NucNews - February 17, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Scientist seeks endorsement of research on cancer near reactors Hopes backing will lead to funding Published in the Asbury Park Press 02/17/05 By NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050217/NEWS03/502170308/1007 EWING -- A scientist well-known for collecting baby teeth at the Jersey Shore and testing them for cancer-causing radiation touted his group's studies on Wednesday before a top radiation-protection official who has been skeptical of the research. In testimony during a state Commission on Radiation Protection meeting, Joseph Mangano, national coordinator for the Radiation and Public Health Project, tried to convince commission Chairwoman Julie Timins and other commissioners to endorse his work, which attempts to link cancer with emissions from nuclear power plants. Mangano's request coincides with a push by the federal government to extend the lives of nuclear reactors and to build new ones. In July, the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey is expected to seek permission to extend its life by 20 years. Support from the nine-member volunteer commission, made up of radiation experts, would improve the research group's chances of receiving state grants, Mangano said. Ultimately, Mangano wants to reveal what causes childhood cancer and bring peace of mind to parents of children with cancer, such as Brick resident Marie Crescenzo. Her 15-year-old daughter, Katie, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer nearly two years ago. Crescenzo said she asked her doctors what caused her daughter's cancer. She also combed the Internet searching for answers but found none. Mangano's work offers Crescenzo hope, she said, though she does have reservations about his group's research. "I wish he could come up with an answer," she said. "That would be wonderful." But the independent research group that brought actor Alec Baldwin and supermodel Christie Brinkley to Toms River in May 2000 to promote its Tooth Fairy Project could have difficulty convincing the commission that it is legitimate. About a month after the state mailed its first check — part of a $25,000 grant — to the health project in December 2003, Timins expressed serious concerns about the group's research methods in a letter to then-Gov. James E. McGreevey. Skepticism continued Wednesday following Mangano's presentation before six commissioners and other top state radiation officials from the Department of Environmental Protection. Some commissioners suggested that Mangano revise his approach. Commissioner John J. Mauro said Mangano could obtain solid results by taking a completely different route: Pull data related to radiation released by reactors. "There's a world of analytical material out there," he said. Commissioners seemed most concerned with the number of teeth that Mangano tested. They said scientists would require a much larger sample to regard the work as statistically sound. The research group used 52 teeth in its latest study, which was funded by the state grant. It linked children with cancer and strontium-90, a radioactive isotope emitted in small doses from reactors. The study showed children with cancer have more of the isotope in their baby teeth than children without cancer. Mangano acknowledged the sample-size problem and welcomed commissioners' suggestions. He said after the meeting that he would like to produce more credible research, but he needs funding, which is why he addresses the commission. The commission plans to review Mangano's comments and the health project's studies. Once it finishes, the commission will draft an opinion on the group. Timins said she did not know how long it would take the commission to make a decision. Donald B. Louria, professor and chairman emeritus of the department of preventive medicine and community health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, said the state should invest in Mangano. "I think his hypothesis should be played out," he said. "Has Mangano proved anything? Absolutely not. But he deserves support." Oyster Creek officials disagree. Plant spokeswoman Gina Scala said the commission should look at the many studies refuting the connection among strontium-90, reactors and cancer before reaching a decision about Mangano's work. "We would hope that they would look at the entire picture and come to the same decision as they came to when they wrote to Governor McGreevey," she said. Mangano said he received an opportunity to appear before the commission after Edith Gbur, president of Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch, a citizens group that wants Oyster Creek closed immediately, asked state officials to hear him. Gbur told commissioners Wednesday that they should support the health project. Livingston resident Jane Furst and her 14-year-old son, Cory, also urged commissioners to see value in Mangano's research. Doctors diagnosed Cory with lung and liver cancer when he was 19 months old. Chemotherapy treatments caused him permanent hearing loss. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie, Cory asked the commission to help find out what caused his sickness by backing Mangano. "If there is a relationship between strontium-90 and cancer, then we must shut down the nuclear power plants producing it," he said. -------- africa S. Africa will not appeal nuclear plant suspension 17 Feb 2005 17:22:53 GMT Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1788714.htm JOHANNESBURG, Feb 17 (Reuters) - South Africa's department of environmental affairs said on Thursday it would not appeal a court decision suspending a government plan to develop a highly advanced nuclear power reactor near Cape Town. Instead, it said it would address the court's concerns, which include allowing environmental groups more time to make their views heard. The ruling last month by the Cape High Court followed objections from environmentalists to the proposed multi-billion rand project and a court challenge from lobby group Earthlife Africa in November. The pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) is an advanced design that claims to dramatically improve safety and efficiency, but environmentalists say it is unsafe and creates excessive radioactive waste. The government had given power utility Eskom the go-ahead to build a pilot reactor near the site of its only existing nuclear power plant to help meet rising demand for power, forecast to outstrip supply within three years. But the court ruled that environmental groups must be given further opportunity to comment on the project. "The department of environmental affairs ... today announced its intention not to appeal the decision of the Cape High Court," the department said in a statement. "The court decision stands and environmental groups will be given more time to comment on the project. But the PBMR project is still on track," said environmental affairs spokesman J.P. Louw. But the department believes the current environmental impact assessment process is too cumbersome and that new, streamlined regulations it hopes to implement soon will remove some of the hurdles that stand in the way of big projects. About 6 percent of the country's power output is generated through the existing Koeberg nuclear plant, while 88 percent is sourced by coal. -------- australia Australia in uranium talks with China February 17, 2005 The Age http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Australia-in-uranium-talks-with-China/2005/02/17/1108609344557.html?oneclick=true Australia had started talks with China about selling uranium to the communist nation, a parliamentary committee was told. Senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official John Carlson told a Senate estimates hearing informal talks on uranium sales had begun between Canberra and Beijing. "I will be travelling to Beijing at the weekend to progress those discussions," Mr Carlson said. Under questioning by Australian Democrats deputy leader Andrew Bartlett, Mr Carlson said Australia had safeguards to ensure the material was not used for nuclear weapons. "We would request that the state be a party to the NPT (non-proliferation treaty)," he said. "We require that Australian nuclear material be subject to the country's agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We require that Australian prior consent is necessary for any high-enrichment reprocessing or transfer to third parties. "We require that supplied nuclear material be used for exclusively peaceful purposes and that excludes not only nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive uses but also military propulsion or use in depleted uranium munitions." Senator Bartlett said despite the safeguards, Australia should tread cautiously. "We do not believe China has committed to sufficient international non-proliferation action, nor has it signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," Senator Bartlett said. "In the case of uranium and nuclear materials, the danger is extreme, so the caution the federal government exercises in considering any increase in uranium exports must also be extreme." Australian uranium sales have been under the spotlight as a result of Swiss-based Xstrata's hostile takeover bid for WMC Resources. If successful, the takeover would give it control over one of the world's biggest uranium deposits at the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. Chinese ambassador Madame Fu Ying said China was considering an expansion of nuclear power and was interested in buying uranium from overseas. "We also understand countries that export uranium will require a safeguard agreement and China will be very happy to enter into negotiations with countries on that," she said. But she said formal talks had not started. In a wide-ranging speech, Madame Fu welcomed Australia's decision not to object to the EU lifting its arms embargo to China, which was put in place in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. "We would like to see these restrictions which were imposed on China decades ago removed, we think that Australia's position shows the level of political trust and understanding (we share)," she said. The United States is against the EU move, saying it sends the wrong message to China which still has a poor human rights record. Despite China's continuing economic growth, Madame Fu said it had no ambitions to become a rival superpower to the US. "I do not believe that China will assume a role that will challenge the United States in the world or holds a threat to other countries in the region," she said. And fears of its increasing economic strength were unwarranted. "China is both big and small - its growing GDP when shared by 1.3 billion people becomes a very small number," Madame Fu said. Australian Democrats deputy leader Andrew Bartlett expressed doubt that China could provide any real guarantees on how the uranium would be used. "While officials say Australia's requirements that uranium be used for peaceful purposes are adequate, the Australian Democrats do not have great faith ... any real guarantees can be provided," he said. "We do not believe China has committed to sufficient international non-proliferation action, nor has it signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. "In the case of uranium and nuclear materials, the danger is extreme, so the caution the federal government exercises in considering any increase in uranium exports must also be extreme." -------- britain Nuclear audit says Sellafield has 'lost' 30kg of plutonium By Angela Jameson, Industrial Correspondent February 17, 2005 UK Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1487789,00.html SELLAFIELD, Britain’s major nuclear site, has “lost” 30 kilograms of plutonium, according to figures due to be published today. The annual audit of nuclear material at all of Britain’s civil nuclear installations is expected to reveal that the plutonium — enough for seven or eight nuclear bombs — was classified as “material unaccounted for” last year. The revelation that such a large amount of plutonium has apparently disappeared is likely to cause deep embarrassment at British Nuclear Group and the Department of Trade and Industry, which are weeks away from completing a huge shake-up in the nuclear industry, with the creation of an independent Nuclear Decomissioning Authority. The discrepancy compares with a 19kg loss at Sellafield in 2003 and a cumulative loss of about 50kg at the Cumbrian plant over the past ten years. British Nuclear Fuels, which operates the plant, is expected to dismiss the figures as a “paper loss” and an “accounting issue”. But independent experts described the disclosure as deeply worrying. “They make this claim of an auditing problem but I would expect them to be overzealous in the current climate of fears about terrorism,” John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, said. Dr Frank Barnaby, a specialist in nuclear weapons, said: “There will always be some material unaccounted for but this is a dramatic development. “This is a major reason for not reprocessing spent nuclear fuel because you can’t tell what the material unaccounted for is.” All nuclear material at Sellafield, including the content of contaminated ponds and any emissions, are measured every year, according to guidelines endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “It’s just like a balance sheet, we count what comes in and what goes out,” one insider said. The fact that the figures do not balance is embarrassing rather than sinister. They do not imply that any material has been improperly diverted, or that there has been a breach of security at the site. Keeping track of just how much material is present at the plant at any one time is tricky, and subject to errors. Spent nuclear fuel rods, which have been inside nuclear reactors for about five years, are taken to Sellafield for reprocessing. They are allowed to cool in ponds for up to four years before they are treated. The process then involves cutting up the fuel rods, dissolving them in acid and then separating the solution into three streams — uranium, plutonium, and high-level waste. At each stage of the process the material is weighed and calculations made of the amounts of plutonium it contains. All this has to be done remotely behind shielding because of the radioactivity involved. At the end of the process the weight of the plutonium recovered ought to balance with the estimates of the amount put in. They seldom do, but the discrepancy is rarely as large as it is this year. Small measuring errors can accumulate to produce large discrepancies, as they have done this year. The IAEA lays down rules for the permitted levels of “material unaccounted for”, which must not exceed about 3 per cent of the plutonium throughput. Given the huge quantities reprocessed at Sellafield, this year’s discrepancy will fall within these standards. According to insiders the material unaccounted for is roughly 0.1 per cent of the material that went through Sellafield’s facilities last year. “The point is none has gone missing and none has gone from the site,” a source told The Times. A spokesman for the DTI said that the 30kg “loss” was due to a “new accounting system”. Security at civil nuclear sites has been stepped up since September 11. But new figures showed security breaches on 45 occasions last year. They included a case of unauthorised access and the theft of sensitive information, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The figures, from the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, indicate that human error has led to serious breaches. The Health and Safety Commission is known to be concerned about the safety of nuclear sites as private companies bid to take over their management over the next three years. ---- British nuclear site cannot account for 30 kilos of plutonium: newspaper Thu Feb 17, 1:56 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050217/wl_uk_afp/britainnuclear_050217185619 LONDON - A civilian nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northwest England cannot account for enough plutonium to produce seven or eight nuclear bombs, but regulators said it was due to bookkeeping errors and no material had left the facility. "This is material that is unaccounted for, and there is always a discrepancy between the physical inventory and the book inventory," said a spokesman for the British Nuclear Group (BNG) which audited the plant, confirming a report in the daily The Times that some 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of plutonium could not be traced. "There is no suggestion that any material has left the site," which is located in Sellafield, northwest England," she added. "When you have got a complicated chemical procedure, quite often material remains in the plant." The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the country's nuclear regulatory body, said there was no reason to believe that "real loss" of plutonium had occurred. "The material unaccounted for 2003-2004 were all within international standards of expected measurement accuracies for closing a nuclear material balance at the type of facilities concerned," it said. "We have published these figures since the 1970s". Some years there is an apparent gain, some years there is an apparent loss," the BNG spokeswoman said. Figures published by the BNG each year reveal an audit of nuclear material which is admitted and processed by the various plants around Britain. Guidelines issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say that material unaccounted for must not exceed three percent of the amount that is processed. If the 30 kilogram figure is accurate, it would equate to around 0.1 percent of that amount, the spokeswoman said. A spokesman for the British Department of Trade and Industry said: "This is an account of an ongoing process and does not represent the loss of any actual material. "It is not unusual for the accounting process to indicate material unaccounted for." But independent experts were worried about the disclosure, according to the Times. "They make this claim of an auditing problem but I would expect them to be overzealous in the current climate of fears about terrorism," John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, was quoted as saying. Frank Barnaby, a specialist in nuclear weapons, told The Times "there will always be some material unaccounted for but this is a dramatic development." Spent nuclear fuel rods, which have been inside nuclear reactors for about five years, are taken to Sellafield for reprocessing. The Sellafield complex, which employs nearly 10,000 people, comprises a 49-year-old nuclear power station, which is currently being dismantled and decontaminated, spent fuel reprocessing facilities and a site to produce MOX, a fuel made up of a mixture of uranium and plutonium. ---- Missing plutonium 'just on paper' BBC Thursday, 17 February, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4272691.stm Almost 30kg of plutonium apparently missing from the Sellafield nuclear plant is simply an auditing issue, it has been announced. The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) confirmed 29.6kg of plutonium - enough to make seven nuclear bombs - was "unaccounted for" in auditing records. Operator, the British Nuclear Group (BNG), said it was a discrepancy between physical and book inventories. UKAEA said there was no reason to think there was any "real loss" of plutonium. In a statement it said: "The material unaccounted for (MUF) figures for 2003/04 were all within international standards of expected measurement accuracies for closing a nuclear material balance at the type of facility concerned." But Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker said: "If the figures are wrong then this looks like serious incompetence from an industry that deals with highly dangerous resources." 'Security measures' The figures also showed that 16.4kg of naturally-depleted uranium was also unaccounted for. Sellafield reprocesses spent fuel and employs more than 10,000 workers at the site in West Cumbria. A BNG spokesman said: "There is no evidence to suggest that any of the apparent losses reported were real losses of nuclear material. "There is no suggestion that any material has left the site. When you have got a complicated chemical procedure, quite often material remains in the plant. "We are extremely confident that the safety and security measures we have here at the site." In 2003 BNG revealed 19kg of plutonium was unaccounted for at the plant. --- Plutonium to make seven or eight nuclear bombs has "gone missing" From UK Nuclear Plant 17.02.2005 Iraq War (Russia) http://www.iraq-war.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=40002 'SEVEN NUCLEAR BOMBS' Enough plutonium to make seven or eight nuclear bombs has "gone missing" from Sellafield nuclear plant. Figures published by the British Nuclear Group (BNG) show 30kg (66lb) has gone astray from the site, according to The Times. Dr Frank Barnaby, a specialist in nuclear weapons, told the newspaper: "There will always be some material unaccounted for but this is a dramatic development." According to the newspaper a 19kg loss was recorded in 2003 and a cumulative loss of 50kg during the past 10 years. A BNG spokeswoman at Sellafield said it was not a cause for concern. She said: "There is no suggestion that any material has left the site. "This is material that is unaccounted for, and there is always a discrepancy between the physical inventory and the book inventory." She said the most likely reason for the shortfall was the complex measuring process at the site. Guidelines issued by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) say material unaccounted for must not exceed 3% of the amount processed. The 30kg would account for 0.1%, the spokeswoman said. A spokesman for the Department of Transport said: "It's not unusual for the accounting process to indicate material unaccounted for." Plutonium makes up 1% of the nuclear material used at Sellafield - the rest is uranium. ---- Thirty kilos of plutonium missing from British nuclear site LONDON (AFP) Feb 17, 2005 http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/February/theworld_February429.xml§ion=theworld Some 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of plutonium, enough for seven or eight nuclear bombs, are listed as "unaccounted for" at the British nuclear site at Sellafied, a newspaper said Thursday. The annual audit of nuclear material at all of Britain's civil nuclear installations is expected to reveal that the quantity of plutonium was classified as "material unaccounded for" last year, The Times said. British Nuclear Fuels, which operates the plant at Sellafield in northwest England, is expected to dismiss the figures as a "paper loss" and an "accounting issue," according to the newspaper. But independent experts were worried about the disclosure. "They make this claim of an auditing problem but I would expect them to be overzealous in the current climate of fears about terrorism," John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, was quoted as saying. Frank Barnaby, a specialist in nuclear weapons, told The Times "there will always be some material unaccounted for but this is a dramatic development." All nuclear material at Sellafield, including the content of contaminated ponds and any emissions are measured every year, according to guidelines endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "It's just like a balance sheet, we count what comes in and what goes out," one insider was quoted as saying. Spent nuclear fuel rods, which have been inside nuclear reactors for about five years, are taken to Sellafield for reprocessing. ---- 66 POUNDS OF PLUTONIUM MISSING Feb 17, 2005 (AP) http://www.kpvi.com/index.cfm?page=nbcheadlines.cfm&ID=24150 LONDON -- A British nuclear reprocessing plant cannot account for nearly 66 pounds of plutonium, but authorities don't believe the material itself is missing. The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority says the amount of material listed as missing at the Sellafield plant in northwestern England is thought to be a paperwork problem. The agency says the discrepancy is within international norms. In 2003, the processing plant reported it could not account for 42 pounds of plutonium. The plant said that was consistent with figures published since the 1970's. Plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, accounts for one percent of the nuclear material handled at Sellafield; the rest is uranium. -------- depleted uranium Tungsten bullets cause cancer in wounds Big News Network.com, Thursday 17th February, 2005 (UPI) http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=beedf8d4791256dc Tungsten alloys, being used in battlefield munitions to make them less toxic may cause cancer in soldiers wounded by them, U.S. Army researchers said. Researchers at the Forces Radiobiology Research Institute implanted pellets of the tungsten alloys in rats to simulate shrapnel wounds from the weapons. Some rats received high-dose pellets, some low-dose and some pellets of other material for controlled comparison. All of the rats implanted with tungsten developed extremely aggressive tumors surrounding the pellets. Though the tumors in the low-dose individuals grew more slowly, all of the tumors spread rapidly to the lungs of the rats, requiring researchers to euthanize the animals well before the anticipated end of the study. (The findings raise) extremely serious concerns over the potential health effects of tungsten-alloy-based munitions currently being used as non-toxic alternatives to lead and depleted uranium, the researchers said. If the findings ... are validated by further research, it appears that soldiers could be at risk of surviving battlefield wounds only to develop an aggressive form of cancer, said Dr. Jim Burkhart, science editor for the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which published the research. ---- US Military, President Out of Control -- What Does "Mildly Radioactive" Mean, Anyway? By Bob Nichols, Project Censored Award Winner Feb 17, 2005, 18:23 AxisofLogic.com http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_15814.shtml February 18, 2005 -- (Oklahoma, Red State, “Land of the Free”) The Russians just recently stopped a weightlifter coming across the border with about 100 pounds of "highly radioactive depleted uranium." The guy said he was using it for dumbbells in weightlifting. The American Department of Defense and other government departments all are unanimous in calling so-called depleted uranium "mildly radioactive depleted uranium." They like to use it for bombs, shells and heavy caliber bullets. Highly radioactive, mildly radioactive, moderately radioactive. What does it mean? Whom to believe? The godless former Commies or the brave Iraq-smashing Americans? Decide for yourself. Radioactivity is a standard property of the metal uranium, used by Americans for bombs, shells and bullets, and one gram will always give off 12,000 "atomic disintegrations" per second. This lasts forever, as far as we are concerned. Think of the "atomic diserntegrations" as little atomic bullets. The kind that are only harmful from inside the human body. What do you think? Does 12,000 per second rank high or low with you? What if it is in your lung? Delicate lung cells of 19 year old American troopers and 60-year-old Iraqi “guerrillas” don't have the ability to "spin" what is turning them into infection, pus and cancer. Just so you know, that is 43 million, 200 thousand little bullets per hour. This nuclear bombardment at the heart of a cell in the lung or the rest of the body never stops. Of course, the "throwaway soldiers" will get cancer and die; but, the chicken-hawk Neo-Cons in the Bush Administration say that is OK! They just don't want to pay for it. Remember the 100-hour-long First Gulf War? Only an unlucky few were killed. We Americans used 375 tons of uranium munitions. Out of the one half million, or so, soldiers in the prime of life in the war, 11,000 are now dead. and hundreds of thousands are on Medical Disability. The latest good journalist to "Drink the Government Kool-Aid" was Bob Evans of the Daily Press in Virginia. Evans used the deceptive Government term "mildly radioactive" over and over, in his recent seven-part series on uranium weapons in use by the US Military. In his effort to be fair, Evans, a respected veteran journalist, never used the forbidden words "illegal" or "war crimes." The Daily Press readership includes a large segment of "retired military." Since uranium is a metal that also catches on fire and burns, the bombs, shells and bullets burn and vaporize when they hit something hard like a tank, bunker, or building. Uranium gas and smoke ends up in the nose, throat and lungs of our kids and friends in the US Military and any unlucky Iraqi around. Some of the gas also hitches a ride on the desert winds to the rest of the world, including the American ally, Israel. This is a real bummer for the American Troopers and the Iraqis. Uranium by the thousands of tons has been dispersed this way in Iraq during Gulf War I, the No-Fly Zones era, Gulf War II, the war after the war, and to this very day. Once the uranium gas and dust is in their lungs and bodies the soldiers and civilians become radiation poisoning victims and are forever changed. There is no way to remove the uranium smoke from the body. It is radioactive. There is no treatment; there is no cure. This stuff stays dangerous, lethal even, forever and a day. After all, it is highly radioact ... err, ... pardon me, "mildly radioactive," ... err ... whatever! Our victimized soldiers don't have forever, though. With the same absolute certainty of the Atomic Clock the US Government uses to tell time, the constant ticking of the "atomic disintegrations" (little bullets) starts the countdown to death from radiation poisoning for the soldiers and civilians alike. It's just a matter of the dose of lethal poison they received. A greater dose equals less time. It gets worse. Captain Terry Riordon unknowingly brought radiation poisoning home with him from Iraq to his wife, Susan Riordon. As recounted in the November, 2004 issue of the mainstream Conde Nast publication Vanity Fair, Mrs. Riordon was constantly burned by her husband's semen during intercourse. Seems Terry's semen was turned to a fiery alkali by the radioactive uranium that settled in his testicles. The happily married couple had no idea what this new and horrifying complication was in this intensely private part of their life together. Little did they know the American Department of Defense had hopped into bed with them with a deadly intent. With her husband slowly dying of radiation poisoning and in intense pain herself, Mrs. Riordon resorted to filling condoms with frozen green peas to use on herself to obtain relief from the internal burning's intense, excruciating, lasting pain. Other couples do that and other wildly frantic and imaginative measures seeking relief. The burning can leave blisters and contamination. "It hurt [Terry] too. He said it was like forcing it through barbed wire," Riordon says. "It seemed to burn through condoms; if he got any on his thighs or his testicles, he was in hell." In a last, desperate attempt to save their sex life, says Riordon, "I used to fill condoms with frozen peas and insert them [after sex] with a lubricant." That, she says, made her pain just about bearable. Perhaps inevitably, he became impotent. "And that was like our last little intimacy gone." Children produced from radioactive soldier's couplings have devastating birth defects; both to war's children born in the United States and in Iraq. After all, uranium gas is just a dumb radioactive metal; it does not care one whit about the nationality of the body parts it targets. In Iraq, women call the doomed pregnancies the "jelly belly." The world simply calls it "Genocide." That's the purposeful targeting of a race or ethnic group of people for extermination. That's our red blooded, By Gawd, All American Policy. Exterminate them! That is one answer to the question Americans are always indignantly asking "Why do they hate us so? Haven't we set them free!?!" Bob Evans, in his series, even inadvertently let a Classified Specification out of the bag. The 140,000 pound Abrams Main Battle Tank, a primary dispenser of radioactive, poisonous uranium gas and dust in Iraq, fires its big gun at a spectacular 2,100 MPH or three times the speed of sound (MACH III.) The three foot long solid uranium projectiles then vaporize and burn at temperatures ranging from an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 degrees as they penetrate their target. Mr. Evans, guru-like, informs us the temperature is 5,600 degrees. What is the difference in "highly radioactive in Russia or "mildly radioactive" in Virginia? Is it the same metal? Yes, it is. Are both metals radioactive? Yes! Whether they are in Russia or the United States, yes, they are: at 12,000 little bullets per second, anywhere in the known universe! Uranium is our own perverse absolute value. Well, this is kind of a bummer for all US citizens. President Bush and the US Military have gone and screwed the pooch. Turns out that using uranium for weapons is, like, kind of a "Big Time" War Crime. Not only is it a War Crime, it is a War Crime four different ways, according to famous UN War Crimes and humanitarian lawyer Karen Parker, JD. Parker stated "My 'four-point' test is especially intelligible: people understand. "It spreads" (beyond the field of battle); "it lasts" (can't be turned off when the war ends); "it injures people in impermissible ways" (as in making an as yet unborn child deformed); and "it harms the environment". Ever since we Americans obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan with nuclear weapons in August of 1945, immediately killing an estimated quarter of a million people, the rest of the world has taken a really dim view of actually using nuclear weapons. Uranium bombs, shells and bullets are just different forms of slow-acting, stealth nuclear weapons. They are slower than the instant big boom and flash of Nagasaki type Nuclear Weapons - the atom bomb and hydrogen bomb. They are the answer to the Administration's dedicated Crusade for the Holy Grail of a "usable" nuclear weapon. Time has telescoped from 1945 instantly -- past to present; World War II is just over, and we used nuclear weapons on civilians. Now we are using the next generation of nuclear weapons on the hapless guerrillas and civilians of Iraq. They never had a chance. Not a prayer. Uranium weapons spread deadly radioactivity that kills and contaminates forever. Iraq is simply "toast" because of the indiscriminate, promiscuous and criminal use of millions of pounds of uranium weapons by our kids and friends in the US Military, at the command of their political masters. The masters and troopers are war criminals, and we, the U.S. taxpayers, are accessories to war crimes. US Military Out of Control - Defies Law So, what to do? It's all right there, in US Army Regulations, according to Maj. Doug Rokke, Ph.D. Ret., the former Director of the Pentagon Depleted Uranium Project. U.S. Army Regulations AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278 require the Army to "Clean and Treat." The Army is required by US law to treat all persons affected and all areas contaminated by the radioactive uranium munitions. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. The self-claimed right to use war crime weapons carries the with it big responsibility to clean up after oneself. Refusing to clean up and treat is purposeful genocide. It is that simple. We are guilty as sin. Dennie Williams' breakthrough CommonDreams.org article of November 11, 2004 sets the record straight on the US Military's view of using and cleaning up after illegal uranium munitions. "The Department of Defense 'does not clean up DU [depleted uranium weapons] once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle', said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official." The "suits" in the Pentagon can't be anymore clear than that. They absolutely refuse to treat the people poisoned, including their own troopers, and refuse to clean up the poisoned radioactive land. The US Military did the same thing in Vietnam with the chemical Agent Orange, which was denied and covered up for decades. As one Vietnam War medic says "Uranium weapons are like Agent Orange on steriods." Therefore, the situation is this: the political leadership of the U.S. decided to secretly use thousands of tons of a genocidal weapon, uranium, in Iraq. Their servants in the US Military are gung-ho to irradiate the Iraqis and poison their land, forever, with illegal uranium-based war crimes weapons. The Army refuses to obey their own Regulations, that have the force of law, to Clean & Treat, in their slavish obedience to the sub-human, sick, perverted genocidal desires of their politically appointed controllers. What's wrong with this picture? This is real Nazi Germany stuff, isn't it? Closer to home, it is very similar to Andrew Jackson’s policy of exterminating Native Americans. Citizens here in the U.S. may not want to know or accept that fact, but that is the sleight-of-hand dealt to us mere citizens in America in 2005 by our corporate-owned and sponsored politicians and media. Denying a fact situation does not make it disappear. The facts, and the thousands of tons of weaponized uranium oxide gas and dust, just hang in there. This is impossible for supposedly patriotic "My Country Right or Wrong - Love It or Leave It" type Americans to explain away. Uranium is as real as it gets, and it never goes away. As long as there are congenitally deformed Iraqis left in the world, and until the Iraqis are finally exterminated by these long-lived genocidal weapons, they will continue to whisper and croak in whatever voice left to them: "America Exterminated Me, Punish Them!" and demand justice. Americans of all political stripes should be enraged to hear of what our US Military has done to Iraq. It is not OK, and they should feel betrayed by the Bush Administration, perhaps especially the center-right Americans responsible for twice electing Bush. (And the results of Both elections are still disputed.) It was real Americans some 60 years ago "The Greatest Generation," as network news reader Tom Brokaw called them, in his book of the same name, who with the Russians, Free French, British and others stomped the fascist war makers in Germany and their Axis ally Japan in World War II. Now the "World's Only Superpower's" American Army has taken the place of Hitler's Storm Troopers in ruling the modern world. It is supremely ironic that their own uranium weapons kill them as well as the "enemy" civilians, as they set out to control. These unthinking soldiers will ultimately destroy the world, and that seems to be the desired outcome of Administration's cult like "Rapture Me" Christofascist radical religious tradition. In the famous Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, established after World War II to try Nazi War Criminals and assess their guilt and punishment, the Chief Prosecutor said of the German people something that applies directly to Americans today. He speaks knowingly and directly across more than 50 years of time to resolutely instruct American citizens on exactly what our duty is today, right now: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." - Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950 The statement was affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal. It is now international law and by extension, U.S. law. It is our duty as American citizens. The fascist government controlling the United States and the US Military can no longer be allowed to exist. The world and international law holds us all accountable, and the price is dear. These white-collar criminals must all be impeached and imprisoned for their war crimes, commensurate with their degree of complicity and guilt. If the House will not impeach and the Senate will not put them on trial, then, we have a problem. We will have to do it ourselves. Additionally, we have to vote out the co-conspirators in the Senate and the House for refusing to impeach. That is the law, handed down in 1950 after a disastrous world-wide war. We Americans must follow the law. It is our sacred duty. As President Bush likes to say "they [the House and Senate] are either for us or against us." Can we wait till tomorrow, next week, or, next year to impeach? In a word, "No!" Leuren Moret, world famous former Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab scientist, said the following in an Email on Valentine's Day, 2005, requesting hundreds of physicists, scientists, professionals, managers, writers and others to join in the world-wide effort to stop the current flagrant use of illegal uranium weapons: "I believe in the end that ... you will comprehend that the amount of DU [Depleted Uranium] released into the atmosphere since 1991 is far more than my estimate. Whatever you or I think or differ about, the disaster is worse than we even know ... but that tale will be told each year, each decade, each century. Humanity has changed the genome of the entire planet forever." "How can you help us present the disaster in a way that ordinary people can comprehend? Infant mortality is increasing globally for the first time in 41 years..." "This planet is being turned into a death star," Moret added. The time to act is now. The Bush Administration controls the big media on this issue. They do not control you. Tell your friends and email this article everywhere. As U.S. citizens, as human beings, we know what we should do, and we know that we cannot afford to wait any longer. Writers & Warriors Speakers Group: Contact Bob Nichols at info-radiation-wars@cox.net for College Distinguished Lecture Series Speakers, Commencement Speakers, People's Events and Rallies. Speakers include Bob Nichols, Leuren Moret, Maj. Doug Rokke, Ph.D., Ret., former S. Sgt. Dennis Kyne, Karen Parker, J.D. Send email only, no attachments, to: Attention: Bob Nichols at info-radiation-wars@cox.net The following sources were consulted for this article. 1. Nichols - "There Are No Words" http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Nichols0327.htm 2. Nichols - "My God! My Country Is Using Poison Gas In Iraq" http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Nichols0807.htm 3. Russell Hoffman "Poison Fire, USA" http://www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf 4. Moret - Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml 5. World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference: http://www.uraniumweaponsconference 6. International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan written opinion of Judge N. Bhagwat: also at http://www.traprockpeace.org/tokyo_trial_13march04.doc 7. Gsponer and Hurni "Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: The Physical Principles Of Thermonuclear Explosives, Inertial Confinement Fusion, And The Quest For Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons" http://www.inesap.org/publ_tech01.htm 8. Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html 9. Parker, K., “Weapons and the Laws and the Customs of War,” International Education Development/Humanitarian Law Project, San Francisco, California, May 1997. 10. The Nuremburg Trials, 1945 - 1949. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm 11. Memorandum To Brigadier General L. R. Groves from Drs. Conant, Compton and Urey. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Groves-Memo-Manhattan30oct43.htm 12. "Heavy Metal or Death Metal," IDUST Archives. http://www.idust.net/Docs/Docs002.htm 13. "Poisoned? Special Investigation," by Juan Gonzales, New York Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html 14. Dr. Asaf Duracovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, Uranium Medical Research Center. http://www.umrc.net/ 15. "Three Questions from Doug Rokke, Ph.D. to the Department of Defense concerning its use of radioactive weapons." Traprock Peace Center, September 13, 2004. http://traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html 16. "The Real Dirty Bombs: Depleted Uranium," by Christopher Bollyn, August 4, 2004, WagingPeace.org. http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2004/08/06_bollyn_real-dirty-bombs.htm 17. "Dahr Jamil's Iraq Dispatches." http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php 18. "Living Under Fascism," Davidson Loehr, First UCC Church of Austin, 11/07/04. http://207.44.245.159/article7478.htm 19. Kissinger's quote regarding military men comes from Chapter 14, which extensively discusses Al Haig, Kissinger and other Nixon staff advisors' negotiations and differences over national security issues during the 1969-1974 period. The exact, direct quote marks begin with the word 'dumb' and terminates after the word 'used'. SOURCE: Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein, The Final Days, second Touchstone paperback edition (1994), Chapter 14, pp. 194-195. 20. November, 2004 magazine "Vanity Fair." Weapons of Self-Destruction by David Rose. http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/041115roco04 21. Nov. 21 2004, "Hartford Courant" newspaper. "Legislator Takes Veterans' Cause." by Thomas D. Williams, Courant Staff. http://www.ctnow.com/news/health/hc-dubill1121.artnov21,1,7836871.story?coll=hc-headlines-health 22. CommonDreams.org "Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis" by Thomas D. Williams. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/1101-01.htm 23. Leuren Moret, February 14, 2005 email on du-list, a YahooGroups email listserv group. Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award Winner and lives in Oklahoma. He is a frequent contributor to AxisofLogic.com, other online publications and the "San Francisco Bay View" newspaper. Nichols is a former employee of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Nichols can be reached by email at info-radiation-wars@cox.net. ---- Camilo Mejia - Regaining My Humanity..... Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:15 PM http://www.codepinkalert.org/National_Actions_Camilo.shtml Great news! Camilo Mejia Released from Prison We were delighted to receive a phone call yesterday, February 15, from Camilo Mejia, letting us know that he has just been released from prison. Some of you might remember Camilo, a courageous soldier who spent more than 7 years in the military, 8 months fighting in Iraq, came home for a 2-week furlough, and decided that he could not—in good conscience—return to Iraq. He applied for Conscientious Objector status, and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. But the US military convicted him of desertion, and sent him to serve a one-year prison sentence in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This happened the same day that Spc. Jeremy Sivits was court-martialed and sentenced to a year in prison for abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, an order Camilo had refused to obey. For more information on Camilo go to: http://freecamilo.org/ Regaining My Humanity By Camilo Mejia I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son. I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army. And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at. Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq. By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles. When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me—they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price Humanity has paid for war. Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me. I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been. I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me. One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience. While I was confined in total segregation, I came across a poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name is Albrecht Hanshofer, and he wrote this poem as he awaited execution. GUILT The burden of my guilt before the law weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot and to conspire was my duty to the people; I would have been a criminal had I not. I am guilty, though not the way you think, I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong, I should have called evil more clearly by its name I hesitated to condemn it for far too long. I now accuse myself within my heart: I have betrayed my conscience far too long I have deceived myself and fellow man. I knew the course of evil from the start My warning was not loud nor clear enough! Today I know what I was guilty of… To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray their conscience, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say “come forward.” I say “free your minds.” Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war. CODEPINK, 2010 Linden Ave, Venice, CA. 90291 (310) 827-4320 info@codepinkalert.org / webmistress@codepinkalert.org -------- europe Austrian court orders Slovakian nuclear station to conform to safety norms VIENNA (AFP) Feb 16, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050216121329.ukijijrn.html An Austrian tribunal has ruled that Slovakia should guarantee safety standards at its nuclear power plant at Mochove, some 140 kilometres (86 miles) east of Vienna, Austrian public radio ORF reported. The Vienna regional court ruled in favour of the spokeswoman of the opposition Green Party, Eva Glawischnig, who brought a complaint in 1998 that the plant constituted "a danger to the people and the property" of neighbouring Austria. It ruled that the direction of the power plant should assure that the safety at the plant "by taking the necessary measures to ensure that radio-active leaks do not occur again." "This means that either the plant should conform to safety norms or it should be shut down," Glawischnig said Wednesday. "This is made very clear by the ruling." She said the ruling set a precedent because it was the first time in the history of the European Union that a court has ruled that a nuclear plant in one country could pose a danger to the people of another. Glawischnig said "there was not a shadow of a doubt" that the ruling should be obeyed by Bratislava. "In commercial matters a Slovakian company is obliged to implement a court ruling handed down against it in Vienna, this is an everyday occurrence," she said. "But is good to see that now this also applies to the nuclear industry," she added. Austria banned nuclear energy following a referendum on the subject in 1978, which the government lost. The country is unhappy about the fact its neighbours operate nuclear power plants close to its borders and that it has no control over them. ---- Austrian court rules against Slovak nuclear plant 17 Feb 2005 19:48:34 GMT Source: Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1723290.htm VIENNA, Feb 17 (Reuters) - An Austrian court has set a precedent for Europe by ruling that a foreign nuclear plant poses a health hazard that must be corrected, the Green party said on Thursday. "The ruling shows impressively that people can defend themselves successfully against a nuclear power plant in a neighbouring state," Eva Glawischnig, the party's deputy leader and one of the two plaintiffs, said in a statement. A Vienna district court found Slovakia's Mochovce power plant, northeast of Bratislava and about 150 km (90 miles) from Vienna, did not meet international safety standards and posed a risk to the health of the plaintiffs, who both live in Vienna. Judge Hannelore Weber ruled against the plant's owner, Slovak state power firm Slovenske Elektrarne (SE), saying it had to reduce the risk of an accident that could cause a radiation leak and damage the plaintiffs' health. The plant's owner said it would appeal. "The nuclear power plant at Mochovce meets all Slovakia's legislative requirements as well as international safety standards," it added. The opposition Greens said the court made the ruling earlier this month. Glawischnig held a news conference on the case on Thursday where copies of the ruling were handed out. The party added that as Slovakia is a member state of the European Union, the ruling was binding across the border. The Greens said the ruling was "unique in Europe". "This is the first time a court has established that a nuclear power plant across the border creates a threat to life and health," the party said. The ruling said there was no danger if the power station functioned normally, but said several aspects did not reach Western safety standards, such as its lack of protection against plane crashes, and pipes placed too close together. "Due to the respondent's inability to prove that international standards were observed in the construction and operation of the Mochovce nuclear power plant, one can assume that there is an increased risk of accidents," the judge ruled. She ruled SE should "take suitable precautions to prevent nuisances (in Vienna, originating at the plant)", adding that the choice of precautions was up to SE. -------- iran Iran says nuclear fuel deal with Russia imminent Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:01 AM ET (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7658932 TEHRAN - Russia will sign a deal with Iran next week to start nuclear fuel shipments for the Russian-built reactor there, an Iranian official said on Thursday. The United States, which accuses Iran of secretly working to develop nuclear weapons, has long called on Russia to avoid supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel. "A fuel deal for the Bushehr nuclear power plant will be signed on Feb. 26," Assadollah Sabouri, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told state television. The comments indicated that the two countries had settled disagreements over the terms of their accord after years of negotiations. Russian Atomic Energy Agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev, confirming Iran's announcement, said ways of accelerating the reactor's start-up will be discussed during his visit to Tehran next week, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. The 1,000-megawatt Bushehr reactor, Iran's only nuclear power plant, is due to start up in late 2005 and reach full capacity in 2006. Oil-rich Iran denies that it is developing nuclear arms and says its programme is solely for generating electricity. Israel said on Wednesday that Iran was just six months away from having the knowledge to build nuclear weapons. A source at the agency said this month that the first fuel containers would be supplied about two months after the signing. Spent fuel will be sent back to Siberian storage units after about a decade of use -- a condition Russia thinks should allay U.S. concerns that Iran could use the material to make weapons. The European Union, represented by France, Britain and Germany, has been trying to persuade Iran to scrap potentially weapons-related activities in return for economic incentives. But Iran has repeatedly said it will never permanently end its disputed nuclear activities. (Additional reporting by Maria Golovnina in Moscow) ---- IAEA Digs Into Past Of Iranian Program Probe Traces How Materials Were Obtained By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A18 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30726-2005Feb16?language=printer VIENNA, Feb. 16 -- Despite a lack of fresh leads, U.N. inspectors continue to probe how Iran's nuclear program obtained equipment, material and know-how from abroad, questions that raise suspicions in Washington and Europe, diplomats with detailed knowledge of the investigation said Wednesday. None of these lines of inquiry addresses whether Iran is currently working on nuclear weapons. Rather, diplomats say, the International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to obtain greater insight into the international black market that supplied Iran and get a more definitive account of the country's past programs. Under arrangements still being worked out, Pakistan has agreed to lend the IAEA equipment from its nuclear weapons program that could help clear up one of the largest mysteries surrounding the two-year investigation of Iran -- why certain equipment in Iran has been found to contain traces of enriched uranium. Western governments have suggested that the uranium's presence could indicate that Iran was manufacturing a key ingredient for nuclear weapons. But Iranian officials are hoping that test results will show that equipment it bought from Pakistan years ago arrived contaminated with the uranium from that country's nuclear program. Iran denies that it intends to make bomb-grade uranium and says its enrichment programs are designed for producing nuclear energy. CIA Director Porter J. Goss, reporting to Congress on Wednesday on global threats, said the Iranian energy program could be diverted for weapons development. "We are more concerned about the dual-use nature of the technology," Goss said. Intelligence agencies are conducting a review of their assessments of Iran's nuclear program. A similar assessment before the Iraq war became a centerpiece of the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was advancing in its nuclear weapons program. But that intelligence, which the IAEA challenged before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, turned out to be wrong. [In a sign of continuing concern over Iran's nuclear program, oil prices spiked Wednesday after an explosion was reported in southern Iran near the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the Associated Press reported. State-run media offered conflicting explanations, including blasting for dam construction, a fuel tank dropping from an Iranian plane and friendly fire.] In a two-year investigation, the U.N. agency uncovered an 18-year-old nuclear program that the Iranians began in secret and in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The discovery helped unravel a nuclear black-market operated by Pakistan's former chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold Iran spare parts from his weapons program. The agency is looking into other dual-use equipment that Iran purchased for a facility in Lavasan. It is also studying experiments that Iran conducted with nuclear designs obtained from Pakistan years ago. Inspectors are awaiting results from soil samples taken at an Iranian military facility last month, but diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, expressed doubt that the results would yield any breakthroughs. The diplomats would discuss details of the sensitive investigation only on condition of anonymity. The IAEA's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in an interview Tuesday that six months have passed since the IAEA obtained any new information on Iran and that the agency hasn't found evidence to substantiate claims that Tehran is working on a weapons program, as the Bush administration has alleged. The IAEA board is to meet in Vienna in two weeks to discuss the latest developments on the Iran case. For the first time in two years, ElBaradei will not present a written report to his board on Iran's programs and is instead preparing a brief statement on grounds of lack of new information. One diplomat said ElBaradei's briefing will focus on Iran's suspension of nuclear-related work and its cooperation with inspectors, which ElBaradei has described as good, as well as the status of the agency's investigation. One of his deputies, Pierre Goldschmidt, will follow his presentation with a separate briefing on technical issues. Goldschmidt will likely discuss two recent issues that inspectors have had with Iran, including a tunnel that the Iranians are building at a nuclear site in Isfahan to store nuclear materials in case of an attack. The construction was first noticed by inspectors on satellite photos, and the Iranians then provided diagrams of the site. Inspectors do not consider the site to be relevant to the weapons investigations due to its defensive nature. Iran has also conducted maintenance work on some centrifuge components that the agency deems "nonsensitive" items and has conducted quality-control tests on other equipment. Neither of those activities violates a recent deal that Iran reached with three European countries to suspend certain nuclear-related operations while talks on a long-term halt continue. But the IAEA asked that the activities stop, and Iran complied, diplomats said. The briefings will also report that Iran has completed converting 37 tons of raw uranium into a solid state that makes it easier to be enriched. The conversion was allowed under the Iran-Europe deal and has been carried out under IAEA supervision. The agency is monitoring the rest of Iran's known nuclear-related sites and equipment, in most cases with 24-hour surveillance cameras. -------- missile defense Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Moving Target Engagement Capability For USAF Baltimore MD (SPX) Feb 17, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/missiles-05l.html Northrop Grumman recently performed successful high-speed captive flight tests of its multi-mode air-to-ground terminal guidance seeker during moving-target engagement exercises at Eglin Air Force Base. The exercises, conducted by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in cooperation with Northrop Grumman, The Boeing Company and Rockwell Collins successfully demonstrated the seeker's capability to find, fix, track, target, engage and assess tactical moving targets based upon targeting information provided by ground forward air controllers through a weapon data link. The demonstration featured a Boeing weapon pod simulating the Small Diameter Bomb. This pod contained the multi-mode seeker, a Boeing weapon mission computer and a Rockwell Collins Link-16 weapon data link. The seeker's ability to find, track, and engage single and multiple moving targets versus varying target speed, aspect, and Link-16 data link update rates was evaluated. The tests were conducted in varying weather conditions, including low ceilings and limited visibility. The Northrop Grumman multi-mode seeker successfully acquired and tracked targets with greater than a 97 percent success rate at tactically useful ranges. The tests also evaluated the ability to use target position updates data linked to the seeker from ground forward air controllers to accurately acquire the correct target. The target position data was obtained using Northrop Grumman's eye-safe Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder. "The demonstration's success provides a preview of future network-centric warfare," said Jock McKinley, director of Strike Programs for Northrop Grumman's Systems Development & Technology Division. "The successful demonstration supports the Air Force's requirements to field smart weapons that are interoperable with today's platforms and to enhance mission effectiveness by utilizing network-centric and joint operations." -------- russia Missing Russian Nuclear Material Could be Used to Produce Weapon, CIA Chief Warns By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire February 17, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_17.html#681FE192 WASHINGTON — Enough Russian nuclear material is unaccounted for that “those with know-how” could construct a nuclear weapon if they were to obtain it, CIA Director Porter Goss said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 11). Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during its annual worldwide threat hearing that he could not be confident that the material had not fallen into the hands of terrorists. “I can’t make that assurance. I can’t account for some of the material, so I can’t make the assurance about its whereabouts,” he said. Senior Russian officials have repeatedly denied allegations of lost Russian nuclear weapons or materials. Many nonproliferation experts, however, have questioned such denials. Vladimir Rybachenkov of the Russian Embassy in Washington said of Goss’ claim, “I don’t believe it’s true.” In the past 20 years, Rybachenkov said, there have been no reported thefts or disappearances of Russian weapon-grade nuclear material. “This is a fact,” he told Global Security Newswire. Goss said yesterday that the risk of theft or diversion of Russian WMD materials and technologies “is a continuing concern.” Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said he hoped additional funding would be provided for efforts to secure Russian weapons of mass destruction. Russia also remains “an important source” of weapons technology and materials for other nations, Goss said. During yesterday’s hearing, Goss and other senior U.S. intelligence officials outlined for lawmakers potential threats to the United States in a number of countries of concern, including Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. The officials also described the continued threat posed by terrorist groups to the United States. The officials sought to reassure lawmakers’ concerns about the credibility of their assessments of various threats, noting the intelligence improvements that have occurred following failed efforts to assess prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts. For example, the CIA has increased its number of intelligence “collectors” and analysts and has sought to encourage “contrarian analysis,” Goss said. Iran, North Korea Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby warned that Iran was likely to develop a nuclear weapon “early in the next decade” barring constraints imposed through a nonproliferation agreement (see related GSN story, today). “Iran is likely continuing nuclear weapons-related endeavors in an effort to become the dominant regional power and deter what it perceives as the potential for U.S. or Israeli attacks. We judge that Iran is devoting significant resources to its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs,” Jacoby said in his prepared testimony. Iran has long claimed, however, that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes. While agreeing that Tehran would be “right” in developing the capability to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors, Goss said the CIA was concerned about the “dual-use nature” of much of Iran’s nuclear technology. “We do not have transparency,” he said. One factor that complicates intelligence efforts on Iran’s nuclear program is the “advantage of ambiguity,” said Carol Rodley, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. “The Iranians don’t necessarily have to have a successful nuclear program in order to have the deterrent value. They merely have to convince us, others and their neighbors that they do. This is a lesson that hasn’t been lost on them, and it merely complicates both the collection and the analysis on this issue,” she said. The Defense Intelligence Agency has also determined that Iran is likely to have the “technical capability” to develop an ICBM by 2015, Jacoby said in his prepared testimony, adding that “it is not clear” whether Tehran has decided to do so. Iran is also likely to continue efforts to improve its short-range ballistic missile arsenal, and is expected to “develop or import” land-attack cruise missiles, he said. North Korea has probably progressed beyond a 2002 CIA assessment that it possessed enough plutonium to produce one or two nuclear weapons, Goss told lawmakers. “It has increased since then,” he said of Pyongyang’s weapons-production capability. The CIA also believes that North Korea is continuing to seek a uranium enrichment capability drawing on assistance provided by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, Goss said. Last week, Pyongyang announced publicly that it possessed nuclear weapons and that it would no longer participate in multilateral talks seeking to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Such talks, known as the six-party talks, involve China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States. In his prepared testimony, Jacoby said that while North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may agree at some point to a partial removal of his nuclear weapons arsenal and program, “we judge Kim is not likely to surrender all of his nuclear weapons capabilities.” Both Goss and Jacoby also suggested the possibility that Pyongyang might seek to sell its nuclear weapons or materials abroad for hard currency. The officials also said that North Korea could begin flight-testing its Taepodong 2 ICBM, which is believed to be capable of reaching targets with a nuclear weapon-sized payload. Jacoby also said in his prepared remarks that Pyongyang is continuing efforts to develop new short-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. North Korea is also believed to have active programs to develop biological and chemical weapons, Goss said, adding that Pyongyang “probably” has chemical weapons available for use, and “possibly” biological weapons. Pakistan There is a continued “significant threat” that terrorists could seek to destabilize Pakistan through the assassination of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and other high-level officials, according to Jacoby. Were Musharraf to be assassinated, extremist Islamic politicians could gain greater influence, including over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, according to the officials (see GSN, Jan. 21). During her Senate confirmation hearings last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said plans were in place to address the possible capture of Pakistani nuclear weapons by Islamic extremists. During yesterday’s hearing, Goss briefly addressed another key U.S. proliferation concern regarding Pakistan — the Khan network, which was used to transfer nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Some have claimed that the investigation into the network, which was revealed through Khan’s confession, has been hampered due to Pakistan’s refusal to allow direct access to the scientist (see GSN, Feb. 15). In response to questions from lawmakers, Goss praised Pakistan’s cooperation with the U.S. investigation of the network, but declined to provide detail in an open committee hearing. “There is an understanding that A.Q. Khan enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity status in his country because he was the man who brought them the bomb, which was very critical to that culture and their national pride, and so forth,” Goss said. “It has been a difficult prospect, and understanding the problem they are having to deal with is useful in negotiating our interests, which are to get all the information possible. I think that those discussions are understood, and appropriate steps by the right people are being taken place,” he added. The U.S. investigation into the network is continuing, Goss said. “We have found that from a variety of sources following the leads of what we’ve known already that we’ve uncovered many new things, and we have found that in covering those things that we have not got to the end of the trail. Getting to the end of that trail is extremely important for us,” he said. Another concern is that Pakistan and its regional rival India may both develop “boosted” nuclear weapons with increased yields, according to Jacoby. China Goss told the Senate intelligence panel that China’s military modernization efforts “could tilt the balance of power in the Taiwan strait” and could jeopardize U.S. troops in the region. Such modernization efforts include efforts to improve both the capabilities and survivability of China’s ballistic missile forces, officials said. A Taiwanese push for independence could result in China responding with “varying levels of force,” Goss said. In his prepared testimony, though, Jacoby said that Beijing was believed more likely to use economic and diplomatic pressures to ward off Taiwan’s separation, as least through the 2008 Olympics. Terrorism In addition to the threats posed by several countries of concerns, the senior intelligence officials during yesterday’s Senate hearing also stressed the continued danger posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, including their interests in obtaining weapons of mass destruction. “We are … extremely concerned with a growing body of sensitive reporting that continues to show al-Qaeda’s clear intention to obtain and to ultimately use some form of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in its attacks against the United States. We still assess that a mass-casualty attack using relatively low-tech methods will be their most likely approach,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said. Terrorists are believed to be more likely to use industrial chemical or biological agents, rather than nuclear or radiological weapons, “because they are easier to employ” in attacks, Jacoby said in his prepared remarks. Such attacks would be intended to “cause casualties and attack the psyche of the targeted populations.” While noting the risk of possible WMD attacks by terrorists, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Adm. James Loy said “we are most likely to be attacked with a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, because that’s the weapon of choice around the world.” While “the most serious” terrorist threat to the United States is posed by al-Qaeda operatives abroad, there are also concerns that other terrorists groups with a presence in the United States, or domestic Islamic militants, may assist a future attack, Mueller said. Such groups include Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, he said. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, may choose to conduct retaliatory attacks against the United States in the event of U.S. military action against Tehran, Goss said. “I would certainly recommend that any policy-maker considering that take that calculation,” he said. -------- transportation Hazardous Materials Rerouted CSX Sues, Denies Misleading District By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page B01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30752-2005Feb16?language=printer CSX Transportation officials acknowledged yesterday that when they voluntarily rerouted hazardous-materials shipments last spring from a north-south rail line that passes by the U.S. Capitol, they redirected some of the rail cars onto an east-west line that passes through the District. The east-west route, known as the B&O line, travels mostly through the Brookland and Eckington neighborhoods of Ward 5. The railroad company filed suit yesterday in federal court, seeking to overturn a District law that bans the shipping of hazardous materials through the city, just hours after Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said he signed the legislation. CSX said in company legal papers that the District law, by preventing use of the east-west route, could double the time that hazardous materials spend in transit, making neighborhoods across the country less safe and also inconveniencing train commuters. For a shipment from Galmish, W. Va., to Bayonne, N.J., the normal 581-mile route would become a trip of 1,076 miles if the train could not go through the District, the documents said. D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who sponsored the law, said at a news conference yesterday that CSX officials had misled city officials in private briefings last year by assuring them that the legislation was unnecessary and by suggesting that the company was voluntarily rerouting the most dangerous materials to rail lines outside the District's borders. "At the least, they've misled council members and the Williams administration," Patterson said. "They've been dishonest at the worst. It just proves they're not going to do anything to reroute hazardous materials voluntarily." CSX spokesman Robert Sullivan denied that the company misled the city, saying CSX officials made it clear that they were focused on reducing the volume of hazardous materials traveling on the line near the Capitol. "There was never an attempt or an intent to mislead," Sullivan said. In its lawsuit, CSX called the D.C. law "protectionist legislation" that violates constitutional protections for interstate commerce and interferes with the federal government's safety regulations for the rail industry. "The ordinance . . . invites other local jurisdictions to enact copycat legislation which could, by crazy-quilt coverage, bring to a halt the interstate shipment of critically important materials throughout the United States of America," said the lawsuit, noting that the city's ban covers such commodities as chlorine to disinfect water and propane to heat homes. The company plans to seek an emergency restraining order to keep the District from enforcing the law. City officials and environmental groups supporting the ban said the District is unusual because it is a prime target for a terrorist attack. They argue that in a worst-case scenario, the cloud of poisonous gas from the explosion of a rail car carrying chlorine could kill as many as 100,000 people and sicken many more. "[T]he issue is not the 'economic regulation' of CSX, but the safety of hundreds of thousands of the District's residents and visitors," the city wrote in responding to a CSX filing last week that asked the federal government to stop the ban. "CSX's petition is nothing less than an attempt to stop the District's exercise of its broad police powers to protect its citizens from an unprecedented and unique threat ." Experts in commerce law have questioned whether the city's argument will win, because courts generally have interpreted the Constitution to protect business conducted across state lines from state and local government interference. Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu and Lori Montgomery contributed to this report. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Rumsfeld States Case For Burrowing Weapon By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A05 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30615-2005Feb16?language=printer Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday defended plans to resume studying the feasibility of an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead, saying many countries are burying targets underground and "we have no capability, conventional or nuclear" to go after them. Last year, Congress, by a single vote, refused to continue funding what was begun in 2002 as a three-year technical study. The goal is to see whether the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories could come up with a concept for a warhead casing that could carry a nuclear device down through rock or hardened earth, keeping it intact to explode and destroy an underground facility. Opposition to the study came from House and Senate members who saw it as the United States working to create a new nuclear weapon when Washington is attempting to stop other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, from having atomic weapons. At the House Armed Services Committee meeting yesterday, Rumsfeld said what was involved was a feasibility study and not development of a weapon. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that Gen. James E. Cartwright, the new chief of Strategic Command who has to deal with countering underground targets, "certainly thinks there's a need for this study," and that the other Joint Chiefs agreed. "It's not a commitment to go forward with a system," Myers said. On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, whose laboratories had halted work on the project when the budget was eliminated, said Rumsfeld had asked that he support resumption of the study and funds had been included to complete it in fiscal 2007. The Defense Department is "a very important customer and one that we try to work with effectively and so we have done so at their request," Bodman told a Senate panel. He described the project as "design work" that does not involve nuclear materials. Instead, he said, "it involves understanding the physics of having a projectile hit the earth, and to determine just how deep the device goes and what happens to the internal structure." Bodman said questions include whether the warhead can "retain sufficient structure that a nuclear device that might be inside . . . or a non-nuclear device, be protected until it reaches some depth in the ground." ---- Republicans Push for New Nuke Requirement By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire February 17, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_17.html#EAE8E5BE WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers this week pressed U.S. defense officials to explain why the military would need a new earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, which has been under evaluation in a program favored by the Bush administration (see GSN, Feb. 4). The administration has requested $8.5 million in fiscal 2006 funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program to continue a study of whether an upgraded, existing nuclear weapon might be capable of plowing more deeply through rock prior to a nuclear explosion. The money would enable a first drop test by the Air Force next year of the hardened weapon, without a nuclear explosion. Bipartisan opposition to the program was sufficient to eliminate funding for the program for the current fiscal year. A key Republican lawmaker questioned whether the senior military leadership believes there is a military need — reflected in a formally stated military requirement — for whatever new capability the weapon might offer. No one at the Defense or Energy departments has “ever articulated to me a specific military requirement for a nuclear earth penetrator,” Representative Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, said in a speech this month. No Formal Requirement So far, military leaders have not publicly indicated a formal military requirement for a modified weapon. “A formal military requirement for the nuclear bunker buster would give the program additional forward momentum. It brings the bomb closer to reality,” said Council for a Livable World President John Isaacs. A Republican legislator yesterday asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to detail such a requirement. “Could you please tell me directly if there’s a military need for this robust nuclear earth penetrator?” asked Representative Terry Everett (R-Ala.) at a Defense Department budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers responded that the combatant commander responsible for worrying about deeply buried targets “certainly thinks there’s a need for this study,” and also endorsed that view. “It’s not a commitment to go forward with a system, it’s just to see if it’s feasible,” he said. Rumsfeld said “there is a need for the study — which is what we’re talking about here, and not a weapon.” He offered, though, the administration’s rationale for pursuing such a capability, though, saying new commercial technology has enabled other countries to bury facilities by “digging underground, in rock, twice the height of a basketball net and the full length of a basketball court every day in rock.” Countries “all across the globe are putting things underground, and we have no capability, conventional or nuclear, to deal with the issue of deep penetrat[ion],” Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld in January reportedly sent a letter to then Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham urging funding for continuing the earth-penetrator study (see GSN, Feb. 1). Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) at a hearing on Tuesday asked Abraham’s replacement, Samuel Bodman, to provide the committee the administration’s justification for the program (see GSN, Feb. 16). Administration Seeks Weapon The administration first signaled an interest in a new earth-penetrating capability in its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. A deeper digging nuclear weapon, Pentagon officials have argued, could provide the United States a better capability to strike deeply buried, hardened underground bunkers and potentially create less surface destruction by using a small nuclear yield. Congressional opponents and independent critics of the effort have argued that no weapon is likely to plow deep enough to significantly contain a blast; that such a weapon would be unlikely to be used because it would create massive surface destruction and fallout on populated areas; and that the program undermines efforts to strengthen international nonproliferation cooperation. The administration last year projected a five-year, $485 million budget for the earth-penetrator program if Congress authorizes moving past the study phase into full research and development. U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) suggested that North Korean officials during his recent visit to Pyongyang expressed concern about the United States obtaining a more capable nuclear earth penetrator. “The North Koreans were very intrigued by the notion that we were looking to pursue a deep-earth penetrator to get at their underground complexes,” he said during yesterday’s briefing. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new mexico In a New Mexico Desert Town, Residents Stake Their Future on Uranium February 17, 2005 — By Peter Barnes, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7155 EUNICE, New Mexico — Like many others in this former boomtown, Mayor James Brown knows more about isotopes, centrifuges and uranium-235 than your average college student. Brown's recent crash course in nuclear physics was a prerequisite: Many of his constituents are counting on the jobs and economic trickle-down that are being promised if a $1.3 billion (euro1.02 billion) uranium enrichment plant that would make fuel for nuclear power plants comes to town. The project would be the first privately operated uranium enrichment plant in the United States and the first U.S. installation to use centrifuge technology, rather than a process known as gaseous diffusion that has been around since the Manhattan Project. Louisiana Energy Services, the international consortium behind the plant, wanted to build the project in rural Louisiana, but backed out in 1998 after opponents accused it of targeting a predominantly poor and black parish. Then it pulled out of Hartsville, Tennessee, in 2003 after running into opposition from former Vice President Al Gore and others. Critics say the proposed National Enrichment Facility could pollute the environment, guzzle scarce water and leave this oil-producing town with tons of radioactive waste and nowhere to put it. But the mayor warns that without the plant, Eunice faces extinction. "We have to have something else in place or communities like Eunice and Jal will just disappear," he said. "The oil industry won't be able to support our economy 20 or 30 years from now." The new proposed site is in the flat, scrub-covered desert 550 kilometers (340 miles) from Albuquerque in the southeastern corner of the state, close to the Texas line. LES has promised that the plant would employ 400 workers during the construction phase and, once it is up and running, 210 people, with a payroll of more than $10 million (euro7.84 million) and an average salary of $50,000 (euro39,179). Last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board held public meetings on the LES plan. At one, Lea County Commissioner Darrold Stephenson made his point by flipping the lights off. If the project is turned down, "this is what we're passing on to our future generations: nothing," the 70-year-old commissioner said later. Oil and natural gas have been the region's lifeblood for decades. Today, bobbing oil pumps and high-pressure gas lines are woven into Eunice's modest street grid. But many oil-related jobs are disappearing because of new labor-saving technology, and companies have discovered more lucrative oil fields elsewhere. Since 1985, Eunice's population has fallen by a third, to 2,500. The uranium enrichment plant would be the biggest commercial nuclear project in the United States in years. The nuclear industry is watching the project's fate closely, said Marshall Cohen, an LES spokesman. "If it's a good, steady, on-track process, that's encouraging to others who might want to look at nuclear-related construction. Because it's very expensive -- the amount of money spent on obtaining the license is serious money," he said. Townspeople in Eunice overwhelmingly support the project. Some have grown tired of environmentalists and other out-of-towners preaching doom, and many note that they have lived with industrial hazards all their lives. "Don't tell me how dangerous this is when I grew up in this oil field," said Fay Thompson, owner of The Bakery and More restaurant on Main Street. Compared to working with oil, the plant is a "walk in the park," Thompson said. Her husband, she said, died 40 years ago of cancer related to benzene, a petroleum byproduct. Still, a few in town are skeptical. "We're such a gullible lot here, what can I say?" said Rose Gardner, owner of Desert Rose Flowers and Gifts. "The whole world knows the negative side, but Lea County doesn't seem to know it." Environmentalists worry that radioactive material could seep into the groundwater and the air. Moreover, they say, uranium processing generates a type of waste that currently cannot be dumped anywhere in the United States. With processing, it could be sent to a low-level nuclear waste dump. Currently, no U.S. processing facility can do that. A French company has offered to build such a plant in this country, but it will be years before it even applies for a license. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in the Clinton administration, has indicated his support for the project is contingent on an assurance the waste will be sent out of the state. Mike Sheehan, an economist hired by Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group, also said the new plant would undercut financially an anti-proliferation program in Russia that takes weapons-grade uranium and turns it into power plant fuel. Other critics point out that the United States discourages the same kind of plants in places like Iran, which might use them to produce uranium for nuclear weapons. ---- Probe Finds Nuke Guards Mishandled Guns By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: February 17, 2005 Filed at 12:09 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Test-Site-Security.html LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Federal and private guards entrusted with monitoring the transport of nuclear and conventional weapons ``systematically'' violated policies governing the handling and inventory of their own weapons, a report released Wednesday stated. In one case, a private guard gave a government handgun to his wife to store overnight in her car, the report by the Energy Department inspector general found. In another, guards improperly took government and personal handguns to a Nevada nuclear test site. The report noted inadequate record-keeping exposed the weapons to theft, loss or misuse. Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration and Wackenhut Services Inc. downplayed the findings as paperwork slip-ups, not performance flaws. They said weapons inventory procedures had been stepped up, and guards had been disciplined. ``We don't believe this indicates a systematic problem,'' said Al Stotts, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman in Albuquerque, N.M. The NNSA oversees the Office of Secure Transportation, which moves conventional and nuclear weapons, weapons components and radioactive material around the country. ``Clearly, there was some sloppiness that needed to be cleaned up,'' said Jim Long, president and chief executive of Wackenhut, a security firm based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. ``That's what we did and that's what the government did.'' The nine-month investigation was triggered after New Mexico guards improperly took government and personal handguns to a training exercise at the Nevada Test Site in October 2003. The report found a federal guard brought a personal gun to the test site to be fixed by a Wackenhut employee -- an apparent ethics violation. It found accounting controls lacking for two of 19 government handguns moved in June 2001 from Fort Chaffee, Ark., to the NNSA's National Training Center in Albuquerque. It also traced two government-owned handguns signed out by a Wackenhut employee from a NNSA armory in Albuquerque in October 2003; two other Wackenhut employees handled the guns before one gave them to his wife to store overnight in her car at home. ``He told us that he was concerned about transporting the handguns onto Kirtland Air Force Base without the proper custody documentation,'' the report said. Long and Stotts declined to identify the guards or what discipline they received. They said they were sure the guns were not used for illegal purposes. A federal inspector general's report last year accused Wackenhut of cheating on performance drills at the Energy Department's facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. At the Nevada Test Site, security was beefed up recently after guards failed to stop a mock terrorist attack on a bunker to safeguard weapons-grade nuclear material. -------- MILITARY -------- iraq Iraqi elections cover up the crime Touted as good news, the elections and turn-out in them in Iraq mean nothing while the occupation continues and death reigns by Michael Nenonen February 17 to March 2, 2005 Vancouver Republic http://www.republic-news.org/archive/107-repub/107_nenonen.htm We're witnessing a digestive miracle: throughout Canada and the United States, people are swallowing buckets of bullshit without gagging. I'm speaking, of course, about the mainstream media's coverage of the elections for a transitional national assembly in Iraq. Before we heap one more laurel upon the president's witless head, let's remember that the Bush administration didn't want these elections to occur at all. Over a year ago the Associated Press reported that "Al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite leader, has rejected a US formula for transferring power through a provisional legislature selected by 18 regional caucuses, insisting on direct elections instead.” In other words, the pressure for elections was applied by Al-Sistani, not George W Bush. The Iraqi people voted not in support of, but in protest against, the United States' involvement in their affairs. Polls conducted by the American government prior to the elections revealed that over 90% of Iraqis view the Americans as occupiers, and that less than 10% view them as liberators, positions expressed quite clearly in massive anti-American rallies held in Iraq since the invasion. Despite Al-Sistani's laudable grassroots initiative, and despite the courage shown by the voters, the elections were hardly models of democratic process. Regardless of what we're hearing in the mainstream media, they resemble genuine democratic elections about as much as a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition match resembles a real basketball game. Sources on the ground report that ballots were extremely confusing. The populace recognized few of the candidates because they were unable to hold rallies or debates for fear of violence. Some candidates were surprised to find out their names were even on the ballots. The highly-touted voter turnout of 72% turned out to be rather exaggerated; it appears that only 58% of voters showed up at the polls, which, however commendable in such dangerous circumstances, is hardly astounding. It doesn't offer any guarantees about the country's future, either. Voters in South Vietnam turned out in much higher numbers in a similarly celebrated election five months before the Tet Offensive. On a more substantial level, it should be noted that truly democratic elections conform to international laws. Those laws prohibit an occupying power from making substantial changes to the political and economic structure of an occupied country. The occupiers in Iraq have imposed massive changes in the country's political and economic structure. Given this, how can the elections have any legitimacy? Speaking of legitimacy, genuine elections have to be capable of bringing about changes in a country's political power structure. Whoever wins the Iraq elections, meanwhile, will have to operate within the constraints of legislation imposed by the occupying power. The coalition simply isn't going to allow the elected government to determine Iraq's destiny. As Noam Chomsky pointed out in a January 26 th presentation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a genuinely sovereign democratic Iraq would align its interests with those of the other Shiite-dominated state in the region, Iran. A sovereign Iraq would also want to resume its long-held position as the premiere power in the Middle East, which would bring it into conflict with Israel. Iraq would need to re-arm itself, and would likely develop weapons of mass destruction rivalling Israel's. Such an Iraq would certainly oppose the presence of permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil. Finally, an independent Iraq would want complete control over its foremost resource, its oil reserves. The United States and Great Britain simply won't tolerate any of these steps. Given this, Iraq seems little more than a penitentiary in which the prisoners have held elections to decide who among them will occasionally enforce the will of their guards. But let's turn away from Iraq and consider what's being asked of us. The Bush administration and its shills in the corporate media would have us believe that so long as Western powers allow a subjugated people to vote in an election incapable of altering the real power structure under which they live, it's all right to use flagrant lies to invade a helpless and sovereign country in defiance of international law, kill over 100,000 of its people, maim and arbitrarily arrest and torture many thousands more, multiply its already horrific infant malnutrition and death rate, destroy its infrastructure, flatten its cities, establish permanent military bases on its soil, contaminate its land with depleted uranium shells, sell off its resources through privatisation schemes, shut down its dissident newspapers, and demolish its labour movement. Some are all-too-happy to make a meal of this filth. After all, the Iraq war was beginning to threaten our self-image—and I do mean “our” self-image: Canada is a major arms supplier and trading partner for the United States. Our assistance in Afghanistan allowed American forces to focus their attention on Iraq, and Canadian conservatives like Ralph Klein beat the war drums as loudly as anyone south of the border. The aesthetics of our “War on Terror”—the well-raped detainees, the children covered in their parents' gore, the screams and the severed limbs—were becoming psychologically septic. Corporate greed may compel us to drown the streets of Baghdad with the blood of the brown, but God forbid we should be infected by shame over our actions. Many people are therefore using Iraq's elections as a ritual of self-purification. Now, they can piously proclaim that the people we're slaughtering are only sacrificial lambs offered to appease “Democracy”—a term that no longer refers to democratic process, but rather to some great and murderous abstraction, the Moloch of the modern age. Dinner's been served. Some have eaten hungrily, and they'll soon ask for seconds. As for me, I haven't touched my plate. Someone, please, show me the way out of this restaurant. -------- us Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Moving Target Engagement Capability For USAF Baltimore MD (SPX) Feb 17, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/missiles-05l.html Northrop Grumman recently performed successful high-speed captive flight tests of its multi-mode air-to-ground terminal guidance seeker during moving-target engagement exercises at Eglin Air Force Base. The exercises, conducted by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in cooperation with Northrop Grumman, The Boeing Company and Rockwell Collins successfully demonstrated the seeker's capability to find, fix, track, target, engage and assess tactical moving targets based upon targeting information provided by ground forward air controllers through a weapon data link. The demonstration featured a Boeing weapon pod simulating the Small Diameter Bomb. This pod contained the multi-mode seeker, a Boeing weapon mission computer and a Rockwell Collins Link-16 weapon data link. The seeker's ability to find, track, and engage single and multiple moving targets versus varying target speed, aspect, and Link-16 data link update rates was evaluated. The tests were conducted in varying weather conditions, including low ceilings and limited visibility. The Northrop Grumman multi-mode seeker successfully acquired and tracked targets with greater than a 97 percent success rate at tactically useful ranges. The tests also evaluated the ability to use target position updates data linked to the seeker from ground forward air controllers to accurately acquire the correct target. The target position data was obtained using Northrop Grumman's eye-safe Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder. "The demonstration's success provides a preview of future network-centric warfare," said Jock McKinley, director of Strike Programs for Northrop Grumman's Systems Development & Technology Division. "The successful demonstration supports the Air Force's requirements to field smart weapons that are interoperable with today's platforms and to enhance mission effectiveness by utilizing network-centric and joint operations." -------- war crimes U.S. contractors in Iraq allege abuses Four men say they witnessed brutality Feb. 17, 2005 By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit MSNBC.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947745/ There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations. The four men are all retired military veterans: Capt. Bill Craun, Army Rangers; Sgt. Jim Errante, military police; Cpl. Ernest Colling, U.S. Army; and Will Hough, U.S. Marines. All went to Iraq months ago as private security contractors. "I went there for the money," says Hough. "I'm a patriot," says Craun. "You can't turn off being a soldier," says Colling. They worked for an American company named Custer Battles, hired by the Pentagon to conduct dangerous missions guarding supply convoys. They were so upset by what they saw, three quit after only one or two missions. "What we saw, I know the American population wouldn't stand for," says Craun. They claim heavily armed security operators on Custer Battles' missions — among them poorly trained young Kurds, who have historical resentments against other Iraqis — terrorized civilians, shooting indiscriminately as they ran for cover, smashing into and shooting up cars. On a mission on Nov. 8, escorting ammunition and equipment for the Iraqi army, they claim a Kurd guarding the convoy allegedly shot into a passenger car to clear a traffic jam. "[He] sighted down his AK-47 and started firing," says Colling. "It went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn't even know we were there." Later, the convoy came upon two teenagers by the road. One allegedly was gunned down. "The rear gunner in my vehicle shot him," says Colling. "Unarmed, walking kids." In another traffic jam, they claim a Ford 350 pickup truck smashed into, then rolled up and over the back of a small sedan full of Iraqis. "The front of the truck came down," says Craun. "I could see two children sitting in the back seat of that car with their eyes looking up at the axle as it came down and pulverized the back." "I said, 'Wow, what hit this car?'" remembers Hough. Could anyone have survived? "Probably not. Not from what I saw," says Hough. The men assume that in all three incidents the Iraqis were seriously hurt or killed. But they can't be sure. "It was chaos and carnage and destruction the whole day," says Craun. Two of the men — Craun and Colling — say they quit immediately. Craun, in an e-mail two days later to a friend at the Pentagon, wrote: "I didn't want any part of an organization that deliberately murders children and innocent civilians." Errante says he also quit after witnessing wild, indiscriminate shootings on two other missions. "I said I didn't want to be a witness to any of these, what could be classified as a war crime," says Errante. Once back in the U.S., Craun — recipient of the Bronze Star — took the allegations to Army criminal investigators. The Army tells NBC News it's looking into the matter. This is not the firm’s first brush with controversy. Custer Battles is a relatively new company in the booming field of so-called "private military companies" in Iraq providing veteran soldiers from around the world for various security jobs. Named for founders Michael Battles and Scott Custer, who are military veterans, the company quickly nabbed lucrative contracts in Iraq, where U.S. authorities needed firms who were willing to accept high-risk assignments. The company is already under criminal investigation for allegations of fraud centering on the way it billed the government. Those allegations are also at the heart of a lawsuit by former associates. In September, the military banned the firm and its associates from obtaining new federal contracts or subcontracts. Custer Battles denies it committed any fraud, and says the company has been the target of "baseless allegations" made by "disgruntled former employees" and competitors. It has said it hopes that the government will overturn the suspension on new contracts. In any case, the ban didn’t stop the company from fulfilling its old contracts, such as the missions performed by Craun, Hough, Colling and Errante. "These aren't insurgents that we're brutalizing," says Craun. "It was local civilians on their way to work. It's wrong." Anyone who's been there says Iraq is a brutal, deadly place. So why do the men blame Custer Battles? "Simply, they're negligent," says Colling. "[Just] throwing people out there and then forcing us to use these brutal tactics. They're responsible, absolutely." Custer Battles declined to be interviewed on camera. The CEO calls the allegations "completely baseless and without merit" and says there's "no evidence" to support them. He adds that the Kurds worked for a subcontractor, not Custer Battles. The company provided conflicting information about the crushed car but arranged for NBC News to talk to the man who who oversaw the mission on Nov. 8, 2004. Shawn Greene, who still works for Custer Battles in Iraq, spoke by phone with NBC News. He acknowledges that during the mission a pickup truck did roll over the bumper and taillight area of a sedan, which he says refused to move out of the way. Greene denies anyone was injured in the incident. "There were no children in that vehicle," he insists. As the leader of the mission, Greene ordered the lead driver to push the vehicle since there had been attacks against convoys in that area in the past. "He came directly in front of my lead vehicle," says Greene. "That is how that car got in our path. And why he had to be pushed out the way when he refused to move. It wasn't that we went out of our way in any way looking for a car to hit. We don't do that." But because of the dangers on Iraqi roads, Greene says employees of Custer Battles do sometimes push Iraqi civilian vehicles out of their way if they refuse to move. "Usually, you know, we give them a tap at about 20 miles an hour or so," he says. The company also arranged for a phone conversation with its country manager in Iraq, Paul Christopher. The company points out that Christopher is a retired lieutenant colonel who authored a book on the ethics of war and ran the philosophy program at West Point. Christopher maintains the Nov. 8 mission was the only case where a civilian car was damaged by the company in Iraq. The company provided a photo to NBC News, which it says is the car in question, to prove that the damage was not that severe. In the photo, the passenger compartment of the car seems to be intact. Craun, Colling and Hough say it's not the same car. As for the incidents of allegedly wild shooting, Greene also disputes that any innocent Iraqis were killed by gunfire during the mission, although he agrees there were warning shots fired on several legs of the mission. Likewise, Christopher insists "there has absolutely never been a case of anyone being hurt or killed to my knowledge, except for people who were actively engaged in shooting at us first." Certainly the company does experience genuine combat conditions. In fact, on one leg of the November mission, the convoy came under a serious attack by Iraqi insurgents. First, the pickup truck driven by Hough was struck by an improvised explosive device, or IED, which killed one of the Iraqi Kurd guards. Then the men fought a pitched firefight against insurgents until the U.S. military arrived. However, Custer Battles claims all these men are "disgruntled" former employees, who believe the company still owes them money. It says Hough was fired and that Craun once confided to a colleague that he knew the company didn't really kill any children. So why are these men going public with these allegations now? They say because they care about American soldiers and about winning the war. "If we continue to let this happen, those people will hate us even more than they already do," says Craun. And they say that only makes Iraq more dangerous for American soldiers. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars The CBS Three Won't Slink Off Thursday, February 17th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/17/1530248 Five weeks after CBS blamed them for botching an expose into President Bush's questionable service in the Texas Air National Guard, three staffers who were asked to resign are refusing to quit. [includes rush transcript] They are: Josh Howard, executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday"; senior broadcast producer Mary Murphy, and senior vice president Betsy West. The New York Observer is reporting that Howard has hired a lawyer and wants CBS executive Leslie Moonves to retract comments he made following the release of an exhaustive investigation into how the report got on the air. All three staffers remain on the CBS payroll. CBS refused to comment after the Observer broke the story. Along with CBS producer Mary Mapes, the three were blamed for what an independent panel convened by the network called their "myopic zeal" to nail Bush. We're joined now by Joe Hagan, the reporter who broke this story in The New York Observer. The piece is called "The CBS Three Won't Slink Off; Hiring Lawyers." * Joe Hagan, reporter with The New York Observer. His latest piece is titled "The CBS Three Won't Slink Off; Hiring Lawyers" RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now by Joe Hagan, the reporter who broke the story in The New York Observer. The piece is called "The CBS Three Won't Slink Off; Hiring Lawyers." Joe Hagan is here with us. JOE HAGAN: Thanks for having me. JUAN GONZALEZ: Joe, welcome, and let's start off. Can't CBS supposedly just fire these folks instead of seeking their resignations, and what is the situation in terms of why they cannot, why they have been able to stay in the job? JOE HAGAN: Well, first of all, asking them to resign is a kind of a legal technique which puts them in a position of not being able to talk, basically. As long as they're employed, if they go into the public and begin to tell things they know, then they will be -- they could be sued. So they have to be fired in order to ever say anything. And CBS can just not fire them, and just let their contracts run out. And meanwhile, they're in the position where they can’t even sue, because they're employees of the company right now. So, they have got them in a bind. Meanwhile, the staffers are very angry, because they had their reputations destroyed by this whole event, but also, they have intimated, through back channels, that they have all kinds of information that was not in the report that implicates the top management at CBS in the stonewalling of the event, and also they question the report itself and how it was assembled, and who it was assembled by, by the way. And-- AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? JOE HAGAN: Richard Thornburgh being a Bush family friend seems like less an independent report a more like penance-- AMY GOODMAN: Former Attorney General. JOE HAGAN: Richard Thornburgh, right? who CBS commissioned to do this, is a friend of the Bush family. Why is he actually, you know, an independent operator here to find out what happened, right? AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about Josh Howard, and what he is saying right now behind the scenes. JOE HAGAN: Well, you know, through sources close to him, back channels I'm learning about -- he is the former executive producer of 60 Minutes Wednesday, which aired the big thing. Basically, two days after the show was aired, he began to voice doubts to the management at CBS that, listen, maybe we should acknowledge that this thing is a hoax; you know, I'm worried, I think maybe we need to put the brakes on this thing. He was overridden by management, and they went on to stonewall for another ten days. And you know, to his -- later, when the report came out, Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS, says this guy didn't do his duty, he was irresponsible, therefore he is asked to be – to resign. Meanwhile, none of the top management pays any price, right? So you wonder: How could they have not known that their executive producer was telling them; you know, if he warned them, if he waved the red flag and they ignored him, aren't they thereby responsible somehow and he's -- this is probably his case. JUAN GONZALEZ: What have you been able to tell about the impact of the overall incident on the rest of the CBS news staff in terms of their -- JOE HAGAN: They're just incredibly angry and they're all very much supportive of these staffers who have refused to resign. And I'm telling you there's just incredible antagonism towards the head of CBS news, who remains employed-- JUAN GONZALEZ: Andy Heyward? JOE HAGAN: Andy Heyward, and Gil Schwartz, the head of communications, who was involved in the public relations strategy, and you know up to Leslie Moonves -- question marks about what Leslie Moonves knew and when he knew it. In terms of if he finds out that the executive producer has doubts, why doesn't he maybe think about changing course. AMY GOODMAN: What about the attitude toward Dan Rather? JOE HAGAN: Well, you know, Dan Rather is an interesting case. When the events were unfolding, he tied himself very tightly to Mary Mapes, the producer, and said, you know, he acted like he was very much involved with this story, because that's what he does as a reporter -- right? -- he's a TV reporter, he acts like he is actually doing the reporting himself. And so, but afterwards, he tried to distance himself from it; in the report it seems like he barely has anything to do with it, he's flying in and doing -- so people are very angry because they asked the question: Well, if you're going to spend your career as a TV reporter, acting like a journalist, then you should take responsibility like the rest of the journalists who actually worked on this thing, and just resign. AMY GOODMAN: Can we get one thing straight on these documents? JOE HAGAN: Sure. AMY GOODMAN: The documents that talk about -- that are allegedly about George Bush's-- JOE HAGAN: mm-hmm. AMY GOODMAN: --military record. Even Richard Thornburgh's panel did not conclude that they were false. JOE HAGAN: Right. That's huge. AMY GOODMAN: They didn't conclude they were -- that they could guarantee their -- that they were real. But everyone thinks that they -- it was proven that they were not authentic. JOE HAGAN: That is one of the -- that's a huge issue. This report comes out, it’s supposed to be the most exhaustive report ever, and it doesn't actually conclude whether the documents are false or not, which -- I mean, that's -- if that question mark lies out there, then how can you draw any conclusions from any of this? I just find it really unbelievable and, you know, basically, there's just this huge assumption in the mainstream media, that it's like a left-wing partisan thing, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider that four or five years ago The Boston Globe actually already reported all of this information, just without the documents. I mean, about Bush's National Guard service. We already kind of know that there are gaps in his National Guard record, and that he didn't fulfill his duty. This is just already on the record and reported. So, here they just had a document that was supposed to be the smoking gun that, you know, finally makes it 100% provable, and -- you know -- it's just [trails off...] AMY GOODMAN: So why hasn't the White House called for an investigation – JOE HAGAN: That is a – AMY GOODMAN: -- into the falsification of government documents? JOE HAGAN: -- incredible question. And, if, you know, if you were to -- I have spoken with really highly respected, top TV industry people who spin very elaborate conspiracy theories to me about what they think is going on here: If CBS doesn't want to know, the Thornburgh report doesn't want to know, and the White House doesn't want to know, well, what's going on here? Is it just one crazy guy who typed this up in his place? But I don't know about that. JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the ability of the staffers to actually get at some of the truth -- there have been threats of actually trying to subpoena CBS records by the employees, and e-mails between them. In other words, a court case could turn out to be a (sic) even more embarrassing to CBS than the actual incident itself. JOE HAGAN: Right. That's why these guys have -- this is their hand in playing against CBS. It's like, ‘Listen. You know what we know. And you don't want us to like, unravel this entire thing. You know, if we go into court, there's going to be things that might not be in the report exposed.’ Gaps could be filled in that are -- there are holes in this report, by the way, and -- they could be filled in and show a chain of command going higher than just Betsy West, who was the highest executive asked to resign. AMY GOODMAN: When the final interview was done at the White House with Bartlett-- JOE HAGAN: Right. AMY GOODMAN: They actually never said, ‘these documents are false, how dare you do this,’ which is what led CBS to go on the air. They were surprised they weren't challenged. JOE HAGAN: Right. AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Karl Rove had any role in this? JOE HAGAN: Obviously, there are currently no facts to support that, and I would not assert that. But if you wanted to basically construct a situation in which he was involved, you certainly could do that, and people who are involved in this -- at CBS, friends and affiliates of Dan Rather, even, have questioned this, and they wonder about it. The fact that the White House hasn't decided to investigate makes them scratch their chin and wonder: Well, why don't they want to investigate it? Right? CBS wouldn't want to because they don't want to further embarrass themselves and find out that they were the victims of this, plus, they don't want to piss off the -- you know, the Bush administration any more, because they need to maintain a relationship with the White House in order to have a correspondent there. AMY GOODMAN: Joe Hagan, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Broke the story in The New York Observer about the CBS Three who refused to go quietly to resign over “Memogate.” -------- alternative energy National Clean Energy Standard Projected to Create Jobs WASHINGTON, DC, February 17, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-17-09.asp#anchor6 Investing in clean energy solutions would create 154,000 new jobs in the U.S. and save American consumers $16.2 billion on their electricity bills by 2020, according to a new report released today by U.S. PIRG. "Redirecting America’s Energy: The Economic and Consumer Benefits of Clean Energy Policies" shows how increasing U.S. energy production from renewable sources to 20 percent of the electricity supply by 2020 and shifting billions in proposed subsidies away from coal, oil, gas and nuclear industries toward energy efficiency and renewable energy would generate widespread benefits for consumers, the economy and the environment. The U.S. PIRG analyzed the economic and consumer impacts of three different energy policies: 1. The final 2004 energy bill conference report (H.R.6) which would have given more than $35 billion in taxpayer subsidies to the coal, nuclear, oil and gas industries and was twice rejected by the U.S. Senate 2. a 20 percent renewable energy standard with no federal subsidies 3. a 20 percent renewable energy standard with a shift of the proposed $35 billion in subsidies for coal, nuclear, oil and gas industries toward energy efficiency and renewable energy U.S. PIRG contracted the consulting firm Economic Research Associates to develop a national energy and economic model that provides detailed projections of energy production and consumption patterns. This model enabled U.S. PIRG to evaluate the economic, consumer and environmental impacts of the three energy policies. The analysis showed that clean energy solutions with federal subsidies would create 154,000 jobs nationally between 2005 and 2020, and increase wages across the country by $6.8 billion above projected levels. The clean energy option would save residential, commercial and industrial consumers $16 billion on their electricity bills and $11 billion on natural gas bills in 2020, U.S. PIRG projects. Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants would decrease by 27 percent of 2002 levels under the clean energy option. The analysis also found that a 20 percent renewable energy standard alone - without any federal subsidies - would generate comparable consumer and job benefits to the energy bill without billions of dollars from the taxpayers. “140 countries have taken steps toward reducing global warming pollution by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, yet the U.S. is watching the parade go by while it takes a wait and see approach,” said U.S. PIRG environmental advocate Navin Nayak. “U.S. PIRG’s report demonstrates that solving our energy problems is an unprecedented opportunity to redirect America toward a cheaper, safer, cleaner and more productive energy future.” “If the only thing Congress did on energy this year was to pass a 20 percent national renewable energy standard, it would be better for America’s economy and consumers than last year’s over-priced and wasteful energy bill,” Nayak said. Redirecting America’s Energy can be found here. http://newenergyfuture.com/newenergy.asp?id2=15905&id3=energy&