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NUCLEAR
Experts question safety of Yucca casks
Beckett says no more nuclear power needed yet
Bush Aides Divided on Confronting Iran Over A-Bomb
Iran threatens to pull out of nuclear treaty
Proliferation treaty
Iran shows off ballistic missiles with anti-US, Israeli slogans
Eyeing Iran Reactors, Israel Seeks U.S. Bunker Bombs
Residents' Lawsuit to Block Nuclear Fuel-Reprocessing Plant
First Plutonium Shipment Leaves Charleston for France
Nonproliferation and disarmament go hand in hand
IAEA wants tighter policing
Kelly calls for wiring inspection at Indian Point 2
Expert Faults Court's Ruling About Waste From Reactors
MILITARY
ON AIR: Former rebel Kenneth Banya during the program 'Come Back Home.'
US to sell Israel 5000 smart bombs
Russia to give Czech Republic military helicopters to pay off debt
Troops seize seven missiles in S Waziristan
Majority wants Iraq pullout deadline - poll
Britain promises to safeguard Japanese troops in Iraq
Marines Bide Their Time In Insurgent-Held Fallujah
Beheading of Second American Is Reported by Islamist Web Site
Sobbing hostage killed by Zarqawi
Iraq: How bad can things get?
How Israeli security tries to win friends and influence people
Palestinian militant gets vote, Israel cries foul
Judge Rules Spy Charges May Proceed
Senate Panel Approves Goss as New C.I.A. Chief
Goss Gets Senate Panel's OK for CIA Post
Analysis President's Trip to Address U.N. Relies Heavily on Visuals
Annan Faults Both Sides of Terror War for Eroding Rule of Law
In Address at U.N., Bush Defends Decision to Invade Iraq
Annan Repeats Misgivings About Legality of Iraq War
Bush addresses U.N.
Israel - a stormy relationship: Passport to a world of trouble
Goff likely to face Israel at UN debate
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Charges for Detainees Ordered
New Headquarters Will Guard Capital Area
U.S. House Votes to Allow Family Visits to Cuba, Rebuffing Bush
Report Studies Plight of Indian Prisons
The policy roots of Iraqi prison abuse
POLITICS
Why Americans back the war
Iraqis Warn U.S. Plan to Divert Billions to Security
Ethics Panel Hung Up on DeLay Complaint
Swift Boat Swill
Rather Admits 'Mistake in Judgment'
Killing the Messenger: Who Gave Rather the Memos and Why
What if Iraq Media Coverage was Scrutinized Like CBS Documents?
Questions Surround Man Who Provided Documents
Rather Admits 'Mistake in Judgment'
Kerry Sharpens Attack on Bush and Iraq War
Kerry and Bush Square Off on Iraq
Military moms speak out against Bush, war in Iraq
OTHER
Treaty Curbs Trade in More Dangerous Chemicals
ACTIVISTS
Protesters block Manipur highways
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Experts question safety of Yucca casks
Water penetration, earthquakes among concerns
By Stephen Curran
LAS VEGAS SUN
September 21, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2004/sep/21/517545402.html
A metal drip shield that would keep water from penetrating casks holding high-level nuclear waste at a proposed dump at Yucca Mountain may be less effective than originally thought, members of an independent oversight board said Monday.
Robert Andrews, a geologist for Bechtel SAIC, the project's main contractor, said scientists are still developing models to determine if water seeping into the mountain could penetrate the alloy shield roughly 980 feet below the surface.
He was one of several scientists with both the Energy Department and private contractors who addressed the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board on Monday.
But even if water does go through cracks in the protective layer, researchers still do not know if it could corrode the cylindrical casks that would store the 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in the mountain, Andrews said.
"The fact that it could crack is well known, but what happens when water comes in contact (with the cask) needs to be assessed," Andrews told the board, which met Monday at the Atrium Suites hotel on Paradise Road.
The scientists' concerns came as scientists continue a study on possible risks stemming from the proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The study is part of the long-term license application process, which Energy Department officials say could lead to nuclear waste being shipped to Yucca as soon as 2010.
The department has until the end of the year to submit the license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A team of geologists is studying whether water flowing on the surface could alter the chemistry of the rocks, which could cause the barrier to degrade. If enough water penetrates the shield, scientists worry that radioactive nucleotides could seep into the water table another 980 feet below the casks, he said.
Six teams with three geologists each are developing a plan to study the risks that could arise from a possible earthquake near the proposed repository, said Jon Ake, a geophysicist from the federal Bureau of Reclamation.
A key part of the plan, he said, is incorporating possible but unlikely scenarios about the potential endangerment of those living near the proposed dump. Little Skull Mountain not far from Yucca suffered a 5.6 magnitude earthquake in 1992 and the area was shaken by a 4.4 magnitude quake in June.
Ake and others are currently evaluating faults near the proposed dump to see how dangerous a similar quake would be for the nuclear waste, he said.
"We need to find a way to incorporate the unknown," Ake said.
The meeting came a day after a high-level Energy Department official said the government will likely miss the Dec. 30 deadline to submit the application.
Bechtel had a financial stake in finishing the application on time, as the DOE has promised to pay the contractor another $15 million if scientists for the company finish the application by Nov. 30. The company could also get another $22 million if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts the item on its docket by March.
The project has been on shaky ground since a federal court this summer ruled planners' 10,000-year radiation standard falls short of a stricter standard mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The next step for the Energy Department is to submit the application, which it plans to do by the end of the year.
If approved, a 319-mile railroad would carry the waste through much of rural Lincoln County to the nuclear waste dump.
-------- britain
Beckett says no more nuclear power needed yet
REUTERS UK:
September 21, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27230/story.htm
LONDON - The government says it has no need to increase its nuclear power capacity for at least 10 or 15 years but future expansion of nuclear power cannot be ruled out altogether.
Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Margaret Beckett said the aim of reducing carbon emissions did not rely on more nuclear capacity but could be achieved via renewable energy sources.
"We certainly do not need extra nuclear power in anything like a 10- or 15-year cycle," Beckett told ITV television on Sunday.
"We have not shut the door on nuclear power. We have said that as we get to the stage where we have used up the options that we can now see, we will have to reassess where we are."
Britain relies on nuclear power for around a quarter of its electricity generation, but has not built any new plants for over a decade and most of its reactors are scheduled to close over the next 20 years.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has in the past said he will not rule out another generation of nuclear power stations, but his government is more eager to concentrate on renewable energy sources to cut carbon emissions.
While nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide emissions, Beckett said their value as sustainable energy sources was limited because of the difficult and lengthy decommissioning process.
"It is really hard to argue - when sustainable development means not leaving legacies for future generations to deal with - that nuclear power is a sustainable form of energy use," Beckett said.
Asked when the government was likely to make a definitive decision on whether nuclear power capacity should be increased, Beckett said: "We certainly don't see any need to come to a view on that probably in the run up to, say, 2015 or 2020."
The government has promised that 10 percent of the country's electricity will come from green sources by 2010, of which between 7 and 8 percent will come from wind power.
-------- iran
DIPLOMATIC MEMO
Bush Aides Divided on Confronting Iran Over A-Bomb
September 21, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/politics/21diplo.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - At a time when the violent insurgency in Iraq is vexing the Bush administration and stirring worries among Americans, events may be propelling the United States into yet another confrontation, this time with Iran. The issues have an almost eerie familiarity, evoking the warnings and threats that led to the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and stirring an equally passionate debate.
Like Iraq in its final years under Saddam Hussein, Iran is believed by experts to be on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb. In Iraq, that proved to be untrue, though this time the consensus is much stronger among Western experts.
In addition, as with Iraq, administration officials have said recently that Iran is supporting insurgencies and terrorism in other countries. Recently, top administration officials have accused the Tehran government of backing the rebels in Iraq, something that officials fear could increase if Iran is pressed too hard on its nuclear program.
A parallel concern in Washington is Iran's continued backing of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group that the administration and the Israeli government say is channeling aid to groups attacking Israeli civilians. Israel also warns that Iran's nuclear program will reach a "point of no return" next year, after which it will be able to make a bomb without any outside assistance.
The Bush administration has yet to forge a clear strategy on how to deal with Iran, partly because of a lack of attractive options and partly because there is a debate under way between hard-liners and advocates of diplomatic engagement. But in another similarity with the Iraq situation before the war, Washington is in considerable disagreement with key allies over how to handle the threat.
Britain, France and Germany say Iran's nuclear program is unacceptable, but they also warn that a confrontation could backfire and that incentives as well as punishments need to be presented to Tehran. Threatening sanctions - a cutoff in oil purchases, for example - is not viewed as credible or likely to get much support, they say.
European views cannot be dismissed, especially after the discord over Iraq, administration officials say. Last weekend, under European pressure, the United States agreed to defer its demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately refer Iran's noncooperation on nuclear issues to the United Nations Security Council, where sanctions might be considered.Instead, Iran was given two more months to show that it was cooperating.
Still, even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the leading advocate of diplomacy in Mr. Bush's inner circle, cites a gathering threat from Iran.
"Diplomacy does not mean failure to look in the lion's mouth," Mr. Powell said in a recent interview. "Diplomacy doesn't mean pretending something isn't there when it's there. The Iranians have a nuclear weapons program, and I keep telling everybody it is the responsibility of the international community to apply all the pressure we can."
With Iran policy in a state of flux, there is a drive among conservatives to reach out to Iranian dissidents and exiles seeking to overthrow the government, much as efforts were made with Iraqis in the 1990's. Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, is sponsoring legislation favoring "regime change," with what some say is the tacit backing of administration conservatives.
Last year, when it was trying to reach out to Tehran for cooperation on Iraq, the administration stated that it did not support regime change in Iran, though President Bush also spoke out in favor of greater democracy there.
Administration officials say that there was an internal debate last year but that the idea of giving aid to dissidents who might try to overthrow the Iranian government had been dropped for lack of any credible groups to support.
Yet the cause of regime change in Iran is expected to be revived if President Bush is re-elected, administration officials say. Leading the charge is John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for nonproliferation, who gave a speech last month saying that Iran's conduct did not "bode well for the success of a negotiated approach to dealing with this issue." A colleague called him "the self-appointed tip of the spear" in the discussions.
In an interview, Mr. Bolton declined to comment on whether regime change was appropriate for Iran, other than to say that even without outside support, widespread unhappiness among Iranians over a lagging economy and stifling religious rule could bring a "revolution from below."
"When the old regime in South Africa collapsed they got rid of their nukes," Mr. Bolton said. "When Ukraine became independent they did the same. At a time of profound dislocation, it is not inconceivable that a new government in Tehran might be persuaded to drop its nuclear program."
On the other side of the spectrum, some at the State Department say no solution is possible without a discussion of benefits to the Tehran government if it changes its behavior, or without progress in the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.
Some experts call for a "grand bargain" that would involve an across-the-board agreement in which changed behavior by Tehran on all fronts would be negotiated in return for normal relations and investment from the West.
Still other experts say that such an approach is overly ambitious and that "selective engagement" on a few crucial issues, including steps to stabilize Iraq, should be tried first. That view is advocated by a Council on Foreign Relations committee led by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, a director of central intelligence in the early 1990's.
In three and a half years the Bush administration has tried engaging Iran, but little has come of its efforts. Diplomatic contacts at low levels were suspended in May of last year. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is charging the Bush administration with ignoring the Iran problem. Mr. Kerry said last month that the United States "must work with our allies to end Iran's nuclear weapons program and be ready to work with them to implement a range of tougher measures if needed."
For all the talk about new policies, few administration officials or policy makers and experts outside the administration think that any new approach will be unveiled soon.
A final unpredictable factor in the discussions involves Israel, which some intelligence experts say would be willing to strike one or more Iranian weapons sites, as it did with the French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.
Israeli and American officials insist that the idea of a strike against Iranian sites is impractical. Nevertheless, some diplomats were rattled by a recent warning from Iran's defense minister, Vice Adm. Ali Shamkhani, that Iran would retaliate if Israel tried any such thing.
"I'm frankly very pessimistic about the future," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy. "We have to offer a carrot as well as brandishing a stick. But this administration is too busy and they don't want to think about it. I don't think very much is going to happen until after the American election."
----
Iran threatens to pull out of nuclear treaty
International security experts worry situation could end in confrontation.
Michael Hopkin,
Nature
21 September 2004: This article was amended as a quote from Wyn Bowen was initially misreported.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/040920-3.html
Iran has reacted angrily to demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to end nuclear activities that could be used to develop weapons. The 35-nation agency passed a resolution on 18 September giving Iran until November to stop enriching and reprocessing nuclear fuel.
Iran's nuclear spokesman, Hassan Rowhani, responded on 19 September by saying that Iran will pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if it is reported to the United Nations Security Council, as the United States has demanded. The IAEA will decide at its next meeting, on 25 November, what action to take if Iran does not meet its requests.
The Iranian government insists that its uranium-enrichment programme is for energy production only. But experts point out that the same processes that convert raw uranium ore into reactor fuel can also be used to make far more potent, weapons-grade uranium (see "Nuclear power play").
"Iran just has to give up its enriching and reprocessing activities." - David Albright Institute for Science and International Security The IAEA also fears that Iran may be planning to convert spent nuclear fuel from reactors into weapons-grade plutonium. Analysts report that Iran is between three and five years away from building a 'heavy water' nuclear power station - a design that makes plutonium easier to produce.
"Iran just has to give up its enriching and reprocessing activities," says David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a non-profit research group in Washington DC. "The ball's in their court."
Dangerous potential
Even if Iran is not actively seeking to manufacture weapons, its facilities will give it that option in the future, says Albright. What's more, Iran's nuclear-energy programme was set up at the height of its conflict with Iraq in the 1980s, leading security experts to suspect that it was conceived as a front for weapons production.
"Most people believe there was an active weapons programme in the past," Albright told news@nature.com. "We assume they have knowledge of bomb production." Security analysts have obtained satellite images of the Parchin military complex near Tehran, which they believe could be used to detonate test weapons.
Meanwhile, Iran claims that nuclear facilities such as the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which is nearing completion, will only handle 'low-enriched' uranium - suitable for nuclear power but not for weapons. But the IAEA is worried that Iran's plan to enrich some 40 tonnes of uranium could include the production of highly enriched uranium. Only around 15 kilograms of this material is required to make a simple bomb.
"Iran says this is part of its energy policy, but I think it's ultimately got a military purpose." - Wyn Bowen, King's College London "Iran says this is part of its energy policy, but I think it's ultimately got a military purpose," says Wyn Bowen, a weapons expert at King's College London. "The size of the enrichment programme is pretty damning."
It's all the more suspicious, given that Iran has around 7% of the world's crude oil reserves. "No country has ever had such an ambitious nuclear-power programme when it has such large fossil-fuel reserves," he says.
Such suspicions have put Iran on a collision course with countries that may consider military action if it does not comply with the IAEA's resolution. "It's very troubling," says Albright. "I think there will be a confrontation."
----
Proliferation treaty
Of course Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons - and has the legal entitlement to do so
George Monbiot
Tuesday September 21, 2004
The Guardian
Poor Mr Baradei, His mission is a parody: He tells the states (with some aplomb) They can and cannot have the bomb
Here is the world's most nonsensical job description. Your duty is to work tirelessly to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And to work tirelessly to encourage the proliferation of the means of building them. This is the task of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei.
He is an able diplomat, and as bold as his predecessor, Hans Blix, in standing up to the global powers. But what he is obliged to take away with one hand, he is obliged to give with the other. His message to the non-nuclear powers is this: you are not allowed to develop the bomb, but we will give you the materials and expertise with which you can build one. It is this mortal contradiction which permitted the government of Iran this weekend to tell him to bog off.
His agency's motto - "Atoms for Peace" - wasn't always a lie. In 1953, when Eisenhower founded it with his famous speech to the United Nations, people really seemed to believe that nuclear fission could solve the world's problems. An article in the Herald Tribune, for example, promised that atomic power would create "an earthly paradise... Our automobiles eventually will have atomic energy units built into them at the factory so that we will never have to refuel them... In a relatively short time we will cease to mine coal."
Eisenhower seemed convinced that the nuclear sword could be beaten into the nuclear ploughshare. "It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace." The nuclear powers, he said, "should... make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials" which should then be given to "the power-starved areas of the world", "to provide abundant electrical energy". This would give them, he argued, the necessary incentive to forswear the use of nuclear weapons.
The IAEA, its statute says, should assist "the supplying of materials, equipment, or facilities" to non-nuclear states. It should train nuclear scientists and "foster the exchange of scientific and technical information". Its mission, in other words, is to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, while spreading nuclear technology to as many countries as possible. It is also responsible for enforcing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which has the same dual purpose.
There might have been a case, while Eisenhower's dream could still be dreamt. But to persist with this programme long after it became clear that it caused proliferation, not containment, suggests that the global powers are living in a world of make-believe. The International Atomic Energy Agency has put nuclear technology "into the hands of those who will know how to strip its civilian casing and adapt it to the arts of war".
It's not difficult. Every state which has sought to develop a nuclear weapons programme over the past 30 years - Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iraq - has done so by diverting resources from its nuclear power programme. In some cases they built their weapons with the direct assistance of Atoms for Peace.
India developed its bomb with the help of fissionable material and expertise from Canada, the US, Germany, France, Norway and the UK. Pakistan was able to answer the threat with the help of Canada, the US, Germany, France, Belgium, China and the UK. In the name of peace, we equipped these nations for total war.
Now there are about 20 countries which, as a result of foreign help for their civilian nuclear programmes, could, if they choose, become nuclear weapons states within months. When Russia shipped uranium and the technologies required to build a bomb to Iran, it not only had a right to do so: under the non-proliferation treaty, it had a duty to do so.
It's not yet clear whether Iran has stepped over the brink. It is plainly enriching uranium and producing heavy water, which could enable it to build both uranium- and plutonium-based bombs. But both processes are also legitimate means of developing materials for nuclear power generation. To enrich uranium from power-grade to bomb-grade you need only pass it through the centrifuges a few more times. The non-proliferation treaty gives Iran both the right to own the materials and the cover it requires to use them for a weapons programme. If you want to build a bomb, you simply sign the treaties, join the IAEA, then use your entitlements to do what they were designed to prevent.
Iran certainly has plenty of motives for seeking to become a nuclear power. Israel has enough nuclear weapons to wipe it off the map. Sheltered by the US, it has no incentive to dismantle them and sign the non-proliferation treaty. Both the US and the UK have abandoned their own obligations to disarm, and appear to be contemplating a new generation of nuclear weapons. Both governments have also suggested that they would be prepared to use them pre-emptively. Iran is surrounded by American military bases, and is one of the two surviving members of the axis of evil. The other one, North Korea, has been threatening its neighbours with impunity. Why? Because it has the bomb. If Iran is not developing a nuclear weapons programme, it hasn't understood the drift of global politics.
But what can El Baradei do? He can beg Iran to stop developing enriched uranium, but the treaty he is supposed to be enforcing gives him no authority to do so: the government has pointed out that it's legally entitled to pursue all the processes he fears. This is why he's seeking to persuade it to stick to "voluntary agreements".
I hope I don't need to explain how dangerous all this is. The official nuclear powers have junked the non-proliferation treaty, while the non-nuclear powers are using it to develop their own programmes. If Hizbullah clobbers Israel, Israel might turn on Iran, and the Middle East could go up in nuclear dust, rapidly followed by everyone else who has decided to join the second nuclear arms race. And the man charged with preventing this from happening is still facilitating it.
The obvious conclusion is that you can't phase out nuclear weapons without phasing out nuclear power. Now that the old treaty has become worse than useless, now that the promise of an earthly paradise of free power and electricity too cheap to meter has been shown to be false, isn't it time for a new nuclear treaty, based not on Eisenhower's chiliastic fantasy but on grim global realities? Isn't it time for Mr Baradei to stop destroying the world in order to save it?
----
Iran shows off ballistic missiles with anti-US, Israeli slogans
TEHRAN (AFP)
Sep 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040921073257.sj5m1ju5.html
Iran showed off its range of ballistic missiles at an annual military parade on Tuesday, with the rockets draped in banners vowing to "crush America" and "wipe Israel off the map".
A banner stating "Israel must be wiped off the map" was draped on the side of a Shahab-2 missile, while a banner saying "We will crush America under our feet" was on the side of a trailer carrying the latest Shahab-3 missile.
The parade marks the beginning of "Sacred Defence Week", an event commemorating Iraq's 1980 attack on Iran and the outset of the bloody eight-year war.
"The Shahab-3 missiles, with different ranges, enables us to destroy the most distant targets," said an official commentary accompanying the parade, which was carried live on state television.
"These missiles enable us to destroy the enemy with missile strikes," the commentary said, without giving any specific details on the range of the missiles.
The Shahab-3 is Iran's most advanced missile, and is touted as being capable of hitting arch-enemy Israel.
-------- israel
Eyeing Iran Reactors, Israel Seeks U.S. Bunker Bombs
Reuters
by Dan Williams
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZDU4H5EZDH5AWCRBAEO CFEY?type=topNews&storyID=6290467§ion=news
Photo: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/images/0921-01.jpg
JERUSALEM - The United States plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 "bunker busters" able to penetrate Iran's underground nuclear facilities, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.
The Haaretz newspaper quoted a Pentagon report as saying the planned procurement sought "to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests."
The U.S. embassy in Israel had no comment, referring queries to Washington. Israel's Defense Ministry also declined comment.
But a senior Israeli security source who confirmed the Haaretz story told Reuters: "This is not the sort of ordnance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran, or possibly Syria."
Haaretz quoted Israeli government sources as saying the sale, including 4,500 other guided munitions, was not expected to go through until after the U.S. elections in November. Earlier this month, Haaretz said Israel sought to obtain the U.S.-made, one-ton "bunker buster" bombs for a possible future strike against arch-foe Iran's atomic development program, which the Jewish state considers a strategic threat.
"This relationship has a long history. The United States has given Israel more advanced weapons than this," a spokesman for Iran's Defense Ministry said.
"This could be psychological warfare to test us," he added.
Tehran denies hostile designs, saying its nuclear program has peaceful purposes only. This week, it rejected international calls to comply with a U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency demand that it halt all uranium-enrichment activities.
Among the nuclear facilities that Iran has declared are uranium mines near the city of Yazd, and a uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz incorporating large underground buildings that could accommodate thousands of gas centrifuges.
Western diplomats accuse Iran of having several undeclared facilities close to Tehran thought to be related to uranium enrichment, a process the United States and some other countries believe Tehran will use to produce fissile material for weapons.
The exiled Iranian opposition group known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says Iran is constructing numerous secret facilities under its Defense Ministry.
Known by the military designations GBU-27 or GBU-28, "bunker busters" are guided by lasers or satellites and can penetrate up to 30 feet of earth and concrete. Israel may already have some of the bombs for its U.S.-supplied F-15 fighter jets.
"As they are part of the weapon set for the F-15, I would assume them to be in place," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. He said the bombs proved effective in the 1991 Gulf war and 1990s NATO strikes on Serbian forces.
Israel, which is widely assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed nation, wants to stop Iran going atomic, but officials say diplomatic pressure on Tehran is the best method.
Many believe a military strike, especially by Israel, could kill off any chance of a diplomatic resolution or efforts by Iranian opposition groups to achieve internal reform.
"I think (military action) should be a last, last, last resort. Unlike Iraq and North Korea, there is at least some chance of bringing about an undermining of the Velayat-e Faqih's authority," former CIA director R. James Woolsey told Reuters this month, referring to Iran's ruling Islamic clerics.
Convinced Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, Israel bombed Iraq's Osiraq reactor in 1981. While the move drew international censure, eventually many U.S. experts saw it as an important blow to Saddam's strategic weapons capabilities.
"The response of the United States was, unfortunately, negative with respect to Osiraq," Woolsey said. "The Israelis were right and everybody else was wrong, including us, in 1981."
The Osiraq strike did not stop Saddam's quest for the bomb. Instead, Iraq went underground and worked in secret until the program was uncovered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 1991.
-------- japan
Residents' Lawsuit to Block Nuclear Fuel-Reprocessing Plant Reviewed by Japanese Court
September 21, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=58
TOKYO - An appeals court recently began reviewing a lawsuit filed by residents in northern Japan who are opposed to a government-backed program to reprocess radioactive waste at a plant nearby, a lawyer said.
The residents sued the Japanese government in early 2002 to stop Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. from operating its plant in Rokkasho village in northern Aomori prefecture (state). But the Aomori District Court quickly dismissed the case, and residents appealed.
Koji Asaishi, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said the Sendai High Court began hearing residents claims that the plant's opening and all uranium experiments there scheduled for the coming months should be blocked.
The plant is at the center of Japan's hopes of using an experimental reprocessed nuclear fuel - known as mixed oxide, or MOX - in nuclear reactors as a way of boosting the nation's energy self-sufficiency. The plant's opening, now scheduled for 2006, is years behind schedule following a radioactive water leak there in 2002 and protests from local residents and officials.
Residents say reprocessing the waste into fuel is too costly and have demanded that the government publicly disclose its cost analysis, Asaishi said.
They also say the possibility of an accident involving U.S. military planes stationed nearby risks releasing radioactive material into the air, he said.
Japan's 52 nuclear plants account for nearly 35 percent of its energy supply.
The government's energy policy calls for building 11 new plants by 2010 and converting as many as 18 electricity-generating reactors to use MOX as a transition to more advanced fast-breeder reactors, which run on plutonium and can also generate extra plutonium fuel.
All of Japan's MOX would be made from spent fuel rods at the Rokkasho plant and shipped to domestic plants.
Before the plant opens, Japan Nuclear Fuel plans to run experiments to enrich uranium, a step in the process of making MOX, in the coming months.
Japan Nuclear Fuel officials couldn't be reached for comment.
The appeals hearing follows recent setbacks for the nation's nuclear program, which has been plagued by safety violations, reactor malfunctions, and accidents.
On Aug. 9, a nonradioactive steam leak killed five people and injured six others in Japan's worst-ever nuclear-plant accident, at a facility in Mihama, west of Tokyo.
In July, Japanese officials admitted that they hid a government-commissioned study conducted in 1994 showing that reprocessing radioactive waste into MOX would cost twice as much as burying it at a disposal site.
-------- terrorism
First Plutonium Shipment Leaves Charleston for France
September 21, 2004
CHARLESTON, South Carolina, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-21-09.asp#anchor2
The first shipment of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium bound for France to be reprocessed left the Port of Charleston, in South Carolina on Monday under military escort.
An escort of five inflatables met the two vessels as they entered the bay at 1 am Monday, according to Greenpeace International observers. Closer to the city, four police boats and two helicopters joined the escort.
Police closed down access points to the Cooper River Naval Weapons Station where the plutonium was loaded onto the two UK-flagged commercial nuclear ships that will transport it to France.
Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey and others have objected to the shipment, raising safety issues, particularly the risk of terrorist attack.
Pamela Turner Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs in a letter to the congressman on September 8 admitted that no "formal threat assessment" had been prepared on the shipment but that "a field intelligence report" on "environmental activist groups and their potential to impact this shipment" had been prepared by the Coast Guard.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups opposed to plutonium shipments in general and to this one in particular say that they are not the security issue, instead the plutonium shipment itself is a security risk.
"This shipment sends the strongest signal that the U.S. holds little regard for global efforts to keep nuclear weapons materials out of commerce," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International.
"It is the height of arrogance to conduct a shipment like this while demanding other nations refrain from proliferating nuclear weapons materials and technologies," he said.
Recently a new organisation, Citizens Against Plutonium (CAP), was formed to express concern felt by many in Charleston about the shipment and the refusal of the Department of Energy to prepare an Environmental Impact Assessment on it.
"How sensible is it to sail a ship carrying plutonium round the world at a time when world security is volatile? Whenever such a deadly substance is moved, there will be a risk of accidents or terrorist attacks. In the event of an incident, plutonium could be dispersed into the ocean, poisoning people and the marine environment on which we depend," said local Charleston resident Merrill Chapman of Citizens Against Plutonium.
Upon arrival in Cherbourg, France, the plutonium will be trucked over 660 miles to a closed plutonium fuel fabrication facility in Cadarache, in the south of France. This is the same facility, operated by the state-owned nuclear company Areva/Cogema, where a nuclear accident involving plutonium occurred on September 6, where two workers were contaminated.
"This transport is part of a misguided plan to put weapons plutonium into commercial use by converting it into MOX fuel for use in nuclear reactors. This is an expensive and dangerous way to dispose of plutonium," said Clements. "All existing plutonium should be secured and mixed with nuclear waste and vitrified in robust containers."
-------- u.n.
Nonproliferation and disarmament go hand in hand
IHT
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/539812.html
Seven foreign ministers speak out Nuclear weapons, a legacy of the cold war, today give rise to dangerous new perspectives. Old and new threats converge, putting at risk the security of us all.
Seven years ago the foreign ministers of our countries - Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden - joined together in a New Agenda Coalition to work toward a security order where nuclear weapons would no longer be given a role. Today, we are more convinced than ever that nuclear disarmament is imperative for international peace and security.
We are faced with the perils of nuclear weapons finding their way into more military arsenals and the risk that these old tools of deterrence might become new tools of terrorists.
Nonproliferation is vital. But it is not sufficient. Nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament are two sides of the same coin and both must be energetically pursued. Otherwise we might soon enter a new nuclear arms race with new types, uses and rationales for such weapons and eventually also more warheads. And the primary tool for controlling nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, risks falling apart, with further proliferation as a consequence.
The nonproliferation treaty cannot be complied with à la carte. It is a legally binding agreement, which relies on a fine balance between the commitments of the five nuclear-weapon states - China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States - and those of the nonnuclear-weapon states. The heart of the treaty is that the latter will not develop nuclear weapons in return for which the nuclear powers will reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons.
In 1995 and 2000 this bargain was further refined. In 1995, the nonnuclear-weapon states agreed to the indefinite extension of the nonproliferation treaty, provided that the nuclear powers pursued nuclear disarmament and that all worked toward the entry into force of the comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty.
In 2000, the nuclear powers made an unequivocal undertaking to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, and all parties adopted a practical plan for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. Since then, however, very little progress has been made.
There are deeply disturbing signs pointing in the opposite direction. Instead of working toward the entry into force of the nuclear test-ban treaty, the United States, which was the first country to sign the treaty, has withdrawn its support. And China delays its ratification process year after year. Instead of eliminating nuclear weapons, some nuclear powers have plans to modernize or develop new kinds of nuclear weapons or new rationales for them.
Some even entertain the notion that nuclear weapons may be used pre-emptively against nonnuclear-weapon states. In Russia, nuclear weapons are increasingly seen as a possible defense against conventional weapons. Instead of destroying their nuclear warheads, the United States and Russia store them.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is an important step in the right direction, but it does not require the destruction of these weapons, does not include tactical nuclear weapons and does not have any verification provisions. The process is neither irreversible, nor transparent.
If the nuclear-weapon states continue to treat nuclear weapons as a security enhancer, there is a real danger that other states will start pondering they should do the same. Recent developments show that this has already happened.
What, then, can be done?
First, all parties must comply with their commitments under the nonproliferation treaty, and the treaty should be made universal. All states should raise the guard against the further spread of nuclear weapons. And the nuclear-weapon states must comply with their commitments and pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith. Any plans to develop new nuclear weapons, new uses, roles or rationalizations for their use, must be shelved immediately.
Second, the entry into force of the nuclear test-ban treaty should be pursued as a matter of urgency.
Third, talks on a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty should start immediately. The treaty would ban the production of key components of nuclear weapons, enriched uranium and plutonium, and form a cornerstone in the nuclear disarmament process.
It would impose restraints on India, Israel and Pakistan, the three states still outside the nonproliferation treaty. Together with the test-ban treaty, it would go a long way to uphold the nonproliferation treaty and strengthen the norm on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament.
The future depends on our actions.
This article was signed by Foreign Ministers Celso Amorim of Brazil; Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit of Egypt; Brian Cowen of Ireland; Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista of Mexico; Phil Goff of New Zealand; Nkosazana Dlimini-Zuma of South Africa; and Laila Freivalds of Sweden.
----
IAEA wants tighter policing
September 21, 2004
By George Jahn
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040920-105550-9429r.htm
VIENNA, Austria - More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programs could retool them to make weapons, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said yesterday amid new U.S. and European demands that Iran give up technology capable of producing such arms.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), suggested in a keynote address to the agency's general conference that it was time to tighten world policing of nuclear activities and to stop relying on information volunteered by countries.
Beyond the declared nuclear arms-holding countries, "some estimates indicate that 40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons," Mr. ElBaradei said. "We are relying primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries, intentions, which ... could ... be subject to rapid change."
His comments appeared prompted by a series of revelations of proliferation or suspected illicit nuclear activities over the past two years.
Libya last year revealed a clandestine nuclear arms program and announced it would scrap it; North Korea is threatening to activate a weapons program; Iran is being investigated for what the United States says is evidence it was trying to make nuclear arms; and South Korea recently said it conducted secret experiments with plutonium and enriched uranium, both possible components of weapons programs.
Mr. ElBaradei linked the need for strengthened controls to concerns about the international nuclear black market, which supplied both Iran and Libya and whose existence was proved last year.
The "relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operate demonstrates clearly the inadequacy" of the present controls on nuclear exports, he said.
Mr. ElBaradei did not name the countries capable of quickly turning peaceful nuclear activities into weapons programs. But more than a dozen European countries with either power-producing nuclear reactors or large-scale research reactors are among them, as well as Canada and countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Most peaceful nuclear programs use enriched uranium - a substance that when processed to levels of enrichment above 90 percent can be used to make nuclear warheads - as a power source. Most countries also could extract plutonium from spent fuel for nuclear weapons use.
Iran's enrichment program has been the focus of increased world concern because of suspicions Tehran may not be telling the truth when it says it is interested in the technology only to generate power.
A resolution passed unanimously Saturday by the IAEA governing board demanded for the first time that Iran freeze all work on uranium enrichment. Suggesting that Iran may have to answer to the U.N. Security Council if it defies the demands, the resolution said the next board meeting in November "will decide whether or not further steps are appropriate" in ensuring Iran complies.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Comment: IP design basis issues could be mirrored at VY. NRC cited Vermont Yankee last summer for repeated cable separation issues and continuing failure to do adequate root cause analysis. In 1997, a team inspection found a few minor cable issues, but then then issues kept emerging and VY kept fixing, right through 2003. For all we know, lack of cable separation contributed to the coolant recirculation pump trip during system blitz that led to the recent transformer oil fire. According to published reports, since 2001, Entergy spent about $200 million chasing design basis issues at Indian Point. According to Entergy VY , Vermont Yankee spent about $20 million since Nixon resigned. Ray Shadis
Kelly calls for wiring inspection at Indian Point 2
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
September 21, 2004
http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/092104/b04w21ipwires.html
U.S. Rep. Sue Kelly has asked federal regulators for a visual inspection of the hundreds of miles of wiring at Indian Point 2 to ensure they are properly installed and will not fail following an accident or attack.
Kelly, R-Katonah, wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to fully examine the plant's cable system rather than rely on a recent sample inspection of about 1percent of the thousands of wiring circuits.
"I am very disappointed that, despite repeated requests for a complete walk-down of the plant's cable and raceway system, that this proposal has not yet been supported by the NRC," Kelly wrote in a letter to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz. The cable and raceway are a conduit system.
The letter, dated Sept. 17, was released by Kelly yesterday. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the agency would consider Kelly's request.
But he added that regulators "have confidence that what has been done so far has demonstrated the plant can safely operate."
Sheehan acknowledged violations of wiring rules have been found at the plant, but he said "all of the concerns identified were of very low safety significance and would not defeat a safety system function."
Sheehan said Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns Indian Point 2 and 3 in Buchanan, was spending $42 million on a multi-year project to examine all wiring at Indian Point 2, and any serious problems should be uncovered during that process.
A similar project was conducted at Indian Point 3 in the 1980s when the plant was owned by the New York Power Authority.
Entergy officials declined to comment on the issue yesterday.
The issue of cable integrity has been a critical one for the NRC since a 1975 fire in a room at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Tennessee disabled all of the reactor's main and backup safety systems.
Since then, the NRC has had a strict cable separation rule requiring individual conduits, or raceways, for each circuit.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former consultant on the wiring issue at Indian Point 3, said Indian Point 2 shouldn't be allowed to operate with a problem that has existed for more than a decade.
"What troubles me is that unless you have some assurance that the few circuits you looked at were the worst, then you really can't say that there are no other problems out there," he said.
The NRC's sample inspection at Indian Point 2 was prompted by a formal complaint filed in March by William Lemanski, Entergy's former engineering manager.
He claimed that thousands of circuits at Indian Point 2 were in violation of the cable separation rule and that the plant's electronic tracking system was not reliable.
Lemanski, now a city councilman and police commissioner in Tuxedo, N.Y., said yesterday that the NRC's sample examination was not sufficient enough to detect problems.
"I think they gave Entergy a free pass concerning the magnitude of the issues," Lemanski said. "I am not at all satisfied with the results."
Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566. Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566.
-------- us nuc waste
Expert Faults Court's Ruling About Waste From Reactors
September 21, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/politics/21yucca.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The court that derailed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in July, concluding that the government had not set strict enough rules on radioactivity leakage, based its decision on an incomplete reading of a National Academy of Sciences study, the chairman of the committee that wrote the study said on Monday.
The judges, on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, decided that Congress had intended the rules governing the repository to be in accordance with a 1995 National Academy of Sciences study that said they should cover the period of peak risk, which would be hundreds of thousands of years. The Environmental Protection Agency had written a rule that the repository must meet release standards for only 10,000 years to be licensed.
The court told the agency to rewrite the rules. The E.P.A. has not decided what to do and has asked Congress to override the ruling.
But at a meeting of a National Academy of Sciences committee on radioactive waste, Robert W. Fri, who led the group that wrote the 1995 study, said on Monday that it had based its exposure estimates on the probability that people would live in the places most polluted by the repository, while the E.P.A. had made "extreme assumptions" that people were certain to live there, and to draw polluted water from wells for drinking and for irrigating the crops they would eat.
"That is a place where the committee specifically decided they did not want to be," Mr. Fri said.
The fate of the repository is now before a Congress that is unlikely to take up the issue before the November elections, and depending on their results, may not do so afterward, participants at Monday's meeting of the Academy's Board on Radioactive Waste Management said.
The discussion at the meeting reflected the repository's highly uncertain future.
Mr. Fri said that concluding that Yucca Mountain could not meet federal standards would not make the waste disappear, and that if placing the waste there was better than leaving it where it is now, perhaps the repository should be built anyway.
But Judy Triechel, an official with the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, a state agency, said: "Supposing the best solution isn't good enough, that's easy. The answer is, You're not ready yet. If Yucca Mountain isn't good enough, we shouldn't proceed with it."
Referring to the debate over guarding against leakage for 10,000 years versus several hundred thousand years, Ms. Triechel said, "There cannot be an expiration date on safety."
Some experts at the meeting were pessimistic that Congress would grant the Energy Department's request to change the rules.
"The appearance of such an action to the lay public might well be that Congress, having realized that Yucca Mountain could not meet the existing standards, was now trying to dumb down the standards to the point where Yucca could pass the test," said Sam Fowler, the chief counsel for the Democratic minority on the House Energy Committee.
Others said that question would be much clearer after Election Day.
Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, has pledged not to proceed with Yucca Mountain. But even if the White House does not change hands, a Congress that is only slightly less sympathetic to the project than the current one would probably derail the project.
The radioactive waste board also heard an extended discussion of whether the Energy Department should be allowed to define some nuclear waste created in weapons production in a way that would allow it to be covered with cement and left in place, instead of sealed in glass and prepared for burial. The department is seeking to define some of the waste as "waste incidental to reprocessing," meaning it could be left behind.
Environmentalists say the material is high-level waste that under the law that established the Yucca Mountain program must be readied for "deep geologic disposal."
In July 2003, in a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a federal district judge in Idaho ruled that the department could not change its responsibilities by the way it defined the waste. The department appealed, and an appeals court will hear arguments next month in Seattle.
But as with Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department has also turned to Congress to ask to have the decision overridden. The Senate, in a tie vote, agreed to leave a provision in a military appropriations bill that would overturn the decision for wastes in South Carolina, and the House Armed Services Committee has approved the idea as well.
Geoffrey Fettus, the lawyer at the environmental group that brought the suit, complained on Monday that he had been unable to obtain even a copy of the House legislation.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
ON AIR: Former rebel Kenneth Banya during the program 'Come Back Home.'
The Christian Science Monitor.
JAMES PALMER
September 21, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0921/p07s01-woaf.html
The power of radio helps to end Uganda's long war By James Palmer | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor GULU, UGANDA - When Kenneth Banya heard the voices of his former rebel colleagues on the radio calling for an end to Uganda's 18-year civil war, he knew it was time to surrender. "I wanted to go straight home the first time I heard them," Mr. Banya, a former commander in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), says in a cramped radio studio before going on the air to persuade other members of the rebel group to lay down their arms. "I knew it was safe after hearing them."
Banya is one of hundreds of LRA rebels to return to Ugandan society since 102 Mega FM in Gulu launched "Come Back Home" last December. The show, known as "Dwog Paco" in the local Luo language, features former LRA combatants who assure current fighters that they will not be killed if they surrender to the Ugandan Army, and will receive forgiveness from their communities. The show is the latest example in Africa of how amnesty programs, joined by the power of radio, can help bring an end to some of the continent's most intractable problems. They have helped most recently in Congo, Ivory Coast, and Liberia, while playing a vital role in a recent peace accord that promises to end the 21-year civil conflict in Sudan.
Uganda passed an amnesty law at the beginning of 2000, pardoning all surrendering opposition forces. So far more than 13,500 former combatants from 22 different rebel groups in Uganda have received amnesty protection. But many former rebel fighters say they believed the amnesty law was government propaganda, and they had no means to independently verify its veracity until they heard over the radio waves the testimony of those who were pardoned.
Daniel Hillary Lagen, another LRA officer who recently surrendered, says that high-ranking rebel leaders repeatedly warned that the amnesty is a government ploy to lure them into the open. "I was told that I would be shot or poisoned by the Army if I turned myself in," Mr. Lagen says. "I was misinformed, but I listened to the radio, and that's why I'm here."
Radio is a powerful force throughout Africa, the most accessible means of communication across the continent. David Okidi who manages Mega FM says his station enables former LRA members to speak on air three evenings a week.
Joseph Kony, a primary-school dropout claiming to possess spiritual powers, who pledges to overthrow Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government and rule the country according to the Ten Commandments, leads the LRA. The LRA abducts children and forces them to become fighters. A United Nations report says that the LRA has abducted more than 30,000 over the past decade. Some 200,000 people have been killed and 1.6 million have been forced from their homes during the conflict, according to the UN.
Mr. Museveni and his army have failed to militarily defeat the LRA, but they have forced Mr. Kony back to his bases in southern Sudan. The Ugandan military killed 25 rebels on Saturday during a raid near the southern Sudanese town of Pakanyara, 100 miles north of the Ugandan border.
David Acana, a tribal chief, says that the amnesty act coincides with his community's tradition of forgiveness. "We believe it's important for the perpetrator and victim to come together so everyone can live in harmony," Mr. Acana says.
The military has been integrating former rebels into its ranks since the inception of the amnesty law. Still, the majority of returning LRA fighters experience a difficult transition back into society after spending a battered youth enveloped in violence. Lt. Nelson Egwalu, a 25-year-old former LRA commander who was abducted by the rebels when he was 10 years old, spent more than a decade with the LRA before surrendering in 2001, and integrating into the Army's reserve force. "There's nothing else I can do but stay in the military to survive," he says. Mr. Egwalu earns Ugandan shillings, or roughly $35 per month.
Christie Okello says she watched the LRA shoot and kill her husband and her 4-year-old son last February, but she is ready to accept LRA combatants if they peacefully return home. "I would forgive the rebels for everything if they would just stop fighting now," she says.
-------- arms
US to sell Israel 5000 smart bombs
US-made bombs used by Israel have killed several Palestinians
Tuesday 21 September 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8C117F99-C20E-4738-A15B-0BF683A1B21B.htm
The United States will reportedly sell Israel nearly 5000 smart bombs in one of the largest weapons deals between the allies in years.
The deal could face political controversy since Israel has used such bombs against the Palestinians.
In one such instance in July 2002, a one-tonne bomb meant for a senior Palestinian resistance fighter also killed 15 civilians in an attack in the Gaza Strip.
The deal is worth $319 million and was revealed in a Pentagon report made to the US Congress a few weeks ago, Israeli daily Haaretz said on Tuesday.
Funding for the sale will come from US military aid to Israel.
The bombs include airborne versions, guidance units, training bombs and detonators. These bombs are guided by an existing Israeli satellite used by the military.
As part of the deal, Israel will receive 500 one-tonne "bunker-buster" bombs that can destroy 2-m thick concrete walls, 2500 "regular" one-tonne bombs, 1000 half-tonne bombs and 500 quarter-tonne bombs, the daily said.
Tactical interests
The Pentagon wants the deal to maintain Israel's military advantages and ensure US strategic and tactical interests, Haaretz said.
In addition to American bombs, Israel has used US-made F-16 fighter jets to kill several senior Palestinian resistance fighters whom Tel Aviv accused of overseeing attacks in the four years of the ongoing intifada.
The Israeli Defence Force used a one-tonne bomb to kill senior Hamas official Salah Shahada in July 2002, in an assassination that also left 15 Palestinian civilians dead, including children.
Similar ammunition has been used in several other cases of assassinations and attempted assassinations of Palestinian resistance leaders.
--------
Russia to give Czech Republic military helicopters to pay off debt
PRAGUE (AFP)
Sep 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040921163312.9q8vlvw9.html
Russia will provide the Czech Republic with 26 combat helicopters as part payment of Russia's outstanding 19-billion-koruny (604-million-euro, 741-million-dollar) debt to the country, the Czech defence ministry said on Tuesday.
Ministry spokesman Andrej Cirtek said the aircraft -- 16 Mi-171S helicopters and 10 Mi-35 attack helicopters worth a total 184 million dollars (150 million euros) -- would be delivered by the end of 2006.
The Czechs, who are members of NATO, will have to install technical equipment and communication systems in the helicopters.
In March, Prague and Moscow signed an agreement stipulating that around one fifth of Russia's outstanding debt to the Czech Republic could be paid in supplies of nuclear fuel, military equipment and electrical energy destined for re-export over the next two years.
Earlier this year the Czech defence ministry said it would request 29 combat helicopters -- 18 Mi-171s and 11 Mi-35s -- but in the end it signed an agreement for 26.
The military acquired seven Mi-35s, a new version of the Mi-24 helicopter, from Russia last autumn. The Mi-171 is an updated, better-equipped version of the Mi-17.
Inherited from the days of the Soviet Union, the Russian debt to the Czech Republic is part civil and part military. The former is managed by the finance ministry, the latter by the defence ministry.
-------- asia
Troops seize seven missiles in S Waziristan
The News International
By Sailab Mahsud
September 21, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2004-daily/21-09-2004/main/main13.htm
WANA: The Frontier Corps (FC) Camp here was again attacked with a missile while seven other missiles were seized by the troops from Wana and Kaniguram areas in different parts of South Waziristan before being fired.
Eyewitnesses said the missile aimed at the FC Camp in Wana fell near the makeshift bazaar that has sprung up after closure of the main town markets. It didn't explode and was defused by FC jawans. The missile was locally made.
The six missiles were seized by Pakistan Army soldiers from Manzarkhel Zhay near Kaniguram in the Mahsud tribal territory. They were aimed at troops' positions in the Asman Manza area. The local tribesmen informed the soldiers about the missiles.
Meanwhile, an exchange of fire took place for almost eight hours between the militants and the soldiers in the Karwan Manza area. It began at 11 am Monday. There were reports of casualties. Exchange of fire was also reported from the Sam and Srarogha areas.
Heavy rains in Laddah and Makin was the apparent reason for a quiet day in these two towns. Both have often been targeted by militants hiding in the mountains surrounding them. On the other hand, the 19-member jirga of Mahsud tribal and religious leaders had reportedly established its first contact with the militants. The jirga, led by Maulana Merajuddin, MNA, was formed a couple of days ago to make efforts to restore peace and stability in the Mahsud tribal territory. A member of the jirga said the initial talks with some of the militants were encouraging. He said the government would be contacted once the talks with he militants make any headway.
In another development, a group of journalists was leaving for the Mahsud tribal area to try to establish contacts with Abdullah Mahsud, a commander of the militants who claims to be holding a Pakistani soldier, Mohammad Shaban. Mahsud had announced that he would release the soldier and hand him over to the journalists today (Tuesday).
Up to 50,000 Mahsud tribespeople have left their homes and taken refuge with relations in Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and other places. Neither the government nor any non-governmental organization has offered them support until now.
Online adds: Two personnel of the security forces and one suspected militant were killed in fresh clashes in Caravan Manza on Sunday night, said an eyewitness Said Khan. He said heavy artillery was used by the two sides to target each other's positions, causing heavy material damages in the area.
-------- britain
Majority wants Iraq pullout deadline - poll
(Reuters)
21 September, 2004
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=587568
LONDON - Most voters want Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a date for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, according to a poll for the Guardian.
Seven out of 10 of those polled by ICM said Blair should set a deadline for a pullout of the 8,500 British soldiers in Iraq.
By contrast, an ICM-Guardian poll in May found 45 percent of voters believed British troops should remain in Iraq "for as long as necessary".
Blair, who is U.S. President George W. Bush's strongest ally in the Iraq war, said on Sunday that British and U.S. forces would only leave once Iraq is stable.
More than 300 Iraqis have been killed in a surge of violence in the last 10 days.
The unrest has cast doubt on whether elections planned for January can go ahead, and a series of kidnappings of foreigners has put pressure on the countries operating in Iraq.
American hostage Eugene Armstrong was beheaded and a video of his killing was posted on the internet on Monday.
A militant group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also threatened to kill Armstrong's fellow hostages -- American Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley.
Their captors have called on the U.S. authorities to free women prisoners in Iraqi jails.
Bigley's son Craig appealed to the British premier on Monday to meet the kidnappers' demands.
"I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered," he told BBC News 24. "Please meet the demands and release my father."
Blair told a news conference on Monday that Britain's response "has got to be to stand firm".
ICM interviewed 1,005 adults aged 18 and over between September 17 and 19 for the Guardian poll.
--------
Britain promises to safeguard Japanese troops in Iraq
(AFP)
Sep 21, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1538&ncid=732&e=10&u=/afp/20040921/wl_uk_afp/iraq_japan_britain
TOKYO - Britain promised to help safeguard Japanese troops engaged in a non-combat mission in southern Iraq (news - web sites) if the Netherlands ends its deployment.
The promise was made when Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon met his Japanese counterpart Shigeru Ishiba, officials said Tuesday.
The Netherlands plans to withdraw its troops in March next year from the Iraqi city of Samawa where Japan has been engaged in humanitarian and reconstruction acitivities since late last year.
Hoon was quoted as telling Ishiba that British troops would remain in Iraq as long as there was work to do and the British government would try to persuade the Netherlands to remain in Samawa.
The British minister said that in the event that Dutch troops were withdrawn, Britain would take "necessary measures" to support and secure the safety of the Japanese troops in Samawa, the officials said.
The Japanese troops rely on the Dutch contingent for protection because their duties do not include maintaining order. Britain leads the operations of the multinational force in southern Iraq.
The government of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has supported the US-led war in Iraq and the difficult reconstruction efforts there.
It is the first time since World War II that Japan has sent troops to a country where fighting is stil under way. The post-war constitution bans the use of force to settle international disputes.
-------- iraq
Marines Bide Their Time In Insurgent-Held Fallujah
Officers Say Iraqi Army Must Be Fit to Retake City
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36905-2004Sep20?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- From the porthole of his bunker just outside the city, U.S. Marine Capt. Jeff Stevenson could see no more than the first few rows of brick-and-concrete homes along Fallujah's urban fringe as he squinted into the setting desert sun. But his obscured view was enough to sense trouble.
A half-dozen houses were flattened. Others were punched with tank rounds. Each of them, Stevenson said, had been used by insurgents to fire at his bunker, which is fortified with dirt-filled mesh barriers.
Iraqi police officers and National Guardsmen, who should have been patrolling the streets, were nowhere to be found. A dusty pile of canvas 100 yards away provided the only reminder of the Fallujah Brigade, the now-disbanded Iraqi security force that was supposed to restore order here. The canvas had been one of the brigade's tents. It was gunned down after several members took potshots at Stevenson's men.
"Fallujah has become a cancer," declared Stevenson, echoing a metaphor used by several senior U.S. commanders in Iraq.
A collection of anti-American forces -- former Baath Party loyalists, Islamic extremists and foreign militants -- have been expanding their presence in Fallujah since the Marines withdrew from positions in the city in April and handed over responsibility for security to the Fallujah Brigade. According to U.S. military officials and residents, the insurgents have since taken over the local government, co-opted and cowed Iraqi security forces, and turned the area into a staging ground for terrorist attacks in Baghdad, located about 35 miles to the east.
But the U.S. military command in Iraq is in no hurry to order the Marines back into the city. Officers such as Stevenson, a tall Californian whose unit, the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment, would be among the front-line forces in an offensive, are biding their time in bunkers and observation posts outside Fallujah. Most of their days are spent keeping a highway around the city free of roadside bombs.
Instead of sending Marines charging into Fallujah as they did in April -- a move that radicalized residents and drew scores of fighters from outside Iraq to join the battle -- U.S. commanders say they want to wait until Iraq's new army is large enough, and trained enough, to assume a leading role in retaking the city.
"It doesn't do any good for us to go in and clean it up if it's a pure United States or coalition operation," said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, the top commander responsible for Fallujah and the rest of western Iraq. "We need Iraqi security forces with us. We need to be side by side when we move in, so that when it is said and done, when you open your door the next day and look out, there's an Iraqi policeman, an Iraqi National Guardsman, an Iraqi soldier on your street."
Sattler's predecessor, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who relinquished his command earlier this month, insisted that "the Marines we have there now could crush the city and be done with business in four days."
"But that's not what we're going to do," Conway said. Since the handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in late June, he added, Fallujah "is an Iraqi problem. If there is an attack on the anti-Iraqi forces that inhabit the city, it will be done almost exclusively by Iraqis."
If Iraqi forces take the lead in an offensive, the commanders said they hope that many residents would opt not to fight. That strategy could also deprive insurgent leaders of one of their most potent recruiting messages: that Fallujah needs to be defended against an onslaught of American forces. One Marine officer said the U.S. goal was "to split the city, to get the good people of the city on one side and the terrorists on the other."
Marine officials said they hoped to follow the strategy employed in Najaf last month, when a combination of U.S. and Iraqi forces pressured militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, to vacate a religious shrine. Sadr eventually agreed to a peace deal that called for U.S. troops to withdraw from the city and for newly minted Iraqi army troops to patrol the area. U.S. Marine commanders expressed optimism that a joint U.S.-Iraqi force, employing Iraqi units from outside the city, might eventually succeed in pacifying Fallujah. When Marines withdrew from the city after a three-week offensive in April, they relied on the Fallujah Brigade, made up of local members of the old Iraqi army, to restore order. Instead, the unit melted into the insurgency.
In an interview earlier this month, Conway said he did not believe that the assault on Fallujah, which he said he was ordered to carry out in April after four American security contractors were murdered and mutilated there, was the best course of action. Instead, Conway said he favored targeted operations against insurgents and continued engagement with municipal leaders.
"We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Fallujah: that we ought to probably let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge," he said. The offensive, he added, further radicalized a restive city, leading many residents to support the insurgents. "When we were told to attack Fallujah, I think we certainly increased the level of animosity that existed," he said.
Iraqi Troops Lacking
A U.N. Security Council resolution gives the U.S. military the freedom to conduct military operations as it sees fit in Iraq. But American commanders and diplomats in Baghdad have said they would not mount a major operation in Fallujah without the consent of Iraq's interim government. Senior Iraqi officials said it was highly unlikely that they would endorse military action that did not include a large contingent of Iraqi forces.
But it could take until the end of the year for enough Iraqi forces to be trained and equipped for a full-scale assault on Fallujah. There are only six Iraqi army battalions in service, each with about 700 soldiers, three of which are deployed in Najaf. Six more battalions are supposed to be trained by the end of October. By the end of January, U.S. officials hope to have 27 trained and deployed Iraqi battalions. A senior U.S. military commander in Baghdad said there would not be enough Iraqi troops available between now and the end of October. "We're in kind of a window of vulnerability . . . because we don't have the capacity to do the things we know we need to do," he said.
The senior commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Fallujah and the city of Samarra, an enclave 65 miles north of Baghdad where U.S. forces have avoided a decisive battle with insurgents, did not have to be pacified before national elections could be held in January. More important to quell, he said, were insurgencies in provincial capitals, such as Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of the capital, and Ramadi, 60 miles to the west of Baghdad.
"Candidly, Fallujah and Samarra don't necessarily make the list," the senior commander said. "They're not provincial capitals. They're not major cultural centers."
While the U.S. military intends to intensify a joint campaign with Iraqi forces to attack insurgents by the end of the year, the effort likely will initially focus on small cities, the commander said. "Do you go right to Fallujah?" he said. "It's a big chunk to bite off. Can you isolate it and let it fester for a while?"
Some Marine officers in Fallujah contend that waiting for Iraqi forces to get trained will give the insurgents time to recruit new members, harden their defenses and plot new attacks. Among the insurgent ringleaders believed to be in or near Fallujah is Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born organizer of a string of car bombings, kidnappings and other attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces. He is one of the U.S. military's most-wanted men in Iraq.
"We need to take out that rat's nest," said one senior Marine officer in Fallujah, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his views contradict those of his commanders. "The longer we wait, the stronger they get."
That view is shared by a small cadre of Fallujah residents eager to end the hostilities and open the city to U.S.-funded reconstruction projects. "If they invade Fallujah now, it will be better," said Khamis Hassnawi, the city's senior tribal leader. "Every day that passes, the resistance increases. Their numbers increase. Their power increases."
Although the main road from Fallujah to Baghdad is blocked off by Marines, every other route into the city is open, allowing insurgents free passage to other parts of western Iraq and Baghdad. On most days, there are no checkpoints to search cars leaving Fallujah, where U.S. intelligence officials believe many car bombs are assembled.
U.S. military officers said that placing the city in a vise could lead Zarqawi's followers and other foreign fighters to flee to other parts of Iraq, making it harder to track their movements. The officers said that in the current situation, with insurgents remaining in the city, the military could rely on informants, reconnaissance drones and spy satellites to target them with airstrikes, which have occurred with increasing frequency.
"Zarqawi has massed his folks there and he is presenting targets for us on a regular basis," the senior military official in Baghdad said. "It's a heck of a lot easier to target the Zarqawi network when we see groups of 15 or 20 having a meeting in Fallujah than it is when we see three- to four-man cells spread out all over Iraq."
Conflicting Casualty Counts
Col. John Coleman, the chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, estimated that hundreds of insurgents had been killed in airstrikes over the past several weeks in Fallujah.
Since Thursday, U.S. forces have conducted four airstrikes on what have been described as targets associated with Zarqawi's network in and around the city. Among them was a housing compound in an agricultural area about 15 miles south of Fallujah where the U.S. military said as many as 90 foreign fighters were meeting. The military said the strike, which occurred on Thursday evening, killed about 60 foreign fighters.
Witnesses and hospital officials disputed the account, saying that about 30 men were killed, many of them Iraqi. They said 15 children and 11 women also died in the attack.
Neither version of the strike could be independently verified.
The following night, the U.S. military said in a statement that it conducted "another successful precision strike" on a meeting of "approximately 10 Zarqawi terrorists" in central Fallujah. "There was no indication that any innocent civilians were in the immediate vicinity of the meeting location," the military said in the statement.
Neighbors interviewed by an Iraqi journalist working for The Washington Post described a different outcome. They said six people were killed: two foreign fighters meeting in the targeted house and a family of four -- a father, mother and two children -- living next door.
"The civilians are caught in the middle," said Rihab Aloosi, the director of the Fallujah Women's Center. "The U.S. forces don't give mercy to anyone and the holy warriors don't respect the houses and the families inside."
Competing Agendas
U.S. commanders say they believe the near-daily targeting of foreign fighters is starting to create fissures among insurgents in Fallujah. Initially, the outsiders were welcomed by the Mujaheddin Shura Council, an 18-member group of clerics, tribal sheiks and former Baath Party members who effectively run the city and elements of the insurgency. But now, many Fallujah residents appear to be growing weary of Zarqawi's followers, according to residents interviewed by telephone.
Zarqawi's agenda appears to extend well beyond the goal of residents, who want to keep U.S. forces out of the city. He and his supporters have turned the city into a base for wider attacks, particularly against Iraqi officials and security forces. His loyalists, many of whom adhere to the strict Salafi school of Islam, also have attempted to instill hard-line social restrictions, demanding that women cover their hair and hectoring men for not growing beards. Although Fallujah is a deeply religious city, many residents follow mystical Sufi beliefs, such as praying by the graves of relatives, which Salafis regard as blasphemous.
In what may be the strongest sign of tension between residents and foreigners, the head of the Shura Council, Abdullah Janabi, who had invited foreigners to the city in April, issued a statement on Friday calling Zarqawi a "criminal."
"We don't need Zarqawi to defend our city," said Janabi, who sought to draw a distinction between what he called "Iraqi resistance fighters" and foreign fighters engaged in a campaign against Iraq's infrastructure, foreign civilians and Iraqi security forces. "The Iraqi resistance is something and the terrorism is something else. We don't kidnap journalists and we don't sabotage the oil pipelines and the electric power stations. We don't kill innocent Iraqis. We resist the occupation."
Zarqawi's actions, Janabi said, have "harmed the resistance and made it lose the support of people."
Residents have reported skirmishes between residents and foreign fighters in recent weeks. The fighting has broken out after residents, fearful of airstrikes, have sought to evict foreigners from their neighborhoods, the residents said.
A delegation from the Shura Council intends to travel to Baghdad this week for discussions with Iraqi government officials aimed at a negotiated settlement that would allow Iraqi security forces to enter the city, council members said. But two demands of the council -- that non-Iraqi fighters loyal to the council be allowed to stay in Fallujah and that U.S. forces remain outside the city -- could scuttle the talks. Iraqi government officials have expressed an unwillingness to permit foreign fighters or create exclusion zones for U.S. forces.
Marine commanders remain skeptical that negotiations will bring peace to the city. "In the end," Conway said, "there will be a fight in and around Fallujah."
Washington Post special correspondents in Baghdad and Fallujah contributed to this report.
--------
Beheading of Second American Is Reported by Islamist Web Site
September 21, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/international/middleeast/21CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 21 - An Islamist group said today that it had beheaded the second of two Americans seized with a Briton last week, according to a Web site that has proven reliable in such matters.
The Islamist Web site said that the killing of the hostage, Jack Hensley, had been announced in a statement from the group and that a video of the execution would be posted later in the day. Western news agencies and the Arab news service Al Jazeera also carried reports of the killing, citing statements posted on the Internet.
"The lions slaughtered the second American hostage after the end of the deadline," one such statement attributed to the group said.
The families of Mr. Hensley and the Briton, Kenneth Bigley, had pleaded earlier in the day for officials to help get the men released hours after the group beheaded the other American, Eugene Armstrong.
The Islamist group, One God and Holy War, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted an Internet video after midnight showing the decapitation of Mr. Armstrong, a 53-year-old engineer kidnapped from his home in the capital last Thursday. The group threatened that the other two men, also engineers, would meet a similar fate in 24 hours if its demands were not met.
[In Washington, a C.I.A. official said that the agency had assessed with "high certainty" that the voice of the man who carried out the beheading on the first videotape, showing Mr. Armstrong's death, was that of Mr. Zarqawi.]
All three men worked for a construction company based in the United Arab Emirates that has contracts with the American government in Iraq and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region. They were abducted together in an audacious dawn raid on their home in the affluent neighborhood of Mansour.
On Saturday, the militants released a video showing the three men blindfolded, and captors demanded that American officials free all women being held in prisons in Abu Ghraib and the southern port city of Umm Qasr. The American military has said that it is holding only two women, both suspected of being involved in Saddam Hussein's weapons program, but that neither are in those prisons.
The initial 48-hour deadline came and went on Monday with no concessions from the American government, and the slaying of Mr. Armstrong soon followed.
Iraqi police officers found his body near his home in the Mansour neighborhood at 7:20 p.m. on Monday and reported the discovery to American soldiers, said Maj. Philip J. Smith, a spokesman for the First Cavalry Division, which is charged with controlling Baghdad.
The families of Mr. Hensley and Mr. Bigley made televised pleas today for the lives of the two men.
In London, Mr. Bigley's son, Craig, issued a videotaped statement that implicitly criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for waging war in Iraq, and he asked Mr. Blair to negotiate with his father's captors.
"I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered," Craig Bigley said. "Please meet the demands and release my father - two women for two men."
Philip Bigley, the British hostage's brother, addressed the captors directly.
"We are begging you not to kill him," he said. "We are begging you to find a solution, a compromise, that will help save two lives, innocent lives."
In Georgia, Patty Hensley, the wife of Mr. Hensley, tried delivering a message to the militants through an interview with CNN.
"I would plead with them to please realize this man does not deserve his fate," she said.
More than 130 foreigners have been abducted in recent months. Though most of them have been freed, others have been murdered, with at least 20 beheaded since July. The industry of kidnapping that has sprung up in this country has hobbled reconstruction efforts, sending waves of fear through the expatriate community and driving foreigners into the sanctuaries of fortified homes and hotels, away from the Iraqis with whom they are supposed to interact.
Mr. Zarqawi's group took responsibility in May for the beheading of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, and a similar murder in June of Kim Sun-il, a South Korean interpreter. In both cases, the group distributed videotapes showing the decapitations. The one of Mr. Armstrong's death was similar - the victim sat bound, blindfolded and trembling in an orange jumpsuit at the feet of black-clad militants who sliced his head off after reading a diatribe against the American occupation.
Mr. Armstrong was born in Hillsdale, Mich., and moved from the area around 1990 to travel the world by working in construction. He lived with his wife in Thailand before coming to Iraq.
Rick Gamber, a cousin of Mr. Armstrong, appeared on the NBC "Today Show" and urged prudence in dealing with the killing.
"I would just hope that people would realize this isn't something that there should be retaliation for," he said. "Our family feels a great deal of grief. We hope the criminals are brought to justice, but we certainly don't want people to overreact and do something foolish."
Violence continued to flare up across Iraq. The American military said two marines died today as a result of combat. At least 1,035 American soldiers have died since the start of the war in March 2003.
The First Cavalry Division said that two soldiers with Task Force Baghdad had been charged with being involved in the wrongful killings of three Iraqis. The division declined to give more details.
American soldiers raided the office of a firebrand Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, in the holy city of Najaf. About a dozen aides were arrested, the office of the governor said. Mr. Sadr led his militia, the Mahdi Army, in an uprising against the American occupation in both April and August, but has signaled in recent weeks that he may get involved in politics.
Witnesses said the soldiers raided the office at 3 a.m. and left six hours later. The Americans removed caches of weapons, they said. Helicopters buzzed overhead as the soldiers searched the office.
In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded at 3 p.m. on the road to the airport, injuring four American soldiers, the military said.
The American military said insurgents fired on the prison in Abu Ghraib, killing one prisoner. Over the last 10 days, guerrillas have repeatedly assaulted the prison, launching mortars into the complex. On Sept. 12, an insurgent tried driving a car bomb into the prison, but soldiers fired on the vehicle and detonated the bomb early.
This morning, American soldiers and the Iraqi National Guard defused a car bomb by a Sunni mosque in the Jamia neighborhood of Baghdad. An explosion rocked the area. The attempted bombing of the mosque came a day after the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of anti-American Sunni clerics, said two of its members had been assassinated.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf for this article, and Doug Jehl contributed reporting from Washington.
--------
Sobbing hostage killed by Zarqawi
The Associated Press
September 21, 2004
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10831017%255E1702,00.html
A VIDEO today showed the gruesome beheading of a man identified as American contractor Eugene Armstrong - a killing purportedly carried out personally by top Iraqi terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The authenticity of the nine-minute tape, posted on a website, could not be verified.
However, the voice of a militant reading a statement behind the sobbing victim, sounded like past recordings said to be of al-Zarqawi.
Five militants dressed in black stood behind the hostage, who was blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit.
He was identified from an earlier video in which he was shown with another American and a Briton, who were taken captive with him.
In today's video, four of the militants were armed. A Tawhid and Jihad banner hung on the wall behind them.
The man in the centre - thought to be al-Zarqawi - read out a statement, then carried out the beheading.
The severed head was then placed on top of the body.
During the statement before the killing, the speaker said Tawhid and Jihad was taking revenge for women Iraqi prisoners and called US President George W. Bush "a dog".
"You, sister, rejoice. God's soldiers are coming to get you out of your chains and restore your purity by returning you to your mother and father," he said.
Addressing Mr Bush, he said: "Now, you have people who love death just like you love life. Killing for the sake of God is their best wish, getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads of the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our Lord."
Before the video was posted, a website statement claimed the killing had taken place.
The statement said that al-Zarqawi "God protect him, has beheaded the first American".
"The group will next behead the others."
-----
Iraq: How bad can things get?
BBC
By Paul Wood
21 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3675538.stm
Just how bad are things in Iraq? Since just last week it has seen hundreds of deaths, suicide bombings, beheadings, yet more people kidnapped.
When I visited Basra exactly one year ago it was safe enough to stay in town on our own.
This time, we wouldn't dream of doing that. The chances of being kidnapped are too great.
British troops are on high alert as they patrol Basra now It's true there have been some real, solid achievements over the past year.
There aren't petrol queues, or petrol riots, in Basra any more.
The electricity is on for longer. And oil exports from the south are up to 2.9 million barrels a day.
But here are some other statistics. Last month, the British Army fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition in southern Iraq.
The base in al-Ammara sustained more than 400 direct mortar hits.
The British battalion there counted some 853 separate attacks of different kinds: mortars, roadside bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire.
No British regiment has had such intense "contact", as they call it, since Korea.
Fury over Najaf
A year ago, the British Army was still congratulating itself on running one of the more peaceful parts of Iraq.
It seems sometimes UK troops are gingerly walking on the thin crust of a volcano, wondering how much pressure is building below If you'd predicted all this, it would have been dismissed as doom-mongering.
British officers characterise the fighting in August as merely a spike in the violence.
They say quite rightly that the trouble had a particular cause.
The Americans were battling Shia gunmen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr in Najaf.
The British say they could have destroyed Sadr's militia if they had wanted to The fury spilled over into Basra and al-Ammara.
The anger was fuelled by the widespread belief that US-led forces were attacking the two holy shrines in Najaf.
At the height of the crisis, a leading Shia figure in Basra told a British Brigadier: "There are lots of moderates here who support you. But if the shrines are touched, I'll kill you myself."
Uprising fears
Eventually a peace deal in Najaf brought peace to the rest of the south too.
Since the shrines were not touched, only about 400 hard-core gunmen joined the fight against the multi-national forces in Basra.
Still, in an area which is 99% Shia, the great danger for the British is of a general uprising.
A year ago the atmosphere in Basra was very different It sometimes seems as if the troops are gingerly walking on the thin crust of a volcano, wondering how much pressure is building below.
The British - with tanks, air support and thousands of soldiers - say they could have destroyed the small militia force attacking them.
But they were asked by local people not to turn Basra into a war zone.
And because they didn't, the majority still welcomes them here.
Grateful for security
We went on a British patrol in the dead of night to stop and search vehicles on the road from al-Ammara to Basra.
None of Basra's 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers in the August fighting. Some even helped the gunmen At our checkpoint, drivers were made to get out and show their ID cards while soldiers looked under the seats and in the boot for illegal weapons.
Not one of the drivers or passengers expressed any resentment at this.
One explained that hostage-taking was especially bad on that stretch of road.
The gangs usually kidnap a driver, his lorry and its cargo, he said, and ransom the whole lot back to the company concerned.
Many drivers are killed. It's no surprise then that people are glad of the British presence.
Vicious intimidation
The problem is that very few people are actively supporting the fight against the militants.
There are no illusions about life in the British sector any more A vicious campaign of intimidation doesn't help matters.
Last month, five cleaning ladies at a British base were murdered on their way to work.
Two local translators disappeared. Their severed heads were found outside the front gate.
But perhaps the most worrying development of the August fighting was that none of Basra's 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers. Some even helped the gunmen.
I met one of the senior civilian political advisors to the military command.
Every time he came to Basra things seemed a "step change worse", he said.
The best thing to happen, he went on, would be for a new Islamic government to be elected in January which would ask multi-national forces to leave.
I don't think he was being facetious.
Exit strategy
Elections do form part of the exit strategy, but not in this way.
The hope is that national elections in January will produce a government with the authority and the legitimacy to face down the gunmen on its own.
But in local elections in the British sector this week, turnout was just 15%.
A government election with that much backing would be just one faction in the civil war which some American intelligence officials believe is brewing.
That is very much the worst case. But whatever happens, British officers no longer have any illusions that the southern corner of Iraq they run will be immune from the violence.
-------- israel / palestine
How Israeli security tries to win friends and influence people
21.09.2004
nzherald.co.nz
Fran O'Sullivan
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3593075&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue&thesecondsubsection=&reportID=1162641
Do I fit the profile of a female terrorist?
The thought momentarily crossed my mind when I was singled out for an intensive search by Israeli security at Ben Gurion International Airport.
Travelling alone, female, running late for the plane. Fits the picture.
The New Zealand-Israel trade delegation had stumped up a US$150 fee to get me "VIP pre-clearance". This wasn't on the script.
Just that morning VIP officials told me not to bother arriving at the airport until 90 minutes before the 8.15am flight.
They met me at a special gate well away from the Israeli Defence Force soldiers with their automatic weapons.
But they stood silently to one side while young, tough-as-nails security women challenged me over why I had not turned up three hours before departure. Had it escaped them that I was the only person in the VIP queue - and not by chance?
All my belongings were pulled from their bags. Why have I got Bill Clinton's book? they asked.
"I've just interviewed him in London." And he's cool about the security wall, I murmur, sotto voce. Clinton gets the x-ray.
Who packed your suitcase? Where have you been in Israel? Who can vouch for you? "Here's Michael Ronen's card (Israel Foreign Affairs), call him - he knows who I am. His ministry's been showing me around."
They don't do that and by now the game is clear.
Yes, I am a single woman. No, I haven't been seduced by a Palestinian into carrying a bomb on board, I murmur (under my breath, this time). The laptop, phone cables and spare batteries for my digital tape recorder are simply tools of the trade. Was I going to head for the toilet, make a bomb, blow my BA flight out of the sky?
The male boss from Shin Bet disappears with the laptop. He's gone 30 minutes. Five security people are now questioning me.
On it goes. Yes, I am a journalist with the New Zealand Herald (you know that).
Where have you been in Israel? Dead Sea, Lebanon border, Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv. Yes, I've strayed on to the West Bank several times. And yes, I've been covering the passports story.
I had gone to Israel for an "educational" visit and stayed on to file more reports when the passports affair took a surprising twist.
Who else was with the mission? Mike Nathan (chief executive of the NZ Israel Trade Association) and Nevil Gibson (National Business Review editor).
Where were they? Mike was in Poland - his relatives had perished in the concentration camps. Nevil went back earlier (no problems there - he had been introduced everywhere as the association's patron).
Why had I brought my flight forward again? Because my son is seriously ill in Auckland Hospital. I must get to London for my connecting flight.
Why are you calling on your cellphone? I'm trying to ring my brother. He'll verify this. They are not interested.
No - I would not accept their "offer" to let me depart on time and send the laptop on a later flight. There has been plenty of time for the download. It is returned.
I open computer files as requested.
They take the laptop's connecting wires and batteries, stuff them into my suitcases and push them on to the conveyor belts.
All the papers in my laptop shoulder-bag and leather writing case are taken out and put in paper bags. The laptop bag and writing case are x-rayed separately.
A big cardboard box stamped "security" materialises. Into it go the laptop bag and writing case.
Look, I need that. No - we're sending this separately to Auckland, they say, refusing any explanation. They then seal the box with blue tape marked "security" and put in on the conveyor belt.
The laptop and two paper bags are thrust into my hands. Security escorts me to the plane.
Five hours later I get to Heathrow Airport. The paper bags are coming apart.
I get to Auckland Airport: Anything to declare? A rosary bead.
Hang on, says Customs, what's in this box labelled "security?" It's my laptop case - just take it.
--------
Palestinian militant gets vote, Israel cries foul
By Reuters
September 21, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479577.html
Palestinian election officials have given voting rights to a jailed militant accused of ordering the killing of an Israeli minister, in a move Israel called a sign that Palestinian democracy was badly flawed.
Palestinian poll officials said on Monday they signed up Ahmed Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, because they were trying to reach all eligible voters and he had not been convicted by a Palestinian court.
But a senior Israeli official called the registration of Saadat "a mark of how corrupt this system is."
"A society that is governed by terrorists and a society that caters to terrorists will of course seek the support of terrorists even if they are behind bars," the official said.
Saadat, accused of ordering the killing of far-right Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi, was jailed in Palestinian-run Jericho in 2002 under a U.S.-brokered deal that ended a siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters.
Palestinians began registration early this month for as yet unscheduled general elections in a drive seen as the first concrete step to meet long-standing international and domestic demands for reforms.
Palestinian election officials, already angry at Israel for closing poll centers in East Jerusalem, said the Jewish state had no right to say who should vote in the elections.
"We are willing to register any eligible Palestinian voter," Ammar Dwaik, a senior official of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, told Reuters.
He said the election commission had registered a handful of Palestinian detainees last week, also including Fuad al-Shobaki. A senior financial aide to Arafat, Shobaki was jailed for alleged involvement in the smuggling of weapons to Gaza in a ship seized by Israeli commandos in 2002.
Polls are open to Palestinians older than 17 and not convicted of a serious crime in Palestinian court. Neither Saadat nor Shobaki were ever tried.
The election commission said more than 300,000 Palestinians, or nearly 19 percent of estimated potential voters, had registered.
-------- spies
Judge Rules Spy Charges May Proceed
Reuters
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36762-2004Sep20.html
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., Sept. 20 -- A military judge denied a motion to dismiss spy charges against a Syrian-American airman Monday despite defense arguments the government had failed to make a case over the past year.
Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi, 25, is accused of carrying letters, jail maps and other documents from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are held.
Halabi has spent 10 months in prison pending trial, and 14 of the 30 original charges have already been dropped, as has the threat of the death penalty.
The Army has dropped charges against two others who also were stationed at Guantanamo: Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain, and Army Reserve Col. Jackie Duane Farr, who was an intelligence officer and had been accused of trying to take classified material from the base.
The military recently admitted that the detainee letters that Halabi handled were not classified.
Halabi, a supply clerk, worked as an Arabic language translator at Guantanamo, where suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are held, between November 2002 and July 2003.
--------
Senate Panel Approves Goss as New C.I.A. Chief
September 21, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/politics/21CND-GOSS.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12 to 4 today to approve the nomination of Representative Porter J. Goss to become the new director of central intelligence.
The votes against Mr. Goss, Republican of Florida, were cast by Democrats who in two days of hearings questioned whether the congressman, who until recently was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, could be a nonpartisan intelligence chief and stand up to the White House if required.
Senators said the nomination was likely to go to the full Senate for debate and a vote on Wednesday. Mr. Goss, who would replace George J. Tenet, is expected to win Senate confirmation.
In hearings on Monday, Mr. Goss said that some prewar statements by senior Bush administration officials might well have overstated available intelligence about the threat posed by Iraq.
Under sharp questioning from a Senate Democrat, Mr. Goss said he agreed that statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice that linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks; to Al Qaeda; and to an active nuclear weapons program appeared to have gone beyond what was spelled out in intelligence reports at the time.
Mr. Goss's concession could fuel further Democratic criticisms that Mr. Bush and his advisers overstated the threat posed by Iraq before the war. Democrats failed this year to persuade Republicans to include conclusions related to the administration's use of intelligence in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq that was completed in July.
Mr. Goss said he did not believe that anyone in the administration had "deliberately mischaracterized or misused intelligence" preceding the war on Iraq.
But he said that if confirmed as intelligence chief, he would feel an obligation to correct misstatements or misinformation, though he said he might not do so publicly.
"If I were confronted with that kind of a hypothetical, where I felt that a policy maker was getting beyond what the intelligence said, I think I would advise the person involved," Mr. Goss said in response to a question from Senator Carl M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan. "I do believe that would be a case that would put me into action, if I were confirmed. Yes, sir."
Each example on which Mr. Goss commented was raised by Senator Levin. They included a December 2001 statement in which Mr. Cheney said that a meeting in Prague between a Sept. 11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi official had been "pretty well-confirmed" and a separate statement by Ms. Rice in September 2002 saying, first, that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs" and, second, that "we know" that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.
All three of those assertions have since been discredited, and recent reports by the independent Sept. 11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee suggested that all three exceeded the intelligence available at the time.
In each case, Mr. Goss cautioned that he did not know what information Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice had used as the basis for their statements. He said he still believed that Iraq had provided some unspecified training to Al Qaeda, though he declined to elaborate.
But he said of Mr. Cheney's public assertion on Dec. 9, 2001, about Mr. Atta and the meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague, for example: "I don't think it was as well confirmed perhaps as the vice president thought. But I don't know what was in the vice president's mind, and I've certainly never talked with him about this. So I don't know how he came to that conclusion."
Mr. Goss said that Ms. Rice's Sept. 8, 2002, statement about the aluminum tubes appeared to have been "an exaggeration," compared with the findings spelled out in a national intelligence estimate at the same time. He said Ms. Rice's Sept. 25, 2002, statement linking Iraq to training for Al Qaeda, if it were based solely on the evidence that has been made public to date, would have been in a category in which "I would feel obliged to ask the national security adviser what in fact was the basis for that statement."
Earlier this year, George J. Tenet, then still director of central intelligence, told Congress that he had corrected Bush administration officials, including Mr. Cheney, about several statements, including those linking Mr. Atta to a meeting in Prague.
Mr. Goss, who has spent nearly 16 years in Congress, steered clear of any overt criticism of Mr. Bush or his senior aides. At the same time, he seemed determined to reassure Democrats that he would put partisan politics behind him if confirmed, and he vowed to be an objective, independent and nonpartisan intelligence chief.
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Goss Gets Senate Panel's OK for CIA Post
(AP)
September 21, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4504395,00.html
WASHINGTON - A Senate panel on Tuesday approved the nomination of Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., to head the CIA, overcoming Democrats' objections that Goss was too political for the job.
The Senate Intelligence Committee of eight Democrats and nine Republicans voted 12 to 4 for the nomination, with one senator making no recommendation on the nomination. A party breakout of the vote was not immediately provided.
Goss' nomination could go before the full Republican-led Senate as early as this week.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., on Monday brought two thick binders of statements to Goss' confirmation hearing to argue his belief that President Bush's choice to head the CIA is too political for the job.
Goss served as House Intelligence chairman for nearly eight years. He would be only the second CIA director who served in Congress, after former president and House member George H.W. Bush.
Even before President Bush nominated Goss in August, Democrats complained that Goss lacked the independence to lead the U.S. intelligence community.
Republican Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts said Monday that Goss is independent, nonpartisan and aggressive - and qualified for duty outside Congress.
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Analysis President's Trip to Address U.N. Relies Heavily on Visuals
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36954-2004Sep20.html
NEW YORK, Sept. 20 -- It has become a rite of autumn: Every September, President Bush speaks to the United Nations here and receives polite applause -- then each entity spends the rest of the year thwarting and disparaging the other.
In September 2002, Bush began his effort to win U.N. backing for the use of force in Iraq, and the Security Council ultimately turned him down. In 2003, he came to New York seeking more international contributions of troops and money to Iraq but received little of either.
This year looks no more auspicious. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan last week set the tone when he said the U.S.-led Iraq war was "illegal" and that Iraqi elections scheduled for January might not be credible. And Bush's reelection campaign has been mocking the world body on a near daily basis, with Vice President Cheney saying often that the United States requires no "permission slip" to use its military and refusing to "outsource our national security" to Paris and Berlin.
As a result, supporters and opponents of Bush agree, the president has no hopes of a substantive breakthrough as he prepares to address the General Assembly on Tuesday morning.
"In essence, he believes the U.N. is an organization where the vast majority of members don't share America's values and want to use the U.N. to constrain America from what it must do," said Ivo H. Daalder, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton administration's National Security Council. Daalder called Bush's appearance before the General Assembly purely "ritualistic."
The significance of Tuesday's speech, not surprisingly, is in the presidential election, just six weeks away. Bush will discuss a range of noncontroversial issues -- including funds to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, hunger and illiteracy -- and use the appearance here to debunk the accusation by Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry that Bush has been trigger-happy and acted alone.
"It's a great visual for domestic purposes," said Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration arms-control official who is close to many top Bush aides. "It undercuts Kerry's argument against Bush that he doesn't get along with other countries. They won't be booing him. They'll be politely applauding because they're well-mannered folks."
Adelman said Bush's appearance would also reassure Americans "that a second term is going to be less venturesome and traumatic than a first term," which brought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The body language and the real message is the two wars in the first term aren't going to be followed by two wars in a second term."
Kerry, speaking in New York on Monday, sought to make the case that Bush has not won enough support for Iraq from the United Nations. Kerry said Bush should hold a "summit meeting" in New York this week and offer larger roles to countries that would contribute troops. "After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq," Kerry said. "But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us."
By his own calculus, Bush should regard the United Nations as a lost cause. Before the Security Council failed to authorize force in Iraq in 2003, Bush said that "unless the United Nations shows some backbone and courage, it could render the Security Council irrelevant."
Bush does not call the organization irrelevant, but at a fundraiser here Monday night he implicitly scolded the United Nations, saying, "When an international body speaks, they must mean what they say."
At the GOP convention last month, the keynote speaker, Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), referring to a newspaper interview Kerry gave more than 30 years ago, said: "Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending."
Kerry has said the United States should act alone when necessary. But the political value of such accusations is clear. While most Americans believe the United Nations should have a role in peacekeeping, overwhelming majorities say the organization should not be able to veto the use of force.
Bush's speech on Tuesday is expected to deal lightly with Iraq, tying it to the more broadly supported war against terrorists. Instead, Bush will offer "proposals to expand prosperity and accelerate the march of freedom," as he put it during a radio address Saturday. "Never in the history of the United Nations have we faced so many opportunities to create a safer world by building a better world."
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Annan Faults Both Sides of Terror War for Eroding Rule of Law
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36907-2004Sep20.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 20 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will tell the 191-member U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world has been eroded both by the United States and by other nations as they battle terrorism, and by Islamic extremists and their horrific acts of violence, according to senior U.N. officials.
The U.N. chief's remarks will be delivered less than an hour before President Bush addresses the international body, and will come just days after Annan said publicly he considers the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq illegal. But Annan's top aides insisted that he is not seeking to rehash the dispute over the war's legitimacy. "Stirring things up is not his stock in trade," said a senior U.N. official who briefed reporters on Annan's speech. "He is much more concerned about the future of Iraq."
Annan's speech will set a somber tone for the United Nations' 59th General Assembly, which will draw 64 presidents, 25 prime ministers, 86 foreign ministers and scores of ambassadors, to U.N. headquarters for two weeks of public speeches and private diplomacy.
The overarching theme of Annan's address is that the "basic rules of human conduct" are at risk -- as evidenced in Beslan, Russia, where Chechen militants appear to have slaughtered hundreds of children, the U.N. official said.
Annan will also issue veiled criticism of the Bush administration by citing the abuse of prisoners of war in Iraq by U.S. troops, according to the U.N. official. He will also say that, at times, the vital struggle against terrorism has interfered with civil liberties and human rights, the official said.
Annan is also expected to urge the United States and other U.N. members to embrace a raft of international treaties designed to enforce fair-trade rules, fight terrorism, and combat the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The Bush administration has come under intense criticism at the United Nations for opposing popular international treaties, including a global ban on nuclear tests and an accord to slow the production of emissions that fuel global warming.
Annan will also take issue with Iraqi extremists, Palestinian suicide bombers, Israeli forces and Sudanese militias that stand accused by the United States of committing genocide in Darfur. "This is a rather lawless world that we're living in," the official said. "And we all have to ask ourselves why is it that people don't respect the rules."
The U.N. chief's assessment will reflect a concern at the United Nations that the organization has devoted too little attention to issues that affect the poor, according to senior officials, while focusing on security issues that are important to the United States.
In an effort to shift the debate on U.N. priorities, leaders from more than 50 governments attended two U.N. conferences here Monday on hunger and the side effects of globalization for the world's poor. "The most destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world today is poverty," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who hosted the World Leaders Summit on Hunger at U.N. headquarters. Participants in the event adopted a declaration vowing "to act against hunger and poverty."
The declaration, signed by more than 100 countries, endorsed Brazil's call for a tax on international financial transactions and on heavy weapons sales, to raise billions of dollars for the poor. It also endorsed a British proposal to borrow money from international markets to increase international funding for the developing world.
Bush, who opposed the call for international taxation, declined to attend the meeting.
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In Address at U.N., Bush Defends Decision to Invade Iraq
September 21, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/international/middleeast/21CND-PREX.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 - President Bush told skeptical foreign leaders and envoys today that Iraq was on its way to stability and democracy and called for "a new definition of security" that allows nations to act together to extend freedom to countries gripped by tyranny.
In his fourth annual address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Bush defended the American-led war in Iraq. He spoke in a forthright tone with an occasional defiant edge, . rebutting the assertion by Secretary General Kofi Annan that the war violated international law because it lacked United Nations authorization.
On the contrary, Mr. Bush said the United States and its allies were enforcing a Security Council resolution approved in November 2002 threatening "serious consequences" if Saddam Hussein did not disarm, disclose Iraq's banned weapons and permit inspectors to roam the country.
"The Security Council promised serious consequences for his defiance," Mr. Bush said. "And the commitments we make must have meaning."
The president engaged in the international equivalent of the politicking and record defending that he has done on the campaign trail since the Republican convention. He spoke of Iraq as a success story, heading toward its own elections in January and better off for being rid of "an outlaw dictator."
The difference was that today his audience was one of sober-suited diplomats who sat mute, as is United Nations custom, although they accorded him warm applause at the end.
Mr. Bush's annual visit to the United Nations brought the usual gridlock to midtown Manhattan, with police barricades around the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the East River on a warm last day of summer.
Mr. Bush met briefly with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq, part of an administration effort to showcase him as the symbol of Iraq's advance toward democracy and stability despite the mounting insurgent attacks and doubts expressed at the United Nations that elections can be held if the violence continues.
Mr. Allawi, who was the choice of the United States as Iraq's leader in a process overseen by the United Nations earlier this year, has been giving upbeat assessments of the Iraq situation and offering praise of Mr. Bush since his arrival in New York on Monday, and he is expected to continue his reassuring words at a White House session later in the week.
"I appreciate your courage," Mr. Bush told Mr. Allawi at their meeting. "I appreciate your leadership. I share the same confidence you share that Iraq will be a free nation, and as a free nation, our world will be safer and America will be more secure. We look forward to working with you, sir."
Mr. Allawi praised Mr. Bush for his courage "in deciding to wage war to destroy Saddam." He also offered condolences to the families of Americans killed in Iraq, especially the hostage whose beheading earlier in the week dominated the recent news coverage.
Following the traditional diplomatic swirl when the United Nations General Assembly opens, Mr. Bush had lunch with Secretary General Annan and others at the United Nations and met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf, whose countries share a mountainous border region where Osama bin Laden is believed to be at large.
Earlier, Mr. Bush met with the new prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh.
While Iraq was a prominent theme in Mr. Bush's address, it came somewhat late in the speech whose central theme was the need to advance democracy as the best way to end terrorism. He spoke in fervent tones, reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson, who is considered one of the fathers of using American power to pursue American ideals.
"No other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women, or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace," Mr. Bush said, referring to democracy. "We've witnessed the rise of democratic governments in predominantly Hindu and Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian cultures. Democratic institutions have taken root in modern societies and in traditional societies. When it comes to the desire for liberty and justice, there is no clash of civilizations."
As part of his condemnation of terror, Mr. Bush also offered a firm gesture to Russia, citing the recent attack of a school in Beslan by Chechn militants in what was seen as an effort to assuage irritations expressed by President Vladimir V. Putin that Washington did not realize that his efforts to combat terrorism were the same as those of the United States.
"This month in Beslan we saw, once again, how the terrorists measure their success - in the death of the innocent and in the pain of grieving families," Mr. Bush said.
In another conciliatory gesture, Mr. Bush hailed the leadership of Secretary General Annan, brushing aside what were clearly irritations in the administrations over Mr. Annan's view of the war's legality.
Only a half-hour before Mr. Bush's speech, Mr. Annan made an implicit slap on Monday at the handling of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison by American forces outside Baghdad, mentioning their mistreatment, disclosed earlier this year, as something to condemn along with massacres of civilians and hostage takings in Iraq.
Mr. Bush also brought to his speech a series of other concerns, from spreading and supporting democracy in the Middle East to trafficking in human beings for prostitution and other purposes, supporting a ban on human cloning that is now before the General Assembly and calling for increased financing of the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
He called on the creation of a permanent peacekeeping force for global conflicts, especially in Africa and also demanded that Sudan allow African peacekeeping troops and stop using military aircraft to subdue rebels in the western region of Darfur, where tens of thousands have died and more than a million people have fled their homes.
A few sentences were also devoted at the end of his speech to a subject that many of his listeners say is crucial to achieving stability in the Middle East, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Bush once again rebuked Palestinian leadership, though he did not mention Yasir Arafat by name, but he also presented a set of familiar demands to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
He called on Israel to "impose a settlement freeze" and to dismantle dozens of settlement outposts throughout the West Bank and to "end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations."
The administration, however, is negotiated with Mr. Sharon's government to allow for some growth of populations within settlement areas as part of its freeze. Israel has also said it is trying to dismantle settlement outposts but is facing legal constraints and that it will be easing conditions of Palestinians when it finishes constructing a barrier between Palestinian and Israeli communities. The administration has basically supported this approach.
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Annan Repeats Misgivings About Legality of Iraq War
September 21, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/international/21CND-NATION.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 - Secretary General Kofi Annan opened the annual United Nations debate of world leaders today with a plea for greater observance of international law and a reminder of his misgivings about the legality of the war in Iraq.
"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it," he told the audience of delegates in the General Assembly hall, which included President Bush and Ayad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister.
Mr. Annan, who last week told a BBC interviewer that he considered the war in Iraq "illegal" because it proceeded without Security Council approval, stuck to the point by citing the example of Iraq in his larger argument about the primacy of international law and how it applies to advanced powers as well as unprincipled individuals.
"In Iraq, we see civilians massacred in cold blood while relief workers, journalists and other non-combatants are taken hostage and put to death in the most barbarous fashion," he said. He then drew a parallel to American actions. "At the same time," he said, "we have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused."
He also noted pointedly that "even the necessary fight against terrorism is allowed to encroach unnecessarily on civil liberties."
Despite these repeated references, a senior United Nations official who briefed reporters on the speech said that Mr. Annan had always hoped to focus this year's General Assembly session on the notion of the rule of law at a time of terror and preventive war and did not mean to dwell on Iraq.
"He's already stirred things up enough with his famous `illegal' quote to the BBC last week," the official said. "He was very keen that everyone should understand that stirring things up is not his stock in trade."
The official added, "He is not looking to revive the argument about the precise legality, legitimacy or whatever of the military action taken in March of 2003 in Iraq."
Still it seemed that the war in Iraq was on Mr. Annan's mind as he argued that justice must be applied universally and flouted nowhere. "Every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home must respect it abroad," he said, "and every nation that insists on it abroad must enforce it at home."
Mr. Annan spoke to the General Assembly hall just minutes before Mr. Bush addressed delegates to the two-week session, which is being attended by 64 presidents, 25 prime ministers and 86 foreign ministers. There are representatives from all 191 member states and the Palestinian and Vatican observer missions.
For the United Nations, the year has been one in which its credibility was at once restored by pleas for assistance in Iraq from the Bush administration, which earlier had questioned the world organization's relevance, and battered by the emergence of evidence that its oil-for-food program was ridden with corruption and may have channeled $10 billion to Saddam Hussein.
Its ability to act quickly has also been called into question by the delayed response to the ethnic cleansing campaign in Sudan - called an act of genocide by the United States - in which 50,000 have died and 1.2 million have been made refugees.
Mr. Annan conceded that the organization was in need of reform and noted that a high-level panel he appointed last year to come up with a modernization plan would report back by the end of this year on ways to increase its effectiveness.
Cautioning his listeners not to lose faith in the United Nations, he said, "Let's not imagine that, if we fail to make good use of it, we will find any more effective instrument."
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Bush addresses U.N.
September 21, 2004
By Scott Lindlaw
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040921-122451-3218r.htm
UNITED NATIONS - President Bush delivered an unapologetic defense of his decision to invade Iraq, telling the United Nations today that his decision "helped to deliver the Iraqi people from an outlaw dictator." He appealed to the world community to join together in supporting the new Iraqi interim government.
Bush's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, running just 24 minutes, also included an appeal for intensifying the global war against terrorism and for focusing energies on humanitarian missions, from helping to end the bloody violence in Sudan to combating AIDS in Africa.
Two years after he told the world body that Iraq was a "grave and gathering danger" and challenged delegates to live up to their responsibility, Bush strongly defended his decision to lead a coalition that overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime without the blessings of the U.N. Security Council.
He spoke shortly after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the 191-nation gathering with a warning that the "rule of law" is at risk around the world. Annan last week asserted that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq "was illegal" because it lacked such Security Council approval.
"No one is above the law," Annan said. He condemned the taking and killing of hostages in Iraq, but also said Iraqi prisoners had been disgracefully abused, an implicit criticism of the U.S. treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Bush told a subdued U.N. session that terrorists believe that "suicide and murder are justified ...And they act on their beliefs." He cited recent terror acts, including the death of children earlier this month in their Russian school house.
"The Russian children did nothing to deserve such awful suffering and fright and death," the president said.
Bush reached out to the international organization to help with the reconstruction of Iraq, noting that the prime minister of Iraq's interim government Ayad Allawi was among those attending the session.
"The U.N. and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister Allawi's request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free," he said.
"A democratic Iraq has ruthless enemies," Bush added, asserting that "a terrorist group associated with Al Qaida is now one of the main groups killing the innocent in Iraq today, conducting a campaign of bombings against civilians and the beheadings of bound men."
Bush made specific reference to Monday's beheading of an American civil engineer. "We can expect terror attacks to escalate" as elections approach in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.
"We will be standing with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes for freedom and liberty are fulfilled," Bush said.
Six weeks before Election Day, Bush's comments were directed as much to his audience at home as to the assembled U.N. delegates. His Democratic rival, John Kerry, has accused him of "stubborn incompetence" and "colossal failures in judgment" on Iraq policy and of having squandered international good will.
Bush's speech included an appeal for more humanitarian involvement, ranging from helping to end the bloody conflict in Sudan to fighting AIDS in Africa. "AIDS is the greatest health crisis of our time and our unprecedented commitment will bring new hope to those who have walked too long in the shadow of death," he said.
With the casualty toll in Iraq still rising and with a rash of recent suicide attacks, Bush did not dwell on his decision to lead the invasion of Iraq. But he suggested that the Security Council had not followed through after it "promised serious consequences" for Saddam's defiance.
"The commitments we make must have meaning. When we say serious consequences, for the sake of peace there must be serious consequences. And so a coalition of nations enforced the just demands of the world," Bush said.
"My nation is grateful to the soldiers of many nations who have helped to deliver the Iraqi people from an outlaw dictator," he said.
Bush's remarks drew applause only once - at the end of his speech.
He also told the gathering he was proposing a "democracy fund" within the United Nations which he said would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by instituting the rule of law, independent courts, a free press, political parties and trade unions. "Money from the fund would also help set up voter precincts and polling places and support the work of election monitors," he said.
Bush said the United States will make an initial contribution. "I urge all other nations to contribute as well," he said.
On Iraq, Richard Holbrooke, U.N. ambassador during the Clinton administration, said on NBC"s "Today" show Tuesday, said the goals that Bush has articulated for the new Iraq "are things that this administration has proved incapable of achieving."
Appearing on the same show, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed progress despite the recent wave of car-bombings and hostage-takings.
She said "there's no evidence" that Iraq is falling into a state of civil war and said things are better than three months ago even though the Iraqi people "are facing a very tough and daring insurgency."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, interviewed Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America," called the situation "a difficult struggle" but said "to say we can't deal with it, this sort of attitude that we're on the verge of defeat is absolutely wrong."
Bush's U.N. speech was sandwiched between meetings with world leaders - and a sit-down with Annan. It is an unusual burst of diplomacy for Bush, who has been keeping a punishing travel schedule to swing states as he seeks re-election.
Also Tuesday, Bush met with the leader of India, and was to sit down later with the heads of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Japan and Iraq. Last year, Bush met with the leaders of France and Germany - two of his harshest critics on Iraq. But there are no Europeans on this year's list, and aside from his host, Annan, no sharp critics of the Iraq war.
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Israel - a stormy relationship: Passport to a world of trouble
nzherald.co.nz
21.09.2004
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3593152&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
In a three-part series starting today, assistant editor FRAN O'SULLIVAN examines New Zealand's relations with Israel in the light of the Mossad passport scandal. Her reports, which come as the United Nations prepares for a debate on anti-Semitism, draw on a wide range of sources, including material gathered during a two-week visit to Israel.
When the Palestinian terrorism group Hamas applauded Prime Minister Helen Clark's "daring" actions in imposing sanctions on Israel, Jewish organisations reacted against her "vile bedfellows".
Ted Lapkin, an editor for the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, wrote that Clark had exposed the "moral bankruptcy" of her Middle East policy.
In Wellington, David Zwartz, president of the Jewish Council and Israel's honorary consul - who is banned from official Government meetings - was quick to suggest that Clark's "anti-Israel" comments could have been a trigger for the spate of attacks in which swastikas have been painted and gravestones toppled in Jewish cemeteries.
At issue is the independent line Helen Clark and Foreign Minister Phil Goff have taken since they began fronting New Zealand's foreign policy.
The vocal New Zealand Jewish lobby has long promoted the view that the Government's policies are pulling the two countries apart.
Its litany is well-worn - New Zealand's "anti-Israel" voting record at the United Nations, Goff's visit to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Goff's statements condemning actions by Israeli troops, his decision to uphold an International Court ruling that Israel's "security fence" is illegal.
Capping it all was Clark's refusal to kowtow to the Israel Government's secret overtures to sweep the passports affair under the carpet before agents Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara went to court.
Last week, the American Jewish Committee issued a report into the United Nations voting record on the Arab-Israeli conflict last year and this year.
Titled One-Sided - The Relentless Campaign AGainst Israel in the United Nations, it is the backdrop to a push by Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at the UN this week for a debate on anti-Semitism.
A close examination of the Jewish Committee's report reveals a telling fact - New Zealand is no rogue state.
It is not part of the Arab bloc. Thirty-one nations, among them respectable European heavyweights such as France, Ireland, Italy and Asian countries including South Korea, had similar voting patterns to New Zealand, which endorsed 15 resolutions against Israel and abstained on seven.
The only countries to repeatedly vote in Israel's favour were the US and Israel.
New Zealand's Washington embassy received letters asking the Government to "take a strong stance" against the desecration of the Jewish graves.
Said Ambassador John Wood: "We have since received follow-up correspondence from one particular Jewish organisation commending New Zealand's Parliament for the unanimous resolution
A Herald inquiry reveals that the "scandal" over the actions of Mossad, Israel's security agency, rapidly changed gear once Clark imposed sanctions.
The screen some Israeli officials, analysts and Kiwi-born Zionists erected to cloak their country's activities became a little more transparent.
Officials who had flatly denied that Mossad was behind the attempted theft of New Zealand passports became less categorical.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom as good as admitted his Government's transgression on New Zealand's sovereignty when he told the Knesset that "we" received a message regarding the men's arrest from the New Zealand Government - but that "out of respect to the New Zealand judicial system that had already started legal proceedings where the two Israelis were accused of criminal offences, and out of concern for their safety, it was decided to postpone our response until the end of legal proceedings".
"My advice is to wait until this matter is clarified within diplomatic channels between the two countries, and upon the release of the detainees and their return to Israel, we will be able to resume the amicable relations between the two countries."
An English translation of the Knesset session obtained by the Herald is revealing for the frankly expressed views of MPs.
Shaul Yahalom, of the Mafdal Party which represents the religious Zionist movement, said of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's public response: "The fact that these things were carried out in the legal way, only while denying everything even though they probably had recordings - as was at least made public - only caused more anger, diplomatic anger with the New Zealand Government that could have been avoided.
"There is no doubt that an effective intelligence service of the state of Israel, which is supposed to penetrate countries that are hostile to Israel, should be there. It cannot be done with an Israeli passport.
"I think the Israeli intelligence services can find solutions with the help of friendly intelligence services and have it done in a friendlier manner than the way it has been done so far."
Said Abd-Elmalek, of the Ra'am Party (United Arab List): "The state of Israel has its own ways. It wants to do killings, it wants to hurt leaders, and this is obviously opposed to any international legitimacy and it hurts especially countries that are friendly.
"There was no problem in obtaining American passports. Israel could get them very easily. It gets them. It probably would not serve their purpose in this case. Just as in order to live in Amman and kill a Palestinian leader it was necessary to use Canadian passports.
"Somebody was supposed to be in another Arab country and kill somebody over there, and having a New Zealand passport was considered to be the best."
"Americans are now under suspicion in the Arab world. They are not liked. Anybody knows that. The British are not liked either, not even regular Europeans who, following the invasion of Iraq, already have a negative image in the Arab work, and this is why they looked for a country that does not have this kind of image."
Hemi Doron, from the right-wing Shinui party, claimed that two months before the Israeli passports incident, a Russian intelligence agent was caught in New Zealand.
"The Russian Government apologised. This man was deported from New Zealand and that story was over.
"They did not intent to hurt us and treat us differently than they did with that Russian agent. All we have to do is learn some humility and admit mistake."
An MP from the ruling Likud faction, Magli Vahaba, said he would not take advantage of an "operational mishap" - if indeed it had taken place - to criticise Israeli intelligence. But he wanted a Knesset committee to study the issue.
Other MPs implored Foreign Minister Shalom to own up and apologise for Israel's actions.
Several took issue with the claim that the Clark Government's response had sparked the graveyard desecration or that there was anti-Semitism in New Zealand. Not one MP directly linked the two events.
But Zwartz or any other of Israel's semi-official representatives in New Zealand have made no moves to ensure these differing views get to a broader New Zealand audience.
Goff is still smarting from some of the local attacks - particularly from those who have gained quasi-official status since budget cuts forced the closure of Israel's Wellington Embassy.
"Let's get the record straight again," he says. "I visited Arafat - he was one of the key parties on whom the success or otherwise of the Roadmap [peace process] depends.
"Equally, I saw the key people in Israel I had requested to see.
"This is part of our even-handed approach to the Middle East - not taking sides - and it's not on for Israel to suggest to me as Foreign Minister who I should see when I'm visiting an area ... "
Goff adamantly rejects the "nonsense" that it is anti-Semitic to criticise Israel.
"As I have said, we support Israel's right to secure borders and we consistently condemn suicide bombings.
"But if I am even-handed I will also condemn the de facto annexation involved with the settlement of occupied territory and the building of a wall through territory that doesn't belong to you.
"Didn't we vote in the International Court of Justice on the separation wall? Of course we did. As did 150 other countries, with only six supporting Israel.
"That should tell Israel about the unacceptability of that particular policy ...
"But I don't think Israel can justifiably rely on its stance of always claiming to be the victim when other people are quite patently victims in that conflict as well."
Goff - like some Israeli MPs - suspects the New Zealand passports were intended to assist in "extra-judicial assassinations".
This is a view also shared by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal, who recently visited New Zealand.
"It is outrageous that a country defrauds the passports of another country - It shows that even Israel is not taking the interests of friendly countries into account," he said.
No Israeli Government official would "go on record" about the motivation behind Mossad's alleged actions.
But South African-born security analyst Hersh Goodman - recommended by several officials as a "trusted source" - was blunt about the international terror threat to Israel.
"We're fighting an international organisation that's trying to blow up our embassies, blow up Jewish schools, blow up our consulates all over the world.
"If you've not got an international spy network, how are you going to know that?
"Rap us over the knuckles, call the ambassador in and give us kick up the arse and say, 'Don't do it again'."
The issue is a problematical one for New Zealand diplomacy.
Alleged Israeli ringleader Zev Barkan - who had served in several Israeli embassies - also carries an American passport.
But US authorities have decline to go public on the matter, unlike Canada. That country started inquiries into Kelman's decision to visit New Zealand on a Canadian passport while still a serving Israeli Defence Force member.
Goff has discussed the affair with his Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, who he says was "quite keen to find out about the background to the arrests in New Zealand and what lay behind them".
There are suggestions - so far unconfirmed - that Wellington may have got wind of the Barkan ring before Israeli Foreign Affairs official Michael Ronen visited New Zealand in late February.
Jerusalem officials suggest New Zealand was not keen to act on a suggestion that President Moshe Katsav visit this year.
Goff rejects this. "I would have been delighted to see the President in New Zealand - but obviously in current circumstances that wouldn't be appropriate.
"Somebody in Mr Sharon's office claimed I tried to get an appointment with him - when I had never sought one."
"That's it again - attack is the best method of defence, and in Israel it is frequently spun out of the Prime Minister's office.
Israel is considering re-opening its Wellington embassy, but Goff says New Zealand will not open one in Tel Aviv.
"We need to prioritise our resource and have embassies in those countries with whom we have the most substantial trading and political relationships."
This week, the action shifts to the United Nations where debate on the Roadmap may yet again spark conflict.
Says Goff: "Our offer to contribute to peacekeeping operations in the the region still stands.
"We see the conflict in the Middle East as being one of the things that feeds most directly into international terrorism, giving a pretext to those terrorist groups seeking support arising out of the perceived injustice."
TOMORROW Part II - Israel's Kiwi helpers
-----
Goff likely to face Israel at UN debate
nzherald.co.nz By FRAN O'SULLIVAN 21.09.2004 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3593186&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff and his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, may cross paths at the United Nations this week for the first time since Mossad-linked agents tried to steal false New Zealand passports.
The two will be in New York for a meeting of the UN's General Assembly, which is expected to hold a major debate on anti-Semitism.
The Government has sought an apology from Israel over the passports incident but nothing has been forthcoming.
Mr Goff said nothing was planned. "If I meet up with the Israeli Foreign Minister in passing, or whatever, I will be making the same points that have been made previously.
"The onus is on them at this point to come clean with us and give whatever assurance they are capable of that they don't intend to exploit our citizens and undermine the integrity of our passports."
He said Israeli agents Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman would be deported at their own expense immediately they were released from prison in Auckland.
"These guys are going to be in a real rush to get out of here. They will be out of here as quickly as they can and on a plane back to Israel."
Mr Goff has not sought any direct communication with Israel.
But Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says once the pair have gone, diplomatic efforts to repair the rift will be swift.
"We plan to answer all the New Zealand Government's questions," said Israeli official Michael Ronen.
Mr Goff said the ball was in Israel's court once the agents were released "to say this is what we did, we're sorry we did it and we won't do it again".
The Foreign Affairs Minister will also discuss the passports affair with his Canadian counterpart, Pierre Pettigrew.
Israel was caught using Canadian passports as part of a botched attempt to assassinate a Jordanian leader in 1997.
Herald inquiries established that Kelman used his Canadian passport on an earlier trip to New Zealand.
There are unconfirmed reports that Zev Barkan, the alleged mastermind of the attempted passports fraud, has since used the identity of a Canadian citizen, Kevin William Hunter, in Asia.
"The Canadians feel very sensitive about this," said Mr Goff, "and there is further evidence that, contrary to assurances given to them, their passports continue to be misused by Mossad agents.
"I would expect that if they confirm that, they will get very angry about it."
New Zealand police would likely seek extradition orders against Barkan if he was found.
And Mr Goff said missing Aucklander Tony Resnick, suspected by police as the fourth man in the affair, would be questioned if he returned.
The minister condemned the tactics by the Israeli pair's lawyers to seek an appeal against the convictions as an obvious attempt to "stop open discussion" of the affair.
"They can't claim their conviction was wrong - they pleaded guilty. They can scarcely claim that the sentence was extraordinarily harsh. If anything, I think they got off lightly."
A Herald inquiry has found:
- A high-profile Israeli MP believes the state of Israel "wants to do killings" but should penetrate hostile countries using identities gained with the help of friendly intelligence agencies.
- Charges of anti-Jewish sentiment against the Clark Government within New Zealand and Israel could just as easily be laid against most European nations, judging by their UN voting records.
- Some New Zealanders living in Israel are prepared to "lend" their New Zealand passports to Mossad to help fight terrorists.
- Israeli security analysts believe Mossad was operating a "passport factory" here and in Israel, using disabled people's identities.
- Tony Resnick is well-known to Israel's New Zealand community, but they are not disclosing his whereabouts.
- The strategy Finance Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is using to turn Israel around is "pure Rogernomics".
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Charges for Detainees Ordered
Judge Says Government Must Justify Custody at Guantanamo
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36906-2004Sep20.html
A federal judge yesterday ordered the government to justify why it has been holding detainees in a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly three years without charges and explain why they should not be released.
In a move designed to break stalled negotiations over when the detainees will have their day in federal court, U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green said the Defense Department must provide the charge or factual basis for detaining each of the 60 detainees who have sued the government, starting immediately and finishing by Oct. 18.
The judge also gave the administration an Oct. 4 deadline for filing written arguments on why each of those detainees should not be released.
Green's order was the first public sign of movement in the case since the Supreme Court ruled three months ago that the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters detained at the prison have the right to contest their imprisonment in U.S. courts.
The government began transferring hundreds of men captured in the Afghan war to the U.S. Navy base on Guantanamo in early 2002, accused them of being "enemy combatants" and contended that it was not required to formally charge them or allow them to see attorneys. Officials cited security concerns in holding the detainees incommunicado.
But the Supreme Court disagreed in its June decision and several dozen detainees have since filed suit in federal court in Washington, demanding hearings.
For the past few months, attorneys for the detainees and government have argued over the procedures under which attorneys could visit their clients, whether the conversations would be monitored and whether each detainee would be allowed more than one visit. In the meantime, the government has begun to move forward with the trials of four detainees through "military commissions" and has charged a few others.
Green expressed concern in yesterday's written order that the series of private conferences between the opposing attorneys in August and September have not produced significant progress.
She wrote, "There appears to be some confusion," about the specific time by which the government is obligated to provide the reasons for detaining individuals who have sued in court. Those explanations were supposed to start being furnished by Sept. 8, but attorneys said the government has provided them in only two cases.
Green also expressed frustration that she learned of the government's release of 35 detainees to Pakistani authorities from a newspaper story, and ordered the Pentagon to give her advance notice of any future plans to free captives. She also set a public hearing on Oct. 13 to discuss any remaining disputes.
A Defense Department spokesman said yesterday evening that he was not able to comment on the order because he had not reviewed it.
Attorneys for the detainees just a week ago wrote a joint letter to Green complaining about the stalled cases, and yesterday they applauded her move.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel for several detainees, said he expects that the cases will be debated in open court instead of in private meetings between the judge and attorneys, a prospect he welcomed.
"These are big public attention cases, they deserve to be out in the open," Ratner said. "The government has had three months since the Supreme Court mandated that . . . the government explain why our clients have been detained. Now that it's in the open, how long can the government get away with this?"
Tom Wilner, an attorney for a group of Kuwaiti detainees, and Brent Mickum, an attorney for several other prisoners, said they are hopeful the order will produce progress.
"After almost three years, it's high time the government should be required to say why it's holding people," Wilner said. "How the heck can you hold somebody without saying why you're holding them?"
Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
New Headquarters Will Guard Capital Area
Joint Command at Fort McNair Will Support Police and Federal Agencies
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37092-2004Sep20.html
A new military headquarters at the District's Fort McNair will work to deter and respond to terrorist activities in the Washington region, bringing area military resources under a unique joint command that will prepare for attacks such as the strike on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region -- which is scheduled to be officially activated at a ceremony tomorrow -- will be largely responsible for land-based homeland defense and providing military support to local police departments and federal agencies in the wake of an attack.
Commanded by Army Maj. Gen. Galen B. Jackson, the joint force will be in charge of about 4,000 soldiers and focus on safeguarding obvious potential targets in the Washington region, such as the White House, the Capitol and the Pentagon. The group also has a headquarters staff of about 60 people working to compile threat data from the FBI and local government agencies.
"Now we don't have to wait for something to happen -- we're proactive, we're planning, we're training, rehearsing to defend the national capital region," said Barbara Owens, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Military District of Washington. "It brings a number of resources under one command and unifies the effort."
The new headquarters will pull together the Army military district -- which is best known for its management of Arlington National Cemetery and funeral ceremonies -- the Naval District of Washington and smaller resources within the Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Rear Adm. Jan Gaudio, commandant of the naval district, will be second in command of the joint force, which answers to U.S. Northern Command, based in Colorado.
The joint force will be used to supplement response efforts in the Washington region, Owens said.
"We would assist the first responders," she said. "We would not be the lead, but would be in a support role."
The local headquarters has been operational since last fall and has responded to six events, including the discovery of poisonous ricin powder in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in February.
Thomas J. Lockwood, director of the Office for National Capital Region Coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, said that the department looked forward to working with the command, which would help civilian authorities contact the wide array of military units based around Washington.
"The Department of Homeland Security has been working with the Department of Defense on this project and is excited to see it come to fruition," Lockwood said in a statement. "There is a lot of value added for all entities in the national capital region to have one, direct point of contact for DOD assets and issues."
Staff writer Spencer Hsu contributed to this report.
-------- immigration / visa
U.S. House Votes to Allow Family Visits to Cuba, Rebuffing Bush
(Bloomberg)
Sept. 21, 2004
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aqDKgDkmYOxQ&refer=latin_america
-- The U.S. House of Representatives voted to allow Americans to visit relatives in Cuba once a year, rejecting new Bush administration restrictions on travel to the communist island nation.
The House voted 225-174 to rescind funding for enforcement of new Treasury Department rules that limit family visits to once every three years. The measure would leave in place older, less restrictive rules. It was attached to a budget bill for the Treasury and other agencies in the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
Representative Jim Davis, a Florida Democrat who sponsored the measure, said the new rules are hampering efforts to get aid to Cuba after Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Charley killed dozens of people, destroying buildings and flooding communities.
``Hurricane Ivan dealt a blow to the Cuban people, and under the administration's new Cuba policies, most Cuban-Americans are prohibited from going to Cuba to help their families recover from Ivan's destruction,'' Davis said.
Bush proposed a series of policies in May intended to hasten the ouster of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, including tightened rules on visits and mail to the country. Bush may veto the budget bill if it weakens the Cuba sanctions, White House Budget Office spokesman Chad Kolton said.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who also supports the Cuba embargo, said Bush is trying to win votes in among Florida's Cuban-American population.
Backlash
In July, the House voted 221-194 to overturn new Commerce Department rules that forbid Cuban-Americans from mailing clothing, soap and other items to relatives in Cuba and restrict parcels to immediate family members, excluding aunts, uncles or cousins. Visits also were restricted to immediate family members under the Treasury rules that were overturned in the House today.
For the House-passed measures to become law, they would have to be written into a final bill negotiated with the Senate. The House dropped consideration of a measure lifting all restrictions on travel to Cuba last week when its sponsor, Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, withdrew it.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Smitherman in Washington at lsmitherman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Glenn Hall at ghall@bloomberg.net
-------- police
Report Studies Plight of Indian Prisons
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36767-2004Sep20.html
Suicide attempts are common at prisons throughout Indian Country, where inmates step over one another in overcrowded jails and corrections officers are so few that prisoners simply walk away from some facilities, according to a report to be released today by the Interior Department's inspector general.
The report said the prisons, operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have many problems, including poorly trained guards, underfunded medical facilities and unsanitary conditions even after receiving more than $150 million in federal funding for construction projects since 1997.
The BIA is often hard-pressed to account for money it has spent, the report said. On one occasion, the agency, which the Interior Department oversees, could not provide investigators with expenditures for more than $9 million of the $11 million it received to open new facilities.
"This is one of the most condemning reports I've seen in more than 20 years of oversight work," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "It finds very little worthwhile in Indian detention centers, which are overseen by the federal government, and lots of horror stories."
The IG's report coincides with the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall.
"The museum opening is a high honor to American Indian culture. . . . A decent, humane detention system is also very important," Grassley said in a statement. "Since jails don't attract tour buses, problems there unfortunately can be out of sight, out of mind for many people. It took a lot of determination, hard work and focus to get the museum. It'll take just as much, if not more, to make real changes in Indian detention centers."
Grassley is scheduled to preside over a hearing on the matter at 10 a.m. today. Dave Anderson, Interior's assistant secretary for Indian affairs, is also expected to testify.
Anderson was not available to comment yesterday, but Interior spokesman Dan DuBray defended the BIA and the department, saying problems in Indian Country prisons "have been years in the making." Within hours of being briefed about the seriousness of the issues, Anderson responded by inspecting 39 BIA detention centers for health and safety problems, DuBray said.
"More than 1,000 physical condition repairs were completed," he said. "An investment of $5 million more than the previous year was committed to make these corrections."
Interior Inspector General Earl E. Devaney is expected to testify today that BIA prisons are grossly mismanaged, and that problems cited in reports 10 years ago are still visible.
"At the very outset, it became abundantly clear that some of the facilities we visited were egregiously unsafe, unsanitary, and a hazard to both inmates and staff alike," Devaney said in a copy of his testimony that was provided to The Washington Post. "Our final report . . . found clear evidence of a continuing crisis of inaction, indifference and mismanagement throughout the entire BIA detention program." Anderson could face questions about why nearly a dozen people have died in Indian Country prisons over the past three years. The report also counted 236 attempted suicides and 631 escapes in that time period.
Cindy Lou Bright Star Gilbert SoHappy, 16, died of alcohol poisoning in her cell at the Chemawa Indian School in Oregon earlier this year. In December 2003, an inmate who was arrested in connection with being intoxicated was found dead, hanging in his cell at an Arizona prison. A 15-year-old girl hanged herself in March that year in a New Mexico facility.
At some facilities, the report said, "overcrowding has become a health and sanitary issue. Many inmates sleep on mats on the floor because the jails hold two to three times their capacity."
Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.), the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, said the panel is "looking at developing special bonding authority for Indian tribes, so they can control how funds are spent to improve their jails."
-------- torture
The policy roots of Iraqi prison abuse
Torture not an aberration, but a change in US guidelines
The Christian Science Monitor
By Peter Grier
September 21, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0921/p15s02-bogn.html
Seymour Hersh may not be the last angry man of US political journalism, but he's arguably the angriest. It's hard to envision him producing the slick, as-told-to narratives that his longtime competitor Bob Woodward of The Washington Post now turns out. No, Hersh is still the avatar of watchdog reporting, pursuing what he perceives to be the mistakes and abuses of the powerful. Professionally speaking, he remains the same guy who broke the My Lai massacre story in 1969. Want proof? Take a look at the jacket photo from this book. Hersh is holding to his ear something that looks suspiciously like the receiver of a rotary phone.
That doesn't mean that his engrossing "Chain of Command" is itself an anachronism. This collection of Hersh's stories for The New Yorker, amplified and rearranged for book form, deals with questions that remain staples of news coverage today - and by "today," I mean Sept. 21, 2004. Who's responsible for the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, for instance? How did the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or its lack thereof, get so messed up? How are things going in Afghanistan? How much trouble is Richard Perle in? (Caveat: Mr. Hersh is not held in high regard by many members of the current administration. Indeed, throughout his career, subjects of his investigations have complained that he is a scurrilous hack. The aforementioned Mr. Perle, for one, has labeled Hersh the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist. The Pentagon took the unusual step of issuing a rebuttal to this book prior to its publication. Hersh's work "apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources," said the Department of Defense release.)
The Abu Ghraib portion of this book is its most noteworthy and interesting section, if not necessarily its most convincing. Hersh didn't literally break this story - nor does he claim that he did. But it was his possession of now-infamous photos of prisoner abuse and The New Yorker's plan to publish them that forced CBS to rush its own piece about the affair onto the airwaves.
Hersh's litany of the coercive techniques (some would say torture) used by US personnel will be depressingly familiar to anyone who's followed the news over the past few months. Much of it draws upon details unearthed by the military's own investigations, principally the scathing internal report of Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. But Hersh attempts to explain these actions by placing them in a larger context. Abuses also occurred in Afghanistan, and the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he says, as a desperate desire to obtain useful intelligence flowed down through US ranks.
Top officials became convinced that, in this new kind of war, old rules need not apply. Hersh claims that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized creation of a secret team of US operatives cleared to snatch or assassinate terror suspects anywhere in the world.
"The roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists, but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-an-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism," writes Hersh.
It's a safe bet that Secretary Rumsfeld won't be sending Hersh a Christmas card this year. The Pentagon chief is depicted as flattening the Joint Chiefs like a runaway Bradley, insisting on ripping up their extensive logistics plans in favor of a faster and lighter approach to invasion. That backfired when the insurgency bloomed and there wasn't enough US force to go around. As further investigations have revealed since Hersh wrote this book, at the time abuses were occurring at Abu Ghraib, US Army headquarters in Iraq were woefully short of oversight manpower.
But Rumsfeld is not Hersh's only target. Richard Perle is a conservative defense expert who's served as chairman of an important Pentagon advisory board. Note the use of the past tense. After Hersh detailed what appear to be conflicts between Perle's work as an investor in defense firms and his insider status, Perle resigned his Defense Department post.
His threatened libel suit has yet to materialize, and probably won't now that Perle is in much deeper trouble over allegations of financial malfeasance dealing with his service on the board of Hollinger Corp.
As the Perle example shows, Hersh has lately shown a remarkable ability to identify news currents before they appear. He was pounding Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi exile and would-be leader, in the pages of The New Yorker long before it became apparent that Chalabi might be a conduit of information to Iran.
Yes, as critics claim, much of his best stuff is attributed to unnamed sources. That undoubtedly leads to errors, or at least exaggerations promulgated by people with agendas.
Is there really a Special Access Program to assassinate terrorist leaders? We probably won't know the definitive answer to that for years. And how can we know if the "former intelligence operative" on one page is the same as the "ex-spymaster" on the next? Why is a "retired Navy officer" commenting on an Army operation? There's a reason Bob Woodward chucks that whole approach and writes in narrative form - it's called "readability."
And, think of this: for about double the price of this book, you can subscribe to The New Yorker. You'll get Hersh's stuff - plus cartoons - without having to wait for his next book.
-------- POLITICS
Why Americans back the war
Boston.com
By James Carroll
September 21, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/2004/09/21/why_americans_back_the_war/?rss_id=Boston.com%20/%20News%20/%20Politics
THE WAR IN IRAQ goes from worse to catastrophic. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed last week, as were two dozen US soldiers. Planned elections in January point less to democracy than civil war. Kidnapping has become a weapon of terror on the ground, matching the terror of US air attacks. An American "take-back" offensive threatens to escalate the violence immeasurably. The secretary general of the United Nations pronounced the American war illegal.
In the United States, an uneasy electorate keeps its distance from all of this. Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with resignation than passionate opposition. To the mounting horror of the world, the United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic destruction of a small, unthreatening nation for no good reason. Why has this not gripped the conscience of this country?
The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon. The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly registered with us. Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of thermonuclear weapons. While we demonized our Soviet enemy, we hardly noticed that almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side -- a race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it.
In 1968, we elected Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, then blithely acquiesced when he kept it going for years more. When Ronald Reagan made a joke of wiping out Moscow, we gathered a million strong to demand a nuclear "freeze," but then accepted the promise of "reduction," and took no offense when the promise was broken.
We did not think it odd that America's immediate response to the nonviolent fall of the Berlin Wall was an invasion of Panama. We celebrated the first Gulf War uncritically, even though that display of unchecked American power made Iran and North Korea redouble efforts to build a nuclear weapon, while prompting Osama bin Laden's jihad. The Clinton administration affirmed the permanence of American nukes as a "hedge" against unnamed fears, and we accepted it. We shrugged when the US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with predictable results in India and Pakistan. We bought the expansion of NATO, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the embrace of National Missile Defense -- all measures that inevitably pushed other nations toward defensive escalation.
The war policy of George W. Bush -- "preventive war," unilateralism, contempt for Geneva -- breaks with tradition, but there is nothing new about the American population's refusal to face what is being done in our name. This is a sad, old story. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a pointless, illegal war. The Bush war in Iraq, in fact, is only the latest in a chain of irresponsible acts of a warrior government, going back to the firebombing of Tokyo. In comparison to that, the fire from our helicopter gunships above the cities of Iraq this week is benign. Is that why we take no offense?
Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?
In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of transcendent importance. George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."
-------- budget
RECONSTRUCTION
Iraqis Warn U.S. Plan to Divert Billions to Security Could Cut Off Crucial Services
nytimes
By JAMES GLANZ
September 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/international/middleeast/21rebuild.html?ex=1096736468&ei=1&en=b712b84b777f7736
AGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 - Iraqi officials in charge of rebuilding their country's shattered and decrepit infrastructure are warning that the Bush administration's plan to divert $3.46 billion from water, sewage, electricity and other reconstruction projects to security could leave many people without the crucial services that generally form the backbone of a stable and functioning democracy.
Under the plan, which was proposed last week and would require approval by Congress, the money would pay for training and equipping tens of thousands of additional police officers, border patrol agents and Iraqi national guardsmen in an attempt to restore order to a land where lawlessness and violence have replaced Saddam Hussein's repression since the American-led invasion last year.
But the move comes as a grievous disappointment to Iraqi officials who had already seen the billions once promised them tied up for months by American regulations and planning committees, consumed by administrative overhead and set aside for the enormous costs of ensuring safety for the workers and engineers who will actually build the new sewers, water plants and electrical generators. Of the $18.4 billion that Congress approved last fall for Iraq's reconstruction, only about $1 billion has been spent so far.
"Nobody believes this will benefit Iraq," said Kamil N. Chadirji, deputy minister for administration and financial affairs in the Iraqi Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works, which has responsibility for water and sewage projects outside Baghdad.
"For a year we have been talking, with beautiful PowerPoint documents, but without a drop of water," Mr. Chadirji said, waving a colorful printout that he received from American officials.
The decision to shift the money, which had been earmarked for rebuilding everything from roads and bridges to telecommunications and the outdated equipment pumping oil, appears to signal an abandonment of the administration's original plan for putting Iraq back on its feet as a functioning nation.
In the original view, restoring Iraq's physical infrastructure assumed an importance equaled only by the American-led military action in creating a stable democratic country and winning the sympathies of ordinary citizens. Propounded again and again by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator here until an Iraqi government took over on June 28, that approach assumed that once the conduits for electricity, water, sewage, oil and information were in place, an efflorescence of industrial and national institutions would follow.
But with little actually being built and the deteriorating security situation making it doubtful that anything dramatic would happen if it were, a much more conventional set of nation-building priorities were put in place with the arrival last June of John D. Negroponte, the United States ambassador to Iraq. Those priorities are security, economic development and democracy building.
Somewhere implicit in the economic peg of this three-legged stool is the concept, much demoted, of physical reconstruction. And even then, said officials at the United States Embassy in Baghdad, the rebuilding is best done not by Americans but by Iraqis, who can not only hone their construction skills but also do the work more cheaply.
"It doesn't matter what we build," a senior embassy official said in a succinct expression of the new principles. "In the end, it's got to be an Iraqi solution."
"I feel a lot better about this mission than I did about 'rebuilding Iraq,' '' the official said. When asked why, the official said, "Because this one makes sense."
William B. Taylor Jr., director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office at the embassy, said the change represented something more akin to a shift in emphasis rather than a complete reordering of priorities.
"In the original allocation, the dollar winner, the sector that got the most resources, was electricity," Mr. Taylor said. "Now security is at the top."
He said some or all of the diverted financing could be restored if Congress decided to allocate more money to reconstruction in a future budget or if other countries provided donations.
The shift would take $1.07 billion out of the electricity sector's original allocation of $5.54 billion. Dr. Moayed al-Maayouf, director general for studies and planning at the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, said he was puzzled that nearly all the cuts in his sector would affect work at power plants - a technically difficult, long-term affair whose disruption would affect his planning for years.
Dr. Maayouf said he had not been consulted on the plan, but embassy officials said discussions might have occurred at higher levels in his ministry. In any case, even with the cuts, the ministry should be able to meet its goals for increasing electrical output over the next year, Dr. Maayouf said.
Clearly the most severe impact would be felt in the area of water and sewage, which would have its budget cut to $2.21 billion from $4.15 billion. With the insurgency in Iraq, the estimated cost of providing security for the projects had already tripled - from 10 percent to 30 percent of each construction contract - and had forced dozens of projects to shrink in size or be eliminated.
Now, Mahmood A. Ahmed, director general of water at the public works ministry, said that of an original list of about 100 projects, he knew of only four that are scheduled to start even in the next few months.
Mr. Chadirji, the deputy minister, said fewer than 30 of the original projects, which include municipal drinking water and sewage systems in towns across Iraq, were assured of surviving in the long run.
"We tell them, please, the problem is big, and let's work faster," Mr. Ahmed said. "And we must have a result."
In another indication of new American priorities in Baghdad, some money was also shifted away from the major public works projects to small-scale initiatives in economic reform, private sector development, agriculture and higher education.
Mr. Taylor, in a bit of wry humor, explained why water and electricity were tapped for all these programs by citing Willie Sutton, who said that he robbed banks because that was where the money was.
"If you're looking for $3.46 billion," Mr. Taylor said, "you can't get it out of health care. Where the money is, is electricity and water."
-------- corruption
Ethics Panel Hung Up on DeLay Complaint
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36859-2004Sep20.html
Leaders of the House ethics committee appeared deadlocked yesterday on whether to launch a formal inquiry into a three-month-old complaint against Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The panel's Republican chairman and top Democrat announced they would ask the full committee to rule on whether to dismiss the complaint or assign it to an investigative subcommittee.
But if that committee, composed of five Republicans and five Democrats, deadlocks, the complaint would not be formally dismissed but would remain in limbo, perhaps indefinitely, according to aides familiar with the ethics process.
Committee Chairman Joel Hefley (Colo.) and ranking Democrat Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.) had the authority to drop the complaint or assign it to a subcommittee, which would investigate the charges and recommend action. Yesterday's announcement indicated that the two men could not agree after three months of quiet inquiry.
"Because of the numerous allegations made in the complaint," they said in a statement, "and our desire that our fact-gathering activities . . . be as thorough as possible, we found it necessary to use the entire 90-day period . . . for these activities. In the near future we will be presenting to the committee the information we have obtained and recommendations for committee action."
Rep. Chris Bell (D-Tex.) filed the complaint against DeLay in mid-June. It accused him of soliciting campaign contributions in return for legislative favors; laundering illegal campaign contributions through a Texas political action committee; and improperly involving a federal agency in a Texas partisan matter.
DeLay denied any wrongdoing, and his supporters accused Bell of seeking revenge after losing his reelection bid in the March Democratic primary. DeLay played a major role in the 2003 redrawing of Texas's U.S. House districts in order to benefit Republicans. Bell, a first-term lawmaker, said revenge was not his motive.
Bell's ethics complaint was the first known to be filed by a lawmaker against a House leader since 1997. In that year, Congress barred outsiders from filing complaints, and both political parties agreed to an unwritten truce to end a long series of ethics charges and countercharges.
Some lawmakers thought Bell's complaint might trigger a new ethics war, but House GOP leaders decided to lie low and hope the matter would fade away.
Several public interest groups have pressed the ethics panel to dig deeply into Bell's allegations. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington placed full-page ads, calling for action, in newspapers in Hefley's and Mollohan's districts Sunday.
-------- propaganda wars
Swift Boat Swill
by Nicholas Turse
September 21st, 2004
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0438/turse.php
John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers-not just a few "rogues"-were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, and said this:
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
The archives have hundreds of files of official U.S. military investigations of such atrocities committed by American soldiers. I've pored over those records-which were classified for decades-for my Columbia University dissertation and, now, this Voice article. The exact number of investigated allegations of atrocities is unknown, as is the number of such barbaric incidents that occurred but weren't investigated. Some war crimes, like the Tiger Force atrocities exposed last year by The Toledo Blade, have only come to light decades later. Others never will. But there are plentiful records to back up Kerry's 1971 testimony point by point. Following (with the names removed or abbreviated) are examples, directly from the archives:
"They had personally raped"
On August 12, 1967, Specialist S., a military intelligence interrogator, "raped . . . a 13-year-old . . . female" in an interrogation hut in a P.O.W. compound. He was convicted of assault and indecent acts with a child. He served seven months and 16 days for his crimes.
"Cut off ears"
On August 9, 1968, a seven-man patrol led by First Lieutenant S. entered Dien Tien hamlet. "Shortly thereafter, Private First Class W. was heard to shout to an unidentified person to halt. W. fired his M-16 several times, and the victim was killed. W. then dragged the body to [the lieutenant's] location. . . . Staff Sergeant B. told W. to bring back an ear or finger if he wanted to prove himself a man. W. later went back to the body and removed both ears and a finger." W. was charged with assault and conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline; he was court-martialed and convicted, but he served no prison time. B. was found guilty of assault and was fined $50 a month for three months. S. was discharged from the army before action could be taken against him.
"Cut off heads"
On June 23, 1967, members of the 25th Infantry Division killed two enemy soldiers in combat in Binh Duong province. An army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) probe disclosed that "Staff Sergeant H. then decapitated the bodies with an axe." H. was court-martialed and found guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline. His grade was reduced, but he served no prison time.
"Taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power"
On January 10, 1968, six Green Berets in Long Hai, South Vietnam, "applied electrical torture via field telephones to the sensitive areas of the bodies of three men and one woman . . . " Four received reprimands and "Article 15s"-a nonjudicial punishment meted out by a commanding officer or officer in charge for minor offenses. A fifth refused to accept his Article 15, and no other action was taken against him. No action was taken against the sixth Green Beret.
"Cut off limbs"
A CID investigation disclosed that during late February or early March 1968 near Thanh Duc, South Vietnam, First Lieutenant L. ordered soldier K. to shoot an unidentified Vietnamese civilian. "K. shot the Vietnamese civilian, leaving him with wounds in the chest and stomach. Soldier B., acting on orders from L., returned to the scene and killed the Vietnamese civilian, and an unidentified medic severed the Vietnamese civilian's left arm." No punishment was meted out because none of the "identified perpetrators" was found to be on active duty at the time of the June 1971 investigation.
"Blown up bodies"
On February 14, 1969, Platoon Sergeant B. and Specialist R., on a reconnaissance patrol in Binh Dinh province, "came upon three Vietnamese males . . . whom they detained and then shot at close range using M-16 automatic fire. B. then arranged the bodies on the ground so that their heads were close together. A fragmentation grenade was dropped next to the heads of the bodies." B. was court-martialed, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to a reduction in grade and a fine of $97 per month for six months-after which time he re-enlisted. R. was court-martialed and found not guilty.
"Randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan"
While a U.S. "helicopter hunter-killer team . . . was on a recon mission in Cambodia," its members fired rockets at buildings and "engaged various targets [in a small village] with machine-gun fire. Gunship preparatory fire preceded the landing of a South Vietnamese army platoon, which had been diverted from another mission. A U.S. captain accompanied the platoon on the ground in violation of standing orders. The South Vietnamese troops, reconnoitering by fire, did not search bunkers for enemy forces, nor were enemy weapons found. . . . Civilian casualties were estimated at eight dead, including two children, 15 wounded, and three or four structures destroyed. There is no evidence that the wounded were provided medical treatment by either U.S. or South Vietnamese forces. . . . Members of the South Vietnamese platoon returned to the aircraft with large quantities of civilian property. . . . The incident was neither properly investigated nor reported initially." Letters of reprimand were issued to a lieutenant colonel and a major. The captain received a letter of reprimand.
John Kerry made it clear when he testified more than three decades ago that what he told the Senate was the cumulative testimony of well over 100 "honorably discharged and many very highly decorated" Vietnam vets who gathered in Detroit in early 1971. Calling their gathering the Winter Soldier Investigation, they were trying to raise awareness of the type of war they said America was waging in Southeast Asia. They were trying to demonstrate that the shocking My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, of 567 civilians in a Vietnamese village-a barbarism unknown to the American public until late 1969-was not an isolated incident in which rogue troops went berserk, but simply one of many U.S.-perpetrated atrocities.
All these years later, neither the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) nor the media feeding their allegations about Kerry's supposedly "false 'war crimes' charges" even broaches the subject of Vietnamese suffering, let alone talk about Kerry's exposition of large-scale atrocities, such as free-fire zones and bombardment of villages-gross violations of international law cannot simply be denied or explained away.
Having worked for nearly five years doing research on post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam vets, I understand the intense trauma experienced by many of them. However, having also spent years working with U.S. government records of investigations into atrocities committed against the Vietnamese by U.S. soldiers, it is patently clear which country suffered more as a result of the war, and it isn't the U.S., which tragically lost just over 58,000 soldiers. It's Vietnam. Perhaps as many as 2 million Vietnamese civilians died during the war, and who can even guess at the number wounded-physically and psychologically.
On its website, the SBVT tries to debunk the Winter Soldier Investigation by using the same rhetoric that apologists for the Vietnam War have long employed: They paint the vets who attended the Detroit meeting as a parade of fake veterans offering false testimony. "None of the Winter Soldier 'witnesses' Kerry cited in his Senate testimony less than three months later were willing to sign affidavits, and their gruesome stories lacked the names, dates, and places that would allow their claims to be tested," the SBVT claims. "Few were willing to cooperate with military investigators."
While numerous authors have repeatedly advanced such assertions, U.S. military documents tell a radically different story. According to the formerly classified army records, 46 soldiers who testified at the WSI made allegations that, in the eyes of U.S. Army investigators, "merited further inquiry." As of March 1972, the army's CID noted that of the 46 allegations, "only 43 complainants have been identified" by investigators. "Only" 43 of 46? That means at least 93 percent of the veterans surveyed were real, not fake. Moreover, according to official records, CID investigators attempted to contact 41 people who testified at the Detroit session, which occurred between January 31 and February 2, 1971. Five couldn't be located, according to records. Of the remaining 36, 31 submitted to interviews-hardly the "few" asserted by SBVT. Moreover, as Gerald Nicosia has noted in his mammoth tome Home to War, "A complete transcript of the Winter Soldier testimony was sent to the Pentagon, and the military never refuted a word of it."
The assertion that the vets proved uncooperative and refused to provide useful, identifiable information has also been a typical device used to refute the WSI. In this case, the Winter Soldiers themselves played directly into the hands of their detractors by trying to have it both ways: They wanted to expose atrocities as a product of command policy while denying individual soldiers' responsibility in committing the crimes.
At the WSI, veteran after veteran told of brutal military tactics, like burning villages and establishing free-fire zones. They offered blunt, graphic, and often horrific accounts of murder, rape, torture, mutilation, and indiscriminate violence. But when it came to perpetrators, the soldiers did not name names. From the outset, they made it clear that they would not allow their testimony to be used to, as they put it, scapegoat individual G.I.'s and low-ranking officers when, they said, it was the war's managers-America's political and military leadership-who were ultimately to blame for the atrocities. Because of this stance, some veterans told investigators after the WSI that they would not offer any further testimony or would only speak before Congress or a congressional committee. This stance became a convenient way for the military to stop work on cases and ignore the charges the anti-war vets had made.
But in fact-and despite later claims to the contrary by their pro-war critics-most of the Winter Soldier participants had publicly given accounts with their own names, unit identifications, dates of service, and sometimes rather detailed descriptions of locations-namely, all the information needed to proceed with investigations. In practically all the specific Winter Soldier cases, such probes were never done.
----
Rather Admits 'Mistake in Judgment'
CBS Was Misled About Bush National Guard Documents, Anchor Says
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35531-2004Sep20?language=printer
CBS News anchor Dan Rather apologized yesterday for a "mistake in judgment" in relying on apparently bogus documents for a "60 Minutes" report charging that President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard, ending a nearly two-week-long defense of the network's journalistic conduct that media analysts say has badly hurt its credibility.
CBS also acknowledged for the first time that its source was retired Texas National Guard official Bill Burkett, who Rather said in an interview had "misled" and "lied to" the network in describing how he obtained the purported 30-year-old memos said to have been signed by Bush's late squadron commander.
"I deeply regret I wasn't as good on this story as I should have been," Rather said. Asked whether he felt tarnished, he replied: "I have confidence that those people who don't have a specific partisan political or ideological agenda will understand what happened, how it happened, and I think they have confidence in CBS's credibility and my own. I do have a lifetime of reporting."
Burkett told CBS in an interview aired last night that he "threw out a name" of a bogus source because Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, had "pressured me to a point to reveal that source." Burkett said he had "insisted" that the memos "be authenticated" by CBS.
Mapes also put Burkett in touch with a senior official in John F. Kerry's presidential campaign after telling him that Burkett had been "helpful" on what was then CBS's upcoming story about Bush and the National Guard. The Kerry campaign confirmed her unusual go-between role but said Burkett provided no information about Bush.
What remains unclear is who provided the documents to Burkett and whether the memos were forged in a calculated effort to discredit Bush in the final weeks of his reelection effort. Rather said Burkett previously told CBS that the source was a former Guardsman who was out of the country and could not be reached by the network, and that the new source Burkett named is "one we cannot verify." CBS is still not saying that the memos are forgeries, only that the network cannot confirm they are authentic.
CBS News President Andrew Heyward acknowledged that "60 Minutes" had rushed the story to air on Sept. 8 -- five days after Mapes obtained the memos -- despite warnings from some of its document analysts that the memos may not have been produced on a 1970s government typewriter. "In retrospect, we shouldn't have used the documents, and we clearly should have spent more time and more effort to authenticate them," Heyward said.
CBS staff members, many of whom felt the apology was overdue, were relieved to discover that Burkett had admitted lying to the network, if only to spread the blame.
As Rather conceded, "The question is, why didn't you do it sooner? The story is true. I believed in the story. . . . What kind of reporter would I be -- what kind of person would I be -- if I put something on the air that I believed and then didn't stand behind it? At the first sign of pressure, you run, you cave, you fold? I don't do that."
At the same time, he said, "The fact that copies of the documents could be true was not enough. We needed to be able to prove they were authentic."
"Obviously," Rather added, "I would like to get the original documents if they still exist."
Heyward declined to say whether Rather or anyone else would be disciplined, or whether his news division would change its procedures, saying he wants to see the recommendations of outside investigators he plans to appoint.
Burkett once sued the Guard over medical benefits and previously contended that he had overheard Guard officials talking about sanitizing Bush's medical records -- a contention Texas Guard officials strongly dispute.
Under pressure from CBS, Burkett has now told the network, Rather said, that "I eventually gave you a name to protect the 'real' person."
Burkett has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks," and contacted former Democratic senator Max Cleland (Ga.) in August to offer information to the Kerry campaign.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said CBS's admission "begs the question as to where the documents came from." He noted that Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill made a congratulatory call to former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, a Kerry fundraiser, after Barnes appeared in the same "60 Minutes" segment. Barnes had nothing to do with the documents.
"There seemed to be a lot of high-level interest in the Kerry campaign and among Democrats, and the question is, was there more than just interest? Were there any high-level contacts?" Bartlett asked. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Burkett was a "discredited" source well before he spoke to "60 Minutes."
Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart said that after receiving a call from Mapes on Sept. 4, he called Burkett, who urged the campaign to be more aggressive in responding to attacks on Kerry's Vietnam War record. Lockhart said he is "99.9 percent sure" that Burkett did not mention Bush and the Guard, and accused the Bush campaign of making "baseless charges" of Democratic involvement. Burkett told USA Today that his contact with Lockhart was part of an "understanding" with CBS in exchange for providing the documents.
Critics seized on CBS's acknowledgment of failure. Conservative activist Bill Bennett, whose Salem Radio Network show reaches 100 stations, said that "bias isn't the point. This is corruption. Corruption is when you don't adhere to basic and fundamental standards. They so much wanted it to be true. . . . They were doing what they accused Richard Nixon of doing: stonewalling."
Even liberal columnists are not defending Rather and CBS. "They've handled this about as badly as could be imagined," Boston Phoenix media writer Dan Kennedy said. "They were way too late in acknowledging there may be problems with this. The short-term damage is just horrendous. You have a large percentage of the public believing -- falsely, I would argue -- that the media are suffused with liberal bias, and this just plays right into that."
Media critic Michael Wolff, who writes for Vanity Fair, said CBS executives "are unacquainted with the reality of the modern news business -- that if you're exposed on any point, you're going to get ripped apart." But he said he believes the underlying allegations reported by CBS -- that Bush had received favorable treatment in the Guard -- are accurate.
Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein media center, disagreed, saying it would be a "mistake" for CBS to keep defending the underlying story. "To the extend that Dan Rather steps up and takes the bullet, his credibility will be salvaged," Jones said. "If he is perceived as ultimately not willing to take responsibility, that will be more damaging for him."
Jones added that "somebody's head is going to have to roll," but that it was unlikely to be Rather's because "I don't expect the anchor to be the guy who understands every aspect of the story."
In a further sign of the turmoil at CBS, some staff members at the original Sunday "60 Minutes" say their program has been unfairly blemished by the Wednesday spin-off, which began in 1999 as "60 Minutes II."
"I think it is safe to say that the overwhelming feeling among correspondents and producers on the Sunday program is that we would not have made the same mistakes," correspondent Steve Kroft said. He added: "It's hard to know at this point exactly what went wrong, because the Wednesday show is an entirely separate broadcast with entirely different people, and brand-new management. But something clearly went wrong with the process."
Josh Howard, who runs "60 Minutes" Wednesday, said producer Mapes had not told him that Burkett was the source and that this was "probably one of many things I would do differently next time." As for Burkett's charge that Mapes, who has declined all interview requests, pushed him too hard, Howard said: "If anything, we didn't push hard enough."
Rather, who got into an on-air shouting match with Vice President George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, dismissed criticism that he bears a grudge against the family. "I believe overwhelmingly, people, even people who don't like me, know I'm fiercely independent and I'm not motivated by politics," he said. "I'm motivated by news."
Heyward, noting that other news organizations had restored their reputation after journalistic embarrassments, said he does not think the mistake will be a "permanent blot" on CBS's reputation.
----
Killing the Messenger: Who Gave Rather the Memos and Why
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/1348220
As Dan Rather apologizes for documents used in a story about President Bush's National Guard service, the Republicans charge that it's a Democratic conspiracy but most agree the scandal only helps George W. Bush. We speak with veteran Texas journalist Jim Moore. [includes rush transcript] With Iraq in the midst of one of the bloodiest periods since the beginning of the US invasion, there is another story that in many media circles is dominating the news. That is the controversy over documents used by CBS anchor Dan Rather in a story on President Bush's National Guard Service during the Vietnam War. After nearly two weeks of defending its reporting against accusations that the documents key documents in the report were fraudulent, Dan Rather and CBS News apologized last night for what Rather called a "mistake in judgement."
- CBS News, September 20, 2004.
That was Dan Rather last night on his own newscast. He also announced that CBS was convening an independent panel to investigate the controversy and that the network would make the findings public. An hour before the CBS Evening News went on the air, Rather was interviewed on the local New York CBS affiliate, where he first issued his public apology.
- Dan Rather being interviewed on CBS News, September 20, 2004.
At the center of the controversy are documents CBS now says it received from retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett. The network said yesterday that Burkett gave veteran CBS producer Mary Mapes a false account of the origins of the documents, which were allegedly authored by the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. CBS said Burkett originally told them he obtained the documents from another former guardsman but now says he got them from a different source whose identity CBS News has been unable to verify. Last night on the Evening News, Rather aired an interview he did with Burkett over the weekend.
- Dan Rather interviewing Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, September 20, 2004.
Since the CBS story aired on September 8, controversy swirled over the authenticity of the documents, the question of who created them and ultimately who facilitated getting the documents into Dan Rather's story. The Republicans and their allies in the corporate media began a whirlwind of rumors and speculation that the documents were part of a Democratic Party smear campaign. As evidence, they point to the fact that shortly after the CBS story aired, the Democrats launched a major series of attack ads focusing on Bush's National Guard record, the so-called "Fortunate Son" campaign. To compound these accusations, reports emerged yesterday that a key aid to John Kerry called Bill Burkett at the behest of CBS producer Mary Mapes. Former Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart says Mapes told him there were some records "that might move the story forward."
Lockhart said he talked to Burkett for a few minutes and that Burkett had "some advice on how to deal with the Vietnam issue and the Swift boat" allegations," saying Burkett told him "These guys play tough and we have to put the Vietnam experience into context and have Kerry talk about it more." Lockhart said he does not recall talking to Burkett about Bush's Guard records and called the accusations that the Kerry campaign was involved baseless.
Senior Kerry advisor Max Cleland also spoke to Burkett before the story aired and USA Today reported yesterday that Burkett said he also spoke to Howard Dean before the story aired. Further, the key figure in the CBS segment Ben Barnes, who says he intervened to get Bush into the guard at the behest of George HW Bush is listed on John Kerry's website as a vice-chair of fundraising for Kerry in Texas.
Add to this the fact that Burkett is a known Bush critic who has posted anti-Bush comments on a Democratic website in Texas and the pundits have spun this as a democratic hatchet job orchestrated by Kerry supporters, if not by the campaign itself. Here is what White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters yesterday. Note that his comments were made well before Rather went on the air last night.
- Scott McClellan, White house press secretary, September 20, 2004.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, speaking yesterday. But while the Republicans are spinning this as a democratic conspiracy against Bush, few observers would disagree that this scandal only helps the Bush campaign. The very real issue of Bush"s record in the Texas National Guard has now been trumped by the controversy over the documents and the fate of one of the most famous newsmen in the US. Last night in his interview with the local New York CBS affiliate, Rather was asked if he thought he had been "set up?"
- Dan Rather being interviewed on CBS News, September 20, 2004.
# James Moore, Emmy Award winning TV news correspondent in Texas. He is the author of "Bush's War for Re-Election" and the co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President." RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: After nearly two weeks of defending its reporting against accusations that the documents in the report were fraudulent, Dan Rather and CBS News apologized last night for what Rather called a mistake in judgment.
DAN RATHER: News about CBS News and the question surrounding documents we aired on this broadcast and on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" on September 8. The documents purported to show that George W. Bush received preferential treatment during his years in the Texas Air National Guard. At the time, CBS News and this reporter fully believed the documents were genuine. Tonight, after further investigation, we can no longer vouch for their authenticity.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dan Rather last night in his own newscast. He also announced that CBS is convening an independent panel to investigate the controversy, and that the network will make the findings public. An hour before the "CBS Evening News" went on the air, Dan Rather was interviewed on the local New York CBS affiliate where he first issued his public apology.
DAN RATHER: I made a mistake. I didn't dig hard enough, long enough, didn't ask enough of the right questions, and I trusted a source who changed his story. It turns out he misled us, lied to us about one thing. But there are no excuses. This not a day for excuses. I have made a mistake, we have made a mistake, and I'm sorry for it.
AMY GOODMAN: At the center of controversy are documents that CBS now says it received from retired Texas National Guard officer, Bill Burkett. The network said yet Burkett gave veteran CBS producer, Mary Mapes, a false account of the origins of the documents, which were allegedly authored by the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian. CBS said Burkett originally told them he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman, but now says he got them from a different source, whose identity CBS News has been unable to verify. Last night, on the "CBS Evening News," Rather aired an interview he did with Burkett over the weekend.
DAN RATHER: Why did you mislead us?
BILL BURKETT: Well, I didn't totally mislead you. I did mislead you on the one individual. You know, your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.
DAN RATHER: Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession.
BILL BURKETT: I understand that.
DAN RATHER: You said you had received them from someone.
BILL BURKETT: I understand that.
DAN RATHER: We did pressure you to say, well, you received them from someone and this someone was whom. And it's true, we pressured you, because it was a very important point for us.
BILL BURKETT: And I simply threw out a name that was basically -- it was I guess to get a little pressure off for a moment.
DAN RATHER: Have you forged anything?
BILL BURKETT: No, sir.
DAN RATHER: Have you faked anything?
BILL BURKETT: No, sir.
DAN RATHER: But you did mislead us? You use the word "lie"...
BILL BURKETT: That's an admission.
DAN RATHER: You lied to us.
BILL BURKETT: Yes, I did.
DAN RATHER: Why would I or anyone believe that you wouldn't mislead us about something else?
BILL BURKETT: I can understand that question. I can. That's going to have to be your judgment and anybody else's.
DAN RATHER: Burkett still insist that the documents are real, but says he was in no position to verify them.
BILL BURKETT: I also insisted when I sat down with your staff in the first face-to-face session, before I gave up any documents, I wanted to know what you were going to do with them. And I insisted that they be authenticated.
AMY GOODMAN: Since the CBS story aired on September 8, controversy has swirled over the authenticity of the documents, the question of who created them and ultimately who facilitated getting the documents into Dan Rather's story. The Republicans and their allies in the corporate media began a whirlwind of rumors and speculation that the documents were part of a Democratic party smear campaign. As evidence, they point to the fact that shortly after the CBS story aired, the Democrats launched a major series of attack ads focusing on Bush's National Guard record, the so-called "Fortunate Son Campaign." To compound these accusations, reports emerged yesterday that a key aide to John Kerry called Bill Burkett at the behest of CBS producer, Mary Mapes, former Clinton Press Secretary, Joe Lockhart, says Mapes told him, "There were some records that might move the story forward." Lockhart said he talked to Burkett for a few minutes and that Burkett, had "some advice on how to deal with the Vietnam issue and the swift boat allegations," saying Burkett told him, "These guys play tough and we have to put the Vietnam experience into context and have Kerry talk about it more." Lockhart said he did not recall talking to Burkett about Bush's Guard records, and called the accusations that the Kerry campaign was involved baseless. Senior Kerry adviser, former-Senator Max Cleland, also spoke to Burkett before the story aired, and USA Today reported yesterday that Burkett said he also spoke to Howard Dean before the story aired. Further, the key figure in the CBS segment, Ben Barnes, who says he intervened to get Bush into the Guard at the behest of George H.W. Bush, is listed on John Kerry's website as a Vice Chair of Fundraising for Kerry in Texas. Add to this the fact that Burkett is known -- is a known Bush critic who has posted anti-Bush comments on a Democratic website in Texas, and the pundits have spun this as a Democratic hatchet job, orchestrated by Kerry's supporters, if not by the campaign itself. Here's what White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters yesterday. Note that his comments were made well before Rather went on the air last night.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: An announcement by CBS and there are additional conversations with Mr. Burkett, raise a number of serious questions. These are serious questions that are being raised. They need to be answered in terms of what contacts people had, what contacts did Mr. Burkett have with Democrats. There are reports that he had senior-level contacts with members of the Kerry campaign. There are reports that he misled CBS on who the original source of the documents were. Those are serious questions. Why did CBS rely on Bill Burkett, a previously discredited source, for this information? CBS said that he was an unimpeachable source. The fact is he is not an unimpeachable source. He is he a discredited source from the past and someone who has been very involved with Democrats.
AMY GOODMAN: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan speaking yesterday. But while the Republicans are spinning this as a Democratic conspiracy against Bush, few observers would disagree that this scandal only helps the Bush campaign. The very real issue of Bush's record in the Texas National Guard has now been trumped by the controversy over the documents and the fate of one of the most famous newsmen in America. Last night in his interview with the local New York CBS affiliate Rather was asked if he thought he had had been, "set up?"
DAN RATHER: Certainly anybody who has been in journalism as I have, for as long as I have, you are going to accumulate enemies. Some of those are going to be enemies because they have their own partisan political agendas or ideological agendas, but we are responsible. We have made a mistake and we have to own up to it and we did own up to it today.
AFFILIATE ANCHOR: Did somebody try to set CBS up?
DAN RATHER: I don't think so. And even if they did, it was our job to find that out. No, I don't think we were set up for it. You never can rule anything completely, totally out. You know, "beware of certitude" is one of the laws of journalism. But I don't think we were set up, no. The mistake was in our web, the wound in this case is self-inflicted.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dan Rather on the local CBS affiliate in New York last night. [break]
AMY GOODMAN: As we turn now to Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, and James Moore, who wrote the book, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President. James Moore, you're in right Texas now. First of all, your response to this overall controversy?
JAMES MOORE: Well, I think it's terribly, terribly sad that what has happened to CBS has happened. I don't think there's any -- I don't think there's any doubt-- [Sound fades.] Hello...
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your assessment of what took place, what you see at this point as having happened.
JAMES MOORE: Well, it's technically hard to know. Until yesterday, when I heard the story about the envelope being turned over to Bill Burkett in Houston. I don't -- what I don't understand is why Burkett would continue to protect the source, an individual whom he does not know, as well as why CBS did not do an adequate job of vetting the document. When I was first provided a copy of the document, a number of references in it -- as a result of my long familiarity with Mr. Bush's released file -- a number of references in the document such as "O.E.T.R.," rather than "O.E.R." for Officer Effectiveness Report, and the abbreviation for "group"-"flight group" -- in this document was "grp." rather than the Air Force standard of "gp." There was a reference to "billet," which is an army term. There were just a number of things that jumped right out, and I doubted the veracity of the documents. Now Bill Burkett, on the other hand, is someone I've been checking out for almost two years; and even the people who today are calling him a liar, when I first began checking him out had described him as a truth-telling, stand-up guy who when he opened his mouth he was always honest. He worked himself very hard, had impeccable credentials and work and ethical standards, and yet now he's obviously misled CBS and is clearly guilty of lying in some regard.
AMY GOODMAN: In the guest commentary, you wrote for buzzflash.com, Jim Moore, you said that the first lie actually belongs to the President of the United States, that no one any longer has doubt that there are records missing from the President's military personnel records jacket. Can you elaborate on that?
JAMES MOORE: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, if the President had simply or would simply still today come forward and offer an explanation of his grounding. It was something more than just not showing up for a physical. You have standing orders as a pilot to get a physical every single year. Our president, who is now crossing the country and -- and promising to protect the country in times of terror, had made a similar pledge when he was a young man, to protect the country for six year, and he didn't do that. And there's not an explanation that has ever been offered by him as to why he did not take that physical; nor has any reporter ever asked him point blank, Mr. President, why did you not take your physical? The only person ever to answer that question has been Dan Bartlett, and Bartlett always offers a rather insufficient explanation, that the President was no longer flying, so it was just a formality. Well, the truth is, a pilot does not get to unilaterally decide, four years into his six year hitch, that he is not going to fly anymore. The President disobeyed orders, and he's not explained that. And documents that are required by regulation -- Now, I have studied these regulations rather extensively, and when a pilot is grounded, that pilot is then required -- the commanders are required to conduct a board of inquiry, and that board of inquiry has to issue a report on its findings as well as what is referred to as a "counciling statement," and that counciling statement informs the pilot how he might rehabilitate himself and get back in the air or get reassigned. Mr. Bush -- none of these records are in Mr. Bush's file. They're missing.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote the book, James Moore, Bush's Brain. You speculate in your piece about these CBS memos. Can you do that for us now?
JAMES MOORE: Well, I think that a number of things have to be considered. I know that people --people have often said of me, and any number of other people who watched Karl Rove for years, that we give him credit for more than he deserves; but I, like any other political reporter who's been around for twenty or thirty years, knows talent when they see it. I have watched Rove closely for over twenty years, almost twenty-five years. And he's the best there is. He's the best there ever has been at political skullduggery, and it is not beyond comprehension for him to have planted these documents, knowing that they might surface and get them into the right hands. Mr. Burkett doesn't know the individual who gave them to him. He has checked out the background of this person and says he may have had access to the National Guard, but he doesn't know the person. He never met the person. The individual who gave him the documents apparently -- he had no way of knowing if that was a person who called him on the phone. So, he appears on television and all of a sudden he gets a mysterious phone call, and a few months later, when he is at a livestock show, he gets these documents. They're planted. They're either planted, or someone -- someone who was so angry about what Mr. Bush was doing to the country recreated something that they knew was in the original file. Either way we have a situation where the good guys ended up using lies to take on the bad guys, and now they've smeared themselves and they've covered up what I think is a critical question about our President's background, and that is: How did he behave at a time in our country's history when he had taken a pledge to protect us during the war in Vietnam? And I think the context for this is what's critical, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of the President's National Guard service. He is presently calling young people into active duty from the National Guard, and they're dying in Baghdad and all over Iraq. These are young people that are supporting our war and serving based upon their pledge. Mr. Bush's war would be nowhere if those young people were acting as irresponsibly as he did. I think that this goes to his moral authority to call people to active duty and to send them into combat.
AMY GOODMAN: But James Moore, could you explain more why would -- I mean this is something that's been swirling around for the last few weeks: Did Karl Rove plant these documents? -- but why would it be in any way in George W. Bush's interests?
JAMES MOORE: Say that again.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you --
JAMES MOORE: Why wouldn't it be in George W. Bush's interests?
AMY GOODMAN: Why would it be? This whole controversy. These whole allegations.
JAMES MOORE: This is -- this is a standard Rove tactic, to attack -- to attack the messenger, rather than the message. If you can discredit the messenger, therefore you've discredited what the messenger is saying. Now, look at -- look at the fact that the White House -- the White House has believed that Bill Burkett was discredited by the Boston Globe story back in February. Now, if we can get documents into the political discourse and attach them to Bill Burkett (and during this process his personal medical files were leaked that showed he had a nervous breakdown while he was suffering from a viral attack he contracted in Panama) -- Well, if you can take a story that is generally viewed as probably true by the majority of people, and you can attach that story to someone who is discredited, well you've pretty much destroyed the story, and that would serve the President in this whole National Guard controversy quite well. Frankly, from now on, I think in any political campaign, for some time to come, when documents surface, people are immediately going to say, "Oh, it's not one of those National Guard things, is it?" Because Bill Burkett has been discredited and his story has now been discredited. If this were a political tactic or strategy employed by Rove or by Republican operatives, it's worked quite well.
AMY GOODMAN: James Moore is author of Bush's War for Re-Election and co-author of the book, Bush's Brain.
----
What if Iraq Media Coverage was Scrutinized Like CBS Documents?
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/1348226
What if the model being used to dissect Dan Rather and CBS News was applied to all of the corporate media for their coverage in the build up to the invasion of Iraq? We speak with Harper's publisher Rick MacArthur who says "there would have been no war." [includes rush transcript]
- John R. (Rick) MacArthur, publisher of Harpers Magazine and author of the book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda In the Gulf War.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined by Rick MacArthur, who is Publisher of Harper's Magazine. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Rick. Your response to this controversy, to Dan Rather, to the memos.
RICK MACARTHUR: Well, I'm appalled by Dan Rather, because I think -- or by-I don't know that Dan Rather has done any reporting in 30 years, but he is the supervisor of his producers-and as an investigative reporter, I just -- I can't believe how stupid they were. I mean, you have to ask yourself: have they ever read any history? Do they know anything about the Hitler diaries? You remember the Hitler diaries? Stern in Germany bought these forged diaries, and before you knew it, even one of the most famous historians of Nazi Germany, Hugh Trevor-Roper, had been conned. Harper's Magazine itself published a document about ten, twelve years ago about George Bush Senior's record as a navy pilot because he strafed some survivors of a Japanese lifeboat. The press covered it up, didn't want to publish it. We did it after the election, after Clinton beat him. But when you check out a document, you take it to the source. You take it all the way to the source. The idea that they would actually go with a story without actually -- without following it to the National Guard archive or to the Pentagon and verifying its actual authenticity is just mind-blowing; but it's not surprising, I guess, given Rather's terrible record. Don't forget that he was practically saluting Bush on David Letterman famously after 9/11. He said "All -- He's my commander-in-chief. All he has to do is tell me where to line up and I'll do it." Even on the Abu Ghraib scandal, which they did break (I mean, we have to give CBS credit for putting it on the air), they called General Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once they had the pictures and the evidence, confronted him with it, and he said, "Well, give me a couple of weeks. Please don't do the story," and they sat on it for two weeks! And then later said, "Well, we went with the story because -- only because it was going to break on the internet." Not because it was the right thing to do. So now, the -- you have a case of crazy overcompensation, but incredible incompetence by CBS. I don't want to sound like an old geezer, I'm 48 years old, but I talk to journalism classes, I talk to a lot of young people going to journalism, and I -- I sort of say flippantly, "We don't have any reporters anymore; people don't know how to do journalism anymore," and I guess I wasn't exaggerating. Here you got a 72-year-old guy with some experience. He doesn't know what he's doing! It's just unbelievable.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's also remember that the same producer who did this story on Bush's National Guard record and got the documents is the one who got the photos in the Abu Ghraib case.
RICK MACARTHUR: She did get the photos.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Same producer.
RICK MACARTHUR: Well, I give her credit for that; but I'm just saying that CBS doesn't have a great record. Rather doesn't have a great record on, I don't know, doing thorough and accurate journalism as Rather piously said last night. They specialized in not asking the tough questions. This was gratuitous, too. What did we need this for? The record is clear that Bush was given preferential treatment. Just getting into the Guard was a clear case of getting preferential treatment. What was the purpose -- what purpose did this serve?
AMY GOODMAN: I've been listening to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as we were driving into Colorado Springs last night, listening to Hannity's radio show. It's been amazing to listen to them talk about here, getting these documents, not investigating, going with what they believed, which proved that they were partisan. It's interesting to look at that and compare it to what all the media, not just Fox, did in the lead-up to the invasion. The kind of scrutiny they said that Dan Rather should use. Can you look at that model, what it would have meant in the lead-up to the invasion, what the corporate media should have done?
RICK MACARTHUR: Rather, also remember, got the highest rating from Brent Bozell's right-wing media watchdog group -- I forget which one it's called, what the title -- what the name of it is -- for his coverage of the Iraq war, of the invasion. In other words, he was -- CBS and Dan Rather were the most superpatriotic, pro-war, or sympathetic to the war, network among all of the networks. They got a higher grade even than Fox. So when you talk about the corporate media, you have to understand that you're talking about the kept media; and the kept media follows the wishes, follows the tendencies, follows the interests of power, and in this case, power in the form of the Bush Administration wanted the war. They wanted to go into Iraq, and Rather and company went along for the ride and distinguished themselves in the eyes of the right-wingers. I hope that people point out Dan Rather's high grade from Brent Bozell when Hannity and company starts to -- talking about the liberal media again, saying, "Oh, look at the liberal media trying to get Bush." It's preposterous. Rather was in the bag during the invasion.
AMY GOODMAN: What about all of the media? What about all of the media applying this same level of scrutiny to the issues of weapons of mass destruction?
RICK MACARTHUR: Well --
AMY GOODMAN: The whole issue of --
RICK MACARTHUR: If we'd had the kind of energy that Rather -it's incompetent, but it does show some initiative and energy-that he showed in this investigation, in theory, there would have been no war. The New York Times, as I've said a hundred times, distinguished itself in its production of fraudulent information, which was all served to them by White House, supporting the thesis that Saddam was on the verge of getting an atomic bomb. It was all false. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary; but The New York Times and the Washington Post just went out of their way to promote the fraudulent premise of the war. So did most of the rest of media. There are a couple of distinguished exceptions: The Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, sorry to promote myself, me, and anybody who put Scott Ritter on TV or radio; but beyond that, there wasn't any real scrutiny. On the contrary, there was promotion of the and advancing of the administration lies about w.m.d., which I hesit --It's about -- remember it's not about weapons of mass destruction, back when it counts; it's about an atomic bomb threat. That's what they were promoting, which was the most preposterous of all of the premises put forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Rick MacArthur, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Publisher of Harper's Magazine - and Jim Moore, author of, among other books, Bush's Brain. This is Democracy Now!
--------
Questions Surround Man Who Provided Documents
CBS's 'Unimpeachable Source' Is Ex-Guard Officer With History of Problems and of Attacking Bush
Washington Post
By Michael Dobbs
September 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36908-2004Sep20?language=printer
The man CBS News touted as the "unimpeachable source" of explosive documents about President Bush's National Guard service turns out to be a former Guard officer with a history of self-described mental problems who has denounced Bush as a liar with "demonic personality shortcomings."
Over the past three years, retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett has given dozens of newspaper and television interviews accusing the president and his aides of destroying documents and stealing elections. In e-mail messages to an Internet chat group for Texas Democrats, he has also said that the "Bush team" sent "goons" to intimidate him at his ranch in Baird, Tex.
"They can go to hell," the retired officer, 55, wrote in a March 29 posting. "I'll continue to defend the freedom of this nation -- not the liars who have wrested its helm."
Burkett's allegations against Bush and leaders of the Texas National Guard were featured prominently in a controversial book, "Bush's War for Reelection," by a former reporter, James Moore, that was published in February. The book led to Burkett's briefly becoming a TV talk-show celebrity, with his allegations of corruption and favoritism in the National Guard.
Stories about Burkett appeared in dozens of newspapers, including the New York Times, along with outraged denials from former Bush aides. Burkett said he overheard a conversation in 1997 between Joe M. Allbaugh, who was then Bush's chief of staff, and the commander of the Texas National Guard on how to "sanitize" National Guard files to prevent any political embarrassment to Bush, who was running for reelection as governor of Texas.
A Feb. 13 story in the Boston Globe noted that a former Guardsman cited by Burkett as a key corroborating witness denied that he led Burkett to a room where Bush's records were being vetted. "I have no recall of that whatsoever," said George O. Conn, a former chief warrant officer with the Guard and a friend of Burkett's. "None, zip, nada." Burkett later said that Conn, a civilian employee of the U.S military in Germany, recanted his story because of political pressure from the White House.
Conn could not be reached to comment.
As a former planning officer in the Texas National Guard, Burkett had the opportunity -- at least in theory -- to witness the events that he described. But he also had a clear motive to attack his former superiors. In 1998, he became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Guard over medical benefits after he contracted a mysterious disease while on assignment in Panama.
In interviews, Burkett accused the Guard of failing to provide him with proper medical treatment, as a result of which he became partly paralyzed and had a nervous breakdown. He told author Moore that, in desperation, he saved himself from death by taking a dose of cattle penicillin that turned out to be three times the correct dosage for his body weight.
Moore was one of Burkett's staunchest defenders until the "60 Minutes" program, but said yesterday that he no longer knew whether to believe him. "I've got so caught up in the white noise of political skullduggery that I no longer trust anything anyone tells me," Moore said.
For Burkett, attacking Bush, posting Internet messages and giving media interviews have become such all-consuming passions that he has had little time to tend to his ranch. As reporters began gathering outside his modest one-story house on the Texas scrub last week, neighbors complained that Burkett's cattle were roaming across their land.
Interviewed over the weekend by CBS, Burkett acknowledged that he had "misled" the network by simply "throwing out a name" when asked to reveal the source of the documents. He insisted that he had not forged the documents and that he had urged CBS producers to investigate their authenticity before using them in a broadcast.
For 10 days, CBS declined to name Burkett as the person who provided the disputed Guard documents, saying only that they came from an "unimpeachable source." CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said yesterday that the network was investigating a Sept. 9 statement that asserted the network had spoken with "individuals who saw the documents at the time they were written."
In the rush to air the documents Burkett provided, CBS producers inadvertently left clues about their confidential source. People asked by CBS to authenticate the documents said the papers bore a header showing they had been faxed from a Kinko's in Abilene, Tex., 21 miles from Burkett's home. Documents examiner Emily Will said the footer indicated the document had been sent at 6:41 p.m. on Sept. 2.
The next day, at 7:32 p.m., Burkett posted a message hinting that CBS News was on the verge of airing a major scoop on the Bush National Guard controversy. "No proof, just gut instinct," he wrote.
Staff writer James V. Grimaldi contributed to this report.
-----
Rather Admits 'Mistake in Judgment'
CBS Was Misled About Bush National Guard Documents, Anchor Says
Washington Post
By Howard Kurtz
September 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35531-2004Sep20?language=printer
CBS News anchor Dan Rather apologized yesterday for a "mistake in judgment" in relying on apparently bogus documents for a "60 Minutes" report charging that President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard, ending a nearly two-week-long defense of the network's journalistic conduct that media analysts say has badly hurt its credibility.
CBS also acknowledged for the first time that its source was retired Texas National Guard official Bill Burkett, who Rather said in an interview had "misled" and "lied to" the network in describing how he obtained the purported 30-year-old memos said to have been signed by Bush's late squadron commander.
"I deeply regret I wasn't as good on this story as I should have been," Rather said. Asked whether he felt tarnished, he replied: "I have confidence that those people who don't have a specific partisan political or ideological agenda will understand what happened, how it happened, and I think they have confidence in CBS's credibility and my own. I do have a lifetime of reporting."
Burkett told CBS in an interview aired last night that he "threw out a name" of a bogus source because Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, had "pressured me to a point to reveal that source." Burkett said he had "insisted" that the memos "be authenticated" by CBS.
Mapes also put Burkett in touch with a senior official in John F. Kerry's presidential campaign after telling him that Burkett had been "helpful" on what was then CBS's upcoming story about Bush and the National Guard. The Kerry campaign confirmed her unusual go-between role but said Burkett provided no information about Bush.
What remains unclear is who provided the documents to Burkett and whether the memos were forged in a calculated effort to discredit Bush in the final weeks of his reelection effort. Rather said Burkett previously told CBS that the source was a former Guardsman who was out of the country and could not be reached by the network, and that the new source Burkett named is "one we cannot verify." CBS is still not saying that the memos are forgeries, only that the network cannot confirm they are authentic.
CBS News President Andrew Heyward acknowledged that "60 Minutes" had rushed the story to air on Sept. 8 -- five days after Mapes obtained the memos -- despite warnings from some of its document analysts that the memos may not have been produced on a 1970s government typewriter. "In retrospect, we shouldn't have used the documents, and we clearly should have spent more time and more effort to authenticate them," Heyward said.
CBS staff members, many of whom felt the apology was overdue, were relieved to discover that Burkett had admitted lying to the network, if only to spread the blame.
As Rather conceded, "The question is, why didn't you do it sooner? The story is true. I believed in the story. . . . What kind of reporter would I be -- what kind of person would I be -- if I put something on the air that I believed and then didn't stand behind it? At the first sign of pressure, you run, you cave, you fold? I don't do that."
At the same time, he said, "The fact that copies of the documents could be true was not enough. We needed to be able to prove they were authentic."
"Obviously," Rather added, "I would like to get the original documents if they still exist."
Heyward declined to say whether Rather or anyone else would be disciplined, or whether his news division would change its procedures, saying he wants to see the recommendations of outside investigators he plans to appoint.
Burkett once sued the Guard over medical benefits and previously contended that he had overheard Guard officials talking about sanitizing Bush's medical records -- a contention Texas Guard officials strongly dispute.
Under pressure from CBS, Burkett has now told the network, Rather said, that "I eventually gave you a name to protect the 'real' person."
Burkett has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks," and contacted former Democratic senator Max Cleland (Ga.) in August to offer information to the Kerry campaign.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said CBS's admission "begs the question as to where the documents came from." He noted that Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill made a congratulatory call to former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, a Kerry fundraiser, after Barnes appeared in the same "60 Minutes" segment. Barnes had nothing to do with the documents.
"There seemed to be a lot of high-level interest in the Kerry campaign and among Democrats, and the question is, was there more than just interest? Were there any high-level contacts?" Bartlett asked. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Burkett was a "discredited" source well before he spoke to "60 Minutes."
Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart said that after receiving a call from Mapes on Sept. 4, he called Burkett, who urged the campaign to be more aggressive in responding to attacks on Kerry's Vietnam War record. Lockhart said he is "99.9 percent sure" that Burkett did not mention Bush and the Guard, and accused the Bush campaign of making "baseless charges" of Democratic involvement. Burkett told USA Today that his contact with Lockhart was part of an "understanding" with CBS in exchange for providing the documents.
Critics seized on CBS's acknowledgment of failure. Conservative activist Bill Bennett, whose Salem Radio Network show reaches 100 stations, said that "bias isn't the point. This is corruption. Corruption is when you don't adhere to basic and fundamental standards. They so much wanted it to be true. . . . They were doing what they accused Richard Nixon of doing: stonewalling."
Even liberal columnists are not defending Rather and CBS. "They've handled this about as badly as could be imagined," Boston Phoenix media writer Dan Kennedy said. "They were way too late in acknowledging there may be problems with this. The short-term damage is just horrendous. You have a large percentage of the public believing -- falsely, I would argue -- that the media are suffused with liberal bias, and this just plays right into that."
Media critic Michael Wolff, who writes for Vanity Fair, said CBS executives "are unacquainted with the reality of the modern news business -- that if you're exposed on any point, you're going to get ripped apart." But he said he believes the underlying allegations reported by CBS -- that Bush had received favorable treatment in the Guard -- are accurate.
Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein media center, disagreed, saying it would be a "mistake" for CBS to keep defending the underlying story. "To the extend that Dan Rather steps up and takes the bullet, his credibility will be salvaged," Jones said. "If he is perceived as ultimately not willing to take responsibility, that will be more damaging for him."
Jones added that "somebody's head is going to have to roll," but that it was unlikely to be Rather's because "I don't expect the anchor to be the guy who understands every aspect of the story."
In a further sign of the turmoil at CBS, some staff members at the original Sunday "60 Minutes" say their program has been unfairly blemished by the Wednesday spin-off, which began in 1999 as "60 Minutes II."
"I think it is safe to say that the overwhelming feeling among correspondents and producers on the Sunday program is that we would not have made the same mistakes," correspondent Steve Kroft said. He added: "It's hard to know at this point exactly what went wrong, because the Wednesday show is an entirely separate broadcast with entirely different people, and brand-new management. But something clearly went wrong with the process."
Josh Howard, who runs "60 Minutes" Wednesday, said producer Mapes had not told him that Burkett was the source and that this was "probably one of many things I would do differently next time." As for Burkett's charge that Mapes, who has declined all interview requests, pushed him too hard, Howard said: "If anything, we didn't push hard enough."
Rather, who got into an on-air shouting match with Vice President George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, dismissed criticism that he bears a grudge against the family. "I believe overwhelmingly, people, even people who don't like me, know I'm fiercely independent and I'm not motivated by politics," he said. "I'm motivated by news."
Heyward, noting that other news organizations had restored their reputation after journalistic embarrassments, said he does not think the mistake will be a "permanent blot" on CBS's reputation.
-------- us politics
Kerry Sharpens Attack on Bush and Iraq War
Democrat Says Goal Is Total Withdrawal in 4 Years
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34964-2004Sep20?language=printer
NEW YORK, Sept. 20 -- Sen. John F. Kerry on Monday accused President Bush of deception in taking the country to war in Iraq and historic miscalculations since the invasion ended, arguing that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat and that his removal has turned Iraq into a terrorist breeding ground that has left the United States even less secure.
In his most comprehensive and stinging indictment of the administration, Kerry charged that by nearly every measure, from attacks on U.S. forces to the pace of reconstruction to the training of an Iraqi security force, conditions in Iraq are far worse than the president has acknowledged. Kerry called the November election a choice between staying the course with failed policies and a change in direction that he said is urgently needed to prevent disaster in Iraq.
"The president misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective -- a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government -- far harder to achieve than it ever should have been," Kerry said in a speech at New York University.
Bush and Vice President Cheney immediately attacked Kerry for repeatedly changing his position. "He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy," Bush said in New Hampshire. "I couldn't disagree more and not so long ago, so did my opponent."
Kerry's speech came one day before the president is scheduled to address the United Nations. Bush aides said he would use his U.N. speech to say that Iraq is making progress toward stability and democracy, despite signs that the insurgency there has gained strength. On Thursday, Bush will host Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at the White House. Officials predicted Allawi would offer an assessment that will rebut what they called Kerry's grim description of conditions in Iraq.
Kerry told his audience that, if elected, his goal would be to withdraw all U.S. forces within four years, beginning sometime next summer. But he warned that unless Bush begins to act this week at the United Nations, the prospects of being able to meet that timetable could be compromised.
Bush, he said, should lobby other nations this week to make good on their pledges for more military and financial support contained in a U.N. resolution approved last spring. "Not a single country has answered that call, and the president acts as if it doesn't matter," he said, noting that of $13 billion pledged, just $1.2 billion has been delivered.
Kerry said that the administration has inflated its estimates of how quickly Iraqi security forces are being trained and that Bush should immediately expand training programs, both inside and outside Iraq. On reconstruction, the Democratic nominee said that the administration has spent just $1 billion of $18 billion authorized by Congress and that Bush should revamp the reconstruction process by inviting in more Iraqi firms rather than large U.S. corporations such as Halliburton.
Kerry also said the administration must act quickly to assure that elections scheduled for next year can be held, beginning with the recruitment of an international security force to help protect any U.N. team that is sent there to facilitate those elections.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Kerry's prescription echoes what Bush already is trying to do in Iraq.
Kerry used his 45-minute address, which was interrupted frequently by applause, to challenge the president's veracity and credibility -- and to counter criticism that he not only has shifted positions repeatedly on Iraq but also has failed to stake out clear differences with Bush on the road ahead.
Advisers said Monday's speech would form the backbone of the case Kerry will make against the president as the two candidates prepare for their first debate Sept. 30 in Miami. Kerry's goal is to get off the defensive on Iraq and persuade voters that, if Iraq is the frontline in the war on terrorism, as Bush says, then the president's overall foreign policy leadership should be judged a failure.
In condemning the administration, Kerry went further than he has in the past to dispute Bush's principal rationale for going to war -- that Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction required a preemptive strike. He also sought to make clear that he would not have gone to war, even as he again defended his October 2002 vote for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to do so. Kerry said that three dozen nations had greater capacity to develop nuclear weapons than Iraq.
"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," Kerry said. "But that was not -- that was not -- in itself a reason to go to war. The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
To Bush's argument, made repeatedly on the campaign trail, that despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction he would do the same thing now as he did in the spring of 2003, Kerry said: "How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer: resoundingly no. Because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."
Officials in the Bush-Cheney campaign immediately responded that Kerry had again changed his position. They cited the senator's words during the Democratic primaries, when he criticized former Vermont governor Howard Dean for saying that the Iraqi leader's capture did not make the United States safer, arguing those who believed that did not have the judgment to be president.
Bartlett challenged Kerry's portrayal of conditions in Iraq and said his timing, just as Allawi is arriving in the United States, sent the wrong signal to those working to stabilize Iraq. "To disparage everything being done by casting everything in the negative light is not what I think the American people are looking for," he said.
Kerry charged that Bush repeatedly failed to tell the truth before the war, on everything from the threat posed by Hussein to what it would take militarily and financially to prevail after the invasion. He said Vice President Cheney remains one of the few holdouts. "Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the Earth is flat," he said.
Kerry argued that Bush's failure to tell the truth before the war has been topped by repeated miscalculations since then. "His miscalculations were not the equivalent of accounting errors," he said. "They were colossal failures of judgment -- and judgment is what we look for in a president."
Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), joined in the criticism, saying at a town hall meeting in Raleigh, N.C., that the president has been "completely incompetent" in administering the war and that Bush's actions have been "a disaster." He added, "The only two people in America who wouldn't change what they've done in Iraq are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney."
During a question-and-answer session, Edwards was asked about his vote for the Iraq resolution by a young man who said he was a Marine Corps reservist and a Democrat. "Why are my friends dying over there?" the man asked. "Why did you vote for that?"
"I stand by my vote on the resolution," Edwards said. "But I did not give George Bush the authority to make the mess he's made in Iraq."
Staff writer David Snyder, traveling with Edwards, contributed to this report.
----
Kerry and Bush Square Off on Iraq
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/1348211
With six weeks remaining until Election Day, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry launched what is being called his most definitive statement yet on President Bush's war in Iraq. Shortly after Kerry's speech, Bush responded to his opponent's comments. [includes rush transcript] With six weeks remaining until Election Day, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry yesterday issued what is being called his most definitive statement yet on the war in Iraq.
Kerry's stance on the war has come under criticism for being too vague or too similar to President Bush's. But in a speech at New York University yesterday, the Democratic candidate issued what is described as his sharpest assault to date on Iraq.
- Sen. John Kerry, New York University, September 20, 2004.
Sen. John Kerry speaking in New York yesterday. His speech was timed one day ahead of President Bush's scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York today in which he is expected to defend his policy on Iraq. On Thursday the President will meet with the unelected Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi at the White House.
Two hours after Kerry's speech, President Bush hit back at his opponent at a campaign stop in Derry, New Hampshire.
- President George W. Bush, Derry, New Hampshire September 20, 2004.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Kerry's stance on the war has come under criticism for being too vague or too similar to President Bush's. But in a speech yesterday at New York University, the Democratic candidate issued what's being called his clearest annunciation to date on Iraq.
JOHN KERRY: Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not -- that was not in and of itself a reason to go to war. The satisfaction -- the satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact -- we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure. Now, the President has said that he miscalculated in Iraq, and that it was a catastrophic success. In fact, in fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions. From the beginning in Iraq, at every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn, and he has led us in the wrong direction.
AMY GOODMAN: John Kerry speaking in New York yesterday. His speech timed one day ahead of President Bush's scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly today in which he's expected to defend his policy in Iraq. On Thursday, the President will meet with the unelected Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, at the White House. Two hours after Kerry's speech, President Bush hit back at his opponent at a campaign stop in Derry, New Hampshire.
GEORGE W. BUSH: Today my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind with new contradictions of his old positions on Iraq. He apparently woke up this morning and has now decided, no, we should not have invaded Iraq. After just last month saying that he still would have voted for force, even knowing everything we know today. Incredibly, he now believes our national security would be stronger with Saddam Hussein in power, not in prison. Today he said, and I quote, "we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." He is saying that he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of Democracy. I couldn't disagree more, and not so long ago, so did my opponent.
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush at a campaign stop in Derry, New Hampshire, yesterday. With Iraq in the midst of one of the bloodiest periods since the beginning of the U.S. invasion, there's another story that in many media circles is dominating the news, that's the controversy over documented used by CBS anchor, Dan Rather, in a story on President Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam War.
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Military moms speak out against Bush, war in Iraq
The Associated Press
By JENNIFER BUNDY
9/21/2004
http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/politics/index.ssf?/base/politics-0/1095797648305850.xml&storylist=president
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Six women whose sons or husbands are in the military launched a multistate bus tour at West Virginia's veterans memorial Tuesday to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and against the war in Iraq. Most have a loved one who has served in or is now in Iraq or Afghanistan. Another group of women with military ties are on a similar bus tour through the Midwest. Although none is from West Virginia, the tour began in Charleston because the presidential race is close here and military and veterans issues are important, a spokeswoman said.
The tour is funded by the Democratic Party coordinating committee.
"It's not about not supporting the troops. It's not about being un-American. It's about being against George Bush," said Nita Martin of Wallingford, Pa., who has two sons in the Marine Corps.
Her younger son took part in the invasion of Iraq and came home in the summer of 2003. Her older son, who is now in Iraq, had to buy his own helmet before he went because the helmet provided by the military did not offer protection against shrapnel and bullets.
"He is in more danger than my youngest son was in the first wave," said Martin, a Republican. "It's a much more dangerous situation than it ever has been.
"How could we have gone to war without friends, without equipment, without thinking, without strategy, without understanding who the enemy really was, because I don't think we even knew that. We still don't know that today," Martin said.
Lilly Gunn, whose husband retired after 35 years in the Navy, has a son, son-in-law and nephew in the Navy now.
She said before Sept. 11, 2001, America had a reputation as a strong, rich country that was a champion of human rights and a place where diverse cultures could live together.
"Now we are bogged down in a terrible situation in Iraq which I despair at every day," said Gunn of Washington, D.C. "Colin Powell told him, 'Mr. President, if you break it you buy it.' Now he's bought it, but he's paying for it with the blood of our kids and he's paying for it with the dollars of our grandchildren."
Mary Diamond, a spokeswoman for Bush in West Virginia, said, "There are a lot of families in West Virginia who have family members who are serving. We know it's taking a hard toll."
She said Kerry on Monday, "took his eighth position on the $87 billion to fund our troops. He said on the David Letterman show he's glad he voted against the $87 billion, which would have provided body armor for our troops. That says a lot about this commitment to giving troops what they need."
The mothers' bus tour was scheduled to also appear in Cincinnati on Tuesday and later this week in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio; Wheeling; Erie, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Allentown and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Treaty Curbs Trade in More Dangerous Chemicals
Story by Simon Denyer
REUTERS SWITZERLAND:
September 21, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27257/story.htm
GENEVA - The United Nations added 14 pesticides and chemicals, including lead additive for petrol, to a growing list of toxic substances in which trade is restricted. Under the Rotterdam Convention, such substances can only be exported from one country to another with the permission of the government of the importing state.
"This is going to reduce the risk of people's exposure to a number of dangerous chemicals that are still in widespread use," said Jim Willis, executive secretary of the U.N. treaty.
The decision takes to 41 the number of products, including several types of asbestos, regarded as a major agent of cancer, which cannot be moved freely across borders under the treaty.
But chrysotile, the most common form of asbestos, was again dropped after producing countries, including Canada and Russia, blocked its inclusion at a preparatory meeting on Saturday.
Decisions under the 1998 treaty - officially the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure - are taken by consensus.
Conservationist group WWF reacted angrily to its exclusion, saying chrysotile, which represents some 94 percent of world consumption, met all the requirements for being listed.
The convention, which has been ratified by over 70 states, allows for global restrictions on any substance which is already the subject of limitations or bans in any two U.N. regions.
In the case of chyrysotile, three regions - represented by Australia, Chile and the European Union - had taken action based on findings the chemical is carcinogenic, WWF noted.
"Canada and Russia's objections to listing chrysotile asbestos are embarrassingly self-interested, protecting domestic exporters interested in selling this dangerous chemical abroad," said Clifton Curtis, director of WWF's Global Toxics Program.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protesters block Manipur highways
bbc
21 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3671876.stm
Protesters in the north-eastern Indian state of Manipur are continuing to block two highways to push for the repeal of a controversial terror law.
But a spokesman for the 32 groups leading the protest says they are ready to negotiate with the government. The government has refused to lift the anti-terror law saying it needs it to fight separatists.
Manipur has been on the boil since the killing and alleged rape of a Manipuri woman held by Indian soldiers in July.
A spokesman for Apunba Lup, a collection of 32 students and rights groups which has spearheaded the protests, told the BBC they would negotiate with Delhi if the government would stop arresting their leaders and using the police to break up peaceful protests.
But he said they would continue to press for the lifting of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from Manipur.
The act gives the armed forces wide-ranging powers to arrest and shoot suspected rebels and search their homes.
Blockade
The protesters have put up barricades at various points on the two highways - one which connects Manipur to the neighbouring state of Nagaland and the other to Assam.
Buses and trucks have stopped travelling on them although the police say some cars can be seen on the road.
"Transporters have kept their vehicles away out of fear," police superintendent T Muivah told Reuters.
Students groups have also called for a ban on the Hindi language being taught in schools and colleges across Manipur.
"What's the point in learning the national language when Delhi has a different set of rules for Manipur," Ksh Umesh, president of the All Manipur Students' Union, is quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Manipur has been hit by protests after the bullet-riddled body of Manorama Devi was discovered in July, a day after she was arrested by the paramilitary Assam Rifles.
The government says Ms Devi was a member of a separatist group but her family denies this.
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