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NUCLEAR
Safety Allegations Surrounding Nuclear Transport Containers
Weapons of Mass Deception
Abrams tank showed 'vulnerability' in Iraq
EU Leaders to Warn North Korea, Iran on WMD
Iran Welcomes IAEA Statement, Says U.S. Failed
Iran Reiterates No Sampling at Alleged Nuke Plant
Bolton: Military Action on Iran an Option
U.N. agency raps Iran nuke program
Iran Urged To Explain Nuclear Plan
U.N Atom Agency Seeks Wider Scrutiny on Iran, but Is Rebuffed
Iran Blocks U.N. Nuke Watchdog's Moves
Blix 'amazed' by US WMD claims
Looted Iraqi Uranium Found, Report Says
Envoys: Progress Made on Iraqi Uranium
Why No Objection to Israel's WMD?
North Korea has nuclear ballistic missiles: report
Failed missile-defense test probed
Update: Senate inquiry into intelligence on Iraqi WMD
Rumsfeld seeks to punish France for its stance
MILITARY
War's toxic legacy in Baltic Sea
People might want Taliban to return
Congo Combatants Agree to Cease-Fire
The Albanians and the State
Galloway wins apology from US newspaper
Weapons claims fitted US plans, says Wilkie
Thefts Plague U.S. Contractors' Efforts in Iraq
Discarded War Munitions Leach Poisons Into the Baltic
China's missile tests
EU weighs more activist foreign policy
Paris Raid Reveals Washington's Fractured Iran Policy
Soldiers 'will create cycle of revenge'
Rising U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Spurs Concern
Hussein Is Probably Alive in Iraq, U.S. Experts Say
Netanyahu says Iraq-Israel oil line not pipe-dream
Powell Urges Israelis and Arabs to Act Quickly for Peace
US options for policing the peace in Israel
Israel Dismantles a Settlement and Ignites a Family Feud
A War Within a War
Okinawa's Strategic Value to Grow--Top U.S. Marine
U.S. may consider force against Syria
Grozny rocked by bomb blast
Landmine Under Bus Kills Three Near Chechnya - Media
Space is 'ultimate high ground'
Panel Faults CIA's Use of Case Officers in Crisis Support
Britain seeks radical Security Council shake-up
Charges Are Dropped In 'Friendly Fire' Case
New U.S. Strategy Will Use Navy for In-and-Out, Quick-Strike Warfare
From Baghdad to Terre Haute:
U.S. troops face depression, boredom, general malaise
Roche nomination
Where Are WMDs? Where's Congress?
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments
The Pentagon's Laughable Weapons Test
Rewriting Yesterday
Belgium goes ahead with war crimes lawsuits
Prosecutors Say Document Links Milosevic to Genocide
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Ashcroft Calls on News Media to Help Explain Antiterrorism Laws
FBI Making Progress in War on Terrorism
Pentagon Issues Specific Terror Alert for Kenya
US fears terrorists may have jet
U.S. Cites Al Qaeda in Plan to Destroy Brooklyn Bridge
ENERGY AND OTHER
Shell opens hydrogen station for Tokyo motorists
Hydrogen Fuel May Make Earth Cooler, Cloudier
Dam project on Philippine island spurs ire
$100 Million Donation Helps to Establish a Genome Institute
Activist Group Warns of Unsafe Mercury in Tuna
ACTIVISTS
Bush to NGOs: Watch Your Mouths
Kucinich speaks to MoveOn members
WorldCom Opponents In Sync
Britain Says Democracy Advocate Is Held in Burmese Jail
Iran Cleric Calls for Death Penalty
Three more protesters set themselves alight
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Safety Allegations Surrounding Nuclear Transport Containers Suggest Failure of NRC Quality Assurance Program
Groups Call for Investigation of Issues Raised by Former Exelon Employee
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003
From: Joseph Malherek - jmalherek@CITIZEN.ORG
Public Citizen
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two public interest groups today called for an investigation into allegations that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) failed to identify and appropriately respond to quality assurance violations by a lead manufacturer of nuclear waste transportation casks.
In a letter to the NRC's Office of Inspector General, Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) requested an independent evaluation of the NRC's quality assurance program in light of safety allegations brought by former Exelon employee, Oscar Shirani.
In July 2000, as an employee of Exelon, Shirani led a quality assurance audit of Holtec, a lead manufacturer of casks used to transport and store irradiated nuclear fuel, and its supplier, U.S. Tool & Die. Shirani uncovered nine quality assurance violations indicating that casks made by Holtec may not match the licensed design specifications. As a result, Holtec casks have indeterminate engineered safety margins, according to Shirani.
This means that casks loaded with nuclear fuel may not perform as expected under stress and strain, and under certain circumstances may not adequately contain radiation from high-level nuclear waste. Shirani questioned why NRC quality assurance auditors failed to identify these issues.
Holtec casks are currently used to store irradiated nuclear fuel at five sites in Illinois, Oregon, New York, Georgia and Washington.
Shirani, whose employment was subsequently terminated by Exelon, also alleges that the NRC failed to adequately address the safety issues he identified and that some of these issues remain unresolved. Shirani's list of pending Holtec violations include welding violations, brittle materials, damaged neutron shielding and falsified quality assurance documents.
"The circumstances surrounding this audit, its findings and Mr. Shirani's subsequent dismissal from Exelon point to a concerning breakdown in NRC's quality assurance program and the agency's oversight of industry quality assurance programs," the groups wrote in a letter to the NRC's Office of Inspector General.
These issues with respect to Holtec and its suppliers are particularly timely in light of the pending proposal by a consortium of nuclear utilities (Private Fuel Storage, L.L.C.) to transport unprecedented quantities of irradiated fuel to a proposed storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah using Holtec train casks. Private Fuel Storage would also use Holtec casks for storage at the Skull Valley site.
Separately, the NRC is proposing limited physical testing of a single Holtec cask as part of a program to test existing computer models used to evaluate transport cask license applications. The alleged holes in NRC quality assurance audits raise questions about the safety of the Private Fuel scheme and the validity of the NRC's proposed cask tests.
The groups pointed to systemic concerns about the effectiveness of NRC quality assurance and oversight. Last year, NRC inspections failed to uncover severe corrosion at the Ohio Davis-Besse reactor, where an acid deposit ate a hole almost all the way through the stainless steel reactor vessel head.
"We believe that an investigation of this case is important to effective nuclear regulation and public safety," they wrote.
Oscar Shirani is available to discuss his safety allegations. Please contact Public Citizen to schedule an interview.
-------- depleted uranium
Weapons of Mass Deception
What the Pentagon doesn't want us to know about depleted uranium.
By Frida Berrigan
6.20.03
http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=253_0_1_0_C
An Iraqi woman and a child sit in the leukemia ward of the Al Mansoor Hospital in Baghdad, where children with various forms of cancer, attributed to the 1991 use of depleted uranium munitions by the allies, are being treated.
In the weeks leading up to the war on Iraq, TV screens across America were crowded with images of U.S. soldiers readying for upcoming battles with a crazed dictator who would stop at nothing. One clip after another showed U.S. soldiers racing to don $211 suits designed to protect them from the chemical and biological attacks they would surely suffer on the road to ousting Saddam Hussein.
But these grim forecasts were wrong. Despite the advance hype, Hussein's dreaded arsenal was not the biggest threat to Americans on the battlefield in Iraq. In fact, it was no threat at all.
The real threat-not only to U.S. troops but to Iraqis as well-may prove to be a weapon scarcely mentioned before, during or after the war: depleted uranium.
A toxic and radioactive substance, depleted uranium (DU)-otherwise known as Uranium 238-was widely used by U.S. troops as their Abrams battle tanks and A-10 Warthogs thundered through Iraq this spring.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of enriched uranium, the fissile material in nuclear weapons. It is pyrophoric, burning spontaneously on impact. That, along with its extreme density, makes depleted uranium munitions the Pentagon's ideal choice for penetrating an enemy's tank armor or reinforced bunkers.
When a DU shell hits its target, it burns, losing anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of its mass and dispersing a fine dust that can be carried long distances by winds or absorbed directly into the soil and groundwater.
Depleted uranium's radioactive and toxic residue has been linked to birth defects, cancers, the Gulf War Syndrome, and environmental damage.
But the Pentagon insists depleted uranium is both safe and necessary, saying it is a "superior armor [and] a superior munition that we will continue to use." Pentagon officials say that the health and environmental risks of DU use are outweighed by its military advantages. But to retain the right to use and manufacture DU weaponry and armor, the Pentagon has to actively ignore and deny the risks that depleted uranium poses to human health and environment.
To keep depleted uranium at the top of its weapons list, the Pentagon has distorted research that demonstrates how DU dust can work its way into the human body, potentially posing a grave health risk. According to a 1998 report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the inhalation of DU particles can lead to symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, lymphatic problems, bronchial complaints, weight loss, and an unsteady gait-symptoms that match those of sick veterans of the Gulf and Balkan wars. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a Canadian epidemiologist, released a study in 1999 revealing that depleted uranium can stay in the lungs for up to two years. "When the dust is breathed in, it passes through the walls of the lung and into the blood, circulating through the whole body," she wrote. Bertell concluded that exposure to depleted uranium, especially when inhaled, "represents a serious risk of damaged immune systems and fatal cancers."
The Pentagon has to cloak this dangerous weapon in deceptive and innocuous language. The adjective "depleted," with its connotation that the substance is non-threatening or diminished in strength, is misleading. While depleted uranium is not as radioactive and dangerous as U235-a person would not get sick merely from brief DU exposure-depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (as long as the solar system has existed) and may pose serious health risks and environmental contamination.
Don't Believe the Hype: Propaganda Wars
As the U.S. military prepared to launch a new offensive against Iraq early this year, the Pentagon and White House embarked on a parallel effort to promote depleted uranium as a highly effective weapon that would protect the lives of innocent Iraqis. At the same time, the Iraqi government sought to exploit the use of depleted uranium and the serious public health concerns about its use in its propaganda war against the United States.
At a March 14 Pentagon briefing, Col. James Naughton of the U.S. Army announced that U.S. forces had decided to employ DU munitions in the looming war on Iraq. When asked about depleted uranium's possible effects on civilians, Naughton characterized opposition to the use of DU weapons as a product of propaganda and cowardice. "Why do [the Iraqis] want [depleted uranium] to go away?" he asked. "They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them [in the first Gulf War]."
The White House echoed Naughton's sentiment, rejecting reports linking depleted uranium to birth defects and cancers in Iraq. Early this year the White House released a report titled Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003, which includes a section on "The Depleted Uranium Scare." In it, the White House accuses the Iraqi government of launching a "disinformation campaign" that uses "horrifying pictures of children with birth defects" as a tool to "take advantage of an established international network of antinuclear activists." Iraq's aim, the report charged, was to promote the "false claim that the depleted uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth defects in Iraq."
But few anti-DU activists say that depleted uranium is the sole cause of cancer and birth defects. Rather, they contend there is an obvious link between depleted uranium and other toxins released into the environment during the 1991 Gulf War, that independent study is now required, and, in the meantime, that the United States should declare a moratorium on any future use of depleted uranium.
Depleted Uranium Use Increasing
Over the past 15 years, the Pentagon has become increasingly dependent on DU weapons and armor. The 1991 Gulf War was the first major conflict in which DU weaponry and armor was used. Almost 320 tons-an amount equal to the weight of five Abrams battle tanks-were fired in the Iraqi desert. About 10 tons of DU munitions were used in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia in the '90s. DU weaponry was reportedly used in Afghanistan in 2001 as well, but reliable estimates are not yet available.
Depleted uranium was used extensively in this year's war on Iraq, but if Pentagon officials have an accurate accounting of total DU use, they are keeping that number to themselves. In a May 15 article in the Christian Science Monitor, reporter Scott Peterson wrote that after the war, the Pentagon, when pressed by reporters, announced that about 75 tons of DU munitions were fired from A-10 Warthogs. However, the Pentagon has stalled on releasing additional relevant data on how much depleted uranium was fired from Abrams battle tanks-the other system that uses only DU munitions. More importantly, it has not addressed concerns that DU weaponry was used much more extensively in Iraq's urban and densely populated areas in the 2003 war than in 1991.
The use of DU weapons in urban areas and against civilian targets in Iraq gives the lie to the Pentagon's insistence that it needed the DU advantage in order to win the recent war quickly. To illustrate the power of this wonder weapon, a March Pentagon press conference prominently featured pictures from the first Gulf War of an Abrams tank firing a DU munition through a sand dune to destroy an Iraqi tank hidden behind. While this makes good TV, did depleted uranium really provide a critical advantage to the U.S. military in Iraq? The answer is no. The U.S. military did not need a wonder weapon in Iraq because the crippled country was not a wonder opponent. Its arsenal was antiquated and had been poorly maintained since the first Gulf War. Suffering under more than 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions, moreover, Iraq had not been able to develop or purchase comparable high-tech armored weaponry.
In his May 15 article, Peterson describes video footage from the last days of the recent war showing an A-10 Warthog strafing the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in downtown Baghdad. This was not an armored target; it was a building in a heavily populated neighborhood. Peterson visited the area and found "dozens of spent radioactive DU rounds, and distinctive aluminum casings with two white bands, that drilled into the tile and concrete rear of the building."
The indiscriminate use of DU munitions in densely populated areas throughout Iraq, which put large numbers of civilians in jeopardy of radioactive and toxic exposure, violates the Geneva Convention's protocol prohibiting the use of weapons that do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians during wartime.
So why did the Pentagon insist on using DU weapons in Iraq? Tungsten alloys would have worked as well. Depleted uranium, it turns out, has one tremendous advantage over tungsten. It is provided to weapons manufacturers nearly free of charge by the U.S. government-an ingenious method of radioactive waste disposal. Essentially, depleted uranium is the waste left over from decades of nuclear weapons development. In fact, the United States has stockpiles of depleted uranium scattered at sites throughout the country-728,000 metric tons to be exact-a tiny fraction of which is used in the manufacture of depleted uranium warheads.
Lies and Silence
In an April 14 video address, President Bush spoke directly to military personnel and their families, thanking them for their role in the Iraq war. The monuments to Hussein had been toppled in Baghdad, and the first troops were beginning to return home triumphant. The message, broadcast on armed services networks around the country and beamed to troops on the Iraq battlefield, included Bush's promise that veterans of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" would receive "the full support of our government. We will keep our commitment to improving the quality of life for our military families."
The same day, the Defense Department and the Centers for Disease Control released the results of their four-year study on birth defects in the children of Gulf War Veterans. Although the study did not mention depleted uranium specifically, it found "significantly higher prevalences" of heart and kidney birth defects in veterans' children. Unfortunately, the study's disturbing findings were not reported by any U.S. media outlets until June.
The Pentagon and White House propaganda on depleted uranium was never challenged by the mainstream media this past spring. If members of the national press corps had done their homework, they would have found ample evidence that the Pentagon is fully aware of the dangers posed by DU weaponry and is actively ignoring its own research and warnings.
A 1974 military report evaluated the medical and environmental effects of depleted uranium, noting that "in combat situations involving the widespread use of DU munitions, the potential for inhalation, ingestion, or implantation of DU compounds may be locally significant." This contradicts recent Pentagon claims that depleted uranium does not pose a threat and demonstrates the military's understanding of how depleted uranium is absorbed into the human body, posing risks to organs.
In a 1998 training manual, the U.S. Army acknowledged the hazards of depleted uranium, requiring that anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection. The manual cautioned: "Contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."
And in November 1999, NATO sent its commanders the following warning: "Inhalation of insoluble depleted uranium dust particles has been associated with long-term health effects, including cancers and birth defects."
They Hid It Well
The fact that these reports are in the public record is the result of years of hard work, study, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by anti-DU activists. The Pentagon and Bush administration have also been hard at work. In the past two years, they have clamped down on sources of information that had been immensely valuable to service personnel and their families over the past decade.
Dan Fahey served in the United States Navy just months after the fighting ended in the Gulf War. Seeing the havoc the war wreaked on his fellow veterans, he set out to become an independent expert on depleted uranium. He sits on the board of Veterans for Common Sense and has played a major role in obtaining U.S. government documents about depleted uranium through FOIA.
Fahey says that, under President Bush, the Department of Defense is controlling the release of information about depleted uranium so tightly that if he were starting his research and disclosure efforts today, he would be unable to get any information through the Freedom of Information Act. "There is less information and more secrecy," he says. "There are tighter restrictions on access to information."
Fahey was responsible for publicizing the findings of a July 1990 report by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a defense contractor commissioned by the Pentagon to study depleted uranium.
The report revealed that the Pentagon knew that depleted uranium was harmful before 1991, when they sent 697,000 American troops to the Gulf, where they could be exposed to DU dust and residue. SAIC asserted that depleted uranium is "a low-level alpha radiation emitter" that could be "linked to cancer when exposures are internal." The report further warned, "DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant, with potential radiological and toxicological effects." In addition the report found that "short-term effects of high doses [of depleted uranium] can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer."
SAIC says in its report that widespread knowledge of depleted uranium's harmful properties could lead to public outrage about the "acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic energy penetrators for military applications." That's what worries the Pentagon.
All the while, as the Pentagon hides behind claims that more study is needed to prove depleted uranium's connection with the ailments suffered by Gulf War veterans and Iraqi civilians, their own research demonstrates that, at best, depleted uranium is radioactive and toxic-and that at worst, it can lead to incurable diseases and death.
Veterans Suffer
The Pentagon says more study is needed. But veterans of the Gulf War, meanwhile, need medical care, information, and benefits, and for the Pentagon to come clean about depleted uranium. The veterans had been exposed to a "toxic soup" of smoke from oil and chemical fires, pesticides, vaccinations, depleted uranium and, most likely, plutonium.
Two types of depleted uranium exist. One is "clean" depleted uranium, a byproduct of the processing of uranium ore into uranium-235 (which is used in nuclear fuel and weapons). The other type is created at government facilities as a byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel (done to extract plutonium for nuclear warheads) and is known as "dirty" depleted uranium because it contains highly toxic plutonium.
In November 2000, U.N. researchers examined 11 sites in Kosovo hit by DU shells and found radioactive contamination at eight of them. Furthermore, those tests uncovered evidence that at least some of the DU munitions in the U.S. arsenal used in Kosovo contained "dirty" depleted uranium. This raises the question: How much of its plutonium-processing waste did the U.S. government supply to weapons manufacturers?
If some of the DU shells in the U.S. arsenal have been made from dirty depleted uranium, that could help explain why about 300 of 5,000 refugees from a Sarajevo suburb heavily bombed by NATO jets in 1995 had died of cancer by early 2001. And it could also help explain the fact that 28 percent of veterans who served in the first Gulf War have over the past 12 years sought treatment for illness and disease resulting from their military service and filed claims with the Veterans Administration for medical and compensation benefits. In all, 186,000 veterans of that war have sought treatment for a collection of maladies including chronic fatigue, joint and muscle pain, memory loss, reproductive problems, depression, and gastrointestinal disorders. Together these ailments are known as the Gulf War Syndrome.
Based on the struggles of Gulf War veterans, Congress passed a law in 1997 requiring the Pentagon to conduct pre- and postdeployment medical screenings of troops and military personnel so that medical professionals would have an accurate base of information if health problems developed. In the early months of this year, as U.S. troops were being deployed to Iraq, lawmakers found that the Pentagon was not complying with the 1997 law: The troops were not being screened at all.
According to Steven Robinson, a former Army Ranger who now directs the National Gulf War Resource Center, it took two congressional hearings, 30 news interviews, 60 radio interviews, and a timely New York Times ad courtesy of www.TomPaine.com to pressure the Pentagon to follow the law. On April 29, the Pentagon announced it would begin conducting postdeployment examinations. Anti-DU activists say the military's grudging compliance is too little, too late.
Activists are struggling for treatment of veterans, for information about depleted uranium and other toxins that could be responsible for the Gulf War Syndrome, and for some sort of government acknowledgement or apology. But they are also battling against a legacy of lies, secrecy, and official promotion of an ends-justifies-the-means posture. Veterans with Gulf War Syndrome can be seen as the latest in a long line of Pentagon guinea pigs that includes the troops ordered to witness the atomic blasts in the early days of the Cold War, soldiers exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and the black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were subjected to federal government-sponsored syphilis experiments.
Keeps on Killing
If the Pentagon and the Federal government can treat American troops and their families with such casual disregard and use doublespeak with such abandon, what hope is there for Iraqi civilians and troops?
The people of Iraq have known nothing but decades of war, deprivation, and oppression. It is understandable that many cheered when the statues of dictator Saddam Hussein toppled. At the same time, how could they greet the United States, their liberators, with anything other than the deepest skepticism?
In his just-released book The New Rulers of the World, Australian journalist John Pilger recounts conversations with Iraqi doctors like Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist in Basra. Before the Gulf War, Dr. Al-Ali told Pilger, "We had only three or four deaths in a month from cancer. Now it's 30 to 35 patients dying every month, and that's just in my department. That is a 12-fold increase in cancer mortality. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 percent of the population in this area will get cancer. That's almost half the population."
Not only are Dr. Al-Ali's patients suffering, but his own family members are ill as well. "Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease," he told Pilger. "We strongly suspect depleted uranium."
The public has had to rely on anecdotal evidence like Dr. Al-Ali's testimony to get a sense of the health crisis in Iraq. Throughout the '90s, Hussein's government released data on cancer and birth defects, but it is unlikely that those figures provide an accurate picture.
Kathy Kelly, director of the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness and three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, has visited Iraq repeatedly since the first Gulf War and has built strong relationships with doctors and nurses there. She recounted a day she spent in a pediatric hospital in November 1998. "Four babies were born that day with deformities. I was shocked, but the doctors said, 'This is not unusual.'"
"So, I asked them," she continues, "'Did you know where the mothers were when they conceived? Were their fathers involved in the war? Were they in an area exposed to depleted uranium?'"
"One of the doctors replied, 'All of these questions are very important, and we need to be collecting this data, but we cannot. Let me show you something.' And she showed me a prescription for a baby that was written on the back of a candy wrapper. Because of the effects of the economic sanctions, they did not even have paper to write prescriptions on."
There is an overwhelming need for medical research in Iraq, but it is impossible to initiate within the context of the pressing health needs and the lack of medical supplies and equipment that constitute the fallout of war. This situation allows the U.S. military to continue insisting that there is no proof that DU exposures lead to cancers. "No proof of harm is not proof of no harm," Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist at Boston University, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The potential for a DU-cancer link (especially lung cancer in those who breathe depleted uranium through dust and smoke particles) is still an open question."
Rep. Jim McDermott, a doctor from Washington state, traveled to Iraq in the fall of 2002. He visited hospitals, speaking with his peers, and saw the hospital beds crowded with the dying. He returned to the United States adamantly opposed to a new war in Iraq and deeply committed to challenging the continued use of depleted uranium. McDermott drafted legislation requiring studies of the health and environmental impact of depleted uranium. His bill, introduced just as the war started this past spring, is co-sponsored by a number of other Democrats but needs wider support.
Clearly, this legislation, if passed, would be an important first step in understanding the long-term effects of depleted uranium.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has called for an outright ban on shells made from depleted uranium. That would indeed be another sensible place to start.
In addition, anti-DU activists Dan Fahey, Steve Robinson, and Kathy Kelly should be encouraged and financially supported in their ongoing efforts to compile data and release their findings to the public. Next, manufacturers of DU weapons-like the Minnesota-based Alliant Techsystems, which built 15 million DU shells for the A-10 Warthog-should be held accountable for the long-term effects of their "products."
Finally, we might take up Yugoslavian President Vojislav Kostunica's suggestion: "We should be discussing the depleted conscience of those who used the notorious depleted uranium."
Only then will the cycle of deception and silence about depleted uranium be broken.
Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute.
----
Abrams tank showed 'vulnerability' in Iraq
Tim Ripley JDW Correspondent,
20 June 2003
Jane's Defence Weekly
http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/news/jdw/jdw030620_1_n.shtml
The US Army's M1 Abrams main battle tank (MBT) top side, and rear armour "remains susceptible to penetration" and needs improving, according to the Tank and Automotive Command's (TACOM) Abrams programme manager office (PM Abrams).
In a report into the US Army's principal MBT's performance during Operation 'Iraqi Freedom', however, PM Abrams said the tank's frontal turret and hull armour continues to provide excellent crew protection.
"The tank performed extremely well providing excellent manoeuvre, firepower and overall crew protection", concluded the report, which has been seen by JDW. "Engines typically outlived expectancies and transmissions proved to be durable."
PM Abrams personnel deployed forward with US Army divisions during the war and collected first-hand feedback from tank crews to compile the report. There were "no catastrophic losses due to Iraqi direct or indirect fire weapons," but several tanks were destroyed due to secondary effects attributed to Iraqi weapon systems. US Army sources told JDW that the report was only "preliminary observations" rather than a definitive study and more work was continuing to further refine the exact causes of US tank losses in Iraq. Other US Army sources report that 14 Abrams tanks were damaged and two destroyed during the war.
Most M1 losses were attributed in the report to mechanical breakdown, or vehicles being stripped for parts or vandalised by Iraqis. There were "no reported cases" of an anti-tank guided missile being fired at any US Army vehicle.
Details of the M1 losses were given, including one where 25mm armour-piercing depleted uranium (AP-DU) rounds from an unidentified weapon disabled a US tank near Najaf after penetrating the engine compartment. Another Abrams was disabled near Karbala after a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) penetrated the rear engine compartment and one was lost in Baghdad after its external auxiliary power unit was set on fire by medium-calibre fire.
Left and right side non-ballistic skirts were repeatedly penetrated by anti-armour RPG fire, according to the report, but only cosmetic damage was caused when they were struck by anti-personnel RPG rounds. There were no reported hits on ballistic skirts and no reported instance of US tanks hitting an anti-tank mine. Turret ammunition blast doors worked as designed. In one documented instance where a turret-ready ammunition rack compartment was hit and main gun rounds ignited, the blast doors contained the explosion and crew survived unharmed except for fume inhalation.
-------- europe
EU Leaders to Warn North Korea, Iran on WMD
June 20, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-eu-summit-wmd.html
PORTO CARRAS, Greece (Reuters) - European Union leaders, endorsing a new priority to fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction, were set to warn North Korea and Iran on Friday over their suspect nuclear programs.
A draft final statement to be issued on the second day of an EU summit in the Greek beach resort of Porto Carras, near Thessaloniki, urged North Korea ``to visibly, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear programs and return to full compliance with international non-proliferation obligations.''
It also voiced serious concern at Iran's declared intention to complete the nuclear fuel cycle and urged Tehran to ``restore much-needed confidence'' by accepting no-notice intrusive checks of its nuclear facilities. Future trade ties with the EU would depend on progress in that area, human rights and cooperation in Middle East peace efforts, said the draft obtained by Reuters.
-------- iran
Iran Welcomes IAEA Statement, Says U.S. Failed
Fri June 20, 2003
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2960595
TEHRAN - Iran welcomed on Friday an International Atomic Energy Agency statement on its nuclear activities and said the United States failed in its efforts to secure a tough resolution against the Islamic republic.
"Generally the report was good and shows that Iran's activities and Iran's reports were effective," said Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
He said U.S. efforts to step up pressure on Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is aimed at producing electricity, had been thwarted by it's friends on the IAEA board and Iran's cooperation with U.N. inspectors.
"America has carried out extensive propaganda for this meeting and we should acknowledge that our friends' efforts and the presentation of enough proofs and documents caused their failure," he told state television.
The IAEA's board of governors on Thursday criticized Iran's failure to comply with agreements designed to prevent the use of civilian nuclear resources to make atomic weapons.
But the IAEA statement fell short of the damning resolution the United States had hoped for.
Washington however quickly backed it and issued a fresh demand to Iran to comply with the watchdog.
"This report shows that Iran's activities were transparent. Iran has cooperated and they (the IAEA) are expecting more cooperation," Aghazadeh said.
"In previous months we have intensively cooperated with the agency to remove ambiguities and of course this cooperation will continue. If the agency is concerned about some issues we will remove that concern," he said.
The IAEA board also urged Iran not to introduce uranium to its enrichment facility at Natanz, which has centrifuges that experts believe could produce weapons-grade material.
But Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Salehi, told reporters that Iran intended to press ahead with plans to eventually introduce nuclear material to the enrichment facility, which is legal as long as the IAEA has been informed.
The IAEA and many Western governments have told Iran the best way to dispel doubts about its nuclear ambitions would be to sign the IAEA's Additional Protocol which would allow more intrusive short-notice inspections.
Iran has said it could sign the Additional Protocol if the IAEA grants it access to peaceful technology which it says it is entitled to as a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"Our attitude toward this additional protocol is not negative, it is positive. We have implemented all our commitments but the agency has not fulfilled its commitments," Aghazadeh said.
----
Iran Reiterates No Sampling at Alleged Nuke Plant
Fri June 20, 2003
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2964730
TEHRAN - Iran said on Saturday it would not allow U.N. inspectors to take environmental samples at one of its alleged nuclear plants, despite concerted international pressure for it to dispel doubts over its atomic ambitions.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy organization, reiterated the veto, saying that allowing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to take samples at the Kelaye Electric Company in Tehran would expose Iran to a rash of similar requests.
"We've had no problem concerning environmental samples, but we've been telling the IAEA that this location is a non-nuclear location," Aghazadeh told state television.
"If we accept to operate outside the framework of the protocol (on inspections), it will have no ending...and tomorrow 10 other locations may be named," he said.
On Thursday, the IAEA reprimanded Iran for what it said was repeated failures to report on nuclear material, facilities and activities as required under its safeguards agreement with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.
Iran insists its nuclear program, which contains a sophisticated network of facilities, is exclusively aimed at generating electricity.
But Washington in particular has raised grave doubts about the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials argue Iran could soon have the technology in place which would allow it to produce weapons-grade material for nuclear arms.
John Bolton, U.S. under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, said on Friday the United States reserved the right to use military force to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
"It has to be an option," Bolton told BBC radio.
He added, however, that the military option was still far from the minds of U.S. policymakers.
The failure to allow environmental samples to be taken at Kelaye was one of a number of points contained in an IAEA report discussed in Vienna this week.
According to the IAEA, Iran has acknowledged that Kelaye had been used for the production of uranium centrifuge components. But Iran told the IAEA that no nuclear material had been tested there.
IAEA inspectors were refused access to take samples at Kelaye during a visit to Iran earlier this month.
----
Bolton: Military Action on Iran an Option
Fri June 20, 2003
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2961319
LONDON - The United States reserves the right to take military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, a leading member of President Bush's administration said on Friday.
"It has to be an option," John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told BBC radio when pressed on the issue.
But he stressed that it was one among an array of possibilities and relatively low down the agenda.
"The president has repeatedly said that all options are on the table, but that is not only not our preference it is far, far from our minds," Bolton said.
The United States has steadily ratcheted up the pressure on Iran, which with Russian help is building a nuclear power station, to abide by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and sign a new protocol that would allow snap inspections.
Washington, which suspects that Tehran is trying to develop a secret nuclear arms program, insists the plant could be used to produce weapons-grade material.
Nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday criticized Iran's failure to comply with agreements designed to prevent the use of civilian nuclear resources to make atomic weapons.
But its statement fell short of the damning resolution Washington had hoped for.
----
U.N. agency raps Iran nuke program
June 20, 2003
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030620-120926-1368r.htm
A U.N. watchdog agency yesterday reprimanded Iran for its advanced nuclear program and called for tough new inspections. But it stopped short of U.S. hopes for a full-scale condemnation of what the Bush administration says is a clandestine drive by Tehran to build a nuclear bomb.
After three days of bargaining, the 35-nation board of governors of the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) slammed Iran's failure to come clean on its extensive nuclear program and strongly urged Iran to accept a tough new inspection regime.
Although less than Washington had originally sought, the IAEA statement was met with praise in the White House while a top Iranian official quickly rejected the idea of opening up further to global monitors.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the IAEA move was an "international reinforcement" of President Bush's call Wednesday for a concerted global effort to prevent the Islamic government in Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
"Iran needs to comply. Otherwise, the world will conclude that Iran may be producing nuclear weapons," Mr. Fleischer said.
Kenneth Brill, U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, told reporters in Vienna that the Bush administration was "very satisfied" with yesterday's action.
Iran, which says its nuclear activities are intended for civilian power needs, said yesterday's vote represented a "failure" for the United States, according to Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the country's Atomic Energy Agency.
The U.S.-backed resolution would have immediately referred the issue to the U.N. Security Council for action, a course many nonaligned countries represented at the IAEA were reluctant to take.
Mr. Aghazadeh said Iran would continue to block surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities unless the international community met its demands for aid and technology in developing civilian nuclear plants. Diplomats said there is little chance of such a deal being struck.
The standoff comes as the Islamic government in Iran finds itself facing continued domestic political dissent, including nightly clashes in many cities, between pro-democracy activists and hard-line elements loyal to the cleric-led regime.
Mr. Bush has expressed sympathy and support for the protesters, but U.S. officials deny Iranian charges that they have helped organize the demonstrations. Tensions between Tehran and Washington have sharpened in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
In Paris, an Iranian exile opposition group staged new protests after a crackdown by French officials this week.
A woman from the Mujahideen Khalq, or People's Mujahideen, died yesterday after setting herself on fire in protest after mass arrests of the group's leaders in Paris earlier this week. Similar self-immolations took place in Italy and Switzerland.
French police, who said the group was planning terrorist strikes against Iranian embassies in Europe, rounded up another 100 members of the exile group yesterday.
Miriam Rajkumar, a researcher with the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the IAEA statement a "balancing act" but said the Bush administration had made progress in focusing international pressure on Tehran.
"I don't think the administration wanted to go into this fight alone, and it does seem there is a diplomatic consensus developing that Iran is a problem and that some questions need to be answered," she said.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei "is a diplomat, and it would be very unusual for the agency to send this immediately to the Security Council for action. But you are hearing ... strong statements from the European Union and the Russians that Iran has to respond to."
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said this week that a proposed EU-Iran trade deal could be put on ice if Tehran is not more forthcoming about its nuclear program.
Russia, whose support of a major Iranian nuclear-power plant being built in Bushehr has been a bone of contention with the Bush administration, called the IAEA statement a "balanced declaration" that notes Tehran's promises to try to improve cooperation with the U.N. inspection agency.
But Moscow also has urged Iran in recent days to agree to an additional protocol under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow IAEA inspectors into sites currently declared off-limits.
Miss Rajkumar said the United States was laboring under a "credibility gap" in Vienna, facing widespread international skepticism after the failure to date to find extensive evidence backing U.S. and British claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
A series of revelations in recent months has heightened fears about Iran's nuclear program. Iran admitted in May that it was building a heavy-water research reactor in Arak that could produce weapons-grade plutonium, and it also conducted a secret uranium-enrichment pilot program at a previously undisclosed facility in Natanz.
The Bush administration says Iran's nuclear program is not needed in a country with huge oil deposits.
"If Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, why wouldn't they cooperate fully and completely with the IAEA?" Mr. Fleischer asked yesterday.
The IAEA is set to issue a follow-up report based on its inspections in September, but diplomats said yesterday that the United States and its allies may try to speed the administrative process to keep pressure on Tehran.
----
Iran Urged To Explain Nuclear Plan
U.N. Agency Wants Sites Opened for Inspections
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14289-2003Jun19?language=printer
VIENNA, June 19 -- The U.N. nuclear agency pressed Iran today to suspend plans to enrich uranium and said the Islamic republic should open its nuclear sites to stiffer inspections to allay fears that it is secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation governing board rejected tough language that U.S. representatives had proposed for a statement. But in a compromise statement adopted without objection after two days of debate, the agency called on Iran to explain the intent of a rapid expansion of its nuclear program over the past year.
"We need to fully understand the depth and the breadth of this program," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the watchdog agency, said after the statement was released. ElBaradei then announced he was dispatching another in a series of inspection teams to Iran in an attempt to clear up discrepancies in the country's previous accounting of its nuclear activities.
Iran, one of the nations represented at the talks, said it would look "very positively" at IAEA requests to allow more intensive inspections of nuclear facilities, including testing for nuclear material at key sites. But the Iranian delegation made no promises during the talks, and afterward its chief representative was cool to the idea of allowing inspectors to roam sites that had not been officially declared by Iran as part of its nuclear program.
"We cannot bind ourselves to doing more than we are already committed to," Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's envoy to the IAEA, told reporters after the adoption of the statement. But he added: "The process of cooperation with the IAEA will go on unhindered."
The meeting in Vienna followed a critical June 6 report from the IAEA staff to the governing board. The report accused Iran of failing to comply with some of its "nuclear safeguards agreements," rules intended to prevent nations with civilian nuclear power programs from secretly developing nuclear weapons. The report specifically faulted Iran for failing to promptly disclose a purchase of uranium from China in the early 1990s, and for failing to account for what it did with some of it. Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons.
The document also confirmed that Iran had been researching a wide variety of nuclear technologies, including the development of a heavy-water reactor and the production of various forms of uranium metal. Earlier this year, Iran acknowledged the construction of a massive uranium enrichment plant near the town of Natanz, a project that went undetected in the West until it was exposed by an Iranian opposition group last August.
Iran maintains that all its nuclear sites, including a light-water nuclear reactor being built with Russian help near the port city of Bushehr, are part of a peaceful -- and fully legal -- civilian nuclear power industry that will help the country meet the energy needs of a booming population. But U.S. officials and weapons experts say Iran, with major reserves of natural gas, has little need for nuclear power. And they note that the mix of technologies sought by Iran would provide it with numerous options for developing nuclear weapons.
"The U.S. expects the agency's accumulation of further information will point to only one conclusion: that Iran is aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program," Kenneth Brill, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, said in a statement.
U.S. officials had lobbied for the statement to more explicitly criticize Iran and establish a timetable for resolving the issues. But that approach ran into resistance from several quarters. Malaysian representative Dato Hussein Haniff, in a statement on behalf of a newly formed bloc of "nonaligned" members of the IAEA board, decried what she called a "growing resort to unilateralism and unilaterally imposed prescriptions," a reference to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the pressure the Bush administration has applied on Iran and North Korea because of their nuclear programs.
While the statement adopted by the IAEA board was mild in tone, it echoed the concerns about the direction of Iran's nuclear program expressed by Bush administration officials and by ElBaradei. The statement called on Iran to temporarily suspend plans to begin uranium enrichment at its Natanz facility "as a confidence-building" measure and to agree "promptly and unconditionally" to increased IAEA oversight.
"We've been concerned about Iran's nuclear program for a long time, but we haven't had much company in that regard," Brill said. "We've come a long way from where we were just a year ago."
----
U.N Atom Agency Seeks Wider Scrutiny on Iran, but Is Rebuffed
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/europe/20VIEN.html
VIENNA, June 19 - The International Atomic Energy Agency called on Iran today to allow stricter inspections of the nuclear reactor sites that the United States has said are being used to develop atomic weapons. Iran rejected the request.
In a statement concluding three days of debate, the 35-member governing board of the agency said Iran should "promptly and unconditionally conclude and implement an additional protocol to its Safeguards Agreement, in order to enhance the agency's ability to provide credible assurances regarding the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities."
The statement was in effect a call on Iran, which denies that it is building nuclear weapons, to allow further inspections of its reactor sites, including chemical samplings of the areas that have been identified as places where enriched uranium suitable for weapons is being produced.
"I'm very satisfied with the outcome today," the American ambassador to the agency, Kenneth Brill, said. "We have an important message from the board that supports the U.S. position and concern about the Iranian program."
Mr. Brill said he welcomed the board's call for "unqualified cooperation by Iran to help the I.A.E.A. get to the bottom of this."
"And we expect to hear back soon from the I.A.E.A. in that regard," he said. The agency is scheduled to hear a report in September based on further inspections of the Iranian nuclear program.
The Iranian representative, Ali A. Salehi, rejected the call for wider inspections, saying, "We have dissociated ourselves from this part of the statement."
Today's action by the agency, an arm of the United Nations that monitors nuclear practices around the world, came after three days of debate during which the United States backed away from its initial demand that the agency issue a strong condemnation of Iran for its nuclear activities.
That step had been opposed by 15 countries represented on the board whose position was that Iran had shown cooperation with the agency and should be given a further chance to show that its nuclear programs are only for peaceful purposes.
Still, for the agency's board to issue a statement at all is an unusual step, one that was seen by Western diplomats here as a move toward increasing the pressure on Iran to cease what the United States has called a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
"The international community has a whole different look today than it did a year ago," a senior Western diplomat said. "It's really at the center of attention," he continued, referring to nuclear activities in both Iran and North Korea.
The agency's director general, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, said after today's meeting that the board of governors had a "broad sense" that Iran should accept a new inspections protocol "without conditions."
"Safeguards have to be implemented in a very comprehensive, very conspicuous, very rigid manner to build confidence," Dr. ElBaradei said. "They need to be completely transparent and the issues before us should be resolved as soon as possible."
The agency's statement came a day after President Bush said the United States would "not tolerate" an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Mr. Salehi, the Iranian representative, said in a speech before the agency's board on Wednesday that Iran had no intention or desire to create nuclear weapons and that the attention being paid to it was "politically motivated."
"The language of force and threat will be futile and not conducive to the final achievement of our common goal," Mr. Salehi said.
--------
Iran Blocks U.N. Nuke Watchdog's Moves
June 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Friday it would continue to limit the operations of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, setting the stage for a confrontation with the United States.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said it expected Iran ``to grant the agency all access deemed necessary'' to defuse suspicions Tehran is operating a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
President Bush, who has called Iran and North Korea members of an axis of evil, has said he and other world leaders will not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran.
In London, a senior U.S. official said that while military action against Iran to stop it developing nuclear weapons is far from the thoughts of Washington, it remains an option as a last resort.
John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, insisted Iran can not be allowed to develop a weapons capability that could destabilize the whole region.
Asked by British Broadcasting Corp. radio whether the Bush administration reserved the right to take military action against Iran, he said: ``The president has repeatedly said that all options are on the table. But that is not only not our preference, it is far, far from our minds.''
Iran's state television said the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, would not permit environmental sampling at ``some locations.'' It did not name the locations.
The refusal indicated a hardening of attitude toward the U.N. nuclear watchdog group.
``We've had no problem concerning environmental samples, but we've been telling the IAEA that this location is not a nuclear location, so that if you want to take environmental samples, this is outside the framework of the protocol,'' Aghazadeh said. He did not identify the location.
``If we accept to operate outside the framework of the protocol, it will have no ending ... and tomorrow ten other locations may be named,'' Aghazadeh added.
Inspectors were turned away from a site at Kalaye, west Tehran, earlier this month after they came to take environmental samples. The Iranians have allegedly tested centrifuges at the Kalaye site.
A Western diplomat familiar with the dispute said Aghazadeh appeared to be referring to the Kalaye site.
Tehran would be obligated to open the site to environmental sampling by IAEA experts only if it signed an additional protocol -- something the U.N. agency urged Iran to do at its board meeting in Vienna, Austria, this week.
Judging by Aghazadeh's reaction, Iran is turning a cold shoulder to this request.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the protocol was crucial -- ``to put the pieces of a nuclear puzzle of a country together, it is not enough to go to declared nuclear sites.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency had no comment on the report.
Iran says its nuclear program is designed solely to produce electrical energy, particularly after its oil wells run dry.
IAEA inspectors are expected to return to Iran next month, and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he expects Iran's cooperation in what will be the first test of Iran's willingness to comply.
``I trust, I expect, that Iran will enable us to do all that we need to do,'' ElBaradei said during this week's board meeting.
ElBaradei has asked Iran to permit monitors to take environmental samples at a location where the country has allegedly enriched uranium -- a step in producing nuclear weapons.
On Thursday, the IAEA challenged Iran to prove it does not have a nuclear weapons program, but rejected Washington's effort to bring the matter before the U.N. Security Council.
The United States suspects Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb and Washington's delegation to the IAEA had pushed for the agency to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear bomb and says its nuclear program is designed to produce energy, particularly after its oil reserves run dry.
At its board meeting, the IAEA also urged Iran to stop enriching nuclear fuel and to allow greater access to its nuclear facilities.
Aghazadeh did not respond Friday to the IAEA demand for a cessation of uranium enrichment.
-------- iraq / inspections
Blix 'amazed' by US WMD claims
From correspondents in New York
20 june 03
Advertiser (Australia)
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6625635%255E1702,00.html
CHIEF UN weapons inspector for Iraq Hans Blix today said he was amazed the US and Britain expected to find large quantities of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after UN inspectors were unable to find any.
"What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons," Blix said in an interview with the New York Times.
"I don't see how they could have come to such an attitude if they had, at any time, studied" existing reports by UN inspectors, he said.
"Is the United Nations on a different planet? Are reports from here totally unread south of the Hudson?" Blix asked, in reference to the river that flows through New York, where the UN headquarters is based.
When asked how he felt about the US-led war that ousted the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Blix replied: "We all welcome the disappearance of one of the world's most horrible regimes."
After returning to Iraq after a four-year hiatus in late November, UN weapons inspectors found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, uncovering only the banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles.
Baghdad went on to destroy 72 of the missiles.
So far, US teams deployed in Iraq since the war have found no banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The alleged existence of such weapons in Iraq was a key argument put forward by the US and Britain in the case for war.
--------
Looted Iraqi Uranium Found, Report Says
June 20, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most of the uranium missing from a looted storage facility at Iraq's main nuclear site has been accounted for, Science magazine reported on Friday.
It said the International Atomic Energy Agency had found virtually all the missing material from the site at Tuwaitha, but had not been able to assess whether any Iraqis had become ill after exposure to it.
``Nearly all the material that went missing has been recovered,'' an IAEA official was quoted as saying by ScienceNOW, the magazine's Internet Web site.
It said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming declined comment.
``We want to make sure first that the report is completely accurate,'' she told Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Looters attacked the Tuwaitha compound, 12 miles south of Baghdad, and sold off some of the material after the U.S. invasion.
--------
Envoys: Progress Made on Iraqi Uranium
June 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Nuclear-Agency-Iraq.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Experts from the U.N. atomic agency have accounted for tons of uranium feared looted from Iraq's largest nuclear research facility, diplomats said Friday.
The natural and low-enriched uranium was secured at the Tuwaitha facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity. Tuwaitha was left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve of the war.
U.S. troops didn't secure the area until April 7. In the meantime, looters from the surrounding villages stripped it of uranium storage barrels they later used to hold drinking water. The mission -- whose scope was restricted by the U.S.-led interim administration of Iraq -- was not allowed not to give medical exams to Iraqis reported to have been sickened by contact with the materials, said the diplomats.
They also said that the IAEA team also was unable to determine whether hundreds of radioactive materials used in research and medicine across the country were secure. Officials fear such material could be used to make crude radioactive devices known as ``dirty bombs.''
The diplomats, who are familiar with the workings of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed to discuss the mission to secure the uranium at the Tuwaitha facility only on condition they not be named.
Tuwaitha was thought to contain hundreds of tons of natural uranium and nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium, which could be further processed for arms use.
The diplomats did not detail how much uranium had been looted and where it was found, but it appeared much of it was on or near the site.
U.S. military officials who accompanied the IAEA team said last week that initial assessments indicated most of the uranium that had been stored at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center was accounted for.
Although at least 20 percent of the containers which stored the uranium were taken from the site, it appeared that looters had dumped the uranium before taking the barrels.
U.S. military experts involved in the cleanup of the nuclear site found piles of uranium in the storerooms and purchased most of the looted barrels back from villagers for about $3 a barrel.
The arrival of the U.N. group marked the first time since before the war began that representatives from the agency returned to Iraq.
The IAEA had long monitored Iraq's nuclear programs and recently investigated claims by the U.S. administration that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear weapons program. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, said early on there was no evidence to support Washington's claims.
After weeks of international pressure, the Pentagon allowed the IAEA into the site.
Associated Press writer Dafna Linzer in New York contributed to this report.
-------- israel
Why No Objection to Israel's WMD?
"Apart from two plants in Dimona, Israel established a number of other nuclear plants in Nahal Suryak, south of Tel Aviv in 1958 and in Raishon Liston and Haifa .."
By Hassan Tahsin,
Arab News,
Friday, June 20 2003
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030620170529934
CAIRO - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has spelled out clearly his reasons for accepting the Middle East road map with 14 reservations. During the Aqaba summit on June 6, he said: "Permanent peace requires permanent security. This permanent security will bring about permanent peace to Israel." To accept peace on Sharon's terms would make the proposed Palestinian state a mockery in the service of Israel's security.
The most dangerous thing is that Israel is allowed to possess all kinds of weapons of mass destruction while Arab countries are denied these weapons under the pretext that Israel is under threat.
Israel has said that it is not yet time to look at its nuclear arsenal and weapons of mass destruction because it has not yet attained permanent security and peace.
As a result, Israel has become a depot for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threatening the security of Arab, Asian and European countries. Does Israel require this large arsenal of banned weapons? The French constructed the Dimona nuclear reactor and produced enriched uranium. Israel was ready to produce its first nuclear bomb as early as 1965.
In March 1969, Moshe Dayan celebrated the birth of the Israeli nuclear state and the Israeli nuclear scientist Vannunu has acknowledged that his country was in 6th position in the nuclear club in the 1980s. According to one estimate, Israel possesses at least 100 nuclear bombs.
Apart from two plants in Dimona, Israel established a number of other nuclear plants in Nahal Suryak, south of Tel Aviv in 1958 and in Raishon Liston and Haifa. In 1994, US President Bill Clinton approved nine supercomputers to meet the needs of Israel's nuclear program. Informed sources have estimated that Israel has 100 to 200 nuclear warheads, but another report put the figure at more than 500.
Quoting Vannunu, American journalist Seymour Hersh says in his book that Israel possesses about 300 nuclear warheads. He also says that he has got information indicating Israel possesses hundreds of nitrogen bombs. Reports have confirmed that Israel has various types of nuclear weapons including nuclear bombs which could be dropped from planes, missile warheads, in addition to 25 hydrogen bombs.
Israel also holds an unspecified numbers of tactical weapons.
At least three international sources have confirmed that Israel had not only produced nuclear mines but spread them in various regions at different periods of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially in Golan and Naqab during the military confrontation with Egypt in October 1973 and in January 1991.
The question is: Who can ask the international community to disarm Israel of its mass destructive weapons?
-------- korea
[Of course, these are the same people who swore Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It's so hard to know what is true and what isn't. Let's stop trying, and make Proposition One the law! (http://prop1.org/prop1/hr2503.htm) - et]
North Korea has nuclear ballistic missiles: report
June 20 2003
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/20/1055828474718.html
US authorities have unofficially told their Japanese counterparts that North Korea already possesses several small nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles, a news report said today.
It is the first confirmation that Pyongyang has nuclear missiles that can immediately strike Japan, the Sankei Shimbun said, citing sources related to Japan and the United States.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials have publicly confirmed that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons.
Until now, however, they have not been clear about what stage of development North Korea was at, the Sankei said.
Washington has told Tokyo that the number of nuclear warheads that North Korea has is "not just one or two," the Sankei said.
It was not clear how the United States obtained the information, nor whether those weapons were developed or purchased by North Korea, the Sankei said.
Washington disclosed the information to Tokyo around March, the Sankei said.
-------- missile defense
Failed missile-defense test probed
June 20, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030620-120938-1958r.htm
Preliminary data from a sea-based missile-defense test show that the failure of a solid-fuel guidance system caused a Navy interceptor missile to miss a target missile, Pentagon officials said.
Officials familiar with the test results, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a solid-fuel engine used to control the interceptor's kinetic warhead stopped functioning and the warhead did not hit a target missile near Hawaii on Wednesday night.
Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said it is still too early to know whether a single component caused the test failure.
"We'll certainly analyze the performance of the solid divert and attitude control system (SDACS), along with the performance of every other component from which we received data during the test," Mr. Lehner said in a statement.
The Missile Defense Agency announced in a statement late Wednesday that the SM-3 deployed its nonexplosive warhead, "but an intercept was not achieved." It was the first failure in four tests conducted using the sea-based Aegis weapons system.
The Aegis system is expected to be a major element of the Pentagon's efforts to develop systems that can knock down both short-range and long-range missiles. The Navy system is considered valuable because it can be moved easily on ships.
The warhead-guidance package is known as a solid-fuel divert and attitude control system. The system uses jets that guide a warhead to its target.
Missile-defense officials said the Navy in the past was urged to use a liquid-fuel mechanism, but rejected the idea because liquid fuel is more difficult to store safely on a ship than the solid-fuel system.
"The Navy insisted on a DAC with solid fuel, but the technology makes it more difficult for it to burn and stop, and burn again," the official said.
In the recent test over the Pacific, one of the "cells" of solid fuel failed to ignite.
"The Navy is demonstrating an inability to get the DAC to work right," the official said. "They keep saying they think it's ready, but it's not. They have got to figure out how to fix it."
The Navy has invested several years and millions of dollars in the development of the solid-fuel DAC for the Standard missile, the central element of the Navy's ship-based missile-defense program, the officials said.
The test Wednesday involved a Aries target missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii.
The SM-3 interceptor was fired from the USS Lake Erie guided-missile cruiser near Hawaii.
The sea-based missile-defense program is run by the Missile Defense Agency and the Navy. Raytheon Missile Systems of Tucson, Ariz., is the main contractor of the SM-3.
-------- us politics
Update: Senate inquiry into intelligence on Iraqi WMD
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
JUNE 11, 2003
CONTACT: BILL DUHNKE PHONE: (202) 224-1700
http://intelligence.senate.gov/030611.htm
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), Chairman, and Senator Jay Rockefeller IV (D-WV), Vice Chairman, of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today announced their joint commitment to continue the Committees's thorough review of U.S. intelligence on the existence of and the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, Iraq's ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's threat to stability and security in the region, and his violations of human rights including the actual use of weapons of mass destruction against his own people.
Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller joined in saying that "The Committee will continue to examine -
- the quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's threat to stability and security in the region, and his repression of his own people;
- the objectivity, reasonableness, independence, and accuracy of the judgments reached by the Intelligence Community;
- whether those judgments were properly disseminated to policy makers in the Executive Branch and Congress;
- whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives; and
- other issues we mutually identify in the course of the Committee's review."
Senator Roberts stated that, "In its review, the Committee will endeavor to complete three tasks. First, it will evaluate the quantity and quality of the intelligence underlying prewar assessments of Iraq's WMD capability, its ties to terrorist groups, Saddam's threat to stability and security in the region, and his record of brutalizing his own people. Second, it will determine whether the analytical judgments contained in those assessments were objective, independent, and reasonable. Finally, the Committee will evaluate the accuracy of those assessments by comparing them with the results of the ongoing investigative efforts in Iraq."
Senator Rockefeller stated that "The Committee's inquiry into intelligence on Iraqi WMD ranks among its most important undertakings. In an age when we may again be urged to go to war under the doctrine of preemption, the Nation needs assurance that our Government provides the accurate and unbiased intelligence that is necessary for the Executive Branch and Congress to make sound decisions affecting the national security of the United States."
Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller joined in saying that "The Committee will use whatever tools of oversight it deems necessary to complete its work, including, but not limited to, document review and requests, interviews, closed and open hearings, as appropriate, and preparation of findings and recommendations."
----
Rumsfeld seeks to punish France for its stance
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fri, Jun. 20, 2003
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/6136201.htm
WASHINGTON - While President Bush wants to mend fences with France over its opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is not so forgiving.
In the latest in a series of Pentagon blasts at France, Rumsfeld has prevailed on U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John C. Jumper not to invite his French counterpart, Gen. Richard Wolsztynski, to a prestigious September conference of air force commanders from around the world.
French diplomats have complained bitterly to the State Department and the White House.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, "The White House is aware of the issue." He declined to say what steps Bush is contemplating to assuage the French over what they regard as a serious affront.
The withheld invitation follows Rumsfeld's decisions to restrict U.S. participation in this month's Paris Air Show. He prohibited attendance by American officers above the rank of colonel and barred demonstration flights by U.S. warplanes.
The Defense Department also disinvited France from a major U.S. air exercise next year. Germany, also a leading critic of the Iraq war, was asked to take part.
Rumsfeld's actions run counter to Bush's decision, affirmed by his meeting June 2 in Evian, France, with French President Jacques Chirac, to try to put behind the two countries the damage done to U.S.-French ties by the dispute over Iraq.
Even while the war in Iraq was under way, Bush let his top lieutenants know that he wanted to begin reversing the serious deterioration in ties with France, said two senior administration officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue.
They said that at a meeting March 28, Bush rejected a set of punitive actions against France that Rumsfeld proposed in an 11-page memorandum, finding it too harsh.
The proposals in Rumsfeld's memo included recalling all U.S. military liaison officers from France and sending home 60 French military liaison officers, canceling any U.S.-French exercises, ending U.S. Navy port calls in France and French navy port calls in the United States and suspending a number of cooperative projects and intelligence-sharing programs.
"Rumsfeld is running a foreign policy of his own," said Simon Serfaty, an expert on U.S.-European relations at the Center for Strategic and International Relations, a Washington policy institute. "The State Department and the White House have to some extent put France on probation, and Rumsfeld has not."
Some analysts, American officials and European diplomats said Rumsfeld's continuing efforts to penalize France risk further harming an important relationship from which the United States gains important benefits.
Those benefits include peacekeeping in the Balkans, close cooperation in the war on terrorism - including sharing important intelligence on al-Qaida and other extremist groups - and French participation in training a new Afghan army.
France recently supported lifting U.N. sanctions on Iraq, airlifted 100 American citizens from the war-torn West African nation of Liberia and sent 150 special forces to operate with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesmen said the restrictions on American participation in the Paris Air Show were due to constraints on resources, and that France was not invited to participate in the annual Red Flag air exercise because of a limited number of slots.
Moreover, they said, invitations to Red Flag, which is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, would be reserved for countries with which the United States probably would be participating in future military operations.
France has been a regular attendee of the Global Air Chiefs Conference, an annual event hosted by the top commander of the U.S. Air Force.
The world's largest, most prestigious gathering of its kind, the conference is designed to strengthen ties between the U.S. Air Force and air forces from NATO and non-NATO countries.
It includes seminars on trends and developments in military aviation and offers a chance for attendees to make or renew contacts. An invitation is regarded as a symbolic affirmation of the U.S. Air Force's desire to maintain good relations.
France will be the only major air power that will not be at the Sept. 14-20 gathering in Washington. A senior defense official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said Rumsfeld's office had ordered all U.S. military services to inform it of any activities they planned that would include the French.
In response, Jumper's office told Rumsfeld's office that it wanted to invite Wolsztynski to the air chiefs' conference.
"The (U.S.) Air Force view, the French military's view, is what goes on at a (diplomatic) relationship level should not inhibit what is a long-standing relationship between allied militaries," the senior defense official said. "We did try to say let's lower the temperature."
While Rumsfeld did not specifically order that the invitation be withheld, his office let Jumper know that it opposed the French general's attendance.
-------- MILITARY
War's toxic legacy in Baltic Sea
Marlise Simons,
NYT / IHT
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/100126.html
TALLIN, Estonia Tens of thousands of bombs and barrels filled with blistering agents and nerve gas lie scattered in the Baltic Sea and the eastern Atlantic, dumped there by American, British and Soviet military forces after World War II. And now they have come back to haunt the region's environment.
Entire ships full of weapons, most of them captured from Germany, were scuttled here and forgotten. Scientists say that over time, the weapon casings have corroded in the sea water and become brittle, allowing poisons like arsenic, lewisite, mustard gas and sarin to leach out. The scientists, from Baltic countries and Russia, have traced lethal materials mixed in with sediments and found highly toxic sulfur mustard gas, transformed into brown-yellow clumps of gel, washed ashore.
The problem is compounded by fishermen who have gone into riskier areas to chase depleted fish stocks, using increasingly aggressive methods, including bottom tackle that snags the bombs. Baltic fishermen routinely find the solidified mustard gas clumps among their catch and even haul up whole or damaged chemical bombs in their nets. "We had 10 cases of people finding bombs this year," said Begr Rasmussen, head of the Fishermen's Association of Bornholm, a Danish island close to one of the main dumping grounds. Denmark, which offers special incentives for reporting munitions to the military for retrieval, has recorded more than 400 such incidents in the past two decades.
Scientists believe that some of the poisons dissipate in the water, but others, such as arsenic, can build up in the food chain. Little is known about their effect on marine biology, but people touching or inhaling them are likely to get hurt. Several fishermen have been treated for burns and other poisoning symptoms after handling leaking shells.
Fishing is now forbidden around the four main dumping grounds, which hold an estimated 300,000 tons of ammunition. But in other areas, where sea currents and bottom tackle have dispersed many shells, vessels are required to stock gas masks, rubber gloves and special medical kits with anti-poison powders and injections on board. Either ignored or kept secret by governments until the 1980s, the dumps have by now become a subject of debate among environmental and other concerned citizens' groups, some of which have demanded urgent clean-ups.
With four more Baltic states - Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - set to join the European Union in 2004, all types of pollution are coming under new scrutiny. But there is wide disagreement on what to do about the rusting chemical bombs.
Rasmussen, the head of the Bornholm fishermen, said it would help if governments from all nine Baltic countries would follow the Danish example. When a Danish captain finds a suspect object, he calls a navy emergency number, he explained. The navy comes on board to disinfect the crew and the ship and to destroy the entire catch. Fishermen are then reimbursed for their lost income.
"It's the only way," Rasmussen said. "We know that Polish, Swedish and German fishermen use bottom nets and pull up bombs. Then they throw them back and they keep scattering them. I say, pay the fishermen, so they're not afraid to lose their catch. And the military will pick up the bombs." But the Baltic and the North Seas are only part of the world's underwater chemical weapons graveyards.
Large arsenals were also abandoned in waters off America, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Russia, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. Other sites are still unaccounted for, as marine dumping was required to be declared under the Chemical Weapons Convention only after 1985. Compared with other ocean dumps, however, the Baltic Sea is particularly sensitive. It is shallower than most and its semi-enclosed, brackish waters are renewed only every 30 years.
Some scientists and politicians insist that the chemical bombs must be retrieved. President Arnold Ruutel of Estonia told a recent meeting on the Baltic environment that the discarded munitions contained an estimated 60,000 tons of toxic agents, including 14 different chemicals. He called for a region-wide plan "to neutralize this source of danger," adding that "this is our responsibility for future generations." Vadim Paka, director of the Oceanography Institute in the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, said that surveys showed that "even deep waters are not safe for toxic materials because bottom currents can be turbulent and move the poisons around." He said that last year his team of marine scientists found mustard gas residues in the soil and arsenic up to 100 times higher than normal levels.
"I don't think we face a catastrophe," he said. "But any persistent highly toxic agent in the ecosystem is dangerous." Others, including military experts, insist that it is best to let the weapons degrade in the water, allowing time and bacteria to break them down. Clearing the dumps, they argue, is both very costly and risky, because the munitions could explode or break up and cause further toxic spills.
"After numerous studies, the government concluded that it's safest to leave the munitions alone," said a former Danish minister of environment, Svend Auken. One option under debate is to entomb the deteriorating shells with cement. On the sea floor off the Norwegian and Swedish coasts lie some 40 ships filled with chemical and other weapons, retrieved from Nazi Germany and scuttled on American and British orders in the late 1940s. Paka said the ships' holds could be pumped full of concrete.
Far more complicated, he said, would be coating the large dumps near the islands of Bornholm and Gotland. Here, he said, Soviet soldiers simply threw barrels and shells overboard without any containment, spilling them over large areas. They have been further dispersed by currents and fishermen. Any solution, other than ignoring the weapons, is likely to cost millions of dollars, and it is not clear who would be responsible for paying the bills. For now, the dumps are monitored only sporadically by the Helsinki Commission, an international group that looks after the health of the Baltic Sea. Its last assessment, in 1996, said the chemical weapons "are not causing any appreciable harm to the Baltic environment" and that the situation "has neither improved nor deteriorated."
At the same time, however, the commission published detailed instructions for fishermen on the first aid equipment they should keep on board and how to quickly treat any contamination. "It's an illusion to think we can clear up this mess," said Jean-Pierre Henriet, a geophysicist who has tracked dumps of mustard gas weapons in deep waters off Belgium.
"This is a worldwide problem," he added, "and there's no easy way to destroy these munitions in bulk. It's done slowly, one by one." Farmers and fishermen still find them across Northern Europe.
With stacks of such weapons from two world wars waiting to be destroyed, Henriet added, "it makes no sense to collect more from the sea." The New York Times
-------- afghanistan
People might want Taliban to return due to insecurity in Afghanistan
Friday June 20, 2003
Pakistan Tribune
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=29321&PHPSESSID=b03686ff957c6fbc855841f113c461a9
KABUL, June 20 (Online): Despite the passing of more than 18 months since establishment of Karzai government, people might want Taliban to return due to severe security crisis in Afghanistan.
While giving an interview to BBC, European Union's special representative in Afghanistan Francis Vendrall said that we need to find ways of improving the security across the country and international community must be ready to do what is necessary.
Replying to a question, he said that he would like to see the expansion of the international force and another way would be from coalition forces to address the issue of security.
He said that US might come to the realisation that the best way of preventing the Taliban from becoming a major force again is precisely by ensuring security to the Afghans across the country.
Further, he added that some parts of the Pashtuns there are a feeling of exclusion from the process, coupled with insecurity and lack of reconstruction.
To some extent it could be active support for Taliban elements that might be trying to carry out actions against coalition forces, he revealed.
"To me, the Western world seems willing to accept that Pakistan has done whatever it could do with regards to stopping cross border terrorism", he added.
-------- africa
Congo Combatants Agree to Cease-Fire
June 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/africa/20CONG.html
KIGALI, Rwanda, June 19 - The Congolese government and two rebel factions agreed today to halt fighting in an eastern region and pull back from newly occupied areas, hours after a battle for a town there killed dozens of people.
The cease-fire was signed in neighboring Burundi by the Congolese government, the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy and the government-allied Congolese Rally for Democracy-ML. Advertisement
Earlier today, the Rwanda-backed group captured Lubero in North Kivu Province from government troops and their allies, Sylvain Mbuki, the group's military chief, said from its headquarters in Goma on the Rwandan border.
Fighting began on Wednesday in Lubero, 100 miles north of Goma and about halfway to Bunia, where fighting among tribal militia has killed 500 people since May.
A French-led international emergency force is in Bunia to protect civilians and curb the violence after 700 United Nations troops stationed there did not intervene. Uruguay said today that it would deploy another 190 troops as part of the multinational force.
United Nations military observers in Lubero confirmed that the Rwanda-backed side had captured the town, said Hamadoun Touré, spokesman for the United Nations mission.
-------- balkans
The Albanians and the State
by Christopher Deliso
June 20, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso80.html
Once upon a time, in a small and vulnerable land, there lived a man named Ali. Finding himself generally unsatisfied with things, he set off to the hills one day with his band of 40 (or so) thieves and brigands. After making some noise, threats and complaints, Ali succeeded in bringing the genie out of the bottle. And then it happened that, in a lovely place down by the lake, young Ali was granted his three wishes. And for what did he wish? "We wish for state jobs, our language in the government, and state-funded education!" declared Ali.
Lo and behold, his wishes were granted, and life in that small and vulnerable land would change forever - by not changing at all.
The Albanian Movement: Anti-State, or Anti-Capitalist?
At first glance, the Albanian separatist movements of Kosovo and Macedonia would seem to be classic examples of anti-state revolts: marginalized minorities unwillingly locked in a righteous, David-versus-Goliath struggle against an oppressive, alien state structure. Or so it would seem.
However, this is simply not true. The fractious, paradoxical Balkans seems to revel in self-contradiction. And so it is that, in reaching for a 19th-century nation state through the ideological guise of ultra-liberal, 1990's-era American political rhetoric, the Albanians have wound up striving for nothing other than an idiosyncratic version of Socialist Yugoslavia. Nothing surprising - after all, this is the Balkans we're talking about.
Rationalizing Confusion
Midway through the year 2003, the Albanians of Macedonia still don't know exactly what it is that they want. This speaks rather poorly for their decision to start a war anyway. One must fight for something, but when there's nothing to fight for, rationalizations come cheap and easy. Lacking any degree of creativity or originality in 2001, they merely recycled the same old Kosovo complaints (not surprising, since the very same people were behind both movements). And so the world came to believe that they had no job opportunities, state support or any power whatsoever in Macedonia. Never mind that Albanian language television was airing in Macedonia before television was even available in Albania itself, or that Albanians had long been ruling local government in areas where they constituted a majority, such as Tetovo and Gostivar. Despite all that, we were led to believe that the Albanians had no human rights because of the state's "Slav domination."
Fighting Themselves into a Corner
The anti-state saga of human rights violations and oppression played exceedingly well in the Western media. It prolonged the war, aided public relations, and brought sympathy for the Albanian cause that would have otherwise been lacking.
Unfortunately for them, this meant that when the time came to "compromise" with the Framework Agreement negotiations, the Albanians were restricted to making demands of the government exclusively. And so, rather than throw off the opprobrious, stifling mantle of the state, they were obliged to resurrect it. Indeed, the Framework Agreement demands seem to confirm the victory of the outdated Socialist mode of thinking. The Albanians ended up demanding more state, not less, merely an Albanianized version of the old Yugoslavia.
Willfully Behind the Times
This was not surprising, considering that they had been guided only by their subjective, collective memory of exclusion from the old federation. When given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to submit their wishes in 2001, the Albanians chose to pluck the fruits of the 1970's. It was as if they were trying to make up for something, to fantasize about being useless bureaucrats and publicly-funded pedagogues, though those days are fast disappearing. Albeit slow, change is coming to Macedonia. Once-desirable state jobs and state education are now more a liability than a boon. The public schools and universities are dying, as the best professors and students flock to newly opening private establishments.
Make Haste to Employ Them, Comrade!
Something peculiar has been going on lately with the interventionists in Macedonia. Or, to be more precise, since nothing special has been happening, certain parties are determined to find meaning in this - as if blandness was somehow not the norm, but an aberration here. As I wrote last week, the Empire seems now to be taking depth soundings underneath the Macedonian political surface, in order to plan future mischief-making.
In this regard, you've just got to hand it to the IWPR - they never fail to come through when it's time for a good laugh. Take their recent article entitled "Macedonia: Albanians still underemployed." It is a textbook example of the subtle deception of the interventionist press, disguised in the form of a simple report on unemployment angst.
The article's main purpose seems to be undermining the present government's Albanian representatives - Ali Ahmeti and his party, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI). It does so by quoting unemployed Albanian men from the extremist-friendly northern villages of Matejce and Lipkovo - as well as from Velesta, the prostitution center of Macedonia. It is fascinating to watch how the venerable reporting institution promotes the nonsense of people whose minds are just as stuck in the Socialist past as those of the frequently criticized "Slavs." Take Tahir Hani, mayor of Velesta:
"'...I feel that the DUI is not an equal partner in this government. They should pressure the authorities to open public enterprises and reduce our unemployment,' he told IWPR."
'We Sit All Day Long Waiting for Someone to Give Us Work:' More Inanity from the IWPR
Of course, Velesta is one of the more prosperous villages in the country, owing to the misery of its anonymous, Eastern European "workers." Police raids designed to capture wanted prostitution bosses foundered when local officials tipped off the pimps. And for their part, the "unemployed" farmers of Matejce and Lipkovo profit handsomely from mafia activity with Kosovar Albanians. Yet the reinforced sense of entitlement is all-pervasive:
"...Avni Zendeli from the northeastern village of Matejce now blames the DUI for his poor living conditions. 'Before the elections [the DUI] promised jobs and the renovation of our houses. But out of 4,000 inhabitants, only about ten people in Matejce are employed,' he complained.
"Ljuljzim Arifi from Lipkovo shares his view, saying, 'It seems as if the Ohrid agreement [of August 2001] is not being implemented. Jobs should have been created, but nothing has happened. We sit all day long waiting for somebody to give us work.'"
This last sentence is, for this writer at least, like a gift from the gods. Primarily, because it is absolutely true. At least the first part, that is. After all, Albanian-populated street corners give new meaning to the word "loitering." Heavily suffused with the statist, Socialist mindset of the former Yugoslavia, the Albanians quoted belie the nature of their struggle for "liberation." However, as stated above, the rhetoric about waiting for state employment is simply well-worn, reflexive rhetoric covering up for a fundamental inability to articulate what it is that they actually do want. Plumbing the murky depths of that little issue is more of a socio-psychological exercise than a political one. And, since nobody would believe it if they heard the truth, I will steer clear of the issue.
No Context? No Worries
According to the celebrated English moralist Samuel Johnson, idleness is the primary cause of all evil. Pray tell, what is it that these men do while waiting for the state to employ them? Apparently, there is plenty of time for planting landmines, burning down Macedonian homes, defacing churches, and so on. Of course, the IWPR doesn't say this openly, but alludes to it:
"...Security, as well as the economy, remains a major concern for Albanians in the post-conflict period. Abedin Ziberi, who is adviser to Lipkovo municipality, and also a member of the Democratic Party of Albanians and a former rebel commander in the area, recently warned that 'if anything could worsen security in Macedonia, it is failure to implement the peace accord.'
"Ziberi insists that Albanians are in a worse situation than they were before the war. 'Many have no jobs. People are hungry and poor - and the government is doing nothing to help them,' he said."
The much-lauded IWPR preys upon well-meaning foreigners unaware of the real situation in Macedonia. The truth is, Lipkovo is ground zero for secessionism, and always has been. Landmines, such as the one that killed a Macedonian soldier this week, are planted in the area frequently. In fact, Lipkovo even declared itself a "free republic" a few months ago. It also hosts a reservoir which provides water to the city of Kumanovo below (100,000-plus inhabitants). During the 2001 war, the Albanians of Lipkovo cut off the water supply to the city for almost a month. Now Kumanovo is actively seeking new, safer sources of water. In actuality, Lipkovo has long been written off as a part of the republic.
Devious British subtlety at its best is revealed in the first line: "security... remains a major concern for Albanians in the post-conflict period." Now, citing a former "rebel commander" and member of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) here should send up red flags immediately. The insinuation that security could be "worsened" if further government handouts do not appear is not some kind of disinterested, objective analysis. Rather, it is a threat, one of the many that the DPA has been making against the DUI over the past few months. The level of indoctrination has reached such levels that even my Albanian taxi driver the other day declared that it's high time for a renewed rebellion - because he did not have a state-funded job, as he thought the Ohrid Agreement had promised him.
The IWPR merely reifies these unproductive, anti-free market delusions.
No Expectations
As usual, it is only the Macedonians who expect nothing from their government. Although they may also complain about their economic situation, at least they don't expect the state to save them.
Scavenging, politically-motivated interventionist outlets like the IWPR thrive on connecting unemployment and entitlement. They rarely report that Macedonia is a land of opportunity for motivated, hardworking people. After all, there is less competition. There are many Macedonian success stories - but none of them ever came from people who sat waiting for the state to employ them.
Unfortunately, Albanians locked in the backwards, Socialisti-era mindset - like the enterprising young fellow who thought he should be hired as a policeman just because he owned a whistle - are missing out. The single most destructive and retarding influence that their politicians and the West have saddled them with is that of absolute, irrefutable entitlement. And so they sit, waiting for an already bloated state to digest them.
Go Private, Young Man
They will be waiting a long time. True, their short-term prospects are bright. Albanians are now being hired and Macedonians fired to implement the Ohrid Accord's affirmative action quotas. Yet their long-term prospects are less promising; the IMF and World Bank would like the government to lay off thousands of workers from chronically overstaffed state institutions. The only hope for any individual's economic success will soon lie in the private sector.
Indeed, for what other reason are USAID and other Western agencies doing "competitivity projects," if the suffering minority wants only to retreat into the same system which it tried to destroy? For rather than defeat a system of government (as the French and American revolutions set out to do) the Albanian revolt sought to merely revive it - with the only exception being that they would be on top, instead of the Serbs or Macedonians.
A Victory Befitting Pyrrhus Himself
If the Albanians really do feel left out of life's great feast, it is not because of any willful obstruction from the Macedonians. After all, the latter did not force them to make the statist (and now failing) demands of 2001. Local bureaucracy, affirmative action, language rights, and constitutional change were all things for which Ahmeti and Co. pushed hard. By starting a war with no purpose, the Albanians only condemned themselves to further backwardness - and their political masters were only too happy with that result.
Always a step behind, the Albanians were tricked into believing that happiness, both in Kosovo and in Macedonia, would come through playing at governance in a system from which they had felt estranged. In the Balkans, land of simulation and symbolic victories, the big prize was in getting to become entrenched, mid-level bureaucrats: to work in the dismal confines of a post office processing the very bills they had never been forced to pay before; to collect back pay from their public employer, after returning from fighting that same employer in the war; to study in ethnically pure, ramshackle public schools.
Yet Macedonia is privatizing, Westernizing and seeking more profitable and modern types of work and study. And so, if the Albanians want to return to what was prestigious 30 years ago, why not let them have it? If they want a passport in their own language, so that the Greek border guards will know they are Albanian, and therefore should be denied entry, why not let them have it? And if the fiery Albanian youth of Kumanovo want to block traffic for days, marching down the main street, why not let them have the decrepit public school that they so badly think they need? "Let them go on with their miserable lives, if that's what they want," opined one fed-up Macedonian. "The rest of us have better things to do."
Parasites Lost
It is often said that war is the health of the state. But is not the state also the health of war? The NLA (and KLA before it) would have had no success without a clear, organized state for an enemy, one to which could be affixed all of the blame and responsibility that they themselves evaded as shadowy guerrilla organizations.
But the truth is, these very guerrilla organizations are and always have been just a ward of the state. The Albanian "liberation" movement is defined by its parasitism. Being inherently weak, it can only get results through the sponsorship of a powerful outside power, such as Ottoman Turkey, Nazi Germany or imperial America. It is also well known that the Albanian diaspora has continually funded the Balkan insurrectionists - often one and the same people.
Indeed, back in the days when he was plotting the 2001 war, Ali Ahmeti himself used to collect social security in Switzerland. It is a common practice for Albanian men of Macedonia and Kosovo to go to Western Europe to work illegally, where they also collect social security, while all the while the family back home is also collecting social security and, until very recently, getting free utilities and phone service. Ironically, the former fighters of the DUI, who benefited from such trickery, are now beginning to appreciate some of the problems it can raise for the cash-strapped government they are now participating in.
For the Albanians, the only thing worse than living in the Macedonian state would be living outside of it. Failing to recognize this has doomed them to a life of delusions and collective torpor. Which would suit just fine the manipulative politicians and interventionist hacks who thrive on perpetuating the misery and backwardness of the Balkan peoples.
-------- britain
Galloway wins apology from US newspaper
George Galloway: 'Allegations based on malice, fabrication and forgery'
Ciar Byrne
Friday June 20, 2003
UK Guardian
http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,981461,00.html
An American newspaper has apologised to suspended Labour MP George Galloway over allegations that he was paid millions of pounds by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Christian Science Monitor, which accused Mr Galloway of accepting payments totalling $10m in return for promoting Saddam's interests in the west, has admitted that the documents which were the basis for its story appear to be forgeries.
An "extensive investigation" by the Monitor revealed that the six papers, dated between 1992 and 1993, were in fact written within the last few months, according to chemical analysis of the ink.
"At the time we published these documents, we felt they were newsworthy and appeared credible, although we did explicitly state in our article that we could not guarantee their authenticity," said Paul Van Slambrouck, the editor of the Monitor.
"It is important to set the record straight: we are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologize to Mr Galloway and to our readers," he added.
In an interview with the Press Association, Mr Galloway said today he did not accept the newspaper's apology.
"I said from the beginning that these allegations were based on malice, fabrication and forgery and that they would soon fall apart under scrutiny. That is now beginning to happen," he said.
"This newspaper published on its front page in every country in the world that I had taken $10m from Saddam Hussein. That was a grave and serious libel.
"Of course the documents were a forgery and a newspaper of that importance ought to have made the effort, both morally and legally, to establish the authenticity of those documents before they published them."
Mr Galloway, who was suspended from the Labour party last month pending an internal investigation into whether he brought the party into disrepute by urging British troops not to fight in an illegal war against Iraq, has always denied allegations that he took money from Saddam's regime.
The MP is also facing inquiries into his pro-Iraq fund, the Mariam appeal, from the charity commission and the commission for parliamentary standards.
Mr Galloway has threatened to sue the Monitor for libel, alongside the Daily Telegraph, which also alleged he took money from the former Iraqi ruler. · To give MediaGuardian a story email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857
----
Weapons claims fitted US plans, says Wilkie
By Peter Fray,
Herald Correspondent in London
June 20 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/1055828436631.html
The Australian and British governments grossly exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to stay in step with the United States' plan to invade Iraq, a former senior Australian defence analyst has told a British parliamentary inquiry.
Andrew Wilkie, formerly with the Office of National Assessment, also accused John Howard of repeating false claims about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger so that he could be a player on the world stage.
Mr Wilkie said both governments had ignored warnings from their own intelligence agencies that the US was intent on deposing Saddam Hussein for "strategic and domestic reasons".
Deliberately distorted and doctored evidence about Iraq's weapons program had backed up a series of "ridiculous", "preposterous" and "fundamentally flawed" claims before the war.
"The British and Australian governments were deliberately intent on using WMD to exaggerate the Iraq threat so as to stay in step with the US . . .
"It was a rare opportunity for the Australian Prime Minister to be a player given the involvement of Australian agencies in this matter."
Mr Wilkie was invited to give evidence to the foreign affairs select committee - one of two British parliamentary inquiries examining the Blair Government's justification for war.
He said the heavily qualified language from intelligence agencies about the reliability of information from Iraqi dissidents was ignored.
"The apparent direct political interference with intelligence agencies in the United States and the more subtle political pressure applied in London and Canberra, meant that the rules were different with Iraq," he said.
"Intelligence that once would have been discarded was now useable, with qualification. The problem was that the juicy bits of intelligence most in accord with governments' position were being latched on to and the qualifications were being dropped."
He told the Herald outside the hearing that US interests in Iraq included gaining access to Iraq's oil reserves and trying to restart the Middle East peace process.
Mr Wilkie, an analyst who had worked on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, resigned on March 11 in protest against the Government's war stance.
While he did not deny Saddam had a weapons program or was a "horrid" ruler, it was obvious several claims made by the Australian, British and US governments were exaggerated and in some cases "simply wrong".
These included the "ridiculous" suggestion in the Blair Government's first dossier released last September that Saddam had extensive stockpiles from the 1980s and 1990s of unaccounted-for chemical or biological weapons - including 360 tonnes of bulk chemical agent and 3000 tonnes of precursor chemicals.
He said it was impossible to make such claims when not even the Iraqis themselves knew how much had ever been produced, how much had been used against Iran in the 1980s or how much had been destroyed outside the UN's gaze in the 1990s.
"Most chemical and biological agents soon break down unless produced to a very high level of purity and then effectively stabilised," he said.
Claims about Iraq's weapons build-up between 1998 and 2002, when UN weapons inspectors were absent, were also "unconvincing" as Iraq had neither the technical nor practical abilities to rebuild its program so quickly.
"For the Iraqis to have rebuilt their WMD program since 1998, virtually from scratch, would have been an enormous undertaking."
-------- business
Thefts Plague U.S. Contractors' Efforts in Iraq
Security Issues Delay Rebuilding
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14326-2003Jun19?language=printer
To get the lights back on and the air conditioning humming again in Iraq, U.S. construction firm Bechtel National Inc. needed a giant tool called a crimper to repair and reconnect high-voltage power lines. But three days after the San Francisco-based company shipped in an 80-pound crimper last month, the $15,000 tool disappeared, stolen in a ripple of looting that has become a major challenge for aid workers and private contractors operating in Iraq.
The rebuilding effort also has been hampered by security concerns, according to government and contractor reports from the field. On Monday, as the port of Umm Qasr opened again to commercial traffic, the U.S. Agency for International Development issued a report saying security there remains "a major problem" and "has become even more problematic" in recent weeks.
Last week, men armed with pistols and grenades carried away bags of flour from a humanitarian ship docked at the docks, the agency said, while three days ago a looter was electrocuted trying to make off with part of the recently repaired power grid.
Contractors said similar security problems are evident around the county, raising unease about personal safety and, in some cases, creating delays at a time when the U.S. government is anxious to show signs of progress.
Ross W. Wherry, USAID's senior reconstruction adviser for Asia and the Near East, said the concerns have increased security costs "substantially."
"I begrudge that because I believe the money spent on security could be better spent providing services," he added.
The security conditions in Iraq are similar to the dangers aid workers and contractors have faced in a number of other war-torn countries, including Afghanistan and Bosnia, Wherry said. "The risk is less that an aid worker will be caught in a firefight but rather that there might be an armed robbery, a nasty crowd, a vehicle accident or personal assault.
"They have to get by on their common sense, knowledge of local habits and culture, and ability to collect and evaluate information before they travel into a project area -- plus a good radio, two spare tires and a first-aid kit."
Contractors traveling with military escorts said they welcome having the protection, which also saves them from hiring private security, though it inevitably slows them down.
Reid Maness, a spokesman for RTI International, a North Carolina firm contracted to build support for local governance in Iraq, said the company has been able to start neighborhood council meetings in more than 40 locations in Baghdad in spite of the security difficulties and "so far without incident."
But, Maness said, the firm takes "explicit precautions," always traveling with at least two vehicles and a military escort.
Confidential internal reports from private firms working in Iraq point to specific cases of what appears to be organized looting and smuggling operations.
According to one report, more than 500 tons of copper, aluminum and steel stolen from the electrical transmission towers are being sold daily across the Iranian border. "Interrupting these very organized operations [is] a personal security threat," the report said, adding that some of the looting appears "at least partially, intended to disrupt restoration of the power system."
Abt Associates, a Massachusetts firm contracted by USAID to rebuild Iraq's health system, said it will not bring in replacement medical equipment such as kidney dialysis machines until the situation is more secure.
"The security issue is the overwhelming issue," said Stephen A. Horblitt, spokesman for D.C.-based Creative Associates International Inc., which has the USAID contract to rebuild Iraq's school system.
For Bechtel, which has the main contract to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, including the Umm Qasr port, the problems have been particularly acute.
In April, when the company first set out to assess the damage to Iraq's transmission towers on the southeastern leg of a line from Qurnah to Al Kut, it found 13 towers knocked down by looters in search of cooper, aluminum and steel. A month later, it discovered 52 more towers had been destroyed.
"When you find a substation that doesn't need a lot of attention, you go back the next day, and it's looted, it's destroyed, it's trashed," said Bechtel spokesman Howard N. Menaker. "Security of the infrastructure remains a very serious problem."
In spite of the conditions, workers are making progress, according to USAID and the contractors.
Arthur Keys, president and chief executive of D.C.-based International Relief Development Inc., which is working to clean the sewage and garbage in Baghdad under a USAID grant, said his group hasn't been affected by the same security issues because it is only working in areas that have not had a security incident within 24 hours -- a requirement imposed by the U.S. military.
"We find the security conditions in the neighborhoods not to be an issue," he said.
Creative Associates and Bechtel have identified 18 schools in Al Basrah for reconstruction and refurbishment. And contractor Skylink Air and Logistic Support Inc. is mobilizing the Iraqi labor force to get water and electricity up and running at the Baghdad International Airport.
"We've only been there for a month," Wherry said. "We can't claim success by any means, but there's enough stability that we can then begin to look at what's happening in the country and how we can begin to make Iraqis come back to life that [is] a little more livable."
Meanwhile, Bechtel has replaced its stolen crimper with a much larger model -- one that should be more difficult to cart off.
-------- chemical weapons
Discarded War Munitions Leach Poisons Into the Baltic
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/europe/20BALT.html
TALLIN, Estonia - American teams may be struggling to find chemical weapons and other poisonous materials in Iraq, but tens of thousands of bombs and barrels filled with blistering agents and nerve gas lie scattered in the Baltic Sea and the eastern Atlantic.
American, British and Soviet military dumped them there after World War II. Entire ships full of weapons, most of them captured from Nazi Germany, were scuttled for disposal and forgotten. Now they have come back to haunt the environment.
Over time, scientists say, the weapon casings have corroded in the seawater and become brittle, allowing poisons like arsenic, lewisite, mustard gas and sarin to leach out. Scientists from the Baltic countries and Russia have found lethal material mixed in with sediments, and highly toxic sulfur mustard gas, transformed into brown-yellow clumps of gel, has washed ashore.
The problem is compounded by fishermen who have gone into risky areas to chase depleted fish stocks, using increasingly aggressive methods, including bottom tackle that snag the bombs. They routinely find mustard gas clumps among their catch and haul up whole or damaged chemical bombs in their nets.
"We had 10 cases of people finding bombs this year," said Begr Rasmussen, head of the Fishermen's Association of Bornholm, the Danish island close to one of the main dumping grounds. Denmark, which offers special incentives for reporting munitions to the military for retrieval, has recorded more than 400 such incidents in the last two decades.
Scientists believe that some of the poisons dissipate in the water, but others, like arsenic, can build up in the food chain. Little is known about their effect on marine biology, but people touching or inhaling them are likely to get hurt. Several fishermen have been treated for burns and other poisoning symptoms after handling leaking shells.
Fishing is now forbidden around the four main dumping grounds, which hold an estimated 300,000 tons of munitions. But in other areas, where sea currents and bottom tackle have dispersed many shells, vessels are required to keep gas masks, rubber gloves and special medical kits with antipoison powders and injections on board.
Either ignored or kept secret by governments until the 1980's, the dumps have now become a subject of debate among environmental and other concerned citizens' groups, some of whom have demanded urgent cleanups.
With four Baltic states - Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - set to join the European Union next year, all types of pollution are coming under new scrutiny. But there is wide disagreement on what to do about the rusting chemical bombs.
Mr. Rasmussen, of the Bornholm fishermen's association, said it would help if governments from all nine Baltic countries would follow the Danish example. When a Danish captain finds a suspicious object, Mr. Rasmussen said, he calls a naval emergency number. A navy team boards the vessel to disinfect the crew and the ship and destroy the catch. The fishermen are reimbursed for their lost income.
"It's the only way," Mr. Rasmussen said. "We know that Polish, Swedish and German fishermen use bottom nets and pull up bombs. Then they throw them back and they keep scattering them. I say: pay the fishermen, so they're not afraid to lose their catch, and the military will pick up the bombs."
But the Baltic and the North Sea are only part of the world's underwater chemical weapons graveyards. Large arsenals were also discarded in waters off the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Russia, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague.
Others sites are still unaccounted for because marine dumping was required to be declared under the Chemical Weapons Convention only after 1985.
Compared with other ocean dumps, the Baltic Sea is particularly sensitive. It is shallower than most and its semi-enclosed, brackish waters are renewed only every 30 years.
Some scientists and politicians insist that the chemical bombs must be retrieved. Arnold Ruutel, the president of Estonia, told a recent meeting on the Baltic environment that the discarded munitions contained an estimated 60,000 tons of toxic agents, including 14 chemicals. He called for a regional plan "to neutralize this source of danger," adding that "this is our responsibility for future generations."
Vadim Paka, director of the Oceanography Institute in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, said surveys showed that "even deep waters are not safe for toxic materials because bottom currents can be turbulent and move the poisons around."
He said his team of marine scientists found mustard gas residues in the soil last year and arsenic up to 100 times higher than normal levels.
"I don't think we face a catastrophe," he said. "But any persistent highly toxic agent in the ecosystem is dangerous."
Others, including military experts, insist that it is best to let the weapons degrade in the water, allowing time and bacteria to break them down. Clearing the dumps, they argue, is very costly and risky because the munitions could explode or break up, causing additional damage.
"After numerous studies, the government concluded that it's safest to leave the munitions alone," Svend Auken, Denmark's former minister of environment, said.
One option being debated is a plan to entomb the deteriorating shells in cement. On the sea floor off the Norwegian and Swedish coasts lie some 40 ships filled with chemical and other weapons, retrieved from Nazi Germany and scuttled on American and British orders in the late 1940's. Mr. Paka said the ships' holds could be pumped full of concrete.
Far more complicated, he said, would be coating the large dumps near the islands of Bornholm and Gotland. There, he said, Soviet soldiers simply threw barrels and shells overboard with no containment, spilling them over large areas. They have been further dispersed by currents and fishermen.
Any solution, other than ignoring the weapons, is likely to cost millions of dollars, and it is not clear who would pay.
For now, the dumps are monitored sporadically by the Helsinki Commission, an international group that looks after the health of the Baltic Sea. Its last assessment, in 1996, said that the chemical weapons "are not causing any appreciable harm to the Baltic environment" and that the situation "has neither improved nor deteriorated."
At the same time, the commission published detailed instructions for fishermen on the first aid equipment they should keep on board and how to quickly treat any contamination.
"It's an illusion to think we can clear up this mess," said Jean-Pierre Henriet, a geophysicist who has tracked dumps of mustard gas weapons in deep waters off the Belgian coast.
"This is a worldwide problem," he said, "and there's no easy way to destroy these munitions in bulk. It's done slowly, one by one." Farmers and fishermen still find them across northern Europe.
With stacks of such weapons from two world wars still waiting to be destroyed, he added, "it makes no sense to collect more from the sea."
-------- china
China's missile tests
June 20, 2003
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
China's military is preparing to conduct a flight test of the new DF-31 mobile missile, according to U.S. officials. The test is one of three missile shots expected to take place in the next several weeks.
In addition to the DF-31 test, China's military also will flight-test a medium-range DF-21 missile and a submarine-launched JL-2.
All three missiles are part of China's strategic military buildup.
A U.S. official confirmed the missile tests after a Russian press report last week said Beijing's Defense Ministry had notified Moscow of the three upcoming tests.
The tests are expected to take place from the Wuzhai missile test center north of Beijing, and the missiles' dummy warheads will be targeted at an impact range in the remote Lop Nur test range in northwestern China.
-------- europe
EU weighs more activist foreign policy
Thomas Fuller/IHT
International Herald Tribune
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/100207.html
PORTO CARRAS, Greece European leaders will discuss and probably endorse on Friday a broad plan that calls for a more aggressive collective foreign policy, including an increase in defense spending and greater pooling of diplomatic resources.
The document, which was prepared by Javier Solana, the Union's foreign policy chief, outlines the main threats to the EU and calls for a "more active, more coherent and more capable" response.
In some places the document echoes the tough rhetoric of President George W. Bush. Without using the term "rogue states," the document says that countries that "persistently violate" international norms "should understand that there is a price to be paid, including in their relationship with the European Union." Further on, the document says, "We need to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid, and when necessary, robust intervention." If adopted by the leaders, the text could serve as a sort of catharsis following the bruising divisiveness of the Iraq war. The three-day meeting that began here Thursday is the first formal summit meeting of European leaders since the Iraq war.
When the European Union expands eastward next May it will have a population of 450 million people and will produce a quarter of the world's economic output. "It's the first time that the Union says, 'We are an actor in the world. Let's look at what contribution we can make collectively,'" said Cristina Gallach, the spokeswoman for the Union's foreign policy office. "None of these threats we face now can be faced alone," she said.
Gallach said she had "no doubt" that the leaders would endorse the document.
Where the document is vague, however, is in clearly defining the Union's future relationship with the United States.
Peter Ludlow, an author and analyst on EU politics, says this is the "nub" of the Union's difficulties in forging a common foreign policy. "That's where the division is," Ludlow said.
According to many Brussels analysts, European divisions during the Iraq conflict were a proxy war within the Union on the question of how to handle relations with the United States.
By contrast, the Union has little trouble in laying out its common foreign policy toward Asian or Latin American countries.
Ludlow says Europe's foreign policy "will break down until there is a sense that we have an identity distinct from the United States." Perhaps in an attempt to make the document more palatable to the Union's more pro-American members - Britain, Spain, Denmark and Italy, among them - there are numerous references to the need for watertight trans-Atlantic cooperation.
The documents says "no other country or group of countries comes close" to the military might of the United States.
The trans-Atlantic relationship is described as one of the "core elements" of the international system and as indeed "irreplaceable." Yet implicit in the document is that Europe will forge its own foreign policy that may differ from the goals of the United States.
The document describes the United Nations as the "fundamental framework of international relations." The text says Europe should exert more influence on its neighbors. The Union should take a "stronger interest" in the problems of the southern Caucasus; and it should extend the benefits of economic prosperity to countries like Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, "while resolving political problems there." "We are stronger when we act together," the text says, adding that the EU should both increase defense spending and pool the use of its 45,000 diplomats.
The timing of the document is appropriate. The main item on the summit agenda is deciding the timetable for debate and ultimately implementation of Europe's future constitution.
The draft constitution includes the creation of a post of European president and foreign minister, both designed to raise the profile of the Union in the world. S.
European leaders must reach out beyond New York and Washington and tell the heartland of America about "our brand of democracy" in order to improve Europe's image in America, according to a memorandum submitted for discussion at the European Union summit meeting, The Associated Press reported from Porto Carras.
The memorandum, a copy of which was obtained by AP, will be submitted Friday by the Greek foreign minister, George Papandreou, to the 15 EU leaders and those of the 10 countries set to join next year. Greece holds the current rotating EU presidency.
The memo declares that the EU's goal at next week's U.S.-EU summit meeting in Washington will be "to reassert the fundamental importance of the relationship" with the United States.
-------- iran
Paris Raid Reveals Washington's Fractured Iran Policy
Commentary/Analysis,
William O. Beeman,
Pacific News Service,
Jun 20, 2003
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ce5d2d56be9ef1c09b6000ccca8ab2d5
Editor's Note: Student protests in Iran and the arrests in France of members of an Iranian opposition group cast light on splits and confusion within the Bush administration about what to do about the clerical regime in Iran.
When masked French police swooped in to arrest 150 members of the People's Mujahedeen recently, they did more than deal a crippling blow to the armed Iranian opposition group. From distant Paris suburbs, the raid shed a light on Washington's confusion about what to do about Iran's inconvenient clerical regime.
Hopes of regime change in Iran are high in Washington's consciousness these days, playing out against a backdrop of continuing student protests in Tehran. Washington neoconservatives had been betting on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq organization, known as the People's Mujahedeen, to strike the blow that might finally oust the mullahs, or at least contribute significantly to the effort. With the arrest of key leaders of the Iranian opposition group in Paris, these plans appear to have been disrupted.
The People's Mujahadeen is the military branch of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a secular group that helped overthrow the Shah in 1979. When the Council itself was then ousted from the Islamic Republic because it wanted a more participatory system, it took up residence in exile, in France, Norway, and in the United States, where it still operates. Later, it installed itself in Iraq as a paramilitary organization with troops, tanks and guns, sheltered and supported by Saddam Hussein.
Washington is split over the People's Mujahedeen. Those who dislike them include the State Department and some Congress members. Those who like them include sectors of the Defense Department and other members of Congress. (Iranian monarchists like them, while most Iranians regard them as traitors.)
The State Department declared the People's Mujahedeen a terrorist organization in 1997. One hundred and fifty U.S. congress members protested, but the designation remains in place. The European Union, too, considers them terrorists.
Despite that branding, the Defense Department and its supporters see the group as an asset in toppling Tehran's clerical regime. On April 15, the U.S. Central Command revealed it had negotiated a cease-fire with the People's Mujahedeen that would have allowed them to keep weapons and maintain their organization intact. Clearly they were meant to be kept in reserve as a source for intelligence briefings, and to intimidate the mullahs. Following protests from Iran and the United States, however, the fighters were only nominally disarmed, turning in their heavy weapons.
Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes, conservative commentators with ties to Paul Wolfowitz and other Washington hawks, wrote in May in the New York Post that Washington should remove the group's "terrorist" designation, since their efforts would further U.S. policy in the region. They referred to the fighters by their initials, MEK or MKO: "Maintaining the MKO as an organized group in separate camps in Iraq offers an excellent way to intimidate and gain leverage over Tehran."
Clawson and Pipes reflected current Pentagon thinking. A June 6 article in the New York Daily Forward quoted Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department official: "The Office of Special Plans has been willing to reach out to the MKO and use them as a surrogate to pressure Iran."
The Paris raid was a serious blow to the organization. It accomplished the arrest of symbolic leader Maryam Rajavi, and her husband Masoud Rajavi, acknowledged as the group's real leader, and confiscated 1.3 million dollars. It touched off protests throughout Europe, including at least three self-immolations.
Instead of commenting specifically on the Paris arrests, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said only, "We certainly applaud efforts around the world to take these actions against terrorist groups." But the U.S. overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, was more forthcoming. "The Mujahedeen ... is a terrorist group, it has been identified as that ... If (the French) have arrested some people, I am glad to hear it," he said at a Baghdad briefing.
Iranian opposition groups suspected that the raid came out of a deal between the governments of France and Iran. However, London's Financial Times and The New York Times reported that important U.S. intelligence contributed to the operation.
The People's Mujahedeen adventure should raise a red flag for Americans. There are too many dissonant voices speaking in too many different directions to constitute a comprehensive Iran policy -- from a split Washington to U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq. There is much wishing that the clerics would simply disappear, and half-hearted, ineffectual feints at making that happen.
However, lasting change in Iran will not come from better plots and schemes from Washington. Iranians themselves see such notions as both naïve and arrogant. Eventually, the Iranian people will create the changes they need to realize their aspirations as a nation and a people. They know, and Americans should know, that outsiders cannot do it for them, particularly not outsiders who have been feuding with them for more than 20 years. Washington should learn that frequently, the most effective strategy is to do nothing.
PNS contributor William O. Beeman (William_beeman@brown.edu) teaches anthropology and is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is author of "Language, Status and Power in Iran," and two forthcoming books: "Double Demons: Cultural Impediments to U.S.-Iranian Understanding," and "Iraq: State in Search of a Nation."
-------- iraq
Soldiers 'will create cycle of revenge'
By Patrick Hennessy and Patrick Sawer,
UK Evening Standard
20 June 2003
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/5413473?source=Evening%20Standard
MPs from across the political spectrum today reacted with shock and concern to revelations that trigger-happy US troops in Iraq regularly kill civilians.
Yesterday the Evening Standard published confessions from American soldiers that they have fired indiscriminately at non-combatants and left wounded fighters to die or even shot them.
The GIs said they were often unable to tell civilians from enemy troops.
However, former government whip Graham Allen, who led Labour backbenchers in opposition to the war against Saddam, said the Americans' conduct was creating a "cycle of hatred and revenge".
Mr Allen said President Bush had "failed in his responsibility to prepare properly for the occupation of Iraq when Saddam Hussein had gone", adding: "Mr Bush never told his army or his people what to expect.
"The result is the terrible and growing toll of casualties of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and a cycle of mistrust, hatred and revenge reminiscent of Vietnam. This situation is intolerably dangerous, not only for the Americans and the Iraqis but for British forces, administrators and aid workers."
Mr Allen said there was now only one answer - the full-scale takeover of Iraq's administration by the United Nations.
Another leading Labour anti-war rebel, former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle, said: "I think the Standard's report shows, sadly, that the predictions many of us made - that the invasion of Iraq would increase chaos - have been coming true.
"While the British have their own difficulties, their experience in peacekeeping makes them far more disciplined than their American counterparts. It is indicative of how badly planned and ill thought-out the whole Iraqi escapade was."
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said: "This approach is hardly likely to win over hearts and minds in Iraq. If anything, it is likely to provoke further unrest. There must be serious doubts about the legality of these actions, which on the face of it, constitute serious breaches of the Geneva Convention."
And Colonel Bob Stewart, commander of the UK peacekeeping force in Bosnia, warned the US could reap a whirlwind of its own making - an extremist Islamic state in Iraq - unless it reined in its soldiers.
Col Stewart added: "What the Americans are doing will lead to more and more revenge attacks by Iraqis. The worst scenario is that an Islamic republic will be created as a result of the actions of American soldiers."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "These are American soldiers commenting on American operations. I am sure that the American government will be looking into this report and making its own investigations."
A Ministry of Defence spokesman added: "Obviously we would expect all the forces there to abide by the Geneva Convention. We have our own rules of engagement and the Americans have theirs."
The performance of the US military is to be examined by human rights groups and will be the subject of an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
----
Rising U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Spurs Concern
9 Soldiers Killed in Attacks This Month
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14499-2003Jun19?language=printer
Inside the Bush administration, where top officials resolutely emphasize postwar progress in Iraq while playing down the setbacks, the rising American death toll and the increasing number of attacks on U.S. troops are causing increasing worry.
The death of a U.S. soldier yesterday near Baghdad brought to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq this month in a string of sporadic rocket and sniper attacks. Fifty-four Americans have died in accidents or military action since President Bush declared the war ended on May 1, equal to more than one-third of the 139 wartime deaths.
Bush and his top military and foreign policy officials define the casualties as a necessary cost of a successful military occupation. They say the deaths, while painful, are secondary to recent progress on economic and security issues. As one said yesterday, "Are we better off today than we were a month ago? Yes."
Yet senior aides and members of Congress are talking warily of the dangers ahead, as well as the potential political and diplomatic fallout, amid evidence that Iraqi renegades are determined to fight. Indeed, the commanding general of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division charged this week that anti-American forces are paying Iraqis to kill troops. The perils are significant. It has become clear that U.S. troops will form the majority of the international force in Iraq for many months. Some voices on Capitol Hill, describing the casualties and the extent of the armed Iraqi opposition, have begun to argue that the Bush administration must send more troops or recruit others.
"American troops are being killed daily. Some American family awakens to the news as I did this morning, to find that another American has been killed, and that family that day will have its hearts broken," Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said during a Wednesday hearing.
"There are significant hostile forces," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) told a National Press Club audience yesterday. "There are forces we can't see. There are competitions between power groups vying for power. There's retribution, there's retaliation. And I don't think we do have enough manpower in there."
In one acknowledgement of the troubles, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and other Bush aides have recently put a greater emphasis on the risks. Bush, however, did not mention U.S. casualties when speaking in Minnesota yesterday. Aides said Bush intends to accentuate the positive while speaking about "the challenges and the dangers as we continue to fight the war on terrorism."
Asked why there has been so little public discussion by the Bush defense and foreign policy team about the continuing attacks, one official said other issues have dominated the agenda, including the administration's efforts at Middle East peacemaking and the dispute over evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
"Part of it," the official said, "is that everybody is dealing with the WMD story."
The domestic political fallout remains muted, but analysts and pollsters said it could become significant if the attacks continue and the death toll climbs.
"It hasn't reached much of a decibel level yet," said Ohio State University professor John Mueller, a specialist on the politics of combat casualties, "but it seems very likely it will in due course."
Opinion research companies are only now beginning to seek reactions to postwar casualties, but majorities of people polled before the war said 1,000 or more U.S. combat deaths would be acceptable if Iraq were disarmed and Saddam Hussein toppled. Gallup Poll editor Frank Newport said the context of U.S. deaths will be important.
"It's not so much the casualties themselves -- we've seen the American public has shown a willingness to tolerate casualties -- but what it says about the success of the larger objectives," Newport said. If conditions improve and Iraqis demonstrate general support for the U.S. presence, he added, isolated attacks are likely to be viewed as just that.
U.S. military commanders attribute the attacks that have killed 16 American troops since May 1 to "rogue" elements and "remnants" of Hussein's forces -- part of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls the "untidy" aftermath of regime change.
Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said his troops battle "almost daily" with Baath Party loyalists, militant Islamic fundamentalists and Iraqis "who are poor and are being paid to attack U.S. forces." Interrogations of Iraqis who have tried to kill Americans have revealed payments to anti-American mercenaries, he said.
Aggressive U.S. tactics have forced Iraqis to attack more often, Odierno told reporters by teleconference from Baghdad. Yet he believes the capture of Iraqi suspects and seizure of millions of dollars has weakened the opposition groups, which he called increasingly desperate.
The attacks so far, Odierno said, are "militarily insignificant." He described them as "very small" and "very random." He said they are having "no impact on the way we conduct business on a day-to-day basis in Iraq" and asserted that the attackers themselves are becoming less organized.
The most recent attack occurred yesterday south of Baghdad. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a U.S. military ambulance, killing one American and wounding two others. Earlier in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a rocket-propelled grenade struck a U.S. tank, but no one was hurt.
In Congress, Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), spoke this week of "losing an American a day" in maintaining that more troops from around the world should be dispatched to Iraq to keep the peace and relieve U.S. forces. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said the current situation reminds him of the time when he first began to have doubts about the Vietnam War.
Rumsfeld said Wednesday that Americans will be patient and will tolerate the U.S. casualties.
"I believe that they feel that this is a worthwhile effort on our part," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing, "that it is something that reflects the American spirit, and they recognize the difficulty of the task."
Staff writer Mike Allen and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
--------
INTELLIGENCE
Hussein Is Probably Alive in Iraq, U.S. Experts Say
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/worldspecial/20SADD.html
WASHINGTON, June 19 - American intelligence analysts now believe that Saddam Hussein is much more likely to be alive than dead, a view that has been strengthened in recent weeks by intercepted communications among fugitive members of the Saddam Fedayeen and the Iraqi intelligence service, according to United States government officials.
The officials said the recently obtained intelligence had re-intensified the search for Mr. Hussein along with his sons, Uday and Qusay. The search is being led by Task Force 20, a secret military organization that includes members of the Army's highly specialized Delta Force and of the Navy's elite counterterrorism squads, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency.
The intercepted communications between some of Mr. Hussein's supporters have included credible discussions indicating that the former Iraqi president is alive and must be protected, two Defense Department officials said. Military officials indicated tonight that new operations in the hunt for him were under way.
If Mr. Hussein is alive, the prevailing view among intelligence analysts is that he is still in Iraq. These officials said they suspected that he would feel safer seeking refuge among his supporters in familiar surroundings, rather than risk fleeing to another country, where he could be at greater risk of discovery by American intelligence.
Beyond the intelligence officials, aides to President Bush have begun to express less certainty about the question, saying they do not know whether he is dead or alive. They include those aides who in the immediate aftermath of the war said Mr. Hussein was probably dead.
Increasingly, other officials in the United States and Britain have said publicly that Mr. Hussein probably survived the war. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Fox News last weekend that "probably the majority opinion is that he is alive." The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said in Australia this week that "my judgment and the judgment of the coalition remains that he is almost certainly still in Iraq."
His fate is a factor in the civil unrest in Iraq, endangering American soldiers, some officials say, as Hussein supporters try to organize a continued resistance.
On Monday, the arrest of Mr. Hussein's closest confidant, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, who was No. 4 on an American most-wanted list, raised some hope of obtaining more conclusive information about the former Iraqi leader. The presumption was that Mr. Mahmoud was more likely to have detailed knowledge about what happened to him than almost anyone else in the former government.
At the same time, American officials' optimism about Mr. Mahmoud's capture, near Mr. Hussein's stronghold of Tikrit, has been mixed with disappointment that he was not found to have been hiding with the former president, as some intelligence analysts had suspected.
Mr. Mahmoud's success in eluding capture for nearly two months in a country occupied by nearly 150,000 American soldiers underscored what intelligence officials said was the reality that Iraq still offered many hiding places - even for a figure of of Mr. Hussein's prominence.
Also contributing to the belief that Mr. Hussein may be alive is that the authorities have so far failed to recover specific physical evidence, like his body or DNA material, from the sites of two American bombing raids that tried to kill him.
A number of intelligence analysts said they now believed that he had escaped the two air strikes, on March 20 and April 7. But because they have no conclusive evidence one way or the other, they said they had stopped short of drawing any firm conclusions about his fate.
It was known that Task Force 20 has led the hunt for chemical and biological weapons. But its role in trying to determine the fate of Mr. Hussein had not been previously disclosed. Some officials have suggested that the efforts are linked and that he or his sons left power with a precise knowledge of Iraq's weapons program.
Task Force 20, the military organization that defense officials said had been charged with conducting the search, reports to the Central Command and its leader, Gen. Tommy R. Franks. The Central Command has only recently acknowledged the existence of Task Force 20, and a spokesman for the command, James Wilkinson, said he would not comment on it or its mission. But other American officials said it was being supported by several intelligence agencies, including the C.I.A., and was organized so it could act quickly on intelligence gathered by satellites and electronic eavesdropping.
The uncertainty about Mr. Hussein has complicated American efforts to stabilize Iraq. Administration officials said conviction that he may be alive appears to be an important factor in the surge of armed opposition against American forces.
Although the resistance has been sporadic and localized, some of the fighters appear to have been coordinated at local levels by the fugitive members of the Saddam Fedayeen, a paramilitary organization, and remnants of the former Iraqi intelligence service, American officials said.
"These guys are growing in resistance, and they're still being troublesome, and you have to ask what's motivating them," a defense official said. The officials said recent intelligence reports had indicated that Mr. Hussein and his inner circle were trying to garner support inside the country.
The whereabouts of Mr. Hussein's two sons also remains a mystery. The second son, Qusay, is believed almost certainly to be alive, American officials said. They described that view as being much stronger than the theories about Mr. Hussein himself.
But they said debate continued about Uday Hussein, the elder son, with some intelligence officials believing that he had been killed, possibly in the first American raid.
In the weeks since the end of the war, the White House and the Pentagon have tried to shift attention from the question of their inability to find Mr. Hussein. They said that the open question would have no impact on the American troops in Iraq and that the most important thing was that he had been removed from power.
White House officials have said it may take months or longer to resolve the uncertainty about Mr. Hussein's fate, a time frame they have compared to the six months needed to confirm Hitler's death at the end of World War II.
"Of course, the search for all senior Iraqi regime figures is important, and is getting all sorts of effort," the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said in an interview today. "But what is really important is the fact that Saddam is no longer running the country - and he won't be."
But some American military and intelligence officials in Washington and Iraq have begun to argue that the question of whether Mr. Hussein is alive or dead is increasingly relevant. The new American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, acknowledged this month that the coalition's inability to capture him or recover his body was helping to fuel a resistance movement led by Baath Party members.
"I would obviously prefer that we had clear evidence that Saddam is dead or that we had him alive in our custody," Mr. Bremer said. "It does make a difference because it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and in the villages, as they are doing, saying: `Saddam is alive, and he's going to come back. And we're going to come back.' "
Asked about efforts to find Mr. Hussein and his sons, Mr. Wilkinson said only: "We don't comment on our specific efforts on this front, but clearly the search for the leadership is one of several key priorities. And as others have said, if they're dead, we've got them, and if they're alive, we'll get them."
American forces have tried to get answers to the puzzling question of whether Mr. Hussein was killed in the air attacks. American military engineers equipped with bulldozers and backhoes began excavation work at a restaurant in the Mansur district of Baghdad, the target of the April 7 strike. But intelligence officials in Washington said the search had turned up empty.
The status of excavation efforts at the second site, known as Doura Farms, south of Baghdad, is less clear. The site was reported to have been the target of the March 20 air raid that began the war with an attempt to kill Mr. Hussein and his sons, but its exact location has never been specified by American officials. Reporters who have visited a suspected site recently said it had been graded over.
Precise information about Mr. Hussein has been very difficult for the government to obtain. Defense Department officials said Iraqi officials in American custody had told interrogators that he was not at the site of the April 7 attack, contradicting claims in earlier intelligence by what they said were two independent sources that prompted the strike on the restaurant.
Overall, American officials said that the most senior Iraqi officials now in custody were proving to be highly trained in resisting American interrogation techniques, even if they were coercive, and that they had provided little information of value about Mr. Hussein.
Interrogators have reported that detainees appeared to provide detailed information only about subjects they believed the authorities already were aware of and provided rambling answers to specific questions without revealing the extent of their information about Mr. Hussein or Iraq's weapons programs.
-------- israel
Netanyahu says Iraq-Israel oil line not pipe-dream
By Reuters
Friday, June 20, 2003 Sivan 20, 5763
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/307500.html
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expects an oil pipeline from Iraq to Israel to be reopened in the near future after being closed when Israel became a state in 1948.
"It won't be long when you will see Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa," the port city in Northern Israel, Netanyahu told a group of British investors, declining to give a timetable.
"It is just a matter of time until the pipleline is reconstituted and Iraqi oil will flow to the Mediterranean."
Netanyahu later told Reuters the government is in the early stages of looking into the possibility of reopening the pipeline, which during the British Mandate sent oil from Mosul to Haifa via Jordan. "It's not a pipe-dream," Netanyahu said.
In April, a source at the National Infrastructure Ministry told Reuters Israel and Jordan would hold talks on reopening the pipeline, which Israel believes would lower fuel costs by 25 percent.
The source said that the Israeli section of the pipeline was in good condition but did not know about the Jordanian section.
Jordanian officials denied they would meet Israeli officials, citing cold relations with the Jewish State since the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in late 2000.
Separately, Netanyahu told reporters that British Finance Minister Gordon Brown asked that Israel consider buying natural gas from British Gas, which found gas off the Gaza coast.
"I told him we would consider it as an auxillary supplier to other suppliers," Netanyahu said. "We always want to diversify. But I want an understanding there would be no political pressure."
Israel had planned to buy its natural gas from Israeli suppliers, which discovered commercial quantities of gas off Israel's coast, and from Egypt.
But earlier this month Egypt said it wanted to renegotiate its contract, prompting Israeli officials to believe Egypt did not want to sell to Israel.
As a result, Israel turned to British Gas and the Infrastructure Minister ordered state-owned Israel Electric Corp to hold talks with British Gas over the supply of gas so that it will have two suppliers for its gas turbines.
----
Powell Urges Israelis and Arabs to Act Quickly for Peace
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By IAN FISHER with TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/middleeast/20CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, June 20 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called on Israel and the Palestinians today to act quickly in their efforts to bring peace to the Mideast, saying now was "a moment of opportunity, and we must all seize it."
"We have to move urgently," he said at a news conference in Jericho, on the West Bank, after talks there with the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. "We have to move with great speed and deliberateness," he added.
Mr. Powell earlier held talks in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, after which the secretary called the militant group Hamas an "enemy of peace" and said all militant groups must be disarmed.
In Jericho, referring to the steps needed to carry out the so-called road map for peace, which is backed by Washington, Mr. Powell said:
"None of this is easy. Both the Palestinians and Israelis need to make some very difficult decisions and to take some hard steps. But now is a moment of opportunity, and we all must seize it. I know the prime minister wants the best for his people, as does the United States."
He said he agreed with Mr. Abbas that "violence and terror" are not the way to build a state, a subject he referred to after his talks with Mr. Sharon, when he called on the Palestinian Authority to take decisive steps to disarm Islamic militant groups.
In Jericho, Mr. Powell said he had made it clear in his talks with Mr. Sharon that "Israel, too, has obligations."
He added: "Israel must follow up on initial steps to build confidence and to ease the daily plight of the Palestinian people. Earlier today, Prime Minister Sharon and I discussed all of the issues that are of so much concern to the Palestinian people, including prisoners, removal of unauthorized outposts, and concrete steps to improve the daily life of the Palestinians. He understands that he has a responsibility to see that progress is made on these issues as well as on security."
Mr. Abbas, who appeared at the news conference with Mr. Powell, said "progress in the political arena" was not being translated into "action on the ground." He added: "Israel has to convert itself from being an enemy to a partner to solve our conflict forever. They have to change their path. The confrontation logic does not coincide with the logic of peace."
More than 60 Israelis and Palestinians have been killed in bombings and shootings since the Mideast summit meeting in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4.
As Mr. Sharon and Mr. Powell spoke, an Israeli motorist was killed and three passengers were wounded in an attack near the Palestinian city of Ramallah on the West Bank. A Hamas-linked Web site claimed responsibility for the shooting on behalf of the group.
After his talks with Mr. Sharon, Mr. Powell said a truce with the militant groups was not sufficient, which is Israel's position, too.
Mr. Powell said no progress could be made on the peace plan until the Palestinians go beyond a truce and Palestinian security forces take action to disarm the groups.
Mr. Abbas has said he prefers not to use force against the groups, including Hamas, for fear of setting off a civil war.
Mr. Powell said that as long as Hamas remains committed to terror and violence, "this is a problem we have to deal with in its entirety."
Hamas has been responsible for more acts of violence than any of the other Palestinian groups, which include Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade.
Mr. Sharon said the Palestinians must realize that without a decisive war on terror, there will be no progress in peace talks.
"A true war on terrorism, on its infrastructure, on the entities that finance it, on those who initiate it and on the dispatchers, is the way to make way and move ahead in a sincere and genuine process," Mr. Sharon said.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader wounded in Gaza last week in an Israeli missile strike meant to kill him, said today that "such statements will not terrorize us and will not force us to stop our resistance to occupation."
Mr. Powell urged both sides to show patience, while Mr. Sharon said that once the Palestinians had accepted security responsibility in areas from which Israel withdraws, they would be held accountable for any attacks launched from those areas.
Many officials believe that Mr. Powell's presence is necessary to push through any tentative first deals aimed at demonstrating good will on both sides and showing ordinary Palestinians and Israelis the concrete benefits to the plan.
On Thursday night, top Israeli and Palestinian security officials resumed talks on the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, after a one-day break. And in Gaza, Mr. Abbas continued for a third day negotiations with the various militant factions, in talks aimed at securing a cease-fire to prevent further attacks on Israelis that could scuttle the plan. No breakthroughs in either area were reported, however.
The Abbas talks are exploring a sensitive issue for Israelis: possibly granting militant leaders, including those from Hamas, as-yet-undefined positions of leadership in a Palestinian government of "national unity" in exchange for renouncing violence.
Palestinians say that approach is preferable to using force to disarm the groups, while Israelis say it rewards terrorists. Among dozens of other attacks, Hamas carried out the suicide bombing last Wednesday in Jerusalem that killed 17 people.
"You're not dealing here with people you can convince," said Raanan Gissin, a top adviser to Mr. Sharon. "They are not going to give up their power on their own volition. They'll do it when they are forced."
Mr. Powell, however, said today that some progress had been made on the terms of an Israeli pullout from parts of Gaza. "The differences are being narrowed," he said.
----
US options for policing the peace in Israel
NATO peacekeepers are one option for buttressing road map.
By Peter Grier
The Christian Science Monitor
June 20, 2003 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0620/p02s02-uspo.html
WASHINGTON - As violence continues to swirl through the Middle East, Washington is paying new attention to an old idea: separating Israelis and Palestinians with a force of international peacekeepers.
This doesn't mean the 82nd Airborne will be heading for the West Bank anytime soon. Both the White House and key members of Congress are committed to seeing how the US-backed road-map peace plan plays out.
But as casualties mount and the two sides struggle to agree on a cease-fire, some officials and outside experts here are beginning to wonder if the US needs to think about more radical measures. Their logic: Such a buffer might provide the stability the region needs to nurture political reconciliation.
"If the road-map process hits a dead end..., at that point you might have to look at some other things," says M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis at the Israel Policy Forum.
On Wednesday this process continued to grind along, but barely. A meeting between Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and representatives from Hamas and other militant factions broke up without agreement on a common position regarding a cease-fire with Israel.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was to meet with both Israelis and Palestinians on Friday in Jerusalem, on his way to a meeting of the Mideast "quartet" - the US, UN, European Union, and Russia - in Jordan.
"I am encouraged that both sides seem to realize that they cannot allow this immediate wave of terrorism to stand in the way of progress down the road map," Powell told reporters during a stop in Cambodia on Wednesday.
But some in Washington have decided that Israeli and Palestinian leaders may unable to halt the violence on their own.
Small units of international peacekeepers have long been a fact of life in the Middle East. In the Sinai such troops monitor the Israeli-Egyptian peace today. President Clinton once considered sending in US GIs to similarly watch over an Israeli-Syrian peace.
Building on this history, last week the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner (R) of Virginia, proposed the use of NATO troops as full-blown Middle East peacekeepers.
NATO units have extensive peacekeeping experience, gained in Bosnia and elsewhere, Warner noted. Their multinational character might be acceptable to both sides, given that Europe has traditionally been sympathetic to Palestinians, and the United States to Israel.
"The NATO offer would have to be willingly accepted by both governments, and it in no way should be viewed as a challenge to either side's sovereignty," said Senator Warner.
The White House has reacted coolly to this proposal - in response President Bush sent Warner a letter that noted that Middle East peace "must be sustainable with the presence of outside peacekeeping forces."
Warner has long been a proponent of this idea. But this time he is far from alone in proposing a broader approach to ending Middle East violence. Such respected Middle East experts as William Quandt of the University of Virginia have echoed his call, saying that something new is needed to get the peace process past the cycle of fighting that typically follows any promising political development.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently told an Israeli newspaper that armed peacekeepers might act as an interim "buffer" between the two sides.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a broadcast interview last Sunday that US troops might eventually be used to help fight terrorists in the region.
In a variation on this theme, former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk has proposed that the Palestinian Authority be transferred into an international trusteeship, complete with an international security force. Such a deployment might be fraught with danger. The phase "buffer force" implies the absorption of attacks, which might be enough to prevent the idea from becoming a reality.
"I really worry about getting our people caught in this body- bag type of situation, having the suicide bombers focusing on US or United Nations troops because they see us as the impediment," said former CIA director Stansfield Turner.
Furthermore, the presence of international troops might produce difficult political questions. For example, where exactly should such a buffer be placed? The line of separation would probably become a de facto border between Israel and a nascent Palestinian state. Israel might object if the forces were placed near its pre-1967 borders, and Palestinians would likewise object to troops in the occupied territories.
Thus political progress might be a necessary precursor to any such deployment. As was said of US-Soviet arms agreements during the Cold War, new international peacekeepers in the Middle East might be possible only when they are no longer necessary.
----
Israel Dismantles a Settlement and Ignites a Family Feud
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/middleeast/20SETT.html
MITZPEH YITZHAR, West Bank, June 19 - In what often looked like an oversize rugby scrum, hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police officers scuffled with Jewish settlers today as they dismantled a small hillside settlement, the first populated one to come down as part of a Middle East peace plan.
Twenty-five miles to the north, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up just after daybreak, killing an Israeli shop owner in a farming community.
With peace efforts sputtering, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to hold separate talks with Israelis and Palestinians on Friday. The two sides have been attempting to work out a cease-fire agreement.
In Mitzpeh Yitzhar, the young, bearded settlers used large rocks to construct barricades, lit hillside brush fires and threw themselves in front of army vehicles in an attempt to prevent soldiers and police officers from taking down several tents and huts.
For the past year, up to 10 settlers have been living at the site, just south of Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank.
"In the Bible, it says this land is for us," said Moshe Cohen, 27, a university student who came from Tel Aviv to protest the dismantling of the settlement. "This land belongs to Israel just as much as Tel Aviv."
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has supported the building of settlements for decades, but the new Middle East peace plan known as the road map requires Israel to take down dozens of small settlements that have cropped up since Mr. Sharon came to power in March 2001.
"I'm telling the young men to hold strong to the land of Israel and not let anybody take it away from them," said Rabbi Eliyakim Levanon, who came from a nearby settlement to protest the government action.
"The government of Israeli gave the soldiers an order which is immoral," said the white-bearded rabbi, dressed in a black suit and a white shirt on a sun-scorched day. "We will try to keep the soldiers from fulfilling the order."
Young men kept vigil overnight Wednesday, and were ready this morning to confront the army and the police as they came up a winding road to the rocky, windswept outpost.
The settlers tossed buckets of purple and orange paint on the windshields of army vehicles. After blocking earthmovers with their bodies and forcing them to stop, the settlers sat inside the jaws, and remained there for hours.
The brush fires they set covered the hillside and quickly spread to nearby Palestinian farms and olive groves.
Many soldiers and police officers did not carry weapons, and sought to avoid using force. But every time they moved toward the outpost, clusters of settlers jumped in their path, and pushing, shoving, shouting and wrestling quickly ensued.
Dozens joined in the fights, and hundreds took part in a melee as the soldiers and police officers pulled down the main tent amid a cloud of dust.
About 30 soldiers, police officers and settlers suffered mostly minor injuries, and the police made 15 arrests, Israel radio reported.
In the pauses between battles, the tense atmosphere would ease and soldiers would share snacks with the settlers.
In one instance, a soldier gave his water bottle to a settler who was dripping with sweat and was tossing wood onto a fire that was blocking the one dirt road that led to the settlement.
One protester, named Yossi, encountered his brother, Moshe, a soldier, Israel radio reported without giving their surname.
"We greeted each other and embraced, and continued with our business," Yossi was quoted as saying. "We know many soldiers in the area, and they know us. We cry, and they cry with us, and we are all equally pained."
By sundown, soldiers had removed the tents and used sledgehammers to demolish a cinder-block hut and an outhouse.
Only a guard post was left standing, but hundreds of settlers remained.
"This government is crazy," said Shilo, a student at a Jewish seminary who declined to give his surname. "We can come back tomorrow and rebuild this."
Mr. Sharon's government said it took down 10 uninhabited settlements last week. Mitzpeh Yitzhar was the first of five populated ones scheduled for destruction.
Mitzpeh Yitzhar is typical of many outposts. It has just a few residents and is less than a mile from the formal settlement of Yitzhar, home to some of the most ideologically hard-line Israeli settlers.
Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says that more than 60 have gone up in the West Bank since Mr. Sharon assumed power.
The Palestinians say that, under the road map, all those must be dismantled. The government, for its part, has not said how many will be torn down, but has suggested it will be far fewer than 60.
More than 200,000 Israelis live in nearly 150 formal settlements built in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.
Adi Mintz, general manager of the Settlers Council, which represents the settlements, said the protesters would make every evacuation difficult.
"Wherever Mr. Sharon tries to move Jews from their homes, we will be there to protest," he said. "Every place that Mr. Sharon destroys, we will rebuild."
----
A War Within a War
Hamas is locked in a complex struggle with Palestinian Authority for leadership
By Avraham Sela
June 20, 2003
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-sela20jun20,0,5995377.story
JERUSALEM - To the outside world, Hamas is synonymous with murderous hostility to Israel, consecutive suicide bombings and religious militancy. Many people also know that Hamas is a powerful social and political movement, deeply rooted in Palestinian society, primarily among the destitute refugees.
But to understand Hamas and how to deal with it - and most important, to know whether there can be a meaningful truce with the group in order to restart the region's long-stalled peace negotiations - it is essential to understand the complex relationship between Hamas and the mainstream Palestinian leadership and the battle for hegemony that is underway. Hamas struggles not only against Israel but also against the secular national leadership represented by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, and more specifically, the Palestinian Authority, whose prime minister is Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas' charter - the group is ideologically committed to wage a holy war against Israel until the liberation of historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean - challenges the PLO and presents itself as an Islamic alternative to what it sees as a bankrupt and deviant national leadership.
In its competition for the political leadership of the Palestinian people, Hamas, in addition to providing social services and promoting the Islamization of the populace, has employed violence against Israel as a primary instrument to rally support among Palestinians.
In this context, violence against Israel has served Hamas well, giving it legitimacy among Palestinians and, therefore, a shield against Palestinian Authority attempts to eliminate it as a popular movement. Violence also elevated Hamas' political significance in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Israel. And, especially since the eruption of the Al Aqsa intifada in October 2000, Hamas' violence has drawn more youth to its military ranks.
Hamas has shown great sensitivity to the public's mood and expectations; it has calculated its policies in accordance with perceived costs and benefits to its constituency. As the Israeli military has systematically destroyed the Palestinian Authority's institutions, infrastructure and coercive capabilities, Hamas has gained increasing prestige on the Palestinian street with its violent suicide attacks on Israel.
Whether or not Hamas (and other opposition groups, both Islamic and non-Islamic) accepts a cease-fire is closely linked to the struggle between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for the dominant position in Palestinian society. In recent weeks, Hamas has presented tough conditions for a cease-fire. It insists on a guaranteed end to Israel's attacks on Palestinians and the release of leading Palestinian prisoners, and it also demands guarantees for preserving its military power.
In the days ahead, Hamas' decision-making will be affected by two major factors.
First, although Israel failed to quell Palestinian violence in general and Hamas' suicide attacks in particular, there is clearly a growing sense of fatigue among Palestinians and a willingness to cut losses and seek other paths. Moreover, Hamas has recently been under heavy and continuous pressure from the Israeli military, which has targeted military echelons and political leaders, as demonstrated by the attempt on the life of Abdulaziz Rantisi.
The second factor is the international and regional effect of President Bush's involvement and his stated commitment to the "road map."
The cumulative effect of the U.S. presidential involvement, a new Palestinian government and strong Egyptian pressures on Hamas to accept a cease-fire has instilled in Hamas' leaders - including those in the West Bank and Gaza - the sense that this is a critical moment. Indeed, the top Hamas officials in Gaza have reportedly left the decision to the "inside" leaders, which is more than a sign of support for a cease-fire.
Understandably, for the last few months Hamas has been perceived as the main obstacle to a hudna, or indefinite truce, that would be a sine qua non for renewing the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic dialogue. Yet even if Hamas accepts a temporary cease-fire, it is doubtful that the parties could maintain it for a significant time without progress toward a broader settlement.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have gone too far in their strife to be able to avoid the daily frictions and tit for tat of violence without a third party to separate them. Without a third-party replacement of the Israeli forces that currently occupy the Palestinian-inhabited territories, it is doubtful that piratic settlements and occasional violence will ever come to a halt.
Avraham Sela, a senior lecturer for Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University, is coauthor of "The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence" (Columbia University Press, 2000).
-------- japan
Okinawa's Strategic Value to Grow--Top U.S. Marine
Fri June 20, 2003
By Linda Sieg
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2959656
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa, Japan - The drastic realignment of U.S. forces now being considered by Washington would likely increase the strategic importance of Japan's Okinawa island -- reluctant host to about half America's military presence in Japan, the top U.S. Marine in Japan said on Friday.
But the need for swift responses to modern threats also means Okinawa and the rest of Japan could function in future more like a strategic "hub" -- facilitating the flow of U.S. forces throughout Asia -- than the static "lily pad" to which Japan's role has been compared, Lt General W.C. "Chip" Gregson, commander of the U.S. Marine Corp Bases, Japan, told Reuters.
"I think it (realignment) will enhance the importance of Okinawa and it will enhance the importance of our bases in Japan overall," Gregson said in an interview at Marine headquarters in Okinawa, where he is finishing up a three-year tour before taking over in Hawaii as Commanding General, Marine Forces, Pacific.
"It (Okinawa) is at the confluence of many, many interests, and has always been so, ever since the days of antiquity."
Washington is considering realigning its military forces around the world to cope with new threats such as terrorism and rogue states possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Media reports -- denied by U.S. officials -- that most of the 17,000 Marines stationed in Okinawa might be shifted elsewhere, perhaps Australia, have raised hopes among residents here that their dream of seeing the U.S military depart might come true.
"I already have forces in Hawaii and I have access to any number of...training areas in Australia," Gregson said.
"We can certainly continue to expand that. But as far as moving everyone someplace, that would be moving us away from the most important interests in Asia instead of toward the most important interests in Asia," he added.
Okinawa -- Japan's poorest prefecture and home to about half the U.S. military presence in Japan -- has long resented bearing what many see as an unfair burden for maintaining the U.S.-Japan security alliance, the pillar of Tokyo's post-war diplomacy.
Periodic crimes by U.S. servicemen, including the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese schoolgirl, have sparked outrage, although recent reactions have been more muted than in South Korea, the other main host to U.S. forces in Asia.
HUB INSTEAD OF LILY PAD?
The issue was highlighted this week, when the United States agreed to the swift handover of a U.S. Marine suspected of raping a 19-year-old Japanese woman to police in order to avoid inflaming the Okinawan anger that simmers beneath the surface.
"We work very hard to be productive members of the community and in many ways, we succeed. And when we have an unfortunate incident, we deal with it as quickly as we can," Gregson said.
Talk of withdrawing the Marines, however welcome to many Okinawa residents, risks worrying government officials back in Tokyo, who fear a shift would signal a weaker bilateral alliance.
"Talking about moving troops suddenly raises the alliance question," Gregson said. "We're not here because so many people like being away from their families...we're here in support of the U.S.-Japan alliance."
Gregson said U.S. Marines in Okinawa would play a major role in responding to a military threat from North Korea, now locked in a stand-off with the United States and its allies over the communist state's nuclear ambitions.
Other security concerns across the Asia region also mean basing the U.S. Marines in Okinawa makes sense, he said.
The Marines know, though, that they must increase their ability to move quickly -- and more cheaply -- to respond to new strategic demands, said Gregson, a 35-year career veteran.
"The key is mobility. If we can have more mobility, we can expand our involvement throughout the region. While the bases would still remain here in Okinawa, the practical effect would be that we are operating very much from Japan throughout the region in ways that I think would be very beneficial," he said.
"In a general sense, yes, Japan, not just Okinawa, becomes the hub from which lots of activities take place," he added.
-------- mideast
U.S. may consider force against Syria
By Shlomo Shamir
Friday, June 20, 2003
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=307171&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
NEWYORK - Senior Pentagon officials say it is possible the United States could use force against Syria. The military option was raised after intelligence reports that recent attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq were carried out by militants based in Syria.
The reports indicated that hundreds of militants trained in Syria had been deployed inside Iraq to attack U.S. troops.
Pentagon officials are particularly concerned by intelligence suggesting that some militants were planning suicide bombings against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Sources in Washington say there is disagreement in the Pentagon on how the U.S. should react to the Syrian role in these attacks.
One group believes the United States should not avoid forceful action against Syria, while another holds that some "saber rattling" and warning Damascus of military consequences is enough.
The State Department continues to support diplomatic measures for dealing with Syria.
Senior officials say that during the visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Syrian capital two weeks ago, the American presented a list of demands of President Bashar Assad, and Washington intends to ask for clear answers from its counterparts in Damascus in the near future.
-------- russia / chechnya
Grozny rocked by bomb blast
Agencies
Friday June 20, 2003
UK Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/chechnya/Story/0,2763,981763,00.html
A powerful truck bomb exploded today near a government compound in the Chechen capital Grozny, wounding at least 36 people, a Chechen emergency response official said.
Law enforcement officials were quoted as saying that two suicide bombers died in the blasts.
Akhmed Dzheirkhanov, the deputy chief of the emergency situations ministry branch for Chechnya, said that the truck bombing occurred about 70 metres from a building housing the Chechen police's unit for fighting organised crime.
The Chechen prime minister, Anatoly Popov, initially said a woman had been killed in the explosion, but he later said there were no deaths, only several injuries. Mr Dzeirkhanov said 36 people had sustained injuries and that four people, including a child, had been taken to hospital.
A Chechen justice ministry official, Vadish Tepkayev, said that eight people had been killed. There was no way to reconcile the conflicting casualty counts. Mr Dzheirkhanov had also said earlier that another blast occurred nearby but later said there had been just one explosion.
Chechnya's prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, said the remains of a man and a woman, believed to be suicide bombers who were in the truck, were found at the scene, according to the Interfax news agency.
The explosion carved out a crater three metres wide and four metres deep, Mr Dzheirkhanov said. It caused moderate damage to buildings housing the police's organised crime unit and the region's electricity utility, Grozenergo.
Another Chechen emergency ministry official, Ruslan Khadzhiyev, said that the truck had carried the equivalent of 1.5 metric tonnes of TNT.
TVS television showed footage of a man cradling an injured arm and running for help on a street strewn with metal fragments. Police and military troops came streaming into the street, moving quickly toward the smoke-covered scene of the blast.
The explosion came the day before the region's temporary legislature was to have met for its first session in a Grozny building that was hastily built to replace the government headquarters destroyed in a December car bombing. That attack killed at least 70 people.
Chechnya's Moscow-appointed acting president, Akhmad Kadyrov, said the bombing would not stop the legislature from holding its session, according to Interfax.
The explosion also followed a day of heavy fighting in which 11 servicemen were killed, according to an official in the Moscow-backed civilian administration who spoke on condition of anonymity. Unknown assailants also shot and killed Ramzan Akhmetkhanov, chief of police of a Grozny district, at his home, the official said.
Earlier this month, a female bomber blew up a bus carrying workers from a Russian air base near Chechnya, killing herself and at least 14 people. Two other suicide bombings in a three-day period inside Chechnya last month killed at least 78 people.
The rebel attacks have undercut the Kremlin's efforts to portray the situation in the war-shattered region as stabilising. The Russian parliament last month approved a partial amnesty in hopes of encouraging rebels to abandon their fight.
Yesterday Mr Kadyrov said the region would hold presidential elections in October and elect a parliament by the end of the year. Today he reiterated his intention to run for president and said that no matter what attacks rebels stage, they would not stand in the way of the election, according to Interfax.
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Landmine Under Bus Kills Three Near Chechnya - Media
REUTERS RUSSIA:
June 20, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21245/story.htm
MOSCOW - Three police officers were killed and seven others injured yesterday when their bus was blown up by a landmine near Russia's rebel region of Chechnya, Interfax news agency reported.
Interfax quoted deputy prosecutor general Sergei Fridinsky saying the blast in North Ossetia, near the border with Ingushetia, was being treated as a case of terrorism and premeditated murder.
Itar-Tass news agency said the explosion could have been set off by remote control.
Early this month, a woman suicide bomber blew up a bus carrying Russian air force pilots in North Ossetia, which also borders Chechnya. She killed herself and at least 17 others.
Thursday's blast was the latest example of continuing violence in the region despite a partial amnesty for Chechen separatist rebels which went into effect on June 7.
-------- space
Space is 'ultimate high ground'
by Master Sgt. Scott Elliott
Air Force Print News
6/20/2003
http://www.af.mil/stories/123005118.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Integration of hardware, software and can-do spirit has allowed America to move into an era of space-enabled warfare, a senior Air Force space official said.
And given the significant advantages space gives those who use it, that is a very good thing, according to Brig. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, Air Force director of national security space at the Pentagon.
"There's no doubt about it, space is the ultimate high ground," he said. "Space allows us to see, to hear and to act."
Kehler's comments came on the heels of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to Air Force officials, 70 percent of the bombs dropped on Iraq were precision-guided munitions. Another success story the general attributed to timely use of space assets was the B-1 Lancer strike against an Iraqi leadership location April 7.
"The evidence of success, of integrating space with mainstream operations is everywhere," Kehler said. "You don't have to look very far to find them."
The success story made most painfully obvious to Iraqi adversaries, he said, was the coalition's ability to compress what is known as the "kill chain" -- the six-stage process of engaging a target: find, fix, track, target, engage and assess.
"Integrating space capabilities together across the military and intelligence communities ... is clearly transformational," he said. "The time from when someone says they've found a target, communicates it with a shooter, and the shooter puts a bomb on the target has been tremendously compressed."
While many of the military's current space-based successes have roots that reach back to Operation Desert Storm, the general said integrating space with terrestrial assets was a key theme of the recent congressionally mandated Space Commission.
Kehler said the Space Commission's Jan. 11, 2001, report made several recommendations geared toward streamlining command and control of America's national security space mission. As a result, the undersecretary of the Air Force gained both responsibility for the Air Force space mission and leadership over the National Reconnaissance Office, and Air Force Space Command was restructured with a four-star general in command.
"The bottom line is integration, unity of effort and focus to make sure the whole team goes down the road together in doing what's best for national security," he said.
Kehler said Air Force and NRO officials have always worked closely together, but the focus was different during the Cold War.
"What came home to all of us was that the post-Cold War world was going to be a far more dynamic place," the general said. "In order to be effective and carry out our nation's national security strategy, we had to find a better way to integrate (surveillance satellites) with the tactical need of joint commanders in the field."
It is space-based assets that often provide combatant commanders with such information as weather and details of the enemy's latest troop movements, Kehler said.
"Precision strike is the sum of knowledge and accuracy," Kehler said. "I would never suggest that space does all of these things alone ... space enhances other things, and vice versa.
"What we have here is, with space included, the sum is greater than the individual parts," Kehler said. "We're trying to make sure we are bringing the best of every system (together) to create the effects our commanders need."
-------- spies
Panel Faults CIA's Use of Case Officers in Crisis Support
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14421-2003Jun19?language=printer
The House intelligence committee has criticized the CIA for moving many of its case officers who run spies in their assigned countries to crisis spots in the global war on terrorism, at times leaving regions and many other important issues uncovered.
"One of the casualties of this war . . . is adequate human intelligence coverage in areas of the world that easily could produce America's next security crisis," the committee said in a report released this week on the fiscal 2004 budget for the intelligence agencies.
While praising the job being done by the CIA in combating international terrorism, the committee said "limited numbers" of experienced officers are being sent "time and again from their home areas to provide crisis support" and that "gaps in intelligence collection and production are the immediate, noticeable result."
The panel also termed "unacceptable" the agency's failure to establish human intelligence relationships in some areas of the world. It said this was hindering the collection of information on "plans and intentions of future foes and erstwhile friends."
The report said the kinds of personal relationships between a spy and a CIA officer "cannot be treated like water in a fire, to be opened only in cases of emergency." It added that officers taken away from their areas of expertise have trouble recruiting agents during crises and find that when they return to their main bases, relationships with former agents "often wither."
The committee said the agency had assured it "that the situation in the future will be better with the hiring and training of increased numbers of human intelligence officers."
As it has in the past, the panel criticized the way intelligence agencies divide their funds between expensive collection systems, such as $1 billion satellites, and analysis of the information that is collected, on which much less is spent.
Although the budgets of the U.S. intelligence operations are classified, next fiscal year's request by the Bush administration is estimated to have been about $38 billion, of which more than $30 billion goes to Pentagon agencies, which include the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. An estimated $4.7 billion will go to the CIA, and the rest to the FBI and the State, Treasury and Homeland Security departments.
The committee said it slightly increased the president's overall request and suggested that new investments be made in analysis and analytical tools.
The report also expressed interest in having the FBI implement reforms resulting from the Robert P. Hanssen case in which the longtime FBI agent spied for years for Russia. These steps include creating government-wide standards for counterintelligence by requiring the director of central intelligence to establish an inspection process for all U.S. agencies that handle classified information related to national security.
The director would also set up, through the recently established White House Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, an annual review of all employees on lists designating them eligible to receive classified materials.
-------- un
Britain seeks radical Security Council shake-up
By Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer
20/06/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/20/nun20.xml/
Britain is to propose a radical reform of the United Nations Security Council which would expand membership from 15 to 25 countries as part of an initiative to avoid a repetition of the deep splits during the Iraq crisis.
The Security Council was created by the victorious Allies after the Second World War. In New York this autumn Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will table a series of measures intended to make it more accurately reflect current political realities.
Proposals will include doubling the number of permanent members from the existing five - Britain, America, Russia, France and China - to include Germany, India, Japan, one Latin American country and one African country.
Its non-permanent membership should be increased to 25, but the existing five permanent members would retain their veto rights which would not be extended to any new members.
"If you were to extend veto rights to 10 permanent members, you might as well shut up shop tomorrow," a British official said.
The changes have been mooted before, but the divisions sown within the council while it tried in vain to reach a consensus over Iraq have lent an urgency to the need for change, a Foreign Office official said.
Bill Rammell, Foreign Office minister, said the "UN must have teeth. It has to modernise its institutions and practices" to face up to new challenges. Mr Rammell, who chaired a seminar at the Foreign Office designed to generate new ideas for reforming the UN, said it was essential to do away with "outdated" activities at the organisation.
Britain will have to convince Washington of the value of its initiative. Pentagon and administration hawks saw the UN's performance during the Iraq debate as having revealed the organisation's inability to respond coherently to rapidly-changing world events and would be happy to leave it to disintegrate.
-------- us
Charges Are Dropped In 'Friendly Fire' Case
Other Discipline Sought in Afghan Incident
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14341-2003Jun19?language=printer
The Air Force dropped criminal charges yesterday against two fighter pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian forces last year in Afghanistan, recommending only administrative discipline in the "friendly fire" incident that left four Canadians dead.
The pilots, Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach, had been charged in September with involuntary manslaughter, dereliction of duty and assault after a U.S.-Canadian investigative board concluded they acted recklessly in bombing the Canadian forces training near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in April 2001. The board said the pilots disregarded instructions to "hold fire."
But in deciding not to court-martial the two pilots, Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, effectively dropped those charges and concurred with the recommendation of a military grand jury that they receive lesser sanctions. Both pilots said they acted in self-defense and faulted their superiors for not alerting them that Canadian troops were training in the area.
Defense lawyers for Schmidt and Umbach also asserted that any errors in judgments their clients may have committed were attributable to amphetamines, or "go pills," that the Air Force prescribes to pilots to fight fatigue on long missions.
Gen. Ray Henault, chief of the Canadian Defense Staff, issued a statement in which he "acknowledged" Carlson's decision without further comment and said Canada's armed forces "remain committed to defending Canada and to contributing to international peace and security."
"While risk is an inherent part of military operations, we will continue to work with our allies to mitigate the possibility of such a tragedy recurring," Henault said, adding that he appreciated the "strong feelings" of soldiers, family and friends in Canada "about the outcome of the U.S. proceedings and the welfare of Canadian Forces personnel."
The case, in which eight other Canadians were injured, triggered an uproar in Canada, particularly after President Bush failed to make any immediate public comment on the tragedy. Bush extended his "heartfelt sympathy" a day later.
Instead of a court-martial, Carlson announced he was initiating nonjudicial punishment proceedings against Schmidt in which he could be reprimanded, lose a total of one month's pay, face house arrest in his quarters for 30 days and be confined to a military base for 60 days.
Carlson also recommended that Schmidt's conduct he examined by a Flying Evaluation Board, which could strip him of his flight status. Schmidt, whose lawyer did not return repeated calls for comment, could reject nonjudicial punishment and still request a court-martial.
Schmidt, a full-time instructor pilot at the Illinois Air National Guard's 183rd Fighter Wing and a graduate of the Navy's "Top Gun" Fighter Weapons School, dropped a 500-pound bomb from an F-16 on the Canadian troops less than two minutes after being instructed to "hold fire," according to the joint U.S.-Canadian investigative board.
Joan Schmidt, Schmidt's mother, said in a telephone interview from her home in St. Louis that while she was somewhat relieved her son would not face a court-martial, "I believe my son should receive no punishment, because he was serving his country, he had news that al Qaeda was regrouping there, and he had no news that the Canadians where there."
In the case of Umbach, a reservist who flies for United Airlines, Carlson cited him in a letter of reprimand for failing as lead pilot to exercise appropriate control over Schmidt. Carlson also recommended that Umbach's recent request to retire from the Air Force be granted.
The investigative board's decision last September to charge the pilots with involuntary manslaughter represented the first such criminal charges filed against Air Force pilots. The charges triggered protests from many Air Force pilots, who said criminally charging pilots for conduct during wartime operations was a dangerous precedent that could ultimately endanger pilots' lives.
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New U.S. Strategy Will Use Navy for In-and-Out, Quick-Strike Warfare
Commentary/Analysis,
Franz Schurmann,
Pacific News Service,
Jun 20, 2003
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=9720563bc7bd74bf7e1f8a07e2754928
Editor's Note: Anti-Americanism in both Koreas will prevent an Iraqi-style U.S. attack on North Korea. But U.S. dominion over the world's oceans enables a sea-based strategy of bombing attacks and quick, in-and-out transport of U.S. troops to stop the production of weapons of mass destruction.
Is the Pentagon considering an Iraq-style war against North Korea? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because President Bush has made it clear he will not tolerate North Korea (and Iran) forging nuclear weapons of mass destruction. No, because it is unlikely that he will send in ground forces into North Korea as he did in Iraq or as did President Truman 53 years ago. But how can he win a yes/no war?
The answer lies in the writings of the American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who lived over 100 years ago. Mahan, taking the geopolitical ideas of the British Sir Halford MacKinder, argued that remote America and insular Britain could never defeat the "heartland" powers of Eurasia. But they could control those powers by enforcing absolute dominion over the world's seas.
In a global world, the United States Navy (USN) overshadows all its rival services. Its carriers roam the world, and as both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars showed, they can deliver massive bombing over countries not too far from some sea or ocean. Bush's doctrine of "preemptive attack" can easily be delivered to a small "rogue state" like Iraq or North Korea, or a larger one like Iran.
During the whole 19th century there was only one global navy, Her British Majesty Queen Victoria's. But when her German cousin Kaiser William II decided to build a rival global fleet, World War I was unavoidable. But now, a century later, once again one navy -- the American -- dominates all the world's seas and oceans. After the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, the re-baptized Russian Navy ceased to be a rival.
In Victoria's time, the mission of her navy was to protect and expand the British Empire. Now the mission of the USN is to protect any and all sea-lanes for a global trade upon which the USA heavily depends. But the USN has also become the main guardian of Pax Americana, just as Her Majesty's Navy was the guardian of Pax Brittanica a century ago. The aircraft carriers of the USN are effective behemoths that can go anywhere in the world and approach hostile shores, though Iraq did possess SCUD missiles that could have hit and damaged U.S. warships.
But now there are two crises (North Korea and Iran) that pose a danger to the USN. Both regimes are alleged by the White House to be building nuclear weapons that can wreak damage to warships much greater than that of the SCUDs.
The North Korea crisis currently looms larger than the Iranian one. On June 4-5 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announced in Washington that U.S. forces stationed in Korea's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) since July 1953 would soon be moved out of the Zone. When asked why, he blandly answered that the move was part of a larger force re-stationing.
However, that announcement instantly aroused fear all over East Asia. The Hong Kong based "Sing Tao Daily" of June 11 feared that, as a result of that pullback, Taiwan could announce independence, a move that would automatically trigger an attack from mainland China. The "China Social Research Institute" in Beijing asked a thousand experts what China should do if North Korea doesn't stop its nuclear weapons project and America attacks. Fifty seven percent said China has to help North Korea. Only 24 percent said China should not.
But those polled were not sure whether China would or should intervene if the Americans just bombed the nuclear weapons sites in North Korea.
Rumsfeld's remarks suggest that the Pentagon may indeed sooner or later strike at North Korea's Yangon nuclear test site. However, the attack may not take place until most, if not all, American troops are outside of South Korea. And the reason is that not since World War II have both Korean peoples been so united against foreigners on their soil. From 1910 to 1945, Koreans hated the Japanese. Now, while hatred is too strong a word, anti-Americanism is spreading rapidly in South Korea as a result of some ugly incidents between U.S. armed forces and Koreans.
The new sea-based strategy also fits in with the Pentagon's new tactics of "zero casualty" wars. The idea of fixed foreign military bases is giving way to air transport of soldiers to trouble spots, firing rockets from aircraft carriers at targeted hotspots and then withdrawing quickly. As America is finding out in Afghanistan and Iraq, snipers alone can inflict significant casualties. The new military policy of moving American troops onto the seas or tiny islets like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is the way Pax American now works.
Schurmann (fschurmann@pacificnews.org) is emeritus professor of history and sociology at U.C. Berkeley and author of numerous books.
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From Baghdad to Terre Haute:
Gulf War Veterans & the American Cycle of Violence (Part I)
2003.06.20
http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1958
John Allen Mohammed is a veteran of the first Gulf War, and qualified as an "expert" marksman during his time in the Army National guard before being arrested for the 20 shootings and 13 deaths of October, 2002, that earned him the label the DC Sniper. Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and the rapist and murderer of Tracie Joy McBride, Louis Jones Jr., were both decorated soldiers in the same war; both committed their own atrocities on American soil after leaving the military as well; and both were killed by the same State that trained them to kill in Iraq. These American veterans represent the vicious cycle of violence that is perpetuated by the United States and its addiction to war and power.
"The fighting man is disinclined to repent his deeds of violence. Men who in private life are scrupulous about conventional justice and right are able to destroy the lives and happiness of others in war without compunction. At least to other eyes they seem to have no regrets. It is understandable, of course, why soldiers in combat would not suffer pangs of conscience when they battle for their lives against others who are trying to kill them...But modern wars are notorious for the destruction of nonparticipants...Add to this the unnumbered acts of injustice so omnipresent in war, which may not result in death but inevitably bring pain and grief, and the impartial observer may wonder how the participants in such deeds could ever smile again and be free of care." -J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle
When people commit immoral acts such as murder, an explanation is usually demanded. We want to know why they did such a thing, especially when it directly affects us in some way. Such an explanation can be complicated, however, when the perpetrator of the act has had experience as a soldier in war.
Recently, the father of a young woman who was raped and murdered 8 years ago by a man who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War expressed the following: "There were several thousand troops in the same war, and I have yet to hear of any one of them coming home [to the US], kidnapping, raping and violently murdering a young lady," or at least he would hope not. Unfortunately, the atrocious incident that he described is part of a disturbing trend related to the aftermath of that first US war on Iraq.
His daughter, Tracie Joy McBride, was killed by a Gulf War veteran named Louis Jones Jr. who was executed by the federal government on March 18 of this year for this crime he committed. Jones, however, was not the first veteran to commit such a crime following the war and was, in fact, the second ex-soldier in Desert Storm to be federally executed in the past two years.
The first was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Both were decorated soldiers in the war; both committed atrocities on American soil after leaving the military; both were killed by the same State that trained them to kill in Iraq. They represent the vicious cycle of violence that is perpetuated by the United States and its addiction to war and power.
During the Gulf War, tens of thousands of American soldiers were permanently affected by the psychological intensity of modern warfare and the physical effects of what is known as "Gulf War Syndrome" from exposure to a variety of nerve gases and other toxic elements, namely depleted uranium. This study seeks to examine how the 1991 war on Iraq has contributed to the violence of American society. By looking deeper into, and making connections between, the cases of Timothy McVeigh, Louis Jones Jr. and other Gulf War veterans adversely affected by their experiences in the war it will provide a clearer understanding of this complex phenomenon. It may also give some insight into the implications of the US's most recent invasion and occupation of Iraq and of the so-called war on terrorism in general.
Overview of Gulf War According to Ramsey Clark in his book The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, it was, "a war of aggression to secure American domination of the Persian Gulf and, through its oil, the world beyond." Of course, the Gulf War was launched under the guise of "liberating Kuwait from Iraqi aggression," after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait ordered by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But as an advisor to President Bush admitted to Time Magazine in 1990, "Even a dolt understands the principle-we need the oil."
There were many other issues involved, including Iraq's history and complex relationship with neighboring Iran and Saudi Arabia, but the above quotes effectively summarize the primary intention that was behind the war. Less than a week after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the US had deployed 40,000 troops just to defend Saudi Arabia. By early November 1990, President Bush changed from a defensive strategy to an offensive one and stationed 400,000 US troops in the Gulf region. On January 17, 1991 the United States began its air assault on Iraq, which lasted for 42 days. One month later Bush ordered the ground war to begin, deploying American troops in Iraq. Five days after that happened, Iraq and the United States agreed to a ceasefire. However, post-ceasefire battles occurred all over the country between Iraqis and US soldiers.
By May 1992, over 150,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly children had died as a result of the war including the bombing and ongoing economic sanctions. Only 148 US soldiers died during battle. Thousands of American troops remained in the region to protect American interests, and regular bombings of Iraq and the imposition of brutal sanctions continued throughout the Clinton regime.
Post-War Violence in America
"I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint.... I am entitled to speak, to say, I belonged to a fucked situation. I am entitled to despair over the likelihood of further atrocities..." -Anthony Swofford, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Over the next few years US soldiers who fought in the Gulf War attempted to put their lives back together. Some remained in the military while many others returned to the United States to start a new life after the trauma of war. A number of these veterans suffered from what soon became known as Gulf War Syndrome.
One such veteran who was exposed to sarin nerve gas which he says gave him brain damage just after the war had ended was Louis Jones Jr. In Iraq he served on the front lines of the ground assault. Soon after his exposure to the nerve gas in March 1991 Jones was honorably discharged from the military, returning to the United States. On February 18, 1995, the Gulf War veteran had been retired from the military for a few years when he broke into Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. Jones proceeded to kidnap 19-year-old Pvt. Tracie Joy McBride, raping her and eventually beating her to death with a tire iron. Jones was tried for murder, prosecuted and eventually placed on death row.
Exactly two months later, another Gulf War veteran committed murder in the United States but on a much larger scale. When the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blown up on April 19, 1995, the mass media and people across the country immediately accused Islamic terrorists for the act that killed 168 innocent civilians, including children, and that injured hundreds of other people. But it was the patriotic, white American Timothy McVeigh who drove a Ryder truck loaded with 7,000 pounds of explosives to the federal building and walked away, three years after leaving the military.
He referred to the civilians casualties in Oklahoma City as "collateral damage," a term popularized by US officials to refer to civilian casualties in Iraq. McVeigh was a gunner on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and a decorated soldier during the Gulf War. He explained that his terroristic action was, in part, revenge for what the government had done at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
The authors of a recent biography of McVeigh cite four factors in his life that collectively led him to commit the atrocity in Oklahoma City: his relations with his family, his right-wing ideology, the Waco siege, and his military experience in the Gulf War. His biographers recount his first opportunity to kill Iraqi soldiers during the war and the effect it had on him. During the ground war, McVeigh's lieutenant spotted an "enemy machine gun nest:
'"It was more than a mile away, but Rodriguez knew McVeigh could hit it. He gave the order to fire...An Iraqi soldier popped up his head for a split second. From his position roughly 19 football fields away, McVeigh fired, hitting the soldier in the chest. The man's upper body exploded. "His head just disappeared...I saw everything above the shoulder's just disappear, like in a red mist," McVeigh recalls.'
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in total and 30 more were forced to surrender. This deed, which awarded McVeigh with the Army Commendation Medal, had a profound effect on him as it was the first time he had killed another human being. Killing did not provide him with any sense of satisfaction. In fact, he disobeyed his lieutenant's orders to continue firing at surrendering Iraqi soldiers. McVeigh just shot a few more rounds into the empty desert instead.
Despite the medal, he was "emotionally torn about what he had done." It made him feel "angry and uncomfortable," and, as the biographers report, "The carnage and sadness he saw in the hundred hour war left him with a feeling of sorrow for the Iraqis." McVeigh, who was becoming skeptical of the United States' ambitions in the Gulf War since Iraq was not directly threatening the US, articulated his feelings towards killing these enemy soldiers:
'What made me feel bad was, number one, I didn't kill them in self-defense. When I took a human life, it taught me these were human beings, even though they speak a different language and have different customs. The truth is, we all have the same dreams, the same desires, the same care for our children and our family. These people were humans, like me, at the core.'
McVeigh later admitted that the army eventually taught him how to completely suppress his emotions and become a killing machine.
Four months after he bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 the New York Times ran an article about McVeigh that briefly explored the effect that the war had on shaping who he became:
'Perhaps the Gulf War was a turning point for him. "When he came back, he seemed broken," said his aunt, Mrs. Zanghi. "When we talked about it, he said it was terrible there. He was on the front line and had seen death and caused death." She said that young McVeigh, a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle, spoke of killing Iraqis and had told her, "After the first time it got easy."'
In his book The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, J. Glenn Gray narrates this disturbing effect that war has on the psychology and morality of individual soldiers who are taught to obey orders under all circumstances:
'It is a crucial moment in a soldier's life when he is ordered to perform a deed that he finds completely at variance with his own notions of right and good.... He feels himself caught in a situation that he is powerless to change yet cannot himself be part of. The past cannot be undone and the present is inescapable. His only choice is to alter himself, since all external features are unchangeable.'
It is clear that Timothy McVeigh's experience in the Gulf War contributed to producing the type of person that would commit an atrocity that indiscriminately killed 168 people and wounded 500 more. His war experience desensitized him to death and suffering.
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U.S. troops face depression, boredom, general malaise
By NATALIE POMPILIO
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fri, Jun. 20, 2003
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/6135604.htm
FALLUJAH, Iraq - The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division deployed to the Persian Gulf region last September to prepare for war. Its soldiers fought their way from Kuwait into Iraq in March, losing comrades to car bombs, grenades and bullets. Its tanks were the first to roll into Baghdad in April.
That's why many 3rd ID soldiers thought that, at the very latest, they would be home for the Fourth of July, the perfect time for ticker-tape parades and cheering crowds. Instead they were sent to Fallujah a few weeks ago, a city 35 miles northwest of Baghdad in the Sunni Muslim region of Iraq where support for Saddam Hussein was strongest and anti-American feelings run deep.
The threat of attack means soldiers must stay alert and on guard. They also must cope with depression, boredom and the general malaise that comes from not knowing what the future holds.
"It's a brutal environment where you don't feel welcome or appreciated," said Spc. Raymond Bremen, 21 of the Bronx, N.Y. "It's just hostile, between the weather, the water, the food, the people. It's everything."
U.S. officials see Fallujah as a trouble spot because of the large number of Saddam loyalists in the area. Tensions in the small town have increased steadily as run-ins with U.S. soldiers have left dozens of citizens dead.
On May 27, Iraqis armed with grenades and machine guns attacked an Army checkpoint, killing two soldiers and injuring nine others. On June 6, one soldier was killed and five others were injured in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the town's police station. Since May 1, when Bush declared major hostilities over, at least 14 American soldiers have died in hostile attacks in Iraq.
"We had our hopes so high, thinking we were going home in June. We'd talk about it every day, about going home, having a barbecue. Then it was, `You're going to Fallujah,'" said Pfc. Derrick Thomas, 21, of Bensalem, Pa. "It's time for 3rd ID to go home. We fought the war, we won the war and we're still here."
Instead of riding in victory parades, these soldiers are walking patrols in temperatures of more than 100 degrees while wearing layers of body armor. Instead of being greeted with "Welcome Home" banners, they get chants of "America, go home" and read hostile graffiti - "Go out AMRKA" - on city walls.
Soldiers are forced to wear their Kevlar and body armor whenever they're outside their bases and, in some cases, in their home camps. At the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Brigade, encampment in Tikrit, for example, soldiers must wear their full gear whenever they're outside, and they can't jog around the camp for fear of a rocket-propelled grenade or mortar attack.
Alcohol is banned under military rules throughout Iraq.
"What would help morale? Just to finish the mission and get the end date," said Army Chaplain David McMillan, a major assigned to the 4th Infantry Division. "I think it's going to happen, but right now, it's a low point because we just don't know."
At 3rd ID, Chaplain Patrick Ratigan counsels his soldiers by telling them: "We're going to be proudest because we did the most. We won't remember how bad it was, and we'll wish we'd stayed even longer."
Army officials say they're working to improve soldiers' living conditions, which vary from company to company. In Tikrit, one 4th Infantry Division company sleeps in open tents in the middle of a dust bowl, where the soldiers say they're used to waking up buried under 2 inches of fine brown powder. Down the road, another part of the same brigade has air-conditioned rooms in a former palace.
In Baghdad, those assigned to the 204th Military Police company must depend on drinking water from the Tigris River, which the soldiers say tastes like swimming pool water because so many chemicals have to be added to make it drinkable.
The Army has been trying to speed up mail delivery and has started to provide satellite telephones, so soldiers can call home, and field kitchens, so hot meals occasionally can replace the packaged Meals Ready to Eat. A USO show featuring Kid Rock performed in Baghdad this week. In Tikrit, the 4th Infantry Division is opening "The Soldier's Inn," where troops can take a few days off and enjoy lying around a pool, having their laundry washed for them and not having to worry about ducking bullets or incoming rocket-propelled grenades.
The small things, the soldiers said, make a big difference.
"Real eggs for breakfast. That makes them happy," said 411th Civil Affairs Battalion Capt. Marc Alacqua, 37, of Fort Washington, N.Y. "And we keep lying to them and telling them we're going home soon."
But all that isn't enough as soldiers dodge bullets nightly and watch friends die. They also must juggle a dual mission: Befriend Iraqis, but constantly be on guard against them.
"It's certainly difficult to transfer from combat operations to peacekeeping," Ratigan said. "Everyone is a potential enemy."
(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Tom Lasseter in Iraq contributed to this report.)
----
Roche nomination
June 20, 2003
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Inside the Ring
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
President Bush has approved the nomination of Air Force Secretary James G. Roche to be the next Army secretary, defense insiders tell us. The nomination paperwork is expected to go to the Senate shortly.
But congressional aides say Mr. Roche is likely to receive some rough treatment on a number of issues. They say they still expect the nomination to win Senate confirmation, but would not be surprised if one or more senators placed a "hold" on Mr. Roche to get the White House's attention.
The rub comes on three issues: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's decision to cancel the Crusader artillery system, the Air Force Academy sex-abuse scandal and a feeling on Capitol Hill that Mr. Rumsfeld and his civilian staff mistreated the Army.
Mr. Rumsfeld fired Army Secretary Thomas White in April and was never on especially good terms with Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who retired earlier this month after a four-year term.
SEAL sub
Supporters of a new submarine for Navy SEALs are pointing at recent test successes as a reason Congress should fund a second Northrop Grumman-produced boat.
A team of Navy testers oversaw a sea trial of the first and only Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) last month. It executed two ship-to-shore missions off the attack submarine USS Charlotte.
The minisub returned to the Charlotte, recharged its battery and then conducted a second underwater operation, as required. The ASDS carried out the missions with a new, redesigned propeller that resulted in a quieter vessel - a key Navy requirement. A previous test in February 2002 identified the old propeller as the main source of excessive noise that can lead to sonar detection by enemy forces.
Defense sources say the test has convinced Naval Sea Systems Command it can start construction of a second boat.
The changing ASDS design prompted, in part, a negative report from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm.
Some in Congress want the Navy to build a second boat, a move that may delay production.
The House approved $23.6 million in advanced procurement money for the second boat, but the Senate deleted those funds, shifting the battle to a House-Senate conference.
"Because of the long lead time required [18 months] to build the ASDS hull and composite nose and tail assemblies, eliminating the advanced procurement funding will delay the construction of ASDS No. 2 by one year," the Pentagon said in a message to Congress.
The sub requires a crew of two and can hold eight SEALS. A Navy policy statement says the ASDS "was designed to reduce the risk to Navy Special Operations forces [during] the transit from a submarine to shore. ASDS permits long-range special forces operations. It also enhances the effectiveness of the insertion teams by delivering them to their destination rested and better equipped as well as the means of conducting shore surveillance prior to landing."
• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@washingtontimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
-------- propaganda wars
Where Are WMDs? Where's Congress?
(CBS)
June 20, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/20/opinion/meyer/main559590.shtml
WASHINGTON - Is Congress going to have the guts to do a proper autopsy on the Iraqi WMD controversy? In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer hopes for the best and predicts the worst, given that the lawmakers have chosen closed hearings. The WMD-Gate Inquisition has begun not with a bang but a whisper.
There will not be a credible, serious investigation of the spies, the Bush Hawks, the WMDs and the war without some big bangs.
Will that happen? Will Congress cop out? I can't say it's looking good.
The congressional committees tasked with finding the secrets of the secret agents have opened hearings on the intelligence secrets used to justify the war with Iraq -- in secret. In both the House and the Senate, the intelligence committees are meeting behind closed doors.
Closed hearings have their virtues, the noblest being that they preclude most pandering to the cameras. Having covered many spectacle hearings -- the Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and John Tower confirmations, Iran-Contra, the Clinton impeachment -- I am no fan.
But closed hearings held by committees with narrow jurisdictions cannot and will not provide the oversight needed in the post 9/11, post-Iraq War world.
This is not, as Republicans would have you believe, just a matter of settling a now academic argument about whether Saddam had an arsenal of unconventional weapons and plans to build more.
Yes, the backwards-looking questions are big: Did the intelligence agencies give the policymakers the straight and full scoop? Did the Bush Hawks let them? Did the administration's War Council -- the customers as they are called -- use the intelligence they were given honestly to make the case for war. Was the public duped about why American soldiers were sent off to get killed in Iraq?
But the forward-looking questions are even more important and that's a point Congressional Republicans and administration officials are trying to spin away.
If Iraq had WMDs, could other scary countries and terrorist have them now? Does the CIA have the capacity to answer that?
Since the Bush administration has declared a policy of pre-emptive warfare that says America reserves the right to wage war upon countries or terrorists that pose a threat,who tells us where the threats are? The spies will. And their credibility, and the credibility of the customers needs to be well examined before the next call to arms. It would be nice to know what the deal is with Iraq's WMDs before we take on Iran, Syria or North Korea.
Enter politics -- here defined as the desire of elected officials to get reelected.
Republican members of Congress think an Inquisition will hurt their reelection prospects. The White House agrees.
And many Democrats also think an Inquisition -- and I use that phrase in the noblest and nicest sense -- hurts them politically. Their reading of the polls suggests Americans approve of the outcome of the war no matter what its ostensible justification was. Carping now about dead horses like WMDs could make the Dems look like unpatriotic partisan hacks.
The Democratic and Republican low roads lead to the same place.
So it's not a shock that the partisan jousting in the House has been mild. Republicans and Democrats on the Intelligence Committee agreed on a process and substantive hearings commenced this week. The may be in private but they aren't phony.
But here's a problem. The Republican chairman of committee, Rep. Porter Goss, a former CIA agent, said, "I'm not going into what the customer did with the intelligence."
In other words, his committee will investigate whether the CIA slanted intelligence in order to please their customers. It will look to see if the spooks did a lousy job of finding out was going on in Iraq in the first place.
But the committee will not conduct a post-mortem on the actual policies and decision of the Bush White House. The committee will stay in its jurisdiction. That may be proper, but it's not good enough. It's only looking at part of the picture.
Initially, Senate Republicans recognized that a wider and deeper inquest was necessary. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, it was announced, would hold joint hearings to examine the intelligence and the policy, the war and the prewar. But they weaseled out of it.
So Senate Intel began its closed hearings with a partisan squabble, undecided on how to proceed, Republicans reluctant to dig deep. The ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said, "What they appear to be doing is entirely inadequate and slow-paced and potentially kind of sleep-walking through history."
Somnambulation is an equal opportunity affliction; it can affect Democrats, too. And right now, it's going to take a big bang to wake Congress up.
And once more, for the record: Where's Osama? Where's Saddam?
Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, is based in Washington. For many years, he was a political and investigative producer for The CBS News Evening News With Dan Rather.
----
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence
June 20, 2003
FAIR
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-iraq.html
Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows.
But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.
Here is a transcript of the exchange:
CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But -- I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."
Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."
Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.
If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, please see FAIR's Media Contact list: http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html
----
The Pentagon's Laughable Weapons Test
Fire missile. Miss target completely. Success!
By Fred Kaplan,
Slate
Friday, June 20, 2003
http://slate.msn.com/id/2084665/ http://www.msnbc.com/news/929242.asp
It looked like a headline from the Onion, but it was from CNN and the story was real: "Missile Misses Target, Officials Call It a Success." The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency had conducted a test the afternoon of June 18. A Standard Missile-3, fired from a Navy cruiser 160 miles off the Hawaiian island of Kauai, tried-but failed-to intercept a target missile that had been launched a few minutes earlier from the island's test range. And so it seemed another setback had afflicted President Bush's most cherished military program.
However, the Missile Defense Agency's spokesman, Chris Taylor, saw the test differently. "I wouldn't call it a failure," he told CNN, "because the intercept was not the primary objective. It's still considered a success, in that we gained great engineering data. We just don't know why it didn't hit."
Oh, it's hard to be a satirist these days.
The thing is, Taylor's reasoning is common in the Pentagon, and always has been, for tests not just of the missile-defense program but of all weapons programs.
Officials planning a test usually divide it into several discrete phases. If only one of the phases goes off successfully, and if the others at least yield some interesting data, then the test is marked down as a "success" or, if it was an almost (but not quite) total failure, a "partial success." In the June 18 missile defense test, these phases would have included a) launching the test missile; b) detecting and tracking the target-missile in midflight; c) transmitting information about the target back to control panels on the ship; and d) intercepting the target missile.
The system passed a) through c) with flying colors. Three out of four isn't bad. Call it "success." That's what happened, even though the point of missile defense is to intercept missiles. In fact, the specific aim of this test was to assess a new solid-state engine for the interceptor's guidance system. It now appears that the two missiles didn't collide because the engine malfunctioned. In other words, by any serious measure, broad or narrow, the test was an abject failure, regardless of how the Pentagon grades it.
"This happens all the time," one Pentagon official told me with a sigh. "It's incredible."
Just recently, the Air Force tested a new type of air-to-air missile for its F-22 stealth fighter plane. The missile missed its target by a long shot, but its firing mechanism worked, so the test was counted as a "success."
The problem with this practice is that, when it comes time to decide whether to move ahead on a particular weapons program, an assistant secretary or deputy chief of staff, not having time to study the raw test data, will look at the summary report. The sheet will say, "Eight successes, three partial successes, one failure." That will seem pretty good, and the program will graduate to the next stage of development. At some point, the flaws might get ironed out in the field, but at great cost, not only financial but-if the weapon has to be used on the battlefield in the meantime-strategic and human.
Of course, the Pentagon's standard of success in testing is not entirely ridiculous. In the early stages of a weapon's R & D, especially if the program involves advanced technology, there is real value in learning practically anything about its performance. If one part of the test fails but the other parts work fine, it might legitimately be called a success. However, President Bush plans to start deploying the missile-defense program in the fall of 2004. In order to do so, he formally abrogated the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty. He has requested, and Congress has approved, $9.1 billion for the program next year, and he plans to ask for more than $10 billion the following year. Either the tests should be judged by the standards of an advanced program, or the program should be scaled back to what it really is, despite its advocates' fervent efforts: an interesting but still quite primitive research project.
----
Rewriting Yesterday
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
By GARY LEUPP
June 20, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp06202003.html
Speaking to small business owners in New Jersey June 16, President Bush said there was no doubt that Saddam had posed "a threat to the United States" since 1991. "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history---revisionist historians is what I like to call them. Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003."
As a revisionist historian, I believe the president misunderstands what the term "revisionist history" really means. He has spoken out about Holocaust revisionism in the past, a very evil form of revisionist history that denies there ever was a Holocaust, and perhaps that is his sole contact with the phrase. He seems to think revisionist history is generically bad. But there are good forms as well. All revisionist history entails is a new interpretation of some period or topic in the past based on a changed environment and maybe the collection of new information. For example, certain French revisionist historians in the 1980s began challenging the traditional view of the French Revolution as a heroic struggle for liberty, fraternity, equality, and instead interpreted it as the harbinger of modern totalitarianisms.
I myself specialize in Japanese history, and study the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Western scholars of Japan writing in the 1930s and 40s interpreted this period as one of brutal oppression and economic stagnation. Since the 1960s, western scholars (including revisionist myself) have depicted it as one of social progress, cultural vibrancy, and incipient capitalism. The earlier scholars were influenced by the fascist character of the Japanese government in their own time; the later, by Japan as a rapidly-growing economy wedded to the U.S. Contemporary political conditions inevitably affect how we look at the past. My point, again, is just to defend revisionist history in itself as neither good nor bad but part of the intellectual process.
But back to Bush's remark. He implies that everybody used to realize that Iraq posed a threat to the United States, but that now the revisionists are saying that it never did. We know, Bush tells us, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (which of course no one anywhere denies, since they were discovered and destroyed by UN inspectors from 1991-98). That's not the issue. Those Bush targets as historical revisionists are just people who believed that by 1998 Iraq wasn't, in fact, a threat.
The lack of any WMD discoveries to date would indicate that those maintaining that view were right on target. These include a host of former top government officials, former arms inspectors, even the heads of state of all the nations around Iraq. Bush is deriding those who contend that the war was based on disinformation. On the defensive, he is posturing as someone taking the high road, as he has done in condemning Holocaust revisionism (which maybe, in his own head, he conflates with critical discussion of his actions).
But when Bush announced in Poland that the US had found WMDs (in the form of mobile labs for germ warfare) he was engaging in what I like to call historical revisionism. Up until then, the British suppliers and Iraqi military had viewed them as facilities for the production of hydrogen to fill weather balloons. Rather like the people denying the Holocaust, seems he was just making the germ lab story up. I also see revisionism in Bush's repeated denunciations of Saddam for "attacking his neighbors," implying he thinks this was a terrible thing. Yes, Saddam attacked two of his six neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), and the Reagan administration, with George Bush I as vice-president, supported the first of these. The Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 to cozy up with Saddam and restore full diplomatic and trade ties, arms sales, and sharing of military intelligence. Twenty-four U.S. firms exported arms and materials to Baghdad. The US only provided about one percent of the total military assistance, but it provided some particularly nasty commodities.
Richard L. Armitage, a senior defense official in 1988 (and now a deputy secretary of state), argued that the U.S. should not let Iraq lose the war, and told Congress there was no international law preventing a leader from using WMDs on his own people. The senior intelligence officer at the time, Col. Walter P. Lang, has said both D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran, and "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern."
In September 1988, a Maryland company sent 11 strains of germs---four types of anthrax---developed at Fort Detrick for germ warfare, to Iraq. The Commerce Department approved the sale of WMDs. This was six months after the infamous massacre at Halabja ---the gassing of the Kurds. Perhaps the president would like someone to revise that history.
Gary Leupp is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University and coordinator, Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
-------- war crimes
Belgium goes ahead with war crimes lawsuits
June 20 2003
(AFP) Mercury news (South Africa)
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=vn20030620042744213C765694&set_id=1 http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=173509
Brussles - War crimes lawsuits had been filed in Belgium against eight top officials including United States President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said the Belgian authorities.
But the Belgian government had refused to handle the cases arising from the conflict in Iraq, referring them on to the US and British governments, said the justice ministry.
Nevertheless the lawsuits, brought under Belgium's "universal competence law", are likely to deepen tensions between Washington and Brussels, which firmly opposed the war in Iraq.
Last week US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld - who is one of the eight high-ranking officials named in the lawsuits - said Belgium would face consequences unless it revised the "absurd" law.
The Belgian law was a matter of 'great concern' He warned that US officials would shun the country, and announced that US funding for a new Nato headquarters in Brussels, which is also home to the European Union, would be suspended in the meantime.
Rumsfeld was backed by British defence secretary Geoff Hoon, who said the Belgian law was a matter of "great concern".
The 1993 law allows courts in Belgium to judge suspects accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged acts were committed, the nationality of the accused or that of the victims.
The justice ministry said it had received three lawsuits arising from the Iraq conflict seeking to have Bush, Blair and the six others tried.
Apart from Bush and Blair, the officials named in the suits were US secretary of state Colin Powell, Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, attorney-general John Ashcroft, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and General Tommy Franks, who led US forces in Iraq.
It had received three lawsuits arising from the Iraq conflict Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and Wolfowitz were additionally accused over the US-led campaign in Afghanistan.
But in line with a decision taken by the Belgian cabinet last month, when a similar case was filed against US military officials, the justice ministry said it had passed the latest suits on to legal authorities in Britain and the United States.
A recent revision to the universal competence law by the Belgian parliament allowed such a move where the accused is not Belgian and his or her country has adequate war crimes legislation in place.
The Belgian government is seeking to deflect the storm of international criticism of the law, under which suits have also been brought against Israeli officials including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt wanted to circumvent the dispute by extending diplomatic immunity to all official visitors to international bodies on Belgian territory, said the Financieel Economische Tijd newspaper. - Sapa-AFP
This article was originally published on page 6 of The Mercury on June 20, 2003
----
Prosecutors Say Document Links Milosevic to Genocide
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/europe/20HAGU.html
PARIS, June 19 - Prosecutors at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic have produced what may prove to be crucial evidence in support of their case that the former Yugoslav president is guilty of genocide.
A document, the first of its kind presented to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is an order from the Bosnian Serb interior minister instructing special police to move into Srebrenica just days before under Bosnian Serb forces began to execute more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys.
The killings in July 1995 were the worst massacre of the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia, occurring after Bosnian Serb forces overran a United Nations safe haven in eastern Bosnia, guarded by lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers.
Passages in the document refer to the police forces "taking part in combat operations" and spell out that the forces include "Serbian MUP," the secret police controlled by the Serbian Ministry of the Interior. The document was briefly referred to in court last week, but its text was first published today by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
The Serb leadership and Mr. Milosevic have insisted that they bore no responsibility for Bosnian atrocities because fighting was done by Bosnian Serbs, operating independently from Belgrade. Insiders say that Mr. Milosevic always avoided issuing written orders, and no paper trail appeared to link him to the atrocities inflicted on civilians during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
But the military order, if given due weight by the court, not only puts Serbian special police at the massacre site but also provides a direct link to Mr. Milosevic, who as president of Serbia at the time was formally in charge of all Serb civilian police. It is not clear, however, whether he actually knew that a group of his police had been sent to the Srebrenica area at that time.
Several witnesses at the Milosevic trial testified earlier this year that Serb forces operated in eastern Bosnia in the early 1990's, when tens of thousands of Muslim civilians were driven from their homes to create an ethnically pure region for Serbs.
But this appears to be the first known order relating to Srebrenica that confirms the presence of Serb police. "For the moment, this is the first such document relating to the July 1995 massacre," an official in the prosecutor's office said. "There will be more evidence when we focus on Srebrenica."
The order, dated July 10, 1995, ordered four police units, including the "Serbian MUP," to form "an independent" detachment and move from their base near Sarajevo to Srebrenica "to crush the enemy offensive."
The units were ordered to go first to Bratunac, a village near Srebrenica, on July 11, which was the day that Bosnian Serb troops overran the enclave, which sheltered tens of thousands of Muslims and was protected by about 300 United Nations peacekeepers.
The massacres of civilians did not begin until the next day. Between July 12 and 17 more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys were executed by forces under Bosnian Serb control. Many were transported en masse to sites near Srebrenica and then killed; others died when they tried to escape after being captured.
Gen. Ratko Mladic, the officer in charge of the assault on Srebrenica, has been charged with genocide in connection with the killings and the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo but remains at large.
Witnesses and even participants in the massacres have told the tribunal about the roles played by army, police and paramilitary fighters in the blood bath. But even during the trial of Gen. Radislav Krstic, one of the commanders at Srebrenica, who was sentenced to 46 years in prison for genocide, prosecutors had no documents linking the atrocity to Belgrade. They did have radio intercepts between Bosnian Serb military leaders, discussing the killings.
Mr. Milosevic has maintained that far from giving orders, he heard of the killings only after the fact. He was supported by Zoran Lilic, president of Yugoslavia between 1993 and 1997, who testified for three days this week. Mr. Lilic told the court that while it was Mr. Milosevic who held the true power, he had "nothing to do with what happened in Srebrenica." He said that Mr. Milosevic was "angry and shaken" when he found out, and told him that he could not believe "these crazy Serbs from Pale" did this. Pale was the seat of the Bosnian Serb government during the war.
Even if Mr. Milosevic knew nothing about a plan to massacre civilians, lawyers said he could still be held accountable because he failed to punish the perpetrators.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- homeland security
DOMESTIC SECURITY
Ashcroft Calls on News Media to Help Explain Antiterrorism Laws
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/national/20ASHC.html
QUEENSTOWN, Md., June 19 - Attorney General John Ashcroft called on the press and television today to dispel fears about the sweeping antiterrorism law known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which was enacted after the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Addressing two dozen editors, publishers, television executives and others, Mr. Ashcroft said, "We need the help of the news industry, the fourth estate, to inform citizens about the constitutional tools and methods being used in the war against terror. We need the media's help, for instance, in portraying accurately the U.S.A. Patriot Act."
He told a conference on "Journalism and Homeland Security," convened by the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group, that complaints and misunderstandings about the act were so widespread that "I heard a fellow said his car wouldn't start the other day, and he blamed the Patriot Act."
In fact, he said, "Over the past 20 months the Patriot Act has become a critical reason for our success in the war against terrorists, stopping further attacks in the United States."
In particular, Mr. Ashcroft sought to quiet concern about the government's access to library records and its use of so-called roving wiretaps on terrorism suspects.
He said that critics of the law had "charged that under the Patriot Act the F.B.I. has arbitrarily visited local libraries to check out reading records of ordinary citizens."
"The fact is simply not that," he said. "The Patriot Act simply does not allow federal law enforcement free or unfettered access to local libraries, bookstores or other businesses."
Mr. Ashcroft said that warrants issued under the Patriot Act had to be approved by a judge. In contrast, when records, including library data, were sought by ordinary grand jury subpoena, no judge was involved.
The number of such warrants issued has been classified, despite objections by some in the Justice Department who argue that the low number of warrants actually served would help the department show it was not rummaging in library records. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview on Wednesday that he had seen the classified figures and that only "a few" such warrants had been issued to libraries.
Mr. Ashcroft also asked the news media to explain more clearly the use of the roving wiretap, which allows the authorities to listen in on conversations no matter what telephone an individual may be using.
Mr. Ashcroft told the conference that such wiretaps had been used against drug crimes, health care fraud and racketeering for many years.
"Now I think it's important for the public to understand that this isn't something new, this isn't something different, this isn't some vast incursion into the freedoms of the American people," he said. "This is a time-tested, law enforcement-honored, court-sanctioned and understood technique which is now being extended into the arena of terror."
-------- police
FBI Making Progress in War on Terrorism
June 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Terrorism.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Armed with improved intelligence and stronger law enforcement powers, the FBI is making progress in the war on terrorism and identifying potential al-Qaida operatives in the United States, FBI Director Robert Mueller said.
The best evidence, Mueller said, is that no catastrophic terrorist attacks have occurred since those in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
``I think we've been successful to a certain extent in disrupting al-Qaida,'' Mueller said Friday before a National Press Club audience. ``But that war is not over. The threats are real.''
The U.S.-led removal of al-Qaida's training camps and bases in Afghanistan was a major setback for the organization, Mueller said. Its leaders scattered, al-Qaida now has no sanctuary from which to attempt to build chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction, he said.
``Had we not gone in, I hate to think where they would have been,'' Mueller said of those weapons programs.
Greater cooperation between the FBI, CIA and their foreign counterparts has also been a major factor in progress against terrorism, Mueller said. The capture of such senior leaders as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan has added to an intelligence haul that provides a clearer picture of al-Qaida's presence in the United States.
``Out of that, I will tell you there have been a number of pieces of information that have proved helpful,'' Mueller said. ``Every month, I get more comfortable that we do know who we have here in this country.''
Mohammed was the key contact for Iyman Faris, 34, an Ohio truck driver whose May 1 guilty plea to charges stemming from al-Qaida plots was unsealed Thursday. Faris admitted participating in schemes to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and derail trains, possibly in Washington. Mueller said the Faris arrest was ``a result of our working together'' with U.S. intelligence services and foreign governments.
The USA Patriot Act has been another crucial part of the government's war on terror, mainly by eliminating restrictions to sharing intelligence with criminal investigators and prosecutors, Mueller said. He called the law, passed in the weeks after Sept. 11, ``absolutely essential'' and complained of ``misperceptions'' about how its powers might be misused.
Civil rights activists and others complain that the law, which greatly enhanced the powers of investigators and law enforcers, is an unconstitutional intrusion on Americans' rights.
Mueller said little doubt exists that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden still lives, and the United States must continue to be vigilant for new attacks. He said the color-coded threat level system run by the Homeland Security Department is vital to that effort, even if the government can't disclose the intelligence that leads to decisions to raise or lower it.
``I do believe the American people understand it as being in their best interests,'' he said. ``It makes the environment much more difficult to undertake attacks.''
On the Net:
FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
-------- terrorism
Pentagon Issues Specific Terror Alert for Kenya
Warning cites specific data on threat against a specific, but undisclosed, target.
By Davan Maharaj and Daryl Strickland
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
June 20, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-062003threat_lat,0,5772441.story
The Pentagon raised the terror warning to high for U.S. interests in Kenya, responding to intelligence reports that may indicate that Al Qaeda operatives have been plotting an attack there.
The latest in a stream of warnings from the U.S. and its allies was issued Thursday by the Defense Intelligence Agency, though details remained undisclosed. U.S. officials and Western diplomats have said recently that intercepted communications among members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda revealed that the group may have been planning an attack against members of foreign or local governments.
In recent months the U.S. increasingly has targeted its counterterrorism efforts on Kenya and other countries around the Horn of Africa. The U.S. also has been operating a military task force in the region since last year.
But that hasn't soothed the concerns of U.S. officials. In late May, the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi reviewed its security against a heightened terrorist threat as a precaution. Also last month, Britain suspended flights between Nairobi and London because of intelligence reports that indicated a terrorist strike by Al Qaeda was imminent.
The governments of Britain, the United States and several Scandinavian countries subsequently advised their citizens against traveling to Kenya, causing tourists to cancel hotel bookings, throwing thousands of people out of work and crippling the nation's tourist trade.
"This is the biggest kick in the teeth," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourism Federation, a trade group of hoteliers, lodge owners and tour operators. "It's equivalent to leveling sanctions against Kenya."
The situation got so dire this week that Alan Donovan, the American owner of African Heritage, called for "mercy flights" of tourists from the United States to help rescue East Africa's largest economy.
"We need the Americans more than ever," said Donovan, a UCLA graduate who has lived in Kenya for 32 years. "They're our friends. Why have they deserted us?"
Among the thousands of people who have lost their jobs are hotel workers, red-robed Masai wildlife guides and factory workers who churn out T-shirts or whittle wooden curios for tourists.
"Kenya cannot be isolated in the fight against terrorism," said Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka. "We should not give advantage to terrorism by giving in."
Though British and American officials say they are constantly reviewing security alerts, it seemed unlikely that the travel warnings would be lifted soon.
"The real threats to Kenya's economy are not public warnings or the acts of security forces but the terrorists and their sympathizers, and the appearance that Kenya is not doing enough to stop them," U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Johnnie Carson said in a recent newspaper commentary. "Another major attack here would inflict damage that no amount of public relations work could ever undo."
In the last five years, Kenya has been the target of two major attacks linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
In 1998, more than 200 people died and thousands were injured when the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in neighboring Tanzania were bombed.
In November, Al Qaeda members drove a car bomb into an Israeli-owned resort in the port city of Mombasa, killing at least 16 people, authorities said. The same day, unidentified men fired missiles from shoulder-held launchers at an Israeli airliner departing nearby Moi International Airport. The missiles missed the aircraft.
The Mombasa attacks returned to the spotlight recently when Internal Security Minister Chris Murungaru declared that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who reportedly heads Al Qaeda's operations in East Africa and is a key suspect in the Mombasa and Nairobi attacks, was spotted in Mombasa. The minister said Mohammed apparently was plotting more attacks.
Western diplomats in Nairobi said intelligence from Kenyan, British and U.S. sources indicated that men were spotted photographing planes taking off and landing at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
Since the warnings, Kenyan police have been patrolling five-mile stretches on both sides of the runway. Tourism Minister Raphael Tuju said the patrols pose new challenges.
"The perimeter fences are meant to keep zebras and giraffes [in nearby Nairobi National Park] from entering the airport - not terrorists," he said.
Tourism accounts for about 15% of Kenya's economy. Each year, about 500,000 tourists come to the country's Indian Ocean beaches or wildlife parks.
Tourism has been in a slump since 1997, when ethnic clashes on the coast - which human rights groups say were instigated by the government of former President Daniel Arap Moi - scared away tourists. The embassy blast, rising urban crime and the Mombasa attacks dealt further blows.
"It's ridiculous for the British to say that Kenya is less safe than Burma, Israel or Morocco, where there are no such travel warnings," said Grieves-Cook, a Kenyan of British ancestry. "What happened to that British bulldog spirit? Why are they giving in to terrorists?"
Maharaj reported from Nairobi; Strickland handled rewrite in Los Angeles. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
----
US fears terrorists may have jet
June 20 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/1055828442123.html
A Boeing 727 jet that made an unauthorised take-off from Luanda airport three weeks ago may be in the hands of terrorists, United States officials say.
The CIA has alerted operatives across Africa and asked countries in flying range of Angola to help in the search for the aircraft.
Satellite read-outs of airstrips with the minimum 2000 metres of tarmac it needs to land have failed to show any signs of the aircraft, which took off on in daylight on May25.
US authorities say the aircraft, which had been at the airport since March last year, may have been taken as part of shady business deal and to avoid paying $A6.5 million in airport taxes.
Chris Yates, a civil aviation security analyst for Jane's Aviation, said he had never come across a similar incident. "There is, however, a very murky world in African aviation, including gun running and diamond smuggling, where planes are not always properly registered."
Mr Yates said the aircraft was at one point in the hands of a firm linked to an airline that flew cargo into Afghanistan for the Taliban before the US invasion.
The Telegraph, London
--------
U.S. Cites Al Qaeda in Plan to Destroy Brooklyn Bridge
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/national/20TERR.html
WASHINGTON, June 19 - Federal law enforcement officials said today that they had uncovered a plot by operatives of Al Qaeda, using an Ohio truck driver as a scout, to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and other targets as recently as March.
The truck driver, Iyman Faris, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen from Kashmir living in Columbus, Ohio, was secretly arrested about three months ago. Mr. Faris agreed to plead guilty in May in closed proceedings before a federal judge in Virginia to charges that he had provided material support to terrorists, officials said today. He now faces 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors said Mr. Faris traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning in 2000, meeting with Osama bin Laden and working with one of his top lieutenants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to help organize and finance jihad causes. After returning to the United States in late 2002, officials said, he began casing the Brooklyn Bridge and discussing via coded messages with Qaeda leaders ways of using blowtorches to sever the suspension cables.
The plotting continued through March, as Mr. Faris sent coded messages to Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. One such message said that "the weather is too hot." Officials said that meant that Mr. Faris feared that the plot was unlikely to succeed - apparently because of security and the bridge's structure - and should be postponed. He was arrested soon after, although officials would not discuss the circumstances of his capture.
In a news conference here today, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the authorities took Mr. Faris's plot very seriously and that the case "highlights the very real threats that still exist here at home in the United States of America in the war against terrorism."
The New York City Police Department, which was told of the plot in March, said it considered the threat so serious that it had increased land and marine patrols around the Brooklyn Bridge several months ago. "He is the principal reason why we have the kind of security you see on the Brooklyn Bridge," a law enforcement official said of Mr. Faris.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said: "We spend a great deal of effort and money in keeping this city secure. In this case, it appears that money was well spent. It may have saved the Brooklyn Bridge."
An F.B.I. official said investigators were still seeking to determine just how far the plot proceeded and how serious a threat Mr. Faris posed.
"Obviously he had contacts with people at Al Qaeda so he has to be considered somewhat important, but to say whether he really could have accomplished this or not, we're still not sure," the official said.
Justice Department officials decided to announce the case at a time when Mr. Ashcroft has been put on the defensive by charges from his own inspector general this month that the department mistreated many illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in its aggressive pursuit of terrorist suspects.
The Faris case allowed Mr. Ashcroft to claim another high-profile victory in the campaign against terrorism, and he compared it to other significant prosecutions against terrorist supporters in Detroit, Lackawanna, N.Y., and elsewhere. Although he declined to discuss details, he said the timing in making the case public was driven solely by law enforcement concerns.
"I firmly believe that for us to have announced this case a day sooner would have carried with it the potential of impairing very important interests," Mr. Ashcroft told reporters today.
Mr. Faris was arrested soon after sending the message overseas about the bridge being "too hot" to attack, but the authorities refused to say how or where he was apprehended or what led them to him. Details cited in court documents indicated that the F.B.I. might have used electronic surveillance or intelligence sources to track his activities, but Mr. Ashcroft and other officials refused to discuss the surveillance because they said it could compromise national security.
J. Frederick Sinclair, a lawyer representing Mr. Faris, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The allegations against Mr. Faris bear similarities to the case against José Padilla, a Chicago man who last year was accused of plotting with Al Qaeda to plant a "dirty bomb" and who has been imprisoned in a military brig as an enemy combatant.
Prosecutors discussed the idea of declaring Mr. Faris an enemy combatant as well, and that may have influenced his decision to admit guilt to avoid the prospect of indefinite detention, according to a lawyer who demanded anonymity.
Mr. Faris has indicated that he might be willing to cooperate with authorities, a law enforcement official said.
Mr. Faris, also known as Mohammad Rauf, came to the United States in 1994, officials said. He lived on a clean, tree-lined street in a racially mixed neighborhood in Columbus in the late 1990's, until he and his wife apparently separated in early 2000, neighbors said today.
Negla Ross, a former next-door neighbor said, "He was very standoffish, not approachable."
Ms. Ross said she called the police about him a few times because of loud music and other noise. Once, after neighbors heard shots fired from his home, the police found that his wife's son had set up a shooting range in the basement, she said.
Mr. Ashcroft said that the truck driver's suburban life was a cover.
"On any given day, Iyman Faris appeared to be a hard-working, independent truck driver," Mr. Ashcroft said.
Working out of Columbus "he freely crisscrossed the country making deliveries to airports and businesses without raising a suspicion," the attorney general said. "But Faris led a secret double life," Mr. Ashcroft said. "He traveled to Pakistan and to Afghanistan, covertly met with Osama bin Laden, joined Al Qaeda's jihad against America."
Mr. Faris appeared to have several connections to Al Qaeda. He was a "distant relative" of a former Baltimore resident, Majid Khan, who is a suspected Al Qaeda operative and was captured in Pakistan recently, law enforcement officials said. He also maintained a "friendly relationship" with an unidentified Qaeda leader he knew since the 1980's through connections to Afghanistan, they added.
In late 2000, Mr. Faris traveled with his Qaeda friend from Pakistan to Afghanistan, prosecutors said. There, officials said, he met Mr. bin Laden at a Qaeda training camp and he also began helping the group with logistical planning for their operations, prosecutors said.
A student of aviation, he went to an Internet cafe in Karachi, Pakistan, and researched information for Al Qaeda about ultralight planes and their use as "escape planes," prosecutors said in court pleadings.
He also accompanied his friend to a factory in late 2000 or early 2001 to order 2,000 lightweight sleeping bags to be shipped to Afghanistan for use by Al Qaeda, officials said. And he dressed in disguise to get airline tickets allowing Al Qaeda operatives to travel to Yemen, officials said.
In early 2002, the authorities said, he met Mr. Mohammed, who is regarded as a mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said Mr. Faris was to deliver money and cellphones to Mr. Mohammed.
Mr. Mohammed, identified in court papers only by the code name C-2, told Mr. Faris "that Al Qaeda was planning two simultaneous operations in New York City and Washington D.C," according to the court documents. One plan was to use "gas cutters" - blowtorches referred to by the code name gas stations - to sever the suspension cables of a bridge. Mr. Faris was also told that Al Qaeda was planning to "derail trains," officials said.
He returned to the United States about 14 months ago, prosecutors said, and began researching gas cutters and the Brooklyn Bridge. He spoke with an acquaintance about acquiring the gas cutters and he also sent several coded messages to contacts in Pakistan from April 2002 to March 2003 to update them on the status of the project.
In late 2002, prosecutors said, Mr. Faris traveled to New York City and examined the bridge. But "he concluded that the plot to destroy the bridge by severing the cables was very unlikely to succeed because of the bridge's security and structure," prosecutors said.
But a senior law enforcement official said the design of the bridge could make it vulnerable. "If you had the time and you were out of sight, you could do it," he said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Shell opens hydrogen station for Tokyo motorists
REUTERS UK:
June 20, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21243/story.htm
LONDON - Showa Shell Sekiyu KK has opened the first hydrogen station in Tokyo, part of a worldwide push to supply fuel cell powered vehicles.
Showa Shell, 50 percent owned by Royal Dutch/Shell, opened the station in the central Tokyo Odaiba district, the energy giant's Shell Hydrogen unit said in a statement.
Shell opened its first hydrogen station in Iceland in April and plans to start selling hydrogen at a Washington DC gas station later this year.
Fuel oil cell vehicles use electricity produced from compressed hydrogen, cutting out emissions of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.
----
Hydrogen Fuel May Make Earth Cooler, Cloudier
REUTERS USA:
June 20, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21240/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Hydrogen fuel cells, the widely hailed pollution-free energy source of the future, may turn out not to be so kind to the Earth, scientists said.
Providing the hydrogen needed by all those fuel cells might create a cloudier, cooler planet, with larger and longer-lasting atmospheric ozone holes over the poles, said researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Hydrogen fuel cells are seen as potentially emissions-free energy sources for everything from automobiles to homes, replacing fossil fuel engines and eliminating the noxious pollutants that damage lungs and build up heat-trapping gases cited in theories of global warming.
But in producing and transporting hydrogen needed to fuel the aspiring technology, roughly 10 percent to 20 percent of the gas can be expected to leak into the atmosphere, the report in the journal Science said.
Quadrupling the levels of hydrogen gas -- actually two atoms of hydrogen -- in the air from the current 0.5 parts per million would create more water vapor in the stratosphere as the hydrogen combines with oxygen, resulting in more cloud cover, the report said.
Computer models used by study author Tracey Tromp suggested stratospheric temperatures could cool by 0.5 degrees Celsius, slowing the arrival of spring in the North and South polar regions and expanding the size, depth and longevity of the ozone holes.
Less ozone in the upper atmosphere, which allows more of the sun's dangerous rays to reach the Earth and has increased skin cancer risks, is widely blamed on mankind's release of now-banned chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals used in refrigerants and as propellants.
The ozone layer was expected to recover in 20 to 50 years as chlorofluorocarbon levels ease, though an injection of hydrogen into the atmospheric mix might worsen the problem, the report said.
More hydrogen in the air would likely also have a direct impact on the Earth's teeming surface, as it is a nutrient for microbes, it said.
-------- environment
Dam project on Philippine island spurs ire
June 20, 2003
By Takehiko Kambayashi
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030619-082750-2668r.htm
SAN MANUEL, Philippines - Towering over Luzon island about 125 miles north of Manila, a huge dam run by U.S. and Japanese companies began commercial operation three weeks ago despite purported law infractions and vehement opposition from residents of the area, indigenous peoples and environmentalists.
As the San Roque Dam on the lower Agno River in Pangasinan province began generating electricity, its foes vented anger and frustration, saying the project had ruined people's lives and the local environment.
"Stop the San Roque Dam and let the Agno River flow," said Jose "Apo" Doton, leader of the Peasant Alliance to Free the Agno, whose members say they were not informed or consulted about the $1.19 billion project.
The earth- and rock-fill dam, about 3,600 feet long and 650 feet high, can generate 345 megawatts. It is operated by the San Roque Power Corp. (SRPC), a private consortium including New York-based Sithe Energies Inc. and two Japanese companies - Marubeni, a major trading house, and Kansai Electric Co. Another U.S. firm, Raytheon Corp., also won a $700 million subcontract in 1998.
The National Power Corp. (NPC), a Philippine state-run entity, has agreed to pay the SRPC $7 million to $10 million per month for about 85 megawatts of electricity in the first 12 years. In addition, it paid $400 million in construction costs, an NPC official said.
Critics say the cost is hugely inflated. Wayne C. White of Acton, Mass.-based Foresight Associates, who reviewed the Power Purchase Agreement for the project, said the NPC has to pay even when power is not generated. But the NPC official denied this.
"SRPC has everything to gain and nothing to lose," said Joan Carling, chairman of the Cordillera People's Alliance (CPA), a federation of indigenous peoples' organizations in northern Luzon.
Asked about criticism of the contract, an SRPC official who is not Filipino said: "I would have to tell them, 'That's none of your business at all' " because the parties concerned had agreed on it.
Critics say it is their business because the Philippine public will be footing the bill. Foreign debt payments ate up 37.7 percent of the country's 2002 national budget.
"This agreement is a clear example of how foreign investors in the Philippines are assured of megaprofits, while the Filipino people are burdened with the economic, social and environmental costs," Mrs. Carling said.
The SRPC official said the new electricity-generating dam also can contribute to irrigation systems, improve water quality and prevent or moderate flooding in the region.
"Considering possible losses caused by major floods, [the dam] is not that expensive at all," he said before its May 29 inauguration.
That also was the day the region experienced typhoon-fed flooding - the worst in living memory in some areas, residents say.
When the Ambuclao and the Binga Dams were constructed upstream on the Agno in 1956 and 1960, respectively, indigenous Ibaloy people living in the region were told the structures could protect their communities from floods. However, the Binga Dam could not hold the water during the rainy season and released it, washing away thousands of acres of rice fields and homes.
About 4,400 people were uprooted from their homes during construction of the San Roque Dam. Most were tenants, who had no choice when landowners gave them eviction orders, say opponents of the dam. NPC officials told the residents to sign the documents written in English, which they couldn't read, "for your own good," the critics said.
NPC officials pledged that displaced residents would get free land, water, electricity and housing, and offered 2,000 jobs, but the promises were not fulfilled, the opponents say.
Moreover, they say, the villagers used to fish and pan for gold on the Agno, earning about $20 per day, but with the dam finished, their income has dwindled to less than $2 a day.
The NPC and the SRPC are supposed to offer displaced residents job-training programs, but these have been ineffective, the opposition says. Some poor residents were so desperate that they would sneak into the dam-construction compound to steal scrap metal, worth $3 per pound. One was fatally shot by a security guard.
"Our life here is much worse," says Carmen Borja, a displaced resident. In the past, "we could survive on the Agno alone." Mrs. Borja, whose husband died early last month, has been relocated several times since the start of the project, and now six of her family live in a decrepit hut near the dam.
Critics of the dam said the project has violated the country's Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act, which requires the free and informed consent of native people for projects that affect their ancestral domains. It also has infringed on the Local Government Code, they added.
Despite the rural struggle, the dam is now in operation. Many blame the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), which funded the project despite unresolved problems and the purported violation of its own environmental guidelines. JBIC insists its guidelines were not violated.
"The project would not have gone ahead without JBIC's support. But when the project is built, they walk away saying, 'It's not our problem anymore,' " said Aviva Imhof of the International Rivers Network (IRN), an advocacy group.
"JBIC has no mechanism for independently monitoring this or any other project, and just accepts what the Philippine government, NPC and SRPC tell them," she said. "This is simply unacceptable, given JBIC's role in funding destructive projects around the world."
The San Roque Dam is one of several disputed JBIC-funded projects, says "Development Disasters," a document published by Rivers Watch East and Southeast Asia, Friends of the Earth Japan and IRN. It says that "JBIC funding destroys people's life and environment."
The San Roque project faced strong resistance as early as the 1970s and was shelved for years. It was revived under President Fidel V. Ramos, who served from 1992 to 1998, and was undertaken formally in 1997 at the end of his term. He is from the Pangasinan province, where the dam was built.
Mrs. Carling said that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo conceded in a meeting with her that the San Roque Dam was not a good project, but added that she couldn't withdraw it because it had been signed by the previous administration.
Critics of the dam, meanwhile, say they have been called "terrorists" and "rebels" by local officials. They also say military and police officials have tried to pressure the opposition. Some leaders against the dam said their houses were encircled by the military on several occasions. Also, in July, some residents were evicted and their houses were burned by "agents of the SRPC and NPC," the critics said.
Raymond Cunningham, senior vice president of the SRPC, and JBIC have denied any knowledge of the incident. Critics say such harassment had been covered by reporters, but that the companies had failed to investigate.
Asked why they think the JBIC-funded project has generated so much opposition, a JBIC official responded: "To be honest, we don't know," though they say JBIC has sought to understand its critics through a series of dialogues.
But Mr. Cunningham ascribes the opposition to bad memories about the two older dams on the upper Agno and "extremely well-funded" groups such as IRN and Friends of the Earth that, he said, pump "tons of money" to generate opposition.
-------- genetics
$100 Million Donation Helps to Establish a Genome Institute
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/science/20GENO.html
In an unusual collaboration prompted by a $100 million donation, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will establish a research institute intended to apply knowledge of the human genome to the practice of medicine.
The new institute will be named for Eli Broad, a Los Angeles financial executive, and his wife, Edythe, who are donating the $100 million over 10 years.
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute will be run by Eric S. Lander, a leader of the public consortium that decoded the human genome and a faculty member at M.I.T. and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The Whitehead Institute, which like Harvard and M.I.T. is in Cambridge, Mass., is also a founder of the Broad Institute.
"This is a great day for our universities, for this city, for science and eventually for human health," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said yesterday at a news conference in Cambridge at which he shared the podium with M.I.T.'s president, Charles M. Vest, and the Whitehead director, Susan Lindquist. Dr. Summers said the Broad Institute's greatest resource would be "the scientific talent of the founding institutions on which it will be able to draw."
The institute will try to determine the molecular causes of disease by systematically examining genes and proteins. That could lead to new ways to prevent and diagnose illnesses and to treat their causes rather than just their symptoms, as many medicines now do.
Such research, Dr. Lander said, requires experts in biology, medicine, engineering and chemistry - along with computer experts to analyze the data generated.
"It's about bringing together scientists to do larger collaborative projects, and there just isn't a vehicle for it," said Dr. Lander, a mathematician who veered into biology.
One goal, he said, would be to develop tools for "looking under the hood of the cell" and understanding how it works. Those tools would be freely available to other scientists, he said, just as the human genome sequence has been.
The idea of interdisciplinary work for genomics is not new. Leroy Hood, a pioneer in gene sequencing, left the University of Washington a few years ago to set up the interdisciplinary Institute for Systems Biology. Stanford University is setting up an interdisciplinary biotechnology program based on a $90 million donation by James Clark, a founder of two Silicon Valley companies.
Still, few other efforts seem likely to rival the resources that can be brought to the problem by combining the engineering and science expertise of M.I.T. and the Whitehead Institute with that of Harvard, its medical school and affiliated hospitals.
Mr. Broad (rhymes with "road") started KB Home, a leading home builder, and then AIG SunAmerica, a financial services company, of which he is still chairman. Ranked by Forbes magazine as the 29th richest American, with a net worth of $4.8 billion, he has given money to support the arts, medicine and education and has been extremely active in Los Angeles civic affairs, leading the fund-raising for a new concert hall.
Mr. Broad said he decided to support the effort in Cambridge, rather than in Los Angeles, because of the scientific expertise available there. "The science is more important than the geography," he said.
Harvard and M.I.T. said they would seek to raise $200 million more in private support for the institute over the next decade.
The institute will be based in a building near Kendall Square, the area near M.I.T. that has become a hub of the biotechnology industry. It will have 12 core faculty members and up to 30 associated faculty members from M.I.T., Harvard or Whitehead. Even the core faculty members, including Dr. Lander and three others named yesterday, will retain their appointments at M.I.T., Harvard or Whitehead.
The Whitehead Institute/M.I.T. Center for Genome Research, which is run by Dr. Lander and was one of the sequencing centers for the Human Genome Project, will become part of the Broad Institute. M.I.T. will run the institute on behalf of itself, Harvard and Whitehead.
-------- health
Activist Group Warns of Unsafe Mercury in Tuna
REUTERS USA:
June 20, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21247/story.htm
WASHINGTON - One of every 20 cans of white or albacore tuna sold in the United States may contain unsafe levels of mercury, which can hurt the nervous system of fetuses and young children, a consumer activist group said yesterday.
Mercury in tuna and other kinds of fish is largely due to pollution from industrial plants and coal-fired utilities.
The Mercury Policy Project, based in Vermont, said it randomly bought 48 cans of different brands of albacore tuna from grocery stores across the nation and had them tested by an independent laboratory. Some of the results were also tested a second time by a laboratory used by the food industry.
More than 6 percent of the samples contained mercury at or above the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's so-called "action level" of 1 part per million (ppm). The results showed average mercury levels of more than 0.5 ppm for all the samples, said Michael Bender, director of the activist group.
"Because the FDA halted testing of canned tuna for mercury in 1998 to save money and because the industry keeps its results secret, some parents are unknowingly exposing their children to high mercury levels," Bender said in a statement.
White or albacore tuna accounts for about one-third of the canned tuna sold in the United States. The American Heart Association and other health experts have encouraged Americans to eat more tuna and other fish for the Omega-3 fatty acids and other nutritional benefits.
The tuna industry dismissed the activist group's findings, saying they were based on too small a sample to be valid.
"It's very clear that pregnant women can safely consume up to 12 ounces of a variety of fish each week without any problems whatsoever," said Randi Thomas, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Tuna Foundation.
She said the foundation's testing showed mercury well below the FDA's 1 ppm threshold for action. Thomas said the FDA does regularly test tuna for mercury and has found an average of 0.17 ppm.
At least 11 states have issued advisories warning that pregnant women and children should limit their consumption of canned tuna. Some states have also alerted consumers that white albacore tuna may contain more mercury than "light" tuna.
Earlier this year, Britain's Food Standards Agency urged pregnant women to limit their consumption of tuna to no more than two cans per week due to the mercury risk to their unborn children. California has sued several grocery chains for failing to warn consumers about the risk of mercury in tuna, swordfish and shark.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Bush to NGOs: Watch Your Mouths
by Naomi Klein
Friday, June 20, 2003
Globe and Mail (Canada)
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0620-06.htm
The Bush administration has found its next target for pre-emptive war, but it's not Iran, Syria or North Korea -- not yet, anyway.
Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some homeland housekeeping to take care of: It is going to sweep up those pesky non-governmental organizations that are helping to turn world opinion against U.S. bombs and brands.
The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalizes and criminalizes more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is in charge of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute, the most powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., is wielding the sticks.
On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, gave a speech blasting U.S. NGOs for failing to play a role many of them didn't realize they had been assigned: doing public relations for the U.S. government. According to InterAction, the network of 160 relief and development NGOs that hosted the conference, Mr. Natsios was "irritated" that starving and sick Iraqi and Afghan children didn't realize that their food and vaccines were coming to them courtesy of George W. Bush. From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of linking their humanitarian assistance to U.S. foreign policy and making it clear that they are "an arm of the U.S. government." If they didn't, InterAction reported, "Natsios threatened to personally tear up their contracts and find new partners."
For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to U.S. dollars. USAID told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they cannot speak to the media -- all requests from reporters must go through Washington. Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands "unprecedented," and says, "It looks like the NGOs aren't independent and can't speak for themselves about what they see and think."
Many humanitarian leaders are shocked to hear their work described as "an arm" of government; most see themselves as independent (that would be the "non-governmental" part of the name).
The best NGOs are loyal to their causes, not to countries, and they aren't afraid to blow the whistle on their own governments. Think of Médecins sans frontières standing up to the White House and the European Union over AIDS drug patents, or Human Rights Watch's campaign against the death penalty in the United States. Mr. Natsios himself embraced this independence in his previous job as vice-president of World Vision. During the North Korean famine, he didn't hesitate to blast his own government for withholding food aid, calling the Clinton administration's response "too slow" and its claim that politics was not a factor "total nonsense."
Don't expect candor like that from the aid groups Mr. Natsios now oversees in Iraq. These days, NGOs are supposed to do nothing more than quietly pass out care packages with a big "brought to you by the U.S.A." logo attached -- in public-private partnerships with Bechtel and Halliburton, of course.
That is the message of NGO Watch, an initiative of the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, which takes aim at the growing political influence of the non-profit sector. The stated purpose of the Web site, launched on June 11, is to "bring clarity and accountability to the burgeoning world of NGOs."
In fact, it is a McCarthyite blacklist, telling tales on any NGO that dares speak against Bush administration policies or in support of international treaties opposed by the White House.
This bizarre initiative takes as its premise the idea that there is something sinister about "unelected" groups of citizens getting together to try to influence their government. "The extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies," the site claims.
Coming from the AEI, this is not without irony. As Raj Patel, policy analyst at the California-based NGO Food First, points out, "The American Enterprise Institute is an NGO itself and it is supported by the most powerful corporations on the planet. They are accountable only to their board, which includes Motorola, American Express and ExxonMobil." As for influence, few peddle it quite like the AEI, the looniest ideas of which have a way of becoming Bush administration policy. And no wonder. Richard Perle, member and former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is an AEI fellow, along with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president; the Bush administration is crowded with former AEI fellows.
As President Bush said at an AEI dinner in February, "At the American Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds." In other words, the AEI is more than a think tank; it's Mr. Bush's outsourced brain.
Taken together with Mr. Natsios's statements, this attack on the non-profit sector marks the emergence of a new Bush doctrine: NGOs should be nothing more than the good-hearted charity wing of the military, silently mopping up after wars and famines. Their job is not to ask how these tragedies could have been averted, or to advocate for policy solutions. And it is certainly not to join anti-war and fair-trade movements pushing for real political change.
The control freaks in the White House have really outdone themselves this time. First they tried to silence governments critical of their foreign policies by buying them off with aid packages and trade deals. (Last month U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said that the United States would only enter into new trade agreements with countries that offered "co-operation or better on foreign policy and security issues.") Next, they made sure the press didn't ask hard question during the war by trading journalistic access for editorial control.
Now they are attempting to turn relief workers in Iraq and Afghanistan into publicists for Mr. Bush's Brand U.S.A., to embed them in the Pentagon, like Fox News reporters.
The U.S. government is usually described as "unilateralist," but I don't think that's quite accurate. The Bush administration may be willing to go it alone, but what it really wants is legions of self-censoring followers, from foreign governments to national journalists and international NGOs.
This is not a lone wolf we are dealing with, it's a sheep-herder. The question is: Which of the NGOs will play the sheep?
Naomi Klein is the author of 'No Logo' and 'Fences and Windows'.
----
Kucinich speaks to MoveOn members
June 20, 2003
Forwarded by MOVEON.ORG PAC,
P.O. Box 9218,
Berkeley, CA 94709.
Website: www.moveonpac.org.
Dear MoveOn.org Sisters and Brothers,
On February 17, 2002, more than a year before the war with Iraq, I sat down and wrote "A Prayer for America," a speech I delivered later that day to the Southern California ADA, to a rousing reception. If that speech, or this essay, touches or inspires you, volunteer--help us speak truth to power: http://www.kucinich.us/volunteer.php
More than a year before the Bush Administration bombed Baghdad, I spoke of "...the War Games of an unelected President and his unelected Vice President."
Months before anyone else now running for President, I spoke these words:
"Let us pray that our country will stop this war...
Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.
We did not authorize assassination squads.
We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
We did not authorize national identity cards.
We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.
We did not authorize an eye for an eye.
Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases.
We did not authorize war without end.
We did not authorize a permanent war economy."
It was still early in 2002, but many of us shared a feeling of uneasiness and anger about the Bush Administration's unilateral foreign policy, and the response to my speech was incredible--thousands of emails, letters, calls. Obviously there was a spirit alive in our nation, waiting to be released. Those of you at MoveOn.org understand that spirit, because you have touched it, too.
Like you, I didn't just speak against the war, I acted against it--voted against it, organized against it, campaigned against it. As Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, my friend Barbara Lee and I led the fight against the war resolution, organizing 126 House members to vote no, in just a few weeks. I reintroduced my bill to establish a Cabinet-level Department of Peace and Nonviolence, so that we can promote peacekeeping, conflict resolution, and the nonviolence principles of Gandhi and King. I was even attacked in the mass media for suggesting that the Administration's obsession with Iraq had a lot to do with its oil reserves. Imagine that...
Then on February 15th, 2003, a new spirit of peace exploded out of millions of hearts, with 15 million marchers, including many of you, in 600 cities around the globe, as the world said no to war. The President was not listening, but the people of the world heard us, for our voice was clear. This war was unnecessary, destabilizing, illegal, immoral. This war was not America at its best. This war would cost us our young soldiers, our children's treasury, and our moral authority with the rest of the world.
That February Saturday was cold, but our hearts were on fire as I spoke to the half million demonstrating in New York City: "Peaceful coexistence or war. The whole world is watching. A fist or an open hand. The whole world is watching. First use of nuclear weapons or leadership in global disarmament. The whole world is watching. Bombs or bread to the Iraqi people, to the Iranian people, to the North Korean people. The whole world is watching."
http://www.kucinich.us/speeches/speech10.htm
And when the war finally came, like MoveOn.org, I did not flinch from my American duty to dissent. This is what I said, the same night the war started: "This is a sad day for America, the world community, and the people of Iraq. Tonight, President Bush has commanded U.S. forces to go to war in violation of American traditions of defensive war. This war is wrong; it violates the Constitution and international law."
http://www.kucinich.us/speeches.htm
At that point, some politicians backed away from dissent. Some stayed silent, hoping that the national agenda would soon pass on to other issues. But you and I kept fighting, kept calling for the truth, and kept challenging the so-called evidence that was used to sell this war.
And in the last few weeks, day after day I have gone down to the well of the U. S. House to call on the Bush Administration to finally come clean about the pre-war evidence for the weapons of mass destruction. Just last week, I introduced H. Res. 260, a "Resolution of Inquiry" demanding that the Bush Adminstration produce the evidence for their charges about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I now have 36 co-sponsors, and am adding more every day. We are having an impact, the Administration is beginning to feel the heat, and some in the mass media are finally asking the right questions. I hope you will join me in this effort, which MoveOn.org and TrueMajority.org and Working Assets and Win Without War are also stressing now.
We know the Bush team cheated in Florida in 2000, when Bush Co-Chair Katherine Harris made thousands of false felon purges. We know they manipulated the 2002 elections, using fraudulent charges of an imminent threat from Iraqi WMDs to scare the voters and force a rush to war. If we don't stand up to them now, they'll do it again in 2004. Help me expose the truth about the cooked-up intelligence.
Sign our petition to call on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld to release the evidence.
Email your Congressperson, either to thank them for signing on as a cosponsor, or to urge them to join me on this resolution, H. Res. 260.
Fax the committee, to urge them to hold open, public hearings.
Go to www.kucinich.us and join me in forcing them to come clean.
When the Progressive magazine calls me "the Peace candidate," I accept that label with pride. Like MoveOn.org, I am not afraid of the names we are called for upholding the best traditions of Jefferson, Paine, Lincoln, and Dr. King. Like you, I understand that America's roots are in dissent, change, reform--and that change agents are always attacked as threats to the established order.
My political career has been built on big ideas, fighting for them, and winning. I have a history of defeating entrenched Republican incumbents. And in this Presidential race, I still have the big vision. When I was interviewed by Bob Edwards on NPR, he asked me if I was running to win, or just to raise issues. I told him: by raising these issues, I'm going to win.
(link to NPR interview, http://www.kucinich.us/npr_transcript.htm)
Of MoveOn's top tier, I'm the only one who will cut the bloated Pentagon budget. With George W. Bush's proposed increases for next year, the U.S. military budget will just about equal the military budgets of all other nations in the world combined. That's too big. America is not supposed to be an Empire; we are supposed to be a Democracy. As the ranking Democrat on the House Reform Subcommittee on National Security, I know about wasteful Pentagon spending firsthand. I will cut the military budget, because we have to cut it, in order to have real money to spend on education. More money is desperately needed to rebuild our schools; to pay our teachers; to allow our children to be taught in smaller classes; to wire our older schools for the internet, and help bridge the "digital divide;" to at long last fully fund Head Start. Without cuts in the Pentagon budget, there will not be enough money for education, much less health care, environmental cleanup, and other needed domestic programs. Among the people of America, this is a common sense position; but among the MoveOn top tier candidates, I stand alone on this issue.
The military budget is not the only issue on which I stand apart. I am the only Presidential candidate who voted against the civil-liberties-shredding Patriot Act. From nuclear weapons in space, to nuclear disarmament, to medical marijuana, to the role of the W.T.O. in the too-fast expansion of genetically-modified foods, to opposition to the death penalty, to Canadian-style national health care, my position is the progressive position, the standard that other candidates will not match.
On core Democratic issues, I stand with progressives on the fundamental positions of our party--I am for more money for social safety net programs; I am for a total, not partial, rollback of the extravagant Bush tax cuts for the rich; I am pro-choice, and will not appoint any Supreme Court justices who do not affirm Roe v. Wade; I strongly support clean air and clean water, affirmative action, tough civil rights and voting rights enforcement, strengthening OSHA and the rights of workers to organize, gay and lesbian equality, Title IX protection, affordable housing, living wages, and signing the many treaties that the Bush Administration has rejected, including the Kyoto global warming treaty and the land mine ban treaty. I will fight hard to get private insurance companies and their bureaucracies out of health care, and to keep your Social Security retirement safe for Main Street, rather than privatize it for Wall Street.
I will fight against sweatshops and child labor worldwide; to thwart the takeover of family farmers by agribusiness giants; to return the Social Security retirement age back to 65, as our elders were promised; to pass a massive renewable energy program that provides jobs to Americans, renewable power for the world, and "small-is-beautiful" technologies to developing nations.
I am committed to international cooperation, to working with the U.N. and our historic allies. I want to help build a world where billions of people do not have to try to survive by living on $1 or $2 per day, by cutting down their forests for heat, or by giving away their national resources in order to repay debts that were previously incurred by dictatorial regimes, often supported by our government. I am committed to fair trade practices that provide a higher quality standard of living in the developing world without unsustainable consumption; to providing clean water to the entire world; to placing children into schools rather than into child labor; and to joining Brazil's new President, Lula da Silva, as he seeks to eliminate hunger in a world of plenty.
In short, I am a leader in the "Wellstone wing of the Democratic Party," and like most MoveOn.org members, I'm proud of it. Maybe that's why Paul Wellstone was the lone Senator who joined the Progressive Caucus that I co-chair (with that brave peace advocate, Barbara Lee).
Like Paul, I am a passionate, populist advocate of principled politics. Like Paul, I believe in organizing as well as legislating. And like Senator Wellstone, I won my seat by defeating an incumbent conservative Republican, thanks to a volunteer-based grassroots campaign that united Democrats, Greens, independents, and former "Reagan Democrats" into a winning coalition.
The gatekeepers of conventional wisdom would like you to believe that I cannot win. These big shot media types, of course, are the same crowd that didn't understand the worldwide web, thought the Beatles were a fad, never believed Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson or George McGovern would win any primaries, and laughed when a rumpled, unknown, progressive college professor climbed onto a green bus in Minnesota to challenge a popular, well-funded, experienced conservative incumbent. They laughed; but the voters responded--and Paul Wellstone won the upset victory of 1990 to take his place in United States Senate history.
The fact is, like Paul, most of the base of the Democratic Party is both antiwar and opposed to corporate-dictated trade deals. That's why, with your help and your passion, I can win this nomination. My principles, and MoveOn.org's principles, are those of most Democratic Party primary voters.
When we do win, the gatekeepers of conventional wisdom will then try to tell you that George W. Bush cannot be beaten. Of course, they said that about his father, too.
Once it is clear that George W. Bush's credibility gap has grown to Nixon-like proportions, his Teflon shield will be cracked, and his reckless mishandling of the economy will send him back to Texas.
The big pundits will also tell us that the only way we can win is to be cautious, to run to the middle. But that's not what the Right wing did--when they were in trouble, they turned to their champion, Ronald Reagan. The conservatives ran on their issues, stood fast on their principles and ideas, and triumphed. Now it's our turn.
The truth is, the so-called experts never see the change coming beforehand. They never see the paradigm shift. They're too busy explaining the old habits, while a new world is being born.
A year ago, they would have told you MoveOn.org was declining. A year ago, they would have told you there was no peace movement in America.
The pundits never saw the "Teamsters & turtles" coalition coming together against the WTO in Seattle in 1999; but I was there with 50,000 blue/green protesters as we changed the way the world looked at corporate globalization.
And the pundits never, ever predicted that on a cold Saturday in February of this year, millions and millions of people around the world would gather together at one time, to speak in one voice, to say no to a destabilizing, aggressive, unjust war.
You know how that massive demonstration came together, because you and I helped build it. We organized using the internet, creating a new model of localized, principled, non-hierarchical action. We created, in the words of the New York Times, a new global superpower--world popular opinion.
And we can do it again in 2004--only bigger and stronger. Together, we can win this next election. Together, we can put the brakes on the war machine. Together, we can take our country back from the would-be empire-builders, and come home to democracy. Together, we can build a world of peace and prosperity and unity.
One final point--if you help my campaign strike a strong blow for peace and justice, you will not just gain a candidate for a year--you will gain an ally for your causes for a lifetime.
I am running to be President, but I intend to struggle for a better world for the rest of my life. I think those of you in MoveOn.org and my growing network can work together as a formidable team, as we did in the days leading into February 15th, and as we are doing even today in our battle to force the Bush Administration to come clean on its pre-war claims about the weapons of mass destruction.
Join me, at www.kucinich.us.
A better world is possible.
Peace, Dennis Kucinich
--------
WorldCom Opponents In Sync
D.C. Firm Helps Organize Protest
By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14490-2003Jun19?language=printer
What seemed to be a groundswell of protest materialized last week when WorldCom Inc. lawyers arrived at federal court for a hearing on whether the company's agreement to pay a $500 million fine was sufficient punishment for its mammoth fraud.
The Gray Panthers, a senior citizens group, told the court that the penalty was not severe enough. So did the United Church of Christ and Mitch Marcus, a former WorldCom sales executive who is leading a boycott against the company. Outside the courthouse, a small group of demonstrators rallied to protest WorldCom and its proposed settlement, hoisting handmade signs that decried corporate crime. U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, in the courtroom, took pains to acknowledge the disparate opposition.
The outpouring, though, was hardly spontaneous. Several of the opponents, including protest organizers and petitioners, had ties to Issue Dynamics Inc. (IDI), a Washington-based consulting firm whose clients include some of WorldCom's biggest competitors, such as the regional phone giant Verizon Communications Inc.
IDI President Samuel A. Simon said he is helping the groups in their efforts against WorldCom, but he declined to say who is financing the firm's work. He said some of the money comes from IDI itself.
"If organizations want to talk about what they have done, that's their choice," Simon said.
Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe confirmed that IDI is working for the telephone company. "We are happy to support groups that have similar views as ours, and Sam is bringing us together," Rabe said.
Verizon, which wants the government to force WorldCom to liquidate, says that is the only fair way to punish a company that misstated its finances by $9 billion. Verizon also has opposed the government's decision to continue granting contracts to WorldCom while the courts consider the company's fate. "Anyone who is aware of WorldCom is aware of our position on it," Rabe said.
Rabe would not say how much Verizon is paying IDI. He said Verizon is not the only company contributing to a "funding pool" on the WorldCom issue, but he declined to identify other participants.
When Simon was asked whether IDI had a role in staging last week's protest outside the federal court building in New York, he said it was organized by the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Liz Foley, a spokeswoman for the group, said it helped organize the event only after IDI solicited its involvement.
"They contacted us about the event," Foley said. "We got involved because the courthouse is near our office and WorldCom affected thousands of New Yorkers."
IDI's practice of organizing public interest groups to support its initiatives has occasionally angered some consumer activists, who said Simon often does not disclose whom he is working for. It is particularly irritating to some public interest advocates that Simon often touts his former links to consumer advocates, including a stint as a lawyer working for Ralph Nader.
"His credibility is suspect due to his failure to disclose his funding," said Gene Kimmelman, director of the Washington office of Consumers Union.
Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research group, said organizations such as IDI should disclose their backers. "These are people who are trying to influence the public debate and also the legislative process, and they have an obligation to do so in the light of day," Lewis said.
IDI describes itself as a consulting firm that provides a variety of services, including public affairs, consumer affairs, consumer education, coalition building and Internet communications. The firm has organized letter-writing efforts against Microsoft Corp.'s decision to bundle a forerunner of its MSN online service with its Windows operating system. It has also organized various groups against efforts by pharmaceutical companies to patent drugs. In each case, IDI attempts to rally support around a particular issue of interest to its clients.
For example, last year IDI organized an effort by the National Association of the Deaf, the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Association of People With Disabilities to support a bill pushed by the local telephone companies to relax rules that require them to share their high-speed networks with rivals. In a news release issued by IDI, the groups said they would benefit because the bill would increase access to broadband for everyone, including those with disabilities.
Simon said his firm's efforts to organize groups against WorldCom is not unusual. "This is how we work," Simon said. "We build bridges between organizations on public interest issues."
Last month, the Gray Panthers took out full-page advertisements in The Washington Post and several other newspapers that called on the federal government to stop doing business with WorldCom.
The ad said it was paid for by the Gray Panthers but did not mention that IDI provided much of the money. Gray Panthers Executive Director Timothy Fuller said IDI contributed most of the $200,000 it cost to place the ads. "I was happy to find a donor," Fuller said. He would not say exactly how much of the cost was covered by IDI.
In October, the Gray Panthers, which has a three-person office in Washington, launched a "Corporate Accountability" project focused just on WorldCom. The project is headed by Will Thomas, a former WorldCom employee.
Thomas won't say where money for the project comes from, noting that the Gray Panthers will identify its donors next year in its Form 990, an Internal Revenue Service document that nonprofit organizations must make public.
"The most honest and direct answer is that the 990 will go into that," Thomas said.
Last month was not the first time that IDI has helped place an anti-WorldCom ad. In October, BoycottWorldCom.com, a Web site run by Marcus, placed an ad in USA Today calling on the federal government to stop doing business with WorldCom.
Marcus said IDI had a role in arranging for the ad, but he declined to discuss who paid for it. "The less that WorldCom knows about my operation, the better," Marcus said.
Simon also has direct ties to some of the public interest groups he is working with on the WorldCom issue. For example, he is chairman of the board of the National Consumers League, one of several groups that called on the government to stop doing business with WorldCom. Carol McKay, a spokeswoman, said the league would have been concerned about the consequences of WorldCom's fraud whether or not IDI had been involved. "I can't think of another incident where we worked with IDI," she said.
A group founded by Simon that still operates out of his Washington office organizes an annual lunch and award named for a former United Church of Christ official, the Rev. Everett C. Parker.
In addition to urging Rakoff to take stiffer action against WorldCom, the UCC filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency to revoke WorldCom's telecommunications licenses.
The Rev. Robert Chase, director of UCC-affiliated Office of Communications Inc., said his group filed the petition against WorldCom because "corporations need to be accountable."
The church, with 1.4 million members, has a long history of lobbying the FCC to bring about social change. In the early 1960s, it filed a petition against a TV station in Jackson, Miss., eventually securing the right of the public to participate in the broadcast-license renewal process. The UCC's legal fight against the segregationist station was a precedent-setting decision in civil rights and communications law.
Chase said he consulted with Simon on the WorldCom issue. "We've worked together on this and other projects," Chase said, describing Simon as "a trusted friend and confidante."
IDI's undisclosed ties to many of its critics has frustrated WorldCom, which now does business under the name MCI.
"It seems obvious that these attacks are part of a campaign funded by our largest rivals who are pushing buttons and throwing switches from behind the curtain like some anti-competition Wizard of Oz," WorldCom spokesman Peter Lucht said.
-------
Britain Says Democracy Advocate Is Held in Burmese Jail
June 20, 2003
The New York Times
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/international/asia/20MYAN.html
LONDON, June 19 - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader who was seized by her country's military government more than six weeks ago, is being detained in a jail outside of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, and is still wearing the clothes in which she was arrested, the British government said today.
"I am appalled to learn today, on her 58th birthday, Aung San Suu Kyi is being held in the notorious Insein Jail on the outskirts of Rangoon in a two-room hut," Mike O'Brien, the Foreign Office minister, said in a news release today.
He added that he was "particularly disturbed" to learn that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi had been detained under Section 10(a) of Myanmar's 1975 State Protection Law, which allows authorities to detain anyone suspected of committing, or planning to commit, an act that threatens state security.
"This is the most draconian of the Burmese military regime's laws, which allows for detention without access to family or lawyers for 180 days at a time up to a total of 5 years, with no prospect of appeal," Mr. O'Brien said. "This completely discredits the regime's claim that she is being held in `protective custody.' "
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado since May 30, when military-backed thugs armed with clubs and sticks attacked her convoy as she and members of her National League for Democracy traveled near Mandalay in northern Myanmar, formerly Burma. Military authorities said four people were killed and 50 were injured, but opposition leaders have claimed that scores more people were hurt or killed in the attack.
Meanwhile, Myanmar's foreign minister repeated the government's claims that it was holding Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi for her own safety and could not answer the question of when she might be released.
Win Aungwas speaking in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of 20 Asia-Pacific nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Asean, as it is known, has taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing Myanmar over its treatment of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.
On Wednesday, the American Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell, called on the Burmese government to release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent pro-democracy campaign.
"Burma is attempting to use its sovereignty as a shield behind which it can violate the fundamental rights of its citizens with impunity," The Bangkok Post quoted Mr. Powell as saying. Mr. Powell said that the world, and particularly Myanmar's Asian neighbors, must make it clear "that its actions are contemptible and violate Burma's international human rights obligations."
The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand joined Mr. Powell in calling for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's release. The United States is considering tightening its economic sanctions against the regime; the European Union has already agreed to extend its travel ban and assets freeze on members of the Myanmar regime, their families and associates, and to tighten its arms embargo.
Rallies in support of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi were held across Asia and elsewhere today.
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Iran Cleric Calls for Death Penalty
June 20, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-protests.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian cleric warned Washington on Friday not to treat Iran like Afghanistan or Iraq and urged courts to hand out death penalties to ``hooligans'' who took part in recent protests against Islamic clerical rule.
Sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has come under heavy external and internal pressure in recent weeks, facing pro-democracy protests at home and vocal U.S. accusations it is secretly building nuclear arms and sponsoring terrorism.
Protests against Iran's clerical establishment appeared to have ended on Friday with no reports of demonstrators gathering in the capital for a 10th night despite strong U.S. support for the protesters.
Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a member of the Guardian Council constitutional watchdog, warned Washington not to think it could deal with Iran in the same way it had with its two neighbors.
``American leaders' remarks show you have baseless thoughts and dreams about Iran... Don't think Iran is Afghanistan or Iraq that you can enter by force,'' said Yazdi, whose sermon was broadcast live on state radio.
Yazdi warned U.S. officials not to exaggerate the importance of protests by ``a few hooligans.''
The Iranian people ``if they feel their country and religion is in danger, will come to the scene and fight the enemy until the last drop of their blood,'' he said as worshippers chanted ``Death to America.''
``Don't think what I'm saying are mere slogans, this is the reality. Iran is different from Iraq and Afghanistan so don't make decisions based on false reports,'' he added.
Yazdi, a former judiciary chief, urged courts to deal with those arrested in the recent protests quickly and without mercy.
CORRUPT ON EARTH
``They are rioters, hooligans and they are waging war on God. The judiciary should confront them as people who wage war on God,'' he said.
The loose term ``waging war on God,'' a charge which has been leveled at political dissidents in the past, carries the death penalty in Iran.
More than 300 people have been arrested in Tehran alone since the protests broke out over a week ago.
U.S. officials have hailed the protests as a cry for freedom leading to accusations of blatant interference from Tehran.
In Tehran on Thursday night riot police and hardline Islamic vigilantes lined the streets in some hot spots and intersections where protests had erupted on previous evenings.
Unlike on most of the previous nine nights, when thousands of would-be protesters crammed into cars blowing their horns and occasionally shouting slogans, traffic flows were normal and there was no sign of tension.
The official IRNA news agency and the student news agency ISNA carried no reports on Friday of protests in other cities.
Analysts said the protesters, who had voiced their anger at both reformist President Mohammad Khatami and the conservative clerics who have blocked his attempts at reform, had been intimidated into ending their protests because of the heavy security presence on the streets.
Despite the apparent fizzling out of the demonstrations, where the number of protesters never exceeded 5,000, analysts say widespread, deep anger with Iran's Islamic rulers remains and protests are likely to break out again in coming weeks.
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Three more protesters set themselves alight
Jonathan Steele
Friday June 20, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,981143,00.html
Three more Iranians set themselves alight yesterday in protest at the arrest in France of 158 members of the Mojahedin People's Movement of Iran, which has been banned by all EU states as a terrorist organisation. The detainees include the wife and brother of Massoud Rajavi, the head of the movement.
One man, who suffered severe burns after pouring petrol over himself during a march in the Swiss city of Bern, had failed in an attempt to ignite himself outside the French embassy the day before.
Two other Iranians set themselves alight during a protest in front of the French embassy in Rome.
On Wednesday three protesters set themselves on fire in front of France's intelligence agency, and a 38-year-old man set himself alight during a protest outside the French embassy in London on Tuesday.
In Tehran Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami broke his silence on student protests which have been going on there for 10 days. He was proud the protesters numbered just a few hundred, he said, and America's support for the students only promoted national unity.
"They [Americans] think that if students or non-students gather and protest ... it means that the pillars of the system are shaking, but in fact it means that there is democracy in Iran,"added the foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi.
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