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NUCLEAR
N. Korea Rejects U.S. Proposal
EADS, Lufthansa to build anti-missile systems for civilian aircraft
Retaliation against FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse plant employees
Home, Home on the (Radioactive) Range
Saying 'Good Riddance,' Bush Calls Hussein a 'Murderer'
Fact Sheet: Edwards' Strategy Of Prevention
MILITARY
Afghanistan Faces a Test in Democracy
Karzai Calls for Strong Presidential System
US commerce secretary in Prague to hawk F-16s
Jubilation, grief, and sadness in occupied Baghdad
Suicide Bomber Kills 17 Iraqis, Wounds 33
2 Car Bombers Attack Iraqi Police, as Insurgency Continues
U.S. Forces Uncover Iraqi Ex-Leader Near Home Town
The Resistance Belief That Insurgency Will Fade May Be Misplaced
Israeli Soldiers Kill Two Palestinians at Fence in Gaza
Arab Countries Call for Quick Transfer of Power to Iraqis
Pakistan's President Narrowly Escapes Assassin's Bomb
Pakistani Leader Narrowly Escapes Attempt on Life
Chechen Rebels Kill 9 Russian Troops and Seize 4 Hostages
Spy Agencies Vindicated After String of Setbacks
U.S. Hopes Hussein's Capture Will Bolster Support in U.N.
Iraqi Governing Council Says It Wants to Try Hussein
Iraqis Just Recently Set Rules to Govern Tribunal
At War Crimes Trial, Clark and Milosevic Meet Again
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Cheney Energy Group Case to Get High Court Hearing
Civil Rights Charges Dog Citizen Patrols on Border
China List Identifies Muslim Separatists Accused of Terrorism
ENERGY AND OTHER
Supreme Court to Hear Cheney Energy Appeal
E.P.A. Plans to Expand Pollution Markets
ACTIVISTS
Row as restored A-bomb plane goes on display
Hiroshima survivors protest at Enola Gay display
Atomic Bomb Survivors See Enola Gay
Grief overflows, anger flares as Hiroshima bomber goes on display
New Air And Space Museum Annex Opens
Hiroshima survivors face Enola Gay
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- korea
N. Korea Rejects U.S. Proposal
Associated Press
Monday, December 15, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A737-2003Dec15.html
SEOUL, Dec. 15 -- North Korea on Monday rejected a U.S. proposal to end a nuclear dispute and warned that Washington's "delaying tactics" would prompt Pyongyang to step up development of atomic weapons.
The North's state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said the U.S. offer, issued last week, did not meet North Korea's demand for a deal that would trade aid and security guarantees for the dismantling of its nuclear program. The U.S.-backed plan calls for "coordinated" steps to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
"As the U.S. urges the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear weapons completely, verifiably and irreversibly, the latter has the same right to demand the U.S. . . . give it complete, verifiable and irreversible security assurances," Rodong said, using the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"Its delaying tactics would only result in compelling the DPRK to steadily increase its nuclear deterrent force," it said.
-------- missile defense
EADS, Lufthansa to build anti-missile systems for civilian aircraft
FRANKFURT (AFP)
Dec 15, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031215130521.9i73eioo.html
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) said Monday it had agreed to work with German airline Lufthansa on the development of an anti-missile protection system for civilian aircraft in view of the threat of terrorist attacks.
A preliminary agreement was signed with Lufthansa's technical division Lufthansa Technik on December 4, EADS said in a statement.
The electronic systems will have warning sensors that detect approaching missiles and activate counter measures, such as the release of decoy devices or the disruption of the missiles' targeting ability, EADS said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Retaliation against FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse plant employees;
data cooked to improve results
MEMORANDUM
TO: James Caldwell, Administrator, Region III U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
CC: James Dyer, Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Samuel Collins, Deputy Executive Director for Reactor Programs Members, Davis-Besse 0350 Oversight Panel
FR: Shari Weir, Cleveland Program Director Paul Ryder, Communication Director Ohio Citizen Action
DT: December 15, 2003
RE: An analysis of FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse 'safety culture' surveys:
- Company figures show continuing retaliation against plant employees
- Data cooked to improve results: Raw data show no improvement
1. Summary
From May to November, 2003, FirstEnergy's primary goal was to prove to the public and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it now puts safety first at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant.
In that period, however, Davis-Besse employees report that FirstEnergy managers committed at least 33 acts of "retaliation for raising nuclear safety/quality concerns." That's an average of one every six days.
During the previous six-month period, October 2002 to March 2003, employees also reported at least 33 acts of retaliation; again, one every six days. In other words, FirstEnergy's own surveys show no improvement at all in the most important indicator of 'safety culture.'
These startling statistics come from FirstEnergy's most recent employee survey, which the company released on December 3, saying the results were "positive and encouraging."
FirstEnergy obscured these survey results by manipulating the data, changing both sample characteristics and question wording. In fact, as described below, the raw data behind the survey result most prominently featured by FirstEnergy executives ("I can raise nuclear safety concerns without fear of retaliation") may show a slight increase in intimidation in the plant.
2. Introduction
It is not easy to make a hole in a nuclear reactor lid. The warning signs at Davis-Besse were so clear for so long that only a certain combination of intimidation, exhaustion, management negligence, and deceit could allow it to continue.
FirstEnergy has tried to show the NRC that the intimidation of workers in the plant has ended. It does so with lengthy presentations of process: slides, committees, catch-phrases, color codes, training sessions, acronyms. It also needs to show the results of all this process, and to this end, it has only the results of periodic management-administered employee surveys.
This Thursday, December 18, FirstEnergy will ask the NRC to let them flip the switch to restart Davis-Besse on the basis of improvement in the survey results released on December 3.
In doing so, the company will have two problems:
First, as we understand it, the standard the NRC is looking for is not 'improvement.' The standard is much higher: 'safe enough to split atoms.'
Second, the survey results do not show improvement.
After showing how this is so, we look beyond the surveys for other evidence of FirstEnergy's fitness in the areas of intimidation, employee exhaustion, and management negligence. We will leave it to the federal grand jury to deal with the issue of deceit.
3. FirstEnergy's employee surveys
A. March, 2003
On April 15 and May 6, 2003, the company released results of a March survey of employees and contractors working at Davis-Besse.
The crucial question was posed to 666 employees and 377 contractors, as follows: "I have been subjected to 'HIRD' [harassment, intimidation, retaliation, discrimination] for raising nuclear safety, quality or compliance concerns while working at Davis-Besse within the last six months," (Exhibit 75, April 15, 2003; Exhibit 40, May 6, 2003).
5.1% of employees (33 people) and 10.9% of contractors (41 people) said they had, for a total of 74 workers.
These statistics likely understate the problem, since they only include workers who raised safety issues, then were subjected to 'HIRD' by management, and then were willing to speak out again to the same management. The difference in percentages between employee and contractors fits the pattern of the rest of the survey. This reflects in all likelihood that contractors were less under FirstEnergy's influence and thus more free to tell the truth.
In any other company, such practices would constitute a major scandal, and the Board of Directors would have promptly removed the Chief Executive Officer. At the time, however, FirstEnergy declared it an "improvement."
Importantly, the same March survey showed that 85% of employees and contractors said "I can raise nuclear safety or quality concerns without fear of retaliation." In other words, management could elicit an 85% "without fear" response at the same time it continued widespread retaliation against workers.
The significance of the March survey results is not only how it compares with the subsequent survey, below, but also how it was taken and what FirstEnergy did with the results:
- The employees and contractors were surveyed by the same management that for years maintained the climate of intimidation at the plant. How can anyone expect workers to give straight answers under these circumstances?
- Were responses to the survey intended to be anonymous? If so, what procedures did FirstEnergy follow to protect respondents' anonymity?
- Seeing so many instances of continuing intimidation, did FirstEnergy make any effort to get people to come forward and report it on the record? If so, what did it do? If not, why not?
- If FirstEnergy did make the effort and employees were willing to identify themselves in a complaint, what were the results? How many cases were substantiated? What were the consequences to the managers who were found to have engaged in intimidation or harassment?
- If FirstEnergy did make an effort to investigate this anonymous reported harassment, and employees were not willing to identify themselves, isn't that evidence in itself that employees still believe themselves to be under pressure?
- What has the NRC done since April 15 to find out, first, the particulars on the large number of reported instances of employee harassment, and second, what steps FirstEnergy has taken with respect to the particular cases reported?
B. November 2003
Reported retaliation cases
On December 3, FirstEnergy publicized the results of their November survey. Their Exhibit 25 shows that 4% of employees were willing to report that "I have been subjected to retaliation for raising nuclear safety/quality concerns within the last 6 months while working at Davis-Besse." The number of respondents was 833, so 4% means 33 people.
Given the wording of the survey, an affirmative response refers to at least one act of retaliation. There was no indication by FirstEnergy of a way for respondents to register that they had been subjected to more than one instance of retaliation. The "site population" is 850, so the 17 employees not responding may have had additional cases to report (Exhibit 14, December 3, 2003).
On average, then, there has been at least one act of reported retaliation every 5.5 days.
This result -- 33 reported acts in six months -- is the same as found in last spring's survey. It shows no progress at all in the single most telling index of 'safety culture.' FirstEnergy made two changes to the survey, however, between March and November, which obscured this result, and raise the question whether the climate in the plant may be, in fact, worse.
1. First, FirstEnergy changed the question wording. In March, the question referred to "harassment, intimidation, retaliation, discrimination." In November, the company dropped three of the four, asking only about "retaliation." Had they asked the same question as in March, there could easily have been more affirmative responses.
2. Second, FirstEnergy gave survey results for both employees and contractors in March, but only for employees in November. As noted above, contractors March responses were consistently more negative than those of employees. Did FirstEnergy not survey contractors in November, or have they withheld the November survey results for contractors? Either way, the public and the NRC need to know what contractors' responses to the question were or would be. Without them, the only consistent way to look at the numbers is to compare the number of employee-reported instances in March to employee-reported instances in November. The answer is 33 in both periods.
The "without fear" question
On December 3, FirstEnergy executives emphasized -- to financial analysts in New York and later to the NRC in Oak Harbor -- one survey result: that employees who had a "willingness to raise concerns without fear of retaliation" had risen from 85% in March 2003, to 87% in Nov 2003.
There are several reasons why this result is not the occasion for celebration:
First, the response increased by only 2% after eight months, during which the company said that improving the 'safety culture' was its primary objective. By any business standards, this would be regarded as a failure.
Second, we saw in the March survey that even though 85% of employees said they were willing "to raise concerns without fear of retaliation," management was continuing widespread retaliation against workers at the same time. There is no reason to believe that an increase of 2% in the "no fear" response would be associated with the disappearance of intimidation.
Third, again, FirstEnergy changed the sample characteristics, so that it is comparing apples with oranges. The 85% figure in March represented the combined responses of employees and contractors; the 87% figure in November represents the responses of employees only. FirstEnergy did not provide a breakdown of affirmative March responses between employees and contractors, so there is no way to compare the results responsibly. Since, as above, contractors responses tended to be significantly more negative than those of employees, it is easily possible that the affirmative percentage for employees-only actually dropped from March to November.
This possibility is supported by the clues provided in FirstEnergy's Exhibit 40 from May 6, 2003 and Exhibit 21 from December 3. Comparing the "disagree" responses to this question for employees only, the number climbed from 4.2% in March to 7% in November. This shows a worsening situation, not "improvement."
Other questions
In Exhibit 22, we find the following statement, "Management cares more about resolving safety and quality issues than cost and schedule." In response, 17% disagree, and another 14% "don't know." That's a total of 31%, or 258 employees, who can't affirm that management puts safety first. That's hardly a vote of confidence, again, especially during a year in which the company's primary goal was to prove that it did put safety first.
FirstEnergy also chose 10% of the staff -- 86 people -- for interviews on the same topics. From the interview format, we know for sure that anonymity was impossible. Thus we could expect to find much more favorable responses to the same question than from an anonymous survey.
However, fully 9% were willing to say they knew of or had heard of an instance of retaliation, compared with 11% on the full-staff survey (Exhibit 31).
23% of interview respondents said they were "aware of instances since February 2003 in which another individual raised an issue and considered the response incomplete or unacceptable," (Exhibit 31). If this proportion applied to the employees as a whole, that would be 195 people.
All the same questions about the March 2003 survey apply to the November 2003 survey:
- Were responses to the survey intended to be anonymous? If so, what procedures did FirstEnergy follow to protect respondents' anonymity? What does FirstEnergy intend to do to get people to come forward and report it on the record? What does the NRC intend to do to find out the facts about these continued reports of harassment?
- Why is the NRC relying on FirstEnergy to provide evidence that it has stopped intimidating its own employees? Isn't it inherent in the problem that the honor system won't work?
- What does it say about FirstEnergy's sense of accountability that, at the very moment it demands restart approval, it is trying to slide such clumsy deceptions past the NRC?
4. Other evidence
Management-administered surveys are not the only ways to understand what is going on inside the plant. Below, we look at other evidence about intimidation, exhaustion, and negligence.
A. Intimidating employees
The most publicized example of intimidation occurred to Andrew Siemaszko, an engineer who "had been urging the utility to clean rust from the plant's reactor head almost from the day he was hired in 1999 as a lead nuclear systems engineer with a FirstEnergy subsidiary. When he and a crew of workers were finally allowed to work on the problem during the plant's 2000 refueling outage, the complaint claims, there was so much rust accumulated on the reactor head that workers used crowbars to pry it off," (Tom Henry, Toledo Blade, February 19, 2003). FirstEnergy fired Siemaszko for his continuing insistence on following safety procedures ("Andrew Siemaszko, complainant, v. First Energy Nuclear Operating Company, respondent," U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration).
In another case, three employees were threatened in separate incidents "after they questioned whether a job was being done properly. One worker's auto tires were slashed in early January, said [attorney Howard] Whitcomb, after the employee stopped a project in the reactor containment building over a safety issue," (John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 1, 2003).
The company hired safety expert, Dr. Sonja Haber, to examine their operations. She found a "widespread perception of 'them versus us' within the organization, particularly among some senior managers with regard to Station personnel," (Dr. Sonja Haber, Performance, Safety, and Health Associates, Inc., April 14, 2003).
The overall situation was well-summarized by Paul Blanch and Ulrich Witte, who learned about 'safety culture' at Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut.
They "said they believe that FirstEnergy's charges against Andrew Siemaszko will discourage other employees from coming forward -- regardless of whether Mr. Siemaszko proves he is a whistleblower who was wrongfully terminated. 'It is just sending a horrible, horrible message to the employees that if they [FirstEnergy management] can get away with it, they will,' Mr. Blanch said. 'The message is out there that the utility is persecuting whistleblowers.'. . . 'I guarantee there will never be a credible witness who will step forward and speak honestly about what happened at that plant, because of this,' [Ulrich Witt] added," (Tom Henry, Toledo Blade, April 29, 2003).
B. Working employees to exhaustion
FirstEnergy has also undermined plant safety by overworking its employees. Some fatigue-caused mistakes show themselves immediately. Others become buried in miles of wiring or piping, and don't appear for months or years, on a normal day or during an accident.
Shortly after the hole was discovered, Ohio Citizen Action began to hear from employees -- and friends and relatives of employees -- that the company was working them too hard.
Oak Harbor resident Tom Lenz first raised the issue publicly on September 17, 2002, at an NRC public meeting:
"One other question, you're talking for the safety of the plant; what about the workers and the hours they're putting in? I'm friends with quite a few people that work out there, and I know some of them have been on 12 hour shifts or more and six and seven days a week since September 11 of last year. That cannot be a safe working environment to have these people working those kind of hours for that length of time."
The U.S. NRC did not investigate Mr. Lenz' report, despite the clear language of "NRC Regulatory Issue Summary 2002-07: Clarification of NRC Requirements applicable to worker fatigue and self-declarations of fitness-for-duty," (May 10, 2002). This reads in part:
"Section 26.10(a) requires a licensees to "provide reasonable assurance that nuclear power plant personnel...are not under the influence of any substance, legal or illegal, or mentally or physically impaired from any cause, which in any way adversely affects their ability to safely and competently perform their duties."
This position is consistent with 26.10(a)(2), which states that "licensee policy should also address other factors that could affect fitness for duty such a mental stress, fatigue, and illness."
Subsequent to the September 2002 public meeting, Ohio Citizen Action learned that a worker had filed a condition report complaining that workers were required to work schedules that left them too tired to do their jobs safely. At least one additional worker was rumored to have filed such a condition report, but our source had not yet witnessed a hard copy of it.
Based on these reports, on December 13, 2002, Ohio Citizen Action filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Allegation by Ohio Citizen Action that Davis-Besse employees are required to work unrealistic work schedules, leaving them unfit-for-duty, Amy Ryder, Cleveland Program Director, Ohio Citizen Action, to James Heller, Senior Allegations Coordinator, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, December 13, 2002).
In the complaint, Citizen Action asked the NRC to take the following steps:
1. Obtain, review, and make public copies of all condition reports filed since September 11, 2001, at the Davis-Besse nuclear power station referencing worker fatigue and fitness-for-duty; 2. Launch a formal investigation, independent of the current 0350 panel, to determine Davis-Besse workers' fitness-for-duty, and their ability and freedom to report their fitness-for-duty without fear of reprisal; 3. Inquire into why Mr. Grobe did not take issue with FirstEnergy about exhaustive work schedules after Mr. Lenz raised the problem; 4. Establish a procedure in which Davis-Besse workers may notify the NRC that they are unfit-for-duty, without reprisal or fear of reprisal from their employer; and 5. Notify FirstEnergy that Davis-Besse will not be permitted to return to service until this matter has been resolved and a public meeting has been held in Ohio to notify the public of the resolution of this problem.
In the April 15, 2003, 'safety culture' report, Dr. Sonja Haber also noted the overwork problem:
"At the time of the evaluation, station personnel stated that they had been working extended hours (e.g., 12 hours per day, 6 days a week or 10 hours a day, 7 days a week) for periods of six months and more. . . The continuing long work hours have the potential to lead to degraded safety performance." (Safety Culture Evaluation of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, April 14, 2003, paqe 15).
Five months after Citizen Action filed its complaint, the NRC dismissed it without an investigation. Instead, the agency asked FirstEnergy whether their employees were fit for duty. FirstEnergy said they were. "We consider the issues closed," said John Grobe, Chairman of the NRC's Davis-Besse oversight panel, in his letter dismissing the complaint (May 16, 2003).
Thus officially cleared, FirstEnergy felt free to announce the exhausting schedules: ". . . Davis-Besse employees yesterday began an accelerated 12-hours-a-day, six-day workweek, and they sealed the big hatch that had been used to shuttle repair equipment in and out of the reactor building," (John Mangels, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jun 26, 2003).
Even workers speaking in favor of a quick restart could not help acknowledging the obvious:
". . . we've been working our tails off for the last year and a half trying to get the plant back on-line, and we're tired, we want to get this behind us and move forward," (Ron Purk, Reactor Operator, Davis-Besse, public meeting between U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 0350 Panel and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, October 7, 2003, transcript page 54).
The evidence for worker exhaustion continues through last week: On December 10, the NRC called a special meeting at its regional headquarters to examine corrective actions at Davis-Besse. During the meeting, Davis-Besse plant engineering director Jim Powers said that he plans for the staff to decrease its hours to a fifty-hour workweek, to give staff an opportunity to "rejuvenate." At a Port Clinton Kiwanis Club meeting, reported the same day --
"[Port Clinton EMS Medical Director] Dr. Barry Cover told [FirstEnergy Vice President Mark Bezilla, the corporation's top on-site Davis-Besse executive] that some Davis-Besse workers look 'dead beat' from working 60- and 70-hour weeks readying the power station for restart. 'It doesn't work in my business,' Cover said. 'I don't see how it can work in yours,'" (Rick Neale, Port Clinton News Herald, Dec 11, 2003).
- If FirstEnergy is now committed to "a robust Safety Culture and Safety Conscious Work Environment," as it announced on December 3, 2003, why is it routinely violating NRC safety regulations regarding overwork?
- Why won't the NRC even investigate this violation?
C. Management negligence
At the December 10 meeting in Lisle, Illinois, FirstEnergy told the NRC it had a list of thousands of repairs and improvements left undone.
". . .the engineering workload over the next two years is vast -- more than 8,500 items generated during the plant shutdown remain on the table, said [Davis-Besse plant engineering director Jim] Powers, from updating drawings to reworking old calculations. The company assumes that most of the work, for which it has budgeted $12 million over two years, would be done after the reactor resumes making power," (John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 11, 2003).
At the same meeting, FirstEnergy told the NRC they wanted to resume nuclear fission at Davis-Besse by New Years Eve.
- Is FirstEnergy implying that --
1. None of the 8,500 undone items are safety-related?
2. All the safety-related items will be done within a few days? or
3. They won't be done but they don't care?
- Does the NRC believe either of the first two possibilities is plausible?
FirstEnergy gave confusing answers at the December 10 NRC meeting about how and when this list was prepared, and whether it was available to the NRC.
- Does the NRC have a copy of the list? If so, has it examined each of the 8,500 items?
- Is the NRC prepared to declare, based on that examination, that none of the undone items are safety-related?
Ohio Citizen Action has documented the dozens of different restart dates FirstEnergy has announced since March, 2002. On the average, the restart date was set for 4 - 8 weeks from the date of the announcement.
- On each of the dozens of occasions, were FirstEnergy executives unaware that they had thousands of unfinished items, or were they deliberately ignoring them?
We know that many repairs have been done since March 2002. Since so many items remain, however, and, as reported above, they were "generated during the plant shutdown," it raises several questions:
- How many items have been generated each month during the shutdown? How many items have been accomplished each month?
- Are new items still being generated, and at what rate? How many of these are safety-related? If the number of new safety-related items is significant, is it wise to start a nuclear reactor under these circumstances?
- If, however, the generation of new items has stopped, when did that happen? Did it stop because the hardware is now safe, or because management didn't want new items added to the list?
Ohio Citizen Action 614 W. Superior Avenue, Suite 1200 Cleveland, Ohio 44113 216.861.5200 216.694.6904 fax 1.888.777.7135 toll-free
-------- utah
Home, Home on the (Radioactive) Range
By Chip Ward, tomdispatch.com
December 15, 2003
Associated NUKE News
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17390
The high and dry Great Basin Desert covers much of western Utah and most of Nevada. Its vast scenery - barren gray ranges and sage covered plains - are an acquired taste that few Americans have acquired. Most consider the lonely drive from Salt Lake City to Reno a sleep-inducing and bladder-busting ordeal. Home to flash floods, wildfires, coyotes and seismic catastrophes, the Great Basin is unloved and, therefore, easily abused. It is where we once practiced atomic, then chemical and biological warfare. It is covered with bombing ranges. Today, it is becoming a time-bomb graveyard for nuclear waste that cannot be abided where it is generated.
Those of us who live on the boundaries of such Great Basin facilities as the Nevada Test Site, or the nuclear reservation at Hanford, Washington, or Dugway Proving Grounds have been "downwinders" before. We know how the economics of costs, risks, and liabilities can get translated not only into federal policy but also into ecological disaster and human tragedy. We know that nuclear utilities and their federal facilitators would turn our landscape into a radioactive wasteland and that we are on the frontline of a national struggle.
At first glance, this does not bode well for those who have long fought nuclear technology and its corporate owners. The Great Basin, after all, is sparsely populated and its citizens are politically weak. Mostly Mormon, they are inexperienced in the art of grassroots politics. A local joke goes: how many Utahns does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: five - one man to pronounce Heavenly Father's will, another to lead prayer while screwing in the bulb, and three women to provide childcare and refreshments. Recently, however, political activists in Utah won a big one, a hinterland victory that has gone mostly unnoticed but should encourage activists everywhere. If a handful of determined citizens can beat the big boys in Utah, we can win anywhere.
Facing a Mobile Chernobyl
Utah and Nevada get it both ways. After enduring the insidious consequences of fallout from a hundred above-ground tests of our atomic arsenal, plus leakage from hundreds of underground nuclear tests, we are now asked to abide the results of the "peaceful atom" as well. Utilities that own nuclear power plants elsewhere in the country have for decades been accumulating the waste stream from Hell. So-called "spent" fuel rods from reactor cores are the most irradiated substances on the planet and, unshielded, can kill the unwary bystander within minutes of exposure. They remain dangerous for 20,000 years. After fifty years of studying what to do with such "high-level" nuclear waste, the federal government has assumed responsibility for imposing a "solution" where there is none. Nevada is slated to get forty years' worth of accumulated spent fuel, now stored near reactors across the nation. A "permanent" repository under construction at Yucca Mountain near the Nevada Nuclear Test Site will be the most expensive taxpayer-funded engineering project in history.
Permanence is a dicey concept out here. Yucca is not as safe as an easterner might suspect. The desert only appears static. We live in a dynamic landscape where the earth cracks and shifts suddenly and unimpeded winds lift dust into the jet stream. As Mount St. Helen showed in 1980, even supposedly dormant volcanoes sometimes blow and drift eastward.
The feds also promised the nuclear industry that they would facilitate the development of a "temporary" site to park used fuel rods while they await transfer to Yucca Mountain. When they failed to do so, a consortium of several nuclear utilities came up with a Plan B. Calling themselves Private Fuel Storage, they are trying to ship their accumulated spent-fuel rods to a dirt-poor Goshute Indian reservation in Skull Valley, Utah, until the Yucca Mountain facility can be completed in ten years or so. The state of Utah has held PFS off, arguing that the "temporary" site will sooner or later become permanent because an additional twenty or more years down the road, when Yucca Mountain is filled, there will be enough accumulated fuel rods to fill Skull Valley as well, and still leave more in storage around the power plants that generated them.
Far from solving a staggering and intractable problem, Nevada and Utah argue, Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley simply allow that problem to be replicated and compounded again and again. The Great Basin is slated to be used as an enabler for some very toxic collective behaviors. In the meanwhile, all that dangerous high-level nuclear waste will be hauled across watersheds, over aquifers, and through communities - thousands of shipments vulnerable to terrorist attacks and inevitable accidents along the way. Most will carry the cesium equivalent of more than two hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs. Millions of Americans will be in the path of what critics are calling "Mobile Chernobyl."
But wait, there's more. The nation's nuclear power infrastructure is aging and must be rebuilt if nuclear power is to continue. Since it is no longer possible to site a new nuclear power plant anywhere that lobotomy-free citizens live, the industry cannot perform the usual "walk-away-and-let-the-government-clean-up" act it perfected while mining and processing the uranium that is its raw material. No, the old power plants will have to be torn apart and rebuilt in place. The result will be yet more hot and dangerous debris, hundreds of thousands of tons of "low-level" nuclear waste generated by ripping out and rebuilding that infrastructure. Low-level radioactive waste comes in three alphabetic categories: A, B, and C. B and C wastes are the hottest and most problematic. Previous attempts to isolate and store such wastes failed badly in wet climes like South Carolina. After all, radioactive materials migrate easily once they reach water. To upgrade and go on, nuclear utilities desperately need a dry rug to sweep their hot debris under, so our desert lands are now targeted.
The government's policy for dealing with this developing component of our intractable nuclear waste dilemma has also collapsed and is being conceded to the private sector. An entrepreneur named Khosrow Semnani is becoming the nation's first radioactive-waste multimillionaire and wants to become even richer by filling the gap between the drive to keep nuclear utilities profitable and the inability of federal agencies to pimp their tainted waste stream. Semnani, who gave his corporation the tree-hugging moniker Envirocare, operates a large landfill for A-level radioactive waste, mostly contaminated soils, on Utah's West Desert. He has come close to establishing a monopoly of the market for A-level radioactive waste and is now bidding to corner the emerging market in B- and C-level debris.
The federal government has been an expensive, unresponsive, and careless steward of the nation's nuclear waste. Any citizen who has tried to influence a hearing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knows that its relation to sound science, open information, and citizen inclusion is a lot like the relationship between justice and a drive-by shooting. But the experiment in privatizing the radioactive-waste problem on Utah's western desert has revealed the dramatic shortcomings of that alternative.
When Semnani was applying to Utah for a permit to develop his dump, he paid $600,000 in gold coins and condos to the director of the state's radioactive waste agency who is now serving time in prison, not for extorting the money or receiving a bribe but for failing to report his ill-gotten gains to the IRS. Semnani's lawyers first kept him out of jail and then turned their attention to the corporation's peskier critics - the Sierra Club's Cindy King, for example, is fighting off a $142 million defamation suit. Despite his less than stellar reputation, Semnani went on to become a major contributor to many Utah gubernatorial, congressional, and legislative candidates. Utah's political patriarchs who zealously guard their flock against the dangers of sex education and beer commercials saw no problem in accepting Semnani's glowing largesse.
High Noon and the Mormon Temple of Doom
Just three years ago, Envirocare looked unbeatable and was rolling toward whatever regulatory and legislative permission it needed to expand into the B and C market when a handful of determined activists threw themselves in its path. A grassroots group, Families Against Incinerator Risk, originally formed to oppose the incineration of chemical weapons, led the resistance. FAIR created literature and a web site, taught workshops, held debates, wrote letters, turned out citizens for hearings, lobbied, generated news stories, held demonstrations, cultivated allies, and finally morphed into a broader coalition, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL Utah.
FAIR/HEAL's task was made harder by a local political culture that could not be more hostile to change initiated from the bottom. Utah has a thin history of grassroots and labor organizing and we haven't acquired the skills and native leadership to resist powerful corporations and their government agency allies. Culturally, the Mormon majority is not disposed to challenge authority. My heck, as we would say here, we don't even have a viable two-party system. Except for Salt Lake City itself, Republicans utterly dominate the state legislature and local governments and a rightwing "Cowboy Caucus" dominates the Republican Party. Here the notion of checks and balances applies mostly to banking transactions. Debate in Utah's Legislature tends to be the intellectual equivalent of marrying your cousin.
State regulators get their budgets and marching orders from legislators hostile to regulation in general and environmental notions in particular. Because the ideal Mormon family includes five to ten kids, our population profile is closer to Bangladesh than Bangor, Maine, and our legislators are desperate for the revenue necessary to educate so many. They are pleased when deserts once used as military toilets for nerve gas and anthrax can be turned into pay toilets for commercial hazardous waste. The result is a notoriously weak interpretation of environmental law and policy followed by timid enforcement. Under former governor, now EPA director Michael Leavitt, Utah regulators were more like lapdogs than watchdogs with only one trick in their repertoire: roll over. Predatory corporations peddling toxic waste disposal who knew an anemic civic environment when they saw one, took full advantage. Each new environmental horror pried opened the gate a bit further for the next poisonous monster to slither in.
Semnani's bid to take on hotter radioactive wastes was held off through three legislative sessions before a task force, stacked with Envirocare supporters, was assigned to study the issues and resolve the debate once and for all. The outlook seemed bleak. But within months, FAIR/HEAL, under the leadership of 27 year-old activist Jason Groenewold, managed to strip the task force of its credibility. Recent polls show more than 85 percent of Utahns are opposed to importing the hotter wastes.
The fat lady might have cleared her throat, but she wasn't quite ready to sing. Then Utah's newest congressman, aptly named Rob Bishop, jumped into the fray. A former paid lobbyist for Envirocare, he quietly facilitated a Department of Energy attempt to circumvent the company's failure to get state permission to import C-level wastes from Ohio that the feds were desperate to move. Three years of vigorous civic dialogue was, it seemed, about to be short-circuited with a wink and a nod. Utah citizens were outraged.
Crowds of angry citizens dogged Bishop's appearances, shouting to be heard. His arrogant response to their criticism - that "lay" people, too dumb to grasp such complicated scientific issues, should stand aside and let the technicians do their job - only heightened the backlash. Letters to the editor flooded the newspapers. Talk radio chimed in loud n'clear. Every major media outlet denounced the importation of radioactive waste. When we found out that our top political patrician, Senator Bob Bennett, had tried to create a backdoor loophole through which Envirocare might slip the waste, the crowds turned on him too.
Then a funny thing happened. Olene Walker, our quiet, bumbling, grandmotherly 72 year-old lieutenant governor took office when Leavitt moved to the EPA. We were told that our first female governor would just fill Mike's place for a year until a new patriarch could be chosen. But on her first day in office she sternly denounced the Bishop-Envirocare deal as well as the importation of hotter waste in general and vowed to block any of it from happening. Bennett, noting the cheers for Olene and the punishment doled out to Bishop, immediately did a 180 and proclaimed himself ever against radioactive waste. The co-chair of the legislative task force then promptly abandoned Envirocare, followed by two prominent Republican candidates for governor.
A tipping point had been reached. The final blow was delivered by the Alliance for Unity, a coalition of the state's top religious leaders, and Salt Lake City's Mayor Rocky Anderson, Utah's most progressive political leader. It includes a very high official in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - that is, the Mormon Church. When the Alliance came out against importing hotter waste, a gasp could be heard from one end of the state to the other. The Mormon member would never have accepted the statement without the explicit agreement of the church's prophet and leaders. The almighty Church itself had spoken. Envirocare admitted defeat and withdrew its bid for the Ohio waste.
A grassroots citizen movement driven by an organization led by a 27 year-old with only three staff members and an annual budget of less than $150,000 had just soundly thrashed a well-connected corporation with an annual income of at least $50 million and a team of top-drawer lawyers, lobbyists, and PR flacks. While the citizen David stood triumphant, the nuke-waste Goliath covered his wounded eye and howled. Supporting the importation of even "low level" radioactive waste into Utah is now seen as politically suicidal and the nuclear industry has lost a crucial option for avoiding a problem it must, but cannot, solve.
There is never closure in politics. The campaign to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Utah and Nevada and to expose the coming Mobile Chernobyl that will be heading to Yucca Mountain is just beginning. We must educate our fellow Americans in the East whose utilities are so ready to tag us with the risks, costs, and liabilities of a power source we neither used nor benefited from. Our slogan must be: "No more enabling the nuclear industry anywhere - stop the madness now." Other greedy and dangerous schemes will, no doubt, be hatched. But on this one, we won - hands down. If we can win here, hope is alive and well.
Chip Ward is the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and the forthcoming Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land (Island Press). He has worked for more than a decade as a grassroots organizer, co-founding several environmental groups in Utah where he is also the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System.
-------- us politics
Saying 'Good Riddance,' Bush Calls Hussein a 'Murderer'
December 15, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/middleeast/15CND-PREX.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - President Bush said today that he had a simple message for the captured Saddam Hussein - "Good riddance, the world is better off without you" - and that he would leave it to the Iraqi people to determine if their former leader should be executed.
Mr. Bush reaffirmed his determination "to stay the course" in Iraq, an indication that the capture of Mr. Hussein has not led the White House to reconsider its policies or to seek a speedier exit.
Sounding ebullient during a 50-minute news conference, his last for the year, Mr. Bush said he had his own opinions about how Mr. Hussein should be dealt with, but insisted that "my personal views aren't important in this matter." Several times, however, he called Mr. Hussein a "torturer" and "murderer," and left little doubt, given the president's record of support for the death penalty as governor of Texas and in Washington, what kind of penalty he considered appropriate for those charges.
Significantly, Mr. Bush declined to say that Mr. Hussein should face the special criminal tribunal set up by the Iraqi Governing Council last week, just three days before the deposed Iraqi dictator's capture. Instead, he said he would "work with Iraqis to develop a way to try him that will withstand international scrutiny." That seemed to leave some distance between Washington's thinking about a trial and Iraqi plans.
The current holder of the rotating presidency of the interim Governing Council said at a news conference in Paris today that Mr. Hussein would be tried by Iraq's recently established war crimes tribunal and that he could face the death penalty if convicted.
Mr. Bush described the long-sought capture of the man who survived the 1991 Persian Gulf war and attempted to assassinate his father as the capstone of what he called "an extraordinary year for our country." He listed a series of accomplishments, from the invasion of Iraq to the passage of prescription drug coverage for seniors to his signing of a bill outlawing partial-birth abortion, in what appeared to be a prelude to his re-election campaign.
The president announced that he would be running for re-election in 2004 - hardly a surprise - and added in a burst of enthusiasm that "I have come to realize this job is a magnificent job."
Yet he declined to discuss the coming campaign or potential opponents, other than to say he looked forward to defending his record. He made an exception, however, when he was asked about a recent suggestion from Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and the apparent front-runner in the coming Democratic Party primaries, that the White House might have received an early warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It's an absurd insinuation," Mr. Bush said, turning to the next question.
Mr. Bush was uncharacteristically expansive in many of his answers, a sharp contrast with his tone a month ago, when he seemed brittle and dismissed a query about how long troops would remain in Iraq as a "trick question."
Today, asked about the same issue, he made it clear that Mr. Hussein's capture would not affect his timetable for how long American troops would remain in Iraq.
"The work of our coalition remains difficult and will require further sacrifice," the president said. "We will stay the course until the job is done."
Some of his senior aides, in separate conversations today, suggested that Mr. Hussein's capture made it easier to justify keeping American troops in Iraq even after sovereignty is passed to the Iraqis because it is evident they are accomplishing something. "We've got Saddam," one aide said, "but Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad know we don't have all his friends."
Mr. Bush dismissed the idea that Mr. Hussein had much to contribute during the interrogations that the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have now begun, and suggested that even if the former leader talked about weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Bush would not believe anything he said. "I don't believe he'll tell the truth," the president said. "He didn't tell the truth for over a decade. I just can't believe he's gong to change his ways just because he happens to be captured."
In a slight at Mr. Hussein that White House officials said they hoped would be beamed into Iraq, Mr. Bush also said of the deposed dictator, "When the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it."
Mr. Bush stopped just short of sounding triumphal, and when asked about the fact that weapons inspectors have found little in their nine months in the country, he appeared to back away, ever so slightly, from his assertions before the war that Mr. Hussein actually possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Instead, the president referred to "weapons programs that would have put him in material breach" of United Nations resolutions, and argued that if David Kay, the current weapons inspector who reports to the C.I.A., had been working prior to the invasion of Iraq, he would have reported those breaches to the United Nations.
Asked whether North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, should draw any lessons from Mr. Hussein's capture, Mr. Bush sidestepped the issue, saying that despite the Iraq invasion, "I'm reluctant to use military power."
"It's the last choice, it's not our first choice," he said.
Mr. Bush then went on to describe the diplomacy under way with North Korea and said he hoped that Mr. Kim "listens." It was an interesting moment, however, because Mr. Bush chose not describe the prison camps in North Korea, or the stores of chemical weapons and nuclear weapons that the C.I.A. says North Korea possesses. That is part of a White House strategy to deal with North Korea in the coming year by playing down the threat posed by Mr. Kim and avoiding acknowledgment, except when directly asked, of intelligence estimates about its nuclear weapons capability.
--------
Fact Sheet: Edwards' Strategy Of Prevention, Not Preemption
Edwards for President
Monday, December 15, 2003
http://www.johnedwards2004.com/page.asp?id=445
John Edwards has a specific plan to meet one of the most pressing national security challenges facing America: the threat posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons.
Edwards will implement new policies to meet the new national security realities. Time and technology have enabled dangerous states like North Korea and Iran to take steps toward the development of nuclear arms. These states and others also have the capacity to produce and sell dangerous technologies to terrorists intent on doing us harm. At the same time, the source materials for producing weapons of mass destruction have become vulnerable to theft or black-market sale, particularly in the former Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the international rules and institutions America relies on to deter and isolate those trying to get such weapons are riddled with loopholes and gaps. The Bush administration has responded by pretending that these rules and institutions do not matter. Edwards believes that they do matter, and that the right policy for America's security is not to ignore them, but to fix them.
Edwards believes that America cannot accept the false choice between the administration's dangerous doctrine of preemption and a multilateral regime that isn't up to the current challenge. He has a plan designed to accomplish three broad objectives:
1. To establish new international standards and safeguards to stop dangerous weapons from getting into the wrong hands - standards that are clear, unambiguous and sanctioned by international law;
2. To give the international community tough new tools to punish nations that violate these standards; and
3. To improve America's ability to be an international leader in this effort.
To accomplish these objectives, Edwards will:
- Establish a new Global Nuclear Compact to strengthen and reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
- Propose a new United Nations Security Council Resolution to tighten the diplomatic noose around nations that violate non-proliferation agreements.
- Triple the budget for programs to end the dangers of "Loose Nukes" in the former Soviet Union and around the world.
- Reform our intelligence to strengthen America's capacity to understand and respond to WMD threats.
- Appoint a high-level "Non-Proliferation Director" who will bring focus and energy to our country's non-proliferation efforts.
Establish A New Global Nuclear Compact To Strengthen And Reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Under the NPT, it is too easy for a country to cheat or use a legal civilian power program as the jumping off point for an illegal military one by withdrawing from the Treaty on short notice and having a weapons capability within months. The new Global Nuclear Compact would close this nuclear loophole by establishing clear international standards for the storage, handling and transportation of dangerous nuclear materials, and by giving the international community new tools to deter and, if necessary, to sanction nations that violate these standards. Within six months of taking office, John Edwards will convene a summit of leading nations to consider the new Compact.
In particular, the Compact would:
- Require heightened security for existing nuclear facilities and materials;
- Ensure more frequent verification that nuclear facilities are not being misused and nuclear materials are not being diverted;
- Authorize international inspectors to mount challenge inspections without notice in countries that have a record of past non-compliance with their obligations;
- Set specific limitations on the capability of nations to produce the most dangerous materials and increase the international community's role in providing access to fuels for peaceful nuclear programs;
- Authorize strong, immediate multilateral penalties aimed specifically at the military capabilities of offending nations.
Propose A New United Nations Security Council Resolution To Tighten The Diplomatic Noose Around Nations That Violate Non-Proliferation Agreements
This resolution would establish the principle that countries like North Korea who willfully violate treaties like the NPT lose certain rights under international law, including the right to sell or transfer deadly weapons or related material to other nations or groups. To enforce this principle, law-abiding nations would have the right to search ships, aircraft and land vehicles originating in these lawless countries.
Triple The Budget For Programs To End The Dangers Of "Loose Nukes" In The Former Soviet Union And Around The World
The Edwards plan would increase the budget for initiatives such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program -- from $1 billion per year to $3 billion per year - allowing us to eliminate this problem before the end of the decade. These increases would be paid for by canceling the Bush administration's plan to create a new generation of "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons and by cuts in the $9 billion annual budget for the missile defense programs. It makes no sense to spend nine times as much on an unproven missile defense system than we do on proven successes like the Nunn-Lugar.
Strengthen America's Intelligence Capability To Understand And Respond To WMD Threats
Edwards will hire more intelligence analysts with the right kind of scientific and technical training, backgrounds, and language skills, and institute reforms to improve both our technical and human intelligence concerning WMD. To reform domestic intelligence, Edwards will shift the authority for tracking down terrorists here at home from the FBI to a new agency. That agency should have a mandate, the mission and the institutional culture needed to assault terror without assaulting the constitution of the United States.
Appoint A High-Level "Non-Proliferation Director" Who Will Bring Focus And Energy To Our Country's Non-Proliferation Efforts
Right now we have one person in charge of homeland security, one person who leads our fight against drugs and a single administrator in Iraq, but no one person or office in charge of dealing with the threat from WMD. Instead, that responsibility is dispersed among at least six agencies and many layers of bureaucracy. Edwards will name a senior official, answering directly to him as president, who will wake up every morning thinking only about how to keep WMD out of the hands of terrorists and others who wish us harm.
Last modified on 12/15/2003 8:07:36 PM
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghanistan Faces a Test in Democracy
December 15, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL and AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/asia/15AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 14 - Afghans gathered Sunday for a historic grand council, or loya jirga, to debate and approve a new constitution that will pave the way for national elections. It will also be a test for President Hamid Karzai, as he faces growing political discord and opposition to his vision for a democratic system with a strong presidency.
About 500 delegates traveled from throughout the country for the traditional tribal assembly, which is taking place in a large tent in western Kabul amid heavy security against attacks from the Taliban or other militants opposed to the event, which is sponsored by the United Nations.
Approving a new constitution is one of the steps stipulated in the United Nations Bonn Accords of 2001 for Afghanistan, and would be a major achievement for Mr. Karzai's government. United Nations officials and diplomats expect him to rally enough support for the draft constitution he favors, but probably with some amendments.
The talks could last two weeks.
Yet ahead of the proceedings, delegates and observers warned that the debate might prove protracted and divisive, particularly on the question of whether the country should adopt a parliamentary or a presidential system. Delegates were forming blocs and preparing to oppose parts of the draft constitution, according to United Nations officials and diplomats.
A Kabul newspaper, Farda, published a cartoon showing Mr. Karzai and a foreign adviser tugging on the rope of a boat loaded with delegates, while two mujahedeen leaders, Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf and Burhanuddin Rabbani, pulled in the other direction.
"Either the power of the American presidency! Or the parliamentary power of 1992 to 1996!" the caption read, referring to the Western-style democracy favored by Mr. Karzai versus the Islamic-style mujahedeen government of the 1990's.
The loya jirga opened with delegates expressing optimism and determination to make it a success. They had defied snowy roads and, for some, death threats from the Taliban to reach Kabul.
The former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who carries the symbolic title father of the nation, opened the meeting, saying it heralded a "new national life for Afghanistan."
"The people trust in you, and you should not forget that," he told delegates. "You should act without fear, accept any pressure with patience and tolerance, and attend to what will benefit the country."
Mr. Karzai called it a happy day that after 30 years of strife and upheaval, the country was drawing up a new constitution for a democratic future. "For the first time in the history of Afghanistan, the Afghan people have the opportunity to elect their own leaders," he said.
Mr. Karzai gave an account of the work of his government over the last two years. Much of it sounded like a campaign speech as he listed his government's achievements: the roads being built, the schools being opened and the economy's revival. He also acknowledged some failures: the Taliban insurgency in the south, the continuing deforestation and the widespread cultivation of poppies, which this year produced the second biggest opium harvest ever recorded.
The political divisions and opposition to Mr. Karzai's powers as president came to the fore in the election for chairman of the assembly. The four candidates represented the factions in play, with the harshest challenge coming from Abdul Hafiz Mansoor, 39, a mujahedeen veteran from the Panjshir Valley, which was the base of the Northern Alliance and is now the locus of opposition to too much power for Mr. Karzai.
A conservative Islamist who now edits the newspaper Payam-e- Mojahed, Mr. Mansoor criticized the government and authorities for trying to make the constitution "for themselves, and not the people."
In the end the candidate backed by Mr. Karzai, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, won with 252 votes, just squeaking over the 50 percent he needed to avoid a runoff.
--------
Karzai Calls for Strong Presidential System
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A100-2003Dec14.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 14 -- President Hamid Karzai dominated the opening of a national constitutional assembly Sunday with a forceful, campaign-style speech that called for adoption of a strong presidential system of governance and left no doubt about his ambitions to seek election as head of state.
Delegates from Islamic militia factions immediately challenged Karzai's authority during debate over choosing a chairman for the assembly, hinting at disputes to come. But a front-row array of Karzai-appointed delegates who also control key Islamic factions suggested he had already taken steps to forestall opposition.
Late Sunday, Karzai's position was further bolstered when delegates chose former president Sebqatallah Mojadedi to chair the assembly. Mojadedi, a moderate Muslim and Karzai's choice for the position, defeated his closest rival, Hafiz Mansour, an Islamic conservative ideologue, by 252 votes to 154.
The constitutional assembly, known as a loya jirga, is to debate and ratify a new constitution during the next several weeks, setting the stage for presidential elections next year. The 500 delegates -- more than one-fifth of whom are women -- must choose between a presidential and parliamentary system and the degree to which the tenets of Islam will be enshrined in the constitution.
The meeting was formally convened by Afghanistan's 89-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who referred to the delegates as "my dear children" and reminded them that "the people trusted you -- don't forget them.
"Don't think of your own benefit," he chided from the dais. "Think of the benefit of Afghanistan."
The former monarch's neutral stance was in sharp contrast to his endorsement of Karzai as transitional president at a loya jirga last year. Karzai easily won election to that position after Zahir Shah staved off a grass-roots movement to restore the monarchy.
The tone of Sunday's proceedings was both formal and sentimental, with dozens of foreign diplomats and other dignitaries on hand and a dozen Afghan school children singing patriotic songs that brought tears to the eyes of many participants.
Nevertheless, the run-up to the assembly had been marked by the same accusations of fraud, intimidation and backroom dealing that marred last year's loya jirga. Concerns have been raised that the delegates will be fatally split along political, religious and ethnic lines.
The meeting opened under unprecedented security because of repeated threats to delegates by the Taliban and other guerrilla forces that have launched violent attacks recently around Afghanistan. Afghan troops blocked all roads leading to the meeting site, a college campus in Kabul, and snipers were positioned on surrounding rooftops.
In his hour-long speech, Karzai made repeated pleas for national unity and sacrifice, noting that the delegates' decisions would have a lasting impact on the country. He also made a strong pitch for a presidential system as outlined in the draft constitution proposed by his government, saying it was best for a country with weak political parties that is emerging from a long period of civil conflict.
"This constitution will define the political and cultural future of Afghanistan," he said. "It will give the people their rights, it will give the government a name" and, for the first time, it will "open the way for Afghans to vote for their own president."
Karzai also used the occasion to list the accomplishments of his two-year administration, including the introduction of a stable new currency, the return of 2.5 million refugees, the proliferation of private media, the restored freedom of women to work and study, and the compliance with numerous national political goals mandated by the United Nations in late 2001.
Two years ago, he recalled, Afghanistan had just been freed from the Taliban's extremist Islamic rule, warlords controlled much of the country, schools were closed and several million Afghans had fled abroad. Now, he said, "we have political freedom, economic freedom, we are free."
-------- arms
US commerce secretary in Prague to hawk F-16s
PRAGUE (AFP)
Dec 15, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031215200113.flr6s4f4.html
US Commerce Secretary Don Evans was in Prague Monday trying to convince Czech authorities to buy 14 used US-made F-16 fighter jets.
He said after a meeting with Czech President Vaclav Klaus that F-16's were in wide use in NATO countries, making maintenance and training easier.
The Czech president said the decision to replace its communist-era Mig-21s by 2005 would depend on the country's strategic interests.
The administration of centre-left Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla is to make a final decision before the end of the year.
Evans was to meet with Spidla later Monday.
A commission of experts recommended at the beginning of the month that the government buy 14 Swedish-made Saab-39 Gripen jets.
Sweden has offered new planes to be leased for 10 years at the price of used aircraft, throwing in the logistics needed over the period to boot.
Washington recently offered advantageous loans worth 550 million dollars (447 million euros) to finance the purchase of fighter jets, including those made by other NATO members.
Belgium and the Netherlands have offered updated F-16 MLUs while those from Washington are F-16 Bloc 15 aircraft, made in the 1980s.
Canada has offered used F/A-18 jets.
-------- iraq
Jubilation, grief, and sadness in occupied Baghdad
Dahr Jamail,
Electronic Iraq,
15 December 2003
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1259.shtml
The winds of change are blowing strongly across Baghdad today, literally and figuratively, on this grey, windy, chilly day. The overall mood is subdued, aside from a few small, sporadic demonstrations, namely by the Communist Party. This underscored by the fact that Saddam has been returned to the Iraqi capital, albeit under drastically different circumstances from when he left.
What can be said of Iraqi reaction? It all depends on who I talk with.
Of course many Shia, Communists and others who suffered the most under his reign are ecstatic about his capture. Most Sunni are deeply saddened, of course. What can be said of most everyone I've spoken with, is they are shocked. The man who was in power here for three decades is shown on television looking tired, haggard, forlorn.
Many people still don't believe he has been captured, despite the pictures and footage.
Ironically, even some Shia men I've spoke with today feel grief over his capture.
A cab driver tells me,
"I don't love Saddam. No. But the news still makes me feel sad."
I am told of another Shia man who wept openly when seeing the pictures of Saddam on television last night.
In Kahdamiya, a predominantly Shia section of Baghdad, a man tells me he is sad of Saddam's capture, and that the situation in Iraq today is more terrible than before.
Yet at the same time, a man in Al-Aadamiyah, the predominantly Sunni area of Baghdad, a young man tells me,
"I am glad he is captured. He was a bad president, and he is a motherfucker!"
Many Iraqis I've spoken with continue to show their distrust for the Americans, feeling that despite what has been said of Saddam being tried by an Iraqi court, that he will be taken to Guantanamo or the US.
It is a very complex situation, and certainly too early to tell which direction the current in Iraq will now flow. Already today there have been more bombings and Iraqis killed, predominantly police officers.
My general feeling, just my opinion, is that many Iraqis are saddened, confused and/or relieved by his capture. Even though hundreds of thousands of people here suffered brutally under his regime, he still stood as a figure of power to oppose Western colonialism. He stood up to the Americans. Now with any prospect of his return to power completely wiped from the scene, and no government in Iraq, no security, a still wallowing occupation force, and brutal attacks on civilians by both the Americans and at times resistance fighters, what are people here left with? Where is the hope for a bright future? Most remain extremely reluctant to put any faith in the Americans.
Time will tell how much of an effect his capture will truly have on the course of Iraq.
Meanwhile, daily life continues to be a harsh existence in occupied Iraq for most people, including US soldiers. I learned today that over 10,000 US soldiers are either sick, injured, wounded or dead from this conflict. This number is growing daily.
In addition, the number of Iraqi children dying from malnutrition and disease has doubled since the invasion.
Deaths among pregnant mothers have tripled.
Unemployment is endemic and security remains so awful that children are kept at home from school due to fear of their being kidnapped.
Women face the threat of kidnapping and rape daily.
Gunfire is heard every night, and often during the middle of the day in most areas of Baghdad.
The stories of peoples homes being stormed and searched for resistance fighters continue to pour in -- just this morning I interviewed a woman who had her brother and sister taken to prison after a fruitless raid by American's who had stormed her home at 10pm one night. I'll post this story when I finish writing it, but they were forced to stand outside for five and a half hours while their home was pillaged and destroyed. An older woman with diabetes was forced to urinate on herself while soldiers stood by laughing at her, despite pleas to have an armed escort, if need be, to use the restroom.
The home was devastated, and two family members taken to prison for no reason. The following day the soldiers returned and told the family that they had been given the wrong information and mistakenly stormed their home. But there has been no compensation, no apology, and the two family members remain incarcerated.
The example of what happened to this family has become an epidemic here, all over Iraq.
The Iraqi people are proud and strong. It saddens me to see the devastation wrought upon this once great country by sanctions, a dictator, and terrible wars. Environmentally Iraq is a disaster area-most people I know here who have been here any amount of time have the 'Baghdad cough', while many areas in the south are uninhabitable by the use of Depleted Uranium. The scars of war are visible everywhere; in the people, the buildings and the landscape.
So, will the capture of Saddam signal change for the better now? A true moment in history where a country can move forward? Or will it simply be a political poker chip used by George and Tony, a feather in their hat, signifying nothing towards the benefit and hope of the Iraqi people?
Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist and political activist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has come to Iraq to bear witness and write about how the US occupation is effecting the people of Iraq, since the media in the US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so.
Page last updated: 15 December 2003, 09:58
----
Suicide Bomber Kills 17 Iraqis, Wounds 33
Deaths Shock Town in Sunni Heartland
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63252-2003Dec14.html
KHALDIYA, Iraq, Dec. 14 -- A suicide bomber blew up a car outside a police station in this central Iraqi town Sunday just as officers were congregating at the front gate for morning roll call, killing at least 17 Iraqis and wounding 33 others.
The attack on the police station in Khaldiya, located 45 miles west of Baghdad, in the heartland of Sunni Muslim resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, was the fourth suicide bombing in the last week. The first three targeted well-fortified U.S. military bases and caused one American death.
But the attack at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday proved far more devastating because the station was only lightly protected and many of the officers were near the street at the time of the blast. The explosion destroyed the front gate and part of the surrounding concrete wall, carving a crater in the street and scattering debris, including sandals and bits of police uniform.
At least 30 officers from the night and morning shifts had gathered at the front gate and the daily roll call was underway when the blast occurred, according to Nasir Fayegh, 21, a recent police recruit speaking from a hospital bed in Ramadi, about 10 miles from Khaldiya, where he was being treated for injuries to his chest, legs and neck.
Most of the fatalities were policemen, though a child, apparently on his way to a nearby school, was also among the dead, according to doctors at Ramadi's main hospital. Several civilians were also among the injured.
Some of the victims had been standing at a modest metal food stall next to the police station, eating breakfast, when the blast ripped through the structure. Others were students at a girls' elementary school behind the station, according to residents.
"There were dead and injured everywhere," said Salim Mohammed, 18, a student who rushed to the scene moments after the bombing. "I couldn't tell the injured from the dead."
U.S. forces were not present at the time of the attack but later deployed Humvees, armored personnel carriers and tanks in front of the police station to prevent more violence. Iraqi police officials said they dispatched officers from other districts to the Khaldiya station.
"It started like any other day and ended with a tragedy," said Mohammed Ahmed, 25, who works at a nearby cafeteria. "Its a big disaster for all the people of Khaldiya."
The attack shocked local residents, many of whom have been sympathetic to the insurgency being waged by loyalists of the ousted Saddam Hussein government.
In a town where guerrillas have carried out repeated strikes on U.S. and allied forces, including the assassination of Khaldiya's previous police chief in September, some residents were reluctant to acknowledge that insurgents may have been responsible for the violence. Unaware that he was overheard by a reporter, one resident urged the crowd to tell the media that the explosion was the result of a U.S. rocket fired at the police station.
In Kuwait, meanwhile, four U.S. soldiers were slightly injured after their truck convoys came under fire in two separate attacks, according to a U.S. military spokesman quoted by the Associated Press.
The soldiers were injured by broken glass from the vehicles' windows after coming under fire on two different highways at 5:15 p.m. and at 5:45 p.m. local time, said Lt. Col. Vic Harris.
Investigators were trying to determine who was behind the attacks.
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.
--------
2 Car Bombers Attack Iraqi Police, as Insurgency Continues
December 15, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/middleeast/15CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 15 - Two powerful car bombs exploded at police stations in Baghdad today, killing at least six Iraqi officers and announcing that the insurgency here has not ended with the capture of Saddam Hussein.
"People did this to say, `We can do this even though you caught Saddam,' " said Salem Abed Ali, 40, who was rocked at his breakfast table this morning, along with his wife and two children, when a bomb exploded across the street, at a police station in the Husseiniya neighborhood. "They want to keep battling inside Iraqi lands."
In his national address on Sunday, President Bush cautioned Americans that the "capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq." His warning appeared to be confirmed in the rubble, shredded cars and bloodied bits of human being at the sites of the two bombings today, one of them at a place where American military investigators work but had not yet shown up for the day.
Against the images of a bedraggled and helpless-looking Mr. Hussein printed in Iraqi newspapers and played endlessly on satellite television, the attacks also confronted Iraqis, as well as the American troops doing the fighting, with the question of just what kind of force is mounting the attacks.
"Saddam does not have the power to do these things," said a police lieutenant in Husseiniya, Ali Ismael, 25, his forehead bandaged and his shirt dotted with bloody specks from the blast there. "His ability is too weak. Last night we saw him in a hole."
United States officials, conceding that their knowledge of the insurgents is weak, have blamed the attacks largely on loyalists to Mr. Hussein, Iraqi Islamic extremists and Muslims from outside Iraq. The assumption has been that some percentage has been fighting for Mr. Hussein's return to power, and the question in the coming weeks will be whether the insurgency will grow or shrink with Mr. Hussein's return to power no longer a realistic prospect. Some Iraqis believe Mr. Hussein's capture may actually fuel the insurgency.
"Of course there will be violence, and resistance will increase," said Col. Ibrahim Mutlak, director of police patrols for Salahadin Province, where Mr. Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, is. "Lots of people didn't want to join the resistance because they didn't want to be called Saddam supporters. But now all the people who oppose the Americans will join."
In Tikrit, where support for Mr. Hussein remains strong, American soldiers today dispersed crowds of people expressing anger at his arrest. In Ramadi and Khaldiya, two other strongholds for Mr. Hussein west of Baghdad, huge crowds chanted in support of him and fired off weapons this evening, apparently because of rumors that he had not in fact been captured.
There were also reports of exchanges of gunfire with passing American troops in Ramadi, possibly resulting in Iraqi casualties, though that could not immediately be confirmed.
The United States military reported that information from Mr. Hussein and from documents in a briefcase found when he was captured had led to the arrest of two Iraqi officials wanted by the Americans. A spokesman for the First Armored Division, Capt. Jason Beck, said he had no further details.
After a wave of escalating attacks in October and November, the last three weeks had been relatively quiet amid an American offensive against the insurgent groups and their sources of money.
But on Sunday, hours after Mr. Hussein was arrested but before the arrest was made public, a car bomb exploded in the town of Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 police officers.
The new Iraqi police force, organized and paid by Americans, has been a frequent target for attack, in part because its officers are far less protected than American soldiers.
While many police stations have been reinforced with blast walls and huge barriers of dirt, the station in Husseiniya, a working-poor neighborhood of mostly Shiite Muslims in the far north of Baghdad, had little protection other than concertina wire and an ordinary wall of concrete block.
Col. Hamad Ghazan of the police said he was looking out the window of the building's second story at 7:55 a.m., during a change of shifts, when he saw a four-wheel-drive vehicle, painted like a taxi, speed toward the entrance of the building. One police officer, he said, shot at the vehicle, which then careened through the concertina wire and hit his own car, parked out front, preventing it from making its way to the building's entrance. Then it exploded.
"It was a very, very big explosion," he said. "If my car hadn't been there, he would have gotten inside. And it would have been much worse."
At least six officers, and possibly as many as eight, were killed in the explosion, officers there said. Another 15 people, including several civilians, were wounded, they said.
The blast hurled the vehicle's engine block, and part of the chassis, into the courtyard and carved out a crater perhaps five feet deep in the asphalt road. The inside of the building was shattered, with windows blown out and plaster raining down the floor. This morning, a foot of the bomber, along with part of his face, were still sitting the courtyard, surrounded by curious neighbors.
"This is a cruel action," Colonel Ghazan said. "It will do nothing. We won't be affected by this. We are going to serve Iraq. We are going to serve the Iraqi people."
About 45 minutes later, in the upscale neighborhood of Amariya, two men driving cars with bombs attacked the city's police unit that investigates serious crimes like bank robbery, murder and car theft rings.
An Iraqi investigator, Ali Abdel al-Sada, 32, said he was outside the building when he saw an old Peugot speed toward the entrance gate and explode. At least seven Iraqi police officers were injured, officials said.
A few seconds later, a white Land Cruiser sped through the smoke and debris, as its driver let off shots from an automatic rifle, Mr. Sada said. The vehicle forced its way down a passageway that leads to the building's front door. The attacker and the building's guards exchanged fire and the attacker escaped without setting off his bomb, which described as two huge underwater mines placed the vehicle.
"You can destroy a submarine with this," he said.
Sgt. Dave Scott, 37, a detective and National Guardsman from St. Louis, said there was also a "mound" of plastic explosives in the car. He said that it was only by chance that the American soldiers who usually work at the unit were not there at the time of the blast.
"We were actually pretty lucky, because we were scheduled to be out on an early mission, but it got canceled at the last minute," he said. "We probably would have been there."
Sergeant Scott he doubted that Mr. Hussein's arrest would stop further attacks. "It doesn't look like it's slowed down, whoever is doing this," he said.
--------
U.S. Forces Uncover Iraqi Ex-Leader Near Home Town
Detention Could Lead To Trial on Charges of War Crimes, Genocide
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63555-2003Dec14.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 14 -- Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was captured without a shot Saturday night by American soldiers who discovered him hiding in the dark of a tiny, underground burrow near his home town, U.S. military officials said on Sunday.
Hussein was detained outside Dawr, a hamlet along the Tigris River about 10 miles southeast of Tikrit, by soldiers of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, military officials said. He was spirited to Baghdad, officials said, where he was subjected to a medical examination and questioning that could lead eventually to a trial for crimes against humanity and genocide.
Within hours of his capture, however, the man who exercised absolute power in Iraq for almost three decades was confronted by several politicians he had tormented. In a 30-minute meeting at a detention facility at Baghdad International Airport, four of the country's new leaders grilled Hussein about his rule.
"He had no regret or remorse," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. "He remains the street thug that he always was."
"He was unrepentant and defiant," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior Shiite Muslim politician. "He was not at all apologetic. He just made excuses for his crimes."
However, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, said Hussein "has been cooperative and is talkative." Sanchez, who observed Hussein in custody, described the 66-year-old former leader as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate."
The capture of Hussein, who appeared bedraggled and exhausted after more than eight months on the run, accomplishes a long-sought goal of the Bush administration that U.S. commanders hope will weaken insurgents fighting occupation forces.
The U.S. military said it confirmed Hussein's identity with a DNA test. It also took the unusual step of displaying a two-minute video clip of the former president, who had grown a long beard, having his hair probed for lice and his mouth examined by a latex-gloved doctor. It was an ignominious end for a ruler who had cultivated an image of ruthless invincibility as he executed political rivals, invaded two neighboring nations and then eluded U.S. forces since the fall of Baghdad in April.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, announced to cheering Iraqi journalists and American soldiers at a news conference here. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
The news prompted emotional celebrations across Baghdad, with some residents cheering and dancing in the streets and others crying with joy. Shouts of "God is great! Saddam has been captured!" echoed through several neighborhoods. In a traditional act of merriment, thousands of people fired automatic weapons into the air, sending many others scurrying for cover from stray bullets, which sparked at least three large explosions in the capital.
"Today is a historic day, a happy day, for the Iraqi people," said council member Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq's foreign minister before Hussein's Baath Party came to power 35 years ago. "We have been waiting for this day for a very long time."
Iraqi leaders said Hussein would be tried in public before a war crimes tribunal established last week by the Governing Council. But U.S. authorities have not yet determined when -- or whether -- to hand Hussein over to the Iraqis for a war crimes trial or what his legal status would be.
American military and civilian officials expressed optimism that Hussein's detention would reduce resistance attacks, which have claimed the lives of almost 200 U.S. troops and even more Iraqis since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1. In the latest attack, a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside of a police station in the violence-wracked town of Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 Iraqis and wounding 33 others. A U.S. soldier also died on Sunday while trying to disarm a roadside bomb south of Baghdad.
Military officials said attacks may spike over the next few days and weeks, but they predicted an eventual decline as Hussein loyalists realize that their former leader will not return to power. "This will change the landscape," a senior military official said. "This is a big blow for the terrorists and bitter-enders."
However, in towns across the Sunni Triangle -- a swath of central Iraq dominated by Sunni Muslims where resistance attacks have been most common -- residents have said insurgents in their communities are motivated more by religion and nationalism than by a sense of loyalty to Hussein.
Even in Baghdad's Adhimiya neighborhood, which is predominantly Sunni, dozens of gun-toting men took to the streets on Sunday evening vowing to keep fighting for Hussein. "With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam!" several shouted. Senior U.S. officials in Baghdad said they believed such sentiments would be short-lived. "The capture of Saddam Hussein is a defining moment in the new Iraq," said Sanchez, the military commander. "I expect that the detention of Saddam Hussein will be regarded as the beginning of reconciliation for the people of Iraq and as a sign of Iraq's rebirth."
Bremer hailed the arrest as "a new opportunity for the members of the former regime, whether military or civilian, to end their bitter opposition." He urged Hussein loyalists to lay down their arms and "come forward in spirit of reconciliation and hope."
"This is a great day in Iraq's history," Bremer said in a message to Iraqis after announcing the arrest. "For decades, hundreds of thousands of you suffered at the hands of this cruel man. For decades, Saddam Hussein divided you citizens against each other. For decades, he threatened an attack on your neighbors. Those days are over forever."
In many ways, Hussein's final days were like his first. The hardscrabble village in which Hussein grew up, Auja, is less than 10 miles from where he was captured. He was the son of a landless peasant who died before he was born and was raised by an uncle, living among the same palm groves and farmland in which he recently hid from U.S. forces.
Last seen in public in the final days of the war, he vanished as his army collapsed and U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad on April 9. He immediately became the military's principal quarry, designated "High Value Target No. 1."
Over the next eight months, even as he issued statements exhorting Iraqis to rise up against the U.S. occupation forces, Hussein managed to evade capture. He outlasted many younger compatriots and even his two sons, Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a gun battle with U.S. forces in July. Although a $25 million U.S. government reward for information leading to his capture led to a flurry of tips, none was accurate or timely enough to result in his capture.
Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the 4th Infantry Division's commander, said he believed Hussein had 20 to 30 safe houses in central Iraq that he shuttled among, often spending no more than a few hours in each.
The 4th Infantry conducted dozens of raids aimed at finding Hussein, occasionally coming close, military officials said. Over the past 10 days, however, the division shifted its strategy, detaining and questioning "five to 10 members" of families "close to Saddam," Odierno said.
The division received intelligence about Hussein's whereabouts Saturday from a member of one such family. "Finally, we got the ultimate information," Odierno said.
The division commander dispatched about 600 troops to an area near Dawr, including several Special Forces soldiers. At 8 p.m., after surrounding the area, the soldiers raided two houses but came up empty.
Then, after interrogating a man apprehended in one of the houses, residents said, the troops converged on the hovel where Hussein was hiding, in a palm orchard near a small farm plot at the end of a dirt road. The soldiers, using night-vision scopes, found him sitting in an underground crawl space that was covered with a rug and a camouflaged Styrofoam lid, Odierno said.
Hussein, who was armed with a pistol, was "very disoriented" as soldiers brought him out of the hole. Odierno said he made no attempt to resist. "There was no way he could fight back, so he was just caught like a rat," the general said.
Two other Iraqis -- whose identities were not released but who were described by military officials as "low-level figures" -- were arrested in the raid. Soldiers at the scene found two AK-47 assault rifles and a green metal trunk filled with $750,000 in $100 bills.
The crawl space was next to a two-room mud hut that contained some clothes and a rudimentary kitchen, officials said. Odierno said he assumed Hussein had been there only a short time because new, unwrapped shirts were found in the bedroom.
Odierno noted that Hussein was apprehended just downstream from some of his most lavish palaces. "I think it's rather ironic that he was in a hole in the ground across the river from these great palaces that he built," he said.
--------
The Resistance Belief That Insurgency Will Fade May Be Misplaced
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Thomas E. Ricks and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A158-2003Dec14.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 14 -- The capture of former president Saddam Hussein was greeted with euphoria at the marble-walled headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority here, but in the towns and villages to the north and west of the capital, where anger at the occupation is most intense, Hussein's arrest may have little impact on the insurgency that has roiled the country in recent months.
In the eight months that Hussein has been on the run, the resistance has gathered a momentum of its own, driven primarily by local financiers and ringleaders. Although gloating crowds often glorify Hussein after attacks on U.S. forces, recent interviews across the most restive parts of Iraq suggest that motivation for the insurgency extends well beyond loyalty to the former leader.
In rhetorical terms at least, the message of those fighters and their supporters has appealed more to nationalism and religion than to loyalty to Hussein.
"We are not fighting for Saddam," said Ahmed Jassim, a religious student in the flash-point city of Fallujah, as he cheered an attack on a U.S. convoy recently. "We are fighting for our country, for our honor, for Islam. We are not doing this for Saddam."
U.S. military officials said Hussein's capture would probably not spell an immediate end to the fighting and could result in a short-term increase in attacks, if Hussein loyalists lash back. "We do not expect at this point in time that we will have a complete elimination of those attacks," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a news conference on Sunday.
But U.S. commanders across the country expressed confidence that over time, the capture would cripple resistance activity. Army officers said they think the seizure of Hussein also might convince many Iraqis who have so far not supported the occupation that history is on the side of the Americans and their allies.
"The capture of Saddam Hussein will have a tremendous negative impact on the Baathist insurgency, and it is all good news for us and the future of Iraq," Lt. Col. Henry Arnold, a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division who is based near the Syrian border, said Sunday. "The Wicked Witch is dead."
"I think this puts a nail in the coffin of hopes that the Baath Party could ever regain control of Iraq," another U.S. commander said. "There is no longer any central figure around whom such a movement could coalesce."
"Without Saddam," he added, "This is no longer a nationalist movement."
For U.S. forces, the most immediate challenge will be to capitalize on information gleaned from Hussein. "The good news is we believe we will gain some actionable intelligence over the next few days, as Saddam is interrogated," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, an assistant commander of the 1st Armored Division, which has responsibility for most of Baghdad. "What he has in his possession, and what he will certainly say to those questioning him, will certainly contribute to connecting some additional dots."
But the commander in charge of the operation to apprehend Hussein, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno of the 4th Infantry Division, said it did not appear that the former president was directly organizing resistance activities from his hide-out. There were no communication devices in either the hole in which he was found or a nearby hut.
Odierno and other top U.S. commanders have long maintained that they have not seen signs of national leadership for the resistance, suggesting that Hussein's apprehension may have a more symbolic than practical impact on the insurgency.
"I believe he was there more for moral support," Odierno said. "I don't believe he was coordinating the effort because I don't believe there's any national coordination."
Another key challenge for the military may be to prove to a country where suspicion runs deep that U.S. authorities do, in fact, have Hussein in custody. Doubts are still expressed in some areas about the fate of Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, who were killed July 22 in a four-hour gun battle with U.S. forces in the northern city of Mosul. Hussein was known to have doubles, and conspiracy theories are sure to run rife.
In contrast to the Shiite Muslim-dominated south and the Kurdish north, where Hussein was almost universally despised, the Sunni Muslim region of central Iraq has a more complicated relationship with the former leader. In towns such as Khaldiya and Fallujah, along the Euphrates River, youths have chanted after attacks: "With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Saddam." Graffiti in towns along the Tigris River, in the region that was Hussein's ancestral home, have praised the former leader as a hero and the "crown of Arabs."
But at the same time, many residents have refrained from claiming that the attacks were motivated by support for Hussein. While some expressed nostalgia for his heavy-handed rule -- repression that, in its own way, ensured security -- many have voiced disappointment, and a sense of betrayal, at his disappearance. In past months, it was not uncommon to hear that Hussein, through his blunders, was responsible for bringing U.S. forces to Iraq.
While a minority, Sunni Muslims have long ruled Iraq, and Hussein was the last in a string of Sunni rulers that dates to the Ottoman Empire. Today, a sense of disempowerment pervades the region.
Filling the void are an almost knee-jerk attachment to Hussein and his Baath Party, which drew its most important members from the region, and a surge in Islamic sentiments, which are bolstered by the region's conservative and traditional ethos and hostility to occupation.
In recent months, the hostility has appeared to be ascendant. After dozens of fighters in Samarra were killed by U.S. forces in lengthy gun battles late last month, young men visiting wounded civilians at Samarra General Hospital insisted that the fighters were motivated by what they described as nationalism and religion.
"Everyone is with the resistance," said 22-year-old Safa Hamad Hassan, whose cousin was wounded when a tank round landed near his home during the fighting. "Saddam Hussein is finished. We are protecting our honor and our land."
While slogans in the town praised Hussein, much of the graffiti was directed at Iraqis viewed as collaborating with U.S. forces. "We will blow up the house of anyone who works with the Americans," declared one slogan near the Samarra police station.
In some towns, residents have insisted that guerrillas should be called mujaheddin, an Islamic term for fighters, rather than fedayeen, the term used by the former government. Denunciations of collaborators are typically couched in religious terms, rather than as betrayals of Hussein's government.
Even if the guerrilla networks are still driven by Baath Party financing and contacts -- as many U.S. military officials contend -- the recruitment that is key to keeping the campaign alive does not always glorify Hussein. "Saddam Hussein is behind all our problems," said Khaled Kirtani, whose brother was killed in an attack on U.S. forces in Khaldiya in July. "The young people are waking up," he added. "They're not Baathists, they're not party members. They did it for God. When they saw the Americans come, raid the houses, steal from the people, they didn't accept it."
Ricks reported from Washington. Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Soldiers Kill Two Palestinians at Fence in Gaza
December 15, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/middleeast/15CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 15 - Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip shot dead two unarmed Palestinians attempting to breach a fence and enter Israel before dawn today, and troops also tore down Palestinian buildings in southern Gaza linked to mortar attacks a day earlier.
Despite an overall decline in violence during the past two months, Israeli-Palestinian confrontations remain an almost daily event, while peace efforts continue to sputter.
In northern Gaza, the Israeli forces spotted six "suspicious figures" near Gaza's perimeter fence shortly after midnight and fired on the men, the military said.
Two were killed, while the other four managed to make it across the fence, the military said. One was later arrested, while three remain at large, the military said, adding that no weapons were found on the dead men or the one detained.
The fence along Gaza's boundary, which has been in place for years, has been largely effective in preventing Palestinians from entering southern Israel during the past three years of Mideast fighting.
However, some unarmed Palestinians attempt to cut through it with the intention of finding work in Israel. But the military stressed that Palestinians frequently carry out nighttime attacks against soldiers patrolling along the fence, and some also attempt to infiltrate Israel to pick up weapons from Arabs living in Israel.
Palestinian militants in Gaza have frequently targeted Israeli soldiers and settlers inside the coastal strip, and militants fired more than 20 mortars at the Gush Katif settlement bloc in southern Gaza on Friday and Saturday. The attacks caused only minor damage and no injuries.
In response, the military said it tore down several empty Palestinian buildings today, which the attackers used for cover in the nearby town of Khan Yunis. Palestinians said eight homes were destroyed.
Israel said its forces came under attack from anti-tank missiles during the operation, and two soldiers were lightly hurt.
In the West Bank, Israeli police scuffled briefly with Jewish youths during the dismantling of a small, uninhabited outpost set up by Jewish settlers on a hilltop near the Palestinian city of Nablus.
The Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, calls on Israel to dismantle dozens of outposts that have gone up since March 2001, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power. So far, Israel has only taken down a small number, most of them uninhabited.
Meanwhile, Israelis and Palestinians took part in talks today on economic cooperation, which included the participation of the United States and European nations that give assistance to the Palestinians.
Israelis and Palestinians have resumed regular contacts in recent weeks, but have yet to achieve any real progress on the stalled peace plan.
The most immediate aim is to arrange talks between the prime ministers, Mr. Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qurei, but no meeting has yet been scheduled.
Mr. Qurei, who is attempting to persuade Palestinian factions to halt attacks against Israel, said, "God willing, we will have a new important development in coming days."
In another development, Israel's military said it has charged Jamal Akal, a 23-year-old Canadian born in Gaza, with conspiring to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish interests in the United States and Canada.
According to the indictment, Mr. Akal was recruited by Hamas, the Palestinian faction that has carried out many of the deadliest attacks against Israel. Mr. Akal planned to buy an assault rifle and other weapons in Detroit, but was arrested in Gaza last month, the military said.
Mr. Akal's attorney, Jamil al-Qatib, denied the charges during a court session Monday.
"His confession was under pressure," the attorney was quoted as saying by Reuters. "He had been under intensive interrogation, which was for more than 20 hours a day over a 20-day period, during which his hands were tied."
-------- mideast
Arab Countries Call for Quick Transfer of Power to Iraqis
December 15, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/middleeast/15CND-ARAB.html
Arab officials and commentators said today that they hoped the capture of Saddam Hussein would mean a new stage of stability and self-government for the Iraqi people, and some said it was now more important than ever for the United States and Britain to transfer power to Iraqis.
In newspapers and official government news agencies, there were also questions raised about whether the capture of the former Iraqi leader would lead to an end to the insurgency in Iraq and better regional security.
In September, the 22-member Arab League granted a member of the Iraqi Governing Council a one-year seat with provisional recognition, a decision that the league had been hesitant to make for fear of legitimizing the occupation.
When the governing council's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, took Iraq's seat at the league, he promised that a new Iraq would be based on political diversity and constitutional and democratic principles.
The secretary general of the league, Amr Moussa, an Egyptian, was given responsibility for monitoring Iraq's progress toward drafting a constitution and electing a government.
Responding to the news of Mr. Hussein's capture, Mr. Moussa said in remarks reported today by official Arab news agencies that the event marked a turning point for the Iraqi people. He said they must now move ahead with choosing their own government and ending the occupation of the country while launching its reconstruction.
"The main problems still exist," he said.
An editorial today in an Egyptian government newspaper, Al Ahram, questioned whether the capture would mean an end to the resistance in Iraq and whether the Shiites, once oppressed under Mr. Hussein, would now be encouraged to join the resistance free of fear that success against the Americans could lead to the return of his regime.
"Is the Iraqi resistance against the American and British occupation forces ending or will there be a continued wave of such attacks?" the editorial said.
It said that the American and British occupation of Iraq had sowed sedition by creating the Iraqi ruling council along factional lines, instead of along national lines with proportional representation. "This occupation will not escape the explosion of the insurgency against it," the editorial said.
For their part, Palestinians felt they had had an ally in Saddam Hussein, who fired Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which was sparked by his invasion of Kuwait.
The Iraqi leader has donated millions of dollars to Palestinian families whose sons died in the Palestinian uprising for statehood, and Palestinian refugees in his country received many benefits, like housing subsidies.
The Reuters news agency reported today that about 200 Palestinian supporters of Saddam Hussein burned American and Israeli flags in a Gaza Strip refugee camp to protest his capture.
The Palestinian newspaper Al Quds said in an editorial that there was no justification for any occupation anywhere, but even more so none for the "American-foreign" occupation of Iraq now that Mr. Hussein has been captured.
In the Gulf region, where memories linger of Mr. Hussein's 1990 invasion and brief occupation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia said in an official statement carried on the government news agency S.P.A. that it hoped the capture of Mr. Hussein would allow Iraqis to achieve their aspirations for political and economic stability under a unified leadership.
The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, said in a statement on his country's official news agency that he hoped the event signified the start of a new stage of national unity for Iraq.
A headline in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyassa hailed the capture of Mr. Hussein as the end of a period of oppression and said, "Today Saddam, tomorrow who?"
Many Arabs have no liking for the former Iraqi leader. But during the early days of the American-led invasion of Iraq this spring, there was widespread resentment over the war because it had been launched against an Arab country.
Many saw Mr. Hussein's capture by American forces from an underground spider hole in northern Iraq as a humiliating end for a prominent Arab figure who once stood up against the West.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan's President Narrowly Escapes Assassin's Bomb
December 15, 2003
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/asia/15STAN.html
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 14 - President Pervez Musharraf narrowly survived an assassination attempt here Sunday night when a large bomb detonated on a bridge 30 seconds after his motorcade had crossed.
Visibly shaken, General Musharraf appeared on state television and described what was by far the most serious attempt on his life since he sided with the United States in the campaign against terrorism in September 2001.
"The bomb exploded half a minute after I crossed," General Musharraf said. "I felt the explosion in my car. That is all I know. Certainly it was me who was targeted.
"I am used to such things. They have happened before. God is great. No problem; life continues."
The location of the assassination attempt was unusual: Rawalpindi lies near the nerve center of Pakistan's military establishment. It is considered one of the most secure cities in the country.
The bomb, described by officials as large, exploded 500 yards from the headquarters of the Pakistani Army 11th Corps and only a few miles from the Pakistani Army headquarters, where General Musharraf lives.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was unusual that someone outside General Musharraf's close circle of aides would know the exact timing of his movements.
After the attack, police officers sealed off the bridge and were deployed to critical sites across Islamabad, the country's capital, 20 miles north of here. The extent of damage to the bridge was not known.
The stability of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons, has long been a concern of the United States and the West. Military dictators have ruled Pakistan for most of its modern history. General Musharraf, who is president and chief of staff of the armed forces, seized power in 1999 in a coup. Were he to be assassinated or deposed, the line of succession would be unclear.
Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of allowing Taliban extremists to reorganize on its territory. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants fighting in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Residents described hearing a thunderous explosion at 7:15 p.m. that sent people scrambling for cover inside their homes. Five hundred yards from the bridge, the concussion blew open a wooden front door, ripping off a piece of wooden trim, and shattered two large windows.
"We thought it was a rocket launcher," said Muhammad Habib, a 32-year-old factory worker visiting relatives in the damaged house. "We ran to the other side of the house."
The senior Pakistani intelligence official said multiple motorcades had been used since the police thwarted a plot to kill General Musharraf when he visited Karachi, the southern port city, in April 2002.
The bomb was planted on the Nullah Lei Bridge, a short overpass 200 feet above a small gorge. The bridge is ringed on three sides by luxury homes that house retired Pakistani military officers. A shantytown and a graveyard lie on the other side of it.
Chaudry Rauf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said General Musharraf was returning to his home after making a trip to Sindh Province, in the south, when the bomb detonated.
"It was very close," he said. "The procession had just passed."
Various Islamic militant groups have called for General Musharraf to be killed since he sided with the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, he reversed Pakistan's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. He has also begun a limited crackdown on militant groups in Pakistan.
Elements of Pakistan's military are also said to oppose his pro-American stance. But General Musharraf himself and senior officials say the army remains firmly under control.
President Bush has called General Musharraf one of the United States' closest allies in the campaign against terrorism. Pro-democracy groups in Pakistan dismiss him as a dictator and say he is not serious about cracking down on Islamic militancy.
Pakistani military and police investigators inspecting the bomb site under spotlights barred journalists and onlookers from the area, so it was impossible to assess the damage. More than 100 yards from the site, dozens of chunks of asphalt lay scattered across the bridge.
There have been reports of two other assassination attempts on General Musharraf, but Pakistani officials have denied they occurred.
The bombing occurred on a route that General Musharraf's motorcades use frequently when he travels from his army residence in Rawalpindi to official meetings in Islamabad.
Each time his motorcade moves down the four-lane road connecting the cities, traffic is blocked in both directions. Hundreds of police officers are posted along the route, at intervals of 100 to 200 yards.
Residents condemned the assassination attempt, but one criticized General Musharraf for not doing more to stop the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Islamic hard-liners and some elements of the Pakistani news media regularly describe the invasions as acts of aggression that killed thousands of innocent civilians, even tens of thousands. Many Pakistanis, who have limited sources of information, accept that description as fact and deplore the United States.
"I don't like him," one man said, referring to General Musharraf. "He's not with the Muslim people."
--------
Pakistani Leader Narrowly Escapes Attempt on Life
By Kamran Khan
The Washington Post
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A101-2003Dec14.html
KARACHI, Pakistan, Dec. 14 -- Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, narrowly escaped an attempt on his life Sunday when a powerful bomb ripped up a section of a bridge in the city of Rawalpindi seconds after his motorcade crossed it, officials said.
A senior army official called the explosion the "closest call yet" in at least three attempts to assassinate the president since he began cooperating with the United States in the war against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"This was a cowardly act by the extremist religious forces," Musharraf said at a public appearance in the capital, Islamabad, after the blast. "I was the target, but there is no reason to be scared. We'll continue to fight this menace."
A military official said that "the intensity of the blast was enough to blow up the entire convoy." Police officials and witnesses said debris fell half a mile from the blast site. No one was hurt in the incident.
Shortly after the attack, officials detained about a dozen police officers for security lapses. "It is too early to say who was responsible for this attack, but this is the most serious breach of presidential security," said Lt. Gen. Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani, the corps commander of Rawalpindi.
In recent days, as part of his campaign to rid Pakistan of religious extremism, Musharraf has banned key Islamic militant groups and ordered the arrests of their leaders. And, for the first time, police detained a dozen Islamic militants Saturday for soliciting funds for jihad, or holy war.
Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, drew the wrath of hard-line Islamic groups after he stopped supporting the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan and backed the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network following the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, Pakistani military intelligence officials have arrested about 500 suspected members of the terrorist organization, most of whom have been handed over to the United States.
Senior Pakistani intelligence officials have said al Qaeda and Pakistani militant Islamic groups that pledge their allegiance to bin Laden pose the greatest threat to Musharraf.
In two audiotaped messages recently aired on al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network, Ayman Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, dubbed Musharraf a traitor and called on his Pakistani followers to topple his government.
Two attempts on Musharraf's life were reported in the port city of Karachi last year. The failed attempts led to the arrest of several Pakistani Islamic militants associated with groups recently banned by the government. In October, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced three men to 10-year prison terms for plotting to kill Musharraf. The men had planted a bomb in a car along a route Musharraf passed on a congested road in Karachi in April 2002, but the device failed to detonate.
Because of threats to Musharraf's life, the Special Services Group of the Pakistani army takes care of his personal security. His itinerary is never publicly disclosed, and decoy cars and airplanes routinely escort his journeys. Musharraf, however, is known for ignoring security guidelines. A few hours before the incident Sunday, Musharraf had attended a public luncheon against the advice of his security personnel.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechen Rebels Kill 9 Russian Troops and Seize 4 Hostages
December 15, 2003
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/15CND-CHECHE.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 15 - A band of Chechen rebels crossed into a neighboring Russian region today, killed nine border troops and seized four hostages before disappearing into the rugged, snow-covered Caucasus, officials in the region said.
The rebels, estimated to number between two dozen to four dozen, appeared to have stumbled into a firefight with federal forces in a remote mountain village in Dagestan, not far from Russia's border with Georgia, the officials said.
None of the rebels were reported killed. The fate of the hostages, including two hospital workers, remained unclear.
Today's fighting was one of the most significant ground clashes in a conflict that has increasingly been characterized by partisan warfare and terrorist attacks. A suicide bomber killed herself and five others outside the National Hotel in Moscow last week, only four days after a suicide attack destroyed a commuter train in southern Russia, killing at least 45.
Basyr R. Magomedov, the administrator of the Tsuntinsky region of Dagestan, where the clash occurred, said in a telephone interview that the guerrillas had taken four hostages as they fled, suggesting that seizing captives had not been the intent of the crossing into Dagestan.
The long, bloody war in Chechnya, now in its fifth year, has often spilled into the neighboring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia, as well as into Georgia. Chechen fighters, usually traveling in small groups, use the remote gorges and dense forests of the Caucasus to enter and exit Chechnya.
Mr. Magomedov said the guerrillas attacked a truck full of troops sent to investigate reports of rebel movement near the village of Shauri, killing all of them, including a commander. He said the rebels broke into three groups and retreated into the mountains.
Although Russia has intensified its patrols along Chechnya's rugged borders, the incursion underscored the inability of Russian forces to effectively seal off the guerrillas and their supplies of arms.
"The communication is very bad with this region," a spokesman for Dagestan's interior ministry, Mark Tolchinsky, said in a telephone interview, adding that he could not say where the guerrillas were. "It's too far and high in the mountains."
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
Spy Agencies Vindicated After String of Setbacks
December 15, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/politics/15INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - For American intelligence agencies, the capture of Saddam Hussein is a much needed vindication after many months of failures and frustrations, Bush administration officials and members of Congress said Sunday.
The agencies' standing was brought to a low ebb by a long line of setbacks, including the failure to anticipate the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001; the unsuccessful search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; and the inability to find Mr. Hussein or Osama bin Laden. But that string has ended in the dirt hole where Mr. Hussein was finally found, not far from his birthplace.
Although it was American soldiers who unearthed Mr. Hussein, it was the intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency and its military counterparts, that set them on the right path, beginning with a new analytical effort begun in late November to draw up a list of just who might be hiding him.
As American generals, diplomats and President Bush himself announced the capture in Washington and in Baghdad on Sunday, intelligence officials, including George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, were nowhere to be seen. But Mr. Bush himself used his televised address in part to praise what he called "the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country."
Behind the scenes, the C.I.A. and its counterparts have scored some important victories, including work that has led to the killing and capture of high-ranking members of Al Qaeda. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the intelligence agencies' public record has been checkered at best, beginning with what a Congressional review called a failure to connect the dots in analyzing intelligence that could have provided warnings of the hijackers' intentions.
Mr. bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, has succeeded for more than two years in eluding a hunt by the military and intelligence agencies.
The intelligence agencies are now widely seen as having overestimated the threat posed by Mr. Hussein's government before the war, in particular saying that it had stockpiled prohibited weapons, which so far have not been found. During the war itself, two failed attempts to decapitate Iraq's Baathist leadership with airstrikes aimed at Mr. Hussein on March 19 and April 7 underscored the limitations of information provided by the agencies.
Against that backdrop, senior members of Congress who have been critical of the C.I.A. in recent weeks went out of their way on Sunday to give the intelligence agencies what they called their due.
"Saddam's capture is a direct result of unprecedented cooperation and joint effort on the part of our intelligence analysts, operators in the field and our military," said Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said they "deserve a great deal of credit and our gratitude."
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, described the capture as both "a remarkable achievement" and "a classic intelligence operation of persistence and analysis."
C.I.A. officers have played a major part in the supersecret military Special Operations teams, including Task Force 121, that were given the leading role in tracking down Iraqi leaders. In recent weeks, the information gathered by the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence arms of the military services has been closely shared among the agencies through a new cooperative arrangement in Baghdad.
It was human intelligence, rather than the kinds of information gathered by spy satellites or eavesdropping, that led the United States to Mr. Hussein, the senior American officials said.
Human intelligence was always the weakest link for the United States in Iraq, American officials say, and that capability deteriorated during the 1990's as a result of deep budget cuts. Before the United States invaded Iraq last March, the agencies drew up lists of the Iraqi officials whom they most hoped to capture. But it was apparently not until last November, after months of work in developing new intelligence about Iraq, that a new list pointed the American search effort in the direction that finally proved fruitful.
"I suspect that it will be some time before a settled peace resides in Iraq," said Representative Porter J. Goss, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "Nevertheless," he said of the insurgents, many of them loyal to Mr. Hussein, who have been attacking Americans, "this is the beginning of their end."
-------- un
U.S. Hopes Hussein's Capture Will Bolster Support in U.N.
December 15, 2003
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/middleeast/15CND-NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 15 - The Security Council will meet Tuesday to discuss Iraq, and the United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, said today that he hoped the capture of Saddam Hussein would spur member states to close ranks behind American plans for the transformation of the country.
The 15-nation council, which was deeply divided over the war in Iraq, will be considering a report from Secretary General Kofi Annan on what role the United Nations can play in Baghdad and will also have the chance to question the country's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.
"I think an affirmation or affirmations of support for the political, economic and security development of Iraq would be most welcome indeed, and most appropriate under the circumstances," Mr. Negroponte said.
Mr. Annan, himself a critic of the war, issued a brief statement on Sunday calling Mr. Hussein's capture "an important event" and reiterating the readiness of the world organization to help in any way it could.
In his report to the Security Council last week, Mr. Annan ruled out a swift United Nations return to Iraq because of the dangers there. He had been forced to withdraw all international staff members from the country in October after a series of attacks on relief workers and diplomats and the bombing of the United Nations Baghdad headquarters in which the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other people died.
Today, Mr. Annan met with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's former ambassador to the United Nations, who figured prominently in the failed search for Security Council consensus behind the American-led action in Iraq and who is now Prime Minister Tony Blair's envoy to Baghdad, working side by side with L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq.
In an interview, Sir Jeremy said he believed the United Nations could not step up its involvement inside Iraq until this summer when the process of transition to Iraqi rule begins.
Asked what effect the dictator's capture would have in Iraq, he said, "The most important thing is the reaction of the Iraqi people and whether this entrenches their understanding that everything has changed in Iraq now and government with full consent of the people is likely to become a reality. They weren't quite sure which way it was going to go."
He said he hoped the certainty that Mr. Hussein was not coming back into power would speed reconciliation within Iraq and enable the American-led coalition to attract into government people who had been shunned because of their past association with the Iraqi dictator but actually had not committed criminal acts or human rights abuses.
"The capture is very important," he said, "because it reduces the motivation of those around Saddam, those cells that held out the possibility that the regime could return and try to show that the war was never won by the United States."
Sitting in the nearby residence of the current British ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, that had been his for five years, Sir Jeremy pondered a question about his two perspectives on the Iraqi situation.
"There was some ironic comment as I went from the United Nations to Baghdad in late summer that a leading member of the Security Council during the Iraq debate had to go out and implement his own resolution," he said. "I now think there is some justice in saying that it would be a good experience for members of the Security Council to go to the coal face and see what it all means."
-------- war crimes
Iraqi Governing Council Says It Wants to Try Hussein
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64561-2003Dec14?language=printer
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council intends to put Saddam Hussein on trial in a special Iraqi court for three decades of violent misrule and abuse of power, officials in Baghdad and Washington said yesterday.
The Bush administration expects to advise Iraqi investigators and judges, but will leave the principal decisions to Iraqis barring an unforeseen change, State Department officials said. The administration has spent more than $10 million gathering evidence against Hussein and his top lieutenants.
Hussein "will face the justice he denied to millions," President Bush told an international television audience.
Any trial of Hussein would be a hugely complicated undertaking, especially for an Iraqi justice system that barely exists. Everything from rules of criminal procedure to the legal code itself must be defined before a trial can begin. Evidence has not been consolidated, and analysts maintain that no trial could take place for many months.
Human rights organizations raised questions yesterday about the ability and credibility of the still-unformed Iraqi court and its connections to the U.S. occupation authority. The Governing Council, hand-picked by the Bush administration, is responsible for the court's procedures and will name its members.
"Saddam Hussein's capture is a welcome development, and it's important that the Iraqi people feel ownership of his trial," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a written statement. "But it's equally important that the trial not be perceived as vengeful justice. For that reason, international jurists must be involved in the process."
American and Iraqi officials will meet with fresh urgency in coming days to discuss Hussein's future and the steps to put him on trial, a State Department official said. It was only last week that the Governing Council approved the creation of a tribunal to try Hussein and members of his former government. Yesterday, the Bush administration made no formal decisions on how to handle any trial.
"We will deal with Saddam Hussein," Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi said. "He was an unjust ruler responsible for the deaths of thousands of people."
Human Rights Watch said Hussein led a Baath Party responsible for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, including the execution of more than 100,000 Kurds in 1988. Torture and summary killings were common, as were unofficial "disappearances," whose details are being revealed by the postwar discovery of countless documents and mass graves.
Starting in the late 1970s, when Hussein consolidated power, at least 290,000 Iraqis disappeared at the hands of his security forces, Human Rights Watch said. The number included tens of thousands of Shiites imprisoned in the 1980s and more who were killed during a failed uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Hussein provoked "deep fear and terror," said Khudair Abbas, Iraq's health minister, who called Sunday "a day of jubilation for every human being, especially Iraqis." A fair trial that lives up to international standards, Abbas said during a Washington visit, is crucial to demonstrate that "the new Iraq is different from Saddam's Iraq."
Under the law that will establish a tribunal, Iraqi judges will be nominated by a special judicial board and approved by the 25-member Governing Council, which will also appoint prosecutors, defense lawyers and investigators. The law draws heavily on international norms and requires the Iraqis to seek expertise from abroad.
Still unclear is the depth of direct involvement of foreign judges and prosecutors. The Governing Council, yielding at the last minute to the urging of U.S. authorities, agreed to leave open the possibility that international judges and other specialists could take part in trials.
"It was suggested to them that this would be a good provision to have, in order to give them the widest flexibility," a State Department official said. "We understand the value of having international participation and pointed that out to the Iraqis."
A U.N. team said in August that Iraq's "degraded" justice system was "not capable of rendering fair and effective justice for violations of international humanitarian law and other serious criminal offenses involving the prior regime."
American University law professor Diane F. Orentlicher, citing "serious concerns" about the current capacity of the Iraqi legal system, argued Sunday for a judicial hybrid modeled on the court in Sierra Leone, where local judges sit alongside international colleagues.
"We're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of crimes," said Orentlicher, who advises the U.N. war crimes project in Sierra Leone. She said legitimacy would be enhanced by broad international participation.
"There is the risk," she said, "that prosecutions undertaken by Iraqi courts supported only by American forces will be seen as dispensing victors' justice."
Amnesty International said the Governing Council has failed to consult sufficiently with Iraqis and international experts. The organization also questioned the acceptability of a tribunal that may be permitted to impose the death penalty, a punishment favored by some Iraqis but opposed by many foreign governments and advocates.
The International Criminal Court established last year is not an option. It has no jurisdiction over crimes that occurred before July 1, 2002. Nor was Iraq a signatory to the treaty that created the court.
The Bush administration often cites a need for any trial of Hussein to be perceived as fair.
"Everyone," a senior State Department official said, "has a stake in what happens to Saddam."
Staff writer Ceci Connolly contributed to this report.
--------
LEGAL PROCESS
Iraqis Just Recently Set Rules to Govern Tribunal
December 15, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/politics/15PRIS.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - After United States officials finish interrogating Saddam Hussein, he is expected to become the principal defendant before a special Iraqi-led criminal tribunal that was formally established only last week, Iraqi and American officials said Sunday.
Since the conclusion of major combat in the Iraq war, Bush administration officials have consistently said they want Mr. Hussein and his senior aides tried before an Iraqi-led body for war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide for his actions against Iraqi Kurds and marsh Arabs.
The Iraqi Governing Council put forward a set of regulations on Wednesday creating a five-member court empowered to try Iraqis on such charges stemming from activities from July 17, 1968, the day Mr. Hussein's Baath Party came to power, until May 1, 2003, the day President Bush declared major hostilities over.
"With his capture, the policy remains the same," a senior administration official said. "We believe the Iraqi regime, the former leadership, should be tried before an Iraqi-led process."
The regulations drafted with the aid of United States government lawyers pointedly take an approach different from the rules used for tribunals dealing with cases from Sierra Leone, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, reflecting the Bush administration's distaste for any direct United Nations role in the process. Those three courts were all established under United Nations auspices.
The new regulations allow the Governing Council to appoint international judicial experts as well as Iraqi judges in cases "it deems necessary."
But Iraqi officials have indicated that they expect all five tribunal members will be from Iraq. Adnan Pachachi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, said in Baghdad that Mr. Hussein would face a public trial inside Iraq. "There's no question that the process will be an Iraqi process," Mr. Pachachi said.
But as they go down that road they are certain to draw opposition from critics who have urged a proceeding with greater international involvement.
To deal with criticism that an Iraqi-run proceeding might not have enough expertise or, after years of Baathist government, enough experience in modern trials, the regulations require that international jurists be appointed as advisers. The regulations say that the tribunals may consult with the United Nations in choosing such advisers.
The prosecutors are required to be Iraqis. The regulations also provide for a nine-member appeals tribunal that would review any verdict and sentence.
Iraqi council members were adamant, American officials said, that the tribunals be allowed to impose the death penalty, another important difference from the tribunals sponsored by the United Nations.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, president of the Governing Council, who was on a trip to Madrid, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying that Mr. Hussein would be "taken before the judges, and he will be judged, according to the law in force, before the tribunal that was set up in Iraq."
The tribunal, which is expected to be situated in a former museum containing Mr. Hussein's treasures, is not likely to begin its work until after a new government takes over in July, American officials said.
United States officials have not officially confirmed that Mr. Hussein will be tried before the new tribunal. When questioned at a news conference announcing the capture, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq, declined to specify how Mr. Hussein would be treated, as did Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American military commander there.
While Mr. Bush in his televised remarks did not explicitly address how Mr. Hussein would be dealt with, Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, said in a statement from London that the capture "gives an opportunity for Saddam to be tried in Iraqi courts for his crimes against the Iraqi people."
American officials said Mr. Hussein remained in Iraq, although they would not specify where.
The Bush administration has shown little appetite for international tribunals, notably refusing to participate in the recently established International Criminal Court. That court could not be used for most of the potential human rights issues in Iraq, anyway, because it may deal only with crimes that occurred after July 1, 2002.
Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, one of several groups that have looked askance at the administration's approach, said that an Iraqi-led tribunal could work well but that there were pitfalls.
"The involvement of the Iraqis is desirable and right, but in our judgment there needs to be an international component both for expertise and to ensure the independence of the tribunal," he said. "This is such an extraordinary opportunity to try one of the world's most notorious human rights violators that it's important it be done in a way that is perceived around the world as wholly proper."
Any trial of Mr. Hussein would involve the use of a large cache of documents taken out of Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The documents, which detail mass killings at Mr. Hussein's behest, were obtained by Kurdish militia fighters who raided the offices of military and Baath Party security officials in the northern cities of Erbil, Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya.
The material, officials said, includes an audiotape of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Mr. Hussein's cousin, ordering the use of chemical weapons in 1988 against Kurdish troops, an action that earned him the nickname Chemical Ali.
Mr. Majid is one of several dozen former aides to Mr. Hussein who have been captured and would also be expected to go before a special tribunal. American officials have compiled dossiers that could be used in the prosecution of as many as 200 former officials in the Hussein government.
--------
At War Crimes Trial, Clark and Milosevic Meet Again
December 15, 2003
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/europe/15CND-TRIB.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
THE HAGUE, Dec. 15 - In a grenade-proof courtroom far from the battlefields of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, came face-to-face today with Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO supreme commander who waged war against him.
For nearly five hours, General Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, testified in closed session in a trial against the Balkan strongman, whose intransigence triggered NATO's 11-week bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and added to the long list of criminal charges he is facing.
It was the first encounter between the two men since January 1999, when General Clark warned Mr. Milosevic in a tense session in Belgrade to either end his terror campaign against the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo or be bombed. Mr. Milosevic replied by calling the general a "war criminal." The bombing started several weeks later.
Now it is Mr. Milosevic who is on trial as a war criminal. In the most important war crimes trial since those of the Nazis at Nuremberg, he faces 66 charges of crime committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's.
"Today Milosevic is delivered by his own people to the hands of justice in the Hague," General Clark said in an interview. "It's a powerful testament to the rule of law and the force of ideas."
The 281st witness to be called before the special court formally known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, General Clark is also one of the most important. He is the most senior official from the Clinton administration to testify against Mr. Milosevic in a trial heard before three judges in black, silk-trimmed robes - an Englishman, a South Korean and a Jamaican.
General Clark served as a military representative on Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke's delegation at Balkan peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, which led to an agreement to end the Bosnia war. And he has spent more than 100 hours with Mr. Milosevic, who figures prominently in General Clark's 2001 memoir, "Waging Modern War," an inside account of the planning and conduct of the war in Kosovo and the diplomacy that preceded it.
Prosecutors were expected to follow the same line of questioning they have used with many other witnesses to prove that Mr. Milosevic was aware of Serbian wartime atrocities and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible.
But the historic significance of the day was undercut by the secrecy of General Clark's testimony, an unusual step in a tribunal that has prided itself on its openness.
The Bush administration has invoked a rule under the tribunal to allow State Department lawyers to review and edit the testimony to insure that it does not violate American national security or intelligence sources and methods. Under universal rules of the tribunal, all witnesses are precluded from talking about their testimony until it is over.
Adding to the drama and disarray, Mr. Milosevic, who studied law but never practiced it, is serving as his own lawyer.
The former Serb leader has tried to use this trial, which is being televised in Serbia, to his political advantage at home. Throughout the trial, he has been chided by the chief judge for grand-standing and pontificating and was expected to challenge General Clark's credibility under cross-examination.
From his detention cell near the Hague, Mr. Milosevic, who was removed from power in 2000 and later extradited to the tribunal, is also running his own political campaign as head of his Socialist Party of Serbia's electoral list for parliamentary elections in Serbia on Dec. 28. In Belgrade today, the European Union foreign policy envoy, Javier Solana, condemned the inclusion of Mr. Milosevic and three other suspected war criminals on the lists of candidates in Serbia's parliamentary elections.
"It is not a good idea to have on the list people who are indicted" by the tribunal, Mr. Solana told reporters before heading to the Hague this evening.
A videotape of General Clark's testimony will be shown - perhaps in an edited form - on Friday, both at the Hague tribunal and on its website.
General Clark said he did not object to the delay in his testimony and was not concerned that he could be censored.
General Clark's two-day appearance in the Hague tribunal, which was paid for by the Tribunal, was labeled a break from his campaign activities, and he did not travel with his campaign staff. He was assisted by James P. Rubin, who was a senior aide to the former Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright, and is serving as an unpaid foreign policy advisor to his campaign.
But the trial has thrust the retired four-star general back into the foreign policy and national security world that defined him, far away from the messiness of the political campaign
In addition, the timing of his testimony - a day after the Bush administration announced the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq - allowed General Clark to draw attention to his own tough treatment of a dictator who was forced to back down by NATO's first military campaign in its history and without a single United States combat casualty.
"This is an important day for me but it is far more important for the people of the region," he said in the interview. "For men and women and children who were tortured, imprisoned and run out of their homes, who lived in fear because of the thugs and the paramilitaries and the heartless coercion of the Serb armed forces, the world listened. And led by the United States, we took action."
Mr. Hussein's capture also required General Clark - who has been highly critical of President Bush for conducting what he has called the wrong war at the wrong time and diverting resources from the pursuit of the al Qaeda - to adjust his message.
In the interview today, General Clark called it "an amazing sort of coincidence in time" that Mr. Hussein was captured while Mr. Milosevic was on trial for war crimes. "This is the precedent, the first case in which we've tried a head of state for war crimes," General Clark said.
On Sunday and again today he said that Mr. Hussein must be brought to trial, but noted that the Hague tribunal does not allow for the death penalty and that "all options have to be on the table."
General Clark, with Mr. Rubin's help, rewrote a major foreign policy speech to the Netherlands Institute for International Relations this evening to include his reaction to Mr. Hussein's capture.
Calling the capture "good news" but not sufficient, he charged that Iraq "is still in danger of becoming a failed state."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Cheney Energy Group Case to Get High Court Hearing
December 15, 2003
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/politics/15CND-COURT.html?hp
The United States Supreme Court said today that it would hear arguments from the Bush administration about why it should not be required to turn over information about Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
The administration is fighting a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group based in Washington, and the Sierra Club, which are trying to find out if Mr. Cheney's task force was influenced by participants from the energy industry who were also political allies of the administration.
The panel issued a report four months after President Bush took office that favored opening more public lands to oil and gas drilling and proposed a range of other steps supported by industry.
The case has become a major legal test of how accountable the administration should be.
By agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court will review the decision of an appeals court, which said last July that there was no basis for the Bush administration to ask the appeals court to block a lower court's ruling that required the disclosure of information.
The trial judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, had ruled earlier that the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch might be entitled to a limited amount of information about the meetings Mr. Cheney and his aides had with the energy industry while formulating the White House's energy plan.
The White House had asserted that Judge Sullivan's request would be an improper intrusion into the executive branch.
-------- immigration / refugees
Civil Rights Charges Dog Citizen Patrols on Border
Armed Groups Seek to Curb Illegal Immigrants, Smugglers
By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A75-2003Dec14.html
DOUGLAS, Ariz. -- Jack Foote took a call from a rancher in distress and sprang out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. He was carrying a .45 on his hip, but that was hardly enough. "The guy was shot at, or something like that," he said, breathing hard as he rushed around the old two-bedroom farmhouse that has become the headquarters of Ranch Rescue.
He threw on a camouflage shirt and an assault vest packed with ammunition, food and water. He strapped a knife and more ammunition to his legs. Then he grabbed his walkie-talkie, black sunglasses and an AR-15 rifle. It was the middle of a warm, sleepy Sunday afternoon. Foote, who calls Ranch Rescue a citizen patrol to protect private property from trespassers, was nearly trembling with outrage at what he sees as the audacity of the "alien smugglers" once again terrorizing a U.S. citizen with the bad luck to live in Cochise County, the main entry point for illegal border crossings into the United States.
After rushing to the scene of the phone call, 20 miles from Ranch Rescue, it turned out that the call that agitated Foote so much was not quite what he thought. The rancher, a man with a black bandanna on his head and a rifle on his lap, said he had been run off the road (by a "white man with red hair") when he slowed his motorcycle to snoop on a car as it crept along the shoulder, as smugglers tend to do. But the incident did little to dispel Foote's fears. "I tell you, it's getting more and more dangerous out there," said Foote, a baby-faced 46-year-old Texan who moved last month to Douglas, epicenter for the citizen patrols commonly known as "border vigilantes."
People who live in and around Douglas (population 15,000), which lies one mile from the Mexican border, tend to agree. So do human rights groups that track the lives and deaths of migrants. The debate here is about just why life on this edge of the country is getting so scary.
Human rights groups say the U.S. border control strategy, which has funneled almost all traffic into this country into a 261-mile stretch of desolate, deadly, Arizona desert, has created a lucrative market for organized smuggling rings as driven and armed as the Mafia. But many residents are just as worried about people such as Foote, with his volunteer army in full war gear and his bristling anger. In recent months, the groups have drawn a spate of negative attention. Members of Ranch Rescue, the American Border Patrol (which moved from Sierra Vista, Ariz., to Douglas earlier this year) and the Civil Homeland Defense (based in the tourist town of Tombstone, 45 miles from Douglas) have been arrested on such charges as carrying concealed weapons, firing weapons and assaulting migrants.
Jennifer Allen, director of Border Action Network, a volunteer organization advocating civil rights for migrants and border residents alike, said that groups such as Ranch Rescue, Civil Homeland Defense and the Barnetts -- a Douglas-area rancher family that says it has picked up 10,000 illegal migrants using armed patrols since 1999 -- are feared by many of their neighbors.
Allen's group, with Don MacKenzie, who is groundskeeper and vice president of Summerland Monastery Inc., sued the Barnetts in U.S. district court last week. The suit claims that Roger Barnett, his wife, Barbara, and brother Donald conspired to interfere with the civil rights of immigrants and impersonated law enforcement officials. It seeks an injunction against them. Roger Barnett did not return a phone call to his towing business seeking comment last week.
Ranch Rescue, which Foote describes as a network of independent chapters in several border states, has legal troubles of its own. Casey Nethercott, 36, a Ranch Rescue member from Texas who a few months ago bought the Douglas ranch that the group now calls its headquarters, was arrested recently by the FBI. He was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in a Texas case in which he was accused of detaining migrants -- a Salvadoran couple -- and pistol-whipping at least one of them. He had failed to appear in a Texas court for a hearing on the charges and was also to be arraigned on a third charge, possession of a firearm by a felon, according to the Jim Hogg County prosecutor's office. (The felony record stems from an assault with a firearm conviction in Riverside County, Calif., in 1996.) He was extradited to Texas, where he remains in jail.
Ranch Rescue has also been sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund for civil rights violations. The mayor of Douglas repeatedly speaks out against Ranch Rescue, and the Douglas City Council has passed a resolution condemning the group.
Foote knows Ranch Rescue's reputation has gone from bad to worse. Trained in computer technology after a three-year stint in the Army, he has a hard time finding work. He said he found a job here in the computer department of a private school a week after he arrived, but was suspended when the school found out about his involvement in Ranch Rescue.
He figured the group is so controversial because people do not want it to catch smugglers. Ailing Douglas, where houses cost as little as $40,000 and there is no industry besides cattle ranching, needs the smugglers to stay alive, Foote surmises. "A lot of people make money helping the drug and human smugglers," he said.
But victims of the smugglers love Ranch Rescue, Foote said. He is quick with anecdotes about private property owners who he says were harassed, threatened, beaten and even kidnapped by armed intruders. But human rights groups also tell anecdotes about migrants found shot or stabbed to death, with no suspects ever found.
They point at the case of two men in Yuma, Ariz.: Matthew Hoffman, 23, and Alexander Dumas, 26, who were convicted in October of conspiracy to commit unlawful imprisonment for handcuffing five of six suspected illegal immigrants (including the 16-year-old smugger and three children) and holding them at gunpoint. The men received 120- and 30-day sentences after pleading guilty.
Ranch Rescue is unfazed. It plans on expanding operations. It is in the midst of "Phase II of Operation Thunderbird," which it began Nov. 15 with dozens of volunteers, including members of the Missouri Militia. The operation will involve not only continuous armed patrols to catch "illegal alien trespassers," but also the construction of more facilities on the property. The group plans to build a bunkhouse to hold Ranch Rescue members, similar to one they have already built that holds 10 bunks, as well as a lookout tower and a massive wall to secure the property.
"This is going to be a fortress," Foote said. "This is going to be Fort Apache when we're done with it."
Special correspondent Kimberly Edds contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
China List Identifies Muslim Separatists Accused of Terrorism
December 15, 2003
By JIM YARDLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/international/asia/15CND-CHINA.html
BEIJING, Dec. 15 - China issued its first formal list of terrorists today, accusing 4 Muslim separatist groups and 11 individuals of committing violence and acts of terror, while calling on other nations to help in cracking down against them.
China's decision to make public an official list of terror organizations emulates the list that the United States introduced after the Sept. 11 attacks and has since updated.
But critics have argued that China is using the pretense of a war on terror to legitimize its harsh treatment of Muslim Uighur minorities that are peacefully seeking a separate state in China's western province of Xinjiang.
Zhao Yongshen, an antiterrorism official in China's Ministry of Public Security, asserted today that the groups included on China's list had coordinated bombings and assassinations as part of a campaign to create an independent "East Turkistan" in Xinjiang.
"They have seriously endangered the safety of the life and property of the Chinese people and other ethnic groups and threatened the security and stability of relevant countries in the region," Mr. Zhao told reporters at a news briefing, according to news service reports.
Mr. Zhao asked that other nations freeze bank accounts and arrest and prosecute those named on the list.
Last year, Chinese officials issued a report asserting that Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda terror network had helped finance and train separatists in Xinjiang. China also persuaded the United States to place one group - the East Turkistan Islamic Movement - on the American terrorist list last year.
The Uighurs in Xinjiang are Turkic-speaking Muslims who have long sought to maintain their ethnic and cultural identity - including efforts by some who have advocated an independent state. Advocacy groups for the Uighurs, like the East Turkistan Information Center, have denied any ties to Mr. bin Laden. The Information Center, one of the groups China names as a terror organization, is based in Germany and is registered as a political movement.
Other supporters of Uighur independence accuse China of restricting free speech and individual rights of Uighurs in the name of fighting terror. "We're really concerned about this," said Sarah Davis, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York. "Since Sept. 11, China has increasingly been equating peaceful movements for separatism with international terrorism."
The four groups on the list are the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, the Eastern Turkistan Liberation Organization, the World Uighur Youth Congress, and the Eastern Turkistan Information Center.
The individuals on the list are mostly leaders of the four groups. Chinese state media listed their names as Hasan Mahsum, Muhanmetemin Hazret, Dolqun Isa, Abudujelili Kalakash, Abudukadir Yapuquan, Abudumijit Muhammatkelim, Abudula Kariaji, Abulimit Turxun, Huadaberdi Haxerbik, Yasen Muhammat, and Atahan Abuduhani.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Supreme Court to Hear Cheney Energy Appeal
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
December 15, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-15-09.asp
The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to hear Vice President Dick Cheney's appeal of a court ruling that would force him to disclose details of meetings of his controversial energy task force.
The high court will hear the case in the new year, with a ruling expected in June 2004.
So far Cheney's lawyers have been unable to convince lower courts that the White House has the right to shield information from the public about the role of energy industry executives and lobbyists on the task force.
The public interest group Judicial Watch filed suit in 2001 to obtain the documents after Cheney's office ignored its request for information about the meetings of the task force.
The organization, which was later joined in the suit by Sierra Club, contends that Cheney inappropriately allowed industry lobbyists to help craft White House energy policy.
The plaintiffs say the public has a right to know what influence energy corporations may have had in crafting the administration's energy plan.
Bush officials say there was nothing devious about the meetings and argue that the White House should be able to gather information and advice without public scrutiny.
In July 2003, a three judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Bush administration is subject to "discovery," and must comply with requests for information.
In rejecting the government's arguments, the court wrote that the White House's position would "transform executive privilege from a doctrine designed to protect presidential communications into virtual immunity from suit."
The administration asked the appeals court for a rehearing, but that request was denied in September, prompting the White House to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
"We are seeking to hold the Bush administration accountable for shutting the public out," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney for the Sierra Club. "The American people have already waited far too long to find out exactly how energy industries influenced our national energy policy."
Bookbinder said the plaintiffs believe the Supreme Court could have rejected the administration's arguments "out of hand" but added that the decision to hear the case "will draw attention to the extreme positions the Bush administration has taken, essentially arguing that they are above the law and immune from the courts."
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said he is confident the Supreme Court will reject the Bush administration's "unprecedented assertion of unchecked executive power."
-------- environment
E.P.A. Plans to Expand Pollution Markets
December 15, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/politics/15POLL.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - Convinced that its effort to revamp the Clean Air Act is stalemated in Congress, the Bush administration is pushing the policies, which govern pollution from power plants, through regulation rather than legislation.
This week the Environmental Protection Agency plans to release a pair of proposals that closely track President Bush's proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act, known as the Clear Skies Initiative.
The regulations share the same timelines, limits and trading mechanisms for three of the main pollutants released from burning fossil fuels: mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
The proposals would expand the current pollution trading systems for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and introduce a new one for mercury. The trading systems are modeled after one that even environmental groups consider successful. It has reduced the sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain by allowing companies to buy and sell a limited set of rights to pollute.
In late October, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and other cabinet-level administrators met to deliberate on backing this approach. Documents from the meeting, titled "Administrative Approach for Achieving Clear Skies," state that "as a fallback approach in the event that Congress does not make progress on Clear Skies legislation this year" the committee was convened to consider "how to achieve the goals of the president's Clear Skies Initiative via an administrative approach using existing Clean Air Act authority."
This approach has raised criticism in some quarters.
"The federal government is literally rewriting the clean air rules to give the worst actors a free pass to pollute in perpetuity," said James E. McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey, which introduced its own statewide mercury regulations for power plants last week.
Industry, though, has advocated an overhaul for the Clean Air Act since President Bush's earliest months in office.
In an April 2001 speech to the Western Coal Transport Group, Quin Shea, an electric industry lobbyist for the Edison Electric Institute, acknowledged that the chances of getting the Clean Air Act amended by Congress were "fairly low," according to transcripts on the National Coal Transport Association Web site. "Having said that, the president is prepared to do this administratively," Mr. Shea said, noting that the effort would not be "as robust" but that "the goal here will be to gain a foothold, an irreversible foothold on the next generation" of pollution controls.
Proponents of pollution markets call them efficient and flexible, arguing that the acid rain program brought down sulfur dioxide faster and more cheaply than expected.
"The cap and trade approach shows us again and again that people do more and they do it faster when they have an incentive to do what's in the public's interest," said Michael O. Leavitt, the E.P.A. administrator, in his first speech to employees a few weeks ago.
But a number of senators, state officials and environmental advocacy groups oppose the president's market-based proposal, especially for the toxic pollutant mercury.
Unregulated mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants have become a rising concern in recent years. About 48 tons of mercury are emitted each year from power plants, about 40 percent of total man-made emissions in the country.
The administration's market proposal would put a nationwide limit at 15 tons in the year 2015, with no interim limits stated.
In contrast, the E.P.A. used traditional controls for hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act to bring down mercury from medical waste incinerators, another major source, to about 5 tons today.
While environmental groups are opposed to any mercury trading, some E.P.A. officials and senators say there is some value in building trading into regulations. One proposal backed by Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware, and three Republican senators also allows trading once individual plants achieve a 70 percent reduction. A proposal that was sent by E.P.A. employees to the White House early last year also used this hybrid approach.
The agency's effort to allow a pollution trading system for mercury is almost certain to be challenged in court if it is ever made final.
"That's riddled with legal problems," said Ann Berwick, who formerly handled environmental litigation for the Massachusetts attorney general and now works as an industry lobbyist for companies that oppose President Bush's plan.
Indeed, the documents from the cabinet-level meeting acknowledge that while a "coordinated administrative approach to the three pollutants is good policy for the electric utility industry," the approach is "legally vulnerable."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Row as restored A-bomb plane goes on display
By Alec Russell in Washington
15/12/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/16/wenola16.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/12/16/ixportal.html
The Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, went on display, fully restored, for the first time yesterday, igniting an angry debate over its place in history. The restored Enola Gay at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum
At the centre of the controversy is the terse label on the principal exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, a new branch of America's most venerable museum, the Smithsonian, which does not mention the casualties of the bombing.
To the outrage of scholars, writers, peace activists and survivors of the Hiroshima firestorm, the two-paragraph text compresses Enola Gay's far-reaching impact on warfare and its devastating effect to one brief sentence.
After telling visitors that it was the "largest and most technologically advanced" bomber of the Second World War, the exhibit's label concludes: "On Aug 6 1945 this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
President Harry S Truman authorised the use of the bomb in August 1945 hoping that it would end Japan's resistance, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, although some of his commanders doubted it was necessary, believing Tokyo was close to capitulation.
About 140,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima bombing and 70,000 died in a second bombing at Nagasaki. For the curators at the Smithsonian, the row is all too familiar, if from a different historical perspective.
In 1994 they planned to put part of the fuselage on display in an exhibition that was to focus on the suffering caused by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But they cancelled it after veterans' groups and the Senate protested that there was to be no mention of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the lives saved by a swift end to the war, and Japan's record of aggression.
After a 19-year restoration the complete plane went on display yesterday as the Air and Space Museum opened in Virginia to mark the start a week of commemorations for the centenary of the Wright brothers' first flight.
Last Friday representatives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors' groups handed letters and a petition with 25,000 signatures to the museum urging it to change the label to include a record of the victims. They planned a protest yesterday outside the museum.
Smithsonian officials have rejected the criticism saying the plaque does not "glorify or vilify" the plane's role in history, and that the label is the same used for the other 81 military and civilian aircraft in the museum.
The museum director, Jim Dailey, a retired marine general, said the bombing helped to prevent later use of nuclear weapons because it "showed what can happen".
He added: "We don't tell people what to think about it."
----
Hiroshima survivors protest at Enola Gay display
December 15, 2003
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/14/1071336815495.html
Fifty-eight years after being devastated by a US atomic bomb, Hiroshima survivors pleaded with the United States today to honour their pain before the plane that dropped the bomb goes on public display.
Three ageing Hiroshima victims travelled from Japan to lodge written protests with US President George W Bush and the National Air and Space Museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, before the bomber named Enola Gay goes on public display today.
They accuse the museum of dishonouring the memory of the scores of thousands of civilians killed in the blast, and a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, by not displaying casualty figures next to the plane.
"If the Enola Gay is going to be displayed, they should also say what happened beneath the plane on the day the bomb was dropped," said Sunao Tsuboi, who was about one and a half kilometres from the centre of the blast on August 6, 1945.
"I was under this cloud," Tsuboi, who still bears scars from the blast, told a press conference, as he pointed to an enlarged photo of a mushroom cloud towering over Hiroshima minutes after the attack.
The Enola Gay, a gleaming silver B-29 Superfortress bomber, will go on public display at a new annexe of the National Air and Space Museum, near Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
It will bear a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II".
The text mentions the technological prowess of the aircraft and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe".
"On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
Survivors claim the exhibit ignores the agony of around 230,000 people killed in the blast and by subsequent radiation poisoning and disease as well as the decades of pain endured by those who survived.
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he told AFP. "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
The museum says its stance is consistent with the mission entrusted to it by US Congress, which is to display and preserve historic and technologically significant air and space craft.
In a petition signed by 25,000 people sent to Bush and Dailey, survivors say they cannot "repress our deep astonishment and anger".
"To exalt this Enola Gay -- which caused an unprecedented atrocity that violated all norms of morality and international law -- as testimony to "technological achievement" is completely unacceptable to the atomic bomb victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Debate has raged for years over the US use of the atomic bomb. Opponents of the twin raids have described them as a war crime. Other historians argue the action hastened the defeat of imperial Japan and by so doing saved thousands of lives.
This is not the first time the Enola Gay has flown into a diplomatic storm.
In 1995, portions of its fuselage, undercarriage and engines went on display in the National Air and Space museum's building on Washington's central mall. The exhibit closed in 1998.
The Enola Gay, which pilot Paul Tibbets named after his mother, has undergone the most extensive restoration in the museum's history.
It will be on display, in one piece for the first time in 43 years, surrounded by other aircraft from World War II, including a British Hawker Hurricane, a German Focke-Wulf FW 190A-8 and a Japanese Aichi Seiran.
----
Atomic Bomb Survivors See Enola Gay
Atomic Bomb Survivors Among First Visitors to See Enola Gay, Which Dropped A-Bomb on Hiroshima
The Associated Press
December 15, 2003
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20031215_2190.html
CHANTILLY, Va. Dec. 15 - A small group of protesters briefly disrupted the official opening of the National Air and Space Museum's new annex at Dulles International Airport Monday, spilling a red liquid supposed to resemble blood near the Enola Gay exhibit and throwing an object that dented the airplane.
Two men were arrested after security broke up the demonstration. Thomas K. Siemer, 73, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged with felony destruction of property and loitering, while Gregory Wright of Hagerstown, Md., faced a misdemeanor loitering charge.
Several elderly atomic bomb survivors from Japan also expressed dismay that information on the effects of the bomb dropped by the Enola Gay on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, was not included in the exhibit.
"If they want to show these planes, that's fine but we can't help but also demand that they show the damage and the stories that take place behind these weapons," said Terumi Tanaka, 71, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb attack which occurred three days after Hiroshima.
A total of 230,000 people were killed in the two attacks. Japan surrendered unconditionally six days after the Nagasaki bombing.
Some visitors at the opening of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center said, however, they considered the Enola Gay an important part of aviation history.
"The Hiroshima bomb started the whole nuclear age, that's why I wanted to see it," said Philip Wheaton, 78, of Takoma Park, Md.
The Enola Gay is one of 82 racers, gliders, helicopters, warplanes and airliners currently on display in the Smithsonian Institution's nearly 294,000-square-foot aviation exhibit hanger. Other notable exhibits include the S-R 71 Blackbird, an American spy plane that still holds the record as the fastest plane ever built; and the space shuttle Enterprise, which was used by NASA to test various concepts during the development of reusable spacecraft.
The Smithsonian's aerospace collection also will eventually be displayed in the 53,000 square foot James S. McDonnell Space hanger.
"This is the largest air and space exhibition complex in the world," said retired Gen. John R. Dailey, director of the museum. "We have about 40 percent of the aircraft in here today, and over the next three years we'll be moving more in."
Visitors, for the most part, said they were impressed with the new annex.
"Seeing all of these aircraft fully assembled is getting to see history," said Ray Kimball, 30, of Menloe Park, Calif. The Army helicopter pilot toured the facility with his three year-old son. "I'll have to bring him back when he's older."
----
Grief overflows, anger flares as Hiroshima bomber goes on display
December 15, 2003
(AFP)
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/62171/1/.html
CHANTILLY, United States : Grief overflowed and anger erupted as aged Japanese survivors confronted the Enola Gay, the US warplane which unleashed the world's first atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
Six survivors and around 50 peace activists held up pictures of hideously burned victims among the tens of thousands killed or injured by the blast, as the restored and shiny silver Boeing B-29 Superfortress loomed overhead.
The Enola Gay was put on display for the first time in one piece on opening day for a vast new annex to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, which also includes a just retired French Concorde and space shuttle prototype.
One protestor threw a bag of paint at the aircraft, and was hauled away by police, though activists could not identify the man.
It was not clear if the Enola Gay was damaged.
The vigil stirred anger among some visitors to the museum, just under the flightpath of Dulles international airport outside Washington.
"Remember Pearl Harbor" "Go home" "What about the Nanjing massacre?" several men shouted in references to the imperial Japanese army, as several scuffles broke out with activists.
Other men, including several US war veterans, took part in animated arguments which peace activists. Several young Japanese visitors to the museum were overcome by emotion and in tears.
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometres (miles) from the epicentre of the blast, and still bears scars from his burns.
"The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky.
"When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger."
Another survivor, Tamiko Tomonaga, 74, said she had come to see the plane in memory of all those who died in the twin atom bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the closing days of World War II.
Survivors are disappointed the plane is being displayed with no reference to casualty figures at Hiroshima, which some estimates say reach 230,000 people, when those who died in later years of radiation poisoning are included.
"We would not mind the plane going on display if they showed the tragedy they caused" Tomonaga, who was a Red Cross nurse at the time of the bombing said.
The Enola Gay bears a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II."
The text mentions the technological prowess of the aircraft and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe."
"On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
As survivors and activists mounted their protest, some visitors to the museum reacted with anger, reflecting raw feelings left over the war, nearly 60 years after the United States and Japan made peace.
"They (Japan) started the war by bombing our servicemen in Pearl Harbor, they should go and stand on the deck of the Arizona," said one man who refused to give his name, referring to a US ship sunk in the raid, now a memorial.
Joe Lassals, in tears but unwilling to say why he was moved to come here, said, "I am thinking of all the American soldiers who were killed -- why don't they remember them?"
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll from the Hiroshima bombings included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he told AFP. "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
The museum says its stance is consistent with the mission entrusted to it by US Congress, which is to display and preserve historic and technologically significant air and space craft.
ON THE NET
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: http://www.nasm.si.edu/
----
New Air And Space Museum Annex Opens
Protesters Arrested Near Enola Gay Exhibit
December 15, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.channeloklahoma.com/travelgetaways/2706665/detail.html
CHANTILLY, Va. -- Visitors to the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex near Dulles Airport will have quite a view even before stepping inside.
Located about 28 miles from west of Washington, the massive Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly looks like an airport.
A tall, glass viewing platform is designed to look like an air traffic control tower -- giving visitors a view of flight operations at nearby Dulles Airport. The main body of the museum looks like an old-fashioned airplane hanger.
The entire complex contains about 30 million square feet of space, and includes an Imax Theater, food court, museum store and offices. It was built at a cost of $311 million.
Right now, more than 80 historic aircraft are on display -- including the space shuttle Enterprise and the Blackbird spy plane.
Museum director Jack Dailey helped cut the ribbon at the museum opening Monday morning. He said the first public visitors are seeing a work in progress.
By 2007, the facility will display 80 percent of the Smithsonian's collection of historic aerospace artifacts. Nearly 120 additional airplanes, gliders and helicopters are awaiting preservation.
Enola Gay Protesters Arrested After Museum Opens
Two men were arrested following an incident at the museum.
The two were allegedly among a small group of demonstrators who voiced their opposition to the display of the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay.
Thomas Seimer of Columbus, Ohio, was charged with felony destruction of property after allegedly throwing a container of red liquid representing blood on the floor near the nose-gear of the aircraft. He also faces a loitering charge, as does Gregory Wright of Hagerstown, Md.
The Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. It is displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center without any mention of the destruction nuclear weapons caused at the end of World War II.
Several Japanese survivors of the two atomic bomb attacks on Japan said details of the bombs' human impact should be included in the exhibit.
----
Hiroshima survivors face Enola Gay
Japanese protesters threw red paint at the infamous aircraft
Tuesday 16 December 2003
(AFP)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CDAF5B2E-5AD8-4829-8527-90FE92F97F29.htm
Grief stricken Hiroshima survivors have confronted the US warplane which unleashed the world's first atomic bomb in 1945 on an unsuspecting city.
The Japanese survivors on Monday visited a museum exhibiting the aircraft, named the Enola Gay, on a trip that has jarred raw US emotions over Japan's wartime role.
Holding pictures of hideously burned victims of the blast, six survivors and about 50 peace activists visited the new museum in Chantilly, Virginia, where the shiny, four-engined Boeing B-29 Superfortress has just gone on display.
Two men were arrested after a bottle of red paint, meant to symbolise blood, was thrown, denting a panel on one side of the plane, which is parked in the new annex to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
One demonstrator was charged with destruction of property, the other faces loitering charges, police said.
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay. The first time was on 6 August, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky. When I saw it today, I was overcome by anger"
Minoru Nishino, Survivor
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometres from the epicentre of the blast, and still bears scars.
"The first time was on 6 August, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky. When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger."
Another survivor, Tamiko Tomonaga, 74, said she had travelled from Japan in memory of the dead.
American anger
But their act of remembrance next to the plane was too much for some museum visitors who angrily shouted, "Remember Pearl Harbor" and "What about the Nanjing massacre?" referring to actions of imperial Japanese forces.
"My Dad fought in the war - go home" shouted another man.
Fifty-eight years after the Hiroshima bombing, and a second atom bomb strike a few days later on Nagasaki, opinion here on the first nuclear strikes is still sharply divided.
Opponents argue the action, which killed up to 230,000 people - if those who died from radiation sickeness are included, was nothing short of a war crime.
However, some historians contend that despite the horror, the bombings shortened the war with Japan, saving untold lives.
Both viewpoints vied for prominence at the museum, located under the flightpath of Dulles international airport and which also houses a retired Air France Concorde and a space shuttle prototype.
Casualty figures
Survivors are disappointed the Enola Gay is being displayed with no reference to casualty figures at Hiroshima.
Survivor Tamiko Tomonaga wants the death toll to be displayed "We would not mind the plane going on display if they showed the tragedy they caused," said Tomonaga, a Red Cross nurse at the time of the bombing.
The Enola Gay bears a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II".
The text mentions the technological prowess of the aircraft and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe".
"On 6 August, 1945, this Martin-built, B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
Remembering the dead
One angry onlooker who refused to give his name defended the decision not to give casualty figures.
"They (Japan) started the war by bombing our servicemen in Pearl Harbor, they should go and stand on the deck of the Arizona," he said, referring to a US ship sunk in 1941 that drew the United States into the war and which is now a memorial.
Another visitor to the museum, Joe Lassals, said, "I am thinking of all the American soldiers who were killed - why don't they remember them?"
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll from the Hiroshima bombings included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he said. "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
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Letter to Al Jazeera:
It was not Japanese protesters who threw blood at the Enola Gay on December 15th. It was an American individual, not part of the planned event, which had only intended to display photographs from Hiroshima and fliers which corrected the Smithsonian's deliberate oversight, "140,000 dead". The seven elderly Japanese A-bomb survivors wept and spoke, with great dignity. You have done them a disservice to imply otherwise in the caption to the photograph in your article published at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CDAF5B2E-5AD8-4829-8527-90FE92F97F29.htm
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