NucNews August 20, 2006



-------- NUCLEAR 



-------- australia

BNFL paid union to back new nuclear power stations

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor 
Sunday Herald - 20 August 2006 

http://www.sundayherald.com/57437

TRADE unionists have been given thousands of pounds by their government company bosses to campaign in favour of Tony Blair’s new nuclear power programme.

Funding from state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) paid for airfares, hotels, dinners and “refreshments” for union members from nuclear plants to lobby delegates at Labour and TUC conferences in Brighton last autumn.

BNFL has been accused of using taxpayers’ money to create a pro-nuclear “front” organisation, while the trade unionists involved have been attacked by fellow unionists for “getting into bed with the employer”.

But this is denied by the nuclear trade unions, who insist that they are “defending our jobs, our livelihoods and our communities” from attack.

Documents obtained by the Sunday Herald reveal that £15,050 was claimed in expenses from BNFL for “Nuklear21 union meetings” in 2005-06.

Nuklear21 is a campaign group that brings together workers from five trade unions at nuclear plants across the UK to lobby for new reactors.

Included in the expenses was £3311 for activists to attend the annual Labour and TUC conferences in Brighton in September 2005. There, they were able to lobby ministers, MPs and trade union leaders in support of nuclear power.

Copies of the expense claims filed on behalf of Nuklear21 show that £2050 was spent on hotels, £343 on air travel from Newcastle and £275.77 on dinners.

The five unions involved in Nuklear21 are GMB, Amicus, Prospect, TGWU and UCATT. It is led by workers from nuclear plants at Sellafield in Cumbria, Capenhurst in Cheshire and Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway and has been lobbying politicians at Westminster and Holyrood to back nuclear power.

But their activities have drawn fierce fire from within the trade union movement. “If somebody gets into bed with the employer, they are totally compromised,” said Ronnie Waugh, a member of the GMB national executive, speaking in a personal capacity. “Their independence is eroded. And they don’t mention within the GMB that they are subsidised by the employer.”

Jean McSorley, from the anti-nuclear group Greenpeace, pointed out that if trade unions wanted a political fighting fund they could levy their members. “For them to go cap-in-hand to their employers is just appalling,” she said.

“They have a legitimate right to fight for their jobs, but they are using illegitimate means – taxpayers’ money.”

Nuklear21’s expense claims were released to the Sunday Herald by BNFL in response to an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act. The company had initially claimed that it did not hold any information about the group’s funding.

But this was overturned after a review by BNFL’s head of taxation, David Canfield. He said the company’s initial attempts to trace documents about Nuklear21 funding were “evidently not sufficient”.

BNFL said last week that it had paid out £15,050 “in support of trade union activities in general”, suggesting that not all the money was spent by Nuklear21. Accredited trade union representatives, it has argued, “have a legitimate role in promoting and defending employment in the nuclear industry”.

Nuklear21’s national secretary Howard Rooms, who works at Sellafield, said: “We’re doing the work of trade unionists in defending our jobs, our livelihoods and our communities.”

“The company has no say in what we lobby for and who we lobby.” There was no conflict in accepting expenses from BNFL while representing its workers on pay and conditions, he argued.

Rooms pointed out that it would be difficult to distinguish between payments for Nuklear21 and for other activities because expense claims were mostly just made for “trade union duties”. He brushed aside criticism of BNFL paying for dinners out in Brighton. “We’ve got to eat, haven’t we?” he said.



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

-------- depleted uranium

IRAQ: Laughter eases pain of child patients
Theatrical groups in Iraq are bringing smiles to sick children

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Afif Sarhan/IRIN, 20 Aug 2006

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55199&SelectRegion=Middle_East&SelectCountry=IRAQ

BAGHDAD (IRIN) - Raghed Bassam is only 5 years old, but she was depressed for weeks – until Cinderella and Donald Duck came to visit her.

Raghed is a long-term leukaemia patient. She’s shown significant signs of improvement in the past month, as a parade of clowns, animals and cartoon characters has been coming to her bedside - courtesy of the students from the arts college of Mustansiriyah University.

“They make me laugh, and when the nurse brings me the medicine to drink I don’t feel bad. I cannot stop remembering their jokes with me,” Raghed said.

A group of about three dozen students decided in mid-July to offer the entertainment programme to bring some happiness to the young patients at the Cancer Radiation Hospital and Children Teaching Hospital, both in Baghdad.

The students make their own costumes – posing as everything from Cinderella to Power Rangers – and they go in trios from room to room, dancing, singing and acting out stories.

Raghed was under great stress from her cancer treatment and her doctors were very worried about her, said Bassima Jua’ad, oncologist at the Cancer Radiation Hospital. But since the group of students started to offer entertainment, Raghed improved rapidly, Jua’ad said.

“This improvement does not mean that she will be cured instantaneously, but it has helped with the treatment,” Jua’ad said. Laughter improves health because it reduces the depression and stress that can suppress the immune system, Jua’ad said.

The trauma of staying in the dull rooms of the hospital contributes to the bleak outlook of patients, but the entertainers bring a bit of light to the children, Jua’ad said.

It’s a tough audience, but the troupes stay until they see the children break out in big smiles. They give sweets and sometimes kites and dolls to the children.

The group gets no financial support from the government or from local organisations, but pays the costs from their own pockets and from the donations of their families.

“Unfortunately in Iraq today, with the current lack of security, people are not so involved with arts and culture because they are afraid to go out to the streets,” said Khalid Adnan, a member of the student group and in the last year of the arts college. “Many extremists started to see theatre and dance as a sin against Islam.”

The dangers have stopped some Iraqis from going to jobs and school, but not Adnan. “We decided not to stay in our homes waiting for the day that Iraq will get better,” he said. “Instead, we decided to go to help people who need this art to survive - and for sure Iraqi kids are the ones most in need of smiles.”

According to the Ministry of Health, about 52 percent of all cancer patients in Iraq are children under 5. Some 6,000 new cancer cases are reported every year. Health officials blame some of the cancer increase on the depleted uranium used in bombs during the war.

Besides feeling better and healing faster, some of the children now can imagine a future: to leave the hospital bed and one day join the world of the arts, theatre and circus.

“I want to be a clown when I grow up, because the most beautiful thing is to see people laughing,” said 8-year-old Hussein Dua’a.

Hussein has been in the hospital for five months undergoing treatment for cancer, “and in the last months that I have been here in the hospital I just saw my mum crying,” he said. “I want to make her laugh with my jokes.”

Hussein’s mother, Zubaida Nuridin, 39, hopes her son’s dream comes true.

“May God hear his wishes, and he will be able to change my tears of suffering to tears of happiness,” Nuridin said.

Hussein said he knew he’d be an entertainer from the first time the students came to his bedside. “I want to survive from my disease. I do not want to die, but laugh a lot.”




-------- india 

Indian oligarchs clash headon with Indian Government as they like to avail Pakistan's new concession on ''perks'' to foreign firms in nuke field

Sidhir Chadda
Aug. 20, 2006 India Daily

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12915.asp

Indian oligarchs want to profit from supplying Pakistan with money and infrastructure to build nuclear power plants in designated ''nuclear parks''.

That is irritating the Indian Government quite a bit, according to reports from New Delhi.

Pakistan has decided to set up ''designated nuclear power parks'' as an additional incentive to attract foreign investors to build and run atomic power plants in the country.

Pakistan's growing energy requirements would be partly met by nuclear power for which it was imperative to provide enhanced facilities and tax concessions to the foreign investors interested in setting up private nuclear power plants, Dawn daily on Sunday quoted an official as saying.

The official pointed out that the setting up of nuclear power plants by foreign investors under the safeguards of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would address "proliferation concerns" of the US and western countries.

Pakistan's Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) was being asked to work out fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to attract foreign investment, the official said.

Indian oligarchs want to join the band wagon in looting again by supplying Pakistan with nuke money. The oligarch families cannot wait to make a handful by Pakistan's need for nukes. 



-------- iran

Ordinary Iranians fearful as prospect of international sanctions looms closer

UK Sunday Times, August 20, 2006
By Kasra Naji

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2320451,00.html

The middle-aged housewife lugging her food shopping in a white plastic bag had a lot to say about her worries for her three grown-up children living here.

With the fighting over in Lebanon, many here fear the world’s attention may now focus on Tehran — and that international sanctions will be imposed if Iran does not suspend its nuclear research programme by the end of the month.

“Like many people here I am worried,” said the woman. “Sanctions cannot be a good thing. Just look at how the people in North Korea are living.”

The woman would not give her name for fear of persecution, even though what she said would not normally be rated as subversive by the authorities.

“Just look at how prices have gone up in the past eight months,” she said looking at her shopping bag of bread, milk, yoghurt, olive oil and vegetables.

“Imagine how far up the prices would go once sanctions are imposed. I am really worried for my children.”

Yet at the same time she could see why Iran was searching for alternative sources of energy. “Even today there are some parts of the country which, under the scorching 50 degrees heat, are facing power cuts,” she said, reflecting Iran’s argument that its nuclear programme is aimed at making not bombs but electricity.

Across the road in a middle-class area of central Tehran, a young graduate student was even more worried.

“Sanctions mean isolation,” said the student of metallurgy who preferred not to give his name, “just like what happened in Iraq before, and in North Korea now.”

He said Iran had managed to build a consensus in the world against itself by its rhetoric.

“I think we have to do everything to avoid sanctions even if it means suspending our uranium enrichment activities,” he said.

The UN resolution was approved after five permanent members of the security council and Germany lost patience with the Iranian government. Iran had been offered a package of incentives to abandon its pursuit of nuclear energy — but had failed to respond.

Now as a showdown looms, the fears and concerns of ordinary Iranians on the streets are largely absent from the official media; newspapers are all the mouthpieces of factions within the Islamic establishment.

Journalists say that Iran’s supreme national security council has put out an order censoring any item that might be seen to weaken the resolve of the nation as a whole, or needlessly create anxiety. As a result there is no dissenting voice on the issue even from the opposition reformists.

“Don’t worry too much about the sanctions,” the council’s chief, Ali Larijani, told reporters this week. “They won’t happen, and if they do, sanctions will harm those who impose them more.” 

Access to other sources of news was curtailed this week when the police began raiding rooftops in Tehran to remove satellite dishes.

Watching satellite television has been illegal as it is seen as the conveyor of decadent western culture. But the ban had not been enforced for a few years and the new campaign has angered many among the 1.5m owners of satellite receivers in Iran who had been drawn to BBC, CNN and others.

Hardline Iranian leaders say that sanctions will not cause Iran many more problems than there are already as Iran has been under US sanctions for many years. They say that Iran will be able to weather a new round of sanctions just like it did during a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s under most stringent western sanctions.

The war in Lebanon has emboldened Iranian leaders who see the outcome as a victory for Hezbollah, which they helped to create in the 1980s.

Posters of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, have appeared all over Tehran and other big cities as the face of the new hero of the Islamic republic.

“Your victory is the victory of Islam,” said Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a message to Nasrallah. “It shattered the myth of the Zionist army’s invincibility.”

While they have been celebrating Hezbollah’s “victory”, the Iranians also suspect the fighting may have been a dress rehearsal for an attack by US or Israel to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

One senior cleric reminded Israel this week that Iran’s Shahab-3 missile has a range of 2,000km, considerably longer than those owned by Hezbollah. The Iranian army has also begun a series of military manoeuvres throughout the country “to show off Iran’s military power to the enemies”.

The celebrations are also being marked by the opening of an international exhibition in Tehran of cartoons mocking the Holocaust — which, according to Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a myth. The cartoons were solicited by a newspaper here on its website to counter what it calls “western taboos about the Holocaust”.

The exhibition is aimed at questioning the right of Israel to exist. So does Ahmadinejad — he has called for it to be wiped off the map. No wonder ordinary Iranians, as they go about their shopping, are quietly fearful of the future.

----

Iran Tests Short-Range Missile

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Missile.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)-- Iran on Sunday test-fired a surface-to-surface short-range missile a day after its army launched large-scale military exercises throughout the country, state-run television reported.

''Saegheh, the missile, has a range of between 80 to 250 kilometers (50 to 150 miles),'' the report said. It said the missile was tested in Kashan desert, about 150 miles southeast of Tehran, the capital.

Saegheh means lightning in Farsi.

Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers. But the new tests, in the wake of the Lebanon-Hezbollah fighting, seemed certain to create new tensions with the West.

State-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.

State-run TV showed video showing 10 missiles being launched from mobile launching pads.

Iran said it launched the new military exercises Saturday to introduce a new defensive doctrine. They are being held in 14 of the country's 30 provinces and could last five weeks, the government has said.

The Islamic Republic, which views the United States as a foe, is concerned about the U.S. military presence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also has expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities, which the West contends could be used to make a bomb but which Iran insists are for civilian uses only.

Iran is already equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which means ''shooting star'' in Farsi, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. An upgraded version of the ballistic missile has a range of more than 1,200 miles and can reach Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Last year, former Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Tehran had successfully tested a solid fuel motor for the Shahab-3, a technological breakthrough for the country's military.

Iran's military test-fired a series of missiles during large-scale war games in the Persian Gulf in March and April, including a missile it claimed was not detectable by radar that can use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously.

After decades of relying on foreign weapons purchases, Iran's military has been working to boost its domestic production of armaments.

Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane, the government has said. It announced in early 2005 that it had begun production of torpedoes.

----

Iran Army Tests Missiles in Wargames

By REUTERS
August 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-missile.html?pagewanted=print

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's army has fired tactical missiles and will test surface-to-sea missiles during Iranian army wargames on Sunday, state television reported.

Iran's army launched wargames in the south of the country on Saturday, and said new, Iranian-built equipment would be tested. It did not say how long the wargames will last.

Tactical surface-to-surface Iranian-made Saeqa (Thunderbolt) missiles, with a range of 80-250 km (50-160 miles), were tested on Sunday, state television reported.

It also said surface-to-sea missiles would be tested on Sunday. It did not identify the missiles by name but said the weapon had been developed by Iranian scientists.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the ideologically driven wing of the armed forces which has a separate command structure to the regular military, held wargames in the Gulf in April in which they tested new missiles, torpedoes and other equipment.

Analysts interpreted those wargames as a thinly veiled threat that Iran could disrupt vital oil shipping lanes if pushed by an escalation in the nuclear dispute.

Iran is embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the West.

It is due to reply by August 22 to a demand by major powers that it suspend uranium enrichment in return for trade and technical concessions. It denies accusations by Western countries that it is seeking nuclear bombs.

----

Iran Tests 10 Short-Range Missiles

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-War-Games.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran test-fired 10 surface-to-surface short-range missiles on Sunday, a day after it launched a series of large-scale military exercises throughout the country, state-run television reported. The Saegheh missile had a range of between 50 and 150 miles, the report said. It did not specify whether the missile was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but it was not believed to be.

State-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.

Iran said it launched the new military exercises Saturday to introduce a new defensive doctrine.

''We have to be prepared against any threat and we should be a role model for other countries,'' local newspapers quoted army spokesman Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, as saying earlier this week.

The military exercises come as Iran faces heightened international scrutiny because of its contentious nuclear program and for supporting the guerrilla group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last month calling for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31 or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

Iran, which claims its nuclear program is peaceful, has rejected as ''illegal'' the binding resolution, saying it had not violated any of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. But it promised to offer a formal response to a package of Western incentives on Tuesday.

Iran also has denied Israeli accusations it is arming and training Hezbollah fighters but also has declared Hezbollah victorious in its battle against the Jewish state.

The Islamic Republic is concerned about the U.S. military presence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. It also has expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities.

Iran already is equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. An upgraded version of the ballistic missile has a range of more than 1,200 miles and can reach Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Last year, former Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Tehran had successfully tested a solid fuel motor for the Shahab-3, a technological breakthrough for the country's military.

Iran's military test-fired a series of missiles during large-scale war games in the Persian Gulf in March and April, including a missile it claimed was not detectable by radar that can use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously.

State-run TV also reported that a small military training plane had crashed on Sunday. The plane was not participating in the military maneuvers, the TV said, stating the crash was due to technical failures and the only pilot in the plane parachuted to safety.



-------- korea

Seoul Agrees To Big Aid Package For North, Steps Up Nuclear Monitoring

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Aug 20, 2006

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Seoul_Agrees_To_Big_Aid_Package_For_North_Steps_Up_Nuclear_Monitoring_999.html

South Korea on Sunday announced a 230 million dollar emergency aid package for flood-hit North Korea, while also stepping up its monitoring of a possible nuclear test by the communist state. The unification ministry said the shipment of 100,000 tonnes of rice and other "humanitarian" aid would begin late this month.

The South was also strengthening its monitoring of North Korea's nuclear activities amid a US news report that it may be preparing to test an atomic bomb.

Six military personnel were recently stationed at a state-run seismology center to be on constant alert for any test, a defense official said.

The South's aid package came one day after inter-Korean Red Cross talks aimed at helping the North recover from last month's devastating floods, which official media said left hundreds dead or missing.

Relief goods included 100,000 tonnes of rice, 100,000 tonnes of cement, 210 dump trucks or other construction equipment, 10,000 first aid kits and 80,000 blankets, the ministry said in a statement.

The 220 billion won (230 million dollar) package is "purely humanitarian" in response to aid appeals from civic groups and politicians at home, it said.

South Korea, a long-time aid donor to its impoverished neighbour, had suspended regular shipments after the North test-fired missiles on July 5 that sparked international anger and condemnation.

North Korea's Red Cross negotiators Saturday "repeatedly expressed gratitude" over the planned aid shipment, the statement said, adding the North said the mid-July floods left 150 people dead or missing

Varying tolls have been reported. The official (North) Korean Central News Agency reported "hundreds" of people dead or missing although one humanitarian group in the South claimed the figure was more than 50,000.

South Korea estimated Friday that the floods deprived the North of at least 100,000 tonnes of grain, increasing this year's shortfall to at least 1.66 million tonnes.

The floods are often blamed on hillsides stripped of tree cover by residents desperate for firewood and particularly vulnerable to landslides.

Seoul has already provided some 10 million dollars to civic groups here to help them buy aid to be sent to the North.

North Korea, which suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s, has relied for the past decade on outside help to feed its 23 million people.

The South's planned aid came after ABC television network reported Thursday the North may be preparing an underground nuclear test. The governments in both Seoul and Washington remain cautious about the authenticity of the report.

The South's military stationed six personnel at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, capable of detecting nuclear tests on the peninsula, on August 14, according to a defense official speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It is not linked to the US media reports but we have been on an around-the-clock vigilance on North Korea's nuclear activities since July," the defense official said.

North Korea announced in February 2005 that it had manufactured nuclear weapons but nuclear weapons tests have never been reported.

Concern has been rising since it warned of taking "stronger physical actions" following UN condemnation and sanctions over its missile tests.

North Korea had requested 500,000 tons of rice from South Korea for this year, but South Korea said it will not comply until the North rejoins stalled international talks on ending its nuclear weapons program.

The North has been boycotting the talks, which also involve South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States, since November over US financial sanctions imposed against it.



-------- missile defense

Missiles may be next big threat to U.S. airliners

By Tim McLaughlin
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/20/2006

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/C5AD5272F7A96C30862571CF005AD0C6?OpenDocument

The nation's airline industry is a shoulder-launched missile attack away from plunging into a financial tailspin, one that could trigger $1 trillion-plus in financial losses in this country.

Five years after the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. passenger jets still have no response to a shoulder-launched missile that can be purchased on the black market for as little as $5,000 and can hit a target more than a mile away. If beefed-up airline security continues to keep terrorists and their bombs off commercial flights, shoulder-launched missile attacks pose a likely alternative, experts say.

"Terrorists are a lot like electricity: They take the path of least resistance," said Jack Pledger, an executive at defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. "Instead of working out elaborate methods, terrorists go to the next-easiest thing. If you take out these easy things, you drive them to using" a shoulder-launched missile.

Pledger is director of business development for Northrop Grumman's infrared-countermeasure program, which is testing a system that disrupts a shoulder-launched missile's guidance system. The cost of the system would be less than $1 million for each plane if Northrop were to receive enough orders to warrant high-rate production.

But the U.S. government and the airline industry are not ready to spend the billions of dollars it would take to equip passenger jets with anti-missile systems. And even if an initiative started today, it would take several years to equip the several thousand passenger jets operated by U.S. airlines.

The unaddressed threat underscores the physical and financial vulnerability of U.S. airlines, despite massive efforts by the government and industry to prevent hijackings and scary episodes like the thwarted plot in Great Britain that authorities said targeted U.S.-bound commercial flights with liquid explosives.

Last year, a study by think tank RAND Corp. warned that as measures are taken to preclude 9/11-style attacks - including better screening of passengers and luggage - groups like al-Qaida might resort to shoulder-launched missiles because of the obvious vulnerability.

Charles V. Pena, director of defense-policy studies at the Cato Institute, wrote in a study last year that even though no U.S. airliner has been attacked by a missile, "The question may well be when, not if, such an attack will happen.

"The harsh reality is that ground security to defend against (shoulder-fired missiles) is nearly impossible," Pena said.

A missile attack on a passenger jet would produce the same spectacular result that al-Qaida plotters sought recently in Great Britain. Authorities there say they foiled plans to blow up U.S.-bound planes with liquid explosives smuggled in drink bottles.

A fragile industry

The airline industry isn't in financial position to afford anti-missile systems. Roiled by sky-high prices for fuel, bankruptcy filings and debt-laden balance sheets, the industry remains fragile. Problems aside, the Air Transport Association, a trade group for the major U.S. carriers, says there's no better time to fly than now.

Pledger said the industry is waiting for Congress to fund the sort of anti-missile system being tested by Northrop Grumman.

"There's not really a market" from commercial airlines, Pledger said. "The carriers are interested in the systems, but they see the protection as a government responsibility."

It would cost an estimated $11 billion to equip 6,800 U.S. commercial jets with anti-missile systems, not including annual operating costs of more than $2 billion, according to government estimates.

But that might be a bargain when you consider the financial reverberations that shook the U.S. after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A Milken Institute study estimated the U.S. lost $47 billion in economic output in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. In addition, the loss of stock market wealth was more than $1.7 trillion after the first week of trading following the attacks, the study estimated.

Since 1978, there have been about three dozen shoulder-fired missile attacks on commercial aircraft. All but one happened in combat zones. In 2002, an Israeli passenger jet was shot at with shoulder-fired missiles in Mombasa, Kenya. No one was hurt.

These missiles, numbering up to an estimated 750,000 in military arsenals and the black market worldwide, can be fired by one person with little training. Many of them track the heat of a jet's engine exhaust. But more sophisticated missiles use guidance systems that can evade jammers and flares, Pledger said.

Northrop's Guardian aircraft protection system - a pod mounted on the belly of a plane - uses a laser to disrupt a shoulder-fired missile's guidance system. The company recently received a $55.4 million contract from the Homeland Security Department to complete production on 12 anti-missile systems.

"The market for this is solely driven by government activity," Pledger said.

Once installed, the anti-missile pods can be swapped between planes in about nine minutes, he said.

Analysts at CreditSights Inc., an independent debt-research firm, recently commented in a research report that one would have thought an airline calamity would have happened by now, given holes in a security net for 35,000 commercial aircraft flying around the world.

"It's always the little items that cause the troubles," CreditSights analysts said. "First it was the box cutters and a rule that pilots obey hijackers. Up until 2001, (hijackers) always wanted to land somewhere.

"Now it is jars of Old Spice, Chanel and Listerine that might contain chemical ingredients for an explosive," the analysts said. "Airline (stocks) were always a hair trigger away from losing their luster - whether that trigger was terrorist attacks, oil prices, the Middle East, Iran, North Korea or Taiwan."

tmclaughlin@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8206



-------- MILITARY 


-------- asia

Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment
'Americans don't do things like this,' an officer thought when he learned of three villagers' deaths. His shock grew when the soldier convicted continued to serve.

By Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse
Special to The Times
August 20, 2006

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes367.html

BINH DINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — On the morning of Feb. 25, 1969, Platoon Sgt. Roy E. Bumgarner Jr. led a five-man team on a reconnaissance patrol that took them into a rolling landscape of rice fields.

The soldiers crossed paths with an irrigation worker and two teenage boys tending ducklings. The boys carried only bamboo cages and herding sticks, the irrigation worker a hoe.

Bumgarner detained the three Vietnamese and marched them to a secluded spot, where he and one of his men opened fire. Then they searched the bodies, removing identification papers, a watch and a wedding ring.

Next, Bumgarner dragged the bodies close together and told the other soldier to detonate a grenade near the heads.

Afterward, Bumgarner reported that three enemy fighters had been killed in action and led his team back to their base.

The incident, and others detailed in declassified Army records, show how a violent minority within the 173rd Airborne Brigade abused Vietnamese citizens with little or no fear of punishment.

A military court convicted Bumgarner of manslaughter, reduced his rank and cut his pay. But he served no prison time for the killings. He remained in Vietnam and, approximately six months later, reenlisted for another tour.

Troubled Past

Bumgarner, who remained in the Army until 1981 and died last year, was a bigger-than-life figure at the 173rd Airborne base near the South China Sea.

He had spent 10 troubled years in the Marines before joining the Army. Marine records show that he had been busted down in rank, court-martialed and served brief periods of confinement at California's Camp Pendleton, in the Philippines and in Japan.

Records indicate that in the Army, he pleaded guilty to assault and disorderly conduct in 1961 and was sentenced to three months' confinement. Four years later, he went to Vietnam. There, he earned a reputation as a talented and prolific killer with a competitive zeal for boosting his personal body count.

Anguish and Fury

The news reached Huynh Thi Nay as she walked home from market that morning. A neighbor told her to hurry — that U.S. soldiers had detained two duck-herders and an irrigation worker outside the hamlet.

"I dropped my carrying basket," Huynh said in a recent interview in Giao Hoi 2 Hamlet. Speaking through an interpreter, she said she raced down a footpath through the paddies to where she knew her 17-year-old son, Pham Tho, would be.

"When I reached there, I found a pair of bamboo cages … with a flock of young ducks on one side," she said. "I called out 'Tho, Tho,' about three times, but no one replied."

She ran on until she reached a jackfruit tree, where she spotted the teenager's conical hat perched in a branch. His stick and a hoe lay nearby.

The bodies of her son and his two companions were laid out like spokes of a wheel with the feet pointed outward, the bodies riddled with bullets and the heads blown off, according to Army records.

"It became as dark as night. My tears overflowed in both eyes," said Huynh, now 77. "I rushed back and informed the community here. I was running back, crying all the way. My eyes were full of tears, so I could not see my way."

Phan Thi Dan, widow of the irrigation worker, said she handed him her wedding ring for safekeeping when he left for the rice fields that morning. The couple had sold a pig to pay for the ring, and she didn't want to lose it in the pond where she fished for shrimp for their ducks.

An hour or two later, she heard "the rattling sounds of bullets, then one big explosion sound — boom," she said through an interpreter. Not long after, a friend ran to her, shouting that the Americans had shot her husband, Nguyen Dinh, 41.

Phan, now 79, remembers standing frozen for a moment, fishing net in hand. She says she fainted at the sight of the bodies.

When a U.S. Army investigator arrived with a Vietnamese interpreter, Phan picked up rocks to throw at the American. The interpreter stopped her.

"When I get flashbacks, that fit of fury still arises in me," she said.

A Different Account

Bumgarner told an Army investigator that his platoon had fired at the Vietnamese because they were running.

"Before we approached the bodies, we threw about 4 or 5 frags at them just to be on the safe side," he said, according to the investigator's notes, referring to fragmentation grenades. Bumgarner said that a search of the bodies turned up no personal effects, but that he and his soldiers recovered a grenade, a rocket and a mortar round nearby.

Spc. 4 James C. Rodarte, one of Bumgarner's men, told a different story. In a sworn statement, he said the Vietnamese were unarmed and were not running.

He said he did not obey Bumgarner's order to shoot the three civilians, but instead fired into the air and the ground. The victims were dead when he dropped the grenade near their heads, Rodarte said.

Bumgarner pulled several weapons out of a carrying case and planted them near the bodies, Rodarte said.

"He said not to say anything other than that we made contact and saw them running, and fired on them," Rodarte said. "He said don't make a statement, that we had everybody on our side and we could get out of it."

Rodarte was wearing Phan's wedding ring when the investigator interviewed him. He said he kept it, along with a watch that belonged to Pham Tho. Rodarte recently declined to answer The Times' questions.

The two soldiers were court-martialed on charges of premeditated murder.

Rodarte, then 20, was acquitted. Bumgarner, then 38, was convicted of manslaughter.

The judge reduced his rank to private and ordered him to forfeit $97 a month in pay for two years. The period later was reduced to six months.

Official Explanation

On March 31, 1972, Peter Berenbak opened the New York Times to find a photo of Bumgarner, his arm around a Vietnamese child, accompanying a feature article about Americans who considered Vietnam their home.

He fired off a letter to the editor.

"Sgt. Bumgarner is a convicted murderer," he wrote. "So I feel a responsibility to speak for Sgt. Bumgarner's victims and ask the Army why this man is still in Vietnam?"

Berenbak, now 62 and a sales executive in New Jersey, was serving in a civil affairs unit at the same base as the 173rd Airborne when the killings occurred. He was sent to the hamlet and saw the bodies lying on a poncho liner, awaiting transport to the base, he said in a recent interview.

"I can still see the old man insisting that the Americans killed them, and still remember my initial reaction: 'No, Americans don't do things like this.' "

Berenbak sent a copy of his letter to the editor to then-Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen Jr. (R-N.J.), who forwarded it to the office of the secretary of the Army, requesting an explanation.

Col. Murray Williams, deputy director of discipline and drug policies, replied on April 21, 1972. He noted that the Army needed infantrymen in Vietnam, and Bumgarner had volunteered.

"The type of court-martial or the offense for which he was court-martialed does not automatically restrict his eligibility for reenlistment," Williams wrote. "Thus, Sgt. Bumgarner, although convicted by a court-martial, for which he paid a debt, is contributing positively in his chosen profession."

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.



-------- israel / palestine / lebanon / iran

Israel Will Prevent Arms Reaching Hezbollah, Maintain Blockade

By Alex Morales and Maher Chmaytelli
August 20, 2006 (Bloomberg)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a5bQJEqpZQ6E&refer=home

Aug. 21 -- Israel will maintain its sea and air blockade on Lebanon to prevent weapons reaching the Hezbollah group after the monthlong conflict, a United Nations envoy said.

Israel is linking the smuggling of arms to Hezbollah with the lifting of the blockade it imposed, Terje Roed Larsen said yesterday in Beirut. ``What's important now is that the government of Lebanon convincingly show that they are controlling the border,'' he said.

Israel will carry out aerial attacks if it sees evidence that trucks are bringing weapons for Hezbollah into Lebanon from Syria, the daily newspaper Haaretz reported, citing unidentified Israeli military officials.

A cease-fire on Aug. 14 halted the fighting that began July 12 and killed about 1,200 Lebanese citizens, Lebanon's government said, and 159 Israelis, according to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Israel carried out a raid in eastern Lebanon three days ago after accusing Hezbollah of breaking the truce resolution by bringing weapons into Lebanon from abroad.

Efforts to smuggle arms to Hezbollah increased after the cease-fire and Israel's air attacks came to a halt, the Haaretz report said.

UN Security Council resolution 1701, which defines the terms of the cessation of hostilities, demands that the Lebanese government secure its border with Syria, as well as its coastline and airport, to prevent Hezbollah, from receiving weapons. The resolution provides no mechanism for enforcing an embargo on arms shipments, Haaretz cited the Israeli officials as saying. Hezbollah is backed by Syria and Iran.

Cross-Border Raid

The conflict began when Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid. The Lebanese Shiite Muslim group, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, has been linked to attacks on Israelis and Americans, including rocket assaults on Israeli towns, and bombings in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French soldiers.

Hezbollah's television station al-Manar has denied arms were smuggled to the group from Syria and Iran. The group is committed to the UN resolution and the Lebanese government will arrest anyone caught firing rockets at Israel, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr told reporters yesterday in Yarze, east of Beirut.

The U.S. State Department estimates Hezbollah has several thousand fighters and activists and gets about $100 million a year from Iran. The group's stated goals, according to the U.S. State Department, include the destruction of Israel and establishing Islamic rule in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, which has two members in the Lebanese cabinet, has defied UN Resolution 1559, approved in 2004, which calls for the disarming and disbanding of all militias in the country.

Peacekeeping Force

The UN cease-fire resolution provides for the strengthening of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to 15,000 soldiers. Lebanon will deploy about 15,000 soldiers along the border. The state-run National News Agency said two days ago 49 French soldiers have arrived as the first of an additional 200 French service personnel assigned to the mission.

Military planners at the UN are asking countries to contribute soldiers so that an initial force of 3,500 peacekeepers can be sent soon to southern Lebanon. At least seven countries made ``relatively firm commitments,'' UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said last week. They include the Muslim majority nations of Bangladesh, Indonesia at Malaysia.

European Union members will meet on Aug. 23 to discuss contributions to the UN force, Finnish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Susanna Parkkonen said yesterday.

U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, yesterday criticized France for the size of its commitment after promising to lead the planned 15,000-member peacekeeping force.

``So far, they're saying there would be only about 200'' French troops, McCain said in an interview with NBC News. ``It's very disappointing.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in Jerusalem at amorales2@bloomberg.net ; Maher Chmaytelli in Beirut at mchmaytelli@bloomberg.net



-------- mideast

Israel Strikes Deep in Lebanon
Premier, U.N. Chief Condemn Attack as Violation of Truce

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 20, 2006; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900217_pf.html

BEIRUT, Aug. 19 -- Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday, setting off a fierce gun battle. Lebanon called the attack a "flagrant violation" of a fragile six-day-old cease-fire and threatened to halt troop deployments in protest.

Hezbollah, which battled the Israeli military for 33 days until the truce took hold Monday, said its fighters encountered the Israeli commandos in a field near the town of Boudai, about 20 miles from the Syrian border.

The Israeli military, confirming the raid, said its commandos carried out the operation to interdict shipments of weapons and munitions to Hezbollah from Syria and Iran. The military said one Israeli officer was killed and two soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters in Beirut that the attack was a "flagrant violation" of the U.N. cease-fire and that he planned to lodge a complaint with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Later Saturday, Annan said that he agreed the raid violated the cease-fire agreement and that he was "deeply concerned."

Hezbollah issued no immediate reaction. But many Lebanese worried that the militant Shiite Muslim movement would retaliate, risking a chain of cease-fire violations that could rekindle the devastating war that drove nearly a fourth of Lebanon's inhabitants from their homes and inflicted an estimated $3.6 billion in damage to bridges, roads and other infrastructure.

In accepting the cease-fire, the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, warned that his militia reserved the right to attack Israelis as long as they remain on Lebanese soil. At the same time, the Israeli military declared that it reserved the right to respond to attacks and prevent weapons shipments to Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern border hills until an international force was in place.

In practice, however, Hezbollah has held its fire even though an unknown number of Israeli troops remain in observation posts scattered across the rocky Lebanese hills just north of the border. Until Saturday, Israel also had refrained from attacks of any size on Hezbollah fighters in the border area or on other Hezbollah installations farther north. The restraint by both sides had led to optimism in Beirut that the truce would hold and that rebuilding could begin -- optimism that suddenly came under doubt.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said the raid was not a violation of the cease-fire because it was in response to a violation by Hezbollah. "If the other side violates the cease-fire, then we are entitled to act," Regev said.

"Had the Lebanese forces, augmented by international troops, been on the border crossing points with Syria the way they should have been, then our attack would have been superfluous," he added. "Hopefully, those international troops will be there soon and then there will be no need for these kinds of actions. In the interim, we cannot have an open border with arms coming from Syria to rearm Hezbollah. The violation of the cease-fire is the arms transfer from Syria to Lebanon."

The Lebanese military, which stood aside during the war, has begun deploying along the border with Syria in northern and eastern Lebanon, in addition to its deployment over the last three days in villages along the southern border with Israel. But the frontier with Syria remains far from secured, officials acknowledged, and Israel is unlikely to relax its vigilance against Hezbollah arms deliveries.

The Lebanese defense minister, Elias Murr, said Lebanon would stop moving troops into the southern part of the country if the United Nations did not intervene, the Associated Press reported.

"We have put the matter forward in a serious manner and the U.N. delegation was understanding of the seriousness of the situation," Murr said. "We are awaiting an answer."

Israeli officials have said they are counting on the arrival of an international peacekeeping force to guarantee that the arms shipments stop. About 50 French military engineers arrived in southern Lebanon as a vanguard of the European and other soldiers who, under the U.N. resolution, will be assigned to reinforce the 2,000-member United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

But France and other European nations have expressed reluctance to commit troops to the operation until its U.N. mandate is clearly laid out. France, which was expected to provide several thousand troops, has limited its new contribution to 200. As a result, negotiations on assembling, transporting and tasking the additional peacekeepers could drag out in the days ahead, increasing the risk of cease-fire violations.

Boudai, which lies in the foothills of the Mount Lebanon chain about 10 miles northwest of Baalbek, has long been known as a Hezbollah stronghold. Local officials speculated that a senior Hezbollah leader, Sheik Mohammed Yazbek, may have been the commandos' target. Other Lebanese suggested that the raid may have been an attempt to recover two Israeli soldiers whose seizure by Hezbollah commandos on July 12 precipitated the war.

The Israeli military, however, specified that preventing the transport of weapons was its objective. "The goals were achieved in full," it added in a statement.

Lebanese residents and security officials reported that Israeli planes were heard in the Bekaa Valley through the night, prompting fears of a raid. When they landed around 5 a.m., the Israeli special troops drove toward Boudai in two vehicles transported into Lebanon by helicopters, they said. When challenged, the Israelis identified themselves as Lebanese army troops, but the ploy failed and Hezbollah fighters opened fire, they added.

Hezbollah fighters found bloody bandages and syringes on the ground after the battle, leading them to conclude that the Israelis suffered casualties, according to Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, a Hezbollah ally. Hezbollah's al-Manar television reported a number of Israeli casualties but did not say whether they were killed or wounded.

Lebanese security officials told the Reuters news agency that three Hezbollah fighters were killed, but Hezbollah did not confirm the toll.

Correspondent Doug Struck in Jerusalem contributed to this report.



-------- spies

US ramping up its spying: Venezuela's Chavez

Sun Aug 20, 2006 (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060821/wl_afp/venezuelacubausintelligence_060821003612

CARACAS - President Hugo Chavez has hit back at US intelligence, which announced earlier that it had named a special case manager to focus on Venezuela and Cuba.

The US special "manager" effectively puts the two Caribbean nations on a par with "axis of evil" states confronted on multiple levels by the administration of President George W. Bush.

Chavez said in his weekly broadcast, "Hello, Mr. President," that Venezuela's oligarchy had joined with the US "empire" to oust him.

"We are not going to allow the empire and its lackeys to return to the destabilization of 2002," when Chavez was removed from office by a two-day coup.

"I call on movements that believe in democracy: do not do what you did in December, because it is part of the destabilization game," he said, referring to an opposition boycott of National Assembly elections.

Chavez is the closest Latin American ally to Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, 80, who has handed over power to his younger brother, Raul Castro, while recovering from surgery.

"In Cuba, they talk about the post-Fidel era, and the death of Fidel.

"In Venezuela, they think about the fall of Chavez and about using elections to return to 2002," Chavez said.

Chavez is a candidate for re-election in a December 3 vote, contested by Zulia provincial governor Manuel Rosales.

North Korea and Iran are the only other countries that have been assigned so-called "mission managers," who supervise US intelligence operations against them on what the office of national intelligence director called "a strategic level."

"The Venezuelan oligarchy will disguise itself and say yes, they will vote, but some want to return to 2002," he said.

Chavez claims the United States participated in the 2002 coup and has plans to remove him from office.

The Venezuelan leader has had difficult relations with the United States, although US oil companies are his country's largest customer.



-------- un

U.N. needs troops to monitor cease-fire

Updated 8/20/2006 (AP) 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-19-mideast_x.htm

BEIRUT — Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep in Lebanon on Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle, and the Lebanese government threatened to halt further troop deployments to protest what U.N. officials called a violation of the 6-day-old cease-fire.

Israel said the raid was launched to stop arms smuggling from Iran and Syria to the militant Shiite fighters. An Israeli officer was killed during the raid, and two soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

There were no signs of further clashes, but the flare-up underlined worries about the fragility of the cease-fire as the U.N. pleaded for nations to send troops to an international force in southern Lebanon that is to separate Israeli and Hezbollah fighters.

The office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement later Saturday labeling the operation a violation of the U.N. truce.

A contingent of 49 French soldiers landed in the south Saturday, providing the first reinforcements for the 2,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL that has been stationed in the region for years. About 200 more were expected next week.

They were the first additions to what is intended to grow into a 15,000-soldier U.N. force to police the truce with an equal number of Lebanese soldiers. France leads UNIFIL and already had 200 soldiers in Lebanon before the reinforcements.

But with Europe moving slowly to provide more troops, Israel warned it would continue to act on its own to enforce an arms embargo on the Lebanese guerrilla group until the Lebanese army and an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force are in place.

"If the Syrians and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah in violation of the resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "Once the Lebanese army and the international forces are active ... then such Israeli activity will become superfluous."

Defense Minister Elias Murr met with U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen and threatened to halt the movement of Lebanese troops into the former war zone in the south if the United Nations did not intervene against Israel. That could deeply damage efforts to deploy a strong U.N. peacekeeping force.

"We have put the matter forward in a serious manner and the U.N. delegation was understanding of the seriousness of the situation," Murr told reporters. "We are awaiting an answer."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the raid during a phone conversation with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying it was "intended to prevent the re-supply of new weapons and ammunition for Hezbollah," officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

The Israeli leader pointed to the importance of the supervision of the Syrian-Lebanese border as well, they said.

The Israeli military also said the raid was launched "to prevent and interfere with terror activity against Israel, especially the smuggling of arms from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah."

The Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected the characterization of the raid as a truce violation, saying the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers must take control of Lebanon's border with Syria to ensure arms don't reach Hezbollah.

"But in the interim, of course, we can't have a situation where endless amounts of weaponry arrive for Hezbollah, so we are forced to act in response to this violation," he said, warning that further incursions could occur.

A statement issued by Annan's spokesman later Saturday said that the U.N. chief spoke with both Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Olmert about the fighting. "The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities," it said.

"All such violations of Security Council Resolution 1701 endanger the fragile calm that was reached after much negotiation," said the statement, issued by spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The White House declined to criticize the raid, noting that Israel said it acted in reaction to arms smuggling into Lebanon and that the U.N. resolution calls for the prevention of resupplying Hezbollah with weapons.

"The incident underscores the importance of quickly deploying the enhanced UNIFIL," White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo said.

Roed-Larsen said earlier the Lebanese army has deployed more than 1,500 soldiers in three sectors of the south where Israeli forces have left, and the 2,000 peacekeepers of UNIFIL have set up checkpoints and started patrolling the areas.

The broad outlines of the U.N. cease-fire plan call on Hezbollah to halt all attacks and for Israel to stop offensive operations. It gives Israel the right to respond if attacked, but the commandos were flown in by helicopter and the raid took place far from Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

Israel did not identify the officer killed in the raid. Hezbollah issued a terse statement saying guerrillas "ambushed" the commando force and suffered no casualties. Lebanese security officials said three guerrillas were killed and three wounded.

The security officials said the commandos flew in by helicopter to a hill outside the village of Boudai west of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, about 17 miles from the Syrian border. Witnesses said Israeli missiles destroyed a bridge during the fighting.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information to the media, said the Israelis apparently were seeking a guerrilla target in a nearby school but they had no other details.

Lebanese media speculated that Sheik Mohammed Yazbeck, a senior Hezbollah official in the Bekaa Valley and a member of the group's executive council, may have been the target. Yazbeck is a native of Boudai.

The Israeli army denied it had captured any Hezbollah fighter, and said it had not been the raid's objective.

Overflights by Israeli jet fighters drowned out the clatter of helicopters that flew the commandos into the foothills of the central Lebanese mountains, local Hezbollah officials said.

Using two vehicles also delivered by helicopter, the commandos drove into Boudai and were intercepted by Hezbollah fighters in a field, the officials said. They said the Israelis identified themselves as Lebanese soldiers, but the guerrillas grew suspicious and gunfire erupted.

Israeli helicopters fired missiles as the commandos withdrew and flew them out of the area an hour later, the Hezbollah officials said.

Witnesses reported seeing bandages and syringes at the landing site outside Boudai. The bridge that witnesses said was destroyed was about 500 yards from the landing site.

The area in the eastern Bekaa Valley, 60 miles north of the Israeli border, is a major guerrilla stronghold. Baalbek is the birthplace of Hezbollah, a militant Islamic movement that is supported by Iran and Syria.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, buried 55 fighters Friday and Saturday in Haris, Majdel Silim, Bint Jbail, Deir Qanoun and south Beirut, security officials said. Israel claims it killed hundreds of guerrillas during the war. Hezbollah reported 68 deaths.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown said more countries needed to join the peacekeeping force. The U.N. wants to have 3,500 soldiers on the ground by Aug. 28 to help police the truce that took effect Monday and ended 34 days of brutal warfare.

Bangladesh, Indonesia, Italy, France and Finland have promised troops. In an effort to encourage more countries to sign on, Annan said the peacekeeping force would not "wage war" on Israel, Lebanon or Hezbollah militants, addressing a key concern of many countries.

The U.N. and Lebanon's government have said Hezbollah will not be allowed to bring weapons out in public, but have declined to commit to trying to disarm the guerrillas, as called for in a September 2004 U.N. resolution.



-------- POLITICS


-------- propaganda wars

Full Transcript of Donald Rumsfeld Interview

By Salena Zito, Colin McNickle and Frank Craig
Aug 20, 2006 Post Chronicle

http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=1&num=35005

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed Aug. 10 in his Pentagon office by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editors Frank Craig and Colin McNickle, reporter Salena Zito and photographer Joe Appel. The 70-minute interview occurred the morning that Great Britain announced it had thwarted terrorists’ plans to blow up airliners.

Here is an edited transcript of the interview.

Q: I take it the developments in London this morning bring home the -- what you call "The Long War."

RUMSFELD: They sure do. We've been needless to say tracking it for some days now, and it is a reminder -- probably even a useful reminder for everybody that this is going to be a long struggle and that there are a large number of people who are determined to try to defeat freedom and free peoples, alter their behaviors. It was Harry Truman who once said that -- about the Cold War, that the conflict between people who believe in freedom, the people who want to take us back to slavery and darkness. And the organization, the financing, the purposefulness of these people is real, and they're not the kind of people that you negotiate with and end up solving any differences, because their desires are to change how other people live, and they don't accept half-way measures.

Q: You came into the Pentagon vowing to transform things, and September 11th -- I hope I can assume -- made that mission ever more urgent. How has that transformation gone? And how is it going?

RUMSFELD: A lot of people said to me, "There goes transformation," when 9/11 came, but in fact just the opposite has been true. It has provided an impetus to transforming this institution because it's a daily reminder for people continuously the necessity. You know, you think about it every -- for those of us who were around here on September 11th, every day is September 12th. We focus on it. One of the things we talk about in our department is imagine an event of that nature or double or triple or quadruple in six months from now in your mind and ask yourself, "Are you doing today everything you need to be doing to either prevent that from happening or be arranged in a way that it is mitigated one way or another?"

And we have had a background of being organized, trained and equipped for big armies, navies and air forces, and our folks here can do that pretty darn well, which is one of the obvious reasons why that's not likely to happen in the immediate term. The people -- even countries that have large armies, navies and air forces or reasonably large armies, navies and air forces are fashioning asymmetric approaches to deal with because they can't compete directly nose to nose with our Army, Navy, or Air Force, but they can using irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, whether it's terrorism or cyber attacks or any number of other things.

Q: So you can have the best transformation plan ever devised, but you can't implement that without the funding and the appropriations and the support of Congress to do that. Has -- what kind of challenge has that been?

RUMSFELD: It's tough. It is tough. Big institutions are hard to change. Big institutions have constituencies. In our case, we have the institution itself, the Department of Defense, and the bureaucracies, civilian, the military bureaucracy. We've got the contracting world and all the corporations that interact and have a vested interest in replicating what it is they do. And the Congress, and the Congress gets comfortable with what is, just as all of us get comfortable with what is and tend to want to continue down that path.

And the reality is that in the 21st century, we can't afford to stay in the industrial age. We've got to be in the information age. We -- there's a pattern for people to tend to think of things the way they were, and so we count things; we look at numbers. I'll give you an example. Carrier battle groups or strike groups; 10 years ago, we had, for the sake of argument, 12 carrier battle groups, and we were able to have out at any given time, deployed, ready to do what they do -- three and surge two more. And today, we have 11 carrier battle groups, and we can have five out and surge one.

So we have -- even though the numbers are smaller, we have vastly better presence in the world because of a whole set of things that have been done by the Navy, very creative. They've got crew slots, where they fly the crews out, so all the time going back and forth isn't wasted. When they're bringing in -- instead of just having everything stop when they bring it in for end of their deployment, where they -- everyone would leave and they'd go to school or they'd take leave and they'd put it in dry dock and do all -- everything and just everything's down. What they do now is they have a lot more spare parts. Therefore, the downtime is much shorter, and therefore, we're able to double the capability almost.

Second, the lethality of a carrier battle group today is totally different from before. …(W)ith a single airplane, you can attack 20 or 30 targets. And so the lethality, the capability is so much different. But we tend to be tied back to past. It's because we're human beings, and it's very hard for people to break out of that.

But we're doing it. The transformation's going forward. This is something I did after our Quadrennial Defense Review …, and I tried to show that transformation is not some -- that it's dynamic; it's not static. You don't start here and end there. You -- it's a process. And so I cast everything as moving from, for example, a peacetime tempo to a wartime sense of urgency; from a threat-based planning to capability-based planning; from single service acquisition systems to joint portfolio management; from the U.S. military performing tasks to a focus on building partnership capabilities with other countries so that they can do those tasks; from amassing forces to amassing effects. And this kind of characterizes it, and that's kind of the preface, I guess, to the Quadrennial Defense Review.

Before I forget -- you asked about the long war on terrorism. There's a copy of a speech I did, and somewhere in there is a comment on terrorism, and it dates back to 1984, when I was President Reagan's Middle East envoy and was involved after the 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon.

And you look at what's going on today, and -- so this long war didn't just start on September 11th. It's been upon us. And it's hard -- there again, changing people's approach is difficult. An awful lot of people still think of it as criminal activity, as a crime, like shooting someone or stealing a car or robbing a bank, where you need to punish. And we've had a great deal of difficulty getting the country and the world to understand that this is different. This is a long struggle with a minority in that religion -- a small minority, to be sure -- that are violent extremists and who are determined and persistent. And you -- it is not as though they're committing a crime. They're on a cause to change the world and to destabilize the regimes in the Middle East, to defeat Western culture and approaches, to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and that's a different kind of thing. But our approaches are still really quite different. And you see people thinking about, well, shouldn't these people have a trial? And, of course, in some cases, we didn't try prisoners of war -- and these aren't even prisoners of war. These are people that --

Q: Enemy combatants?

RUMSFELD: -- that are -- yeah, they don't wear uniforms, carry their weapons out. And we don't read Miranda rights on the battlefield. And so the idea of trying to have everything befit Article III of the Constitution, it just doesn't work.

Q: But as we fight the war on terrorism, we have other challenges: China, North Korea. … How serious is the Chinese threat? How serious is the North Korean threat?

RUMSFELD: First, North Korea. It is a -- I think, a real threat from a proliferation standpoint. They have starved their people. They do a lot of bad things. They are on the terrorist list. They counterfeit our money. They sell illegal drugs. But -- and they proliferate. They're the world's leading proliferator of ballistic missile technology, and to the extent they have other WMD technologies, there's no doubt in my mind but that for currency they'll proliferate them as well. And that is a serious danger -- I mean, you start moving that kind of technologies that a state can develop that a terrorist network has difficulty developing and having a state that's willing to transfer those types of things to a terrorist network. A network doesn't have a country to defend, they aren't deterred by the same types of things that other nation-states are deterred by. So they're a threat in that sense.

In terms of a threat to invade the South Koreans, I think today much less so. I mean, the South Koreans -- they have the same population, the same resources as the North and the South, but the South has the 10th-largest economy on the face of the Earth and a very capable military, 50 years after the devastation of the Korean War. The North is taking people in that are four feet, 10 inches tall in their military and weigh less than a hundred pounds because of starvation. It is a tragic circumstance for the North Korean people, that regime.

I keep this (photo) on my desk.

I mean, that's a free system and a free political and a free economic system. This is a command economy and a dictatorship, and that's Pyongyang, the capital. That's it.

Q: That's a satellite photo taken at night?.

RUMSFELD: Yeah.

Q: And China?

RUMSFELD: China -- unclear where China is going. They're increasingly being connected to the world economy -- I think a good thing. I think that it's not -- it doesn't give one certainty as to how they're going to evolve as a country, but that -- it does make them a stakeholder in the success of that economy over time -- it should, I should say, make them a stakeholder.

They do have a dictatorial political system, and they have a(n) evolving, more market-oriented economic system, which strikes me as going to be a complication for them over time. They're going to be faced with having -- if they want to continue to have the growth they're having -- double digits, very successful economic growth -- they're going to be in a position where they're going to have people with a lot of computers and an awful lot of people from other countries running around their country and a lot of people from their country running around other people's countries, and they're going to see how other countries function, how free countries work. And that exposure is going to, I think, change a -- some portion of their population. And the success that comes from a market system, as opposed to a command economy, is going to become something that will be attractive to them, because there are more opportunities.

The other end, their political system, will want to perpetuate itself. That's natural for political systems. And therefore, they are going to find themselves (on) somewhat diverging paths over time. To perpetuate a -- their type of political system means that they have to have controls and manage things, and that runs counter to the freedoms and the opportunities that come from more of a market economy.

They also have some problems. They have some demographic problems. They have some terrible environmental problems. They have enormous and growing -- (inaudible.) Their success in the world economy depends in part in behavior. Money's a coward. Money does not want to go someplace that it's frightened of.

And so they're a country that, for example, doesn't want to lose the Olympics, if you will. And that begins to shape behavior, to a certain extent. It isn't -- you can't be certain about it, because there will be a tug between those two paths they're on.

But I think the task for all of us, other countries, is to try to do what we're doing, and that is to urge them to be more transparent in their military investment. And they aren't, but they should be. To the extent they are not, it's going to be something that other countries are going to notice and wonder, well, what it is -- why is that they're so -- lack transparency with respect -- and why is there a disconnect between what they're doing militarily and what they seem to be wanting to do in other areas. And we've talked to them about that.

I think they're -- the other thing we want to do is to try to encourage -- that we demystify their system and our system to each other. So we're trying to -- we had an abrupt halt after the EP-3 situation, where they caused the loss of our aircraft and then they took prisoner our crew.

But since then, we've been trying to work out the military exchanges and port visits and training for younger officers, so that they can see what we're about and not have it be a mystery to them; and that we can have people go over there, and they can get to know those folks and hope that China continues on a path and moves in a direction that is -- enters the world community in a peaceful and constructive way, and begins to feel a greater stake in the success of that system, and therefore a set of -- a behavior pattern that would resist breaches in that system.

Who knows? We'll have to see where it goes. But one would hope that they would move on a constructive path like that.

Q: How about some of the other countries that seem to be of concern right now -- Iran, for example?

RUMSFELD: There's a country with a proud history and intelligent people, people that in many instances live around the world and have been very successful. And they have in recent periods had leadership that has been managed by a very small handful of clerics that are imposing their views on that population and in -- attempting to affect their neighbors or -- you know, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to -- clearly, a major sponsor of terrorism, the financial and weapon backer of Hezbollah, linking with dictatorships around the world in a way that is -- inevitably has to have the effect of isolating them and -- but having them less connected to the free world and the part of the world that's not dictatorships.

And you look at the visits that go around. You've got Chavez, and you've got Syria, and you've Iran and North Korea and a handful of countries that are comfortable with Iran's behavior -- very extreme statements about wiping Israel off the face of the Earth, that the world's better without the United States and -- (pauses) -- and a determination to have nuclear weapons. That's a problem for the rest of the world and the region as well as the rest of the world.

Again, what you have is a country that's sponsoring terrorist organizations, developing nuclear weapons and funding terrorist organizations. That's a problem. And these problems, like terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, are problems that no one country can solve. They're just not -- they don't lend themselves to single-country solutions. They require -- I mean, just like the global war on terror -- I don't know how many countries are currently cooperating, but it's got to be over 80 in the coalition. In the Security Proliferation Initiative, we must have -- I don't know -- 60 nations involved now. In our counter-narcotics sessions, we've got large numbers of nations involved.

It is unfortunate that we don't have international institutions that a have an ability to play a really constructive role, for example, in something like narcotic – counter-narcotics and proliferation. But we don't, and therefore we have to try to fashion coalitions that can help on those things.

Q: Can the U.S. tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapon?
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RUMSFELD: That's a question that I think I'm going to leave to the president.

Q: What you said just a minute ago about, you know, this isn't something that one country can solve, it sounded awfully close to kind of stepping back from what we've been saying all along, which is everything's on the table.

RUMSFELD: Oh, I'm not stepping back from anything like that or anything the president said. No, I was just characterizing proliferation --as something that no one nation can deal with. I mean, it just takes a lot of countries to prevent the proliferation of these dangerous technologies to other people.

And it takes 21st century rules. I mean, we were working to stop a bunch of missiles going into a Middle Eastern country. And if you'll recall, the ship was stopped, they found the missiles, and they ended up having to let the ship go, and the missiles go because there was no law or rule that would permit them from being -- to be stopped. And we had a maritime interdiction system that was available at that time to do that.

But the world has not adjusted to the 21st century, and we're still functioning with institutions that were fashioned at the juncture of the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, that have stood us in good stead a long time. But this new century is going to require institutions to be either significantly adjusted or new ones to be fashioned, new arrangements to be fashioned. And we think of cyber warfare, the damage that could be done to countries. The rules -- the guidelines and the procedures and the legitimacy of certain types of behavior in that area haven't been thought through well.

Q: With Iraq and Afghanistan, the troop levels involved there, we hear much about our state of readiness. What is our state of readiness?

RUMSFELD: Well, it's an interesting problem, and we've been -- I've been working with Capitol Hill on that subject. The -- if you use our readiness systems as they were designed, for peacetime, what happens is, you end up with apples and oranges on the same chart, and it goes like this. You have -- let's say that your requirement is for a hundred airplanes, and 10 years ago you had 75. So your readiness was at 75 percent of a hundred.

Ten years later, your requirement has gone from a hundred to 500. And you actually have 300, but your readiness has gone down from 75 percent to 66 percent. So you've deteriorated, theoretically, but in fact you've got three times as many airplanes and capability, and they're vastly more capable.

So the old system -- called a sort system, I think -- has that problem that it does not apples and apples or oranges and oranges; it used apples and oranges on the same chart.

And the short answer to your question is that when you're in a war, you are not at peace, and when you're peace, you may have a utilization rate of X number of miles per tanker or X flying hours on an aircraft or whatever, and when you're at war, you may have two and three times X. Then you have a cycle to replace and reset, and the cycle involves trying to get the Congress to pass a supplemental or a bill on time, which -- we don't think we've had one time in how many years -- trying to get the Congress to pass the budget the way you send it up, and any given year it's somewhere between $10 (billion), $15 (billion), $20 billion different. That is to say, they take some money out, they add a bunch of things we don't want and require that the money be taken from something else. We put in a number of savings, like forget the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, forget the John F. Kennedy -- it costs too much to repair it -- and they require you to keep it in.

So you end up with a cut, if you will. It's not technically a cut, but it's a reduction in the funds you have available to do the things you need, for those three reasons. And that -- you do that every year for X number of years and it hurts.

Now, where are we? We're actually a vastly more capable force today than we were in 2001. But if you look at -- technically at the readiness things, they would be -- go down, because it -- the depots have money, but they haven't replaced all weapons. It takes -- may take 30 months to replace a helicopter or something. You know, it gets in the queue.

But we have -- we have a force that is -- has more experience than it had five or 10 years ago. We have a force that has benefitted from the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars of new equipment that they have. And we also have a force that is functioning at a rate that it is using things up faster than would be normal, and therefore have a problem in getting it reconstituted or reset, and we -- we're going to have to get still more money from the Congress to meet the needs that the Army particularly but also the Marine Corps has in terms of resetting the force.

But it is a -- you ask anyone about it who knows the full story, and what they'll say is, we're going to -- that we have reset -- budget problem on the reset. We have a timing problem on some of the equipment because of the fact that it takes that long for the production. And notwithstanding all of that, we have a force that's vastly more capable than it was five years ago.

Q: Over the past two days, I've had a dickens of a time trying to find a quote from you in full context, where you were overly optimistic about Iraq.

RUMSFELD: (Laughs.) I don't know how things like that come (out) of the Senate.

Q: It was a senator who did it.

RUMSFELD: (Laughs.) That's a catchy phrase!

Q: But knowing what you know today, would you have done anything different with Iraq, regarding Iraq?

RUMSFELD: You bet. You bet. And what happens is the enemy's got a brain and they're constantly changing what they're doing, and so we have to constantly be changing. It would be wonderful -- and they don't have any big bureaucracy that they have to manage. But they can turn frequently inside your turning circle.

But we are -- I have not been optimistic. War is a tough thing, and I have known that and I've said that repeatedly, and certainly there are things you would want to be different.

I'll give you one example: the training and equipping of the forces. We've done darn well on the Ministry of Defense forces, for example, in Iraq. The Ministry of Interior forces, the police forces, haven't been done as well. And that is not nothing because to the extent you've got sectarian violence and to the extent you've got insurgency and to the extent you've got terrorists, you need a presence in a town so people feel safe, and that is much more of a police function than a military function. It could be both, but -- and today the weakness in Iraq is essentially the police side.

And we didn't get involved in that until very late last year. It has been -- it was -- in Afghanistan, it was supposedly undertaken under the Bonn agreement by other countries, and it wasn't done as well. In our government, it's a matter that different committees, from the Armed Services Committee, and the State Department has the responsibility.

And it just -- we do not have trainers for police in the Pentagon. We've ended up taking over that responsibility very recently, and General Casey has described 2006 as the year of the police because it has to be. But we've finally gotten permission from Congress to do that, and we're working it, but it's two or three years behind. And particularly at a difficult time like today in Iraq, that is a problem, that the police aren't strong.

Q: What keeps you up at night?

RUMSFELD: I was asked that when I was up at the confirmation hearings in January of '01, and I said intelligence. And if you think about this department, we have just enormous capability to finish. If you use the phrase "find, fix and finish," we can finish something if we can find it and fix it in time and location. The problem is finding it.

And you can find big armies and big navies and big air forces, and we've gotten quite good at that in this department. It is a whale of a lot harder to deal with a network, with individuals, with people that don't wear uniforms, with people that mix among civilians and hide among innocent people. It is very difficult to do. And we've had some good luck in the case of Saddam Hussein and his sons and Zarqawi. We've had some less than good luck with respect to UBL (bin Laden) and various others.

And -- but getting the right intelligence is, I think, a problem that our world is going to face. And as weapons become more lethal, more dangerous and more available, the necessity of having precise intelligence is greater. And we -- this country of ours tended to migrate away from human intelligence towards technological things, with the result being that we could do an awful lot from overhead assets and various types of technologies.

But the kinds of enemies we face -- human intelligence becomes critically important, and it takes a long time to develop, and it isn't easy. It's dangerous, and yet, it's a must.

Q: What’s a better way to convey the mission? Or is there a better way, as the country is politically restless?

RUMSFELD: Well, I guess another thing I would say -- that I would change -- I would -- even to this day, I do not spend as much time thinking about how to communicate as I do doing the things I have to do here. I mean, we just evacuated 15,000 people out of Lebanon -- moved a major city. Just -- we just sent 500 firefighters out to the west coast. We have got so many things going on in this department. And I wasn't recruited and asked to take this job because I had spent my life in communications. I just haven't. And yet, the fact of the matter is the enemy is fairly skillful. I mean, they have media committees, they work the problem, they plan their attacks to get the maximum drama so that they'll get on the front page, they lie and cheat and dummy up photographs and do all kinds of things that are totally unacceptable in our society, and they're never held to account for it. They know how to manipulate the media in this country and in the capitals of the world. And they know that they can't win a battle out there in any -- in Iraq or Afghanistan. All they can do is win in the capitals of the Western countries. And the center of gravity of these wars, these conflicts, this struggle is clearly in Washington, D.C., and in the country.

And they're good at it, and we're not. We're all tangled up. We have rules -- we can't do this, we can't do that. It's horror's horrors if anyone even thinks about trying to develop a new way of communicating that's different. One of our commanders out there had all the authority in the world to do it, and he ended up believing that he would have fewer Americans killed if -- in his area if he could get the truth of what they were doing -- hospitals, schools, helping people -- into the media. And he couldn't get it in the papers, so he paid somebody to put it in the papers. And they hired a person who would write it in -- from the paper and put it in, and they got it in.

Well, my goodness, you'd think we'd done the most horrible thing in the world. Now, is that a problem? Yes, it is a problem, because we don't do that here.

And -- but we're not here. We're there! So the question is, what should he have done? So he now has suspended that while everyone studies it and decides, is that right? Is it wrong? How do we handle that type of thing?

We don't have a modern, 21st-century capability. We're still organized in here to deal with newspapers and reporters. And as you look at the -- what do you call it? -- circulation figures, a lot of papers' circulation, they're going down, and bloggers are going up, and talk radio's doing this, and there's so many different ways to do things today, and we're still doing it the old way, and we can't.

Furthermore, we don't work with the -- anyone in government has to be very careful about taking taxpayers' money and then fashioning messages that are terribly important in one place because multiple audiences hear them, and they hear them here. And then someone can legitimately say, "My goodness, what are you doing? Are you using taxpayers' money, appropriated by Congress, to communicate to the American people?" And that's not what you're supposed to be doing. And yet, you can't communicate to the Iraqi people and not the American people. It's -- the multiple audiences, they all -- everyone hears everything, except the people who read -- listen to Al-Jazeera. … But it is -- that is something that we have to do better, we must do better. And it worries me. This is the first war that's been fought in the 21st century with a new media reality. And it's a very different environment.

Q: Well, it's interesting to note that in World War II, there was sacrifice and people gave things up, and that doesn't happen in this war. This generation doesn't feel the pull of the war.

RUMSFELD: Well, of course it's a very different kind of war. And it's more like, I think, in a sense the Cold War, which lasted a lot of years, and people didn't give up there, either. And there was a lot of worry, would we have the staying power? I mean, there was plenty of times when Euro-Communism was considered kind of like the good communism, and very fashionable in Europe. And there were amendments in Congress -- I used to have to fly back and testify against them -- to pull our forces out of Europe. There were people who said, "My goodness, the Soviet Union is not going to go away, and you'd be better to accommodate to it." But there were other people who had good sense and they said no, that's not the right thing to do; let's persevere and let's not toss in the towel. And we didn't for decades. Imagine! Successive administration, both political parties, in this country and other countries in Western Europe, and they held together. And that thing called the "Soviet Union" is gone. And it wasn't because we did what we did in World War II. I mean, I had Victory Gardens, and I was raising chickens, and I was growing stuff, and collecting hangers and metal, and doing all kinds of things during World War II.

But I think the American people have a good center of gravity, I really do. I think they've got good sense. And they can get blown off course once in a while, but on big things, over time they tend to re-center and -- this is serious business. What's going on today is not an accident. These people are planning. They're all over the world. They're serious. They want to kill as many people as they can kill. And putting our heads in the sand and pretending they're not there isn't going to do it. It's going to take a lot of time. And it's ultimately going to be won within that religion, and we're going to have to strengthen the moderates in that religion so that they prevail over the extremists, and that the extremists don't win, because if they win, we lose. And if we lose -- I mean, they are happy to do what they're doing in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon or Israel or Spain or London. But their goal is beyond that; it is an appetite that's substantially greater, and it is literally to move as much of the world as they can towards their way of thinking and towards an absence of freedom, and a terribly dark vision that would have dire consequences for our country.

Q: Sir, I just gave you a poll that we did, a national poll, last week, which is very interesting. You should look at it because it talks in there about what Americans think about the war in Iraq, terrorism in general, you know, what's the most pressing issues for them.

RUMSFELD: I'd like to see it.

Q: And what we found was that there's a lot of concern about Iraq; there's less concern about terrorism now, when we asked them to pick the one thing that concerns them most.

I guess I've got a two-part question here. What would you tell all those military families from back in Pittsburgh and western PA that they can look forward to for the foreseeable future? And how about the rest of America, I mean, what are they going to do to help win this war, if they really don't think it's that serious a problem?

RUMSFELD: The first thing I'd say to people in your area is to all of those who are serving and the families of those people serving, thank you. I mean, we are so fortunate that we don't have a draft, we don't have a conscripted Army, military. We have a volunteer service where people put up their hands and say, "Send me. I'll do it. I understand, and I believe it, and I want to serve."

I just looked at the recruiting and retention figures -- someone gave them to me. They're all -- I don't know, for the eighth and ninth month --

STAFF: Fourteenth.

RUMSFELD: Fourteenth?

STAFF: Yes, sir.

RUMSFELD: They're all over 100 percent. And recruiting -- correction. The retention rates are all projected to meet their goal, and the rates for people who served in Afghanistan or Iraq are higher than the rest of the force. Partly that's because there's an incentive for doing it, if they do it while they're over there. So let's -- at the minimum, they're equal. There's no detriment to retention. So we're a fortunate country to have that.

And the American people need to appreciate the danger that exists for them, for all of us, because of the determination of the enemy and the perseverance of the enemy, and the capabilities that the enemy has. I mean, they killed 3,000 on September 11th.

You look at the Johns Hopkins "dark winter" study, and I think it was small pox was theoretically put into three airports, or something, and within a relatively short period of months, the loss of life in this country was something like 800,000 or 900,000 people. So, when you think of chemical weapons, biological weapons, and radiological weapons, and nuclear weapons, and terrorist groups that are determined to kill large numbers of people, to alter their behavior and to have them not be able to be free to do what they want, but to do what the terrorists want them to do, the extremists want them to do, that is a real danger in the country. And people have to, first of all, understand that and put a value on that, a weight to it. And second, they then have to -- I think that's in this.

I would wish -- if I had one wish, it would be that we taught history in our schools in a way that people -- it became a part of their being. And anyone who knows anything about the Revolutionary War knows that we didn't win a battle for ages, that pressure was relentless, that we were up against difficult powers in the world, that they wanted to fire George Washington. And he hung on and we hung on, and we're a country because of it.

Now, you look at the Civil War -- I don't know how many people were killed, but someone gave me a piece of paper and I looked at it, it was half a million people were killed, and -- 524,000 people were killed. So think of that. We've lost 2,054, killed in action in Iraq. World War II was 116,000. World War I -- World War II was 405,000. The Korean War was 36,000. Vietnam was 58,000. The lives that have been lost -- American lives to defend this country and the willingness of the American people to defend the country at those costs says a lot about our country. But we wouldn't be the country we are today if those people hadn't been willing to serve and to -- and we -- you say, "What would you want people to understand?" I think we have to appreciate that wars are terribly difficult things. They're ugly, they're violent, and they're unpredictable, and we are so fortunate to have the people we have serving over there, doing the job they're doing. They're doing an absolutely superb job under terribly difficult circumstances.

And they're doing well at it, and they're proud of it. And you talk to them, and you go out to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, the ones that are wounded and talk to them, talk to their families. They're darn proud of what they're doing, and they know what they're doing. And they know -- they're convinced that they're making progress. It's going to be a lot of -- it's not a military problem over there. It's a political problem in a large measure. And the reconciliation process in Iraq has got to be successful. It's easier to talk about it than to do it, and Prime Minister Maliki's going to have a tough time doing it. But getting it done in a way that satisfies large chunks of that -- those respective communities will make a big difference, and he's working on it. And that's good.

We have to live in this world, but we're here, it's the year 2006, and your leadership and the people I deal with are alive and responsible for this country. We can't stick our head in the sand and pretend the world isn't there. The reach of these networks is obvious. They can go to Madrid, they can go to London, they can go to New York, they can come to Washington, D.C. and hit this building. And they're not going to go away if you turn your head, and the fact that people disagree with us as to how to do it exactly or what to do when, that's understandable in free countries. But in terms of the basic threat, it is real, it is serious, and it's lethal. And we have no choice but to confront it.

Q: All right. Venezuela -- a lot of people, including us, are very worried about Venezuela. How big a threat is Venezuela? Is this going to be another Cuba? Is this going to be something worse than Cuba?

RUMSFELD: I guess only time will tell. Cuba didn't have oil money, for one thing. Venezuela does. And if someone is determined to spread their views, having a large chunk of money helps

They are -- have decided to associate with Iran and with Syria and with Cuba and to involve -- try to involve themselves in elections in Latin America, in some cases, successfully, and in some cases, unsuccessfully.

And the country of Colombia has been very successful over the years, has had very good leadership in President Uribe, and it -- they have been successfully reducing the of amount of real estate that the -- (inaudible) -- controlled. They've been working their drug problem. They have reduced the number of assassinations and hostage takers. And having a neighbor that, in the case of -- in this Venezuelan administration -- is hostile, is difficult. It makes the job of the Colombian government more difficult.

The effort he's (Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez) undertaken to try to get a seat in the U.N. Security Council -- and he's gotten -- lined up a great many people to support -- countries to support him -- would be obviously a most unfortunate thing for the United Nations and for the world, too. To have a country with that orientation sitting on the U.N. Security Council is -- would -- I have trouble understanding how countries could support that, and yet take the institution seriously.

So we're hopeful, obviously, that countries will support Guatemala, if it's to be a country from this hemisphere, which it very likely will be.

Q: Does the U.N. matter anymore? Or NATO? Do either of them, or are they obsolete?

RUMSFELD: If you think of what NATO's done, NATO is in the process of fashioning a NATO Response Force, which is something that can be critically important in transforming that institution and giving it relevance in the 21st century.

Second, we've managed to enlarge it and bring in some countries that very recently didn't have their freedom. And that brings an energy and a respect for freedom, a passion for freedom that is healthy for that institution.

Third, we've managed to reduce down the number of headquarters in there and increase the tooth-to-tail ratio, improve the tooth-to-tail ratio, I don't know, from something like 20 down to 10 headquarters.

And fourth, we have NATO today is engaged in Afghanistan, which is truly historic for that organization, for it to be involved outside of the NATO Treaty area, outside of Europe for the first time, undertaking a significant responsibility -- all 26 countries are participating. There are now a total of 42 countries helping out in Afghanistan, but 26 of them are NATO countries. And in one way or another, they're all doing something there. That is a significant departure for NATO.

So I think that while NATO is a different institution than it was when I was ambassador to NATO back in the early 1970s, and it's gone from 15 to 26 countries, it is -- it probably -- it certainly is today the most important military alliance in the world. It may be the most important military alliance in -- has to be in the century. Is it perfect? No. But does it take time when you're dealing with multiple countries to get something accomplished? Yes. Is it, however, a valuable thing, given what it's done in Bosnia and Kosovo? Yes. What it's doing in Afghanistan? Yes.

Q: And the U.N.?

RUMSFELD: Very different. Not a military alliance. Has difficulties doing things. Countries have vetoes. The General Assembly has votes. They use a rotation -- it needs reform. It needs the kinds of things that John Bolton is recommending. But, I mean, any organization that just automatically goes through and puts countries on things like the Human Rights Commission and you end up with Sudan or something -- they ended up with -- I forgot who it was, some country -- maybe it was Iraq -- or Iran, or it was on the Non-Proliferation Commission we had one time. And the excuse is, well, it's automatic. It just goes through and it doesn't change things.

But it needs reform. And there are people up there working on it -- Newt Gingrich -- and I forget who he worked with. Who was it? Tom Foley or Lee Hamilton, somebody. They had a group they put together and came up with some good ideas as to how that institution might be improved. But --

Q: So you're not ready to throw in the towel and say let's get out of it, let's get rid of it?

RUMSFELD: Well, you know, I don't -- I look at almost all the institutions and say to myself they're basically 20th century institutions. They were fashioned, most of them, in the Truman era. I mean, the World Bank, and the IMF, and NATO, and the U.N. You asked yourself about the OAS. They all needed to be adjusted or adapted or something substituted for them to deal with the information age, to deal with a world that's much more connected, where weapons are much more powerful, and where the threats tend to be global or regional, rather than simply one country threat. It's not Germany invading France, it's -- the threat of proliferation is something that's much more difficult to deal with.

So I think we need the ability to work with other countries, and the question is how do you best get that. And my answer -- my guess is the answer is, very likely, through multiple fora. For whatever reason, the nature of the world today is such that a great many countries won't participate in peacekeeping if there isn't a U.N. mandate. Well, we need peacekeepers.

I mean, the risk of mass migration out of Haiti, for example, and those -- we were able to get a bunch of countries to work down there. We don't have troops there, but a lot of countries do, and God bless them for doing it. And it's been -- and many of them would not have agreed to it, except for the fact that there was a U.N. mandate.

Are we better off handling a group of peacekeepers down in Haiti and not having mass migration and disorder and more -- still more violence than is normal there? I think so.

Q: You mentioned bin Laden a while back. We let you escape from that one. Are we ever going to catch him? And does it even matter anymore?

RUMSFELD: Well, you know, it obviously would be nice, but he must be spending an awful lot of time not getting caught, as opposed to running his organization -- (chuckles) -- because there's an awful lot of folks looking for him. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Sheehan, others protest at Rove event

Updated 8/20/2006 (AP) 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-20-sheehan-protest_x.htm

AUSTIN, Texas — Chanting "Try Rove for treason," Cindy Sheehan and more than 50 other war protesters disrupted a reception before President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove spoke at a fundraiser Saturday.

One woman was arrested during a scuffle with police after Sheehan and the anti-war demonstrators rushed toward the closed doors and kept chanting loudly after the guests went into the dinner.

Rove was speaking to the Associated Republicans of Texas, and ticket prices started at $200. He was not in the Renaissance Hotel lobby during the reception.

"I want him arrested. He planned the war that killed my son," Sheehan told officers guarding the door. Sheehan's oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Police then ordered the group to leave, but some protesters had paid for rooms for the night. Those protesters went upstairs, including Sheehan.

One protester slipped inside the ballroom during the dinner but was escorted out after shouting about men and women dying, the Austin American-Statesman reported in its Sunday editions.

"Pat, did you get her check before she left?" Rove quipped to the GOP group's executive director, Pat Robbins, as the crowd of 300 laughed, the newspaper reported.

"I don't question the patriotism of our critics. Many are hardworking public servants who are doing the best they can. Some of them are people looking for a free meal," Rove said, drawing more laughs.

Earlier, wearing shorts and T-shirts while guests of the lobby reception walked past in sequined dresses and expensive suits, anti-war demonstrators carried American flags and signs, including one that read "Check your conscience." A few protesters unfurled a large banner from a sixth-floor hotel balcony that read "Rove v. Truth: No Contest. Pink slip Rove."

Those at the reception sipped their drinks and largely ignored the protesters before they started chanting. One man looked at the group and said, "Go Bush!"

Earlier Saturday, the group of more than 70 gathered at the hotel entrance, carrying a large banner that read, "Rove: Guilty of crimes against humanity." Ann Wright, a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in protest over the war, yelled through a bullhorn, "Karl Rove, you are a criminal!"

After about 30 minutes, Austin police made them move onto grass at the edge of the property about a block away. Dozens remained later Saturday, holding signs as cars drove by, honking their horns.

Sheehan and the group left their campsite in Crawford near Bush's ranch, where they have held vigil the past two weeks, and drove about 100 miles south to Austin.

The war protest will continue until early September, although Bush's ranch 10-day ranch vacation ended last weekend. Sheehan's 26-day protest last August drew more than 10,000 people to her campsite in ditches off the rural road leading to the ranch, but she recently bought land near downtown for the group to camp on.