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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Fusion Project Seeks End to Site Dispute
U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium At Bulgaria Plant
New European Law Controls Radioactive Sources
Pakistan Says Its Iran Nuke Probe Hints at Greed
Full probe demanded into Pakistan-Iran nuclear allegations
Pakistan to Hold Scientists Liable
Iran Vows to Retaliate if Israel Attacks
Nuclear Fuel Repatriated to Russia for Down-Blending
Uranium Removed From Bulgaria Reactor
U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium At Bulgaria Plant
Kucinich Releasing World Peace Initiative
With a whisper, not a bang
White House Faulted on Uranium Claim
Kucinich Stresses Civil Liberties
Kucinich Takes to the Air
MILITARY
Suicide Car Bomb Kills Four in North Iraq
National Defense
Dozens of Iraqi Suspects Arrested
Israelis Kill 8 Palestinians in Raid on a Camp in Gaza
In Battle Over a Settlement, It's Israelis vs. Israelis
Israeli Raid Kills 8 Palestinians in Gaza
Pakistan President to Quit As Army Chief
Pakistan Bombing Aimed at Military Ruler Highlights His Role
Defense Dept. Halts Anthrax Vaccinations
Anthrax Vaccinations Suspended
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Denounces Attorney General's Death-Penalty Push
Intelligence Cites Some U.S. Cities
U.S. Checking Foreign Airlines for Terror Risks
Orange Alert Colors the Region
Immigration Reform on Bush Agenda
ENERGY AND OTHER
Peril in the Wind Industry
Fuel cell research touted for New Mexico
Administration Is Exempting Alaska Forest From Protection
Administration Opens Alaska's Tongass Forest to Logging
Countries Ban American Beef After U.S. Discovers Mad Cow Disease
ACTIVISTS
1914 Christmas truce 'planned by thousands of German soldiers'
Editorial: The Onion says it best
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Fusion Project Seeks End to Site Dispute
Story by Paul Carrel
REUTERS FRANCE:
December 24, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23221/story.htm
PARIS - A group of countries that wants to produce energy like the sun - through nuclear fusion - are considering whether sharing out work on the project can resolve a dispute over where to host it, France said this week.
The European Union still wants the scheme's International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be at Cadarache in southern France, but data analysis could take place in another country, French Research Minister Claudie Haignere said.
"The European site (in Cadarache) is the one that offers the greatest chance for success," Haignere told a news conference.
The other possible site for the reactor is in Japan.
The six-member ITER joint venture failed to agree where to place the reactor at a weekend meeting near Washington. The United States and South Korea backed Japan, but Russia and China favored France.
Haignere said officials proposed that the group should look into ways to expand the project to give more than just one country a hands-on role.
"What was proposed was to say 'Of course a reactor is essential in the project'...But to have a greater chance of success, there is also a need for communication, data analysis, testing materials," she said.
These parts of the project could be carried out outside Europe, she added.
Commentators have seen the deadlock as more evidence of Washington's displeasure with France over its opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, following its move to bar opponents of the war from bidding for lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
The ITER aims to create the world's first sustained nuclear fusion reaction, lasting several minutes, in a bid to harness the source of the sun's power and tame it, in a cleaner process than today's nuclear fission.
Fusion power has been touted as a solution to the world's energy problem because it is low in pollution and has a virtually limitless supply of fuel in the form of sea water.
Fusion involves sticking atoms together, unlike the splitting of an atom that is at the heart of nuclear fission, the process used in today's atomic power plants and weapons.
The stakes are high. Construction of the reactor is expected to take a decade and provide employment for about 2,000 workers.
A working group would look at ways of dividing the project's work among different countries before a ministerial meeting in early February aimed at leading to a decision, Haignere said.
-------- europe
U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium At Bulgaria Plant
Material Was Potent Enough for Bomb
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25861-2003Dec23?language=printer
MOSCOW, Dec. 23 -- An international team of nuclear specialists backed by armed security units swooped into a shuttered Bulgarian reactor and recovered 37 pounds of highly enriched uranium in a secretive operation intended to forestall nuclear terrorism, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The elaborately planned mission, which was organized with the cooperation of Bulgarian authorities, removed nearly enough uranium to make a small nuclear bomb, the officials said. The material was sent by plane on Tuesday to a Russian facility where it will be converted into a form that cannot be used for weapons, they said.
It was the third time since last year that U.S. and Russian authorities have teamed up to retrieve highly enriched uranium from Soviet-era facilities in an effort to keep such material from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Experts worry that such caches of uranium scattered in obscure corners of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states represent one of the most vulnerable sources of fissile material for would-be bomb-makers.
"Proliferation of nuclear materials is a worldwide problem and requires a worldwide solution," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement. "We must not allow terrorists and others with bad intentions to acquire deadly material, and the Department of Energy will continue doing its part."
U.S. authorities have begun stepping up such joint operations with the Russians. In August 2002, a team from the two countries retrieved 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging reactor in Yugoslavia. The second seizure of uranium took place three months ago, when 30 pounds was removed from a facility in Romania.
"We hope that you'll be seeing this more frequently," Paul M. Longsworth, the Energy Department's deputy administrator for nuclear nonproliferation, said Tuesday. In conjunction with the Russians and the International Atomic Energy Agency, U.S. officials have developed a schedule to recover all Soviet-originated highly enriched uranium and return it to Russia by the end of 2005 for safekeeping and conversion, Longsworth said.
After last year's mission in Yugoslavia, the State Department compiled a list of 24 other foreign reactors that use weapons-grade nuclear fuel, some in old and poorly guarded facilities.
"We're certainly going in the right direction, although one might prefer speedier development," said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear nonproliferation scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research institute here. "But it takes time. . . . Such problems cannot be solved overnight."
The complexity of the Bulgarian operation demonstrated the challenges involved. Officials focused on a Soviet-designed, two-megawatt research reactor built in 1959 at the Institute of Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy in the capital, Sofia. The reactor was closed in 1989, and the nuclear fuel assemblies have been stored ever since.
An IAEA team, accompanied by U.S. and Russian nuclear engineers, removed seals from storage containers and verified the contents before the material was loaded into four special canisters provided by the Russian government. The U. S. government paid the $400,000 bill for the mission. The operation took 48 hours, and special units of the Bulgarian domestic police took responsibility for securing the facility and transporting the uranium to the airport at Gorna Oryahovitsa, about 100 miles northeast of Sofia.
The uranium taken from the Sofia facility was 36 percent enriched, which scientists consider usable in nuclear weapons but not the most potent form called weapons-grade, which refers to uranium enriched 90 percent or more. Still, because it has not been irradiated, officials said, the Bulgarian material would be particularly attractive to outlaw elements.
"It's quite useful to a terrorist," said Longsworth. "You can handle it without protection."
The uranium was flown aboard a Russian AN-12 cargo plane to Dimitrovgrad, in the Volga region of Ulyanovsk about 520 miles southeast of Moscow. A facility there, which is undergoing comprehensive upgrades due to be finished in the next couple of months, will blend down the uranium until it can no longer be used in a nuclear weapon, officials said. At that point, it could be sold for use in commercial nuclear power plants, officials said.
The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy was closed Tuesday evening and no one answered telephone calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman at the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington said she was not able to discuss the operation.
----
New European Law Controls Radioactive Sources
BRUSSELS, Belgium, (ENS)
December 24, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-24-19.asp#anchor5
The European Environment Council has adopted new legislation that will enhance controls of radioactive sources and prevent accidents involving these devices.
The December 22 action by the environment ministers of the EU member states is intended to better protect the population and workers, by reducing the likelihood of their being accidentally exposed to ionizing radiation as a result of a lack of control on radioactive sources, in particular when sources are no longer being used.
Radioactive sources are used for many purposes in industry, medicine and research. When radioactive sources are used in the context of these activities, the risks are usually well known, and exposures resulting from an accidental or unintended manipulation are therefore rare.
But radioactive sources are sometimes abandoned, lost, misplaced or removed without authorization, and then they become orphan sources. Orphan sources represent a serious risk because they can be found by members of the public, who may not identify them as such and would not perceive the risks of injury.
Measuring and controlling devices containing radioactive materials that were improperly disposed of as scrap metal have been taken to metal recyclers.
Radioactive material used with gauges in industrial processes and in road and building construction have been found by the side of the road or in a river.
Sealed radioactive sources used in oil and gas exploration that are no longer wanted but contain radioactive materials have been found in scrap yards.
The new law harmonizes and sets out specific requirements to ensure that every single high activity radioactive source in Europe is always kept under control.
European Vice President Loyola de Palacio, the commissioner responsible for energy and transport said, "Radioactive sources must be controlled from cradle to grave, so that we can be sure that no orphan source will be accidentally found by our citizens."
"Traceability of radioactive sources is the keyword," she said, "as it will prevent sources from becoming lost and will also reduce the risk of radioactive sources being misused."
The new law demands action at two different stages. First at the preventive level, the law requires that detection systems be put in place where orphan sources are likely to appear. It also requires that campaigns be established for recovering orphan sources resulting from past activities.
In addition, at the remedial level the law clarifies responsibilities and establishes intervention procedures, including provisions on how to cover intervention costs.
Source traceability will be improved through different obligations at all levels. The compulsory prior authorization for any use of a high activity radioactive sealed source will be denied unless it is proved that measures necessary for the safe management of the source have been taken. Each source shall also be duly identified and marked, and records must be kept, to know at every precise moment who holds which source and where.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Says Its Iran Nuke Probe Hints at Greed
Story by David Brunnstrom
REUTERS IRAN:
December 24, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23218/story.htm
ISLAMABAD - Investigations into possible nuclear technology transfers from Pakistan to Iran showed that "certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed," the Pakistani government said yesterday.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a news briefing that Pakistan was determined to get to the bottom of allegations that technology may have been transferred from Pakistan to Iran.
"If there are any individuals who are found involved in transfers of any sort, action would be taken against them," he said. "Nobody is above the law.
"There are indications that certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed. But we have not made a final determination," he said.
Khan said Pakistan began questioning some of its nuclear scientists five to six weeks ago after being approached by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and having received information from the Iranian government that "pointed to certain individuals."
However he stressed that the government itself had never been involved in nuclear proliferation. "It takes its responsibility as a nuclear weapons state very seriously," he said.
"The government of Pakistan has not authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology or information to other countries," he said. "This is out of the question."
Monday, Islamabad said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the controversial "father of Pakistan's atom bomb," was being questioned in connection with "debriefings" of several scientists working at his Khan Research Laboratories, a uranium enrichment plant near Islamabad.
The admission came after diplomats said last month that the IAEA was probing a possible link between Iran and Pakistan following Tehran's acknowledgement that it had used centrifuge designs that appeared identical to ones used in Islamabad's quest for the bomb.
Sunday, Islamabad said Yasin Chohan, one of three Khan Laboratories scientists detained earlier in the month, had been allowed home after a "personnel dependability and debriefing session." It said two others, Mohammad Farooq, and another identified only as Saeed, were "still undergoing debriefing."
Monday, Bush administration officials said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had assured Washington that his government had not - at least "in the present time" - provided any nuclear secrets to countries like Iran and North Korea.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Musharraf's personal assurances "important" and added that close cooperation between the United States and Pakistan in the war on terrorism would continue - despite any transfers of nuclear technology and know-how that might have taken place in the past.
----
Full probe demanded into Pakistan-Iran nuclear allegations
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Dec 24, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031224142208.koen0k0d.html
Pakistani defence experts Wednesday demanded a full public investigation into allegations that Pakistani scientists may have sold sensitive nuclear secrets to Iran.
The calls came after the government revealed that several scientists had been questioned about the spread of sensitive technology to Iran in response to information from Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"It should be thoroughly probed how our scientists, who are trusted so well and watched so closely, are named," former air marshall Ayaz Ahmed said.
"We should get into the bottom of the issue and the enquiry report should be made public. When we make a mistake we better acknowledge it," he told AFP.
Pakistan said Tuesday it had placed some senior nuclear scientists under investigation because of information they may have cooperated with Iran's nuclear programme for "personal ambition or greed".
"We are investigating individuals who might have violated Pakistani law for their commercial gains," Foreign office spokesman Masood Khan said Tuesday.
The authorities earlier this month took in Farooq Mohammad and Yasin Chohan, directors of Pakistan's key uranium enrichment facility Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), for questioning.
The government spokesman said the father of the country's nuclear programme and former KRL chairman, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had also been questioned.
However, he denied the movements of Khan, who is revered as a national hero, had been restricted.
Qadeer Khan appeared as a chief guest at a seminar on science and technology for socio-economic development in Islamic states late Wednesday.
The scientist, who was given a standing ovation by the audience, declined to answer a volley of questions on the debriefing of nuclear scientists.
"No comments," he told reporters before leaving in an official black Sedan.
"Doctor Qadeer Khan has faced many ups and downs in his life and he is facing some now. Let's not be daunted by all these things," minister for science and technology Atta-ur Rehman said in his speech.
The New York Times reported Monday that information Iran turned over to the IAEA two months ago had strengthened suspicions that Pakistan sold key nuclear secrets to Iran.
Pakistan's suspected role in providing centrifuge designs to Iran was also revealed by the Washington Post, which said the blueprints provided a "tremendous boost" to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium, or spin it at supersonic speeds to produce a concentrated material used to make nuclear weapons.
Defence analyst Air Marshal Ahmed said any inquiry should not be one-sided and that the scientists should be given the opportunity to tell the truth.
Former lieutenant general Kamal Matinuddin said he had doubts about the reports from Iran.
"We have a strong command and control system. Pakistan has repeatedly said we are not at all involved in any transfer of technology," Matinuddin said.
Government spokesman Masood Khan stressed that "other countries and individuals in Europe, Asia and North America have also been named. They should also be investigated. Pakistan should not be singled out."
Islamabad, which went public as a nuclear power in May 1998 when it conducted underground nuclear tests, has consistently denied reports that it has exported its nuclear know-how. President Pervez Musharraf has rejected the allegations as a smear campaign.
"The president of Pakistan has given his 400 percent assurance and commitment that no violation of Pakistan's commitment will ever take place," said government spokesman Khan.
----
Pakistan to Hold Scientists Liable
December 24, 2003
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/international/asia/24NUKE.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 23 - Pakistan on Tuesday promised legal action against people found to have been involved in sharing nuclear secrets with other countries and reaffirmed its commitment to nuclear nonproliferation.
Masood Khan, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference, "There were indications that certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed." But he maintained that no final determination had been made.
"If they are found responsible at the end of the debriefing session, we shall take action against such individuals if warranted and if they are found culpable under our law," he added.
On Monday, Pakistan confirmed that Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the developer of its atomic bomb, was being questioned in connection with news reports that the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency was investigating links between Pakistan and Iran. Centrifuge designs used in Iran closely resemble some of those used by Pakistan.
Officials in Islamabad strongly reiterated Pakistan's commitment to uphold nuclear nonproliferation. "The government of Pakistan has not authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology or information to other countries," the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "This is out of the question."
-------- iran
Iran Vows to Retaliate if Israel Attacks
Iran says it would use long-range missile if attacked by Israel
Thursday 25 December, 2003
(AP)
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1078&dept_id=151021&newsid=10712966&PAG=461&rfi=9
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's defense minister said Wednesday that his country would strike back with its long-range Shahab-3 missile if Israel attacked its nuclear facilities.
Ali Shamkhani was responding to comments made last month by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who said Israel would not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons - a hint it was prepared to take unilateral military action.
"We will strike Israel with all weapons at our disposal if the Zionist regime ventures to do so," Shamkhani said in comments carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. He said the Shahab-3, able to reach Israel, was one of the weapons that would be used.
The Shahab-3, officially deployed to the military last July, has a range of about 1,300 kilometers (810 miles). Israel is which is about 965 kilometers (600 miles) west of Iran.
Shamkhani's comments marked the second Iranian response in two days. On Tuesday, reporters outside parliament asked Shamkhani and President Mohamed Khatami about Mofaz's statement. The minister responded, "No place will be safe in Israel."
The president, meanwhile, scoffed at the Israeli words.
"Israel will make a damn mistake" if they attack Iran, Khatami said with a smile, in footage aired on state-run television.
Shamkhani said Wednesday that Mofaz's statement proved that Israel was "an evil entity."
"Israel is a fragile glass garrison," he said. "The Zionist leaders are cherishing the dream of a rule over the globe."
In 1981, Israel warplanes destroyed an Iraqi reactor under construction. Israel suspected that Iraq planned to use it to produce nuclear weapons.
Israel - and the United States - frequently charges that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and has often hinted at military action against Iran. Last month, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took charge of Israel's efforts to thwart Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
Iran says its nuclear development program is to replace rapidly diminishing oil resources as a method for producing electricity.
Earlier this month, Iran signed a key accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency, opening its nuclear facilities to unfettered and unannounced inspections. The signing came after months of pressure from European nations and a U.S. push for Iran to be slapped with U.S. sanctions.
Earlier, an IAEA report charged that Iran covered up past nuclear programs, including enriching uranium and processing small amounts of plutonium, essential elements of nuclear weapons.
Addressing regional tension following the war on Iraq, Shamkhani said an arms race would not help calm the region, and said the collapse of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would help establish "sustainable security" in the Middle East.
-------- russia
Nuclear Fuel Repatriated to Russia for Down-Blending
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
December 24, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-24-19.asp#anchor4
Seventeen kilograms of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) were returned from Bulgaria to the Russian Federation Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced today.
The shipment of the research reactor fuel from Bulgaria to Russia was part of a U.S. led cooperative international effort to reduce, and if possible eliminate, the use and storage of high enriched uranium in civil nuclear activities.
The highly enriched uranium was airlifted from Gorna Oryahovista airport in Bulgaria to Dmitrovgrad, Russia where it will be down-blended to low enriched uranium which cannot be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is one of the two fissile materials that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. In 1996, the Department of Energy announced plans for eliminating the proliferation threat from stockpiles of surplus highly enriched uranium by down-blending the material to low enriched uranium.
Low enriched uranium powder (Photo courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration) In this form, the material is unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons and can be used as commercial nuclear reactor fuel to recover its economic value.
The shipment of HEU from Bulgaria is the second shipment conducted under a tripartite initiative - of the United States, the Russian Federation, and the International Atomic Energy Agency - to return Russian supplied HEU research reactor fuel for long term management and disposition in Russia.
The first shipment, of Russian origin HEU fuel from Romania to the Russian Federation, was carried out on September 21, 2003.
Secretary Abraham said, "With U.S. leadership and through cooperation and determination with other nations, a more secure world is eventually attainable." "Proliferation of nuclear material is a worldwide problem and requires a worldwide solution," Abraham said. "We must not allow terrorists and others with bad intentions to acquire deadly material and the Department of Energy will continue doing its part."
The highly enriched nuclear fuel assemblies were originally supplied to Bulgaria by the former Soviet Union for the Russian designed two megawatt research reactor, located in Sofia. The reactor was shut down in 1989, and is going to be reconstructed.
The nuclear fuel was loaded into four fresh fuel transportation canisters provided by the Russian Federation.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards inspectors and DOE technical experts monitored the process of loading the fuel in the canisters.
An AN-12 Russian cargo plane was used to transport the HEU fuel from Bulgaria to Russia.
"The Bulgarians have shown leadership as they have cooperated with the U.S., Russia, and the IAEA in seeking ways to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation, including the return of HEU from Bulgaria to Russia," National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Linton Brooks said.
"Along with the decision to return fresh HEU to Russia, the Bulgarian government also has made a decision to reconstruct the existing research reactor in Sofia to low enriched uranium fuel," said Brooks. "These are important steps in our overall nonproliferation efforts worldwide."
The IAEA said today that Bulgarian authorities consider the return of the HEU fresh fuel, and future construction of a low power, low enriched fuel research reactor at the same site, as an important phase of their technical cooperation with the IAEA. The planned reactor would mainly be used for education and training purposes.
There are currently about 80 research reactors around the world that still have highly enriched uranium subject to international control as potentially weapons useable material, according to the IAEA.
----
Uranium Removed From Bulgaria Reactor
By VESELIN TOSHKOV
Associated Press Writer
Dec 24, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BULGARIA_NUCLEAR_FUEL?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) -- U.S. and Russian experts removed a cache of highly enriched uranium from a mothballed Bulgarian reactor and whisked it out of the country, part of an international plan to keep loosely guarded nuclear material out of terrorists' hands, officials said Wednesday.
It was the third such U.S.-Russian operation, aimed at securing uranium from reactors run with fuel from the former Soviet Union. In Washington, deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said more such removals are planned.
The nuclear and security experts, helped by Bulgarian special police, took 37 pounds of uranium from the Institute of Nuclear Sciences just outside the capital, Sofia, Ereli and Bulgarian and Russian officials said.
From a remote airport in eastern Bulgaria, a Russian AN-12 cargo plane flew the material to a Russian reprocessing center to be made into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.
"(The uranium) certainly presented a danger," said Nikolai Shingaryov, a spokesman for Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, in a telephone interview after Tuesday's removal operation. "Terrorists may steal some amount of uranium at one place, some more at another and finally get enough for making a bomb." Washington and Moscow have launched a program to rein in nuclear materials, focusing on 24 reactors built in 16 countries and fueled with help from the former Soviet Union.
Such reactors are of concern because they offer a ready source of the material needed to create a nuclear bomb - and security at some of them is frighteningly lax because of cost cutting that has accompanied the collapse of communism more than a decade ago.
The reactors and facilities are designed to use highly enriched uranium to create nuclear isotopes used for medical treatments and other peaceful purposes.
The Bulgaria operation, financed by $440,000 provided by the United States, was the third in the U.S.-Russian program, following removals of material in Yugoslavia in August 2002 and in Romania three months ago.
The research reactor near Sofia was shut down in 1989, but the uranium remained there. Now experts will take the material and "repatriate it to Russia, where it's converted into a form that isn't readily usable in a weapon," said Mark Gwozdecky, the spokesman for the U.N. nuclear agency, which coordinated the mission.
Bulgarian officials said the highly enriched uranium would have been enough to develop a small nuclear warhead, but Gwozdecky stressed that the uranium would have had to be enriched further to become weapons grade.
Experts worry that terrorists or hostile nations may get their hands on enough uranium or plutonium to build a nuclear bomb from one of hundreds of research reactors around the world.
There are also fears that terrorists could obtain nuclear materials and use it to build a "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive strapped with radioactive materials. Experts fear such an attack could cause widespread panic. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the IAEA began pressing governments to keep all radioactive materials under close guard to prevent such a scenario.
"Any enriched uranium is a concern," Gwozdecky said.
The meticulously planned operation also underlined Bulgaria's determination to take a greater role in anti-terrorist activities involving the United States. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bulgaria's pro-Western government lent its air and land bases to U.S. troops transiting to Afghanistan.
The Balkan country, which is set to join NATO next year, was also a staunch supporter of the military campaign against Saddam Hussein. It has a 485-soldier infantry battalion stationed among coalition forces in Iraq.
Last week, the parliament voted in support of setting up permanent U.S. military bases in Bulgaria.
-------- terrorism
U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium At Bulgaria Plant
Material Was Potent Enough for Bomb
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25861-2003Dec23.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 23 -- An international team of nuclear specialists backed by armed security units swooped into a shuttered Bulgarian reactor and recovered 37 pounds of highly enriched uranium in a secretive operation intended to forestall nuclear terrorism, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The elaborately planned mission, which was organized with the cooperation of Bulgarian authorities, removed nearly enough uranium to make a small nuclear bomb, the officials said. The material was sent by plane on Tuesday to a Russian facility where it will be converted into a form that cannot be used for weapons, they said.
It was the third time since last year that U.S. and Russian authorities have teamed up to retrieve highly enriched uranium from Soviet-era facilities in an effort to keep such material from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Experts worry that such caches of uranium scattered in obscure corners of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states represent one of the most vulnerable sources of fissile material for would-be bomb-makers.
"Proliferation of nuclear materials is a worldwide problem and requires a worldwide solution," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement. "We must not allow terrorists and others with bad intentions to acquire deadly material, and the Department of Energy will continue doing its part."
U.S. authorities have begun stepping up such joint operations with the Russians. In August 2002, a team from the two countries retrieved 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging reactor in Yugoslavia. The second seizure of uranium took place three months ago, when 30 pounds was removed from a facility in Romania.
"We hope that you'll be seeing this more frequently," Paul M. Longsworth, the Energy Department's deputy administrator for nuclear nonproliferation, said Tuesday. In conjunction with the Russians and the International Atomic Energy Agency, U.S. officials have developed a schedule to recover all Soviet-originated highly enriched uranium and return it to Russia by the end of 2005 for safekeeping and conversion, Longsworth said.
After last year's mission in Yugoslavia, the State Department compiled a list of 24 other foreign reactors that use weapons-grade nuclear fuel, some in old and poorly guarded facilities.
"We're certainly going in the right direction, although one might prefer speedier development," said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear nonproliferation scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research institute here. "But it takes time. . . . Such problems cannot be solved overnight."
The complexity of the Bulgarian operation demonstrated the challenges involved. Officials focused on a Soviet-designed, two-megawatt research reactor built in 1959 at the Institute of Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy in the capital, Sofia. The reactor was closed in 1989, and the nuclear fuel assemblies have been stored ever since.
An IAEA team, accompanied by U.S. and Russian nuclear engineers, removed seals from storage containers and verified the contents before the material was loaded into four special canisters provided by the Russian government. The U. S. government paid the $400,000 bill for the mission. The operation took 48 hours, and special units of the Bulgarian domestic police took responsibility for securing the facility and transporting the uranium to the airport at Gorna Oryahovitsa, about 100 miles northeast of Sofia.
The uranium taken from the Sofia facility was 36 percent enriched, which scientists consider usable in nuclear weapons but not the most potent form called weapons-grade, which refers to uranium enriched 90 percent or more. Still, because it has not been irradiated, officials said, the Bulgarian material would be particularly attractive to outlaw elements.
"It's quite useful to a terrorist," said Longsworth. "You can handle it without protection."
The uranium was flown aboard a Russian AN-12 cargo plane to Dimitrovgrad, in the Volga region of Ulyanovsk about 520 miles southeast of Moscow. A facility there, which is undergoing comprehensive upgrades due to be finished in the next couple of months, will blend down the uranium until it can no longer be used in a nuclear weapon, officials said. At that point, it could be sold for use in commercial nuclear power plants, officials said.
The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy was closed Tuesday evening and no one answered telephone calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman at the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington said she was not able to discuss the operation.
-------- us politics
Kucinich Releasing World Peace Initiative
December 24, 2003
Kucinich Campaign
http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_122403.php
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich will be releasing a multi-part World Peace Initiative. The first piece, being released today, addresses the elimination of nuclear weapons through a 12-point program.
Today Kucinich released this statement:
"The holiday season is a time of common aspiration for peace on Earth, but this holiday season the Bush Administration is taking us in the opposite direction, undermining international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms. Our government is now developing new nuclear weapons. The Administration is putting the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in jeopardy, thereby increasing the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons.
"According to an article published yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, diplomats and non-proliferation experts are saying that the Bush Administration's efforts to develop new nuclear weapons while simultaneously condemning such development by other countries creates a double standard which will undermine efforts to curb nuclear arms.
"In this season of peace, the Administration is conjuring nuclear war. This is why I feel it's imperative to announce the first part of a World Peace Initiative, one dealing with the threat of nuclear weapons to world peace."
World Peace Initiative
Part 1: Nuclear Weapons
As President, Dennis Kucinich will work to achieve the following steps to promote world peace:
1. Leading the way toward the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth. Kucinich's goal as president will be a steady movement toward complete nuclear disarmament.
2. Renouncing first-strike policy. Kucinich will set aside the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which is a strategy for nuclear proliferation. He will assure the world community that the United States will not be the first to use nuclear weapons.
3. Cancellation of all U.S. nuclear weapons programs. Kucinich will work to put an end to the development of any new nuclear weapons, to the manufacture of any nuclear weapons, and to any plans to test nuclear weapons.
4. Stopping the use of all depleted uranium munitions. Kucinich will order an end to the United States' use of depleted uranium munitions. He will lead an international effort to recover depleted uranium. He will promote environmental remediation. He will develop a program to provide care and restitution for people suffering as a result of the United States' use of depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons production, nuclear testing, and uranium mining.
5. Banning all nuclear weapons testing by the United States. Kucinich will enact a new policy banning nuclear testing and will work to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
6. Opening talks with all nuclear powers. Kucinich will begin new talks with Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan to develop a plan aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The first step will be to suspend all "readiness" levels of nuclear weapons systems, including those of the United States.
7. Encouraging participation in the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Kucinich will encourage all nations to actively participate in the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, and will meet personally with the leaders of India, Israel, and Pakistan to request that they sign as non-nuclear weapons states. He will also meet personally with Kim Jong Il to encourage North Korea to re-join the community of nations through reaffirming its participation as a non-nuclear weapons state.
8. Discouraging nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. Kucinich will work with the nations of North Korea, Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Syria, and others to discourage the acquisition of nuclear weapons capability.
9. Reinstating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Canceling the Ballistic Missile Defense. Kucinich will work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reinstate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty prevents both the United States and Russia from developing nationwide ABM defense systems and limits employment of new ABM technologies. Consequently, the ballistic missile defense program will be cancelled.
10. Meeting all requirements of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Kucinich will work to ensure that the United States leads the world again in fulfilling all requirements of the treaty. This means the United States must negotiate the complete elimination of its nuclear arsenal.
11. Committing to greatly expanding inspections. Kucinich will work with the 188 signatories of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency to greatly expand the use of inspections in all nations.
12. Leading an international effort to bring terrorists to justice. Kucinich will cause the United States to participate in a cooperative world effort to track down terrorists who are seeking to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
For Rep. Kucinich's Schedule: http://www.kucinich.us/schedule.htm
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With a whisper, not a bang
Bush signs parts of Patriot Act II into law - stealthily
By David Martin,
12/24/2003
San Antonio Current / Phoenix News
http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=8352
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
Congress passed the legislation around Thanksgiving. Except for U.S. Representative Charlie Gonzalez, all San Antonio's House members voted for the act. The Senate passed it with a voice vote to avoid individual accountability. While broadening the definition of "financial institution," the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a "National Security Letter." To get the records, the FBI doesn't have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate "probable cause" - reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties. And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to report to Congress how often they have used the National Security Letters.
Supporters of expanding the Patriot Act claim that the new law is necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks on the U.S. The FBI needs these new powers to be "expeditious and efficient" in its response to these new threats. Robert Summers, professor of international law and director of the new Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University, explains, "We don't go to war with the terrorists as we went to war with the Germans or the North Vietnamese. If we apply old methods of following the money, we will not be successful. We need to meet them on an even playing field to avoid another disaster."
"It's a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see." - Robert Summers Opponents of the PATRIOT Act and its expansion claim that safeguards like judicial oversight and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, are essential to prevent abuses of power. "There's a reason these protections were put into place," says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, and a historian of U.S. political repression. "It has been shown that if you give [these agencies] this power they will abuse it. For any investigative agency, once you tell them that they must make sure that they protect the country from subversives, it inevitably gets translated into a program to silence dissent."
Opponents claim the FBI already has all the tools to stop crime and terrorism. Moreover, explains Patrick Filyk, an attorney and vice president of the local chapter of the ACLU, "The only thing the act accomplishes is the removal of judicial oversight and the transfer of more power to law enforcements agents."
This broadening of the Patriot Act represents a political victory for the Bush Administration's stealth legislative strategy to increase executive power. Last February, shortly before Bush launched the war on Iraq, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a draft of a comprehensive expansion of the Patriot Act, nicknamed Patriot Act II, written by Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff. Again, the timing was suspicious; it appeared that the Bush Administration was waiting for the start of the Iraq war to introduce Patriot Act II, and then exploit the crisis to ram it through Congress with little public debate.
The leak and ensuing public backlash frustrated the Bush administration's strategy, so Ashcroft and Co. disassembled Patriot Act II, then reassembled its parts into other legislation. By attaching the redefinition of "financial institution" to an Intelligence Authorization Act, the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies avoided public hearings and floor debates for the expansion of the Patriot Act.
Even proponents of this expansion have expressed concern about these legislative tactics. "It's a problem that some of these riders that are added on may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to see," says St. Mary's Professor Robert Summers.
The Bush Administration has yet to answer pivotal questions about its latest constitutional coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to protect United States citizens, then why would the legislation not withstand the test of public debate? If the new act's provisions are in the public interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the legislative process? •
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White House Faulted on Uranium Claim
Intelligence Warnings Disregarded, President's Advisory Board Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25935-2003Dec23.html
The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that the White House made a questionable claim in January's State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear materials because of its desperation to show that Hussein had an active program to develop nuclear weapons, according to a well-placed source familiar with the board's findings.
In the speech Jan. 28, President Bush cited British intelligence in asserting that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from an unnamed country in Africa. The White House later said the claim should not have been made, after reports that the intelligence community expressed doubts it was true. After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.
The source said that at the time of the State of the Union speech, there was no organized system at the White House to vet intelligence, and the informal system that was followed did not work in the case of that speech. The White House has since established procedures for handling intelligence in presidential speeches by including a CIA officer in the speechwriting process.
The board shared its findings with Bush earlier this month. It is the first government body to complete its inquiry into an episode that buttressed criticism by lawmakers and others that the administration exaggerated intelligence to make the case for war. Word of its findings has also circulated within the White House and on Capitol Hill. The White House declined to comment on the board's findings.
The findings of the advisory board do not appear to add many new details about the uranium episode, but they make it clear that the White House should share blame with the CIA for allowing the questionable material into the speech. CIA Director George J. Tenet and deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley have accepted responsibility for allowing the assertion into the address.
In May, Bush asked Scowcroft to look into how the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium in Africa -- the claim concerned Niger -- made it into the presidential speech. The intelligence board, made up of 16 members, including former California governor Pete Wilson, former Netscape chief executive Jim Barksdale and retired Adm. David E. Jeremiah, traditionally provides the president private advice on intelligence questions. Scowcroft served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, among others.
That request came at the same time that members of the Senate intelligence panel asked the inspectors general of the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department to investigate the matter. The House and Senate intelligence committees are looking into the episode as well.
Although the president's intelligence board keeps its findings secret, the Senate panel plans to make public details of its inquiry in a report, which is being drafted and is expected to be released next spring, according to congressional sources.
"The whole Niger case will be disclosed and the entire story told because it is not classified," one senior congressional aide familiar with the committee inquiry said yesterday.
At the time of the president's speech, the allegation about Hussein's uranium purchase in Africa was already part of the administration's campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. Although at the request of Tenet a reference to Niger had been removed from a speech by Bush the previous October, the White House subsequently wanted to "find something affirmative" for the January speech, one source said.
That month, the allegations had already been included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by Bush's four most senior national security officials.
The CIA and the State Department had doubts about the purported Niger information because they knew that Hussein already had a stockpile of the same type of uranium that he was supposed to be seeking. In addition, the CIA had sent former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger in February 2002, and he reported that officials in that country had denied the report.
More recently, the Iraq Survey Group looking into weapons activities in that country under the direction of David Kay reported in October that it found no support for the report that Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa. In fact, Kay said, the group found that the Iraqis had turned down an offer of uranium from a still-unidentified country.
One enduring mystery is which White House official was responsible for promoting the material in question. Senate hearings have indicated there was a disagreement between a CIA analyst and the White House National Security Council staff member about how the material was handled. "One side did not coordinate with the other," said the source familiar with the advisory board's inquiry.
The Senate probe has been slowed by disputes between Republicans and Democrats. It will not probe how other intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was used in public statements by administration officials in the run-up to the war, one congressional official said.
"But how that intelligence was portrayed [by policymakers] is a subjective thing and not something a committee could agree on," he said. "What was said publicly is available publicly," he added, saying each senator could make his own judgment.
It probably will be at least two to three months before the committee releases its report and holds public hearings on the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, according to congressional sources. The first drafts are not expected before February, when they will first be reviewed by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the intelligence panel, and its vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). Then other senators get to read it and make suggestions, a process that could take weeks.
Meanwhile, Roberts has tentatively set March for a closed hearing to update the work of Kay's survey group. At that time, or perhaps even before, Kay is expected to resign his position for personal reasons -- although the work in Iraq is expected to continue for at least another year, according to administration sources.
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Kucinich Stresses Civil Liberties
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25960-2003Dec23?language=printer
Fifth in a series of occasional articles
In the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Justice Department moved swiftly to expand its policing powers, and most members of Congress were eager to enact such legislation. But Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) took to the House floor in protest.
"Let freedom ring even as we travel through the valley of the shadow of terrorism, for freedom is a sweeter melody," Kucinich said. "Let freedom ring. If freedom is under attack from outside sources, then let us not permit an attack from within."
Kucinich has taken his mantra on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire. In speech after speech, he accuses the Bush administration of overreaching its authority.
"This is one of the hottest issues in this country right now," he said in an interview. "Americans have a sense their liberty is under attack."
Civil liberties may seem an improbable rallying cry for a presidential campaign. But Kucinich is an improbable candidate for the highest office: a maverick who takes pride in challenging authority. The Bush administration, he tells all who will listen, is encroaching on citizens' privacy rights. "This administration has overreached in the area of civil liberties," he said. "Government shouldn't have that power. It's not consistent with what we are as a nation."
To press the matter legislatively, Kucinich has forged an unusual alliance with Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho), who listened to Kucinich's protest during the initial House debate on the USA Patriot Act.
As Otter recalled, "it wasn't something where we sat down and said, 'Let's work on this together.' Dennis and I both recognized we were of a like mind on the need for protection of civil liberties."
More than a year later the two drafted an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and State spending bill that would prohibit the Justice Department from carrying out the Patriot Act's "sneak and peek" provisions, which allow federal authorities to search someone's home or office without prior notice.
They targeted their natural constituencies, with Otter speaking to the House's Liberty and Western caucuses and Kucinich appealing to the Progressive Caucus. The House approved the amendment, 309 to 118, but it never became law.
Kucinich also has taken on the FBI. He accused the bureau of infringing on civil liberties after the New York Times reported the FBI had collected information on antiwar demonstrators. "I will continue to attend every peace rally possible, and I expect that I will see millions of Americans there standing proudly and openly against these fear tactics," Kucinich said.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and others have defended the Patriot Act, saying critics exaggerate its impact on civil liberties. "The charges of the hysterics are revealed for what they are: castles in the air, built on misrepresentation, supported by unfounded fear, held aloft by hysterics," Ashcroft told a gathering of police and prosecutors in Memphis this year.
Nonetheless, Kucinich has offered legislation to repeal the act. Americans, he said, are starting to take note of the government's new powers to search business records, including those in libraries and bookstores, in the name of fighting terrorism.
"Congress is ready for decisive action to defend the civil rights of Americans," Kucinich said at a news conference.
Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.), who attended the event, predicted that other Democratic presidential candidates would conclude, "We wish we had thought of this first."
Several Kucinich rivals have leveled criticism of the Patriot Act, but not as regularly and forcefully as Kucinich. His doggedness has won some fans in Iowa, home of the first presidential caucus. Shanna Drew, 32, a student at Upper Iowa University, said she was won over by Kucinich's attacks on the Bush administration's civil liberties stance.
"Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate I know who wants total repeal of the Patriot Act," Drew said at a Kucinich campaign event. But she added that it is difficult to spread the word. "Unfortunately a lot of people don't know what's in the Patriot Act. When you call something a Patriot Act, to be opposed to it seems unpatriotic."
Matt Tapscott, another Kucinich supporter who opposes the Patriot Act, said that only "fairly well-informed voters understand that issue."
Kucinich also supports gay rights, pushing for nondiscrimination in hiring and federal benefits for domestic partners of federal employees. He has sought advice and support from the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, among others.
Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington office, called Kucinich "an important voice for civil liberties." His voting record is not perfect in the ACLU's eyes, however, because Kucinich supported a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American flag, as well as legislation to ban procedures that critics call "partial-birth abortion."
Still, Murphy said he was a key warrior in the fight to protect privacy. "He's a coalition builder, but he's also someone who's leading by example," she said.
For Kucinich, the battle over the Patriot Act symbolizes a larger fight over how President Bush and his lieutenants relate to the American people. The candidate has accused the administration of terrifying voters through questionable allegations such as Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"My candidacy really challenges the fear that has been promoted in this country," Kucinich said. "They have built up a climate of fear in this country. Fear itself is forcing us to sacrifice our liberties."
Political researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
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Kucinich Takes to the Air
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26272-2003Dec23.html
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich will broadcast the first television commercials of his campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire next month, and they will feature actor Danny Glover.
Nine ads will start running in the two states and in Washington, D.C., beginning Jan. 4. All have the theme "Fear ends. Hope begins" and follow Kucinich's antiwar rhetoric. Glover, whose film credits include "The Color Purple" and the "Lethal Weapon" series, does the voice-overs.
In one ad targeting young voters, Glover says: "If preemptive war continues to drive our foreign policy, if our volunteer troops are stretched thinner and thinner, you could be facing compulsory draft. All young Americans deserve a world without end -- not a war without end."
Kucinich is the only image in the ad. As the camera focuses in on his eyes, Glover says, "The eyes that see through the lies."
Recent polls show Kucinich having the support of 1 to 2 percent of likely voters in early caucus and primary states. He has raised about $4.5 million, far less than the front-runners who have aired dozens of ads in Iowa and New Hampshire for the past four months.
"We have the money to run them," said David Swanson, a Kucinich spokesman. Still, the campaign is asking visitors to his Web site to donate money and purchase Kucinich campaign posters so he can afford to run the ads. The campaign would not say how much it plans to spend on the ads.
-------- MILITARY
-------- iraq
Suicide Car Bomb Kills Four in North Iraq
December 24, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-blast.html
ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb exploded outside a government building in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least four people and wounding 20, Iraqi officials said.
The car detonated just outside the gates of the Interior Ministry in the city, killing the bomber, two policemen guarding the facility and a passer-by.
The ministry building suffered material damage and windows of nearby residential buildings were shattered by the blast, witnesses said.
U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq have tightened security in Baghdad and other hotspots in anticipation of attacks by insurgents to coincide with the holiday season.
The mainly Kurdish north has seen less violence than the rest of Iraq since U.S.-led forces deposed Saddam Hussein in April, but several car bombs have targeted U.S. troops and Iraqis working with them in the region.
Arbil was the seat of an autonomous Kurdish government after the 1991 Gulf War when U.S.-backed Kurds rebelled against Saddam's government in Baghdad.
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National Defense
Vernon Loeb and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15866-2003Dec19?language=printer
Post military reporter Vernon Loeb was online Wednesday, Dec. 24 at Noon ET, to talk about the latest developments in national security and defense. (Dana Priest is away.)
Here are the latest stories from Iraq: Latest News From Iraq
Loeb covers military defense and national security issues. Priest covers intelligence and recently wrote "The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military" (W.W. Norton). The book chronicles the increasing frequency with which the military is called upon to solve political and economic problems.
A transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Vernon Loeb: Greetings everyone. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. Let's get started.
Ellicott City, Md.: So how many different named operations have so far happened in Iraq, from Operation Iron Grip, to that Ivy one, to so many others, I honestly lose track and they lose importance by becoming a blur.
Vernon Loeb: I can't keep track of them all either. There definitely seems to be some kind of operation code name inflation at work here. U.S. forces go out and do raids and sweeps every day. I'm not sure they all require distinct operational code names. I've always been kind of curious as to who thinks these names up.
Tampa, Fla.: Has the war in Iraq forced the military to reconsider its reliance on reserves and National Guard units? I get the impression that these part-time units don't train for nation building the way full-time units do.
Vernon Loeb: Yes, very much so. Actually, reserve units in some ways are more suited for nation-building than their active duty counterparts, since very high percentages of some specialties critical to nation building, like civil affairs and psychological operations and military police and engineering and combat medical teams, reside in the reserves. So what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is attempting to do now is shift some of those specialties to the active duty side of the ledger, so the nation won't be quite so dependent on the guard and reserves in Iraq (which will go on for years)and other future nation-building/peacekeeping operations.
Laurel, Md.: What is actually known about the July 1990 meeting between U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein, in which Glaspie supposedly relayed that (now former) President Bush would not intervene if Hussein invaded Kuwait.
At one time, this was a hot story, and I can't remember what became of it. Are we likely to start hearing about it again if Hussein should start talking; or if there is anything important to learn, will we never hear from Hussein about it?
Vernon Loeb: Here is a classic example of a washingtonpost.com poster being way ahead of a Washington Post reporter. These are all great questions, for which I have no precise answers. Maybe some other posters out there can help me out. Wasn't the story that Glaspie may have conveyed the sense, intentionally or unintentionally, to Saddam in 1990 that the U.S. wouldn't do all that much if he were to invade Kuwait? It remains to be seen how much we will learn of the Saddam interrogation, as it unfolds. My sense is, not much. The CIA, which is in charge of the interrogation, actually can keep secrets fairly well. And I'm not sure whether the question you pose would be addressed at Saddam's trail, which presumably will focus on his crimes against the Iraqi people. 2004 is going to be a most interesting year, for a lot of reasons, Saddam's interrogation/trial being just one of them.
Rockville, Md.: Do you get the impression that the military is slightly concerned that they may be overdeployed abroad, leaving far too few personnel available should the Guard be required back home to deal with some catastrophe such as a large scale terrorist attack?
Vernon Loeb: Yes, the Army clearly thinks it is greatly over-extended abroad as a result of its deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think the Army is that concerned about not having enough troops to respond to a major terrorist attack in the U.S. By Army standards, not that many troops would be required to respond, and the primary responsibility for that doesn't even reside with the military. What the Army is really worried about is whether it can sustain its current level of overseas deployments, and whether those deployments will ultimately drive the best enlisted personnel and young officers out of the service. The Army basically operates on a 4 to 1 replacement system, which means that for every division it has in the field on a mission, it needs three back home resting, re-fitting, and training. Rught now, the Army is oeprating on about half that, a 2 to 1 cycle. And if that continues for two many years, it will break the Army, and this incredibly professional military we now have will be no more. There just comes a point in the lives of sergeants and captains with young families when they say, I just can't take being away from my family every other year--I quit.
Capitol Hill: A letter to the editor -- I forget whether it was in the Post or NYT -- brought up the very good point that if the capture of Saddam Hussein made America "safer," why are we now at code orange?
Vernon Loeb: I, for one, do not buy the argument that Saddam's capture makes the United States safer from a terrorist attack, as the new, increased alert code level suggests. Saddam's capture was a good thing, and it may prove to make our soldiers safer in Iraq, if the Baathist insurgency loses steam (although there doesn't seem to be evidence of this happening yet). One could make the argument that Saddam's capture makes us less safe, if al Qaeda sees his capture as an indication that it must now step in and fill the Baathist void, by staging attacks in Iraq, or in the United States.
Iotpata, Ill.: What are the diffrences between Iraq and Syria with regard to terrorism support and war/civil criminals? Is Syria the next target?
Vernon Loeb: I think Syria probably has been much more attack in terms of supporting terrorists than Iraq, though the terrorists supported by Syria are primarily focused on attacking Israel, not the United States. You hear people say that Syria is the next target of the Bush administration, and while there are undoubtedly officials in the administration who would love to take down the Syrian regime, I, for one, think the administration has its hands full at the moment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whyamiatwork, Md.: I understand that there are arrests and foiled terrorist attempts regularly that the public simply does not know about. I am told that the thinking is to keep the populace from panicking. Is there anyone in the Pentagon, DHS, or DOJ who might be of the mind that letting people know what is actually being done on their behalf would not only raise the image of the government's success in fighting terrorism, but also make us more vigilant?
Vernon Loeb: Indeed, why are you at work? At least I have an excuse. I had to do this chat today, plus the paper comes out every day, so some of us have to work on Christmas eve. To answer your question: I think you do hear about most of the government's major anti-terrorist successes. Yes, they like to argue that many of their successes remain secret. But it seems to me that an awful lot of the big arrests end up being announced, or leaked. Personally, I think you probably should have some confidence in the government's anti-terrorist, or counterterrorist, activities. A lot of smart and dedicated people work this problem very hard all the time. But they can never defend all our targets all the time. And there is no ultimate military/intelligence/law enforcement solution to the terrorist problem. If the government doesn't match its efforts on that side of the equation with skillful political, diplomatic, economic, even cultural, initiatives, the United States will never win.
Bowie, Md.: When discussing whether the capture of Saddam makes us "safer" from terrorist attack, shouldn't we differentiate being safer because:
1. Terrorists are less likely to CHOOSE TO attack us; vs.
2. Terrorists having LESS ABILITY to attack us
The capture of Saddam might like us less safe short term for reason 1; but long term we're safer for reason 2.
Vernon Loeb: I simply don't understand how capturing Saddam makes terrorists less able to attack us. Maybe I'm missing something. Saddam's loyalists are Saddam's loyalists. Al Qaeda's forces are al Qaeda's forces. I don't see them as being related in much of any way at all.
Washington, D.C.: Within the operational naming systems for things like "Iron Hammer," "Rolling Thunder," and "Desert Storm," are you aware of any informally implied status or affiliations associated with the number of syllables that comprise an operation's name?
Vernon Loeb: I am not, sorry. But that's an interesting question. Anybody know the answer to that?
Charlotte, N.C.: Hi Vernon,
First a big Merry Christmas to all of the people in CJSOTF --Afghanistan. You are not forgotten.
My question is what do you think the effects of the deployments will be on the Guard/Reserve force and do you think that Rumsfeld will be successfull in shifting more of the duties to Active Duty forces?
I like the idea that you cannot bring the country into war without calling out the Reserves. Puts a limit on the Executive Branch since it is readily apparent that Congress has abdicated it's role in declaring war.
Vernon Loeb: I'm with you on wishing the forces in Afghanistan a Merry Christmas. I think Rumsfeld, through the Afghanistan and Iraq deployments, will basically break the Guard and Reserve over the next few years. After the troops now deployed come home, they are going to quit in droves, because they are simply being asked to do way too much right now. For this reason, Rumsfeld will succeed in moving a lot of Guard and Reserve capabilities over to the active duty force. He has to. The system is now working exactly the way Army officials wanted it to work when they loaded all these important combat support specialties into the Guard and Reserve after Vietnam--the nation now cannot go to war without them, as you say. But with the war in Iraq becoming a very extended affair, this is becoming impossible for Rumsfeld to sustain.
Stuckatworktoo: Vernon (and moderator!),
Thanks so much for doing the chat today! Best wishes for the holidays.
Vernon Loeb: I'm glad to see so many of you spending your time in the office in such productive ways. I just hope your bosses aren't monitoring your computer use.
Washington, D.C.: Regarding the mad cow scare and the subsequent import ban from so many countries, do the armed services have the means to purchase excess stocks on the wholesale markets and convert this food into military or humanitarian rations for later use?
Vernon Loeb: I get asked many questions where I think I know maybe a little part of an answer, if not the whole answer. But you've totally stumped me on this one. Totally. I just haven't got a clue about what you've asked.
Denver, Colo.: I am all for the mission in Afghanistan and would rather see billions of dollars being spent finding Osama, rather than being spent rebuilding a nation we destroyed for no apparent purpose other than a 'feel good' moment. But how come people continue to believe that Iraq has important ties to al Qaeda? For example, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail yesterday saying that Iraq and bin Laden had close (enough) ties -- 20 years ago -- in the form of the same business partner, but for two differnt ventures. Heck, 20 years ago, the U.S. was supporting both Iraq and the Taliban and through them, al Qaeda. Seems to me, the U.S. has more of relationship with both parties than they do with each other.
Vernon Loeb: I think there is scant evidence supporting the notion that Iraq and al Qaeda have had close ties in recent years. I would direct you to a recent column by Post columnist David Ignatius, who quoted intelligence sources as saying that there actually were links between Iraq and al Qaeda up until 1999, when Saddam Hussein made a conscious decision to break them off.
In reply to WhyamIatwork: Vernon,
A better answer, I believe, is that providing information about an arrest (even acknowledging an arrest) or an interdiction of a terrorist act will provide information to terrorists about our policing and counterterrorist methods and possibly sources, thereby making future actions more difficult. A good example is the common knowledge that U.S. forces triangulate positions of "bad guys" whenever they use their cell phones. Now the bad guys don't use them -- why this was made public is beyond me.
Vernon Loeb: You're right, that is a better answer, though you seem to agree with me, that word of many of the big arrests is ultimately made public. While the media ferrets some of that information out (and may blow some intelligence sources in the process), the agencies often cannot help themselves in tooting their own horns for political purposes.
New York, N.Y.: Your comment that "-i]f the government doesn't match its efforts on that side of the equation with skillful political, diplomatic, economic, even cultural, initiatives, the United States will never win" is exactly to the point.
Isn't Bush's failure in these areas the reason we are losing the war on terror?
Vernon Loeb: Let me just say that, in my opinion, one of the things the Bush administration could do to have the greatest positive impact in the war on terror is to fully invest itself in brokering an honest solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which I would describe as one of the political or diplomatic initiatives I'm talking about.
Re: April Glaspie and Saddam: I think this is what you're looking for.
HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.
GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting With U.S. Envoy (New York Times, Sept. 23)
Vernon Loeb: It helps having the smartest readers/posters in the world. Many thanks.
Wheaton, Md.: Vernon,
Today's Post story White House Faulted on Uranium Claim (Post, Dec. 24) quotes the inquiry into the president's Niger charge in the SOTU address as saying that, "After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was 'no deliberate effort to fabricate' a story, the source said."
Does anyone really take such a "finding" seriously? A former official of the first administration, and close family friend, finds that George W. didn't 'mean' to mislead the country. The fact that CIA head George Tenet 'asked' him to take the spurious charge out of a speech in October, but it crept back into the principal speech of the year three months later, was purely a mistake made in good faith. Yes, and the moon is made of green cheese.
Vernon Loeb: Thanks for your comment.
Ellicott City, Md.: We constantly hear of the rounding up of suspected guerrillas, but I never get a feel for how many of these rounded up suspects are then held as actual guerrillas and how many are freed. To me this is important because as a metric of success, constantly rounding up suspects doesn't mean you are solving the problem, catching the culprits shows that. Any insight to how many are actual fighters and how many are just "wrong place wrong time"?
Vernon Loeb: You make an excellent point. The overwhelming majority of those being rounded up in Iraq are not held for more than a few hours. So one question the military should be asking is, are we creating more bad guys than we're taking off the street by rounding people up (and humiliating them in the process)and then releasing them. Many commanders I spoke to are well aware of this problem, and well aware that precision in staging raids against suspected insurgents is very important.
San Francisco, Calif.: An article in today's Washington Post said "Recent arrests in several towns are the result, in part, of information gleaned from the arrest of Hussein". Dozens of Iraqi Suspects Arrested (AP, Dec.24)
I heard over the radio that people arrested included Iraqis whose loyalty was to the resistance even though they had jobs in the Iraqi police and military units that are supposed to be on our side. How successful was the enemy in getting its people recruited into the Iraqi police and military units that are supposed to be allied to us?
Vernon Loeb: I think the U.S. military is quite worried about problems associated with Iraqi insurgents infiltrating the Iraqi security forces that the U.S. is standing up in Iraq. Most of these new recruits are hardly vetted. I had one general tell me that the Pentagon believes such infilitration goes all the way to Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority.
Monterey, Calif.: I don't think it's necessary or even helpful to be waging a "war" on terrorism. The international police-type actions and covert operations have been effective in capturing criminal terrorists, and our military operations create at least as many problems as they address.
What do you think?
Vernon Loeb: You make a good point which I touched on in an earlier answer. I do, however, think there is a role for the military, and particularly Special Operations forces, to play in the Global War on Terrorism. A role, but not the major role. The U.S. military and all its exotic Special Operations units like Delta Force and Grey Fox and Seal Team 7 will never, by themselves, win the war on terrorism.
College Park, Md.: I find it interesting that in order for a person to get a certain job with the government one needs to be a citizen in order to get a security clearance. However, to actually fight and shoot a gun in the military you don't have to be a citizen of this country. How can we trust soldiers who have not pledged allegiance to our country through citizenship to fight on our side? Seems like a mercenary military. What do you think?
Vernon Loeb: You make an interesting point, but I think there's a difference between getting a security clearance, and fighting in a military unit. I've met a lot of non-U.S. citizen soldiers, and I think letting them join the U.S. military, often as a prelude to citizenship, is a good thing. I suppose there is some risk involved, but I would think their commanders, over time, would be able to tell whether they were really loyal to the U.S. cause.
Orange is a lovely holiday color: I'm flying out tonight to Germany (husband's parents for the holidays), back on Dec. 30. Should I be nervous? Would you be? I think my mom is nervous enough that I can choose to think that nothing is likely to happen.
On that note, Leno had a funny bit last night about why do they need the color rating system, since they always follow any change in color by explaining what the new color means.
Vernon Loeb: I would not be nervous about flying to Germany for the holidays. Have a great trip. Germany should be beautiful at this time of year. I'm envious.
Uh oh: Monitor our computer use? Can they do that?
Anyway: Reagarding the suicide attacks that have happened in Iraq -- does it make sense to you that Baathists would commit suicide for their cause? Suicide attacks are more frequently a radical Islamist tactic, no?
Vernon Loeb: You're right. I was probably needlessly alarmist in suggesting that employers might monitor their employees' computer use. (This is all for a good cause, isn't it?) As for the suicide bombers, I agree that they are more likely to be religious extremists acting on their own or hired by the Baathists, than they be Baathists themselves.
Vernon Loeb: And on that note, I'm signing off for 2003. It's been a long year. Thanks everybody for participating. Have a great holiday, pray for peace, and come back ready to post in the first week of January!
----
Dozens of Iraqi Suspects Arrested
Rebels May Be Linked to Top Hussein Aide
By Christopher Torchia
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25830-2003Dec23.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 -- U.S. soldiers arrested dozens of rebel suspects, including several associates of a former aide to Saddam Hussein who is believed to have a leading role in Iraq's insurgency. Early Wednesday, explosions rocked Baghdad as the U.S. military conducted an anti-rebel operation.
U.S. commanders have said they had planned operations over the Christmas period after receiving intelligence that there might be rebel attacks. Asked about the repeated explosions south of the city center, a military spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity that operations, including "aerial activity and artillery," were underway.
A U.S. task force in Baquba, 30 miles northwest of Baghdad, arrested five Iraqis on Tuesday, including one suspected of recruiting guerrillas, said Maj. Josselyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division.
Two other military sources said the other four detainees were believed to be associates of Izzat Ibrahim, one of Hussein's closest aides and the top remaining figure from the U.S. list of 55 most wanted Iraqis. U.S. commanders say Ibrahim could be organizing anti-American resistance. Thirteen fugitives from the list remain at large, with Ibrahim No. 6 in the ranking.
In an earlier raid in Baquba, U.S. troops detained a former Iraqi army colonel suspected of recruiting ex-Iraqi soldiers to fight the U.S. military. Aberle said the ex-colonel was believed to be connected to a local businessman helping to finance the insurgency.
The former officer "is a midlevel in the national scheme, but quite important in the area," the major said.
Another task force in the area arrested two Iraqis discovered digging up a cache of 100 82mm mortar rounds and 20 rockets, Aberle said.
Near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, troops captured "26 enemy personnel including two former Iraqi generals and an Iraqi Special Forces colonel," a military statement said.
Recent arrests in several towns are the result, in part, of information gleaned from the arrest of Hussein on Dec. 13, according to the U.S. military.
The military also has been getting information from more Iraqis since Hussein's capture, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday. Myers said that with Hussein out of the picture, "people are more willing to come forward."
"It probably tells you the role that fear plays in people's minds," the general said at a Pentagon news conference.
In the northern city of Mosul Monday night, gunmen fatally shot a judge, Youssef Murad, in his car. The assailants escaped.
Also in Mosul, rebels on Tuesday fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of four U.S. Humvees escorting a cash delivery to a city bank. One soldier was wounded, according to a U.S. soldier at the scene who declined to give his name.
Separately, after a nearly two-week search, U.S. Army divers found the body of an American soldier floating in the Tigris River on Tuesday. The soldier had jumped into the river on Dec. 10 in an attempt to save another soldier who fell overboard during a boat patrol.
The man who fell also drowned, and his body was discovered the day after the accident.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Kill 8 Palestinians in Raid on a Camp in Gaza
December 24, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/international/middleeast/24MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 23 - Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians, both militants and civilians, as armored vehicles charged into a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip early Tuesday and uncovered a large weapons-smuggling tunnel, according to accounts by the two sides.
Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen have clashed repeatedly in recent months in the camp, at Rafah, despite an overall decline in violence. In a similar Israeli raid in Rafah earlier this month, six Palestinians were killed; in an operation in October, a dozen Palestinians died.
Such surges in violence show how unstable the region remains. But the episodes have been relatively brief of late and have not degenerated into the larger waves of fighting that have been common in the past three years of Middle East bloodshed.
The latest violence comes a day after Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as part of broader efforts to work out a cease-fire and revive a top-level dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. But the Palestinians questioned whether Israel was serious about renewing peace talks.
"The attack in Rafah is blatant aggression," said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister.
Israel says it will press ahead with such operations because the Palestinian leadership has not acted against factions responsible for violence. The military said the incursion on Tuesday reached its target: a large smuggling tunnel with a hidden entrance inside a three-story house.
The tunnel acts "as an oxygen pipe for terrorist organizations operating in the area," said Col. Pinchas Zuaretz of the Army. It was used to bring in weapons from Egypt, and also allowed wanted Palestinians to flee to Egypt temporarily, the colonel said in a radio interview. Five to 10 other tunnels are believed to be in the area, he added.
Several dozen tanks, jeeps and armored vehicles roared into Rafah's densely packed refugee camp before dawn. As is typically the case, Palestinian gunmen soon opened fire.
As Israeli helicopters hovered, Palestinian gunmen in camouflage fatigues and ski masks stalked the narrow alleyways. Women in their pajamas ran from the area, some crying as they carried frightened children under their arms.
In intermittent gun battles, Israeli forces shot eight armed Palestinians, the military reported. It was not known if they were killed. According to Palestinians, three militants taking cover in one house were killed, along with a policeman on his way to work.
Ali al-Najar, one of the gunmen who died, heard the Israeli tanks approaching and immediately rushed out of his home to fight, said his father, Hussein al-Najar.
Ali al-Najar and two fellow militants were preparing their weapons in another house when it was hit by an Israeli shell, killing all three, his father said.
But Palestinians said several of those killed Tuesday were civilians. They included Weam Musa, 27, a medic hit by shrapnel while helping treat the wounded, according to his cousin Dr. Ali Musa, the director of Rafah Hospital.
Palestinian gunmen maintained steady fire in an attempt to prevent the Israelis from reaching the house with the tunnel, the military said. But the soldiers eventually found the tunnel in the afternoon, about 12 hours after the operation began.
The Israeli raid was mounted only hours after two Israeli Army officers were killed by Palestinian attackers on a road in southern Gaza. The two Palestinians were also killed.
That attack took place less than 10 miles from Rafah, but the army said the Tuesday operation was part of the continuing efforts to eliminate the tunnels, and was not related to the Monday night attack.
Also, the army said Tuesday that it had arrested 22 members of Hamas in and around Ramallah, in the West Bank, over the past few days. Those arrested were suspected of involvement in attacks that have killed 10 Israelis, the military said.
--------
In Battle Over a Settlement, It's Israelis vs. Israelis
December 24, 2003
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/international/middleeast/24SETT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MIGRON, West Bank, Dec. 23 - The Hebrew signs posted along the road to this hilltop settlement in the West Bank say, "The Battle Begins in Migron," and on Tuesday as a thousand or more people arrived in a caravan of cars and vans and buses, ostensibly to put a Torah scroll into the synagogue, it was clear that the battle had begun.
There were bearded men holding the scrolls aloft and chanting lines from the prophet Isaiah ("It shall not stand; neither shall it come to pass") while young men danced around them in a circle. Women pushed strollers; men with machine guns slung over their backs held small children on their shoulders. Everybody had a good time.
But what shall not stand, in the crowd's view, is the announced policy of the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Migron and other illegal outposts like it are going to be dismantled. Under pressure from the United States to fulfill the terms of the peace plan known as the road map, Mr. Sharon pledged in a speech last week that he would soon evacuate the illegal settlements, and Migron is the largest and best-known of them all.
Hence the widespread feeling in Israel that Migron is indeed going to be a battleground, not between Israelis and Palestinians but between Israelis and Israelis, or, more specifically, between the government and a settler movement that is powerful, well organized and determined not to give an inch.
"To bring a Torah here is the opposite of evacuating a community," said Pinchas Wallerstein, an official of the local Israeli administration who is regarded as a sort of father of the settlement movement in this region, shouting over the clamor of the Torah installation ceremony. He was asked what would happen if the government, as many people expect, sent the army to take Migron down.
"First, we are acting through the courts, and we believe we will have the support of the courts," Mr. Wallerstein replied. "If not, we'll ask thousands of people to be here, and if we have 10,000 people, they will need 40,000 police and soldiers, and there's no such force in Israel."
Migron is, when not being visited by a thousand or two supporters, an unprepossessing place, a cluster of 40 or so trailers installed on a rocky, treeless promontory. On Tuesday the Arab town of Deir Dibwan could be seen glistening in the hazy sun across the valley to the north, a reminder of how close things are on the West Bank.
Migron started a year or so ago with a couple of trailers, water and electricity connections. Then came a few more trailers, a total of 42 now, along with a permanent-looking stone building that serves as the synagogue.
Many of the young couples who have set up households here grew up in places that were once similar to what Migron is today, a kind of encampment among Arab villages, encircled by a fence. They are in this sense the second settler generation, continuing what is to them a tradition.
"I love this place," Moriya Harell, 25, a graduate of film school, said in a conversation last Friday. She was preparing a Sabbath meal while carrying her 7-week-old son, Yaacov, in a sling. "This is my place. I come from a religious home, and for me it's a natural thing to live here and to raise my child here."
Ms. Harell represents the major trend in the settler movement, namely that it has become essentially a religious movement carried on by people who believe that they are carrying out God's wish by settling in the regions of ancient hills known in the Bible as Judea and Samaria.
As Ms. Harell's husband, Itay, 29, put it, the classical, mostly secular Zionism that spurred Israel's creation has become tired and the energy now comes from religious conviction.
But in a democracy like Israel, Mr. Harell was asked, what gives him and the other settlers the authority to stay if the government and the law determine that they must go? He claimed a higher authority than the government.
"There's no comparison between the state law and biblical law," he replied. "There was a meeting of rabbis in Migron the other day, and they affirmed that no prime minister has the right to hand over a piece of the land of Israel."
It would be easy, especially in the festive spirit that prevailed in Migron on Tuesday, to become swept up in the enthusiasm of this place - the new homes, the bracing desert air, the attractive young people who are starting families here, all of them connected spiritually with ancient times.
Many Israelis, probably even some non-settlers, have sympathy for the young people on a hilltop like Migron, seeing it in the tradition of early Zionism, which was, after all, a movement to build new communities on patches of what was largely barren land.
"People say, `That's us 30 years ago,' " Shlomo Kaniel, a settler since 1977 and a professor of educational psychology at Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview. "They say, `It's exactly the way we did it and the way we have done it over the years.' "
But Migron also represents the chief divide in Israel, between those who feel that the settlements extend the Zionist enterprise and those who feel that they have hijacked that enterprise and endangered the long-term survival of Israel in the process.
"Zionism was a secular messianism," said Yarom Ezrahi, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "All the Zionist leaders were both utopian and pragmatic, but what you have with the settlers is the utopian part frighteningly unaccompanied by the pragmatic part.
"There is a distinction between creating the Jewish national home, which was done in the context of a war of survival for the Jewish people, and a colonial movement that cannot be justified as a necessity for Israeli security."
The Sharon government, confronting the problem of Migron, seems to fall between those two views - Migron as a God-given right and Migron as an unjustified and unnecessary obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
For that reason, perhaps, there is no agreement among Israelis over how Mr. Sharon will carry out his pledge to dismantle the illegal settlements as required by the American-supported peace plan.
Perhaps he will find a way to give a sort of retroactive approval to Migron and thereby avoid confrontation. He might then evacuate a few of the smaller outposts, those consisting merely of a trailer or two, visible on many West Bank hills.
If he does only that, though, he risks angering the United States, which has been pressing him for a major gesture to get negotiations back on track. The daily Haaretz on Tuesday cited an unidentified American official as saying explicitly that the United States expected Israel to dismantle Migron.
But the crowd of people dancing around the Torah here shows that evacuating this particular settlement is not going to be easy. And if there is a violent clash and people are hurt, Israeli public opinion could easily turn against the government.
"The confrontation will not be between the army and Migron," Mr. Kaniel said. "It will be between the army and the many, many settlers who will come and make Migron much stronger. That's where the potential for an explosion is."
--------
Israeli Raid Kills 8 Palestinians in Gaza
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25936-2003Dec23.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 23 -- At least eight Palestinians were killed and more than 30 people injured Tuesday in intense fighting that broke out when Israeli troops entered a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip to locate and destroy cross-border smuggling tunnels, Israeli military and Palestinian security and hospital officials said.
Most of the killings occurred during firefights between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli tanks, witnesses said. The deaths brought to 12 the number of people killed in the last 24 hours in the Gaza Strip.
Today's Israeli operation followed the ambush Monday night of two Israeli military officers in central Gaza. Capt. Hagai Bibi, 24, and Lt. Leonardo Weisman, 23, were summoned to investigate a suspicious-looking man, Israeli military officials said, and were attacked with small arms and grenades as they were getting out of their jeep. Both men were killed.
Two Palestinians -- one linked to Islamic Jihad and the other to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, two of the principal organizations fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- were killed by return fire, an Israeli army spokeswoman said. Five Palestinian laborers were injured in the crossfire, Palestinian security and hospital officials said.
Sarita Weisman, the sister of one of the Israelis slain Monday night, called his death "meaningless" and blamed Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip. About 7,000 Jewish settlers live in Gaza, surrounded by about 1.2 million Palestinians and protected by thousands of Israeli soldiers.
"I do not understand why my brother had to sit with other soldiers and protect 20 [settler] families that are stuck in the middle of nowhere," she said. "If they want to live there, let them protect themselves. I do not have to lose my dear brother for their sake."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a statement issued Tuesday after the Gaza raids began, called on Israel to "protect the civilian population and desist from using disproportionate force."
In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli troops intensified a nine-day-old campaign against militant groups in Nablus, expanding a crackdown from the Balata refugee camp to the entire city and cutting Nablus in two with roadblocks, tanks and troops, Palestinian witnesses said. Israeli military officials said the Nablus operations were a response to the capture of a large number of would-be suicide bombers there in the last two months.
Tuesday's Israeli operation in Gaza, while aimed at cutting off underground smuggling from Egypt, was indirectly related to the fatal ambush on Monday night, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
"These tunnels led to a situation where, in the last month, there have been 253 attacks in Gaza alone," she said. "This has caused an escalation that came to a peak yesterday when they managed to shoot and kill two of our officers."
Palestinian witnesses said about 20 tanks, bulldozers and other armored vehicles, supported by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, began entering the Rafah refugee camp about 2 a.m. Palestinian militants and residents of the camp responded with grenades and guns, the witnesses said.
The army spokeswoman said Israeli troops reported shooting and hitting nine Palestinians, including five who were trying to lay mines. Two were struck by a missile fired from a helicopter, she said.
Palestinian security and hospital officials said the victims included a Palestinian police officer, Ahmad Abed Najar, 32, and a local hospital worker, Wiam Mousa, 27, who were killed while on their way to work. Security officials said the police officer was shot in the head by a sniper.
Officials at Martyr Abu Yousef El-Najar Hospital, where most of the injured were taken, said the facility had received more than 30 wounded, including nine children.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan President to Quit As Army Chief
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press Writer,
Dec 24, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PAKISTAN_MUSHARRAF?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's pro-U.S. president agreed Wednesday to quit as army chief by the end of 2004, part of a surprise deal with the anti-American Islamic opposition and a historic step in this nuclear-armed country's return to democratic rule. Pervez Musharraf will serve out the final 3 1/2 years of his presidency, but he may be in a less powerful position and some observers questioned whether he will be able to stay in power without the military at his beck and call.
The agreement, reached after months of protests by the Islamic opposition, also forces Musharraf to scale back extraordinary powers he decreed after ousting a civilian government in 1999.
"I have decided that I will take off my military uniform by December 2004 and I will step down as chief of army staff," the 60-year-old president - wearing glasses and clad in his green and black military fatigues - said in a brief televised address to the nation.
"There comes a time in the lives of nations when important decisions must be taken," he said. "That time has come."
The agreement - which comes just nine days after Musharraf narrowly escaped an assassination attempt and about two weeks before a landmark regional summit with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee - immediately led to speculation about who would succeed Musharraf as military chief.
A pro-American four-star general, Mohammed Yousaf Khan, is next in line to take command. However, Khan is due to complete his three-year tenure in the No. 2 position next October, and it is unclear whether he would be in position to succeed Musharraf when he steps down at the end of next year, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
After he steps down from the army post, Musharraf must seek a vote of confidence in parliament to serve out the rest of his presidential term, which ends in 2007. The Islamic opposition party that reached the agreement with Musharraf said it would back him in the vote.
Musharraf still enjoys popular support after ousting the ineffective government of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless 1999 coup. The general seized power after Sharif denied landing rights to the civilian plane carrying Musharraf, nearly causing it to crash with well over 100 people on board.
The agreement was signed at a hastily called ceremony in the capital Wednesday between Chaudry Shujaat Hussain, the head of Musharraf's PML-Q party, and Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, the bearded cleric who leads the hardline Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA.
"It is good for democracy and good for the stability of the country," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press ahead of the formal announcement. "The president has proven he is sincere about democracy."
It is a marriage of convenience between the U.S.-backed president and the religious coalition, which won unprecedented support in October 2002 elections on the strength of an anti-American, anti-Musharraf platform.
Opposition lawmakers - led by the MMA - have paralyzed parliament for months, harassing speakers, staging mass walkouts and blocking most legislation.
They are angry about special powers Musharraf granted himself that give him the right to sack the prime minister and disband parliament by decree.
Wednesday's agreement allows Musharraf to keep the controversial powers, but requires him to consult the prime minister before sacking the government, and then seek approval from the Supreme Court for the move.
Some opposition parties blasted the deal as a sellout that gave legitimacy to an illegal coup.
The agreement "will disfigure the constitution and demolish the parliamentary system," said Sadique al-Farooq, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party.
The MMA says it will continue to vote in opposition to Musharraf's ruling faction, but would vote with the president's party to formalize the special powers.
"There is no change in our policies. We still have differences with Musharraf over his support for America," said MMA spokesman Hafiz Hussain Ahmad. He said, however, that his party would not vote against Musharraf during the vote of confidence.
Musharraf's ruling PML-Q party controls a slim majority in parliament, but needs the MMA to reach the two-thirds support necessary to amend the constitution and ratify the powers.
Musharraf won a five-year term as president in a 2002 referendum in which he was the only candidate.
In October 2002, he allowed elections to choose a national parliament and provincial assemblies, permitting a measure of democracy to return to this conservative Islamic country. Both Sharif and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's leading political figures, were barred from taking part in the vote.
Sharif lives in exile in Saudi Arabia, and Bhutto splits her time between London and Dubai. She faces arrest on corruption charges if she returns to Pakistan.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, a Musharraf ally, now runs the day-to-day operations of the government, but Musharraf has remained the ultimate power in the country.
The Pakistani leader was jolted by a Dec. 14 assassination attempt that came within seconds of blowing up his limousine as it passed a bridge in Rawalpindi, near the capital. High-tech jamming devices in Musharraf's vehicle apparently delayed the explosion.
Hardline Islamic militant groups are believed behind the attack, though no important suspects have been arrested.
AP reporter Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
----
Pakistan Bombing Aimed at Military Ruler Highlights His Role
December 24, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/international/asia/24STAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
AWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 18 - A jagged 15-foot-wide hole blown into a concrete bridge in this heavily militarized city, the tightly guarded headquarters of Pakistan's Army, is the latest example of why this country is so unsettling to American policy makers.
Last Sunday night, a powerful bomb here came within seconds of killing the military ruler of Pakistan, an impoverished, nuclear-armed country that sits near the epicenter of the American-led campaign against terrorism. Who would have succeeded the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and taken control of the country's dozens of nuclear bombs is unclear.
The choice of Rawalpindi as the site of the attack also raised questions about whether members of Pakistan's Army or the police helped the people who tried to kill him.
"It's the heart and center of all security," said Talad Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general. "That was the last place anyone would think."
Pakistani officials have said C-4 plastic explosive was used in the assassination attempt, according to news reports. Some Pakistani analysts contend the use of C-4, along with the sophistication of the attack, suggests involvement by Al Qaeda. Pakistani officials say their investigation is continuing.
In recent months, other troubling questions about the general's rule have emerged.
Officials are questioning at least three Pakistani scientists about reports that they may have sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran.
Afghan and Indian officials continue to say Pakistan's hard-line religious schools are churning out thousands of brainwashed militants who fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and separatists in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The bomb attack prompted some Pakistani analysts to question whether it was wise for the United States to continue to rely so heavily on General Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999. For now, the Bush administration appears to be staying the course. After the attack, State Department officials praised the Pakistani ruler and condemned his attackers.
A senior Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity here said the general's rule was gradually stabilizing the country. The diplomat predicted that if General Musharraf were killed, the army's pro-Western No. 2 general would gain control of its nuclear arsenal. The Constitution would require democratic elections in three months.
"I don't think you would have chaos," the diplomat said. "I think you would have an orderly transition."
But some Pakistani scholars maintain that the general's rule is simply keeping a lid on the political and ethnic tensions, not resolving them. An assassination would bring underlying tensions surging to the surface, they say.
"There will be chaos and disorder and instability" in the event the president is killed, predicted Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at Lahore University of Management Sciences. "Potential for a lot of internal strife, more along ethnic lines."
A wide array of Pakistani analysts agreed that what happens in Pakistan in the event the president is killed lies almost completely in the hands of the army. With American support, the army dominates Pakistani society to an extent never seen before in the country's modern history, they said.
During his four years in power, General Musharraf has appointed dozens of military figures to top posts in government and in public and private corporations. Army officers and their families already enjoyed vastly better lifestyles, education and prospects than the average Pakistani, thanks to a network of army-run farms, companies, neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.
"It's the most powerful political force," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to the army. "It has really overwhelmed the state and society."
In the last six months, General Musharraf has moved more aggressively to block dissent, and signs of tension between civilians and the military have emerged.
An opposition leader, Javed Hashmi, was arrested in late October after he circulated a letter on forged army stationery calling on officers to support democracy. He remains in jail, charged with inciting mutiny in the armed forces.
In August, a political activist in Baluchistan Province was arrested for distributing a calendar displaying a photograph of army soldiers beating local civilians. Faisal Saleh Hayat, Pakistan's interior minister, said in an interview that the calendar displayed "objectionable material" regarding the army.
Referring to the calendars, Mr. Hayat said, "They cannot be ignored." The calendars, he said, "questioned the sovereignty of Pakistan."
Journalists have also complained of intimidation by the military government. Amir Mir, a Pakistani journalist, said military and intelligence officials had repeatedly told him to tone down his critical coverage of Pakistan's army. In June, he was removed from his position as editor of a weekly magazine. He blamed pressure from the army. On Nov. 22, unknown men set Mr. Mir's car ablaze.
Rehana Hakim, editor of the weekly magazine Newsline, said government advertisements were abruptly pulled from the magazine's December issue. She said the military's unhappiness with the magazine's critical coverage of the army prompted the move. "Politicians have been subjected to intense scrutiny," she wrote in the magazine's December issue. "Surely the army does not expect to be revered like a sacred cow? Or does it?"
Experts here say there is no evidence of what diplomats called a worst-case scenario - a split between pro-Western and Islamist elements in the army. The 500 most powerful men in the army are generally believed to be pro-Western. But there are questions about the support militants may have in the lower ranks.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Al Qaeda's head of operations, was arrested in Rawalpindi in March in the house of the brother of a low-level army officer. Senior Pakistani officials have said that some soldiers are openly unenthusiastic about missions against the Taliban, Pakistan's former allies.
Immediately after the bomb attack, military officials questioned the police officers who apparently were not at their posts on the bridge, officials said.
Whatever happened, it is widely agreed here that the security breach was alarming.
-------- us
Defense Dept. Halts Anthrax Vaccinations
December 24, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/national/24ANTH.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The Pentagon will administer the anthrax vaccine, but only on a voluntary basis, while the government considers its response to a Federal District Court's ruling that military personnel cannot be forced to take the vaccine, senior Defense Department officials said on Tuesday.
The military's senior officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, defended the use of the vaccine as essential to safeguarding troops facing adversaries who may attack with unconventional weapons.
"From a military standpoint, I think it's very important we have this capability to protect our troops and enable them to do their job," General Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a news briefing.
General Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are among the one million military personnel or Pentagon civilians who have received the vaccine since 1998.
Pentagon officials said that several hundred military or Pentagon personnel declined the vaccine in the initial years of the program, but that only 10 had refused vaccination since June 2002, when the program was accelerated after supply problems were resolved. Since then, 600,000 to 700,000 military or Pentagon civilian personnel have received the vaccine.
On Monday, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction halting the Pentagon from "inoculating service members without their consent." He ruled that the vaccine used in the Pentagon's mandatory program was "an investigational drug," being used for an unapproved purpose.
Judge Sullivan sided with arguments that the vaccine was licensed to protect against skin exposure to anthrax, but not against anthrax that is inhaled.
Late on Tuesday, Justice Department officials said that no decisions had yet been made on the government's legal response.
"It's still under review, and no determination has been made at this time as to what our next step will be," said Charles S. Miller, spokesman for the Justice Department's civil division.
At the Pentagon, senior officials disputed Judge Sullivan's reasoning and his facts.
"We stand behind this program," said Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "The anthrax vaccine is safe and effective."
He said that the vaccine had been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration since 1970, and that the F.D.A. had provided guidance to the Pentagon "that easily allows for the conclusion that this, in their judgment, is effective against inhaled anthrax."
Dr. Winkenwerder rejected suggestions that the Pentagon was experimenting on the troops, saying, "We do not use service members as guinea pigs."
Army officials said the rate of complaints from the vaccine was similar to that over flu shots. Officials said most of those complaints were headaches, muscle aches and swelling at the site of the injection.
One senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday that the anthrax vaccine would continue to be administered, but only to those who did not object.
"It won't be mandatory," the official said. "If they object, they won't get it. We don't strap people down to the gurney and make them take the vaccine."
On Capitol Hill, a critic of the program called on the Pentagon to reopen the cases of all military personnel punished for declining the vaccine. That legislator, Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, issued a statement demanding that the Defense Department "immediately begin a review of all disciplinary actions taken against those who refused the vaccine."
--------
Anthrax Vaccinations Suspended
Program for Military On Hold While Legalities Are Explored
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26269-2003Dec23.html
Senior Pentagon officials yesterday defended the military's anthrax vaccine as "safe and effective" but said they were discontinuing a program of mandatory anthrax inoculations for troops in high-threat areas until the program's legal status is clarified.
The program's temporary suspension came one day after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the military to stop administering the anthrax vaccine to service members without their consent, pending a trial on the matter.
"The department will stop giving anthrax vaccinations until the legal situation is clarified," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said last night, adding that Pentagon lawyers are now reviewing legal options.
Sullivan gave the Pentagon until the end of January to file court papers responding to his order, in which he held that U.S. soldiers receiving the anthrax vaccine were being used as "guinea pigs for experimental drugs."
The Pentagon could appeal Sullivan's order, proceed to trial or seek a presidential waiver of service members' right of informed consent, a remedy provided under federal law to ensure that military units are ready for all contingencies.
Earlier yesterday, at a Pentagon briefing called to rebut Sullivan's findings, William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, took strong exception to Sullivan's finding that troops receiving the anthrax vaccine were being used as "guinea pigs."
In issuing a preliminary injunction halting mandatory inoculations, Sullivan agreed with the contention by six unnamed Defense Department plaintiffs that the anthrax vaccine is an experimental drug that has never been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for use against airborne anthrax spores. The vaccine has been licensed for use against infection through the skin.
On that point, Winkenwerder disputed Sullivan's interpretation, saying the FDA has certified the anthrax vaccine as "a licensed product against all forms of anthrax."
Winkenwerder noted that a March 2002 study by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine concluded that the vaccine is effective "for the protection of humans against anthrax, including inhalation anthrax, caused by all known or plausible engineered strains of Bacillus anthracis."
A million service members have received the vaccine since the Pentagon began a program for mandatory inoculations in 1998, including 600,000 to 700,000 who received the vaccine since June 2002 as the military prepared for war in Iraq.
Hundreds of other service members have refused to take the vaccine out of concerns about its safety, and many have been court-martialed for refusing the vaccine, forced out of the military and, in some cases, imprisoned.
Winkenwerder said that most of those who refused the vaccine did so in the early stages of the program, in 1998 and 1999, and that only 10 have refused it since the program accelerated this summer. "Our most recent experience in the last two years is that our service members support the vaccine program and accept it, and our refusal rate is very, very, very small."
In his order, Sullivan noted that the Pentagon recently updated the "adverse reaction rate" associated with the anthrax vaccine from 0.2 percent to 5 percent to 35 percent.
Army Col. John D. Grabenstein, who helps administer the anthrax vaccine program and appeared with Winkenwerder, said adverse reaction rates of 5 percent to 35 percent are comparable to those of other vaccines and flu shots, typically indicating nothing more than headaches or swelling at the injection site on a patient's skin.
"These are not scary numbers," he said.
Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer who filed the suit challenging the anthrax vaccine program, disputed Winkenwerder's claim that the vaccine is licensed by the FDA for use against airborne anthrax spores.
"The only thing [defense officials] received from the FDA was a letter from a political figure at the FDA" saying the vaccine is effective against airborne anthrax, he said.
"This letter means nothing," Zaid said. "It is a personal opinion. The FDA is the linchpin of this entire situation. The reason the judge ruled the way he did was because the FDA did not answer the questions that he wanted addressed."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- death penalty
Judge Denounces Attorney General's Death-Penalty Push
December 24, 2003
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/nyregion/24DEAT.html
A prominent federal judge in Brooklyn has added his voice to those of prosecutors who have been quietly seething because Attorney General John Ashcroft regularly overrules them and directs that they seek capital punishment when they have recommended against it.
In one of the cases, a jury failed to agree on a death sentence on Monday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, a division that will result in a life sentence for a Flatbush killer and crack dealer named Emile Dixon.
Now, out of the same court, the prosecutors who have been muttering about Mr. Ashcroft's death penalty policies have an unusually influential ally, a tough-as-nails judge who has leveled a rare public broadside against Mr. Ashcroft's approach.
"The attorney general's attempt to achieve uniformity by compelling U.S. attorneys to seek the death penalty is a bad idea," wrote the judge, John Gleeson, who was appointed to the bench in 1994 after a formidable career as a federal prosecutor that included winning the conviction of John J. Gotti.
Judge Gleeson chose a scholarly forum, The Virginia Law Review. But he pulled no punches in the article.
He said Mr. Ashcroft's policy has the effect of "undermining the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes," saying it may well lead to acquittals of heinous criminals by juries anxious to be certain of avoiding the death penalty.
Worse, he wrote, when Mr. Ashcroft's policy is applied in cases involving criminals who made agreements with prosecutors to cooperate in exchange for leniency, other criminals may end up going free. Who, he said, will help prosecutors make their cases if that path may end with a lethal injection?
"For the sake of seeking the death penalty in a few more federal cases," Judge Gleeson wrote, "significant numbers of murderers and other criminals can elude investigation and prosecution, and thus remain at large, free to commit further crimes."
Murder investigations in particular, he said, often depend heavily on getting criminals to turn on each other, despite people's television-fed image of cutting-edge forensic techniques. "The truth is, the real world looks nothing like `C.S.I.: Miami,' " the judge wrote.
In his article, in the November issue of the law review, he wrote that Mr. Ashcroft's policy would probably demoralize prosecutors who believe they know their cases better than Washington officials. He said it would drain their resources because death penalty trials are costly in time and money.
He said Mr. Ashcroft's policy failed to take account of the fact that local federal prosecutors understand attitudes in their districts, including those about the death penalty. He said the attorney general should defer when local United States attorneys recommend against capital punishment.
The Justice Department has been sketchy in explaining the standards Mr. Ashcroft uses when he insists on a capital prosecution. In response to questions about Judge Gleeson's article and Mr. Ashcroft's policies yesterday, a Justice Department spokeswoman issued a statement that said a review process in Washington "is designed to ensure consistency and fairness in the application of the death penalty in all U.S. attorney districts across the country."
The statement said officials at the Justice Department in Washington "have the benefit of seeing the landscape of these cases nationwide, thereby ensuring consistency" nationally.
Some current and former federal prosecutors say they have little patience for Mr. Ashcroft's critics. Otto G. Obermaier, a former United States attorney in Manhattan, said that in a democracy, the president and his attorney general have the authority to decide policy questions, including when to seek the death penalty.
"Every U.S. attorney doesn't decide what the law in his district is," Mr. Obermaier said.
But some former federal prosecutors said Judge Gleeson's article put into words criticisms of Mr. Ashcroft's death penalty policies that many federal prosecutors are afraid to make publicly.
"It is too easy to say that tough law enforcement means seeking the death penalty as often as you can," said Jamie Orenstein, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the death penalty prosecution of Timothy J. McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Judge Gleeson, 50, has unusual credibility with law enforcement officials. He can be strict when sentencing criminals, and some lawyers describe him as pro-prosecution.
Federal judges have not been particularly vocal about Mr. Ashcroft's death penalty decisions. The capital case against Emile Dixon that ended on Monday included some hints that the judge who presided, Raymond J. Dearie, was uncomfortable because the local federal prosecutors had been ordered to seek death.
With the jury out of the courtroom as the case moved toward its conclusion, he praised the work of lawyers on both sides.
"That's not to say I feel good about the process," he said, "but that's for another time and for other people." It is not known whether Judge Dearie knew about Judge Gleeson's article.
-------- homeland security
Intelligence Cites Some U.S. Cities
December 24, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/national/24ALER.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - Officials said Tuesday that they were analyzing recently collected terrorism intelligence to determine why a handful of American cities were mentioned, but they cautioned that the locales were not necessarily considered targets.
Separate bits of intelligence collected from sources who are tied to extremist groups refer to cities like New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Las Vegas - sites often considered possible terrorist targets - as well as remote areas in rural Virginia and Alaska, said an F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The locales were first reported Tuesday by The Los Angeles Times.
The information is part of a recent surge in counterterrorism intelligence that led the Bush administration to raise the terror threat status on Sunday from "elevated" to "high."
--------
U.S. Checking Foreign Airlines for Terror Risks
By Sara Kehaulani Goo and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26028-2003Dec23?language=printer
New U.S. intelligence is prompting stepped-up scrutiny into whether foreign airports and airlines have been penetrated by individuals sympathetic to terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officials said.
U.S. security officials have been thoroughly checking the identities of foreign flight crews before their departures from U.S. airports and upon their arrival in the United States. U.S. officials have questioned a small number of crew members in recent weeks after their names appeared to be similar to those on the FBI's "watch lists" of suspected terrorists, Bush administration sources said yesterday.
The officials said there have been no arrests and declined to identify the air carriers involved.
"At this time, our Customs and Border Protection inspectors are increasing scrutiny of all international passengers coming into the United States," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
The most recent U.S. intelligence reports that prompted the government to elevate the nation's alert level on Sunday to "code orange," or "high," indicate that terrorists may target U.S.-bound flights from overseas, although other methods of attack, such as use of a "dirty" bomb that spreads radioactive materials, are also possible. Law enforcement officials said they are concerned about security throughout the country but in particular in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
In an unusual event, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Los Angeles city officials said last night that they will forbid passengers from being picked up or dropped off by private vehicles at the Los Angeles International Airport terminal during the holidays. Passengers will have to be picked up and dropped off at nearby parking garages. It is the first time in nearly two years that a major U.S. airport has restricted access in that fashion.
"Terrorist operatives remain interested in bombings, suicide hijackings and even the possible use of man-portable air defense systems," or shoulder-fired missile, said a Department of Homeland Security memo to U.S. airports issued Sunday that was obtained by The Washington Post. The department continues "to receive uncorroborated reports that extremists may attempt to hijack or bomb commercial aircraft both in the United States and abroad."
Passengers coming into at least one major U.S. international airport on Air France and flights from Mexico will be subject to more security procedures beginning today, according to an aviation industry official and two other sources. Some foreign airlines are planning to have their countries' armed air marshals on board U.S.-bound flights, sources said.
Miguel Monterrubio, a Mexican Embassy spokesman, said authorities from his country are cooperating with U.S. officials to "avoid any security risk." He declined to discuss specific security procedures.
A French official said there have been "some very intense exchanges" between U.S. and French officials on efforts "to share intelligence and to reflect on how we could prevent any possible terrorist attacks."
Air France has 25 scheduled daily flights to the United States. A spokesman declined to comment on the airline's security procedures.
The Department of Homeland Security said that it issued the same directions to all international carriers to step up security during the heightened alert and that no specific airline is being targeted.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. officials have expressed frustration that security at some foreign airports is nowhere near as tight as it is at U.S. airports. The U.S. complaints have intensified in recent months, officials and security experts said.
"You can understand the concerns of U.S. intelligence about this, because security at some foreign airports is appallingly low," said Chris Yates, an aviation-security analyst at the Jane's Aviation consulting service.
Yates said that among the airports with spotty security are many regional ones in Russia, whose flights feed into Moscow's airport, and mid-size airports around the Middle East whose flights connect to cities such as Cairo. In many Muslim countries, he said, women who set off alarms going through security are not searched because of cultural sensitivities.
The United States earlier this year revoked the right of two Saudi pilots to fly into the United States, as part of a secretive new program run by the TSA that can bar pilots if the agency decides they "pose a security threat." The TSA said it has not taken similar action since then.
Foreign pilots must undergo a Department of Homeland Security background check, which includes a review of any criminal history. After the terrorist attacks in 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration created a database of foreign flight crews from 17 foreign airlines.
Foreign crews are matched to the database and the FBI watch lists. The Department of Homeland Security said it has flagged foreign pilots for questions relating to the background checks, crew database and watch lists.
"It happens on occasion that those pilots are told they can't fly into the U.S.," an administration official said.
At U.S. airports, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection inspectors have stepped up scrutiny of foreign flight crews after they arrive, according to Frank A. Clark, executive director of LAX Tech Corp., an organization that represents 46 international carriers with service to Los Angeles International, one of the largest international airports in the world.
It is not uncommon, Clark said, for some members of foreign flight crews to be questioned and held for 45 minutes to an hour, as U.S. officials verify their identities. Often crew members have the same or similar last names as people on the watch lists, Clark said.
"We see, on occasions, a crew member . . . held and questioned extensively," Clark said. Usually it's because the crew member has the "Asian version of Smith or the Arabic version of Smith" as a last name, he said.
Clark said the tightening of security started in September, after the Department of Homeland Security canceled a program that allowed some passengers to move through U.S. airports without visas. That action, which was taken out of concern that terrorists could exploit the program and slip into the country, prompted changes for foreign carriers, he said.
Staff writer John Mintz and researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
--------
Orange Alert Colors the Region
Stepped-Up Security Evident at Landmarks and in Residents' Lives
By Steve Vogel and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25889-2003Dec23?language=printer
The roar of fighter jets regularly rocks Derlen Wilson's Upper Marlboro home, the echo of heightened vigilance against terrorism that was announced this week.
Wilson, 45, who was waiting yesterday with her 7-year-old daughter for a photo with Santa Claus at a Charles County mall, said she felt more secure living near Andrews Air Force Base, where jets take off for patrols over Washington. The military, responding to intelligence warnings of a possible terrorist strike in the United States, has increased the number of fighter patrols over Washington and other cities in recent days.
"We hear the jets all the time. The house [starts] shaking," said Wilson, whose daughter, Chantel, was clutching a list to give to Santa at St. Charles Towne Center in Waldorf. "If I'm not safe there, I won't be safe anywhere."
The increased fighter patrols are one part of the added security evident in the Washington region since the Department of Homeland Security raised the threat level Sunday to orange, or high alert.
"We are increasing patrols by air, by water and by land," said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Carter, a Coast Guard spokesman. "We're out there to deter and detect."
On the Potomac River, Coast Guard boats stepped up patrols around bridges and other potential targets. Helicopters and other aircraft from various federal agencies have been in the air regularly.
Defense officials raised the force protection level at the Pentagon for the first time since September, back to the level it had been at since Sept. 11, 2001. Black-uniformed security officers with automatic weapons guarded the building, while Department of Defense police conducted more random checks of cars entering parking lots.
"We shouldn't sit around hiding under chairs," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters in the building yesterday. "We have to live our lives, and that's what we'll all do."
Still, threat warnings carry an increased resonance at the Pentagon, where 125 workers died along with 59 passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked plane that hit the building's west wall. "People here always have a sense of where they are because of what happened," said Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman.
Access to other area military installations has also been tightened, officials said. And security outside the U.S. Capitol was tight.
"I think that the terrorists have somewhat won because they've changed our way of life," said Richard Quadri, a carpenter from Florida who was waiting in line for a Capitol tour with his wife and four children.
In Annapolis, State Circle, the road that rings the State House, was blocked off with orange cones, as well as black Ford Expeditions, Crown Victorias and a Department of General Services cruiser.
A Marine guarding a gate to the U.S. Naval Academy scrutinized visitors' badges more closely than usual, taking them out of their plastic sleeves and looking at the back. When asked whether the school had stepped up security, he replied: "Yeah, we have. But we can't talk about it."
In Calvert County, both the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant and the Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant remained on heightened alert, a county official said.
Police in Northern Virginia are spending more time patrolling potential terrorist targets, law enforcement officials said, and Fairfax County police are keeping their helicopter in the air for more hours.
Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, said the agency has experienced a spike in phone calls and e-mails from people concerned about suspicious activities.
"I think it's due to citizens being more aware of their surroundings, a sense of concern and possible nervousness," she said.
As they went about their Christmas chores, residents such as Derlen Wilson have been gauging what if anything to do to prepare themselves. The only change Wilson made was to make sure her children had her cell phone number and the number of their grandmother in case they became separated.
"You don't want to scare the kids too much, but you've got to be prepared a little bit," she said.
For shoppers, it was mostly business as usual. At St. Charles Towne Center, the throngs soldiered on with last-minute Christmas shopping, undeterred by the heightened security alert.
"If you stay home and are afraid, then you let the terrorists win," said Louis Salviejo, 64, a retired sheet metal worker from White Plains.
Hurried customers zipping into the post office in Fairfax City to mail cards and presents said they were unconcerned.
"I did ask myself, 'Do I have enough water?' But I feel fairly secure where I live," said Dave James, 52, of Fairfax. "I don't know if I'd feel that way if I lived in downtown Washington."
Standing on a busy street corner in Old Town Alexandria, waving a bell and holding a Santa hat while soliciting donations for the Salvation Army, Everett Williams said the Code Orange alert would not affect his Christmas in the slightest.
"I think people are still in the spirit," he said. "I don't see any bah-humbugs or Scrooges."
Staff writers Nelson Hernandez, Allan Lengel, Jerry Markon, Raymond McCaffrey, Liz Seymour, Ian Shapira and Robin Shulman contributed to this report.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigration Reform on Bush Agenda
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25882-2003Dec23.html
President Bush plans to kick off his reelection year by proposing a program that would make it easier for immigrants to work legally in the United States, in what would constitute the most significant changes to immigration law in 18 years, Republican officials said yesterday.
Lobbyists working with the White House said Bush is developing a plan that would allow immigrants to cross the border legally if jobs are waiting for them. The sources said the administration also wants to provide a way for some undocumented workers in the United States to move toward legal status.
Bush will try to make the plan more palatable to conservatives by including stricter entry controls, including increased use of technology at the border and steps toward better enforcement of current visa restrictions and reporting requirements, sources said.
Bush said at his year-end news conference last week that he was preparing to send Congress recommendations for an "immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee." He said he is "firmly against blanket amnesty," or a mass legalization. An estimated 8 million undocumented people live in the United States. At least half of them are Mexican, authorities said.
White House aides would not provide details of the proposal, but the Republican officials said it draws on, among other sources, a bill introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). It would create a Web-based job registry, to be run by the Labor Department. Employers would post job opportunities that would be available first to U.S. workers and then to prospective immigrants, who would be allowed to come under a new visa for temporary workers.
The other half of the program would be what Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge referred to earlier this month as "some kind of legal status" for undocumented workers in this country. The sources said White House officials were more skeptical about this idea than about the temporary-worker program, but they concluded that they needed a response to the large population of undocumented workers for the plan to be credible and for Bush to get credit from Hispanic voters.
The blueprint is the most ambitious of its kind since a bill signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 that offered legal status to millions of illegal immigrants who had moved to the United States before 1982 and imposed sanctions on employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants.
The White House plan is being designed by Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, in consultation with the domestic policy staff. Sources said the White House's biggest concern is that the new mechanism not penalize people who had followed the law and reward those who had not. McCain's plan, which was introduced in the House by Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), tries to mitigate that problem by creating a new type of visa for previously undocumented workers who would be allowed to live in the United States legally for three years. Then the workers could apply for the temporary worker visa, which would be the path to a green card, or legal permanent residency. That would amount to a three-year advantage for those who entered legally.
The Republican officials said that rather than proposing specific legislation, Bush may issue broad principles that would become part of what campaign officials call the "compassion agenda."
Administration officials said Bush will present his proposal, which is still being refined, in the second week of January, shortly before traveling to Monterrey, Mexico, for a two-day summit of leaders from throughout the Americas.
The proposal is crucial to Bush's relationship with Mexican President Vicente Fox, which was warm in Bush's first year in office but soured after he postponed any relaxation of immigration laws and Fox opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The two leaders began repairing the relationship during a meeting in October at an international economic summit in Thailand.
Bush, who said during his campaign that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande," had been heading toward seeking an overhaul of immigration laws during his first year in office. On Sept. 6, 2001, Fox said during a White House visit that he wanted broad changes in U.S. immigration law within a year, and Bush said he hoped to "accommodate my friend."
But the plans were scuttled after the terrorist attacks five days later turned the government's attention toward restricting access to the country rather than easing it. Bush said in October 2002 that some noncitizens had "taken advantage" of America's "generous" immigration rules.
Some conservative lawmakers remain adamantly opposed to any changes that could be portrayed as encouraging immigration, and some members of the Republican congressional leadership are leery of the idea, making its outlook on Capitol Hill uncertain. But presidential advisers said they believe that Hispanic voters, one of the targets for Bush's reelection campaign, will give him credit for pushing for the changes even if nothing is enacted before the election.
Kolbe said in a telephone interview that "there's a mood for the first time since 9/11 that we have to take a look at this problem rather than just hardening the borders." He added, "The president's involvement will be critical."
A House GOP leadership aide, who insisted on anonymity, said the leaders are willing to work with Bush but think it will be a hard sell for rank-and-file members who are concerned that the plan could take jobs away from constituents. "The economic piece of it is now much more of a problem than your traditional xenophobia-type objections," the aide said.
Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights organization, said the danger is that Bush will propose something "that's going to sound vast and historic but that he knows can't get enacted next year."
"If what the White House proposes is credible, there's likely to be a warm response," Muñoz said. "As long as we get results, we're not going to be picky about the motive."
The proposal planned by the White House has much in common with plans that have been offered by some of the Democratic presidential candidates, most of which provide for a route to legalization for undocumented workers who have been in the country for five or six years, have a work history and can pass a background check.
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) calls his the Earned Legalization and Family Reunification program. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) has called immigration reform "another broken promise" by Bush. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean told the Arizona Republic's editorial board that he favors earned legalization for undocumented workers who have been in the country for some time and have committed no crimes, but he sounded a note of skepticism about a guest-worker program like that proposed by McCain.
The Democrats have frequently highlighted their immigration plans in debates. A leading Bush adviser said that, given the crucial swing vote Hispanics could provide next November, "the White House feels it's got to get its irons in the fire now."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Peril in the Wind Industry
Turbines That Produce Clean Energy Also Kill Migrating Birds
By Kimberly Edds
Washington Post
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25818-2003Dec23?language=printer
LOS ANGELES -- The freezers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department in the Sacramento Valley are overflowing with the decapitated and mangled bodies of golden eagles, kestrels and red-tailed hawks, victims of the whirling blades of wind turbines.
Scientists estimate as many as 44,000 birds have been killed over the past two decades by these towering machines in the Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco.
Although the rows of spinning blades at Altamont Pass turn wind into electricity and make Alameda County less dependent on fossil fuel, they are also the end of the line for many predatory birds whose annual migration route includes the pass. The area is also home to the largest resident population of golden eagles in the lower 48 states. Concentrating on their prey on the ground, the birds fly into the blur of the windmill blades.
The bird deaths have led some environmental groups that support wind power to oppose permits for the Altamont site. They argue that enough birds are being killed to affect the resident population of golden eagles -- an average of 50 golden eagles are killed each year -- and that the wind industry is not doing enough to stop the deaths.
Federal law enforcement agents pick up more than 1,000 dead birds a year, recording the species and cause of death before depositing each bird in the freezer. When space is in short supply, the birds are incinerated.
"On the one hand, we feel we need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, and we support the idea of wind power. We would like to see the wind industry continue to remain in business. It conflicts with the goal of protecting birds like the golden eagle, red-tailed hawks and other birds," said Jim Nickles, a spokesman with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In Alameda County, several environmental groups are trying to persuade the county to stop reissuing permits for the windmills without requiring additional environmental studies.
The county zoning board approved permanent permits for 1,400 windmills in November, but Californians for Renewable Energy and the Center for Biological Diversity, a national nonprofit group known for taking wildlife issues to court, say the county approved the permits illegally. The county board of supervisors is scheduled to review the issue next month.
"The level of bird kills is just astronomical. You couldn't have picked a worse place to put a wind farm. It's just been an accepted cost of doing business out there," said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Environmental activists accuse the industry of dragging its feet on making improvements, despite knowing what impact the turbines are having on the bird population.
Steve Stengel, a spokesman for Florida Power & Light Co., which owns about half of the 7,000 wind turbines at the Altamont wind farm, said members of the wind industry have been working for 18 months to come up with ways to reduce the number of bird kills in the area. But one of the biggest challenges has been to develop an agreement among the many different turbine owners.
There are wind farms in 29 states, and they provide about 1percent of the nation's energy, but that could increase to 6 percent by 2020, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The plains of North Dakota alone could supply one-third of the nation's demand for energy.
Altamont was constructed in the early 1980s when little was known about the migration patterns of birds in nearby areas. Mistakes made at Altamont have been used to make improvements in new wind farms. No other wind farm in the United States comes close to the bird mortality rates at Altamont because of improved windmill design for newer farms. The industry says similar updates for Altamont would be too costly.
Past attempts to reduce bird kills have included painting the tips of turbine blades to try to make them more visible to birds, installing screens around generators and putting devices to discourage perching on the towers.
But those measures have failed to substantially lower the number of bird deaths. Among the measures now being discussed is letting the grass beneath the turbines grow taller and removing nearby rock to provide more cover for prey and discourage birds from flying in the area.
"There is no universal agreement what the exact right thing to do is," Stengel said, noting that a few years ago the recommendation was to build rock piles near the turbines. Now the recommendation is the opposite.
"They've been saying they've been working on the problem for 10 years, but the mortalities are continuing," Nickles said.
The controversy over bird kills has "delayed and even significantly contributed to blocking the development of some wind plants in the U.S.," according to a 2001 report commissioned by the National Wind Coordinating Committee, an advocacy group funded by the industry. A debate is raging over a proposed 28-acre offshore wind farm off Cape Cod, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) opposing the project because of environmental concerns.
Environmentalists blame the federal government in part for failing to enforce numerous laws that protect some birds. Companies can be fined thousands of dollars for every protected bird -- including golden eagles -- that is killed as a result of running into a wind turbine. But a citation has yet to be issued at Altamont.
"Bringing a criminal case under the migratory bird act would be really tough because you have to prove intent, and these cases seem to be unintentional or accidental. Plus, there are so many different companies up there, it's hard logistically to deal with several thousand windmills and who owns what," Nickles said. "We're just monitoring the situation for now."
----
Fuel cell research touted for New Mexico
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-24/s_11547.asp
SANTA FE, N.M. - State officials pushed fuel cell research for New Mexico as Toyota showcased a full-size sports utility vehicle that runs entirely on hydrogen, sending only water vapor out its tailpipe.
Toyota vice presidents and senior engineers visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, and later the state Capitol, where Gov. Bill Richardson drove their prototype, as they stopped Monday in New Mexico while looking for potential hydrogen-power research sites around the country.
Bill Reinert, national manager for Toyota's Advanced Technologies Group in Torrance, Calif., said hydrogen power could revolutionize business.
"If hydrogen works - and there's no guarantee it will work - it's a fundamental shift," he said.
Fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, creating heat and water as byproducts. One significant hurdle: figuring out how to store the hydrogen.
Even with major advances in fuel-cell technology, it could be decades before a vehicle hits the market.
Reinert said developing hydrogen power will take private-public partnerships.
Los Alamos researchers helped design some of the key innovations that have made hydrogen fuel cells more efficient and economically feasible.
"There are certain breakthrough technologies that have to happen for hydrogen fuel cells to become safe and economic and accessible," Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans said. "And that kind of research is what's taking place at Los Alamos."
Researchers, environmentalists and politicians see fuel-cell vehicles as a way to obtain limitless energy, clean air and freedom from oil dependence in the Middle East.
The vehicle the Toyota delegation showed off looked just like the company's normal Highlander.
"This is amazing, really, to see this technology work, and to see it work in a vehicle of this size," said Piotr Zelenay, who has studied fuel-cell applications for years at Los Alamos. "It runs just like a regular car, with one difference: It's quiet."
The Toyota officials met with representatives of the Hydrogen Technology Partnership and heard about research efforts at Sandia National Laboratories, White Sands Missile Range and New Mexico universities. Homans met with Toyota officials during a recent trip to Asia.
"The only promise we got was a promise to continue talking. When you are recruiting somebody to your state, that's what you want to hear," Homans said.
Richardson sparked the New Mexico visit by contacting Toshikaki Taguchi, president and CEO of Toyota Motor, North America.
"We want to become the hydrogen fuel cell research center in America," the governor said.
-------- environment
Administration Is Exempting Alaska Forest From Protection
December 24, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/politics/24ENVI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The Bush administration announced on Tuesday that the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest in the country, would be exempted from a Clinton-era rule, potentially opening up more than half of the 17 million-acre forest for more development and as many as 50 logging projects.
The decision stems from the settlement of a lawsuit between Alaska and the federal government over the so-called roadless rule, which prohibited the building of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.
Environmental groups attacked the administration for the settlement in July, saying it was an underhanded strategy for circumventing the regulation. Conservation groups said the administration had failed to defend the roadless designation adequately.
But Ray Massey, a spokesman for the Forest Service in Alaska, said that agency officials felt there were already enough protections for the Tongass. "We didn't really need roadless to protect the Tongass," he said in a telephone interview. "We already have a forest plan in place to protect the Tongass."
Before putting the roadless designation into effect, the Forest Service had drawn up plans for the immediate development of 300,000 acres in the Tongass. Environmental groups say that about 9.6 million acres of the Tongass could be affected by the dropping of the ban.
The roadless rule was put in place after a two-year process that included 600 scientific studies and two rounds of public comments that generated almost two million responses, most of them in favor of the rule.
Since its inception, the rule has been challenged through a host of legal, legislative and administrative efforts. The conflicts have highlighted the tensions between environmental protection and economic development, and between state autonomy and federal oversight.
Environmental groups supported the roadless rule as a way to curb the development and logging that had already affected half of national forest land. But Western states and the timber industry said the rule was unjustified in its sweeping scope - touching about 30 percent of national forest acreage in the country.
Industry groups and states have made a concerted effort to attack the rule through lawsuits around the country. In July, a federal district court judge in Wyoming suspended the rule nationwide. Environmental groups are appealing the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver.
Before that, a federal court in Idaho originally threw out the roadless rule, but that decision was overturned last December by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.
The Tongass National Forest, with 16.8 million acres, has been particularly contentious because of its environmental symbolism as the only temperate rain forest on the continent.
"This is the rarest forest type on earth and it needs to be protected," said Jeremy Paster, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace.
--------
Administration Opens Alaska's Tongass Forest to Logging
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 24, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26001-2003Dec23.html
Capping more than 10 years of intense controversy over the fate of some of the nation's last remaining old-growth forest, the Bush administration yesterday finalized the opening of 300,000 acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest for logging and other development.
"This is the end of a very long process," said Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and the environment at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the national forest system. "We used the best scientific information available to strike a balance between protecting as much as we could . . . while maintaining a small part of the Tongass for use and management to sustain the 72,000 people who live in southeastern Alaska."
The administration's action was not unexpected. After years of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers by advocates and opponents of Tongass logging and the involvement of all three branches of government, the Agriculture Department proposed its final rule in June as part of an agreement in which the state of Alaska -- which wanted the land opened -- promised to drop a lawsuit against the federal government.
Nonetheless, the final action drew angry protests from environmental groups -- and pledges to find other ways to halt the decision. "This is . . . a Christmas present from the Bush administration to the timber industry, which wants the right to clearcut in America's greatest temperate forest," Earthjustice Alaska said in a statement.
Tongass is the nation's largest national forest, covering 16.8 million acres, of which 9.3 million acres consist of timber -- the rest being mostly rock, ice or water, said Ray Massey, a Forest Service spokesman for the Alaska region. "The near-term effect will be a few timber sales that will go through," Massey said.
Alaska Gov. Frank H. Murkowski (R) and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) applauded the decision, emphasizing that the rule would protect 95 percent of the national forest.
But Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it would open to development "the most valuable habitat from one of our most important forests and one of the most ancient forests worldwide. The trees they want to log are the biggest and oldest." Of more than 250,000 comments the agency received, she said, fewer than 2,000 favored the rule.
Staff writer Dana Milbank contributed to this report.
-------- health
Countries Ban American Beef After U.S. Discovers Mad Cow Disease
December 24, 2003
By MATTHEW L. WALD and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/science/24COW.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - A sick cow slaughtered about two weeks ago near Yakima, Wash., has tested positive for mad cow disease in early laboratory results, the first such case in the United States, the secretary of agriculture said on Tuesday.
Shortly after the announcement, Japan said it was banning imports of American beef. The South Korean agriculture ministry said in a statement that South Korea was also halting American beef imports and that it was pulling American beef products off supermarket shelves.
[On Wednesday morning, Russia, Thailand and Hong Kong also announced that they too were banning imports of American beef products.]
American agriculture officials are likely to announce as early as Wednesday a voluntary recall on beef they hope to trace to the plants where the cow was slaughtered and processed, said Dr. Elsa Murano, the under secretary for food safety.
"We are considering if we need to take that step, but it's likely to happen," Dr. Murano said in an interview.
Federal officials did not say where the meat is now, but the agriculture secretary, Ann M. Veneman, said the meat supply was safe because of precautions taken over the last decade to keep the nerve tissue of slaughtered beef out of the food supply. Only the brain, spinal cord and related parts can spread the disease to humans, Ms. Veneman said, and she added that she intended to serve beef to her family at Christmas.
"This finding, while unfortunate, does not pose any kind of significant risk to the human food chain," she said at a news briefing here tonight.
While agriculture officials urged the public not to overreact to the discovery, Dr. W. Ron DeHaven, the chief veterinary officer for the Agriculture Department, said: "This is certainly a big concern. We now have evidence of a disease that we didn't have before in the U.S."
Agriculture officials and leaders of the beef industry were particularly concerned about the impact on domestic sales and beef exports. They are eager to avoid a repetition of the crisis that hit Europe in the 1980's and 1990's. Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in Britian in 1986. It spread through 180,000 livestock, led to the deaths of more than 100 people and prompted the United States and other countries to ban beef imports.
In May, when a single case of mad cow disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was found in Alberta, Canada, a number of countries, including the United States, banned the import of Canadian beef. The ban has been eased somewhat, and imports of boneless cuts and from cattle younger than 30 months have resumed.
No cases have turned up in people from the Canadian beef.
Federal officials say the cow in the Washington case, a Holstein, was traced to a farm in Mabton, about 40 miles southeast of Yakima. The farm has been quarantined, Dr. Veneman said.
The sample was taken on Dec. 9, the same day the cow was slaughtered. Inspectors took a sample because the cow was a "downer animal," which Ms. Veneman said meant "nonambulatory." A fraction of all cows that cannot walk - a symptom of the disease - are tested.
Nerve tissue from the cow was tested at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, establishing a "presumptive" diagnosis, she said, and a military jet is flying a sample to a laboratory in England for a definitive diagnosis. No result is expected for several days, but the government was proceeding as if the finding was conclusive, she said.
The development is likely to be a serious blow for ranchers, feed-lot operators and slaughterhouses. About 10 percent of American beef production is exported, industry officials say.
McDonald's, Burger King and Wal-Mart Stores quickly said they did not believe they had received meat from the animal. And almost as soon as Ms. Veneman finished her news conference, officials of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association began a conference call to seek to reassure consumers. Terry Stokes, chief executive of the group, referred to a "triple firewall" to prevent the introduction or spread of the disease.
Mr. Stokes said these safeguards consisted of testing animals that arrive at slaughterhouses unable to walk, forbidding imports of cattle and bovine products from countries where the disease is present and banning material derived from cows for use as cow feed. That is meant to prevent the transfer of aberrant proteins, called prions, which are believed to cause the disease.
Investigators are still trying to determine how and when the cow was processed.
"First we have to determine where the stuff went," Dr. Murano said. "That will determine how big the recall is," with officials hoping to recall any Washington beef that may have become mixed with and contaminated by the diseased cow.
Dr. Murano said it was possible that the contaminated beef had already been distributed and eaten, but she said that even in that case she did not believe it posed a risk to consumers because the processed parts did not include the tissue that has been shown to carry the disease. Or the beef could have been frozen "and it may all be sitting in a warehouse somewhere," she said.
Dr. Murano said she expected the recall to be a Class 2, the middle grade in the three-tiered system the U.S.D.A. uses to rank the severity of the health risk. "This is a voluntary thing out of an abundance of caution," she said.
Despite the evident failure of the system to prevent the case in Washington, Mr. Stokes said that consumers should have confidence in the food supply because there is no evidence that the disease is transmissible through muscle meat. Such a reassurance is critical, since Agriculture Department officials said that meat from the infected animal - but not tissue from its central nervous system - had been sent to at least two other processing plants.
Critics say that the safeguards are not perfect. Among the problems, they say, is that machines that strip meat scraps from carcasses can contaminate the meat with tissue from the nervous system. Critics also say that regulations to prevent contamination of cattle food with nerve tissue are unevenly enforced.
"We put a number of measures in place that we thought would substantially reduce our chance of seeing mad cow disease in this country, but clearly those methods fell short of perfect," said Dr. Fred Cohen, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California at San Francisco and a leading expert on ways to treat prion diseases.
Still, Dr. Cohen said, the risk is low.
"One can derive a fair bit of comfort from statistics and epidemiology," he said. "When there were 60,000 to 80,000 infected cows in the U.K., approximately 150 people out of 60 million developed the disease," he said. "One cow is not likely to translate into any cases" in the United States, he said.
The disease, commonly abbreviated as B.S.E., makes brain tissue spongy and full of holes. Sheep, deer and elk can also get spongiform encephalopothies. The human form, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kills about 250 Americans a year. In most cases the cause is unknown.
The possibility of an infected cow renewed calls to end the slaughter of animals that cannot walk. Wayne Pacelle, the vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, said that such animals are pushed by bulldozers or dragged by chains, and are a threat to the food supply.
Ms. Veneman said in the news conference that her department had tested 20,526 head of cattle for mad cow disease this year, triple the level of last year.
But Mr. Pacelle said in a telephone interview that this was only about 10 percent of the number of "downer" animals slaughtered every year. "For them to be guaranteeing the food supply is safe is completely bogus," he said.
The diagnosis in Washington State came just a week after a federal appeals court in New York revived a lawsuit brought by an animal rights group that says that the Agriculture Department has not done enough to protect consumers from mad cow disease. The group, Farm Sanctuary, maintained in a 1998 lawsuit that the government's policy of allowing the slaughter of animals that cannot walk poses a significant health risk to consumers. A judge threw out the suit, saying the danger was remote, but the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned that decision last week.
-------- ACTIVISTS
1914 Christmas truce 'planned by thousands of German soldiers'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
24 December 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=475890
The Christmas truce of the Great War in 1914 was started by a "peace movement" of German soldiers who won over their trenchbound British foes by lobbing chocolate cake at them instead of hand grenades, a new book claims.
The interpretation of the events on the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914 is made by Michael Jürgs whose book, The Small Peace in the Great War is the first to be written about the ceasefire from a German perspective.
The book has received wide publicity in Germany where its findings have been welcomed, not least because they help to dispel the stereotype of the German soldier as a ruthless fighting machine.
"This is the friendly Hun from next door," wrote Markus Hesselmann in Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. "It's about German front line soldiers not obeying orders and making peace by leaving their weapons behind."
Jürgs compares the actions of German soldiers in 1914 to those of the country's peace movement opposing the Iraq war. "There were not merely one or two incidents of peace on the Western Front in 1914," he writes. "In reality there was a spontaneous peace movement which ran for hundreds of kilometres and thousands took part," he adds.
His book reveals that German troops began preparing for the truce well in advance. Several days before Christmas, soldiers from a Saxon regiment lobbed a carefully packaged chocolate cake across no- man's land into the British trenches. A message was attached asking whether holding a one-hour ceasefire that evening might be possible, so that the troops could celebrate their captain's birthday.
According to Jürgs, the British stopped firing, stood on their trench parapets and applauded as a German band struck up a rendition of "Happy Birthday". Jürgs quotes from the diary of Kurt Zehmisch, a German lieutenant who describes how thousands of German Christmas trees delivered to the front line helped to bring about the ceasefire. "It was pure illumination - along the trench parapets there were Christmas trees lit up by burning candles," Zehmisch writes. "The British responded by shouting and clapping."
What followed was a bout of unprecedented fraternisation between enemy forces that has never been repeated on an equivalent scale: German Fritzes bearing candles, chunks of cake and cigars met British Tommies carrying cigarettes and Christmas pudding in no-man's land. The two sides exchanged presents, sang songs and played football, using tin cans for makeshift balls and spiked Pickelhaube helmets for goalposts.
Jürgs says the Germans were able to take the initiative because many had been in Britain as "guest workers" before the war and, unlike most of the British, had a command of the enemy's language.
The truce collapsed shortly after Christmas 1914 when news of the ceasefire reached the horrified high commands and strict military discipline was reinforced. Jürgs writes that in one area, Ploegsteert forest in Belgium, the ceasefire continued until the end of February 1915.
----
Editorial: The Onion says it best
An editorial
December 24, 2003
Capital Times, Madison WI
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/63868.php
Our friends at The Onion, which is supposedly a satirical newspaper, have a penchant for making up headlines - and stories - that are more accurate than much of what appears in most of the news media. So it is with the issue released last week, with the headline above the weekly newspaper's top story reading, "Christmas Brought to Iraq by Force." The ensuing story, on "Operation Desert Santa," reports that despite the best efforts of the U.S. invasion force, "Iraqis report that they are unable to get into the Christmas spirit."
The story goes on to quote 34-year-old Baghdad mechanic Hassan al Ajili as asking, while standing in line for a mandatory visit to Santa, "Why am I supposed to feel joy for the world? My country is still at war. I need an American identification card to get anywhere in my own city. Now, for some reason, men with machine guns have placed two rows of jingling antlered pigs on our roof. This is insane."
What's really insane is that only because it appears in The Onion would most readers question the headline or the validity of the article that follows. The invasion of Iraq in March and the occupation that continues to this day both lend themselves to parody. The problem is that, long after the parodies are done, the occupation will continue.
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