided what its next step will be, said Jackie Lesch, spokeswoman for the Justice Department.

The state does have its own lawsuit in McDonald's court that could bar waste shipments to Hanford without need of the initiative. It was filed in 2003, long before the initiative went to voters.

On April 28, McDonald is scheduled to consider lengthening or dissolving injunctions now in place barring DOE from shipping different types of waste to Hanford under the 2003 suit.




-------- us nuc waste

Chu says DOE to improve plans to ship waste

By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
February 09, 2005

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/feb/09/518263621.html

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is working on improving its transportation planning for the Yucca Mountain project, department official Margaret Chu told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

The board sent Chu a letter Dec. 1, saying the department had no "overarching implementation organization" to develop a safe and efficient waste-shipping program along with other problems.

But Chu, the department's assistant secretary in charge of the nuclear dump effort, pointed out in a seven-page response sent to the board Feb. 1. that the Office of National Transportation oversees the shipping plans.

The department needs to plan how to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Chu said the office manages plans to move waste across the country as well as ship waste within Nevada. It works to "ensure the transportation system is safe, secure, and efficient," Chu wrote.

She agreed with the board's concern that the department needs to develop specific logistical plans to show who is responsible to different elements of the overall plan. She told the board the department is working on developing such plans and more can be done after specific decisions on casks, rail cars and trains are made. 



-------- MILITARY 


-------- arms 

New Cameras Turn Night Into Day

The system, devised for the Dutch military, uses a computer to impose colour on an image, replacing the fuzzy grey or green monochrome (as seen above) images of conventional night-vision goggles.

Paris (AFP) Feb 09, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/news/miltech-05a.html

Dutch researchers have developed "revolutionary" vision equipment that makes video imaging at night time as clear and as colourful as in broad daylight, the British weekly New Scientist says.

The system, devised for the Dutch military, uses a computer to impose colour on an image, replacing the fuzzy grey or green monochrome images of conventional night-vision goggles, it reports in next Saturday's issue.

Night-vision cameras either amplify available light or use infrared sensors to map the heat radiation that emanates from objects.

The new gadget improves on this by "sampling" colour daytime images in the landscapes in which the system is expected to be used.

It then selects random pixels to obtain a sample of the range of colours in a typical environment - browns for tree trunks, greens for grass, vegetation and tree canopies, blues for the sky.

The system matches these colours to equivalent monochrome shades - for example, a light grey is matched to a shade of blue for the sky, a dark brown is matched to tree trunks.

Then, when the system is used at night to view a target scene, the mapping is reversed, so that monochrome pixels are replaced with the closest colour match.

The equipment has already been tested on a dozen volunteers, who say it has dramatically improved their ability to spot obstacles and terrain in the dark.

The next step is to develop a prototype for night-time, low-flying helicopter manoeuvres.

----

Northrop Grumman Begins Demo Flights For Army UAV Program

Fort Huachuca AZ (SPX) Feb 09, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/news/uav-05n.html

Northrop Grumman has begun ground and flight demonstrations of the new Hunter II medium altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) it has proposed as the U.S. Army's next generation UAV system.

The flights are being conducted at Libby Army Air Field here as part of a six-week-long flight demonstration between two competing air-vehicle designs selected for the Phase I System Capability Demonstration (SCD) phase of the Army's Extended Range/Multi-Purpose UAV program. The SCD program is designed to demonstrate the maturity of the proposed UAV designs.

"Northrop Grumman's Hunter II air vehicle will be 100 percent compliant with the ER/MP program's threshold requirements, and will demonstrate a heavy fuel engine configuration in advance of the Army's requirements," said Bill McCall, Northrop Grumman's ER/MP program director.

"Our new Hunter II UAV system is designed to be operated and maintained easily by enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers, who already are familiar with the Hunter UAV. Its new avionics and communications capabilities will also provide Army land commanders with the situational awareness they need to 'see and exploit' the land battlefield in a timely manner."

Northrop Grumman's SCD activities include a variety of ground and test flights to evaluate the Hunter II demonstrator air vehicle's flight characteristics including speed, endurance, range and altitude. For the test program, the company is using three Hunter II demonstrator air vehicles, one of which is configured with a heavy fuel engine.

The SCD competition is expected to culminate in a Phase II system development and demonstration contract awarded to a single contractor in the second quarter of 2005.

Hunter II is a twin-boom, autonomous UAV that builds on the legacy of the battle-proven family of Hunter UAVs. It features a sensor suite that includes electro-optical/infrared and synthetic aperture radar systems; software architecture that can easily accommodate new payloads and data-handling requirements; state-of-the-art avionics; a weapons capability and a communications subsystem that allows it to share data seamlessly with current battlefield networks; and a fully automatic take-off and landing system.

Northrop Grumman's Hunter II industry team is lead by the company's Integrated Systems sector with support from Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems, Space Technology and Electronic Systems sectors.

Other team members include Aurora Flight Sciences, Manassas, Va., which will provide vehicle design support and manufacture the air vehicles at its Starkville, Miss. facility; CAS Inc, Huntsville, Ala., which will provide client-based knowledge of weapons, integration, performance-based logistics support, and engineering test and evaluation; and Cubic Defense Systems Applications, San Diego, which will provide advanced interoperable data links.

Hunter II's modular architecture is designed to accommodate future advances in avionics technology, navigation systems, weapons management or air vehicle manufacturing and payload integration derived from the company's other UAV programs, including the U.S. Air Force's Global Hawk, the Army's Hunter, Fire Scout (being developed for Army and U.S. Navy use), and the stealthy X-47 Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, currently in development for a joint Air Force/ Navy/Defense Advanced Research Project Agency team.

----

Northrop Grumman Establishes Directed Energy Systems Unit

Redondo Beach CA (SPX) Feb 09, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/news/laser-05c.html

Northrop Grumman has established a new business area - Directed Energy Systems - to help transition high-energy laser systems from the laboratory to warfighters, the most advanced of which will be able to engage mortars, rockets, artillery and other threats to protect U.S. and allied military and civilian populations and assets.

Established at the company's Space Technology sector, DES positions the company to better take advantage of upcoming opportunities in directed energy applications.

In 2004, the Airborne Laser (ABL) program achieved 'first light' of the Northrop Grumman-built, megawatt-class laser, and the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) testbed proved its versatility by repeatedly shooting down mortars and large-caliber rockets in-flight.

"Because of the recent successes in proving the technology and engineering behind high-energy lasers, we believe the time has come to put these speed-of-light defensive capabilities into the hands of our warfighters," said Alexis Livanos, president of Northrop Grumman Space Technology.

"Northrop Grumman's high-energy laser and active protection expertise will help our nation create operational systems for both today and the future. We have world-class technology and an unparalleled team of experts in this field.

"By leveraging those assets with the breadth of Northrop Grumman's related capabilities in platforms, systems integration and other directed-energy technologies, we provide a tremendous asset to our government customers in addressing our nation's battlefield and area defense needs," Livanos added.

Art Stephenson, a 28-year company veteran and former director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has been named vice president of the DES unit.

Stephenson, 62, is responsible for Northrop Grumman's work on chemical lasers, solid-state lasers and rocket-based engagement systems. Chemical laser programs include the ABL and the THEL testbed.

Solid-state lasers include the Joint High Power Solid-State Laser and the Strategic Illuminator Laser. Rocket-based engagement systems include the Active Protection System - a radar-commanded, point-and-shoot system that can detect, track, intercept and defeat threats at a distance sufficient enough to ensure combat vehicles' survival on the battlefield.

The new business area includes affiliates Cutting Edge Optronics in St. Charles, Mo., and SYNOPTICS in Charlotte, N.C., both of which produce laser materials and components.

"Our work on chemical lasers as part of the THEL program has produced derivatives that are ready for deployment," Stephenson said.

"These lasers are the pathfinders to the military's use of directed energy to defend against the variety of attacks we're seeing today. While chemical lasers offer a starting point for incorporating directed energy weapons into security and combat operations, our solid-state lasers, though less powerful than chemical lasers today, offer our customers the promise of more flexible, ubiquitous and mobile defense systems for future years," Stephenson added.

He further noted the company continues to make significant strides in its development of solid-state lasers.

"Northrop Grumman is a leading supplier of the solid-state lasers used daily by our military to perform designation and range finding. Higher-power Northrop Grumman solid-state illuminator lasers, such as the Beacon Illuminator Laser for ABL, are being used now. The Strategic Illuminator Laser is only a few years away. As we look forward to weapons systems, those using very high-power lasers could be deployed in six to nine years," Stephenson explained.

Northrop Grumman is developing high-energy laser systems for ground, sea, air and space applications, including the U.S. Army's THEL, which has shot down more than four dozen targets, ranging from Katyusha rockets to artillery shells, large-caliber rockets and mortar threats, as well as the laser for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser program.


-------- china

Rumsfeld to visit China, eyes hot line for defense

February 09, 2005
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050208-115248-4196r.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has agreed to visit China this year and the Pentagon is discussing the creation of a telephone hot line to the Chinese military, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

    "We've agreed in principle and [Mr. Rumsfeld is] interested in going," a senior defense official said, noting that no date has been set.

    Mr. Rumsfeld has not visited the communist state since becoming defense secretary in 2001, despite repeated invitations from Chinese officials.

	Asked why Mr. Rumsfeld has delayed the China trip, the senior official said: "I think the fact that we're at war is an issue, and that his travel schedule is necessarily oriented toward Europe and the Middle East."

    Officials who briefed reporters on the visit to China last week of a U.S. delegation headed by Richard Lawless, the deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asia, said China has stepped up criticism of the United States in a recent defense report and has increased its harsh rhetoric against Taiwan.

    The meetings were part of what the Pentagon calls the Special Party Dialogue and included the proposed communications link between the Pentagon and Chinese defense ministries.

    "For us, it is very frustrating for the Chinese not to accept the gesture that we have made with the [defense telecommunications link]," the senior official said.

    China at first rejected the plan but during meetings in Beijing Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 said it is interested in "studying seriously" the hot line, the senior official said.

    During the talks, the U.S. side also questioned the Chinese about specific references to the United States in the Chinese defense white paper issued in December, and on dire descriptions of the China-Taiwan standoff across the Taiwan Strait.

    The Chinese report said China-Taiwan ties are "grim" and that Chinese military forces are prepared to "crush" Taiwan. The report also blamed the United States for "complicating" the security of the Asia-Pacific region.

    "We're talking about an escalation of rhetoric," the senior official said.

    The military exchange program with China was put on hold for 22 months after the April 2001 collision between a U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft and Chinese F-8 jet over the South China Sea.

    China's military imprisoned the EP-3's 23-member crew for 11 days after the plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island after the collision, which was caused by the Chinese pilot.

    Military exchanges have not been resumed at the level of the Clinton administration, the officials said.

    "We've taken a different approach," the senior official said. "It's a moderate and measured pace [of military exchanges] and it fits our criteria of transparency and reciprocity."

    Critics of earlier military exchanges with China have said Beijing's military visitors here were allowed to see sensitive U.S. military facilities, such as the Pentagon's National Command Center, while China refused to permit visits to similar sites in China.

    Officials said yesterday that China has not responded to repeated requests to allow U.S. military officials to see China's Western Hills Command Center, a secret underground facility that is considered a key command post.

    In an related development, State Department arms control official John Bolton said in Tokyo yesterday that China's government has not done enough to halt arms and missile proliferation to rogue states.

    Mr. Bolton, in a speech, said China's government has ignored U.S. appeals to help halt Chinese companies from transferring arms to nations such as Iran, including proliferation activities by the China North Industries Corp., he said.

    The administration has imposed sanctions on China 62 times since 2001 and will continue to do so until Beijing takes action to halt arms proliferation, he said.


-------- europe

Rice Calls on Europe to Join in Building a Safer World

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
February 9, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/international/europe/09rice.html?pagewanted=print&position=

PARIS, Feb. 8 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Tuesday for France and Europe to put aside differences with the United States and embark on a joint effort to expand freedom in the Arab world, build a new Iraq and bring about peace in the Middle East.

Reactions to her talk afterward suggested that Ms. Rice had gone far to convince listeners, and perhaps those beyond the hall, of her sincerity, but a certain skepticism remained.

The speech was given to students, political figures and intellectuals at the Institute of Political Studies. Ms. Rice sought to assure her audience that despite past talk about a Europe divided between friends and critics of the United States, the Bush administration wanted to work with a united Europe on common problems using the power of ideas, not force.

"America has everything to gain from having a stronger Europe as a partner in building a safer and even a better world," Ms. Rice said. "So let each of us bring to the table ideas, experience and resources, and let us discuss and decide, together, how best to employ them for democratic change."

Ms. Rice delivered her half-hour speech in the subdued tone of a university lecture rather than a political speech. She spoke in an academic lecture hall, before an audience of luminaries in scuffed wooden seats.

Former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was there, called her talk "the affirmation of a new line in American foreign policy," but added that it might have lacked some realism. "The main aim of America is to see the spread of freedom," he said, "but that is not enough to organize the world. Freedom is not enough to solve all the problems in the world."

More pleased was Ernest-Antoine Seillière, president of Medef, the association of French corporate heads. "This shows a warming of the Franco-American relationship," he said. "Ms. Rice was convincing, the bearer of simple and strong ideas, the Americans' ideas. She really is Mr. Bush's spokesman."

Aides described the speech as the centerpiece of her weeklong tour of Europe and the Middle East, which began Thursday. Its mission was not only to repair the rupture over Iraq and other policies, but in effect to move to higher ground by presenting an array of causes around which the two sides of the Atlantic could rally.

The talk did not outline new policies so much as try to define in a favorable way the current state of affairs and win over the French political class, if not Europeans as a whole. American officials said they were pleased at the publicity it was getting, hoping that this would improve the atmosphere before President Bush goes to Europe this month.

The ideas in the speech were unusually detailed, reflecting a strategy by her team to address deep European anxieties about the United States. Europe, American officials acknowledge, is skeptical about American-led crusades and believes that countries pursue their interests more than their ideals, whether they admit it or not.

Ms. Rice tried to meet that argument head on, reminding the French that they had joined together two generations ago to defeat Communism and declaring that they now must confront Islamic terrorism.

"Today's radical Islamists are swimming against the tide of the human spirit," Ms. Rice said. "They grab headlines with their ruthless brutality, and they can be brutal, but they are dwelling on the outer fringes of a great world religion and are radicals of a special sort. They are in revolt against the future."

After her speech, Ms. Rice met with President Jacques Chirac for what a spokesman said were "cordial and focused" discussions. A State Department official said it was "a very good meeting."

The French spokesman, Jérôme Bonnafont, said President Chirac had told Ms. Rice that France attached "great importance to bilateral cooperation and the trans-Atlantic relationship" and was eager to "push forward the political process" in Iraq but that he wanted American support for the European-led negotiations with Iran.

The speech came at a moment that French and American officials acknowledged was a propitious one for Ms. Rice because of the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians announced in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

After visiting the Middle East, she was able to report to her audience that she had urged Israel as well as the Palestinians to make tough concessions in pursuit of an accord.

That comment seemed directed at allaying the suspicion in Europe that Mr. Bush has been indifferent to the Middle East, in part because of domestic political pressure on him to support Israel uncritically.

"This is the best chance for peace we are likely to see for years to come, and we are acting to help Israelis and Palestinians seize this chance," Ms. Rice declared. Appealing for European aid to this process, she said that if Europe and America shared such burdens, it would enable them to "share in the blessings of peace" in the region.

The speech gave scant mention to the issues dividing Europe and the United States, particularly the differences in their approach to Iran, underscored by American doubts about the effectiveness of the European desire to persuade the Tehran government to drop its suspected nuclear weapons program by offering economic and political incentives.

Nor was there mention of the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, both of which Europeans support and the Bush administration opposes, or American opposition to Europe's plan to lift a ban on military exports to China.

The idea, aides said, was not to dwell on whether Europe and America loved each other or whether they were culturally from different planets, but to issue a kind of call to arms.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a time of unprecedented opportunity for our trans-Atlantic partnership," Ms. Rice said. "If we make the pursuit of global freedom our overarching organizing principle for the century, we will achieve historic global advances for justice and prosperity, for liberty and for peace."

"A global agenda requires a global partnership," she added. "So let us multiply our common effort."

In another way, the speech offered as much insight into Ms. Rice's role within the Bush administration as her vision of the American relationship to Europe. An unspoken but unmistakable figure in the shadows of her presentation was Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who in 2003 spoke of an "old Europe" that was critical of American objectives in Iraq and a "new Europe" that was supportive.

In Europe that comment was widely viewed as an attempt to divide the continent for American gain, undercutting what some French diplomats were saying would be an effort to make Europe a "counterweight" against the United States.

In fact, administration officials note, there is a debate among conservatives in the United States and within the Bush administration over whether a united Europe - the European Union now has 25 members and an economy that competes with the United States - is good for American interests. American officials said Ms. Rice was coming down on the side that says European unity is beneficial to Americans.

"The United States, above all, welcomes the growing unity of Europe," Ms. Rice declared. "America has everything to gain from having a stronger Europe as a partner in building a safer and better world."

Elaine Sciolino contributing reporting for this article.

----

Bush to Seek 50% Increase in Military Aid to Poland

By BRIAN KNOWLTON, February 9, 2005
International Herald Tribune

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/politics/09cnd-prexy.html?ei=5070&en=cd3d1ee775fdc201&ex=1108616400&pagewanted=print&position=

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - President Bush said today that he would seek a 50 percent increase in American military assistance to Poland, a staunch ally in Iraq but one engaged in debate over withdrawing its entire force from that country.

Neither Mr. Bush nor the visiting Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, publicly addressed that debate during a brief session with reporters at the White House.

Mr. Bush said he and Mr. Kwasniewski would discuss their "mutual desire to train Iraqis." Training has become a principal objective of American-led forces, crucial to hopes for their eventual withdrawal.

The 2,400 Polish soldiers in Iraq comprise the fourth-largest coalition force, and about 800 are set to leave this month. Poland leads a multinational division of about 6,000 troops in the country's south-central region.

But amid the unrelenting violence in Iraq where 16 Polish soldiers and 4 Polish nationals have died, debate continues on whether Poland should follow its partial withdrawal by pulling out its remaining troops, perhaps by year's end.

Warsaw, under political and economic pressure, had sought an increase in American military aid, and a Polish reporter asked about that. "The president and I talked about that," Mr. Bush said. He said he would ask Congress to increase Polish military aid to $100 million from the current $65 million.

"Poland's been a fantastic ally," Mr. Bush said, "because the people of Poland love freedom."

The president also thanked Mr. Kwasniewski for his help in nudging leaders in neighboring Ukraine toward a peaceful solution of the tense electoral standoff last year. And he suggested that Washington and Warsaw were on track to resolving a visa dispute - Americans need no visas for Poland, while the United States requires them of Poles - that has caused friction.

But Iraq has loomed over other issues.Warsaw has been regarded as a particularly important and reliable partner in the Iraq coalition.While a number of countries with relatively small forces in Iraq have withdrawn including Hungary, the Philippines and Honduras, a full Polish withdrawal would be much harder to replace, akin to the departure of the sizable Spanish force last year. Ukraine, now the fifth-largest contingent in Iraq and part of the multinational division led by Poland, announced last month that it was withdrawing its 1,600 troops.

American officials have been working to shore up Polish resolve. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stopped in Warsaw on Saturday to thank Poland for its "extraordinary" contributions in Iraq and praise it as "one of our strongest trans-Atlantic partners." '

But in Poland, surveys show that 7 in 10 people oppose involvement in the Iraq war.

In addition to the loss of 20 Polish lives, the war has left Poles in an uncomfortable spot in Europe.

This was particularly true after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that war critics like France and Germany were part of an "old Europe" of declining relevance, while supporters like Poland were part of a more dynamic "new Europe." During Ms. Rice's visit, the Polish foreign minister, Adam Rotfeld, pointedly rejected that distinction as "a misunderstanding, because there is only one Europe."

Ordinary Poles, not unlike the British, have complained that their sacrifices in Iraq had not been rewarded, as they expected, by American reconstruction contracts.

But Polish officials have welcomed the Jan. 30 election in Iraq. Mr. Rotfeld said that it opened new possibilities for trans-Atlantic cooperation.



-------- mideast

Noam Chomsky: U.S. Might Face "Ultimate Nightmare" in Middle East Where Shiites Control Most of World's Oil

Wednesday, February 9th, 2005 Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/09/1458256

One of the country's leading dissidents, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, gives a major new address on the Iraq war, the re-election of President Bush and imperialism. On Iraq's elections, Chomsky predicts what a Shiite-controlled Iraq may look like: "The first thing they'll do is reestablish relations with Iran...The next thing that might happen is that a Shiite-controlled, more or less democratic Iraq might stir up feelings in the Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia, which happen to be right nearby and which happen to be where all the oil is. So you might find what in Washington must be the ultimate nightmare-a Shiite region which controls most of the world's oil and is independent." [includes rush transcript] In her first major foreign policy address as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice called for a new chapter in transatlantic relations to repair a growing rift with Europe over the Iraq war. Rice deliberatedly chose to deliver the address in France, one of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq invasion Speaking at the renowned Paris university Science Politique, Rice continued President Bush's inaugural and State of the Union themes of spreading freedom and democracy around the world.

* Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaking at the Sciences Politiques University

Two weeks earlier, another leading figure in American politics gave his first major speech of President Bush's second term: and that is Noam Chomsky. A professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky is the author of "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance", "9-11", "Power and Terror" and dozens of other books. He is regarded as one of the leading dissidents and scholars in the United States. On January 26th, he spoke at a forum sponsored by the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The forum was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center, of which Chomsky is a board member. Today we spend the hour hearing his address. He spoke about imperialism, the elections in Iraq and much more. This is Noam Chomsky.

* MIT professor Noam Chomsky speaking in Santa Fe, New Mexico on January 26.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking at the renowned Paris University Science Politique, Rice continued President Bush's inaugural and State of the Union themes of what he called spreading freedom and democracy around the world.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: America and Europe have stood firm in the belief that the fundamental character of regimes cannot be separated from their external behavior. Borders between countries cannot be peaceful if tyrants destroy the peace of their societies from within. State where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign invariably pose threats to their neighbors, threats to their regions, and potential threats to the entire international community. Our work together has only begun. In our time, we have an historic opportunity to shape a global balance of power that favors freedom, and that will therefore deepen and extend the peace. And I use the word power broadly. Because even more important than military and indeed economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope. I am here in Europe so that we can talk about how America and Europe can use the power of our partnership to advance our ideals worldwide.

AMY GOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice delivering her first major address as Secretary of State in Paris on Tuesday. Two weeks earlier, another leading figure in American politics gave his first major speech of President Bush's second term: Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is the author of Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, also wrote the best seller, 9/11: Power and Terror, and dozens of other books, regarded as one of the leading dissidents and scholars in the United States. On January 26, Chomsky spoke at a forum sponsored by the Lannan Foundation in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The forum was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center. Today we spend the hour hearing his address. Chomsky spoke about imperialism, elections in Iraq, and much more. This is Professor Noam Chomsky.

NOAM CHOMSKY: My last visit to New Mexico was five years ago for the -- to join in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of IRC. I'm very pleased to be able to participate in the 25th anniversary celebration. Since that time, as you know, the name has changed, the scope has broadened, but the mission remains. The central component, as they put it, is to make the United States a more responsible global partner, and to engage citizens in that endeavor. Well, that task was urgent enough five years ago. Even at that time there were warnings from right at the heart of the establishment that -- I’m quoting – “much of the world regards the United States as a rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence.” That happens to be Samuel Huntington, Harvard Professor, at -- in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. And he was not alone. Shortly after the president of the American Political Science Association repeated the same message in very similar words. That was five years ago. Since then, the situation has become far worse. It's now not much of the world that regards the US as a rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence, but most of the world, almost all of it, in fact. George Bush has -- his administration has succeeded in a few years in making the United States the most feared and often hated country in the world.

Well, one reason for this, obviously, is the invasion of Iraq, which against extraordinary international opposition -- in fact, I cannot think of a historical parallel to that. That incidentally includes the so-called “Coalition of the Willing.” So, at the summit meeting announcing war, declaring the war, virtually, George Bush and his -- I'll say, politely -- associate Tony Blair, were joined by Prime Minister Aznar of Spain to announce that the war was going to start in a couple of days. At that point, Aznar had support of 2% of the population of Spain for joining in the US-British war. And he was therefore hailed as a great leader of what was called the New Europe, the grand hope for democracy. In fact, the performance about New Europe and Old Europe was a very enlightening one. There was very sharp cri-- you remember it, of course. New Europe, were the good guys, the hope of the future, the leaders of the democratic crusade and so on; Old Europe were the bad guys, stuck in their old ways, don't have democratic credentials. The criterion to distinguish them was extremely sharp. Old Europe, bad guys, were the country as where the governments took the same position as the large majority of their population. New Europe were the countries like Spain where the government overruled even larger majorities of their population -- huge ones in the case of Spain and Italy -- and followed orders from Crawford, Texas. So, they were -- therefore, they understood the nature of democracy. Perhaps the most extraordinary case was Turkey, which to everyone's surprise -- mine, too -- the government actually followed the -- took the same position as 95% of the population, and rejected Washington's orders. And they were bitterly condemned by the US leadership, by intellectuals. Paul Wolfowitz, who is identified by the Washington Post as the -- what they called the “idealist-in-chief,” leading the democracy crusade -- he went so far as to berate the Turkish military because they didn't force the government to overrule 95% of the population, and take their marching orders from the boss. And he ordered them to apologize to the United States for this and to make it clear that their task is to help America. Well, that performance was doubly interesting, first because it took place, and second, because nobody seemed to notice it and what it meant. What it means about the elite conceptions of democracy shouldn't require any comment. What it means is democracy is fine as long as you do what we say. We, of course, doesn't mean you and me or the people of the United States, it means the political and economic leadership. And that conception is so deeply ingrained that even in an incredible case like this, it literally can't be noticed.

Well, one reason for the deterioration in the position of the United States in the eyes of the world is, of course, the invasion of Iraq. For most of the world, that was the supreme international crime encompassing all of the evil that follows -- the wording of the Nuremburg Judgment, trying the Nazi criminals, including people like the Nazi Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, who was accused and hanged in fact for such crimes as preparing the diplomatic background for Hitler's preemptive strike against Norway, which I'll leave the consequences of the conclusion from that to you. The evil that followed was -- only increased the fear and the hatred. That's, first of all, the fate of Iraqis, as Tariq [Ali] mentioned. The most probable estimate of deaths done on a careful study several months ago was about 100,000 mostly violent deaths since the US invasion. The number of children suffering from acute malnutrition has doubled. It's now at the level of Burundi, lower than Haiti and Uganda. These matters were barely reported in the United States, and insofar as they were even mentioned, quickly dismissed. In England there was enough other response so that the British Government had to release a pathetic and embarrassing answer. Here, not even that. That's a rather important fact that has to be borne in mind for people here who care about their country.

Following -- that's just the beginning of it. What followed were really serious outright war crimes. We have just seen one in the last few months: the invasion of Fallujah. In this case, the crimes were not concealed, which may be worse than passing them over in silence. They were openly reported, and then, in fact, proudly reported. You could see on the front page of the New York Times a big picture of the first victory in the conquest of Fallujah. The first target was the Fallujah General Hospital, and the Times featured a big picture on the front page of a soldier standing guard over people lying on the floor in hospital gowns with their hands tied behind their backs. The story explained that the American forces that went in forced patients from their beds, forced them to lie on the floor, and manacled them with their hands behind their backs. The story went on to say that this had had to be done because the Fallujah General Hospital was serving as a propaganda weapon for the insurgents by releasing casualty figures. The Times added, of course, these are inflated casualty figures. They knew they were inflated because our dear leader had announced that, which is apparently enough.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, speaking at the Lensic Theater in Sante Fe, New Mexico. We'll come back to this speech in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky, speaking in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The foundation of contemporary modern post-second World War humanitarian law, in fact, part of the supreme law of the land of the United States is the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions explicitly and unambiguously state that any medical facility must be protected by any combatants in any conflict. Anything other than that is a major war crime, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Under current U.S. law, the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by a Republican congress, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions carry a sentence of possible death penalty. Maybe our coming Attorney General had that kind of a thing in mind a couple of years ago when he was legal counsel to President Bush, and advised him in that capacity that he should rescind the -- effectively rescind -- the Geneva Conventions to reduce the likelihood of prosecution. Well, again, you can draw the conclusions yourselves. All of this was passed over very lightly here, mostly without comment, but not elsewhere.

The evil that followed the invasion and is encompassed in the supreme international crime didn't only include Iraq, there are consequences for the rest of the world, too, including Americans. One of the consequences is an increase in terrorism, the kind of terrorism that passes through our doctrinal filters, namely terrorism by others against us. The other kind is not recognized. But that category of terrorism, as anticipated, increased. Before the invasion, there were warnings from specialists, people knowledgeable about the area; Tariq was one of the early ones. In fact, even the U.S. and British intelligence agencies, that the invasion of Iraq would be likely to increase the threat of terrorism. And in fact, those warnings were realized. It did increase the threat. The national intelligence estimate in the United States that was presented to George Bush a month before the invasion, released recently, warned that the invasion would very likely increase the threat of terrorism. Just a few weeks ago, the National Intelligence Council, the coordinating body of intelligence agencies, released its projections for the next 15 years, and one of them is that Iraq will now become a training -- is becoming and will continue to be -- a training ground for Jihadi terrorists, Islamic terrorists, much in the way that Afghanistan was in the past.

They didn't go on to say when Afghanistan was a training ground for terrorists, so let's add that. It was in the primarily -- at first in the 1980s, when the CIA and its associates, pretty much the present administration or their mentors, organized radical Islamist terrorists from around the world for their own state purposes, created the foundation of what is now called al Qaeda, and other related organizations, and then again, Afghanistan became a major training ground for terrorists after Clinton bombed the Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. That led to warmer, closer relations between Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, previously cool, and turned Afghanistan into a training ground for terrorists again. Now Iraq is taking its place. Well, these are -- this carries consequences for everyone, and very threatening ones. Sooner or later, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are going to be united, and the consequences could be pretty awful.

There are other sources of global concern and fear and anger with regard to the United States, which were evident even before the Iraq invasion. Primarily, the stance of brazen intent for the entire framework of international order that has been laboriously constructed since World War II, and is simply dismissed with contempt by the administration. Just to take one of many examples related to terror, the National Intelligence Council report that I just mentioned predicts that one of the major threats to the United States will be biological weapons. Now, that threat can be reduced, and we know how to reduce it. There is a bioweapons treaty, but it has no enforcement mechanisms. There have been negotiations going on for several years to add enforcement measures to the bioweapons treaty, which would certainly have the effect of monitoring, controlling and reducing the threat of biological terror that the National Intelligence Council warned against. However, that's not going to happen. In September of 2002, right after the Bush administration released its national security strategy, which sent plenty of shivers around the world, a couple of days later, its point man, John Bolton, informed Europe that there would be no further negotiations to introduce enforcement measures into the bioweapons treaty. The reasons that were given was that inspection -- of course, that would involve inspection -- and inspection might harm the interests of U.S. pharmaceutical corporations. There are also suspicions that Washington wants to conceal illegal bioweapons research and development that it’s carrying out. Therefore, the National Intelligence Council is quite right to warn of the increasing threat of biological warfare terror here. However, there are much worse threats than biological weapons. Far worse. Nuclear weapons and militarization of space are surely the most serious threats. All of this is of particular significance in New Mexico, because New Mexico is, as I’m sure you know, one of the major centers in enhancing these threats to survival, and in this case, we are literally talking about survival of the species.

Well, these threats are leading to much more dire warnings than those that I quoted, again, from the heart of the establishment. So, last summer, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which is very sober and respectable and not given to hyperbole, ran an article by two prominent strategic analysts, John Steinbrenner and Nancy Gallagher, in which they pointed out, these are mostly quotes, that the military programs and aggressive stance of the administration, carry in their words, “appreciable risk of ultimate doom,” and they go on to say that you have to look very hard -- in fact, I can't think of a case where such words have ever been pronounced in establishment -- respectable establishment circles. They go on to say that, "If the United States is to remain a democracy worthy of the name, the political system will have to acknowledge that the United States is now the dominant threat to everyone else." Their words. The “super outlaw state.” They go on to explain that the terrifying technology that is being developed in Donald Rumsfeld's transformation of the military will “assuredly defuse to the rest of the world. There will be a competition in intimidation and action/reaction cycle creating rising dangers, potentially unmanageable ones, for Americans as well,” and, in fact, that's already been happening. Russia, a year ago had its first military -- serious military exercises in 20 years. They deployed new offensive weapons, more sophisticated missiles, nuclear arms aimed at the United States. U.S. military analysts estimate that Russia may have tripled its military expenditures since the Bush administration came in with its militaristic stance. They have officially adopted the Bush administration's so-called preemptive war strategy, meaning asserting the right of a first strike, even the first nuclear strike, without pretext of defense. Washington's aggressive stance is compelling the Russians, who are much weaker, of course, to transfer missiles thousands of miles from one part of their territory to another repeatedly. This is over very lightly defended areas.

Nuclear arm missiles are a very tempting target for terrorists. Their offensive nuclear system has been placed on hair-trigger alert computer controlled firing. We know about how the U.S. systems work. Lots known about that. Our systems are also computer controlled, and there are regular occurrences, frequent occurrences of the computer systems giving a warning that a missile -- that the U.S. is under attack, and must respond. The rules are that when such a warning comes, and it is very frequent, there are three minutes for human intervention to determine whether it's an authentic attack, and then there's a time for presidential authorization, 30 seconds. That's the way our systems work. The Russian systems are far worse, furthermore deteriorating. The threat is being very consciously enhanced, and it's a very serious one. Senator -- former Senator Sam Nunn, one of the leading figures in arms control, wrote a couple of weeks ago that it is madness for human survival to depend on the hope that regular computer errors will be caught in time. The threat is severe, and he says, may well be increasing.

Well, we know that there have been very close calls in the past. The most dangerous was discovered in October 2002 on the 40th anniversary of the missile crisis. There was a conference in Havana of high-level participants, those who were still a life in the original missile crisis from the United States, Cuba and Russia, and they had already known that the missile crisis, was as Arthur Schlesinger put it, Kennedy advisor, was the most dangerous moment in history, but they're shocked at what was learned at this 40th anniversary meeting. It turned out that the world was literally one word away from nuclear war. The details if you like. Two of the leading scholars of the missile crisis who helped organize that meeting, James Blight and Phil Brenner, commented that it is miraculous that the world escaped nuclear war on that occasion. It had unusual contemporary relevance in another respect. The missile crisis was in large part a consequence of a major international terrorist campaign. John F. Kennedy's Operation Mongoose, the goal of which was to bring the terrors of the earth to Cuba. Those are the -- that's again Arthur Schlesinger’s words in his biography of Robert Kennedy describing Robert Kennedy’s goal. He was in charge of these operations, which he made the highest priority for U.S. intelligence agencies. That led pretty directly to the missile crisis and to the miraculous escape. Well, this was the most important news in many years. It was barely reported, literally, and all ignored. Few people even know about it, which raises further questions about the viability of American democracy, and reasons why the world should be frightened. We should be, too.

Without saying so explicitly, the two strategic analysts I mixed, Steinbrenner and Gallagher, express a very deep despair about American democracy. After outlining the policies that they say carry an “appreciable risk of ultimate doom,” they express hope that the policies will be changed, but not from within the United States. Apparently, they don't consider that an option. They hope that the policies that -- that there will be a coalition of peace-loving states which will counter American militarism and aggressiveness, which they hope will be led by China. We have come to a pretty pass when leading analysts in the most respectable journals hope that China can save us from the collapse of American democracy. What that implies about ourselves is pretty shocking.

Why did they pick China? Well, they explain, first reason is that China has been in the forefront of international efforts at the United Nations to preserve space for peaceful purposes. That has been blocked unilaterally by Washington, actually since the Clinton years. Not reported, incidentally, though of extreme importance. It became much worse since Bush took over. Right after the national security strategy was announced, which essentially declared the U.S. intention to dominate the world by force and prevent any threat to that dominance, right after that, part of the implementation of it was a program announced by the Air Force space command shifting policy from Clinton’s to a new policy. Clinton's policy was control of space for military purposes. The new announced policy was ownership of space for military purposes. Meaning, as they said, the possibility of instant engagement anywhere, with highly lethal offensive weapons, which can strike anywhere on earth without warning. The whole world is under surveillance by sophisticated satellite and other systems. Sophisticated enough that they can tell if a truck is crossing a street in Damascus or any other place that you pick. So, the world is at constant risk of instant destruction. That's ownership of space, and that's a natural spelling out of the national security strategy. This also was, as far as I know, not reported at all. Certainly not much. The -- a lot of this is called “missile defense,” but as everyone knows on every side, missile defense is not a defensive system, it's a first strike weapon. That's understood by U.S. analysts, understood by the Chinese, and other potential targets. And we know how the U.S. reacted when Russia installed a very small missile defense system around Moscow back in 1968. The U.S. classified immediately reacted by sharply increasing the offensive nuclear military force so as to overwhelm it and destroy all radar positions and there's very little doubt that potential targets will react to our so-called missile defense system in the same way. It's apparently being deployed in early stages right now. There's a lot of debate and discussion about the so-called missile defense. A lot of criticism on grounds that it hasn't been tried, and probably won't work and so on. That may be true or may not be true, but it's kind of missing the point. The system is far more dangerous if there's some appearance that it might work, that is going -- that's what's going to impel potential targets to do exactly what the United States did in the case of a much more primitive and insignificant missile defense system in 1968. Namely, to expand their offensive military capacities to overwhelm it.

AMY GOODMAN: M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky speaking in Santa Fe, New Mexico several weeks ago. We'll come back to the speech in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to the conclusion of the speech of M.I.T. professor, Noam Chomsky, author of Hegemony or Survival, speaking in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the election of last November strongly reinforced that feeling in much of the world. It also led to a good deal of despair and sometimes hopelessness among Americans, at least those who are concerned about the fate of their country and the world, and the concerns are very real. They include the likelihood of terminal war, terminal nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, the enhanced threat of terror, plenty of domestic concerns, the very dedicated effort to dismantle the achievements of the past popular struggle in the past century, and now being systematically dismantled in an exercise of fraud that is truly awesome. The con game about Social Security is a pretty striking, stunning even, example of sheer audacity and contempt for the population, and faith in the enormous power of public relations as an instrument of deceit. Run through the details. I assume you know them. But it is pretty stunning, well, that faith in public relations as an instrument of deceit may well be warranted. After a few weeks of intense propaganda, a fair -- a large part of the population, particularly young people, have come to believe that the Social Security system is in fact in crisis, which is too ridiculous to discuss.

The war in Iraq was sold in the same way. In September, 2002, and that is a month that will go down in history, if history continues. In that month, there was a huge propaganda campaign, initiated by our next Secretary of State, who warned that the next thing we'll hear from Saddam Hussein is a mushroom cloud over New York. Within a couple of weeks of government media propaganda, the American population was simply driven entirely off the spectrum of world opinion, fearing Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, ties to al Qaeda, probable involvement in 9/11, and so on. Saddam Hussein was hated almost everywhere, certainly in the countries that he had invaded, Kuwait and Iran, but he was feared only in the United States, not in those countries. And that, incidentally, remains true. Some striking recent statistics on that; right now, it turns out that about 75% of the American population think that the United States should not have gone to war if Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. Well, the belief, nevertheless, roughly 50% think the U.S. should have gone to war. Even after the government's own report, the Kay and Dulfer report, have completely exploded those charges. There's actually no contradiction there. People still believe it. Despite the refutation, roughly half the population still believes that, yes, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or programs to develop them, and ties to al Qaeda terrorism. And it's not surprising that they do.

If you read the report of yesterday's committee hearings on the Rice nomination, the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, gave a statement justifying the war, and he said, “Outlaw regimes must be confronted, nuclear weapons proliferation must be stopped, terrorist organizations must be destroyed. Therefore, we were right to invade Iraq.” Didn't matter that we had known beyond dispute they were not involved in nuclear weapons proliferation and that they had no ties to terror, though now they're a terrorist haven. As for confronting outlaw regimes, a few thoughts come to mind, but I'll leave it there.

The faith in the power of deceit is shared in the places that matter, in policymaking centers, in particular, in the business world. We all know that corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year in advertising, which is not an effort to inform but it's an effort to deceive, as we all know. If you want to find out the characteristics of, say, the cars that Ford is going to produce next year, or of drugs or other commodities, you don't turn on the television set to see ads. The goal of the ads, hundreds of billions of dollars, is to project imagery, first of all, to create artificial wants, and secondly, to delude you into satisfying those created wants with one commodity rather than another more or less identical one. The commitment to deceive is pursued with real fanaticism. That's demonstrated not only by the scale, literally hundreds of billions a year, but also in other ways.

So, recently, though it wasn't reported here, there were negotiations with Australia to establish what's called a free trade agreement. Nothing to do with free trade and certainly not an agreement, but that’s what those things are called. But the negotiations were held up for some time because the United States was objecting to Australia's highly efficient health care system, maybe the most efficient in the world. The prices of drugs are a fraction of what they are in the United States. Very same drug produced by the same corporation, which makes a ton of money in Australia, but makes maybe ten times that much for the same drug here. Why was the U.S. objecting to the Australian system? Well, because the Australian system is evidence-based. It's the phrase that was used. That means if a pharmaceutical corporation wants to advertise, you know, by showing sports heroes saying, you know, ask your doctor if this drug is good for you, it's good for me, or something like that, often not even telling you what it is, they're not allowed to do that. They have to provide evidence that the drug actually does something, that it is better than some cheaper thing that's already on the market. That evidence-based approach, the U.S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. That's crucial. Australia sort of backed off on that, but the claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy.

For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him to, you know, throw a cow over his shoulder or whatever you’re supposed to do on a ranch, but, all of this is careful training. Ordinary guy. Meanwhile, Kerry is trained to be a goose hunter and a motorcycle rider and so on and so forth. The other imagery seemed to work marginally better, but the important thing to do is to keep people from knowing the stands and positions of the candidates on any issue or the parties. And it sort of works. Take a look at the last election. Right before the election people were asked -- potential voters were asked, on what -- what are the grounds for your vote going to be? About 10% said they were voting on the basis of the candidate's stands on issues, agendas, policies and ideas. 6% for Bush voters, 13% for Kerry voters. The rest are voting for what are called qualities or values in the P.R. industry, which is, of course, all meaningless.

Let's go back to Spain for a minute. In March, 2003, Spain was very highly lauded for leading the marvelous new Europe because Aznar took his orders from Crawford, Texas, with the support of 2% of the population. In March, 2004, an election came along, and Aznar was voted out. Spain was bitterly denounced for appeasing terrorism. What was the position of the new government? Well, the position of the new government was that Spain should not have troops in Iraq, unless they're under U.N. authorization, which happens to be the position of about 75% of Americans at the same time. But there's a difference between Spain and the United States. In Spain, people know what public opinion is. In the United States, it takes an individual research project to determine what it is, because it wasn't reported. Furthermore, in Spain, they could vote on it, not in the United States. Neither political party would touch such an opinion and that's why Spain was denounced, because voters took the same position as the large majority of the American public. Well, that tells us something, too. I couldn't find any comment on that.

Well, there seems to be something paradoxical about all of this. The facts of the matter of which this sort of example seem to conflict with the grand contemporary theme, namely, that the mission of the United States is what's called democracy promotion. In particular, what the liberal press calls the president's messianic vision, to bring democracy to Iraq. That's a vision that suddenly surfaced as the cause, the reason for the war, after all of the other pretexts for the invasion have disappeared, but people were polite enough, commentators polite enough not to notice that, and in fact there was near unanimous awe for the president's messianic vision. Critics said, well, maybe it's noble and inspiring, but maybe we can't carry it off, because of their cultural failings and so on and so forth. Actually, there was one sector of opinion, I should say, that didn't agree with this, the only one I could find, namely, Iraqis. At about the same time that the president announced his messianic vision with enormous awe and acclaim, I couldn't find a word here questioning that this was the reason for the invasion after it was announced. Right at the same time -- this was last November a year ago, the Washington Post did report a poll taken in Baghdad where people were asked what they thought the reason for the U.S. invasion was, and some agreed with 100% of articulate opinion here, that it was to bring democracy to Iraq. 1%, 5% thought that the goal was to help Iraqis. The rest said the unspeakable here that the goal was to take control of Iraq’s resources and reorganize the region in U.S. interests, the large majority.

Iraqis did agree with American commentators in seeing a cultural problem, but they didn't see it in Iraq. They saw it here. It’s a cultural problem here where people are willing to believe the word of their dear leader without any other evidence. That is a problem. They're right about that. Actually, Iraqi opinions were somewhat more nuanced. The same poll showed that although 1% thought that the goal of the invasion was to bring democracy, about half said the United States wants democracy in Iraq, but the U.S. will make sure that it will influence and determine its course. And that's correct. That's what democracy means. Democracy means you can have elections; you can do anything that you would like, but you better do what we say. Iraqis apparently understand that. And we choose not to, and the word choose has to be emphasized because there's plenty of evidence.

AMY GOODMAN: M.I.T. professor, Noam Chomsky speaking at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at an event sponsored by the Lannan Foundation. 


-------- nato

After NATO Talks, Rice Is Optimistic on Iraq Help

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
and ERIC SCHMITT
February 9, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/international/europe/09cnd-rice.html?pagewanted=print&position=

BRUSSELS, Feb. 9 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that after meeting with NATO foreign ministers she was increasingly confident that all 26 countries in the alliance would make a commitment to help with some form of training for Iraqi security forces by the time President Bush visits Europe this month.

She spoke after another day of lobbying European envoys - this time at NATO and the European Union - to drop their differences with the United States over Iraq, Iran and many other issues and to work together to secure peace in the Middle East, promote democracy there and rebuild Iraq.

But the focus at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters here was, for the first time in Ms. Rice's weeklong trip to Europe, the problem of violence in Iraq.

Her attention to that subject coincided with meetings held today in Nice, France, between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and some European counterparts ahead of a NATO defense ministers meeting on Thursday.

"I think there was a kind of coming together," Ms. Rice said at a news conference at NATO headquarters, referring to the discussions on Iraq. "I can say with gratitude to colleagues around the table that there were a number of countries that immediately agreed to contribute and a number of others that said they intended to contribute."

The NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, also said he felt after the meeting of foreign ministers that there was now a general commitment to reach the goal of all 26 countries participating.

But he said some countries would train Iraqis outside their country and some would supply financing and equipment for training instead of training forces themselves.

In Nice, Mr. Rumsfeld said he, Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush, with their visits to Europe, would seek to capitalize on the success of the Iraqi elections to garner more allied support for the training mission.

"I think we'll find that countries recognize that Iraq is on a path where they have a very good crack at making it successfully toward a peaceful, representative system," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"Since the elections, it is correct to say that some countries have in various ways indicated their desire to be supportive in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said.

Ms. Rice said in Brussels that her conversations on Iraq had been "the best discussion of Iraq that we have had as an alliance since the Saddam Hussein regime fell and in fact, before that, because it was clearly a unified alliance, unified because we know what the work is to be done ahead."

European and American officials said that the step forward on training troops for Iraq - however small it was and however concerned they were about implementing it - had been aided because of the elections in Iraq last month and the cease-fire announced Tuesday between Israel and the Palestinians.

A Bush administration official said that of the 26 NATO members, about 20 were making some effort to help with training. He would not identify which ones were holding out.

"May I say that I think, over lunch, we have made good progress for the mission, both in terms of personnel and of money," Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said, referring to the goal of 26 countries.

He added that the NATO meeting "was not a pledging conference as such," but that he could report positive results from it.

The two countries most conspicuous in refusing to send forces to train in Iraq are France and Germany, but Germany has said it would train 1,500 Iraqis in the United Arab Emirates and France has said that it would train 1,500 security and police forces, possibly in Qatar.

The reluctance of these two countries to train in Iraq has irritated the Bush administration, and defense officials have said that training in that country would be their strong preference.

The Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has also gone through Europe asking for help in training his forces in Iraq, but he has met with the same problem the United States had in enlisting support for the war two years ago: the strong objections of France, Germany and others to sending any of their own forces into Iraq.

Ms. Rice finished her seventh day of travel in Europe and the Middle East by flying to Luxembourg. Her meetings in Brussels also touched on other issues that remain a matter of dispute between the United States and Europe, even after the new secretary of state's strenuous efforts to proclaim that on goals and ideals there was no trans-Atlantic rift.

On Iran, Ms. Rice suggested that the Europeans who have been negotiating with Tehran may not have conveyed a strong enough message to government leaders that they needed to dismantle their suspected nuclear weapons program or risk having their noncompliance referred to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.

Several European countries have sought to convince Iran through diplomacy to halt its uranium enrichment activities in exchange for potential rewards.

"The Iranians need to hear that if they are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving them, if they are unwilling to live with the verification measures, to sign the additional protocol to allow the I.A.E.A. in completely, then the Security Council referral looms," Ms. Rice said, referring to the United Nations watchdog agency on nuclear affairs.

"I don't know that anyone has said that as clearly as they should to the Iranians."

In Washington, Bush also addressed the issue in a meeting with President Aleksandr Kwasniewski of Poland.

"The Iranians just need to know the free world is working together to send a very clear message: Don't develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destablizing force in the world."

He said he was "very pleased" with the response European leaders have given Ms. Rice.

"We're going to speak with one voice and we will continue to do so," Mr. Bush said.

In Nice, Mr. Rumsfeld met this afternoon with the defense ministers of Romania and Spain, as well as Mr. de Hoop Scheffer.

After his session with Mr. Rumsfeld, the Spanish minister, José Bono, said that as part of humanitarian assistance, his government would send demining experts to Iraq to help train military forces.

He said his government had also offered to train Iraqi police officers, judges and other public officials in Spain.

An American defense official said the Romanian minister, Teodor Atanasiu, had indicated support for sending military trainers to Iraq as part of the NATO mission, but had yet to make a firm commitment.

In recent weeks, Bush administration officials have expressed exasperation with NATO and its members for not pledging trainers, equipment and other expertise to the Iraqi training mission faster.

Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington that "the numbers are not where we'd like them in terms of NATO contribution."

Of the 159 training positions that NATO has agreed to fill in Iraq, 50 of the jobs to be filled by non-Americans are still empty, a defense official said.

Steven R. Weisman reported from Brussels for this article and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Nice, France.



-------- spies

Russia Still Fields Cold War Army of Spies

By Anatoly Medetsky
Moscow Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005. Page 1.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/02/09/003.html

In the five years since former KGB spy Vladimir Putin assumed power, the number of Russian spies has swelled to meet or exceed Cold War levels in the United States and Germany, according to Western media reports and a former KGB agent in London.

Former KGB spies living in Russia, however, scoffed at the notion of increased spy activity, saying Putin has no reason to jeopardize relations with two of Russia's closest allies. They suggested that the spy claims may be part of a disinformation drive to spoil ties with Russia or divert more funds to Western intelligence....


-------- us

Anti-war soldier finds his sincerity under scrutiny

Wed, Feb. 09, 2005
Associated Press

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/10856225.htm

FORT STEWART, Ga. - A soldier who refused to deploy for a second tour in Iraq faced tough questions about his quest for conscientious objector status - from the timing of his application to whether he enjoys hunting.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, was questioned Tuesday by an investigating officer who will recommend to Fort Stewart commanders how they should proceed with the Army veteran's objector application.

Benderman began seeking objector status in late December, days before his 3rd Infantry Division deployed to Iraq for a second time. Benderman, a Bradley armored vehicle mechanic, refused to go with them.

"I don't make rash decisions," Benderman told the investigating officer, Capt. Victor Aqueche, when questioned about the timing of his application. He returned from his first Iraq tour in September 2003.

"You think about the mass graves," Benderman said. "You think about soldiers you were with and how it dehumanized them, how the soldiers did things they never would have done."

The Army has charged Benderman with desertion for refusing to return to Iraq, and Fort Stewart commanders must soon decide whether to court-martial him. His conscientious objector application is being handled separately.

The military defines a conscientious objector as someone who holds a deep moral or religious opposition to war in all forms. Investigators put applicants through rigorous interviews to try to help gauge their sincerity.

Aqueche asked Benderman whether he kept any guns at home. Benderman said he bought a Winchester hunting rifle in 1999, but hadn't been hunting since 1992.

"You say you're morally opposed to violence. That's a quote you use, and you cannot bear arms," Aqueche said, referring to Benderman's application. "I'm just trying to get the facts."

Benderman replied, "Hunting is exclusive from killing in a war."

"But it's killing," Aqueche said.
Information from: Savannah Morning News, http://www.savannahnow.com

----

Binding military duties

February 09, 2005
Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050208-083631-5611r.htm

In times of war, the Pentagon can keep servicemen on duty as it deems necessary, in accordance with enlistment contracts and limits imposed by the law. That's what the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia affirmed on Monday when it ruled in an opinion by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth against eight plaintiffs challenging the Pentagon's so-called stop-loss policy. From the outset, the suit was largely symbolic.

    Spc. David Qualls, an Arkansas Guardsman currently in Iraq and the only plaintiff to reveal his name, never showed the court the enlistment contract he said failed to notify him of possible extensions. He instead gave a photocopied version which, the court concluded, simply omitted the pages on which applicable U.S. law was disclosed. 

The court examined the standard contract and found the relevant passages: "a member of a Reserve Component of an Armed Force at the beginning of a period of war or national emergency declared by Congress, or if [he] become a member during that period, [his] military service may be extended without [his] consent until six (6) months after the end of that period of war."

    Since a state of national emergency has existed throughout Spc. Qualls's enlistment, the court reasoned, the contract "indeed put Qualls on notice that the Army might involuntarily extend his term of service." It then affirmed a key Army position: "Nowhere in the enlistment contract does the Army forfeit its right to involuntarily extend enlistees pursuant to United States laws."

    So the court upheld the Army's right to bind servicemen to extended duty if war should require it. That opinion makes prudential sense: If stop-loss had been found inapplicable in Spc. Qualls's clear-cut case, then the Army's contracts with many other servicemen would also be undermined. That would "present the possibility of substantial disruption and diversion of military resources," the court found.

    The court weighed the interests of the servicemen and the interests of the public. In one particularly moving passage, it said that Spc. Qualls, "like other military personnel in Iraq, puts his life on the line every day and faces a great risk of harm and death as a result of his continuing service."

    Military life is unpredictable, and more so during times of war. The stop-loss policy is yet another reminder of that fact.


-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

9/11 essay feeds furor on campus, beyond

By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA TODAY 2/9/2005 7:48 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-08-prof_x.htm

BOULDER, Colo. — A University of Colorado professor at the center of a national controversy over free speech and a person's right to criticize the United States stepped forward to defend himself Tuesday night as college administrators consider firing him.

The source of all the fury: an essay that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill wrote in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, Churchill rationalized the attacks and likened World Trade Center victims to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Churchill's essay was little noticed until about a week before he was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in Upstate New York about the "limits of dissent." And then, like the horrific terrorist strike that prompted his words, all hell broke loose, all over again.

The essay has stirred debate about whether it's taboo in American discourse to take an alternative view about what happened on 9/11.

New York Gov. George Pataki called Churchill a "bigoted terrorist supporter." James Giaccone, whose brother Joseph died at the Trade Center, labeled Churchill "a nut case." Hamilton canceled last week's talk because of death threats and other security concerns.

Here in Colorado, the Legislature branded Churchill's words "evil and inflammatory." Gov. Bill Owens asked the university to fire him. The university's Board of Regents apologized, disavowed Churchill's words and ordered a month-long investigation to see whether there are grounds to dismiss him. Churchill, 57, holds a tenured position at the university.

More than three years after 9/11, the controversy shows the attacks are as sensitive a subject as ever.

The Churchill debate pits advocates for free speech and academic freedom against those who argue that there are limits if the words in question suggest a bent toward violence — or even treason.

In his essay, Churchill used the incendiary words "little Eichmanns" to suggest that some of the Trade Center victims were like the notorious Nazi bureaucrat. He called them "a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" who, like Eichmann, didn't kill anyone directly but were part of the infrastructure of an imperialist government.

Churchill said Tuesday that the "one phrase out of one sentence in a 20-page essay" applied to the "technical cadre that make this system hum," not the janitors, service workers and other innocent victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Churchill, who teaches American Indian studies and is an activist on Native American issues, posited that America's crimes abroad ultimately led terrorists to hijack and crash jetliners into symbols of America's military and economic might.

Tuesday's speech in which Churchill defended himself almost didn't happen. Campus officials postponed it Monday for security reasons. Student organizers of the lecture said they had received threats.

But Churchill and his supporters sought a federal court injunction in Denver on Tuesday to override that decision. After university officials met again with the organizers, students "retracted" their reports of death threats and urged that the speech go forward, said Ronald Stump, vice chancellor for student affairs.

Last week, the Board of Regents ordered a 30-day probe into the published writings and spoken remarks of Churchill, who has been prolific. He recently told his students he has written 24 books himself and 70 chapters in other publications.

Campus police used hand-held metal detectors to screen those entering the hall for Tuesday's speech. Two campus activists were arrested in a raucous display at last week's meeting of the regents. Churchill has said that he has received more than 100 death threats and that last week, someone spray-painted swastikas on his pickup.

In a written statement 10 days ago, Churchill said his essay was not meant to defend the 9/11 attacks but to point out "that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned."

Churchill's defenders say the uproar over his remarks reflects the same kind of paranoia that drove Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his search for communist infiltrators in American society in the 1950s.

"It's a witch hunt based on the perceptions of his comments as being politically incorrect," said Churchill's attorney, David Lane of Denver. "It's a shame that his message, which is a valid message, is completely lost in ... his poor choice of words."

Churchill has said he will not apologize and has vowed to sue if the university tries to dismiss him.

The dispute has ripped through a campus reeling from months of unwelcome controversy. Last year, Colorado's athletic department was the subject of national scrutiny and continuing lawsuits over sexual-harassment and sex-for-recruits scandals in the football program. Last fall, a fraternity pledge died of alcohol poisoning just as the university sought to overcome its image as a party school in the Rockies.

Churchill's critics on talk radio and the Internet have been combing through his writings, recorded speeches and other statements. Among the loudest are Denver radio commentators Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, two lawyers who play excerpts daily from a recorded appearance Churchill made in California after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "This man is actively promoting violence against the United States," said Silverman, a former Denver prosecutor. "He says he's engaged in armed resistance."

Free-speech advocates stress that Churchill has a right to his views, no matter how unpopular. "Much of the history of free speech in this country is defending people who are outrageous or say reprehensible things," Columbia University historian Eric Foner said. 

----

Pentagon to broadcast to millions of U.S. homes 
 
Big News Network.com Wednesday 9th February, 2005    

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=4272a7ec26944f6c

The U.S. military is to beam its own news coverage to millions of Americans.

Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and controlling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. The service will emanate from what is known as the Pentagon Channel, an internal public relations television unit within the Department of Defense. It was set up nine months ago.

The government-run TV service will be channeled to the public through EchoStar Communication's Dish Network which will offer the Pentagon Channel to its more than 11 million viewers on a no-cost basis. Programming will appear on the network's public interest channels and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Dish viewers will be kept up to date with current military news and information including Department of Defense news briefings, military news, interviews with top defense officials, and short stories about the work of military people.

'We appreciate Dish Network's decision to carry the new Pentagon Channel on their satellite TV system,' said Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita. 'Their support helps us fulfill our mission of providing timely military news and information.'

Have your say on this story

http://64.39.236.54/comment.php?sid=4272a7ec26944f6c&cid=c08dd24cec417021



-------- OTHER


-------- environment

National Wildlife Federation Commends New Jersey's Mercury Efforts

TRENTON, New Jersey, February 9, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-09-09.asp#anchor7

In its 2005 Mid-Atlantic Mercury Report Card released this month, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) recognized New Jersey's achievements in regulating mercury contamination, awarding it the highest grades in four of seven categories among the Mid-Atlantic states and noting that "New Jersey stands out as the leader in addressing emissions of mercury."

"Protecting public health from toxic mercury emissions has been a high priority for New Jersey and we will continue to lead the nation in this effort," said Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Bradley Campbell.

The DEP passed stringent new regulations for controlling mercury emissions from power plants in November 2004. These regulations are the most comprehensive mercury standards in the nation, reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, iron and steel melters, and solid waste incinerators by up to 90 percent by the end of 2007.

"We are pleased that the NWF has recognized our efforts to protect the public and our wildlife from the dangers of mercury. We hope this recognition will prompt the legislature to complete work on the bill by Senator Steve Sweeney and Assemblyman John Burzichelli to remove mercury switches from the waste stream."

This is the first year NWF has released a mercury report card in the Mid-Atlantic region, but a partnership with the New England Zero-Mercury Campaign that produced similar reports for the New England region proved to be an effective method of promoting further action from the states.

New Jersey received top marks, an A, for its efforts in reducing state mercury air emissions within the state by the maximum extent possible.

New Jersey also received an A for advocating strong federal policies on mercury. Campbell has repeatedly challenged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed mercury standards as inadequate, while seven of the state's 13 U.S. representatives and both senators have signed letters encouraging strict federal regulations for mercury emissions from power plants.

New Jersey also received the highest grades in the Mid-Atlantic region for reducing mercury exposure through public education and outreach, as well as improving understanding of mercury sources, impacts, and cycling.

New Jersey is the only state in the region that has passed legislation requiring the state to provide information regarding mercury-contaminated fish to high-risk populations and to post such information in public places.

The DEP has also initiated a Mercury Task Force to research the sources of mercury and its impacts on the environment and to develop a mercury pollution reduction plan for the state.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that, in humans, harms the development and function of the central nervous, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. In wildlife, increased levels of mercury contamination can decrease ability to reproduce, impair growth and development, and cause abnormal behavior and death.

For the full analysis of the Mid-Atlantic states' progress in addressing mercury pollution and exposure, including all grades for all states, see "Mercury in the Mid-Atlantic: Are States Meeting the Challenge?" online at: www.nwf.org/news.

For more information on DEP's mercury regulation initiatives and research, visit the DEP website at: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/mercury/. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Display Stirs Controversy In Land Park
Soldier's Uniform Hangs From Noose In Front Of Home

February 9, 2005
TheKCRAChannel

http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/4180042/detail.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Nestled in a quiet Sacramento neighborhood is a very loud political statement that is testing the very foundation of the right to free speech.

Hanging from a house in Land Park, a soldier's uniform in a noose dangles from a rooftop. The words "your tax dollars at work" are scrolled across the chest.

In a community full of patriotism, this view of the war in Iraq has not gone unnoticed.

"I think it's the ultimate sign of disrespect. We have troops dying for us," Land Park resident Mark Cohen said.

"(I'm) annoyed and disgusted. I think if this is the way someone feels they can find a better way to vent their opinions," Land Park resident Pete Miles said.

The homeowners behind the controversy are Steve and Virginia Pearcy. They released a statement saying, "There will always be people who are offended by political speech, and the most important forum of all ... is one's own residence. The First Amendment is meaningless unless dissent is allowed."

Some neighbors agree.

"Even if you don't agree with it, he has the right to state his opinion. I don't find it offensive at all," Land Park resident Cece Williams said.

The tension in the neighborhood has escalated into more than just a political feud.

The matter has been reported to the police department and to the city attorney. The city council has even heard about it, but says they can't solve the problem.

"Unfortunately or fortunately this is protected speech by the First Amendment ... so there is nothing we can do about it," Sacramento City Councilman Rob Fong said.

KCRA 3 received a call late Wednesday morning from the homeowner saying that a group of people had torn down the display. He said that what he did was not illegal, but what was done by the people who removed the display was.

----

Anti-war soldier finds his sincerity under scrutiny

Associated Press
Wed, Feb. 09, 2005

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/10856225.htm

FORT STEWART, Ga. - A soldier who refused to deploy for a second tour in Iraq faced tough questions about his quest for conscientious objector status - from the timing of his application to whether he enjoys hunting.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, was questioned Tuesday by an investigating officer who will recommend to Fort Stewart commanders how they should proceed with the Army veteran's objector application.

Benderman began seeking objector status in late December, days before his 3rd Infantry Division deployed to Iraq for a second time. Benderman, a Bradley armored vehicle mechanic, refused to go with them.

"I don't make rash decisions," Benderman told the investigating officer, Capt. Victor Aqueche, when questioned about the timing of his application. He returned from his first Iraq tour in September 2003.

"You think about the mass graves," Benderman said. "You think about soldiers you were with and how it dehumanized them, how the soldiers did things they never would have done."

The Army has charged Benderman with desertion for refusing to return to Iraq, and Fort Stewart commanders must soon decide whether to court-martial him. His conscientious objector application is being handled separately.

The military defines a conscientious objector as someone who holds a deep moral or religious opposition to war in all forms. Investigators put applicants through rigorous interviews to try to help gauge their sincerity.

Aqueche asked Benderman whether he kept any guns at home. Benderman said he bought a Winchester hunting rifle in 1999, but hadn't been hunting since 1992.

"You say you're morally opposed to violence. That's a quote you use, and you cannot bear arms," Aqueche said, referring to Benderman's application. "I'm just trying to get the facts."

Benderman replied, "Hunting is exclusive from killing in a war."

"But it's killing," Aqueche said.