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NUCLEAR
North Korea Says Nuclear Program Can Be Negotiated
Report: N. Korea Wants U.S. Talks
US Brushes Off Report of North Korea Talks Request
White House Urges Pyongyang to End Weapons Program
MILITARY
U.N. Seeks More Forces for Kabul
The Need Not to Know
Health Depts. Aim to Spot Bioterror
Army Weighs Privatizing Close to 214,000 Jobs
Chinese spy ship driven off Taiwan after PLA naval operation warning
Indonesia Military Allegedly Talked Of Targeting Mine
Report: Bin Laden Son Detained
Pentagon - Iraq's Special Republican Guard
Iraq Ready to Fight, Saddam Tells Airforce
Netanyahu to Accept Israeli Post if Elections Are Held
NATO Tells Hungary to Modernize Its Military
Czechs Become Model for New NATO
'Pakistan': A Nuclear Yugoslavia
Russian Crisis Brings War Home
Feud Grows Over Extradition of Chechen Rebel
The 'Sons' Rise In Chechnya
Russian Copter Shot Down in Chechnya
Sex, Lies and Videotape
U.S. Pilots in Gulf Use Southern Iraq for Practice Runs
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
War Games
Security Doesn't Have to Be So Unsightly
U.S. Defends Bush's Designation of Bomb-Plot Suspect
The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Libraries
Afghans Raise Concern That Taliban Forces Are Reorganizing in Pakistan
OTHER
Climate Talks Shift Focus to How to Deal With Changes
ACTIVISTS
'Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers'
Plan to Crack Down on Dissent Stirs Debate in Hong Kong
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- korea
North Korea Says Nuclear Program Can Be Negotiated
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/asia/03KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 - North Korea says it wants to negotiate with the United States over the North's newly disclosed nuclear weapons program, and is open to meeting the Bush administration's demand that it shut down its previously secret uranium-enrichment facilities.
In a series of statements issued over the last week by its mission to the United Nations, North Korea said "everything will be negotiable," including the dismantling of the enrichment program.
Last month, North Korea acknowledged that the uranium facilities were part of a secret program to build nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States. The 1994 accord provided for energy aid and other assistance to North Korea.
In the statements released through its United Nations mission in New York, North Korea also said it was open to discussion of international inspections of the uranium facilities.
The State Department said it had no official response to the North Korea statements, which were made in an interview with a senior North Korean diplomat and subsequent written statements to The New York Times, contacts that the North Korean Mission at the United Nations initiated.
But administration officials said they doubted that the United States would waver in its refusal to resume negotiations with North Korea until it first dismantled the enrichment laboratories.
The United States is pressing its allies to isolate North Korea, using the North's desperate economic needs to force it to comply with the American demands. On Friday, Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton ruled out talks with North Korea until it "completely and verifiably" ended the nuclear weapons program. He said it was "hard to see how we can have conversations with a government that has blatantly violated its agreements."
In their statements over the last week, the North Koreans said they were equally firm that they would not consider dismantling the uranium facilities until after the United States had reopened talks. If the United States refused to negotiate, they said, they would welcome the intervention of an intermediary, like former President Jimmy Carter or other prominent American political figures.
"Everything will be negotiable," the North Korean government said in one of the statements issued through Ambassador Han Song Ryol of the mission at the United Nations, the country's sole diplomatic post in the United States. "Our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns through the talks, if your government has a will to end its hostile policy."
In the interview in the mission - a small, nondescript suite of offices decorated with images of the nation's absolute leader, Kim Jong Il, and his late father, Kim Il Sung - Mr. Han said his government had been "stunned" by the refusal of the United States to continue talks on the nuclear issue.
In North Korea, "the interpretation is that the U.S. is preparing for a war," he said. adding: "There must be a continuing dialogue. If both sides sit together, the matter can be resolved peacefully and quickly."
Asked in a later e-mail exchange if North Korea was willing to consider shutting down the uranium-enrichment program, he replied, "Yes, I believe our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns."
Asked if the North Korean government would consider allowing international inspections of the uranium facilities, he replied simply, "Yes."
He said it was the United States that first violated the 1994 nuclear agreement, the so-called Agreed Framework, because of Washington's failure to move toward normal ties, and because of long delays in the completion of two civilian nuclear power plants that were promised under the pact.
North Korea was startled, he said, by the Bush administration's hostility toward it from the start, when the administration shut down wide-ranging bilateral talks begun during the Clinton administration.
Mr. Han said his government had been particularly alarmed by President Bush's description of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran, and by Mr. Bush's repeated statements beginning last summer that the United States would pre-emptively attack nations that threatened it with weapons of mass destruction.
"The U.S. has put the D.P.R.K. on a list of pre-emptive strikes," he said, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. "So we would like to ask the American people: What is the alterative? What is the choice for the D.P.R.K.?"
Mr. Han, who is understood to be a crucial member of his country's Foreign Ministry, said his statements had been authorized at senior levels of the government, which he said was acting to open a new "means of communication with United States government and its people."
The North Korean Mission contacted The Times through a New Jersey restaurateur, Robert Egan, who is the chairman of a trade group that has worked to improve ties between the United States and North Korea. Officials of North Korea, he said, "want the American people to understand their position."
Members of Congress and Korea specialists in the United States said the series of statements was highly significant if only because they suggested the North's eagerness to resolve the nuclear issue. At the same time, the North has spoken of a desire to mend relations with Japan, and taken steps to open up parts of its economy to foreign investment.
Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in an interview that he was "skeptical" and "mistrustful" about any new North Korea offer to shut its nuclear weapons program.
But he said that the United States would need to resume a dialogue with North Korea, and that the Bush administration's refusal to talk for nearly two years before last month's confrontation had the effect of "guaranteeing a negative outcome."
"I'll tell you that I thought the administration made an enormous mistake not to engage with the North Koreans from Day 1," he said. "We didn't trust the Soviet Union, but we talked to them and ultimately engaged them in a ratcheting down of the arms race."
Stephen W. Bosworth, who served as the American ambassador to South Korea from 1997 until 2000, said the North Korean statements suggested that "they are feeling pushed into a corner" and even under threat from the United States.
"They may be paranoid, but they do have enemies," he said. "Certainly there is no reason for them not to think of the Bush administration - and more generally, the United States - as an enemy."
"In the end, I think we're going to have to talk to them again," he said.
--------
Report: N. Korea Wants U.S. Talks
November 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-US.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A senior North Korean diplomat said the communist country was willing to negotiate with the United States over its newly disclosed nuclear weapons program, according to a news report Sunday.
``Everything will be negotiable,'' North Korean ambassador to the United Nations Han Song Ryol told The New York Times. ``There must be a continuing dialogue. If both sides sit together, the matter can be resolved peacefully and quickly.''
Asked if Pyongyang was willing to consider shutting down its uranium enrichment program, Han said: ``Yes, I believe our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns.''
Han also said Pyongyang would consider allowing international inspections of the uranium facilities.
Since the nuclear dispute surfaced last month, North Korea has maintained that it would abandon its nuclear weapons program if the United States signs a nonaggression treaty.
U.S. official said they have no plan to engage in talks with the North unless it scraps the nuclear program.
Han said his government was ``stunned'' by the refusal of the United States to continue talks on the nuclear issue and that it thinks that Washington was ``preparing for war.''
``Our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns through the talks, if your government has a will to end its hostile policy,'' Han said.
He said the North Korean government was startled when President Bush suspended bilateral security talks that began during the final months of the former Clinton administration.
Bush suspended talks with North Korea soon after coming into office in 2001 for a policy review. He offered in June that year to resume talks, but the North said no.
In January, Bush called North Korea a part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and Iran, further chilling U.S.-North Korea relations.
After the two year standstill, Washington and Pyongyang resumed talks last month with a visit to Pyongyang by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, during which the North admitted having the nuclear weapons program.
Since the revelation, the United States and North Korea have accused each other of violating a 1994 agreement, under which the North promised not to develop nuclear weapons in return for two U.S.-designed light-water reactors.
North Korea has said it considered the agreement dead because of delays in delivery of reactors, initially planned to be completed by 2003. U.S. officials anticipate at least five years of delay.
The United States fought on South Korea's side in the 1950-53 Korean War. Washington keeps 37,000 troops in the South, a legacy of the war that ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
-------
US Brushes Off Report of North Korea Talks Request
Reuters
Sunday, November 3, 2002; 1:36 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62258-2002Nov3?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea wants talks with the United States on its nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported on Sunday, but the White House quickly dismissed the report and called on Pyongyang to end the program.
"Everything will be negotiable," North Korea said in one of several written statements released to the newspaper through Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations that disclosed the North Korean request for talks.
The New York Times said North Korea also said it would consider international inspections of the uranium facilities, citing the written statements released by its mission to the United Nations and an interview with a senior North Korean diplomat.
Asked about the report as President Bush flew to Illinois on a domestic political trip, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters: "North Korea knows what it needs to do ... that it needs to dismantle its nuclear program and honor its treaty obligations."
North Korea on Oct. 4 admitted it had a clandestine weapons program, putting the reclusive Stalinist state in violation of at least four international commitments, including the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it promised to halt its nuclear efforts.
Pyongyang's admission upset the delicate balance of power on the Korean Peninsula, one of the Cold War's last frontiers, where the United States has some 37,000 troops to protect South Korea from North Korea.
Asked if the United States was ready to open talks, Fleischer replied: "We continue to work with our allies about this. But it is not a question of talking, it's a question of action. North Korea should not have abandoned its obligations. North Korea needs to keep its word."
Asked what could be a first step by North Korea, Fleischer said: "Dismantlement of its nuclear weapons programs."
The New York Times story was based in part on exchanges with North Korea's U.N. ambassador, Han Song Ryol.
"Everything will be negotiable," read one of the statements to The Times issued through Han. "Our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns through the talks, if your government has a will to ends its hostile policy."
Han told The Times in an interview that North Korea had been stunned by the U.S. refusal to continue talks on the nuclear issue and interpreted that to mean the United States was preparing for war.
"There must be continuing dialogue," he was quoted as saying. "If both sides sit together, the matter can be resolved peacefully and quickly."
In a later exchange by e-mail, Han indicated his country was willing to consider shutting down the uranium enrichment program and also would consider allowing international inspections of the uranium facilities, the newspaper reported.
The North Korean diplomat said his country was alarmed by the Bush administration's hostility toward it from the start, when it shut down talks began during the Clinton administration, and subsequently by Bush's description of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil."
----
White House Urges Pyongyang to End Weapons Program
November 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/03WIRE-KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - North Korea wants talks with the United States on its nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported on Sunday, but the White House quickly dismissed the report and called on Pyongyang to end the program.
"Everything will be negotiable," North Korea said in one of several written statements released to the newspaper through Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations that disclosed the North Korean request for talks.
The New York Times said North Korea also said it would consider international inspections of the uranium facilities, citing the written statements released by its mission to the United Nations and an interview with a senior North Korean diplomat.
Asked about the report as U.S. President George W. Bush flew to Illinois on a domestic political trip, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters: "North Korea knows what it needs to do ... that it needs to dismantle its nuclear program and honor its treaty obligations."
North Korea on Oct. 4 admitted it had a clandestine weapons program, putting the reclusive Stalinist state in violation of at least four international commitments, including the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it promised to halt its nuclear efforts.
Pyongyang's admission upset the delicate balance of power on the Korean Peninsula, one of the Cold War's last frontiers, where the United States has some 37,000 troops to protect South Korea from North Korea.
Asked if the United States was ready to open talks, Fleischer replied: "We continue to work with our allies about this. But it is not a question of talking, it's a question of action. North Korea should not have abandoned its obligations. North Korea needs to keep its word."
Asked what could be a first step by North Korea, Fleischer said: "Dismantlement of its nuclear weapons programs."
The New York Times story was based in part on exchanges with North Korea's U.N. ambassador, Han Song Ryol.
"Everything will be negotiable," read one of the statements to The Times issued through Han. "Our government will resolve all U.S. security concerns through the talks, if your government has a will to ends its hostile policy."
Han told The Times in an interview that North Korea had been stunned by the U.S. refusal to continue talks on the nuclear issue and interpreted that to mean the United States was preparing for war.
"There must be continuing dialogue," he was quoted as saying. "If both sides sit together, the matter can be resolved peacefully and quickly."
In a later exchange by e-mail, Han indicated his country was willing to consider shutting down the uranium enrichment program and also would consider allowing international inspections of the uranium facilities, the newspaper reported.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.N. Seeks More Forces for Kabul
November 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Afghanistan.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- As sporadic fighting and lawlessness plague Afghanistan, the United Nations is hoping Washington will finally back the expansion of the international force in Kabul.
The world body is also promoting establishment of a national army and police force as the long-term answer to ending the reign of warlords and bringing security to the country.
The lack of security remains an overriding concern a year after the United States launched its war that toppled Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers and dispersed the al-Qaida terrorists they harbored. It is hampering efforts to rebuild the country and provide Afghanistan's 26 million people with a peace dividend after two decades of war.
The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that the new government headed by Hamid Karzai doesn't have the means or power to deal with the underlying problems that cause security threats.
So clashes among rival warlords and harassment and intimidation of civilians continue. Since August, a series of bombs have exploded in Kabul and several girls' schools outside the capital were attacked.
There is also concern that Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is trying to form an alliance with remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida to challenge the Karzai government, Brahimi said. Hekmatyar has urged Afghans to rise up against all foreign forces in the country.
Brahimi, a highly respected former Algerian foreign minister, said there will be no long-term security in Afghanistan until a well-trained, well-equipped, and regularly paid national police force and national army are in place.
But training a police force has only recently begun, and serious efforts to create an army haven't started.
For immediate security, Karzai, Brahimi, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have called for expansion of the 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, now confined to Kabul.
Initially, U.S. officials opposed any expansion of the force and the Europeans also grew cool to the idea of deploying more troops to key cities around the country.
But Brahimi said in an interview on Thursday that the United States is rethinking its opposition.
``We hear their position has moved ... from saying `no' it's not necessary to saying look we don't care one way or the other ... to saying `yes' I think it's a good idea, but we can't do it because we have other things to do and it would be good if somebody else did it,'' Brahimi said.
``They haven't reach the stage of saying `yes,' this is indispensable and it must be done,'' he said.
That's what the United Nations would like.
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said in September that the United States would be happy if other countries contributed resources to build up the international force.
``But we retain the view that we're not looking to base Afghan security on the fantasy of enormous numbers of international peacekeepers coming here and trying to create order,'' he said.
The State Department said Saturday it had no further comment.
Brahimi said he doubts the international force will be expanded anytime soon.
Nonetheless, he said, ``the impression we have is not only the Americans but a lot of other people are now thinking, yes, something has to be done.''
In February, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Abdullah backed a suggested force of about 20,000 troops in four or five cities.
Turkey now heads the international force, which includes military units from Germany, Britain and France, among others. Its troops are leaving in December and the Germans and Dutch will take over command.
Brahimi said that with Germany as the lead nation, work is proceeding well in building a national police force. But despite U.S. and French training efforts, attempts to start building a national army have been unsatisfactory so far, he said.
One problem is that the warlords know a powerful national army would usurp their positions as regional powerbrokers and expand the authority of the central government.
Brahimi noted that all the warlords are on the country's Defense Commission and he insisted that establishing a national army is ``absolutely doable.''
He said the commission has held serious consultations but it must now produce a plan that reforms the Ministry of Defense and commits all factional leaders to integrate their forces into a national army and agree that some will be disarmed and demobilized.
What's needed now, Brahimi said, is action by the warlords and financial support from the international community to support the formation of an army and a police force.
-------- biological weapons
The Need Not to Know
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54816-2002Nov1?language=printer
The brief official note that came from Baghdad to the health ministry of a quasi-friendly European nation a few weeks ago was polite in tone, chilling in content. Iraq's health service director wanted to know: Could you provide information and help to treat an anthrax outbreak?
No answer went back to Baghdad. Instead, the European government reported the Iraqi inquiry to the State Department and asked its own questions: Could the note represent a genuine request for help for an outbreak that had already occurred? Or was it a veiled warning of a weapon that invading American forces would meet?
"There is no way of knowing, and that may be the point," said an official who described the note's contents to me. "The Iraqis are very adept at using disguised threats. But it is also conceivable that their efforts to weaponize anthrax have created a problem at home. There is no way to be sure."
We do not expect terrorists or brutal dictators to be subtle or ambiguous. So we underestimate Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the rest. We expect to find not only a smoking gun, but also bloody fingerprints on it after a terrorist outrage. But evidence accumulates that today's masters of terror expect Americans to expect just that and labor to deny such evidence to them.
As the Bush administration has made ever more translucent its intent to go to war rather than let Iraq keep biological and chemical arsenals and develop a nuclear bomb, controversy has escalated over Iraq's links to international terrorism and to bin Laden's al Qaeda in particular.
Much of the controversy is unnecessary or intentionally diversionary. The links become clear with a little digging. You miss them only if you have a strong need not to know what Iraq's terrorist trainers and their Palestinian, Yemeni and other cut-outs and false-flaggers have been doing and hiding.
Here is one publicly available description that rebuts the once-popular view at the CIA that Iraq has not been in the international terrorist business since a thwarted plot in 1993 against former president George H.W. Bush:
"Page after page [of secret Iraqi documents] revealed plans for terrorist operations. . . . A requisition to the army asked for Iranian land mines so that the high explosive could be removed and used in booby traps overseas -- the purpose being to dupe any forensic examiner into concluding that the culprit was Iran, not Iraq. There were designs for mines configured as toys. Plans for ambushing moving convoys. A primer on how to wiretap. Document after document outlined an international program of terror."
The source of this description of a June 1996 discovery of what the author calls an Iraqi "school for terrorists and terrorism" is none other than Scott Ritter, now the star of antiwar rallies but once a fiercely dedicated U.N. arms inspector. You will find it on Page 121 of his informative 1999 book titled "Endgame."
False-flagging -- planting clues that finger another nation -- is a sophisticated espionage art. Saddam Hussein and company have spent the past 12 years planning and acting to get their enemies without getting got themselves. They have had billions of dollars available from oil smuggling to pour into a campaign of destruction, deception and denial.
But what about al Qaeda? When I heard President Bush declare in his Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members in bombmaking, poisons and deadly gases, I went asking the all-purpose reporter's question: Sez who? The answer: Sez the CIA, when pressed to the mat.
"The president's speech was cleared line by line by several levels of the CIA, including the director," George Tenet. So says a senior, knowledgeable U.S. official. "There is no doubt about its accuracy."
Two senior officials who work closely with Bush (who thus may have axes to grind) and two working-level spook types no longer in his pay (and without discernible axes) confirm that about the time Ritter was pawing through Iraqi documents at the Abu Ghraib military camp, the CIA was getting reliable reports about bin Laden's terror operations then headquartered in Khartoum. One top-secret report stood out: It detailed how Iraq had provided a Palestinian bombmaking expert to bin Laden and then hid that link. That nugget worked its way into a presidential speech a mere six years later.
"We've never said Saddam masterminded September 11," observes a senior official. But Bush's case that Baghdad played a central role in establishing and running the infrastructure of international terrorism that contributed to Sept. 11 is undeniable. Unless, that is, there is a need not to know.
--------
Health Depts. Aim to Spot Bioterror
November 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterror-Alert.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Public health officials have developed an odd interest lately in the mundane and arcane.
Epidemiologists are tracking orange juice sales at the local Safeway and poring over school attendance data. They're mapping every case of the sniffles they can find and watching surveillance videos to count how many times people sneeze.
The idea is that a sudden spike in everyday aches, pains, sniffles and coughs could signal the earliest stages of a health commissioner's worst nightmare -- a massive biological attack. So in the last few years, an increasing number of health departments have started collecting electronic data from hospital emergency rooms, pharmacies and other sources in an effort to gauge the overall level of illness in the population.
Epidemiologists call their new strategy syndromic surveillance, because it looks for increases in clusters of symptoms -- ``syndromes'' in medical jargon -- rather than particular disease diagnoses. In September, public health officials from around the country met at the New York Academy of Medicine to explore the potential of using syndromic surveillance as part of a bioterror alarm system. The conference was organized by the New York City health department with help from the Centers for Disease Control and funding from the Sloan Foundation.
The new disease-tracking approach is also on the agenda at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Philadelphia Nov. 9-13.
Last year's anthrax letter campaign was just ``a tragic dry-run,'' Minnesota state epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told his colleagues on the first morning of the conference.
``Do not under any circumstances be surprised when the next shoe drops,'' Osterholm admonished. ``It will drop.''
And more than a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation remains woefully vulnerable to terrorist attacks of all kinds, a panel on homeland security reported recently.
If it were to provide early warning of a bioterror attack, syndromic surveillance might avert massive casualties. Even some of the deadliest bioterror agents -- including anthrax, plague and smallpox -- can be treated successfully if they are diagnosed early enough. But they also progress quickly from mild symptoms to serious illness to death, so hours count.
``There is the potential of a huge benefit if we really do get early detection of a large bioterror event out of this,'' said Farzad Mostashari, an assistant commissioner at the New York City health department.
Traditionally, health departments have relied on astute doctors to identify bioterror attacks by diagnosis. That's how last fall's attacks came to light -- Dr. Larry M. Bush, a physician at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis, Fla., identified anthrax in a supermarket tabloid photo editor named Bob Stevens.
``We don't pretend that the technology can replace man or that this is the answer to everything,'' said Mostashari.
But doctors may not recognize such rare diseases as tularemia, Q fever or bubonic plague -- all potential bioterror agents. And one diagnosis would not tell public health officials very much about the scope, geographic location or timing of an attack. So to supplement the eyes and ears of individual physicians, some public health departments now monitor everything from emergency room visits, 911 calls and doctor visits to school absenteeism and sales of cough syrup.
Public health has enjoyed a badly needed cash infusion in the year since the World Trade Center and anthrax attacks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got $1.1 billion from Congress this year to beef up bioterrorism defense. It is hard to say exactly how much of that money is going to surveillance, but many experts believe spending a sizable chunk of it on warning systems would be a good idea.
``For a long time it was very hard to get people to listen when you talked about public health surveillance,'' said Margaret Hamburg, vice president for biological programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington, D.C., think tank. ``Surveillance simply was not sexy and it was very poorly understood.''
Until recently, some researchers were skeptical that anything so apparently trivial as cough syrup sales could indicate a significant jump in illness. But researchers have shown that at least with the annual flu season, there are a wealth of indicators that people are getting sick.
Elaine Newton, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, has done studies showing that orange juice and paper tissue sales increase at the onset of flu season. She has also found that Internet consumer health web sites dealing with the flu get more hits a few days before a flu outbreak is officially announced.
Now Newton is exploring the seemingly far-fetched idea of using surveillance camera footage of public places to gauge the health of the population, perhaps even by counting coughs and sneezes.
Such notions naturally raise the issue of privacy. The current systems do not collect names or other identifying information, but Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Latanya Sweeney said anybody who really wanted to identify a person would probably be able to do so by combining data from the bioterror system with facts culled from voter rolls or some other public database.
New York has had a system since 1999. It analyzes information from hospital emergency rooms, the 911 system and ambulance dispatches for sudden increases. The system also collects sales data from city drugstores and absentee statistics from employers and schools as supplementary information.
Since June 2001, Seattle's public health department has analyzed reports from three emergency rooms and 11 primary care clinics. The Seattle system also monitors 911 dispatches, which are available via the Internet by the city's fire department.
Baltimore even collects information on dog and cat deaths from the city's animal control department, and keeps track of school absenteeism and over-the-counter cold medicine sales.
A system in western Pennsylvania collects information on every patient who passes through the doors of 21 hospital emergency departments. It records the age, gender, home ZIP code, time of admission and chief complaint of each patient, and looks for sudden increases in respiratory illness and other symptoms that might indicate a bioterror attack. A version of the Pennsylvania system was also set up in Utah for the 2002 Winter Olympics, and has been operating there ever since.
Monitoring major public events for bioterrorism has become a challenging subspecialty for designers of these early warning systems. In addition to the 2002 Winter Olympics, systems have been set up for the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, both the Democratic and Republican party conventions in 2000 and the 2001 World Series.
In October the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded a $1.2 million grant to Harvard University researchers to begin developing a national warning system that automatically collects information on the number of patients with flu-like symptoms, strange rashes and other possible symptoms of bioterrorism.
The New York health department knows its surveillance system works because it goes off all the time. A sudden increase in rashes at a particularly busy emergency room is much more likely to be a random uptick than a smallpox attack. A rise in fevers and coughs during November almost certainly means ``flu,'' not ``anthrax.''
For example, New York's system issued an alert the day American Airlines Flight 587 crashed on takeoff from JFK airport, two months after the World Trade Center attacks. The two hospitals nearest to the crash site were reporting an unusually high number of patients with respiratory problems, a possible indicator of an attack with anthrax or several other bioterror agents.
When investigators checked with the hospitals, they discovered that the increase was due to a handful of factors, some related to the plane crash and some incidental. There was one firefighter who had smoke inhalation from responding to the crash, two cases of flu, three asthma attacks, two people complaining of chest pain and one person who appeared upon examination to be having an anxiety attack.
``We didn't really think there was a bioterrorism attack,'' said Mostashari, who is credited with setting up the New York surveillance system.
Even so, he added, every suspicious pattern has to be investigated or the system won't work.
``We do need something to give us a sense of the pulse of the city,'' said Marcelle Layton, an assistant commissioner at the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
For all its sensitivity, New York's system did not detect the anthrax attacks last fall. Layton and her colleagues do not consider that a problem, however, because the system is designed to detect major airborne bioterror attacks. Last year's mail attacks were so limited that only one of the seven New Yorkers who contracted skin anthrax from contaminated letters even visited an emergency room.
-------- business
Army Weighs Privatizing Close to 214,000 Jobs
One in Six Workers Could Be Affected
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59002-2002Nov2?language=printer
The Army is considering whether to contract out nearly 214,000 military and civilian employee positions in what would be the largest transfer of jobs to the private sector by a government agency, Pentagon officials said.
If successful, the Army's initiative -- undertaken in the name of focusing more of the military's resources on national defense -- could affect more than one in six Army jobs around the world. And it could provide a major boost to the Bush administration's efforts to move large blocs of government work into the private sector.
Although similar attempts to privatize government jobs date back decades, the Army plan is much more ambitious. On the line are the jobs of 58,727 military personnel and 154,910 civilian employees who perform such support functions as accounting, legal counsel, maintenance and communications.
Army Secretary Thomas E. White wrote in an Oct. 4 internal memo that the Army needs to direct as many resources as it can to anti-terrorism efforts and let support jobs go to the private sector, where the administration believes they can be done at lower cost.
"The Army must focus its energies and talents on our core competencies -- functions we perform better than anyone else -- and seek to obtain other needed products or services from the private sector where it makes sense," White wrote in the memo.
All told, the Army currently employs about 1.3 million people, including 222,000 civilians.
Federal unions denounced the Army plan as a thinly veiled attempt to do away with their jobs and benefit defense contractors. And some analysts said it raised questions about the Defense Department's capability to adequately manage its growing workforce of contract personnel.
"It's not about saving money, it's about moving money," said Bobby L. Harnage Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees. "They're going to turn over as many jobs as they can to these contractors, who are their major political contributors. . . . Their mission is to privatize. They don't give a damn about national security."
The Army says it is examining ways to trim the public payroll of jobs determined not to be central to its mission of national defense. One established method is to allow defense contractors to compete with Army employees to see who could do a particular job best and at the lowest cost. The process, which requires a comprehensive economic analysis, can take years -- but could result in a decision to keep the jobs in-house.
Other options under consideration include creating public-private partnerships and quasi-governmental corporations, directly moving jobs to the private sector, and simply wiping out some job categories altogether. But some of the methods aren't permitted by law and will require new legislation from Congress.
Military personnel whose jobs are affected would be reassigned to other duties within the Army. Officials, acknowledging that layoffs are possible, said they would try to help civilian workers move with their jobs to private contractors or land assignments elsewhere in the government.
"We're not just throwing people out on the street," said Lt. Col. Ryan Yantis, an Army spokesman. "We're very committed to doing the right thing in stewardship for both money, people and our mission."
A similar review of 25,000 Army positions in the 1980s led to about 15,000 jobs being moved to the private sector, with the rest remaining in-house, officials said. In another review of 33,000 posts begun in the late 1990s, 6,300 jobs were converted to private-sector work, 6,800 were kept in the government and no final decisions have been made on the rest.
Officials said 375 civilians had been laid off since 1998 in earlier rounds of privatization.
The Army's new plan, first reported by Government Executive magazine, is in keeping with President Bush's directive last year that agencies increase the amount of work deemed not "inherently governmental" that is contracted out or put up for competition between the public and private sectors.
Bush's plan calls for the Pentagon to have "competed out" 15 percent of all such jobs, or directly convert them to private-sector contracts, by the end of fiscal 2003. The administration's ultimate goal is to put 425,000 jobs government-wide up for such competition.
So far, 20,000 to 40,000 jobs in 26 major agencies have been put up for competition or directly converted to the private sector, said Angela Styles, administrator for federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget.
Styles said most of the reviews were continuing and she did not know exactly how many positions had actually moved to the private sector.
"You'll probably see an increase in that as agencies start to make performance decisions," she said, "but that doesn't mean that they [all] go to the private sector. More than half of these competitions are won by the public sector."
The Forest Service, for instance, has identified 3,035 jobs in such areas as information technology, buildings, and grounds and road maintenance that may be contracted out by next October, angering the union that represents many of its 30,000 employees.
"We think the mission should be determining what goes on here, not some arbitrary target," said Art Johnson, legislative chairman of the Forest Service Council of the National Federation of Federal Employees. "We don't think that's in the best interests of the taxpayers or the mission of the Forest Service. It seems to be contrary to the way government should be run to have a quota system."
Alisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service, said the agency merely identified jobs that may be competed out. "That doesn't mean that all of them will be," she said. "We're trying to work through the process with as much sensitivity as we can."
As recently as last December, Defense Department officials also were questioning whether targets were the way to go.
In a Dec. 26 memo to OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., Defense Undersecretary E.C. "Pete" Aldridge wrote that a reassessment "may very well show we have already contracted out capabilities to the private sector that are essential to our mission, or that divestiture of some activities may be more appropriate than public-private competitions or direct conversions."
Army officials said White's proposal does not represent a change of heart. White's memo calls for a range of options for dealing with the Army jobs, including public-private competition, direct privatization or transferring duties to another agency.
Army commands are to submit plans to White by Dec. 20 to privatize or compete all "non-core spaces," a process that Army officials said could begin as early as spring if White gives the go-ahead.
"The first of the competitions, privatizations, divestitures can, presumably, start immediately after approval," said Jim Wakefield, deputy chairman of the Army's non-core-competencies working group, which will oversee implementation of the plan. "There is no reason to delay."
Employees disagree, said Jacqueline Simon, director of public policy for the AFGE.
Simon noted that some of the options outlined by White are not permitted by law, which generally requires a competition to be a part of determining whether a government job can be done better or more cheaply by the private sector.
Indeed, White concedes in his memo that "most of these alternatives . . . will require enabling legislation that does not exist yet."
Styles, the OMB official, said the lack of competition in some of the Army's plans had caught her eye, too. "I just had them in here for an hour and a half talking about it," she said.
Styles said Bush does not want agencies to simply outsource jobs to the private sector. His model relies on competition to determine whether jobs should stay or go.
"If we don't think it fits the construct of competition, or it doesn't help us achieve the goal of providing the best service to the taxpayer, within whichever sector, then it doesn't count from our managerial agenda perspective," she said.
The prospect of moving so many Army jobs into the private sector raises questions about who will oversee the workforce and what rules will govern it, said Dan Guttman, a specialist on government contracting and a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Center for the Study of American Government.
Already the Army has little idea of how many people make up its contract workforce, Guttman said.
Assistant Army Secretary Reginald J. Brown put the figure at "between 124,000 and 605,000" in an April memo to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. A month earlier, White acknowledged in a department memo that "credible information on contract labor does not exist internal to the Department."
"The fact that the Army has so little grasp on how many people it is already employing raises basic questions about its ability to account in the future for all this stuff," Guttman said. "The relevant question is not, 'Is there competition?' The issue is who is going to be there after the [contract] workforce is established to supervise it and hold it to account."
John Anderson, assistant deputy assistant secretary for manpower management, said the Army has a pilot program that requires contractors to report costs and workforce sizes back to the department.
"We're working on that right now," he said.
-------- china
Chinese spy ship driven off Taiwan after PLA naval operation warning
Nov 03, 2002
Agence France-Presse
http://spacedaily.com/news/021103082543.ozdecxsj.html
TAIPEI (AFP) Taiwanese navy and coast guard vessels chased away a Chinese spy ship in the island's territorial waters after fresh warnings China has expanded naval operations against Taiwan, officials said Sunday.
After a tip-off from fishermen, a Lafayette-class frigate from the navy and patrol boats from the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) rushed to the scene after "Xiangyanghong No. 14" was detected some nine kilometers (five nautical miles) off Lanyu, an island southeast of Taiwan, the CGA said.
"We have adopted due procedure to make sure the ship leaves our territorial waters," a CGA spokesman told AFP.
CGA records showed it was the third time the ship had crossed into Taiwan's territorial waters this year.
The unarmed 2,894-tonne Chinese navigation vessel was last detected and driven away from Lanyu October 10.
The vessel also sailed into Taiwan's turf in May, some 25 nautical miles off Chiupeng base, where most of Taiwan's missile tests have been conducted.
Taiwan's armed forces were, at that time, conducting the "Hankuang 18" (Han Glory) exercise, the year's biggest military exercise to test reforms of the military command structure.
Taiwan defense minister Tang Yao-ming, in surprise testimony to parliament last week, said a Chinese destroyer from the North Sea fleet recently sailed through the waters east of Taiwan to join a wargame in the South China Sea.
Chinese warships usually sailed past the Taiwan Strait for similar missions.
Local military analysts regarded the rare sailing as a flexing of marine muscle by the Chinese navy, which is fast-modernising its fleets after obtaining advanced Kilo-class submarines and Modern-class destroyers from Russia.
Tang urged parliament to approve the navy's controversial plan to purchase four second-hand Kidd-class destroyers from the United States.
Taiwanese officials normally remain tightlipped over Chinese wargames near the island for fear of sparking public panic.
Taiwan and China, which split at the end of a civil war in 1949, are still technically at war despite opening civil contacts in 1987.
-------- indonesia
Indonesia Military Allegedly Talked Of Targeting Mine
By Ellen Nakashima and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59430-2002Nov2?language=printer
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 2 -- Senior Indonesian military officials discussed an operation against Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. before an ambush near its mine in Papua province that killed two Americans and one Indonesian on Aug. 31, according to intelligence obtained by the United States, a U.S. government official and other sources said.
The discussions involved the top ranks of Indonesia's military, including Endriartono Sutarto, the influential commander in chief, and were aimed at discrediting a Papuan separatist group, the Free Papua Movement, said the U.S. government official and another American source. A spokesman for Sutarto denied the discussions occurred.
The attack took place near a mine operated by New Orleans-based Freeport; the three victims were contract employees.
The intelligence was based on information supplied after the ambush by a person who claimed to be knowledgeable about the high-level military conversations. The source was described in the report as "highly reliable." This information was supported by an intercept of a conversation including that individual, said the U.S. government official and the American source. The intercept was shared with the United States by another country, identified by a Western source as Australia.
The discussions described in the intelligence report did not detail a specific attack, nor did they call explicitly for the killing of Americans or other foreigners, but they clearly targeted Freeport, the U.S. official and the American source said. Subordinates could have understood the discussions as a direction "to take some kind of violent action against Freeport," the government official said. It could not be learned precisely when the discussions took place.
The intelligence report was provided to the State Department about two weeks after the ambush, the official said.
If confirmed, evidence of Indonesian military involvement could seriously impair Bush administration efforts to restore U.S. assistance to the Indonesian military, suspended in 1999 to protest the involvement of the armed forces in human rights atrocities in East Timor. Such evidence would also represent a setback to a key U.S. foreign policy goal in Southeast Asia of engaging the Indonesian military, known by the initials TNI, in the campaign against terrorism.
Maj. Gen. Syafrie Syamsuddin, an armed forces spokesman, said today that top officers had never discussed an operation targeting Freeport. He said Sutarto is a disciplined officer who would not become involved in activities that violate the strict rules and ethics of the Indonesian military.
Syamsuddin also said top officers do not get involved in "technical matters" such as planning specific attacks and ambushes. He added that to ambush Freeport employees as a way of discrediting the separatist group would be "illogical."
"This is probably something made up to discredit the TNI," he said. Asked who might have sought to tarnish the army, Syamsuddin said he did not know.
Sutarto said last week that no Indonesian military officers were involved in the attack, which took place in Indonesia's easternmost province, on a misty mountain slope near the world's largest gold and copper mine.
His comments came after Papua police investigators told the commanders of military intelligence and military police that they believed Indonesian soldiers likely were behind the attack, according to senior military and intelligence officials.
The U.S. government official today confirmed that the FBI briefed State Department and embassy officials about three weeks ago on the bureau's own investigation of the attack. FBI investigators have visited Papua as part of the probe.
"The indications have pointed in that direction [of the military] but are not conclusive," the official said. The FBI is still interviewing witnesses, Freeport contract employees and their family members who have returned to the United States, he said.
The intelligence report, completed separately from the FBI investigation, indicated the military was "thinking or contemplating some kind of measure to accomplish the goal" of prodding the United States to declare the Free Papua Movement (OPM) a terrorist group, the official said.
The OPM is a loose organization of Papuan rebels waging a long-running independence struggle marked by sporadic, low-level violence. The military's claims that the separatists carried out the Aug. 31 attack have been met with skepticism from some analysts, who said it was not OPM practice to target foreigners or to use automatic weapons. The ambush was carried out with assault rifles, which the attackers used to spray two vehicles with bullets, killing three teachers and wounding 12 people, mostly Americans.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and the administration's senior Indonesia expert, said Friday that it was "very disturbing" the military might be involved. "We take it very seriously," he said. "And if it's true, I think it's extremely important for the government to get to the bottom of it."
But that is not a reason to resist reestablishing ties with the Indonesian military, he argued. Giving the military "more contact with the West and with the United States and moving them in a positive direction is important both to support democracy in Indonesia and to support the fight against terrorism," he said. "Unfortunately, we've been isolating them for a decade. It's not a policy that's working."
Wolfowitz was not asked in the interview about the intelligence report.
A State Department spokeswoman said the department did not comment on intelligence reports.
Critics of renewed military aid for Indonesia expressed concern. "These revelations should trigger a complete and public congressional investigation," said Mike Jendrzejczk, director of Human Rights Watch/Asia. "This should also take up the question of the U.S.-Indonesia military relationship generally. But the focus has got to be on getting to the bottom of these allegations."
On Friday, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, said that if the Indonesian military was found to have planned the killings, then the administration's proposed military training aid, $400,000 for fiscal 2003, should not go forward.
"It should surprise no one that the Indonesian army may have been involved in this atrocity," he said. "It has a long history of human rights violations and obstruction of justice. The fact that the perpetrators apparently believed they could murder Americans without fear of being punished illustrates the extent of the impunity."
Freeport's vice president of corporate communications, William Collier, said the company could not comment on an ongoing investigation. "We hope that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, whoever they may be," he said.
Regional analysts and sources familiar with the investigation said the military had been troubled by Freeport's practice beginning in 1996 of providing 1 percent of the Papua operation's gross revenue to the local community for development projects. Military officials have repeatedly expressed concern that a portion of that money is being diverted to the separatists.
About one week after the shooting, a police official, an army general and a high-ranking official from the office of the coordinating minister for security flew to Papua to speak to Freeport officials about what they believed to be Freeport's financing of a trip to Australia by pro-independence Papuans, said a source familiar with the investigation. The delegation was not convinced by assurances that Freeport had not financed the trip, the source said. Collier said today that Freeport money does not go to OPM. "We're not financing the separatist movement in any way," he said. "It's just not true."
-------- iran
Report: Bin Laden Son Detained
Iran Allegedly Captured Hundreds With Links to Al Qaeda
Associated Press
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59389-2002Nov2?language=printer
LONDON, Nov. 3 (Sunday) -- Iranian security forces have detained one of Osama bin Laden's sons and more than 200 other people suspected of links to al Qaeda, the Financial Times reported on its Web site Saturday.
Citing an unidentified Iranian official, the newspaper said Iran had transferred bin Laden's son to authorities in either Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
The newspaper's report could not be independently verified.
[In Washington, a senior U.S. intelligence official said, "We don't have anything to substantiate this." Because Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are close U.S. allies, the official said, "we would have known about it."]
Iran's vice president, Mohammed Ali Abtahi, reached early today, said he was aware of the report, but "wouldn't confirm it unless credible information is available." Legislator Ali Shakouri-Rad, a close ally of President Mohammad Khatami, said he had no information on the reported capture.
Bin Laden has at least 23 children by several wives. One of the oldest, Saad bin Laden, who is about 22 years old, has emerged as an al Qaeda leader and one of the United States' top two dozen targets in the network. Mohammed and Ahmed bin Laden also support their father's efforts, U.S. officials say.
The official quoted by the Financial Times did not identify the son he said was detained. He reportedly said the man was captured with others suspected of al Qaeda links as they fled Afghanistan.
The paper quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi as saying the group numbered about 250 and that all the suspects had been returned to their home countries. He did not identify any of them.
The anonymous official also was quoted as saying he believed Osama bin Laden was dead. U.S. officials have repeatedly said they do not know if the alleged architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States is dead or alive.
-------- iraq
[Clearly this article was posted before it was complete. et]
Pentagon - Iraq's Special Republican Guard top tier combat force willing to fight and die
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59196-2002Nov2?language=printer
Despite doubts about the overall fighting capability of the Iraqi military, the Pentagon considers Iraq's Special Republican Guard a top tier combat force willing to fight and die in Baghdad defending President Saddam Hussein's regime, senior officers said last week.
Overseen by Hussein's competent and ruthless youngest son, Qusay, the Special Republican Guard consists of 30,000 loyal troops whose mission is to protect the president and secure Baghdad with armored fighting vehicles and anti-tank weapons.
Right here: Graf that says Saddam rules here at this focal point of power through family ties, loyalty and fear. Very robust, meaty graf.
Then: What the Pentagon is planning: plans to isolate Baghdad, and what effect isolating Baghdad would have; psyops, and strategic bombs of key strategic targets (and possibly those of economic value to key Hussein cronys--to confirm).
Then: Go Ring by ring through the defense, starting from outside in, and finishing with Special Republican Guard.
Then: Get into cronies.
This elite commando force is the inner-most ring of layered military defenses consisting of six Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad's perimeter and 17 regular Army divisions arrayed across Iraq.
Overall, the Iraqi military is but a shadow of what it was at the start of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Its 430,000 troops are less than half of the million-plus soldiers Iraq had in uniform 11 years ago, and its fighting equipment -- minus 1,200 armored vehicles destroyed during the war -- is old and decrepit.
But the U.S. military's respect for the loyalty, discipline and fighting capabilities of the Special Republican Guard and, to a lesser extent, the 80,000 troops of the Republican Guard, is a crucial factor for war planners in building an invasion force large and heavy enough to overwhelm these elite Iraqi battalions, whose leaders are closely linked to Hussein.
"I certainly don't take them lightly, and I don't know anyone who might have to fight them who does," said one general. "They are a tough force who will know the terrain and the cities. I believe they will fight hard."
Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution who favors invading Iraq, argues in a new book that the Special Republican Guard is "even more willing to fight and die for this regime" than it was during the Gulf War because its ranks are more heavily composed of loyal soldiers from Hussein's tribe or home town of Tikrit.
Since any U.S. invasion would be for the explicit purpose of toppling Hussein's regime, Pollack writes, officers and troops in this elite force would also be motivated to fight by a "fear of retribution that could follow Saddam's demise."
While most Americans remembered the sight of Iraqi forces surrendering en masse during the Gulf War, Pollack and numerous military officers involved in the conflict point out that the Republican Guard and several heavy divisions of the regular Army fought "furiously," if in the end, unsuccessfully, against U.S. forces.
"A portion of the Iraqi armed forces -- the Special Republican Guard, most if not all of the Republican Guard, and a small part of the regular Army -- will probably fight very hard," Pollack writes.
In Baghdad, the Special Republican Guard is equipped with 100 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles as well as Russian-made Sagger anti-tank guided missiles, according to Amatzia Baram, an expert on the Iraqi military at the University of Haifa in Israel.
"They are trained to fight any tank unit that dares enter Baghdad," Baram said. "It's a force to be reckoned with. It's not the same as your commandos. But it's trained."
The Special Republican Guard is controlled directly by Qusay Hussein and the Special Security Organization, whose 5,000 members both guard the president and oversee numerous other security units, including the Republican Guard. The SSO and the Special Republican Guard are the most feared security organizations in Iraq known for ruthlessly torturing and murdering anyone suspected of disloyalty.
Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, oversees the SSO with Qusay Hussein. Mahmud, in turn, works closely with Jamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan al-Tikriti, another member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle who is both a cousin to Saddam and married to Saddam's youngest daughter, Hala.
Jamal Mustafa is rare among Saddam's relatives for having military experience and a reputation as a competent commander, according to Ahmed Chalabi, a leading opposition figure who heads the Iraqi National Congress. Jamal Mustafa's brother, Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, is an important Republican Guard commander who formerly headed the Special Republican Guard.
But even these relatives entrusted with important military commands are kept on edge and constantly tested for their loyalty. "Everyone is a 'blade-runner,' with the possible exception of three to six people," Baram wrote in a recent article in the Journal of International Security.
Qusay, his older brother Udayy, who controls the Iraqi media, and Adib Hamid Mahmud, Saddam's personal secretary, are the "most sheltered, although not completely immune to the wrath of Saddam," according to Baram. After them come Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi, Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz and Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.
Recognizing the loyalty and strength of the Special Republican Guard and Saddam Hussein's other security services, Pentagon officials are crafting plans that would enable them to avoid a bloody, block-to-block fight in Baghdad by first bombing strategic communications and command facilities and then cordoning off and isolating the Iraqi capital.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and a key Bush administration advisor, said that Pentagon planners "have to assume [the Special Republican Guard] will fight and fight well."
"But I don't believe we'll have to go into Baghdad, because I don't believe he will survive in Baghdad for any length of time," Perle said. "Dictators like Saddam do not last very long once it's clear that they have been challenged. Once he's effectively challenged and it's clear he's finished, there's no ideological loyalty."
Absent any such unifying ideology, added Khidir Hamza, former head of Iraq's nuclear weapons program who was spirited out of the country by the CIA, even Saddam's relatives and fellow Tikiritis "are not going to commit suicide" to save him.
But security organs like the Special Republican Guard most likely will remain intact until quite late in the game, Hamza said, if only to arrange for Saddam's escape before quietly disbanding.
For the U.S. military, just getting to the outskirts of Baghdad and isolating Hussein's elite forces could be more difficult than the "cakewalk" some analysts predict, according to current and former military officers.
Richard Raftery, a former Marine intelligence officer with experience in northern Iraq, said he fears Hussein will employ a military strategy designed to exhaust the invading U.S. forces so that they lack the power to overwhelm his elite protectors in Baghdad.
As they cross into Iraq, Raftery said, U.S. forces could find themselves forced to bomb and maneuver around Iraq's regular Army of 300,000 troops, which includes three armored and three mechanized divisions.
"These troops are all conscripts, and if they surrender, it will take a large number of U.S. troops to evacuate, interrogate and guard the prisoners," Raftery said.
Next will come the more professional Republican Guard troops closer to Baghdad, organized in three infantry and three armored divisions. The armored divisions have all 600 of Iraq's T-72 tanks which, while fairly capable, were easily destroyed by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps' M1 Abrams tanks.
"These guys will be positioned at strategic points because they know where our axis' of advance are," Raftery said. "These are better troops but our guys will crush them. [But] once gain it will slow down our momentum and cause us to expend large amounts of ammunition."
Once the assault reaches Baghdad, military operations could produce civilian casualties and help turn world opinion against the United States, said Raftery. "The Special Republican Guard units will die to a man defending the regime," he said.
But many in the Bush administration -- and the Iraqi opposition--believe the Iraqi regime will collapse long before U.S. armored forces arrive in the outskirts of Baghdad. Like Perle, former Iraqi Brig. Gen. Najib al Salhi, a former Republican Guard officer and tank commander now living in northern Virginia, doubts the conflict will ever come down to a battle for Baghdad.
Units from the regular Iraqi Army, he said, could actually become a force multiplier for the Pentagon. "They are more prepared to turn against him than defend him," Salih said.
Parts of the Republican Guard could follow suit, he said, once they are convinced that the Bush administration is serious about removing Hussein from power. "I served in the Republican Guard myself at the time we were defending Iraq from Iran and I did not feel a true loyalty to Saddam Hussein even at that time," he said.
And once U.S. move past the Republican Guard positions, with or without resistance, he said, the Special Republican Guard will be psychologically defeated. "When we get that far," he said, "they will realize the fight is over. All of Iraq will be totally liberated by the time we face the Special Republican Guard, and their mood will be totally zero. I do not believe they will fight."
At the Pentagon, one senior defense official listened to Salih's scenario and said there are plans in the works for psychological operations designed to convince Iraq's elite units that resistance, after a certain point, would be pointless. Deals could be cut, he suggested, that would guarantee certain commanders they would not be prosecuted or imprisoned once they laid down their arms.
"But when you plan for military operations," the official said, "you have to plan for the worst -- so you have to plan that they will fight."
----
Iraq Ready to Fight, Saddam Tells Airforce
Reuters
Sunday, November 3, 2002
By Samia Nakhoul
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61834-2002Nov3?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein told his airforce commanders and pilots on Sunday that Iraq was ready for war with the United States.
"When God wants us to fight we will be ready to fight under all circumstances. We will fight on all frontlines and whatever God wants is appropriate," Saddam was quoted by Iraq's official television as saying.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said the United States was making business out of wars and that conflict could be avoided if the superpower stopped "warmongering."
He repeated that Baghdad would not accept a U.S. draft resolution currently under debate at the U.N. Security Council, saying it amounted to a declaration of war.
"A conflict can be avoided if America stops warmongering, stops making business from wars, from killing and (causing) death to other nations," said Sabri, who was accompanying Austrian far-right politician Joerg Haider on a tour of Baghdad's trade fair.
President Bush wants to end Saddam's rule over his alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and has threatened military action. The United Nations is seeking a resolution to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Baghdad after a four-year absence.
Asked if Iraq would accept the U.S. draft resolution, Sabri said: "This is not a U.N. resolution. This is a declaration of war on the United Nations and on Iraq." Sabri said Washington's allies -- Britain and Israel -- were the only supporters of the U.S. draft resolution.
Earlier on Sunday, Saddam urged his airforce to "deny the enemy the chance to achieve its wicked and evil intentions," adding: "If God wants us to fight, and imposes it on us, we will fight, though we hate it."
In separate remarks, Saddam promised "no walkover" for U.S. and British soldiers should they attack Iraq.
"We are preparing as if war will break out in one hour and we are psychologically ready for that," Saddam told the independent Egyptian newspaper al-Osboa.
"Iraq will never be like Afghanistan. This does not mean that we are stronger than the United States, which owns fleets and long-range missiles, but we have faith in God, in the nation, the Iraqi people and...the Arab people and we will never let it be a walkover for American or British soldiers."
"Time is definitely on our side and we must buy more time because the American-British alliance will disintegrate for internal reasons and because of world opinion," Saddam said.
The Iraqi leader said Washington's real motive for any attack lay in controlling the region and its oil.
-------- israel / palestine
Netanyahu to Accept Israeli Post if Elections Are Held
November 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-netanyahu.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday made an early Israeli election his condition for accepting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's offer to be foreign minister in a narrow right-wing government.
Sources close to the hawkish Netanyahu, Sharon's main rival in the right-wing Likud party, said the prime minister had yet to reply to the terms.
``Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to serve as foreign minister in a government that will head to early elections,'' Netanyahu said in a statement issued after he met Sharon at the prime minister's Jerusalem residence.
Sharon offered Netanyahu the foreign ministry post on Friday, two days after the center-left Labour Party pulled out of his ruling coalition in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements on occupied land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Sharon has been trying to draw far-right parties into his shrunken government to regain a parliamentary majority shattered by Labour's departure.
Under Netanyahu's proposal, he would join a revamped government as foreign minister and Sharon would announce an early general election. By law, Sharon must hold a national ballot no later than October 2003.
Netanyahu's terms appeared to leave open the possibility that he could still fulfill his pledge to challenge Sharon for the Likud leadership in the next election Israel holds.
``(Netanyahu) returned to the principle he stood by two years ago -- that no government can function in this (parliament) or achieve anything,'' Netanyahu aide Gabi Piker told Army Radio.
``He suggested that the prime minister accept this principle and go to elections so we have a stronger parliament, a stronger Likud party.''
Netanyahu, who has called for a harder line against a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood, served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, when he was defeated by Labour's Ehud Barak.
-------- nato
NATO Tells Hungary to Modernize Its Military
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59421-2002Nov2?language=printer
BUDAPEST -- Two days after moving from the opposition benches of parliament last May to become Hungary's defense minister, Ferenc Juhasz made a routine courtesy call at NATO headquarters in Brussels. When he met with Secretary General George Robertson, Juhasz recalled, "it was a shock."
Banging a table with his finger for emphasis, Juhasz said, Robertson delivered a lecture: Fulfill your pledges to modernize and better equip your forces. "You do not have any time," Juhasz recalled the NATO chief saying. "If you don't do this, you are in trouble."
"It was two days after I took office," Juhasz said. "Usually, the new government gets a hundred-day honeymoon."
There has been no honeymoon for Hungary's new coalition government as it confronts a dilapidated military structure that is in many ways the weak link of the NATO alliance. "Hungary is not a military nation," said a Western diplomat from an allied country. "They haven't won a battle since around 1456. And there's very little support for military spending."
The diplomat praised the government for promising more military spending, but noted it was merely a promise. "The new government came in with a huge set of promises that are very expensive," the diplomat said.
When Hungary joined the alliance in 1999, many NATO countries considered it a good ally. At the start of the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, it immediately opened its airspace to allow jets to carry out bombing raids. But since then, Juhasz said, "we are treated like an unreliable partner."
Juhasz blames Hungary's previous government for neglecting pledges to restructure the military. For four years, he said, there have been no significant purchases of new equipment, meaning that "technological backwardness is huge." Reductions in manpower have left some units nonoperational. The army has no protective gear to defend against chemical or biological attacks. Communications systems are old and Hungarian soldiers have difficulty talking to their NATO counterparts.
This is not to say that Hungary hasn't spent money on defense in recent years -- about $1.08 billion yearly, or 1.75 percent of its gross domestic product, a respectable rate by European standards. But much of it was misspent, officials said. For instance, the previous government put large sums of money into studying how to create a maritime transport capability for a landlocked country.
When the United States was looking for allies to help with the war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Juhasz said, "I was shocked to see two [NATO] countries which did not take part." One was Iceland, which doesn't have an army, and the other was Hungary.
Now, the new government has announced a 16 percent increase in its defense budget, pushing it to about $1.2 billion. Much of the new money will go for technical improvements and restructuring. Already, Hungary has put out tenders for new vehicles and equipment.
Juhasz has also embarked on a long-term defense review, with American and British assistance, to determine precisely what capabilities Hungary now has -- no one is quite sure -- and what it might contribute in the future. But that review will not be completed until March, too late for the upcoming NATO summit in Prague.
----
Czechs Become Model for New NATO
'Niche' Expertise in Chemical Weapon Defense Compensates for Military Shortcomings
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59400-2002Nov2?language=printer
THIRTY-SECOND TACTICAL AIR BASE, Czech Republic -- Brand-new L-159 bomber jets take off most days from this expansive facility, climbing fast into the skies for training missions. Replacements for retired Russian-made Su-22s, the locally built jets carry advanced Italian-made radar systems that allow for strikes in complete darkness.
These light combat aircraft are efficient and modern, but of the 38 planes on order, only 27 have been delivered, not enough for all of the pilots at this base. The deputy base commander estimates it will be two years before the first pilots will be ready for combat operations with their NATO allies.
Once a source of national pride, the Czech air force has fallen on hard times, highlighting the costs and difficulties of transforming the military of a former communist state into a reliable and battle-ready partner in NATO, which added the Czech Republic as a member in 1999.
At another military base, other units of the Czech military are turning the past into an asset for the future. At the 9th NBC Company barracks in Liberec, soldiers in self-cooling protective gear practice responding to a simulated chemical attack, using skills acquired during the Cold War, when Czech troops were the Warsaw Pact's specialists in defense against nuclear, biological and chemical attack.
Within an hour, a small unit can extract 60 injured people from a "hot zone," provide medical care and decontaminate the area -- in scorching desert temperatures of over 120 degrees, officials said. It's an expertise the Czechs recently demonstrated to U.S. forces training in Kuwait, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. "I think we surprised a lot of people in Kuwait," boasted Maj. Jiri Gajdos, the company commander, who had recently returned from the desert exercises.
Soldiers involved in the nuclear, biological and chemical unit joke that NBC once stood for "No Body Cares." But when the leaders of the 19 NATO countries gather later this month in Prague, the Czech Republic's capital, the Czech military's NBC defensive capabilities, not its struggling air force, will be the focus of a display for the media and the assembled leaders.
Czech officers, defense planning officials and diplomats said the Czech example offers lessons to the seven East European countries that, during the summit, will be formally invited to join NATO. Like the Czech Republic, they are former communist states, most with small populations and struggling with limited budgets to replace and upgrade Soviet-era equipment and inefficient military command structures.
As part of their contribution to NATO's military might, countries can compensate for a lack of manpower and high-tech weaponry by adopting specialized "niche" expertise, military officers will tell them in Prague. "I believe after three and a half years [in NATO], we are finding our position as a small country which is able to contribute something meaningful," said Jan Vana, director general of the Czech defense department's strategic planning division. "This is something [the new members] may want to consider."
The old NATO was about countries with large standing armies, each with similar capabilities, poised to defend against a Soviet invasion from the east, George Robertson, NATO's secretary general, said in an interview.
"The new NATO," he said, "is going to be about countries who do different things, and do each of them well."
The army of Romania, a country that is likely to be invited to join, has units long renowned for their mountain-fighting skills. The three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, also set for membership, might contribute police units for peacekeeping and police-training missions.
The Czech Republic and the two other countries that joined in 1999, Poland and Hungary, have had varied success in restructuring their armed forces to fit into the alliance. Poland, the most populous of the three, and with much greater resources and a long-term military modernization program, has gone furthest, military analysts said. Hungary, with the lowest rate of defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, and a lack of political commitment to the military in previous governments, has done the least.
Somewhere in-between is the Czech Republic.
"The totally old dinosaurs are gone" from the ranks, said Ivan Dvorak, the Czech deputy director of strategic planning. But some problems persist. "We have a lot of ammunition and stocks we do not need. We have excessive infrastructure we do not need. The personnel structure has to be changed."
The three new members joined NATO less than two weeks before the start of the alliance's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, a high-tech operation for which the three found themselves largely unprepared. Michael Zantovsky, who chairs the foreign affairs, defense and security committee in the Czech Senate, said that every new country "always thinks they are ready, and they are wrong, including us."
But the Czech Republic got a political dividend, he said. "The idea was that joining NATO would help with the self-identification of the nation as a Western, democratic nation bound by the same rules, and it may have helped accelerate democratic transformation" in the three new members.
But what followed, he said, was "a steep learning curve, for the brass and everyone else involved."
One of the biggest immediate problems facing the Czech Republic when it joined was that too few of the country's soldiers spoke English well enough to allow for smooth joint operations with NATO. "That was not a success story," said Dvorak. "A great number of people had been studying in academies abroad. But the military lost these people because the [military] career system didn't work." English remains a problem. "We are successfully getting over the language problem, but we are not where we should be," said Gen. Martin Herja, a pilot and deputy commander here at the 32nd Tactical Air Base.
Obsolete equipment, mostly vintage stock from the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, proved a greater obstacle than did the language barrier.
The Czech air force fleet of MiG-21 fighters will reach the end of their operational lives in three years, and some of the jets are already grounded for lack of spare parts. Over the last 10 years, 20 pilots have been killed in accidents blamed on poor training, and reduced flight hours have prompted many pilots to quit.
When the last of the MiGs are retired from service, the air force will be left without a single supersonic fighter. That's because the need for funds to clean up after disastrous flooding in August forced the government to divert about $2 billion that was set aside to buy new Swedish- and British-made Gripen combat aircraft.
As the old Russian jets are retired, the Czech Republic can slowly wean itself away from Moscow's spare parts pipeline. Many here would be happy to end that relationship, continuing to feel deep distrust of Russia 13 years after the Velvet Revolution peacefully deposed the Moscow-backed Communist government of Czechoslovakia, now two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
"We need aircraft made in the Czech Republic, or in the West," said Herja, the pilot, "in order to be independent."
The size of the armed forces also remains a problem -- there are more than 60,000 members, and planning officials said the target number is close to 36,000. The government is phasing out the draft, but the army will not be fully made up of volunteers as required by NATO until the end of 2006, the officials said.
The use of conscripts creates an added problem. Under the Czech constitution, draftees cannot be deployed outside the country's borders, meaning that at present half the armed forces could not be used for foreign NATO operations.
A trimmed-down military force would also have to recast a top-heavy command structure. The number of garrisons, now at 140, will be reduced to 50. "Our armed forces are so small, we don't need so many levels of command," said Dvorak.
Another shortfall is the military's lack of transport planes for moving soldiers and equipment long distances. Czech troops currently train in Kuwait and operate a medical facility in Afghanistan. But to get there, the soldiers in Afghanistan resorted to commercial aircraft.
The Prague government is currently in talks with Moscow about converting part of the debt Russia owes the republic into three Antonov-70 cargo planes.
Dvorak said their goal is to develop within four years the capability to dispatch a 5,000-man brigade for six-month deployments -- "something that would be totally unimaginable today," he said.
-------- pakistan
'Pakistan': A Nuclear Yugoslavia
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/books/review/03KAPLANT.html
The central drama affecting the future of South Asia is not the hunt for remaining elements of Al Qaeda or even the struggle over the fate of Kashmir, it is the continuing institutional decline of Pakistan, the world's seventh most populous country and a potential nuclear version of Yugoslavia. Islam in Pakistan has had no more success in quelling ethnic and tribal animosities than Communism had in Yugoslavia. The Punjabis, through the military and the civil service, run the other provinces in imperial fashion much as the Serbs ran other parts of what was once Yugoslavia.
In ''Pakistan: Eye of the Storm,'' Owen Bennett Jones, a BBC correspondent formerly stationed there, writes: ''No elected government has ever completed its term in office. It has had three wars with India and has lost around half of its territory. Its economy has never flourished. Nearly half its vast population is illiterate and 20 percent is undernourished.'' In ''Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan,'' Mary Anne Weaver, a correspondent for The New Yorker, observes that this vast and arid frontier zone of the Indian subcontinent is where ''angry students cling to a vision of an Islamist utopia, and equally angry mullahs chant prayers from the country's countless mosques.'' There is so little sense of authentic nationhood that when the Baluchi inhabitants of the country's southwestern desert venture elsewhere in Pakistan, they say they are going to ''Hindustan,'' which for most people means India. As a consequence, Weaver says, Pakistan's ruling aristocracy -- once a triumvirate of military officers, tribal chiefs and the feudal landowners who bankroll the political parties -- clings to the British legacy of empire as the only available defense against anarchy. Since independence, the only addition to this triumvirate has been the Islamic clerics.
Though Weaver and Bennett Jones are both journalists, Weaver presents more of a descriptive, traveler's-eye view, exploring subjects like falconry and desert fortresses in addition to politics, while Bennett Jones has produced a more comprehensive, scholarly work, in which everything from the Seraiki national movement in southern Punjab to Pakistani nuclear doctrine is covered. Both books, however -- each the product of impressive expertise -- agree on a fundamental point: the differences between democratically elected leaders and military dictators in Pakistan may be less than the differences between one military leader and another, and prodding Pakistan toward stability and individual freedom is less a matter of the immediate return of democracy than of a sustained and nuanced American commitment to the country.
Together, these books provide an excruciatingly precise account of how in October 1999, Pakistan's last democratically elected leader, Nawas Sharif -- a Punjabi religious conservative who through the bribing of parliamentarians and the intimidation of judges and journalists was erecting a theocratic dictatorship under the guise of democracy -- denied landing rights to a civilian airliner packed with schoolchildren, in order to kill one of the passengers. The passenger was Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military chief of staff. Musharraf's fellow officers removed Sharif from power literally minutes before the plane's fuel ran out, and installed Musharraf as the country's new leader. Musharraf is described by both Weaver and Bennett Jones as the country's last credible Westernizer: a man who admits to a penchant for whiskey and casinos, and whose greatest concern is that ''75 percent of my officers have never been out of Pakistan.''
Musharraf emerges in these books as the philosophical opposite of another Pakistani general, Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. According to Bennett Jones, Zia is ''perhaps the only one of Pakistan's four military rulers to deserve the epithet 'dictator.' '' Zia took power in a coup in 1977 and ruled until 1988, when he was killed in a still unexplained plane crash. He was a courteous middle-class man with a common touch, but uncomfortable as a public speaker and lacking the charisma of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the civilian politician he had toppled. Weak politically, Zia aligned himself with Muslim extremists, institutionalizing radical Islam in almost every branch of the state. Zia's democratic successors, Bennett Jones notes, ''did little to dismantle his legacy.''
Undoing Zia's Islamization program has proved a thankless task for Musharraf, who despite his failure thus far has at least tried: challenging the clerics by denouncing religious practices like ''honor killings'' and blasphemy laws, and speaking out in support of human rights in a way that previous Pakistani leaders rarely did. As Bennett Jones asserts, Musharraf, unlike his democratic predecessors, ''does at least have an agenda. . . . He wants a modernist, liberal Pakistan in which there is religious tolerance and respect for the law.'' Musharraf, a dashing former commando with tons of the self-confidence that Zia lacked, reversed Pakistan's longstanding policy of support for the Taliban, and has assisted the United States in hunting down Al Qaeda to a degree that would have been inconceivable for any previous government. ''It is impossible to avoid the conclusion,'' Bennett Jones writes, ''that the military stand a much better chance of delivering radical change in Pakistan than the civilians.''
The reality is that Pakistan's experience with democracy has so far been unfortunate, beginning in essence with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a slick demagogue who in 1965 played a leading role in instigating Pakistan's disastrous war with India and later, as prime minister in the 1970's, imposed a ban on drinking, gambling and nightclubs even though he was a regular drinker himself. ''He repeatedly pandered to the Islamic radicals in the hope of securing short-term political advantage,'' Bennett Jones reports. Weaver writes of how, in an effort to subdue Baluchi separatism, Bhutto ''bombed and strafed'' the Baluchi ''at random''; 3,300 Pakistani soldiers and over 6,000 Baloch died. It was only after Bhutto's 1977 re-election was marred by fraud and riots broke out that the military, under Zia, took power.
Bhutto's daughter, Benazir, ruled twice, in the late 1980's and 90's, after Zia's death returned the country to democracy. In an affecting profile, Weaver shows how a hostile military and a feudal party apparatus were partly responsible for the gross mismanagement and disastrous decisions that characterized her first turn as prime minister. But, Weaver goes on, when Bhutto returned to power in 1993 and the country began to fall apart, ''she had only herself to blame.'' She and Asif Ali Zardari, her husband as well as the investment minister, ran Pakistan as though it were a ''commercial enterprise.''
As in Turkey, the military has periodically rescued Pakistan from political anarchy. But the Pakistani military, by constituting a state within a state, is itself a fundamental part of the problem, Bennett Jones concludes. Turkey has functioned reasonably well in recent decades because of an implicit division of power between the generals and the civilian leadership. The former, through a national security council, make the key decisions in security and foreign affairs, while the prime minister and parliament are sovereign domestically. One closes these two books thinking that if it is not to go on oscillating between military tyranny and democratic anarchy, Pakistan desperately needs a hybrid regime akin to the Turkish model.
Although the sheer variety of social and economic problems in the world cannot always be solved simply by instituting Western-style democracy, international elites have persistently demanded that Musharraf hold elections. So he did. Last month, Pakistan held its first nationwide election in seven years. With the reported connivance of the military, there were major gains for the hard-line religious parties and other opponents of working with the United States in the fight against terrorism. In two provinces bordering Afghanistan, crucial to American military operations, the religious parties are now dominant.
Near the end of her book, Weaver quotes Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former commander in chief of Central Command, the headquarters for Middle East operations, who tells her: ''It's so important that we work with Musharraf: not so much because of what Musharraf is or is not, but because what would come after him would be a disaster.'' Sadly, Zinni may still be right.
Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of ''Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan.''
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Crisis Brings War Home
Shaken Moscow Family Awakens to Distant Chechen Conflict
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 3, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59429-2002Nov2?language=printer
MOSCOW -- The Zapunny family immediately makes it clear that not a single one of them supports the war in Chechnya.
"Show me a person who wants to continue the war in Chechnya," demanded Nina Zapunny, a 47-year-old accountant with a social conscience. "Who could be for it?"
Her husband, Sergei Zapunny, a businessman, is also still reeling from the aftershocks of Moscow's hostage crisis, but is both angrier and more cynical, now that the 50 Chechen guerrillas who stormed the Moscow theater are dead, along with 117 hostages killed by the deadly gas used by Russian authorities in the raid to save them.
"As soon as this happened, I realized that I was a hostage, too, that everyone in this country is a hostage to this war," said Sergei, also 47. "And we will be as long as the situation is not resolved clearly."
Like the rest of this traumatized city, the Zapunny family is trying to make sense of the war that came home to them with an act of terror in a Moscow theater. They are grieving for the victims, and questioning the actions of their government while supporting their president. And most of all, they are wondering how, when and what will come next in the bloody, seemingly endless conflict with Chechnya that has interrupted Moscow's boomtown reveries with unpleasant reminders of the forgotten war down south.
Over a leisurely Friday night dinner of chicken and mashed potatoes, French wine and Greek salad, the Zapunny family debated the events that unfolded just a few miles from where they sat. They are exactly the sort of people the Chechen guerrillas appear to have targeted in their attack on the theater where the hit Russian musical "Nord-Ost" was playing on the night of Oct. 23.
The Zapunnys are theatergoers, well-educated and law-abiding, and have managed not only to survive but to flourish in Moscow's turbulent decade-long transition to capitalism. They are the people one of the Chechen hostage-takers had in mind when he told Anatoly Glazychev, the "Nord-Ost" stage manager, "You are responsible. It's your indifference" to the war in far-off Chechnya that had made them decide to bring the battle to Moscow.
Now, with the funerals over and the recriminations just beginning, the Zapunny family retreated to the kitchen, as they always did in Soviet times, when it was the only safe space for a family, in private, to say what they really thought of the world.
It was a conversation filled with all the contradictions of the broader Russia, one that quickly moved beyond the shock and horror of the hostage crisis to touch on the lasting power of the Soviet legacy in shaping both the authorities' response to the crisis and their own way of seeing the world. Like other Russians, the Zapunny family had little criticism of President Vladimir Putin's handling of the crisis and decision to deploy the gas -- the first post-raid opinion survey put approval for Putin's actions at 85 percent.
But the dinner talk also revealed what the polls have yet to fully explore: a deep cynicism and suspicion of the government that Putin leads and a strong belief that many of the hostages' lives were lost because of the Soviet legacy of secrets and lies.
The hostage crisis exposed many of the most painful questions of the Putin era, the things that Russians often choose not to talk about -- the heavy state control over the media, the lack of information about Chechnya, the failure of ordinary Russians to pressure their government to end a war that many of them don't support.
In the end, though, the Zapunnys still do not view things through the prism of Putin's Russia, but through the longer lens of Soviet history. And, said Nina, "compared to Soviet times, this story, this tragedy is a huge step forward. The authorities were talking. It was not all the truth, it was some of the truth. They admitted mistakes, not right away, but they admitted them. For us, this is progress." Never Met a Chechen
From the minute it happened, they understood that the hostage-taking was a huge moment for them and the city they love, an event of such magnitude, it could not be ignored.
"I had a feeling of deja vu," said Sergei. "It was like September 11, when I was at work and watched all that terror happen in New York. It was absolutely the same feeling of horror happening in front of your eyes."
Nina interrupted. "Yes," she said. "It was the same show: 'Terror Live.' "
For days, they were glued to the television set with a sense of impending disaster. Nina worried about the pregnant women in the audience, the children just like her 14-year-old daughter, Marina, who had gone to see "Nord-Ost," or "North-East," a few months ago, and the 75 foreigners suddenly caught up in Russia's long-running war. None of them expected it to end well.
They watched it all play out on a flat-screen Sony set, in the same apartment where they have lived since Soviet times -- only three rooms, but like their city, upgraded considerably in recent years.
They connected what was happening very directly with Moscow, a rich city, waging war on Chechnya, a poor region. In the same way the hostage-takers are said to have refused to bring in food, even for the dozens of children among their hostages, telling intermediaries, "why should your children eat; ours don't." The Zapunny family believed Moscow was targeted because of its special status in post-Soviet Russia as a city of new shopping malls and Mercedes-Benzes, at odds with a country of collapsing villages and grinding poverty. "We live better here," as Sergei put it repeatedly. "We have a higher standard of living."
But like most Muscovites at their level of income and education, they have been insulated from the war in Chechnya. Russia's mandatory conscription system hasn't touched their family. Their 21-year-old son, Volodya, who is finishing his last year at a prestigious Moscow economics institute, managed to get out of military service because of bad eyesight. In their circles, Nina said, "I never heard of anyone sending their sons to the war."
If the war has not penetrated their daily life, then neither have the Chechens, who exist for this family -- and for most Russians -- as little more than ciphers on television, mysterious enemies whose history, culture and religion are so different from their own. No one in the Zapunny family has ever met a Chechen. With Russia's state-controlled television showing little of the war from the Chechen point of view, their ignorance about the Chechens only contributes to their sense of hopelessness about ending a war they don't really understand.
"I don't know what Chechnya is. What kind of people live there? How do they live? What do they eat? What do they have for dinner?" Volodya said. "How can we know what is the right thing to do when we only have this limited information from television and official sources?" Question of Responsibility
To the hostage-takers, the attack may have been an effort to bring the war home to a complacent city. Sergei, however, wasn't having any of it. "I don't feel any responsibility for this war," he said.
Nina interrupted. "I do," she said.
"Naturally people who have jobs do not participate in rallies," Sergei retorted.
"I'm afraid we've outgrown it," Nina said. "Ten years ago, we were always part of it" -- enthusiastic participants in the crowds who surged excitedly around Moscow in the days of the downfall of the Soviet Union, protesting to win new rights, cheering when symbols of the Soviet state, like the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, came tumbling down. "I actually blame myself now for not having participated in rallies against the war."
In the midst of the hostage crisis, when angry relatives of some hostages staged an anti-war protest, Nina considered going down to Red Square herself. But then she heard that the authorities had prohibited the protest and were vowing to break it up. "That I wasn't prepared for," she said. She stayed at work, part of a silent minority protesting the war only around the kitchen table.
That was on Friday, Oct. 25.
Like many Muscovites, Nina and Sergei awoke the next morning just as news was spilling out about the pre-dawn raid. At first, they felt an enormous sense of relief and even happiness.
"But when we began to hear the details, it changed," Nina said.
They were soon more sad and angry than elated as the death toll rose and it became clear that doctors didn't have proper information about the gas to treat its victims. "We have many questions, so many questions," Nina said.
They may support Putin, but they adamantly blame the rest of the government for creating and prolonging the war in Chechnya, for botching the hostage rescue and then for lying about it.
"America is a more patriotic country," Nina said. "People there identify themselves with the state."
"But here, we have suffered so much from the state," Sergei said.
"We don't expect anything good from the state," Nina added. 'It Will Be Forgotten'
Now, most of all, there is a deep, shared pessimism that any progress will come out of this terrible tragedy in the middle of their city. Volodya spoke for the whole family when he said: "It will be forgotten. Everything will calm down. And then, when everybody begins to forget, something like this will happen again. Again, there will be indignation, outrage."
Sergei agreed. "This is people's nature," he said. "Especially here in Moscow, where life is good. There will be no major changes with Chechnya. Just this same, slow-moving war."
Nina interjected: "Because there are no answers to the major questions."
For the whole family, the war in Chechnya, the brutality and corruption they do their best to isolate themselves from, is all about the broader corruption of the Russian state. "The war is a business," Sergei said flatly, echoing a widely held view.
Sergei was also giving voice to another widely held opinion in Russia since the hostage-taking -- the notion that Chechens are so different and so fundamentally opposed to Russian rule that peace can never happen.
"It's impossible to come to terms with the Chechens," he said, retracing the long history of near-constant war between the Russians and the Chechens since the early 19th century. "If Moscow is Rome, then the Chechens are barbarians."
His wife and children don't use such language, but even Nina said she believed the best possible solution at this point may well be "to build a Chinese wall" around Chechnya, trapping the people and the problem inside, where it can't infect the rest of Russia.
Sergei ended dinner where he began it, pondering the price that Moscow has to pay for a war in Chechnya that seemingly few want. "Chechnya is like a tooth that aches," he said. The person with the toothache resolves to have it pulled out, but is convinced by the dentist that it just needs to be treated and the pain will go away. Of course, the pain doesn't go away but just keeps coming back.
"That's the way Chechnya is. You can't have it pulled right out, but you still have to pay money to the dentist to treat it," Sergei said. The family laughed.
Today, the Zapunny family is scheduled to leave for a beach vacation in Egypt. They will lie on the sand and forget Moscow's trauma. They will carry on with the lifestyle of the New Russians they have become. They will try to forget the toothache that never quite goes away.
----
Feud Grows Over Extradition of Chechen Rebel
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/europe/03RUSS.html
MOSCOW, Nov. 2 - Denmark has so far refused to extradite a senior Chechen leader the police arrested on Wednesday, saying that Russian prosecutors had yet to provide evidence that he was involved in terrorist activities.
Relations between Denmark and Russia soured badly in the wake of the siege of a Moscow theater by a group of Chechen guerrillas after Danish authorities refused to shut down a two-day conference of Chechen representatives earlier this week in Copenhagen.
As the conference ended, Danish police arrested Akhmed Zakayev, a former actor who has risen to political prominence in Chechnya's independence movement, in his hotel room early Wednesday morning, acting on an international warrant first issued by the Russians more than a year ago.
Far from easing tensions, however, the arrest has inflamed them further as Danish authorities weigh Russia's extradition demands.
Some members of Russia's Parliament have called for a boycott of Danish goods, while others led a demonstration outside the Danish Embassy here today to demand Mr. Zakayev's extradition.
"If Denmark adheres to its deaf-and-dumb position, we will take tough steps," the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Russia's Parliament, Dmitri O. Rogozin, was quoted today as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Denmark's justice minister, Lene Espersen, issued a written statement on Friday saying that Russia's demands had not met the conditions for extradition under a 1957 treaty.
In remarks on television later, she said Russia's formal extradition request, delivered on Thursday, was "unacceptable" and "incomplete," warning that Mr. Zakayev would be freed if Russia did not provide more evidence by Nov. 30.
She spoke only hours after Russia's foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said that Russia had already sent enough evidence proving Mr. Zakayev, 43, was involved in terrorism. Today, however, the prosecutor general said officials would send more documents in the next few days.
Russia has accused Mr. Zakayev, a former vice premier in Chechnya's republican government, of a series of crimes in Chechnya. They include armed insurrection, the organization of an illegal armed detachment and attempted murder of law-enforcement officers.
The Russians have also accused him - without detailing the evidence - of involvement in the hostage siege that began here on Oct. 23 and ended 57 hours later when Russian commandos stormed the theater, killing 41 Chechen guerrillas and 119 of more than 750 hostages.
Mr. Zakayev, who is also a representative of Alsan Maskhadov, a Chechen separatist leader, has been regarded as a moderate among Chechen separatists. Until the hostage siege, he was seen as one of the Chechen leaders with whom the Russians could most likely negotiate a settlement to the war, now in its fourth year.
Even after issuing a warrant for his arrest in 2001, Russian officials continued to contact Mr. Zakayev, and he traveled widely in Europe. During the siege in Moscow, however, Russian authorities reissued the arrest warrant to the Danes.
Vanessa Redgrave, the British actress who has worked in support of the Chechen independence cause and who attended the meeting in Copenhagen, asserted that the Russian charges against Mr. Zakayev were politically motivated. She said that Mr. Zakayev had denounced terrorism in general and the seizure of the Moscow theater specifically.
----
The 'Sons' Rise In Chechnya
By Anna Politkovskaya
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54819-2002Nov1?language=printer
MOSCOW -- Abubakar lifts the black mask covering his face. We are staring, examining each other at close quarters. We are both trying to understand what's going to happen when this, yet another Russian tragedy, is over. Abubakar, a 29-year-old Chechen, looks 40. He is deputy commander of the terrorist group that has taken several hundred people hostage. I am a journalist who has come to the captured theater building to negotiate. And now I am trying to understand who these people are. Will it be possible to persuade them to compromise if their lives are spared? Will they let all those unhappy people go? Who is behind them? And, more important, what comes after them?
We don't want anything, says Abubakar sharply; we do not intend to survive. We don't need it. We have come to die. And we are going to die in battle. He is wearing military fatigues that cover the figure of a physically fit special forces fighter with long service. An automatic weapon is on his lap; he constantly strokes it as if it is a baby.
Abubakar is one of those Chechens who have been fighting since youth. He has spent the past three years in the woods and mountains, without water, gas or heat. He has been surviving.
-- Why did you live like that?
-- I am a fighter for the freedom of my land.
-- What did you come to Moscow for?
-- To show you what we feel like during mop-up operations, when federals take us hostage, beat us up, humiliate, kill. We want you to go through it and understand how you have hurt us.
-- But let the children go.
-- Children? You take our 12-year-old children away. We are going to keep yours. To make you understand what it feels like.
This refrain -- "We will show you how we suffer" -- is to be an undercurrent of our "talks." Other fighters from the "subversive kamikaze group" added their details to the picture Abubakar was painting. Their attitude is not going to change. It is this: We have come to die to make the war stop. We are making no concessions.
Abubakar and his group, the majority of them between the ages of 25 and 30, are the generation of the "sons" of the Chechen war, who have grown old together with their "fathers." They have known nothing but an automatic weapon and the woods ever since they finished school.
In midsummer this year, as the military-political leadership of the Chechen resistance grew more and more radical, Abubakar and people like him began to raise their voices against the "fathers" -- including leaders and well-known field commanders -- saying that they were faltering in the struggle, lacking in drive, leaving fighters to spend a whole winter in the woods doing nothing while the outrageous Russian "mopping up" operations rose to unprecedented levels.
A Chechen woman of about 40 comes in, a grenade hanging on her thumb, an explosive device attached to her body. She carries a pail, which she fills with water for the hostages. We talk a little about her family in Grozny. She doesn't feel sorry for anybody or anything either. Abubakar is telling us that they had chosen people for this operation very carefully: They took only the best. The woman has been waiting a year and a half for a chance to become a kamikaze. Her husband and brothers were killed; her uncle and nephew are missing.
-- Are you answerable to Aslan Maskhadov (the Chechen separatist leader and former president)?
-- Yes, Maskhadov is our president, but we are fighting on our own.
Abubakar says this coldly. It confirms one's worst fears: This group is a force that operates on its own, waging a war of its own.
He names certain members of the leadership. They are conducting peace talks very slowly, he says, because they sleep on sheets, whereas we are dying in the woods. We are tired of them.
That was it, the sum total of their "ideology." It's easy to deride it as primitive, but I don't feel like doing that just now. This group, which is gaining the upper hand in Chechnya, promises innocent blood in the future -- one terrorist act after another. Meanwhile, the Kremlin does not even want to hear about a peace process.
The fate of the Chechen leader Maskhadov is becoming ever more predictable: Choose the frenzied radicalism of the "sons" or be swept away, and very soon.
The chance for a peaceful settlement now, after the October tragedy, has been lost. The Kremlin turns a deaf ear. Now it will take a much stronger effort for it to sit down at a negotiating table.
Female hostages are led toward me, then men. They all say the same thing: "We are the second Kursk" -- invoking the lost Russian submarine. No one in the Kremlin cares about their lives, they are saying: The only thing Putin wants is to demonstrate his strength and to show that he will never bow to the terrorists. And so we will have to die for it, right?
The writer is a Russian journalist with extensive experience covering the Chechen war. She is the author of "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya."
----
Russian Copter Shot Down in Chechnya
November 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Chechnya-Helicopter.html
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) -- A Russian military helicopter was shot down by rebels in Chechnya on Sunday, officials said. Interfax news agency reported that nine soldiers were killed.
The Mi-8 helicopter had just taken off from an airfield near Khankala, Russia's main military base in Chechnya, when it was hit by rebel fire, said Alexander Lemeshev of the Emergency Situations Ministry in southern Russia.
The helicopter, carrying three crew and six passengers, plunged to the ground, Lemeshev said. He said he did not have any information about the fate of those onboard.
Lt. Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, was quoted as telling Interfax that the helicopter was downed by a mobile rocket launcher. He said rebels appeared to be firing from a dilapidated five-story building on the outskirts of the Chechen capital, Grozny.
Podoprigora told Interfax that everyone onboard were killed, and federal troops were searching the area for the rebels. He said two rebels had already been killed.
Chechen rebels have shot down several Russian helicopters during the two wars in the region in the past decade, including one packed with troops in August that left at least 119 people dead. On Tuesday, an Mi-8 helicopter was shot down by a rebel missile, killing all three crew and one passenger aboard.
Russian forces retreated from Chechnya after a 1994-1996 war that left separatists in charge. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to return in 1999 after attacks on a neighboring region and several deadly apartment bombings blamed on the rebels.
-------- spies
Sex, Lies and Videotape
'Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America'
by David Wise, Random House. 309 pp.
Reviewed by Robert Sherrill
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page BW07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49169-2002Oct31?language=printer
As America's premier writer on espionage and the intelligence bureaucracy, David Wise has over the years introduced us to some very weird and dangerous civil servants. But for weirdness, the others couldn't touch Robert Philip Hanssen. He was, says Wise, "a walking paradox." Although a zealous right-wing anti-communist, he sold thousands of our government's secrets to Moscow. He was the kind of devout Catholic who went to Mass every day and hung a crucifix on his office wall, but he was obsessed with exhibitionist sex and pornography, spending hours hunting it on the Internet.
When his closest friend made extended visits to his home, Hanssen, an electronics whiz, hid a small video camera in his bedroom and rigged it up so that his friend, "sitting in the comfort of the downstairs den, could watch on television as [the Hanssens] had sex in their upstairs bedroom." (Mrs. Hanssen didn't know she was on camera.) Later the two men would critique the show.
Very early in his treasonous career, Hanssen's wife caught him putting together some material he claimed he was selling to the KGB as a "scam." To pacify his wife, he promised to give the first payoff money to Mother Teresa. More likely, he spent it on strippers, particularly the one he dated for a year, gave a sapphire-and-diamond necklace and a Mercedes, and treated to a two-week fling with him in Hong Kong.
He could afford it. For all the secrets passed to the KGB over two decades, Hanssen received $600,000. Wise says the secrets were of such enormous value that he could have demanded millions, "yet he never negotiated for more."
Did Hanssen's Catholicism make it easier for him to be a traitor in good conscience? Wise points out that Hanssen repeatedly confessed his espionage to priests and received absolution. Secrecy was guaranteed. "He betrayed his country and simultaneously betrayed his wife," writes Wise, while "urging his friends to get closer to God."
Seven years ago, Wise wrote a gripping account (Nightmover) of how Aldrich Ames was for nine years Moscow's mole inside the CIA, destroying many of the agency's most important undercover operations. Wise saw the CIA's incompetence in catching Ames as just another sign that the agency was almost worthless. ("From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra, its covert warriors hatched one disaster after another" and "its analysts misjudged almost every major development in the post-World War II world.")
Wise could have been almost as harsh in his judgment of the FBI. Behind the masterful puffery and self-promotion of J. Edgar Hoover during his half-century as its first director, the bureau was riddled with defects. Until Hoover's death in 1972, the FBI was marked by racism and civil-liberty violations, and seemed more interested in harassing left-wing political dissenters than in disturbing the Mafia. Post-Hoover directors produced their "string of debacles," such as the shootings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and making a bonfire of 75 Branch Davidians in Waco, Tex.
And, in terms of time elapsed, they were even more incompetent than the CIA in catching their mole. Not that there weren't "certainly enough warning signs." Hanssen's own brother-in-law, also an FBI agent, warned his supervisor that a suspiciously large pile of $100 bills had been seen on top of Hanssen's dresser. There was no follow-up. And what about the time Hanssen broke into another agent's computer? And the time he dodged taking a lie detector test? And the time "FBI technicians discovered he had a password breaker on his hard drive, normally a sure sign of a hacker"? And what about the time he got into a shoving match with a woman who worked in his office? (She fell to the floor, and he dragged her up the corridor, yelling and screaming.) Hmmmm. Maybe a little mental problem there? "Perhaps none of these incidents and questions about Hanssen was enough, by itself, to lead the counterspies to suspect their own colleague," Wise writes, "but taken together they should have triggered an investigation."
By the time Director Louis Freeh announced he was quitting in 2001, a CBS News poll showed public confidence in the FBI had plummeted to 24 percent. But within the bureau, confidence was still high. Perhaps too high. Wise smartly guesses that the FBI "may have failed to detect Hanssen sooner because it was in love with its own image" of bureaucratic purity and shrewdness -- a hangover from the myth-ridden Hoover era, "when the vast majority of Americans admired the bureau and its agents, who were invariably portrayed as square-jawed and invincible." A traitor in their ranks? Impossible.
As always, Wise offers his readers the excitement of spying on the spies, and the pleasure of hooting at good guys who stumble because they are too smug. And he leaves us mulling over the question of justice, served or unserved. Hanssen got a life sentence, but the government turned its traitor into a fairly good provider by allowing Mrs. Hanssen to receive $40,000 of his pension a year, plus the house and their three cars.
The really big winner in this tale is, ironically, the Russian spy who defected to the United States, bringing a treasure chest of data plundered from KGB files. It was this material that exposed Hanssen. In gratitude, our government paid the lucky immigrant $7 million, and he is now living comfortably somewhere in the United States under a new identity. •
Robert Sherrill is a staff writer for the Nation.
-------- us
THE MILITARY
U.S. Pilots in Gulf Use Southern Iraq for Practice Runs
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/middleeast/03GULF.html
ABOARD U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, in the Persian Gulf, Oct. 30 - When Navy warplanes roar off the flight deck of this aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, their official mission is to patrol the no-flight zone in southern Iraq.
But they also have an unadvertised task: practicing bombing runs against Iraqi targets.
Navy pilots are conducting mock strikes against airfields, towers and other military sites in Iraq, acquainting themselves with targets they may be called on to strike as the Bush administration prepares for a possible military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein.
"It gives us the opportunity to train in the same environment that we may possibly go to war in," Capt. Kevin C. Albright, who commands the Abraham Lincoln's air wing, said of the Navy patrols over southern Iraq. "We are looking at target sets and practicing."
The no-flight zones in southern and northern Iraq were established after the 1991 Persian Gulf war to prevent Iraq from carrying out airstrikes against Shiites in southern Iraq and Kurdish forces in the north of the country. The zones have been patrolled by the United States Air Force and Navy and by the British.
At the beginning of the Bush administration, there was some debate within the American military whether the patrols were worth the wear and tear on equipment and the risk to allied pilots, who have repeatedly been fired at by Iraqi antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles and who have responded by bombing Iraqi air defenses.
But with Washington and Baghdad on a collision course, that debate is long forgotten. The allied patrols, in fact, have grown into a low-grade war. According to Pentagon officials, Iraq has fired at allied patrols more than 130 times since mid-September.
The Iraqi goal, said Rear Adm. John M. Kelly, the commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, "is to shoot down a coalition aircraft."
To make it harder for allied warplanes to retaliate, Admiral Kelly said, the Iraqis have tried to minimize their use of weapons radar, which the planes can detect and attack. The Iraqis have also tried to anticipate allied flight patterns and guide their fire by eye.
In response, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has given American warplanes the authority to attack a broader array of targets, Pentagon officials said. Instead of focusing on mobile antiaircraft systems, which Iraq can hide, the Pentagon has authorized the military to attack an expanded set of command and control centers, communications relay stations, military radars and other stationary targets. These are nearly impossible to conceal, costly and difficult to repair and essential for Iraq's air defense network.
By bringing in the Lincoln, the United States has further expanded its options. As the Navy likes to put it, a carrier represents four and a half acres of sovereign American territory, which means that political considerations by Persian Gulf nations do not affect the Navy's ability to conduct bombing missions.
That is not the case for land-based allied patrols, which have been limited by political constraints. American F-15E Strike Eagles and British Tornados based in Kuwait are authorized to bomb targets in Iraq. But many planes that help monitor the no-flight zone are based in Saudi Arabia, which does not allow them to be used in actual bombing missions.
The Lincoln is the only aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, but more are expected to arrive. The Constellation and the Harry S. Truman are scheduled to leave ports in the United States and could reach the gulf by December. The George Washington is in the Mediterranean, but could quickly reach the Persian Gulf.
"You could make a case that with normal rotations, if you did the math, you could have up to four carrier battle groups deployed," said Vice Adm. Timothy J. Keating, who commands the Navy's Fifth Fleet. "Could they end up in the Arabian Gulf? Sure. It depends on where we want them to go. It depends on what the president tells us to do."
After the Lincoln turned its attention away from Afghanistan and steamed into the Persian Gulf this week, Cmdr. Jeffrey Penfield, who leads the VFA-115 strike fighter squadron, prepared to enforce the no-flight zone in southern Iraq.
The squadron is the first to be equipped with the Navy's F/A-18E Super Hornet. The new planes are bigger than the old F/A-18 Hornets, allowing them to carry more bombs and fly farther without refueling. The pilots have their own nickname for the formidable aircraft: Rhino.
When the aircrews from the Lincoln patrolled Afghanistan, their missions were largely uneventful. But flying over Iraq on the eve of a possible war has sent a jolt of adrenaline through the aircrews.
"In Afghanistan we did not get shot at," Captain Albright said. "So this is probably the first chance of being in combat for most of our crew for a while."
Commander Penfield's patrol mission began at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, when his squadron convened in its ready room on the carrier for a briefing.
The missions are complex and involve choreographed flights of Air Force, Navy and British planes. The basic plan this time was for an Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and an Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic surveillance plane to monitor the Iraqi military.
Allied fighters would be aloft to protect the intelligence planes and shoot down any Iraqi warplanes that violate restrictions. Allied tankers would be flying to refuel the aircraft.
The mission for Commander Penfield and three other Navy Super Hornet pilots - including Captain Albright, his superior, who served as his wingman on this mission - was "strike." That meant they could bomb targets in Iraq if Iraqi air defenses fired on the allied patrol.
If the planes were attacked, one target would be a reinforced air defense command and control center. The Super Hornet patrol was prepared to attack it with bunker-busting bombs, weapons designed to penetrate concrete and guided to their targets by satellite. A second possible target was a surface-to-air missile battery in southern Iraq.
But that was not the only task. The Super Hornet pilots were also given several practice targets, including an abandoned airfield and a tower. By simulating attacks on those targets, the pilots would improve their fighting skills and prepare for a possible war with Baghdad.
Airfields are relatively easy to spot, but the tower had been picked because it was more difficult to find. Navy pilots say that by flying patrol missions, they become accustomed to the Iraqi terrain and winds, and learn how the weather affects their infrared targeting systems, which generate images from the heat of the objects they detect.
The mock bombing attacks also give the pilots an opportunity to maneuver their planes so that their radar systems can generate a good picture of the target. It is a chance to rehearse what pilots call "knobology," the complicated series of steps that are needed to target a precision-guided bomb.
Some of the aircraft are outfitted with satellite-guided bombs, but Navy pilots often simulate the more difficult task of dropping laser-guided bombs. To carry out an attack with a laser-guided bomb, the pilot needs to keep a laser focused on a target for as long as half a minute as he maneuvers his aircraft.
The practice sessions are recorded, and the pilots review the tapes of their mock attacks after they return to the carrier.
"You go through everything you would do as if you were actually going to drop," Commander Penfield said. "You fly a specific formation. You assign aim points. You make sure you have the right weapon on board. You use the radar. You go through the knobology as if you were actually dropping the weapons."
In carrying out their missions, the Super Hornet pilots also benefit from a mission conducted by one of Navy's oldest and least glamorous aircraft - a P-3 Orion, which regularly flies seven-hour missions in the Persian Gulf and over Kuwait. The plane was designed for antisubmarine warfare during the cold war, but it uses its infrared sensors and electro-optical systems to monitor Iraqi threats to allied air patrols and ships in the Persian Gulf.
"We are monitoring various activities to make sure Iraq is not capable of reaching our aircraft, our troops on the ground or our ships at sea," said Petty Officer First Class John Clark, who operated the sensor systems on a recent Orion flight.
After completing his briefing and suiting up, Commander Penfield and his Super Hornet pilots were on the carrier deck at 7 a.m., getting ready for their catapult launching off the deck.
The nose of some of Navy fighters were festooned with paintings, many recalling the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One depicted the crest of New York Fire Department Engine Company 54 and Ladder Company 4, which is in Times Square. The companies lost 17 firefighters in the attack on the World Trade Center, and their emblem boasts that they have "Never Missed a Performance." The pilots of VFA-115 wear the companies' patch on their shoulders.
At 8 a.m., the planes took off for their three-and-a-half-hour flight. The actual time over Iraq, what pilots call the vulnerability period, was about an hour and a half. The weather was cloudy. On this day, there was no firing by the Iraqis and no allied bombing. But it was the first Iraq patrol during the Lincoln's deployment, and the pilots are aware that there is a high probability that they will see their share of action during the rest of their time at sea.
The patrols are something of a double-edged sword. While they give the American pilots a chance to rehearse military attacks against the Iraqis, they also give the Iraqi air defense forces a chance to practice against allied patrols. The allies vary their formations, tactics and flight times to keep the Iraqis off guard.
The Navy's general assessment is that it learns more from the patrols than the Iraqis do. Navy pilots who attacked Iraq during the gulf war were often flying over unfamiliar terrain using bombing plans that were rushed to them at the last minute from commanders based in Saudi Arabia.
Now, the Navy pilots gain combat experience when they police the no-flight zone. They have the chance to practice bombing tactics when the Iraqis refrain from firing at the patrols and to hone their skills in case of war.
"It can only improve the likelihood of successful mission execution," Admiral Keating observed.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
War Games
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54802-2002Nov1?language=printer
IMAGINE A COOL spring day, clear skies, light winds blowing east -- and a bomb goes off at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. A few hours later, another explodes at Union Station, followed by a third in a suburban mall. A local news organization has received a videotaped statement from a masked spokesman who claims that more bombings are to come. What would you do? Here's the good news: Local officials will have already thought about it. Last week a wide range of them, from Maryland, Virginia, the District and the federal government, took part in a role-playing, war-game scenario similar to the one described above. Firefighters, police officers, civil servants, utility officials and others acted out their parts, trying to identify what the bottlenecks would be, trying to decide whom they would contact first. It was the largest regional homeland security exercise to date, and it may have been the largest to take place in the country. The Washington metropolitan area is well ahead of other regions in thinking about how local officials would communicate during emergencies and where they would turn for more help. Thanks in part to relatively generous federal funding, and in part to the impressive initiative of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, sponsors of last week's war game, local officials now know one another, as well as many of their counterparts in the state and federal governments, and will be better able to work with them if it becomes necessary.
Here's the bad news: Local officials are thinking about emergency responses -- but they haven't told you that yet. Among other things, last week's war game made clear the importance of public communication. In the event of a genuine terrorist catastrophe, thousands of lives will be saved if authorities give the public the right instructions -- and if the public is prepared to follow them. Despite occasional mass mailings, some community meetings and the printing of many pamphlets, it is probably fair to say that most people in the area are still not prepared, would not understand that different catastrophes require different responses, and might well try (for example) to evacuate the region even if told not to. There is no partial solution: A serious program of mass public education, complete with emergency drills and careful planning, would require the involvement of schools, universities and businesses, as well as different branches of government. It would also require regular, reliable and probably federal funding, not a one-time gift of money. Among the many lessons learned during last week's scenario, we hope this one will not be forgotten.
----
Security Doesn't Have to Be So Unsightly
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52341-2002Nov1?language=printer
The alarming proliferation of security fortifications in our nation's capital is sad testimony to the world having become a harsher place. Gone are the days when architects and planners could take to the drawing board giving little or no thought to making streets and buildings secure.
Sewer pipes encircle the Capitol, Jersey barriers block Pennsylvania Avenue and surround the Washington Monument, guard huts litter the Mall, and massive planters proliferate like mushrooms around the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. Their purpose may be to help prevent terrorist attacks, but the effect of these barriers is to communicate fear and undermine the premises of an open and democratic society. In addition, this barrage of piecemeal security erodes the historic beauty and spirit of our capital.
No one wants to see Washington defined by such a hodgepodge of unsightly barriers. An attractive city does not have to be inconsistent with a secure one, but having both beauty and safety will take vision and commitment.
The National Capital Planning Commission recently released a plan to integrate building perimeter security with good urban design. The commission's National Capital Urban Design and Security Plan proposes a variety of permanent security and streetscape improvements for the city's monumental core while creating a more welcoming and beautiful public realm.
Some of the nation's leading planning and urban-design firms assisted in the preparation of this plan, which recognizes that design solutions need to be tailored to particular precincts. For example, on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, a preliminary concept includes trees, a compacted granite path and attractive guard stations to replace the barricades and contribute to a dignified civic setting.
The plan also offers techniques that could help set the standard for city design throughout the nation. Solutions such as "hardened" street furniture -- landscaped planting walls, security bollards embedded within rows of hedges, and sidewalk planters -- would improve rather than detract from the streetscape.
Many cities are trying to fortify their courthouses, city halls and historical monuments. The plan encourages them to examine alternative security installations that also would improve their streetscapes. After all, Jersey barriers are no more attractive in Biloxi, Miss., than they are in Washington.
Planners and designers, security agencies, historical preservationists and civic, business and community groups came together to draft the National Capital Urban Design and Security Plan. The next step is for the White House and Congress to approve the plan's implementation. Americans deserve a solution worthy of their national pride.
-- Richard Friedman
is chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission's interagency security task force.
----
U.S. Defends Bush's Designation of Bomb-Plot Suspect as Enemy Combatant
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/national/03BOMB.html
The government has strongly defended the legality of President Bush's designation of Jose Padilla, the man accused of plotting to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States, as an enemy combatant, arguing that the designation is not subject to close court scrutiny.
At most, the government said in a court filing on Friday, the designation may be reviewed only to ensure that the president had "some factual basis" for his action.
The government's arguments were made to Judge Michael B. Mukasey of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who is considering a habeas corpus petition that seeks to test the legality of Mr. Padilla's detention.
The judge has not said when he will rule. Usually, in considering habeas petitions, judges have wide latitude in reviewing the underlying facts and procedures that led to a person's being jailed.
Mr. Padilla, an American who is also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, was first detained last May in Chicago as a material witness in the terrorism investigation. In June, he was declared an enemy combatant by President Bush, and moved into military custody. Since then, he has been held, without access to a lawyer, in a Navy brig in South Carolina.
Judge Mukasey had asked for further submissions on whether he should consider a classified document that is said to detail the evidence against Mr. Padilla, but which the government has refused to show to the defense.
The defense lawyers say he should not rely on it if they cannot also see it. But the government says that the judge may review the document.
"This case is not an ordinary habeas case, and the general rules regarding factual determinations in ordinary habeas proceedings have no bearing here," the government said.
It also said Judge Mukasey should not undertake "the sort of unprecedented and constitutionally problematic proceeding" that the government contends Mr. Padilla's lawyers are seeking. Such an approach could open the door to enemy combatants seeking extensive judicial review of "the correctness of the president's determination to detain them," the government said.
In a separate filing, Mr. Padilla's lawyers, Donna R. Newman and Andrew G. Patel, likened his detention to "the selective implementing of martial law."
They also challenged the government's reasons for denying him a lawyer. Among other things, the government has argued that a lawyer might be unwittingly used as a conduit to pass messages to members of Al Qaeda.
But Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued that when he was first arrested last spring, Mr. Padilla had a lawyer for several weeks and did not seek to use her to pass messages to outsiders.
He has been in solitary confinement for more than five months, they added.
"At this point," they said, "the only information that Padilla could possibly have to pass on to Al Qaeda is how to sleep with the lights on."
--------
The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Libraries
November 3, 2002
Bill Olds,
Hartford Courant
http://www.ctnow.com/features/lifestyle/hc-privacy1103.artnov03col.story
Some reports say the FBI is snooping in the libraries. Is that really happening?
Yes. I have uncovered information that persuades me that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has bugged the computers at the Hartford Public Library. And it's probable that other libraries around the state have also been bugged. It's an effort by the FBI to obtain leads that it believes may lead them to terrorists.
Many members of the public regularly use computers in libraries to access the Internet for research purposes or to locate information about particular interests. It's also not uncommon for students and others to communicate with friends and relatives through e-mail from there.
The FBI system apparently involves the installation of special software on the computers that lets the FBI copy a person's use of the Internet and their e-mail messages. (Don't ask me how I know about this because I can't reveal how I was able to collect the information.) Members of the public who use the library have not been informed that the government is watching their activities. It's not just the computers. Circulation lists that show which books someone borrowed are also accessible to the government.
What are the Hartford librarians saying?
"I can't disclose that we were presented with anything," said Louise Blalock, Hartford's head librarian.
I asked Mary W. Billings, the library's technical services manager, if the FBI had given her a subpoena or a court order for library information. Her response: "I cannot answer that question."
She did confirm that in recent months the FBI made two separate visits to the Hartford Library, and there were discussions about "computer-related information." On one visit, an agent asked to speak to the library staff - a request that was turned down.
Interestingly, Billings said, "The library is now working on a public notice that it can't guarantee that there isn't third-party monitoring" for people who use its computers. A library staffer also remarked, "You know there is software that can grab everybody's Internet use."
I know my librarian, and I believe she would tell me if the government were tracking my computer use at the library. Don't you agree?
No way. There's a gag order. When the FBI uses a court order or a subpoena to gain access to library computers or a list of the names of people who have borrowed certain books, librarians can't tell anyone - not even other librarians or you. They face a stiff federal penalty if they do. It's unfair that librarians should be placed in such a position.
Does this mean that when I use the library's computer to do research for college papers on Saudi Arabia or Islam, the FBI could be following my steps on the Internet?
Very possible. Of course, it may depend on which library you visit. And there's no way you're going to be able to find out. The librarians can't tell you, and you're not going to spot the special software in the computers. Even if the software hasn't been installed, there's a back door for the FBI to tap in through. The Internet service providers (businesses located elsewhere) are required to cooperate with the authorities, and spy software can be installed at that end.
But isn't this snooping only going to be used against people suspected of being terrorists?
That's not how it works. It can check on everyone who uses the bugged computers. The rules allow this kind of surveillance even if someone is not suspected of being a terrorist or under any kind of suspicion.
Is there a state law that protects my privacy in the library?
Yes. Circulation records must be kept confidential. However, a new federal law - the U.S. Patriot Act - takes priority over the state rule and allows the FBI to have easy access to these records as well as to the computers.
What are the FBI and the Congress saying about all of this?
Mum's the word. The FBI has refused to discuss the issue, and Congress wants to get more information. It has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to describe what the FBI has been doing in the libraries. But Ashcroft also is not talking and has indicated he doesn't have to answer to Congress.
I've got nothing to hide when I go into a library, and I don't care if the FBI sees what I'm doing at the computer. What's the big deal?
We all want to be safe, and I don't know anyone who opposes the prosecution of terrorists. However, the way it is carried out is important. It comes down to a key question: How does a democracy deal with serious threats from terrorists and maintain its own freedoms?
Three points to consider:
1.) We have to be very careful that we don't fight terrorism in a way that destroys democracy. Terrorists may want us to accept their methods and the idea that our democracy should be tossed away. If that's what they achieve, we will have walked into a trap, and we will have given them a major victory.
2.) Libraries exist to provide information and knowledge to the public. When our own government places librarians in the position of participating, possibly against their will, to "watch" the public, it runs counter to vital principles that have guided us for much of our history.
3.) Protecting our freedom includes being able to openly communicate with each other without worrying that the government is listening or looking over our shoulders. The mere suspicion that we're being watched, even if we're wrong, can intimidate us in expressing our views. If Americans are only going to say and read what is "politically correct," our democracy will be in deep trouble.
Questions can be sent to Bill Olds, in care of The Hartford Courant, Features Department, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115 or by e-mail at docbillo@yahoo.com.
E-mail: docbillo@yahoo.com
-------- terrorism
THE HOLDOUTS
Afghans Raise Concern That Taliban Forces Are Reorganizing in Pakistan
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/asia/03AFGH.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 - Senior Afghan officials have told American officials that they are increasingly concerned that Taliban forces are reorganizing in the border areas of Pakistan in preparation for a new wave of terrorist attacks on Afghanistan.
This assessment - which has also been relayed to Pakistani officials - is shared by many people in the Pentagon and State Department, who say intelligence reports indicate that Taliban commanders have been meeting in Pakistan to reinvigorate the group, possibly under new leadership.
The Afghan officials said their concerns had been heightened by recent elections in Pakistan in which fundamentalist Islamic parties allied with the Taliban gained control of provincial governments along the border. The officials said they were convinced that those regional governments would shelter Taliban fighters planning raids into Afghanistan.
"They are the mentors of the Taliban," Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister, said in a recent interview in Washington, referring to Pakistan's Islamic parties. "When these elements are the governors and rulers in those provinces, it can jeopardize the interest of the campaign against terror."
American officials cite recent attacks on girls' schools in Afghanistan, rocket attacks on American forces there and the uncovering of numerous weapons caches along the Pakistani border as evidence of renewed activity by Taliban remnants and their allies inside Afghanistan.
Last week, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that continuing sweeps by coalition forces in Afghanistan have, to date, uncovered 475 weapons caches containing 2,100 AK-47 rifles, 70,000 mortar rounds, 2,116 air-to-air missiles and 42,997 107-millimeter and 122-millimeter rockets.
Pentagon officials say that while many of those weapons were hidden by fleeing Taliban forces, some are fresh caches planted by units preparing guerrilla attacks against the government of President Hamid Karzai.
"Taliban leaders have been meeting to talk about reconstituting the Taliban structure," a Pentagon official said. "These weapons caches are a part of their plan. They are trying to set things up for military action around Afghanistan."
Pakistani diplomats contend that it is too early to determine whether the local elections will embolden the Taliban, citing the moderate tone of statements by religious party leaders after their victories. Government officials in Islamabad have said that the government's support for the war on terrorism will not be undermined by the elections.
But to many American officials, the Islamic parties' success last month underscored the fragility of President Pervez Musharraf's government and the unpopularity, in some quarters, of Pakistan's alliance with Washington.
In Kabul and at the Pentagon, concern is now widespread that newly elected Islamic officials in the borderlands will try to thwart Pakistani military efforts to capture factions of the Taliban and of Al Qaeda hiding in their regions.
"It is already difficult to root out the Taliban elements in those areas," a Pentagon official said. "One can only expect that it will become more difficult now."
Many American and Afghan officials also believe that elements inside Pakistan's intelligence agency continue to support the Taliban and their sympathizers. The agency helped create the Taliban in the 1990's as part of a program to strengthen Pakistan's influence over Afghanistan. That support was curtailed after General Musharraf decided to back the American-led military campaign to oust the Taliban last year.
But American officials are convinced that elements of Pakistani intelligence continue to funnel weapons and money to Taliban units and their allies inside and outside Afghanistan. Those officials say it is unclear whether the Pakistani intelligence support comes from rogue elements of the agency or is sanctioned by high-ranking officials.
"It's difficult with Pakistan," a State Department official said, "because all this stuff happens on the fringes. Is it intelligence officers? Is it rogue operators? Is it retired officers? It's hard to know."
Many American officials also believe that Pakistani intelligence may have been involved in helping provide pivotal assistance to the secret North Korean weapons program, which North Korea admitted operating last month. Washington has been hesitant to criticize Pakistan publicly about that assistance, out of concern that such a tactic may weaken General Musharraf's support for the war on terrorism.
In the October elections, religious parties won a majority of seats in the provincial assembly in the North-West Frontier Province, considered a hotbed of Taliban activity. The parties also won enough seats to lead a coalition government in Baluchistan Province to the south.
Pentagon and State Department officials say that Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan, which borders North-West Frontier Province, has become a gateway for Taliban fighters moving in and out of Pakistan. It is also a base for soldiers loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fiery Islamic fundamentalist who has vowed to overthrow Mr. Karzai.
Pentagon officials say that Mr. Hekmatyar is providing leadership to former Taliban units and that he has formed allegiances with Taliban and Qaeda commanders.
American military intelligence also indicates that two senior Taliban commanders, Mullah Berader and Mullah Dadullah, both operating out of Pakistan, may be trying to wrest control over the remaining Taliban forces from Mullah Muhammad Omar, Pentagon officials said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Climate Talks Shift Focus to How to Deal With Changes
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/science/03CLIM.html
The global climate is changing in big ways, probably because of human actions, and it is time to focus on adapting to the impacts instead of just fighting to limit the warming. That, in a nutshell, was the idea that dominated the latest round of international climate talks, which ended on Friday in New Delhi.
While many scientists have long held this view, it was a striking departure for the policy makers at the talks - the industry lobbyists, environmental activists and government officials. For more than a decade, their single focus had been the fight over whether to cut smokestack and tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Many environmentalists had long avoided discussing adaptation for fear it would smack of defeatism.
Experts espousing the views of industry were thrilled with the shift in New Delhi.
"By building capabilities to deal with climate change, we'll be much better off than by just paying attention to global warming," said Myron Ebell, who directs climate policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a private group that opposes regulatory approaches to environmental problems.
Although they conceded its importance, environmental campaigners said an approach that focused on adapting to climate change rather than preventing it would inevitably fail, because the impact of unfettered emissions would eventually exceed people's ability to adjust.
Moreover, many said, coral reefs, alpine forests and other fragile ecosystems - without the resiliency of human societies - would simply be unable to cope with fast-changing conditions.
The change in attitude, expressed in the negotiations and in a formal declaration adopted Friday, has been partly driven by unusual weather this year - record floods in Europe, landslides in the Himalayas, searing drought in southern Asia and Africa.
No single weather event can be linked to human-caused warming. But as the costs of weather-related disasters rise, unease about climate change rises, too. So far this year, unusual weather is blamed for 9,400 deaths and $56 billion in damage, according to the United Nations and insurers, and deaths and costs have been rising for years.
Another impetus is the rising realization that many significant shifts have already been set in motion by a century-long accumulation of warming gases.
Even if emissions stopped today, some experts say, the volume of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere would slowly raise sea levels for a century or two as warmed water expands and terrestrial ice melts. The result would be coastal erosion and salt water intrusion into water supplies.
The new focus suits the agendas of the Bush administration and many developing countries, which for different reasons want to avoid cutting emissions of the warming gases. But some environmental campaigners say the shift will discourage efforts to cut dependence on fossil fuels like coal and oil, the main source of the offending gases, in favor of building dikes, designing hardier crops or other engineering fixes.
"Adaptation is like the `wear sunglasses and a hat' theory of fighting ozone depletion," said Kert Davies, the research director for Greenpeace, referring to the Reagan-era debate over chemicals that were weakening the earth's atmospheric shield against harmful radiation.
In that case, the offending synthetic chemicals were banned under a 1987 treaty, but only because damage to the ozone layer had become vividly apparent in satellite images - and because industry had come up with alternatives.
But no ready substitutes exist for cheap, plentiful fossil fuels. Many experts say the use of coal and oil is bound to keep rising for decades, particularly as poor countries climb the economic ladder from bicycles and water buckets to cars and washing machines.
Conservative policy analysts said proposed curbs on fuel use were thus unrealistic and unjustified, while making countries more resilient to extremes of weather made sense for many reasons. One goal, Mr. Ebell said, should be to enable low-lying countries like Bangladesh to respond to typhoons the way Florida responds to hurricanes.
There are also ways to foster development in poor countries that limit harm from climate change. Experts say that in semi-arid zones in Africa and Asia, agricultural assistance could improve farmers' ability to endure heat and drought.
In some areas, adaptation is already under way. In the Himalayas, some communities, with the help of the United Nations, are installing alarm systems to warn of flash floods as expanding lakes of glacial meltwater grow to the bursting point in the next decade.
Low-lying island nations, like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, have been watching the slow rise of the seas for decades and have not only been planning to build storm barriers, but possibly to evacuate entirely at some point.
The emphasis on adapting is a profound turnabout from the course set a decade ago after President George Bush and other world leaders signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Though that treaty and subsequent addenda contained vague commitments by industrial nations to help vulnerable countries adapt, the emphasis was always about curbing emissions to prevent dangerous changes in the climate system.
Adaptation got support in New Delhi because it suits both the current Bush administration, which has tried to shift debate away from emissions reductions, and developing countries, which have expressed frustration at the developed world's inertia in limiting its own emissions and its delays in pledged aid.
At the meeting, poorer countries did not quite say it was their turn to pollute but, led by the host country, they did demand the right to grow out of destitution, a path that will require vast use of existing fuel reserves - mainly coal.
Opening the plenary session last Wednesday, India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said per capita use of such fuels by the world's poorest populations was a fraction of that of people in the industrial powers. Mitigating fuel use, he said, "will bring additional strain to the already fragile economies of the developing countries."
The adaptation issue also got support from a new scientific analysis, published Friday, suggesting that the only way to safely stabilize greenhouse gases by midcentury was with a hugely ambitious Apollo-size research program on fusion, solar power, and other nonpolluting energy sources.
The lead authors of that study echoed other experts in saying it was nearly inconceivable that the Bush administration or Congress would finance such a costly crash program.
They also said that modest emission reductions called for under the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty supported by Europe and Japan, would not be enough to spur governments and businesses to seek the necessary technological shift. The protocol, an addendum to the 1992 climate convention, is moving toward taking legal force sometime next year, when Russia is expected to ratify it. But President Bush has rejected it, and without the adherence of the United States, the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases, the Kyoto pact's impact on climate will be negligible, scientists and treaty experts say.
Still, some experts said Kyoto's significance should not be discounted. "Your first trip to the gym doesn't improve your health, but you've got to get into a regular habit," said David D. Doniger, the director of climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group. "Kyoto is that first trip. It provides a structure to build on."
Mr. Doniger and other veterans of the climate wars with varying perspectives said the best - and perhaps only - hope lay in a blend of all of the above: a mix of finding ways to improve energy efficiency now; to protect the most vulnerable countries and ecosystems from accelerating change; and to push the technological frontier to determine if any far-flung solutions can come to the rescue.
Dr. Martin I. Hoffert, the New York University physicist who led the new clean-energy study, said he was confident that technology held an eventual solution. "We started World War II with biplanes, and seven years later had jets," he said.
But he and other climate experts acknowledged that wartime innovations emerged in crisis, not ahead of a slow-moving environmental shift.
-------- ACTIVISTS
'Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers'
by Daniel Ellsberg; Viking. 498 pp.
Reviewed by Michael Kazin
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page BW06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49168-2002Oct31?language=printer
Inside Job
In June 1971, a day after the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, H.R. Haldeman told his boss, President Richard Nixon, what he thought the import of the previously classified 7,000-page history of U.S. policy in Vietnam would be: "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment."
That opinion offered by a future felon to America's most notorious co-conspirator serves as the climax of Daniel Ellsberg's consistently dramatic if at times vainglorious memoir. As every newspaper reader once knew, Ellsberg was the little-known but much-respected insider who risked jail and won fame in a desire to expose the ugly truth about a very bad war. In 1969, together with his colleague Anthony Russo, the Harvard-trained defense expert smuggled the classified Papers out of his office and then made sure that America's leading newspapers and several liberal senators each got their own copies. Ellsberg thus became the exemplar of the establishment rebel -- a man who relished all the gobbledygook, thriving within the cult of Cold War secrecy until he decided, flamboyantly, to betray it.
What's most compelling about Ellsberg's memoir is that it took him so long to change sides, to convert his distaste for the war into a celebrated act of civil disobedience. After his first visit to Vietnam in 1961, the ex-Marine officer writes, he was already convinced that the United States could not defeat the communist-led insurgency.
Three years later, while working at the Pentagon, Ellsberg pored over anxious cables sent by Naval officers from the Tonkin Gulf that contradicted the White House's tale of "an unprovoked attack" by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Congress swallowed the official version and gave Lyndon Johnson the authority to throw half a million troops into a bloody, hopeless conflict.
At the end of 1968, Ellsberg, then on the staff of the Rand Corporation, met with Henry Kissinger in a Manhattan luxury hotel to brief the incoming national security adviser about the "strategic options" the new Republican administration would face in Indochina. Finally, in the fall of 1969, he changed sides. I "felt ready," he writes, "to go to prison just to expose lies about murder" -- and he began spending long nights hunched over a slow but reliable Xerox machine.
One can blame the lengthy hiatus between conviction and action only on the multiple seductions of power. Ellsberg never advised a president, but he routinely gave advice to men who did. By his account, he nearly always counseled against escalation and for gradual withdrawal.
His memoir is punctuated with anecdotes about frequent, candid talks with William Bundy, Walt Rostow, Bobby Kennedy, Bill Moyers and other bright stars from the heyday of 1960s realpolitik. Amazingly, nearly every luminary appears to have deferred to Ellsberg's greater, if sharply critical, understanding of the war: "Over at State, Bill Bundy, who was in charge of Far East, seemed to agree with everything I was saying about our prospects in Vietnam"; "I have learned more from Dan Ellsberg," Kissinger told an audience at Rand, "than from any other person in Vietnam." So why did they usually take a course contrary to the one he advocated? Perhaps Ellsberg, like many a previous courtier, artfully clothed his doubts in the raiment of flattery. Or perhaps his self-regard surpassed the esteem of his superiors.
Ellsberg's flights of egotism go down more easily because they are usually accompanied by perceptive comments about how his fellow insiders could be so wrong. Year after year, the makers of Vietnam policy dismissed all doubters and protesters as foolish naifs who didn't appreciate the tough complexities of the conflict. "They never had the clearances," scoffed Kissinger in 1970.
But such arrogance seemed utterly criminal to Ellsberg after he finished reading through the Papers in 1969. Diplomatic cables and memos dating back to World War II confirmed what the anti-war movement had been saying for years: The aim of American policy since the Truman administration was to prevent an independent Vietnam that communists would control. To this end, the United States first funded the French attempt to regain its colony, then created the nation of South Vietnam to stop the forces of Ho Chi Minh from unifying the country, and had been pulling the strings in Saigon ever since. Not until Ellsberg read the long record of deception on high did he come to believe that "telling truth to presidents" was a worthless endeavor. "The only way to change the president's course was to bring pressure on him from outside, from Congress and the public."
Ellsberg's long journey to mutiny makes for a compelling narrative. In taut, unadorned prose, he details his ongoing attempts to wise up the warmakers while, at the same time, he was beginning to study Ghandian thought and marching in peace demonstrations. As public opposition to the war grew in the late '60s, he grew ashamed of his own complicity. At one pacifist conference, he cried alone for an hour in the men's room after hearing an activist speak eloquently about the need to fill the prisons with draft resisters. He decided to exit the establishment with a bang, using its own words as ammunition.
For all its narrative power, Secrets has no great revelations to divulge. Many histories of the war and anti-war cover the essential details of Ellsberg's story. The author devotes just a few paragraphs to his personal life; he discusses his children only when defending their part in helping him copy the Papers and makes vague references to what was, at times, an "obsessive" sexual appetite. The result is that he fails to challenge the bruisingly negative portrait that Tom Wells, a historian of Vietnam-era protest, drew of him in a recent biography, Wild Man. Wells suggested that Ellsberg's egotism, dishonesty and philandering overshadowed whatever he did to stop the war.
Such a judgment is surely unfair. Should Lyndon Johnson's bullying, promiscuous ways devalue what he did to end segregation? Publication of the Pentagon Papers certainly infuriated Nixon and his White House gang, even though the clandestine history was completed before they took office. If classified documents from the recent past could be featured on every newsstand in the country, were any of Nixon's own secrets secure? Ellsberg, according to his erstwhile admirer Henry Kissinger, had become "the most dangerous man in America. He must be stopped at all costs."
That resolve sparked an undercover raid on the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist by the notorious Plumbers, under the command of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. The attempt to smear the patient's character, which turned up no usable dirt, was an essential warm-up for the Watergate break-in. The ensuing scandal stopped Nixon from continuing to fund the crumbling ally regime in Saigon or to send B-52s back to bomb North Vietnam. Thus indirectly, Ellsberg's act helped cut short the carnage that cost the lives of 60,000 Americans and close to 3 million Vietnamese.
Ellsberg's life has featured no second act of much significance. In 1973, a federal judge dismissed the indictment against him and Russo for conspiracy and espionage; "improper government conduct" had fatally tainted its case. Since then, Ellsberg has kept busy as an itinerant speaker and anti-war activist, sharing his tale with anyone who will listen. But his first act was quite meaningful enough, and it concluded with a distinct service to the cause of open and democratic government. His well-told memoir sticks in the mind and will be a powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought. •
Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. His most recent book (with Maurice Isserman) is "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s."
----
Plan to Crack Down on Dissent Stirs Debate in Hong Kong
November 3, 2002
New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/international/asia/03HONG.html
HONG KONG, Nov. 2 - A fierce debate has erupted here over a government proposal to lengthen jail terms and increase fines for people who make "seditious" statements, even over the Internet, and to allow some police searches and seizures without a warrant.
The increasingly heated discussion has caught the attention of world leaders, including President Bush. After meeting with President Jiang Zemin of China a week ago, Mr. Bush said he had offered his views on the importance of China's "preserving the rights of Hong Kong citizens."
China's deputy prime minister, Qian Qichen, fanned the dispute when he said in a recent television interview that opponents of the new rules must have something to hide. The opponents must have "devils in their hearts," he warned, a phrase that has angered and dismayed democracy advocates here.
Regina Ip, Hong Kong's powerful secretary for security and a top aide to Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive, increased the controversy when she spoke to students at a local university last Monday. Mrs. Ip questioned the value of democracy in protecting civil liberties and contended that democracy in Germany in the 1930's led to the rise of Hitler and to the Holocaust.
She said at a public debate on Wednesday that the remark was a personal opinion, not a government position, but went on to cast doubt again on the usefulness of democratic processes. "I don't think democracy is the panacea for all problems," she said. "If you look at the countries around the world, particularly in Asia, there are many democratically elected governments which fail even to protect human life, let alone human rights."
Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, when it was returned to China. The territory enjoys some autonomy under its Basic Law, which provides for a separate legal system and considerable autonomy in running its own affairs.
Tightened up by Beijing after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Article 23 of the Basic Law calls for the Hong Kong government to put in place laws against sedition and treason.
The government put out a "consultation paper" last month that outlines in some detail the legislation it plans to introduce in February, with the goal of winning final passage by the legislature next summer.
Pro-Beijing parties dominate the legislature, where only 40 percent of the members are directly elected. (The others are chosen by special interest groups or a committee.) The legislature virtually always passes government proposals, though sometimes with small changes.
Hong Kong's government contends that its current proposal conforms to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as the United States has urged.
Hong Kong currently has a sedition law dating from colonial times that prohibits people from bringing the government "into hatred or contempt," but it has not been enforced for years. Bob Allcock, the solicitor general of Hong Kong, said the consultation paper called for narrowing the definition somewhat, to "incitement to violence or public disorder which seriously endangers the stability" of China or Hong Kong.
But the consultation paper does call for harsher penalties against people who engage in sedition, as newly defined. Instead of two years in prison and a fine of up to 5,000 Hong Kong dollars ($641), violators will face up to seven years in prison and fines up to 500,000 Hong Kong dollars ($64,100).
Critics contend that expressing support or even sympathy for Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, could be interpreted as an incitement to violence. Government officials dismiss these fears as exaggerated.
Seditious publications are already subject to confiscation, though the longstanding rule has not been used recently. But the consultation paper calls for the same longer jail terms and higher fines as for sedition for the responsible individuals and covers information published on the Internet. The police would be allowed to search and seize evidence without a warrant in cases they deemed to involve national security.
All of these provisions have alarmed news organizations here.
In a speech on Thursday to four local chambers of commerce, Mrs. Ip did promise that the actual legislation, unlike the consultation paper, will have two limits on the police's ability to conduct searches and seizures in national security cases without seeking a court's approval. The government has decided, she said, that the police should still be required to obtain warrants before they may conduct searches or seizures of financial information or of "journalistic materials."
The consultation paper also says that foreigners living in Hong Kong would be subject to prosecution on sedition charges and that activities may be seditious even if they occur partly in other countries, as long as the hub of the activity is here.
Audrey Eu, a politically independent member of the legislature, said at the debate on Wednesday with Mr. Allcock and Mrs. Ip that the antisedition laws amounted to importing mainland Chinese laws, a contention Mrs. Ip denied. The debate was held at the Foreign Correspondents Club here.
Speaking in Cantonese, Mrs. Ip had said on Monday: "Hitler was returned by universal suffrage and he killed seven million Jews. Did he respect human rights?"
The statement has drawn growing criticism for being both callous and historically incomplete. Hitler lost Germany's presidential election in 1932. While his Nazi Party subsequently became the largest in Parliament, it did not command the support of the majority of Germans. Partly by fomenting political violence, Hitler ended up becoming the chancellor of a coalition cabinet on Jan. 30, 1933, and was subsequently voted dictatorial powers by Germany's Reichstag.
"For some reason people love to imagine Hitler was voted into power, but it was far more complicated than that," said Mitchell B. Hart, the Padnos visiting professor of Jewish history at the University of Michigan. He added that most experts put the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust at five million to six million, not seven million.
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